OS Book Club Pt II

[dickey1331]

Quote: Originally Posted by DieHardYankee26

What were your favorite ones? Any recommendations or ones that stood out?

My favorite comedy was The Two Gentlemen of Verona and this might be my favorite play overall. It was also the 3rd play I read haha. The rest of the comedies were either good or average.

With the histories I wasnt the biggest fan of but I believe the 3 part of Henry the Sixth was my favorite.

The tragedies were pretty good overall. Romeo and Juliet is great. Antony and Cleopatra is really enjoyable. I will say that to me Macbeth is highly overrated. I didn't understand why it is so highly liked.

The Romances were generally good with Pericles, Prince of Tyre being my favorite.

None of the poems really stuck out to me.

I think the biggest issue overall with Shakespeare is that for most of the plays I understand the general story overall but it was the details I didn't get and the jokes that would of been funny or more understood had I lived during that time. This may be an unpopular opinion but you could pick a random book on Amazon and the average person would get more enjoyment out of it than a Shakespeare play. Im not the type of person who would enjoy Shakespeare but it was something I wanted to do. It may be that these stories you are meant to watch instead of read to really get the most enjoyment out of them.

[Fresh Tendrils]

Quote: Originally Posted by Fresh Tendrils

I have a stack on my dresser and another stack sitting in an Amazon cart, but hoping to dive into most of these within the next 8 months: Spoiler The Fifth Season - NK Jemisin The Citiy We Became - NK Jemisin The Haunting of Tram Car 015 - P. Djeli Clark Ring Shout - P. Djeli Clark Black Sun - Rebecca Roanhorse EarthSea: A Wizard of EarthSea - Ursula K. Le Guin Song of Solomon - Toni Morrison V. - Thomas Pynchon Mason & Dixon - Thomas Pynchon Cosmos - Carl Sagan Dune - Frank Herbert The Only Good Indians - Stephen Graham Jones The Way of Kings/Words of Radiance/Oathbringer - Brandon Sanderson The New Jim Crow - Michelle Alexander Abolition Democracy - Angela Davis Rethinking Incarceration - Dominique DuBois Gilliard Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - Frederick Douglass

I've gotten through a fair amount of that list already in the past month and a half:

Spoiler

The Fifth Season trilogy, The City We Became - NK Jemisin
The Haunting of Tram Car 015, Ring Shout - P. Djeli Clark
The Only Good Indians - Stephen Graham Jones

I keep meaning to post impressions/reviews, but by the end of the day the last thing I want to see is a computer screen unless I'm running around feudal Japan in Ghost of Tsushima. I have been going back and writing down all the passages I've marked with index cards so that's something I guess.

P. Djeli Clark has a new full length novel out set in his steampunk 1910s Cairo which centers around the Egyptian Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural Entities. The Haunting of Tram Car 015 was great, but a rather straight-forward "detective" story. Still, for only being 150 pages its a great weekend type read and highly entertaining. He establishes a fantastic universe in such a short story - I'm looking forward to diving into A Master of Djinn sometime within the next month. A part of me is hoping he expands upon his other "universe" (though, I guess its possible his works all exist in the same world) that he established so well in Ring Shout. That was a gem of a read and packed a whole lot into similar length (180ish pages). Anyway, before diving into his new book I wanted to read his short-story which setup his version of Cairo initially: A Dead Djinn in Cairo and is only available digitally.

[dickey1331]

If you have a kindle with no ads and you update it. Your book cover will show as the Lock Screen. You have to enable it. It’s in the settings.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[DieHardYankee26]

Quote: Originally Posted by dickey1331

If you have a kindle with no ads and you update it. Your book cover will show as the Lock Screen. You have to enable it. It’s in the settings. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Great feature.

[Fresh Tendrils]

I was going through the list of Hugo award winners (fantasy and science fiction award) to bolster my to read list, because obviously I don't think my backlog is quite big enough.

Anyway, I was surprised by how many recent winners I've actually read already and 3 of the nominees for this year I have either read or have on my nightstand to read (The City We Became, Piranesi, and Black Sun). So doing a better job than I thought. Seems like that and the Nebula awards are good sources to browse through. There's some older books I need to go through, though.

Are there any notable awards for other genres to follow?

I've been reading some novellas this year and this may be my new jam. Of course I suppose this depends on the author, but all of P. Djeli Clark's that I have read have been fantastic especially Ring Shout. I'm currently reading his Dead Djinn in Cairo before I jump into his novel A Master of Djinn.

There's some novella series I'm considering for the Summer, but curious to see if anyone here has read them: Murderbot and Singing Hills Cycle.

As far as recent readings I'm now firmly in the NK Jemisin homer camp. I loved the Broken Earth trilogy and The City We Became was fantastic and I loved how she represented New York. The premise itself felt really original and resonated with me. As someone who really has now interest in visiting NYC I felt at home in the book. Really looking forward to the rest of the series.

I read my second Ursula K. Le Guin book of this year this past week - Wizard of Eathsea. Her writing is really superb and just as strong as The Left Hand of Darkness overall. The story itself may be a bit more simplistic and focused smaller, but it was a fantastic read. A wizard earning his stripes. Battling dragons with magic and wit. Fighting his own demons. Just an epic tale for only being two hundred some pages.

