What are we reading in November?

So many books,so little time.What plans do you have for November?

No real plans for November,lufe is rather fraught and difficult at the moment,aspoor Mr Dusty is falling into paranoia along with memory loss.
All I can try to fit in some short stories I have to read for a challenge in a group of mine,and one or two crime or fantasy light fluff..

>2 dustydigger:
Wishing you and Mr Dusty strength.

>2 dustydigger:

Sorry to hear that, Dusty. Thanks for being here to hang with us.

In Progress
Shadowland
Kothar of the Magic Sword

On Deck
Prince of Scorpio
Lies, Inc.
Aurora

Ordered/Requested
Beyond the Hallowed Sky
Beyond the Reach of Earth

My TBR got sort of jumbled and delayed in October. So I'm still only midway through my Hallowe'en read of Straub's Shadowland, and I've read just the first of the stories in Fox's Kothar of the Magic Sword. I expect to finish both in November, and I've set aside the three further listed books for my sf reading to ramp up toward year's end.

November 2024 Reading Plan

Texas Standoff - Elmer Kelton
Forward the Foundation - Isaac Asimov
All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque
The Daughter’s War - Christopher Buehlman
Copperhead - Bernard Cornwell
The Cowardly Lion of Oz - Ruth Plumy Thompson
Jade City - Fonda Lee
The Way of Edan - Philip Chase

I am about a third of the way through Timescape. Should be able to finish it next week now that our group read along of The October Country has wrapped up. Not sure what I’ll read after that. I am tempted to start my reread of Tolkien: The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings. I’ve only read Hobbit twice and the others only once. I want to read what the original was like before I start reading some more recent fantasy. I may have to leave this group and move over to the fantasy readers group for awhile!

We’ll see how the reading spirit moves me.

I have in hand The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands (I'm finding it a little slight), The Mercy of Gods, Edges, Devil's Gun, and Lords of Uncreation.

Finished The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands, again, "slight" is the word that best describes it, at least for me. I didn't get much of an emotional payout.

Half way through Sheine Lende. Meh. I don't know why I try to read young adult books. I never seem to stay interested in them. Also reading The First Men in the Moon. That one is more entertaining.

Finished Salvation, now a mystery diversion with Lament for a Maker.

177 pages into my wade through Hartwell's The Science Fiction Century. Some surprises so far.

James Tiptree Jnr. - Beam us Home: surprised to see this was written in 1969! Of course, it now inhabits an alternate universe where there was no continuation of the Trek universe.
C.S. Lewis - Ministering Angels: "uproariously politically incorrect" says Hartwell in his intro. I found little to justify any sort of enthusiasm for this.
Edgar Pangborn - The Music Master of Babylon: elegiac.
H.G. Wells - A Story of the Days to Come: 1897 future history. Has a description of a smart speaker-like device that would have meant little when the anthology was first published in 1997. Otherwise projects Victorian values forward into the 22nd century.
Hal Clement - Hot Planet (1963): info-dumps about Mercury, now known to be incorrect. Mixed-sex spaceship crew but otherwise pedestrian and unremarkable.
James Blish - A Work of Art (1956): the composer Richard Strauss is brought back to life, seemingly. Not an AI story, but has certain resonances with such a theme, and writes about the business of creatives in fairly resonant terms.
E.M. Forster - The Machine Stops (1908): prescient, perhaps more so now than then, when Forster merely meant it as a counterblast to Wells' A Modern Utopia. Should be required reading.

>12 RobertDay: I remember reading The Machine Stops in grade school. Excellent short story.

I finished Shadowland and posted a review.

>2 dustydigger: I'm sorry to hear that you two have to go through that.

I put Hydrogen Sonata aside for a bit, reading ebooks at the moment, including Stormwarden.

Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey.

>1 dustydigger: Well crap. Hoping that you find some good fluff, anyway, to help endure the difficulties.

Hoping to read A half-built garden By Ruthanna Emrys for a book group next week.

I am gallivanting in other genres at the moment but ended up reading a SF novella: Unexploded Remnants. I was pleasantly surprised - it did have some heavy-handed moments but overall I quite enjoyed it.

Finished The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands, again, "slight" is the word that best describes it, at least for me. I didn't get much of an emotional payout.

Finished Timescape. I really enjoyed it. Reading some fantasy next: The Death of Chaos.

Over the weekend I finally finished Navigational Entanglements by Aliette de Bodard. I ordered it over the summer and kept reading a few pages and then putting it down, but I finally got through it. It's got four young people trying to solve a thorny problem and work together despite personality clashes (enjoyable) and a sapphic romance that didn't work for me at all. I do not understand why these two characters appealed to one another and the declarations of love based on very short acquaintance seemed forced. I usually really like this author's work, but this one wasn't great. I would have really enjoyed the story more without the romantic plotline (and I usually like queer romance, I'm not romance-bashing).

