Our reads December 2020

Another month another pile of books to comfort us a little in thesecrazy times

Dusty's TBR for December
SF/F
Jim Butcher - Battle Ground✔
Paul Melko - Singularity's Ring ✔
Cherie Priest - Boneshaker
Larry Niven - Flight of the Horse ✔
H Beam Piper - Four Day Planet ✔

I'm taking a brief breather from the Book of the New Sun after finishing The Claw of the Conciliator. I've picked up The Tourmaline in the meanwhile--the second volume of Paul Park's portal fantasy Roumania.

I have in hand Dead Astronauts, Dead Lies Dreaming, A Deadly Education and After the End of the World; I swear that this was all due to the serendipity of the "reserve" fairy at the public library. The possible wild card is The Burning God, which also has a lot of death in it!

I am hoping to finish the Vorkosigan series by reading Cetaganda, Memory, Diplomatic Immunity and Cryoburn.

>2 dustydigger:. I almost started Boneshaker, but was discouraged by your prior post about it. So I grabbed Agency out of the TBR pile instead.

Still reading, and struggling with, The Tinderbox: Soldier of Indira by Lou Diamond Phillips.

Just started The Green Man's Silence. A definite improvement on the previous instalment, The Green Man's Foe, but these are a really good urban fantasy series and I hate urban fantasy.

Finished Vaneglory, started Steal Across the Sky.

Just started Brandon Sanderson's The Well of Ascension. These books are always so long!

Just starting Jodi Taylor's The Argumentation of Historians (#9 in the series) - for a lightweight series, the previous installment was way too dark so let's see where it is going from there.

Started Morning of Creation, the second book of the Destiny Makers quintet. Read the first book last year and been meaning to read them for ages. Fortunately, I have all five books with me.

Finished Agency, the second book of William Gibson's Jackpot Trilogy. I noted that Time picked this book for their 100 best books of 2020 list. I have a few books that I personally rated higher than this one but I liked it quite a lot. I'm hoping Book #3 won't be too long in coming.

Finished Too like the Lightning, which I enjoyed, though I do think the author painted themselves into a bit of a corner and had to insert a very non-Eighteenth Century "I have gathered you all here this evening" scene towards the end of the book to extract themselves.

As this is a fairly complex and involved book, I shall be pressing on with the second in the series, Seven Surrenders, after I take a break to read one of Iain Banks' non-sf novels, Stonemouth.

I'm reading Little eyes by Samanta Schweblin which has been marketed as literary fiction but is very clearly SF/dystopian.

Finished Dead Lies Dreaming, which I enjoyed quite a bit more than I thought I might, and is something of a rebound from The Labyrinth Index (which was a bit nihilistic even for my tastes).

H Beam Piper's Four Day Planet was just a fun pulpy read.Really enjoyed going on a sea monster hunt on space vehicle appropriately named the Pequod! lol.
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A lot of people will be dusting off their copies of Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff on hearing of the death of Chuck Yeager,first person to break the sound barrier in 1947. So much has happened since then,and the definition of what the ''right stuff'' has altered significantly but Chuck has been a god to the USAF. RIP Chuck

Finished Steal Across the Sky, began Komarr which is a re-read.

>14 RobertDay:

I'm cheered to hear Agency is that good. It's unread on my shelf, and while I've liked every Gibson book I've read, I didn't rate The Peripheral among his best.

>19 elenchus: Unless you've sought out my review from March this year, I suspect you meant to reply to >13 gypsysmom:. (I echo >13 gypsysmom:'s opinion, though.)

>20 RobertDay: Glad to know it.
>19 elenchus: I liked The Peripheral so you might consider that.

>20 RobertDay:

You are right: meant to reply directly to gypsysmom, but as it happens I'd read your review as well.

To be clear, I definitely enjoyed The Peripheral, no question but that I'd continue reading. I've been re-reading through Gibson's work, though, and the perspective has me rating The Bridge Trilogy higher than I remembered. I briefly thought about re-reading The Peripheral before starting Agency, but reconsidered. Best to read as they're published, as I've done with all prior Gibson novels, and then return to the trilogy once I've read each novel.

Still have Blue Ant to re-read, in any case.

I'm doing a winter re-read of Vinge's Zones of Thought, starting with A Fire Upon the Deep. I read it when it first came out about 30 years ago and so far it's better than I remembered!

Finished A Deadly Education yesterday and felt a bit "meh" about it. Too much exposition and another POV character would have been good. Still expect to be continuing with the series but I'm not hyped. To be fair, I would have liked to have spent some more time with the book, but I have The Burning God in hand and only have a short time with that.

