My recent reading:

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle.  Interesting read, does lots of good stuff, wasn't quite as stunning as I'd hoped, but still definitely recommended.

Dragon Teeth.  Crichton's final work, and fairly standard fare of him - historical rather than sci-fi, engrossingly written, but not exactly high-brow.

The Fourth Monkey.  Thriller by J D Barker.  Kinda OK, at times predictable, at times not.

Divisadero.  Exquisite prose, as you might expect from Oondatje (of English Patient fame).  Really enjoying it.

Are literary awards actually indicative of good shit?

tigerswiftly wrote:

N.K. Jemisin wins a 3rd Hugo award on the bounce...

I should get around to reading her books!

Same. I hear good things, so The Fifth Season is already on my rapidly expanding wish list. I just wish I had a bit more time to read all these books.

THEY HAVE THE BEST WORDS BOLLO

at lassed*

Bollockoff wrote:

Are literary awards actually indicative of good shit?

The Hugo’s are particularly strong. If you look back at previous winners (and short-listed) then the real great sci-fi/fantasy novels and novelists are represented. They have a consistency that you don’t tend to find from other literary awards, perhaps because of the genre focus. Unlike awards like the Costa, Booker etc. The Hugo’s don’t tend to be decided and influenced by societal change, contemporary relevance etc. They don’t really have any dud decisions either - there’s no Crash a la Oscars.

It’s probably down to the community being very passionate and focused. It doesn’t have the disparate views, genre preferences etc. That you find with the other awards. Whilst I prefer sci-fi to fantasy Jemisin is excellent.

Ah ok. Cool. Ever since the Nobels started imploding i've been scrutinising awards a hit more.

Just finished The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead which was one of lthe best books I’ve read in a fair while. It’s a fictional tale of an enslaved black girl during the 19th and how she ends up interacting with the Underground Railway, which apparently helped to liberate over 100,000 during it’s life. It’s brutal in parts but is thoroughly engaging throughout. It does a great job of painting a picture of how inidividual states dealt with slavery, freeman, slave catchers, patrolmen and issues such as sterilisation and education. Without being preachy it does a great job of educating you about that time in America’s history.

I’d fully recommend. Won the Pulitzer last year.

I've just got back from holiday, which means I've finally hard a chance to sit down and read something.  Normally I spend ages deciding on which hallowed text I'll be taking with me, but this time I picked up a copy of Lud in the Mist by Hope Mirrlees pretty much on the spur of the moment.  I was vaguely aware of it, mainly because I'd heard Neil Gaiman refer to it, but knew very little about it.

So, for anyone equally unaware of this beautiful little book, Lud in the Mist was written by Mirrlees in 1926.  It was largely ignored in its day, but enjoyed brief popularity in the 60s, before mostly fading back into obscurity.  In broad terms the story concerns the titular town, which lies near the border to the world of fairy, and its mayor - a self centred bureaucrat who, much like the inhabitants of the town, has spent much of his life suppressing any hint of the "poetic" - and their struggle to deal with the apparently increasing influence of their unwanted neighbours.

In many respects it's a deeply flawed novel - the lead is, for much of the book, pretty unlikeable, the opening chapters are almost exclusively scene setting, some characters seem to just appear from nowhere, and some of the book's most dramatic events are given such light treatment you almost have to re-read to check that they happened at all.  (Indeed the book's finale could easily have warranted another novel in its own right, rather than the scant few pages it is afforded here.)  Attitudes to women, and arguably race, feel very much of their time.

And yet I absolutely loved it.

It's extraordinary.  Mirrlees throws out some incredible turns of phrase, often unexpectedly, positively forcing you to cling to the words.  Whilst the book is short, and the story arguably slight, it is none the less simultaneously dense.  It's full of references to old folk tales, but you're not punished if you don't know them.  Much more, it references itself, gently, and cleverly, in ways that demand you to go back and re-read it.  

