What are you reading? - 2019, and beyond.

[Deleted]

Went back to "The Wishsong of Shannara", because my current game draws on it. A strangely satisfying experience. Other than that, reading a play, "Copenhagen". Not sure about that one, yet.

[Otto Harkaman]

Just reread "Dark Valley Destiny, The Life of Robert E. Howard" by Sprague de Camp



I had read this some time ago, it's a sad tale. Having just lost my father a couple of months ago I am more sympathetic to REH's state of mind. I have watched parts of "Whole Wide World" based on Novalyne Price's recollection of Howard. I need to watch the whole movie. Lots of thoughts going through my head about life.
I need to reread Sprague de Camp's biography of Lovecraft, though considered out of date I have really enjoyed these biographies.

[Deleted]

Can anybody recommend me a good fantasy AUDIObook? I kind of got hooked on the genre, again, after rereading "Wishsong of Shannara" earlier this month.

That said, I know the vast majority of mainstream titles already. But before I am embarking on the 20-part "Valdemar" series, I thought, maybe some of you can give me a better recommendation...

[stevemitchell]

The Killing of Osama Bin Laden by Seymour Hersch. A short collection of four essays, three of them on the multi-factional war in Syria, the other on the title subject. Interesting perspectives.

I Speak for Earth, The Psionic Menace, and Meeting at Infinity by John Brunner. Early in his career, Brunner wrote many SF paperback originals for Ace Books. Brunner later moved on to more highly regarded works such as Stand on Zanzibar, The Sheep Look Up, and The Shockwave Rider, but I still find his early titles to be enjoyable.

Baphomet: The Temple Mystery Revealed by Tracy Twyman and Alexander Rivera. Baphomet was the god/demon/idol allegedly worshipped by the Knights Templar, at least according to their enemies, both ecclesiastical and temporal. This erudite study in mystic and occult traditions attempts to ascertain the true nature and identity of Baphomet, going on at some length before reaching a somewhat qualified conclusion.

I Never Would Have Slept with You If I Had Known You Were a Giant Birdman from Outer Space by John Keel. More high strangeness from the author of The Mothman Prophecies.

[Otto Harkaman]

Arabian Nights and Days by Naguib Mahfouz



I was looking for books and audiobooks of the 1,001 Arabian nights and found an audio book of Naguib Mahfouz's novel. It reminds me a lot of Lawrence Durrell's "The Alexandria Quartet" Interesting, reviews say it is a sequel of the Arabian Nights, but it is very much like "The Alexandria Quartet" where it interweaves through the chapters the various protagonists and their collective effect on the communal reality of the characters in the book.

More literature than pulp(trash)

[Otto Harkaman]

May 26, 2016 15:02:37 GMT -6 @rafael said:

Can anybody recommend me a good fantasy AUDIObook? I kind of got hooked on the genre, again, after rereading "Wishsong of Shannara" earlier this month.

That said, I know the vast majority of mainstream titles already. But before I am embarking on the 20-part "Valdemar" series, I thought, maybe some of you can give me a better recommendation...

Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain

[Deleted]

I like, but also... I own.

Also, I started "Valdemar"... Also, I abandoned "Valdemar".

[stevemitchell]

Mission to the Stars by A. E. Van Vogt. Van Vogt was a major SF writer in the 1940s and 1950s, although after that, his creativity, and popularity, diminished somewhat. I have enjoyed reading, and re-reading, Van Vogt for decades, and that’s more than I can say for most of the authors from the Campell-Astounding tradition. This is a fast-paced novel with the epic sweep associated with Golden Age SF.

Trotsky: The Eternal Revolutionary by Dmitri Volkogonov. Perhaps not the best introduction to Trotsky for the general reader; some previous background with the Bolshevik Revolution and the Soviet Union would be helpful. But it’s a worthwhile study, and a useful counterpoint to the hero worship on display in Isaac Deutcher’s three-volume life of Trotsky.

