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Darkwalker on Moonshae by Douglas Niles, the first of the Moonshae trilogy.
Or at least that was what I had intended to start on the bus today but found out I had forgotten it at home, so it will have to wait until tomorrow. I found this one (and only this one of the series) at a flea market a couple weeks ago.
If you’re having trouble finding the other books, maybe try Abe Books. It’s a website that specializes in rare or used books. I’ve found plenty of stuff there.
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I’m not usually one for Conan stories REH didn’t write, but decided to pick up The Siege of the Black Citadel, a new book by Chuck Dixon. I’ve enjoyed a lot of Chuck’s past work, so I look forward to reading this.
I really enjoyed Chuck Dixon's Batman and related titles, but his Homophobic rants have chilled me on him. Now I enjoy watching his Robin be Bisexual, his Green Arrow be Asexual, and as many other characters til he pops his cork!
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…..and alternatives to Amazon are generally good things). As it was I was commenting on how, IME at least, one rarely finds complete series at used book stores/garage sales/flea markets.
About that…..sorry, Abe Books is actually a subsidiary of Amazon. I think they started out as independent, then got bought up years later. Still, I’ve gotten some books for really great prices.
I also used to go to Half-Priced Books (there was one right next to my comic book store), until all the conveniently located ones closed down.
Bleh, Amazon really is a scourge. Let's see if I can remain principled enough to avoid buying from Abe Books in the future.
I bet you're still closer to a HPB than I am. I've gotten a lot of good stuff there but having to cross the pond makes it an option that rarely presents itself.
Try World Of Books, or Ebay. I've occasionally come up trumps there.
Have you considered thriftbooks.com ? It's not a subsidiary of Amazon. 6 months ago, I ordered enough from ThriftBooks to qualify for free shipping and I was happy with it.
I am about half way through Plague of Shadows by Howard Andrew Jones. It's pretty good so far. I think this is the fourth or fifth Pathfinder Tales book for me, and I have a bunch more sitting on my to-read shelf, which sits under my TV. They silently judge me when I watch a screen instead of read them. They are far from alone on this shelf of judgment.
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I just finished the second volume of Batman: White Knight, maybe the Greatest Batman story of all time. Really digs into who profits and what makes Batman better than a vigilante. I can't recommend it enough without spoiling it. The first volume came out in 2017, but it has situations that echo the 2020 protests. Both volumes have a satisfying mystery that Batman cannot simply punch his way out of. The only criticism I have is that switching the order of Todd and Grayson feels unnecessarily complicated, but perhaps the next volume will give me a reason for that.
Rereading Joseph Carriker's queer superhero novel Sacred Bond. I wanted something good that I'd read before for the ride to and from Origins, and for occasional downtime when I was too wiped to game or socialize.
It seems weird, but I chose the book I'm reading now because of numbers.
It's been decades since my first two readings of the Dragonlance Chronicles and Dragonlance Legends trilogies. I loved them so much that I went on to read dozens more Dragonlance novels (plus lots of related gaming material) even though those other books were decidedly inferior. Well, I guess some of those other Dragonlance novels, such as Weasel's Luck, Flint, the King, The Kinslayer Wars, and The Soulforge were good enough to make me read them a second time; I could call those "second-tier Dragonlance books".
But the Chronicles and Legends trilogies were special. In 2006, when I finished my third reading of the first volume, Dragons of Autumn Twilight, my timing happened to be perfect - coincidentally, Dragons of the Dwarven Depths arrived at the public libraries right about then, so I could read it at just the right point of continuity, between Dragons of Autumn Twilight and Dragons of Winter Night. And Dwarven Depths was a rare gem, actually worthy of the original six novels! So when I read Chronicles and Legends for the fourth and fifth (!) times, I inserted Dwarven Depths in that right place.
