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What Else Are You Reading?
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What else are you reading - August 2020
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YES. I laughed. I gagged. I cried. I loved it."
It is an emotional ride. I loved it also.
I am listening to the Daily Stoic and just finished The Song of Achilles.
Ruth wrote: "Listening to the audiobook of The Relentless Moon and my eyes are inexplicably leaking 😭"Same here! It's so, so good though. I have a little over five hours left and I just want to keep listening. Silly work, getting in the way! :p
So, after reading the August pic I've decided to retry and read Neal Stephsenson's tome Quicksilver. This is because I was able to get through and enjoyed his book Fall, or Dodge in Hell. I'm going to finish it this time. Also, the first time I started this book I was in the middle of finishing my Bachelor's in Computer Science.
I finished: 
The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin
Rating: 4 stars
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
and I started reading:
Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis
Jason wrote: "So, after reading the August pic I've decided to retry and read Neal Stephsenson's tome Quicksilver."The whole trilogy or just Quicksilver for now? If I remember right, they are each pretty darn long. I enjoyed it, but not as much as some of his other novels. Then again I read it mostly as it was coming out, and haven't touched it since. So maybe I'd like it more now. I sort of felt it was like Cryptonomicon taken up to 11. If you dug that book, it is worth giving it a go, but be prepared.
In a similar note, I started Fall this spring before everything got crazy, was about half way through and haven't really picked it up since. I will at some point, but just not feeling it yet.
Misti wrote: "Ruth wrote: "Listening to the audiobook of The Relentless Moon and my eyes are inexplicably leaking 😭"Same here! It's so, so good though. I have a little over five hours left and ..."
I have just under 7 hours left and I’m having to listen in short bursts because otherwise my eyes start leaking again
“Food is fuel”
I finished: 
A Touch of the Creature by Charles Beaumont
Rating: 3 stars
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The stories in the collection were actually written in the 1950s and 1960s but the collection was posthumously published in 2000. Beaumont was known as one of the primary writers on the original Twilight Zone series. He was a fantastic writer capable of wildly imaginative stories across a great spectrum of topics and interests, but this collection is probably not the best place to start reading his work.
RJ from the LBC wrote: "He was a fantastic writer capable of wildly imaginative stories across a great spectrum of topics and interests, but this collection is probably not the best place to start reading his work. "Now that you’ve read more of his stuff, which would you recommend?
Decided to start the Witches track of Discworld. Working on Equal Rites.Also reading Raybearer; The Angel of the Crows up next.
Did finally finish Made Things. Not my favourite from Adrian Tchaikovsky. It felt like he'd conjured quite an expansive setting but only had an insubstantial story rattling around inside it. Undeterred, I'm going to start another of his novellas, Walking to Aldebaran, because I bought them together and I'm in the mood for another shorter read.
Spent a few days semi-off the grid (up at my parents', where the internet speed is measured with single digits) during which I finished The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian, devoured Bone Silence in as close to one sitting as I could manage, and started Walter Jon Williams' Quillifer, which so far is giving me a bit of a K.J. Parker vibe. (Which is, of course, not a bad thing.)
^There's some pretty awesome stuff in there, but yeah. Strange start.
Just finished The Human by Neal Asher. It's the third book in a trilogy. I found the second one underwhelming but wanted to have the end of the story. Welp, at least I am now done.I should be loving this. References about. There's a Laumer drive, after author Keith Laumer, who did the alt-history Worlds of the Imperium that I rave about, altho he's better known for the Retief books. A character named Trantor, after the capital planet of the Foundation books.
There's space opera galore, loads of action, huge space battles...and it left me flat. It's as if someone was trying to redo the scale of Lensman but without the heart of that series.
Lots of action, but no rising action, no characters to root for and the one real villain was so ill defined as to defy characterization. Plenty of pew pew pew substituting for actual plot.
Asher wants to settle the question of the Jain, his setup dead-civilization berserker weapon from many previous books. This trilogy functions as an answer to a question that really no one asked.
Asher has gained in writing skill since Gridlinked. I can see it. I'm just not enjoying it. Gridlinked and the next few sequels sent up action and SF tropes in subtle and hilarious ways. The first Prador book had the humans musing on first contact that they were silly to be anxious that the crablike Prador would enslave and eat humans - and then that's exactly what they do! Macabre, pointed, and hilarious.
