What Else Are You Reading - November 2016

[Travis]

I just started The Vagrant by Paul Newman at my wife's PT appointment today and blew through the fist 100 pages. This book has been really good so far! It's like Lone Wolf & Cub mixed up with Dark Souls.

[Phil]

Just finished Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits. I really enjoyed it. I liked the humor and didn't find the violence any worse than a lot of the fantasies the group has read over the years.
Starting Steal Across the Sky by Nancy Kress.

[Joseph]

Finished The Man in the High Castle which, whatever I was expecting, that really wasn't it (but I still enjoyed it), and started Kate Elliott's Poisoned Blade, second in her Court of Fives series.

[[deleted user]]

Joseph wrote: "Finished The Man in the High Castle which, whatever I was expecting, that really wasn't it (but I still enjoyed it)..."

I've read a few PKD books and each one has done that to me.

Just finished The Obelisk Gate. Loved it.

Next I'm heading to my substantial TBR pile. Maybe SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome or The Lies of Locke Lamora.

[Sumant]

Here is my review for Lord of Chaos

[Silvana]

Blood Song by Anthony Ryan

I hope this is as good as the last military fantasy I read, the Powder Mage trilogy.

[Brendan]

Finished reading The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. Was surprised by just how much Joss Whedon and Mass Effect influence there was. Some scenes and characters from her sources show up in the book, mostly unaltered. There were too many viewpoint characters for a relatively short book, with the end result that I couldn't form an emotional attachment to any of them. Other than that, pretty good book, but I won't be continuing with the series.

[William]

Phil wrote: "Starting Steal Across the Sky by Nancy Kress."

I have mixed feelings about that book - got sucked into it, but felt the second half didn't quite fit the first half. That said, scenes and ideas keep coming back to me ever since.

I'd be interested to hear what you make of it.

[Shad]

Finished up Crossroads of Twilight. It was okay, but there is very little plot advancement in the book. If anyone is reading Wheel of Time and feels like it is dragging, I would recommend taking a long break and get back in. I took a year or so break from reading them after book 8 and have enjoyed books 9 and 10 much more than the ones before.

Starting Guards! Guards!. Figured a lighter funny book would be a good change of pace after one of the Wheel of Time books.

[Erik]

I'm currently reading through The Aeronaut's Windlass, once finished I am going to start Summer Knight.

I'm also getting ready to start a re-read of The Wheel of Time series, will be the first time since I finished A Memory of Light back in '13.

[taeli]

I'm currently in the middle of listening to The Paper Menagerie and Other Storiesby Ken Liu and Wild Cards and reading the August 2012 issue of Lightspeed.

[Rob, Roberator]

I finished The Subtle Knife in audio. 3 Stars(My Review).

[Stephen]

I am doing the audio of The Castle of Kings read by the great Kate Reading. Do not know why I am doing it, but someone must have recommended it. So far so good.

[Joel]

The Black Company by Glenn Cook

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

[Viola]

Started on Broken Homes. So far I am loving this series and I hope it stays that way. My experience with urban fantasy isn't the best.

[Silvana]

Finished with Blood Song. Yet another series to follow but loved it. The romance is not irritating and the main character could give Logen Ninefingers a run for his money.

Now back to SF with Luna: New Moon.

Joel wrote: "The Black Company by Glenn Cook


Oh I love this one.

[Rob]

Reading:
Alexander Hamilton
Wool: The Graphic Novel
The Only Rule Is It Has to Work: Our Wild Experiment Building a New Kind of Baseball Team

[Dara]

Enjoy the Hamilton biography, Robert! It's excellent, definitely my favorite book that I've read this year.

[Phil]

William wrote: "Phil wrote: "Starting Steal Across the Sky by Nancy Kress."

I have mixed feelings about that book - got sucked into it, but felt the second half didn't quite fit the first half. That said, scenes ..."

Finished Steal Across the Sky by Nancy Kress. I enjoyed this a lot but I see what you mean about the transition between parts William. I would have liked to have seen what the teams on the other planets went through as well. Overall though this was an interesting and thought-provoking book. This is the second Kress book I've read and they were both very good. I'll have to look up more of her stuff.
Starting Among Others.

[John (Taloni)]

I finished The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. Decent enough, I enjoyed it. I appreciated the warnings that it was plot light and character heavy so I knew what to expect. In fact I think the only real plot was in the last ten percent.

One science kerfluffle bothered me: They visit a tidal locked moon that is always night on the back side. Either it's a planet tidal locked to its sun, not a moon, or it will get varying sunlight as it orbits its primary. Think Nemesis or if we must, Avatar. Otherwise the science was hand-waved at, which is just fine in the right place.

