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Oh no, don't delete it! Let's put on as many books threads as possible!
ESPECIALLY ones that aren't under "Books," to throw the nay-sayers off the scent!
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Currently reading:
"Furies of Calderon", first book from the Codex Alera, by Jim Butcher
"Interesting Times", by Terry Pratchett
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On topic: I Shall Wear Midnight by Sir Terry Pratchett and Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes. :)
The Tiffany Aching books were surprisingly good. I finished the entire quartet all in a row before picking up Snuff.
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I'm one of those people who's read the Discworld books in publication date order (including the extra ones; Where is My Cow? is one of my favorites), so I'm *almost* caught up entirely. It's exciting! :D
There's a long-lost familiar face hidden in ISWM for you then =) I won't spoil beyond that. Enjoy!
I felt Raising Steam was a return to form after a faintly disappointing (by Pratchett standards, which means better than 99% of everything else) Snuff.
And I finished London Calling by Paul Cornell yesterday. It starts out sort of like a more action-oriented version of The Wire set in London, and then it takes a turn for the supernatural into a darker version of Neverwhere around chapter 3.
Very good book.
Going to follow it with Warrior's Bond by Juliet E. McKenna, even if I can't find the fifth and last book in the series. :(
I felt Raising Steam was a return to form after a faintly disappointing (by Pratchett standards, which means better than 99% of everything else) Snuff.
There's another one?! Which series is it in?
I think that's a Moist one. I didn't know it was out yet.
Just finished the Watch series of Terry Pratchett's Discworld; finished Snuff Monday night.
Going to either get started on the Death series with Mort, or start reading the Leviathan trilogy by Scott Westerfield.
Mort! Read Mort! You won't be disappointed.
I felt Raising Steam was a return to form after a faintly disappointing (by Pratchett standards, which means better than 99% of everything else) Snuff.There's another one?! Which series is it in?
What Scintillae said.
I was digging through the piles of books the other day and came across the old family copy of The Voice of the Dolphin, so I had to sit down with it for awhile. I'm also trying to get all the way through Three Kingdoms, but it's impossible to keep all the characters straight in my head. *Sigh*
Is that the Three Kingdoms of Red Cliff fame, SnowJade?
I'm one of those people who's read the Discworld books in publication date order (including the extra ones; Where is My Cow? is one of my favorites), so I'm *almost* caught up entirely. It's exciting! :D
I love those, esp the Tiffany Aching series. Have you read the Science ones too?
Darwin Elevator by Jason Hough.
Done with Leviathan, started on Behemoth.
Star Wars: Scourge by Jeff Grubb. Pretty decent adventure read.
I have never been interested by Star Wars novels, but I gave this one a try because I have always liked Jeff Grubb's work, both in gaming and in his prose. I just fell in love with the characters in his Finder's Stone trilogy many years ago. I hope he gets to expand his short story "Catch of the Day" from Planet Stories' Worlds of their Own into a full novel in the near future.
Next on the reading pile is Pathfinder Tales: Death's Heretic
by James L. Sutter. Salim seems like a very interesting character.
I highly recommend Pathfinder Tales: Liar's Blade, which I recently finished. Had a lot of fun reading the bromance between anti-hero Rodrick and his sword Hrym, and kudos for the nod to master Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar series on the title of every chapters! Please give us some more Tim Pratt!
Also just finished the last issue of the Pathfinder comic book series. I want more stories about our favorite iconics.
In addition to Warrior's Bond that I mentioned above, I'm also reading Saints of the Shadow Bible by Ian Rankin (his 23rd book with DI [previously DS] John Rebus as the main POV-character).
And then there's the book about the Germanic peoples and languages I'm reading whenever I have cause to sit down on the white porcelain chair.
Just started reading The Book of Tyreal, a stylized background, descriptive narrative, based on the Diablo series of computer games.
Yes, it is, Doodles. I have to read it in translation, and I know it's a (sometimes not very accurate) novelization of a long period of Chinese history, but it's still fun.
Vive le Yellow Turbans!!!
About the only video game I ever play is Dynasty Warriors 4. I have no idea why, it soothes me. All my friends make fun of me for it, because I've been playing it for....well, longer than I care to say. Before Red Cliff came out, anyway.
Anyways, I've been asking periodically on these boards for the last three years if anyone has ever read it and, up 'til now, the closest I've gotten to an affirmative answer is one of the Australian brethren said he saw a copy of it when he was visiting the PRC.
I'm glad to hear it's fun, and will start looking for it again.
Finished Wise Man's Fear. I'm unsure that this series is really a trilogy. It seems like we have far more story to get through than one more book could contain, especially if that book is also supposed bring a return of the old Kvothe like Bast wants. The narration generally seems to be on Bast's side in the present day scenes and we get enough glimpses to see that he's still in there, but something is badly wrong. Maybe more wrong than Kvothe knows.
Not sure what's up next.
Finished Wise Man's Fear. I'm unsure that this series is really a trilogy. It seems like we have far more story to get through than one more book could contain, especially if that book is also supposed bring a return of the old Kvothe like Bast wants....Not sure what's up next.
