I’M READING AS FAST AS I CAN (OCTOBER 2011 EDITION)

[defrog]

I read books. I will prove it now.

JUST FINISHED

Boneshaker by Cherie Priest

I’m generally not that enthralled with steampunk as a sub-genre, but the word-of-mouth on Boneshaker – it’s steampunk with zombies set in 1880s Seattle! – was enough to convince me to try it. The premise is intriguing – an inventor creates a large drill that goes amok, wrecks downtown Seattle and releases a gas that turns people into the walking dead, forcing the city to be evacuated and walled off. That’s the background for the search-and-rescue tale that follows, with Briar Wilkes forced to enter the city to find her wayward teenage son. It’s slow in places, but overall it’s a good tale, and Priest tells it reasonably well. And Briar Wilkes is one of the better heroines I’ve read for awhile (great name, too). If nothing else, I’m impressed enough that I’ll likely be reading Priest again.

JUST STARTED

The Great Crash 1929 by John Kenneth Galbraith

The classic account of the 1929 stock market crash, which isn’t something I’d normally read, but given current events, it just seems like some historical perspective is in order. Granted, that’s true regardless of current events. Still …

RECENT TITLES

The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress by Robert A Heinlein
In which Luna circa 2075 is a former penal colony turned into a work farm, and jack-of-all-trades Manny is roped into a plot to overthrow the Authority and declare Luna’s independence from Earth – with the help of a sentient computer named Mike. It’s a great set-up, and Heinlein doesn’t squander it, going into quite a lot of political detail on how to do a revolution properly without bogging down the narrative. The main weakness – apart from the asides into the complexities of polyandrous marriages, which are common on Luna – is the first-person narrative told in the “Loonie” dialect, which involves a stripped-down grammar that tends to bog things down, at least until you get used to it. Still, it’s an imaginative and reasonably convincing revolution tale. 

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
Another one of those NPR Top 100 SF/F books that I hadn’t read yet – or at least I don’t think I did. I remember the TV mini-series with Rock Hudson when I was in middle school, and I seem to remember getting a copy of the book, but not really getting into it. Reading it now, I’m not surprised – Bradbury’s style wouldn't have agreed with my 14-year-old self. But my 45-year-old self really digs it. The stories are great, forsaking hard science in favor of dead-on satire, with the underlying theme being that if man ever gets to Mars, we’ll probably just ruin it like we ruined the Earth. Brilliant SF for people who don’t normally read SF. 

The Man With The Getaway Face by Richard Stark
Continuing my education of the works of Donald E Westlake, this is my second time reading him as Richard Stark, but the first time reading one of his books featuring heist man Parker. In this one, Parker gets a new face from a plastic surgeon to hide from the mob, and gets a job robbing an armored car. The inevitable complications: an untrustworthy female accomplice, and a hit man after Parker after the plastic surgeon gets whacked by a client. Stark writes with efficient, almost sociopathic detachment, and keeps the story moving. I’ve liked what little Westlake I’ve read so far, but this is by far the best book of the bunch. 

Home Is The Sailor by Day Keene
Classic pulp noir from Keene, who I know only from seeing his name on lots of pulp fiction cover art scans. This is a Hard Case Crime reprint of one of his better known books, which follows the old “hard-drinking lunkhead gets suckered by femme fatale” routine – in this case, seaman Swede Nelson falls hard for blonde motel owner Corliss Mason and, within 24 hours, they kill a guy, have sex, get married in Tijuana and then it all goes to hell. In many ways it’s typical 50s tough-guy sexist pulp, and Nelson is a hard protagonist to feel sorry for, not least because his troubles are self-inflicted by alcohol – and yet Keene tells the story so well that I felt bad for Nelson anyway just watching him blow chance after chance. Recommended for noir fans.

Hello sailor,

This is dF