What books are you currently reading?


Books

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I recently reread Margaret Ronald's Evie Scelan trilogy (Spiral Hunt, Wild Hunt, and Soul Hunt). They are modern urban fantasy set in and around Boston, where I was living at the time the books came out (I also know the author). They're some of the best of the genre that I've read, and even more fun if you know Boston at all.

I will probably start rereading Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy next, as a change of pace.


Currently indulging my previously mentioned love of short F/SF fiction by reading a batch of back-issue genre magazines I've picked up recently. On tap at the moment is Asimov's December, 2015 issue.

Scarab Sages

The King of Elfland’s Daughter


Tim Emrick wrote:
I will probably start rereading Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy next, as a change of pace.

Yup, went with this. It's a fun book: a collection of essays about different philosophical ideas and value systems, using examples from the TV series (and occasionally "Angel") to illustrate a point. Overall, it's a lot more accessible and fun to read than most philosophy texts, and has some useful insights into the nature of heroism, which should make it appealing to gamers. I was playing in a BtVS game at the time that I acquired it, and am rereading it in part because that game has revived for a "reunion arc." I've thought a great deal over the years about why my PCs in that game make the choices they do, and there are parts of this book that have helped me articulate some of that better.

If and when that gets too serious and heavy (or I finish it), I intend to borrow or steal the Pathfinder novel "Hellknight" from my eldest to read. I gave it to him for Xmas because he was playing a Hellknight in PFS, but I'm not sure if he's read it yet. So at least one of us should have a chance to enjoy it, right? ;)


Working on "Always coming home" by Ursula LeGuin, an anthropologicalstudy of a future society. Fascinating, as one expects from someone of her caliber. However, I feel I get more out of it by dipping in an out, so I'm taking a quick break to read "Armor" by John Steakley. I remember very little about it other than that I liked it and though it is even longer since I read Starship Troopers, I recall liking Armor better. Less Heinlein-y, certainly.


Bjørn Røyrvik wrote:
Working on "Always coming home" by Ursula LeGuin, an anthropologicalstudy of a future society. Fascinating, as one expects from someone of her caliber. However, I feel I get more out of it by dipping in an out, so I'm taking a quick break to read "Armor" by John Steakley. I remember very little about it other than that I liked it and though it is even longer since I read Starship Troopers, I recall liking Armor better. Less Heinlein-y, certainly.

Armor is another one with bugs, right?

Friend of mine recommended it to me, long ago. Wasn't my taste.

Dark Archive

thejeff wrote:
Bjørn Røyrvik wrote:
Working on "Always coming home" by Ursula LeGuin, an anthropologicalstudy of a future society. Fascinating, as one expects from someone of her caliber. However, I feel I get more out of it by dipping in an out, so I'm taking a quick break to read "Armor" by John Steakley. I remember very little about it other than that I liked it and though it is even longer since I read Starship Troopers, I recall liking Armor better. Less Heinlein-y, certainly.

Armor is another one with bugs, right?

Friend of mine recommended it to me, long ago. Wasn't my taste.

Yeah, as military-style science fiction goes, Armor was pretty good, as I recall.

It is funny how many different sci-fi novels seem to reference Starship Troopers, as if it kinda / sorta happened in their continuity. Steakley's Armor is one. Walter Jon William's Voice of the Whirlwind is another.

Anywho, currently rereading the Expanse books, after rereading NK Jemison's Fifth Gate cycle. Loving the Expanse. Liked the Fifth Gate, but the protagonist was so angry all the time it felt like she was her own worst enemy. Going to have to pick up some other NK Jemison books, because I like her writing (her Far Sector is my favorite DC comic at the moment), just was not a fan of this particular protagonist.


Set wrote:
Going to have to pick up some other NK Jemison books, because I like her writing (her Far Sector is my favorite DC comic at the moment), just was not a fan of this particular protagonist.

Set, where would you recommend a potential fan begin reading NK Jemison? I've been meaning to pick up something for a while, but I'm having a hard time deciding just where to begin.

Dark Archive

Readerbreeder wrote:
Set wrote:
Going to have to pick up some other NK Jemison books, because I like her writing (her Far Sector is my favorite DC comic at the moment), just was not a fan of this particular protagonist.
Set, where would you recommend a potential fan begin reading NK Jemison? I've been meaning to pick up something for a while, but I'm having a hard time deciding just where to begin.

