SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion
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What Else Are You Reading?
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What Else Are You Reading in 2022?
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Michelle
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Jul 31, 2022 08:21AM
I would consider Portland just for Powell's.
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Gabi, I haven't read Beartown yet, but I've liked everything else I've read by Backman. There's one novella on Storytel (And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer) that I think you'd love, but only when you're in a headspace to read about (view spoiler). It really got to me, and I don't even have personal experiences with the topic it tackles.
I loved And Every Morning… but couldn’t finish Beartown. The incident in it triggered me and I had to put it down and walk away. I was rather enjoying it up until then.
Nah I haven’t read that one yet Anna. I did listen to My Grandmother said to say she was sorry (or whatever the name is as it has a couple of names) and loved it. I’ve been meaning to read Britt-Marie was here. She’s one of the characters from that one. I listened to it while I was driving and the Grandmother had me remembering my grandmother so I was crying a lot. Which doesn’t help when you’re driving.
Yeah crying isn't great while driving :D
Anna wrote: "Gabi, I haven't read Beartown yet, but I've liked everything else I've read by Backman. There's one novella on Storytel (And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer) that ..."Thank you, Anna! Since my life is in shatters for a year now because exactly of that topic, the CW is very much appreciated. I will certainly read it nevertheless because sometimes crying is the best method to get through the day.
I've seen several Backman novels on storytel, some of them in German translation which of course is great for me. I will read them all for sure. The insight into a mother's soul he showed in Beartown was something I honestly would not have expected coming from an man (yeah, I know, prejudice, prejudice ... I'm guilty!). I could relate to every single thought and feeling of the mothers in there. So this author jumped to the top of my must-read-everything-of list for sure.
It is sad, but also really beautiful, written to help him deal with it happening in his own life.I can't wait to get to Beartown, book three is out in September, and I hope Storytel gets it, so that I can marathon all three! Weirdly many of these haven't been translated into Finnish. I wanted to buy Longer and Longer for my mom, and although she does read in English, too, this was something I wanted to give her in Finnish, and usually Swedish authors are easy to find in Finnish.
A Family Reunion
Not the most thought-provoking action/adventure - mystery/suspense novel it is however a fun read. The action is paced well and intermixed with the comedy of the over-the-hill CIA gang antics. It also has some interesting family interactions that add another level of comedy to what is already a fun book. Never going to hit a top ten list of best-written books ever, but it will be a wonderful guilty treat on any reading list.
I read
A Snake Falls to Earth by Darcie Little Badger. I read the author's first book (Elatsoe) and loved it, so I was really looking forward to this one. Unfortunately, I didn't like it nearly as much. The pace was too languid for the length of the story, especially in the first half, where I put it down a few times. On the positive side, this is a bright, cheery, feel-good book with nice characters. It is, I think, definitely MG, probably on the younger side of that group, which is where the length may be an issue. I do think it would be a good book to read to younger kids and would recommend it for that.
A friend of mine loaned me Locke & Key: The Golden Age by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez. If you liked the original graphic novel series, this is a prequel, giving some background to the Locke family, and maintains the story's high quality.
Tagg wrote: "After hearing a lot about it, I'm finally coming around to reading the Expanse series by "James S.A. Corey" (Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck), starting with [book:Leviathan Wakes|8855..."I loved Leviathan Wakes! Lots of Neuromancer/Hyperion vibes. But with these kinds of books I never feel motivated to read the second one because they often tie up so well or I just feel satisfied at the end, if that makes sense?
Marc wrote: "Still on my quest to read Hugo Award winners. December I had finished Jo Walton's Among Others and Vonda McIntyre's Dreamsnake. Now I'm reading Ursula LeGuin's Hainish cycle working my way to her t..."Have you liked them a lot? I love all of Leguin's stuff but haven't explored many of the Hugos...
