January Reading 2017

[Peadar]

11 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Noooooooooooo you have so much to live for!

If only there were some kind of... of forum where I could see what people thought of it first

[Iskaral Pust]

15 hours ago, unJon said:

I keep meaning to pick up a David Mitchell book. What do people think the best place to start is? (I saw the Cloud Atlas movie though don't remember much about it.)

I'd suggest Cloud Atlas as the best place to start.  Black Swan Green or The Thousand Autumns of Jacob DeZoet would be next.  Bone Clocks, Slade House and Ghostwritten share some common fantasy elements, which probably make it better to read Slade House third among those.  Number9Dream was IMO a slightly oddball outlier from the others; not bad, just not a high priority.

[Maester Llama]

I read Kristoff's Nevernight last year and I honestly kind of dug it -- after disliking most things about his debut novel Stormdancer quite intensely. It leans in to the things I find Kristoff's good at, namely big action that's simultaneously stylised and deeply obsessed with bodies and the things that can happen to them, and also broad world building. It's telling a story that has serious implications for its characters and they feel deeply and we're definitely asked to do so too, but it's also got a narrative voice that's constantly throwing in winks and jokes and side-eye, always puncturing the potential for the leaden self-seriousness noun soup epic fantasy can fall prey to by reminding us "I'm willing to laugh at this and you should be too." Ultimately -- said with only two books-worth of exposure, bear in mind -- Kristoff's gonna Kristoff, which means some of the language doesn't make a ton of sense for the world, the approach to borrowing from real-world culture is like an amiable but inattentive drunk dude trying to buy eggs and get them out of the store without breaking them [I've seen some online responses by people who've found the book's remixing of some elements of maori culture quite hurtful], and whether the approach to sex is refreshingly frank or verging on pervy is a matter for debate. But, low bar though this might be, it's tons better than Stormdancer. And it has sand krakens.

 

Finished Leigh Bardugo's Crooked Kingdom. Hot damn but these are good shit. Fantasy criminality and con games worthy of Scott Lynch, with the breakneck pace and emotional fever pitch of really good ya. Satisfying full story told across this book and Six of Crows, while still leaving the impression that there could be more involving some or all of these characters. This one leans on the Grisha Trilogy a bit for some important side characters and I haven't read those yet, but this mostly just gives a sense that the story's world is large and there's important shit going on elsewhere; not being familiar with these characters doesn't impede the tale at hand. Crooked Kingdom I found maybe slightly less well-honed than Six of Crows, because it has more to get done, a couple of antagonists sometimes get lost in the shuffle a bit, and it struck me that near the end some authority figures looked away from one or two things a little easily, but these are minor niggles: This was great and I loved all of it.

 

Reading Lila Bowen's second weird western Conspiracy of Ravens now. Good stuff so far, even better than its predecessor. Also savoring Peter S. Beagle's newest novel Summerlong. New Beagle fiction is a rare event and I already suspect I'm going to be a puddle of emotional goo at the end of this.

[williamjm]

17 hours ago, unJon said:

I keep meaning to pick up a David Mitchell book. What do people think the best place to start is? (I saw the Cloud Atlas movie though don't remember much about it.)

Out of the three I've read I'd say Cloud Atlas, although The Bone Clocks would also be a reasonable choice. Slade House should probably be after The Bone Clocks since one section probably reads very differently if you're already familiar with a character.

While the Cloud Atlas film was a valiant attempt to film a seemingly unfilmable book, I think the book is significantly better (and there were a lot of plot changes between the two).

[Darth Richard II]

There are longer more detailed take downs of Nevernight, but the short DR version is that the prose reminds me a LOT of Robert Newcomb. o.O

[Richard Writhen]

Started The Fisherman by John Langan. Very engrossing so far. After that I want to try We Eat Our Own and Mongrels.

[peterbound]

Werewolf Cop, yo.  Fuck the world!!

 

It's actually kind of good. 

[RedEyedGhost]

2 hours ago, peterbound said:

Werewolf Cop, yo.  Fuck the world!!

 

It's actually kind of good. 

Never heard of it.  Looked it up.  Will be reading it.

[SkynJay]

On 1/1/2017 at 2:45 PM, beniowa said:

New year, new month, new thread.  I'm about to start Chains of the Heretic by Jeff Salyards, third book in Bloodsounder's Arc.  I quite enjoyed the first book, but was disappointed by the second so we'll see how this goes.

Damn.  I loved the first two books and forgot the third one came out.  I think I balked at the price and then forgot to ever check back.

On 1/1/2017 at 4:21 PM, Darth Richard II said:

I finally started A Crown For Cold Silver by Alex Marshall and I want to marry this book. His sense of humor lines up PERFECTLY with mine.

YES.   I loved it.  And couldn't get fifty pages into the second one for some reason.  Plan on trying again through.

I finished Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee today.  It is fantastic.  Plan on starting The Stars are Legion by Kameron Hurley but first I am going to finish up a reread of the Kitty Jay series.

[Andorion]

So far this month I have reread Alastair Reynolds' House of Suns. So so very good. 

