December Reading 2016

[Garett Hornwood]

I'm still early on in my reading of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 1 by Edward Gibbon.

[Starkess]

I'm getting through Nemesis Games at a pretty rapid clip. It is great--love getting the Roci's crew POVs. So far I would say it's the best since book 1. Hope the last act holds up!

[The Marquis de Leech]

I am really enjoying M.R. James' ghost stories. It's turning into one of those rare books that you wish was a bit longer.

[Jo498]

The first MR James story I encountered was "A school story". Very mysterious and it was not that frightening. I read it in German translation in a somewhat unfortunate anthology that started with a few lighter/funny stories but later had a few that scared the shits out of my 10-11 year old self (most of all Benson's "The room in the tower"). Especially because I got hold of that book at my older cousin's during Xmas or some other family gathering and suddenly found myself basically alone in her room, most of the house dark and empty because all the family had gathered in some downstairs room two dark staircases away.

I finished "A career of evil" (Cormoran Strike 3). It was not bad but far from great (same I'd say about the others). Way too long, IMO, also fairly slow in the first 25% or so. We get some more background, also for Robin, but I think the family/romance/background elements are not so well done and the books does not benefit from them. While in the earlier books it was completely mysterious how ugly, awkward, difficult and one-legged Strike easily beds the most gorgeous women, it is now agreed upon by several females that he has some "magnetism"...

Spoiler

I also think the author is cheating by giving he bad guy almost superhuman powers of deception and disguise, as already in HP 4. But polyjuice potion does not exist in real life.

 

[Contrarius+]

I finished both The Legend of Drizzt: Homeland and The Legend of Drizzt: The Collected Stories. Real teen-boy wish-fulfillment stuff, with troubling overtones of misogyny.

Yesterday I started Retribution Falls. Fun, if somewhat studied/artificial -- here we are being witty, here we are being gritty, here we are setting up the cast of characters, and so on.

[Lichen]

10 hours ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

I am really enjoying M.R. James' ghost stories. It's turning into one of those rare books that you wish was a bit longer.

Finished re-reading the first book in his collected stories recently (Penguin edition) and have to agree with you. Simply wonderful. Especially Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904). Total classic.

Some other highly recommended recent reads include Creeping Waves by Matthew M. Bartlett. This is without a doubt my favourite collection of horror stories for a long time. Pulpy, blasphemous and utterly demented but elegant set of short stories, vignettes and asides. Absolutely worth checking out if you always wished Lovecraft or Thomas Ligotti had written filthier stuff. His self published debut collection Gateways to Abomination was already very good but this second book is something else.

Sylvan Dread: Tales of Pastoral Darkness by Richard Gavin. Nature themed collection of supernatural stories. Certainly from the occult / Night-Mare end of the spectrum but not pure horror exactly. Pagan undercurrent & his writing often has quite sacral feeling. Good stuff even if it did not totally meet my high expectations. 

[Guinevere Seaworth]

I've read a few books in November that I haven't posted about in the Nov thread.

Penric's Mission by Lois McMaster Bujold was great except for the abrupt ending.  Thankfully LMB on Goodreads said that she fully intends to expand on this story as the next novella.

Okanagan Geology was a great read if one wants to know more of the geology in south central British Columbia.

The Hundred Days by Patrick O'Brian was OK.  They killed off 2 of my favourite minor characters, one off screen and the other in one sentence which put a damper on the novel for me.

Now reading League of Dragons by Naomi Novik as my bedtime read and The Making of Outlander: The Official Guide to Seasons 1&2 as my commute read.  I love reading in behind the scenes of my favourite TV shows and movies.

[beniowa]

Finished Senlin Ascends.  Great book.  I can see why Wert and others have been raving about this one.

A while back Lily Valley recommended Enemy by K. Eason so I'll be reading that next.

[Peadar]

14 hours ago, beniowa said:

Finished Senlin Ascends.  Great book.  I can see why Wert and others have been raving about this one.

I need to add this to my TBR... Thanks for the reminder!

[Zorral]

For recreational reading currently, it's the new biography of Cassanova and his times, and Bernard Cornwell's latest Saxon Tales installment, The Flame Bearer.

Non-recreational reading is all connected to the history of southeastern Pennsylvania and the Delmarva region, particularly Lee's invasion.

 

[Starkess]

Finished Nemesis Games by James S.A. Corey. Thought it was really great, probably my second favorite in the series after the first book. My biggest problems with it were a bit too much reliance on coincidence as well as the fact that it felt like a largely set-up book that didn't really have a satisfactory self-contained arc. I also have trouble connecting to the series on an emotional level, but I still enjoy seeing everything play out. I definitely liked less Holden this book although disliked that much of what we saw of him was put through a fawning POV but whatever. I really liked seeing some of the older characters and appreciated we didn't really get thrown a whole new set of POV characters this time around.

Not sure what I am going to read over the next couple games while I wait for Babylon's Ashes...

[TheRevanchist]

Started the month by reading the first two books in 'The Acts of Caine'. It looks that I am going to finish my 52 books per year challenge successfully (need just an another 4 books to do so).