The Super-Barbarians and The Skynappers by John Brunner. More John Brunner paperback originals from the archives of Ace Books. I thought he was coasting in The Super-Barbarians, but The Skynappers was a fun read.

Chancy by Louis L’Amour. A tough young man from Tennessee ramrods a cattle drive from Oklahoma to Wyoming, and is dogged by outlaws all the way. A good western adventure.

[Otto Harkaman]

I just started reading "The Unique Legacy of Weird Tales: The Evolution of Modern Fantasy and Horror (Studies in Supernatural Literature) by Justin Everett and Jeffrey H. Shanks"

[Deleted]

Apart from job-related literature about, yayay, the oh-so-totally-impending collapse of our world economy, I have been enjoying "The Nameless Dwarf", by P. D. Dior.
A low-fi book, in terms of marketing, but, really, an enjoyable, linear fantasy Western with just enough charm to make it through until the end.

[kesher]

Jun 12, 2016 7:29:13 GMT -6 @rafael said:

Apart from job-related literature about, yayay, the oh-so-totally-impending collapse of our world economy, I have been enjoying "The Nameless Dwarf", by P. D. Dior.
A low-fi book, in terms of marketing, but, really, an enjoyable, linear fantasy Western with just enough charm to make it through until the end.

Wait a minute--our world economy is about to collapse??

[Deleted]

Always, my friend. ALWAYS.

[tetramorph]

Wow, @rafael, I want to hear more about this impending economic collapse. But perhaps on another thread! ;)

Hey! I FINALLY was able to pick up a copy of Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions at the NTRPGCon! (Why is it the hardest piece of appendix N literature to find in the whole world?)

I am so sad to have missed this for so long. It feels like the missing piece! Love the Law/Chaos thing. I am understanding the game that Gygax and Arneson were trying to play more and more.

And I'm just enjoying a good book.

[Falconer]

Rafael, the most recent audio recording of Heir to the Empire and the other Thrawn books are really well done, if you are at all ready to revisit them.

[Deleted]

Definitely I will! Thank you! - I might be a bit contrary to the general opinion, when it comes to that, but I always liked "Spectres" and "Visions". (While, apparently, nobody else did.)

I noticed a while ago that there was a new audio edition for the whole series, and I am looking forward to my next day-long drive (likely, in late July), to get back to them!

[Falconer]

I’ve almost never heard anything bad about Zahn’s Specter or Vision, other than people complaining that they (plus Stackpole’s I, Jedi) were an attempt to “right the ship“ of the EU, and thus ignore or undo a lot of what other EU writers had done. I certainly stand with Zahn and Stackpole on that score, however!

[tog]

Just finished The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch (GAWD I love The Gentlemen Bastards!), The Coyote Kings Of The Space-Age Bachelor Pad by Minister Faust (the main characters have their own character sheets!), and The Face in The Frost by John Bellairs, and I'm working on Nifft The Lean by Michael Shea, though as I'm at a convenient stopping point I might switch over to the "World's End" series by Lin Carter, as I'm in the need for something lite and good-stupid.

[stevemitchell]

It Defies Language! Essays on UFOs and Other Weirdness by Greg Bishop. Numerous small essays on the indicated topics, mostly taken from a website from a few years back.

Presocratic Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction by Catherine Osborne. The extensive Oxford University Press “Very Short Introduction” series has entries ranging from excellent (Buddhism) to why bother (The Norman Conquest), but in my reading, the good titles significantly outweigh those of lesser value. This volume presents the thinkers from the dawn of philosophy; I found it to be excellent, and even exciting in places. But I was a philosophy major in college, so I’m peculiar that way.

Hard-Luck Diggings: The Early Jack Vance, Volume One by Jack Vance. SF stories (and one mystery) from the 1940s and 1950s; these are early efforts by Vance, but still very colorful and imaginative.

Worlds of If by Rog Phillips. Through a strange experiment, a businessman in 1984 is able to “remember” his life in an alternate timeline—beginning in 1953, with the Communist takeover of the United States!

