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 2024?
Julia wrote: "Just started So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
"Hope that one has you smiling all the way through!
Economondos wrote: "Julia wrote: "Just started So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish"Hope that one has you smiling all the way through!"
Thank you, these books have me laughing to myself quite often. Not a good look when your in public with wireless earbuds in..!! 😊
Starting Michael A. Bellesiles', A People's History of the U.S. Military, a bio of Sojourner Truth, and John Langan's, The Fisherman. Comanche Empire was *outstanding*, and I look forward to his similar treatment of the Iroquois.
Finally finished Magician: Apprentice by Raymond E. Feist. It looks like when the group read it they read the first two Riftwar books together, so I can't really look at the spoiler threads or comment there. I got about 80% through and got bogged down, but I liked a lot of the beginning.
I don't guess a lot of people need to be told who T. Kingfisher is, or why to read her fascinating fantasy stories. Still seems a waste not to be SURE y'all hear from me that her latest, A Sorceress Comes to Call
, is a whale of a good read. Here's why:https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Read Orbital by Samantha Harvey and gave it 3 stars, but honestly, I don't think it deserves a rating. It's what the younger folks would call "basic." From all the praise she gets, you're expect a level of sophistication in Harvey's writing that just isn't there. Maybe in her other works, which I haven't read, but not in this. I've read enough Booker winners to know what tends to win that award so I'm not really surprised by that. It's people comparing Harvey to Woolf that annoys me more. That's reaching. Really reaching. Other recent disappointments: Toward Eternity by Anton Hur and Metal from Heaven by August Clark. I'm fighting the lingering bad taste all these disappointing reads have left behind, which hasn't been helped by my current health issues.
Started The Fox Wife by Yanghze Choo, and I like it. It has a neat, clean style to it that makes it very readable. But it's not as engaging of a read as I'm craving right now.
Completed Governor by David Weber yesterday.My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Well-written in the style Weber uses for his Honor Harrington series, although this one is set in his Into the Fury series. The social commentary between the haves and have-nots is pretty clear, but also central to the plot.
My review here
This leaves me with three open books. I am rereading Tanya Huff's Blood Price, The Return of the King on audio and Chrome Shelled Regios on tablet. The last is a translation of a Japanese light novel about teens saving a polluted planet from filth monsters.
Started reading The Navigator Children by Tad Williams and am very happy about it.
Relatively new Fantasy Novel reader (mainly read mangas and watch animes) Started The Lies of Locke Lamora and so far so goodThe Lies of Locke Lamora
Food wrote: "Relatively new Fantasy Novel reader (mainly read mangas and watch animes) Started The Lies of Locke Lamora and so far so goodThe Lies of Locke Lamora"
I love that book
I guess I have to hurry. But right at the top is Greg Egan's latest work published this year, "Morphotrophic." In a world where the cells that make up our bodies are not assigned to any organism, Egan uses three protagonists to show us the consequences of this:
Marla, who is confronted with the impermanence of her cytes, decides to understand the phenomenon with the help of Ada, a centuries-old flourisher.
Swappers like Ruth, in turn, welcome impermanence and meet with others to exchange cytes and find the perfect mix. But Ruth is facing her own crisis, and as the technology for manipulating cytes advances, all three are drawn into a battle to shape the future of life.
With his new novel, Egan returns to the subject of his first creative phase (up to around 2000), in which he also focused on questions of bioethics, among others. See also: Mitochondrial Eve (1995)
The topic of self-sufficient cells is not entirely new; Greg Bear wrote the classic on the subject in 1985: Blood Music.
Michelle wrote: "Food wrote: "Relatively new Fantasy Novel reader (mainly read mangas and watch animes) Started The Lies of Locke Lamora and so far so goodThe Lies of Locke Lamora"
I love that book"
me too
I had to pause Tchaikovsky's Children of Time. A quarter way in, and it's a great book so far. Had to pause because I realized November is almost over, and I have a hiking scifi book club that selected 'Chain gang All-Stars' by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah. Had to finish it by Sunday. Which I apparently raced through, because I finished it! and what a ride!!! It initially reminded me of the recent Death Race movies, the first starring Jason Statham. Both are set in corrupt prison systems and featured prisoners vs prisoners. But the movies dealt with car races and didn't necessarily mean death. Win X amount of races, you go free is the premise of the movie. In CGASs, death is the point, more a gladiator battle kinda like the movie Gladiator. Although the protagonist wasn't innocent (at least not like Maximus in the first gladiator movie, well maybe not innocent, but thought dead and enslaved. Here, convicts volunteer to fight. Obviously, if you did smaller crimes, you wouldn't volunteer, you'd just do your time and get out.
Anyhoo, it's about a set of prisoners who volunteered and is trying to stay alive long enough to get out, but to survive, you gotta kill your opponent. and the more opponents you kill, the harder the next opponent is. Even though the book mostly follows a single prisoner, it does go into some of the backgrounds of her opponents (it's gender-neutral, so men/women can fight each other). And it's a bit of an indictment of the system and of society itself. Great book! I highly recommend it!
