What Books Are You Reading Right Now?

[SaintRidley]

Tolkien's Beowulf got dropped off at my door today. About a third of the way through the translation, looking forward to the commentary.

[warty goblin]

Finished any and all books I have listed here previously. I just finished Sabriel, and have not gotten a new book yet.

I finished listening to Sabriel last night during a lengthy woodcarving session that left the floor covered in woodchips. Damn fine story, and excellent accompaniment to turning a chunk of basswood into shavings and (hopefully) a tulip.

Tolkien's Beowulf got dropped off at my door today. About a third of the way through the translation, looking forward to the commentary.

Oooh, this I must have, thanks for posting about it! It's been a couple of years since I read Beowulf, and it'll be quite interesting to see how Tolkien's translation contrasts with Heaney's. Is it in alliterative verse? I loved Tolkien's alliterative version of Sigurd and Gudrun when it came out a few years ago, though I haven't gotten to The Fall of Arthur yet.

Got to the second of Hartwright's sections in The Woman in White yesterday. This next bit is going to be something of a downer I suspect.

[Eulalios]

I've just started In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson after recently rereading A Devil in the White City. Yesterday I read Doctor Sleep, Stephen King's sequel The Shining. I *may* have only checked the latter out from the library due to the author's dedication to Warren Zevon in the beginning, but I enjoyed reading it. King's books are great for a lazy afternoon.

I will second Doctor Sleep as being a good read. And Warren Zevon as a brilliant songwriter.

[Duck999]

Hopefully I'll move onto the rest of the Abhorsen series next.

[SaintRidley]

Oooh, this I must have, thanks for posting about it! It's been a couple of years since I read Beowulf, and it'll be quite interesting to see how Tolkien's translation contrasts with Heaney's. Is it in alliterative verse? I loved Tolkien's alliterative version of Sigurd and Gudrun when it came out a few years ago, though I haven't gotten to The Fall of Arthur yet.

Tolkien's isn't verse, but prose. Very engrossing prose, and it's nice to see archaic diction and sentence structure wielded by someone who actually studies that sort of thing (as someone who studies that sort of thing, nothing turns me off faster than poorly done archaicizing of diction and sentence structure).

I'm about halfway through the translation, going to read through the commentary and other materials and probably write up a solid annotation for my personal reference.

[turkishproverb]

Tolkien's Beowulf got dropped off at my door today. About a third of the way through the translation, looking forward to the commentary.

Hm. Given how long it took to get this published, I'm torn. On the one hand, J.R.R. Tolkien knew Beowulf. On the other hand, some of the more recent works read as though Christopher Tolkien is very not so much "editing" as "posthumously co-writing" many of the works he puts out soulley in his father's name at this point.

[dehro]

Hm. Given how long it took to get this published, I'm torn. On the one hand, J.R.R. Tolkien knew Beowulf. On the other hand, some of the more recent works read as though Christopher Tolkien is very not so much "editing" as "posthumously co-writing" many of the works he puts out soulley in his father's name at this point.

this.. very much this..
I know perfectly well that Tolkien was an authority on Beowulf (did he not already write a book about it that actually got published during his lifetime? I must go look at my stash of books)
That said, I'm starting to be a little aggravated by the notion that Christopher Tolkien still wants us to believe that 40 years after his father's passing, he is still finding untapped material stuffed in the back of a drawer somewhere.
might as well come out and say it clearly that he's been pouring his own scholarly achievements on paper.
I wouldn't hold it against him to have continued in father's footsteps... this whole "tolkien has written a new book from beyond the grave" gimmick is starting to tire me.

[David LS]

I'm reading Animorphs right now. When I was a kid I only read the first six or so books, so I've taken up the endeavor of reading the whole series. Even as quick a read as those books are, it's taking me quite a while (it's like 62 books long!).

It's an interesting series. In many ways it feels like reading a super hero comic, it has cosmic aliens, secret identities, drama, really nonsensical science (almost silver age level, honestly), a main villain who is cartoonishly evil, but it also does a good job of realistically portraying a war, of showing a world that isn't black and white. Not a perfect book series, but definitely an interesting one.

