What are you reading right now?

My resolution this week is to round up and finish the dozen odd books that I have laying around half read. I've finished The Wasp Factory and The Mirror, I'm on Perdido Street Station now. Should be done with that one tomorrow, and then the next is Hyperion. Onwards!
Just finished rereading Hyperion and Endymion as well, I'm about halfway through the Ilium duology by the same author atm. Thinking of reading one of Frank Herbert's pre-Dune works next.
 
Just finished rereading Hyperion and Endymion as well, I'm about halfway through the Ilium duology by the same author atm. Thinking of reading one of Frank Herbert's pre-Dune works next.
What'd you think of the Hyperion/Endymion and what are you thinking about Ilium so far?
 
Perdido Street Station is actually a long time favourite of mine, but it's been quite a few years since I last read it. I've always enjoyed it on reread, but I will say that I remembered it much better than I realised, and I'm not really enjoying it as much as I did in the past. I'm not sure if that's because I remember it too well to immerse myself properly or if my tastes have moved on.

Also, at least once in every page of dialogue, one of the characters "hisses" and it's aggravating as fuck. I completely understand needing a more descriptive term than "he/she said" but I have no doubt that Mieville knows how to use a fucking thesaurus. I remember that it threw me out of the reading zone all the other times I read it too.

The Scar is another favourite of mine, the world building, grubby morality and characterisation is top notch. Iron Council I've read once and rather disliked. Like you I enjoyed Embassytown but from memory The City and the City completely failed to keep my attention and I've never felt the urge to pick it up again. I've had Kraken sitting on my shelf for years and never touched it. Really need to get on that.


I really liked Kraken, it was the first of his I read. I haven't read any of these, though, and I probably should. I've liked every book of his that I've picked up. Railsea's probably my favorite so far.
 
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Tried reading Radcliffe's The Monk but it didn't quite capture me quickly enough. Instead, I tried Zelazny's A Night in the Lonesome October and it really captures the fun vibe of Victorian gothic horror. It is written from the perspective of Jack the Ripper's watchdog, Snuff, as various macabre figures prepare to conduct or disrupt an unholy ritual that could end the world. It feels slightly trashy, but still a love letter to classic horror and penny dreadfuls. Definitely a recommended reading for Halloween as it's a very charming book.
 
What'd you think of the Hyperion/Endymion and what are you thinking about Ilium so far?
I think it's a pretty good sci-fi space opera series, especially the first two books. They're very dense, with lots of literary references, and lots of different things going on at the same time. Ilium strikes me as very thematically and tonally similar, though I personally didn't enjoy it nearly as much.
 
To REPLACE American Midnight, The Fighting Bunch, about the Battle of Athens. The Count Dankula Battle of Athens, ie when American sigma male WW2 vet Chads overthrew a Democratic Party dictatorship in the 1940s South.

Was kicked off when police shot down a Black man for trying to vote, but see if they preach that in all the schools.


The parallels for today are obvious (the book is apolitical, written long before 2020), but it's infuriating nonetheless to read about evicting poll watchers, stuffing ballots with mail in fraud, and so on, and all of it written with a tone that it is so OBVIOUSLY crooked, because it fucking is and the whole world knew it until it was done to Orange Man.

Saw the name Hochschild when you picked up the book and it took that long for the Jewdar to go off?
Could have been German, and just because he's Jewish that doesn't automatically mean there's going to be kikery. Take this one, for example. It was written by a Jewish woman, even a Leftist, but she's spitting fire.

I finished American Midnight; too much agenda, I agree. Trump derangement is a massive turn-off when I just want to read some history. Most people who do read a lot of history have sufficient intelligence to draw any parallels for themselves.

At least American Midnight made me want to find better reading on censorship in the Wilson years.
So not worth my time as someone that's already pretty familiar with the era?
Maybe worth my time to read as someone that may need a good introductory book to give people as a reference?

