O! Where are you going, with beards all a-wagging! And what are you reading?

Lily Fairbairn

Lily Fairbairn

Half-elven
If I understood him correctly, Notta will be back at the helm of this thread next week. We can all gather around, clutch at his coattails, and ask, "What did you bring us? What did you bring us?" [:)]

This week I read Italian Neighbors, by Tim Parks, which was published in the early 90s. It's about an Englishman and his wife buying a condo in a small town outside Verona and settling down. It reminded me of A Year in Provence. A Year in the Veneto?

Parks makes his living as a translator and novelist, and the book is very well written, with enough Italian words I felt I'd had a mini-course in the language. And a very entertaining course in modern Italian culture, albeit that of twenty years ago. Even though it's a relatively short book, by the end I felt I knew Parks's neighbors, and was very sorry when one of them died.

One phrase caught my attention: "The dry sticks of Marini's vegetable patch opposite are somber pointed shadows, spear tips of an army of wraiths." Sounds like JRRT's description of the Paths of the Dead, right? I wonder if Parks is a fan.
 
Carol Berg. I just finished the first book in her Rai-kirah series, Transformation, and am eagerly looking forward to the rest (I found them all in a used book store). She's a wonderful writer in every way: wonderful characters, terrific plot, unique ideas, lots of description, believable dialogue, climatic battle that has you on the edge of your seat . . . everything works!

I can finally, after three years, indulge myself in "fun" reading, because I'm essentially done with the academic portion of school. Three years - it was an eyeblink! I have a lot of reading ahead for the dissertation, but I'm taking a couple of months off first, and Berg was a great find for my summer vacation.
 
by Stephen King. I'm only about a third of the way through it, but so far I'm loving it. King definitely knows how to keep a reader spellbound!
 
Many thanks again, Lily for keeping this thread running! I didn't have posting time the last few weeks, but I see you all continued to do your homework reading even if it is summer (for some of us) and the teacher was away... :)

I did manage to finish the 3rd Dresden Files book and am now on to book 4 (Summer Knight), where Dresden has managed to get himself far more entangled with the Fae than is good for anyone, and that's just the start of his problems.

That's about all for now, we got in at 2:00 am this morning after driving straight for 19 hours, and I've got a heap of work to catch up on - but I'll see if I can't find something rattling around at the bottom of the suitcase to share with everyone next week!

Notta
 
are my favorite King's.

There are others that also stick in the mind.... The Mist (though I find the ending done for the movie better than King's)... Trucks....

And his On Writing is also well done.
 
Driving for 19 hours straight? You really did smell home ahead of you, didn't you? But now that you're there, I hope you get settled back in and caught up quickly.

You're very welcome. I really had to work hard to keep the thread going. I mean, what torture, to talk about books and reading.... [tongue][cool][laugh]
 
Found a bunch of old Science Fiction Book Club hardcovers at a library sale, so I've read recently read short story compilations by Ben Bova, Leigh Brackett, Lloyd Biggle, and am now on Fritz Lieber. Some real gems, some that are really dated, but good reading all the same.

I also found a copy of Leigh Brackett's original script for Empire Strikes Back on line -- quite fun, but more Edgar Rice Burroughs than George Lucas. I would be glad to share the link if anyone's interested!
 
I haven't met her myself, but she lives in the area. She's apparently a lovely, friendly woman. My sister got to read all her novels and critique them before they went off to the publishers :-)

I'm afraid I couldn't get through the one I tried; it was too dark for my taste. But the writing is very good.
 
as in The Day of the Triffids and The Midwich Cuckoos (the book on which Village of the Damned is based)? Love them!

Also, another excellent book is Wild Talent, although I don't remember who wrote it.

Another good author was Jerry Sohl. One of his books I loved was Point Ultimate.


I imagine that the John Wyndham books would be easy to get hold of. The others, not so much.
 
This is another book by the author of Heidi. I got eight of them for a total of 99 cents as an amazon download, but it's also free at project gutenberg.

Cornelli is a little Swiss girl who is dismayed when her father goes off on business and has his female cousin come with her lady friend to babysit for a while. The two women mean well but their new rules make Cornelli very unhappy. I'm only a little way into it, but I'm enjoying it a lot. Knowing Spyri, I'm expecting a happy ending.
 
He was the first sf author I ever saw in the flesh. Unfortunately, I hadn't read anything of his at the time, so was impressed at a distance. Since then I've certainly read and enjoyed a good many of his stories. I was just eyeballing my old paperbacks of his Lankhmar stories and thinking what fun it would be to re-read them -- assuming the books don't fall apart in my hands.

I knew his son, Justin Leiber, briefly some years ago.

And while I'm name-dropping [blush] I'll mention that I've met Carol Berg and I agree that she's a lovely person.
 
...and liked it a lot! It struck me as a more poignant version of "the end of the world" than say, War of the Worlds.

The part where the main female character gets all dressed up before saying farewell to the world the way it was before had that sort of Galadriel bittersweetness to i, IMHO; it's been years since I read it, but that part of the book, as well as how the hero saves her from being used by the blind bad guys, are scenes I still remember and that have stuck with me....

Thanks for the other author recommendations as well...I recognized Jerry Sohl's name as one of the screenplay writers from the first Star Trek...did not know he was an author as well. He wrote two of my all time favorite episodes -- Corbomite Maneuver, and This Side of Paradise (that one under a pen name). So he definitely goes on my list of authors to check out as a I journey though classic SF tales!
 
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I didn't get hooked on the stories, but the characters have stuck with me through the years. I like Leiber's mix of horror and fantasy and sf -- a nice cross between Ray Bradbury and Lovecraft, with a few other elements tossed in for fun...

From what I read, of Fritz L, he was quite the character -- very much a flair for the dramatic, a chess master and a fencer. Quite a combo! The anthology I'm reading has "A Pail of Air" and "Roll Them Bones" -- both stories I had read years ago, and loved, so it was fun to have them come back to me again now.

I did a fair number of SF cons back in my college years and for a few years after that. Then, you could spend time talking with authors...I'm not sure if that's still the case. I have a lot of great memories from back then... now, I guess, people can get a bit of that experience from following an author's blog, but it was great to meet them in person and to have an actual conversation with them. One time we did not have a place to stay, so stayed up all night talking to an author so we would not get kicked out of the hotel!
 
Depending on the individual author and his/her schedule and his/her personality, of course. The smaller local conventions are better for that, though.
 
I know the Trek cons have gone more "professional" in that you have to pay to have access to the cast...

SF cons were always nice and collegial -- if you were at the con, you were part of the group, you know? I'd dearly love to get to one again, those were fun times....
 
and I'm a professional editor who is very picky!

She's right up my alley. The rai-kirah series reminds me somewhat of my favorite books by Lois McMaster Bujold, Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls, which I have read over and over. I finished Transformation in a day and am now onto Revelation.
 
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