[Fiend]

I keep meaning to attempt one of these. Light first then?

I kinda enjoyed these but also struggled a bit and found them a bit obtuse. Might be something to do with....

Cryptic crossword aficionados might get it quicker than I did.

!!

[Wellsy]

The Sunken Land etc was excellent. Really well written, the evocative prose was hypnotic, I read it basically non stop. Highly recommended.

I agree that the 3BP sequels were less good but like you Rocksteady definitely some of the best scifi I've read in ages, some incredible scope and invention.

[Falling Down]

I didn’t think that Nova Swing was that great but the final one did the business.  Light though can be read entirely standalone and is brilliant.

[Fiend]

Another one that...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Echo-Wife-fast-paced-unsettling-domestic-ebook/dp/B08HQCC974

...was quite enjoyable. Requires some suspension of disbelief in many places, but is well done and has some good twists and thought-provoking moments.

[dunnyg]

I read "Milkman" by Anna Burns. It's not the easiest read, but once you get into the style of writing I thought it was great. The story keeps moving, and I thought it gives an interesting view point of living through the troubles. A bit on the bleak side, unsurprisingly given the setting, but I've not read much like and really enjoyed it.

On the flip side, my mum couldn't get over the writing style and sacked it off. 2 reviews for the price of one.

I might re read the kefuchi tract trilogy, I think I read them fairly young, and I remember at least one being fairly confusing to say the least. Maybe round 2 will make it clearer!

I've also been slowly mooching through Ian M Banks after recommendations on here, I think I enjoyed player of games most so far, but all have been good!

[Fiend]

Another gentle-ish semi-sci-fi with a female protagonist...

James Smythe - I Still Dream

Aka one girl and her homemade AI - the life of a tech prodigy and how her personal journey unfolds along with her AI, rivals and family.

I've liked Smythe's stuff from his first two books in the still unfinished Anomaly Quartet, as well as in particular the chllling No Harm Can Come To A Good Man. This latest one grew on me and sucked me despite it being quite a slow ride at first, although it definitely escalates especially with mini-catastrophe that gave me quite a shiver. Read some reviews and maybe give it a go.

[Wellsy]

The Ratline by Phillipe Sands

Anything by Sands is worth reading and this is no exception. A very insightful and extremely well written look into the life and end of Otto Freiherr von Wachter, a SS Brigadefuhrer and noted lawyer in the Nazi administration of Poland.

Subject matter is not light but is deeply, deeply personal. A must-read imo. Also highly recommend East-West Street by the same author. That was probably the most powerful piece of non fiction I ever read.

[andy popp]

Thanks Wellsy. I've really wanted to read both these Sands' books for sometime, but have not yet managed to get my hands on copies. Must resolve to correct that.

My reading has been rather lacklustre this year, but I did recently finish Alfred Doblin's modernist, Weimar-set masterpiece. Berlin Alexanderplatz, which was excellent.

[Will Hunt]

Blasphemy, perhaps, on the Books thread, but if anyone wants to follow up this recommendation but would prefer to listen then Sands presents a series of podcasts on The Ratline, first episode here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p06lh2b5

[csl]

Barnabus Calder - Architecture: From Prehistory to Climate Emergency

A great history of architecture and buildings in general. Feels little like the "Climate Emergency" part was shoe-horned in given how few pages are spent on sustainable modern architecture - but still an enjoyable read and the link between what was being built and what energy was available to build it was very interesting.

[Oldmanmatt]

I’ve been working my way through Heinlein’s works (what a mixed bag and by god he was a randy bugger), anyway, just finishing up the Rolling Stones, published in 1952. So many popular SciFi tropes originate in his books! Bloody Star Trek Tribbles, in this book. Martian “Flat Cats” that asexually produce 8 young, every 60 days and hibernate in “Grapefruit sized” fury balls; swamping the Stone’s ship. Not to mention their waiting on a delivery from the ship “Firefly” late in the novel…

[seankenny]

A very short essay on science fiction and the Luddites, posted for all the SF fans on here:

https://locusmag.com/2022/01/cory-doctorow-science-fiction-is-a-luddite-literature/

[jwi]

A very short essay on science fiction and the Luddites, posted for all the SF fans on here:

https://locusmag.com/2022/01/cory-doctorow-science-fiction-is-a-luddite-literature/

Interesting! Is it true though? What does the historical scholarship say about the motivation of the luddites? (I have no idea, and since there wasn't any reference to the literature in the article I cannot easily find out.)

