Gets through more books than a Nazi bonfire

@Raiziel is burning up the books OK.


You retired early , didn't you?  Nice.

I've nearly finished Life and Fate by Vasilly Grossman which is simply brilliant. It's hard to track all the characters and their relationships because of the number of them but also because of the way Russians name people which means they have 2 names all seemingly ending in "ov"!!).  But wow - what a book. Made up of several parallel inter-related narratives set in WW2 with the 2 main ones being about a nuclear physicist struggling with his life and his relationship with Stalin's Russia, and the other being at the front during the siege of Stalingrad. But there are others including a blood chilling deathcamp/gas chamber sequence.

Grossman was a Jewish war correspondent and was on the Russian front line for 1000 days. The descriptions of the conditions are the most striking I've read. This will demand a re-read at some point.


Also working through memoires of Northern Ireland in 1972 - the worst year of the troubles - as told by members of the Army. Not an angle we ever hear from that often. Heavy going. I avoid reading too much about this subject but I'm trying to approach from a number of different points of view but I'm not sure I can even finish this. I am too emotionally involved and I don't think a true neutral position will ever be described.  I certainly wouldn't have the stomach to read anything by an IRA apologist.

On a somewhat lighter note I have picked up Vol.1 of Chips Channon's diaries. Diaries are good because you can dip in and not worry too much about leaving them for a while and losing the narrative. Channon married into the Guinness family and so had a ring side seat at events such as the abdication and the machinations leading up to WW2. He isn't shy of expressing an opinion on people - marvellously catty and he's dropping names like a carpet bomber.

davyK wrote:

I've nearly finished Life and Fate by Vasilly Grossman which is simply brilliant. It's hard to track all the characters and their relationships because of the number of them but also because of the way Russians name people which means they have 2 names all seemingly ending in "ov"!!).  But wow - what a book. Made up of several parallel inter-related narratives set in WW2 with the 2 main ones being about a nuclear physicist struggling with his life and his relationship with Stalin's Russia, and the other being at the front during the siege of Stalingrad. But there are others including a blood chilling deathcamp/gas chamber sequence. Grossman was a Jewish war correspondent and was on the Russian front line for 1000 days. The descriptions of the conditions are the most striking I've read. This will demand a re-read at some point.

Finished it. This is a masterpiece. The prose is beautiful in places and I can't imagine how good it must be in its native language. The translation of this must have been done by a person at the height of their powers.

Don't we all...

30. The Hod King (Josiah Bancroft)
Third in the Tower of Babel trilogy and yet again he knocks out out of the park - absolutely brilliant storytelling, world building and characters. So enjoyable, so compulsive and I can't wait for the next installment.

o/

62.  Voyagers II by Ben Bova.  This story trades the political shenanigans between America and Russia of the first book for conniving corporations and tricksy terrorist organisations.  This time they’re not after an alien spaceship (that’s been parked in orbit for years now), but rather the astronaut who first went aboard and who is now newly defrosted after nearly twenty years in deep freeze.  He’s got something on his mind, and it might just be alien in origin.  Again, the sci-fi is very much in the background, and the focus this time around is on the protagonists sudden motivation to do nothing less than bring about world peace.

It’s all right, and the first time I read it impressionable little me loved it.  But this was at a time when I hadn’t really discovered what I really liked.  Now this comes across as a little too vanilla for older me.  When little me finished this book I wrote to Bova in the States to tell him how much I had enjoyed his Voyagers books and to announce that I too would like to be a writer one day.  He was kind enough to write back with some advice I’ve long since forgotten and to also say that he was currently working on the third and final book in the series.  So yeah, in spite of how I’ve changed in the interim, these books still hold a little magic for me.  Will be dipping into that third book soon.

I am reading his The Three Body Problem right now and it is AMAZING! I was not prepared.

Snap 3! Though AMAZING would be overstating things, plus over diverted onto The Mirror and the Light.

Raiziel wrote:

I am reading his The Three Body Problem right now and it is AMAZING! I was not prepared.

It's due a reread for me. But as Davey says, you ain't read nothing yet until you get to the second and third books. Completely changed the way I thought about what sci-fi could be and about the universe in general. Amazing stuff.

Started reading New York 2041 by Kim Stanley Robinson. I'm not sure where it's going, but it's an interesting premise full of interesting characters and it's well written. It hasn't exactly grabbed me yet though.

63.  The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin, translated by Ken Liu.  Finished it late last night because I just couldn’t stop reading.  This book…this book…wow.  I’m mostly lost for words, really, partly because I don’t want to mention a single thing about the story, but also because I’m just utterly blown away by the creativity on display here.  I went into this one completely blind, didn’t even read the blurb on the back of the book.  I had the vague notion that it might be about first contact and that was about it.  I’m so glad I did because I love it when I get completely blindsided by a book.

I was somewhat put off reading this series after watching the film adaptation of The Wandering Earth, which is one of the stupidest things I’ve even seen.  So I just assumed that the sci-fi he wrote was not the sci-fi I liked.  How wrong I was, and how happy I am to be proved wrong.  This is hard sci-fi of the most exotic kind.  I love the science of physics, and the more exotic it is, the more outlandish, the more I love it.  For me this book delivers multiple dopamine hits to the brain as Liu digs into some truly weird physics concepts.  This book feels like the next generation of the type of sci-fi Arthur C. Clarke wrote.

And like Clarke, if there is a negative I can throw at this book, it’s that the characters can come across as underwritten or opaque.  Wang, for example, as the protagonist, feels more like a cipher than he does a person.  He’s the portal through which I get to experience much of the story, but I never get much of a feel for him as a person.  Some of the dialogue too is a little formal, a little stilted on occasion, but I’m assuming that’s a cultural thing and it never really bothered me.  Ultimately it feels trite to mention these things when the story and creativity are just so fucking good.  Thank goodness there are two more books to go.

Haha! Exact same thing happened to me last night, davy. I’m on Kindle too. Was expecting to finish it today and suddenly boom! it’s over. Not the strongest ending.

64.  Voyagers III by Ben Bova.  Explosions! kidnapping! double agents! double dealing! pandemics! midi-chlorians! chases! escapes! cats and dogs living together! mass hysteria!  Voyagers III has them all…except maybe the bit about the cats and dogs.  It’s all right, I guess, but it’s worth reiterating what I said about the second book: I loved these books before I knew what I really liked.  Having said that, I am intrigued to find out how it all really ends in the fourth and final book; a book I didn’t even know existed until a year or two ago.  It’ll finally conclude a journey I started 35 years ago.

That's a pity. I really liked the follow up.