What are you reading?

[Gillianren]

That's fair. It wasn't my clearest writing.

[HenrikOlsen]

What is the correct way to use a/an before an "h" word?

CJSF

From what I've learned, it's "a" if the word is pronounced with a consonant sound first, "an" is it's a vowel sound, so which to use before "history" is a dialect/speed of pronunciation decision; speak fast and continuous and you can get "an'istory", enunciate carefully and it's "a history", both versions are equally correct.

At a guess, though it may be wildly off, your mother grew up with a dialect where h-words with short vowels tend to blend with the previous word and drop the h in fast speech.

[CJSF]

Well, my mother grew up in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, but has always been what I think of as a "dialect assimilator." She quickly picks up and uses (sometimes to our embarrassment growing up) the dilect and speech patterns of the people she is speaking with. She also lived a stint in Florida, Louisiana (I think) and spent a fair bit of time in a convent. So her speech can be a bit weird at times.

CJSF

[Parrothead]

Finished Wedgwood's The Thirty Years War, excellent narrative.

Am now reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the Undead. Have found myself laughing hard, a few times. Only 100 pages in.

[Githyanki]

The Communist Manifesto: I found a used copy in English in a shop in Bariloche, Argentina. I'm also reading JR Tolken's Silmarillion which I also picked up new in Bariloche. The Silmarillion is quite boring and the CM was more intellectually stimulating as that little book changed the lives of millions of people decades after it was written.

[grant hutchison]

Just finished Allen Steele's Coyote Horizon. I thought the early Coyote series was something of a return to form for Steele. This one's a workmanlike enough bit of plotting, but didn't hook me back in.
Before that was Paul J. McAuley's Gardens of the Sun, the sequel to The Quiet War. A much more engaging world and characters, for my money. I was just beginning to think that the way McAuley's characters were being driven by the plot into a tour of the outer solar system was reminiscent of how Kim Stanley Robinson gave us a tour of Mars through his characters' various wanderings; then McAuley had one of his characters speak some words from Red Mars. ("Well, here we are," as he sets foot on Pluto.) Later in the book there's a Terminator quote, and something from 2010: I'm not entirely sure what's going on there.

On now to a collection of essays on consciousness: Neuroscience & Philosophy.

Grant Hutchison

[slang]

Well, finished Stephen King's The Stand. A great story, although I didn't like much his distinction between technical inclined people and their inherent draw towards the evil. Now going through some Jack Vance, several of which I've already read in the Dutch translation, years ago. Tschai is as I remember, lots of adventures while Vance explores implications of some quirks in alien races. Enjoyed Trullion, one of the Alastor novels. Reads almost like a detective. I like Vance's story telling, and I can see why he seems to be considered a master of "painting" an environment with words, but to me it does get a little tedious to over and over read descriptions of, and invented names for, items and of persons, especially those that don't really play an important role.

[Gillianren]

I don't think it was evil so much as structure, which let's face it, they were kind of low on in Boulder.

I have just gotten Cryoburn, by Lois McMaster Bujold, in from the library. It is the first Vorkosigan novel in many years, since she had given her main character children and decided she didn't want to write about children almost simultaneously. The solution seems to have been sending Miles off-planet; there are children, but they aren't in much of the story at the point I'm reading.

[AndreasJ]

I've just begun Furuhagen's Bibeln och arkeologerna ("The Bible and the archaeologists"), a book about the interaction between Judeo-Christian religion and Levantine archaeology.

[jamesabrown]

Just started Towers of Midnight, the 13th and penultimate novel in Robert Jordan's/Brandon Sanderson's Wheel of Time epic.

[CJSF]

I couldn't stand it any longer. I have started Flashback, the 11th Anna Pigeon mystery novel by Nevada Barr. This one is set at Dry Tortugas National Park. I did manage to re-read Death from the Skies and Bad Astronomy. The holidays are approaching, and family often comes to me asking my opinion of things from the Moon "hoax" to 2012, and I like to have a good refresher course before answering.

CJSF

[grant hutchison]

Neuroscience & Philosophy was a brisk little canter through the Binding Problem, qualia, and other topics lying along the neuroscience/philosophy interface. Interesting, if you're that way inclined. Very much not, if you're not. The best section is Daniel Robinson's final, dryly witty summary of the various viewpoints presented. I'm much taken by his style and insight, and hope there's a monograph out there with his name on it.

Back to Richard Monaco, now: Parsival, or a Knight's Tale.

Grant Hutchison

[baskerbosse]

Now reading Philip K Dick : Ubik

..strange & interesting..

Peter

[HenrikOlsen]

Just finished the first 11 Dresden Files novels.

[Buttercup]

Now reading Philip K Dick : Ubik

..strange & interesting..

Peter

I have a collection of PKD novels, purchased last year. I've not yet read "Ubik" and it came to mind last week. Might go ahead and give it a read now.

[Paul Beardsley]

I've read a few of PKD's, and I rate Ubik as one of his best, partly for the way it feels so real while at the same time dealing with such way-out ideas.

[AndreasJ]

I finished Bibeln och arkeologerna y'dy. A bit of a mixed bag; plenty of interest, but on subjects I happen to be more familiar with, Furuhagen sometimes annoyingly oversimplifies, leading one to wonder what he leaves out on subjects I'm less familiar with. He assumes practically no background knowledge, which is undoubtedly the right thing to do in a popular book for these secularized times, but it sometimes feels weird to someone who actually paid attention in Sunday School (yeah, I know, I'm a freak).

