So what are you reading now? Part 2

[F. King Daniel]

I finished Vulcan! about a week ago, not as good as Kathleen Sky’s other TOS novel, Death’s Angel (Richard Arnold would not have approved those cool aliens!). Vulcan! was alright until the mindmeld at the end when all sense went out the window.

I finished Reunion, which was alright (I find MJF’s books decent but unspectacular). All the new characters were interesting (as I’d hope considering it spawned a whole Stargazer series).

I’m now reading Dark Victory, and I’m loving every minute of it. But if I didn’t know better (that the book was released in 1999), I’d think it was packed with Star Trek XI references:

Kirk wears a T-shirt for the 75th annual James Kirk memorial orbital skydiving championships (okay, that one is based on the Generations deleted scene now on YouTube).

Kirk suspects the captain of the Sovereign is a bumped-up space cadet (pot calling the kettle black!).

The Heisenberg (which, admittedly, may not exist) is equipped with Countdown-style holographic screens floating over the control consoles.

I know Bob Orci (claims to) love the Trek novels and draws inspiration from them, but it’s seeming more and more likely that Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens are, in fact, from the future.

 

[Rosalind]

plus five months worth of New Scientist magazines to read from last year.

I say skip New Scientist and read Scientific America. Though the quality of science in SciAm has gone down a bit too, but at least it doesn't have those newspaper style speculative articles that NS has.

But the spec articles are great fodder for story ideas. It's the primary reason I read the magazine, well and it's interesting too for the most part. I've got enough ideas from the NS magazine to give me enough novels for three lifetimes, not including all the ideas I come up with on my own. I'll have to write synopses and leave them for my kids to write.

fair enough.

We've got different purposes for reading these magazines, then. for myself, I'm reading them to keep up to date with the latest in science. if I had the time I would've read Science, because it's a peer reviewed science magazine, but it's a weekly magazine, I just don't have the time to read one every week.

 

[RandyS]

I'm 90 pages away from finishing FULL CIRCLE. The best VOYAGER novel I've read in a while. I was thinking about reading the DESTINY trilogy next, but haven't made up my mind. Can any of you guys recommend it?

 

[Deranged Nasat]

I'm 90 pages away from finishing FULL CIRCLE. The best VOYAGER novel I've read in a while. I was thinking about reading the DESTINY trilogy next, but haven't made up my mind. Can any of you guys recommend it?

Oh yes. Definitely.

 

[rahullak]

I'm 90 pages away from finishing FULL CIRCLE. The best VOYAGER novel I've read in a while. I was thinking about reading the DESTINY trilogy next, but haven't made up my mind. Can any of you guys recommend it?

Oh yes. Definitely.

Seconded.

 

[Thrawn]

I'm 90 pages away from finishing FULL CIRCLE. The best VOYAGER novel I've read in a while. I was thinking about reading the DESTINY trilogy next, but haven't made up my mind. Can any of you guys recommend it?

Oh HELL yes.

 

[Kira Nerys]

Nothing at the moment

 

[JD]

Read Destiny, trust me you won't regret it.

 

[RandyS]

Read Destiny, trust me you won't regret it.

That good huh?

Okay, you guys sold me.

Thanks.

 

[S. Gomez]

^ "It was a pleasure to burn."

Love it!

"If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you'll never learn." (That one jumped off the page at me because it was quoted on The West Wing.)

And then there's this:

"Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You'd find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more 'literary' you are. That's my definition, anyway. Telling detail. Fresh detail. The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies."

 

[TenLubak]

Reading "Five Against One" the Pearl Jam biography for a speech i'm giving in American Music history college, and going to attempt to squeese Over a Torrent Sea in there.

:O

 

[Cap'n Crunch]

I just finished Stargate Atlantis: Mirror, Mirror by Sabine C. Bauer and started Torchwood: Another Life by Peter Anghelides. Next up is Star Trek: Troublesome Minds by Dave Galanter.

