What are you reading?

Chapter 11 of the Picture of Dorian Gray has been kind of rough, at first. For me it's been love/hate.

This description of the dawn was a good start:

"Gradually white fingers creep through the curtains, and they appear to tremble. In black fantastic shapes, dumb shadows crawl into the corners of the room and crouch there. Outside, there is the stirring of birds among the leaves, or the sound of men going forth to their work, or the sigh and sob of the wind coming down from the hills and wandering round the silent house, as though it feared to wake the sleepers and yet must needs call forth sleep from her purple cave. "

"Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by degrees the forms and colours of things are restored to them, and we watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern. The wan mirrors get back their mimic life. The flameless tapers stand where we had left them, and beside them lies the half-cut book that we had been studying, or the wired flower that we had worn at the ball, or the letter that we had been afraid to read, or that we had read too often. Nothing seems to us changed. Out of the unreal shadows of the night comes back the real life that we had known."

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but then Oscar lurches into a bizarre manifesto of all Dorian's collectibles. It reminds me of the "roll call" sections of the Iliad, wherein Homer lists an utterly exhaustive manifesto of all the ships and men involved in the conflict. Wilde just rambles for seemingly ever, on with a list of items upon items that Dorian has collected in his mania. It just goes on and on. The narrator assumes a monotone, and it's nigh intolerable.

It wouldnt have been so bad, if major events didnt just happen in the book - but they have. As a reader, im on the edge of my seat waiting to see what's going to happen. Yet he just wont shut up about the "ruby encrusted saddlebag that Prince Waldemar of Wallachia once wore on his Appalachian Apaloosa". I actually lost my patience, and forwarded the recording.

Yeah, that wasnt going to sit right.

It was late, i was tired, and the next evening, i began it again from the beginning of Chapter 11. This time, i let the tale carry me, instead of me demanding where it go, and appreciated it a bit more. In hindsight, this is probably one of the most important sections of the book. Yes, it goes through a laborious account of all this collectibles, but they are meant to stand as physical manifestations of his maniacal quest of hedonism.

Bookended by the catalogue, great sections of his life are fast-forwarded, and it all comes full circle by the end of the chapter with a pretty sound, major event. In that regard, it' a very dense bit of storytelling, and at times it may require some patience.

Or maybe Wilde was just doing some good old-fashioned 19th century trolling

Just closed (metaphorically, since it's an e-book) Viper Pilot: A Memoir of Air Combat by Dan Hampton. The author describes a few interesting missions he had flown as an F-16 pilot during the Gulf War and its sequel, the Iraq War. Being much into aviation, it's a treat of course, but to someone who's indifferent it may be a bit too detailed, technical and difficult to enjoy.

The author was in a Wild Weasel unit, those crazy pilots who provoke the enemy's surface-to-air missile defense sites. The general idea is to fly deep into enemy territory, make those sites launch missiles at them, and use special missiles that are guided by the site's radar to destroy it (while avoiding the enemy missiles and AAA). This cleans the path to bombers who cannot avoid those sites.

Now back to the George Smiley series

I just wrapped up re-reading Lonesome Dove, never a boring read, always a pure joy to revisit. It's odd how the book started out as a screenplay, meant for John Wayne, Jim Stewart, and Fonda to star in, yet when Wayne turned it down, the work languished for ten years, then McMurtry went back to the script, and converted it to a novel. One can only imagine how the original plans might have turned out, yet the mini-series is fine on its own, just don't expect it to be nearly as good as the novel.

It is simply spectacular. At its origin, the book is about a cattle drive from Texas to Montana, yet the drive doesn't start until over two hundred pages in, as McMurtry does a fine job of establishing many of the characters before the journey commences. Others come and go, yet the main cast is set fairly early into the work. I cannot give this book a higher recommendation, the accolades will have to speak if my words aren't enough. Is this McMurty's finest work? That for me is difficult to say, as I love many of his books, yet Lonesome Dove is sublime, and that's not a word I easily bequeath to any work. The Last Picture Show, Terms of Endearment, and many others are also well worth checking out.

Next up for me will be Caliban's War. I'll likely go back to McMurtry at some point, and continue this story with Streets of Loredo.

khaight said:

It's interesting to me how a number of Sanderson's viewpoint characters in this series are mentally ill.

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A rather large number! The Legion series took that even further. The main character there has got the be the most original character I've ever heard of.

Speaking of... I'm reading We are Legion (We are Bob) - a story about a software engineer/manager that has just made a mint selling off his company, pays to get his brain frozen in case he dies, and manages to get himself killed in the first few pages. Some time in the future, the state decides it can use these frozen brains to run their machinery. Well... not the physical brain, but an excellent simulation of it. So Bob wakes up as a computer, complete with instant calculation and all those other computery things, but he still feels like Bob. Bob with a single camera as an eye, a speaker for a voice, a microphone for an ear, and no body whatsoever, anyway.

I'm about two thirds of the way through it and it's been great fun! Well, great fun for a computer nerd that grew up in the late 20th century, anyway. Taylor isn't aiming for a timeless, universal classic.

I agree, many of the characters in Sanderson's series seem to have some serious mental illnesses, I would also include the Mistborn books as well as the Stormlight ones, in that analysis. Then again, I think many novels have characters portrayed as such, going back hundreds of years. Who knows, perhaps the oddest amongst us tend to stand out more? His early work Elantris almost takes this to an absurd level, if you've read that one you'll know exactly what I mean.

