What Jeff is Reading
I tend towards SF. That's what I've been reading since I was a child, and it's comfortable when I'm reading as an escape. Reading can also educate, on any number of levels: science, history, human emotion, world events, etc., and I try to balance my reading accordingly. I also read a lot of travel guides, since I have been to a lot of new countries and cities in the past few years. I don't list any of those, nor do I list textbooks.
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Last Updated November 26th, 2005.
Now Reading: The Lindisfarne Gospels, Janet Blackhouse. What a fantastic book for $7.50! Beautiful photos of a beautiful old illuminated manuscript, with insightful and informative text.
Now Reading: The Best American Sports Writing 2005, Mike Lupica, ed. A selection of great stories. Many of them touch on drug use and depress me about the sad state of professional sports in the world today. Among the othres, one moved me to tears, and many inspire me as a coach.
The Oxford Illustrated History of Medieval
England, Nigel Saul.
My ancestry largely goes back to England, and I'm looking to make
a link between that and my Anachronist hobby. This book is a
starting point. I originally wrote about this book: "I doubt I
will be able to read through it cover to cover, because so far it's
been dry and lacking in maps, and assumes plenty of knowledge I
don't have." Having just read the "Story" (below), I guess I now
have the context and enough basic knowledge to read through this
one cover to cover. I like its focus purely on the Medieval, with
no dark ages and no Tudor or later history.
The Story of Britain: From the Romans to the Present: A Narrative
History, Rebecca Fraser. An easy read, from prehistoric
Celts to the end of Elizabethan, where I stopped reading (because
that's the scope of my present interest). But it's more like "a story of
Britain's Kings and Queens" than a story of the people as a whole.
Still, not a bad introduction to the subject. It has made reading
the "Oxford Illustrated" (above) much easier. September 14, 2005
The Etched City, K. J. Bishop. This is a great
first novel. It sets up a gritty 19th century world with a fictional
pseudo-asian setting, creates strong characters each with good and
bad sides, and then the fantastic intrudes in a surprising and not
unbelievable way. I'm still disoriented, in the way that makes me
want to re-read it right now. Five stars. (I'm keen to see how
long it takes Ms Bishop to produce another novel, and if she tries
to recreate the setting or goes another route entirely.) August
29, 2005
Iron Sunrise, Charles Stross.
It's, like... good. But it's so much like everything else in this
genre its goodness seems ordinary. At least this time Stross gets his
story pacing right, the climax is climactic, and the denoument is
short, sweet, and leaves me feeling happy. Are books supposed to do
that?
August 4, 2005
The Power that Preserves, Stephen
R. Donaldson. I am constantly amazed by how dark Donaldson
is, in his best stories. People he writes so that you
really like them keep dying the most horrible deaths, all to support
the main character who you feel uncomfortable being in the same
room with. At the same time a kernel of you identifies with him. I
shudder. At any rate, this series doesn't hold the same incredible
power over me it did when I first read it, 20 years ago. It's still
an intricate and fascinating work. But the flaws are so obvious to me
now I have a hard time being fully engrossed. I'm like "dude, the
moon does NOT work that way", rising at sunset and setting at dawn no
matter if it's new, full, or quarter.
Singularity Sky, Charles Stross. Good story. This
guy knows his physics backwards and forwards (and he isn't afraid to
use it). I wasn't ever sure where the climax of the story was
supposed to be. It held my interest, and continued to provide
interesting ideas, but never really reached a high peak. Still, it
gets 4 1/2 stars, and may even merit re-reading.
May 19, 2005
The Stranger, Albert Camus. I read this translated
into English. What a great short book. I wish there was a modern
English author who could convey a single idea so well. Five stars.
May 7, 2005
Lord Foul's Bane, The Illearth War, Stephen R.
Donaldson. I first read the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant
trilogy in 1984 when I was 12 years old, on vacation in my family's
RV for a month driving around the country. It was a fantastic,
otherworldly experience that permanently imprinted itself on my
life. (Reading the books, I mean.) This is the second time I've
re-read them since then. They are the most wonderful, dark and weird
fantasy novels written in the 80s and 90s. April, 2005 +/-
The Sheep Look Up, John Brunner. Re-reading it.
