What I'm Reading Now

I'm still reading a lot of SF/F books for reviews I'm writing for Asimov's and Interzone, but those will not appear here. These are books I've been reading for fun. (Dr. Skull walks in: "What are you reading?" I show him the cover. He frowns. "Why are you reading that?" Me: "For fun. Can't I read things for fun anymore?" Dr. Skull shakes his head and walks out again.)

Rosamunde Pilcher, Coming Home

One of my favorite genres is books written by women in England from about 1930 to about 1950, and this one reads like that sort of book, except it was written in the 1990s. We follow one main character, Judith Dunbar, and a bunch of minor characters who connect with Judith's life, from 1935 to 1945. At the start of the book, Judith is being sent to boarding school in England while her mother and four-year-old sister travel back to South Asia (eventually to Singapore) to join her father, a business tycoon of some sort. Judith is upset about being parted from her mother and sister, but also stoic -- this is just what life is like for those whose (British) parents work in the tropics. The first part of the book is relatively idyllic, since Judith befriends a wealthy schoolmate and is adopted by her family; but then WWII first looms and then strikes, and Judith's family, in Singapore when it falls, stop sending her letters.

This is the sort of novel which, if you like me love this sort of novel, you will like well enough. It's absorbing if a trifle sentimental at parts, and the focus on the women characters (there are men, but the women are the main characters) is nice. I would have liked a little more depth, but I enjoyed this enough to order couple other works by Pilcher which my library owns.

Rex Stout, Some Buried Caesar et al

I am, apparently, once again re-reading all of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe novels. I started on this series when I was maybe 20 years old, when my Intro to American Lit professor assigned Some Buried Caesar to the class as one of our texts and every other student in the class had a melt-down. "How can we read this?" they demanded. "What are we supposed to do with this?" they wailed.

"I thought you might enjoy reading it," he said, and they howled with confused fury. Eventually he took it off the syllabus, but I had already bought it and I did enjoy reading it, far more than Hawthorne, if I'm being honest. I've been reading Rex Stout ever since. These are mysteries, more or less, but their real attraction is life in New York in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, as well as the relationship between Nero Wolfe and his amanuensis Archie Goodwin. Some Buried Caesar is a great place to start -- Wolfe and Archie go to a state fair in upstate New York, where in order to achieve a comfortable bed after their car breaks down, Wolfe embroils them in a murder mystery in which the original victim is a bull named Caesar. There's a lot of detail about live in 1938 and state fairs in 1938 and jails in 1938. It's a lot of fun.

Once I'd reread that, it was inevitable that I read on through the rest of them. I have several, and the local public library has the rest. It does not have the Nero Wolfe cookbook, but I have found a way to access a free copy of that online.

Antimatter Blues, Edward Ashton

This is a sequel to Mickey7, which I read some time ago. It's readable in a way that made me finish it, but I wouldn't say a loved it. It's about a colony on a new planet that is having an unusual amount of trouble, and Mickey, who is now turning into the colony's leader.

Mickey7 was about Mickey being the colony's "expendable," which is a low-skill, low-education human who can be printed up as needed to handle the nasty jobs. Most of these jobs kill him, but his experience is uploaded each time -- his consciousness and memory are -- and then downloaded into the body when they print a new human. It's an interesting concept. Sort of like the Ship of Theseus, Mickey thinks, only with him. The 7 in Mickey7 is because the Mickey we start with in the seventh interation.

So some interesting SF concepts, and pretty cool aliens, a found-family kind of space colony going on, and lots of banter. No real thinking about whether it's ethical to colonize planets, even though these people know that at least a couple of the planets they have landed on have intelligent life on them. There is one moment of introspection, and Mickey worries a little about slaughtering the intelligent aliens (two kinds) on the planet, but I wouldn't say it's about colonization. It's about a bunch of humans and their interpersonal relationships and conflicts, but on a planet that isn't earth. 

If you like John Scalzi, you'd probably like this one.