Last, but not least Stephen Graham Jones appears to be legit. I read his "horror"inspired The Only Good Indians and was completely enamored the whole book. It follows four friends a decade after some event that haunts each to some degree thereafter. So basically somewhat similar to IT, but not quite an epic length read being only a little over 300 pages. Tons of basketball references which I greatly enjoyed. Lots of native symbolism she representation throughout. I loved the ride.

[kibaxx7]

As a massive fan of Blade Runner, I finally read the book last month and I was surprised with all the things the movie left out.

Now I'm reading Absolutely on Music: Conversations with Seiji Ozawa, a book by Haruki Murakami in which they chat about Beethoven, Mahler, Brahms and also jazz music.

[DieHardYankee26]

Childhood Ends by Arthur C. Clarke

I don't remember what made me pick this one up, I want to say I read it recommended on reddit but I'm honestly not sure. Either way, glad I found it. Classic sci-fi book written in 1953, and when reading it I didn't have a ton of thoughts on it but after sitting with it for a while I think it's really great. The US and Russia are going at it trying to win the Space Race, and instead of one or the other finally getting to the stars, we get a visit from a fleet of ships that just hover over major world capitals. They communicate to us through a UN appointee who basically sends messages back in forth. We call them the Overlords and the one who talks to us directly is named Karellen.

It's split in 3 parts. The first part is the arrival, the first rebellion against the Overlords, and Stormgren (the UN guy) trying to get the overlords to reveal their appearance to us instead of hiding behind a one way mirror that he talks to Karellen through. I don't want to get too far into the plot but one of the cooler things about the overlord backstory is their appearance. This is spoiling everything but I thought it was cool so I had to share:

Spoiler

So the Overlords look like the devil. Karellen tells Stormgren he doesn't believe that the generation of people who were alive at their arrival would be able to take it and they have to wait 50 years. After the 50 years, they reveal themselves but because their technological prowess and knowledge has essentially solved a lot of humanity's issues, it's not as big a deal as it would've been on arrival. The Overlords serve a higher being called the Overmind which "collects" species that are about to ascend into space travel and absorbs them into its consciousness. The Overlords are not able to achieve this state and so have reached the peak of their own evolution and are studying the transition of other species to see what they can learn. Even cooler IMO, is there's a thread going through the book about how the Overlords are studying humanity's relationship with the occult and psychic happenings and whatnot and the reason is because there was basically a vision shared among the entire human race in early times where they saw the Overlords coming and helping the transition of humanity into the Overmind, aka The End, and interpreted it as evil demons.

There's a miniseries that SyFy did a few years ago, 3 episodes. It changes some key things and omits others but it is pretty decent, and I just really love the visual of giant alien ships hovering over cities. Also, Charles Dance (Tywin Lannister) is Karellen so you already know what's up. When I finished the book, I gave the book a 3. When I finished the miniseries and thought about it again, I went back and gave it a 4. Writing all this after having marathoned the Mass Effect trilogy (ME1 is my favorite game ever) and realizing that the Reapers are the ****ing Overlords, I think I'm gonna give it a 5. It has had a long life in my mind outside of the pages.

Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn

Wanted to read these books forever and after reading a little about the way they came together (when he wrote them they were essentially canon and licensed by LucasFilm which I did not know) I decided to finally give it a shot. Only the first book in a trilogy, and there's a way to go, but I enjoyed it quite a bit. Thrawn and Mara Jade immediately feel like characters that just belong in the universe, and there's not so much new stuff going on that it feels completely made up. Makes you wonder what would've happened if they would've just let him write the new trilogy. Two things on this: the first is that there's a lot of Star Wars mumbo jumbo. It's cool because it feels like a part of the universe, but there's some insider baseball ship parts that don't get in the way but it kinda goes over your head after a while, at least it did for me. And the second, highly recommend the audiobook. Seriously, the absolute best audiobook I've ever heard. I'm going to listen to the whole series this way. They've got blaster and lightsaber effects, legit SW music, the narrator is doing voices for each character (Lando is hilarious and there's a wookiee with a speech impediment where this guy is getting all the way in his bag), it is fantastic, like listening to a stage play.

On a big sci-fi kick right now, I find the idea of first contact absurdly interesting. How do we react? How do they react? What does it mean? I could be reading these books forever. Starting the Three-Body Problem which is the first in a Chinese trilogy that I've had recommended to me a few times to I'm going to alternate between these and Thrawn trilogy books until I've finished both and then reassess.

[Fresh Tendrils]

ME1 was my favorite of the series as well. Long live the Mako.

If anyone wants to explore a magic infused, steampunk inspired 1920s Cairo I highly recommend P. Djeli Clark's A Master of Djinn. Instant favorite to me and I'm still thinking about it 3/4 of the way through the book I've been reading after that wishing I was reading A Master of Djinn again.

Highly entertaining and can be enjoyed on a surface level, but there's also some layers to dive into it you want to give the book and it's world legs. Plus there's two short stories/novella prequels to add more richness.

I've read 5 of Clark's books this year and he's up there with Jemisin to me. Top quality writing and story telling. Superb and memorable characters. A rich, thriving world that you never want to set down. Humor, clever insight, fantastic action, and wonderful pacing. My only negative is that I figured out the plot by halfway through, but the ride was still excellent.

Definitely recommend for summer reading this season.