Plutocracy by Metanoia Films is a brilliant documentary, sometimes lies/misleads (they act like the Bisbee Deportation left people in the desert to die, which isn't even necessary exaggeration when the idea of vigilantes forcedly deporting American citizens is already horrifying), but it goes very deep in one episode with Wilsonian America.
 
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I had read a lot of the work of the late Joe Gores, an ex-private investigator who got into screenwriting and writing crime novels and short stories, and among other honors ended up winning three Edgar awards from the Mystery Writers of America (Best First Novel, Best Short Story and Best One-Hour Teleplay), he also wrote a novel, Hammett featuring the author (who had also been a private detective) of The Maltese Falcon as the protagonist, as well as a mostly well-received literary prequel to Falcon, Spade & Archer set seven years before the events of Hammett's novel as Sam Spade goes to work as an independent PI. My faves from his oeuvre were his string of novels about Dan Kearney & Associates, a San Francisco private investigation firm made up of a motely crew, specializing in skip tracing and repo work. It brought a nuts-and-bolts police procedural style to a depiction of PI work.

One novel of Gores' I'd never gotten around reading until recently was Interface originally published in 1974. One of the most bleak and chilling novels I've read. It starts with a drug deal gone bad. A mystery man, Docker, murders two men involved in the deal and takes off with a briefcase filled with a quarter of a million dollars worth of heroin and $175,000 in cash. Among the others in pursuit is the nominal "protagonist" Neal Fargo, an ex-pro football player and Vietnam vet turned extraordinarily bent private investigator. Fargo is interested because he has a sideline in dealing heroin, and he had brought Docker, who he'd known in Vietnam, in as the middleman for the drug deal. Also connected is Fargo's current legitimate piece of private eye business, tracking down a wealthy industrialist's missing daughter, who under a false name was the mistress of the local dealer involved in the drug deal Docker ripped off. Also in the mix are a crooked businessman who is on the import end of the drug dealing, a sadistic, knife-wielding chauffeur, assorted cops, and a network of underworld lowlifes.

Gores' authorial voice for this novel is a totally objective third-person narrative, at no point does he dip into the minds of the characters; instead, characterization is masterfully delivered by action, description, and dialogue. It all builds up to one of the most truly surprising surprise endings I've ever read, one of the best ever since Sam Spade refused to play the sap for Brigid O'Shaugnessy.
 
Ilium strikes me as very thematically and tonally similar, though I personally didn't enjoy it nearly as much.
Yeah, I felt the same. It is both less fantastical and creative compared to Hyperion, yet somehow kept me more confused for longer. And somehow, despite being quite a bit shorter, the Ilium duology felt longer for me than Hyperion/Endymion.
 
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Just finished up Red Country by Joe Abercrombie
It was ok. Probably the worst of his stuff that I've read so far. The most exciting part of the book was about halfway thru and the rest was kind of a slog. I don't really like some of the creative decisions he made and for a character driven author, some of the character choices were downright bizzare.
I'm onto "A Little Hatred" and I'm already enjoying it much more than Red Country
 
Finished "Pattern Recognition." Some good ideas, but again, something about Gibson's writing doesn't do it for me. The ending was also really rushed. It almost felt like he had some deadline so he just kind of hastily expanded his notes into paragraphs and ended it.

Back to nonfiction next; "Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power" by Zbigniew Brzezinski.
 
Finished "Pattern Recognition." Some good ideas, but again, something about Gibson's writing doesn't do it for me. The ending was also really rushed. It almost felt like he had some deadline so he just kind of hastily expanded his notes into paragraphs and ended it.

Back to nonfiction next; "Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power" by Zbigniew Brzezinski.
It's funny cause I initially dropped Neuromancer cause he overexplained everything. Sure, cyberpunk wasnt a common theme but he seemingly both explained everything in detail or not at all. And now I'm fine reading Dune where Frankie just drops random shit he never explains and you just go with it. Tempted to go back to Neuromancer once I'm done.

