Bring it on!

I thought this group had died out, then saw there were a few postings in February.

Anyway, I'm ready for a new challenge. If interested, check my profile to see what I like to read.

What about Clifford D. Simak 's City?
Or Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang?
Or Pump Six and Other Stories by Paolo Bacigalupi
Or Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke? Although I suspect that this one can be actually right up your alley in some ways:)

Pick one (or we can as well run 4 of them one after the other:))

Hi Annie, good to hear from you. I'll try to have a suggestion for you tomorrow.

:) Sure.

I will even reread whatever you choose to read from mine and post my own review - haven't done it for either of the 4 above :)

I read a couple of reviews of CITY and it sounds interesting, so I'll try that.

I'll suggest THE LONG LEGGED FLY, by James Sallis. It is the first in a series about a black man, a sort of private eye in New Orleans. Jim is white but lived for much of his childhood in the south with many (most?) of his friends being black.

Or A JAMES SALLIS READER. It is a collection of his poetry, essays, short stories, and two short novels. It's not as long a book as that might sound like, at just over 300 pages, though it is an "oversized" paperback.

Jim is one of the most literate mystery writers around and a very nice guy.

TO ANYONE who might stumble on this thread, feel free to post your own comments.

Charles

THE LONG LEGGED FLY it is then - not available for Kindle and out of print so will need to wait a while to get it but should be here in a week or two :)

I suspect that I will like it a lot - although I had never heard the author's name before... or the series :) But then finding something that I usually would not read is not that easy.

And I will pull my copy of City from the shelves - it is as good time as any to reread it :)

OK - it actually sounded vaguely familiar and looking at the genre, that should mean Shamus -- not a winner but probably shortlisted. Just looked it up - shortlisted a few times :)

Got CITY from half.com and will start it today.

Still in the mail -- so cannot start mine. Can start rereading City though :)

Wish you enjoyable reading :)

I read WHY CALL THEM BACK FROM HEAVEN, also by Simak, while waiting for CITY, and enjoyed it.

:) I suspect you will like City as well then.

My book arrived last night as well so reading it this weekend.

I'm about half way through CITY. It started a bit slow, but is picking up pretty good. Like the Jupiter part.

Annie:

Here's the mini-review I posted in the review section:

While waiting to get CITY from half.com, I read WHY CALL THEM BACK FROM HEAVEN? both by Clifford D. Simak.

I much preferred WHY CALL THEM BACK FROM HEAVEN? (Referred to hereafter (pun not intended) in this review as simply: HEAVEN)

CITY had a lot fewer scenes than HEAVEN and some of the scenes were like an early one where the scene was from the pov of a character at a town council-type meeting. People telling each other what happened in the past and telling each other what was going on in the present. Not compelling stuff. HEAVEN had lots of scenes, lots of people interacting, people in conflict, people trying to reach a goal. In CITY the reader gets little of this. The best part of CITY was the chapter (chapters?) set on Jupiter. There you get some of what you get in HEAVEN.

In HEAVEN, there are people who are in the novel throughout the story, some leaving and coming back, but part of the story nontheless. In HEAVEN you only get a robot all throughout. He's portraited as somewhat human, but that really didn't do it for this reader.

CITY certainly has interesting ideas and was worth reading, but the same is true of HEAVEN. I can't see myself reading CITY again, I can see myself reading HEAVEN again. Maybe.