Also the usual sloppy editing. Most remarkably, the word kanaanitisk ("Canaanite" as adjective) is, more than half the time, misspelt as kanaaitisk. No idea what's up with that - the misspelling you usually see is kananitisk, dropping a letter that doesn't affect pronunciation.


Today I've begun In a Glass Darkly, a short story collection by Sheridan Le Fanu. Bought it for "Carmilla", but currently on the first story, "Green Tea".

[Paul Beardsley]

Today I've begun In a Glass Darkly, a short story collection by Sheridan Le Fanu. Bought it for "Carmilla", but currently on the first story, "Green Tea".

What do you think of what you've read so far?

I did read "Carmilla" but at the time I was trying to cram in certain works (I can't remember the reason) and didn't give it the time it probably deserved.

[Parrothead]

Finished The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the Undead, ended up I was getting more laughs from the original work, the zombie part kinda became repetitive.

Have now started Rising Phoenix by Kyle Mills.

[AndreasJ]

What do you think of what you've read so far?

Having now finished "Green Tea", my reaction's a bit mixed: it's got some nicely atmospheric passages, and some unexpected twists, but it's marred by a slow start*, an annoying narrator (Dr Hesselius - not the "editor" who inserts occasional notes into the text), and a few things that are left less clear then they should have been. Still, I don't regret reading it, and expect to read the rest of the collection over the coming week. (Apparently the rest aren't told in Hesselius' voice, which should be a plus.)

The Introduction to the Wordsworth edition I own is one of those annoying ones that apparently assumes you've already read the stories and don't mind spoilers. I think I shall start refering to them as extroductions - they're better read, if at all, as afterwords.


* My inner teenager, who used to devour doorstoppers, wants to register disbelief that a story of 28 pages possibly could have a slow start.

[starcanuck64]

Just finishing up Failure is not an option by Gene Kranz.

It's a good book about the early days of the manned space program and how steep a learning curve most of the people involved were on. Kranz went from fighter jock and flight test engineer to flight director with NASA in a few years. Many of the men who worked in Mission Control in Houston were fresh out of university in the US southwest many with bachelors degrees. John Aaron is a great example of how fast some of these guys picked up their trade and where it took them.

Here's an example of Aaron at work in Mission Control:

http://www.pakistan.tv/videos-sce-to...ryll8y8%5D.cfm

[grant hutchison]

Well, Parsival was a much looser and more self-indulgent novel than The Grail War. I finished it with a distinct sense that Monaco had more fun writing it than I had reading it.

I've now just finished David H Freedman's Wrong: Why Experts Keep Failing Us--And How to Know When Not to Trust Them. Not much new for me, apart from a few quotes and anecdotes. But reading it reminds me, again, how astonishing I find it that anyone ever talks to a journalist, about anything. Just run away.

Grant Hutchison

[CJSF]

So far Flashback is my least favorite Anna Pigeon mystery. It contains significant "flashback" portions in the form of would-be letters written by Anna's great-great-aunt or something. The letters are very much a forced narrative, though. They don't come across as very much like letters at all.

CJSF

[LaurelHS]

Just finishing up Failure is not an option by Gene Kranz.

It's a good book about the early days of the manned space program and how steep a learning curve most of the people involved were on. Kranz went from fighter jock and flight test engineer to flight director with NASA in a few years. Many of the men who worked in Mission Control in Houston were fresh out of university in the US southwest many with bachelors degrees. John Aaron is a great example of how fast some of these guys picked up their trade and where it took them.

Here's an example of Aaron at work in Mission Control:

http://www.pakistan.tv/videos-sce-to...ryll8y8%5D.cfm

I read Kranz's book twice and I really enjoyed it. Actually, it was the first book about spaceflight I read. It certainly encouraged my interest in the subject.

I'm reading Wednesday's Child by Peter Robinson and I'm about to start reading Moving: Poems by Elizabeth Greene.

[gzhpcu]

"To serve and protect: The LAPD's century of war in the city of dreams" - Joe Domanick.

[AndreasJ]

Just finished the 2nd story in the Le Fanu collection, "The Familiar". It mostly lacked the faults of "Green Tea", but also its twistiness. Overall verdict would be good but not great.

[grant hutchison]

Justin Marozzi's Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World. History, biography, travelogue. Another one for my shelf of books about Central Asia. I've been to Timur's tomb in Samarkand, many years ago (he has a big chunk of jade as a tomb marker), but I confess that at the time I was more interested in his grandson Ulugh Beg (buried in the same mausoleum).

Grant Hutchison

[AndreasJ]

Just begun The Illustrated History of the Russo-Japanese War by J. N. Westwood. The war has to long tended to be synonymous with Tsushima in my mind, so I thought it was time to learn the basics of the rest of the war too.

[slang]

The Demon Princes by Jack Vance. Guy sees his village, and all but one of his family, murdered by criminal forces, headed by 5 criminals, and goes out on a life long ambition to punish those responsible. As a plot it might just as well have been a western, but it's a good hook to hang some great SF on.

[grant hutchison]

The Demon Princes by Jack Vance. Guy sees his village, and all but one of his family, murdered by criminal forces, headed by 5 criminals, and goes out on a life long ambition to punish those responsible. As a plot it might just as well have been a western, but it's a good hook to hang some great SF on.

Ah, I have those in the attic. I have fond memories of Vance's various "encyclopaedia entries" at the chapter heads. I must read them again some time. I seem to recall there's a character called "Mr Spock" in there, before the name achieved fame in Star Trek.

Grant Hutchison