[happyturtle]

Currently reading Hugo finalists as my own reading.

Bedtime Story Hour with Mr HT - we've finished Excession (which I liked less this time around than previous reads) and started on Ascension by Jacqueline Koyanagi. It's another debut novel, and I love it. The protagonist has a chronic pain disease, which got my attention, but what's selling it to me is the language. Some of the passages feel like poetry.

In non-fiction, a book about how to use a TENS machine for pain management. I lost my cheap TENS and replaced it with a less-cheap-but-still-affordable one that has far more control over the settings. I think I'm going to have a lot better results with this one.

[Duck999]

And I am now on Inferno.

[SaintRidley]

this.. very much this..
I know perfectly well that Tolkien was an authority on Beowulf (did he not already write a book about it that actually got published during his lifetime? I must go look at my stash of books)
That said, I'm starting to be a little aggravated by the notion that Christopher Tolkien still wants us to believe that 40 years after his father's passing, he is still finding untapped material stuffed in the back of a drawer somewhere.
might as well come out and say it clearly that he's been pouring his own scholarly achievements on paper.
I wouldn't hold it against him to have continued in father's footsteps... this whole "tolkien has written a new book from beyond the grave" gimmick is starting to tire me.

He seems pretty forthright in the introduction about how this one got compiled. He typed up his father's old manuscript while he was still alive, and his father went through and corrected it some time before he died. Chris eventually revised the typescript for those corrections and much of the difficulty (and most of the book) lay in determining presentation of the text and scholarly commentary from his father's old lecture notes.

[warty goblin]

this.. very much this..
I know perfectly well that Tolkien was an authority on Beowulf (did he not already write a book about it that actually got published during his lifetime? I must go look at my stash of books)
That said, I'm starting to be a little aggravated by the notion that Christopher Tolkien still wants us to believe that 40 years after his father's passing, he is still finding untapped material stuffed in the back of a drawer somewhere.
might as well come out and say it clearly that he's been pouring his own scholarly achievements on paper.
I wouldn't hold it against him to have continued in father's footsteps... this whole "tolkien has written a new book from beyond the grave" gimmick is starting to tire me.

Personally, this complaint has never made much sense to me. Tolkien had a long professional life, and a person can get a lot done over the years. Depending on how they organize stuff, it can be quite difficult to make sense of it, or compile it into a sensible whole after the fact.

Besides which, Christopher is getting up there in years now. I don't know who becomes literary executor of the Tolkien estate after he dies, but it doesn't seem unreasonable to expect that whatever fragmentary material there is would be published in one form or another then anyway; almost certainly by people who are less intimately familiar both with Tolkien's works, and Tolkien himself, than his son. It doesn't seem particularly surprising to me that he wants to release the material now, when he has some control over it and better represent his father's work. Particularly after the films - which understand Christopher did not like - seizing the chance to let his father's works speak for themselves as best he is able seems a pretty understandable thing to do.

[IthilanorStPete]

Personally, this complaint has never made much sense to me. Tolkien had a long professional life, and a person can get a lot done over the years. Depending on how they organize stuff, it can be quite difficult to make sense of it, or compile it into a sensible whole after the fact.

Besides which, Christopher is getting up there in years now. I don't know who becomes literary executor of the Tolkien estate after he dies, but it doesn't seem unreasonable to expect that whatever fragmentary material there is would be published in one form or another then anyway; almost certainly by people who are less intimately familiar both with Tolkien's works, and Tolkien himself, than his son. It doesn't seem particularly surprising to me that he wants to release the material now, when he has some control over it and better represent his father's work. Particularly after the films - which understand Christopher did not like - seizing the chance to let his father's works speak for themselves as best he is able seems a pretty understandable thing to do.

I agree with this, especially since Tolkien was not one of the world's great organizers. What Christopher Tolkien does is a whole different world than, say, what Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson have done with Frank Herbert's legacy.

