The Books/Reading Thread

[challenge_everything]

I've been re-reading it for the film release, and find the prose way less palatable than I remember. The roaming free indirect style is jarring, and the didactic tone of characters' interior thoughts feels wrong.

I must have read this book a dozen times and although the mystic aspects never entirely grabbed me, aside from that I find the writing almost perfect - it's economical (I've never been a fan of flowery prose), the psychological warfare-through-dialogue in all the key interactions is sublime and the imagining of a world from its ecology to its economic and political structure surpasses anything else I can think of in science fiction.

 

[challenge_everything]

Also - tip for Frank Herbert fans - Hellstrom's Hive is a terrifically underrated book, blackly funny scifi thriller.

 

[Vegard Pompey]

I must have read this book a dozen times and although the mystic aspects never entirely grabbed me, aside from that I find the writing almost perfect - it's economical (I've never been a fan of flowery prose), the psychological warfare-through-dialogue in all the key interactions is sublime and the imagining of a world from its ecology to its economic and political structure surpasses anything else I can think of in science fiction.

Dune awed and terrified me. What stuck with me was how ridiculously engineered the setting was without artificial intelligence ever coming into play. Engineered genetics, engineered cultures, engineered religions and myths... everyone's a cog in some colossal machinery centuries in the making. Even the central Atreides-Harkonnen conflict is engineered and its outcome predetermined. It's all so horrifyingly authoritarian-fatalist, but also gorgeously envisioned on Herbert's part. Sure made me feel grateful for not being part of any grand masterplan, however much I might wish the world were a little bit more ordered sometimes.

 

[challenge_everything]

Dune awed and terrified me. What stuck with me was how ridiculously engineered the setting was without artificial intelligence ever coming into play. Engineered genetics, engineered cultures, engineered religions and myths... everyone's a cog in some colossal machinery centuries in the making. Even the central Atreides-Harkonnen conflict is engineered and its outcome predetermined. It's all so horrifyingly authoritarian-fatalist, but also gorgeously envisioned on Herbert's part. Sure made me feel grateful for not being part of any grand masterplan, however much I might wish the world were a little bit more ordered sometimes.

A lot of that is subtext but you're absolutely right. It thankfully never felt too fatalistic to me, although Paul often despairs about the coming jihad, that's something that doesn't really emerge until the sequels. I think Herbert was really quite attuned to the push-pull forces in the world and how they interact; wealth, military force, religious fanaticism, environment, controlling means of supply (in this case water and spice). For that reason the dinner table scene after the Atreides settle on Arrakis, when all the influential members of society are present and striving for relevance, is possibly the highlight of the whole book. There's a lot of layers there to delve into but I also love how none of it derails what is just a cracking adventure story too.

 

[CiG]

Felt like rereading this for some odd reason.

 

[Slammed]

I like the that in the short story that King wrote introducing Captain Tripps he referred to the illness as a China Flu. In another story of a similar vein he referred to China Flu and then 30+ years later Joe Hill writes a book about a disease taking over and he mentions it first being referred to as China Flu. Yet Trump called covid China Flu and the whole world shit itself.

 

[Einherjar86]

Finished this for research recently. Haven't read any O'Brien since The Things They Carried in undergrad. It was a good book, probably not everyone's cup of tea--pretty slow, definitely not plot-driven, and heavy on the satire. But I thought it was a funny book, more deserving of praise than many critics say:

Super excited about this new haul:

Already own about half the stories in this collection, but the Charles Burns cover art alone made it an attractive purchase:

Psyched for this, Russell's short stories are amazing:

This trilogy by an up-and-coming Nigerian sf writer, got lots of rave reviews when it came out:

 

[TageRyche]

Here's my Top Ten Mysteries & Thrillers of 2020.

 

[Oblivious Maximus]

New edition just released earlier in the month.

 

[TageRyche]

I finished reading the James Grippando legal thriller Twenty last night.

 

[Einherjar86]

Not a big true crime fan, but this was fucking great:

 

[TageRyche]

I finished reading the Joanna Schaffhausen thriller Every Waking Hour today. Here's my review!

 

[Einherjar86]

Horror fans, check out Stephen Graham Jones's The Only Good Indians. Four indigenous buddies go hunting on land they're not supposed to. Folkloric madness and gore ensues. And it's a sharp little commentary on indigenous precarity and land rights in the U.S.

I hesitate to call it a gorefest because it's a very thoughtfully paced and patient narrative. But the bloodshed would overflow buckets, when it does happen. Jones has a skill for drawing out narrative uncertainty to build suspense. Really enjoyable read.

 

[no country for old wainds]

i have that one on my kindle, i’ll post my thoughts when i read it!

 

[Einherjar86]

I’ll be interested to hear what you think. There’s a perspectival effect in the novel’s first part that describes a viewpoint looking down from a ceiling, above the blades of a rotating fan.

Difficult to describe, but I can’t help but picture it cinematically.

 

[TageRyche]

I finished reading the James Grippando legal thriller Twenty last night.

You can check out my Mystery Scene magazine review of the book HERE!

 

[TageRyche]

Here's my Mystery Scene magazine review of P.J. Tracy's Deep Into The Dark.

 

[TageRyche]

I finished reading the Jon Land thriller Murder on the Metro

 

[Einherjar86]

Just finished this, really fantastic. Especially in light of the Atlanta shootings, it does a nice job of breaking down the "model minority" stereotype.

 

[Bloopy]

I re-read some of Christopher Pike's more sci-fi leaning books from my teens, namely The Tachyon Web, Sati, The Starlight Crystal, The Star Group and The Visitor. The last one is the most on the horror side which just makes it silly, and it's not well explained. I think I'll stop there. His horror books were what we read when we wanted to feel more grown up than Goosebumps readers. I kept collecting them obsessively while my friends moved onto even longer, more gory books.

I could've sworn one of the books had a bit where someone gets it on with an alien and has an out-of-this-world orgasm, but I have no idea what book that was now. I thought maybe it was Sati as that one seemed to be marketed more towards adults, but nope, that just seems to be in the sense that it's kind of a spiritual/religious message and nothing very exciting happens in it. Must've been something else I read around the same time.