I'm about halfway through Artemis and while it's no The Martian, I'm finding it quite fun and definitely worth reading, which I was not necessarily expecting since I thought I remembered people feeling rather let down by it when it came out.

Just started Seven Surrenders - thought I'd better press on with the series whilst it was all still fresh with me from the first book...

I'm reading Alliance of equals, number ??? in the Liaden series.

Working my way through Alastair Reynolds' Revenger trilogy.

>27 Sakerfalcon: I love the Liaden series! I am hoping that I get the latest book, Trader's Leap, for Christmas...

>13 gypsysmom: & >19 elenchus: I finished Agency and did not think that it was the quality that I expect from Wiliam Gibson. One long chase scene and a limp conclusion. Meh.

Finished Komarr and about halfway through The Game-Players of Titan.

Finished Singularity's Ring,rather ''meh'' IMO and am rereading Battle Ground to complete a challenge with another group.
Having fun preparing my usual basic TBR list for 2020 for this group,and will post it soon,as I do every December.You all know how I love a list :0)
I only read 16/50 of last year's list,since our library was shut down for 8 months! lol.I had to drastically change my TBR. Thank goodness for online books.At least that settles a good proportion of next year's choices :0)

Finished The Tinderbox: Soldier of Indira by Lou Diamond Phillips. I had a really hard time with the story/writing style at the start. There were several times when I seriously considered calling it quits. But I toughed it out and the story kind of grew on me. Better than meh but not quite good.

3/4 way through A boy and his dog at the end of the world
by C.A. Fletcher.

Finished The Game-Players of Titan, started More Than Human -- with trepidation, since it was a book I loved 50 years ago. Would hate to lose it to the suck fairy.

Just finished the newest Patrick Ness, Burn. SF in that it deals with multiple worlds; fantasy in that it is 1957 in our world but with dragons and magic. Pretty good, if you like that sort of thing. Teenagers who have agency! always a plus for me.

For a book group, reading the latest Scalzi, The Last Emperox. Lots of pissed off people cussing, which must have been somewhat satisfying for writing during the Trump administration by someone who dislikes Trump. I vaguely recall the previous books, but the casual mentions of background info bring enough of it back.

Also reading the second Stuart Turton mystery, The devil and the dark water. It's an historical mystery that may or may not have an actual demon in it. Evelyn Hardcastle had some time travel in it, so I'm not betting either way. Good, though.

re: Gibson's Agency
That provided some good conversation in my book group around time travel. We recently read The future of another timeline by Annalee Newitz and This is how you lose the time war by El-Mohtar and Gladstone.

Interesting that time travel is experiencing a resurgence in North American writers.

Posting my usual WWEnd lists selection for next year a bit early this year,not sure what will be going on with family and friends over the holidays as Boris seems to change his mind every other week and seems to think the virus will follow our guidelines. Bonkers.
Anyhoo,I made my list,couldnt reduce it below 60 this year,usually 50. A third are female authors this year,an improvement but still not great. Quite a good number of award winners,and some classic golden oldies.A very few 90s books,but nothing later,and not much fantasy.
The days of reading up to 200 books a year seem to have gone the way of the dodo,but I am going to concentrate on classics and award winners this year. Perhaps a few short stories too.

