Experiments in Woolgathering

I started reading Steve Martin’s ‘Shopgirl’ Saturday night, and although I’ve not finished it, I did see the movie which thus far has tracked the written story very closely, so I’m writing what amounts to a review.

If you’ve read my other reviews of Asher’s books (The Skinner and Cowl) you know I’ve his books a great deal. While I didn’t find Grindlinked as good as those first two, it’s still an excellent read.

Tainaron is the first book I’ve read by Leena Krohn, a Finnish author. The book is subtitled ‘Mail From Another City’ (Postia Toisesta Kaupungista in Finnish) and is a collection of thirty fantastic letters written by a visitor to the city of Tainaron. Accordingly, it is not a large book, only 124 pages, and 15 or so of those are illustrations.

I’ve read a fair number of ::Philip K. Dick::’s novels, but didn’t manage to get around to Minority Report before the movie version came out – and obviously it took me a couple more years to get around to it. Like most stories translated to film, more than a few liberties were taken with the it.

When I found out Clemens was starting a new fantasy series, I was very excited. I’d read his Banned and the Banished series and loved it. The first volume of The Godslayer Chronicles almost lived up to my very high expectations.

I’ve been terribly remiss in posting reviews of what I’ve been reading. So, since I’ve no illusions about me actually writing full reviews of all of these, I’m just going to give capsule reviews.

Carse’s Finite and Infinite Games is a thin book that is at once so obvious and so profound I could barely believe it when I read it.

Third review today, as part of my plan to get caught up on my book reviews, since I’ve been slacking off on my blogging in general pretty severely. After Excession I was in the mood for some more far-future scifi, and, after some searching around, I stumbled upon a rarity, a scifi trilogy: ::John C. Wright::’s, The Golden Age, which shares its name with its first book.

Charles Stross is an author I discovered falling trails of ‘if you liked this novel…’ on Amazon.com – which is how I’ve discovered a number of new authors recently. His novel Singularity Sky was highly rated and recommended, so the next time I was at a book store I picked it up.

It’s been a while since I’ve finished a book, I spent some time skimming some roleplaying game books and some reference stuff for a PBEM game character that I ended up not playing because the game turned out to be defunct, but I had the books out from the library, so I read a bit of them anyhow.

I’d actually started Excession by Iain M. Banks before this, set it aside reluctantly for this little project – which was not an easy thing as the book hooks you fairly early and well.

After the heaviness that was The Light Ages I was very in the mood for something lighter and more fast paced. So when I returned Ages I looked through the new fiction shelves and came across Spin by Robert Charles Wilson. After reading the synopsis on the jacket I was very intrigued to say the least and went ahead and checked it out.

My weekends, and more than a few weekdays, have been been fairly busy the last month so it’s taken me a while to finish Ian R. MacLeod’s World Fantasy Award winning The Light Ages. On top of various distractions it’s a good-sized and dense novel – so I do have an excuse.

As you’ve probably noticed I’ve been reading a lot of Lethem lately, it’s almost subconcious really. Yes, obviously it takes a conscious effort to check out or buy the book and to crack it open to read, but my TBR pile aside, I’ve not really be reading with any particular goal in mind. With that said it seems there’s something that keeps (subconciously) drawing me back to Lethem.

Not a novel, but a collection of short stories by the author of Girl In Landscape – and the first short story collection I’ve read in quite a while. Lethem Men and Cartoons consists of 9 stories totalling 160 pages. I’m not going to try to review each story individually, mostly because I’m too lazy, but I will give some edited highlights.

I finished my second Neal Asher (and here) book (and his second published in the US I believe), Cowl, Saturday. Like the other Asher I’ve read (The Skinner) Cowl is a fast-paced hard scifi novel that did not disappoint.

This is the first, in the Dune universe’s chronology, of six prequel novels to ::Frank Herbert::’s seminal Dune series (which is also 6 books in length). The books were written by Frank’s son, Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson from Frank’s notes and published from 1999 to 2004.

I’ve been wrestling with how to review ::Jonathan Lethem::’s Girl In Landscape a little, though not because I didn’t like it, I liked it very much. It was oddly different from most of what I’ve read lately, and the ending left me feeling somewhat ambiguous.

I haven’t read any non-fiction that wasn’t a gaming book in a while, and I don’t believe any reviews of such have yet appeared here. My non-fiction tastes tend toward history, mythology, archeology, religion and philosophy. _A Coyote Reader is an exploration of the Coyote figure in western Native American culture, as well as its recent flourishing in modern American literature as well. The author also attempts to relate the mythic Coyote to the biological animal.

I finished Veniss Underground (buy here or visit its web site) the same day (Saturday) that I finished American Gods. Unlike the former, latter is relatively short (about 200 pages), a book, and, well, a completely different story.

I listened to this on tape – unabridged. I’m not sure if I’d bother with a abridged reading. The actual book is 600+ pages, which came out to 14 90-minute tapes – reading out loud, performing really, takes a while.