What are you reading?

[trekkiedane]

^I have tremendous trouble getting started reading Ian Banks-novels, but thoroughly enjoyed The Wasp Factory, The Bridge , and the introduction to Raw Spirit though.

Just finished The Player of Games, which I think is the most Culture intensive story despite not taking place in The Culture, and am currently reading my absolute favourite of them all: Excession (which was my introduction to Banks).

Say, haven't we discussed him before? You and I, here ...

 

[Miss Chicken]

Maybe, we have. I know I had a discussion online about him a few months ago. It was probably the reason I downloaded The Player of Games.

I must have about 100 books in my To Be Read list

 

[trekkiedane]

Yeah, I know, am there myself; most recently I've started my e-book-collection of Dan Turéll crime stories (aka. the 'The Murder in ...'-series and afaik only translated into German) which I haven't read any of since I was a teen, and Inge Eriksens SciFi-novels (that afaik have never been translated), and all the Stanislaw Lem I can find in a language I can read, and, and, and... (You'd rarely find me without my Kindle within arms reach ). Plus my niece and nephew are pushing Conan to me; but the complete colllection was only $ 1.24 on Amazon so I also have that lying 'round.

Luckily for me, I think, the Danish summer has been one for being indoors reading books this year.

ETA: Good thing I happened in on this thread; reminded me to charge my book after last nights prolonged session

 

[Balok's Decoy]

I finished IT and Breakfast of Champions this weekend. Both were great. Now I'm moving on to The Dark Tower series. Gunslinger up first.

 

[Miss Chicken]

I have just finished the third book in the Bobiverse trilogy by Dennis E. Taylor. The three books are

1) We Are Legion (We Are Bob)
2) For We Are Many
3) All These Worlds

Bob is a nerd and he has just sold his software company and is now quite rich. He decides to sign a contract for his body to be cryogenically frozen on his death. Soon after he is killed.

He wakes up more than 100 years into the future and discovers his consciousness has been downloaded into a computer programme and he no longer has a physical body.

As war breaks out on Earth, Bob escapes in a spaceship and heads out into space. He makes 4 clones of his program and each clone has a slightly different personality. Each take a new name.

One of the clones eventually goes to check on how the Earth is doing. He finds that only a few million humans are alive, clinging to life on a dying Earth.

These Bobs (and the newer Bobs they clone) realise they will have to evacuate the survivors. They have to search for planets suitable for humans to live on , they have to build ships to evacuate the survivors and they have to protect humans from a very nasty alien race.

 

[auntiehill]

Neil Gaiman's "Norse Mythology."

 

[rhubarbodendron]

Much obliged, Jeeves

 

[Hugo Rune]

Paul Auster's massive new Big America novel - 4,3,2,1

The life of a man that takes four different paths between 1947 and today.

Not his normal material, but the prose is beautiful and the four iterations of the same characters, masterful.

Hugo - taking his time over this 1000 page monster

 

[Smellincoffee]

Wild Swans, a history of China's bloody transition from warlord-dictators to communist-dictators through the story of one woman, her mother, and her grandmother's lives.

Also: Dracula, which I got a head start on for my Halloween reading but will probably finish before the first.

 

[kirk55555]

Finished the latest Iron Druid book (Besieged) and now I'm in book limbo. Might have to reread an old book. Just not enough good fantasy or sci fi around, and I don't have another book coming up in an ongoing series that I'm reading until Jim Butcher finishes the next Dresden Files book (which will probably around the time Hell freezes over at this rate, at least that's what it feels like ).

 

[think]

doing this with a sponsor
at like number 6 about and fifteen questions in so far...
Have to get back to it...today.

oooops fyi I am not an Ideal member and such but I try, to work this stuff.. and such..
oh an posting this here goes against all the traditions in theory-- but this is all I really read these days... other than mad amounts of writing and music making, and brush and ink things in a watercolor like works.

 

[Velocity]

Finished the latest Iron Druid book (Besieged) and now I'm in book limbo. Might have to reread an old book. Just not enough good fantasy or sci fi around, and I don't have another book coming up in an ongoing series that I'm reading until Jim Butcher finishes the next Dresden Files book (which will probably around the time Hell freezes over at this rate, at least that's what it feels like ).

