Help me with my New Year's Resolution

[brixtonbrood]

[Poll #1668286]

I do realise that this wasn't exactly my NYR, but I have ended up resolving to Read More Actual New Books, and have somehow drifted into several libraries and charity shops over the last two days.

Comments

[juggzy.livejournal.com]

You could read the Strosses as well - Charlie Stross is, as nja said very recently, a geek hipster-by-numbers, so you'll find his books hitting all of the salient points of every vaguely alternative movement you'll have seen on LJ over the last five years (he's on LJ as autopope), but more in a kind of checklist way, rather than an actually exploring-the-various-consequences-of-ideas way. He writes very unannoyingly (unlike Stephenson) and well, in a jazzy, slangy style, but I feel that Stephenson is more authentic and has the deeper exploration of ideas; I started re-reading Anathem so that I could make notes in the margins because I totally disagree with the essentially platonic world view that Stephenson uses as his starting point for Anathem (once it eventually gets going) but the point is that Stephenson is doing something genuinely original in Anathem, whereas Stross is more or less a vessel for the meme-themes of the groups he wants to advertise that he is part of.

Atrocity Archives.

[timscience.livejournal.com]

I like Stross because, of all the current SF writers, he's the most fun.

Don't expect him to be Don Delillo or anything though. Which is no bad thing. What Juggzy said, I guess.

You could do worse than Anathem as well. It's not as good as Cryptonomicon, but then, what is?

Re: Atrocity Archives.

[juggzy.livejournal.com]

It's not as good as Cryptonomicon,

It's far better than Cryptonomicon - much tighter in the writing and far less indulgent; when Stephenson goes into a semi-stoned riff on whatever is on his mind in Anathem, it is at least germane to his central conceit about platonic universes, whereas in Cryptonomicon it usually wasn't (e.g. riffs on sex on antique furniture, how to eat cornflates, etc) and was just messy (and often not as funny or insightful as Stephenson seemed to think it was).

Re: Atrocity Archives.

[pureofthought.livejournal.com]

Where I think Anathem is a big leap forward for Stephenson is that he is able to handle the endless infodumps better than before. It's a long way from the clunky Librarian in Snow Crash. But I still enjoyed Cryptonomicon more.

Stross is always worth a look: The Atrocity Archives is great fun (like Simon R. Green but better written and more imaginative). The Family Trade is not so good; I liked it, but find the rest of the series moves a bit too slowly.

Wolf Hall I just found too annoying to get beyond the first chapter or two. A Most Wanted Man is typical of recent JLC, interesting, but depressing and worthy and an attack on modern Western treatment of non-Westerners. Not read this particular Michael Dibdin, but haven't liked his other stuff much. (It's likely to be much more ambiguous than the Zen adaptations on TV at the moment, but just as dully plotted, judging by the several books of his I've read.)

Dibdin

[jackfirecat.livejournal.com]

I didn't tick it only because as the wikip summary says, accurately, "The earlier books have a lightness of touch that* gradually becomes much darker."

Having read them all, I have been surprised how well it's all working out for him in the early ones on TV - I had forgotten that that's what sucked me in...

*I want to say which but I'm quoting

[t--m--i.livejournal.com]

There's better Mantel than Wolf Hall which I thought she might have done in her sleep. Beyond Black is the only novel I've really been impressed by in the last decade or so, not that I read much mind (fiction).THAT I recommend.

[cleanskies.livejournal.com]

Anathem is a delight.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I don't much like these Stross books, find Stephenson flatulently overindulgent, Truss ghastly and cringe-making. Haven't read the Dibdin and Mantel under offer, but I've liked other stuff by them. You can't go wrong with le Carre though!