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January Reads -new year, new books


mashiara

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I read her book 'The Theif's Gambit" and enjoyed it quite a bit. Felt she had some standout characters, though it was in a very standard fantasy setting (though the author pointed out that what was once new is now trope, and I respect that). I want to try her later series soon as well, let us know how it goes!

I am reading "Between Two Thorns' right now, and I am torn so far. It is a "land of fairy meets real world" kind of book, and moving at a nice pace with some cool ideas, but I am not sure I am completely buying the rules the author is setting up. Halfway done though, so maybe the second half will wow me.

Actually, it was your review of The Thief's Gambit that got me interested. Since my library does not have any Tales of Einnarin, but the complete set of Aldabreshin Compass, I got that instead.

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Finished Daughter of the Empire by Feist and Wurts, and sorry guys, but that was terrible.

I read the Wikipedia one sentence summaries of the next two books to have my suspicions confirmed that the protagonist remains a total Mary Sue, so I have no need to read them.

I have read Ender's Game and thought it was entertaining but not great. No desire to read the other Ender books. My conditions for the book list and series is that I will read the first book of the series but not be obligated to go on, since the point isn't to spend my time reading 10 books that I already know I'll dislike. (But if WOT is on there, I'll read the last book without trying to go back and re-read!)

Next up, Assassin's Apprentice. Given reviews of the trilogy, I would like to read all three, despite my normal lack of enthusiasm for series.

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So far in January I have read Retribution Falls and The Black Lung Captain by Chris Wooding both of which I loved! Blood Red Snow White by Marcus Sedgewick which I enjoyed. All the Walking Dead comics which were entertaining and The Desert Spear by Peter Brett which was good but felt too much like set up for the Daylight War with not all that much happening. Not sure what to read next. Either Brave New World, 1984 or The Iron Jackal.

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I finished Forge of Darkness by Steven Erikson. Here's my take: http://loopingworld.com/2013/01/25/forge-of-darkness-steven-erikson/

Utterly loved it, best Malazan that I read. Though it took a while because I'm not content enough to have "begun" all the major series (Erikson, Jordan, Bakker, Wolfe, Martin, Abercrombie, Cook Wurts and more), that I read in a kind of rotation. BUT I also read at the same time way too many books.

Here's a list of stuff I read at some point while I was reading Forge of Darkness:

The Republic of Wine by Mo Yan, The Shadow Rising by Jordan, The Man in the High Castle by Dick, Cat's Cradle by Vonnegut, The Bonehunters by Erikson, The White Rose by Glen Cook, The Magus by John Fowles, Bleak House by Dickens, The Silmarillion by Tolkien, A Dream of Wessex by Christopher Priest, Before They Are Hanged by Abercrombie, Hounded by Kevin Hearne, The Pale King by David Foster Wallace, The Cold Command by Richard Morgan, Dune by Frank Herbert, The Wayward Mind by Guy Claxton, The Game of Kings by Dorothy Dunnet, Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter and, just now, V. by Thomas Pynchon.

I think it's all, but consider that I started reading the 650 pages of Forge of Darkness this past August.

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I read Intrusion, by Ken MacLeod - better effort than his last few, and with a really solid premise, but it still kind of dissolves into sillyness. It's up for the BSFA best novel, IIRC that thread correctly, and...nope.

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I finished up The Six-Gun Tarot by R.S. Belcher the other day - it was a very pleasant surprise (review). I still owe reviews for The Half-Made World by Felix Gilman and Fortress Frontier by Myke Cole (I liked both).

For my next read I decided to get a Charles de Lint fix, so I'm reading Someplace to be Flying - I really like de Lint's writing.

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A couple of days ago I finished War for the Oaks by Emma Bull which was really fun to read, without being a contestant for Novel of the year. I loved the dialogue and some scenes, I thought some others were kind of silly. Overall,a fun, quick read.

I started The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell. I'm about 100 pages in and l like it a lot. It's a lot different feel than Cloud Atlas, but great writing still, so far.

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I started The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell. I'm about 100 pages in and l like it a lot. It's a lot different feel than Cloud Atlas, but great writing still, so far.

Please post your thoughts when you finish. I loved the novel Cloud Atlas (still haven't seen the film), and it got me interested in reading another.

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Please post your thoughts when you finish. I loved the novel Cloud Atlas (still haven't seen the film), and it got me interested in reading another.

I'll try. Given the way my life is right now it might be hard to write more than a couple of coherent sentences, but for you, Trisky, I'll try. :)

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I'll try. Given the way my life is right now it might be hard to write more than a couple of coherent sentences, but for you, Trisky, I'll try. :)

I should amend my post: please post your thoughts as life allows!

But on a serious note, I didn't mean, like, "I demand full review". I meant more like a quick hitter along the lines of "Fans of Cloud Atlas will be..."

Please don't feel pressure!

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I've just finished Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas. I found it took a while to get going, but the later parts of the book engaged me. I couldn't help feeling that it all ended a bit too neatly for the protagonists in the end. I will eventually get round to reading the last book in the D'Artagnan series, though as the final one is a bit of a monsterous size, I'll probably read each of the three books (it's available broken down in to three in English) separately with breaks between.

I've now just started Service of All the Dead by Colin Dexter. I've not read any of the Inspector Morse novels before, though I've listened to some on audio book and enjoyed a number of episodes when it was on the TV in the 80s & 90s.

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finished: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

next: ?

a, Kornai János: A hiány (Economics of Shortage) - Boldog születésnapot, Kornai úr!

b, Sylvia Plath: Poems (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets)

c, The Epic of Gilgamesh (translator: Andrew George)

d, Nathaniel Hawthorne: Collected Novels: Fanshawe, The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, The Marble Faun

e, The Poetic Edda: The Heroic Poems (t: Henry Adams Bellows)

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I read Karen Russell's upcoming collection Vampires in the Lemon Grove (good, but most of the eight stories share a similar structure, which triggered burnout after only a handful of stories) and Karin Tidbeck's Jagannath (good and really weird, but some of the stories could have been longer). I'm taking a break from short fiction, but am dancing around what to read next. I am bouncing between M.John Harrison's The Course of the Heart and John Crowley's The Solitudes, but haven't committed to either and am likely to try something else.

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Finished Herta Muller's The Passport. A strange and powerful little book, I have a feeling I'll have to read it several more times before I really understand it.

I think I'll read Daniel Abraham's The King's Blood next.

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