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What are you reading at the moment? Recommendations welcome

Listening to The Ministry of Time. Quite interesting, though only a third of the way through.
I had to DNF that one. If I wanted a lecture... Oh no WAIT. That was The Ministry of the Future that I was reading... haha. Scrap that.

But speaking of DNF... I'm debating finishing one I'm listening to now... Backyard Starship. I'm trying to remember who mentioned it on this thread and what they said.

Ah, a quick search later and it was @Bloo ! Hey Bloo, so didn't you find all the words got in the way of the story? Like all the world building and internalizing and explaining what was going on using a LOT of words totally cut into the plot and action for me. I mean, it's COOL world building (although very little action) but it's like he talks over everything that's happening. haha. I'm not explain it well. The other thing that I always hate is when a story goes meta. Talking about how "that would only happen in a sci-fi novel, not in real life..." and boom, I am right out of the story. And this book does that a lot. I'm over half way. Does it keep going like this? I mean it's fine, it's fun, but it's also a tiny bit annoying, no??
 
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I liked Ministry of the Future, but it defo was a lecture and I skimmed it for the research. I just got an audio book of Cordwainer Smith stories. Looking forward to those. Oh I hate the same things yu do Lyse. Iffy get it in audio too it makes a big diff. I might like Becky Chambers if it's a book, but the narration really put me off. I might have gotten thru all of Ministry of theFuture (I mean I know all the Swiss places in there) if it was audio and I could speed it up and listen while I'm cleaning poo or something.
 
I liked Ministry of the Future, but it defo was a lecture and I skimmed it for the research. I just got an audio book of Cordwainer Smith stories. Looking forward to those. Oh I hate the same things yu do Lyse. Iffy get it in audio too it makes a big diff. I might like Becky Chambers if it's a book, but the narration really put me off. I might have gotten thru all of Ministry of theFuture (I mean I know all the Swiss places in there) if it was audio and I could speed it up and listen while I'm cleaning poo or something.
That would be a shitty read.
 
That would be a shitty read.
Kim Stanley Robinson is capable of writing interesting stories, but the story here is so obviously a skinin which to stuff all these interesting theories and information he wants yu to know about re thefutureof climate change. It is an important discussion,but he probably should've made it nonfiction.
 
Randomly picked 'The Locked Door' by Freida McFadden, from the list of Kindle Prime Books of the Month. I know little about the author but have read 33%. Easy to read,, although a little cliched in parts, but I shall continue reading.
 
Just finished The Siege by Ben Macintyre. I recommend it.

I can remember, back in the day (1980), calling to my then-boyfriend, who'd just paused in watching the final of the snooker, on which he had a bet, to make some tea: "Come quickly, they've sent the army in to the Iranian Embassy – *and Kate Adie is covering it!"

The siege of the Iranian Embassy in Prince's Gate, Kensington, London, began when six armed gunmen burst in and took hostage all those in the building, including the injured Ambassador, who had thrown himself out of a window in an unsuccessful attempt to escape. It lasted six days, ending when the British Government, led by Home Secretary William Whitelaw on behalf of PM Margaret Thatcher, sent in the SAS, a 'special forces' unit of the British army, fairly recently returned from duties in Northern Ireland.

This siege was the more dramatic for taking place against the backdrop of the simultaneous continuing hostage situation at the US Embassy in Teheran. The London hostage-takers were Iranian arabs, whose main demand was for independence for Arabistan, an arab enclave in Iran, though that was never made public at the time. The hostage-takers were deluded, hot-headed young men, many of whom had lost near relatives to the Iranian Ayatollah regime; Macintyre reveals [spoiler here] they were recruited, trained and financed by Iraq, via a group organised by the well-known purveyor of terror, Abu Nidal.

Macintyre's chunky (non-fiction) paperback draws on unpublished source material and testimony, very often anonymous, from parties on all sides involved in the siege and in operations around it. He remains heroically impartial – for the most part – and resists the temptation to rake over the politics, post hoc. Many of the political big beasts are now dead, which cannot have been a coincidence.

