The Royal Library of Alexandria (SP Book Discussion)

Miscellaneous Blather
#90

Weird. Ill look into it. I don’t know what I’m doing so I probably set something up wrong.

Okay, to add a book to our group you need to actually add it. It doesn’t just grab the book you’re currently reading. Basically, it wants you to add books that you want to talk about specifically in the group. So…

From the group homepage, you’ll see Group Home on the right side. Click “Bookshelf”.

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On the next screen, you’ll be able to add books to our group bookshelf by searching and adding it via the dialog on the left of the screen.

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Can you do this, or did I mess this up so only I can see these things?

#91

I gather there can only be one book on the Currently Reading list at a time?

edit: never mind, I figured it out.

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#92

Looks like I was able to add something, one of the (basically) three books I’m currently reading, which may be of interest to the Yakuza fans around these parts.

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#93

I really enjoyed The Cage.

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#94

Well, @Neumannium, you finally got me to sign up for GoodReads.

At the moment I’m sort of noodling along in The Magicians, which has been sitting in my wife’s Kindle library for a while. Figured that, since I so enjoyed the capacity of the show to keep surprising me without simply seeming like chaos, it was worth checking out the source material. Satisfactory so far. I also finally found my book about the biology of trees, which I’d mislaid for months, so I knock off a chapter of that now and then. And I finally grabbed Maus the last time I was at the library, and finished it that night. Very impressed by the inclusion of various details and subplots which humanize the story. Makes it feel less like simply an “issue” book. I developed a distaste for books which were trying to tell me some one clear thing when I was in high school, and haven’t really lost it yet.

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#95

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Sighs for days.

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A history lesson and glimpse into the future
#96

Chris Brookmyre, Places in the Darkness. Nice chewy SF slash detective procedural, set amid the seamier side of life on a space station building humanity’s first starship. Brookmyre’s other books tend to the blacker side of dark, but despite the starting corpse, this one veers away from the utterly grim. Enjoyed it.

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#97

“The Steady Atrophy and Eventual Disappearance of …”

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#98

It has taken me way too long to finish Rich Horton’s 2016 Best SF & Fantasy collection.

I’m going to read a G.M. Ford Leo Waterman novel next just so I can get back on track for my Goodreads Reading Challenge.

I’m debating what my next book will be after that. Either Suicide of the West by Jonah Goldberg or The Storm Before the Storm by Mike Duncan.

We’ll see whether I’m feeling particularly Roman or not. :slight_smile:

#99

Maybe I’m missing out, but I’ve never had any interest in any of the sci-fi or fantasy short fiction anthologies. It doesn’t matter if any of the big names contributed, I just don’t see myself getting all that interested in short stories. Perhaps that’s short-sighted in my part.

#100

They’re not for everybody.

But since that’s what I write (well, wrote, as I haven’t written one in years), I have always been interested in the form.

#101

Brookmyre used to write very amusing books, then shifted to serious police procedurals, probably because they sold better, but he lost me. I might have to try this.

#102

And Declare is finished. Thank god for long plane rides and down time on vacation.

I loved it. Fantastic read, even if much of it confused me. By the end I had it all figured out, but the way he writes (jumps back and forth in time) takes some getting used to.

Bought On Stranger Tides to read next. What’s the next Powers book I should read after that? The Egyptian one sounds interesting…

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#103

Anibis Gates is great. Not Egyptian though, time-travelling in London.

Last Call would be my other front-runner.

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#104

Ah, okay. Saw the title and assumed…

I’ll put them both on my Kindle wishlist.

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#105

I’ve read Anubis Gates, Declare, Drawing of the Dark, Last Call and the first quarter or so of both Stress of Her Regard and Three Days to Never. The feeling you describe is just a feature of his work. He tosses you in the deep end and explains much of it later, although many details will never be explained. A bit like Gene Wolfe in that regard, although more didactic. Wolfe just leaves you to figure practically everything out on your own, but in my opinion he’s the stronger writer. Both Catholics, funnily enough. Anyway I didn’t care too much for Anubis Gates; I mean it was fine, just nowhere even close to Declare, though it was much earlier in his career. Drawing of the Dark was fun, and for 1979 some of the swordplay descriptions are much more accurate than I would have expected. Last Call was the first one I read, and I think almost as good as Declare. I’ll go back to the others eventually. Three Days to Never in particular seemed promising, and as a fan of Powers, antediluvian mythology and Romantic poetry I can’t very well not read Stress of Her Regard.

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#106

FYI there is definitely some Egyptian stuff in Anubis Gates, but the action mainly happens in England.

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#107

Probably fiction’s best, most horrific werewolf, too.

#108

alright, I’m in

#109

The Lights That Failed, Zara Steiner.

If you ever feel too happy, I highly recommend reading a good, detailed history of virtually any subject, but especially politics, warfare, or economics, to emotionally flatline yourself. And so it is here, as Steiner lays out the post-WWI efforts to restore a European order, with uncomfortable Frankensteinian results. Not just an intermission where everyone got drinks and snacks between world wars, the 1920s and 30s are probably overlooked in any other context than as epilogue to WWI and prologue to WWII, and if you think ‘not much happened’ it’s because a great deal happened, it’s just been overshadowed by peaks to either side. Steiner’s work is thoroughly excellent. It’s not popular history, so it’s not an easy read, at all, but it’s worth the time. Well-informed, impeccably sourced, dense, and valuable.

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