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 2023?
Dj wrote: "Kloos' is proving to be a very good writer of space military adventures. He makes them short sweet and to the point."He really is. The Frontlines series is a favorite.
@Dj: Good to hear. He doesn't seem to favor any particular general, though he does seem to hold Harold Alexander in particular disfavor. I was disappointed to see D'Este cite David Irving, which is not so awesome.
I read the newest Connie Willis, The Road to Roswell, which I’d been eagerly anticipating, because I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve ever read by her. It may have been *too* silly, even though I was expecting something very silly indeed. I love her humor, but it seems too much is too much and my limit is here 😅 Definitely a quick and light read though!(It’s also possible the audio narration added to the overly silly feel, I like the narrator, but have preferred more serious narration styles for Willis’s books, even the lighthearted ones.)
Anna wrote: "I read the newest Connie Willis, The Road to Roswell, which I’d been eagerly anticipating ..."I'm in the middle of listening to this one. I'd been anticipating it because she describes it as "... a love letter to the Southwest." I used to live in New Mexico and it's great to be back. Some of her descriptions of locations that I've visited are very evocative. One nice touch: the book was released a few days before the start of this year's Roswell UFO Festival.
I agree on the silly tone. This is feeling like a beach read so far. Well, except for the whole water thing.
That was the part I left out because it's a me thing. I've noticed Willis has a few things she always/often includes, and movies are one. When it's classic movies, popular everyone-has-at-least-heard-of-this movies, or scifi movies, that's cool, I know enough to keep up, but Westerns?! I've never got them, have watched some under duress, but they're really not for me, so I can't really appreciate how much of that was included. But as I said, that's a me thing, I'm sure it's wonderful for those who enjoy them!Of course I also avoid anything to do with any wars, yet I absolutely 5 star love Blackout/All Clear and have reread them several times, so if anyone would make me enjoy Westerns, it would be her! :D
The fifth book in the Far Reaches Collection is Just Out of Jupiter's Reach by Nnedi Okorafor. I was really looking forward to this one and it was excellent. I think it was the sentient spaceships which appealed to me the mostMy review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Snow and Steel, Peter Caddick-Adams. Single volume history of the Battle of the Bulge. Not as dense as his later volume on Overlord, but close.
I'm just now starting the new Jack Campbell: Implacable. I'm almost afraid to start it! I've been looking forward to its release so much that I've mentally placed it on a very high bookish pedestal :)
Anna wrote: "That was the part I left out because it's a me thing. I've noticed Willis has a few things she always/often includes, and movies are one. When it's classic movies, popular everyone-has-at-least-hea..."This reminds me of the first Elizabeth Peters book I read, Night Train to Memphis, which I picked up because I love a mystery and the setting in Egypt was interesting to me. There were tons of puns and references to country & western songs throughout (including the title, Memphis is a city in Tennessee and it's also a song) which flew over my head. The book was still fun and I read a lot more Peters' books.
That said, I love Connie Willis too and I have this book sitting on my bookshelf waiting to be read.
I never put up my June round-up, so here it is. Not much to report, again. It's been a wild year, and not in a good way, and reading is pretty much the first thing to go when I'm under stress.Neom: I read this short novel (more like a novella) for SFFBC's VBC. The plot didn't do much for me, but I liked how it evoked a much greater world and history through the eyes of some of the people in the "here and now." (review)
Ancillary Justice: a re-re-read, this time in audio. I've read the 2nd and 3rd books of this series, and Provenance, only once, but I keep coming back to this one. I guess I like it. :) (review)
also: 19 manga volumes. I review most of the manga I read, but I'm not gonna link all that here. Check out my manga shelf if you are interested in my junk reading. :)
I requested the remaining Witcher books from the library. I am enjoying The Time of Contempt and Witcher season 3 on Netflix. I stopped after reading Blood of Elves but I'm in the mood to finish out the series. Time will tell if I run out of speed.
Just finished Mira Grant's Rise, her concluding newsflesh novel. it's basically a collection of short stories, but should be read after her 3 books about Georgia/Shaun Mason. I really enjoyed her newsflesh work, a good new take on zombies!! Now, going back to knocking off David Brin's Uplift series, Infinity's Shore.
I unintentionally ended up reading The Left Hand of Dog in parallel with The Road to Roswell. The Left Hand of Dog is another silly alien abduction novel. It even says so on the cover and it lives up to that promise. It also has a strong focus on found family and diversity. The combination worked for me at this (short) length, although I think that I would have been happier if the diversity part had been more show and less tell. I'll likely continue on with more of the series, but not immediately.
I finished another Far Reaches story, "The Long Game" by Ann Leckie. It was quite nice, but not great ;)My review is here ;)
Yesterday I started reading a crime novel, The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino. I like it very much so far, it's plotted in an interesting way.