He does ask the question: were the SAS instructed to 'shoot to kill'?, but leaves it unanswered. The fact that one of the hostage-takers had 39 bullets in his (dead) body, while two others were not, in fact, armed at the time of their deaths, is probably rather telling. Of those, one had the air pistol used by embassy staff to scare pigeons - which proved fatally misleading – and the other, who was said to have been 'concealing something' under his torso, was revealed to have... a packet of biscuits. [Sorry, second spoiler.]

That day, *Kate Adie (31), was the BBC's duty reporter. Through her impressive live and unscripted commentary, much of it delivered sheltering behind a parked car as the siege came to its climax, she became the first British woman TV journalist, certainly of her age, to provide coverage of such a major international hard news situation.
 
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Just finished The Radleys.

Well-written and quite entertaining, but it read like the author couldn't quite decide whether he was writing a YA coming-of-age romance, a Bram-Stoker-meets-Martin-Amis (with more gentle humour) social commentary, or a Pinteresque (the playwright, not the social media platform) suburban kitchen-sink drama...but set in a village.

Parts really engaged me, but it didn't feel coherent. Also, I wasn't keen on the 70s-detective-TV-Series-style epilogue.

Why so many hyphenations in this post? Because that's how the novel felt: overly-hyphenated.
 
Finished Into The woods by John Yorke. Most of it was very good and very readable (did you know, Shakespeare's players trimmed the night performance candles so they would last precisely the length of each Act?). It contained very good, detailed analyses of three Act and Five Act structures, characterisation and dialogue. The last section was slow going: a deep, philosophical analysis of why we tell stories which, to be honest, mostly went in one eye and out the other, but I still highly recommend this book if you already have a level of understanding of story structure. I'd say it's a bit too complicated for beginners.
I've outlined both my present (completed) and next (not written yet) novels in a five act story structure which I've found suits me even better than the broader 3 Act structure.
 
After a painfully thorough blitz on querying and submitting, my immortal soul probably imperilled forever by my 'economies* with the truth', I have turned for relief to Curtis Sittenfeld's re-imaging of Pride and Prejudice, re-located to Cincinnati. A clever idea, well done.

I was enjoying it hugely at the beginning, the more so where it followed the original closely, but now I've met the younger sisters, I'm struggling a bit. They are unfeasibly appalling – IMO – where Ms Austen's girls are merely vapid and rather dim...

We'll see. More later, if it's worth it.

* how many believable-sounding ways can you complete this sentence:
I am contacting you for representation because...?
 
Winner to be the desperate would-be author who could produce the most unctuously flattering line that is still just about plausible, if not absolutely credible.
Not allowed to include compliments to the recipient's taste in pets, leisure-time activities and/or all-time favourite novels.
 
I've just finished the three "Martin Scarsden" books by Chris Hammer ("Scrublands", "Silver" and "Trust"). This is Australian crimer / noir fiction which I hadn't read before, but in terms of tone, echos works my Michael Connely which I very much enjoyed. Overall, enjoyable and though I am Australian, I havent read much Australian fiction before.

I few more craft-related thoughts:
  • All novels are in 3rd person present tense. I have read a few 1st person present tense before and barely noticed it, but for these stories, especially the first, there were some parts that read almost like a screenplay. Although there is action, it feels like i am being told what happens. I found this less and less with each subsequent book. Maybe that is just me getting used to the style or just an improvement in the craft.
  • The author does an excellent job recounting three different Australian locations, where the location itself feels like a character. Book two overlays that further with a sense of nostalgia which I was surprised I enjoyed. Overall the locations feel very real, though two of them are fictional.
  • The author is a journalist, therefore the protagonist is a journalist. There is a lot in all three novels about the importance of the story. I found the willingness of the other characters, including those later revealed to be the "baddie" to confide their secrets to the journalist who is outright telling them that he will be publishing it a little contrived, but then I am not a journalist so maybe that's realistic.
  • Without spoilers, the protagonist maintains a relationship with a female character across all three books. I found that female character increasingly frustrating and the revelations about her past in book three feel like they were necessary to add so that a third book could be written. I also didn't buy there relationship.
  • Plot-wise, you can expect these sorts of crime stories to have lots of twists, coincidences, and intrigue. These do not dissapoint. The revelations in Book 1 made sense to me. Books 2 and 3 seemed a little contrived. For all three books, there are random happennings / events that indirectly become the only reason that the plot can progress, making it difficult for the protagonist to fully protag.
Book 1, Scrublands was made into a 4-part series on Stan streaming (in Australia) and another season (presumably book 2 or 3) is in production.

