Vintage Tales discussion

Right now I am finishing Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods and Red Lily then will get to my next reads afterwards.

Currently reading "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl - it's about his time in a German concentration camp during the holocaust. It's a short book, but it's hard to read because it's so confronting.

Tori, I read Man's Search for Meaning back when I was in college. I remember it as a very powerful and ultimately rewarding read.

Besides the book(s) I'm reading in print, I recently started a novel on my Kindle app, Agent with a History, the opening installment of Guy S. Stanton III's Agents for Good series. He offered the e-book version free for a limited time early this fall, and I decided to check it out. (If I like it, I'll buy a print copy, and continue with the series --though I arguably need to start another series about as much as I need a hole in the head! :-) )

Recently I finished two short reads De Profundis and The Death of Ivan Ilych and an epic historical novel Wolf Hall.

I'm now reading The French Revolution: A History and The Age of Innocence.

Finishing The Genius Wars then will get to my next reads later.

From time to time, I review fiction with action-oriented heroines, for a website catering to fans of that sort of media, and I'd recently decided to review the 1988 film novelization Willow. But I read it about 25 years ago, and quickly realized that I'd forgotten a significant amount of detail! To do a serious review, I need to reread it; so I started on my second reading of the book this past Friday. I'm also hoping to re-watch the movie and compare the two.

One thing I'm trying to do lately in my reading is to be more focused on following up (and where possible, finishing), series I've started and wanted to continue, but haven't gotten around to doing so. In pursuit of that objective, I'm currently reading Petty Treason, the second book in Madeleine E. Robins' Sarah Tolerance series, which follows the adventures of a trail-blazing female "agent of inquiry" (i.e., private detective) in Regency London. The series opener, Point of Honour, has been described as "Jane Austen meets Dashiel Hammett." :-)

My Goodreads friend Andrew M. Seddon has a story included in the recently-published speculative fiction anthology Misunderstood. He recently gifted me with a copy; so I started reading it last weekend, as soon as I possibly could!

On New Year's Day, I started the new year with a new read: The Informationist, by Taylor Stevens. I'd tried to read it a couple of years ago, and that didn't work out (long story --it was because of circumstances at the time, not due to any flaw in the book!) My curiosity about how it would resolve was piqued, though; so having gotten a copy last year from BookMooch, I'm now starting it over at the beginning for a cover-to-cover read.

I'm reading Frankenstein by Mary Shelley for my 19th century literature class. It is quite depressing and I'm not sure whether I like it or not. After this I'll start The Picture of Dorian Gray. They could just as well call this course "Classics 2.0"

Someone recently donated a copy of Same Kind of Different As Me: A Modern-Day Slave, an International Art Dealer, and the Unlikely Woman Who Bound Them Together to the library where I work. It wasn't on my radar to read before this; but the question of how to catalog it arose (we classify nonfiction books by their subject matter --but pigeonholing that into the systematic schema isn't always an exact science). There's pretty much no good way to do that for certain without reading the book, so I'm reading it. It's turned out to be surprisingly fascinating!

Annebeth, I've read both the books you mentioned. I gave Frankenstein three stars, which in Goodreads' scale means that I liked it, but you're right that it's depressing. It's very definitely a dark, tragic novel, which is why it didn't get more stars from me; I'm personally much more drawn to more upbeat works.

Are you majoring in English? (Sometimes I regret that I didn't!) I'd love to be taking that 19th-Century Literature class!

I just started God's Little Acre (1933) by Erskine Caldwell.
This month I've read:
Another Country by James Baldwin
Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Right now, I'm reading Crown of Aloes, Norah Lofts' historical novel about Queen Isabella of Spain. It's a common read for next month in the Norah Lofts fan group here on Goodreads; but the discussion thread is already up, and since I was ready for a new book, I started it a little early.

First published in 1973, it's not old enough to be called a classic. A number of earlier novels by Lofts (1904-1983), though, arguably could fit that definition, both in terms of their age and their quality.

Werner wrote: "Someone recently donated a copy of Same Kind of Different As Me: A Modern-Day Slave, an International Art Dealer, and the Unlikely Woman Who Bound Them Together to the library where ..."

Werner, it's for the reasons you cited that I pushed Frankenstein further and further down my to-read list! Another reason that I don't feel drawn to the novel is the sci-fic element, which is my bete noire!

