Dragons & Jetpacks discussion
Book Discussion - Non BotM
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The last book I read was...
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Cupcakes & Machetes, Hybrid Creature
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Mar 11, 2016 05:53AM
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I finished reading The Lost World (the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle one, not the Jurassic Park one) earlier this week.Now I want to track down my dvd sets of the tv show from the late '90s/early 2000s.
The last book I read was the newest release in my absolute most favorite historical mystery series, When Falcons Fall. I'm a sucker for a dashing man in Hessian boots.
I just Towing Jehovah. I thought it was a fantastic book. The author, James K. Morrow, is speaking at USF in Tampa, and the book was recommended to me many years ago, so I decided to finally read it. It's funny; not ha-ha funny, but deeply satirical, and spares no one. Morrow's pen is equally vicious toward the Catholic Church and radical feminism. It is quite a book that satirizes the death of god *and* historical reenactment.
I just finished The Kill Order, which is kind of sad since everybody dies, and the third book of the 13th Reality series. Both are by James Dashner, which is a coincidence. I can start Redshirts now.
Veronica that series looks great, and now you all have me very curious about the red rising trilogy. :-)
Veronica that series looks great, and now you all have me very curious about the red rising trilogy. :-)
Reading Steven King chronologically. Just starting, I finished Rage a few days ago. Next month the Stand...
Tony wrote: "Reading Steven King chronologically. Just starting, I finished Rage a few days ago. Next month the Stand..."
I've only read the Dark Tower series by King and wasn't a huge fan, I'm not really into his genre or I would have probably started his other stuff.
I've only read the Dark Tower series by King and wasn't a huge fan, I'm not really into his genre or I would have probably started his other stuff.
Ive read the first four dark tower books a long time ago. You should check out his The Eyes of the Dragon book its more a classic fantasy story rather than horror.
Tony wrote: "Ive read the first four dark tower books a long time ago. You should check out his The Eyes of the Dragon book its more a classic fantasy story rather than horror."
adding it to tbr right now, thanks!
adding it to tbr right now, thanks!
I don't like Stephen King's books in general but The Eyes of the Dragon is one of my ALL-TIME-FAVORITE books, ever!
Ohhh! The Stand! a truly spine chilling book. Mr King plumbs the depths of human nature and makes the Apocalypse totally believable. I'd rate this as one of his best books, but I thought Dark Tower was just weird!
I am a Stephen King fan, and I also recommend The Eyes of the Dragon whether or not you like King in general. That and The Green Mile are probably some of his best work that isn't really horror per se.
Tony wrote: "Ive read the first four dark tower books a long time ago. You should check out his The Eyes of the Dragon book its more a classic fantasy story rather than horror."Tony, I read The Eyes of the Dragon to my son the summer before he started first grade and he absolutely loved it. I think that helped turn him into a fantasy - scifi geek. Either that or he just takes after me. :-D
Btw, I enjoyed it too! My favorite King? The Talisman. Don't know why but it just clicked with me.
Wayland wrote: "I am a Stephen King fan, and I also recommend The Eyes of the Dragon whether or not you like King in general. That and The Green Mile are probably some of his best work th..."
I really enjoyed The Green Mile, both the movie and the book.
I really enjoyed The Green Mile, both the movie and the book.
I just finished Uprooted and wow, what a great book, the best book I've read this year and that's included a few Sanderson books. I wasn't a huge fan of the Temeriare series by Naomi Navik but I just loved this book.
Nice, Roger! Uprooted was definitely one of my best reads last year. I yet have to try Temeraire and see if I'll like 'm just as much.
I loved Uprooted . I read it last month and it really worked. Kevin , our other Irish member here gave it to me as a Christmas present.
Its a wonderfully well written fairy tale.
Its a wonderfully well written fairy tale.
Sarah wrote: "Sounds like I should bump Uprooted higher up on my TBR if so many in this group liked it."
Definitely, it found its way right on to my favorite shelf :)
Definitely, it found its way right on to my favorite shelf :)
I had not even heard of Uprooted before. With all these glowing recommendations, I will definitely move this way up on my TBR!
