Our reads in May 2024

Another month trying to steady the tottering TBR mountain. What are your plans for May?

Had major eye problems amongst all my myriad autoimmune woes in April,did little reading most of the month. Had tests last week and the eyes seem to be working better,not so much gunk around now,but I will need a new glasses prescription before the eyes can cope with a lot of reading.I'll post a very token TBR now,I have books to finish off from last month.Hoping to get back to full steam ahead by June.
Dusty's TBR for May
C J Cherryh - Hellburner✔
Clifford D Simak - The Werewolf Principle✔
Poul Anderson - The Broken Sword
Darcy Coates - The Hollow dead
Jorn Lier Horst - Dregs✔

Still working on Some Desperate Glory.

This month's line-up is Jack Four, The Atlas Complex, The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles, Cahokia Jazz, and Some Desperate Glory.

I finished Children of the Sky in the final hour of April and posted a review. Here's how May is shaping up:

In Progress
The Hearing Trumpet

On Deck
Titanium Noir
The Incal: Psychoverse
Revival

Ordered/Requested
Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon

>5 paradoxosalpha: I had never heard of Leonora Carrington until we went to see an exhibition at the Sainsbury Arts Centre at the University of East Anglia in Norwich in 2010 about Carrington, Remedios Varo and Kati Horna. I brought back the catalogue (Surreal Friends) and brought these artists onto my radar, though if you read the other review of Surreal Friends on LT, you might conclude that Carrington was at best an unreliable narrator of her own story.

I'd heard of The Hearing Trumpet in passing, but hadn't really considered it to be something I'd be likely to see. Now I must look out for a copy.

>6 RobertDay: The hearing trumpet is one of my favourite books! I'm very envious of you getting to see that exhibition.

>6 RobertDay:
My copy of The Hearing Trumpet is a Penguin Modern Classics edition that I picked up secondhand, but it still smells fresh off the press and doesn't seem like it would be hard to procure new.

For readers entertained by the 20th-century history of English Surrealism, I would recommend the novel Exquisite Corpse by Robert Irwin.

Yesterday, I started The Crystal World by JG Ballard. It had been sitting on my TBR shelf for a few years and I have read a couple of posts in this group that Ballard is a good writer. Well… the first chapter has impressed already. Looking forward to this read.

Not yet sure what I’ll read after that. William Gibson’s Blue Ant trilogy has been staring at me on my bookshelf for awhile so I might take on that next.

>7 Sakerfalcon: I've added The Hearing Trumpet to my wishlist. >8 paradoxosalpha: It looks like the book is available to purchase new on Thriftbooks.

I'm continuing with the Liaden series, now up to Trader's leap.

>11 vwinsloe: To see nearly all new and used copies on offer, give Bookfinder a try. I usually search on ISBN to help find the specific edition I'm after but there are a number of ways to filter results. Here are a couple links for The Hearing Trumpet:

• ISBN: 1681374641
  
• ISBN: 1878972197
  

BTW... I see my library offers the ebook via Overdrive/Libby so that might be another way to acquire the book.

>4 Shrike58: I hope you enjoy Cahokia Jazz! I read it in March, and I'm still thinking about it.

About to pick up Touched by Walter Mosley. Apparently a dystopian fantasy contemplating how humanity and technological innovation threaten everything else. Or something... I shall see soon enough.

>15 PocheFamily: A quick little read with the typical Mosley feel. I adore his detective novels and find his science fiction thought provoking. If you remotely enjoy 'touched' I heartily recommend Futureland

>13 ScoLgo: Cool, thanks, I didn't know about that site.

>17 vwinsloe: You're welcome!

Have you seen The Literature Map?

>18 ScoLgo:, sorry to butt in but that map is way cool! I entered 'Charles Dickens' with some skepticism and it came back with huge accuracy - a lot of predictable names, but also several surprise names that I do also like.

>18 ScoLgo: wow, no! That is also cool. Thank you.

Knocked off The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles; if you liked the first book in this series you'll have little reason not to enjoy this one. Next up: Jack Four. My understanding is that this isn't vintage Asher, but I need my fix of kinetic, cinematic mayhem, and don't feel like tackling one of the man's older novels right now.