[seankenny]

A very short essay on science fiction and the Luddites, posted for all the SF fans on here:

https://locusmag.com/2022/01/cory-doctorow-science-fiction-is-a-luddite-literature/

Interesting! Is it true though? What does the historical scholarship say about the motivation of the luddites? (I have no idea, and since there wasn't any reference to the literature in the article I cannot easily find out.)

I do believe a historian of business and the Industrial Revolution is a regular poster on these very forums...

[Wellsy]

Highly recommend Stasiland, a book about an Australian journalists interviews with East Germans about their experiences with the Stasi during the GDR period.

[andy popp]

A very short essay on science fiction and the Luddites, posted for all the SF fans on here:

https://locusmag.com/2022/01/cory-doctorow-science-fiction-is-a-luddite-literature/

Interesting! Is it true though? What does the historical scholarship say about the motivation of the luddites? (I have no idea, and since there wasn't any reference to the literature in the article I cannot easily find out.)

I've only read the Doctorow piece quickly (and a lot of its industrial history is pretty sketchy), and I know nothing about Sci-Fi, but so far as the Luddites go, this is broadly true:

"In truth, their goal was something closely related to science fiction: to challenge not the technology itself, but rather the social relations that governed its use."

Uneducated perhaps, the Luddites were not simple brutes who, Canute like, thought they could stem the flood of new technologies by smashing a few knitting frames. Their critique (though it was largely an implicit one) was subtler and more far-reaching. The classic treatment is in E.P Thompson's "The Making of the English Working Class," but just as good an introduction to the issues can be found in the same author's "Moral Economy of the English Crowd" (albeit it is about bread riots, not maching breaking). This is essentially about what we might call market ordering: who has a legitimate role in the market (and who doesn't); what are and are not legitimate market activities (speculation and engrossing not, for example); is there a limit to the market; what determines prices and profits and are there limits to both; what are the social relations that govern production and exchange? Bread rioters and machine breakers proposed that custom and community gave different answers to these questions than the emerging laissez-faire political economy of the "Manchester School."

[sherlock]

Highly recommend Stasiland, a book about an Australian journalists interviews with East Germans about their experiences with the Stasi during the GDR period.

Certainly puts in perspective folk complaining about 'the surveillance society' (copyright Daily Mail).

[sheavi]

I read The Power of the Dog by Thomas Savage recently.  There is a film out currently based on the 1967 book that I have not seen.  Based in the 1920's on a ranch in Montana.  Gripping and powerful with a twist at the end.  Highly recommend.

[Johnny Brown]

Black Car Burning - Helen Mort.

Climbing fiction doesn't come along very often, and yet, despite being from and about the heart of the Sheffield scene, published in 2019, with a lot of promotion and positive reviews from writers like Macfarlane and M John, review or comment for this book is weirdly absent in the climbing world. It didn't get a UKC review or shortlisting for the BT, nor generate any forum traffic. To be honest I wasn't drawn to it either (received it as a gift) - someone else's perspective on something so close is likely to jar - and the cover with a rope sewn into a carbine hook isn't a great start. But I enjoyed the first 100 pages, the writing style is a bit terse for my liking but I soon got over it, and I enjoyed the one page landscape statements. but it soon started to drag. Nothing much happens, the characters never really develop, and everything is told from inside someone's head in a manner that is perhaps intended to be gritty and real but just comes across as dull and tedious. By the final 100 pages I was just trying to finish in the hope it might improve. There are a few nice descriptions of soloing but mostly the climbing seems to be a vehicle for people to have accidents or exhibit selfish behaviour - just the sort of cliched outsider perspective I was hoping to avoid. There is a lot of drinking and sex which seem equally joyless, the moral perhaps being hinted at that perhaps risky behaviour in life and relationships never works out. The 'action' constantly jumps around Sheffield and the Peak without much reason, and anyone who doesn't know the area well will be left bewildered. Meh.

