November 2010 Reads

[mashiara]

New month, new thread. You know the drill, post here about what you've read recently and how you felt about it, what you're reading now and what you are planning on reading next.

I'm about a third into Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel and I'm loving it! For some reason I was reluctant to pick it up but I'm really fascinated by it now.

I finished On Beauty by Zadie Smith a couple of days ago and I liked it. It turned out to be a lot more complex and interesting than the first few chapters led me to believe.

I'm really looking forward to Towers of Midnight but I'll have to wait at least a week before I can get my hands on it. :/

[Peadar]

I enjoyed Factotum by D. M. Cornish. On now swiftly to a collection of short fiction by Poul Anderson...

[TheEvilKing]

Finished Wizard & Glass last night. Good stuff but perhaps a bit too long. I felt at least a hundred pages could have been shaved off the whole backstory.

Started Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon. Also reading Women by Charles Bukowski.

[Guinevere Seaworth]

I'm 150 pages into The Gathering Storm by Kate Elliott. I'll be finishing off the Crown of Stars series this month along with Duchess of Aquitaine by Margaret Ball. Ever since reading Sharon Kay Penman, I want to know more about Eleanor of Aquitaine.

[beniowa]

Technically, I finished it in October, but I read Corvus, the second Macht book by Paul Kearney. Corvus didn't have the novelty or the world building of The Ten Thousand, but stylistically it's the better written book. Another excellent novel from one of my favorite authors.

It's a little late for Halloween, but I picked up Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury from the library.

[nickg]

Heh I just took Something Wicked This Way Comes back to the library and picked up Dragonfly Fallin by Adrian Tchaikovsky. The only complaint so far ( about 150 pages in ) is the prose. Not unreadable, and it doesn't keep me from enjoying the story, but it gets feels awkward at times

[RedEyedGhost]

I've had pink eye the last week and a half, and my eyes were freaking killing me so I haven't been able to that much. But now I'm feeling better and am absolutely loving Felix Gilman's The Half-Made World. Very well written and wonderfully imagined. The pace is also deceptively fast. Great stuff so far, and I'm really looking forward to finishing it.

Heh I just took Something Wicked This Way Comes back to the library and picked up Dragonfly Fallin by Adrian Tchaikovsky. The only complaint so far ( about 150 pages in ) is the prose. Not unreadable, and it doesn't keep me from enjoying the story, but it gets feels awkward at times

That's too bad, for me the prose just elevated images off the page.

[The Evil Hat]

I'm reading Surface Detail very slowly, but that's not from lack of enjoyment. So far it's absolutely excellent, and I'm loving every chapter, but in between starting National Novel Writing Month, working on blog posts, working on school work, etc, it's been good to have something that I know is great to just fall back on and let me relax before I go to sleep and in those spare moments that I have.

Beyond that, I'm planning for:

Brandon Sanderson/Robert Jordan - Towers of Midnight (up next as soon as it comes)

Murakami - Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

K.J. Parker - Evil for Evil

Steph Swainston - No Present Like Time

Thomas Ligotti - Noctuary

Cormac McCarthy - All the Pretty Horses

Probably have a few more random books in the month and miss out on half of those, but I'd like to hit at least most of them.

[nickg]

I agree with you for the most part. It really is only a small complaint. Every once in a while a sentence or two would feel clumsy ( I tried to skim and fond an example but don't have the patience ). I also picked up House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds. The last sci fi I read was The Dragon Never Sleeps and that was last year. In the mood for some SF.

[delete this account pls]

I'm about a third into Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel and I'm loving it! For some reason I was reluctant to pick it up but I'm really fascinated by it now.

I loved Wolf Hall. If it wasn't for Matterhorn, which was simple genius, it would have been my best read of the year easily.

[BookWyrm]

Brandon Sanderson/Robert Jordan - Towers of Midnight (up next as soon as it comes)

Murakami - Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

K.J. Parker - Evil for Evil

Steph Swainston - No Present Like Time

Thomas Ligotti - Noctuary

Cormac McCarthy - All the Pretty Horses

You've got some wins there. Murakami is awesome and so is McCarthy. I haven't read Ligotti yet but I've heard good things. Have you read him before?