Now back to Children of Time...
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Marc wrote: "I had to pause Tchaikovsky's Children of Time. A quarter way in, and it's a great book so far. Had to pause because I realized November is almost over, and I have a hiking scifi book club that se..."
A hiking scifi book club!?! That sounds cool, so is it a group who talks about the book on a hike? This is a totally new concept to me, love it!
Marc wrote: "I have a hiking scifi book club"I got stuck on the hiking scifi book club! That would combine two of my most favorite things.
Rereading the double book of Blood Price and Blood Trail, The Blood Books, Volume I by Tanya HuffMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
You know it's been a strange day, she mused, when you're looking forward to the arrival of the bloodsucking undead.
Solid urban fantasy set mostly in Toronto. I especially like that the second book could be titled 'Who Is Killing the Werewolves of Canada?' Recommended for urban fantasy, horror, and Canada fans.
My review here
Now reading the second double-book Blood Lines/Blood Pact.
Lords of Uncreation by Adrian Tchaikovsky. A few turns of phrase are refreshing but this 3rd book in the trilogy doesn't measure up to the first book. The 2nd book didn't measure up either. Adrian Tchaikovsky would have been better off to leave book #1 as a stand alone and move on to something else entirely.In Ascension by Martin MacInnes. A deep melancholy suffuses this novel from beginning to end as our narrator’s childhood trauma lives way too close to the surface and the space mission on which she embarks ends in disaster. The people of earth don’t fare well either. I admire the author’s writing but find the story really depressing.
Just starting The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst.
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. I am glad that I am reading Accessory to War: The Unspoken Alliance Between Astrophysics and the Military by Neil deGrasse Tyson (NDT) and Avis Lang. The science in the nonfiction book is accessible--NDT explains so well--that I am comfortable enough with science as described in both books.I recommend reading these two books together.
Older giftees, even permaybehaps your own good otaku self, will get the frisson from Kaiju Unleashed: An Illustrated Guide to the World of Strange Beasts
by Shawn Pryor, says my 4.5* review:https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
i just realised i havent had any goodread emails for ages.i havent really noticed since a few months ago i was given a few boxes of old sci fi and fantasy books. i have just finished reading the 40th book. well skimming might be a better word. a lot of them are very old in style and attitude
found a few good ones though,
but i am stuck on what to do with a 140 warhammer books. i have never heard of them before, i dont have a clue in what order to read them and finding the order on line is proving difficult. Trying to decide whether to persist or just get rid of the books as there are plenty of other books to read
My youngest brother would probably love to have those Warhammer books, but unfortunately is living in a small apartment.I didn't post a reading roundup for last month, so here it is. Not much to it. I'm not upset with a slight one this time around, because I made good progress on a couple of very long books, and unless something goes dreadfully amiss, I should be able to finish 35 or 36 books this year.
Into the Drowning Deep by Seanan McGuire (writing as Mira Grant): the take on horrific mermaids is very cool, with present-day science extrapolated to describe a fictional creature well-suited to life in the Challenger Deep. The story and characters are so-so, though, making this a mixed bag. It's also too long. (review)
Just finished Sisters In Hate: American Women On the Front Lines of White Nationalism (Seyward Darby.) As a palate cleanser, I'm opening the short, Negroes With Guns, by Robert F. Williams - kind of the anti-MLK.
Kateb wrote: "i am stuck on what to do with a 140 warhammer books"Not being a Warhammer fan, I had no idea there was that many books in the franchise!
As for my own reading, I've been slowed down for the past 1 1/2 weeks because of chemo. But I finished my reread of The Star My Destination by Alfred Bester. Not a perfect work, not always a likeable work (nor Bester always a likeable writer) but an interesting work for when it was written. It was written in the pulp style of the 1950s so while it was very ambitious in some ways, it also has the tendency to turn to wild ideas that Bester couldn't bother to make sense in the larger narrative, but just thrown them in for some shock value. (Also there are few points where I was like, "Was Bester doing cocaine or what?")
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We have a thread for that book if you want to necro-post and chek out what others thought: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
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FYI: Good reads no longer send email notifications for groups/discussions. We are gripping about it here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/....
Kateb wrote: "i just realised i havent had any goodread emails for ages.i havent really noticed since a few months ago i was given a few boxes of old sci fi and fantasy books. i have just finished reading the..."
I have really enjoyed some Warhammer books but it quite hardcore political/military scifi.
There are a lot of fans out there s you probably won't have much trouble getting rid of them.
Ate breakfast with one hand while holding/reading The Blood Books, Volume II by Tanya Huff in the other.My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is an omnibus of the 3rd and 4th novels in the series. The end of the fourth book (Blood Pact) is the obvious conclusion to the series. And it is a satisfying ending. I like the antagonists in these two even better than the ones in the first two novels.