[Gnoman]

Precisely. The non-Frank Herbert Dune books were allegedly found on a couple of 5.25" floppies that could have held maybe 5 or 6 complete manuscripts. The way Christopher Tolkien puts it i more "found shoebox behind fireplace. Contained manuscript pages. Found desk in attic. Drawers contained manuscript pages. Tripped over rock in garden. Was hollow, contained manuscript pages." Completely different, and much more plausible.

[dehro]

I'd just like to see him claim ownership over at least some of the work that's gone in the later books, rather than trying to further enlarge the already legendary scope of his father's work. It's not like there's a need for that. That said I disagree that there's always some confused pile of notes that take a decade to make sense of. The children of Hurin for instance was a complete cash-grab, given how we already knew 99% of the story which had been told already. The notion that Christopher Tolkien takes forty/fifty years to go through all of his father's work which for the most part he's been familiar with when not directly involved in his entire life stretches my cynical sense of realism in unconfortable ways.
I can't help thinking that maybe someone in the family needed a new car.

[GloatingSwine]

Currently reading Hugo finalists as my own reading.

What's your call for winner this year?

Were I a betting man I'd say Ancillary Justice is going to scoop it, esp. now it's won the Nebula award. I would personally rate Neptune's Brood a little ahead of it though, AJ is good but it felt a little rough around the edges (first novel and all that), whereas Neptune's Brood feels finely crafted and tightly edited, everything in it has a purpose, no matter how odd it might initially seem (and given that it's a hard SF space opera about banking fraud, that's pretty odd).

Parasite was OK but is too blatantly the first of a trilogy and the stinger at the end is obvious from about page five. (It's probably supposed to be, but really, why even try and deny it, just get on with dealing with the implications).

WoT is WoT. Entered as a whole it's too saggy in the middle to really win.

Warbound is some kind of protest entry and isn't going anywhere.

[EmeraldRose]

IIIIIIIIIIII got a new book in the mail today!!!!! Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Series #6- Players by Terrance Dicks.

MUST RESTRAIN SELF AND FINISH FEET OF CLAY FIRST!!!!

*looks at book sitting next to the computer*

sooooooo.....shiny!!!!!!

[warty goblin]

I'd just like to see him claim ownership over at least some of the work that's gone in the later books, rather than trying to further enlarge the already legendary scope of his father's work. It's not like there's a need for that. That said I disagree that there's always some confused pile of notes that take a decade to make sense of. The children of Hurin for instance was a complete cash-grab, given how we already knew 99% of the story which had been told already. The notion that Christopher Tolkien takes forty/fifty years to go through all of his father's work which for the most part he's been familiar with when not directly involved in his entire life stretches my cynical sense of realism in unconfortable ways.
I can't help thinking that maybe someone in the family needed a new car.

I figure if he sees himself more as curator or compiler, that's entirely his judgement to make. He's certainly in a more informed position to make the call than you or I.

I don't see anything particularly odd about the idea that Tolkien did leave a lot of partially completed drafts about either. He started working on Middle Earth back during World War I after all; that's a lot of time for the half-finished (and more than half-finished) manuscripts to pile up. If one accepts for instance that Tolkien built the history of the First Age around the three larger stories of Turin and Nienor, Beren and Luthien, and the fall of Gondolin, it seems quite reasonable that he would have at least started longer versions of those tales than are related in the Quenta Silmarillion. Besides which, The Children of Hurin may not have told anybody who had read the Silmarillion anything new, but it did expand on an already good story, and give some other characters a chance to shine through a bit more than the extremely condensed version presented previously. I should dig out my copy and reread it sometime... maybe next summer I'll do all of Tolkien.

I'm also having trouble reconciling a desire for Christopher Tolkien to take greater ownership of something, and considering his work a cynical cash grab. There's something a bit odd there, considering how entirely respectful and meticulous his treatment of his father's legacy seems to be.

[Zach J.]

I will second Doctor Sleep as being a good read. And Warren Zevon as a brilliant songwriter.