[The Evil Hat]

You've got some wins there. Murakami is awesome and so is McCarthy. I haven't read Ligotti yet but I've heard good things. Have you read him before?

Yeah, I read Songs of a Dead Dreamer in august, and it's probably my favorite book that I've read this year. Absolutely incredible atmospheric, philosophical horror fiction. His books (except the two latest) are expensive, but well worth it, at least so far.

[kcf]

I finished up Towers of Midnight by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson a while ago, but I just posted my review (12:00 AM EDT). I really liked it as I expect most fans will. Though I anticipate a few complaints. It's not as good in my opinion as The Gathering Storm which was much more thematically coherent, but it's still quite good. Sanderson is doing a great job with the series.

I'm still finishing up the Swords and Dark Magic anthology edited by Lou Anders and Jonathan Strahan. It's good, but most stories are only good with not very many that excel.

[siemprepe]

Reading Thief takers apprentice by Stephen Daes at work (Already halfway through).

And reading Insurrection by Robyn Young at home.

[Isis]

I've had pink eye the last week and a half, and my eyes were freaking killing me so I haven't been able to that much. But now I'm feeling better and am absolutely loving Felix Gilman's The Half-Made World. Very well written and wonderfully imagined. The pace is also deceptively fast. Great stuff so far, and I'm really looking forward to finishing it.

How do you compare this with the previous book?

[Lordwalker]

Started A Shadow in Summer also Stripped by Brian Freeman. Listening to Brimstone by Robert Parker.

[The Evil Hat]

How do you compare this with the previous book?

The Halfmade World's the first in a new world, but, comparing it with anything else Gilman wrote is like comparing night and day. And I really liked Thunderer.

[Thrashalla]

Finished "One" by Conrad Williams. It wasn't bad, but I have no clue how it managed to win Best Novel at the 2010 Britsh Fantasy Awards. I'm all for post-apocalyptic depressinternalmonalemothons, but there was nothing that stood out as particularly original in this one.

On to one that I've been saving for a while - a nice piece (800 page...) piece of candy that I KNOW will not let me down: 'Blade of Tyshalle' by Matthew Stover

[BookWyrm]

Recently I've been doing tons of reading for a novella class I'm taking. I read Octavia Butler's Bloodchild, which freaked me out more than a little. There's a relationship between a human and a giant alien bug that blurrs the lines between motherhood/sisterhood/lover. Definitely disturbing. Also male pregnancy certainly DOESN'T make the world a better place.

I also read Sarah Manguso's memoir, Two Kinds of Decay which took place the same time I was being hospitalized in Mass, in possibly the same hospital so that was pretty cool. If anyone's interested in a rather more bleak interpretation of the "girl gets sick, girl fights disease heroically, girl gets better, everyone cries" story.

Peter Kuper translated Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis into a wonderful little graphic novel. I read it last week and, though not the same as actually reading Kafka, it was interesting to see how he illustrated scenes. Sometimes words crawl along the page sideways when Gregor creeps up a wall - that kind of thing.

Lastly I'm now reading Kelly Link's collection, Magic For Beginners. Excellent so far.

Yeah, I read Songs of a Dead Dreamer in august, and it's probably my favorite book that I've read this year. Absolutely incredible atmospheric, philosophical horror fiction. His books (except the two latest) are expensive, but well worth it, at least so far.

That's good to hear. Maybe I should have read him last week for Halloween spirit. Oh well. I've got a paperback of his sitting back home on a shelf. Teatro Grottesco is the book, it's gotten tons of favorable reviews. Apparently he even did a freaky take on Plato's Cave. :read:

[RobMRobM]

Just finished Sanderson's Way of Kings, which I liked but has some Volume One-itis issues with length and info dumping. Still, solid enjoyable work. Will definitely read Vol. 2 when it comes out someday (probably in late 2012 or 2013 once Memory of Light is finished).

Just starting Sanderson/Jordan Towers of Midnight. Enjoyable so far (through page 110). Of course, I'm a fan so I've been waiting for this for quite some time.

Will start Bujold's Cryoburn afterwards - also looking forward to this for years (last full Vorkosigan book came out in 2002).

Re others discussed above, Gentlemen of the Road by Chabon is lots of fun.