As for the rest...spoilers, I guess...

(view spoiler)[The lengthy cast of characters felt like a drama club putting on an improv, with everyone careful to work in their unique traits. "I'm the outrageous tech!" "I'm the overly familiar lizard! Look at me with my hot rooms and warmth blanket!" "I'm the Aspergers algae specialist with no social skills!" I felt like soon there would be a character sliding in from stage left announcing "I'm Lisa, peppy blonde and stunning, sophomore prom queen five years running! Goooooo Lisa!"

There was some decent character development, but parts were left less interesting than they could be. When the interspecies lesbian love subplot finally revealed itself, I found myself wondering what if it had been someone less appealing. What if it had been the brusque algae guy who was the only one willing to provide the affection the lizard needed? Well, to keep the intent of the storyline he would have had to be a she, and Aspergers runs more in men. Still, I would have found that more interesting. Both could have grown as beings.

I was also surprised to see an author obviously on the progressive side essentially espouse the conservative position on terrorists. I next to applauded the ending. It made up for a lot of slow development and throwaway plot points.

I'm definitely in for the sequel. (hide spoiler)]

[Rick]

You seem to be wrapped up a fair bit in the politics of your fiction. Eh.

The sequel is nothing like the first one. It's not really a sequel as such, more of a continuation of a main plot point in Long Way, (view spoiler)[the fate of the new version of Lovelace (hide spoiler)]. I'll be interested to see what you think - it's a bit more plot driven and definitely more focused character-wise.

As for the cast of characters... it takes that from a long line of SF most readily from Firefly. While you seem dismissive of that, it seemed to me to be a way to illustrate the diversity of the universe in which the story is set. Rather than hear about Andrisks, we have one as a character. Same for Dr Chef, etc. Coming out of that book we now have a picture of a variety of aliens, some more detailed than others, and we can use that knowledge to inform future stories.

[Trike]

John (Taloni) wrote: "I finished The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. Decent enough, I enjoyed it. ... One science kerfluffle bothered me: They visit a tidal locked moon that is always night on the back side. Either it's a planet tidal locked to its sun, not a moon, or it will get varying sunlight as it orbits its primary.."

There are a number of things like that in the book, but it's clearly just a Star Trek/Known Space/Firefly type of sci-fi "space opera lite" that stuff didn't bother me. It's kind of like when Kirk says in an episode of TOS, "It's one to the fourth power!" So... it's one? You have to let those goofs go or you'll never find anything to read.

[Brendan]

It threw me off in the beginning that they were very casual about rocks hitting the Wayfarer. At the speeds they're presumably going wouldn't that be much more of a problem?

Currently reading: Gardens of the Moon, 25% done.

[John (Taloni)]

Trike wrote: "It's kind of like when Kirk says in an episode of TOS, "It's one to the fourth power!" So... it's one?"

Oh my god I missed that one. Do you remember the episode?

Incidentally I just found out about Scalzi's "Redshirts." Can't wait to read it.

Rick wrote: "As for the cast of characters... it takes that from a long line of SF most readily from Firefly"

I would think the best comparison would be Niven's Known Space books, most notably Ringworld. Great cast of weird characters, most alien.

[Brendan]

Except, Larry Niven could not write a believable female character to save his life. It's no wonder that, when he had an opportunity to make up his own alien species, he made the females into non-sentient sex dolls.

[Stephen]

Well The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is still only $1.99 for the ebook. I am sure it will be a Book of the Month pick but I have been sure about other thing lately and have been completely wrong, so there is that.

[John (Taloni)]

Brendan wrote: "Except, Larry Niven could not write a believable female character to save his life. It's no wonder that, when he had an opportunity to make up his own alien species, he made the females into non-se..."

True that Niven couldn't write good female characters. However, the idea of the non-sentient Kzinti females was in keeping with his writing of weird alien species, such as the digger-wasp style Puppeteers and living-helium Outsiders . Give Niven a hard time where it's due, but we don't need to overstate the case. Also, the nonsentient Kzinti females were retconned in Man-Kzin wars. That is, over time Niven thought better of that idea.

[Trike]

John (Taloni) wrote: "Trike wrote: "It's kind of like when Kirk says in an episode of TOS, "It's one to the fourth power!" So... it's one?"

Oh my god I missed that one. Do you remember the episode?
.."

