What Else Are You Reading in 2019? Showing 2,751-2,800 of 3,237

[Hank]

Allison wrote: "Stayed up til 1 am trying to figure out how you do a backhanded uppercut."

Wait...does that include practicing on someone? If I wasn't scared of the mods before (and I was), I am now!

[Anthony]

I wish there was an easy way to post a video because the backhanded uppercut seems so simple to me and it’s difficult to describe in a way that makes sense.

[Hank]

Oh yeah and I just finished

Vicious - Good
Limited Wish - Good
The Thousand Names - Decent
Gods of Jade and Shadow - YA and not the kind I like.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Hank wrote: "Allison wrote: "Stayed up til 1 am trying to figure out how you do a backhanded uppercut."

Wait...does that include practicing on someone? If I wasn't scared of the mods before (and I was), I am now!"

I certainly didn't do anything you can prove before a jury of my peers.

Anthony, I think he just meant an uppercut. Or a sort of vertical cuff. But the words he's using are like saying you have a 4 door coupe. Like, I can imagine a car that's small enough for the size requirement of a coupe having 4 doors, but it's generally understood that coupes have 2 doors and sedans have 4, and that it wouldn't make sense to have 4 doors on a coupe-sized vehicle.

[Jemppu]

Anthony wrote: "I wish there was an easy way to post a video because the backhanded uppercut seems so simple to me and it’s difficult to describe in a way that makes sense."

Well, now I wish that too. I'd love to see you demonstrate it :D

[Pam]

I loved the Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser books when I was a teen but I'm sure I would find them decidedly dodgy with attitudes to women now .... will eventually get round to a re-read and will then find out.

Read a few books lately and have caught up on reviews:

1. Bond of the Fire by Anthony Fon Eisen - reviewed - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3039643488.

2. The Jargoon Pard by Andre Norton - reviewed - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1954249194.

3. The Crystal Gryphon by Andre Norton - reviewed - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1954248909.

4. Other Dimensions volume 1 by Clark Ashton Smith - reviewed - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2998994738.

[Anna]

Remember to vote in this year's final polls!

[Carro]

MadProfessah wrote: "I’d love to hear more people give their impressions of Kage Baker’s work. I tried reading the first in The Company series and bounced off of it very hard (DNF)."
Well I read a couple a lot of years ago and found them memorable, one of those books where scenes stick in my head - but not so appealing to me that I read the whole series. Tried re-reading one recently and gave up.

[Carro]

I've just read (and reviewed)The Celtic Witch and the Sea: Two stories of modern British magic - highlighting it here. It is two short stories set one each in Molly Milligan's two different witch series - one in rural Wales, the other in a Norfolk seaside town. Currently free on kindle so a good way to try out the series, as the both stories are pretty representative of the series but don't have spoilers. (And I'm not a friend of the author, just think she is worth promoting :) ) First came across her books a year or so ago on Goodreads.

[Scarlet]

Blood in the Water: The Lost Tale of Captain Hook

I am so in love with this new series I found! If you love dark fairy tale retellings, you have got to check this one out! It seems hard to find... that's the only down side. But I sure am glad I found this little hidden treasure.

[Thomas]

Gabi wrote: "After some rather underwhelming reading experiences I am glad I had three wins in a row.

Too Like the Lightning gets a special place for my first ever DNF'd novel. (and after feeli..."

I enjoyed Le Guin's later Earthsea books too! What was your favorite ting about them?

[Don]

"A Brightness Long Ago" by Guy Gavriel Kay is on sale on Audible as a daily deal 11/9/19. If you haven't read Kay before, his stories read almost like historic fiction but they are Fantasy where the magic is subtle. His most popular book would be "Tigana" .

[Carolyn]

I’m reading The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter. It took me about a year to get my hands on this from the library and it’s turning out to be well worth the wait. This author has such a mastery of language and imagery! And the book is awesomely creepy in all the right ways. I may have to add this to my permanent collection of books so I can reread at my leisure.

[DivaDiane]

Hey Carolyn! The Bloody Chamber is on my TBR for 2020!

[Carolyn]

@diane hope you enjoy The Bloody Chamber as much as I did. Bizarre sensuous take on fairy tales.

[CBRetriever]

Finished my reread of Black Sun Rising and am almost done with When True Night Falls. The books are a bit complicated, so I can only read a few chapters at a time, though the second book is easier than the first one. They deal with the descendants of an ship from Earth that settled on a seismically active planet with inhabitants. Geology, evolution, and magic are all thrown into the mix with "a wild, near-sentient natural force known as "the fae.""

