Sunday Status Update: June 2, 2019

Another week, more books!

Bill: This week I read several Locus nominees:  The Red-Stained Wings by Elizabeth Bear, Ahab’s Return by Jeffrey Ford, and In the Night Wood by Dale Bailey. In TV, my son and I are still enjoying The Magicians season four, and I’ ambout three-quarters of the way through Cloak and Dagger season two, which is a bit more uneven in the latter half but I’m still mostly impressed by.

Kat: My mom broke her foot so I was out of town helping her this week and only got one book read: Paul Tremblay’s The Cabin at the End of the World, which is a Locus finalist for Best Horror Novel. I’m not much of a horror reader, so keep that in mind when I say that I didn’t love the book. The audio version was especially disappointing. Terry and I will review this novel soon.

Marion: I didn’t get much reading done this week. I’ve started The Mortal Word, the latest INVISIBLE LIBRARY novel by Genevieve Cogman. I reread Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, and it was a pure joy.

Tadiana: I’ve finished both books in T. Kingfisher’s steampunk-flavored fantasy duology, Clockwork Boys and The Wonder Engine. It’s not radically different from any other company of strangers fantasy mission, but Kingfisher’s writing style is very appealing to me. I also read Adrian Tchaikovsky’s SF horror novella Walking to Aldebaran, which was exceptionally literary for that particular genre. Currently I’m dividing my reading time between the first set of Welcome to Night Vale episodes, Mostly Void, Partly Stars; Mark Lawrence‘s Limited Wish, the second book in his IMPOSSIBLE TIMES time travel SF series; and just starting A Sword Named Truth by Sherwood Smith, a new novel set in her Sartorias-Deles world.

Terry: I finished Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik this week, and wow, is it good! No wonder it’s been nominated for a Hugo Award. Now I’m on to Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller. I started it earlier this year but it didn’t take; this attempt seems likely to be more successful. I still don’t think I’ll like it as much as Marion did, though. Cyberpunk has just never been my thing, even though I keep trying.

Tim: This week, I finished up Robert A. Heinlein‘s Stranger in a Strange Land, one of those apparently venerable sci/fi works that I never got around to before now. And it’s… yeah, it’s very dated. Heinlein was definitely a talented writer, but this kind of novel-as-pontification thing doesn’t age well, and frankly I doubt it was worth all the hoopla the day it was published. I swear that the book is 80% composed of one character or another holding forth on How Society Ought to Work, or grinding an axe against People Who Don’t Get It. This is the trouble with political novels that forget to also focus on being good stories – when the politics age, as they inevitably will, there’s just not a lot left to appreciate.