Good Morning Blue Sky! Hope you’re all ok? Today I’m currently reading the very enjoyable short fiction collection The Vega Incident And Other Stories by Joseph Elliott-Coleman. What are you reading at the moment?
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Still working through either Someone in Time anthology or Space Crone, the Ursula K LeGuin essay/story collection. Last 2 weeks been v short on time, but almost finished both. Then it'll be the next Discworld book.
Good morning, Womble! I'm a little more than halfway through Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford, which recently won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History. Really interesting so far!
Hello Womble. I am reading The Reformatory by Tananarive Due. I have to do it in small doses since it is so brutally realistic, the supernatural elements not necessary to make it scary.
Morning Womble, I'm having fun with Lady Eve's Last Con by Rebecca Fraimow - a fast moving sci-fi crime story with a small-time criminal getting out of her depth on a high-society space colony.
Morning Womble. I’m good today. Have some brioche rising, ready for baking. I’m listening to Le Carré’s TTSP on Audible during the day, and have Candice Fox’s Hades for nighttime reading.
Currently reading Doctor Who: Rogue by Kate Herron and Briony Redman. It is everything I love in a Who novelisation: extra scenes, footnotes, a “the changing face of DOCTOR WHO” note in the front.
The modern novelisations make no sense in any meaningful way. Not when you can watch a story on the iPlayer whenever you want. So they are very definitely meant for fans from the pre-VCR era. Everything about them is to hit that particular fan itch. They’re in A format: what else is in A format now?
I would advocate reading and watching - why limit yourself? My mother taught me to read before I went to school - an advantage I never lost and which enabled me to escape my socio - economic roots. And what a pleasure it has been.
Not disagreeing, but I think it's the reading bit that's most important. "Oh, you like Doctor Who and you like reading? Here you go." The Target books for many pre-VCR-ers were the gateway to reading much, much more.
Top o’the morning, Womble. I finished the excellent Translation State by Ann Leckie late last night, currently listening to The Will of Many by James Islington. Engaging first few chapters!
Good morning Womble. Just finished Laurence Leemer's "Capote's Women: A True Story of Love, Ambition & Betrayal"; now starting S.B. Divya's "Loka", and wondering if her far-future Alloy Era is not, in the end, more relateable than the high society Capote moved in.
Morning! I'm digging back into Hilary Mantel's A Place of Greater Safety. The main takeaway so far: Robespierre is the absolute epitome of 'it's the quiet ones you need to watch'...
Hi Womble! I'm slowly making my way through Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright. I remember finding Carpentaria a challenge but then getting partway through and it rewired my brain a bit (in a good way) and I started to get it, and I suspect this might be a similar experience.
Funnily enough I'm reading Will Self's "Why Read" - a series of articles about his experience of reading, literature, some authors and reflections upon modern technogy's effect on reading and literature.
I'm only about a quarter of the way into it and I can't really decide. There's a lot of in depth explanation of language development which I've been skimming over tbh. I'll see how it develops.
For my bedtime reading, it's Ransome's Coot Club. Ransome's someone I go back to again and again. Just treated myself by ordering secondhand hardcovers of We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea and The Picts and the Martyrs, which I have only in paperback, the former a Bad Glue era Puffin tied up with string.
Someday I want to be there. It's the realest part of fictional Britain for me, more real than London where I've actually been. (My Ransome shelf includes "The Natural History of Britain and Northern Europe: Mountains and Moorland" and "The Lakes" by Nicholson.)
Interesting to note via my Ransome collection, which is mostly later (i.e. from the 40's) printings of the first editions, that even bad War and post-War paper is in better shape than recent trd and hc printing of things, which seem to be yellowing within a few years of publication.
Ransome is THE great writer of realistic children's adventure.
We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea is my foundational research for anything I've ever written involving ships and storms. (Moth's voyage to her volcano-blasted homeland to reforge Lakkariss, in particular.)
I really want a collection of the chequered editions, though I think they've been reprinted - but I also know my parents have a complete set of more modern (1980s) paperbacks so I'm not in a hurry. But I do have a Penguin of We Didn't Mean to Go to See because it's my fave - then Coot Club - so...
I have a first edition (first printing) of Great Northern, which is one of my favourites. (I think they're all my favourites except Peter Duck and Missee Lee, because one of the things I loved was the stories were "real" and the made-up Peter Duck stories weren't what I wanted of the S,A, & D's.)
Reading Lifelode by Jo Walton, which appears to be a magical family drama with a disorienting-but-interesting insistence on putting everything in present tense (there is a story reason for this)
Good morning! I seem to be following your lead lately, as I read Premee Mohamed's 'The Rider, the Ride and the Rich Man's Wife' earlier this week, and I have Interzone 300 queued up for this afternoon.
Good morning from Chicago. A friend suggested West from Appomattox by Heather Cox Richardson. It dives into how the Reconstruction period after America's Civil War changed the country, helped form our middle class and laid the groundwork for where we are today.