I also read Full Speed to a Crash Landing by Beth Revis, which was so clearly written for a different audience than me that I'm not sure I can be objective about it. It certainly doesn't help that the author stated it was written out of spite in response to someone who she felt criticized her work, to prove that she was better than they thought. I believe the author has written YA and romance in the past, and the prose felt very much like both of those things, though the plot was not. I kept muttering "bullshit" to myself every time the character described what had become of Earth. The other characters did not behave like competent adults. I am sure there is a readership who will really enjoy this, but they are not me, I found it superficial and almost insulting to my intelligence as a reader.

Wrapped up The Mercy of Gods; takes awhile to get to the point with characters that start out feckless and annoying. More inclined to finish up "The Expanse" books before continuing with this new trilogy(?).

>22 Shrike58: That's a shame. Was looking forward to reading that.

For me, reading The Hero of Ages, by Sanderson. First time Sanderson reader, been quite enjoying the series.

I did wrap up Kothar and the Magic Sword and posted a review. Now I'm about a third of the way through Prince of Scorpio. The latter is almost as derivative as the former, but not as lively.

>12 RobertDay: More progress through the Hartwell anthology:

Charles Harness - The Rose: some years since I read this. Comes over now as unduly complex, with dubious psychological themes. The pov character moonlights as a composer and choreographer, which is unlikely. Yet the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, an undoubtedly powerful piece of writing.
Philip José Farmer - Mother: more psychodrama, this time overtly Freudian.
Rudyard Kipling - As easy as ABC: Libertarianism vs. corporatism in Kipling's future history where the Aerial Board of Control governs world transit.
Michael Swanwick - Ginungagap: more political scheming, this time with arachnoid aliens.
William Tenn - Time in advance: Precrime without precognition.
Wolfgang Jeschke - The King and the Dollmaker: a slightly Brothers Grimm-flavoured story, but with time travel. Hartwell's introduction to this story holds Jeschke up as the epitome of German sf whilst managing to avoid mention of Perry Rhodan.
Connie Willis - Fire Watch: again, a while since I've read this. Now struck by how similar it is to Blackout/All Clear (apart from being set in the same universe), in terms of how much Willis gets wrong about London in WW2, and how little history her history students seem to know. Hartwell incorrectly cites her later novel Doomsday Book as a sequel to this story, whereas it seems very much to be a prequel, explaining why the character Kivrin seems so reticent about her experience on her research trip.

>25 RobertDay:

Admittedly I don't read much in German, but I'm still a bit taken aback I wasn't even aware of the name Perry Rhodan let alone its cultural impact.

Started Children of Time last night. Big book... this will take a while!

I'm reading an anthology Twelve tomorrows of mostly optimistic SF stories. There are some excellent authors involved; I especially liked Elizabeth Bear's story of those I've read so far.

I've also started The archive undying which is intriguing and confusing so far.

>28 Sakerfalcon: I haven't read the book, but I did read some of its stories that were collected in a Neil Clarke volume. I too liked "Okay, Glory."

>26 elenchus: I have heard it said that German SF consists of a) Perry Rhodan and b) everything else.

Admittedly, the literary merits of Perry Rhodan may be open to debate, but in terms of sheer quantity, the series does tend to outweigh the output of far more regarded authors such as Jeschke.

Finished Lament for a Maker and started Zoe's Tale.

>29 Stevil2001: I've just seen that my Best of Elizabeth Bear contains Okay Glory too, so I'll be able to reread it when I return Twelve tomorrows to the library. The Sarah Pinsker story, Escape from Caring Seasons, is a standout too.

About to start 2010: Odyssey Two by Arthur C. Clarke. Gotta see where he's going to take the story after how 2001 ended ...

>33 PocheFamily:

I read the whole Odyssey sequence in 2022-3; my full opinions are in my reviews (like this one for 2001). On the whole, I thought a little less of each book than the one before, but they did hold my attention through 3001.

>34 paradoxosalpha:
You have expressed my view on the series.

I'm still working on The Hydrogen Sonata, but I've set that aside for The Navigator's Children, the last book in Tad William's 2nd Osten Ard series.

I got a note from the public library that they have acquired Beyond the hallowed sky at my request, so it will be next on my TBR, after I finish Prince of Scorpio.

Today I bicycled down to the public library and borrowed Beyond the Hallowed Sky. I also wrapped up Prince of Scorpio and posted my review.

>25 RobertDay: I was given a copy of the Hartwell anthology recently. Not likely to come to the top of my TBR based on your progress reports.

>39 igorken: Don't get me wrong; I'm enjoying it, but I'm not being an uncritical reader. I'd suggest dipping into it rather than ploughing through the way I'm doing.

Finished Zoe's Tale and started Piranesi.

>38 paradoxosalpha: I enjoyed the first two books in that series, will hopefully read the third soon.

