mashiara Posted September 1, 2015 Share Posted September 1, 2015 No, I'm not excited to be going back to work. Teachers do love their summer vacations, that much is true. :) I finished The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley. A good read with a remarkable young protagonist, I would like to read the rest of the series at some point. I'm now back into the Masters of Rome universe. I started Caesar's Women by Colleen McCullough. I'm sure it's going to take me some time to finish that one. also planning on reading the anthology The End has Come (The Apocalypse Triptych 3) edited by John Joseph Adams while waiting for various buses on my way to work. What are you guys reading this month? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Knight of Ashes Posted September 1, 2015 Share Posted September 1, 2015 Just started The Magician King by Lev Grossman. More intrigued by new addition Julia than the old gang whom I have some dislike for. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xray the Enforcer Posted September 1, 2015 Share Posted September 1, 2015 Reading NK Jemisin's Fifth Season, the first book in her new trilogy. There are some narrative choices I'm not fond of, but overall this book is very good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A wilding Posted September 1, 2015 Share Posted September 1, 2015 Just read The Rhesus Chart by Charles Stross. His Laundry books are a little hit and miss for me, but this one was definitely a hit. Basically the usual downbeat background of a PTSD couple trying to hold their marriage together while working for a bureaucratic secret government organisation that is struggling to prevent a Lovecraftian armageddon, but in this one we have the Laundry universe's version of vampires. We get a lot of fun with an Investment Bank research team accidentally turning themselves into vampires and immediately planning ways they can maximise their new skill set to make even bigger bonuses, without realising how horribly out of their depth they are. Also Bob's unreliable narration is getting quite interesting, he is now in serious denial. Which makes this one being the first of a planned trilogy, with other narrators coming up, intriguing, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SkynJay Posted September 1, 2015 Share Posted September 1, 2015 I finished up House of Shattered Wings right before the months end. I didn't really enjoy it but objectively I think it was a solid urban fantasy that just didn't appeal to my taste. Reading The Serpent of Venice by Christopher Moore. The author is always good for a laugh, though rarely for a coherent ending. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HexMachina Posted September 1, 2015 Share Posted September 1, 2015 Working my way through The Longest Journey by E.M Foster. Not enjoying it as much as Howards End but still has the beautiful prose that I loved so much in Howards End. Looking forward to reading more of his work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sologdin Posted September 1, 2015 Share Posted September 1, 2015 following up trainspotting from last month with requiem for a dream now. anyone recommend further novels regarding lumpenized antisocial nihilists who also suffer from heroin addiction? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maia Posted September 1, 2015 Share Posted September 1, 2015 Well, I am cheating because I actually read this stuff in August, but was too lazy to post ;). Finished Tuf Voyaging by our very own GRRM. Was definitely a disappointment for me, I think that I liked most of his non-ASOIAF stuff better than this. There are glimpses of greatness here and there, but the protagonist being such a cipher didn't help - in the last couple of novellas we are clearly supposed to see how the power has changed him, but IMHO he was deeply unsettling and creepy from the begining, and his benevolent rhetoric just that. Oh, and an implausible, jarring nails-on chalkboard straw antagonist character spoiled the first novella - "The Plague Star" for me, while the equally unbelievable S'uthlamese did for most of the rest, despite my liking of Tolly Mune. I liked "Call him Moses" best, I guess, as we got a pretty chilling view/insight of Tuf. Read the Jenny Casey trilogy by Elizabeth Bear - Hammered, Scardown and Wetwired. It starts as a refreshingly different "end-of-the world" story, where Canada managed to mutate into a world power and various groups of people are desperately scrabbling in trying to ensure some kind of future for their countries/humanity. It features some nicely ambigious characters, hard choices, etc. Unfortunately, while promising, it doesn't stick the ending, IMHO. In the end, a fun romp, but could have been much more. Annihilation Score by Charles Stross. I was really looking forward to it, but... I just don't think that he managed to achieve what he is trying to achieve with it. Some things that I agree with were implemented too anviliciously, IMHO, while others seemed to me to illustrate the very tropes that he was pushing against, as I only found out when visiting his blog. So, a mixture of too obvious and too subtle, never a good combination. Don't take me wrong, it was still an entertaining read and I am certainly very curious about the ultimate direction of the series. Also, seeing Bob from the outside was very interesting, to say the least. It is just, he did no favors to Mo by introducing her as a PoV at the very nadir of psychological health and consequently at her most unsympathetic. Half a War by Joe Abercrombie - liked it a lot, but didn't love it. Don't know why, but so far the Shattered Sea books aren't quite on the same level for me as the rest of his works. Too simplistic? Too optimistic? Dunno. Anyway, I am on to Half a World, so the ending of the trilogy may yet wow me. Certainly, Yarvi evolved into one scary plotter, I'll give him that, heh. Neat to see him from the outside as this formidable figure. Also started The James Tiptree Award Anthology vol 1. Not sure about the stories yet, but the essays are great and beautifully written. