May 2016 reads

[The Marquis de Leech]

3 hours ago, Mandy said:

 I'm spending WAY too much money on books

Public libraries are your friend (seriously, there is no way in hell I could manage my reading quantity without it).

[SkynJay]

5 hours ago, Mandy said:

I'm on my 30th book this year. It's been very slow at work.  I'm spending WAY too much money on books and I've even come back to the board, all caffeinated to hell and jittery. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind essentially getting paid to read, but I end up sitting here, thinking about all the things I need to get done at home that I could be getting done.

Anyway, I've been reading urban fantasy, but I'm getting super tired of crappy genre books repeating the same old plotlines.  I'm sick of vampires, I'm sick of Alphaholes and I'm sick of Were-anythings. I need a new Expanse novel or something as good.

This was how I started blogging and continued it for three years.  I figured if i was reading all these books I ought to write my thoughts down.  I changed jobs and suddenly realized how much time my former employer paid me to read.  I will complete about a third of the amount of books as last year.

[Teng Ai Hui]

Recently, I completed The Bone Clocks, which I personally found to be a slog.  I enjoyed reading about Holly Sykes and her family and about Crispen Hershey.  The horology war and the post-apocalyptic section felt unnecessarily wedged into the main storyline.

I also read The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet.  Now I'm reading Felicia Day's autobiography and The Trials of Apollo, Book 1: The Hidden Oracle.  (Yes, I'm a Rick Riordan fanboy.  It's a guilty pleasure.  I can't help it.)

[Andorion]

8 hours ago, polishgenius said:

I read this earlier in the week. It's good, smart, and nicely paced, although the structure made it difficult to really engage with the characters and moments so it doesn't get a full five stars from me. Well worth reading, though.

I worry about the movie adaptation. It's not a very long book but the nature of the book makes it very easy to cover a huge amount of time and happening in that space and I don't think a two-hour movie is remotely going to fit it all in. It would be perfect for a TV show.

Actually the interview/report model was something I really liked. I found that as the book progressed the questions had more subtext and it was fun trying to learn more about the questioner from the questions. 

[RedEyedGhost]

8 hours ago, Mandy said:

I'm on my 30th book this year. It's been very slow at work.  I'm spending WAY too much money on books and I've even come back to the board, all caffeinated to hell and jittery. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind essentially getting paid to read, but I end up sitting here, thinking about all the things I need to get done at home that I could be getting done.

Anyway, I've been reading urban fantasy, but I'm getting super tired of crappy genre books repeating the same old plotlines.  I'm sick of vampires, I'm sick of Alphaholes and I'm sick of Were-anythings. I need a new Expanse novel or something as good.

You should really try Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga.  If you can find a 1st Edition hardcover they have a cd that includes all of the books except the most recent two and one in the middle.  Seriously, you'll love them.

[TheRevanchist]

Reading God Emperor of Dune. Finding it quite good, significantly better than the previous two books.

However, every Dune book drains my reading ability.

[Maia]

On 12.5.2016 at 10:15 PM, Mandy said:

Anyway, I've been reading urban fantasy, but I'm getting super tired of crappy genre books repeating the same old plotlines.  I'm sick of vampires, I'm sick of Alphaholes and I'm sick of Were-anythings. I need a new Expanse novel or something as good.

So, why keep reading UF? There is a lot of good stuff around, both SF/F and  other genres, even mainstream.

On 12.5.2016 at 1:29 AM, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

Public libraries are your friend (seriously, there is no way in hell I could manage my reading quantity without it).

Also, this. Some kind of e-device + library Overdrive is godly and  really helps me to venture out of the rut/comfort zone, as well as try out things that I was interested in, but for some reason or other  put off for years. Paper books are good too - but with e-library you save all the trips and worrying about returning them in time.

