What are you reading?

[JLSigman]

20 hours ago, Liam said:

Currently reading 'The Fifth Season' at the moment, which has started off interestingly at least.

That series will fuck you up. It's so, so good.

[Liam]

 

[Contentious C]

I started re-reading the Dresden Files series.  I don't know why I do this to myself, except that, last time, it did a fair job of kicking me in the ass enough to work on my own books.  And it beats throwing away hundreds of hours playing some dumb fucking video game.  Or maybe it doesn't.  I don't know.  I hate my life.

[supremebve]

30 minutes ago, Contentious C said:

I started re-reading the Dresden Files series.  I don't know why I do this to myself, except that, last time, it did a fair job of kicking me in the ass enough to work on my own books.  And it beats throwing away hundreds of hours playing some dumb fucking video game.  Or maybe it doesn't.  I don't know.  I hate my life.

I'm 3 books in, and I'm really enjoying the series.  I enjoy epic fantasy as much anyone, but there's something about urban fantasy that really grabs me.  Dresden is likable enough, but I think the side characters are where this series is starting to shine.  I really like Murphy, and how her and Dresden's relationship is starting to evolve.  I'm really looking forward to see how it goes when he finally stops trying to baby her and starts to trust her.  Thomas seems to be fun too, but I've just been introduced to him.  My favorite so far is Susan Rodriguez, I'd be down to read an entire book series about Susan Rodriguez...she's fucking dope.

[Contentious C]

Well...you're in for a lot of loops thrown your way and a whole heaping helping of disappointment.

But, a lot of interesting stuff, too.  Luckily, Grave Peril is where the series stops sounding like a bad copy of Raymond Chandler with groan-worthy one-liners to close every chapter (I just started re-reading it this morning).  And yeah, the side characters are almost always the winners.  I'm not too fond of Thomas, but I generally don't care for hardly any of the vampire storylines.  My favorites were Death Masks and Small Favor - big surprise, same villain in both.

My ex was the one who got me to read it - when you lay in bed next to someone and see the books on their shelf for a few years straight, it's difficult not to just pick one up and go eventually - but her interpretations of the characters were all wrong.  She talked about Harry like he was a True Neutral, and he's definitely not that.  Neutral Good or even Chaotic Good, sometimes, but his stick-in-the-mud, Old-Fashioned Guy stuff comes through a lot in the early books.  Which really makes me think what a series would look like if the central character *were* a True Neutral, and how all those decisions reverberate, and then my head starts in with the useless radio chatter of, "Hey, why don't you just write something like that, then?" and then I'm back to hating myself.

[Mike Campbell]

I'm attempting to read "Shantaram" by Gregory David Roberts. I say "attempting to" because, it's so long-winded, that reading it feels like a challenge. I can usually knock out a 400-500 page novel in a few days. But, after forty five minutes last night, I couldn't beleive I'd only read ten pages. 

[Liam]

Just finished 'The Fifth Season'. Amazing.

My project centers around reading 75 authors I've owned but never read anything of - however, I do really want to read the next one.

As the project works alongside a 'not buying any books this year' resolution, might have to get it out of the library and read it alongside the other ones I'm looking at.

[Curt McGirt]

A buddy of mine is visiting his folks here for Zombie Jesus Day and is dropping off a box of books for me. This will hopefully put a hot pepper up my ass to read some of them, namely the requested City of Quartz. Until then I'm just skimming through Seven Inches of Death, which is more a coffee table picture book than anything about early death metal 45s. Oh, and I finally finished Hagakure - The Book of the Samurai. I really didn't think there was much wisdom it imparted, being stuck in its particular caste ghetto. What I did learn was that samurai were some violent motherfuckers, and there's a lot of gore in the book.

[JLSigman]

20 hours ago, Liam said:

Just finished 'The Fifth Season'. Amazing.

My project centers around reading 75 authors I've owned but never read anything of - however, I do really want to read the next one.

As the project works alongside a 'not buying any books this year' resolution, might have to get it out of the library and read it alongside the other ones I'm looking at.

