Things I am planning to read

[cahn]

In case anyone else is interested. (This isn’t an exhaustive list, but these are the things I think would be most fun to read in the company of others.)

In the next week: John M. Ford’s Klingon novel, The Final Reflection (reread), in the hopes sineala will also reread. If anyone else does read this, and even if you don’t, I shall ask all the dumb questions I still don’t understand about this book. (I seem to remember some confusion about Maxwell Grandisson III and Van Diemen and who was responsible for whose fate. We shall see!)

In the next month or so: Cynthia Voigt’s Tillerman cycle (reread), completely out of order, and probably not including Homecoming, which I find so painful I’ve never actually gotten all the way through it. I’ve got a post on Come a Stranger queued, and probably will read The Runner, Sons from Afar, and Seventeen Against the Dealer in that order. Then probably I’ll give Homecoming a stab, and then Dicey’s Song and A Solitary Blue. (I, um, don't recommend this order if you're reading it for the first time. Start with Dicey's Song or Solitary Blue and work more-or-less in order of publication.)

In the next three months: Moby-Dick. I say three months because what with various Summer Plans I suspect it will take me that long to get through it, although of course I hope it doesn’t take that long!

In the fall: Cordwainer Smith’s short stories with duckwhatduck! And possibly some Baudelaire. I've never read any Baudelaire, but apparently "Drunkboat" would make a lot more sense if I had.

(Fall reading will, of course, be ramping up to Yuletide, so if there's anything else I should read for Yuletide then feel free to lecture me about it ;) I think maybe I should read Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London novels? What else?)

Comments

[seekingferret]

FWIW, Moby Dick took me about three months to read the first go-round. And I'm probably ready for a re-read, I'd guess I last read it nearly a decade ago.

And I'm totally onboard for a Cordwainer Smith re-read. The Instrumentality of Mankind is fantastic.

At the moment, I'm two thirds of the way through Zadie Smith's new novel NW, which is really well written but not quite as enjoyable as her other three novels. Have you read Zadie Smith? Zadie Smith's books are things I would request for Yuletide if I weren't totally terrified of what I might get. So I request The Autograph Man fic for Kaleidoscope instead.

[cahn]

OH HEY YOU'VE READ CORDWAINER SMITH. These are my favorite stories ever, and I feel like no one has ever heard of them!

(Um. You didn't happen to come up with the title "Do you hear the underpeople sing?" elsewhere, did you? If so, I know someone who wants to be friends with you! Or possibly already is.)

I have never read Zadie Smith! Shall put on the list.

[seekingferret]

Cordwainer Smith is part of my cat people theory of SF, which says that if a work of science fiction has cat people, you can assume it is bad science fiction, unless it's by Cordwainer Smith or Larry Niven. (The formulation of that theory was inspired by this amazing cover)

[duckwhatduck]

Out of interest, how do you classify the non-Niven kzinti stories?

[seekingferret]

:P Mostly, I don't, if I can help it.

But look, the thing with Known Space is that it's not like the kzin are a convincing alien species. They're actually just about the least interesting part of Known Space. It's just that Known Space is entertaining and interesting in spite of the kzin, thus earning a carveout in my theory.

[duckwhatduck]

Totally fair enough, I just like to nitpick at anything that might possibly have holes to pick at...

[cahn]

...That is definitely an amazing cover! :)

[seekingferret]

It's a pretty amazing book, too. I once described it as 'a Just-So story about relativity'. The story begins in a non-relativistic universe that the main characters transform into a relativistic universe in order that their (creepy, disturbing) love can endure.

It is a tour-de-force of terrible physics.

[cahn]

I... almost.. feel like I have to read this, it sounds so trainwrecky.

But only almost! The sensible part of my brain knows it would be a Bad Idea.

[thistleingrey]

I'd happily reread Final Reflection (which I haven't done since first reading circa age fourteen), but my copy is in a box of unknown precise location.

