What are you reading?

[ligedog]

I'm midway through the Phillip Jose Farmer story "Spiders of the Purple Mage" in Tales from the Vulgar Unicorn and that story fucking rocks. It just may be one of the finest dungeon crawl stories I've ever read. Again, a number of elements seem to point to D&D for me, particularly how illusionary magic is handled.

PJF just rocks in general =)

He's kind of the forgotten literary influence on D&D. You read the World of Tiers books and they all seem like the creations of a DM down to the ludicrously complicated and deadly traps and I think they predate D&D for the most part.

[T. Foster]

I just finished The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch, a (fairly) contemporary - published in 2006 - fantasy novel, which was pretty much garbage. It's very much in the mold of George R.R. Martin, in that it's a million (technically 719) pages long but surprisingly little actually happens, it's "gritty" so there's lots of descriptions of casual torture and violence and everybody says "fuck" a lot and seemingly-major characters get killed off willy-nilly, it's set in a pseudo-historical fantasy world that devotes thousands upon thousands of words to "worldbuilding" (names and histories and cultures and religions of the fictional lands) even though they all just seem to be a fairly lightly-modified and exaggerated version of earth - the city where all the action takes place is fantasy Venice, remnant of a fantasy Roman Empire that fell to fantasy Germanics and fantasy Muslims - and almost all of the "fantasy" element is background stuff and minor set-dressing (literally - the main fantastical element is that the entire civilization is built upon ruins left behind by a mysterious non-human race; there's also a single wizard character who

does some mind-control stuff but ultimately proves to be pretty ineffectual

).

It was fast-moving despite its length, so I don't feel like I wasted too much time on it, but I certainly don't plan to read any more books in this series (of which there are currently three, with more surely to follow).

[Stonegiant]

Reading THE WITCHER series right now. Not high literature but enjoyable

[grodog]

I just started Ghouls in My Grave by Jean Ray. I'd been hunting down a copy of this for years, but Amazon and eBay typically ran $80-100 (for a 50 year-old mass market paperback), and often didn't even have any available. But, I got lucky and snagged one for $20 recently. The first story, "Gold Teeth," was excellent and everything I've read says the other stories are even better. I've heard him called the Belgian Poe or Lovecraft...I can see why.

Keith graciously loaned me his two Jean Ray books at GaryCon, and I'm about halfway through Ghouls in My Grave now (just finished "I Killed Alfred Heavenrock"), and I'm enjoying the stories thus far.

Finished this one. Excellent stuff. At times they reminded me of Lovecraft, William Hope Hodgson, and even CAS/Vance for some really likable evil characters.

I've not gotten a strong HPL vibe from them yet (in terms of cosmic horror, the insignificance of humanity, etc.), although one of the stories---"The Shadowy Street"---does use some similar framing devices as HPL (narrator discovers two manuscripts and the reader learns about what's going on through the character's perusal of these previous histories), but there is definitely a Poe-like sense of the macabre (and the imp of the perverse!), perhaps mixed with a Flannery O'Connor-like sense of decadence in moral character.

EDIT: these stories should be reprinted in full pretty by Fedogan and Breemer, Wildside, or equivalent. They're that good.

Agreed: it would be nice to see them back in print. I wonder where the rights to them sit....

Allan.

[grodog]

Henry has now started PJF's _The Maker of Universes_ and is loving it! He's already come over to say how a couple of gate-related traps would be cool to use in AD&D

Ethan will likely be starting ERB's _A Princess of Mars_---he just has to figure out if he's going to read it on the Kindle (via Project Gutenberg) or my pb!

Allan.

[TRP]

About half-way through Petty Pewter Gods. Cook's Garrett P.I. novels are good, safe comfort food reading. They'd adapt well into a great ABC TV series.

[ThirstyStirge]

Ethan will likely be starting ERB's _A Princess of Mars_---he just has to figure out if he's going to read it on the Kindle (via Project Gutenberg) or my pb!

Hopefully he will like it. I discovered ERB's Barsoom books rather late -- just after High School. Shame that I didn't know about them in grammar school. Rip-roaring good yarns, those.

