Advisory stuff.

Thanks, Billzabub. I picked up the fifth book at a little place in Dallas called Paperbacks Plus, and was hoping to get the fourth. I stopped by Half-Price today, and what to my wondering eyes should appear? But a stack of F&GM novels that had new Mignola covers on them. Many of them renamed. With stories collected in volumes apparently in a different order! I retired from the store in confusion, and am still looking for that elusive fourth volume according to the old reckoning.

In the meantime, I've read Brackett's Sword of Rhiannon and Tolkien's Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun. Quite different, but I enjoyed them both. Now starting John Bellairs' The Face in the Frost.

Just finished World War Z and Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks. I just started rereading some HP Lovecraft to get geared up for DM'ing. If you're in my gaming group, be afeared. Be verrrry afeared! >:D

Just finished World War Z and Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks. I just started rereading some HP Lovecraft to get geared up for DM'ing. If you're in my gaming group, be afeared. Be verrrry afeared! >:D

How is World War Z? It's been on my list for a while now, and I'm just getting to the point where I'm running out of the better known (to me) books.

Just Finished: Turn Coat and Backup both by Jim Butcher in the Dresden Series.

Is the Dresden series, the Dresden Files?

Yes the Dresden Files sorry.

I just started Brad Meltzer's Book of Lies which I learned about about a year ago when I saw this video* but only just got around to starting it.

*Good News. It looks like they managed to save the house.

How is World War Z? It's been on my list for a while now, and I'm just getting to the point where I'm running out of the better known (to me) books.

Not bad. It's written as a series of interviews made 10 years after the Zombie War, so it's not really a novel. Read it and then the Survival Guide, since ZSG has a lot of spoilers (IMO) in it.

Almost finished Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson. A few more chapters to go.

I'm also about half way through Shadow's Edge (Book 2 of the Night Angel trilogy), by Brent Weeks.

On deck is Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erikson. From what I gather, this is a seperate story from Gardens of the Moon. So my question is:

For anyone who has read it, will it draw me in as Gardens did? I couldn't put that book down.

Brothers of the Snake, by Dan Abnett

Almost finished Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson. A few more chapters to go.

I'm also about half way through Shadow's Edge (Book 2 of the Night Angel trilogy), by Brent Weeks.

On deck is Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erikson. From what I gather, this is a seperate story from Gardens of the Moon. So my question is:

For anyone who has read it, will it draw me in as Gardens did? I couldn't put that book down.

I liked deadhouse gates better than gardens of the moon. Both are awesome. I've probably read those two books 5 or 6 times. Up until I started law school I'd re-read the entire series each time he put out a new book. It's amazing what you can spot / read into / understand more of in the first few books with the perspective you get from the later ones. Really a pleasure to go back to them.

Almost finished Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson. A few more chapters to go.

On deck is Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erikson. From what I gather, this is a seperate story from Gardens of the Moon. So my question is:

For anyone who has read it, will it draw me in as Gardens did? I couldn't put that book down.

Yes, eventually. DHG starts off more slowly than GotM. It actually explains WTF is going on, whilst GotM went mental at the start jumping from continent to continent and across different time periods. DHG is a bit more restrained.

There's a few characters from GotM who show up (Crokus, Kalam, Sorry and Fiddler being the main ones, IIRC) but mostly it's a brand-new cast and a new continent, Seven Cities, which is more desert-oriented than the more temperate Genabackis.

DHG also takes place simultaneously alongside the events of Book 3, MEMORIES OF ICE (set back on Genabackis with most of the crew from GotM), so there's some cool moments in the two books when characters magically talk to one another, then you get the other side of the conversation in Book 3.

To sum up, DHG is probably the second-best book in the series (after MEMORIES OF ICE) and a very strong book. The Chain of Dogs is one of the epic and awesome things I've ever encountered in a novel.