>41 ChrisRiesbeck: How did you like Zoe's Tale? I found it a bit repetitive.

>42 Karlstar:
I'm about a quarter of the way through Beyond the Hallowed Sky, and I've put a library hold request in for Beyond the Reach of Earth.

>43 Karlstar: I hadn't read The Last Colony so the events were new to me, but some of Zoë's speeches didn't know when to stop. While it breezed along, it could've used a lot of tightening.

I've finally started Translation State. Great characters!

Just finished A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers

>35 pgmcc: Another Hartwell progress report:

Poul Anderson - Goat Song: Baroque far-future adventure with one man against a planet-wide controlling computer. Reads surprisingly well to say it was written in 1972.
Jack London - The Scarlet Plague: How the modern civilised world of 2012 ended, told by a survivor in the 2070s. Except the world of 2012 was 1912 with added airships and telephones.
Cordwainer Smith - Drunkboat: It's a while since I've read any CS, and I'd forgotten just how strange and exotic his writing could be, which was his strength.
J.H. Rosny aîné - Another World: Odd narrative about what later writers would call a mutant, except his mutations give him a violet skin colour and the ability to see a co-existent world and its inhabitants that occupies the same space as ours but doesn't interact with it. And that's about it; the story actually goes nowhere further.
Gordon Eklund and Gregory Benford - If the Stars are Gods: Writing credits are reversed here, oddly. Excellent story, even if the story takes place in a future that never quite happened that way.
George Turner - I still call Australia home: Also excellent. He also used the theme of a returning relativistic starship returning to a changed Earth in his novel Beloved Son.
Alexander Kuprin - Liquid Sunshine: Sadly, the run of good stories ended here, with this Russian tale of an eccentric English inventor reversing Dean Swifts trick from Gulliver's Travels of extracting sunrays from cucumbers. Too much nuts and bolts detail of imaginary technology and casual racism. And a massive explosion resets the world to its default position - i.e. without the weird science - at the end. Why anyone thought this was worth reprinting is beyond me.
John Crowley - Great Work of Time: only part-way into this so far, but i t's alternate reality shenanigans and well written too, so the signs are good.

I have finished Beyond the Hallowed Sky and posted a quick review. The hold fairy says she already has Beyond the Reach of Earth for me, so I'm not starting other sf off my TBR pile, but I am reading (in) Going for a Beer also.

I've finished Le monde d'Edena, my first Mœbius, and, sadly, I must say that I lost interest as the issues went on and dream logic took over the plotting. The artwork was great, though.

I had this idea of moving on to Jodorowsky's oeuvre (with or without Giraud, comics and film). Perhaps these, with a different writer at the helm, will be more to my liking.

>50 Petroglyph: I haven't been so impressed with Moebius' writing, and it's not what he's known for. His art is great, and his work with Jodorowsky is definitely worth knowing. Go straight to The Incal; why not? It has been hugely influential in its own right, even if it started as a secondhand Dune.

>51 paradoxosalpha:

Thanks for the tip. I was indeed eyeing the Incal as my next read (a second-hand copy has been ordered). I'll probably manage to watch La montaña sagrada first, though (last year's viewing of El Topo whet my appetite).

>48 RobertDay: I read The Scarlet Plague right at the start of COVID. The fact that the Scarlet Plague spread so rapidly and so far because no symptoms appeared for 5 days hit too close to home.

Finished Edges, which turned out to be the solid far-future space adventure I was hoping for. A little shallow on the characterization form, but that's okay.

I finished Translation State and went to write a review, only to find that Robert Day's review perfectly set out my own feelings about the book as well. Well done, RobertDay!

Finished Piranesi, started The Bridge.

>56 ChrisRiesbeck:
My favourite Banks book.

Circling back to The Hydrogen Sonata, now that I'm done with The Navigator's Children.

>55 vwinsloe: Well, thank you!

>59 RobertDay: Thank you, actually!

Finished Devil's Gun; probably better than I'm giving it credit for but it still comes off as a little too slight for its own good.

>57 pgmcc: A bit of synchronicity that it comes after Piranesi, another book that begins with an amnesiac perfectly at home in a vast artificial landscape. I assume it will end very differently.

>62 ChrisRiesbeck:
Piranesi is quite different from The Bridge. :-)

Zipped through Bujold's Brothers in Arms so quickly over the weekend I forgot to post about it here.

Started Naomi Novik's Victory of Eagles on my flight home for Thanksgiving today.

Finished Beyond the Reach of Earth and posted my review. Next up: Lies, Inc. (f.k.a. The Unteleported Man).

Took a break from SF and read the fantasy novel The Death of Chaos which I enjoyed. Now back to SF reading a book that has been on my shelf for three decades: Bring the Jubilee.

Wrapped up Lords of Uncreation, something of a shambling mess, particularly since it's not clear that events have been actually resolved, but I was basically happy with it.