I recently read A Place of Greater Safety, Marie Antoinette: The Journey, The French Revolution: A History and The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories.

Have just finished The Fall.

Werner wrote: "Barb and I just started a new "car book" yesterday, Operation Chaos by Poul Anderson. We'll probably read quite a bit in it today, since we'll be leaving shortly to spend a few days w..."

Werner, I read this when it was first published in 1971 and greatly and enjoyed it. But I'm not sure I ever read any Poul Anderson works that I didn't enjoy. One of the very first SF novels that I read--and this was probably 50 years ago- was Anderson's Vault of the Ages . I still have that book somewhere in my basement. That one truly is a classic. It's very much in the vein of the Heinlein juvenile SF novels. I wish that Anderson had written several more in that sub genre, but his more mature novels are quite suitable for the YA audience anyway.

Werner wrote: "Beth, Operation Chaos was recommended to me several years ago (when I was new to Goodreads) by a Goodreads friend, but I can't remember now who it was. The Broken Sword sounds familiar... For SF by Anderson, I'd definitely recommend The High Crusade. My review of that one is here: www.goodreads.com/review/show/18226215"

The High Crusade was serialized in Analog and its first part was in the very first Analog that I ever bought.

I have four more Poul Anderson books on my to-read shelf: Operation Luna (which is a sequel to Operation Chaos), The Collected Short Works of Poul Anderson, Volume 1: Call Me Joe; A Midsummer Tempest, and No Truce with Kings. There are quite a few more I'd like to add; but at the moment, I'm trying to hold my to-read shelf to 399 books!

Operation Chaos was my top favorite read in 2015!

Werner wrote: "I have four more Poul Anderson books on my to-read shelf: Operation Luna (which is a sequel to Operation Chaos), [book:The Collected Short Works of Poul Anderson, Volume 1: Call Me Jo..."

Werner, I really think that Poul Anderson shines the brightest when he was writing novellas. No Truce with Kings is just exceptional. I think that both it and Call Me Joe won awards. I read A Midsummer Tempest and really enjoyed it also. Anderson really was almost equally good in writing fantasy or hard SF. I actually preferred the latter, especially the works in the Time Patrol series and in the Maurai series. See the Wiki bibliography in the link below. (For what it's worth, Anderson's daughter, Astrid, is one of my Facebook friends. Astrid is married to another really good SF writer, Greg Bear.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poul_An...

Larry wrote: "...Anderson's daughter, Astrid, is one of my Facebook friends." Cool, it's a small world! And I'd heard of Bear (we have one or two of his books in the Bluefield College library collection), but I had no idea that he was Anderson's son-in-law.

Thanks for that link! When time permits, I'll definitely be checking it out. Don't know when I'll get around to reading any of these books ("So many books, so little time!"); but whenever I do, I'll review them here on Goodreads.

I just finished E.B. White's Here Is New York. Published in book form, it's really just an extended essay. And it is often cited as one of the top essays about New York City. Put simply, it was great.

Even though White wrote it in 1949, I bet many of the points he made are still valid, e.g. there are three kinds of New Yorkers: natives, commuters, and those who have come to the city in search of something. His writing about the self-sufficiency the neighborhood and how all things are available to the residents within that small neighborhood (which might only be a few blocks in area) was so insightful. And his sentence about the threats to the city in how we lived in an age where airplanes could fly over the city and "towers" (his own word) might fall was a scary precognition of what came to be ... more than fifty years after he wrote the book. Even in 1949, he noted that there were "fewer newspapers than there used to be .. One misses the Globe, the Mail, the Herald; and to many New Yorker life has never been the same since the World took the count."

Here's one last quote: "It's a miracle that New York works at all. The whole thing is implausible."

And if New York City is anything like other major U.S. cities, most if not all of the tight-knit, self-sufficient neighborhoods White extolled have probably been systematically destroyed by social engineering and "urban development." :-(

Right now, I'm reading two books, one in e-book format. That one is the anthology The Worlds Of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror, which I recently picked up for free on Smashwords. It includes a story by my friend Andrew Seddon, whom I've often mentioned on this thread.