Atlantis and the Silver City by Peter Daughtrey. The author makes a case for Atlantis having been located along the coast of southwestern Iberia, from Gibraltar west and north to Cape St. Vincent.

The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells. It’s been decades since the first time I read this, but it holds up nicely.

[Deleted]

In other news, this guy is my personal Yoda:



When I was fifteen, and obviously didn't know better, I took at least one Shannara novel wherever I traveled.
So weird in retrospect, but without Terry Brooks, I'd never come here, or done anything of my online stuff.

[Deleted]

Jun 13, 2016 11:40:28 GMT -6 Falconer said:

I’ve almost never heard anything bad about Zahn’s Specter or Vision, other than people complaining that they (plus Stackpole’s I, Jedi) were an attempt to “right the ship“ of the EU, and thus ignore or undo a lot of what other EU writers had done. I certainly stand with Zahn and Stackpole on that score, however!

I don't really know what the critics write, but the overall consensus among my peers was, before anything else, that the novel felt very repetitive in comparison to the first Zahn series. I never understood that sort of criticism; between Zahn, Stackpole, and Allston, I think the output was great, especially when compared to other series that were popular at the time. Not sure how diligently they tied together, but Corran Horn, at least in the X-Wing series, a serious hero of mine growing up. ...Still chuckling about the story of how he dated that catwoman, and then developed an allergy against her fur.

[Deleted]

Has anyone of you read the works of this guy? Sounds pretty intriguing, within what the genre has produced over the last few years.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Donald

[kesher]

I have not, but now I want to.

[stevemitchell]

Saucers of Fear by Gray Barker and others. More UFOlogical essays. Barker was the author of the paranoid classic They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers, which introduced (or invented?) the legend of the Men in Black. Speaking of which. . .

Women in Black by Nick Redfern. Who knew?

Ashes by Phillip Hemplow. An effective short novel about a haunted house on the Yorkshire Moors, with linkages to the Cthulhu Mythos. Mr. Hemplow does not appear to be a very prolific author, but everything I have read by him has been bang-on-target.

The Xothic Myth Cycle by Lin Carter. Most of these stories are Carter’s pastiches of August Derleth’s pastiches of Lovecraft. Recursive and tedious overall.

Correlated Contents and From Between the Star-Spaces by James Ambuehl. Two small collections of fan Mythos fiction with a pulpy feel. Ambuehl uses some standard Mythos entities, but he’s created an entire parallel set of deities of his own. Watch out for Uvhash, the Blood-Mad God of the Void!

Acolytes of Cthulhu edited by Robert M. Price. I seem to have a Mythos monkey on my back lately. An iridescent purple, diorite-fanged monkey with a three-lobed burning eye. . . .

Here There Be Monsters by Tim Curran. A lively mix of Lovecraftian tales, with many approaches and styles. All good, but with two particular knockouts, one involving whalers in the Bering Sea, another featuring monsters unleashed at a maximum security prison.

Stealing Cthulhu by Graham Walmsley. I was surprised to see that it’s been 5 years since this little gem was first published. Still a good read the second time around!

[cadriel]

I own all of H.P. Lovecraft's fiction in three volumes from Penguin Books, but most of the stories I've read were the ones in the Ballantine collection The Best of H.P. Lovecraft. So I'm going through everything, currently working on The Thing at the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories. I'm currently on The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, most of the way through the story, hoping to either finish it at lunch or after work today. Next will be "The Dunwich Horror," then At the Mountains of Madness and "The Thing on the Doorstep" will ensure that I've read at least all of those stories.

I've read most of the stories in The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories but will probably go back through all of them, since the last six of that book are some of the strongest of Lovecraft's work. From The Dreams in the Witch House and Other Weird Stories I've read a few of the short Dreamlands pieces, as well as "The Dreams in the Witch House" and "The Shadow Out of TIme," but again I'll go all the way through the book since in the case of the last two, it's certainly been a decade or two since I read them.

