I’ve always wanted to read Elric but I’m a stickler for reading things in some sort of proper order and from what I understand there are basically several ways to do that with all the Elric stuff (i.e. published order, timeline order, etc.)
Plus those books have been released and re-released so many times in so many different books and ugghh i can just feel my OCD kicking already.
You guys usually make me feel bad reading all those high-falutin’ real adult books because I never really got out of my high school fantasy/sci-fi phase.
Last week I finished The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie - I thought it was good, I like Abercrombie a lot, the entire book takes place over a few days of a pitched battle. I’ve found myself getting more and more into Historic Fantasy lately, of which there seems to be a resurgence, thanks in part to the success of Game of Thrones.
Right now I’m in the middle of Authority by Jeff Vandermeer. I liked the first book in the series, and this one is alright! The writing style can get frustrating in how pedantic it is, but it’s basically a story about scientific people trying to figure out an alien landscape that defies normal description, so I get it.
I’m worried that there won’t be much of a point all said and done, though, so I’ll have to check back in after I’ve finished the whole series.
I read Annihilation a while back and part of me just wants to let it stand alone - I was okay with the ambiguity of everything. Almost like a really long short story with no resolution.
The Southern Reach Trilogy manages to end in a way that laboriously explains a lot of things that I didn’t think needed explained while also being anticlimactic in the exact wrong way, imo.
Reading Don Quixote for first time, enjoying it a lot, Cellini’s Autobiography was probably one of my favourites of the books I read last year so I want to read more picaresques I guess. Even though it seems like a genre that could just read as formless and undifferentiated if the tone isn’t just right. I read Leskov’s “The Enchanted Wanderer” because of the title but couldn’t really get into it.
Also started Stanislaw Lem’s “The Invincible” after loving his Ijon Tichy books for years but never having checked out any of his harder s.f. Enjoying that one too which is starting to gain some momentum after a pretty dry beginning.
Seconding rec for the Amano/Moorcock doubleteam, that was how I got into his writing so it always threw me to find other editions of the same books with covers depicting husky barbarian guys instead of ornately androgynous magician people staring winsomely out of shot.
Which translation of Quixote? I picked up the Edith Grossman translation a few years back after SB recommended it. I like it but have only read about a quarter of it.
The thing about those old picaresque/serialized novels is that I end up only reading 25-50% of them before putting them down for a while.
It’s by Walter Starkie, although I don’t know how it stacks up against the others - It’s my dad’s old copy that I picked up a good while ago. It’s also apparently an abridged version which I only found out recently! No idea what it stripped out but it doesn’t seem too noticeably censorious. Ordinarily I would avoid abridgements but since I’ve already started reading this I figure I might as well keep going and can check out the full text some other time.
I got a copy of Simplicissimus somewhere mainly on the strength of T.Mann’s rec for it but have been hesitating to start on it for tthe reasons you said - suspect it’ll be more diffuse than either of the other two.
Re. Lem, I’ve been going through some of the archived back issues of Science Fiction Studies during spare time at work which has a number of his essays in the earlier issues (including one on PK Dick!) and that’s been whetting my appetite sorta Full Texts of Sold-Out Back Issues . I think there are a few pieces on him there too but they’re sorta scattered around… Enough to make me want to take a second whack at Memoirs Found In A Bathtub at least
I don’t read very many books, because I’m a child, but I read Kim Stanley Robinson’s Aurora the other day. It’s nice to read a book so openly dismissive, in well-considered ways, of particular flavors of sci-fi bullshit. “Generation ships on colonization missions are incredibly selfish and basically morally indefensible” ain’t a new thought to articulate, I’m sure, but the tension of the various escalating situations, as the book goes from one “but what about–” point to the next, really gripped me.
Also, I have a soft spot for “all-powerful” artificial intelligences trying to keep humans from wrecking things while descending into fascism.
The Jeffrey Gantz translation put out by Penguin. I also looked at a bunch of others, so this choice was basically arbitrary based on what I could find a copy of. All I can say is: avoid the public domain Lady Charlotte Guest translation. It’s the occasional case of the public domain translation just being bad in about every way imaginable.
@JoeX111 Yeah, Best Served Cold was really great, but I think I liked The Heroes even more!
I’ve also read his Half a King trilogy. It’s obviously YA fiction, but it got me through a few weeks of train rides and has a few really fun characters. Check it out if you get a second.
Also, if you like Abercrombie, check out the Locke Lamora stuff by Scott Lynch. Unfortunately, the author has very severe anxiety and will probably never finish the story he is trying to tell, but the books that exist are a lot of fun.
I love the first two Locke Lamora books. I sort of gave up hope after Republic of Thieves got delayed so many times. Now that it’s here, my heart’s not really in it. Doesn’t help that my fiancee read it and said it was “meh.”
Have you read Richard K. Morgan’s A Land Fit For Heroes series? I hear it’s good and in a similar vein to Abercrombie. I really liked Morgan’s Takeshi Kovacs cyberpunk novels, so I’ve been itching to give them a try.
Finished Endymion (book 3 of the Hyperion Cantos) and it was less good than the first two, but still enjoyable, and man did it set up the Catholic Church as some weird ass shit, so I had to go grab book 4 because I really hope it gets weirder.
I would rate the series basically in order right now, with Hyperion being the must-read and everything else so far being pretty alright. I will update this ranking if book 4 alters it though.