I have only read the Fifth Season trilogy, so I got nuthin' on her other stuff (other than the Far Sector comic). It's generally not too expensive on Amazon as a set, and a pretty decent read.

It's not exactly fantasy or sci-fi, kind of similar to Saberhagen's Empire of the East, set in a sort of post-apocalypse world.

I'm going to order some more stuff, perhaps her Inheritance trilogy, but I have no idea what it's gonna be like...


Set wrote:


It is funny how many different sci-fi novels seem to reference Starship Troopers, as if it kinda / sorta happened in their continuity. Steakley's Armor is one. Walter Jon William's Voice of the Whirlwind is another.

I did not get the feeling that Armor had a 'kinda/sorta' shared continuity with Starship Troopers. Maybe because it's been even longer since I read that one, but other than necessities of the settings like FTL travel and power armor, I can't put my finger on anything. Can't comment on "Voice of the whirlwind" since just about the only thing I remember about it was that I read it and the sequel.

The ending of Armor was a bit wonky and I don't know if I'm glad we didn't get the sequel Steakley was working on before he died. I really can't see how he could have done more with the characters or the setting without making things just awkward, but he may have just used the title for a new setting and characters and pulled it off.

Anyway, time to finish "Always coming home", between bouts of reading Return of the Runelords and despairing at the amount of work I will have to do to make it work for my needs.


"Always coming home" was very good, and very inspirational when world-building.

Just finished Sheri S. Tepper's "The Gate to Women's Country".
Short version, 300 years after a nuclear war, Women's Country is a matriarchal society of city-states based on a semi-Spartan model, where most men are warriors and focused on honor and glory while women do everything else. There's also another society we come across which is something like the Republic of Gilead heading towards the Hills Have Eyes.
Stavia is a young girl growing up in this society, trying to learn the rules of society and her place there, fighting against young infatuation and realization that people change over time and sometimes lie. There are snippets of a play set to the Trojan war as seen from POV of the women of the story, and this play has much the same role as the tale of the Black Freighter does in Watchmen.
The story is a bit dated in certain ideas (homosexuality being something that can and should be cured by hormones in youth) and it can definitely feel a bit strident in its portrayal of male-dominated societies being shitty, but Woman's Country is not portrayed as perfect so I interpret this more as characters talking rather than the author using them as mouthpieces for her precise views.
On the whole, I quite enjoyed it.

Now reading John Brunner's "The astronauts must not land". I'm about halfway in and it's not his best work. We'll see if it gets better but I think it will be a story that you can safely give a miss.


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I am reading Arbiter of Worlds by Alexander Macris. I recommend it for any GM.


I am now currently re-reading Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys. Probably the most sustained farce of any of his works that I've read.

And I just received a couple early birthday gifts--Wil Wheaton's Just a Geek and Dava Sobel's Galileo's Daughter--which have been on my wish list so long I've nearly forgotten why I put them there. :D I'll start in on those next.


"The astronauts must not land" was ok. Slightly better than it seemed when I first mentioned it but nothing you should go out of your way to find unless you are a fan of Brunner.
I also read "The Space-time juggler", also by Brunner since it was in the same double feature volume. One of those weird settings where you have interstellar travel yet everything else seems to be 14th century Europe. Passable read but again nothing you need to go out of your way to find.

Just finished "Sideshow" by Sheri Tepper. Set in the same universe as "Grass", another book I picked up at the same time as Sideshow and was unaware of the connection so this one was read first. Not a bad story. A bit unclear towards the end, but mostly enjoyable. I've heard LeGuin be accused of being damn preachy but Tepper is far more so. Her various cultures seem to be made merely to prove a point and seem a bit shallower than LeGuin's. If you don't mind a bit of preachiness it is worth your time. This book is also notable for being the only work of fiction I've heard of where two of the main characters are a pair of conjoined intersex twins, one assigned male the other female. I'm afraid I don't know enough about those situations to tell how accurate their portrayal or how (in)offensive it is to actual intersex or conjoined people, was but they were very much characters first and physiological situation second.

On to "Etruscans" by Morgan Llywellyn and Michael Scott, one of the too many books that has been gathering dust unread on my shelf for a couple decades or more.

Scarab Sages

In an effort to improve my map-making skills, I’ve been perusing three books I recently acquired:

Castles of the Western World (with 240 illustrations) by Armin Tuulse
Ancient Architecture by Seton Lloyd & Hans Wolfgang Müller
Byzantine Architecture by Cyril Mango

The latter two books are part of a old series called History of World Architecture.