It's freakin eerie how much like the modern world his story is. We
haven't gone quite as far in some directions (air pollution) as he
predicts, but farther in others. Miss America gowns look much like
some of the impossibly outlandish styles he writes about (only
without the tufts of steel-wool "hair" attached to the panties).
Government and corporations are just as much out of control as he
predicts. His fictional dumb-ass president has an awful lot in
common with ours. Today's modern world would look pretty ridiculous to an
intelligent adult in the '60s. April, 2005 +/-
The Diamond Age, Neal Stephenson. Re-read this one
because I was too short on cash to buy something new and too lazy to
go to the library. Great book! I love it just as much 10 years
later. April, 2005 +/-
Excession, Ian M. Banks. A great modern SF novel.
All kinds of neat ideas, good characters, and good plot. I gave
it 4 stars instead of 4 1/2 because there are a lot of other books
kind of similar to this one; everyone is "thinking outside the box"
so much that you have to go really far outside the box for
real novelty. April, 2005 +/-
The System of the World, Neal Stephenson. An almost
disappointing let down to the end of his truly wonderful Baroque cycle.
February, 2005 +/-
The Double, Jose Saramago.
My favorite living author. But having recently read another book
of his, his style is starting to feel a little bit tired. He is
insightful, and I don't feel like putting the book down, but his
style never varies. That's not intended as a critisism, but just
as a house with Monet on every wall would start to feel monotonous
even though he was a great painter, a month with mostly Saramago
starts to feel monotonous. That having been said, it's a good book.
I heartily recommend it to any Saramago fan. January 2005, +/-
The Confusion, Neal Stephenson. A fine continuation
and development of his Baroque Cycle, started in Quicksilver.
He builds, develops and grows his story and characters, far beyond
the normal extent of other authors. January 5, 2005
All the Names, Jose Saramago.
A weird view into the mental workings of an older bachelor. Read this
only if you're addicted to Saramago, it's not his most appealing work.
The Known World, Edward P. Jones.
This is an amazing book. Pulitzer prize winner for 2004. I'm not
even going to try to tell you about it. Read it. Read it!
December, 2004
Big gap here. I'll have to go back and find what I read in the missing months.
Chasm City, Alastair Reynolds. Another good book by
this author. Wild and various setting. Read others of his books
first though, and if you want more as I did, then read this one.
The Golden Age, John C Wright. A truly futuristic
future, with fantastic imagination and detail. I couldn't put this
one down once I started reading it. I'm only disappointed because
the book isn't really self-contained: I feel like I have to read
the second book to get the whole story. July 1, 2004
The Engines of God, Jack McDevitt. A great space
archeology novel. I think this story's people of the future have
too many 20th century habits, but the quality of the story is good.
June 24, 2004
Perdido Streeet Station, China Mieville.
This took me a solid month to finish. Having read two of his other
novels before, I'm starting to see patterns and habits that
detract from what I had thought of as unmitigated authorial greatness. For
instance, he's way too comfortable writing about spashing around in
shit and eating out of a dumpster. It's ok to use a word like
ratiocination once, but three times (even spread across 600 pages) is
too many. None the less, this is a great novel, which I recommend to
anyone with the patience to finish such a long SF book.
June 10, 2004
Revelation Space, Alastair Reynolds.
I really liked this book, but it didn't pull me through, I had to push
every step of the way. It would have been easy to put down at any
point and feel relieved. The author does a great job of not revealing
all the details of what's happening, so you can't get ahead of the
characters. It's a lot like real life: there's technology you don't
understand, history you don't know about, and people have motivations
you can't guess. On one level, this is a very welcome change from
most SF books, where you know what's going on from beginning to end
just like a children's story. However the effort it took to finish
reading the book detracts from its potential greatness.
May 6, 2004
White Apples, Jonathan Carroll.