It was on TV a couple weeks ago, I guess it was BBC America, but they're running them out of order for some reason. Not that it really matters much from a story perspective, but there's no way to narrow it down to a specific season.

[Trike]

John (Taloni) wrote: "True that Niven couldn't write good female characters. However, the idea of the non-sentient Kzinti females was in keeping with his writing of weird alien species, such as the digger-wasp style Puppeteers and living-helium Outsiders . Give Niven a hard time where it's due, but we don't need to overstate the case. Also, the nonsentient Kzinti females were retconned in Man-Kzin wars. That is, over time Niven thought better of that idea. "

Weren't there sentient kzinrettes in Ringworld Engineers on the map of Kzin? I think that was where he first put forth the idea that the kzinti had purposely bred sentience out of the females. So that was pretty early in the creation of Known Space.

I agree that Niven's women weren't very impressive, but they were leaps and bounds ahead of those found in Asimov or Heinlein. Probably the worst one can say of them is that they were regulated to the hero's girlfriend, not that they were furniture with boobs as in a lot of sci-fi.

I never got the idea he was actively sexist in his early days, just that he never really thought about it. All of his protagonists are men. He did include non-white men as main characters. Louis Wu and Carlos Wu are the biggest examples.

[David H.]

Criminal, Vol. 7: Wrong Time, Wrong Place by Ed Brubaker: I think I like the Criminal series way better than Sin City.

Ghost Talkers by Mary Robinette Kowal: I started this on Halloween and finished it on Armistice Day, though I really should've read it faster than that! Great story, loved the setting and the mystery.

Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 122 edited by Neil Clarke: I really liked Chen Hongyu's "Western Heaven" (a robotic Journey to the West, in a way) and Bo Balder's "Follow the White Line."

Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History edited by Rose Fox & Daniel José Older: Great premise for an anthology but I found myself skimming a lot of the stories, maybe I wasn't in the mood for a lot of them. I picked this up mainly for Ken Liu, but some other good stories in here (just not as many as I'd like, a common complaint I always have with anthologies).

[Tassie Dave, S&L Historian]

John (Taloni) wrote: "Trike wrote: "It's kind of like when Kirk says in an episode of TOS, "It's one to the fourth power!" So... it's one?"

Oh my god I missed that one. Do you remember the episode?"

Season 1 Episode 20 "Court Martial"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyNxjt...

[Joseph]

Finished Poisoned Blade and, because the third volume won't be out until next summer, started something new: The Vagrant by Peter Newman.

[Shad]

Just picked up Catalyst: A Rogue One Novel from my local library. Not very far in, but enjoying it so far.

[Keith]

A little good, a little horrifying. I'm reading The Devil's Eye by Jack McDevitt and The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard J. Evans.

[Fried]

This month I read Slaughterhouse-Five, as good as short. It amazes me that a novel that talks about the bombing of Dresden can be so funny without stopping being really touching.

Also finished Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. What can I say except that it was AMAZING. Usually with books longer than 500 pages I feel like half of them are pure filling that could be easily erased, but not this time. Everything was important, everything was interesting. Great story really good written. Also "The Gentleman" is such a great character, so much fun with his ideas & plans. I feel empty now that I finished it

[David H.]

Uxia, Clarke put out a collection of stories in the same setting called "The Ladies of Grace Adieu"--I think these are basically stories she came up with while writing JS&MN but found them out of place for the novel. No main characters from the novel if I remember right.

She also is supposedly working on another book in the same setting (following lower-class characters) but it's been 10+ years since Jonathan Strange (incidentally how long it took her to write it in the first place). So we'll see!

[Lite]

Just finished
Super powereds: year 1 nd then Year @ by Drew Hayes
Very addictive series

[John (Taloni)]

I also read Sarah Hoyt's take on Pride and Prejudice (and Shapeshifters) titled A Touch of Night. It was fair. I'm not in love with the source material, but enjoyed Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. This take is amusing in spots. Without spoiling too much, the obnoxious cousin who is set to inherit the house and tries to marry into the family, whose profession is Pastor, turns out to be a were-orangutan. His sermons often consist of "Oook," repeated over and over again. It reminded me somewhat of Discworld. It's decent light reading.

[Lauren]

David wrote: " In the computer line, The Cathedral & the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary is a manifesto of sorts for open source. As I read it I kept finding common values between my field of librarianship and open source culture. Thanks again for pointing me to your list. "

David, I read Cathedral & Bazaar while back and was in awe at the connections to Open Access and other initiatives that libraries are working on. I still use references to this book today when I give talks. Hope you enjoyed it.