Speaking of: Children of Düné. Holy shit is it dull. It's fine, being Dune and iconic, but nothing happens. I don't mind the "nothing happens" of Dune 1 cause it has action in between, but non-stop talking in Children is a snore fest. Yet, the religious doctrine on display is so fascinating. Like I want to read and hear about this religion but so little is truly, truly described. I just went through the Preacher facing Alia on Day le Mudlib and that's the most concise talking of the jihad's ideology so far, and it was just... nothing burger.

Then I go "Hm. Islam maybe?", and then remember it's all stone-throwing from sandniggers with no understanding of their own religion. Oh to be a Lord's man and live that shit unironically.
 
Just finished The First Law trilogy. Overall a quite fantastic series that wraps up pretty neatly in the third book, and Gloktor is one of my favorite characters in fiction now. I will say it felt like it was both too condensed and too stretched out in the third book. I would have liked more time for the events to breath and allow characters to settle into their new roles before the Gerkish invasion, and the ending seemed to drag on in order to create a circular feeling conclusion. It is also a bit of a slow burner as I do not feel there was much payoff for the story lines until the final book. Overall though very fantastic series and would highly recommend if you are willing to stick through all three books.
The elderly man who uses devil powers, runs a powerful bank, thinks less of people who are not of his persuasion, and controls the world from the shadows, what did the author mean by this?
 
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The Mercy of Gods, by James SA Corey.

The Captive’s War series got a rough start. We get the bad parts of the Expanse (the writing) without the good parts (an interesting premise, the working class Belt aesthetic, or fun characters like Chrisjen Avasarala). It’s got potential though, I’ll give the sequel a chance, but if it’s no better I’ll consider this author duo to be a one-hit wonder.
 
what did the author mean by this?
yea I had the same thought LOL

Absolutely fell in love with Glokta as well.
Highly recommend the 3 stand alone books next, Best Served Cold, The Heroes, and Red Country. Especially if you liked Nicamo Casca at all.
I just started on the 2nd series which is after a 27 year time skip from the ending of Last Argument of Kings. It only gets better and the world gets more fleshed out.
 
Iron Star by Loren D. Estleman, an author noted for his crime fiction, his long-running series about Detroit-based PI Amos Walker, his series of novels about Peter Macklin, professional hitman, a string of novels set in Detroit at different points of the early 20th Century, as well as several Western novels. His 1983 novel Mister St. John dealt with retired Deputy US Marshal Irons St. John, a man in his 50s who, in 1906 found himself with a string of busted business ventures and a failed run for political office behind him when he was recruited by a Pinkerton agent to bring together some of his old crew to form a posse and track down the rampaging Buckner Gang in the last days of the "Old West". Iron Star is a long-off sequel but you don't have to have read the first book to comprehend what's going down.

1926, after securing funding from Boston businessman Joseph Kennedy, film star Buck Jones is desperate to produce a Western starring himself he hopes will be a career-booster, based on the exploits of St. John. Years earlier, St. John published a sanitized memoir during his failed Congressional bid, but Jones figures there’s more to the St. John story, and gets in touch with the last surviving member of the posse that chased the Buckners, former Pinkerton operative Emmett Rawlings, who recruited St. Johns years ago. Rawlings had retired to Minnesota to work on writing a history of the Pinkerton Detective Agency after getting permission from his former boss, and had already spent his publisher's advance, then the agency's attorney threatened him with legal action if he continues. Desperate for money, he accepts Jones' invitation and Jones soon learns that the Old West was a lot grittier and far more violent than he'd suspected.
 
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Just finished The First Law trilogy. Overall a quite fantastic series that wraps up pretty neatly in the third book, and Gloktor is one of my favorite characters in fiction now. I will say it felt like it was both too condensed and too stretched out in the third book. I would have liked more time for the events to breath and allow characters to settle into their new roles before the Gerkish invasion, and the ending seemed to drag on in order to create a circular feeling conclusion. It is also a bit of a slow burner as I do not feel there was much payoff for the story lines until the final book. Overall though very fantastic series and would highly recommend if you are willing to stick through all three books.
The elderly man who uses devil powers, runs a powerful bank, thinks less of people who are not of his persuasion, and controls the world from the shadows, what did the author mean by this?