Finished Priest's Episodes; now reading Paul McAuley's Players - another of his techno-thriller efforts, written 2007 and about MMORPGs, which he sets out to explain to the uninitiated - perhaps not in such an info-dumping way as he did in Whole Wide World for DDOS attacks, but there's still an element of clunk about it. The murder mystery isn't much of a mystery - what's not given away in the blurb becomes fairly clear about three chapters in when we're introduced to an exceptionally mad and unpleasant tech billionaire and his (just plain unpleasant) sidekick, and the only mystery looks as if it is going to be sorting out everyone's agenda.

Done with Some Desperate Glory, really good book; now I'm on a mini-break from Hugo reading with the Library of America Ursula K. Le Guin: Collected Poems.

Finished The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian by Robert E. Howard. In my youth, I had read the Conan books that included stories by L. Sprague de Camp & Lin Carter, in addition to Howards. This book collects only Howard stories. It's a quality edition put out by Del Rey illustrated by Mark Schultz. Recommended for those who enjoy this kind of thing.

Yeah, those 21st-century Del Rey Conan editions are really definitive--certainly a cut above the old de Camp & Carter ones.

I finished The Hearing Trumpet and posted my review. Also, the hold fairy manifested a copy of Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon for me this week, so that's next.

now reading The Mammoth Book of Time Travel SF which have many interesting takes on time travel, one of my faves is the truth about weena a sequel to Well's time Machine others include The Catch by Kage Baker ,Time Gypsy by Ellen Klages,try and change the past by Fritz leiber and Red Letter Day by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. but my fav is Molly Brown - Women on the Brink of a Cataclysm a take on the SF meme of finding yourself while time traveling. written by a comedian, its interesting and hilarious. if you are in to the subject, think youd find this collection a good read

I just completed The Crystal World. I’m not sure what to make of it. I certainly enjoyed the prose. The entire novel seemed to drift along dreamlike punctuated by unexpected action. It feels like an experience that remains unresolved.

Started a Lodestar finalist last night, The Sinister Booksellers of Bath by Garth Nix.

Finished The Other Wind and started The Veils of Azlaroc.

I finished Exhalation, which is a short story collection by Ted Chiang. It was OK. The stories were very imaginative and thought-provoking, but they sometimes read like essays rather than stories. The characters and the tiny slivers of plot were just meant to carry the idea. Which is a perfectly fine way to write a story sometimes, but it left me wanting more than an interesting premise. Definitely not a waste of time, though, and fans of "idea" stories would like it.

>31 drmamm: Exhalation is on my TBR, and from your description, it sounds appealing to me. Thanks.

Oh brother. Oh bother. To Your Scattered Bodies Go had great world-building, which encouraged me to go on with the quintet when at some point I should have applied the Pearl Rule. Now I've finished The Magic Labyrinth 2** (and I give it that much because at least it does "sorta-sorta" wrap things up and give some answers to what this quintet is all about), having finished it up because I tend to feel honor-bound not to use a Wikipedia plot summary and drop reading the whole clunker series.

I'm going on to Gods of Riverworld but only because the finale's Wikipedia plot summary is rather skimpy (which I can't blame any summary writer for, considering that writing a summary of these Riverworld books can relive all the tedium of eternal rebirth in that danged river valley) and I want to see if there's anything I've missed.

This is a quintet that should have been wrapped up in a trilogy at most – or best of all, one over-sized single volume. Great concept, but there's such a cumbersome jungle (jumble?) of characters and so many divergent plot threads as to make this whole thing into a self-indulgent bog.

>33 CurrerBell:

I continue to watch with interest here on the sidelines. As you say, the concept is great and I have fond but very, very vague recollection of characters and scenes but very little of the overarching plot. This makes for a tempting candidate for re-read, and I'm using your commentary as a cautionary tale. There is, after all, so much to read and re-read.

>31 drmamm:
I have Exhalation on my shelf. (I say shelf, but that is metaphorical. I have multiple bookcases, let alone shelves.) I read and enjoyed his first collection and your post tells me Exhalation is similar in that it has great ideas in the stories but he seems to find difficulty finding an ending in many of his stories. I look forward to reading this collection.

Yesterday I started All Systems Red the first novella in the Murderbot Diaries. Today I finished it. I enjoyed it and will likely be reading the sequels in the near future. It has some similarities to the Imperial Radch original trilogy and also some similar themes to the film Ex Machina.