I'm rereading Sansûkh, the epic Hobbit/LotR fanfic by Determamfidd, which follows the dead Thorin Oakenshield as he (and his similarly dead companions) watch over those they left behind... including Glóin's young son Gimli, and by extension the Fellowship and the events of LotR.
It really is, and exceptionally well-researched! It sticks to book canon (adding in things that would have happened but weren't mentioned, such as the dwarves' visits to Bilbo in Bag End in the years between the two stories) but fleshes the characters out with the traits added in PJ's movies.
Morning Womble! I finished the Ministry of Time this week, I’ve not had time to start another book… Although I’m slowly reading the Magician’s Nephew to my baby in Arabic to make sure he hears all the phonemes while his brain is developing.
Question 7 by Richard Flanagan, flitting between the author’s family history, the invention of the by nuclear bomb, the love life of HG Wells and much besides, with notes on what makes good writers (and readers). Beguiling!
Happy second Sunday Womble! (Got to love a bank holiday) I’m currently having much fun reading Bless Your Heart by Lindy Ryan - Texan multigenerational matriarchal vampire hunting undertakers
I’m currently read Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree. Started reading it yesterday at Crane Beach, Ipswich. Seems appropriate since the novel is set by the ocean.
During the week I utterly devoured Fourth Wing and Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros. I know I'm coming to this series late, but it really is excellent. Does all the stuff the Dragonriders of Pern did, only waaaay better. Just about to start Expanse book 3.
Good afternoon, dread Darth Tobermoriarty. I had restarted The House of Hidden Meanings by RuPaul. I say restart as it’s my second attempt at vibing with it. I am still finding it difficult but I cannot figure out why - he had a tough childhood but there’s a lot of scar tissue blocking the writing?
Good morning! I'm about 75% through (and plan on finishing today) Dexter Palmer's brilliant Mary Toft; or, the Rabbit Queen. (Yes the title has a semicolon in it.) It is, frankly, incredible.
Good morning Womble! This morning I'm finishing The Fortunate Fall by Cameron Reed. This spectacular screenshot got re-skeeted into my timeline yesterday.
Oh yeah, I remember Jo Walton and the whole rec.arts.sf.written crew absolutely loving this book. Took me several decades to find it because it went out of print so fast.
Morning, I am reading Shorefall by @robertjbennett.bsky.social For a middle book in a trilogy, this one is definitely not treading water. Action and increasing tension from page 1.
Good afternoon adventurer of both the over and undergrounds.
I am trying to finish off some VMAs that are yet to be read. The decidedly mediocre State of Change and Device of Death.
Morning! After 3 DNFs (too grim/too sweet/too something else), I finished rereading The Furthest Station by Ben Aaronovitch. I had forgotten until 1/2 way through what it was about. I had a silly cry at the end. Trying another New-to-Me-Author and gripped so far - fingers x my DNF run has ceased.
No new book. Sorry. Read the terms for my new flat. I GOT IT. So am rather boring right now and pack far to many books away. And since I am old and have creaky joints I fall asleep easily. So I log out here for a few weeks. And wait for fantastic new autumn, spooky reads. Don't disappoint me 💙
Ah.Sorry. A small omission. Am snacking on Rakesfall by Vajra Chandrasekera. But snacking doesn't do it justice. I have the feeling that it is a book to be savoured like a gourmet. Not by an exhausted and aching gourmand for words
Good afternoon Womble! Have thoroughly enjoyed listening to Becky Chambers’ two Monk and Robot novellas and am just starting Andrew Joseph White’s The Spirit Bears Its Teeth
I have tentatively been reading again, but am struggling to do so with any enthusiasm. It is not the words on the page but the brain trying to take them in. OverLondon by @georgepenney.bsky.social and Tony Johnson, a fun fantasy mystery.
Morning Womble!
I finished The Library at Mount Char, which I liked a lot, squeezed in Bitter Waters by Vivian Shaw (always fun) and I've just started Stars and Bones by Gareth L. Powell.
Morning, Womble! I am reading and absolutely adoring Kelly Link's The Book of Love, which reminds me how much I used to really love the early novels of John Irving and also, of course, of how much I love Buffy. But even more that I need to reread Link's stories.
Finishing up Johanna van Veen's My Darling Dreadful Thing. Classic, well-crafted gothic with a wonderful viscerality. Hope it sticks the landing; ending this sort of ghost story well is hard.
Currently reading The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman. Was pulled away briefly to read the latest of volume of the manga Way of the Househusband though. Excellent comedic manga about an ex-yakuza turned househusband. He takes his duties very seriously haha.
I decided to face an old wound & read The Shepherd's Crown.
I don't know what I was expecting from the final Discworld book, but this was exactly what I needed.
Deeply emotional. Fantastic characters. Stunning plot.
Although the final scenes have sent me back to Sir Terry's old classics to recover.
I think of it as less the end and more now the reading can begin again with new eyes. I need to get back to my own reread now the nights are drawing in…
I mostly do reread the Watch books. I do the Witches about one in three rereads, I think. I just feel like Vimes at his Vimesiest is perfection. Angry, competent, caring, fair, flawed-and-knows-it.