Indeed he was, always good to meet another fan. I'm now rereading A Game of Thrones.

[T-Mick]

The Napoleon of Notting Hill is in the mail as we speak. Will probably arrive tomorrow. The only other Chesterton novel I've read in Manalive, which was not considered his best. Of course, as such a gifted writer, his worst novel is magnitudes greater than almost everything I've ever read. Needless to say, I'm excited.

[Palanan]

Well, I've really been striking out this week.

I was traveling for a few days, so I figured a hotel room would be a good place to make some progress on Coyote Horizon, which I've been trying to start for a while now. Sadly, Coyote Horizon is even more bland and listless than its three predecessors, almost entirely populated with unconvincing characters I can never quite get interested in. I made it about eighty pages and then gave up.

But just across the street was a mall parking lot, and at the other end was a Barnes & Noble, and I had the notion I could find a copy of Sabriel, as recently recommended here. It sounded like just the thing for a couple nights of limited social opportunity--but alas, the store had none in stock, so I ended up slogging through a little more Coyote Horizon out of desperation. (Urf.)

Fortunately, when I came home there was a box waiting for me, featuring the long-awaited Protector by C.J. Cherryh, the fourteenth (!) in her Foreigner series. The intricate political machinations of a nonhuman culture, with a no-longer-naive human translator at the center of it all. Not much really new here, not conceptually, but that's hardly the point: it's a warm bubble bath for the mind, fizzy and fun, and if you've been with the characters through all the series so far, there are certainly some zingers in the first couple of chapters. Even though the situations aren't really that different (I'm expecting a bus and a gunfight at some point) the characters themselves, both human and atevi, have changed and grown by subtle brushstrokes, and they can still surprise you. C.J. is having fun with this, and it really shows in the writing.

And, new audiobook: A Rage for Glory, a well-written biography of Stephen Decatur, a perfect lagniappe after having finished the Patrick O'Brian novels. Apart from Decatur's exploits off Tripoli, the book explores the Chesapeake-Leopard affair and the long run-up to the War of 1812, showcasing the "superfrigates" that defined the early American navy--as well as the hair-trigger notions of personal and national honor which defined the early naval officers.

Originally Posted by Thiel
I've started on Post Captain, the second book in the Aubrey and Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian and I have to say it's a much better read than the first one.

H.M.S. Surprise is better yet, and the books become more polished and enjoyable from there.

Originally Posted by SaintRidley
Tolkien's Beowulf got dropped off at my door today. About a third of the way through the translation, looking forward to the commentary.

I'm about halfway through the translation, going to read through the commentary and other materials and probably write up a solid annotation for my personal reference.

Thank you. I have GOT to read this.

And you know, if you'd be willing to share that annotation....

Originally Posted by warty goblin
I'm also having trouble reconciling a desire for Christopher Tolkien to take greater ownership of something, and considering his work a cynical cash grab. There's something a bit odd there, considering how entirely respectful and meticulous his treatment of his father's legacy seems to be.

Yes indeed.

In The Anglo-Saxon World, the audiocourse I finished recently, Michael Drout makes the point--as he has elsewhere--that Tolkien's work on Beowulf was pivotal for twentieth-century Anglo-Saxon scholarship, and that even if Tolkien had never written a word in Middle-Earth, his Beowulf would still earn him a place in the literary firmament.

Now, Michael Drout is both a professor of Anglo-Saxon and a huge Tolkien fan, but I don't think that lessens his critical judgement where Tolkien as a scholar is concerned. The man was incredible. His professional achievements were remarkable, apart from his success as a popular author, and one hardly has to resort to posthumous padding to explain his meticulous and prolific scholarship.

[Thiel]

H.M.S. Surprise is better yet, and the books become more polished and enjoyable from there.

I certainly hope so. Don't get me wrong the story was quite enjoyable, if a bit stilted at times, but I swear there were times when he changed point of view mid-sentence.

[dehro]

I don't see anything particularly odd about the idea that Tolkien did leave a lot of partially completed drafts about either.

