What are you currently reading? Showing 1,951-2,000 of 2,844

[Kirsten]

I finished reading the third book in the Chief Inspector Gamache serie by Louise Penny, The Cruelest Month.

I've also been listening to Lover Eternal by J.R. Ward

[Scott]

I recently finished The Outsider and A Head Full of Ghosts. I liked them both.

Now I'm reading Dolores Claiborne.

[Scott]

S by Koji Suzuki

[Allan]

Finished The Divine Invasion and followed into that by reading the first three books of Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea novels. I'm going to try and knock out The Handmaid's Tale by Saturday so that I can focus on something fat and new for a brief beach vacation. I just got a used copy of Joe Hill's The Fireman. I haven't read any of his and am in the mood for something like that.

[Mary]

Superluminary by John C. Wright

[RJ - Slayer of Trolls]

Do we know yet what is our August group read? Or are we just sticking with the Valis series?

[Mary]

The Ginger Star byLeigh Brackett

[Kirsten]

I've been reading The Good Daughter by Karin Slaughter and listening to Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann

[Allan]

Finished up The Handmaid's Tale in two days, really liked it. Started on Forever Peace, felt like something military-ish. Also read a few pages of The Fireman, enough that I'll consider it started. It's long and I'll take my time with it. I'm on a short beach vacation in Corpus Christi, and it turns out there's a Half Price Books conveniently across from the hotel. I've tapped the three San Antonio stores I frequent, but I try to find new stores wherever I go. In my never-ending quest for Hugo/Nebula nominees and classic sf, I found To Say Nothing of the Dog & Passage by Connie Willis, Too Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm & Sux Wakes by Mur Lafferty. Now my allotted bookshelf space is full and I need to knock some reading out!

[Kirsten]

Allan wrote: "Finished up The Handmaid's Tale in two days, really liked it. Started on Forever Peace, felt like something military-ish. Also read a few pages of The Fireman, enough that I'll consider it started...."

I really enjoyed Too Late The Sweet Birds Sang.

[Robert]

Kirsten wrote: "I've been reading The Good Daughter by Karin Slaughter and listening to Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by [aut..."

I enjoy the NY Time book review column - "by the book". THis week it features Karin Slaughter https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/bo...

[Mary]

The Hounds of Skaith byLeigh Brackett

[Mary]

The Reavers of Skaith by Leigh Brackett

[Paul]

I finished Ninefox Gambit (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️). Took a while for me to get my bearings, but by the end it started to make more sense. It’s a weird one, to be sure. You really are dropped right into a bizarre universe and left to figure out a lot of heavy ideas with absolutely no help. I really rate it 3.5 Stars for this reason, but rounded up to 4 because of the originality of the story, the expectation that the sequels will continue to tie up some loose ends, and the fact that I didn’t now give the book my full attention when reading it along with several other books that I was juggling in July.

I’m now reading The Rise of Endymion by Dan Simmons, finishing up this series which so far has become one of my favorites. I can’t believe I’ve waited so long to read these books!

[Mary]

Good Deeds Gone Unpunished by Rich Burlew

[Scott]

Manhattan in Reverse by Peter F. Hamilton

[Paul]

Amazon had The Postman by David Brin on sale for $1.99 today (Kindle book). I grabbed it, since it’s on the list of Hugo nominees that I’m trying to read as many of as possible, and read the first part (The Cascades) tonight. Pretty cool story. I never saw the movie with Kevin Costner so I have no idea what to expect.

[Allan]

Finishing up Forever Peace and about halfway through Tehanu (Earthsea). I've got a handful of other books just started: The Fireman, All Quiet On The Western Front, The Naked God, just trying to chip away at those.

[Phil]

The Vorkosigan saga, on book three now.

[Kirsten]

Phil wrote: "The Vorkosigan saga, on book three now."

Love Miles!!

[Clyde]

The Singularity Trap by Dennis E. Taylor (audio) and The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal (ebook)

[Allan]

This week, I finished up Forever Peace, took a short foray into military history, reading All Quiet On The Western Front, then wrapped up Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang and Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea. I started reading the very short classic Heart Of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and the 3rd book of PKD's VALIS trilogy, The Transmigration Of Timothy Archer. Chipping away at The Fireman & The Naked God here and there.

[Allan]

Is there a Monthly Read for August?

[Allan]

Tales From Earthsea (paper), The Other Wind (audio) to finish out the entire Earthsea series. Still chipping away at Archer and a couple other long ones. On my Kindle phone app, I've got van Vogt's The Weapon Shops of Isher, short old novel.

[CD]

The Feed. A dystopian journey in the world after a Web type technology collapses or is compromised.