I know, right? Not to mention he still hasn't done any of those things from the back cover of the first book yet...
...Except spend the night with Ferulian.
Vive le Yellow Turbans!!!
About the only video game I ever play is Dynasty Warriors 4. I have no idea why, it soothes me. All my friends make fun of me for it, because I've been playing it for....well, longer than I care to say. Before Red Cliff came out, anyway.
Anyways, I've been asking periodically on these boards for the last three years if anyone has ever read it and, up 'til now, the closest I've gotten to an affirmative answer is one of the Australian brethren said he saw a copy of it when he was visiting the PRC.
I'm glad to hear it's fun, and will start looking for it again.
The only readable version I've found so far is the Moss Roberts translation; the maps and notes are very good, but the notes, annoyingly, are all placed at the back of the second volume (or the fourth, if you're looking at the paperback Foreign Language Press edition). In addition, the print in the FLP edition is absolutely minuscule, so it's very hard to make sense out of the maps.
Actually, for sheer fun, I'd recommend Outlaws of the Marsh, if you haven't already read it. I have this translation, and it's a ripping good yarn.
Vive les Outlaws!
Finished Wise Man's Fear. I'm unsure that this series is really a trilogy. It seems like we have far more story to get through than one more book could contain, especially if that book is also supposed bring a return of the old Kvothe like Bast wants....Not sure what's up next.I know, right? Not to mention he still hasn't done any of those things from the back cover of the first book yet...
I've been meaning to pick up WMF for a while now.
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Actually, for sheer fun, I'd recommend Outlaws of the Marsh, if you haven't already read it.Vive les Outlaws!
+1 to that. Outlaws of the Marsh is the tops! If only 'they' hadn't taken the TV adaptation off Youtube :(
I read The Moon Pool over the weekend - nice bit of pulpy sci-fi horror with proto bullywugs and a naughty Bolshevik villain. Am also reading Jack Tar by Roy and Lesley Atkins, which is a book about the lives of ordinary sailors in the Royal Navy at the time of the Napoleonic wars. It's based on personal accounts - diaries and what have you - from the time and is utterly fascinating.
Sort of on topic, anyway - I like to have a picture of a character in my head when I read about him or her in a story. Caroline Young is one of my favorite artists, and her subjects are generally drawn from Chinese history and novels. Now, if she'd just paint a snow leopard....
Still plowing through 3K, and probably will be for awhile.
I've been in a funk these last few weeks, aimlessly flipping through comic books and the Book of Psalms and commie newspapers.
I don't know how to snap out of it.
Maybe this article about William S. Burroughs and Andy Warhol discussing how they lost their virginity will do it...
Just checked in with Amazon to see why my order of Moorcock and Gaskell hasn't shown up yet (thank you again for the offer, Limey, but I think I got them all for the same price it would've cost just to ship them from Perfidious Albion to AmeriKKKa) and all of the "People who bought what you bought also bought" is Chinese classics: Romance of the Three Kingdoms, A Dream of Red Mansions, Journey to the West, etc., etc.
That's kinda weird, isn't it? Frickin' NSA...
Just checked in with Amazon to see why my order of Moorcock and Gaskell hasn't shown up yet
Yay, they arrived!
I typically read two books at a time. One fiction and one nonfiction, typically one in text form and the other in audiobook format, typically either driving to work or at the gym.
I just finished the Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe (fiction; audiobook).
I'm reading Playing at the World by Jon Peterson (text; Kindle).
The next fiction book I'm going listen to is Finch by Jeff Vandermeer (fiction audiobook).
I'm also picking at some of the stories in the Swords and Dark Magic anthology edited by Jonathan Strahan and Lou Anders (fiction; softcover from the library). I pounced on the Joe Abercrombie story first, now I'm reading the one by Steven Erikson.
I'm reading The Witching Hour by Anne Rice.
I'm listening to both The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
and A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin.
I'm encouraging fans of roleplaying, fantasy, and sci-fi to read
The Myth Prosaic by Georgia Z.
It's free online, presented as a web-serial, with updates 3 times a week.
The story revolves around a character who plays an RPG and how that experience becomes useful to him in a dystopian future.
And, yeah, I know the author. ;)
(Please click through and check it out. I really do think many here will enjoy it. I know I do. Thanks.)
I just checked and discovered that I am less than forty pages from ending my long ordeal of generally not reading William W. Freehling's The Road to Disunion, Volume Two: Secessionists Triumphant.
It's still a great, well-written history. I still have no idea why reading it has been an uphill battle.
After that? I'm kind of making eyes at Robert E. Mays' books on the filibusters. Or maybe some fiction.
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Oh, happy day, comrades!
Much joyous success at the Merrimack Public Library's Winter Sale. I even found both volumes of The Chronicles of Corum, which I like to think of as the revenge of ye olde usede booke store gods for buying things off Amazon.
Many, many books were bought today, comrades, because of a variety of your recommendations. Even if you think no one's listening, you can rest assured that Doodlebug Anklebiter is.