Also reading Bakker's Thousandfold Thought. This is once again an awesome book, though so far at least, Warrior Prophet was better. 

Also reading Janny Wurts' Ships of Merior, which is much better than book 1 and Gone with the Wind from the Classics Challenge

[RedEyedGhost]

1 hour ago, SkynJay said:

Plan on starting The Stars are Legion by Kameron Hurley

I thought that got pushed to October... maybe it was originally supposed to be released last October?  Anyway, that awesome that it's coming out early next month.  Really looking forward to reading it!

[Darth Richard II]

23 minutes ago, RedEyedGhost said:

I thought that got pushed to October... maybe it was originally supposed to be released last October?  Anyway, that awesome that it's coming out early next month.  Really looking forward to reading it!

Oh skynjay always gets books super early, the jerk.

[Maester Llama]

The Stars Are Legion was indeed originally scheduled for last October, if I'm remembering right. It then wobbled around a bit -- it was scheduled for January 2017 for a bit before settling in February, which seems to be for real. Soon! It's Hurley's The Broken Heavens, the last Worldbreaker book, that's coming out this October.

[TheRevanchist]

Starting the year with Lightbringer from Brent Weeks. It is the first book of him I have ever read.

I am finding the writing very awkward. Too many short sentences that break the flow. Not sure that I can read 4-5 books if things continue like this.

[Jo498]

Joy Chant: "Red moon and black mountain". (in German translation, because this was so much easier to find cheaply) Her debut from 1970, young adultish (three siblings enter a fantasy world and the oldest becomes some kind of hero there) and apparently mostly forgotten. It was probably not unoriginal before the big fantasy wave of the 70s and it is not bad but not great either and seems almost generic nowadays. The prose tries to be poetic and heroic, not sure of the success (hard to tell in translation) and the background world is partly neglected, partly piled on with lots of names and sketches of mythology. There are two further volumes (several years apart, I guess she had children in between, the first book was written in her early 20s).

Now I'll give "Sharp Ends" another chance.

[HexMachina]

10 hours ago, TheRevanchist said:

Starting the year with Lightbringer from Brent Weeks. It is the first book of him I have ever read.

I am finding the writing very awkward. Too many short sentences that break the flow. Not sure that I can read 4-5 books if things continue like this.

I didn't even get through the first book. I had absolutely no interest in the plot, and as you say it was clumsily written

[Isis]

On 02/01/2017 at 1:20 AM, Andorion said:

Started the year by experimenting to see how many books I can read together.

The Thousandfold Thought by R Scott Bakker - 84 pages in - his usual excellent quality so far

The Ships of Merior by Janny Wurts - too early to comment

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell - too early to comment

Rereading House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds - about 250 pages in - I forgot how epic and elegant Reynolds can be

I tend to get a bit dishearted with this approach (because finishing any title is slowed down) and attempt to avoid doing it. That said, I am currently reading Paradise Lost (at a glacial pace of two pages per day), The Essex Serpent (hard copy) and Three Moments of an Explosion (on my kindle).

[red snow]

23 minutes ago, Isis said:

I tend to get a bit dishearted with this approach (because finishing any title is slowed down) and attempt to avoid doing it. That said, I am currently reading Paradise Lost (at a glacial pace of two pages per day), The Essex Serpent (hard copy) and Three Moments of an Explosion (on my kindle).

I stick to two but that's mainly because I have books to read and books to listen to on audio. At some point I'll try and do whispersync although I think that could be a bit confusing switching between the two sensory inputs on the same book.

I'm determined to finish Dark Tower this month and put a cap on Stephen King for 2017 (as he took up a lot of 2016). I'm also reading "clash of eagles" by Alan Smale and enjoying it a lot. It's not high art but it's a good page turner in a similar vein to that of "the martian". Storywise it's very different but the author is doing a good job of mixing alt history with speculative history on native american cultures we sadly know virtually nothing about.

[Andorion]

1 hour ago, Isis said:

I tend to get a bit dishearted with this approach (because finishing any title is slowed down) and attempt to avoid doing it. That said, I am currently reading Paradise Lost (at a glacial pace of two pages per day), The Essex Serpent (hard copy) and Three Moments of an Explosion (on my kindle).

I usually read two - one as commute, one as home read.

Right now the third one - Gone With the WInd is from my Classics Challenge.

So, I finished House of Suns, which was excellent. 

Progressed halfway in Bakker - excellent.

About a third into Ships of Merior - far better than the first book. 

About a third into Gone with the WInd - after an exceptionally weak beginning, the book has started picking up steam. 

 

BTW what is the forum opinion on Brent Weeks? I tried and failed to read his Night Angel books, but I consistently hear praise for Lightbringer

[Winterfella]

On ‎1‎/‎2‎/‎2017 at 10:24 PM, Paxter said:

Finished the excellent News of the World by Paulette Jiles.

I also read this a couple months ago and agree it is very good.  I enjoyed the adventures of Chohenna and the Kepdun.

Starting 2017 off with the first Illuminae Files book and The Lost City of Z at the same time on my Kindle.