3.3 / 5
 
Discovered a new author, Manda Scott. A veterinary surgeon who started off writing crime novels which I will now look up. But what I found at a charity shop is the first of her series on Boudica. The beginning was very hard to get into. Too many difficult names, too slow. So I did what i sometimes do-skip to the end chapters to try and get into the story. That worked and I am in awe for what she has accomplished. She's managed to blend her own knowledge of animals with her trove of archeological research and recreated a credible world with characters that feel real. My task is to weave together 8 characters and create a world. Scott has done it with 3 times those characters all with long, funny names. Salud!
 
James Charles, Jousting was the football of the time. The way an unknown could become rich and famous.

Wizard of OZ was supposed to be written about the US politics of the time. My state of Kansas was in the middle of it at the turn of the last century. The film and the books I think are forgotten now. The last generation to care is probably in their 30's now. Wizard has taken over, but I tthought the film was dull and more into costumes and sets than story. And one great song in a musical? Now I want to see this in the theatre.
 
I have just finished an unusual and intriguing book. The Woman Who Fell to Earth by R. B. Russell (pub.Tartarus Press) is hard to categorise, though probably you'd file it under 'mysterious and macabre'.

The plot:
When a body falls on to the roof of Tanya Sewell's house in the middle of the night, Tanya recognises the woman as an old friend, the literary researcher Catherine Richards. Where did she come from and how did she end up on Tanya's roof?
It is clear Richards wasn't climbing on the roof, but fell there, out of the sky. Did something from her research into arcane subjects prove the reason for her death?

Some may recognise the name R. B. Russell as one of the founders of indie publisher Tartarus Press, specialising in mysterious and macabre stories.

As a novel, this is not perfect. IMO, it would have been improved by more consistent chill and a bit less 'Girls' Own Adventures' in places, and the end didn't do it for me. Interesting and different, though.
NB. this is NOT genre horror.
 
Starting on the 2nd in the Boudica series. Dreaming the Bull. Since almost everything about the tribes in pre Roman Britain has been lost she is inventing the world from roman descriptions and archaeological snippets, but doing a marvelous job. I Like the way she centers the culture around horses and dogs but it's breaking my heart. Is there anyway to emotionally connect faster than with horses and dogs? It is difficult to take in as much research as she had done and yet not info dump. She's masterful at close 3rd POV. If only I could absorb her skill. Manda Scott. Vet surgeon turned historical fiction novelist and now podcaster.
 
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I have just finished an unusual and intriguing book. The Woman Who Fell to Earth by R. B. Russell (pub.Tartarus Press) is hard to categorise, though probably you'd file it under 'mysterious and macabre'.

The plot:
When a body falls on to the roof of Tanya Sewell's house in the middle of the night, Tanya recognises the woman as an old friend, the literary researcher Catherine Richards. Where did she come from and how did she end up on Tanya's roof?
It is clear Richards wasn't climbing on the roof, but fell there, out of the sky. Did something from her research into arcane subjects prove the reason for her death?

Some may recognise the name R. B. Russell as one of the founders of indie publisher Tartarus Press, specialising in mysterious and macabre stories.

As a novel, this is not perfect. IMO, it would have been improved by more consistent chill and a bit less 'Girls' Own Adventures' in places, and the end didn't do it for me. Interesting and different, though.
NB. this is NOT genre horror.
Sounds intriguing.
 
A Litopia discussion and subsequent google search for "footnotes in fiction" directed me to The Mezzanine by
Nicholson Baker. The novel traces, in detail, a man's disparate thoughts as he rides an escalator up to the mezzanine after his lunch break. Loved it! It's a short read -150 pages- and an online review said it could have stopped at 100. But to me, after a short lull, it really picked up at the end, when his reflection of the shampoos aisle at CVS included Prell. (Perhaps younger readers, such as that reviewer, can't appreciate the nostalgia of that section.) The ending was very satisfying in how it resolved his fascination with shoelaces.
 
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