 

[Rosalind]

I just finished Enterprise: The Good That Man Do. It's the best Ent novel I've ever read.

 

[C. Cole-Chakotay]

Lord Brocktree by Brian Jacques, number 13 in the Redwall series.

 

[Steve Roby]

Currently reading Aspho Fields, Karen Traviss's first Gears of War novel (Laura and I are both fans of the Gears game, and she read this one before I did). Too early to say for sure, but it looks like she's got a sort of Mando-Sue character in this one.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Glenn Beck's Common Sense. I was curious, because I really don't get the appeal or understand the mindset. After reading this, I still don't get the appeal or understand the mindset.

Also currently reading The Lancelot-Grail Reader, which is extracts from Norris Lacy's five volume English translation of the French Vulgate Cycle, the 12th-century Arthurian saga.

Also reading Guy Davis' The Marquis Volume 1, a collection of his comics about a demon hunter in an alternate-18th-century France. I'd been wanting to read these for a long time, because I love Davis' artwork, but the series came out when I was on a comics sabbatical, and since then the issues have been out-of-print and difficult to find. It's absolutely gorgeous.

 

[Steve Roby]

Glenn Beck's Common Sense. I was curious, because I really don't get the appeal or understand the mindset. After reading this, I still don't get the appeal or understand the mindset.

Your key error is assuming that there's a mind to understand.

Also reading Guy Davis' The Marquis Volume 1, a collection of his comics about a demon hunter in an alternate-18th-century France. I'd been wanting to read these for a long time, because I love Davis' artwork, but the series came out when I was on a comics sabbatical, and since then the issues have been out-of-print and difficult to find. It's absolutely gorgeous.

Yeah, I liked that, too, though I did read it as individual issues. I really liked his work on the late, lamented Sandman Mystery Theater and Baker Street, too.

 

[S. Gomez]

Also currently reading The Lancelot-Grail Reader, which is extracts from Norris Lacy's five volume English translation of the French Vulgate Cycle, the 12th-century Arthurian saga.

How are you liking it?

 

[JD]

I started A Game of Thrones, and so far I'm loving it. At first I was kinda shocked by the whole thing with a kid forcing his 13 year sister to marry an adult man, instead of marrying him herself. But once I reminded myself that this is done more in the style of an alternate medieval history and that this stuff went on in the past, I was able to move past it, and really enjoy the book.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Also currently reading The Lancelot-Grail Reader, which is extracts from Norris Lacy's five volume English translation of the French Vulgate Cycle, the 12th-century Arthurian saga.

How are you liking it?

In college I read Queste del Saint Grail, so I'm familiar with that.

Histoire del Saint Grail was interesting. It's written in a faux-Biblical style; given the story it tells, beginning with the Crucifixion and Joseph of Aramathea's imprisonment, that style makes sense. The attitude toward history is intriguing; on the one hand, the dating of the Crucifxion in relation to Vespasian's reign is accurate, while at the same time, the story puts Saracens active in the Middle East circa 80 CE. The story also seems to think that one can get from Palestine to the Middle East in about eight hours.

Merlin I've enjoyed. The detail about Merlin's birth is fascinating, and the portrayal of Uther and his reign is welcome. (Malory puts that off-stage, while that's fairly important in the Vulgate.) There's more detail given about Uther's seduction of Ygraine than in Malory, and the manner in which Arthur impregnates his half-sister is laughable, but remarkably innocent.

I haven't dug down into the Prose Lancelot yet. And I skipped ahead and read the Mort Artu, which (at least in these extracts) is rather short. John Cleese played Lancelot right, I think; in the Mort Artu, Lancelot is a homicidal idiot.

The book is incredibly readable, and if you have an interest in matters Arthurian, and you're looking for something beyond Malory, then this is a pretty good volume to pick up, based on what I've read thus far.

The five-volume complete translation is coming back into print next year. I'm hoping it will be affordable, because if it is, I'm adding it to my library.