I'm also having trouble reconciling a desire for Christopher Tolkien to take greater ownership of something, and considering his work a cynical cash grab. There's something a bit odd there, considering how entirely respectful and meticulous his treatment of his father's legacy seems to be.

Me neither, just not 40 years worth of publications. I can't help thinking that no matter how much material Tolkien left behind, his son should be done compiling it by now, unless he was delaying publication on purpose, to make the most money out of it. That's also perfectly fine, just say so.
And if instead you're adding a thing here and there because you actually have run out of notes, then say so too, I'll still buy it even if the initials aren't J.R.R. anymore.
Yes, you can be commercially cynical without misrepresenting your father's work. I never said he's anything less than consistent and meticulous about his use and gradual representation of middle earth. All I am saying is that after 40 years I have a hard time believing there are still stacks of notes and original subjects left untold and unexplored.
I am forced to think that either Christopher is filling gaps and expanding on his own (kudos and more power to him, I wouldn't want anybody else doing it), or he's purposedly held back stuff to milk the material for as long as possible, which is cynical, no matter how respectfully done.

[happyturtle]

I'd just like to see him claim ownership over at least some of the work that's gone in the later books, rather than trying to further enlarge the already legendary scope of his father's work. It's not like there's a need for that. That said I disagree that there's always some confused pile of notes that take a decade to make sense of. The children of Hurin for instance was a complete cash-grab, given how we already knew 99% of the story which had been told already. The notion that Christopher Tolkien takes forty/fifty years to go through all of his father's work which for the most part he's been familiar with when not directly involved in his entire life stretches my cynical sense of realism in unconfortable ways.
I can't help thinking that maybe someone in the family needed a new car.

The Children of Hurin's plot was told in the Silmarillion, but it was far better written in the standalone work.

What's your call for winner this year?

Were I a betting man I'd say Ancillary Justice is going to scoop it, esp. now it's won the Nebula award. I would personally rate Neptune's Brood a little ahead of it though, AJ is good but it felt a little rough around the edges (first novel and all that), whereas Neptune's Brood feels finely crafted and tightly edited, everything in it has a purpose, no matter how odd it might initially seem (and given that it's a hard SF space opera about banking fraud, that's pretty odd).

Parasite was OK but is too blatantly the first of a trilogy and the stinger at the end is obvious from about page five. (It's probably supposed to be, but really, why even try and deny it, just get on with dealing with the implications).

WoT is WoT. Entered as a whole it's too saggy in the middle to really win.

Warbound is some kind of protest entry and isn't going anywhere.

So far, I've only read Ancillary Justice. The other works will be hard pressed to top that one in my mind. But I expect WoT to actually win. It's a popularity vote, after all. ((More discussion in the Hugo Thread.))

[Piggy Knowles]

Curious, would I enjoy Neptune's Brood if I thought Saturn's Children was kind of awful? I find Stross is so hit or miss with me - I loved Glasshouse, for example, but hated Saturn's Children practically from the first page.

EDIT: It's worth expanding on that point - I tend to enjoy Stross' ideas, but his characters often fall flat, and I find he can be a bit ham-fisted with his explanations. I really didn't like the main character from Saturn's Children, and I especially found it tedious how he'd shoehorn in constant background or explanation with clunky statements like "My true love's race couldn't have survived this! Thank goodness I was outfitted with [insert his really clever idea for robots, society or nanotech]."

[GloatingSwine]

Curious, would I enjoy Neptune's Brood if I thought Saturn's Children was kind of awful? I find Stross is so hit or miss with me - I loved Glasshouse, for example, but hated Saturn's Children practically from the first page.

EDIT: It's worth expanding on that point - I tend to enjoy Stross' ideas, but his characters often fall flat, and I find he can be a bit ham-fisted with his explanations. I really didn't like the main character from Saturn's Children, and I especially found it tedious how he'd shoehorn in constant background or explanation with clunky statements like "My true love's race couldn't have survived this! Thank goodness I was outfitted with [insert his really clever idea for robots, society or nanotech]."

