First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day: Summertime Blues

51 Comments

Happy New Year (celebrated). I'll be heading to the office shortly, to get caught up a bit. I don't have ESPN anyway, so I won't be missing the bowl games (grrr).

The New Year is a traditional time to look backward and look forward. Today's selection, Joan Vinge's 1991 Hugo nominee, The Summer Queen does both of those things.

The book is the long-awaited sequel to Vinge's 1981 Hugo winner, The Snow Queen, based on a Hans Christian Andersen story. I read the original perhaps five years ago -- it was a masterpiece, but I've forgotten too much. This volume (I'm half-way through) is complex, confusing, and tantalizing. Moon Dawntreader, the hidden clone of the Winter Queen and heroine of the first volume, is the Summer Queen, presiding over an effort to drag her techno-phobic people toward modernity during the long "summer," during which her planet's wormhole gate to a wider human civilization is inaccessible. Her planet holds both a Spice-like life-extending substance and the secret to a civilization-wide information technology mediated through "sibyls" -- human computer interfaces. Meanwhile, outside, other characters are in a race to rediscover a long-lost technology for faster-than-light travel.

The characters and (most of the) relationships are interesting and compelling, and the action sequences well drawn. I'm hooked on this space opera. But you'll want to read The Snow Queen first.

New Year's is a time for lists, so here, here and here are links to NPR's top sci fi picks, of the year and for evah (thanks, Sean, for that third link).

I don't yet know where The Summer Queen will rank on my top whatever list, but it will be in the mix. What are you reading?

51 thoughts on “First Monday Book Day: Summertime Blues”

  1. Finished Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Diamond Tattoo, and I've been holding off on starting on the next until the holidays were over. I enjoyed it, but I can see how some would think the beginning to be slow and lacking in action.

      2. oh geez, my multiplexer isn't multiplexing. Move along folks, there's nothing to see here.

        I guess I should have mentioned that I saw the Swedish movie as well, and although I understand the need to adjust the plot for brevity's sake, there was at least one change that I was disappointed with that as it did nothing but give the audience a bit of (unnecessary and unwanted) justice.

  2. This month I finished several books including the Yiddish Policeman's Union, 60 Feet Six Inches, and Catch-22. I can't recommend 60 Feet as it's full of GOML and reggie be reggie. Really, I found the discussion boring, and aside from a few anecdotes I wouldn't have anything positive to remember about this book.

    TYPU was thoroughly enjoyable. I highly recommend this book, and am still holding out hope that the Cohen Bros will make the movie.

    Catch-22 left me the most conflicted.

    Spoiler SelectShow

  4. As mentioned, I finished the Pulitzer Price winning book by The Roommate. Loved it. I probably knew about 12 pages total worth of material about the Commodore before reading the bio, and was stunned by his life (sort of like my experiences reading Lindbergh and The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt).

    Now, I have about 100 pages left of Pillars of the Earth. I'm pretty conflicted because it has really interesting passages about architecture and science mixed together with a love story and a villain ripped from a Dan Brown novel.

    1. Pillars is sitting on my dresser, in the queue.

      Glad to hear that you enjoyed The Roommate's tome. Next up for him is a biog of Custer.

  5. I haven't gotten a lot of book reading done this month. I'm about 30% into "Catch-22". I started Theodore Roosevelt's autobiography (available from Project Gutenberg), and I read the Kindle sample of the biography of Vonnegut "So It Goes" and Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum".

    I also read a bunch of the articles on Deadspin's best sports writing of 2011. Of particular interest around here might be the three part article on Derek Boogaard (Part I, Part II, Part III)

    I also am looking for a good book on the history and culture of the Lenape/Delaware tribe, if anyone knows of one.

    1. if you are into preznit autobiographies, the place to go is U.S. Grants'. He wrote it as he was dying from throat cancer and broke. The book is outstanding. And the story of their marketing is interesting as well.

      1. Grant's determination to finish his autobiography is one of my favorite historical anecdotes. Imagine a modern President being in the same situation today.

        1. He wasn't a President, but I read the first volume of Mark Twain's autobiography this summer (completely with numerous stories about Grant and his autobiography) and it was stupendous.

  6. I've just begun Cloud Atlas. I had a nice little reading list prepared for winter recess, but between catching up on my own work and preparing for teaching a new course next semester it looks like I'll have to defer the balance of it.

    One of my brothers very considerately gave me Crossing to Safety for Christmas, which I heard in excerpts on Wisconsin Public Radio's Chapter a Day program a few years back. I've never read any Stegner, so I'm not sure exactly what I'm getting into, but I've wanted to read this for a while based on the few chapters I heard on the radio.

    1. Wallace Stegner was an incredible writer. Angle of Repose should be on everyone's short list. And his Beyond the Hundredth Meridian is a great piece of biography, historical writing, and ecology.