Confusing and disorienting, and a really good book. It is a rare
example of fiction where the reader isn't given information
unavailable to the characters, which does a great job of recreating
the characters' emotional state in the reader.
April 20, 2004
The Old Man Who Read Love Stories, Luis Sepulveda.
Short, sweet, beautifully written. Engaging and personal and other
words other people normally use to imply a bubbling over of enthusiasm
for a great work of fiction. One word: read it.
April 17, 2004
Dinosaur Summer, Greg Bear.
This book sucked. I didn't finish it. If I were to give it the
benefit of the doubt, I would guess it's Young Adult Fiction that
fails to appeal to adults who are no longer young. Greg Bear normally
writes great stuff. This time he didn't.
The DaVinci Code, that guy.
This gets 3 stars because it is totally engrossing, addictive and
impossible to put down. But the story is patchy and probably doesn't
deserve such a high rating.
April 13, 2004
Pattern Recognition, William Gibson.
Despite myself, I enjoyed this book. It only suffers from a Gibsonian
non-ending. Does he actually think he resolved all the loose
plotlines in the final chapter?
Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, Frank Herbert.
Everyone knows this series is fantastic. I only withold the full 5th
star because having heard and read so much about it before reading
it myself, having seen the movie, the miniseries, etc., etc., some
of the impact is lost.
The Scar, China Mieville.
I hear this is a sort-of-sequel to Perdido Street Station,
which I haven't read yet. The ending here was a bit of a stretch and
didn't show us first-hand things we want to see. Otherwise this novel
is a gem, a rather long gem but well worth the time.
Kiln People, David Brin.
This book wandered around spouting off on topics I found it hard to
care about. The fundamental idea is great, and the first few chapters
are wonderful. But it feels like it's dragging by the end.
Forever Free, Joe Haldeman.
Haldeman has written some tremendous stuff. This is certainly less than
tremendous though. Enjoyable but not his best work.
The Rise of Endymion, Dan Simmons. Finally the
series ends. Or does it? The first book in the series, Hyperion,
was truly fantastic, wonderful, literary science fiction of the
highest order. After reading it you love the setting, lending a
lot to the following 3 novels, which have fallen somewhere between
great and merely good.
By The Sword, Richard Cohen.
Pretty nice read, a whole heck of a lot better than other tomes on
the subject. If you're interested in swords, duelling, or fencing,
you'll probably like this book.
Heartfire, The Crystal City, Orson Scott Card.
I read this series to get to the final book, a signed copy which I
received as a gift. Not bad, but not in a genre I find as interesting
to me right now as it was as a teenager. It is an interesting
example of collaborative creation of characters, with Card using a
website for his fans to create personas in his world and incorporating
many of them into the novels.
The Diamond as Big as the Ritz, and other short stories,
F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Count that as 4.5 stars. Perhaps his best works outside The Great
Gatsby, though the first stories are fantastic and the later ones
less so.
Eragon, Christopher Paolini. This guy has a great
vocabulary. Too bad he hasn't figured out how to use words to create
an interesting plot or multidimensional characters. This reads like a
cut-and-paste from other hack fantasy novels on the shelves. Perhaps
it is amazing he started it when he was still in the womb, but that
doesn't excuse tricking me into buying this piece of shit.
King Rat, China Mieville. A wonderful modern fantasy
novel, with tons of dirt and grit. Should be required reading.
The Cave, José Saramago.
My favorite living author. This book is great, like all his others.
I haven't bothered retroactively rating anything below here, and they all have nice little blurbs that explain how I feel, more or less.
The Green Odyssey, Philip Jose Farmer, 1957. Short, nice book from another age. It rings remarkably like modern sci-fi (except the alien point of view may just be a 1950's point of view).
The Crystal Shard and Streams of Silver, R.A. Salvatore, Spellfire, Ed Greenwood, and Cormyr, a Novel, Ed Greenwood and Jeff Grubb. Forgotten Realms setting fantasy. Not much recommends these books unless you're a fan and are looking for insight into the Realms.