Dusty's TBR for 2021
Douglas Adams - Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
Douglas Adams - Long Dark Teatime of the Soul
Brian Aldiss - Moment of Eclipse
Algis Budrys - Who?
Michail Bulgakov - The Master and Margarita
Edgar Rice Burroughs - Synthetic Men of Mars
Edgar Rice Burroughs - Llana of Gathol
Olivia E Butler - Dawn
Karel Capek - War with the Newts
Orson Scott Card - Xenocide
Joy Chant - Red Moon,Black Mountain
Michael G coney - Brontomek
James S A Corey - Abaddon's Gate
John Crow;ey -Little Big
Samuel L Delaney - Dhalgren
P K Dick - A Scanner Darkly
Colin Greenland - Take Back Plenty
Nicola Griffith - Ammonite
Charles L Harness - Paradox Men
Nathaniel Hawthorne - House of Seven Gables
D F Jones - Colossus
Katharine Kerr - Polar City Blues
C M Kornbluth - Not This August
Henry Kuttner - Fury
Ursula K Le Guin - The Telling
Justine Larbelestier - Razorhurst
Murray Leinster - Quarantine World
Stanislaw Lem - Cyberiad
R A MacAvoy - Tea with the Black Dragon
Maureen McHugh - China Mountain Zhang
Erin Morgenstern - Night Circus
Andre Norton - Star Guard
Larry Niven - Fallen Angels
Alan Nourse - Space Surgeon
Mark Phillips - Brain Twister
H Beam Piper - Ullr Uprising
Christopher Priest - Inverted World
Patrick Rothfus - Name of the Wind
Joanna Russ - Picnic on Paradise
Joanna Russ - Female Man
Maria Doria Russell - The Sparrow
Brandon Sanderson - Elantris
Clifford D Simak - Highway to Eternity
Joan Slonczewski - Door into Ocean
E E Doc Smith - Grey Lensman
Olaf Siapledon - Last and First Men
Neal Stephenson - Cryptonomicon
George R Stewart - Earth Abides
J R R Tolkien - Silmarillion
Ian Watson - The Jonah Kit
Jack Vance - Dying Earth
Jack Vance - The Face
Vernor Vinge - Marooned in Real Time
AE Van Vogt - Slan
A E Van Vogt - Weapon Makers
Jo Walton - Tooth and Claw
Jack Williamson - Legion of Space
Connie Willis - The Passage
Virginia Woolf - Orlando
Yevgeny Zamyatin - We

As ever I welcome any comments on the list. How many have you read?

>38 dustydigger: I've read 28 of those and five of the rest are on my TBR pile.

>38 dustydigger: 37 for me. I would especially recommend Little, Big, Ammonite, The Night Circus, and Orlando and I think you will like Tea with the Black Dragon. Personally, I'd skip Silmarillion.

>38 dustydigger:

The ones I've read on your list are all great:
Little, Big *
The Master and Margarita
Dhalgren *
We
The Dying Earth
A Scanner Darkly
Silmarillion
The two ERB Barsoom books

The asterisked titles are on my list of thirty all-time favorites.

Many of the others are ones that I've long been interested in reading.

>38 dustydigger:. Only about 14 of those for me. But The Sparrow is one of my favorite books ever.

Tea with the Black Dragon has a sequel, Twisting the Rope. Both are good, although I feel the first is the better of the two.

Of the others, I've probably read at least 18 (mostly the SFF). Some I may have read - Dhalgren was one of the possibles, and The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul; although I know I've read the first of the two. Others were probably library reads.

>38 dustydigger: Only 23 -- ouch: less than half
Your usual mix, from literary to pulp, classic to not-so-classic
Ones I read that stand out as esp. good: Little, Big; Ammonite; Seven Gables; The Telling; Door into Ocean; Dying Earth.
Some are classic but I can't warm up to (e.g. Last & First Men)
There are some fun pulp titles in there: I was very fond of Williamson as an adolescent, and Legion of Space was a favorite (plus another Legion -- Time? I forget), and Burroughs too.
On the other hand, I found Doc Smith stupid & hackneyed; only ever read a couple.
The Silmarillion is important to me since I'm a Tolkien devotee to the core -- but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who isn't. It (and even more, many of the subsequent titles) is very stiff & lifeless compared to the Hobbit & LOTR.

You always have interesting lists!
I have to confess that I had a US-centric moment reading your post. "Boris? Who's Boris?" -- happily followed quickly by, "Oh -- right"

>38 dustydigger: Well, since others have commented in more detail: I loved Little, Big as when I read it, I was reading even less fantasy than I do now, yet I took to it and started following John Crowley as a result. Ammonite is good, and I also enjoyed Polar City Blues. I'm more familiar with Kornbluth's Not this August under the title of 'Christmas Eve', which was its UK hardback title a very long time ago. Lem's The Cyberiad should fill you with admiration for the translator; a Polish colleague boggled a bit when he saw me looking at a Stanislaw Lem website one lunchtime, as apparently in the late 90s/early 2000s, Lem was taught in Polish schools the way Shakespeare was in British schools (i.e. badly).

Was impressed by The Sparrow and by Cryptonomicon, though YMMV on that last one. Inverted World took the UK sf fan scene by storm when it was first released. I was pleasantly surprised by Willis' Passage, as I read it shortly after suffering through Blackout/All Clear; but in 'Passage', I could relate to her 'characters running around a maze of twisty passages all alike' trope as the last hospital I visited, I couldn't find my way out of...

And I've been fascinated by Zamyatin's We for very many years.

>38 dustydigger: What a great list! I heartily agree with all the good things that have been said about Little, Big--easily the best book I read in 2020.