My current "regular," print read is Night Sea Journey by another of my Goodreads friends, Paula Cappa, who's also my co-moderator in the Supernatural Fiction Readers group. (So it's not surprising that the front cover of this book has the description, "A TALE OF THE SUPERNATURAL.") I've read or beta read some of Paula's short stories before, but this is my first experience with her long fiction.

Werner wrote: "Right now, I'm reading two books, one in e-book format. That one is the anthology The Worlds Of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror, which I recently picked up for free on Smashwords. It includes a story by my friend Andrew Seddon, whom I've often mentioned on this thread. ..."

Werner, it wasn't free, but since it was only $1.25 on Amazon, I just bought a Kindle copy of the book.

Larry, maybe the give-away for free was only on Smashwords, or maybe it was temporary and is now expired (I got my e-copy last week or earlier --I don't recall the exact day). I hope it proves to be worth $1.25, especially if you bought it because I mentioned it! :-) The only writer in the book that I'd heard of before is Andrew; I have the impression that the compiler didn't care much about quality control, and of the two stories I've read so far, I didn't care at all for the first one. But the second one, by Sarah Knight, is a real barn-burner; so you should have at least two tales there that are worth reading!

Werner wrote: "Larry, maybe the give-away for free was only on Smashwords, or maybe it was temporary and is now expired (I got my e-copy last week or earlier --I don't recall the exact day). I hope it proves to b..."

Werner,

I noticed that a lot of the stories collected in the new anthology were by Australians. That's fine. For years, actually decades, the only non-American SF books that appealed to me were ones by British or Canadian authors. That is definitely changing. I am reading The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin and find it really good. Since it won the Hugo for Best SF novel in 2015, it seems that a lot of others thought it was more than good.

The last few days, after we have finished our breakfast together, I've been picking up Songs and Sonnets from Laura's Lifetime as translated by Nicholas Kilmer and just reading one sonnet. It's not a close translation at all, although that's based what Kilmer says in his introduction and not my own reading. He says this: "The shapes and sounds of my verse do not imitate the Italian. My answer to the sonnet tends to be a small, square, sometimes irregular poem. My answer to the song is loser, more irregular, less mellifluous."

I wouldn't call Kilmer's translation great poetry, but it is deeply thoughtful. If you want a careful translation, do look at Robert Durlin's Petrarch's Lyric Poems: The "Rime Sparse" and Other Lyrics. I sometimes read the same sonnet in Durling's translation after I've read the Kilmer.

Larry wrote: "I noticed that a lot of the stories collected in the new anthology were by Australians."

That's probably because the publishing house is Australian-based, and the editor is apparently an Aussie.

I'm woefully poorly read in fiction by any authors other than American or British --even those from Canada, which is a contiguous country, and from Australia, where I have a family connection. (I'm ashamed to say I can't ever recall reading a whole book by an Aussie author, although I've read a few by Canadians!) That's true not only of SF, but of fiction in general. :-(

Werner, I'm also deficient in my reading of authors from these two countries. We lived in Australia for a year when I was on assignment from the U.S. government and I did pick up a good number of books by Australian authors. That was in the area of generAl fiction and literature and not SF. For Canada, other than Robertson Davies, I can't remember a Canadian author whose works I've read in terms of general fiction or lit. But for Canadian SF, I've read a bit. I really admire Robert Charles Wilson.

Werner, I'm about to start the Australian novel Cloudstreet by Tim Winton as a group read in another GoodReads group. I am really looking forward to reading this book.

It looks interesting, Larry; I hope you enjoy it! I have one book by an Australian author, Marianne de Pierres, on my to-read shelf (and my BookMooch wishlist): Peacemaker.

Although I've heard of Davies and Wilson, I've never read any of their work. My favorite Canadian author is Charles de Lint, who writes both traditional and urban fantasy. But for Canadian general fiction, I highly recommend Lucy Maud Montgomery; Barb and I have read the first two volumes of her Anne of Green Gables series. (The first one is the better of the two.)

Werner wrote: "Although I've heard of Davies and Wilson, I've never read any of their work. My favorite Canadian author is Charles de Lint, who writes both traditional and urban fantasy. But for Canadian general fiction, I highly recommend Lucy Maud Montgomery; Barb and I have read the first two volumes of her Anne of Green Gables series...."

