March Reads

[Sir Thursday]

I'll be reading Chris Wooding's The Braided Path trilogy this month. I'm only four chapters into the first book of the series, The Weavers of Saramyr, but I'm liking it so far.

Ditto! It has been fun so far (I'm about a third of the way through).

ST

[Alytha]

Started Kushiel's Dart a couple of days ago. Really like it so far, Phèdre is a great narrator. And the author helps you with that "OMG too many characters I can't keep apart" problem in the same way that GRRM does...isn't that nice of her?

Like Ormond said somewhere above, I also have some littlenitpicks about names...a lot of the French names used for men are actually female names, which is a bit confusing. Looking at maps of Europe, I now wonder if Luxembourg is part of Terre d'Ange or if we're Skaldic barbarians over there? ;)

[Samsaptakas]

rereading The Warrior Prophet

reading Two towers

been struck on Midnight Tides for two months.

[peterbound]

Just read Shadow and Bone. Dug it. Now onto Siege and Storm. Gonna read 'Annihilation' thereafter.

I also read 'Terms of Enlistment' and 'Lines of Departure' by Marko Kloos. Good, good military fiction. If you dig that shit, you should pick them up.

[Isis]

Continuing with my go-slow: I've stalled about 150 pages into Guns, Germs, and Steel. I'm around halfway through that other book about maps I started in January.

However, I did start Last Orders by Graham Swift (a Booker prize winner). I'm about 3/4 through it and should finish it in the next couple of days. There is a kind of sad air of depressing inevitability surrounding the closely linked characters in this novel, like they're locked into a negative path and they're never going to gather sufficient velocity to escape their fate. I'm trying to think which other author that reminds me of... it's someone I really like but I'm just blanking on it right now. Anyway, Last Orders is a depressing spiral of doom - so it's right up my street.

[UndergroundMan]

Recently finished Shame by Salman Rushdie. Not his best, but still very good. Now I have only Grimus and Fury to read and I will have finished all of Rushdie's fictional works.

Also finished Junot Diaz's This is How You Lose Her. It was an absolute joy to read; Diaz is a fantastic writer.

I should finish Norwegian Wood later today. Like all the Murakami that I've read, I'm enjoying it immensely.

After that, I can't decide if I should read Swamplandia by Karen Russell or A House for Mr. Biswas by VS Naipaul.

[Antonius Pius]

Currently reading Antony and Cleopatra by Adrian Goldsworthy. I think that's the last book by Goldsworthy I have yet to read. Love his work. Of course it helps that I've always been a fan of Roman history.

@Triskele

I'm sure there was a Matterhorn thread. I think it was started by either Raidne of Brady. It was some time ago, though.

[Bolivar]

I was gonna take some time away from reading but now totally into Deadhouse Gates after reading the prologue aloud to my fiance before bed. She wants to know if Felisin made it to the ship but I'm a little past that at this point :P

[SkynJay]

I reread Perdido Street Station and it was just as good the second time. I know The Scar seems to be prefered by most, but damn I love PSS. Starting to understand Sci's crush a bit.

Now reading Glenda Larke's new one. So far, so good, a spice trade revolution is an interesting starting point.

[Biter]

After that, I can't decide if I should read Swamplandia by Karen Russell or A House for Mr. Biswas by VS Naipaul.

You've probably already started on one of these books, but I recommend Swamplandia (although I haven't read anything by Naipaul).

[deleted01]

Just finished The Help. Such a fantastic book, like nothing I've ever read before, and the author's note at the end just topped it off for me. Gave it 5 stars on Goodreads - I think I'll check out the film next.

I feel so lucky to have read so many great books this year. Up next is Burial Rites by Hannah Kent, which looks set to be just as good.

[Maester Llama]

I enjoyed Swamplandia a lot. One of those quirkily depressing books that starts out looking like something altogether less fearsome than it ultimately becomes. It deserves more analysis than that, but it's been a while since I read it and a lot of it went over my head. I've read only one book by Naipaul and disliked it intensely, though this has to be somewhat qualified by 1: the narrator's dickishness almost certainly being deliberate, and 2: unsuppressable overflow from the little bit of research I did on Naipaul, which suggests he is an asshat. An exceptionally skilled asshat, absolutely, but still, an asshat of remarkable size.

