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June '18 Reading - Something something witty.


RedEyedGhost

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10 hours ago, Spaßvogel said:

Picked up the new Jim Butcher Dresden short story collection Brief Cases.  Unlike Side Jobs, where I hadn't read most of the stories, only the new story Zoo Day was actually new to me this time around.  A couple of the stories were 7 or 8 years old.  It was a little disappointing overall to be honest.  At least Jim has his house situation finally resolved and he can get back to work.

This is the first I'd heard about a housing situation, and it looks like he had an ama on reddit a couple of weeks ago which makes me optimistic that he will be back onto his pre-2014 writing schedule.  I have only read the Dresden short stories in Side Jobs, so I'm still looking forward to Brief Cases, but that is disappointing that there's not much new in it (because that means the majority of it will be back in the time line).

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On 6/13/2018 at 3:59 PM, Werthead said:

Received an ARC of Chris Wooding's The Ember Blade, a massive (800 pages in tradeback) "traditional" epic fantasy. Only a couple of chapters in but very promising so far.

Excited for this. How far out from pub date?

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15 hours ago, RedEyedGhost said:

This is the first I'd heard about a housing situation, and it looks like he had an ama on reddit a couple of weeks ago which makes me optimistic that he will be back onto his pre-2014 writing schedule.  I have only read the Dresden short stories in Side Jobs, so I'm still looking forward to Brief Cases, but that is disappointing that there's not much new in it (because that means the majority of it will be back in the time line).

Yeah, I only learned about his house construction woes during the AMA and frankly it explained a lot!  Brief Cases is worth it if you haven't read the other stories.  I was so Dresden starved that I went on a quest to get all of the anthologies that had Dresden short stories, and so I had read everything in Brief Cases except the new one. 

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On 6/16/2018 at 10:39 AM, aceluby said:

Having a much more difficult time getting through Blade of Tyshell than Heroes Die.  Hoping it picks up some as I go

It's a much different kind of book than Heroes Die.  There are some excellent moments but the pacing mostly stays the same throughout.  

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All done with Michael Chabon's Moonglow. In the end, I thought this was a fantastic read. My initial reservations were cured once I got used to the non-chronological and pseudo-memoir style. There are some really unforgettable characters in this novel and, as usual, Chabon's prose is amazing. He has an incredible ability to write about serious trauma and its effects without triggering reader depression or making the reading experience feel like a slog. But the thing that I will remember most about this read was the depiction of the relationship between the grandparents. Unconditional love brought to life on the page. 

Now on to Austen's Pride and Prejudice. I'll probably then tackle Harry Potter #2 (my least favourite) as part of a series re-read.  

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Just binged two series.  First finished the Echos of the Fall series be Adrian Tchaikovsky going through all three books in the last week of May and first week of June.   Thoroughly enjoyed them.   Still need to read the Shadow of the Apt series, but now much more motivated after this introduction to Tchaikovsky.

Then rolled into and through the Shadow Campaigns by Django Wexler.  Read all five books  in the past two weeks.   Stayed up way too late and lunches ran long getting through these.  Appreciated my Kindle more, as I could order and download the next book as soon as I finished the previous book.   It was nice that both series were complete, so wasn't left hanging.

Next up is Good Guys by Steven Brust. 

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Jim Thompson's Pop. 1280. I preferred it to Thompson's The Killer Inside Me due to the humor with which Nick Corey recounts his story. But he's just as twisted and depraved as Lou Ford is.

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Enjoying butcher's "death masks". The Dresden books are like comfort foods and easy to digest. However it's a shame his writing has "matured" into writing fairly detailed sex scenes now. I preferred it when he shied away from too many details because I had a suspicion of how they'd play out given every woman in the series is gorgeous and "curvy". No surprises here in the sense Dresden/butcher is a man's idea of god's gift to women.

The rest of the book is fine though I just hope sex scenes don't become a regular installment from now on if this is how they pan out. Poor James Marsters has to narrate this!

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15 hours ago, Leofric said:

Just binged two series.  First finished the Echos of the Fall series be Adrian Tchaikovsky going through all three books in the last week of May and first week of June.   Thoroughly enjoyed them.   Still need to read the Shadow of the Apt series, but now much more motivated after this introduction to Tchaikovsky.

