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dustydigger
Posted 2022-03-31 4:10 PM (#23901 - in reply to #23638)
Subject: Re: Pick & Mix challenge 2022		Quote Reply



Elite Veteran

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Location: UK		Not a lot of reading done in March.
Completed the Inheritance trilogy with Kingdom of GodsI prefer this trilogy to the Broken Earth series. The world building is superlative,the gods are fascinating,(rather like the greek pantheon,but more complex) and the plot complicated so you need to be alert.lol.
Finished Network Effect,pleasant but not earthshattering enough to win all those awards..Not sure why people got so excited,there was nothing really new to old timers of SF robots andandroids. So the android likes soap operas and old TV shows.is that so striking as to win awards?
Completed the 2nd and 3rd books of the Bobiverse,For We are Many and All these Worlds . Diminishing returns of course,but For We Are Many was good fun. Its gratifying to have read so much SF so as to get all the references to so many books of the past. Agreeable fluff really,and I didnt find All These Worlds very engaging.It was repetitious and rather to IMO.
Far far behind with my TBR this month,too distracted with health and family matters to read serious stuff,as I am only getting brief 10 minute stretches of reading time,so I am reading SF lite books which dont need much brain power.lol.I am going to wait for a new month and hopefully a new mindset.
For now I think I'll only read short stories or fluff
Read Angela Carter's famous short story,The Bloody Chamber. I am a real fan of fairy tales and was interested to see Carter stuck quite close to Perraults version of Bluebeard. Carter shocked the literary world with her collection of tales based on fairy tales. Many were shocked by her often brutal and sexual takes on the stories,but those interested in folk and fairy tales will not be so shocked. The old tales were very brutal,cruel and callous,all she did was highlight the nasty or decadent tropes with a feminist twist,making the females less passive and helpless.
I understood her decadent slant on the tale,and the first part of the story was excellent,but then the transition to the horror part was faintly risible and incredible to me,and the end with the heroine(?) being rescued by her mother galloping in on a horse and shooting the Bluebeard character was a little odd!
The only other Carter book I attempted was Nights at the Circus,and I gave up after 50 pages,I hated the characters,plot and style so much. Extremely rare to DNF a book,possibly only 1 or 2 a year. So I am definitely not an Angela Carter fan!
Really enjoyed Murray Leinster's iconic 1934 short story Sidewise in Time
The Sidewise Award for Alternate History stories is a reference to this story,possibly the earliest alternate world/timeline story printed. It spawned a whole subgenre which is very popular to this day. Isaac Asimov said it had a strong influence on his The End of Eternity
It is quite pulpy and has,for a change ,not a mad scientist (so ubiquitous to the 30s magazine stories),but instead a mad mathematician! lol.The explanations of the altertnate timelines erupting into modern day,with dinosaurs,an ice age,roman legions,confederates winning the war between the states all tossed off carelessly are a bit wordy by todays standards but at the time must have been truly astonishing,and though pulpy and a bit clunky,the story is still readable today. Good fun.
Nearly finished Ill Met in Lankhmar.Pratchett claims it wasnt a direct influence on his Ank Morpork,but a bossy overlord who interferes with social systems,a very smelly river,and a Thieves Guild all seem somehow linked with this Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser tale. Not my sort of thing really,but at least there is humour and a lightness to Leiber's fantasy stories. Conan and Elric of Melnibone are not exactly laugh a minute. I wonder if there wasnt a touch of satire at work here,something often found in Leiber's work

And thats about it for March. No really great or memorable reads,but I must admit to being very distracted most of the month.

18 Pick N' Mixers have now read 189 books for the challenge so far this year. Only 56 books,below earlier months. We all seem to be in the doldrums,lets hope for strong winds to push us forward next month!

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