>38 dustydigger: I've read 22 that I can be sure of. Some of the other old ones I may well have read back in the 60s and 70s but can't recall them now.

I've read sixteen of those, although some were really a long time ago now. Red Moon, Black Mountain, The Dying Earth and The Cyberiad I read in the early 80s, Slan, The Weapon Makers, The Master and Margarita, and Inverted World in the mid 80s, Little, Big and A Scanner Darkly in the late 80s and The Sparrow in the early 90s. The Silmarillion I am in fact rereading for the first time in 25 years right now!

>38 dustydigger: Another nice and varied list! I have only read 20 of those so far. A few more are also on my list for 2021. Little, Big and The Tales of Dying Earth among them.

I think you are in for a treat with Ammonite, A Door Into Ocean, The Sparrow, and Dawn. All powerful tales that spoke to me when I read them.

Just read Tooth & Claw last week. Not my favorite Walton novel but YMMV... The central conceit was just not my type of thing.

Abbadon's Gate - have you read the previous entries in the series? If not, you will be missing out on a ton of back story.

Hmmm... Cryptonomicon? Considering your past experiences with Stephenson, I must ask, "Are you sure?" - LOL!!

>38 dustydigger: I've only read 12 that I'm sure of.

>38 dustydigger: I've read 22 for sure, with several more on the eternal TBR pile. It's an ambitious list, too. (Dhalgren and Silmarillion?!)

Door into ocean was excellent: science fiction by a scientist. Razorhurst is a bit spooky and well researched and also a good story.

I also agree with a bunch of other people's faves (Little, big; Ammonite; Dawn). Be sure to let us know how some of them aged, especially the likes of Cryptonomicon; it was timely when it came out -- in 1999.

> 38 As far as I can remember I've only read 8 of the books on your list. One of them was The House of Seven Gables and I guess I'm in the minority because I was not overly impressed with it. The Sparrow, on the other hand, as others have commented is great.

>38 dustydigger: PM Johnson has a mind to change? Last time I noticed he still seems determined to destroy the country. Maybe I spend too much time following Charley Stross's Twitter feed.

I've read about 12-to-13 (maybe 15 if one includes those I picked up and put down) of these books, but of the ones I haven't read the two that standout to me as ones I need to tackle are the Bulgakov and Delaney.

>38 dustydigger: Cool list. I have read 13 on your list and have 14 on my TBR list. I really liked Cryptonomicon and Dhalgren. The Cyberiad has been on the TBR list for quite some time. Perhaps I will get to it this year.

Finished Seven Surrenders and will press on to the latest, The Will to Battle once I've absorbed a fairly technical text on Mars.

Finished Alliance of equals which was a fun instalment in the Liaden series (although I felt there was a bit too much time spent on Padi talking to traders at times). Also read Do androids dream of electric sheep, for the first time. I don't know why it took me so long to get around to this one, when I've read plenty of other books by PKD and enjoyed them. Anyway, it's another classic ticked off the list.

Duplicate entry

Stayed up until midnight to finish the last 2/5s of The Burning God, and yes, Ms. Kuang stuck the landing. Did I doubt that she would? Maybe I spent too much time reading Kuang's own Twitter feed where she publicly moaned about why she ever thought undertaking this project was ever a good idea!

Finished More Than Human, next up The X Factor.

Having picked up Hunting Party as a 99p Amazon deal, I binge read the whole Serrano Legacy series (I have print copies of the series). I also finally got around to reading Trading in Danger.

Today I've had my head in the oven giving it the annual deep clean before trying to cook a turkey.

>60 Maddz: Stay away from any works by Sylvia Plath during this period! (Just posting what everyone else was thinking)

>61 DugsBooks: No need to worry! The oven is electric although I might have problems with fumes from the cleaner. Much to my annoyance, the local shops don't stock gel oven cleaner - only spray, so I'll have to finish the job in the New Year.

>61 DugsBooks: HaHa - wicked but funny.

>60 Maddz: and >61 DugsBooks:
When I read that last sentence I too thought 2020 had claimed another victim. I would also add staying away from The Hours or anything by Virginia Woolf.

>64 gypsysmom: Virginia Woolf is not one of my favourites, although my late mother would married into the fringes of the Bloomsbury Group had he survived the war. His sister knew the Woolfs well.

Cleaning the oven is one of my least favourite jobs because it's a low level oven and I'm not as flexible as I was (when I remodel the kitchen, I'll have it moved to eye level). Plus it's a double oven.