>36 Neil_Luvs_Books:

I also see parallels between Murderbot and Imperial Radch, and while I'm not as enamoured of Leckie's characters as yet, her world-building is as layered and nuanced as Wells's. I am intrigued by Leckie's inclusion of religion, as well as singing and song in Ancillary Justice, for example.

Still need to screen Ex Machina, and that's another bump for me.

>37 elenchus: Don't forget the tea services!

I always saw the concentration on tea services in the Leckie books as being like the glory days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, when officers sat around in clubs, chatting about the latest scandals, pontificating on Glory and Duty to the Emperor and admiring each others' gorgeous uniforms. Little in the way of military puissance, but gorgeous uniforms.

reading starter villian Ive seen scalzis name but for some reason never read his books. This reading is for a RL book group and am enjoying it quite a bit. (talking cats? what else can you want? )Hopefully it continues to be good

Ex Machina is terrific, but I wouldn't compare it much to Murderbot, despite some arguable overlap of subject matter. The tone I get from each is so vastly different from the other.

>16 skid0612: Thanks for the recommendation.

But first I need to figure out what I just read ... am mostly left wondering "what just happened?" after reading Touched. There's a lot to unpack. I'm probably just being dense (and not just distracted by the zombies). Maybe there are several, not just one metaphor ... or maybe it's just a story.

>38 RobertDay:

The tea service is great, too. So colonial, with that being a constant across disparate cultures. I just finished the short story "Night's Slow Poison", featuring a civilization attacked by the Radch, yet they also unabashedly resort to the comfort of tea.

Knocked off Jack Four last night, no thanks to being woken up by a tornado warning. Anyway, it was good Neal Asher but not great Neal Asher; I really have to get back to his "Polity Agent" books sometime.

Finally reread Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand many years after reading it when it was new. I liked it less than the first time, but am glad I did it. The worldbuilding is great. He's brilliant with language & philosophy, and with his treatment of gender and sexuality. He's just brilliant generally. But the plotting is somehow minimal and confusing at the same time; and I found the characters wooden, despite many colorful quirks. As before, I could say that my favorite thing is the title.

>40 paradoxosalpha: true, the tone between Ex Machina and Murderbot is different. But I was thinking of the similarity between the two AIs in each both desiring freedom and self-determination.

>42 elenchus: I have one more episode of Shōgun to watch and you reminded me of the similarity between the serving of tea in Japanese and Imperial Radch cultures. I wonder if Leckie was thinking of Japan when she wrote the tea service into the Ancilliary novels?

I am half way through The Skylark of Space. It’s a fun read but the implicit racism is disconcerting when it appears on the page.

>45 Neil_Luvs_Books:
We have a really good idea what Murderbot desires, because it tells us all the time.
To me, the gripping core of Ex Machina is not knowing what Ava "desires."

>47 paradoxosalpha: Hmmmm… I always had the sense in Ex Machina that she wanted to leave. I wonder if I am not remembering correctly. Weren’t there lots of clues indicating what she wanted even though she didn’t voice them? I’ll have to watch it again. It’s a good film worth watching again.

Just finished The Robots of Dawn by Isaac Asimov - I'm working my way through his Robot/Foundation sequence. Asimov enjoyed exploring the implications of robots to human societies. I take it for granted that his work is pretty dated at this point, but still found it an enjoyable read.

I'm reading some of Frederik Pohls short stories. His Midas World robots remind me of Asimovs.

Starting my next Best Graphic Story finalist, Shubeik Lubeik, also known as Your Wish Is My Command.

I am currently reading The House Of Styx which I bought some time ago and have only just got around to it. Quite different in feel to his earlier Quantum Evolution series.

>50 bnielsen: One of my favourite books is The Best of Frederik Pohl. The short story in there, Tunnel Under the World, is my fav short story of all time. I remember reading it to my daughter on Halloween when she was a child. Goosebumps!

>49 ChrisG1: This is also a future reading project of mine: to reread Asimov's Robots/Empire/Foundation series, this time in chronological order rather than publication order just for a different reading experience compared to the first time I read them.