Werner, I actually have read some of the early Charles de Lint urban fantasies. I thought that they were strikingly original. I don't know if you get the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction but de Lint has had a book review column for years in that periodical. His reviews of others' works are very insightful but almost always kind, especially toward new authors.

As for Robert Charles Wilson, his Spin trilogy (Spin, Axis, and Vortex) was definitely one of my favorite SF series of the past decade. The first one won the Hugo in 2006. Wilson is another Facebook friend.

I do have a Kindle copy of Anne of Green Gables. I'll suggest to my wife that we read it together.

I

Larry, if I were on Facebook, I'd be honored to friend you there. But I haven't been on there for some time (and was only on it for a brief period). So Goodreads is the only social network where I hang out!

If you and your wife do read Anne of Green Gables, I hope you like it! (Very early in our married life, Barb and I formed the practice of my reading aloud to her, though we also both enjoy reading by ourselves as well; so that's one of a number of books we experienced together that way.) There's also a wonderful TV miniseries adaptation, made in 1985 and available on DVD, starring Megan Follows as Anne. I highly recommend that one!

No, I don't take The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, though I know it by reputation (and we have some older back issues, which I picked up cheap at a flea market years ago, at the Bluefield College library where I work). But I'm sure de Lint would be an interesting and insightful reviewer of books!

I started Bernard Cornwell's Waterloo: The True Story of Four Days, Three Armies and Three Battles a few days ago. Wow! People often talk about how a certain work reads like a novel, usually meant in a positive way. I guess with all of the experience that Cornwell has in writing novels, e.g. the Sharpe series devoted to the Napoleonic Wars, it should be of little surprise that he can write engagingly with great suspense, etc. I know more than a little about the Battle of Waterloo, but I'm learning many important things I didn't know.

To be honest, I am careful about history written by non-historians. Oh, when it comes to ones like Tuchman or Manchester, I probably like their books better than the works of most professional historians. But generally, the inaccuracies that exist in most popular histories bother me a lot. But this is a fascinating book ... and I can hardly wait to get back to it.

When we read the classics, informed criticism is often very helpful. Elsewhere I have mentioned that I have been reading James Wood's The Fun Stuff: And Other Essays. In his essay on Edmund Wilson, he has the following relating to Edmund Wilson on Proust (So what you get in Wood's book is a modern great critic writing about a past great critic writing about a great writer):

"The chapter on Proust, from Axel’s Castle, is an astonishing thirty-page summary of À la recherche du temps perdu, and ends with a paragraph that used to be famous: Proust is perhaps the last great historian of the loves, the society, the intelligence, the diplomacy, the literature and the art of the Heartbreak House of capitalist culture; and the little man with the sad appealing voice, the metaphysician’s mind, the Saracen’s beak, the ill-fitting dress-shirt and the great eyes that seem to see all about him like the many-faceted eyes of a fly, dominates the scene and plays host in the mansion where he is not long to be master."

"A paragraph that used to be famous" ... I smile every time I read that sentence.

Note: It may be easiest to find a good copy of Edmund Wilson's Axel's Castle in the Library of America collection, Literary Essays and Reviews of the 1920s & 30s. You also get Wilson's other collection of essays, The Shores of Light in that volume):

My two just-previous books were such quick reads that I finished them before I could get around to posting about them here. One was a free review copy that I got as a very kind gift (in paper format, because he knew that was my preference) from Goodreads author Bran Gustafson, who's in a couple of other groups with me: his debut novel Coyote, the opener for a projected series. (I also want to read the next volume, when it's published!) The other and much shorter one was a kid's book, Stone Fox, by John Reynolds Gardiner. My ten-year-old grandson recently read it, and was so excited about it he lent me his copy so that I could read it as well.

Now, I'm into reading the third book in Madeleine E. Robins' Sarah Tolerance series, The Sleeping Partner. When I'm done with this one, I'll be caught up with the series, as there are no other volumes published yet.

