What have you read lately?

[onthefringe]

I've also been reading a variety of romance books, in part because I'm so fascinated by the industry as a whole that I've decided I should actually read the damn books, and in part because I've been so stressed with house-hunting that I can't focus on much else. I've sampled from the big names of historical Romance (Courtney Milan, Tessa Dare, Lisa Kleypas, Beverly Jenkins, Cat Sebastian), and decided that I rather like Cat Sebastian's gay regency romances and will look for more of them. Courtney Milan is fine but kind of all samey (but I do appreciate her attention to historical detail), and I don't really feel any need for Tessa Dare or Lisa Kleypas or Beverly Jenkins.

ergative, if you like Cat Sebastian, you are likely to enjoy KJ Charles as well.

[hmaria1609]

Reading from the library: How Music Got Free by Stephen Witt
How digital music piracy influenced getting free music online and the trio that made it happen.

[FishProf]

A Land Fit for Heroes #1 - The Steel Remains by Richard K. Morgan.

This is a dark and grim fantasy series with a homosexual protagonist (this does not make him popular).  It is a great read with interesting worldbuilding and character development.

I read it years ago, when it first came out, and stumbled across the completed series last month.  So I re-read* this one so I could complete the series.  I remembered some parts, but the parts I had forgotten were fantastic all over again.

If you like Joe Abercrombie fantasy, I highly recommend this series.  I'm starting book 2 next week.

*well, listened to it as an audiobook.   It is read by Simon Vance, who also read the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series.  I found the place names in Sweden entertaining, and the made-up place names in The Steel Remains made me think, "where is that?  Is that near Uppsala?  No, wrong world."

[Hegemony]

I am reading The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again, by M. John Harrison — an eerie atmospheric tale of a depressed middle-aged man in London. The blurb says "Unsettling and insinuating, fabulously alert to the spaces between things, Harrison is without peer as a chronicler of the fraught, unsteady state we're in." Yep, that's it. It's well written. It's not really a cheerer-upper kind of book to read during a pandemic when the world is falling apart.

[ergative]

I am reading The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again, by M. John Harrison — an eerie atmospheric tale of a depressed middle-aged man in London. The blurb says "Unsettling and insinuating, fabulously alert to the spaces between things, Harrison is without peer as a chronicler of the fraught, unsteady state we're in." Yep, that's it. It's well written. It's not really a cheerer-upper kind of book to read during a pandemic when the world is falling apart.

I started reading Light by the same author, which was praised to high heaven by various SFF aficionados. Gave it up maybe 100 pages in because it was so disagreeable.

[apl68]

I recall thinking that Rendezvous With Rama had a really interesting premise when I read it many years ago.  But the other things that ergative mentioned...yeah, those were pretty bad.  All too many science fiction writers then were (and I guess probably still are) into a very adolescent idea of sexually liberated futures.  Gene Roddenberry notoriously tried to slip as much of this into Star Trek as he could get away with back in the day.

[Juvenal]

Some Tame Gazelle by Barbara Pym.  I must have read it years ago because it was down in the basement library.  First American edition, it turns out.  Search prompted by a recent NYer article.

I know I have read other Pym because I was texting about the book with a friend, who also read her some time back, and she said that I'd judged Pym, "weak tea Jane Austen."  And yet, on (re)reading this book I retract that judgment.  The characters--especially the stand-in for Barbara Pym, "Belinda" make many sly, snarky comments along the way.  The plot is nothing much--a small village, a small set of characters (in this book apparently based on some real people), social anxieties among the gentlefolk, and the thrum of love and marriage driving the story.  Hey!  That sounds a lot like Jane Austen, too.

[hmaria1609]

From the library: The Complete Works of Isaac Babel, edited by Nathalie Babel Brown, translated by Peter Constantine

[FishProf]

The Striker by Clive Cussler.  This is an Isaac Bell novel (one of my mental palate cleanser series).  It follows the adventures of a railroad detective (a rival company to the Pinkertons).  Reviews are that is gives a good sense of railroad and steam travel in the early 1900s, and this one is about the labor movement in 1902-12 (~ish).  It was a fun read.

[ergative]

The Prisoner of Zenda. I'd read it before, ages ago, and I remember enjoying it more than I expected to, but I've forgotten most of it. In researching which of KJ Charles's books to read (on ontehfringe's recommendation uptrhead), I discovered that she wrote a from-the-villain-perspective take on that tale, The Henchmen of Zenda. So, naturally, I must do my research!

As it turns out, The Prisoner of Zenda is exactly as fun as I remember. A fast, goofy, swashbuckling yarn that is down for having fun with a good old-fashioned royal switcheroo. I can't wait to see what KJ Charles does with it.

[mamselle]

Twain's "Prince and the Pauper" comes to mind...

M.

[ergative]

Twain's "Prince and the Pauper" comes to mind...

M.

Ah, but Prince and the Pauper is so full of tedious moralizing! This has a lot more in common with that Netflix series The Princess Switch.

[mamselle]

Mark Twain, moralize?

Where do you get that from?

  <<grins, ducks and runs>>

M.

[ergative]

The Prisoner of Zenda. I'd read it before, ages ago, and I remember enjoying it more than I expected to, but I've forgotten most of it. In researching which of KJ Charles's books to read (on ontehfringe's recommendation uptrhead), I discovered that she wrote a from-the-villain-perspective take on that tale, The Henchmen of Zenda. So, naturally, I must do my research!

As it turns out, The Prisoner of Zenda is exactly as fun as I remember. A fast, goofy, swashbuckling yarn that is down for having fun with a good old-fashioned royal switcheroo. I can't wait to see what KJ Charles does with it.

Update: The Henchmen of Zenda is--ahem--spicier than Prisoner (which I expected, given the comparison to Cat Sebastian), but also hilarious. I laughed aloud multiple times in the first several pages alone. Peeved secondary characters saying, 'Oh, is that what he said happened? Yeah, right, no. Listen...' is a delightful trope.

[FishProf]

I've read ergative's last two posts as ZELDA, not ZENDA.

I was confused as I didn't remember either of those games....