I have fond memories of the Wasp Factory and Complicity but it’s been a while since I read either. I miss him, wish he was still with us
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I never read many of his “M”-less novels, and it was a long time ago, but FWIW I have a vague recollection of The Bridge being good.
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I think The Wasp Factory is the only one I’ve read, barely remember it.
Edit: Just read a synopsis, now I remember it, weird one.
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Wasp Factory is very weird and nasty, “The Business” was one of the more normal ones and I enjoyed it a lot.
Player of Games is one of my favourite books of all time. I never read the final 3 or so Culture novels, must do that.
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PoG is great!
Use of Weapons has a… “middle part”… that has lodged itself inside my brain forever. Just one sentence, so carefully constructed, so utterly perfect in its use.
The rest of the Culture books I’ve read have been forgettable but good. Not great, not bad, but good. But damn did Banks have a gift for naming AIs/starships.
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So, what was the sentence?
I used to love Banks, read everything by him. But, as you say, a lot of it is kind of forgettable. Or maybe that’s just me getting older and being forgetful.
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haha! guess that makes me weird!
(but I am not nasty!)
This might need to be in “What are you watching” so apologies to the mods, please move it if appropriate.
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I still need to get around to this one. I can never find it when I think of it when I am at a bookstore.
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That was a lovely interview that I couldn’t watch, but enjoyed listening to at work, thank you.
Faversham got a name-check! I would have been so excited to have learned he was living where I grew up. Probably wouldn’t have done anything with that knowledge though, I’ve always been leery of hero-worship and fandom.
Some lovely lines in there, such as being extra nice to compensate for being a really selfish person. So much I related to on a very personal level.
Now feel like I need to track down the remaining books of his I haven’t read.
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I can’t say due to spoilers.
The plot doesn’t hinge on it, but the emotional impact does. Even saying there is a really, really smart sentence in the book is probably saying too much.
But man. It is GOOD.
I have read the book multiple times. I just don’t remember it as clearly as you do.
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Recently finished The Last Unicorn by Peter S Beagle. Surprised I had not heard of it until recently, with it being contemporary to LOTR and with the circles I run with…
Slow start but my gosh what a work of beauty.
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I recently re-read A Talent for War by Jack McDevitt, his second novel. This story blew me away the first time I read it 30 years or so ago, and still holds my attention today.
Despite the rather snide reviews by the likes of critics like Clute et al, and dismissal by Stross for writing cozy Mid-West SF I like his series (a couple of exceptions of course, but on the whole they deliver what they promise).
I’ve just started Undaunted, book 8 in the Kris Longknife series by Mike Shepherd. A rollicking space opera that satisfies my need for the three Rs of SF: rockets, robots, and ray-guns.
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For my money nothing else he’s done has quite lived up to it. Both of his series can get quite samey in their later episodes (how many of them have someone stuck in a runaway aircar?), but this introduced me to the variation of the engineer-with-a-wrench story where the engineering is historical research.
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Course readings! So much fun.
I read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, and it was hella-depressing. Fascinating, in a “wow things are way worse than I thought they were” sorta way, but definitely interesting. I don’t like biographies as a general rule, though, and this one was no exception. But I don’t begrudge reading it since I knew absolutely nothing about HeLa before.
Then I had to read As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner for my American Lit course. I… am not a fan.
It’s written really well, beautiful imagery and just a wonder writing style but way, way too depressing and scattered for my own tastes. And there are sentences that should be illegal that just repeat a phrase or part of a sentence five times. Ugh.
And then I read a few Eliot poems (“The Hollow Men,” “The Journey of the Magi,” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”). Not my tastes again, but gosh to people love reading depressing stuff.
I’m about three chapters into The Realm of Hungry Ghosts by Gabor Mate(accent on the e), and it’s interesting at the very least. Also depressing, but in a hopeful kind of way? It’s all about addiction and how it all stems from trauma. Good so far, but I’m early into it.
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I have actually read a book. I listened to a couple but I think this is the first book I read this year. Considering that I used to read… a lot… I am bit sad that it is October and I have read 1 book. I know some of the reasons and I hope that I will get back to more book reading at some point. For now I know the surest way to destroy a hobby is force it.
In any case: The Color of Magic. I don’t think this numbered among my previous Pratchett reads. It has also been a long time that I read anything by him (except Good Omens). I had not realized before that he must have been either playing D&D (et al) or listened to someone describe it… it’s so much like a campaign write-up in places… fascinating. I am getting started on the next one. I’ve always wanted to read everything–my Pratchett reading is “spotty”.
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As I’m sure lots of folks have said on here before, Colour of Magic and Light Fantastic are REALLY different to all the others (and yes, they concentrate on spoofing very specific D&D, Conan and fantasy fiction tropes).
Equal Rites suddenly feels like it’s in a new series (and that feeling stays for most of the books after it) quite different. So if you’ve only read a few, CoM and LF are totally on their own compared to the rest.
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Yeah he was just lampooning the fantasy genre as a whole in CoM and LF. I think then he realised he could use the fantasy genre to lampoon reality…
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May I have your bookshelf when you’re finished with it? : )
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