Yeah, shadows going missing. It's very interesting so far. Although I think it's set all over the place. The story actually starts out in the D.C area, and no mention of India yet, but maybe that's just because I'm not far into it yet.
What are you reading?
- Thread starter Snowlilly
- Start date
Yeah, shadows going missing. It's very interesting so far. Although I think it's set all over the place. The story actually starts out in the D.C area, and no mention of India yet, but maybe that's just because I'm not far into it yet.
Finished The Book of M by Peng Shepherd:
Ok, wow. That is one of my favourite reads of the year. This is from a first-time novelist and she absolutely nails it. Post-apocalyptic fiction at its finest. Intriguing from beginning to end.
This was a refreshingly original read. It's getting compared to The Stand a lot, and for good reason. It is a literary epic. A masterpiece. I really can't say enough good things about this one.
Ok, wow. That is one of my favourite reads of the year. This is from a first-time novelist and she absolutely nails it. Post-apocalyptic fiction at its finest. Intriguing from beginning to end.
This was a refreshingly original read. It's getting compared to The Stand a lot, and for good reason. It is a literary epic. A masterpiece. I really can't say enough good things about this one.
I have been listening to the Barker and Llewellyn series by Will Thomas. Excellent mysteries set in Victorian England. Before he wrote novels Thomas wrote essays for Sherlock Holmes society publications and lectured on crime fiction of the Victorian era., and his knowledge of Britain in the late 19th century really shows in his books. I am currently on the 5th book of nine but I plan to have a break from them after the current one so I can listen to ‘The Book of M’ and also to finish off a couple of Kindle books I have started.
Since I have last posted I finished the 5th Barker and Llewellyn book as well as the 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th book. Now I will have to wait until November when the 10th book will be released.
Am currently half way through ‘The Book of M’ by Peng Shepherd. Really good so far.
Am currently half way through ‘The Book of M’ by Peng Shepherd. Really good so far.
Time And The Gods by Lord Dunsany.
Bond, James Bond, and having decidedly mixed feelings about the books. Very well written, often thrilling, but shot through with a box set of bigotry, occasionally so crass it jars you right out of the story. Like eating a delicous series of apples, only to find the odd maggot worming through them, sometimes a big, ugly one. Not completely put off yet, but...
Since I last posted I have finished ‘The Book of M’ by Peng Shepherd. A very original post-apocalyptic novel. 4.5/5.
I have also listened to two books by MJ Carter -‘The Strangler Vine’ and ‘The Printer’s Coffin’, both narrated by Sam Dastor. Early Victorian Era mysteries featuring the duo of Jeremiah Blake and William Avery. The first is set in India and the second in London. I will listen to the third one when I get more Audible credits next week.
My Kindle read is ‘From the Deep Wood to Civilisation’ an autobiography written by Charles Alexander Eastman who was a Sioux doctor/author/lecturer.
I have also listened to two books by MJ Carter -‘The Strangler Vine’ and ‘The Printer’s Coffin’, both narrated by Sam Dastor. Early Victorian Era mysteries featuring the duo of Jeremiah Blake and William Avery. The first is set in India and the second in London. I will listen to the third one when I get more Audible credits next week.
My Kindle read is ‘From the Deep Wood to Civilisation’ an autobiography written by Charles Alexander Eastman who was a Sioux doctor/author/lecturer.
Current read: Le Tigri di Mompracem by Emilio Salgari in its Italian original. Not really easy as I never properly learned Italian. I just picked up the odd bit here and there during 2 vacations in Italy. But since I had 6 years of Latin at school I get the gist of the story. I also bought it as audio book and though the reader is damned fast it helps a lot to hear the words while reading them. The spelling differs a lot but the pronounciation is still very similar to Latin.
The book itself is rather thrilling:
Serious as the topic may be, in some parts it is involuntarily funny. One must keep in mind that it was written about 140 years ago when heroes were noble savages with a good deal of animal attraction and and heroines were refined and pure as freshly fallen snow. To a modern reader it's both soppy and euphuistic. Still, it makes a good bedtime read 
The book itself is rather thrilling:
Malaysian prince Sandokan's family gets killed, grown up he turns pirate, revenges himself on all Europeans, particularly the East India Company and promptly falls in love with a barely 17 year old Italian-British lady whom he marries. Both get repeatedly incarcerated and abducted by her parents and Sandokan's enemies throughout the story. Though there is a happy end in this volume (they escape), it doesn't last long: in the next volume, after only one year Lady Marianna is killed in battle by a stray bullet and poor Sandokan never looks at a woman for the rest of his life.
