What are you reading?

[yovargas]

Though I don't read nearly as much as an adult as I did when I was younger, I'm still surprised by how few of those books I've read. At a glance I think it's only Brave New World, 2001, and Rendezvous with Rama.

Frelga's opinion that Le Guin writes beautiful does make me think I should give her a shot at least. What's the best place to start with her?

[elengil]

I confess I read little sci fi. Though I do love Rendezvous with Rama and Sphere. I think it didn't capture me quite the same when I was young and I kinda never got into it later. Love watching it, but...

Sweetie has the Mars trilogy, haven't read them yet but at least I have them.

[Inanna]

Though I don't read nearly as much as an adult as I did when I was younger, I'm still surprised by how few of those books I've read. At a glance I think it's only Brave New World, 2001, and Rendezvous with Rama.

Frelga's opinion that Le Guin writes beautiful does make me think I should give her a shot at least. What's the best place to start with her?

Dispossessed.

[Frelga]

Though I don't read nearly as much as an adult as I did when I was younger, I'm still surprised by how few of those books I've read. At a glance I think it's only Brave New World, 2001, and Rendezvous with Rama.

Frelga's opinion that Le Guin writes beautiful does make me think I should give her a shot at least. What's the best place to start with her?

Dispossessed.

Dispossessed is a poli-sci based story about an anarchist society built on the Moon. It's a beautiful human story, being Le Guin, and the politics of it are nuanced and dimensional, but to me it is not a "typical" Le Guin. Still worth a read.

Arguably, Left Hand of the Darkness is her masterpiece, and the exploration of gender roles through a society where genders do not exist is fascinating.

The Earthsea trilogy is more of a traditional fantasy story. If you are looking to explore Le Guin as a writer, I'd go Earthsea, Left Hand, Dispossessed, as those show three very different sides of her talent.

PS: Bradbury wrote Martial Chronicles in the 50s, and his writing is intoxicating. Although he shades farther into horror than I can deal with right now.

[yovargas]

I had thought about mentioning Bradbury as an exception to my observation about poor writing in the genre. He writes beautifully, and Martian Chronicles is an all time fav.

(Duly notes ULG advice.)

[Maria]

An unexpectedly good author is Louis L'Amour. I'm not into poetry at all, but some of his descriptive prose reads almost like poetry. He was VERY good with words, especially considering the genre (mostly Westerns).

[elengil]

Thanks to Impy, I have just started on A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking. I was hooked on page 1.

[Frelga]

I've never heard of it but the title alone is worth a read.

[elengil]

I've never heard of it but the title alone is worth a read.

That was my thought as soon as Impy suggested it

[Inanna]

Putting it on my list!

I found three short stories of Jemisin’s set in the world of the “inheritance” series. So I am now re-reading the inheritance series. She’s really an amazing writer. Post Covid I’m hoping to get to her at a book launch or something.

[Sunsilver]

An unexpectedly good author is Louis L'Amour. I'm not into poetry at all, but some of his descriptive prose reads almost like poetry. He was VERY good with words, especially considering the genre (mostly Westerns).

Maria, if you like Louis L'Amour, give Jack Schaefer a try! His Monte Walsh is an all time favourite of mine! I also have a collection of his very excellent short stories, plus several other novels he wrote, especially Mavericks, a story about an old man who loves mustangs. He is, of course, best known for Shane.

Neither of the two film versions of Monte Walsh came even CLOSE to doing the book justice, even though both had major stars (Lee Marvin, Tom Selleck) in the title role. It's magnificent!

Here's my favourite passage from Mavericks. God, can this man WRITE!

Old Jake Hanlon sits on the mesa edge and puffs slowly on a crusted bowl pipe that fouls the air above it as the smoke drifts upward….
Below him on the great expanse of plain, out of distance to the east, into distance to the west snaking between the tall buttes, runs the new highway….

Still and quiet he sits and watches. And now the pipe has gone out and he does not know it. He stares down at the flowing traffic and he does not see it. His old eyes are brighter than before and they look on the big dual highway but they do not see it. For him it has faded away into the mists of long ago and there where it snakes its way between the tall buttes is only the thin tracery of an ancient trail. That murky veil hanging over the highway to the westward is not the gray reeking fumes of a battery of big trucks hammering the hard pavement. It is a rising cloud of clean sweet dust, golden in glancing sunlight, raised by thousands of hooves drumming the good earth in the clean, sweet beat of freedom.