That is something of a feature of Stross' writing, and there is exposition which you need to know in order to know what's going on in the story, but it feels pretty tightly done, if there's exposition going on it's because you actually do need to know what they're telling you about.

[BWR]

Curious, would I enjoy Neptune's Brood if I thought Saturn's Children was kind of awful? I find Stross is so hit or miss with me - I loved Glasshouse, for example, but hated Saturn's Children practically from the first page.

EDIT: It's worth expanding on that point - I tend to enjoy Stross' ideas, but his characters often fall flat, and I find he can be a bit ham-fisted with his explanations. I really didn't like the main character from Saturn's Children, and I especially found it tedious how he'd shoehorn in constant background or explanation with clunky statements like "My true love's race couldn't have survived this! Thank goodness I was outfitted with [insert his really clever idea for robots, society or nanotech]."

I think the main weakness of Saturn's Children was that it was Stross' attempt at writing a Heinlein story. It makes a lot more sense when you know that. It doesn't make it better, necessarily, but it does explain why it's rather disappointing compared to most of his other stuff.

[Zach J.]

Right now I'm reading Dinosaurs Without Bones by Anthony J. Martin and 11/22/63 by Stephen King.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Thiel
Don't get me wrong the story was quite enjoyable, if a bit stilted at times, but I swear there were times when he changed point of view mid-sentence.

O'Brian may well have done that, or it might have been a consequence of his style, which can take some getting used to.

Also, if you want slam-bang action, keep in mind that much of H.M.S. Surprise tells a more personal story at a different pace. The Mauritius Command ramps back up with some squadron encounters, including a finale that just about leaves your ears ringing from the cannonfire.

And Maturin's work as an intelligence agent means that as the series progresses, that component becomes increasingly important to many of Aubrey's missions, along with the development of the characters' personal lives. There's good seafaring action in every one, but with some delicate psychological pointillism as well.

Originally Posted by happyturtle
The Children of Hurin's plot was told in the Silmarillion, but it was far better written in the standalone work.

For some reason The Children of Hurin didn't impress me. It certainly expands on the bare-bones outline in The Silmarillion, but I found it not especially interesting and a bit of a slog to get through--and I've loved just about everything I've ever read by Tolkien.

Originally Posted by Zach J.
Right now I'm reading Dinosaurs Without Bones by Anthony J. Martin....

I've seen that in the library here recently. Worthwhile?



And, in other book news, I've now started The Disney That Never Was, which is really interesting for the artwork and the animation history alike. I'd never realized that Disney first developed the modern idea of the storyboard, which I grew up reading about in the making-of-Star-Wars books. Very cool.

[Cristo Meyers]

Just finished The Lies of Locke Lamora while on vacation. Fantastic. Thought it kinda fell apart a little at the last quarter, but still that was a fantastic book. Can't wait to get my hands on the other 2. Also finished Downfall of the Crusader Kingdom by W.B. Bartlett. I'm not nearly well-versed in history to be able to judge the actual fact-to-speculation ratio, but it was a very interesting read.

Also forced myself to finish a book that I mentioned before in thread: Dustball Air. Anyone that may have picked this up after I mentioned it: I'm so, so sorry.

If you ever need an example as to why people look down on self-published books, this is the one you should point to. It's not just bad, it's aggressively, unrelentingly bad. Spelling mistakes (seriously, how to do misuse 'thrown' for 'throne'?), blatant rip-offs in a number of scenes, nauseating characters, the works. The author even handily lists his 'influences' at the end of the book (taking a number of potshots at the authors in the process), but unfortunately doesn't understand the difference between "influence" and "copied the scene and filed off the serial number." By the end I just wanted to shake this guy and scream "It's first person POV! You don't need to keep telling us 'I thought'!" The best thing I can say is that eventually it became the reading equivalent of a B-Movie.

On to Promise of Blood, otherwise known as "the book I should have spent the past days reading."