Finished The Secret Wisdom of the Earth by Christopher Scotten. A debut novel set in a small-town in Kentucky in 1985 as it grapples with nearby coal mining and mountain top removal. Loved this novel, and I'll eagerly read more from this author. The characters were so vivid and well-written that they felt like real people, especially the grandfather. It's a sweet story about town hardships and the people that grapple with them.
I finished the Julie Czerneda trilogy I'd been reading a little over a week ago, and picked up The Long Way To a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers. It's also part of a trilogy, and I have the second book as well (A Closed and Common Orbit), but haven't yet picked up the third (Record of a Spaceborn Few) - I could have bought it last weekend in the dealers' room at Worldcon, but I like the UK cover art, which is on the editions we get here. (And I'm anal-retentive enough that I want all the books in a series to match on the shelf. ) Of course, it didn't come out in Canada before I went, so I had to settle for just getting the first two autographed.
When I went to her table, I felt I had to apologize because I'd only just started the first one. She didn't seem to mind, though. I am enjoying it quite a bit. Her writing is clear and her characters are well portrayed. I've just gotten to the part where the main plot is starting to kick in, so I can't speak to that, but it's intriguing - a spaceship crew have to, essentially, build a subspace tunnel somewhere where one doesn't currently exist. This is apparently a very dangerous task. The main character is a young woman who has come aboard as the new clerk for the captain. Many of the rest of the crew are very alien - but again, very well portrayed.
) Of course, it didn't come out in Canada before I went, so I had to settle for just getting the first two autographed.When I went to her table, I felt I had to apologize because I'd only just started the first one. She didn't seem to mind, though. I am enjoying it quite a bit. Her writing is clear and her characters are well portrayed. I've just gotten to the part where the main plot is starting to kick in, so I can't speak to that, but it's intriguing - a spaceship crew have to, essentially, build a subspace tunnel somewhere where one doesn't currently exist. This is apparently a very dangerous task. The main character is a young woman who has come aboard as the new clerk for the captain. Many of the rest of the crew are very alien - but again, very well portrayed.
Since I last posted I have listened to
‘Wild Fire’ by Ann Cleeves, narrated by Kenny Blyth. 8 the book in the Shetland Island Mysteries series.
‘The Keeper of Lost Causes’ by Jussi Adler-Olsen, narrated by Erik Davies. I did not like the narrator much and I am annoyed to have just discover that Audible now has this book under the title ‘Mercy’ and it is narrated by Steven Pacey, a narrator I really like.
‘The Melon Rind Cafe’ by Chinle Miller, narrated by Richard Henzel. 9th book in the Bud Shumway mystery series. Cosy murder mystery set in Utah. I preferred this series when it was narrated by Roy Worley.
Presently listening to ‘X-FIles: Cold Cases’. A full cast performance including David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson. Audible has started giving their members two free Audible orginals each month. One can choose from 6 on offer each month. I don’t usually like full cast performance but it was free.
‘Wild Fire’ by Ann Cleeves, narrated by Kenny Blyth. 8 the book in the Shetland Island Mysteries series.
‘The Keeper of Lost Causes’ by Jussi Adler-Olsen, narrated by Erik Davies. I did not like the narrator much and I am annoyed to have just discover that Audible now has this book under the title ‘Mercy’ and it is narrated by Steven Pacey, a narrator I really like.
‘The Melon Rind Cafe’ by Chinle Miller, narrated by Richard Henzel. 9th book in the Bud Shumway mystery series. Cosy murder mystery set in Utah. I preferred this series when it was narrated by Roy Worley.
Presently listening to ‘X-FIles: Cold Cases’. A full cast performance including David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson. Audible has started giving their members two free Audible orginals each month. One can choose from 6 on offer each month. I don’t usually like full cast performance but it was free.