[tetramorph]

I've now moved on to Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword.

Where has this book been all my life?

I think I am finally arriving at D&D station!

[Deleted]

Not a book, but half through watching the movie "'71". That movie has my full attention, I can tell you.

[stevemitchell]

Kothar: Barbarian Swordsman by Gardner F. Fox. Low-rent sword-and-sorcery from the 1960s fantasy boom. Fox is a better writer than this title might suggest; his science-fantasy tales from Planet Stories and other 1940s SF magazines are better efforts.

A Very Short Introduction to the Reformation by Peter Marshall. A good overview of a complex subject.

Things Near and Far by Arthur Machen. The second volume of autobiography by this great writer of horror and fantasy. Typical for Machen, there are many digressions along the way. But I thoroughly enjoy Machen’s work, so I don’t mind at all.

The London Adventure or The Art of Wandering by Arthur Machen. The third and final volume of Machen’s autobiography. When I found this many years ago (appropriately enough, while wandering in London), I didn’t realize it was part of a three-volume series. I read it, and only much later discovered the two earlier volumes. So I thought I had better read it again, in the proper sequence this time. Here Machen spends 140 pages sedulously avoiding the subject upon which he has been commissioned to write!

The Three Imposters by Arthur Machen. Two of Machen’s best horror stories, “The Novel of the Black Seal” and “The Novel of the Powder,” are actually self-contained extracts from this volume. A strange story of interlocking narratives and brazen impersonations.

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. My wife and I finished watching the second season of Black Sails recently, and I realized I had never read one of the key sources for the series. So I have now rectified that unfortunate omission.

The Lost Tomb of King Arthur by Graham Phillips. 25 years ago, Phillips was the co-author of King Arthur: The True Story, in which he offered the theory that the “historical” King Arthur was, or was based on, a late Fifth Century-early Sixth Century Welsh king named Owain Ddantgwyn. He expands on that theory here, and makes a reasonable case for Owain D. being in the right place at the right time—but still not convincing me that Owain’s own name would have been forgotten and replaced by the name (or title) of Arthur within a century. Well, if you don’t like Phillips’ theory, there about twenty competing ones you can chose from!

[tetramorph]

Okay, Falconer, I've now finished Poul Anderson's The High Crusade.

Wow. "Arnesonian"? For sure!

Really awesome. What a great ending.

My only disappointment was his handling of the medieval cosmos as though it were simply mistaken, rather than taking a more subtle route like Lewis did in his space trilogy.

But it was great.

[geoffrey]

Aug 4, 2016 16:48:16 GMT -6 stevemitchell said:

Things Near and Far by Arthur Machen. The second volume of autobiography by this great writer of horror and fantasy. Typical for Machen, there are many digressions along the way. But I thoroughly enjoy Machen’s work, so I don’t mind at all.

The London Adventure or The Art of Wandering by Arthur Machen. The third and final volume of Machen’s autobiography. When I found this many years ago (appropriately enough, while wandering in London), I didn’t realize it was part of a three-volume series. I read it, and only much later discovered the two earlier volumes. So I thought I had better read it again, in the proper sequence this time. Here Machen spends 140 pages sedulously avoiding the subject upon which he has been commissioned to write!

The Three Imposters by Arthur Machen. Two of Machen’s best horror stories, “The Novel of the Black Seal” and “The Novel of the Powder,” are actually self-contained extracts from this volume. A strange story of interlocking narratives and brazen impersonations.

Machen is one of the greats. He was one of H. P. Lovecraft's four favorite authors (along with Algernon Blackwood, Lord Dunsany, and M. R. James).

I've never read Machen's three-volume autobiography. I should look into that. I have read The Three Imposters, though. My favorite of Machen's works is "The White People", which I consider to be the single finest weird story ever written.

[stevemitchell]

A big plus one on "The White People." My absolute favorite of Machen's stories.