[MadProfessah]

The Coldfire Trilogy by CS Friedman is surprisingly effective... there’s a vampire whose supposed to be the villain I guess but I was rooting for him!

[Eric]

I finished The Defiant. Book six in the series. Fun stuff! Next up The Name of the Wind.

[Beth]

The Shadowed Sun was kind of a bust. Not its fault--I'm probably not going to be up for anything that complicated or heavy until after New Year's.

So instead it's The Affair of the Mysterious Letter (found through a KJ Charles review) and its first few chapters have been great, just what I was looking for.

[Joseph]

I may start "Doctor Sleep" soon. If I have only seen the film version of "The Shining" would it be hard to follow the plot?

[Pam]

Just read the first in a series by Dean Koontz, Odd Thomas - reviewed - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3040627556
and
first in Jack Vance's Lyonesse series - Lyonesse aka Suldrun's Garden - reviewed - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3044269507.

[Dj]

Trike wrote: "Beth wrote: "(admittedly better than Le Guin being the "there can be only one woman" from the 1970s.)"

I’ve never heard anyone say this."

I hadn't really heard it either and I grew up in the 70s. She was prolific but I don't think she was the only one. Although to be fair I didn't start reading outside the Military History box until about 78 so I did get late in the game.

[Dj]

Phrynne wrote: "Allison wrote: "Whoa! That's some impressive longevity!

I am trying not to take Swords and Deviltry personally, but so far I think Fafhrd is a dbag and I am so confused by the writin..."

I usually go with Fred. It works for me. LOL.

[Bruce]

Trike, I only just saw your comment. Haha. Mine is similar too, although maybe not quite like yours, Wilde’s, and Tyler’s. My great grandfather would probably be 130’s-150’s as well (more likely around 140), and my grandpa would be 110, and was a Jewish child living in Tsarist Russia before he came to the US (when they had major anti semitism and pograms, like in Fiddler on the Roof and An American Tail). I’m also 41, and still don’t have kids, but would like to someday.

[Bruce]

They obviously haven’t heard of Octavia Butler, who wrote in the 70’s.

[CBRetriever]

Tor had a series of articles on female authors from the 70s and the links are in this article

https://www.tor.com/2018/08/02/fighti...

and they forgot about

Vonda N. McIntyre
Cecelia Holland
Eleanor Arnason
C.J. Cherryh

[Jacqueline]

At the moment I’m constantly reading the Bushfire alerts. We have a big one just to the west of us that is out of control and the wind is blowing pretty hard from that way so it’s expected to come over here. It’s the sort of excitement I can do without. Especially when I’m by myself.

[Trike]

Jacqueline wrote: "At the moment I’m constantly reading the Bushfire alerts. We have a big one just to the west of us that is out of control and the wind is blowing pretty hard from that way so it’s expected to come ..."

Stay safe.

[Jacqueline]

I’m trying to. I have my bins filled with water and the sprinklers on trying to make the ground too wet for embers to catch. I keep getting alerts that it’s getting closer. These are the worst fires ever they reckon. The whole coast is alight. And the wind is getting stronger. If it gets too bad the dog and I will be down at the beach in the water.

[Phrynne]

Even Sydney is, affected by these fires. Our nearest is 6 kilometres away but we are watching out for it. Stay safe Jacqueline!

[Jacqueline]

Yeah a heap have started in Sydney, the Blue Mountains and around Newcastle today. I read something this morning that for the first time in recorded weather whatsit there hasn’t been a drop of rain in the whole of mainland Australia. That’s like not a drop in the US or Canada. About the same size. That just sounds impossible. Even though I did read somewhere that the continents in the Southern Hemisphere is actually depicted smaller than they really are. Probably not right but I did read it.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Yikes! Please be safe, Aussie friends! =/

I'm reading The Republic of Thieves, which is tons of fun and The Broken Crown which I think has a lot of potential but so far is just very confusing.

[DivaDiane]

I hope you all are safe!

I'm reading a LOT at the moment:
The Farthest Shore aloud to my son;
An Unkindness of Ghosts;
Green Mars;
Watchmen;
Changing Voices: An Approach to Adolescent Voice Training.