The First Law is a little weird. The world, the plot(s) and the characters are largely uninteresting, but the narration, characterization (how said middling characters are actually presented to the reader that is) and dialogue more than makes up for it.
 
Been reading James Kelman, who is the best writer in the Scotch dialect. His short stories rival many classics and say a lot with very little.

Most writers of the "working class experience", those promoted by middle class publishers anyhow, tend to pose with false and safe aggression, overindulging with gruesome subject matter that distracts from bad writing; and they often feature unrealistically depressing stories that serve to satisfy prejudice and class self-loathing. Kelman's writing, however, actually has a masculine and aggressive energy (so far as literature can have). His stories, sometimes a page long, feel lived in, as though we are entering one moment in a long life. The best short story writers, Maussapant, Chekhov, Maugnham, are also great psychologists, and Kelman is no exception.

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A 1988 reprint of the 1938 novel 42 Days For Murder, the only novel penned by prolific pulpster Roger Torrey, who contributed a lot of stories to detective pulp magazines like Black Mask, Detective Fiction Weekly, Private Detective Stories and Dime Detective. It features private eye Shean Connell who is of the classic mold of the hard-drinking, fast-talking, two-fisted PI. Connell is a piano player who plays well enough to take nightclub jobs when the cover is useful. One of the great attractions of the novel the setting of Reno, Nevada. Torrey lovingly describes a wide-open town, where gangsters, crooked politicians and others were running the gambling, prostitution and drug rackets. As well as the "easy divorce" rackets.

Reno, at the time, was known as the divorce capital of the United States. Nevada's divorce laws were more lenient than in other parts of the United States in the early 20th Century, which had strict divorce laws and complex legal barriers. In order to establish residency and be eligible for the courts of Nevada, it was necessary to live there for six weeks - hence the title. So because of this "divorce boom" a lot of lodging and entertainment was built near the Reno courthouse to attract "divorce tourists", and there was plenty of gambling and other sorts of nightlife in the city.

The plot starts out simple enough, Connell's associate Joey Free brings him a new client, rich businessman Tod Wendell had just returned to New York from South America and found his wife, Ruth, had split without a word and she's staying in Reno in order to divorce him. Wendell is still in love and his attempts to contact Ruth have been stymied by her lawyer, Crandall, a man with considerable influence in Reno ("I've always hated the fat, smooth toad type and he was the perfect example.") Wendell and Free made an effort to meet her, ensconced inside Crandall's house but between hired goons and threatening local police, they were forced to leave. From this simple base, Connell's assignment builds into a twisted but well-worked out plot and he sallies forth with the aid of Lester, his 19-year old sidekick. Among other moments, Lester starts falling for a huge "brassy" blonde dame and Connell tries to warn him off:

She's too big for you; she'd grapple with you and take two falls out of three.

At another point, Lester comments on the youth of a prostitute (who told the cops "Just a minute Chief. You ain't getting any cherry; I been pinched before") that she hardly seemed more than a child:

She's been further under the barn after eggs than you've been away from home, kid. That's a tough baby.

Plus, there is a certain amount of violence as the case proves more complex than it did at first:

My slug had caught him just below the knee and ranged up the whole length of his thigh. They dug it out up by his hip but they had to cut off his leg to find it.

While there have been reprints of Torrey's short stories, there's only been one or so of the eight Connell short stories reprinted in anthologies.
 
Speaking of: Children of Düné. Holy shit is it dull. It's fine, being Dune and iconic, but nothing happens.
That book was the most confusing and boring to me (and considering it's reputation, to most people) and I didn't enjoy it as much as the others. But the GEoD really made me glad I stuck with it to the end (and kinda devalued the previous 3 books because of how much more I liked it in relation to them).
 
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