Megalithic sites in Britain and Megalithic Lunar Observatories - A Thom
Xmas treat for myself having read many books that reference them. Wow. These slim volumes represent the tip of a giant iceberg of research and understanding; it's no surprise the archaeological world was blindsided and mostly rushed to find reasons to safely ignore them. Lots of algebra, statistics and site surveys all presented with beautiful pen and ink hand drawn diagrams and graphs from a pre-computer age. The writing is meant less to convince than to teach you to do it yourself and let the results speak. And a lot of it is very convincing (the astronomy), other parts less so (some of the geometry), but it is often hard to understand the potential errors and their effects. Ultimately, despite Thom's assertions of 'statistical certainties' it is all circumstantial in a way a dateable find will never be, so the establishment's ongoing wariness can be understood, but it's also a very numbers-based MEng approach that must have terrified all those humanities profs who at the time didn't even have pocket calculators. Inspirational stuff (I have since bought a theodolite).

[spidermonkey09]

Black Car Burning - Helen Mort.

Climbing fiction doesn't come along very often, and yet, despite being from and about the heart of the Sheffield scene, published in 2019, with a lot of promotion and positive reviews from writers like Macfarlane and M John, review or comment for this book is weirdly absent in the climbing world. It didn't get a UKC review or shortlisting for the BT, nor generate any forum traffic. To be honest I wasn't drawn to it either (received it as a gift) - someone else's perspective on something so close is likely to jar - and the cover with a rope sewn into a carbine hook isn't a great start. But I enjoyed the first 100 pages, the writing style is a bit terse for my liking but I soon got over it, and I enjoyed the one page landscape statements. but it soon started to drag. Nothing much happens, the characters never really develop, and everything is told from inside someone's head in a manner that is perhaps intended to be gritty and real but just comes across as dull and tedious. By the final 100 pages I was just trying to finish in the hope it might improve. There are a few nice descriptions of soloing but mostly the climbing seems to be a vehicle for people to have accidents or exhibit selfish behaviour - just the sort of cliched outsider perspective I was hoping to avoid. There is a lot of drinking and sex which seem equally joyless, the moral perhaps being hinted at that perhaps risky behaviour in life and relationships never works out. The 'action' constantly jumps around Sheffield and the Peak without much reason, and anyone who doesn't know the area well will be left bewildered. Meh.

I got this as a gift too and keep putting it off for much the same reasons you did. I'll give it a go but doesn't sound like I'm missing a masterpiece.

[steveri]

Re: Black Car Burning. Enjoyed and I think deliberately drab and a bit grubby, rather like M John Harrison’s ‘Cimbers’. I believe she’s a fan? I thought the (typically) one pager ‘narratives’ from the places were one of the best things about it and allowed the poet a bit more of a free rein. Good, could have been tighter. Brave attempt.

[jwi]

I just read Andy Meir's Project Hail Mary. An enjoyable Jules Verne for the 21 century. The protagonist wakes up with amnesia (a plot device: does not happen in real life) and figures out that the apparent gravity is too high for it to be on earth and makes a ridiculously complicated experiment to figure out if their are in a centrifuge (the protagoinst is painted to be scientifically literate and clever, surely they would have heard of Focault's pendelum?) After the protagonist comes to their senses, they strike up an unlikely friendship with a very hands-on engineer, with whom they save two worlds.

Really like the puzzle-box structure, but I was a bit disappointed by some strange logic things. Like: why are there no checklists in an inter-solar vehicle? How can you not know about Coriolis force if you plan to work in a centrifuge? How do you learn a completely unfamiliar language that fast if your linguistics skills are so bad you cannot even think of a gender-neutral pronoun in your native English? So, all in all a great book with some unfortunate plot devices.

[duncan]

The Tower, Kelly Cordes brilliant history of climbing on Cerro Torre, has been recorded by the author and made available for nothing here. He's not a professional narrator but I've enjoyed the subtle changes in tone which betray his perspective more than words on a page do and the occasional pause and slurp (is it coffee...or a margarita?). 

[Johnny Brown]

That's a great book.

[SamT]

"A feeling for Rock"  Sarah-Jane Dobson deserves a mention..

Just a magical collection of climbing related prose and missives.  Seems to really cut to the nub of what its all about (for me anyhow).