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What Else Are You Reading?
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What else are you reading - September 2015
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Reading Blood of Tyrants by Naomi Novik book 8 in the Temeraire series. This series has taken a lot of turns for me. I liked the books up to 4. 5 and 6 took a dip in quality. 7 completely redeemed the series for me and I'm hoping for great things for the last few books, since Naomi Novik recently announced she finished the last book.
Finished Into the Wild today. Enjoyed it. My review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...Now reading The Kingdom of Gods.
Finished Karen Memory, which I loved dearly, and started The House of Shattered Wings by Aliette de Bodard.
I loved House of Shattered Wings. Have you read other de Bodard?
Rick wrote: "I loved House of Shattered Wings. Have you read other de Bodard?"I read the Obsidian and Blood trilogy a few years back and thought it was excellent. At some point I need to pick up On a Red Station, Drifting and some of her other, shorter works.
And I just picked up a free collection of hers -- In Morningstar's Shadow: Dominion of the Fallen Stories, stories set in the Shattered Wings world.
If you like the Obsidian & Blood stuff I think there's a good chance you'll like House. Look forward to hearing what you think. Wait... I didn't know about those stories. Oh.... thanks man!
Rick wrote: "If you like the Obsidian & Blood stuff I think there's a good chance you'll like House. Look forward to hearing what you think. Wait... I didn't know about those stories. Oh.... thanks man!"
You're welcome! And I think she also has one other related story that's not free.
About three chapters in and I'm definitely intrigued.
Of Books, and Earth, and Courtship for 99 cents. Very cool, I didn't know she had short fiction in this universe.
I finished The Diamond Throne and I'm now on to The Ruby Knight, book 2 in the Elenium trilogy.My desire to re-read Eddings means that I haven't made much progress on the other books I've been reading: Drood and The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian.
Read Binti. Brilliant novella, amazing amount of character and world-building in such a small space. My Review.Read Bright of the Sky which was great big concept SF, but at a plodding pace. My Review.
Read Dreams of Shreds and Tatters. Unfortunately a frustrating mess. My Review.
Currently reading Koko the Mighty.
Tamahome wrote: "Bad link on your Binti review!"Thanks, fixed now.
The Bond book that I had started, Solo, didn't hook me. Such as, why did the author have to make up a country? There's plenty to go around. Maybe I'll just leave my Bond fandom to the movies.I'm going to read The Aeronaut's Windlass despite my general boredom with the steampunk setting. I figure Jim Butcher is worth a try.
Also, I'm going to read one story a day from Skeleton Crew by Stephen King. Today's story, "Here There Be Tygers", was five pages long and was about a tiger in an elementary school bathroom. Bow down to the master of horror!
Started a reread of the Harry Potter series. Read the first book in Russian. I had bought it years ago when I was in Russia and had never taken the time to attempt it. It was a fun experience but am glad to be back to reading in English.Now starting Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
Adrian wrote: "I'm currently reading 
and nearing the half way point. I am not really fully into it and wondering if I should keep on. What do y'all think?Oh, I'm listening to..."
I thought Leviathan was amazing because it had such a horror sci fi aspect to it. The rest of the series is more straight forward sci fi but still good. I just finished the most recent book, Nemesis Games, and its the best since Leviathan.
Currently trying to wrap up a re-read of the Mistborn series that I started back in May (I've put it down for other books like Nemesis Games which is why its taking so long) so that its all fresh in my mind when the next two Alloy of Law Books come out in the next few months. I'm oddly having a hard time sticking with it. I loved this series when I first read it and over my life I've frequently re-read series without difficulty but this one is just hard for me to be enthused about. It seems downright boring compared to what I recall. Maybe its because I remembered it as being awesome medieval superhero type fight scenes after fight scenes and instead its a fight scene followed by a hundred pages of political drama before another fight scene.