So far this month I've read As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner (5 ★ ), The Elfstones of Shannara by Terry Brooks (4 ★), and The Martian by Andy Weir (3.5 ★). As I Lay Dying was somewhat difficult but stunningly lovely; the other two were loads of fun - I enjoyed every minute of them!And now, I'm currently in the middle of two books: The Awakening by Kate Chopin and Bloodchild and Other Stories by Octavia E. Butler. I'm enjoying both of these too.
A great reading month so far!
Rinn wrote: "Greg, if you haven't done so already, check out our chat thread for the Martian :)"Thanks Rinn, will do! :) A happy coincidence it's one of your recent group reads!
I just joined the group. I'll do an intro post shortly. I spent several minutes scrolling through the messages in this topic. Earlier today I finished reading
Book number 4 in the series, 2 novels, a novella, and then this novel.
This series is so much fun. Imagine a world where if you had the power, and the main character, Ree Reyes, does through her powers as a Geekomancer to basically turn a model of a lightsaber into the real thing. She carries a lightsaber and a phaser. She can also get power ups from watching things like Buffy episodes or scenes from Spider-man. She has chanelled her Inner Peter Parker at times to climb walls for instance. Hexomancy is the end of the current story arc. I sure hope Michael Underwood comes back to Ree and her friends for more adventuring soon.
I read in many different genres. SF, fantasy, comics, mystery, thrillers, action adventure, western. I really need to get back to The Wheel of Time, I reread the first three last year on my Nook. I am also rereading the second King Kelson Deryni trilogy by Katherine Kurtz I love the Deryni books and have since the were first released in the 1970s. Yep I'm that old.
Also recently read
An urban fantasy/legal thriller which I gave 4 stars to.
I loved Uprooted too!I recently finished
which was a pleasant surprise. This is my third by this author and the priors were a hit and a disappointment so I hadn't been sure what this would be like. Definitely will be continuing on.
It's funny how this book seems to keep popping up lately. I just recently read The Raven Boys myself, and thought it was pretty damn good.
Just finished The Spider's War by Daniel Abraham, the final book in the Dagger and Coin Quintet. It was a fantastic ending to a fantastic series that contained likely the most tragic character I've read in a long time, if not ever.
I would highly recommend this series to any fantasy reader. It starts off great and ends excellent. Also my new favourite female character as well.
I would highly recommend this series to any fantasy reader. It starts off great and ends excellent. Also my new favourite female character as well.
I actually managed to finish a few books over the nice long weekend we had:I Shall Wear Midnight as I decided to revisit the Discworld, but break it up into bits based on the characters written about. I had my doubts about this one, as it turned quite dark in the second chapter, far darker than I expected from a book for "younger readers". I thoroughly enjoyed it when I got past the initial shock, though.
The Water Babies - a firm favourite, and one I tend to re-read practically on a yearly basis. It's just such a beautiful story.
I also only joined the group just before the voting closed for the BotM for April, and when I saw that A Gathering of Shadows was the one that was most likely to win, I quickly had to read A Darker Shade of Magic in preparation - and it was quickly, because I just could not put it down. I got really drawn into it - can't wait for April to start so I can get into the next book!
That of course led me to the other books by V.E. Schwab and I read the short story Warm Up as it seems to be the prelude to Vicious - I wasn't quite sold on it though, but I'll still shelf Vicious as a to-read for a day when I lack other reading inspiration.
At the moment I'm sort of struggling through The Magicians - while it started off wonderfully, I just started losing interest the further along I read - funnily enough, not unlike the main character...
I just finished reading Ex-Heroes and enjoyed it enough that I am messing up my planned reads for the rest of the month and moving straight on to the second book in the series, Ex-Patriots.
Vicious was okay, but I wouldn't exactly recommend it to others. I am glad I read A Darker Shade of Magic first, because I really loved that one.Veronica, I thought Ex-Patriots was perhaps twice as good as Heroes! Though for some reason I never moved onto the sequels... One of those series where I said "Oh, fantastic! I know this will be fun, so I'll save that one to follow up some dreary read...." I still need to read the 4th Ketty Jay book for the same reasons haha
Andrew wrote: "Veronica, I thought Ex-Patriots was perhaps twice as good as Heroes!"That's good to hear! I tend to be a binge reader myself as far as series go. In those rare instances where I'm not able to binge read, yeah, I find that I lose my momentum to keep going even if I really liked the series.
I plan on using my Easter weekend to catch up on books and video games (especially as my new 27" monitor will be arriving!)