Finished Elizabeth Bear's Shattered Pillars, and it stayed awesome, some of the best epic fantasy from last year that I've read, without question. It's very much the middle book of a trilogy, and so arcs are left suspended in mid air, but it accomplishes a lot, including -- at least technically -- one thing that's been built up since the characters set out on their quest in the first book. The character relationships deepen; the world broadens; we get some glancing hints at the setting's past; it's great, great stuff. One of the very, very few complaints I'd say is worth mentioning is one I also leveled at the first novel in this series Range of Ghosts, specifically that the last fifty pages are in a phenomenal hurry to get someplace. The pace needs to accelerate as a story reaches its climax, absolutely, but a couple of big scenes near the end of Shattered Pillars are dispensed with in very economical short paragraphs when it feels to me like they might have had more impact as scenes that got lingered over at least a little. It feels less like an energetically fast pace and more like the book's checking stuff off a list. This pacing feels all the more out of whack given the first half of the book, which slowed down considerably relative to Range of Ghosts and demonstrated that this series can do nuanced, considered political intrigue as well as it can do fast-paced travelogue and swashbuckling. Outside of that, though, this was wicked, and I can't wait for the final novel -- in just over a month!

I also finished Rachel Bach's Fortune's Pawn. Very fun, but with even more of a question mark for an ending than I expected, so I'm not sure I've got much more to say before I read the next one. Definitely down for that next one, though. I was kinda skeptical when I started this book, very open but kinda skeptical, but it's convinced me that this series is for me.

SkynJay, is that new Glenda Larke The Lascar's Dagger? I read an excerpt the other day on the publisher's website, and -- Saker's weird elaborate mental cusswords, which seem to be a character thing, aside -- I was very intrigued. Looking forward with interest to hearing how it Goes.

[The Undead Martyr]

Recently finished Shame by Salman Rushdie. Not his best, but still very good. Now I have only Grimus and Fury to read and I will have finished all of Rushdie's fictional works.

Also finished Junot Diaz's This is How You Lose Her. It was an absolute joy to read; Diaz is a fantastic writer.

I should finish Norwegian Wood later today. Like all the Murakami that I've read, I'm enjoying it immensely.

After that, I can't decide if I should read Swamplandia by Karen Russell or A House for Mr. Biswas by VS Naipaul.

I read Swamplandia for a class last year; my first reaction is "surreal," as it's very good, interesting and quite dark/depressing at times, but as the main character is a ten(?) year old girl much of the prose comes off almost light or flippant, almost detached.

I'd definitely recommend trying it out.

As for myself, I have finished Homage to Catalonia, am 75% through Republic of Thieves, and have started Wealth of Nations on a whim. Smith's commentaries on money immediately made me think of Das Kapital, Marx basically lifted the Labor Theory of Value and ran with it.

I've also got the Book of the Dying Sun on Kindle. Doubt I'll have time to start it before the semester ends, though.

[peterbound]

Just got 'The Barrow', by this Smylie guy. Mostly because I want to support the board.

Also got 'Words of Radiance'. After much internal debate I broke down and bought it. Hope it doesn't suck.

[The Undead Martyr]

Well, since no-one else has started the new thread... I'm reading Emperor of Thorns by Mark Lawrence. About one third of the way through, as I expected it so far.

What are you reading this month? Share your likes and dislikes, I know I've gotten a lot of good recommendations from these threads over the years.

I highly respect the author for ending the trilogy then and there, but if I were to do a sequel:

First, I'd make the prince's child have been a girl instead; then have the spinoff surrounding his wife/former allies dealing with the fallout of his death, i.e. narrowly averted zombie apocalypse or not, princes are still power-hungry bastards and a female infant on the throne is going to cause problems, I could easily see someone (his aunt?) try to become the next emperor... given the tone of the series the ending- "oh yes, the five-minute-emperor killed the pope and god-knows how many thousands, but a hundred years of civil war power-hungry princes will accept the dead sociopath's infant child on the throne... hell especially if it became common knowledge that the zombie lord was his brother...

The ending was OK, though; just a bit jarringly "instant Pax Romanum" for my tastes given the prior tone of the series. The Monarchies of God series was sort of the same, though for different reasons, namely the whole last novel felt obviously rushed.

Finished Terry Pratchett's most recent Discworld novel, Raising Steam. I enjoyed it, and I felt that it got better as it went along, but it doesn't feel nearly as light on its feet, or nearly as stunningly on point, as Pratchett often does. It feels kind of like Snuff, and maybe a little bit like Jingo, in terms of comparing it to the relatively small number of other Disc books I've read: Good overall idea, and some enjoyable moments, but a lot of just puttering along talking about how harmfully silly the people who don't agree with the story's major premise are. A lot of it is just kind of spending time in the Discworld while watching Moist von Lipwig and some somewhat less entertaining characters be right about things.