Readerbreeder wrote:
I had set a goal long ago to re-read them on a yearly basis, but slipped out of that around the time that the Peter Jackson movies were released. On my most recent re-reading, I was surprised that in several places, I was beginning to conflate parts of the movies with the books.

Yes!

Okay, I seem to be late in responding to this message. I've again broken my record by going a whopping FOUR MONTHS without checking the Piazo messageboards. But I have to respond to this, despite my lateness.

Yeah, I read Lord of the Rings three times before the Peter Jackson movies came out. When they did, I disliked certain parts of those movies, and felt the movies inferior to the books. But then when I told the story to my kids, I was surprised to find my telling was influenced by the movies.

In late 2009, in an effort to set my mind straight again, I started reading Lord of the Rings a fourth time. Yet STILL I found I was telling my kids certain parts in line with the movies rather than the books. Furthermore, in early 2010, I was surprised to discover that some parts of the books were long and... boring! How could I never have noticed before? Finally, in the part where Gandalf confronts Theoden and Wormtongue, I gave up. And my fourth reading has been stuck there ever since.


Aaron Bitman wrote:
Readerbreeder wrote:
I had set a goal long ago to re-read them on a yearly basis, but slipped out of that around the time that the Peter Jackson movies were released. On my most recent re-reading, I was surprised that in several places, I was beginning to conflate parts of the movies with the books.

Yes!

Okay, I seem to be late in responding to this message. I've again broken my record by going a whopping FOUR MONTHS without checking the Piazo messageboards. But I have to respond to this, despite my lateness.

Yeah, I read Lord of the Rings three times before the Peter Jackson movies came out. When they did, I disliked certain parts of those movies, and felt the movies inferior to the books. But then when I told the story to my kids, I was surprised to find my telling was influenced by the movies.

In late 2009, in an effort to set my mind straight again, I started reading Lord of the Rings a fourth time. Yet STILL I found I was telling my kids certain parts in line with the movies rather than the books. Furthermore, in early 2010, I was surprised to discover that some parts of the books were long and... boring! How could I never have noticed before? Finally, in the part where Gandalf confronts Theoden and Wormtongue, I gave up. And my fourth reading has been stuck there ever since.

I read LOTR at least a couple of times before I discovered (in middle school) how much other F&SF there was out there. I've reread them every few years since, though probably less often since the movies came out.

For me (and probably most first-time readers), the big stumbling block in reading the trilogy is the glacial pacing of the first half of Fellowship. Once we get to Rivendell, Tolkein finally knows what story he wants to tell, and gets on with it.


Etruscans was OK. I know basically nothing about historical Etruscans so I can't comment on how historically accurate this thing was. The book itself was a bit expositiony, not particularly exciting and there was one scene that was straight out of a bad isekai and once I read that I couldn't stop thinking of the book in those terms. If the authors got the setting right (despite the name it was mostly pre-Republic Rome) then it's worth a read, especially if you want to run a game in a fantasy version of RW historical periods. If, as I suspect, there is a lot of made up stuff and virtually no historicity, you can give it a miss unless this sort of thing really appeals.

I also read More about Paddington by Michael Bond. I'm reading the handful of Paddington books I have once more before they go to my niece. she's a bit young for them yet but that will soon change.

Now rereading Charlie Stross' Dead lies dreaming, originally titled "The Lost Boys" but the publishers thought that was a bad name because of some stupid film or other. Stross manages to write very simply, easily, engagingly and without it being too simple to be enjoyable. This is a rare gift, and I do so love the Laundry Files stories, and the new Laundry-adjacent Tales of the New Management book. Inspired by and homages/riffs on classic writers and genres, satire of society and politics (which was driven off the rails and into the ground by Brexit being stupider than he could foresee or handle). Either way, it helps to have read the rest of the series leading up to this one but not entirely necessary.


I finished The Elizabethan Reader, which was a compilation of c15th stuff - plays, poems, prose - which was pretty interesting.

I also read 'Chessmen of Mars'. ERB is always enjoyable.

Now I have 'Liber Null - Psychonaut' by Peter Carrol to get through. I have recently been getting into Occult Literature again, and I'm not entirely sure the subject is worthwhile, but we'll see.


Nearly done with The Tangleroot Palace, a collection of short stories by Marjorie Liu, and I really like it. She has written a bunch of other stuff, from Marvel comics to various novels (which I will be sure to keep an eye out for), but I'd only read Monstress previously, which is the best and most beautiful graphic novels I've read in years.
I recommend both.