2003-09-01: Endymion, Dan Simmons. The third is a series. This book follows Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion, and it would be hard to match them. Simmons disappoints me a bit by leaving off right in the middle of the story at the end of the book. Perhaps it was a publisher's decision, so as not to have one huge novel.
2003-08-20: Cleric Quintet, R. A. Salvatore. Fantasy set in the Forgotten Realms. Not high literature, but not a bad read. I've recently finished a couple other fantasy books I didn't think to record here. I'll have to do that soon, so you can judge just how low my taste has sunk recently.
The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury. I read this in a translated-into-French version I picked up in Montreal. It was slow going and my comprehension was pretty low, since I'm not exactly what you would call fluent in French.
Now Reading: Ulysses, James Joyce. I'll be lucky to finish this one. I'm about 300 pages into the 950+ page book. It works extremely well as a soporific, or if I'm not sleepy as a mental tangent generator. (Is there a word for that?) I bought it in Lisbon because I had blown through the previous two books I was reading very quickly, and wanted the most English pages I could get per Euro.
2003-04-12: Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card. I have spent so much time recently doing hard reading this book drew me in and wouldn't let go. It seems an impossible pleasure to reread a book 20 years after the last time you read it, and I enjoy this book so much I can't describe it: transcendental, ineffable, et cetera.
2003-03-25: Fall of Hyperion, Dan Simmons. The "sequel" to Hyperion, more like the second half of a very long and very good book.
2003-02-10: The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho. Quick parable of a book. I found it awfully preachy. Makes a good point, but if it were any longer it would have beaten the subject to death. I can recommend it, but I don't rank it among the better books I've read.
2003-01-30 To Die in Italbar/A Dark Traveling, Roger Zelazny. A collection of two stories in one trade paperback. The first, "To Die in Italbar", was extremely interesting. I felt a lot more could have been done with the subject and was disappointed to find the second, "A Dark Traveling" was a completely unrelated story in a completely unrelated SF universe.
2003-01-28: The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, Jose Saramago. I love Saramago's books. This one points out how little I know, not being terribly interested in religion, about the Bible. A good read, but not my favorite of Saramago's.
2003-01-06: Men Without Women, Ernest Hemingway. Good collection of early short stories. I found quite a few quotable passages in here.
not finished: The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2000 years, Bernard Lewis. I'm barely past the introduction, and I find this book making me think, a lot. Not about the `situation in the middle east' or the condition of the human race, but about many varied subjects. Maybe I need to get out more.
2003-01-06: I haven't picked this book up in weeks. I'm about 1/3 through it, and nothing is bringing me back to finish it.
not finished: Caligula, Albert Camus, in the original French. Play about a Roman emperor who was hooking up with his sister, but she kicks it and he goes nuts. I'm working through this one slowly because it's in a language I'm only partially capable of understanding. But, on the bright side, I only have to mark one word each page to later look up in my French-English dictionary, so I feel I have a handle on it.
2003-01-06: I haven't picked this book up in a long time. I haven't been in the mood to read French recently. Perhaps it has something to do with having a job and less free time.
jeff slacks off on recording what he's reading
2002-11-15: The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, Jose Saramago. This is a book that will reward rereading. Perhaps the best book written in Europe since World War II. (Not my quote, but I don't remember whose it is.) Definitely a great book. One of his best, though I love them all.
2002-10-25: The Alienist, Caleb Carr. Atmospheric of late Victorian New York City, but not an inspiring book. There is a quote on the cover saying "you can smell the fear in the air." I think what we're afraid of is that Carr will write another book. You can get it used on amazon.com as cheaply as 35 cents, which is a fair price.
2002-09-24: Geek Love, Katherine Dunn. Weird book. Hard read at first, but I grew to like it. I'm not sure if I can say this is a great book or not. I'd have to reread it to know, and I doubt I ever will. If you're prepared to read a book about circus freaks and cripples, read this, it's not bad.
2002-09-19: Outside Magazine, October 2002. The 50th anniversary edition. This edition is packed with well written stories on all sorts of subjects. I spent days savoring it.