Not so this trilogy. Asher has gained in skill and lost in inspiration. I'm done and, well, meh. It's over.
Trike wrote: "RJ from the LBC wrote: "He was a fantastic writer capable of wildly imaginative stories across a great spectrum of topics and interests, but this collection is probably not the best place to start reading his work.Now that you’ve read more of his stuff, which would you recommend?"
Great question. I would go with the Penguin collection Perchance to Dream which has a nice selection of Beaumont's stories including many of his best. After reading that someone should know if they like his stuff enough to track down his other collections. Most are out of print but The Hunger and Other Stories and A Touch of the Creature have both been re-printed by Vallancourt. Those are both good but not great (Hunger was his first collection with his earliest writings, Creature contains non-published stuff and is kind of a mixed bag) so I would recommend trying to find a used copy of one of these out-of-print collections instead:
The Howling Man (also called "Selected Stories")
Night Ride And Other Journeys
The Magic Man and Other Science-Fantasy Stories
The Edge
Yonder, his second collection, is also just OK. The best stuff in it is also available in Perchance or Howling Man/Selected Stories.
The ultimate Beaumont collection seems to be Mass for Mixed Voices: The Selected Short Fiction of Charles Beaumont which runs about $2,000.00 or so secondhand. It is so choice. If you have the means I highly recommend picking one up.
I finished the Hugo, Nebula and Locus Award winning: 
Dreamsnake by Vonda N. McIntyre
Rating: 3 stars
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
and I started reading:
Blackout by Connie Willis
Jason wrote: "So, after reading the August pic I've decided to retry and read Neal Stephsenson's tome Quicksilver. I really loved that series. However, better to go in with the attitude that you're going to enjoy the journey, not the destination. It really rambles, and if you don't enjoy the rambling...
I finished The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness for my non-fiction book club. Man, that was a downer. But everyone (American at least) should read it. Take your medicine!Now reading World Fantasy Award nominee Queen of the Conquered. And guess what, race-based slavery features prominently! Not sure I knew what I was getting into. However, I am enjoying it quite a bit, maybe just because reading well-written fiction is easier than depressing non-fiction.
Just finished Blood of Elves. I quite enjoyed it. Ink & Sigil comes out tomorrow, I'm pretty excited to read it next.
I'm about to finish the Commonwealth Series (Pandora's Star, Judas Unchained) for the second time. The Commonwealth is invaded by a hostile alien, and need to create an interstellar navy. The navy has been given a budget of a trillion dollars to build a fleet of FTL starships. Give the author some slack; it was released in 2008.
^Took a while to get going but ultimately very satisfying. The later Commonwealth books are not quite as good, but worth reading.
I read the first three entries into the Well World saga for my Hindsight 2020 challenge. So good.Now reading Kings of the Wyld, a Fantasy about getting a band of adventurers back together as old farts go on one last adventure to rescue one of their daughters, who has followed in dad’s footsteps and become a mercenary.
I like that he literally uses “getting the band back together” as their rallying cry and that one of them is nicknamed “Slowhand.” This is a straight up classic rock reunion tour filtered through Epic Fantasy.
Trike wrote: "I read the first three entries into the Well World saga for my Hindsight 2020 challenge. So good.Now reading Kings of the Wyld, a Fantasy about getting a band of adventurers back ..."
I read the KotW (in audiobook) a couple of years ago. It’s a good fun read with some genuinely touching moments (the two-headed giant will stay with me) and more classic rock jokes than you can shake a lute at.
Finished The Relentless Moon this morning. I loved it so much. Not sure what I will listen to next since I've already read the pick for September.
Colin wrote: "Did finally finish Made Things. Not my favourite from Adrian Tchaikovsky. It felt like he'd conjured quite an expansive setting but only had an insubstantial story rattling around inside it."I was going to chime in that I feel that way about most novellas - they usually come up short somewhere. Just read The Empress of Salt and Fortune, however, and really liked it. There are few characters, but they're all interesting, and the world is evocative for all it is painted in only a few brush-strokes.