I re-read Denise Mina's Hellblazer stories "Empathy is the enemy" and "The Red Right Hand". It's a damn shame Mina didn't get to write more Hellblazer because she did a damn fine job. The idea of the empathy engine could easily be adapted to an RPG plot.

The Light of the Jedi by Charles Soule is the start of a new series of SW books set in the High Republic, i.e. the time between the Battle of Ruuan and the Clone Wars. This particular novel is set about 263 BBY. The story itself is OK, as are the characters, but there are a lot of problems with the plot. Some are minor issues, like Yarael Poof, the long-necked Jedi master seen in TPM, is mentioned but Quermians only live about 200 years. Without knowing the details of Quermian lifespans this isn't a big deal considering the extremes of some human life spans beyond the norm, but still it would be very easy to get this right. The major issue is how hyperspace is handled, and this is the core of the story. Nonsense like the feeling that the galaxy isn't at all well explored (and we're only talking close Outer Rim stuff, not Unknown regions or deep core), the idea that you can blockade all of hypserspace in certain regions, and the core issue of Paths, basically magically conceived plots through hypserspace which are better than the known paths in every way and manage to ignore the blockade. This whole issue really grated on me.

Now reading Paddington helps out

Scarab Sages

Later by Stephen King. I’ll follow that up with Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir.


Aberzombie wrote:
Later by Stephen King. I’ll follow that up with Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir.

Both of those are on my to-read list, Aberzombie. (Granted, I have a lot of books on my to-read list, but still...) Are you willing to give a spoiler-free opinion when you're done?


1/3 of the way through Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. It has only been a year since I reread Red Mars but already I've forgotten most of the recurring characters. Still, despite being a solid 750+ page brick, the books flow really well and are easy to read. Having a focus on science (I cannot comment on the accuracy of it but it seems more legit than, e.g. Star Trek) as well as politics and interpersonal drama make the books a recommended read.

Scarab Sages

Readerbreeder wrote:
Aberzombie wrote:
Later by Stephen King. I’ll follow that up with Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir.
Both of those are on my to-read list, Aberzombie. (Granted, I have a lot of books on my to-read list, but still...) Are you willing to give a spoiler-free opinion when you're done?

This is King’s third Hard Case Crime novel. I enjoyed the previous two, so had high hopes for this one. I was not disappointed. The cast of characters is small, but interesting. The story is relatively straightforward, but with enough curveballs thrown in to make it fun. It was a quick read (finished in less than a day). And it has ties to a previous King novel, with (in my opinion) some interesting implications. The only downside I’d say it had was King’s predilection for imputing some politics into it, which I feel detracts from being able to enjoy the book 100%. Nevertheless, I highly recommend it.

I’m only a few chapters into Project Hail Mary so far. Heavy on science (not surprising), and the plot is pretty interesting so far. More later.


Finished the last of my Paddington books, Padddington Takes the Test. I should get the rest so my niece can have a complete collection.

Now on to WEG Star Wars the Roleplaying Game. We bought the re-release a few years ago but haven't gotten around to reading it before now.

Scarab Sages

Readerbreeder wrote:
Aberzombie wrote:
Later by Stephen King. I’ll follow that up with Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir.
Both of those are on my to-read list, Aberzombie. (Granted, I have a lot of books on my to-read list, but still...) Are you willing to give a spoiler-free opinion when you're done?

I finally finished Project Hail Mary last night. I enjoyed the book. It had an interesting story, and some likable characters. Towards the end of the book, my opinion about the main character changed a bit, and I saw him in a slightly more negative light, but not enough to make me dislike him. The second main character was totally awesome and had no negative qualities whatsoever.

The story is actually pretty straight forward. No surprise, it was (very) heavy on the science. The engineer in me approved. This book also had a bit more of the "fiction" to go with the "science", which is different from The Martian (I haven't read Weir's second book yet). There are also some high drama/action scenes, which I suspect were included for future Big Screen Adaptation.

The story is told in "present time" and "flashback", but not so much that it disrupted the flow of the story.

All in all, I think if you liked his other books, you'll like this one.

Scarab Sages

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Now I’m working on The Book of Wonder by Lord Dunsany.


Nearly done with Dragon Keeper by Robin Hobb, first of the Rain Wilds Charonicls. I'm not quite sure what the official name for her setting is, but I'm enjoying it. I didn't like the Liveship Traders qhen I read it 20 years ago but I suspect I would like it today.

