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What 📔book are you reading right now?

Squint-eyed Southerner said:
You could do worse. I think I may have mentioned somewhere on an earlier page that I spent several months, a few years ago, catching up on all the Dickens I'd neglected for so long -- and also his buddy Wilkie Collins. Very rewarding reading.
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I love Wilkie Collins. Dickens.... not so much. You can tell he was paid by the word - that man lacked a good editor 🤣
 
Re-reading the third and final (2013) book of Swiss Catholic theologian's Hans Küng's (1928-2021) memoirs.
 
Well-aged Enting said:
Yes, Dickens and Collins I have... along with a few others. (Have I read them all? well, umnhhh.... nope. No wonder I'm a few bricks short of a full wall.)
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I've read a few Dickens' works: David Copperfield, Great Expectations, his Ghost Stories (in which I include A Christmas Carol).
Wilkie Colins is on my list...there are just too many other works that take precedence. 🙁
Nope, thou art most assuredly not. I read a lot of SF (rather indiscriminately, if truth be told) when I was much, much younger.
What I have left can fit on a one meter shelf.
All Clarke is gone except for 2001.
All Asimov is gone except for the original 3 Foundation books and his "Asimov's Mysteries". It is a collection of short mysteries. Most, if not all are very good. I find myself re-reading them every year or so even tho' I know how they end. 😁

I have several collections of short stories by Theodore Sturgeon, Harlan Ellison, Philip K. Dick, and others, most being of the Golden Age and Silver Age of SF.

I liked the original Dune. I enjoyed Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card).
I read Ursula LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness, which was OK except for the part about crossing the Gobrin Ice... that was very good.

I mentioned John Wyndham's stories in the thread about earlier 20th C. movies.
I've also mentioned Ray Bradbury, tho' there is some debate as to describing his works as true SF.
I think he falls more under the same genre as Hawthorne; that is, stories that have a supernatural and/or fantastic element to them.

And then there's.....Robert A Heinlein 😁.
With a few exceptions that are more "adult" (maybe a half dozen come to mind) I thoroughly enjoy nearly all of his "Juvenile Fiction".
The six or so [adult ] novels all predate Stranger in a Strange Land (which I did not care for and prompted me to ignore anything RAH wrote after that).
Oh, and I have his Past Through Tomorrow collection, which contains his early "Future Histories" Stories.
 
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Starbrow said:
I also enjoy SciFi - Ursula K. Leguin and Robert Heinlein are my favorites.
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I also read Scifi a lot. I read the first three Foundation novels and am taking a break. I also recently read Marrow by Robert Reed, it was a very good scifi story. One of my favorites that I've read was Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke, another excellent story.
 
Regarding "Rama" you and I must have read different stories with the same title.
It must a have been over 40 years ago that I read it, and I recall that I didn't like it, or at least was "meh" about it.
And right now (channeling a certain Maia) I can honestly say of the story itself that "I have no memory of it."
 
Deimos said:
Of the six or so exceptions all predate Stranger in a Strange Land (which I did not care
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Precisely. This is where Heinlein lost me as well.
 
Well-aged Enting said:
Precisely. This is where Heinlein lost me as well.
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Not sure I conveyed my thoughts on this clearly, so I slightly amended my original post.
What I was trying to say was that I enjoy nearly all his juvenile Fiction ,maybe 3 excepted.
Before he wrote SIASL he wrote quite a few more "Adult" novels and most of those I enjoyed as well. As I said, I can name about 6 off the top of my head.
But when SIASL came out (can't recall when, mid 60s maybe)...and were assigned it in SF class I was taking in University,... Well, [I thought] pretty weird.
Then there were the ones that followed: Time Enough for Love, I WIll Fear No Evil.... I only had to read about them, that is, the plot reviews/synopses to decide, OK really bizarre. And not even going to touch The Number of the Beast, To Sail Beyond the Sunset etc.
Thanks, but no thanks... I'll stick with what I already have of his earlier works.

@ Well- aged Enting...FYI .... that quote in my signature that you like?....came from The Star Beast.
Just thought you'd like to know in case you were wondering.... 😁
 
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Reactions: Ent
Deimos said:
Not sure I conveyed my thoughts on this clearly,
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Actually, I thought you conveyed your thoughts well.
Heinlein was very much on my reading list too, until Stranger in a Strange Land.
With that book I thought he went a bit off the rails.
My brief look at the one following, (which I did not buy), confirmed my thought, and I've not read anything of his since.
His earlier stuff I would reread if i had the time and inclination - it was good stuff. But there are others I would reread first.
 
I treat his juvenile fiction as "literary comfort foods"...just pick it up and start reading, goes down pretty easy and never fails to make me feel better.
I can be in the middle of the Iliad (which I re-read avery other year, alternating with the Odyssey) and pick up A RAH novel and still stay focused on the Iliad (in another part of my mind), and just read both. I can do that with most books as long as the genres are totally different. Say, reading ghost stories in tandem with a history or maybe a biography.
 
Deimos said:
stay focused
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It is a bit of a gift to be able to multi-task like that.
I'm currently working on 4 - not different genres - but with ever-increasing age it's getting more difficult to make the clean breaks needed.
It's just too many.
I'm now finding I need to step back for a quick scan of the last little bit to re-engage the brain cells, then proceed.
 
Well there's your problem! You are reading the same genres, or ones that are too similar !
Mix it up a bit and it might be easier (or at least less difficult 😉)
 
Reactions: Ent
Erestor Arcamen said:
One of my favorites that I've read was Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke, another excellent story.
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"Rendezvous with Rama" is from 1973, so almost, but not over 40 years ago. It's the first book in the series of four, the only one Clarke wrote alone, and the shortest one at 243 pages in my 1990 Bantam paperback edition.
"Rama II", 1989/90, 466 pages, "Garden of Rama", 1991/98, 593 pages, and "Rama Revealed", 1994/95, 602 pages, are all collaborations with Gentry Lee.
From what I vaguely remember, Lee did most of the actual writing, with Clarke providing the framework or "skeleton". The three Lee collaborations appealed less to me that Clake's first solo book.
 
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