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

[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).