My review here
Immediately started the third onmi. Will have to see if Huff is writing past the logical close of the series. But I know that the second part of Blood Books III consists of all the short stories in this universe, so really looking forward to those.
Just finished The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean - if you're interested I posted a review here:https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The hiking book club is great!! I didn't put it together, but basically, we vote on the next 3 or so books for the next 3 or so months hikes, so like Jan, we know to read Sabaa Tahir's Ember in the Ashes. we also know the date and the location to hike (barring weather, in colorado, all kinds of things might shift a hiking location due to mud, ice, snow, etc.). On the hike, we generally talk to one or two people who are hiking next to you, and about half way, we step off the trail and find a nice place without disturbing the landscape too much, sit and talk about the book. everyone generally says something, things that they liked, not liked, key points, etc. it's great because sometimes you missed something that someone else caught, I'm like oh! I didn't think about it that way! then we take a group picture, and hike back, talking more about the book and other stuff with the small number of people you are walking with. We do abide by the trail rules, some sites limit to groups of at most, 25 (sometimes less), and it generally works out (people suddenly can't go). I think only once did we have to split into two groups, one group on a sat, the other on sun. They aren't too difficult a hike, no 14ers! Usually about 2 hours on the trail.Anyhoo, I did finally finish Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time, and I gotta say, whoa!! it was a great book! not too difficult to read even though it's a 600 page book, you move somewhat fast. It's actually plausible from a human behavior perspective in that most humanity wiped each other out in kinda a liberal vs conservative fashion. think about it, that kinda exists in all nations. In the book's case (not a spoiler), it happened as humanity started exploring the galaxy. No, we hadn't gotten around Einstein's relativity limitation (can't go too fast, no faster than light travel), a few arks escaped the human-caused destruction. It follows one ark and one planet that started terraforming a planet. I won't say more than that, but it's a great book!
Now, on to John Scalzi's Old Man's War. I am in a book challenge as well, and it's the last book I committed to reading this year (Children of Time was also on that list). I got the next two books in that old man's war series, so I'll just read those two after I finish. Then I might go way back in time and read Heinlein's Job: comedy of justice. dunno if I'll make it before I have to start reading Ember in the ashes though.
And that was quick, finished Scalzi's Old Man's War last night. Was a fun quick read!So moving on to book 2 of that series, Ghost Brigades.
Just finished Ice by Anna Kavan. An incredible and unique read. It's more or less one big descriptive allegory that intertwined feminine trauma with the societal trauma of WWII. This is Kavan's only work that remotely falls under speculative fiction, but I'd love to read more by her. Reading the speculative fic YA novel They Both Die in the End by Adam Silvera, because comparison with it to the queer YA SF novel The Darkness Outside Us by Eliot Schrefer that I loved immensely. This book I'm not loving as much so far but I'm warming up to the characters.
Also started Glass Houses by Madeline Ashby, and it may be an DNF. It's so far an underwhelming marginally SF, potboiler thriller type of book with shallow characters who feel based more on media reporting than the author's insights.
I'm currently reading "The Christmas Cottage" and hopefully after that I can squeeze in another book before 2024 ends.
Have started Wind and Truth by Brandon Sanderson and am 21% in of an absolute chunker of a book. Over 1300 pages. Which is so far a really good thing, as I'm really loving it.
Mai wrote: "Gave up on The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch as it's failed to capture my interest."Sorry to hear you couldn't interested in it.
Leonie wrote: "Have started Wind and Truth by Brandon Sanderson and am 21% in of an absolute chunker of a book. Over 1300 pages. Which is so far a really good thing, as I'm really ..."I didn't realize book five was out. Hope it is better than book four. Too many flashbacks in book four. Thanks for the heads up, Leonie.
About halfway through Nell Irvin Painter's, A History of White People, and it's *fascinating*.
I am reading The Life of Nelson: The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain; Towing Jehovah; and Odd John. Enjoying them all.
Brett wrote: "About halfway through Nell Irvin Painter's, A History of White People, and it's *fascinating*."I read that a few years back too. Lots to chew on. You might be interested in the "Seeing White" podcast. I believe Nell Irvin Painter is interviewed on at least one episode, but they cover a lot of different ground too, often quite personal for the host.
https://sceneonradio.org/seeing-white/
Charlton wrote: "Mai wrote: "Gave up on The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch as it's failed to capture my interest."Sorry to hear you couldn't interested in it."
I remember I had to try a couple times to get into that, the beginning was a struggle.
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For anyone starting the latest Stormlight Archive book, there is series thread already to discuss it: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Melanie wrote: "Eric wrote: "I didn't realize book five was out. Hope it is better than book four. Too many flashbacks in book four. Thanks for the heads up, Leonie"For anyone starting the lasted Stormlight Arch..."
Thanks, Melanie!
I just bought Wind and Truth. Doing a re-read of the first 4 books in the Stormlight Archive in preparation for it!
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Starting Adrian Tchaikovsky's Lords of Uncreation.