Still slogging thru Quicksilver (good book, but LOOOONG). Took a side dive into a quirky little history book called: America's Hidden History, a nice quick read detailing out several interesting factoids about the earliest part of North America's (European colonization) history. I never knew there was an attempt to settle French Huguenots on the Floridian coast in the late 16th Century, and that one bad hurricane kept the Atlantic coast of Florida from becoming the French version of Plymouth Plantation. Good stuff for the history nerd.

I read my first Conan story a couple of days ago. The local Waldenbooks had an anthology that purports to be all of them in order of publishing, apparently organized by a British company. I had a coupon and was curious.

I tried to start in on the second and it just can't keep my interest. I didn't go in expecting great art, but I'm just plain not having that much fun. The Phoenix and the Sword was serviceable and felt a fair bit like a D&D novel, or a game plot. Which I suppose means that D&D feels like a Conan story.

The Scarlet Citadel is just boring the hell out of me, and was doing that even before the racist caricature I was expecting (I read the essay on the Hyborean Age before I dove into the stories.) trotted up on the stage. If this is the format they all fit into, I don't think I'm going to much like Howard at all. I didn't expect great art, but this isn't especially exciting either.

Just started Jim Butcher's Turn Coat (Dresden Files).

Recently finished:
Goblin Quest, Goblin Hero, Goblin War (They are the literal representation of don't judge a book by its cover. I think the cover art doesn't do the novels justice, and made me put them off for a long time)

Soon I Will Be Invincible. Cool super hero book.

I read my first Conan story a couple of days ago. The local Waldenbooks had an anthology that purports to be all of them in order of publishing, apparently organized by a British company. I had a coupon and was curious.

I've seen that anthology, but refrained from purchasing it because I acquired most of (if not all) the Conan stories.

In fact, the series of Conan books I had were just three of a larger series put out over the last few years. They had some other great books in the series that you might want to look into. Some of the stories repeat, but they're all pretty decent.

The series consisted of:

The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian
The Bloody Crown of Conan
The Conquering Sword of Conan
Kull: exile of Atlantis
Bran Mak Morn: The Last King
The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane
The Best of Robert E. Howard Volume 1: Crimson Shadows
The Best of Robert E. Howard Volume 2: Grim Lands
The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard

There's also another book I found one day, not in the same series as above, but equally interesting - The Lord of Samarcand and Other Adventure Tales.

Just started the Liveship Trilogy by Robin Hobb. Let's see how this goes.

About 200 pages from the end of The Name of the Wind - been really enjoying this book.

About 200 pages from the end of The Name of the Wind - been really enjoying this book.

I liked it myself, I just haven't gotten around to looking for the next book yet.

hedgeknight wrote:

About 200 pages from the end of The Name of the Wind - been really enjoying this book.

I liked it myself, I just haven't gotten around to looking for the next book yet.

Don't worry, Rothfuss just sent the Book Two manuscript off to his editor last month: >LINK<

Don't worry, Rothfuss just sent the Book Two manuscript off to his editor last month: >LINK<

And I got to hear Pat read the first chapter last week :-) It was very good. From the sound it, Book 2 should really be a step up from the first one, which I enjoyed but there was one bit near the end which felt a bit tacked on to create some action. I gather Pat regrets doing that now and there shouldn't be more of the same in Book 2.

Storm Dragon, by James Wyatt

I'm surprised at just how good this book is--a great novel for those who generally don't enjoy 'game fiction.' In fact, if you removed any marketing references to WotC or D&D from the cover, and you didn't know about Eberron, you'd think this was a really inventive, fresh fantasy novel. Also, a great start for someone reluctant to read Eberron; no prior knowledge is required.

Just finished:
- Still Life With Crows by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
- Carnivorous Nights by Margaret Mittelbach, Michael Crewdson, and Alexis Rockman
- The Darwin Awards, vol. 4 by Wendy Northcutt

Currently reading:
- The Scar by China Mieville
- Riptide by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

Up next:
- The City and the City by China Mieville
- The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie

Currently reading an advance copy of Fire by Kristin Cashore, the follow-up to her debut novel Graceling. Like the first book, decent. The romance-heavy storyline is a little wearying, but the main character is conflicted and twisted in an interesting manner, and there's a nice spin on the magic system introduced in the first book.