2002-09-06: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, J.K. Rowling Third in the series. Bought it in Heathrow airport. Slightly longer than the first two. I thought it lacked the element of surprise or originality present in the first two. Perhaps I read all three in too close succession.
2002-09-04: Harry Potter and Chamber of Secrets, J.K. Rowling. Second book in the Harry Potter series. Bought it in Heathrow airport, finished it in Heathrow airport the same day. As good as the first one.
2002-09-03: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling. You might be thinking "You idiot, that's not the title of the book." But in fact that is the title of the book I read, the European version, because I bought it in Cologne where I couldn't find anything else in English worth reading. The American version was called Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, supposedly because we're too stupid to know what a Philosopher's Stone is. I have to guess the story was largely the same between the two versions, and I thought it was good. About one thousand million other people also thought it was good.
2002-08-30: Passage, Connie Willis. This was a long book that seemed to keep going in circles. I was happy to be rid of it when I finally finished it.
2002-08-13: The Telling, Ursula K. Le Guin. Short book. I really like Ursula's work, and I really like this one. Easy, simple, quick read.
2002-08-05: Oceanspace, Allen Steele. I didn't like this book. It was a failed exercise in trying to write an underwater story that would appeal to SF readers.
2002-08-01: The Liar, Stephen Fry. Fun quick read. Oddly, the thing I got the most from this book is a better understanding of Cricket.
2002-07-30: Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson. Great book. Highly engaging. It is very long, and I was tired of carrying it around by the time I was done. But I really enjoyed it.
The Chronoliths, Robert Charles Wilson. One of the best books of 2002, nominated for the Hugo. A must read.
Hyperion, Dan Simmons. Good book, interesting format, a series of short stories with different main characters that all together tells a whole tale about the group, a la Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, but much more coherent and of course modern.
Darwin's Radio, Greg Bear. Good book, interesting subject for an SF novel. I remain interested even though I'm already done with it. Does that mean there's a sequel in the works...?
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley. English language classic. How did I get to be 30 years old without reading this?
Ammonite, Nicola Griffith. The ultimate feminist SF.
Idoru, William Gibson. Not his best work.
Vigilant, James Alan Gardner. Completely engrossing. I really like this book. Any SF fan should read it.
Commitment Hour, James Alan Gardner. Gardner shows his flexibility by writing a book that fails to get me involved in any way. I could take it or leave it.
Waiting, Ha Jin. This book lives up to its title. I spent the whole time waiting for something to happen. It's not all that bad, and I believe the author succeeds in achieving what he wanted, but that doesn't coincide with what I wanted from the book.
Death in the Afternoon, Ernest Hemingway. A long read on an esoteric subject. It's almost impossible to see a bullfight these days, and I have the feeling a lot of the details he elaborates on have changed since this book was written.
Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden. Good book. Easy read, engaging style.
Amsterdam, Ian McEwan. This book spent a long time building up to a decidedly disappointing ending. I prefer novels in which characters undergo a meaningful change. This book really let me down. I suppose that was the author's intent.
Armor, John Steakley. Great book. Any SF fan should read it.
The Third Chimpanzee, Jared Diamond. Read Guns, Germs, and Steel first. This covers many of the same topics, but also provides insights not in the other book. If you like the other one enough to want more, then read this one.
Deepness in the Sky, Vernor Vinge. Great SF novel. The best character development I have ever read of a truly alien species. Vernor may be the best SF author alive.
Antarctica, Kim Stanley Robinson. Kim is another of my favorite SF authors, and he applies his incredible skills to a not-quite-SF setting in Antarctica. Read the Mars trilogy first, but this is a great book when you're looking for some more of Kim's work.
Beowulf, translated by Seamus Heaney. This is an incredible work.
The best English language author is Ernest Hemingway. I've read almost everything he's written. If you haven't read The Sun Also Rises you must, right away.
Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. I refuse to have a discussion about evolution with anyone who hasn't read it. It's engaging and enlightening, and there's no excuse not to read it.
Since I read so much SF, here's the place to find out what the widely agreed upon "best" in SF is: The AwardWeb.
snider.com/jeff