>53 Neil_Luvs_Books: I'm getting rid of some Danish translations of old science fiction stories, so I take the opportunity to read both the original and the Danish translation. Some of the translations of Pohl's short fiction are okay (but I'm still getting rid of them :-)

Finished His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik. The Napoleonic Wars....with dragons. Yep, this could have been done campy, but the author handled it more straightforwardly & wove an enjoyable, entertaining story.

I finished and reviewed Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon, and Titanium Noir is next.

Very little reading done,but enjoyed a reread of C J Cherryh's Hellburner .Very complicated setting,but each reread I understand a little more! lol.I just love Cherryh's immersive style,always enjoy falling back into her worlds.
Clifford D Simak's The Werewolf Principle wasnt among the very best work of Simak,but even lower level Simak has interesting themes,sympathetic characters,some philosophy and of course lovely descriptions of nature,so I enjoyed it a lot. Ending was a bit rushed and perhaps not credible,but still a nice read. I have a mini goal of trying to fill all the gaps in my Simak novels.17 down,about 7 or 8 to go,if I can locate free pdfs online:0)
Trying again with Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword.I have never had much enthusiasm for the whole nordic sort of mythology,Beowulf and Eddas included.
(I exclude Tolkien,he has pretty much Anglesized his elves etc,apart from the names IMO) But I'll make yet another attempt at Broken Sword,see if I can get beyond about 25%!

I DNF’d The Broken Sword ages ago. I’ve this vague idea I should give it another chance, but it’ll probably never happen - too much else to read.

Finished The Veils of Azlaroc, started The Black Sun (lot of false hits on that title).

Poul Anderson was never one of my faves, at least to the degree that I felt the need to be the completist. To put it another way, by the time I arrived at the golden age of science fiction (13), I already appreciated that his politics were not mine.

Speaking of agendas, I just wrapped up The Atlas Complex. I regard the trilogy as a qualified success; your enthusiasm for the book will depend on how much patience you have with a pack of characters with delusions of grandeur, and for whom the getting of wisdom is a rough road. I do find it amusing that there are people over at Goodreads who love Ms. Blake's characters rather more than she does, and took it really personal when bad things happened to them!

I'm about 10% of the way through Swan Song. Very dark and disturbing so far.

I finished The Skylark of Space. I don’t think it has aged very well. Verne, Wells, & Burroughs have aged better I think. It was interesting to read something that was unabashedly sexist and racist without meaning to. I think it really reflects the culture that Doc Smith was writing in.

Just finished Murderbot 2, Artificial Condition. I'm liking Murderbot. Almost too self deprecating, but not quite.

>61 Shrike58:

I've liked much else by Anderson, but in general I think I've appreciated his sf better than his fantasy.

I'm reading another Hugo Best Graphic Story finalist, Saga, Volume Eleven, then onto Ai Jiang's novelette I Am AI.

Any Jeopardy fans here catch the question this week about the name of the capital city in Hyperion? I was surprised to see Hyperion come up.

>68 Karlstar: yes! then I was mad at myself because I couldn't think of it quickly enough.

>64 Neil_Luvs_Books: A couple of years ago, I re-read Galactic Patrol, out of some sort of curiosity. I was surprised by some of the things I found, things I could never have noticed when Smith was my go-to writer for thrilling space opera. But I felt no urge to carry on and re-read any more.

And then I read Clifford Simak's Cosmic Engineers. Much to my surprise, this stacked up badly against the Doc Smith.

Reviews for both books were posted.

>70 RobertDay: interesting about Simak! I have his City and Way Station on my bookshelf waiting to be read. I have only heard good things about those two books.

>71 Neil_Luvs_Books:, >70 RobertDay: Simak was one of those spotty writers, sometimes very good, sometimes so-so. Maybe not surprising considering how prolific he was.

>70 RobertDay: Thanks for the review of C.E. "a fairly preachy piece" describes a lot of the Simak I've read :-)

>7 Sakerfalcon:! Way Station was always a favourite of mine. I'm a bit afraid to re-read it, in case disappointment lurks within.

I read Way Station a few years ago and really enjoyed it. City also has some great moments. I am particularly fond of Why Call Them Back from Heaven?, which goes a bit weird at the end but is an effective piece of satire.

I've coincidentally just started reading Simak's Shakespeare's planet, which I picked up because I seemed to remember liking the wild imagination of whatever short stories of his I encountered in anthologies. I'll be reading it with more interest now!