It is sort of strange to know that there's no more new trips around the Disc now.
They've been such a strong part of my love of storytelling since I was first sneaking into my teenage years.
Good morrow! I picked up most of Will Wight's Cradle progression fantasy when it was free on Kindle a while back; I just started book 2, Soulsmith, for more wuxia-inspired D&Dish action. It's tosh, but readable tosh!
Morning Womble! We were at the Indie Horror Chapter One event in Birmingham on Saturday, so am working through my haul from that - starting with David Watkins' The Exeter Incident
Happy Sunday, Womble! I’m about to hop on a train to Glasgow (and then a bus to Campbeltown) so very glad to have the entertaining The Hexologists by Josiah Bancroft to keep me company!
I'm late to the party again, Womble. Currently reading on paper The Sword of Albion by Mark Chadbourn, an Elizabethan spy romp with added Unseelie Court. On digital I read a sample of Saltblood by Francesca de Tores & instantly fell in love with the compelling voice & and gorgeous prose.
I'm keen to Bear's Stratford Man books which are in a similar vein. Speaking of things Elizabethan, have you read the Night's Masque trilogy by Anne Lyle? Theatre and magic and an alt-London where Elizabeth had kids - great read.
I have to confess that it’s been on my TBR since its publication. I loved the linked series set in the present, but I never managed to find the right time to read the trilogy. You may have inspired me to do just that.
It's been on my shelves since 2011 or so - I'm only hitting it now as part of my read-the-TBR project (shame on me). I had no idea there was a linked series!
No shame from me. As I remember it, it is totally stand alone - new publisher etc but does link in to the bigger ‘world’ that comes from series starting with The Age of Misrule.
Good morning Womble from drizzly Copenhagen! I’m about to head out in search of some coffee and a danish pastry, and I have just started reading the best Hugo novel, Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh
Morning! I finished the first Crater School book and went straight onto the second. I wonder if Chaz Brenchley will write as many as Elinor Brent-dyer wrote Chalet school books (about 60!)
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Currently reading Doctor Who: Rogue by Kate Herron and Briony Redman. It is everything I love in a Who novelisation: extra scenes, footnotes, a “the changing face of DOCTOR WHO” note in the front.
I’m adoring Rogue in novel form because they did not go the way you might expect.
I don’t know if they have the same hook for modern readers/fans.
(The Giggle was the one in the last batch.)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/214915520-a-marriage-of-undead-inconvenience
Please make this into a film. Thank you.
I am reading THE FIFTH SUN A New History of the Aztecs by Camilla Townsend
We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea is my foundational research for anything I've ever written involving ships and storms. (Moth's voyage to her volcano-blasted homeland to reforge Lakkariss, in particular.)
Today, I am reading ADHD Organization and Cleaning by Calvin Caulfield.
(Out of sheer desperation before I have a meltdown)
In the eyes: The Girls by Emma Cline
In the ears: Someone Like Me by M R Carey
Looking for someone who will help dismantle your criminal empire..
Have had a very unproductive reading month so far, got distracted by the Olympics
Rilke today!
And you and the weather have both reminded me that it must soon be time for my annual Rilke poem post ('Lord - it is time...').
... So yes, maybe posting the original is the way to go.
I’m currently read Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree. Started reading it yesterday at Crane Beach, Ipswich. Seems appropriate since the novel is set by the ocean.
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250886101/bookshopsbonedust
https://bsky.app/profile/liz-is.bsky.social/post/3l2hh23jlez2r
Worth it though.
Glad to see that it's back in print!
I'm currently reading Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon. It's a fresh and really engaging take on the ancient world, Syracuse cum Dublin.
Just finished before this The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain and more Sofia Samatar remains a great thing.
So far I’m finding the combination of cosmic horror and space opera very appealing.
I am trying to finish off some VMAs that are yet to be read. The decidedly mediocre State of Change and Device of Death.
Check out Slayer of Yggdrasil on Tapas. https://tapas.io/series/Slayer-of-Yggdrasil
I finished The Library at Mount Char, which I liked a lot, squeezed in Bitter Waters by Vivian Shaw (always fun) and I've just started Stars and Bones by Gareth L. Powell.
Just finished Simon Reynolds' Shock and Awe: Glam Rock and Its Legacy
https://cloggie.org/books2/2024/08/shock-and-awe-simon-reynolds/
I don't know what I was expecting from the final Discworld book, but this was exactly what I needed.
Deeply emotional. Fantastic characters. Stunning plot.
Although the final scenes have sent me back to Sir Terry's old classics to recover.
The City Watch stories always feel designed to keep you warm on a cold afternoon.
They've been such a strong part of my love of storytelling since I was first sneaking into my teenage years.
Crime in the Land of 1000 Islands by Zephaniah Sole
Crime fiction about tracing a paedophile in the Philippines, intergenerational trauma, fables, justice
Really a lot better and less depressing than it sounds!