Many of the book's mysteries are predictable, but again, the book itself is not.  Dancing off in peculiar directions, sometimes within a single paragraph.  Take for instance this sequence from early in the book as both warning and promise for what is to come:

 “...it is never safe to classify the souls of one's neighbors; one is apt, in the long run, to be proved a fool. You should regard each meeting with a friend as a sitting he is unwillingly giving you for a portrait -- a portrait that, probably, when you or he die, will still be unfinished. And, though this is an absorbing pursuit, nevertheless, the painters are apt to end pessimists. For however handsome and merry may be the face, however rich the background, in the first rough sketch of each portrait, yet with every added stroke of the brush, with every tiny readjustment of the 'values,' with every modification of the chiaroscuro, the eyes looking out at you grow more disquieting. And, finally, it is your own face that you are staring at in terror, as in a mirror by candle-light, when all the house is still.” 

Having read it, I'm not surprised Gaiman offered it plaudits - it's clear he owes Mirrlees a debt himself (as does Susannah Clarke, and countless more), though it seems unfair to keep count when Mirrlees herself clearly (and openly) was inspired by others.  ("Goblin Market" by Rossetti being an obvious one, alongside a whole host of folk stories.) 

As for what actually happens, and what it's about...  I'm inclined not to say too much - my copy has a forward by Gaiman that I strongly advise against reading lest the whole novel be spoiled before you begin.  It's clear though that there are specific ideas that Mirrlees wishes to convey, though like any good book there's plenty of space for interpretation.  

So, yeah, tl;dr - read it.  It deserves a wider audience.  (Though some of you will hate it.)

Just finished Perdido Street Station. Thank Jabber it’s over. I didn’t enjoy it at all really. Miéville is so in love with his city creation that he spends way too much time describing it and not nearly enough time moving the plot along. After a languid first half he badly fumbles the second with some dry action and a frankly ridiculous finale.

New Crobuzon is basically Pratchett’s Ankh-Morpork pulling the straightest face it can possibly manage. Not a great place to spend over seven hundred pages. I won’t be going back, nor will I be reading any of Miéville’s other books.

Writing off one of fantasy's most celebrated writers due to not liking one of their earliest novels, and one he himself has dug out for being the work of a young guy trying to be 'gritty gritty gritty' doesn't seem too smart.

I doubt you'd get on with the other Bas-Lag novels, but Embassytown, Railsea, The City and the City... There's a wealth of different styles he has written in.

He's very divisive though, so I'm not terribly shocked you didn't like him. Perdido is my least favourite, I think, of the 8 or so I've read.

Edit: Essentially, you'd be bonkers to write him off if it was the story/world you disliked as he writes a variety of stuff. If it's the style and prose that turned you off.. . Yeah, that's his thing. Always does it, the fiend.

tigerswiftly wrote:

Writing off one of fantasy's most celebrated writers due to not liking one of their earliest novels, and one he himself has dug out for being the work of a young guy trying to be 'gritty gritty gritty' doesn't seem too smart.

I doubt you'd get on with the other Bas-Lag novels, but Embassytown, Railsea, The City and the City... There's a wealth of different styles he has written in.

He's very divisive though, so I'm not terribly shocked you didn't like him. Perdido is my least favourite, I think, of the 8 or so I've read.

Well then I guess I’m just not that smart. I have a massive backlog of books and new authors I want to read. I’m not about to go back to one I didn’t enjoy.

That’s a negative as well. Will be finishing off Wilfred Thesiger’s Arabian Sands, then I’ve got nine Thomas Covenant books to gorge on.

And I think The Traitor God is going to be a DNF.
Written by a chap on another forum I post in, I really want to like it, but the MC just annoys me and I just can't dig it.

The Chalk Man by CJ Tudor

Satisfying creepy thriller with shades of Stand by Me and It ... but more British. In turns disturbing and then depressing.. great ending too (I find these often disappoint in the 400 page thriller genre as authors struggle to get everthing tied up at the end)

Recommended