Just wrapped up The Buried Giant and I gotta say I really enjoyed. The language is rich is detail and relevant to the time period. This was a bit outside my normal reading material, but still in the fantasy realm. Shortly after King Arthur time when peace exists between the Saxons and the Britons. We have dragons and pixies to keep us enchanted. At the same time, I'm reading Greg Bear's The Forge of God from 1997. It feels very familiar, especially after reading Seveneves, but also totally different. It's fun to read about tech and networks before there was so much cultural awareness of such things. Anyway, only half way through and I plan to finish it soon.
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I also finished listening to City of Golden Shadow and really enjoyed it: My Review.
I also listened to Aftermath. I thought it was alright. I don't really get why people are so angry about it. It's a so-so book. My understanding is the old Star Wars books had a lot of those. Here's My Review.
Guys! I'm so bummed. I just lemmed The Voyage of the Basilisk: A Memoir by Lady Trent. I loved the other 2 books.. but this one I could not get into at all. Felt like it was moving sooo slow. Giving Damned a go since my husband recently snagged Doomed from the bookstore from the sale table and they sound interesting.
Finished my Expanded Universe reread. It's been about 30 years since I last read it and I'm afraid there are some unintentionally funny bits to it now. The best parts were the predictions for the year 2000 he first made in 1950 then revised in 1965 and again in 1980.Starting Rule 34. I'm about 10% in and enjoying it so far despite the stupid 2nd person POV and Scottish slang.
Here is my review of Blade of tyshalle 2nd book in Acts of caine. Really hated this book and stopped reading it after 75%.
The only two SF/F books I read in September I thoroughly enjoyed.The first was installment number... 8? 9? of the Destroyermen series by Taylor Anderson, Deadly Shores. It was a return to form with a lot of action and some significant changes to the cast.
The other was the opposite, a debut SF novel from Becky Chambers called The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet that is a sort of character study meets travelogue punctuated by moments of action. As I said in my review, "One might be tempted to compare it to famous and familiar sci-fi worlds. It's a little like Firefly, it's a little like Cowboy Bebop, it's a little like Mass Effect, it's a little like Farscape, it's a little like Ringworld, it's a little like Well World... Which ultimately means it's its own thing."
I just finished reading A New Dawn, Ghost Story, and Professional Integrity.A new Dawn was the first Star Wars book I've read, it was good fun in the way I expect that sort of book to be. Not great writing, but fun story. The audio version was quite good - nice sounds effects and voice acting without distracting from the story the way some of the older graphic audio books I've listened to have.
Ghost Story was an interesting follow-up to changes - Harry gets pretty emo.
Professional Integrity I think I got free from backing The Death of Dulgath of which I unfortunately was not selected as a beta reader but am eagerly awaiting. Turned out to be a fun Halloween-y type book, though i didn't know it before I started.
I am starting The Aeronaut's Windlass on the drive home and hope to do a quick re-read of The Alloy of Law before Shadows of Self comes out in a week or so.
Been unable to sit down and dedicatedly read anything lately with real life getting in the way too much.Finished Swords of Exodus and Three in audio recently.
Dead Six (the series in which swords of Exodus is the 2nd book) really grew on me I wasn't a big fan the first time I tried rolling though it but it just really started clicking. Lorenzo is basically the best military thriller protagonist ever. The series does a lot of things rig, htthe two protagonists written by different authors actually flows well very naturally giving the characters different internal thought processing. That and the whole Illuminati/NWO/Black Government Helicopters/coast to coast am was right about everything makes for a fun setting. I'm just waiting for the reptilian shape shifters and aliens to pop out.
Three was recommended to me by the local bookstore owner. It was a cyberpunk western it was pretty good I guess I'm not really a western fan though.
Sumant wrote: "Here is my review of Blade of tyshalle 2nd book in Acts of caine. Really hated this book and stopped reading it after 75%."
I don't really blame you, my friend had the same opinion, and my opinion while not so harsh was significantly more negative then the first. Which is in my mind one of the most underrated fantasy books.
Off to Be the WizardRead "Off to Be the Wizard," a funny book with a creative twist on the whole idea of advanced enough tech essentially being magic... by making it exactly that!
Planning on getting to the next two books in the series before long.
