The B&B Book Review - The Bear and Badger

hylian_elf

Is it usually abridged? Didn’t know there were two versions. I’m guessing my copy will say abridged if it is? Haven’t read it. Yet.

hylian_elf

Scout wrote:

Has anyone read the unabridged The Count of Monte Cristo? I'm crawling towards the end and it's been a painful jounrey.

acemuzzy

Had to at school.

Well, was meant to. Think I just watched the video, and failed the test.

Scout

I read that there's been lots of abridged versions over the years. The reason I looked into it was that I was sucpicious of people like my dad and a couple of uncles telling me how they loved it when they were kids. It's 1300 pages long. The opening 200 or so pages are entertaining. The prison, the escape, all that stuff is great. But then it settles into the enormous middle section that's a real slog to get through. Countless characters. Meandering plotlines. Then the final 200 or so pages it starts to pick up again. So I'm wondering if my dad's memory of the book might have been a kid-friendly abridged version.

I also read that the book was originally serialised in a French newsapaper and Dumas was being paid by the word. So there was every reason for him to string the whole thing out for as long as possible.

The Daddy

Finished Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky at the weekend. Took a bit of getting into, but some really good sci fi in there. Not a patch on Children of Time, but still good. Don’t think Tchaikovsky quite fills the M.Banks shaped hole for me, but I’m liking his stuff.

Next up, The Trouble with Peace by Joe Abercrombie.

Bob

The Black Dog by Kevin Bridges

Now granted it doesn’t claim to
Be a comedy but it’s one seriously unfunny book. Got a signed hardback but it’s been a struggle. 400 pages and absolutely nothing happens apart from a supposed heroin junky mysteriously getting clean at the end. I mean it’s not bad and it’s not
Badly written but I’ve gotten to the end feeling it’s utterly pointless. 2 and a half stars

Raiziel

The Daddy wrote:

Finished Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky at the weekend. Took a bit of getting into, but some really good sci fi in there. Not a patch on Children of Time, but still good. Don’t think Tchaikovsky quite fills the M.Banks shaped hole for me, but I’m liking his stuff.

I’m on Children of Ruin at the moment and finding it an absolute chore to get through.

Bob

Bear Town by Fredrick Backman

The last few chapters where good but it was a
Long slog. Not sure American school ice hockey is interesting enough to
Sustain nearly 500 pages

Gremill

Raiziel wrote:

The Daddy wrote:

Finished Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky at the weekend. Took a bit of getting into, but some really good sci fi in there. Not a patch on Children of Time, but still good. Don’t think Tchaikovsky quite fills the M.Banks shaped hole for me, but I’m liking his stuff.

I’m on Children of Ruin at the moment and finding it an absolute chore to get through.

You are not the man I thought you were. It's a joy that book, even if it's just for the incredible attempts to describe and understand how a human level intelligence octopus would take to space travel and communication.

Raiziel

I’ve finished it. I thought the story was heavily buried beneath a mass world-building and sciency stuff.

tigersgogrrr

Rereading Monstress and it's the best.

Hugo awards announced. Main ones listed below.

Best Novel

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Del Rey)
The Kaiju Preservation Society, by John Scalzi (Tor Books)
Legends & Lattes, by Travis Baldree (Tor Books)
Nona the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir (Tordotcom)
Nettle & Bone, by T. Kingfisher (Tor Books)
The Spare Man, by Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor Books)

Best Novella

Even Though I Knew the End, by C.L. Polk (Tordotcom)
Into the Riverlands, by Nghi Vo (Tordotcom)
A Mirror Mended, by Alix E. Harrow (Tordotcom)
Ogres, by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Solaris)
What Moves the Dead, by T. Kingfisher (Tor Nightfire)
Where the Drowned Girls Go, by Seanan McGuire (Tordotcom)

Best Novelette

“The Difference Between Love and Time”, by Catherynne M. Valente (Someone in Time: Tales of Time-Crossed Romance, Solaris)
“A Dream of Electric Mothers”, by Wole Talabi (Africa Risen: A New Era of Speculative Fiction, Tordotcom)
“If You Find Yourself Speaking to God, Address God with the Informal You”, by John Chu (Uncanny Magazine, July-August 2022)
“Murder By Pixel: Crime and Responsibility in the Digital Darkness”, by S.L. Huang (Clarkesworld, December 2022)
“The Space-Time Painter”, by Hai Ya (Galaxy’s Edge, April 2022)
“We Built This City”, by Marie Vibbert (Clarkesworld, June 2022)

Best Short Story

“D.I.Y.”, by John Wiswell (Tor.com, August 2022)
“On the Razor’s Edge”, by Jiang Bo (Science Fiction World, January 2022)
“Rabbit Test”, by Samantha Mills (Uncanny Magazine, November-December 2022)
“Resurrection”, by Ren Qing (Future Fiction/Science Fiction World, December 2022)
“The White Cliff”, by Lu Ban (Science Fiction World, May 2022)
“Zhurong on Mars”, by Regina Kanyu Wang (Frontiers, September 2022)

Best Series

Children of Time Series, by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Pan Macmillan/Orbit)
The Founders Trilogy, by Robert Jackson Bennett (Del Rey)
The Locked Tomb, by Tamsyn Muir (Tor.com)
October Daye, by Seanan McGuire (DAW)
Rivers of London, by Ben Aaronovich (Orion)
The Scholomance, by Naomi Novik (Del Rey)

Gremill

Nona the Ninth is an absolute cracker. I'll give all of those in the best novel section a go.