Speaking of which - Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins was excellent. It is very dark in places, so I understand why it was shunned by the awards, but it would have been on all my nomination lists if I had read it in time. And isn't it still eligible for the Cambell award for new writers in 2017? If so, it has my bow.  And the book  is not _grim_dark - it is ruthless and bloody, but also funny and hopeful and genuinely surprising, which, unfortunately,  has become rather rare in SF/F. The setting is sort contemporary, but with hidden "magic", which  is in the process of becoming much less hidden.  But it is nothing like other books with a similar premise. The novel is also unapologetically standalone, which in this age of endless series is an extra bonus.

So, I appear to be on a roll re: chancing on good books this month, long may this streak continue! Now on to some lighter stuff for a change - "Seraphina" by Rachel Hartman and "Queen of the Tearling" by Erika Johansen. Both YA, but both had good buzz in general SF/F community a couple of years back.

[SkynJay]

16 hours ago, RedEyedGhost said:

You should really try Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga.  If you can find a 1st Edition hardcover they have a cd that includes all of the books except the most recent two and one in the middle.  Seriously, you'll love them.

Oh to get my hands on that CD.  My library has all of these on audio (and they are well done) but none on e-book.   They get their hands on the strangest bundles.

[Maester Llama]

Finished Pierce Brown's Morning Star. Was thoroughly entertained throughout in a very efficient, functional way. I think the book misses a couple opportunities to physically downgrade the protagonist in such a way as to highlight that, while the motivation for the whole story is sociopolitical and there are larger-than-life political scenes that are fun, the primary focus here is mayhem and the political scenes are mostly present as launching pads for the next bout of action, like cutscenes between the levels in a videogame. Despite myself I've come to at least conflictedly love this series' full-throated approach to emotional outbursts and grandstanding prebattle speeches / public spectacles, as well as its all-out take on action; everything in this series [specially books 2 and 3] is as big as it can be and the book wears its heart on its sleeve at all times. It's kinda dopey, absolutely, but it's beautifully committed to itself in a way that I think helps any story in any style, and it is great adrenaline reading. Morning Star doesn't have a ton to say about classism or prejudice or violent uprising, though it does do movingly theatrical renditions of some of the greatest thematic hits related to these social concerns [the personally honourable enemy committed wholeheartedly to a terrible system, the old how-far-can-you-go-before-you-become-the-monster shtick, etc], but I think it succeeds in being what it's trying to be very thoroughly, and, despite the book's issues of corniness and minimal thoughtfulness, "it succeeds thoroughly to be what it's trying to be" is a pretty definitive statement of quality so far as I'm concerned. I dug it.

 

Stuff other people are reading:

 

All hail Max Gladstone. Give yourself this gift. Same applies to Bujold -- I found that it took the Vorkossigan books a little while [when reading in publication order] to get really good, but they entertained me from the beginning, and once Bujold really started refining her craft they got just brilliant.

 

I thought Hartman's Serafina was chrome-plated gold awesome -- fine from the beginning and quickly building an increasingly absorbing world and emotional landscape, and that Johansen's Queen of the Tearling was solidly entertaining but had major problems. The Johansen did not age very well in my brain at all and, though I took book 2 out of the library, I never bothered to actually read it and honestly may well not at this point.

[Guinevere Seaworth]

I adored re-reading the Empire trilogy. It made me love the fantasy genre all over again.  Great stuff.

I did not like Red Rising by Pierce Brown. It was too bleak, brutal and violent for my tastes.  However, the concept was interesting and the character of Darrow was complex enough that I'm willing to read the next book.  I just hope it is more of a political maneuvering rather than war and violence novel. 

I'm now eagerly reading the latest Guy Gavriel Kay book, Children of Earth and Sky.  I'm glad he is back in the world of the Sarantine Mosaic.  I have to smile at the references to the Dalmation coast geography/culture having been there just last fall.

[williamjm]

1 hour ago, Guinevere Seaworth said:

I'm now eagerly reading the latest Guy Gavriel Kay book, Children of Earth and Sky.  I'm glad he is back in the world of the Sarantine Mosaic.  I have to smile at the references to the Dalmation coast geography/culture having been there just last fall.