On hold on audio are:
All Clear and
The Way of Kings

[Bobby]

I haven't posted here in a long time, so I thought I'd give an update. I started listening to Audio books for the first time ever in my quest to re-read the Wheel of Time. Aside from some weird pronunciations, I thought the narrators were great, and I went from book 8 to book 14 in about 2 months.

In my other re-read quest, I've been slowly reading Malazan over the past year so I can get to the final book, which I have been putting off for way too long. I'm now on book 7 out of 10 in that re-read, and chugging along nicely.

I really like the way I can multitask with audio books, so I searched my library and it turns out they had The Blade Itself, which is the group re-read this month.

I've been hearing about this series for a long time, so it's nice to finally jump in. I'm about half way through, and while I wouldn't say it's a new favorite, I'm definitely enjoying it and want to keep reading (listening) to find out what happens next.

[Beth]

I'll be listening to the audio for The Blade Itself too, Bobby. I probably won't have time to actually start TBI before the group read starts, but I'll pop in to the thread eventually.

[Carolyn]

I’m burning through Do Androids Dream of Electric Sleep right now. I have almost no memory of Bladerunner so have to locate the movie and watch as soon as I finish the last couple of chapters. Now I want to read his book The Man in the High Castle!

[Don]

I read somewhere recently that: "Attics are designed to circulate air in hot weather and that burning embers are drawn in by this feature. That by covering the air intakes with 1/8th to 1/16th inch wire mesh that fire risk is greatly reduced". GoodOnYa Australia! Hoping for Rain in Sydney.

[Don]

try to choose between Kel Kade's "fate of the fallen" or Craig Alanson's "Armageddon"...

[Jacqueline]

Don’t have an attic as such. No ventilation at all really in my roof space. We were going to get whirlybird fan things to put in the roof the take the hot air out. Just got a new roof so that’s good.

[Phrynne]

It's cooler today and things are easier. No rain in sight though!

I just read an interesting short story by Mark Lawrence. Totally different to his normal stuff!

My review of During the Dance by Mark Lawrence

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Jacqueline]

I read that one by Mark Lawrence a while ago. I loved it.

Yeah nicer today and not as windy but the two big ones on either side of me are getting bigger. And hooking up. The damned things are all joining up. A new one has just started above us too. And yeah no rain in sight.

[Trike]

When I was in Australia in 2013, everywhere we went either fires were burning or had just burned. Brisbane, Sydney, Fraser Island... we kept hearing “a controlled burn got away from them.” Started sensing a pattern, that maybe the fire marshals were not terribly good at their jobs. Or perhaps a little too good at it. 😂

[Pam]

Just read book 2 in Dean Koontz's series, Forever Odd - review - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3047340521

[Beth]

Another book bust, another day. Rats! Spent some time fidgeting between the initial pages of 8-10 books yesterday evening and The Bumblebee Flies Anyway: Gardening and Surviving Against the Odds looks like the one that might finally stick. Don't be too surprised if there's another post like this in a day or two, though. Brain seems to be having some problems!

[W.]

Working on finishing up The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie. I wish more authors could use the omniscient narrator with the skill he does. A lot of awkward dialogue, telling phrases and dull infodumps could be avoided.

[Raucous]

Beth wrote: "Another book bust, another day. Rats! Spent some time fidgeting between the initial pages of 8-10 books yesterday evening..."

This is why I usually have so many books in progress. I can never tell on any given day just what's going to appeal to me although I know there's a good chance that it won't be what I was reading yesterday.

The Bumblebee Flies Anyway: Gardening and Surviving Against the Odds sounds interesting. Or maybe it would be too close to home. We have a heavily wooded lot that we've left in a natural state. Our neighbors all keep going on about how wonderful our view would be if we cleared. And then of course we could have one of those big green lawns just like theirs. Not happening. We currently see eagles, six different kinds of woodpeckers, ravens, deer, and much more (including bumblebees). Those neighbors appreciate what we already have.

[Carolyn]

About to dive into Artificial Condition, the second novella in the Murderbot series.

[Sabrina]

I just finished The Ninth Rain and urge everyone to give this female author a try. Her excellent book receives far too little attention.

For what its worth my review

[Anna]

Polls for the last two books of 2019 close at midnight tomorrow GR time. Make sure you've voted!

[Kai]

Sabrina wrote: "I just finished The Ninth Rain and urge everyone to give this female author a try. Her excellent book receives far too little attention.

For what its worth my review"

I agree, I enjoyed that one from Jen Williams too. She has won a couple of UK Fantasy awards for the series.