Wow... Because I literally just finished this book ~3 minutes ago... Just wow...But it was Bitter of Tongue, number Six of the Tales of the Shadowhunter Academy by our lord and Queen, Cassandra Clare.
It was so good and so amazing that I have to share it with everyone, because of all the feelz.
Oh the feelz...
Well, OTP has really been the struggle of my vicarious living these days and so it really is so nice when life entreats you with such pleasure and not disdain as is per usual :)
I mean i have learned to know, expect and appreciate that to achieve such an amazing OTP, you must first be subjected to THE worst forms of torture. Then grow stronger and and break again, but grow back... You guessed it, stronger! And then all of life is happy!
But anyway, not to spoil but as i have exaggerated so much already, there was some SERIOUS OTP but i have also waited for this for about, ~15 books. And it is everything i hav ever hoped for or dreamed about and so much beyond!!! So i want everyone to know that if you see true OTP that you care about, go and wait and wait and develop that relationship. And then, reach that goal. And OTP will shine through, like nothing you have ever seen or will ever see again, until the next re-read!
#Sizzy!
Hybrid Creature (devours books instead of brains) wrote: "Yes, Rinn! Brown announced shortly after the release of Morning Star that he was going to continue in the Red Rising universe with some of the characters that we already know and love. :D"Oh this makes me so happy, and hopefully he will write about one character that I looooove so much...but I won't say WHO because I do not want to risk spoiling anything (who lives/who dies) for anyone! So bummed that I am finished with this trilogy, but so happy that it will continue on in other ways!
~Jessica
Just finished Morning Star by Pierce Brown. If you haven't stared this series yet get going. Stunning is an understatement
Ryan wrote: "I thought the Magicians was brilliant, but hampered by the choice of protagonist."This is a good point. I did somewhat enjoy Magicians, but I honestly could not stand the protagonist. Oddly though, I have read several books that I loved where I just detested the main characters (Gone Girl, Girl on the Train come to mind), but this guy cast a bit of a pall over the whole book for me.
~Jessica
Andrew wrote: "Vicious was okay, but I wouldn't exactly recommend it to others. I am glad I read A Darker Shade of Magic first, because I really loved that one.Veronica, I thought Ex-Patriots was perhaps twice ..."
I really enjoyed Ex-Patriots and Ex-Heroes but seem to be stuck on the very beginning of Ex-Communication. I think it's a stress reaction though...lots of stress in my life right now, so reading about zombies doesn't alleviate much stress! Weird how that works ;o)
~Jessica
Not SF or fantasy. The 3rd in the 87th Precinct series by the late, great Ed McBain, aka Evan Hunter.
I just finished The Death Cure, which is the last in the Maze Runner trilogy, although I know there's the prequel too which I've not read yet.I found the second book in the series to be pretty disappointing so I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this one. It was still a very easy read (I read the whole thing during a 3 hour flight) but I thought the plot got a bit more coherent and things resolved more or less satisfactorily. The characters remained underwhelming, but I was definitely more engaged with them in the final book.
I find trilogies like this vexing because at the end of the second book I really didn't care what happened and nearly didn't bother with the third but then went on to enjoy it. It seems to be not uncommon with fantasy series to have that big dip in one of the middle books and then there's always the 'do I bother going any further with this?' question. I'll usually try and I think there's only been one series where I *really* wished that I'd quit earlier because I was so frustrated with it towards the end! (That was The Bitterbynde trilogy by Cecilia Dart-Thornton if you're curious. My ratings go 3*, 2*, 1* for the three books in order...)
Finished another batch of great books over the last couple weeks: The Awakening by Kate Chopin (4.5 ★ - hard to believe this was written in the 1800s, way ahead of its time)
Bloodchild and Other Stories by Octavia E. Butler (3.5 ★ - the sci-fi stories were the best ones, especially "Amnesty," so imaginative and unique)
Hamlet by William Shakespeare (4.5 ★)
Neuromancer by William Gibson (3.75 ★ - I quite enjoyed this one, some poetry in it I think; very engaging; love some of the characters' backstory)
Now I'm in the middle of A Prayer for Owen Meany, Dancing at Lughnasa, and thinking of picking up A Darker Shade of Magic.
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atchi ai (other topics)
SUOL (other topics)
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