There they come, hooves thundering, manes flying, heads tossing , with the look of eagles in their eyes! The wild horses, the mustangs, the broncos, the broomtails!

Out of the west they come in numbers past counting. Descendents of the gallant Barbs with the blood of Arabia in them brought from the pains of Cordoba in far-off Spain by the Conquistadors full four centuries ago. Home again in the land where the first horses evolved eons ago in the youth of the American continents and from there spread into Asia across the Alaskan land bridge before the ocean rose and rolled between. Home again in the land where their remote ancestors came into being and then, in some cataclysmic shift of conditions as the years in their millennia swept past, dwindled into extinction. Home again in the land of their primal birth, the land that was ready to receive them again when the conquistadores brought them from Spain and they escaped to run free once more.

Smallish and thin and bony, stunted through the years and the generations by subsistence on the scant but hardy forage of the semiarid Southwest. Much of the Barb beauty gone, the noble head, the arched neck, the straight back, the full-fleshed swelling hips. Hardly a one that, stopped and standing still, would attract a second look from an eastern horseman used to the big, carefully bred, carefully fed horses of racetrack and show-ring. But in motion, wild and free, eating the wind, swallowing distance, the very symbol, the concentrated essence, of the wide stripped barren land and the great open spaces.

Smallish and stunted, grass bellied, cat hipped. Almost everything splendid gone – everything except the sprit and the hardihood.

And the stubborn clutch on freedom. Bred by adversity to the single purpose – survival in a land where only those fitted to it can survive. Honed by summer drought and winter storm and the fangs of the wolf pack and the claws of the mountain lion to the knife-edge of ultimate endurance. Motion the very meaning of their existence Mighty lungs in the smallish bony bodies, and strong hearts, and steel springs in the thin legs and rock-hard hooves, and buried deep in the lean taunt flanks the ability to gallop to the edge of eternity and back.

P.S. My brother has every Louis L'Amour book ever written... I've read most of them but they didn't grab me the way Schaefer's work did.

[Sunsilver]

Thanks to Impy, I have just started on A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking. I was hooked on page 1.

I've never heard of it but the title alone is worth a read.

I think there's a Wizard of Id cartoon about this somewhere...

[RoseMorninStar]

I just finished reading 'The Lost Jewels' by Kirsty Manning. I enjoy historical fiction and the book is based on the true story of the Cheapside jewelry hoard found buried in London in 1912. The chapters jump in time from roughly present day when a jewelry historian finds that a story she is commissioned to write intertwines with her own family history. Other time periods are 1912 (that of her great-grandmother) and the 1600's, likely when the jewels were mined, collected, and buried. The historian and the photographer assigned to the job travel from Boston to London, to India, Paris, etc.. in search of answers. It intertwines a personal journey with that of the harsh conditions others endured in pursuit of all that is precious.

[Impenitent]

Thanks to Impy, I have just started on A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking. I was hooked on page 1.

I'm pleased you're enjoying. It's just romping good fun.

Sent from my SM-G965U1 using Tapatalk

[yovargas]

The Earthsea trilogy is more of a traditional fantasy story. If you are looking to explore Le Guin as a writer, I'd go Earthsea, Left Hand, Dispossessed, as those show three very different sides of her talent.

I just finished the first Earthsea book and very much enjoyed it! A lovely, wonderful book, and she is indeed an excellent writer.

I would like to read more but sadly that's all my local library has from her so not sure if/when I'll get the chance to try her other books.

[Inanna]

Do you have a kindle? Or kindle app? I can see if I can loan mine to you.

[yovargas]

Ooh, yes I do, is that a thing you can do? I didn't know that!

[Frelga]

You can, although not every book can be loaned. At least, not through official channels.

Some libraries also will loan ebooks. Or order a book from another library for you.

[RoseMorninStar]

I'm not sure how it works in other states or your particular library yov, but our library is part of a consortium that has options for ordering books to be checked out online or brought in from (something like 30) sister libraries. It really expands what is available.

[Frelga]

Also, if you don't mind giving money to Amazon, Dispossessed is 5.49 on Kindle. It's a very different story from Earthsea, but much more brilliant, imo.

The first Earthsea story is about the only one of Le Guin's books that could be mistaken for something written by a man. Also IMO, of course.