Finished Dead Astronauts yesterday evening, or, perhaps more accurately, it finished with me! I have the highest respect for VanderMeer but I mostly just bounced off the novel. Maybe 2020 has wrecked me for the level of surrealism in this story.

Oh well, on to 2021. The TBR pile is already growing and I have Harrow the Ninth and The City We Became in hand; and a short time to read them!

>38 dustydigger: That's a great list! I've only read 16 of those myself; my absolute favourites being Grey Lensman and Slan.

I also have a lot of love for Who?, Synthetic Men of Mars, Paradox Men, Inverted World and The Dying Earth.

Next year I'm probably going to re-read Rendezvous with Rama and some other stuff.

>38 dustydigger: Have you read Galactic Patrol? Ideally that should be read before Grey Lensman.

Happy Christmas everyone! I'm halfway through The Dramaturges of Yan by John Brunner. It's a bit slow out of the gate but some interesting themes are developing. Unusually for Brunner it's "conventional SF" but I'm expecting him to throw a curve ball before the end.

>68 SFF1928-1973: Yes,I read it a while ago,2015 or so,then got diverted to the Skylark series and extending my ERB Barsoom series beyond the original first trilogy,(now ready for Synthetic and Llana,#9 & 10 .
So now I am back to continue the Lensmen series,with book 4 :0)

In view of my new reads being held up in the post this looks like a good time for another re-read of The Queen of the Swords by Michael Moorcock

>71 SFF1928-1973: Are those stories related to the Zelazny “Amber” series in any way?

>72 DugsBooks: No, Moorcock's book have nothing to do with Zelany's books. There are some commonalities in setting, both series are fantasy, and both were written at about the same time.

However, I'd say the Moorcock books are more aimed at the male 16-15 market (and read a bit like that), whereas Zelazny wrote for an older market. (Moorcock didn't really start moving away from that market until Gloriana.)

>73 Maddz: Full disclosure: I was 13 when I started reading Moorcock. I reckon I'd read most of the good stuff by the time I was 18. I still have good memories but re-reading them now it's possible to spot flaws that I never noticed before (weak plotting, one-dimensional characters etc.).

The postie just delivered the books I've been waiting for. Time for my re-read of Rendezvous with Rama!

>75 SFF1928-1973: I loved Rendezvous with Rama. It is one of the few books I have ever re-read.

I did not care much for the sequels. I was very irked by the fact that there were four Rama books. The Ramans always do things in threes.

Just finished The mermaid, the witch, and the sea by Maggie Tokuda-Hall. (Argh, touchstones.) Pirates!

>76 pgmcc: I was surprised by the first sequel - it was better than I expected - and on the strength of it acquired the others. In the middle one, nothing happened but at very great length. The last one had its moments but was a shaggy God story and ultimately left nothing explained.

A few years ago, a client gave me the two extra sequels Gentry Lee wrote on their own. They were awful.

Just finished Exit strategy to start catching up on the Murderbot stories. Book group will discuss at least one next year.

Also started Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor, a first contact story set in current Lagos. So far so good.

>76 pgmcc: Rendezvous was begging for a sequel, indeed a trilogy seems most logical. Four books is just milking it!

I've still to read past the original.

>80 SFF1928-1973: Like yourself I expected a trilogy. As the years passed and no sequel appeared I thought it was a lost cause.

Then RAMA II appeared with Arthur C Clarke and Gentry Lee appearing as co-authors. I am always suspicious when I see this. My interpretation is that the less famous author is trying to piggy-back on the reputation of the more famous and experienced author. The amount of input from the senior partner is not always certain. The senior partner may be just happy (or possibly unhappy) to lend their name to the enterprise and let the tyro do all the work.

Given how much I had enjoyed Rendezvous With Rama I took the chance and invested my hard earned capital and bought a copy. I enjoyed it but did not regard it as anything more than a re-run of the first book.

Garden of Rama appeared and I once more took the plunge. I found it a boring tale of colonisation of the third RAMA craft. The sociological development of the community in the vessel was a bit ham-fisted and I just got irritated with it.

When Rama Revealed appeared I was a bit more savvy. I borrowed it from the library. About half way through with it I just got totally bored with it and returned it to is home.

Another case of a great first book being exploited and coming to nothing worth getting excited about. I think your "milking it" comment summed it up nicely. I would say you are missing nothing by not reading past the original. Advice I would also give in relation to K-Pax.

Just popping in to say that my final book read for 2020 was Jasper Fforde's Early Riser, which I enjoyed a lot. Well, I always enjoy his work.

>82 rocketjk: I loved Early Riser, I found it to be different enough to to unique.