Finished Beartown by Fredrick Backman. Explores the hockey culture and the inhabitants of a small swedish town and how they're affected by it when they pretty much depend on it for their survival. Now, I'm not much of a hockey guy, but I ended up loving it so much I went right out and bought the sequel. He's got a terrific handle on his characters and plot development and a terrific attention to detail.
Starting The Saboteur by Andrew Gross, about how Norwegian soldiers went on a mission to destroy a deutorium-oxide plant (heavy water) to prevent the Germans from getting access to it for the development of their atom bomb.
Starting The Saboteur by Andrew Gross, about how Norwegian soldiers went on a mission to destroy a deutorium-oxide plant (heavy water) to prevent the Germans from getting access to it for the development of their atom bomb.
I’m currently reading Gnomon by Nick Harkaway, which is about an investigation into the death in custody of a writer who had taken pains to stay off the grid in a near-future surveillance state where direct democracy is implemented by an advanced AI system and access to another person’s innermost thoughts is possible. The inspector absorbs and relives the writer’s recorded memories of the rather intrusive interrogation, and discovers a number of alternate personas which seem designed to throw the mind-reading technology off the scent; these include a fast-living banker convinced he’s being followed by a shark that eats corporations, a fourth-century alchemist mourning the loss of her son by St Augustine, an Ethiopian ex-patriate artist who in the modern day helps his granddaughter develop a video game with similarities to the world of the novel’s main narrative, and the titular Gnomon, a human group consciousness sent from the future to carry out a number of assassinations. A very long, but very absorbing novel.
Before that, The Golden House by Salman Rushdie. An elderly construction magnate moves from Mumbai to New York with his three sons, but over the course of the years 2008 to 2016 it becomes clear that the past won’t be left behind. In the background, the rise of identity politics in the US is analogised by frequent reference to a certain fictitious Clown Prince of Crime.
Other recent reads include The Song Of Achilles by Madeline Miller, told from the perspective of Achillles’ lover Patroclus. I found it quite engaging.
I thought Children Of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky was a wonderful novel. Far-future humans accidentally (and for a long time unknowingly) seed a planet with the genome of intelligent spiders, and when the last survivors of the human race eventually turn up desperate for a place to settle, there’s a bit of conflict. The author renders his characters and the spider society masterfully, for example when he illustrates the difficulties of communicating with a species that has no concept of sound.
I also recently read Kim Stanley Robinson’s Green Mars, the middle part of his famous Mars trilogy. Took me ages, much of the book being taken up with seemingly endless meetings and terrain descriptions. It does have characters about whom the reader learns to care, though, and the occasional burst of thrilling narrative activity. Clearly the author has put a lot of thought into all aspects of the tale.
Before that, The Golden House by Salman Rushdie. An elderly construction magnate moves from Mumbai to New York with his three sons, but over the course of the years 2008 to 2016 it becomes clear that the past won’t be left behind. In the background, the rise of identity politics in the US is analogised by frequent reference to a certain fictitious Clown Prince of Crime.
Other recent reads include The Song Of Achilles by Madeline Miller, told from the perspective of Achillles’ lover Patroclus. I found it quite engaging.
I thought Children Of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky was a wonderful novel. Far-future humans accidentally (and for a long time unknowingly) seed a planet with the genome of intelligent spiders, and when the last survivors of the human race eventually turn up desperate for a place to settle, there’s a bit of conflict. The author renders his characters and the spider society masterfully, for example when he illustrates the difficulties of communicating with a species that has no concept of sound.
I also recently read Kim Stanley Robinson’s Green Mars, the middle part of his famous Mars trilogy. Took me ages, much of the book being taken up with seemingly endless meetings and terrain descriptions. It does have characters about whom the reader learns to care, though, and the occasional burst of thrilling narrative activity. Clearly the author has put a lot of thought into all aspects of the tale.
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The Saint mets his Match (by Leslie Charteris).
I like old books
I like old books
Currently reading the collected edition of "Xenozoic" by Mark Schultz. Awesome stuff.
Still ploughing through Star Trek stories (its going to take me years)
New Frontier Gods above
New Frontier Gods above