I really like graphic novels and some comments made in another GoodReads group made me think about a book that I bought perhaps a year ago, even though it's not really a graphic novel. This was Whitman Illuminated: Song of Myself. The book is a graphic masterpiece and contains all of Song of Myself. But ... masterpiece or not, I found it easier to read the actual poetry using a standard edition and then just marvel at the same text turned into art by Allen Crawford. This is from a review by the Guardian, with a link for the whole article following:

"Was it worth it? Yes. This version of Song of Myself is just occasionally tricky to follow, Crawford having “liberated” its lines from their blocks of verse so that they flow freely over the page “like a stream or a bustling city crowd”. But what it lacks in legibility it makes up for in beauty. This is a 21st-century version of an illuminated manuscript: as portable as a Kindle, but a thousand times more lovely. Crawford’s greatest achievement, I think, is to have caught Whitman’s sensibility so well – grand but intimate, earthy but also dreamy..."

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015...

Earlier on this thread, I've mentioned that my wife and I have been reading Suzanne Arruda's Jade del Cameron series together. We've recently started on the third book, The Serpent's Daughter, which takes Jade to Morocco in 1920. Both of the earlier series installments got five stars from me, so I have high hopes for this one as well.

For once, I'm currently reading a classic --The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson, which another of my groups is doing as a common read this month. This is actually a reread for me, but I first read it back in junior high school, and have never done a review of it for Goodreads. So I'm welcoming this opportunity to refresh my memory of many details I'd forgotten, and to view the whole thing from an adult perspective.

Larry wrote: "I started Bernard Cornwell's Waterloo: The True Story of Four Days, Three Armies and Three Battles a few days ago. Wow! People often talk about how a certain work reads like a novel..."

Larry, good to hear you're liking Waterloo: The True Story of Four Days, Three Armies and Three Battles. It's high on my to-read list!

I'm reading Blood & Beauty: The Borgias and am enjoying it a great deal.

I just finished Claude Houghton's mystery I Am Jonathan Scrivener. It was published in 1930 and is well worth reading. My full review is here:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Though it was published in 1943, I wouldn't characterize the book I'm currently reading --Dave Dawson on the Russian Front, by R. Sidney Bowen-- as a "classic." :-) It's part of a series of World War II action adventure books featuring American ace fighter pilot Dawson and his British sidekick Freddie Farmer as peripatetic agents for Allied intelligence. I read it back in grade school, and even did a Goodreads review of sorts from memory in 2008. But I'm thinking of writing a serious review for another site (long story!) and that requires an adult reread.

Reading aloud The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett to my children. I simply adore this story. Loved it as a child and still love it today.

When I finished reading the opening volume of Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody historical mysteries, Crocodile on the Sandbank, six years ago, I was resolved to read more of the series. It's taken me quite awhile to get back to it, even though I was able to get a copy of the second book from BookMooch a few years ago. But I finally started on the latter book yesterday! This is a long awaited read; I'm already entranced with (and sometimes caused to laugh out loud by) Amelia's drolly humorous, deadpan narrative voice.

right now I am reading The Witch's Revenge then will get to my next read after that.

I'm actually halfway through reading Wicked: The life and times of the wicked witch of the west. It is intrguiging to say in the least.

Right now, I'm reading books in both paperback and (which isn't always the case) electronic format. In the former, I'm taking part this month in a common read of Peter O'Donnell's 1965 series opener Modesty Blaise, in another group. On my Kindle app, I'm reading a novel that was temporarily offered for free earlier this year, Walking The Edge (the first book the Corpus Brides series by Zee Monodee). The O'Donnell book is one I've wanted to read for decades (so it's about time!); the other one caught my attention through a Goodreads friend's five-star review.

I'm reading The Vatican Princess: A Novel of Lucrezia Borgia by C.W. Gortner.

After taking a stab at reading The Queen of the South by Arturo Perez-Reverte, back in 2009, and making a very negative judgment of it after reading just three chapters, I've finally taken it from my "started-not-finished" shelf for a second try, just so I can write a serious and fair review of it --long story! (I didn't write a review the first time, just a short note explaining why I didn't finish it.) This time around, I may not like it any better; but at least I'll have given it more of a chance than I did the first time around.

As it turned out, The Queen of the South flunked its second chance; I read through Chapter 7 and skimmed the rest carefully enough to do a review for another site (though not for Goodreads), but I'm not the target audience for it. So it's gone back to the "started-not-finished" shelf to stay.

My wife Barb and I have both become thoroughly hooked on the Jade del Cameron series (which I've mentioned before on this thread). We've just started on the fourth installment, The Leopard's Prey.