Raiziel

I read Gideon the Ninth earlier this year. I wasn’t a fan. Great characters (although I liked Gideon less as the story wore on and Harrow more), but I didn’t like the world or the story.

Stopharage

The Kaiju Preservation Society is Sci-Fi for Dan Brown readers. Really not worthy of winning a Hugo. Tchaikovsky must win at least one of those.

Not sure why ‘How High We Go In The Dark’ hasn’t been nominated for a Hugo. Been raving about it since it was released and it’s the best Sci-Fi I’ve read in the last 10 years. The theme park and pig chapters would stand alone as award-winning short stories.

Moot_Geeza

I don't read much fantasy but I'm tempted by Legends & Lattes.

davyK

I'm wary of reading the followup to Children of Time. That is such a great book.

Gremill

Stopharage wrote:

Not sure why ‘How High We Go In The Dark’ hasn’t been nominated for a Hugo. Been raving about it since it was released and it’s the best Sci-Fi I’ve read in the last 10 years. The theme park and pig chapters would stand alone as award-winning short stories.

Yeah, read that a few weeks back. Absolutely outstanding, although the theme park chapter almost finished me.

tigersgogrrr

I'll have to give that a try.

I think the 3rd Scholomance book dropped off considerably, else I'd think it was a good shout for best series. Tchaikovsky probably the top pick there. Not the Locked Tomb is nominated with another installment to come. Feels needed.

Nona

Moot_Geeza

I get this with all sort of things from time to time (songs, films, games), but I love/hate it when I'm reading a book that I'm enjoying so much I start to get worried that it'll shit the bed in some way. I'm coming up to 2/3 of the way through something called Night Boat to Tangier that I picked up in a charity shop haul and it's absolutely magnificent so far.

Gremill

davyK wrote:

I'm wary of reading the followup to Children of Time. That is such a great book.

Really liked Children of Ruin, not quite as great as Time but very, very interesting ideas. I've got the third one, Children of Memory, sitting on my bookshelf. But I have to read some other stuff that's been hanging around first.

Vela

Last week I read Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the end of the Lane and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Bob

Vela wrote:

Last week I read Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the end of the Lane and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Was a while ago but i liked it

Mel Giedroyc - The Best Things - Finally finished my back log of half read novels with this. It's not half as funny as it thinks it is. Doesn't really have much of a plot or, as far as I can tell, any redemption for any of the main characters. It's average.

Vela

It's very much like a soft fairy tale, not a grim one like Pans Labyrinth. Very dream like.

And now I've started The Peripheral after mistakenly reading Agency first. Whenever I read a Gibson story I always start out completely disorientated for the first 100 or so pages. This is no different. The lingo is difficult to parse initially.

poprock

Try the TV show afterwards, if you haven’t already. It’s like a cover version - a different take on the same ideas.

Bollockoff

Roughly half way through the unabridged Les Mis.

All of life is in this. I want to visit Hugo's grave to cry at the kaleidoscope of humanism put to paper and punch it for going off on such incredibly meandering historical tangents. It's a living, breathing book you can feel Hugo pouring all of himself and his national identity into after decades of experiencing France throwing the tables and chairs of Europe around in apopletic rage and terrifying everyone including themselves.

Bob

The Satsuma Complex - Bob Mortimer

I read his autobiography when it came out and quite enjoyed it even though it all sounded like pretty much like all of it could appear on WILTY which indeed one of the anecdotes did (Allegedly true) and thought I'd like this but it was a bit laboured and not as funny as I'd hoped and weirdly violent in places. 7 out of 10.

acemuzzy

How High We Go in the Dark

Everyone else seems to love this, I thought? For me it peaked pretty early (the first section and the rollercoaster stuff clear highlights), and then drops into a series of vignettes whose revealed interrelationship was all a bit weak, and none of the others really stood out. So it felt a bit too inconsistent to me, too oddly meandering in purpose and meaning. Would have preferred it as a standalone short story or two I think.

The Daddy

Hmm, was gonna give that a go when I finished Dune 3.

The Trouble with Peace by Joe Abercrombie

Abercrombie's just completely mastered his craft, his stuff is so well written. Another great entry into his First Law world.

Related, there's a film adaptation of Best Served Cold in the offing:

https://joeabercrombie.com/best-served-cold-on-film/

Raiziel

Everyone, honestly, you need The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins in your life.

Written by the guy that brought you such hits as Linux Desk Reference, Empty Box, and, who can forget, Apache Web Server Administrator and Commerce Handbook.

I’m not even kidding. This guy seemingly strayed out of his comfort zone and knocked it out of the park.

Gremill

The Daddy wrote:

Hmm, was gonna give that a go when I finished Dune 3.

The Trouble with Peace by Joe Abercrombie

Abercrombie's just completely mastered his craft, his stuff is so well written. Another great entry into his First Law world.

Related, there's a film adaptation of Best Served Cold in the offing:

https://joeabercrombie.com/best-served-cold-on-film/

Just got a semi. Fuck yes.

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