And that's where the numbers started coming into play. By the time I started that fifth reading, I had come up with criteria for consolidating the list of my 10 favorite novel series' of all time. One criterion was: the more times I voluntarily read a series, the higher on the list it should be. So when I finished my 5th reading, that put the series at #2 on my list!
Or did it? If Dwarven Depths counts as part of the series then you could say I had read it only 3 times, which would drop Dragonlance down to #6 or thereabouts. So when I had a craving to read a good Dragonlance novel again, I read Dwarven Depths for a fourth time, thus indisputably giving Dragonlance the #2 spot.
But.. it's weird. This month, I had a craving to read that Dragonlance material again. (And the second- and third-rate books didn't cut it for me when I tried them. And the new one, Dragons of Deceit, doesn't sound too promising.) Maybe I should have started again with Autumn Twilight since it's been about 5 years since last I read it... but that would be my SIXTH reading. I don't know if I could take it that many times. So a few days ago, just because of the numbers, I started my fifth reading of Dwarven Depths, even though it's been only a few months since my fourth.
I recently finished 'Hadon of Ancient Opar', by Philip José Farmer, and 'The Magic and Science of Jewels and Stones', by Isidore Kozminsky, and have moved onto volume one of 'The Natural History of Pliny the Elder', and 'Nifft the Lean', by Michael Shea.
I just started The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin. It won the Hugo Award in 2015 and there is an upcoming Netflix series based on it, so it should be good.
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Last month, on this thread, Bjørn Røyrvik, Aberzombie, Limeylongears, and I discussed alternatives to Amazon for finding used books. For instance, Aberzombie mentioned Abe Books. (Hey, I just noticed that there's an "Abe" in "Aberzombie"!) That discussion made me consider Abe Books. So I ordered something from it and got my book 5 days later. Now I'm 80 or 90 percent through it.
But what with the title of this thread, maybe I should talk about the book from Abe Books I'm currently reading. It's Invasion of the Body Snatchers by Jack Finney.
I expect anyone reading this has heard of at least one of the movie adaptations (and probably more than one). There were 4, altogether. I remember when I was young someone described the 1978 movie (the second version) to me, particularly its famous ending. Over a decade later, I saw the 1956 movie (the first one) and the ending shocked me; it was nothing like the 1978 movie ending! I never would have guessed the movie would end that way! About 2 decades after THAT, I watched the 1993 version (the third one). As I did so, I felt real suspense. Would it end like the first movie, or like the second? Well, the answer was... neither! Again, I never guessed the movie might end that way, despite the hints. And I read a synopsis of the 2007 version, which had yet ANOTHER ending! Not only that, but I heard that the 1956 movie's original script had yet ANOTHER ending! Finally, I read a brief description of the original novel and learned that it had yet ANOTHER ending! That makes SIX different endings!
Well, I heard that the 1978 movie was the best version. I hope to see it someday. (I also heard that the 2007 version was bad. I have no plans to see that one.) But in the meantime, I decided to read the book.
I got a surprise just from looking at the copyright page of that book. It seems that when the 1978 movie came out, Dell Publishing put out a revised and updated edition. The very first page mentions that it takes place in 1976. Some of the references in the book, such as one to President Carter, obviously must have been changes to the 1955 edition. I got the impression, though, that other than superficial changes like that, the book wasn't substantially revised. But I haven't a scrap of evidence to prove that belief.
Anyway, the first 30 or 40 pages of the book are VERY similar to the 1956 movie. Then a lot of details change. Sometimes the plot diverges from what I expect, based on that movie, but then gets back onto the same track as the movie... which I actually find disappointing. I guess I don't regard Invasion of the Body Snatchers as a sacred text. Getting surprise variations of the story is a major part of the fun of it.
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Last month, on this thread, Bjørn Røyrvik, Aberzombie, Limeylongears, and I discussed alternatives to Amazon for finding used books. For instance, Aberzombie mentioned Abe Books. (Hey, I just noticed that there's an "Abe" in "Aberzombie"!) That discussion made me consider Abe Books. So I ordered something from it and got my book 5 days later. Now I'm 80 or 90 percent through it.