I'm about halfway through at the moment, the first few chapters took a little while to get going as Kay introduced the large cast of characters but after that it's been really good.

Do you know what the real world equivalent of Senjai is? Dubrava=Dubrovnik and Seressa=Venice were fairly obvious, but I don't know enough about Croatian history/geography to identify the other city.

[Darth Richard II]

Yes, All Hail Max Gladstone!

[Garett Hornwood]

On 5/12/2016 at 9:36 PM, SkynJay said:

I saw that on Goodreads.  I eagerly await your thoughts because I am on a major early U.S. kick these days.

Hey @SkynJay, I finished with Jefferson's America.  I thought it was good, but not great, and I learned a lot about the tensions between the U.S. and Spain during the period.  My preferred rating is 3 1/2 stars like I did on LibraryThing and BookLikes, but for Amazon and Goodreads I rated it 4 because I felt it was better than just okay. You can read my review on Goodreads or my blog, links in the signature.

I'm going to be starting Legends II: Dragon, Sword, and King as part of my re-read of ASOIAF with The Sworn Sword novella, but I haven't read the other three stories in this collection yet so that will be a new experience.  I'm also going to read the graphic novel adaptation of The Sworn Sword for the first time concurrently with the novella.

[mgambino]

Although I said I wasn't going to, I decided to try the 4th Malazan book. It's making me want to tear my eyeballs out. I just don't get the appeal of these books. I've never quit a series before, but I don't think I can power through 16 + books of this. 

[The Marquis de Leech]

20 minutes ago, mgambino said:

Although I said I wasn't going to, I decided to try the 4th Malazan book. It's making me want to tear my eyeballs out. I just don't get the appeal of these books. I've never quit a series before, but I don't think I can power through 16 + books of this. 

House of Chains is bad. Frankly, if you didn't like Deadhouse Gates or Memories of Ice, you're not going to like the rest.

(I've read the first seven. There's only three of them - Deadhouse Gates, Memories of Ice, and Midnight Tides - that I truly adore. Gardens of the Moon is decent. The rest... ugh). 

[Astromech]

House of Chains was my least favorite of the MBOTF, especially the Karsa opening.  What annoyed me with the first several books was the changing settings and casts of characters. You're set on settings and characters for the most part once you get the final setting and cast in Midnight Tides. It isn't the easiest series to follow. It helps to just accept that anything can happen and there is no major plot, rather a number of arcs that take place within the Malazan Empire over a certain number of years. It reminded me of a survey course in history. And you have to be a fan of power-ups. Each character introduced is more powerful than the last. I loved the series, but will be the first to admit it had some issues.

[Darth Richard II]

Yeah I love my Malazan but if you're on book 4 and you don't like it you're not going to.  Hell I can;t think of any series we're I would read that far if I wasn't enjoying it.

[Gormenghast]

You people are weird. Beside preference for one book or another, that for Malazan seems a very scattered preference, there just isn't that much difference between the books to the point you can say one is great the other awful. It's really weird. I understand much more those who either like or dislike the work.

And in my personal preference, between the books I've read, House of Chains is the very best, go figure (but I put first Forge of Darkness). And Midnight Tides, that seems considered well here, for me is down the bottom, only better than Gardens of the Moon.

[Darth Richard II]

Hmm no I'll avoid the snark, but I baffle at anyone putting Forge of Darkness first. Easily my least favorite by miles and miles.

[The Marquis de Leech]

My personal rankings:

1. Memories of Ice
2. Midnight Tides
3. Deadhouse Gates
4. Gardens of the Moon
5. The Bonehunters
6. House of Chains
7. Reaper's Gale

I do intend to get around to finishing the series (I'm bloody-minded like that), but after being burnt by Reaper's Gale, I'm leaving it a bit before Toll the Hounds.