Raucous wrote: "I unintentionally ended up reading The Left Hand of Dog in parallel with The Road to Roswell."Oh wow, that would have been way too much humor for me! 😅 Let me know if the humor tones down for the rest of Dog/Teapot!
Just finished Ink Blood Sister Scribe and really enjoyed it, a little bit of magic, a little bit of a mystery, likable characters!
Alexandra wrote: "I finished another Far Reaches story, "The Long Game" by Ann Leckie. It was quite nice, but not great ;)My review is here ;)
I thought that was the weakest one in the collection Alexandra.
On the non-fiction side, just read
Queens of Jerusalem: The Women Who Dared to Rule by Katherine Pangonis. This is a history of women in positions of authority, some with real power some without, during the period from the First Crusade through Saladin's conquest of Jerusalem. I would have thought the focus would be on Melisende, the one queen of Jerusalem who did rule in her own right, but the book covers multiple figures in the history of Outremer, including Eleanor of Aquitaine. The writing is solid and the author has been careful in their research, going to the primary sources that are available. That is where the problem comes in. Primary sources are few and far between and the ones that exist were all written by men, a number of them clerics. The result is that the women were largely ignored in the written histories. (This is, in fact, a key point the author tries to address.) The result is we are left with things that are likely to have happened a particular way, or what intentions probably were all, derived from circumstantial evidence. Even for Melisende, as the author points out, we do not have a description of her appearance. The best we can do is a single statement about one of her sons and that he resembled her. Overall, I would say that this is a good effort, frustrated by the lack of material to work with. I would recommend it to people interested in the history of the period, the history of women in authority in that period, and medieval-based fantasy. Barring an unforeseen discovery of a currently unknown history in an archeological dig, I don't think there is any more to get. It would be interesting, though, to see what a writer like Penman (now sadly gone) could do with a historical fiction based on Melisende or her ever- rebellious sister Alice.
I’m almost finished with Translation State, by Ann Leckie, and have made a good start with Her Majesty’s Royal Coven, by Juno Dawson, which I’m enjoying.
I finished The Fourth Wing yesterday and those who didn't read it -> READ.IT ( it was a def 5 star)-enemies to lovers
-dragons
-slow burn
-found family (kind of)
-side characters and friends>>
-again DRAGONS
I am reading 3rd Degree by James Patterson rn
Phrynne wrote: "I thought that was the weakest one in the collection..."It was certainly one of the weaker ones! (Unfortunately...)
Seems to be a love it or hate it thing with Fourth Wing. I have it (picked it up cheap from Big W which is sort of like Walmart/Target) as it was enthusiastically recommended to me at the bookshop but I’d already bought 3 full price books so didn’t get it but I walked over to the other shop and there it was for half price so I decided why not. I’ll get around to it eventually. Maybe.
the_keeper_of _tears_and_pain, is that the Rebecca Yarros book, I'm assuming? First in its series?
Finally got a copy of Fairy Tales by Stephen King @ the local library.
Phrynne wrote: "The fifth book in the Far Reaches Collection is Just Out of Jupiter's Reach by Nnedi Okorafor. I was really looking forward to this one and it was excellent. I thin..."I read this one yesterday, and it was my favorite in the collection so far (of the three I’ve read). I love how Nnedi Okorafor’s stories have a tech-positive view of the future, and if you have read her story “Mother of Invention,” there are some parallels, as this one seems to be set in the same or a similar world.
As an aside, I was delighted to see that the stories in the Far Reaches Collection have audio versions in Audible, since I mostly listen to short stories. I thought the narrator for this story and for John Scalzi’s “Slow Time Between the Stars” were both excellent. The narrator for “How it Unfolds” by James SA Corey doesn’t use any audio cues (like pauses) to indicate breaks between sections, though, and I found the story confusing. I decided to go back and eye-read that one, and I’m enjoying it much more in that format.
I finished the latest Lost Fleet, Implacable, last night. That was fun! Now I'm trying out And Clouds Passed Above.
There were some excellent stories in the June issue of Clarkesworld, I enjoyed it :)My review is here ;)
I finished And Clouds Passed Above, which while chock full of beautiful language was an exercise in patience. Now I'm back to historical fiction, specifically Spartan HF, with Defiance.
The Hanging City - It's an Amazon First Read so I grabbed it. This will be the second book I've read by Charlie N. Holmberg.
I just finished Babel: An Arcane History. What a well written and powerful book. This one is going to stay in my head awhile.
Diving into The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. This will be the longest single book I've ever read (1143). Second attempt, here goes.
I had high hopes for Defiance, but it fell flat. I never read about more emotional Spartans in my life. I finally stopped reading at the 30% mark.Now I'm rereading Tuyo. I'm going to read this one and #3 as a refresher because #7 comes out in two days.