Eldritch, first time with The Blade Itself? Joe's a friend of mine and always glad to hear of people buying reading (okay, buying) his books!

Eldritch, first time with The Blade Itself? Joe's a friend of mine and always glad to hear of people buying reading (okay, buying) his books!

Yeah, it's the first time I've read one of his books. A guy I know (the same guy who turned me on to Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft) gave me The Blade Itself and the two other books in the series.

Finished John Bellairs' The Face in the Frost and am now reading Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress II. (I still haven't found a copy of Leibner's fourth F&GM novel.) Bellairs was quite enjoyable, and produced a story about wizards in which magic was not a main character. (Check another one off Appendix N for me.) S&S is increasing my interest in Charles Saunders.

Recently finished Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, Sanderson's Mistborn and Butcher's Death Masks

Now reading Jorge Luis Borges - Labyrinths and Selected Fictions

I am currently reading Perdito Street Station (China Mieville), Soul Music (Terry Pratchett), The Kobold Guide to Game Design (Wolfgang Baur), MiracleMan (Alan Moore) and Rule of the Bone (Russell Banks)...all at the same time. Probably not a bright idea, but there it is.

Incidental, every one of these books are worth whatever time you can devote to them. I am particularly enjoying Perdito Street Station while MiracleMan, though brilliantly conceived and written, is going rather slow due to me having gotten used to modern comic styles.

(All of this on top of 3 projects for school, learning the bass, rewatching 8 Simple Rules, napping 2.5 hours a day and restarting my Pokemon addiction by playing all 4 generations in order to catch them all...I'm starting to think I have either way too much energy or way too much free time...)

I have way too much energy and way too much free time...

Fixed that for you.

Perdido St Station is a classic, I love that book. My nan (would have been 85+ by now) leant it to me....

Bailout Nation - Barry Ritholtz - getting me all riled up, astonished and disapointed at the same time :-)

Waiting patiently for the new Douglas Coupland

The French Revolution 1770-1814 by Francois Furet, Antonia Nevill translation.

It's excellent, and reminds me of how poorly the subject was covered back in high school (twice!) and Western Civ. I know just enough French still to catch the languages cadences through the translation and it's fun to see how history is written outside the Anglophone academy. The presumptions on the knowledge of the reader do not seem much different from those of a similar sort of book (say Battle Cry of Freedom) written for American audiences. I expected otherwise given the differing roles of history in the respective cultures.

Finished John Bellairs' The Face in the Frost and am now reading Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress II. (I still haven't found a copy of Leibner's fourth F&GM novel.) Bellairs was quite enjoyable, and produced a story about wizards in which magic was not a main character. (Check another one off Appendix N for me.) S&S is increasing my interest in Charles Saunders.

I read the complete series of Bellairs' YA books on summer break when I was in high school. I enjoyed all of them; it was time well spent.

Right now I'm reading Frederik Pohl's Gateway. I'm not sure I'll finish the Heechee Saga though, because while the novel is interesting it isn't as suspenseful as I'd hoped it would be. It is realistically claustrophobic, as I expect living in a space-ship would actually feel.

Zeugma, is The Face in the Frost part of a series? By YA, do you mean Young Adult, or is it the name of a series? I just know this book (and author) from Appendix N.

The Stepsister Scheme by Jim Hines.

The Pirate King by R.A. Salvatore

Zeugma, is The Face in the Frost part of a series? By YA, do you mean Young Adult, or is it the name of a series? I just know this book (and author) from Appendix N.

Yes, The Face in the Frost is in the same series as The House with a Clock in its Walls, The Curse of the Blue Figurine and several other books.

Mairkurion (sp?) I made a mistake. The Face in the Frost is NOT, I repeat NOT part of the Jonathan Monday series by John Bellairs. Please disregard my last post. High School was eight years ago for me, so it's been at least a decade since I've read Bellairs. But please read his Young Adult stuff too. I'm a big believer in never being "too old" for entertaining literature, and Bellairs stuff is, in my opinion, very good.