[Mary]

Russia Under the Old Regime by Richard Pipes

[C. John]

Anyone else checked out the top 50 Science Fiction novels that is part of Goodreads Science Fiction Week. Link below if you need it.

https://www.goodreads.com/blog/show/1343

[Mickey]

C. John wrote: "Anyone else checked out the top 50 Science Fiction novels that is part of Goodreads Science Fiction Week. Link below if you need it.

https://www.goodreads.com/blog/show/1343"

I just checked it out for the first time. I have read 25 of the books.

[Mary]

Pop Top 20 -- ooops, 50.

Seems loaded toward the present day.

[C. John]

Someone else made a similar comment. Because they used a cut-off of four stars for ratings this tended to eliminate older works for some reason. Galactic Patrol by "Doc" Smith for instance had a 3.99 rating. As well, if they used number of reviews then that metric tends to skewer towards more recent authors.

[C. John]

I also just posted a somewhat scathing reply to someone else's post.

[Paul]

Finished Engineering Infinity last night.

.

A nice little collection of hard sci-fi short stories (13 in all), and the first of seven volumes in The Infinity Project edited by Jonathan Strahan. None were bad, but some of the standout stories for me were:

Malak (Peter Watts)
Judgement Eve (John C. Wright)
A Soldier of the City (David Moles)
Mercies (Gregory Benford)
The Ki-Anna (Gwyneth Jones)
The Birds and the Bees and the Gasoline Trees (John Barnes)

Solid ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️! Looking forward to reading the others in this series, all of which are only $0.99 each on the Kindle Store.

[CD]

Mary wrote: "Pop Top 20 -- ooops, 50.

Seems loaded toward the present day."

Lot of 30, 40, 50, even 60 year old books on the list for it to be loaded to current 'preferences.'

[CD]

C. John wrote: "Someone else made a similar comment. Because they used a cut-off of four stars for ratings this tended to eliminate older works for some reason. Galactic Patrol by "Doc" Smith for instance had a 3...."

Leaving aside any statistical anomalies in the ratings, the older books may not be as popular for a physical reason. They can be quite difficult to find! I tried in the past ten years to replace some of my ee doc smith books and found only poor quality reprints that were already 20-30 years old. My originals had in two cases just aged from the acid in the paper (hardback even!) and were all but powder.

[Paul]

Message #2,000! Woohoo! 😆

[C. John]

A chap named Mitchell has been sort of answering our questions on the blog. He pointed out that books written before Goodreads existed generally have fewer ratings than books written post-Goodreads.

[Scott]

I have started Dune.

[Mary]

The Fall of Gondolin by J.R.R. Tolkien

[Allan]

Finished the last two books of Earthsea, the last book of the VALIS trilogy, then just finished The Fireman by Joe Hill. I'll continue to chip away at The Naked God tonight, then start September monthly reads tomorrow: Way Station, The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner & The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi.

[Mary]

Kings and Wizards by Phil Foglio and Kaja Foglio

[Paul]

I finished out August by reading All Systems Red and Artificial Condition by Martha Wells, both ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️. I’ve also got about 150 page so left in The Rise of Endymion, which I started in August.

First September book is Empire of Silence by Christopher Ruocchio. Only getting started with this, 100 or so pages into it and I am hooked!

[Mary]

Mage Fall by Jonathan Moeller

[Scott]

Stilllllll reading Dune...

[Allan]

Got through The Collapsing Empire in just two days, then started in on Way Station. It slowed down halfway through, so I got sidetracked on I Am Legend (& other stories). Now I'm close to finishing both. I need to read The Sheep Look Up but I'm not sure I'm there yet.

[Caitlin]

Currently reading Bowl of Heaven by Gregory Benford and Larry Niven. The main concept of a Dyson half-sphere using a star as an engine is pretty neat, but the action and characters could have been better developed...

[Allan]

While I can't decide what to read next, so I continue to chip away at Hamilton's 1336 page The Naked God, which I want to complete by the end of the year. Then I got intrigued by Keith Laumer's A Plague of Demons, which is really short.

[Allan]

I finished A Plague of Demons, then got distracted on a 1st edition copy of Rosemary's Baby I found for $5 at my local used book store. That was a quick read, finished it last night. Then I decided I needed to knock out something high on my reading list, so I started in on The Dispossessed by Ursula LeGuin. I read the entire Earthsea saga earlier this year, so I wanted to read more of her amazingly beautiful prose.

[Kirsten]

I'm trying to finish the psychological thriller I've been reading, Girls' Night Out by Liz Fenton

[Scott]

I recently finished Dolores Claiborne and The Manitou.

Now, I'm about half way through Sacré Bleu.

[Mary]

Creating Characters: How to Build Story People by Dwight V. Swain