Then rolled into and through the Shadow Campaigns by Django Wexler.  Read all five books  in the past two weeks.   Stayed up way too late and lunches ran long getting through these.  Appreciated my Kindle more, as I could order and download the next book as soon as I finished the previous book.   It was nice that both series were complete, so wasn't left hanging.

Next up is Good Guys by Steven Brust. 

I honestly don't know where Tchaikovsky finds the time. He seems to have 2-3 series running concurrently with the odd stand alones too. I'm guessing/hoping at this point it's a full time gig for him.

Shadows of the apt is really good. One of the best ideas for a fantasy setting in a long while and the technology aspect is great too. Although you may find his writing a little jarring as it took him a couple of books to hit his stride and your previous exposure will be after that. Stick with it though.

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Took me a while but I finally understand the praise for Long Price. Just finished book one and forging straight on to the next (I bought them as a combined ebook, which is convenient). 

As I said it took me a while to get into it at first but I was captivated by the end. All the characters just felt so real. I loved Amat. 

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I finished Yoon Ha Lee's Revenant Gun. I thought it was a good conclusion to the trilogy, for a series which started off by throwing the reader into an utterly bizarre situation with little in the way of explanation it does a good job of making just about everything feel like it makes sense by the time we get to the third book. I thought the new character in this one who gives the book part of its title added an interesting perspective to the series, and it was interesting to get a closer look at Nirai Kujen who has lurked in the shadows for most of the trilogy. The ending was a satisfying conclusion, although perhaps some parts of it felt a bit rushed and at least one major character had almost nothing to do. I think overall it's been a great series, I've read a lot of space opera but some parts of the setting are unlike anything else I've read, and it also managed to have some fascinating characters as well.

3 hours ago, Helenas Musikautomat said:

Took me a while but I finally understand the praise for Long Price. Just finished book one and forging straight on to the next (I bought them as a combined ebook, which is convenient). 

As I said it took me a while to get into it at first but I was captivated by the end. All the characters just felt so real. I loved Amat. 

I think it does take a while to get into the mindset of the series. I think each book is better than the previous one (particularly the third and fourth books).

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On 6/18/2018 at 8:21 AM, End of Disc One said:

It's a much different kind of book than Heroes Die.  There are some excellent moments but the pacing mostly stays the same throughout.  

It has started to pick up around the 300 page mark, so I'll definitely keep going.  Will probably take a break from the series for a bit after though. 

4 hours ago, Triskjavikson said:

I finally finished Vandermeer's Southern Reach trilogy and am totally baffled by it.  Need to find some online commentary to fill in some gaps, but in the end did not enjoy it and do not recommend it.  Captivating first book that the two following books fail to fulfill.  

I can pretty much agree to this, though I would recommend it to someone if I warned them to not expect anything from reading it.  It's an interesting ride with good prose, but it ultimately leads nowhere.

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Finished reading Quietus by Tristan Palmgren. It's an interesting book, maybe a cross between Connie Willis' Doomsday Book and Ian Banks' Culture, as it delves heavily into history while adding layers of interstellar empires with AI ships directing the show. Also a touch of Stephenson's Anathem, I guess.

I liked it, but I find it to be oddly unmemorable. You feel the author liked his histoey, but somehow in retrospect, it all feels light. Multiple characters but key plot elements are few. Maybe would have made more of an impression on me as a short story. Not bad, you know, even nice ro read, but forgettable.

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18 hours ago, Helenas Musikautomat said:

Took me a while but I finally understand the praise for Long Price. Just finished book one and forging straight on to the next (I bought them as a combined ebook, which is convenient). 

As I said it took me a while to get into it at first but I was captivated by the end. All the characters just felt so real. I loved Amat. 

You're doing well to love it by book one. Books 3-4 were where I finally got the love. The concept is great but I found things a little small scale at first and book two felt a bit too similar to the first. Anyway you're in for a treat with the rest of it.

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Reread neverending story a couple weeks ago, then The Disaster Artist and then Philip K Dick’s Ubik and bought two more of his books to read soon but right now I’m reading Pride a companion piece of sorts to the excellent film from a few years back 

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I've not read much new fiction this year, but I did finish Valente's Space Opera recently.  I liked it quite a bit, though I thought the second half wasn't quite up to the level of the first half.

21 hours ago, williamjm said:

I think it does take a while to get into the mindset of the series. I think each book is better than the previous one (particularly the third and fourth books).

I thought the first three books of the Long Price were very good, but I've never been able to finish the fourth.

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