Ballistic Kiss, the penultimate book in Richard Kadrey's Sandman Slim series, hit my Kindle last night at 9:30 so of course I stayed up and read it all. Excellent entry in the series and, as I tweeted at him, the last two have really been outstanding. This is NOT a book to start the series with...for best effect you need to read these in order, especially the first several.
Starting a re-read of The Way of Kings. I plan to all the books of the The Stormlight Archive, Books 1-3: before the release of Rythm of War.Also readingShadow of the Hegemon.
Jonathan wrote: "Starting a re-read of The Way of Kings. I plan to all the books of the The Stormlight Archive, Books 1-3: before the release of Rythm of War."Avatar checks out. ;-)
Just finished The Well of Lost Plots the third book in the Thursday Next saga by Jasper FfordeThe series is about a special agent in an alternate-history England who gets involved with people changing the plots of books from within and fictional characters breaking out into the real world.
I find this series enjoyable but you might need to know about all those books that you've always promised yourself that you'll read one day. (too many thats and not enough commas, sorry)
In this book the author seems to be taking aim at (view spoiler)
I haven't read much at all this month :( I hit a wall where even some of the books that seemed interesting when got them aren't sparking my interest right now.
I know she's not exactly flavour of the month on the internet just now, but I've been listening to J.K. Rowling / Robert Galbraith's Lethal White as a reminder of what had been happening to the characters in advance of the new book coming out next month.With that out of the way, I'm all set to start on Ten Thousand Doors ...
I just finished Witchmark by C.L. Polk and it was so enjoyable! I also recently read Gail Carriger’s latest book, The Enforcer Enigma.
I just finished Queen of the Conquered, World Fantasy award nominee. I enjoyed it, and plan to read the sequel.Speaking of sequels, next up is The Tyrant Baru Cormorant.
Just finished Gail Carriger's The Enforcer Enigma. I approached this book with some trepidation.Gail's been best known for Victorian Steampunk Romance, with vampires and shifters. Along the way she's had major sympathetic gay characters in the Parasol Protectorate and its followups, most notably Lord Akeldama and Madame LeFoux.
The San Andreas Shifters takes us to the modern day. There's been something called The Saturation and the paranormal set is very different than Gail's previous work. The Shifter world is really very well done. It's also a change to M/M erotica, with very lengthy sex scenes. I got through the first one with some squeamishness because I'd loved Gail's work so much to date. The second one, I knew what I was getting into but that was the one that revealed what the Saturation was, so I got through that.
I just didn't know if I could deal with another M/M erotica book, even if it was Gail with her trademark wit and charm, and a great shifter world. Well, this one is more M/M romance, along the lines of the Madame LeFoux side book and the Biffy/Lyall one.
There's a decent plot involving smuggling and water-shifter gangsters. One of the major characters and his brother deal with the lingering effects of an absent mother and a shunning father. Some of it is fairly silly, and the dollar amounts involved in the smuggling operation make me wonder why a crime family would bother. There are some howlers involving a country singer and I won't say more than that. Some well-loved characters make an appearance by reference. The ending comes together beautifully. It's a "small" book with no earthshaking consequences, about the lives of two men, their werewolf pack, and the cafe one of them uses as a hangout.
All in all enjoyable. I don't like the San Andreas Shifters as much as Gail's previous work, but these are the stories she wants to tell now.
Incidentally, Gail has helpfully marked the non-Parasol Protectorate books as "G.L. Carriger" to distinguish them from her more mass market work. I knew what I was getting into going in. Was getting to the point where I wondered if I should give up the "G.L. Carriger" line. I am glad to see that the answer is 'no."
Finished The Relentless Moon audiobook. Eyes still leaking. Moving on to some non-fiction next in the form of Black and British: A Forgotten History by David Olusoga.
Just started Harrow the Ninth and in the Dramatis Personae list each cavalier’s name is crossed out with a strikethrough, except for Gideon, whose name has been scratched to obliteration. Heh.
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The Sword and Laser
Books mentioned in this topic
The Time of Contempt (other topics)American Elsewhere (other topics)
Harrow the Ninth (other topics)
Black and British: A Forgotten History (other topics)
The Relentless Moon (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
David Olusoga (other topics)Jasper Fforde (other topics)
Richard Kadrey (other topics)
Vonda N. McIntyre (other topics)
Connie Willis (other topics)
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YES. I laughed. I gagged. I cried. I loved it.