After that, on to Sheri Tepper's Grass


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Aberzombie wrote:
Readerbreeder wrote:
Aberzombie wrote:
Later by Stephen King. I’ll follow that up with Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir.
Both of those are on my to-read list, Aberzombie. (Granted, I have a lot of books on my to-read list, but still...) Are you willing to give a spoiler-free opinion when you're done?

I finally finished Project Hail Mary last night. I enjoyed the book. It had an interesting story, and some likable characters. Towards the end of the book, my opinion about the main character changed a bit, and I saw him in a slightly more negative light, but not enough to make me dislike him. The second main character was totally awesome and had no negative qualities whatsoever.

The story is actually pretty straight forward. No surprise, it was (very) heavy on the science. The engineer in me approved. This book also had a bit more of the "fiction" to go with the "science", which is different from The Martian (I haven't read Weir's second book yet). There are also some high drama/action scenes, which I suspect were included for future Big Screen Adaptation.

The story is told in "present time" and "flashback", but not so much that it disrupted the flow of the story.

All in all, I think if you liked his other books, you'll like this one.

Thanks for the recommend Aberzombie! I'm looking forward to reading it.


Aberzombie wrote:
Now I’m working on The Book of Wonder by Lord Dunsany.

I originally read this as a kid (maybe middle school age?) because my grandmother had a copy at her house. I read it again a few years ago, when I had a job that involved a lot of waiting around between calls and not much else to do to kill time except read stuff online. Dunsany was definitely one of my better choices during that period!

Scarab Sages

Currently rereading The Green Brain by Frank Herbert. It's one of his many non-Dune books I enjoy. I've always thought the insects in the book would make an interesting monstrous race for D&D.


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I am reading The Unwelcome Warlock by Lawrence Watt-Evans. It's about what happens when The Calling stops and all warlocks are left without their powers. Well, almost all of them. It's a good entry into the Ethshar novels so far. I'm about ten chapters in.


Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past by David Reich. Really cool book! I’m not smart enough or edumacated enough to understand it fully, but the broad outlines my feeble mind can glean are amazing.


Grass was quite good, probably the best of Tepper's that I've read. I read a few of her books some 20 years ago, so my memory of them is not great, even though I recall Beauty - a reimagining of Sleeping Beauty - being quite good as well.

Now on to Ken Grimwood's Replay, another of the many (though fewer than there once were) books that I bought some 15+ years ago and let gather dust on my shelves, unread.


Currently making my way (slowly, I started the new school year this week) through Mother of Winter, the fourth book in Barbara Hambly's Darwath series. I didn't even realize that she had written anything beyond the original trilogy until I stumbled upon this and Icefalcon's Quest (Book 5) in a local used bookstore. So far it's a good advancement of the milieu, I'm not far enough in yet to speak on the specific baddie of this installment.

@Fumarole, have you read most of Lawrence Watt-Evans' Ethshar series? I read With a Single Spell what seems like a lifetime ago, and while I enjoyed it, I was never really able to pick up the thread of the series, even though I knew it existed. Do you think it would be worth it to try and pick up that thread now?


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Readerbreeder wrote:
@Fumarole, have you read most of Lawrence Watt-Evans' Ethshar series? I read With a Single Spell what seems like a lifetime ago, and while I enjoyed it, I was never really able to pick up the thread of the series, even though I knew it existed. Do you think it would be worth it to try and pick up that thread now?

I love the series, so I may be biased. Once I finish this book I will have just the last two to complete the series. If anything, pick up The Misenchanted Sword, the first in the series, as it is widely considered the best, and with that I agree. With a Single Spell is probably the second best book in the series (of what I've read).


'Underlands', by Robert McFarlane, which is a superb book about underground spaces across the globe. I have also re-read 'Titus Groan'


Replay was good. The general idea isn't unfamiliar these days: what would you do if you died and came back to life at an earlier point in your history? How would you do things differently? It does a good job of portraying the joys and sorrows of such an event. The resolution was perhaps a bit flat compared to the meat of the story, but all in all it was worth reading.

Now reading A.E. van Vogt's Pendulum, a collection of short stories. I used to really like van Vogt but I've not read anything of his in ages, so it's time to go through my modest collection again. almost instantly there are some issues that weren't issues for me when I read them previously. Without getting too spoilery, let us just say there are some elements which don't quite go along with modern sensibilities.
Not that I'm not enjoying the stories, mind you.

