The Knight book is being a bit of a slog so I’ve been making rather slow going of it.
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Sorry for reply delay! I picked Get Real as possibly the easiest and most modern example to get into, but if you’ve read What’s So Funny? already you know the drill. Even the very first one, The Hot Rock, is excellent, imho.
I’ve read that Perelman parody of Chandler, but thanks for reminding me, must dig it out again, I definitely have it in a slim half-remembered volume somewhere.
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Oh yes this thread.
I finished Sixth Watch and it was a lot of tense working out things as disaster is happening around him for our hero and an interesting but quite satisfying end for his career as a mage and troubleshooter for the Night Watch as well as some surprising revealing of information about his past.
@JemmieDuffs got Monday Begins On Saturday for loot day and I have started on that as I have to wait a bit for the holds on the new translation of Roadside Picnic. It made me chuckle at just a few pages in as the hero is seemingly clueless about whose house he has been given lodgings in.
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Is that the new translation of MBoS, or the original 70s translation?
I’ve only read the first (about 20 times!).
Yet I’m still not really sure what “sucking on (one’s) teeth” is.
I just finished Into the Thickening Fog which starts out funny, then gets darkly funny, then gets literally cold and dark. I liked it, though.
Not sure how I found it, think it was a discounted $2 book via BookBub or something?
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The new one from the same translator who did the watch books. 2002 from the copyright page.
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Just started reading N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season after hearing John Hodgman rave about it.
I now have Get Real in my recs-for-2017 list. I am a glutton for book recommendations.
I am in a 20th-century mystery phase at present:
The Moving Toyshop by Edmund Crispin,
and The Shortest Way to Hades by Sarah Caudwell.
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I am reading a scan of a short Icelandic tale.
Clench your teeth and suck air through the disastemal gaps, drawing any bits of pulp or gristle remaining from your last meal into your mouth. It can make any of several distinctive noises, that are culturally significant in some times and places, depending on how you hold your lips and tongue.
If you want to do it silently, place your tongue in front of at least two upper teeth, and suck any wayward asparagus from between them. If you can figure out how to do it without using your tongue you can do it on your lower teeth, too, but careful you don’t rupture blood vessels in your lips.
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Kate Griffin, Stray Souls.
I’m not with the band - Sylvia Patterson
A must read for anyone with a passing interest in the UK music scene throughout the 80s and 90s* as seen through a smash hits journo. A lot of hilarious encounters with the popsters of the day and quite a few poignant moments as well…
And with this, the serenely detached George Michael slipped off his director’s perch, smoothed down the crinkles in his exquisitely tailored leather jacket and disappeared into his considerably more chaotic future, full of sex in latrines with random male strangers, hip hop levels of skunk-weed addiction, political agitation via insurrectionary videos, magnificent indiscretion about every one of his fabulous peers and pranging his Range Rover into a Happy Snaps frontage in Hampstead in 2010, off his rocker on drugs. George Michael has gone down in history alright, and done many remarkable things. Back in 1987, though, Smash Hits summed him up with the following headline: ‘George Michael: The Glummest Man In Pop.’
Sorry about that, George. Unlike Rock ’N’ Roll Babylon, I love you to this day.
*and the 00s actually
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Everything Belongs to the Future - Laurie Penny
Nice little SF novella that explores some of the issues Penny covers in her journalism.
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I enjoyed it.
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I’m reading:
and
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The Postman - David Brin
I’m starting a reread of this book on the evening of January 20th 2017. It’s a post-apoc that manages to be reflective, depressing, mellow, cynical, and somehow… hopeful. Right now I need a book that offers some hope for the future without being optimistic, because I’m sure fucking not. I’m thinking it will go perfectly with a rainy window and tumbler of something strong.
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People complained about the movie, but I thought it better than the fix-up “novel”.
I rather disagree. I personally think the movie is rather shit and the novel is quite good. Opinions are fun!
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It’s not a novel, though - it’s three linked stores smooshed up. And one of them contains the hoary cliche of the pre-cataclysm computer being run by high-priests. ugh.
I read the book before the movie, loved it, and was excited about the movie, which I enjoyed. I read the book again several years later, and was surprised at the change in my reaction.
Fix-ups can work when they work, and not work when they don’t.
Greg Bear’s Strength of Stones should work better given the awesome ideas inside of it, but it doesn’t hold together well.
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I definitely agree with you on that one, that book holds an amazing concept but utilizes menial execution.
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All the Birds in the Sky came in today. It’s by Charlie Anders, who co-founded io9. I’m about five chapters in. The book is over 300 pages and I can tell already it’s going to be way too short. :’(
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I finished Monday Begins On Saturday.
That was a fun read. A good satire on research and institutes. A bit rambling but still very Russian.
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