calumerio, nice to see someone else read Rose. Glad you liked Jackie's book and the Jakarta Method, too.
― we need outrage! we need dicks!! (the table is the table), Friday, 7 January 2022 15:32 (two years ago) link
The Mabinogion (tr. Sioned Davies)Arthur Machen - The Great God PanClark Ashton Smith - ZothiqueClark Ashton Smith - PoseidonisArkady and Boris Strugatsky - Roadside PicnicKir Bulychev - Alice: The Girl From EarthKir Bulychev - Half a Life and Other StoriesKir Bulychev - Gusliar WondersYevgeny Zamyatin - WeGeorge Orwell - Nineteen Eighty-FourAldous Huxley - Brave New WorldKobo Abe - Inter Ice Age 4Kate Wilhelm - Where Late the Sweet Birds SangRuth Park - Playing Beatie BowRuth Park - The Harp in the SouthRuth Park - Poor Man's OrangeBertrand Russell - What I BelieveBertrand Russell - Why I Am Not a ChristianJoe Hill & Gabriel Rodríguez - Locke & Key: Keys to the KingdomJoe Hill & Gabriel Rodríguez - Locke & Key: ClockworksJoe Hill & Gabriel Rodríguez - Locke & Key: Alpha & OmegaBenjamin Myers - Under the Rock (put down halfway through, will finish at some point)
― in walked airbud (unregistered), Saturday, 8 January 2022 00:56 (two years ago) link
I remember L&J being really solid and wishing there were more good, long, discrete contained stories like that (ignoring the rubbish spin offs)
― Chuck_Tatum, Saturday, 8 January 2022 11:39 (two years ago) link
Locke and key I mean.
― Chuck_Tatum, Saturday, 8 January 2022 11:40 (two years ago) link
I watched teh tv series last month, has been a while since I ead the comics which I enjoyed at teh time and was one reason I watched teh tv show. Think I continued cos I started. Don't think I enjoyed as much as the comic anyway. Might give tehm another look if I can find the fiels sinced i read it on cbr.
― Stevolende, Saturday, 8 January 2022 11:54 (two years ago) link
Love's Work was good, but demanded more of me than I was able to give, intellectually and emotionally. I will go back to it.
Shuggie Bain was super bad, a relentless honking airhorn of "we were poor... but dammit we were unhappy too", in sore need of two more drafts and an editor. I did do an actual lol at a very minor character being called "Kier Weir", though, a welcome absurdity.
I don't think I have ever actually *liked* a protagonist in a book as much as I liked Darryl.
Anyway, I will continue lurking here, pinching ideas from youse all, though this year's resolution is read the books that I bought in 2021, rather than buy any new ones.
― calumerio, Saturday, 8 January 2022 13:57 (two years ago) link
this year's resolution is read the books that I bought in 2021, rather than buy any new ones.
I tried that a couple of years ago and, of course, failed. It was helpful, though. It did encourage me to cut back on purchases and clear some of the backlog of unread books, so on the whole I'm glad I made the resolution and consider it a success.
― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Saturday, 8 January 2022 17:01 (two years ago) link
unregistered- how are the Kir Bulychev books?
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Saturday, 8 January 2022 18:50 (two years ago) link
great! I'm not too well-versed in Soviet SFF, but I'd recommend all three of those Bulychev collections. the biggest highlight for me was the title story of Half a Life. at heart it's a narrative of a woman's acts of self-sacrifice as she comes to empathize with the weird sentient beings who are imprisoned with her on an alien research vessel. a little mawkish, maybe, but there's a compelling interplay between the sentimental and the cynical as a group of emotionally stunted astronauts struggle to make sense of the woman's story and the now abandoned vessel
I also really like the cycle of short stories that makes up the second half of Gusliar Wonders, in which a Russian village becomes an unlikely point of first contact with various aliens and wizards and time travelers. it's similar in premise to Simak's Way Station, only funnier and with less faith in human nature. overall Bulychev seems fixated on the way unimaginative egotists react when confronted with the alien or the supernatural, and he has an acute ear for irony
Alice's Travels (the first novel in that Alice collection) is a fun children's interplanetary mystery, concluding with a slightly hokey, Scooby Doo-ish confrontation with space pirates. the cartoon adaptation is apparently regarded as a classic, and Bulychev is best known in Russia for his Alice books/films. afaik few of his other works have been translated into English aside from the post-apocalyptic novel Those Who Survive and the novella "Another's Memory" (collected in Earth and Elsewhere. Half a Life and Gusliar Wonders are both available at the Open Library
― in walked airbud (unregistered), Saturday, 8 January 2022 23:23 (two years ago) link
I'm kinda tempted to start working my way through the non-Strugatsky entries in Ted Sturgeon's Best of Soviet Science Fiction series:
https://i.imgur.com/O5HLz7d.jpg
(full list here)
― in walked airbud (unregistered), Saturday, 8 January 2022 23:28 (two years ago) link