The whole trilogy is amazing. The final book is an amazing series of "OH FUCK" moments that tie everything together. NK Jemisin is an incredible writer and I will gush about her books for hours.

[supremebve]

1 hour ago, JLSigman said:

The whole trilogy is amazing. The final book is an amazing series of "OH FUCK" moments that tie everything together. NK Jemisin is an incredible writer and I will gush about her books for hours.

OK, I'm going to have to give "The Obelisk Gate" another shot, I loved "The Fifth Season," but the first third of the second book hasn't grabbed me at all.  

[Curt McGirt]

I'm gonna have to take it back about Seven Inches of Death being a "picture book". There are stories from every band about every record, they just seem to be samey and kind of boring -- "we were young, the producer had no idea what was happening, we got drunk, Seraphic Decay ripped us off". But then you get stories from guys like Stevo from Impetigo going in depth into all the crazy details they put into such a small release, or Oscar from Cenotaph describing how it was as a Mexican death metal band to come in to a studio that recorded salsa and cumbia and scare the shit out of the superstitious producer with their music, and you realize this has a whole lot more depth to it. And the art is 100% worth it, with backgrounds in the classic zine cut 'n paste style with horror poster clippings and such... so cool. 

[Liam]

 

[Liam]

I've not written it up yet, but I've also read 'One Hundred Years of Solitude'....I hated it. I wanted so much to like it, only for it to just feel like a slog.

[Contentious C]

Since I find the Bosch TV show to be fairly enjoyable, I decided I should give Michael Connolly's books a spin, beginning at the beginning like a sensible human, rather than a goddamned barbarian.

Woof.

Granted, I'm only on the first chapter, but I've already found myself closing the book and picking up with wherever I am in the Dresden Files series instead on a couple of occasions, because it doesn't quite hold my interest.  Connolly already seems to vacillate between Cornwell/Hemingway levels of terseness and the sort of big-city hyperbole you'd expect from a Rorschach monologue.  Maybe the other books get better?  Maybe I'll just stick to the TV show.

Edited April 22, 2019 by Contentious C

[Liam]

I've never read one, but I always just assumed Connolly's books are standard cop thriller fare.

[Contentious C]

Probably, which is bound to be what I'm grinding against. Another fan of the show who's read more says they get better, but I'd wager it's a low ceiling.  I imagine I'll be chalking it up as, "Crap my mom would read" in a couple of weeks.

Edited April 23, 2019 by Contentious C

[username]

Quick book reading question: with the recent passing of Gene Wolfe I've seen a lot of people pushing for others to read The Book of the New Sun but I've been a bit more curious about Peace due to the bits I've heard about it (plus I read TBOTNS a couple years back). I'm curious if anyone here has read it and if so if they'd consider it a worthwhile read or if it was just an earlier "lesser" work. I know very little of the genre and you folks seem to generally know what's up.

[OSJ]

36 minutes ago, username said:

Quick book reading question: with the recent passing of Gene Wolfe I've seen a lot of people pushing for others to read The Book of the New Sun but I've been a bit more curious about Peace due to the bits I've heard about it (plus I read TBOTNS a couple years back). I'm curious if anyone here has read it and if so if they'd consider it a worthwhile read or if it was just an earlier "lesser" work. I know very little of the genre and you folks seem to generally know what's up.

There is no such thing as a Gene Wolfe book that is not worth reading. That doesn't mean that everything he wrote worked perfectly 100% of the time, when you're that damn good you're going to experiment a bit and not every experiment works. That said, even his failures are so well-written that even as failures, they're magnificent.