"The Persians. At the court of the Greatkings." (Translation by me).
This is a big magazine-like book filled with the scheduled-to-be catalogue of an exhibition about the Persians, which never came to be because of Corona.

To me, it didn't tell much new things, but for any German reader interested in the Achemenides, it might be worth looking at. For almost 15 Euros it's almost a steal !
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achaemenid_Empire

Notable is, that both the words "Mage" and "Paradise" have their roots there.

Yesterday I finished Caliban's War, book two of the Expanse. A solid book, it carries much of the story from the prior novel, and builds it up nicely. Also, you get some character back round and development, which is always nice to have in a long series. I picked up Genius Loci, which is a collection of short stories that I contributed to via a kick starter some years ago. I read it once, when I first received it maybe six or seven years ago, so re-visiting it should be good.

Finished The Spy Who Came In from the Cold by John le Carré.

Quite the masterpiece, and quite dark too.

Oh man, Red, that's such a great book. It grips me every time I read it, chilling and just sooo damn good!

I finished Genius Loci pretty quickly, likely due to some nasty storms in the area so the computer and telly stayed off, while I read. It's a nice collection of dark stories, many based on myths and local lore/legends. A good read if any of those are appealing, with some lesser known craftsmen doing the heavy lifting. Instead of going on to the third book of the Expanse, I picked up Straw Men to re-read, as I've not read the series in quite some time.

Aliens: Infiltrator.

Pretty underwhelming so far. I'm about 75% done with it.

Not sure anything has happened, except for a lot of human mutilation.

Over the past week I've read the Straw Man series, pretty good if you enjoy thrillers with a little dash of creepy. It's a total of three books, written by Michael Marshall.

I just finished Saga of The Swamp Thing vol1. This is when Alan Moore re-invented the mythology with Steve Bissette and John Totleben handling art. A true comics classic. Can't wait to get vol2.

Salem's Lot

"Before drifting away entirely, he found himself reflecting---not for the first time---on the peculiarity of adults. They took laxatives, liquor, or sleeping pills to drive away their terrors so that sleep would come, and their terrors were so tame and domestic: the job, the money, what the teacher will think if I can't get Jennie nicer clothes, does my wife still love me, who are my friends?"

" They were pallid compared to the fears every child lies cheek and jowl with in his dark bed, with no one to confess to in hope of perfect understanding but another child. There is no group therapy or psychiatry or community social services for the child who must cope with the thing under the bed or in the cellar every night, the thing which leers and capers and threatens just beyond the point where vision will reach. The same lonely battle must be fought night after night and the only cure is the eventual ossification of the imaginary faculties, and this is called adulthood"

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This morning I picked up Abaddon's Gate, being the third entry in the Expanse series. I'm about fifty pages in and enjoying it just as much as the first time I read it, which was about seven years ago. If you even remotely enjoyed the television series, pick these up, you'll not be disappointed.

Finished The Looking Glass War by John le Carré.

I'm not sure I'll continue the series. I found this book a bit depressing on all accounts, people's lives seem miserable, they set out to start something that seems pointless, several points seem to improve and give hope to the reader, but then turn out badly. There's just no upside, no incentive to keep reading at any moment except maybe 5 or 6 pages near the end.

And the "George Smiley" character is barely represented, once again. Actually, in each book he seems to have a different personality, and in the two last ones he didn't even have a secondary role, or barely, so I'm starting to wonder why this is the name of the series.

Maybe some technical aspects of operations are interesting, if they are accurate, but if that's just for this I'd rather read a history book.

So it's a matter of personal taste, but I would have a hard time recommending this one. The narrative quality is good, the personalities are believable (the man at least, women often seem to be frivolous and shallow), the story is average to fine, but the conclusion is uninteresting and the suspense almost non-existent.

EDIT: The next one of the series is Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, I watched the 1979 TV show (and the 2011 movie but it was a bit of a joke trying to squeeze that into one movie). Has anyone read it? How does it fare in comparison to the earlier books?

I think Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is one of his superior novels, and somewhat better than the books that proceed it. I'm with you, the books without Smiley just seem so....less than. I need him in the pages!!! To fully answer your question it's better than the one you just concluded, at least imo.

Carnifex said:

I think Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is one of his superior novels, and somewhat better than the books that proceed it. I'm with you, the books without Smiley just seem so….less than. I need him in the pages!!! To fully answer your question it's better than the one you just concluded, at least imo.

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Thanks for the advice, I finally grabbed the book and read a bit, and I love it

Yeah if you managed to get through the prior book, I was pretty sure you'd fall in love with this one. Good job on sticking it out, mate!

This morning I finished Abaddon's Gate, being the third volume in the Expanse series. This is the farthest that I've read to date in the books, yet I'm planning to change that by ordering the next two or three novels. This book changes matters significantly in the universe, at the end the gates are open and functional, what happens next is entirely up to mankind. I look forward to getting my mitts on the next book!

As for now, I picked up Hounded, book one in the Iron Druid Chronicles. A nice, lighthearted series, one close to my heart as the protagonist and I seem to share similar beliefs in many areas. And he's irish, woots!!

I just finished The Dark Forest, the sequel to The Three Body Problem.

Well the ending is mind-blowing. Highly recommended! The Dark Forest theory explanation of the Fermi Paradox is amazingly imaginative and paranoid. If Steven Hawking said we should be wary of alien civilizations, should we be hiding?