  7. Here is another top-100 list with reviews and commentary.

    I went 8 for 10 (9? I can't recall on I, Robot, which is an anthology), 23 for 25, 42 for 50, 55 for 75, and 69 for 100. And only 27 of the next 100 on that list. Looks like I still have some work cut out for me.

    That said, I'm sure there a lot of nits that can be picked.

    With their fantasy list, I've read 43 of 100. Twilight, Eragon and Redwall?? Seriously? No, this is not a very serious list.

    2. Which one of the top 10 are you missing? I'm also at 9/10 with just 2001 missing from my have-read list.

          2. I read 1984 a few years ago, figuring I needed to fill in that hole in my education. I really could have done without it. I like my protagonists to have some redeeming qualities.

            1. I like my protagonists to have some redeeming qualities

              Stay away from Jonathan Franzen ten.

        1. Others will tell you differently, but Stranger in a Strange Land did nothing for me. Starship Troopers is much superior, albeit directed at a slightly younger audience.

          1. Stranger == teh Awesome. Starship Troopers, I'm just not that into you. Different strokes, I guess.

            can we agree on The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress being really good?

      1. I'd recommend David Drake's Northworld. It's pretty heavy on Norse mythology as well as having plenty of science fiction aspects, if you're into that. Plus, you can read it online for free!

        I also recommend Armor by John Steakley. It was published in 1984, so it's older than 25 years, but it's one of my favorite sci-fi books.

      2. I'd put Stephenson's The Diamond Age and Cryptonomicon up there, maybe Gaiman's American Gods. Connie Willis' Doomsday Book deserves consideration. Dan Simmons' Ilium was pretty impressive. Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky. Greg Bear's Darwin's Radio.

        and since I included American Gods, which is fantasy, I'm also going to include Lois McMaster Bujold's awesome The Curse of Chalion and equally awesome The Paladin of Souls. I would definitely put those two on the highest possible level.

        1. If you read Cryptonomicon, might as well tackle the System of the World series when you feel like reading 2700 pages.

      3. I've spent the last year "catching up" with some of the newer stuff; Snow Crash was definitely one of my faves. Maybe try Scalzi's Old Man's War if you want harder SciFi.

  8. Like Rhu_Ru, I finished The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I also saw the movie, and I liked both. The book held my interest and kept me turning pages. I kind of wish the bad guys were a little more nuanced (it seems like they weren't just bad, but super-evil), but it was interesting. I'll probably read the rest of the trilogy, but I'm in no rush.

    On NBB's recommendation, I picked up The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes. Loved it. 15 pages in, and I was hooked completely. The unreliability and downright misleading memories and interpretations really hit me, and I loved the whole thing. I didn't figure out the ending until the protagonist did (which maybe I should have), but that was secondary to the way I enjoyed the story throughout.

    We listened to the audiobook of Jon Ronson's The Psychopath Test on the way up to see the family for Christmas. Enjoyable, I like Ronson's voice (writing and speaking) and it was an interesting topic. A lot of the parts I had heard elsewhere (This American Life for the most part), but I enjoyed the extra nuggets in the long for of this book.

    Finished BatGirl's young adult series with The Immortal Fire. It was good, but nothing spectacular.

    Finally I read Dan Simmons' Muse of Fire about a Shakespearean acting troupe in the far future where humans are reduced to menial labor at the hands of alien overlords. It reads as a love letter to Shakespeare (and it did make me want to give another read to some of the Bard's works) in a pretty interesting universe. A short read (about 100 pages), but I enjoyed it.

    That's it for December.

    I'm currently reading a Borges collection of short stories (my first dip into Borges' bibliography), with China Mieville's Embassytown and Ekaterina Sedia's House of Discarded Dreams also on my nightstand.

      1. Gave up on that one 200 pages in. Too much South American poetry history for me. It was very slow going, although it was still Bolaño's style, so if you liked 2666 it's probably worth a shot.

        It's still sitting on my nightstand waiting for me to take another go at it.

  9. Finished Pandora's Star and moved on to Judas Unchained. Good stuff, just too bad it takes 800 pages to set up everything.

      1. Not much different from George R. R. Martin: lots of characters and complicated world make for a slow set up. But once the pieces get arranged, the payoff is better.

  10. fwiw, I just discovered the Baen Free Library. You can download Lois McMaster Bujold's great novella, The Mountains of Mourning here for free.

    1. bS, I've mentioned that site at least three times in the first monday posts- I even have a link to it on my David Drake rec above! You've been missing out for too, too long.

      Oh, and I'm going to go read The Mountains of Mourning right now.

      1. mea culpa, bhiggy. I'm sure I've noticed your links in the past, but I have trouble remembering my own name these days.

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