[Kellri]

Definitely go for the hard copy. I read all the ERB planetary romances as a teenager in library edition hardbacks with the 1930's illustrations. The Tarzan novels I read in those Boris-cover paperbacks on an epic RV road trip out West and back with my grandparents. To this day, I can't really look at a photo of the Grand Canyon without thinking about Tarzan.

[Flambeaux]

Been listening to a lot of audiobooks lately because that's what I have time for.
Just finished Arthur Phillips' The Egyptologist. Fascinating and weird, it's an epistolary novel that moves back and forth in time and among the limited perspectives of several narrators. It's easily the most unusual book I've encountered in many years.

I'm given to understand that the actual text differentiates among the source texts by playing with fonts. The audiobook benefitted, I think, from having different narrators.

Has anyone here read it?

Now working on Michael Lewis' Moneyball and finding that very enjoyable.

My wife's been doing most of the bedtime reading to the kids. She's currently working through The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place and the Wingfeather Saga. Both series are excellent and reward the well-read parent as much as the attentive child.

My oldest is working his way through Dune Messiah.

[TRP]

Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology. It's meh, but finish-able.

[grodog]

Just finished Arthur Phillips' The Egyptologist. Fascinating and weird, it's an epistolary novel that moves back and forth in time and among the limited perspectives of several narrators. It's easily the most unusual book I've encountered in many years.

I'm given to understand that the actual text differentiates among the source texts by playing with fonts. The audiobook benefitted, I think, from having different narrators.

Has anyone here read it?

I haven't, but it sounds similar in spirit to Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves (which employs multiple typographical fonts to differentiate between narratives, footnotes (many of which have their own footnotes), and other story pieces within the texts. (It also relates directly to Poe's second album, Haunted, since MZD is her brother).

The first story of this nature I read was Robert Coover's "The Babysitter"---told simultaneously from multiple points-of-view, in a somewhat scrambled narrative where each paragraph is offset from the others, and you need to figure out how it relates to the rest. Quite good as well, but definitely a challenging read.

My oldest is working his way through Dune Messiah.

Neither Ethan nor Henry have gotten into Dune yet. Henry finished reading the first two World of Tiers books, and decided to go back and read the first Amber Chronicles on his own.

Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology. It's meh, but finish-able.

I had started this before Keith loaned me Ghouls on my Grave, but set it aside while reading that. What's not catching your eye on it, Rob?

Allan.

[TRP]

Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology. It's meh, but finish-able.

I had started this before Keith loaned me Ghouls on my Grave, but set it aside while reading that. What's not catching your eye on it, Rob?

Well, it immediately improved when I picked it up again. The first 3 or 4 chapters, while informative were boring. "This is Odin". "This is where Odin came from." "This is what Odin did." It was like reading a text book. Then, the stories started, and they're pretty funny, well-written stuff.

[grodog]

For our anniversary, Heather and the boys gave me a facsimilie edition of The Voynich Manuscript, and a copy of The Red Sphinx: A Sequel to The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas, Lawrence Ellsworth (aka Lawrence Schick).

I'm looking forward to digging into both! (And Keith I finished reading the final story in Ghouls in My Grave last night---definitely a fun book!).

Allan.

[Flambeaux]

For our anniversary, Heather and the boys gave me a facsimilie edition of The Voynich Manuscript, and a copy of The Red Sphinx: A Sequel to The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas, Lawrence Ellsworth (aka Lawrence Schick).

I'm looking forward to digging into both! (And Keith I finished reading the final story in Ghouls in My Grave last night---definitely a fun book!).

Allan.

Allan,
Let me know what you think of The Red Sphinx. I heard mixed reviews about it. I'm curious if it's worth tackling and/or sharing.

[grodog]

Well, it immediately improved when I picked it up again. The first 3 or 4 chapters, while informative were boring. "This is Odin". "This is where Odin came from." "This is what Odin did." It was like reading a text book. Then, the stories started, and they're pretty funny, well-written stuff.

Oh good, that's about where I was when I put it down, I think

Let me know what you think of The Red Sphinx. I heard mixed reviews about it. I'm curious if it's worth tackling and/or sharing.

Will do, Chris!

Allan.