EJ wrote: "Tagg wrote: "After hearing a lot about it, I'm finally coming around to reading the Expanse series by "James S.A. Corey" (Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck), starting with [book:Leviath..."It does. It makes me think of Dune in a way. Dune was such a good book I find myself wishing I had never read the ones that came after. With the Expanse series, I haven't gotten that image, mostly because my favorite profane Grandma doesn't show up until the second book. Unlike the show. The show lets her loose on the Solar System right out the gate.
Priest of Crowns just came out and I am super excited to read it. It's the final book in the War for the Rose Throne series, and schemes are afoot from the start.
The Lost LegacyNew YA book series I started. I saw people posting about it on Instagram and the author just released the second book cover and release date. Loved the first book!!
Reading The Brothers Karamazov. My daughter gave me several Kindle collections of novels a while ago so I have read two or three like this just when I was between other books. I have tons of reading material if I want it. I checked out the two August books from the Library. They are buying The Gate to Women's Country so I do not have it yet, but they had four copies of The Witch's Heart so I got a copy right away. Anyway, I'm grinding my way through this rather long and wordy classic novel that I started weeks ago before trying out the group fantasy and sci-fi August books.Bobby
I finished the whole Jhereg series reread, so now I'm ready for #16 in the spring. I also finished Sharpe's Prey and rather than switch back to the military sci-fi series I'm reading, I jumped right into Sharpe's Rifles. I find that I am enjoying rereading this series more than I did the first time. Maybe because I'm picking up on things that I'd missed before, I don't know.
I wish I had a loooong series to dig into! I mean sure, I have lots of series I could start, but nothing I'm super enthusiastic about at the moment. Of course if I actually tried any of them I'd know if I could be enthusiastic about them *eyeroll* Anyway, yay for those of you who are mid-series and loving it :)
Jason wrote: "Terry Pratchett's Guards! Guards!"Nice! I read all the Discworld books recently because a computer game I play has references to them and tributes to their author. I liked all the humor and creativity.
I just read and finished Chaos Beingz The Universe Within by Anontimes Zone when i say amazing read I mean it a real page turner and just epic how it was written can wait for book 2
I've been wanting to read more fantasy so I have decided to read The Name of the Wind
as a lot of people have said it's easy to read and a good starting point. Let's see how it goes I have high expectations.
Mystic wrote: "I've been wanting to read more fantasy so I have decided to read The Name of the Wind as a lot of people have said it's easy to read and a good..."Beware. The author never finished the trilogy. Only the two books.
I just started reading The Ballad of Perilous Graves which is about a magical New Orleans. I don't know where I found it. I thought to look here. Not sure if it is on the bookshelf. So far it's pretty cool and it'll take a bit of time for me to assimilate what's going on. Stay tuned!8/16/2022: I finished the book. I really liked it. It is confusing in lots of places but the characters and the magical NOLA helped keep me going.
Eric wrote: "Mystic wrote: "I've been wanting to read more fantasy so I have decided to read The Name of the Wind as a lot of people have said it's easy to ..."Ahh I see another Winds of Winter situation happening here no worries I have great patience for such predicaments. Happens a lot in the video game industry as well. Thanks for the heads up!
I have recently started The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle which was given to me by a friend who is super into murder mysteries, one of my least favourite genres. I was worried it was going to be another carbon copy and I'll admit it does have its Agatha Christie moments, but I'm delighted to say it's got me really intrigued. There are a lot of magical realism elements and the way the different threads weave together is really quite clever. I'm really looking forward to seeing how it plays out.
I'm finishing up the novels for the Hugo's with She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan. It starts with abject poverty, predicted destiny, and deadly bandits, so its seemed pretty epic, and it really has become so, with unexpected multiple view points and a lot of political intrigue.I'm only disappointed I won't get to the short stories or novellas before voting. There just is not enough time to read all the works.
Also, reading Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch. It's a comedy but there are some pretty dark scenes. It's also extremely British, which is great for this Dr. Who fan, and I'm learning more colloquial language I did no know about, such as taking a ton down the road.
