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Our reads in May 2023
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dustydigger
Posted 2023-04-30 1:07 PM (#26953)
Subject: Our reads in May 2023



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Location: UK		Is your TBR rivaling the mountains in height? Share your (probably futile) plans to reduce the pile with us!
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dustydigger
Posted 2023-04-30 2:11 PM (#26954 - in reply to #26953)
Subject: Re: Our reads in May 2023



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Location: UK		On booktube we are doing the May Horror Mayhem challenge. I am a bit of a wimp where graphic horror is concerned,so I plan to read maybe 10 SF Horror or weird fiction short stories in May,plus a few other titles which currently are part read.

Dusty's TBR for May
John Gardner - Grendel
Lord Dunsany - The King of Elfland's Daughter
C L Moore - Northwest of Earth
Arthur Machen - The Great God Pan (reread)
G R R Martin - Sandkings
John W Campbell - Who Goes There?(R)
Michael Shea - The Autopsy
Octavia E Butler - Bloodchild (R)
William Hope Hodgson - The Voice in the Night



Edited by dustydigger 2023-04-30 2:13 PM
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daxxh
Posted 2023-04-30 6:45 PM (#26956 - in reply to #26954)
Subject: Re: Our reads in May 2023



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Location: Great Lakes, USA		My reads for May from Mt. TBR:

The High House - Jessie Greengrass
Lockdown Tales - Neal Asher
Path of Daggers - Robert Jordan
Star Trek Log One - Alan Dean Foster
The Iron Rain - Donald Malcolm

I have The Temporal Void ordered. I might read that as well before I forget what went on in the Dreaming Void. I also have a bunch of nonfiction from the library to read:

The Teachers - Alexandra Robbins
Indigenous Continent - Pekka Hamalainen
Follow Me to Hell - Tom Clavin

@dusty - I just reread both Beowulf and Grendel. I read Beowulf in high school and college and Grendel in college. I definitely got more out of them this time! Excellent works.
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daxxh
Posted 2023-05-01 4:19 PM (#26961 - in reply to #26953)
Subject: Re: Our reads in May 2023



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Location: Great Lakes, USA		Bumping this back to the top of the list since it is May.
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daxxh
Posted 2023-05-29 9:16 AM (#26996 - in reply to #26961)
Subject: Re: Our reads in May 2023



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Location: Great Lakes, USA		I didn't read that much sff this month. What I read:

Path of Daggers and Winter's Heart by Robert Jordan. I listened to these, which is how I was able to get through two of this series. I laugh everytime I hear the description of what everyone is wearing. These people have quite a colorful wardrobe, often clashing. I am still irked by the puerile behavior of the men and women (girls and boys) toward each other. Jr. High behavior while trying to save the world. I forget that the main characters are teens, but still...

The High House by Jessie Greengrass. This was my random pick for the Women in Genre Fiction challenge. I found it while hunting for Grass to add to my challenge list. It was ok. I would have preferred more climate change info. This was definitely a character study and I didn't much like half of the characters.

Star Trek Log One - Alan Dean Foster. This was a reread of the first Star Trek book (maybe the only Star Trek book) offered by the Scholastic Book flyer that we got in elementary and part of junior high school. I know I read it before, but I didn't remember any of it. Fun, though. I have all of the Star Trek Logs and will have to read them. My Star Trek TBR pile is pretty big.

I am currently reading Within Without by Jeff Noon. I like this series and each new one is better than the previous one. I hope he keeps writing these.

Edited by daxxh 2023-05-29 9:17 AM
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lisagarrity
Posted 2023-05-29 8:21 PM (#26997 - in reply to #26953)
Subject: Re: Our reads in May 2023



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Location: California		Did you feel that High House was a dying earth novel? I didn't see their life as sustainable.
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daxxh
Posted 2023-05-29 10:58 PM (#26998 - in reply to #26997)
Subject: Re: Our reads in May 2023



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Location: Great Lakes, USA		@lisagarrity. I didn't see their life as sustainable either. I was hoping for some glimpse of the rest of the world. Was the climate catastrophe the cause of the total fall of civilization, or were there pockets of large groups of people in other places? I got the impression that this was more of a character study of how people would react in a disaster that led to total isolation.
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lisagarrity
Posted 2023-05-30 9:09 AM (#26999 - in reply to #26953)
Subject: Re: Our reads in May 2023



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Location: California		I loved the prose style of High House but I have to agree that the characters were not that likeable. They felt isolated from civilization even before civilization fell apart. It would be interesting to read future genre fiction from Jessie Greengrass but the rumor is that her next book is a Medieval historical.
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dustydigger
Posted 2023-05-31 6:10 AM (#27002 - in reply to #26953)
Subject: Re: Our reads in May 2023



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Location: UK		May was an interesting month.,some fluff reads on kindle unlimited that dont show up here,and several horror shorts for the Horror MAYhem challenge on booktube. Also didnt complete several books on my TBR list. Disappointed not to get to Lord Dunsany's King of Elfland's Daughter,will read it in June. translationso.
John Gardner's Grendel was fascinating. I read Beowulf - Seamus Heaney's in full,and samples of Tolkien,Raffel and some others. Every man and his dog has translated this.Perhaps one for the boys? All that boasting and drinking gifts of weapons,and that nordic melancholy and angst. No hope of an afterlife,a good death the only thing to aim for. I know there is a huge appetite these days for all things viking,norse mythology a la Neil Gaiman,Thor films,graphic novels by the (long0boat load,but it doesnt really grab me.
So when Grendel spouted off about the hypocrisy of the whole ethos,seeing it only as a way to get wealth,I had to cheer for him. lol.
Hey,I live on the northeast coast of England,and straight across that wild expanse of grey sea lies Denmark. Turn slightly north and if you battle the ways long enough you get to Scandinavia. I am with the venerable Bede here,we did NOT want those rapacious (in all senses) to come here and destroy our world. 1200 years ago? Maybe,but memories are long here. lol.
I had seen people rave over Holly Black's The Cruel Prince,so was a little disappointed in it. Black is a cut above most YA authors,and I usually find her character work quite good,but something about the heroine was a bit off for me,I just couldnt take to her at all,which soured the book a bit for me. I feel no urge to continue with the series.
I was a bit saddened reading Arthur Conan Doyle's The Land of Mist,which read very much like a pamphlet advocating the spiritualism that sucked Doyle in at the end of his life. The only way I could bear the book was to treat it like a typical urban fantasy where we meet up with ghosts and spirits regaualy. We suspend disbelief and go into the world of the book. I had to try to do that,accepting Doyle's mediums as perfectly credible characters,and then there was enough of Doyle's writing abilith to make the tale at least marginally readable,but it was sad to see how the creator of the great rationalist Holmes ended up It depressed me enough that I read a raft of Hornblower in Space sort of books to cheer myself up.
On recovery I read short stuff for Horror MAYhem and scared the wits of myself.with the likes of Le Guin's fantastic Bloodchild,George Martin's Sandkings,and John W Campbell's Who Goes There?,and Arthur C Clarke's A Walk in the Dark. Creepy,but all managed to have some SF connection.
Will carry forward some of the books I didnt get to over to June's TBR
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