Huh, I bounced off the one Voigt I tried, probably Dicey's Song and probably in the eighth grade (I can see where it was on the school library's shelf), but I wonder whether adult distance would help. Interested to see what you think during the reread if you post about it, in other words.

Aaronovitch sounds plausible, yes. And I have read a bit of Cordwainer Smith, though (undoubtedly wrongly) his stories blur a bit with Theodore Sturgeon's in far-off memory.

[cahn]

Drat! I was hoping you could explain everything to me :P :) One of these days you're going to find the John M. Ford box, and then I will be after you to reread allllll the Ford and explain it to me :)

Hm. I think I tried Voigt at around the same time and bounced off it hard. I think they're better read as an adult, actually. Although it belongs, sort of, to the same genre of Anne-of-Green-Gables and Austins that we've already discussed :) (Although I find it less sunny than either set.)

Hmmmmmph. I think Cordwainer Smith is far more awesome than Sturgeon, although I guess they're both from the same era-ish, and I do enjoy Sturgeon a lot as well.

[thistleingrey]

Actually! There was a partly unpacked box, and I finished it off this evening--not only all the Ford I own but the handful of TOS Trek novels I've kept. (Eight or nine. Somewhere, either there's another nine or so, or I've sold them--can't remember.) So Reflection is now on my desk. :)

:) The Anne sequence is not hugely sunny to an adult's eye, I think, because one sees some of the silences. I'll try the Voigt books again at some point.

So noted!

[cahn]

Oh, EXCELLENT. I may have to do a Ford reread so that you can explain them all to me! :P :) (In particular, I seem to remember wanting an explanation of the short story "Preflash," the griffin-ending of which has always defeated me. I think I have a working understanding of most of the novels now, even if there are bits here and there I totally don't get. But, um. Whatever works for you, of course! :) )

[thistleingrey]

Heh, who says I understand all of them? Reading and discussing would be fun, regardless, though perhaps not all of them in a row at once.

[cahn]

Hee! Yeah, I don't think I could take all of Ford at once, much as I like him.

[duckwhatduck]

I'm also probably going to be reading Rivers of London in the autumn, because going home and being able to access my Cordwainer Smith will also be my opportunity to get hold of the copy my sister's been promising to lend me.

[cahn]

Cool, okay, that's further incentive for me to get hold of it :)

[ase]

At the moment I say I am not planning to read anything, but let's be honest: once people start posting comments, I will probably be in for at least a little of everything except Moby-Dick. Still slogging through Les Miz (almost done with book 4!), which is enough classical literature for now.

[cahn]

Have you read Cordwainer Smith? It's... I don't know how to describe it. The prose is crazy and compelling with all sorts of literary and historical allusions, and he has a crazy and far-flung historical-SF-worldbuilding mythology, and there are cat-people and songs and it's not really like anything else I've ever read. I have no idea whether you'd like it (and I suppose it's the sort of thing that is harder to read in a post-SJ world (it was written in the 50s-70s); I read it when I was young and impressionable) but I just love it so much.

It seems curiously hard to find, especially in the US, bah (and I certainly don't recommend getting the full collection unless/until you sample and find it's to your taste). Let me research this and get back to you.

Book 4! That was the hardest slog for me. Book 5 is, um, less sloggy. (I was going to type "better," but SO DEPRESSING.) Are you annoyed with Marius yet, or are you really annoyed? :) (I like Marius! But Book 4 was not a good look for him.)

[ase]

Bounced off Norstrilia and some of the short stories pretty hard in college. Probably still have the old paperback short story collection in a box, may have to give it another shot.

On book four... the line between revolutionaries and hipsters is thin! Les Amis could drop into SF's Mission district and no one would blink. Marius is an arrogant stiff-necked creeper trapped in his unacknowledged biases, with a side helping of Hugo's cement-truck approach to angst. I skipped right past annoyance into, "no one can be this outrageous. Can they? I must take notes. Oh Valjean, you might get the son-in-law you deserve, except no one deserves this." I was sort of warned by your previous comments, which helped me slog on (at an admittedly glacial pace).