A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence by Jeff HawkinsThe author had invented the Palm Pilot, a handheld computer, in 1992. He is interested in human intelligence as it relates to computing and AI. Part 1 is about his new hypothesis and two-thirds of the book are on sci-fi like musings of machine intelligence / AI.
My review - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Richard wrote: "I'm finishing up the novels for the Hugo's with She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan. It starts with abject poverty, predicted destiny, and deadly bandits..."Those are two very different books both of which I enjoyed. Glad you did too.
I dedicated August to the reading of this year's releases (prompted by a Bingo challenge in another group). In the first 10 days I've already found two new-to-me jewels:When I Sing, Mountains Dance by Irene Solà.
I bought it because of the title - and as so often with these gut decisions it was point on. The translation from Catalan was released this year and follows the life in a remote mountain village in the Pyrenees for three generations. The chapters are ever changing POVs all in first person for the most part in connection with the preceding chapter. The POVs not only consist of humans but also of Thunderclouds, mushrooms or a deer.
It is a surrealistic, poetic, sometimes brutal narration - perfect to my taste in structure and writing.
I was very much reminded of the prose of "The Mere Wife" - one of my alltime favourite novels.
How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu is a beautiful mosaic novel with again ever changing POVs. Not all POVs hit the target with me, but those that did were absolutely wonderful.
A tale about the tragic and loss of a world wide deadly plague, how it influences and changes society and how everybody tries to find a little hope in something else to deal with the losses.
Some chapters had me crying, some had me dreaming.
A profound, awesome reading experience.
I also read two favourite authors:
The Moonday Letters by Emmi Itäranta. The original Finnish version was released 2020, but the English version was only released this year.
Dreamy, beautifully poetic prose as is typical for this author. Yet I only would recommend it for readers who can go a long way with the prose. The narration is very, very slow, almost subdued, the story is told in epistolary style, mostly in the POV of the protagonist who is looking for her spouse who mysteriously vanished from a laboratory of biological research. A lot of esoterical nuances play into the narration about love, hope and belonging.
Enclave by Claire G. Coleman.
Coleman is a favourite author of mine and writes from the viewpoint of Australian first nation people. This novel again deals with the topics of oppression and dystopian future. It starts slowly, building up the menacing feeling that something is not right with the society of the rich and beautiful wherein the MC lives.
I loved the book until the very end, when it gets too hastened, too convenient. As if the author wanted to quickly finish the story.
Yet since it is literally just the last 7% of the book I still gave it a good rating. The rest is worth it.
A very quirky, weird and short one was the novella
Rosebud by Paul Cornell: This one was a wonderfully weird, short jewel. Especially after the pretentious prose of the below mentioned Greek mythology novel, the sassy, vernicular dialogues of the VERY diverse crew of the 1 mm space ship came as a relief.
In essence it is the classical tale of the big dump object, only that the object is as tiny as the space ship. The crew learn to face their cruel past on that object with a lot of scientifically explained deja vus. Very quirky, full of CW sensitive content, since the future it shows is trans- and homophobic in the extreme, and it has an openly open end.
But it was quite to my taste!
And I wasn't happy with those two:
Wrath Goddess Sing by Maya Deane took me way too long and I put it aside two times to start and finish other books. Here my usual way of going into new books without looking at the blurb was perhaps a mistake. It is another one of those Greek mythology retellings which are apparently not my taste. (I will still make an exemption for Claire North, because it is Claire North). The prose was too pompous the constant naming of gods by all their mythological equivalents through Europe, Asia and Africa was jarring and till the end I couldn't understand why the author changed the known relationships of the Greek gods. It felt rather like a fanfiction kind of story.
(and my personal problem is that knowing the Greek mythologies there is no real suspension in the plot itself. Now an author going to re-write the Trojan war with Troja winning - that would be an interesting one to read for me).
I understand that it is less work to take an existing story and change some elements instead of creating one's own universe - but it makes for rather dull reading in most of the cases.