>61 Shrike58:

I've only read one Poul Anderson novel (Orbit unlimited), which basically was a retelling of American myth-making and its right-wing self-aggrandizement has put me off reading more novels by him. Though I will likely make the little effort required to read some of his short stories (I have fond memories of A little knowledge when I was around the Golden Age).

I'm reading Lake of Souls. I'm about 110 pages in. I'm super picky about my short stories but I am really enjoying this one.

>76 Petroglyph: I have an old flip-book edition of Anderson's There Will Be Time and The Dancer from Atlantis. I read the former many times as a kid and loved it; I could never make it past the first couple chapters of the latter! I did read The High Crusade a couple years ago and found it a total blast, just sheer fun in novel form.

>77 Watry: I haven't picked this up yet but Leckie is in my top five of current working sf authors, so I imagine I will soon.

I have started Ken MacLeod's Beyond the Light Horizon, the third book in the Lightspeed Trilogy.

As with Book 2, he has included a summary of what has gone before to save people the trouble of having to reread the first two books before getting stuck into the final instalment.

>79 pgmcc:

Beyond the Hallowed Sky is nowhere in my public library consortium. I'll have to put in a request, since I'll be glad to tackle another MacLeod trilogy at some point.

>80 paradoxosalpha:
I always fond MacLeod's book rewarding.

I zoomed through Murderbot #2 and am reading Rogue Protocol now.

Started on Chris Priest's The Evidence, another visit to the Dream Archipelago which so far reads like a cross between Kafka and Discovering Scarfolk.

(For those who don't know, Scarfolk started out as a joke website promoting macabre and surreal public health posters, and then went downhill from there.)

Starting a fantasy novel that's a Lodestar finalist, Unraveller. I basically know nothing about it, but I've never not found a Frances Hardinge novel fascinating, so I have high hopes.

>74 RobertDay: I'm in the disappointed camp for Way Station after a recent re-read. I respect what he was trying to do with a story focused largely on introspection, but there just wasn't much there IMO. I was hoping to be impressed, as I was with Brackett's The Long Tomorrow but that was not the case.

I'm on book 3 of the original set of Foundation books, 2nd Foundation. It's been many years since I read them, and watching the series on Apple TV triggered me on a re-read. The books hold up very well (if you can ignore some of the stuff that makes it clear Isaac wrote this in the 50's). I must say, I like the series on TV, but they have gone way off the plot of the books. I'm not sure you can even call the TV series "Foundation" but I still like the show. I will probably take a break from Foundation after I finish this book, then pick up the other books in the series some other time.

I finished Titanium Noir and posted my review. In the process, I discovered that there's a new Harkaway: Karla's Choice, written as a sequel to The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. I think I'll have to read that within the next year or so.

Next on the sf agenda: The Incal: Psychoverse (a graphic novel).

#87 I just watched the documentary on Jodorowsky's Dune. It was because of this never made film that
he met Moebius and when he couldn't raise the money for the film he used much of the storyboard for the film in the Incal and Metabaron series. He's quite insane and and an amazing genius.

Yes, I knew that Dune-based backstory for Incal. I tend to think of Jodo as an occultist first, and then as a writer and filmmaker.

I was disappointed in The Metabarons: Othon & Honorata, because I felt it was too Dune-derivative. (Padded with an R2-D2 & C-3PO frame story!)

>88 justifiedsinner: Your comments, just reminded me of how bad the original Dune movie really was. Check out this scene they cut on Youtube. Fair warning, you can't unsee it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuBSvNtlAq8

as a teaser, the first comment describes it well. "Captain Picard, the lost member of Toto."
I also love how the other actors look stunned. And Kyle's hair! It should be in a museum somewhere.

>90 Authjgab:

N.B. Lynch's Dune (which you refer to as "the original") was not Jodo's earlier Dune, which never made it to production, but had a lot of curious creative progeny, including the documentary to which >88 justifiedsinner: refers.

I thought Lynch's film had some admirable bits, and was perhaps greater in its original conception, before being whittled down to a more conventional feature length. It certainly looks crude compared to Villeneuve's work, though.

Finished The Black Sun, taking an SF break with Appleby's End.

I finally finished The Saints of Salvation, which wrapped up a bit better than I expected. On to Starter Villain.