You took advice…..FROM ME?!?
Are you ill? Do you perhaps have a fever?
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'Conquest: The English Kingdom of Northern France in the Hundred Years War', by Juliet Barker.
Hope you're enjoying Gormenghast - I love those books (there's a TV adaptation, too, but I've never watched it)
I found the opera to be very hard work, personally, though I'm not much of a fan of that genre overall, which probably didn't help.
A biography of Paracelsus, by Philip Ball, and 'The Reavers of Skaith', by Leigh Brackett.
I have just begun to read Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Dan Dennett. It's the first book of his that have read, and here's hoping it is good.
I have just begun to read Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Dan Dennett. It's the first book of his that have read, and here's hoping it is good.Thanks for mentioning this. It's a topic that interests me, so I'm eager to hear your opinion.
Will do. Fair warning I read much more slowly than I did in my youth, so it may be a few weeks before I finish the book.
I've restarted William King's Gotrek and Felix series - those are great - and am also reading Fighter's Factbook 2, ed. Loren Christensen. I feared it might be nothing but cheesy nonsense along the lines of 'And then your unstoppable SHADOW-BEAK PUNCH will make ALL HIS GLANDS EXPLODE AT ONCE', and while there is a tiny bit of that, the bulk of the advice is pretty useful and sensible.
'The Death God's Citadel', by Juanita Colson. Passable, but not dantastic.
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Just finished Michael A Stackpole's Secret Atlas / Cartomancy / The New World trilogy, and it was pretty great. He's always been a good writer, whom I first read in some Shadowrun novel, IIRC, and has only gotten better.
A base premise of his fantasy setting is that powerful magic tends to unleash all sorts of wonky permanent side-effects, so when magical folk duel, they draw a circle (or go to a circle of stones outside of towns) to duel, so that the magical weirdness doesn't spread and endanger others. Said magical circles often have weird effects, like plants won't grow there, or rain won't fall, or the temperature is cold like winter (even with snow on the ground!) in mid-summer, or vice-versa.
Actual sorcerers are practically non-existent (and feared and reviled as monsters), after a great war pretty much destroyed civilization and brought about an ice age-like cataclysm (and ended an empire) many hundreds of years ago, *but* anyone could theoretically attain a level of some skill that becomes magical. Very few actually do, but there are schools of swordsmen who seek to become such legendary folk (and they are the most common users of these dueling circles) and various other folk, even in one case, a legendary courtesan, who runs a pleasure house (and is centuries old, as once you reach that mythic level, you stop aging!), exist. Prominent characters include a trio of siblings, children of an incredibly influential mapmaker, speculate as children what being a legendary *cartographer* would be like. And so it begins.
Will do. Fair warning I read much more slowly than I did in my youth, so it may be a few weeks before I finish the book.I have just begun to read Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Dan Dennett. It's the first book of his that have read, and here's hoping it is good.Thanks for mentioning this. It's a topic that interests me, so I'm eager to hear your opinion.
I am about half way through and can offer some thoughts. Dennett, like many philosophers, takes a while to get to the point, using far more words than I think are necessary. He seems to be a fan of the idea that you should tell the audience what you're going to tell them, tell them what you want them to know, then tell them what you just told them. This can make for tedious reading for some folks, but I am not too bothered by it. The book does take a while to get going, with the first few chapters dragging a bit, but once it hits chapter four or so things really pick up and his main points are made. I'd recommend it for anyone interested, provided they are prepared for a very verbose style of writing. If things change by the time I get to the end (I don't plan on reading the appendices, which make up about a quarter of the page count) I will comment here again.
'Salammbo', by Gustave Flaubert. It was only missing the supernatural element to be rather grim sword and sorcery, and was very reminiscent of Clark Ashton Smith in places. I wouldn't be surprised if he was influenced by it.