The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd - the beginning and the setup were great. It takes place in the academic community of cartographers and map libraries with the magical mystery involving map drawing.
But the motivations of the characters became less and less comprehensible for me and the villain of the whosdunnit had a neon arrow pointing at him. The book didn't succeed in transporting the drama of the story to me. Pity.
You've read Enclave! I still haven't, but am itching to do so as soon as I can dedicate a whole day to eye-reading! ^_^ I just listened to her essay collection Lies, Damned Lies: A personal exploration of the impact of colonisation from Storytel, and it was excellent.
I'm finishing up Amongst Our Weapons (OH, but I adore these audiobooks!) There better be another in the works....I've been slowly reading Kiki's Delivery Service digitally. Very cute and more kid oriented than Howl’s Moving Castle which I really liked.
My nightly read has been Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine. What an absolutely engaging curmudgeon. Haven't found out why she is the way she is but looking forward to getting to know her better.
Still reading A Master of Djinn. What with driving hundreds and hundreds of kilometres all the time and being exhausted I haven’t been able to get back into it. Yes I know I can listen to audiobooks but Hubby was with me and he whinges if we listen to an audiobook. There was always music in the car but not lately. Anyhoo I’ve picked it up once in the last week. Hubby is heading back to work today so I might just be able to get back to it. I bought Shards of Earth yesterday so I’m looking forwards to getting back to that too. I was reading it on my iPad but it was annoying so I was waiting for the cheaper paperback to come into our bookstore so I could finish it. I already have number 2 in the series sitting here waiting for me to finish 1. I’m also up to bag 3 of a Lego build. There are 2 big bags for each section so it’s either section 3 of 6 or bags 5 and 6 of 12. Anyhoo it’s 123 Sesame St. it’s fun so far.
It’s been a big week with my father in law who I used to look after passing away and then we had to attend his funeral with all of those nasty in laws who made my life hell for all those years. And then we got home to the farm yesterday and our daughter rings us to say she has to go back to the doctor today as they’ve found out why she’s getting migraines and they want to start treatment straight away but didn’t tell her what was going on when they phoned her. So now there’s that. Can’t concentrate on anything. Just when you think you can get back to normal life throws a curve ball.
Jacqueline wrote: "Still reading A Master of Djinn. What with driving hundreds and hundreds of kilometres all the time and being exhausted I haven’t been able to get back into it. Yes I know I can listen to audiobook..."Sounds too hectic and very little fun. Hope things turn around for you soon
Dj wrote: "Jacqueline wrote: "Still reading A Master of Djinn. What with driving hundreds and hundreds of kilometres all the time and being exhausted I haven’t been able to get back into it. Yes I know I can ..."Yeah way too hectic for my liking. We just want to slow down and enjoy our semi retirement and world travels but the universe seems to love conspiring against us. I've just come home from running around doing stuff all day and babysitting and worrying and all that crap and all I want to do is just stop and ignore the world. Except that Hubby is stuck somewhere he wasn't supposed to be stuck around 10 hours drive away and he keeps sending me messages to find him flights home and hotels and I can't. I was standing at the checkout at the supermarket with him trying to get me to book him a flight from my phone when he definitely can do that sort of thing himself. Anyhoo.... he sold our plane after trying for 12 months to sell it. He was flying it to where the new owner lives but the weather turned really bad so he's stuck at a town about 3 hours drive from where he was going. He's leaving the plane there now apparently and flying home from there instead of the other town he was supposed to be going to. Then when he gets home tomorrow he has to turn around and drive down past that way again to go to work on Saturday. He works 12 hours drive away. The town he's stuck in is 2 1/2 hours from where he works. Since he doesn't have any stuff with him he can't just get someone to come and pick him up and take him to where he's working. Yeahhhh fun times.
Ugh, Jacqueline, that sounds awful. Maybe he could just buy some clothes and toiletries to ride him over? It might be cheaper. Or is there stuff for work he needs that’s at home? Express mail it?
