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Random quote: If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections, and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind. - Mary Shelly, (Frankenstein)
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Our reads in August 2024
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dustydigger
Posted 2024-07-31 6:00 PM (#30083)
Subject: Our reads in August 2024



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Location: UK		Another month,another pile of books.What are your plans for August?
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dustydigger
Posted 2024-07-31 6:01 PM (#30084 - in reply to #30083)
Subject: Re: Our reads in August 2024



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Location: UK		My TBR for August:

Roger Zelazny - This Immortal
Clifford D Simak - Why Call Them Back From Heaven?
Bob Shaw - Palace of Eternity
John Russell Fearn - Before Earth Came
Simon R Green - Hellworld
Charles Dickens - The Signal-Man
Harlan Ellison - Paladin of the Lost Hour
Philip Jose Farmer - Riders of the Purple Wage
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daxxh
Posted 2024-08-01 7:02 AM (#30085 - in reply to #30084)
Subject: Re: Our reads in August 2024



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Location: Great Lakes, USA		August 2024 Books

Revelation Space - Alastair Reynolds (reread and it's as good the second time!)
Mirrored Heavens - Rebecca Roanhorse
Service Model - Adrian Tchaikovsky
How Much for Just the Planet - John M. Ford
Red Planet - Robert Heinlein

Whatever library hold comes in.

Edited by daxxh 2024-08-01 7:09 AM
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dustydigger
Posted 2024-08-31 10:43 PM (#30143 - in reply to #30083)
Subject: Re: Our reads in August 2024



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Location: UK		For once I managed to read all my TBR except for the Philip Jose Farmer short story.,surprising since I had new carpets fitted,which entailed removing everything repeatedly from room to room,including my 6ft tall,double stacked bookcase.I kept getting distracted reading fave bits out of all sorts of books as I was supposedly ruthlessly sorting to go to the charity shops.Oh dear,as I have finally arranged my bookcases ,the four big bags of books somehow have dwindled to one,because I got a new display unit too,and it looked a bit bare and boring till I added around 40 books to the shelves.Between all the decorating and decluttering and now a huge number of hours watching Olympics and now ParalympicsI am amazed I manged to read anything.!
Roger Zelazny - This Immortal.:It was great to meet up with Conrad Nomikos in Roger Zelazny's wonderful This Immortal,Not bad going to share the Hugo award with a certain novel called Dune!
Conrad has a very mysterious past,he seems to be several hundre years old,(and there are teasing hints that he may be much much older.
Escorting an alien grandee on a tour around a shattered post-nuclear war Earth is not something he relishes, especially when he becomes central to an intrigue determining Earth's future,while suffering a personal tragic loss he finds hard to cope with.
This is my 4th,possibly 5th read of this book,and each time I understand more of the literary and cultural references which make it such a fun read.
As ever when I read a Zelazny book I immediately want to put aside all my reading commitments and just sart another of his books.A blast.

Clifford D Simak - Why Call Them Back From Heaven?.This was one of the bleakest Simak book I have read,in a future where technology has been developed to preserve the dead so as to resurrect them sometime in the future. People spend their whole dull lives working and saving money to fund their lifestyle after that rebirth.Not the best Simak but as ever the descriptions ofnature and human relationships keep us involved in the tale.Simak has a rather bleak view of mankind as a whole,but he makes individual humans interesting and sympathetic.

Simon R Green - Hellworld
to cheer myself up from that I read Green's riproaring Simon R Green adventure about a survey squad checking out a new possible colony world.They meet a myriad of nasty aliens,lots of killing,running around and hair raising escapes.Just good fun. I get the same sort of vibes from Green as I used to get from Alan Dean Foster,just pure fun,unpretentious adventure.....

Bob Shaw - The Palace of Eternity
I was a little disappointed with Bob Shaw's The Palace of Eternity.So many rave reviews, someone even giving it 9.5/10.Very likely back in the late 60s it was new and innovative and amazing,but for me there were too many contrived character actions needed to further the plot which were unconvincing or too coincidental for my tastes.The emotional depths we expect from Shaw were there to some extent,but I couldnt really engage fully with the protagonist,and felt the aliens just withdrawing at the end pretty unconvincing. An OK read,but not as awesome as I had expected.
It reminds me a little of my reaction to Childhood's End,I never felt awe over the events,in fact I was a bit suspicious of those aliens and their intentions. Perhaps i am just too prosaic and mundane,not into books about glorious transcendence.lol.
Apart from thesebooks I read a few short stories and urban fatasy fluff,but am amazed I even managed anything this month with the distractions..
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