Mass Paperbacks
Isaac Asimov--I, Robot (more revenge of ye olde usede booke store gods for going to a Barnes and Noble and buying a book with Will Smith on the cover)
--The Caves of Steel
Asimov, editor--More Soviet Science Fiction
Samuel R. Delany--Babel-17
E.R. Eddison--The Worm Ouroboros
Philip Jose Farmer--Behind the Walls of Terra
Frank Norris--The Octopus
Jean-Paul Sartre--The Age of Reason
Theodore Sturgeon--A Way Home
Jules Verne--The Mysterious Island (which I might already have)
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.--Player Piano
John Wyndham--Gooseflesh and Laughter
Trade Paperbacks
Eric Foner--Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men (which I already have but can peddle to others while peddling socialist newspapers)
Elizabeth Moon--The Deed of Paksenarrion
Saki--The Complete Saki
Hardcovers, Yo!
Poul Anderson--The Dancer from Atlantis
--Annals of the Time Patrol
Philip K. Dick--The Golden Man
Susanna Clarke--Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Robert A. Heinlein--Starship Troopers
Doris Lessing--The Fifth Child
Walter M. Miller, Jr.--A Canticle for Leibowitz
Michael Moorcock--The Elric Saga: Part II
Clifford D. Simak--The Fellowship of the Talisman
S.M. Stirling--Against the Tide of Years
--On the Oceans of Eternity
A.E. Van Vogt--The Voyage of the Space Beagle
Plus a DVD of Army of Darkness and all for $21! Huzzah!
There was tons of good stuff left, and if it is at all feasible for you to get to Merrimack, NH over the weekend, I highly recommend the trip!
What I am actually reading-wise, took Graham Swift's Waterland out of the library before my Amazon books arrived, but tonight one of my player's is going to lend me her copy of The Shining which I want to re-read due to events in another thread, so I'm not really sure which I'll devote myself to next. Hmmm....
Jack Vance--The Green Pearl
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Much joyous success at the Merrimack Public Library's Winter Sale. I even found both volumes of The Chronicles of Corum, which I like to think of as the revenge of ye olde usede booke store gods for buying things off Amazon.
Odd stuff, but I loved the Hand and Eye, which I suspect were the inspirations for the Hand and Eye of Vecna.
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Corum, Elric and Jerry Cornelius made a man out of the young Limey. A peculiarly warped specimen, true, but perhaps we can blame that on overexposure to organophosphates at a young age.
Right now, Derai, by EC Tubb. Sci Fi, and fairly gritty Sci Fi at that (which isn't what I normally go for), but decent all the same.
Also, The Mayor of Casterbridge. I like Hardy.
Much joyous success at the Merrimack Public Library's Winter Sale. I even found both volumes of The Chronicles of Corum, which I like to think of as the revenge of ye olde usede booke store gods for buying things off Amazon.Odd stuff, but I loved the Hand and Eye, which I suspect were the inspirations for the Hand and Eye of Vecna.
Friend Set, get thee to Merrimack!
And if you can make it to Total Con, you can have the hardback Elric. It's got The Vanishing Tower in it.
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...Except spend the night with Ferulian.
He also learned that language in a single day, though for some unfathomable reason the book skipped that part with Kvoth stating that "it's not interesting and I don't want to talk about it". That was a huge disappointment because of all the list of awesome things Kvothe did, this one made me the most curious.
Generally speaking, book 2 made me fear that the series that started so gloriously is going no where.
O ye of little faith...
The complete works of H.P Lovecraft.
Looks like it'll be Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II now that I have finally finished with Freehling.
Until I read his book on wartime anti-Confederate resistance. But it's Slavery by Another Name for now. I'm getting up to go read a chapter this very instant. Or this one. Or-
The instant I get up and go read a chapter is the instant I will get up and go read a chapter. So there.
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The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Murakami.
There's some discussion that this translation is incomplete, an 'adaptation' rather than a strict translation, etc.
I don't read Japanese, so seeing (reading) this for myself is quite impossible.
Nonetheless, I bought the book based on the first page alone. Honestly, I stumbled across it at B&N the other day, and only because I sat my tea on the shelf next to it in order to pick up a completely different book. I found the opening sentences to be compelling and very well written. I'm about a quarter of the way through it. It strikes me as magical realism with an Asian flavor; almost like a Ghibli film on paper. I recommend it.
So, I borrowed a copy of The Shining from one of my players.
It is a recent edition with a preview of Doctor Sleep at the end, and the first thing that blew my mind was how many books Stephen King has written since I stopped paying attention. The last one I remember reading was The Tommyknockers. EDIT: I take that back, it was Needful Things.
So, I read The Shining all the way back in middle school, IIRC. I saw the movie not long after. I don't think I've seen it since. So, that was over 20 years ago.
Nevertheless, from the opening sneer of "Officious little prick" all I can hear is Jack Nicholson. Jack Torrance smiles his toothy grin and all I can see is Jack Nicholson leering.
EDIT: And, of course, Dangerous Minds has a thing about The Shining today.