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Hadriana in All My Dreams
i've been using lots of public transport lately, so i picked up "Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief" by Rick Riordan to give me something to do while i sit. it's been pretty good! it's definitely my easiest read from this year, but i'm having a lot of fun with it. i love how percy is just so confused about all this, it makes this book more relatable (if that's even possible lol). the differences between him and annabeth and grover are great too.
Blew through Cult Classic the 9th book in Stephen Blackmoore's great Eric Carter series. Don't start here (start with the first book...) but I want the next book NOW.
I finished Karin Tidbeck's The Memory Theater yesterday. The prose is lovely. If you are familiar with and like the original dark versions of fairly tales, then this is your kind of read. It's wonderful and I cannot recommend it highly enough.My review is here ;)
I'm still working my way through The Expanse. On book 7 now, about 60% through. I feel like I should already be done with this one, but I have been sick ALL of July already, first with some sort of non-covid respiratory/sinus infection, which I'm STILL dealing with the cough fallout from, and then the hubs brought home a stomach bug from work. He had it on Monday and then I had it on Wednesday. As most of my reading time is audio while I walk or knit, and I haven't really been doing either as much as normal, I feel like this book is dragging on, even when it's really not. *sigh*
Thankfully, feeling better now. The cough is MOSTLY gone, and I no longer feel as fragile from the stomach bug, so hopefully I can start getting back to normal. At least these things happened now, and not in 2 weeks when I go on vacation!
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Oh, Becky: I can sympathize!! I'm mostly over a five month case of bronchitis. I've never been sick that long. I had Covid twice despite being immunized, and I can't help but think that it must have affected my lungs and that's why I've had bronchitis so long. Have you had Covid, too? I'm sorry and I hope you feel better soon!
Thanks! I'm getting there. Probably 90% now.
Michelle wrote: "Oh, Becky: I can sympathize!! I'm mostly over a five month case of bronchitis. I've never been sick that long. I had Covid twice despite being immunized, and I can't help but think that it must hav..."Oh that stinks, Michelle! I'm sorry to hear that. I have had Covid, though thankfully only once. I had it over Christmas last year, after being fully vaccinated and boosted, so it was like a flu, not too bad, but it did take me a while to fully bounce back, so I empathize!
marina wrote: "i've been using lots of public transport lately, so i picked up "Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief" by Rick Riordan to give me something to do while i sit. it's been pretty good! it's definitely m..."My daughters and I had a lot of fun with the Percy Jackson books.
Brett wrote: "@Dj: Good to hear. He doesn't seem to favor any particular general, though he does seem to hold Harold Alexander in particular disfavor. I was disappointed to see D'Este cite David Irving, which is..."It happens from time to time. David Irving would be a much better historian if he wasn't quite so pro Hitler.
Brett wrote: "Diving into The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. This will be the longest single book I've ever read (1143). Second attempt, here goes."It is a tad dated, but still an amazing books due to the Author's first hand knowledge of events taking place for much of the book he was posted in Europe, sometimes within Germany itself.
Wow. I may not like the fact that Showalter seems to disdain footnotes and showing his sources, even so I have to say that this is a very impressive look at a battle that may be one of the most written about on the Eastern Front of the war. Often times when reading histories of battles they tend to lean to one side or the other in the outlook. This is not that surprising considering that often times there is limited information pertaining to one side of the battle as opposed to the other. This book does a great (if not perfect) job of showing a great balance in what it puts forward in regards to the actions of the battle and the outcome. It is interesting that in the end he points out that both views of the battle were wrong. The Germans he concludes had no chance of turning the battle into a victory. The lack of an in depth push in the North and the inability of the Southern arm of the battle to be able to push any deeper than the Prokorova line made victory an impossibility. He also points out that Manistien's favored backhand response to Russian penetrations was also losing much of it's ability to recover situations due to a lack of ability on the German side to control the battle and an increase of ability on the side of the Russians to protect against such an action.On the other side he points out that while the Russians were getting better they still hadn't reach the point where they were able to allow lower unit commanders, even up to the level of Army and Army Group command, to improvise on the fly the way the Germans excelled at. Thus meaning that while the battle of Kursk was an overall victory for the Russians it wasn't nearly the overwhelming victory as portrayed in Russian views of the battle. In short the Russians were learning but they weren't quite there yet.
All in all this is a great addition to any other works you have read on the Battle of Kursk.
Armor and Blood: The Battle of Kursk, The Turning Point of World War II
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SciFi and Fantasy Book Club
Books mentioned in this topic
Hogfather (other topics)Night Watch (other topics)
Small Gods (other topics)
Hogfather (other topics)
The Last Continent (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
T. Kingfisher (other topics)Robin Hobb (other topics)
Robert Jordan (other topics)
Lois McMaster Bujold (other topics)
Martha Wells (other topics)
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My review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...