I'm still in awe that he invited himself in to one of my anthologies. Not five minutes after Vince Harper of Shadowlands Press signed me up to do a Clark Ashton Smith tribute antho (all stories set in his dying earth world of Zothique), Vince was telling Gene about the book (we were all milling about the dealers' room at World Fantasy Con. I heard this thunderous voice behind me and turned to find Gene Wolfe pointing his cane at me "Young man! You're not planning on doing a Smith tribute anthology without me are you?" ME (trying to act far more nonchalant than I felt): "Oh, no of course not!" So yeah, without even writing up a prospectus or discussing payment I had Gene Fucking Wolfe in my book! The whole project was made so much easier by his presence, (we writers are actually a timid lot, it bolsters our confidence when someone we like and respect is already in a project that we're considering, when the person is a living legend like Gene Wolfe, you pretty much have to chase people away with a stick.) In the moments after, I hit on the concept that would make the book a bit different, 50% of the stories would come from folks like me who are students of the game and have read their Weird Tales. The other 50% would come from folks that I knew to be fine writers who had never read Clark Ashton Smith and would thus be approaching the subject matter as an adult with full writerly credentials. (Me, I had read Smith when I was 13/14 when his work was published in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series and his last two Arkham House books were still in-print. 

[JLSigman]

On 3/30/2019 at 8:52 AM, JLSigman said:

Now back to Tad Williams. I re-read The Dragonbone Chair a year or two ago, right before The Witchwood Crown came out. Now that Empire of Grass has a release date of this summer, I should probably finish up the original trilogy before getting the new book on reserve. 

Takes a while to get through almost 2000 pages of insanely good writing. I am a Tad Williams mark, I admit it.

Decided to grab my mother's large print version of Watership Down. I know I've read it once or twice before, but it's been probably 15 years. 

[Liam]

 

[JLSigman]

On 4/26/2019 at 9:14 AM, JLSigman said:

Decided to grab my mother's large print version of Watership Down. I know I've read it once or twice before, but it's been probably 15 years. 

Finished yesterday while waiting for my Mom at the dentist. While it's not as good as I remember, it's still very good. 

Not sure what's next. I've got a few things downloaded to my Kindle, a couple books on the computer, and of course the backlog to be read pile o' shame. 

[Mike Campbell]

After 36 years. I'm reading my first ever Star Wars book. I don't know if it's because it's Star Wars Day or just some coincidence, but BN recommended that I read "Shadows of the Empire" when I was getting a couple of titles for my Nook yesterday. I grabbed it, mostly because I enjoyed playing the N64 game when I was fifteen. I had to admit, I am enjoying it so far. The Villain, Prince Xizor, reminds me of a James Bond Villain, which is just about the last thing I expected.

[Brian Fowler]

That's not a bad one. But, after all these years, I'd still recommend Timothy Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy. Two completely different and spectacular lead villains, a plot that's just complex enough to keep you engaged while still being simple enough to feel like a sequel to The Holy Trilogy.

I happen to think the EU went violently off the rails later, but this was such a rock solid foundation. I still dream of Disney doing an animated adaptation, current continuity be damned.

---------

I read the original trilogy years ago, but I've decided to re-read/read The Millennium Series (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo/Men Who Hurt Women and it's sequels) I'd forgotten how compellingly slow the story builds in the first book, and, surprisingly, most of the details. Although I guess it has been a long time.

[Liam]

Been shit at keeping up with my reviews, but:

The Third Policeman - wasn't sold until the ending, so ok I guess?

Red Rising - really good

The Sisters Brothers - really really good

Will write a proper review at some point.

[OSJ]

On 5/4/2019 at 7:39 PM, Brian Fowler said:

That's not a bad one. But, after all these years, I'd still recommend Timothy Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy. Two completely different and spectacular lead villains, a plot that's just complex enough to keep you engaged while still being simple enough to feel like a sequel to The Holy Trilogy.

Not bad at all, Steve Perry is a fine writer. For a real treat try anything where he's collaborating with Michael Reaves. 

I generally have little use for licensed properties or work-for-hire stuff, but it's interesting how much good material is tucked away in the Star Wars universe. The aforementioned Timothy Zahn, Brian Daley, Steve Perry, and Alan Dean Foster all hit high points in the series. I'm not going to say that we're talking Hugo/Nebula Award level SF, but for a licensed property we're definitely looking at material that's far better than one would expect.