He’s leaving the plane where it is and he was able to get on a commercial flight back to Sydney (lucky there was a seat left) and is coming home on Qantas in the morning. Instead of me having a week by myself I have to go back down with him so we can go and take the plane to where it was originally going on our way back home next week. It’s all a pain but it’s ok. I do have to leave the dog with my daughter for the week we’re away though which I’m definitely not looking forwards to. Where I go Darcy goes normally but not this time.
I finished The Midnight Library. I wasn't prepared for the beginning, where you discover (immediately) that it's about a woman who wants to die. So it was heavy from the start, and I'd forgotten or didn't realise that's what it was about. The whole story is based on it.The author does show, quite well, how depression and perspective alter our experience, and how a different understanding of the same things can completely change it. The point he gets the main character to by the end makes sense and felt like the right choice for her to make/place for her to be. The library and its guide are nice ways to do that.
This is general fiction with fantasy in it (in the sense of the library and what it allows her to do - which is central). I'm not the audience for general fiction; I just don't enjoy it enough. Much more a fantasy reader. So I appreciated the life lessons and journeys, but didn't love it. And that underlying aspect of a deeply depressed woman wanting to die was more than I wanted. But the author is certainly insightful.
I'm reading Cytonic. I'd forgotten how enjoyable this series is. One thing I like about B. Sanderson's books (that I've read so far) is that they make me feel like I want to keep going - in the sense of keeping on trying with whatever challenge is happening; that with a bit of pluck and determination (maybe a lot, actually), humour and creativity, it can be done. He shows this differently with a character like Spensa and one like Kaladin, but both end up having this effect.
I just got my books in the mail from the Book of the Month Club. Very interested in starting The Stardust Thief. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...
Currently reading The Five, by Hallie Rubenhold. It's a gripping novel about the five women murdered in 1888 by Jack the Ripper. It goes deep into their lives and annihilates the myth they were prostitutes, something we believe in to this day. Very well-written with amazing research!
And it gets worse. Because it’s flooding through the middle of NSW we’ve had to come down to Sydney and go around the long way so instead of one 12 hour day we’ll have a 10ish hour day today and a 6+ hour day hour day tomorrow. Not happy at all. I’m over it and we’re still 3 hours away from our motel for the night.
reading Anthony Ryan 's The Legion of Flame which is part 2 of The Draconis Memoria Series. Lots of action and plot twists. I might actually have to spring and pay full price for the third book in the trilogy
Jacqueline wrote: "And it gets worse. Because it’s flooding through the middle of NSW we’ve had to come down to Sydney and go around the long way so instead of one 12 hour day we’ll have a 10ish hour day today and a ..."Oh goodness it just seems to go from bad to worse!!
I hope you have a safe journey and that things work out so you can get some rest when you finally arrive home.
Mid-month roundup seems to be the way I'm doing things, so here we go!Wild Seed: this was quite a book. Interesting, not that fun to read. Characters unlikeable, messages obvious and unpleasant. I was surprised it came out in 1980, but let's just say white people see some things waaaay later than others. (review)
The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System: Ren Zha Fanpai Zijiu Xitong (Novel) Vol. 3: this is the first danmei serial I've read--it's a parody of both danmei (Chinese m/m) and xianxia (cultivation stories). Since I've read a decent amount of m/m it wasn't that mysterious to me... actually, I loved it. (review)
Harrow the Ninth (audio): I read this in hardcover first. Moira Quirk's narration is stellar, and gave me a much better (and emotional) connection to Harrow, but it didn't entirely overcome the dreariness of the Lyctor characters. (review)
also 14 volumes of manga. if you care at all about that you can go here.
Beth wrote: "Mid-month roundup seems to be the way I'm doing things, so here we go!Wild Seed: this was quite a book. Interesting, not that fun to read. Characters unlikeable, messages obvious and..."
I enjoyed the first and third reviews. The link for the second one took me to the Wild Seed review again.
Of any of the books, that one was probably the most niche. Thanks for the heads up though! Fixed.
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