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zorral Posted September 1, 2015 Share Posted September 1, 2015 Secessia by Kent Watson, a "literary" historical novel, located mostly in the time frame of Union occupied New Orleans of 1862. General Benjamin Beast" Butler is a primary figure, he who worked around the so-called property rights in the escaped African Americans who ran to the Union army along the South Carolina - Georgia coast, by classifying them as contrabands, and thus no liable to be returned to the owner due to such "property" would by aiding and assisting the enemy. Cuba is among the locations of this novel as well as New Orleans. So it's got all my stuff in it, so to speak. :thumbsup: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedEyedGhost Posted September 1, 2015 Share Posted September 1, 2015 REG: Hmm, that's an interesting question about Gregory's October appeal. He is definitely interested in some stuff that shows up most often in horror -- Lovecraftian themes [Harrison Squared, We Are All Completely Fine, a little bit in Pandemonium], zombies [Raising Stony Mayhall], involuntary and unknowable changes to the human body [The Devil's Alphabet] -- but, certain scenes excepted, he doesn't always approach them in a particularly chilly way. It's been a while since I've read either of these, but if I was going to suggest potentially October-appropriate Gregory I might lean toward The Devil's Alphabet, which has the domesticity-mixed-with-unsettling-bodily-change element of some Halloween-ish stuff, or Raising Stony Mayhall, which has hints of the horror-tinged melancholy and unwinding of a time / way of doing things [and is, based on how I remember reacting to it, my favourite of his.] He's definitely not the first place I'd go for Octoberism, but there could be something there, for sure. I'm defining autumnal in this way: When I think autumnal / October appropriate I think about a bit of sinister bite mixed with kind of a waning, a winding down -- warm window light shining out against darkening nights, leaves skittering along the sidewalk, cold winds from behind, so on. Thanks! I own Pandemonium and We are All Completely Fine already, but if they're not very autumnal/Octobery I might hold off on them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sologdin Posted September 1, 2015 Share Posted September 1, 2015 So it's got all my stuff in it, so to speak. you are a new orleanian? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Astromech Posted September 1, 2015 Share Posted September 1, 2015 following up trainspotting from last month with requiem for a dream now. anyone recommend further novels regarding lumpenized antisocial nihilists who also suffer from heroin addiction? William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch or Jean Cocteau's, Opium: The Diary of His Cure? Not too sure about the LAS, but they should, sate your heroin fix :) My friends really seemed to like Diary of a Dope Fiend and Other Stories by Richard West Anderson. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guinevere Seaworth Posted September 1, 2015 Share Posted September 1, 2015 I'm just about done The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons. It is not as good as the first book, and the jumping around of the POV's is a bit confusing at times. However, the plot is very good as it keeps me guessing and I still don't know how it is going to end despite only having four chapters left. Up next is the next book in the Hyperion Cantos series, Endymion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guinevere Seaworth Posted September 1, 2015 Share Posted September 1, 2015 Double post! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iskaral Pust Posted September 1, 2015 Share Posted September 1, 2015 following up trainspotting from last month with requiem for a dream now. anyone recommend further novels regarding lumpenized antisocial nihilists who also suffer from heroin addiction? Skagboys is a prequel to Trainspotting and was a very good read. But pretty much anything by Irvine Welsh covers your request. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beniowa Posted September 1, 2015 Share Posted September 1, 2015 I'm about two-thirds of the way through Cixin Liu's The Dark Forest. Like Three-Body, it started slow and took me a little while to get into it, but now I'm rocking along. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Garett Hornwood Posted September 1, 2015 Share Posted September 1, 2015 I'm continuing with Soul Music as part of my read-through of Discworld to start the month. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard Writhen Posted September 1, 2015 Share Posted September 1, 2015 Since I just got The Subtle Knife and Outlander, I'll prolly try to read them simultaneously. No, but seriously, concurrently lawl.. That would be impossible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
williamjm Posted September 1, 2015 Share Posted September 1, 2015 Ian Esslemont's [i]Assail[/i]. It's readable and reasonably fast-moving and so far there hasn't been too much inexplicable Malazan weirdness but so far I wouldn't say the plot is really all that compelling or memorable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Richard II Posted September 2, 2015 Share Posted September 2, 2015 Since I just got The Subtle Knife and Outlander, I'll prolly try to read them simultaneously. No, but seriously, concurrently lawl.. That would be impossible. Wow, were they having a Books DRII hates the most sale? :/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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