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Apocryphal
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One authors whose books I almost always see in used bookshops is Jack Chalker. I’ve never read Chalker, but I’ve been thinking of exploring his first book, Midnight at the Well of Souls, which is free on Audible. Looking him up, I saw this on Wi…
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Perhaps all the breaks are just where the storyteller needed a sip of tea. Which means the shorter sections were the thirstier nights, for whatever reason.
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I don’t think it needs to exclude it. We read Sleep Donation twice, largely with a different crowd the second time. And, by all means, if everyone wants to do Becky Chambers cept me, I can just skip a month - I have a gazillion other books anywa…
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I’ve had my fill of feel-good pastiche SF since then.
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Nettle and Bone might be ok, though I’m increasingly seeing Hugo winners as things to avoid. At least it’s also recognized by the others. Hard pass on the Becky Chambers for me. The Windup Girl was one of my very first club picks back in the early d…
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Really interesting stuff re: possible Buddhist roots, btw.
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For my part, I’m flexible. One the one hand, it might flow better. On the other, reading it like we are is a bit more like Shahriyar’s experience. I never looked, but how long would the section be if we included one top- level story per week. Maybe …
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(Quote) I assume it's about reaping a reward (or at least avoiding a punishment) in exchange for a kind deed. The motif 'Spare me and God will spare you.' is repeated many times. This is a call for mercy. (Quote) King Sinbad is meant to represent t…
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Re: points 1 and 2 - yep.
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@BarnerCobblewood I posted a review of Time Shelter: https://www.ttrpbc.com/discussion/943/novel-review-time-shelter-by-georgi-gospodinov/p1?new=1 The text is not difficult, but extracting meaning is more of a challenge. On the question of 'why do…
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(Quote) I'm also unclear - it if was specified in the intro, I've already forgotten. If they're translations of Galland, then they aren't translations from Arabic - which is what I thought we were getting. So I'm assuming the base texts are older th…
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(Quote) I'm not quite sure what this means, either, but I'm going to say it's probably too early to tell, since we've yet to read two full stories. :D (Quote) If we can accept that that postmodernism is a rejection of most everything that came bef…
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From my current book - the influence of the Arabians nights continues. Time Shelter by Gospodinov (originally 2020 in Bulgarian). (Image)
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Really enjoyable section. I largely agree/see @RichardAbbott 's points and remarked on the same. I think this historical section puts to rest the question about influence. It seems big, and I'm seeing it in everything now. Even in the introduction …
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I guess if we can't find much to say about it, it's 'not successful' from a 'lets talk about books' standpoint. Since the amount and quality of discussion doesn't usually ride on how much we like a book, we probably shouldn't worry too much about wh…
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> @RichardAbbott said: > As for her lurking under the bed - I wonder if a witness to marriage consummation was considered essential? As a sort of parallel to ensuring that marital sheets really had fresh blood on them to demonstrate virgini…
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Curious if Jane Eyre’s Arabian Nights influence came across to anyone via The Eyre Affair?
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You’re obviously giving this a very close reading - the notes are extensive, to say the least LOL. I should have to re-read much of this in order to answer because I wasn’t looking at these details, at least while reading the stories. I was rather l…
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The novel was largely what I expected. I did chortle two or three times (at the notion of door-knocking Baconites, for example) but overall I didn’t find it that funny, or the story that interesting, or the setting that creative, for me to say I enj…
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Yeah, autocorrect - stupid iPhone.
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I clarified my comment. I meant to say I understood the significance of Thursday Next, I just wasn’t that excited by it as wordplay.
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This blurb of a review seems pretty accurate: *'Always ridiculous, often hilarious ... blink and you miss a vital narrative leap. There are shades of Douglas Adams, Lewis Carroll, 'Clockwork Orange' and '1984'. And that's just for starters' - Tim…
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Yeah, I think the time travelling dad and various other elements of the book were more distracting than anything. But since this is likely designed as a series, and I don’t think solving mysteries inside Dickens and Jane Austen novels is enough of a…
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I’m not. This kind of ‘humorous’ fiction doesn’t really do it for me. I felt the same about Rivers of London and other sort of similarly veined things we’ve done over this the years. I should try to re-read my old Hitchhikers books, and maybe a X…
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I guess the idea of entering a book and interacting with it might be interesting for a one-shot. Glorantha achieves something similar with its ‘hero-questing’ which is a ritual whereby characters in the setting can re-enact a myth from me hat settin…
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Actually, I like it when setting elements are hinted at rather than explicit. I didn’t feel like I needed the details. I’m sure if you continue to read the series, more such detail will emerge.
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The Fellowship of the Read? Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever wished I could enter a book and meet its characters in person - I mean, beyond what a good book already allows me to do. Some books are clever enough to let you think you could enter …
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Generally I do appreciate a good pun, but I don’t think it was enough to carry this book into pleasure last for me. Certainly, this is partly due to my choice of reading it in Audio format, where playful spellings do not come across. But things like…
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I’m not sure the old English roots of ‘island’ get us far, as we’re dealing with a modern translation of Arabic. I suspect there’s something in the Arabic word that can mean two things (the way Kur could mean both ‘mountain’ and ‘land’ in Sumerian, …
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> EDIT: I'm getting interested in this. Any objection to me joining the slow read? Of course not!