[Starkess]

I decided to return to Naomi Novik's Temeraire series. I found the first one to be just okay--more of a cool premise than a good book--but I liked the second one, Throne of Jade, quite a lot. Kept me from getting too antsy as I rest up from a minor cold this weekend. Don't think I'll dive into #3, as the book was quite self-contained and this could become overload quickly.

[Andorion]

7 hours ago, Starkess said:

I decided to return to Naomi Novik's Temeraire series. I found the first one to be just okay--more of a cool premise than a good book--but I liked the second one, Throne of Jade, quite a lot. Kept me from getting too antsy as I rest up from a minor cold this weekend. Don't think I'll dive into #3, as the book was quite self-contained and this could become overload quickly.

You know, it was kind of the same for me. I like the books when I am reading them but I have never gotten the urge to just rush through the series like I have done for other authors. 

 

Anyway, currently reading Seveneves by Neal Stephenson, The Warrior Prophet by R Scott Bakker and Foreigner by CJ Cherryh

Very curious about Seveneves, as this was a book I saw a lot of opinions about. Also I want to see how Bakker follows up the excellent Darkness that Comes Before. As for Cherryh, this is my first foray into her canon. I intend to read 1 book each from Foreigner, Company Wars and Chanur to understand her writing. 

[Iskaral Pust]

Copied from my last update: Now reading finished the third Jackson Brodie novel by Kate Atkinson.  Although nominally a crime/mystery genre fiction, it reads like literary fiction.   Atkinson writes so well but her work is always suffused with really improbable levels of premature bereavement and violence against women and kids.  She seems to embrace the deepest tragedy for her characters, but without any of the nuance that would make it more interesting.  It just is, betraying the character's expectations of normalcy, and leaving them scarred, numb and defined by grief for the rest of their lives.  That would be ok here and there but not for every character in every book (not just this series).  It turns out the first ~30% of that book was fully predictive of the remainder.  Overall a good read and well written if you like books with a maudlin tone.

After that I read 2 For The Dough, the second Stephanie Plum novel by Janet Evanovich.  I'm not sure why it was on my Kindle reading list, but it's been there for ages.  Like the first in the series, it's a light, fast-paced crime fiction as a noobie bounty hunter first person POV operates in her familiar New Jersey neighborhood.  It reads like the Soprano's, excluding the mob.  The characters are brassy/trashy New Jersey stereotypes, the community is insular, and everything happens in the same self-contained fish bowl.  It's ok for a change of pace but I can't imagine I'll read the third.

Now I'm reading The Sellout, the 2016 Booker Prize winner by Paul Beatty.  It's literary fiction about a black guy from the ghetto in LA charged with owning a black slave and his case gets heard by the Supreme Court.  It's a meditation on race and culture in the US, told in a witty and whimsical ramble.  It's satire, tragedy, parody, farce, and says lots of uncomfortable things that might be only masquerading as satire -- which I think is the Rorschach test for readers.  Enjoyable so far but I'm concerned that the rambling will get worse.  It would be great if it can find a narrative thread and reach some sort of conclusion or climax, but I have a feeling it might drift to incoherence.  I'll find out soon.

 

[williamjm]

I finished Adrian Tchaikovsky's short story collection Spoils of War. I did like his Shadows of the Apt series a lot so it's nice to return to the world. It doesn't add anything major to the overall story but it does spend most of its time in a place/time period often mentioned in the novels but never shown directly and it's nice to get a bit more backstory for some of the supporting characters. While none of the individual stories really stands out, I thought they were consistently entertaining. I'm not sure how many of these collections are planned, but given that the first one only just reaches the time period of the first book I guess there may be a few more to come.

One annoyance was that there was an excessive number of typos.

Next up, while I wait for Babylon's Ashes I'll read Paul Cornell's The Lost Child of Lychford, I liked the first novella so hopefully the sequel is also good.

[Datepalm]

Currenly reading Evicted, by Matthew Desmond, which I have to assume is the most readable book ever written on rental housing sociology? It's mostly narrative, following different impoverished households in Milwaukee without too much academizing, but there's a solid amount about broader housing economics and policy that's suprised me so far.

I'm half way through Mieville's Three Moments of an Explosion connection, and while there's a few exremely witty stories, I'm not exactly being blown away :-(

[Starkess]

I opted for a fluffy rom-com read called Prada and Prejudice by Katie Oliver. It was cute and helped me pass an evening huddled in bed (stupid sore throat) so that was fine.

[Lily Valley]

On 12/2/2016 at 3:47 PM, beniowa said:

Finished Senlin Ascends.  Great book.  I can see why Wert and others have been raving about this one.

A while back Lily Valley recommended Enemy by K. Eason so I'll be reading that next.

YAY!  I hope you like it!  I took a peek at Eason's blog and it looks like she's having trouble with book three.  Although she could be having trouble with an unrelated project.  I'm certainly not impertinent enough to ask.  It's an unfinished trilogy, but nice wrap up of each story in books 1 and 2.  I felt like the end of 2 was a bit rushed.

I got sucked into reading Jeff Wheeler.   MUST READ AUTHOR BLURBS BEFORE I START FREE FICTION.  It's like the worst of Card's series for heavy handed morality preaching.

I can't even finish it. Senlin Ascends is on Kindle Unlimited.  THANKS BEN!

[Darth Richard II]

*look sup Jeff Wheeler*

 

Haha, oh dear.