Was that Iron Druid one a collection of stories instead of one book length? Yeah, I'm in Butcher limbo too. I hate it when the author takes so long that I forget the plot of the last book and sometimes some of the characters.

 

[kirk55555]

Was that Iron Druid one a collection of stories instead of one book length? Yeah, I'm in Butcher limbo too. I hate it when the author takes so long that I forget the plot of the last book and sometimes some of the characters.

Yeah, Besieged is a collection of short stories but I liked it a lot and the last story definitely lead into the next book (with one or two others talking about events between the last book and the upcoming one). Definitely worth a read for anyone who likes the other Iron Druid books. It gives some interesting stories from the main three characters (Atticus, Granuaile and Owen).

I'd take a Dresden Files book in a similar format at this point if it meant more DF. I'm starting to feel what Game of thrones book fans must feel, especially since Butcher is still releasing books, just not anything connected to the DF (although his steampunk airship civilization book was a decent read, I still want DF). I'm definitely going to have to reread some DF to bring myself up to date, but I'll probably wait until closer to when the next book comes out.

 

[Ensign]

Game of Thrones audiobook in my car!! My boyfriend burned it on to CDs for me as we dont know how to make it work any other way haha

 

[Miss Chicken]

Game of Thrones audiobook in my car!! My boyfriend burned it on to CDs for me as we dont know how to make it work any other way haha

What do you think of the narration? I assume you are listening to Roy Dotrice. I hated his narration and did not get through the first book (though I have read the Kindle version).

 

[Smellincoffee]

Ancestral Shadows: An Anthology of Ghostly Tales, Russell Kirk
A Thousand Miles from Nowhere: Trucking Two Continents

 

[ohdeve.]

A World Undone: The Story of the Great War 1914-1918.

 

[Ensign]

What do you think of the narration? I assume you are listening to Roy Dotrice. I hated his narration and did not get through the first book (though I have read the Kindle version).

Not the best but not the worst. I'm not very fussy though. I have listened to stuff that's quite bad quality and stuff in the past... so this is obviously nowhere near that level.

I am enjoying it. I like that I've seen the show first as I get to remember back to it and understand the mistakes that are being made etc.

 

[ralfy]

I finished reading Mishima's Sea of Fertility tetralogy. Fantastic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sea_of_Fertility

 

[kirk55555]

Tried another random fantasy book from the library called Twelve Kings of Sharakhai. I had looked up reviews before hand, so I thought it was at least going to be ok. The first chapter was solid, involving the heroine in a well described gladatorial style fight. The second chapter then had a way too detailed sex scene then wasted a few pages going over the post sex clean up. Not even any plot or character development, just the main character describing the clean up of...various bodily fluids and going over the herbal birth control she uses. I closed the book and only didn't chuck it in the garbage because its a library book. I wish some of the damn reviews had mentioned that the book was not only super explicit, but bizarrely so. This Game of Thrones style BS has really just ruined fantasy as a genre.

At this point, I feel like I could grab 10 different random fantasy books from the library and they'd not only be terrible, but be terrible in different ways. It doesn't help that most fantasy I can find is either too much like Game of Thrones or are romance books that technically have urban fantasy elements so they're labeled fantasy (SO MANY SHIRTLESS VAMPIRES/WEREWOLVES AND LONELY VAMPIRE/WEREWOLF HUNTING WOMEN WHO HAVE FORBIDDEN AFFAIRS WITH THEM). I just want something with magic, and maybe elves/dwarves (although thats optional). I can only reread stuff like LOTR, the Iron Druid Chronicles and Dresden Files books so many times.

Sci Fi is no better off. Way too much dry military sci fi (I like some military sci fi, but so much of it is dry to the point of boring) or blade runner-esque stuff. Space opera type sci fi is about as rare as you can get, the few times I've found a good one that wasn't a Trek or Star Wars book I've felt like Indiana Jones finding some mythological item that no one really believed existed.

Well, that was me venting I'm off to go aimlessly wander and hope to find the book version of a diamond in a pile of junk.