What are you reading?

[Starkers]

I have just downloaded a novella called "The Devils of Amber Street" onto my iPad. I don't know much about it, it only cost me 99c, and I will read it as soon as I finish Lost Classics: Writers on Books Loved and Lost, Overlooked, Under-read, Unavailable, Stolen, Extinct, or Otherwise Out of Commission which I have been reading on and off for about three weeks.

I never knew shameless plugging actually worked! I hope you enjoy it

Yeah it's definitely a better (and cheaper) time to self publish. Sadly I think a lot of people never recouped their investments in the old days of vanity publishing.

Yeah, now there's a distribution system in place. The biggest problem remaining is advertising.

This is very true, there's only so much you can do on a modest/non existant budget. I did consider Facebook advertising, but I must be dense as I can't figure out how cheaply you could do it! I see ads for self published work all the time but some of them have been going on for ages and must be costing a fortune!

 

[CommanderRaytas]

A book about the history of Berlin....I thought that I should catch up on the city I'm now living in.

 

[SwimmingGnu]

Reliquary by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

 

[trekkiebaggio]

I have just downloaded a novella called "The Devils of Amber Street" onto my iPad. I don't know much about it, it only cost me 99c, and I will read it as soon as I finish Lost Classics: Writers on Books Loved and Lost, Overlooked, Under-read, Unavailable, Stolen, Extinct, or Otherwise Out of Commission which I have been reading on and off for about three weeks.

I never knew shameless plugging actually worked! I hope you enjoy it

Yeah it's definitely a better (and cheaper) time to self publish. Sadly I think a lot of people never recouped their investments in the old days of vanity publishing.

Yeah, now there's a distribution system in place. The biggest problem remaining is advertising.

This is very true, there's only so much you can do on a modest/non existant budget. I did consider Facebook advertising, but I must be dense as I can't figure out how cheaply you could do it! I see ads for self published work all the time but some of them have been going on for ages and must be costing a fortune!

Yeah, getting word of mouth out is hard. I actually got an e-mail from Amazon the other day recommending my own book to me so I'm hoping it's recommending it to other people as well!

I read Alison Hewitt is Trapped on a couple of train rides over the weekend. It was a pretty good story about a girl who was trapped in a room in the shop where she worked. The whole thing was written as a series of blog entries, and at the end of each chapter there were comments which I found a nice stylistic choice. It was entertaining but it didn't leave any lasting impression.

 

[Starkers]

I've had Amazon recommending me stuff I've already bought from them before now...

 

[trekkiebaggio]

I mean the novel I published on Kindle, not one I bought. I was just making a note that Amazon recommendations are like advertising.

 

[Starkers]

Oh I knew what you meant, be good if they are advertising it!

 

[RJDiogenes]

I have a friend who has self-published a couple of books on Kindle and I've seen his stuff promoted in emails.

 

[TorontoTrekker]

Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

I started that about six months ago, after having owned all three books for about ten years and not having been able to get past page 50 or so. I said, "Dammit, I'm going to get through these!"

I'm about 80 pages from the end of Blue Mars, which is the third book. (I know there's a prequel, The Martians, but I think I'm going to give that a miss.)

I've been finding them very dry and slow-going, for the most part. There are bits here and there (mostly in the second book) which I found more interesting - mostly the politics - but I find the National Geographic travelogues dull. (As you might guess by the fact that I've been reading them for six months. Normally I read much faster than that, even though I only manage about 20 minutes a day, while I'm on the bus to work in the mornings. (In the evenings, I generally read the newspaper that I buy at lunch.)

How are you finding it?

I'm not a big fantasy reader, but I picked up the January/February issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine a few weeks ago, and have read about half the stories in it so far. I've enjoyed what I've read so far. (Normally, if I'm in a short story mood, I'm more likely to pick up Asimov's or Analog. But a friend had a story in this issue. )

 

[Gul Re'jal]

"Skeleton Crew" - a collection of stories by Stephen King.

 

[Starkers]

There are a few ropey stories in there, but on the whole Skeleton Crew is very good, The Mist alone is great so anything else is a bonus

 

[Gul Re'jal]

I borrowed it from the library mainly for "The Mist"

 

[mari]

Finished Fuzzy Nation and started Agent to the Stars over the weekend. I'm in a bit of a John Scalzi loop right now, but once this one's done I'm out of fiction paperbacks until my birthday in May. I have a couple non-fiction books I need to get through, so I guess it's back to theoretical physics after this... then maybe I'll get around to writing my own SF novel.

 

[HaventGotALife]

The Price of Politics, by Bob Woodward. But while I've been reading it, Woodward has gone crazy. Makes me want to put it down.

 

[Ashu]

Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky. Something i've been meaning to read for a while and finally just got around to it .

 

[SwimmingGnu]

I'm reading Tomboy by Nina Bouraoui for a book club. It's not really my cup of tea but it will probably yield an interesting discussion

 

[Enterprise is Great]

The third book in the Star Trek TNG Cold Equations trilogy The Body Electric.

 

[Emher]

Just started "The Pillars of the Earth" by Ken Follett. Not far at all into it, literally read the prologue and first chapter last night before I had to go to sleep.

 

[cooleddie74]

Rereading The Battle for America 2008, the Dan Balz book on President Obama's first election as President and the campaigns waged by both major parties that year.

 

[TorontoTrekker]

I'm about 80 pages from the end of Blue Mars, which is the third book.

And... I finally finished it, Thursday night.

I started Reality 36 by Guy Haley yesterday. From the back cover blurb:

Meet Richards and Klein – the Holmes and Watson of the 22nd century.

Except that Richards is a highly advanced artificial intelligence, and Klein his German ex-military cyborg partner. Their first case takes them into the renegade digital realm known as Reality 36 and through the Great Firewall of China, in search of a missing Artificial Intelligence Rights activist. What they find there will threaten every reality.

I find that it's been a bit slow in setting up the world - I'm around page 90 (it's a much faster read than the Mars trilogy was), and there's barely been anything about the missing activist yet. We met him in an earlier chapter, and we've only just found out that he's gone missing. I'm hoping that the story picks up a bit from here.