For me, I'm reading Updraft because I didn't read it when it was the S&L pick some time ago but the discussions got me interested enough to pick it up now. For work, I'm picking my way through The New Librarianship Field Guide, which is good but a lot to digest on every page.

[Kev]

I recently finished Zero World and it was better than I expected (I typically don't like "other worlds/dimensions" stories).
I read Inherit the Stars before that and Behind the Throne, and of course I had to read Ahsoka.

I just finished The Four Thousand, the Eight Hundred, a novella. It started with a bang, then went into a bunch of political/protest stuff which felt oddly uncomfortable, then ended ... I won't spoil it. ;)

[terpkristin]

I Lem'd Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits today, making it the 2nd S&L book this year that I've given up on. This time, I thought the book was just gratuitous crap instead of respecting the author but just not being able to get into it (The Fifth Season).

FVaFS turned me off reading so much that I didn't pick up any books for awhile. I hate it when books do that to me. Work isn't helping that, either. I need more popcorn books, but I just don't have time or energy for them, much, either.

I'm listening to the 3rd book in Tad Williams' Osten Ard series, To Green Angel Tower, which i'm enjoying. It's a nice escape.

I also have a book for work that I'm flirting with, Satellite Communications, though even that I'm not having a lot of energy for.

I hope the Thanksgiving break gets me out of this funk!

[David H.]

Goldenhand by Garth Nix: The fifth book in the Old Kingdom (Abhorsen) series. Another great entry to this setting. It's a direct sequel to the end of Abhorsen, but I definitely recommend people read the series prequel Clariel that came out a couple years ago as well "The Creature in the Case" from the Across the Wall collection--both have an impact on this book in small ways and you'll get a bigger picture if you do.

terpkristin, my reading funk was in October/first half of November, and I definitely hate it when I'm in one--I think I'm getting better, though, now that I read Ghost Talkers and Goldenhand. I thought reading a bunch of random short stories would help, but I think I needed something that could immerse me for longer. I also think reading something completely different would help--been wanting to read a couple nonfiction history books I've got lying around.

[John]

Finished Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits, so am resuming The Sword Of Shanara.

[John (Taloni)]

Finished up Scalzi's book The Android's Dream. Pretty good. I enjoyed the warped humor throughout. The "Nugentians" hunting with a bow made for a good laugh, and of course the "Android's Dream" is a type of sheep with electric blue fur. There were other riffs that I don't recall now but made me chuckle at the time.

Everything else Scalzi is on hold at the library, so I picked up the Manifold series from Baxter. Baxter is never my first choice, ESPECIALLY after Titan, but he's decent enough and I need fodder for Thanksgiving week.

[Aaron]

At the Sign of Triumph It's over it's finally over David Weber finished a series :toot: . Overall a solid end to a strong series.

I read The Last Wish some of the stories were GREAT others were...kind of bland a mixed bag of sorts, I do recommend it though.

Read The Secret of the Dark Forest it's between the 1st and 2nd in quality overall.

Suck My Cosmos still a blast of a series, it takes me a while to go though as I read it in short bursts whenever I need some laughs.

[Colin]

So, it turned out that Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore isn't a 'Sword' book at all - I had thought there was some sort of mild fantasy element to it, but no. Still an enjoyable story though.

Now starting on Jasper Fforde's One of Our Thursdays Is Missing. I've been slowly working my way through this series for years now. I get the impression that I'd get even more out of them if I was better read when it comes to literary classics. Fun reads, even if I have to stop a couple of times per chapter and check dictionary references.

[Viola]

Reading The Night Eternal. At nearly 500 pages, it is a bit longer than I had expected, hope it is good enough so it will be an easy read.

[Rick]

Colin - if you enjoy Fforde's Thursday books you might like Cogman's The Invisible Library. I just finished it and it was a good read.

[John (Taloni)]

About halfway through Baxter's Manifold: Time. Two things stand out. One, Baxter is uniformly depressing in his depiction of the future. This one's about 2010 (published 2000) and he got little right. Similarly, Titan was about the then-near-future and its depressing predictions are well wide of the mark.

The second is that Baxter can write a science yarn like no one else. He takes the reader for a rollercoaster ride of the physical evolution of the later universe, from decaying stars to combined black holes, proton decay and the ultimate heat death. It's fabulously done and very understandable. It's better than a class in cosmology. I could just use a little less doom and gloom on the way.

[Rick]

Baxter is this generation's Benford. Great science. Flat characters, quite depressing. I've read most of the Xeelee stuff but have no interest in his fiction anymore.