Titus Groan is also one I should reread, but I'm pretty sure I'll reread The Book of the New Sun first, possibly interspersed with more van Vogt.


Earlier this week, I finally visited a library for the first time in a year and a half. I browsed for quite a while, but only checked out three books:

* A collection of The Mighty Thor, from Jane Foster's time as Thor. I wanted a taste of what that was like in the original comics before the next Thor movie comes out next year.

* Fate System Toolkit. Our local library system has a surprisingly large RPG collection. I think I read this in PDF after the Fate Core Kickstarter, but now that I'm actually playing in a Fate game, my interest has been renewed, and I prefer to read game books in print.

* Persepolis 2. My kids read the first volume in summer school this year, and one of them made a point of bringing the book home often enough for me to read it, too. They are very eager to read part 2 as well, now that I've finished it. (One of my co-workers is Iranian, from the same generation. She loved the book, and was pleased to hear that my kids and I had been introduced to it, too.)


Having read "Shadow of the Torturer", first part of "The Book of the New Sun" I realized just how little I remembered of the book. A couple of vague scenes but for the most part it was like reading a new book. I will get on to "Claw of the Conciliator" soon enough.

I also started van Vogt's "The World of Null-A", with a rather proud foreword by the author. Yet another story I remember basically nothing of. I could probably stop buying books altogether and just reread my hoard and lots of them will basically be new.
Yesterday I read "Dark Knight of Karameikos" for a friend (who needed some information in it). Third time around for this one, and again I remembered very little of it. The final bit was not terribly good from a setting-accurate standpoint, but I probably liked it the first time I read it.

I also got hold of "Hellblazer: Rise and Fall", a standalone alt.u. Hellblazer story. At least, it's not part of the original Hellblazer universe, with the Devil definitely not Lucifer or the First of the Fallen from Vertigo, and John's dad being alive. Other than that, it's a good story. Some of the dialogue and scenes were a bit more corny than most Hellblazer, but the horror, smarts and charm are there.


I have really been enjoying the The Stork Tower series. It is a near future cyberpunkish / VRMMO RPG series.


'Three Books of Occult Philosophy' by Cornelius Agrippa. Very unlikely to give you Mystic Powers Beyond Mortal Ken, but an interesting look into how people thought back then, as well as good game inspiration. Not recommended for animal lovers, though.


I've started on The Claw of the Conciliator by Gene Wolfe. I remember as much about this one as I did Shadow of the Torturer.
Also reading Bruce Cordell's Edge of the Sun a splatbook for Numenera. Good stuff, as is usual for him.


Back in the 1990s, I read Roger Zelazny's first Amber series (the first five books) 3 times and the second Amber series (books 6 through 10) twice.

(I won't bother describing the series now. I already wrote an explanation and sales pitch for it on this thread, seven years ago. Here's a link to that.)

Sometime in the early 2000s, I started the first series a fourth time but gave up when I wasn't even halfway through book 2.

This year, I picked it up from where I left off. I've recently started book 5, The Courts of Chaos.

I'm just writing to say that it's a shame I didn't take note of the date when I started that fourth reading. I would guesstimate it was about 18 years ago. I say "it's a shame" because this would be my personal record for the longest time it took me to read one novel series.


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I have begun reading Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin. It's the story of the discovery of Tiktaalik, an excellent example of the predictive power of the theory of evolution by natural selection.

Dark Archive

Aaron Bitman wrote:
Back in the 1990s, I read Roger Zelazny's first Amber series (the first five books) 3 times and the second Amber series (books 6 through 10) twice.

I've read those, like, once, and didn't really care for them, but he's my favorite author from that generation, and I've probably read Lord of Light seven times over the decades. Creatures of Light & Darkness, Isle of the Dead, Dilvish the Damned/the Changing Lands, he's got so many I love.

Walter Jon Williams, a more contemporary writer, sometimes writes so much like him it's indistinguishable (I think he's a fan).


'The Man Who Was Thursday' by G.K. Chesterton. Not a man who I have a great deal of sympathy for, but I really enjoyed it. Weird and paranoid and vaguely surreal, with some interesting takes, nonetheless.


My FLGS finally got hold of Piranesi by Susannah Clarke, which makes me happy.

Halfway through and I'm enjoying it. It is a lot shorter than Johnathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, and quite a different type of story, but Clarke shows us that though she works slow the story is worth the wait. I'm not finished so I suppose there is a chance of an unsatisfactory resolution, but I suspect it will be good.

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