Also finished Naomi Mitchison's Memoirs of a Spacewoman, as part of a very gradual ongoing project to read some more classic sf by women. Enjoyable. Fascinating. It's an emotionally reserved book in many ways, but interesting in that its an emotionally reserved book precisely about emoting, since the focus of most of the novel's episodes is communicating with nonhuman forms of life. Deceptively simple -- the prose flows easily, but there is virtually no infodumping, and while some stuff about the world is presented up front a lot of it is slipped in as blink-and-miss it detail we're assumed to be familiar with already, since it's being presented as a book written within its own universe. Not the kind of novel designed to grab me most completely -- the characters, with notable exceptions, are mostly talking heads --, but a fascinating book I could see myself returning to.

Now reading Rachel Bach's Fortune's Pawn, which is about a badass power-armored mercenary who takes a job as security detail aboard what's supposed to be a cursed merchant ship and punches aliens, and has romantic feelings, and has huge fun shooting things, all in spaaaace. Very pulpy, reads very easily, much fun, kind of addictive. The space opera universe the novel's set in seems straightforward on the surface, and the characters appear to be falling into the "charmingly quirky" box -- the love interest is a badass space cook named Rupert, for instance. However, there are a couple of intriguing points that notch themselves in the book's favour for me: 1: The book is partially mystery-based, in that there's clearly something kind of sketchy going on with this "cursed" merchant ship, but this mystery seems to be moving along at a pretty brisk clip. The book is constantly baiting the reader with questions, but does not fuck around with the provision of answers -- I'm only just over half-way through, and I already have a major answer to something I thought might well be jerked around until the climax of the book. 2: The armored space mercenary, Devi, is a character I find quite fun and refreshing, in that while she's a badass, hard-drinkin', lustful risk-taker, she's presented as a really nice person, rather than as someone the reader is encouraged to see as having a problem. She's clearly got flaws, but she's a functional human being, and things that in another story might be presented as among these flaws are instead presented as just a part of her functional human being-ness. Having a lot of fun with this book.

And, finally, I'm about a hundred pages away from the end of Elizabeth Bear's Shattered Pillars, the second book in her Eternal Sky epic fantasy trilogy. I'll try to remember to come back and say something about this when I'm finished, but these books are just fucking great. I think most genre readers probably have a few books / series the obscurity of which feels like evidence for an absence of cosmic justice. This is one of mine.

You, sir or madame, have just won the thread. Fortune's Pawn sounds amazing.

[The Wolves]

I'm reading a lot of detective stories, you can get some nice amateur sleuth novels for great prices on amazon

Agatha Christie

Sherlock Holmes

And my niece and me are reading some Nancy Drew

[RedEyedGhost]

You, sir or madame, have just won the thread. Fortune's Pawn sounds amazing.

It's great fun. Plus the second book just came out last month and the third in the trilogy comes out next month.

[peterbound]

It's great fun. Plus the second book just came out last month and the third in the trilogy comes out next month.

I've got it on my Kindle. Maybe I'll read it before diving into WoR

[Spockydog]

Watching True Detective has given me an itch for some creepy southern lovecraftian horror. So I'm re-reading John Hornor Jacobs' Southern Gods.

Dude was writing about The King in Yellow long before anyone had heard of Rust Cohle.

[SkynJay]

SkynJay, is that new Glenda Larke The Lascar's Dagger? I read an excerpt the other day on the publisher's website, and -- Saker's weird elaborate mental cusswords, which seem to be a character thing, aside -- I was very intrigued. Looking forward with interest to hearing how it Goes.

Ya. It is pretty good so far, and I am a fan of her Stormord trilogy. This one isn't real fast paced but has been interesting.

Just got 'The Barrow', by this Smylie guy. Mostly because I want to support the board.

Also got 'Words of Radiance'. After much internal debate I broke down and bought it. Hope it doesn't suck.

Really want your thoughts on The Barrow.

And you know WoR won't suck, nor will it blow you away. It is Sanderson, it will be well plotted yet infodumpy, a quick read despite its length. Completly, utterly, pretty good but could have been better. At least that is my guess based on everything else I have read of his.