What book are you currently reading, and what book did you finish before it?

posted 2 years ago by Smith1980 2 years ago by Smith1980 +31 / -0

I like to ask this question every few months.

Currently reading Life of Pi by Yang Martel. Saw the movie a few months ago and wanted to read the book. The one I just finished was called Black Ice by Michael Connelly. It’s one of the Bosch books.

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– PointlessPseudoanon 5 points 2 years ago +5 / -0

Especially to have been written in 1912

You'd be surprised - a hundred years earlier, inspired by the Year Without a Summer of 1816, Lord Byron wrote a poem called "Darkness", that I've frequently seen quoted as a possible inspiration for Hodgson:

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air...

The Night Land is a weird book, in that it's incredible despite its prose and writing style, not because of it. Even a hundred years later, it stands out for not being like our world and culture with one or two sci-fi changes, but being something else.