May 2011 Reading Thread

[delete this account pls]

Haven't had much time for reading lately, but since I have the day off, I decided to start The Terror by Dan Simmons. Looks good so far.

[SkynJay]

I'm glad to see another fan of Feed. A very underrated book. I've had Deadline in my TBR pile for about a week and a half. Planning on doing a reread of Feed and then start Deadline.

I am another Feed fan, though I had no idea about Deadline. Gonna be a while before i get to it, but good to know.

Just finished The Long Price quartet; I think I may be the only person I know who thought they were nauseatingly boring. The world-building was fantastic but there was something utterly soulless about the whole series. I really, really wanted to like it, though.

I am flabbergasted. But to each their own preference i suppose. I will forgive you ONCE. :devil:

[Datepalm]

I finished Mary Robinette Kowal's Shades of Milk and Honey last week, which I didn't expect to enjoy as much as I did. (I've never read any Austen.) It s a very elegant, precise book, and my impression of it is growing for the better as time passes. Theres something interesting in the restraint of it - in scope, story, style, language, since for me at least, there was always the awareness that this is a modern book by a modern author, with presumably modern notions of storytelling, nevertheless steadfastly refusing to break the story out and make it bigger and bangier. This felt like a sort of underline of the mannered, fussy restraint of the characters and their various, quite unconcious, struggles against it.

Also just finished Jesse Bullington's Enterprise of Death, which is a rather sweet, optimistic, life affirming sort of book, probably not actually counterintuitive to its theme of sex with corpses.

Started Ken MacLeod's Learning the World, and I think Kate Eilliots Cold Magic might be next, per Koolkat's rec.

[Peadar]

I've finished Barbara Ehrenreich's Blood Rites, which is an attempt to explain the hysteria and the religious levels of ecstasy that overcome whole populations in times of war. It travels some very surprising paths. I loved it.

Up next, Mira Grant's Feed.

[beniowa]

Yup. I finished my reread of the first book a couple of days ago and it was as much fun as always. Maybe even more fun because I kept comparing it to the TV series and while some images in my head have been permanently replaced by the actors others remain unchanged because I prefer them the way I pictured them in the books. I think that was my fifth reread, maybe? First time was 10 years ago. Our poor copy is so tattered some of the pages are falling off.

I'm now 2/3 into A Clash of Kings.

My copies are getting a little battered too.

Just finished my re-read of A Clash with Kings. Probably my third favorite of the books, but still excellent.

Speaking of the poster above me, I'll be re-reading The Inferior before getting into The Deserter.

[Eponine]

Finished Embassytown with some degree of disappointment. It was thought provoking but not much fun to read, partly due to how annoying the narrator was.

[Seli]

And to finish the month, inspired by a thread here, I finished Rumo by Walter Moers. Nice, like his other books even if those might have been a bit better.

[williamjm]

^Heh, I used to work in an area (Intramuros) where parts of Cryptonomicon takes place. The book is pretty much spot-on about Manila.

I was wondering how accurate it was. It seemed authentic, but since I don't really know that much about the Philippines I couldn't really judge. It did remind me how little I know about WW2 in that part of the world compared to what happened here in Europe.