Thanks!

Feeling young, but old memory capacity.

Hmm...

Finished off Quicksilver, and then did Charles Stross' book, The Revolution Business. Just started a new one: Dragonfly by Fredric Durbin. Reads so far like a funhouse version of Ray Bradbury's classic Something Wicked This Way Comes

The Nonesuch and Others by Brian Lumley.

Rapidly devouring Battle Royale by Koushun Takami. Kind of like Lord of the Flies, but with sailor suit miniskirts :)

Seriously though, a seemingly very smooth translation from Viz Media

Just finished:
- Riptide by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
- Still Life with Crows by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
- Carnivorous Nights by Margaret Mittelbach, Michael Crewdson and Alexis Rockman

Currently Reading:
- The Scar by China Mieville
- This Is Water by David Foster Wallace
- Excavation by James Rollins

Up next:
- The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie
- The City and the City by China Mieville
- Millennium Falcon by James Luceno

Planet Stories has me reading some of my old favorites.

Finished ERB's Martian series a couple of weeks ago and almost done with the Lensmen Series by EE Doc Smith.

Maybe after that I will jump back on some planet stories or reread the Skylark Series.

I also have some Lovecraft I haven't read yet...

Currently Reading:
- The Scar by China Mieville

Up next:
- The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie

Oh - hope you love them both as much as I did! I enjoyed The Scar more than Perdido Street Station, and Joe Abercrombie makes fantasy so gloriously down'n'dirty that you can't read it in silence! Enjoy!

Picked up Great Powers: America and the world after Bush at the library (man I love the library).

The author, Tom Barnett, makes several very interesting parallels with America's rise to world power in the 19th Century, early 20th and China's in the 20th-early 21st. Everything that we fear about China the previous world power, Britian feared about us.

He also lines out in a concise readable manner what went wrong with the 'global war on terror' and proposes several ways to realign American policy to harness our power to effect true lasting world improvement.

He also makes an interesting obsevation: America is uniquely positioned to be the example of a political entity stitched together from independent entities. Whereas many nations are fairly uniform in culture and history, we started off as 13 disparate colonies that worked hard to become one nation. Since then we have absorbed lands that were ex nations (Texas), kingdoms (Hawaii), and we have managed to remain together dispite our many differences and a civil war. He argues that the 'American System' of the sum of parts being greater than the whole, individual freedom, open connectivity, market competition, and innovation are the true gifts America has to give to the world, not our policing function.

Dan Abnetts's The Founding (A Gaunt's Ghosts Omnibus)

At The Mountains of Madness and Other Novels of Terror (Lovecraft omnibus) and the Pathfinder Campaign Setting

Taylor Anderson: "Into the storm". In a parallell earth; Seafearing Lemur-humans are being hunted to extinction by smart velociraptors. Enter a ww2 destroyer . one click buy amazon, i'm looking at you.
Brian Ruckley:" Winterbirth" , "Blood heir", "Fall of Thanes" , Interesting world and charachters and plot - getting weaker by the end.
Michael Collins: "Lost souls":).
Val Mcdermid: "A darker domain"
Seth Hunter :"The time of terror" Like Hornblowers Higlights.

Dan Abnetts's The Founding (A Gaunt's Ghosts Omnibus)

Same!

Just started in on the Necropolis section.

Me too. What a coincidence!

Looking for a copy of the Saint in bookstores here in the Philippines.

Just ponied up for "The BEST of Robert E. Howard - Vol 1: Crimson Shadow".

Just began Mind over Ship by David Marusek. Interesting scifi read about clones, AI, starships, and the coming transhuman evolution.

Me too. What a coincidence!

Looking for a copy of the Saint in bookstores here in the Philippines.

Ooo ya that might be a problem.

My wife picked up the last copy of The Saint in the city for me a couple weeks ago.

I admit I like the Omnibus format, and am looking forward to the next few books being gathered into one.