Freddy wrote: "Off to Be the WizardRead "Off to Be the Wizard," a funny book with a creative twist on the whole idea of advanced enough tech essentially being magic... by making it exactly that!
..."
Oh, that looks like it could be a fun read. I've added it to my TBR list.
The Off to Be the Wizard series is great - Rob turned me onto it. Everyone he's recommended it to and read it ended up loving it - highly recommended. The audible narration is also great if you want to do it in audio
Freddy wrote: "Off to Be the WizardRead "Off to Be the Wizard," a funny book with a creative twist on the whole idea of advanced enough tech essentially being magic... by making it exactly that!
..."
I loved this book and fully agree with the audible narration. Luke Daniels is a fantastic narrator. I haven't read the second two yet but I got them on audible so.. soon, maybe.
Keeping up the Discworld binge with Interesting Times. Not a big fan of Rincewind and the Luggage has been overdone, so not expecting much. It's nice that my library has so many for free download though.Soul Music was really uneven. Perhaps it's because I'm binge reading Discworld. I saw Dibbler as the corrupt entertainment guy a month or so back in Moving Pictures. The musical puns were okay and I really liked Susan Sto Helit. The commentary on the music industry got old fast, though.
I just started reading Year's Best SF which is edited by David G. Hartwell. So far the stories have been very good.
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Yeah, I really enjoy the Magic 2.0 books, especially in audio.
Finished The House of Shattered Wings and decided to keep hanging around the angel-infested ruins of Paris with In Morningstar's Shadow, also by Aliette de Bodard.
Just finished The Scarlet Letter. Now reading Quantum: Einstein, Bohr and the Great Debate About the Nature of Reality.
I am more than 50% done with ship of magic and I am simply loving this book and finding it hard to stop reading it.
John (Taloni) wrote: "Keeping up the Discworld binge with Interesting Times. Not a big fan of Rincewind and the Luggage has been overdone, so not expecting much. It's nice that my library has so many for free download t..."Please, stop the binge reading. I did it too for a while (though a long time ago when there weren't as many) and his books really lose a lot when read back-to-back-to-back. Do yourself a favor and don't waste the limited resource that is unread discworld books.
It's been a while since I posted so here's my update - I read Scott Sigler's trilogy Infected, Contagious, Pandemic. It was very good, but I was getting tired of "yet another mutation" by the end.
I finished Armada finally. Totally lacking in the charm RPO held for me.
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet was next and I really enjoyed it, though it's much more of a slice-of-life story, character driven, than any kind of action adventure, space opera thing I was expecting. It was a very good set-up novel if she continues to write about the characters.
I read California Bones by Greg van Eekhout. I liked it a lot and will continue the series at some point (I was lucky to catch the first one on sale for Kindle).
The Girl in the Spider's Web - I just had to read it, I'm such a fan of the other books. And I really liked it. It was a bit different - I think better in some ways because Larsson was pretty wordy and went off on some tangents. I think it didn't have quite enough Lisbeth scenes and the whole plot was a bit murky and wrapped up kind of out-of-the-blue. But the other books were kind of like that too. Anyways, I liked it just fine.
Last book, I finished yesterday - The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry. Really nice little book about a bookstore owner. I think any big reader would like this book, even if it doesn't have any fantasy or scifi elements going on.
Up next, finishing Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, which I was listening to, but I don't have a long drive now, so I'm just going to read the rest of it.
Oh, and I'm afraid I lemmed Leibowitz a little way into the 2nd section. It just wasn't grabbing me, I was finding excuses to not read it. Someday I'll give it another go.
This month's pick has been on my wishlist so I want to read it, but I won't pay $13 for it so hopefully the price drops soon or I find it at the library.
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The Sword and Laser
Books mentioned in this topic
Armada (other topics)Never Let Me Go (other topics)
Contagious (other topics)
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (other topics)
Pandemic (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Aliette de Bodard (other topics)David G. Hartwell (other topics)
Luke Daniels (other topics)
Jim Butcher (other topics)
Stephen King (other topics)
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I've noticed Men At Arms is probably the most polarizing Discworld novel though, at least among americans.