June 2009 Reads

[TheEvilKing]

It got me thinking actually. I used the phrase without consciously choosing it, as far as I can tell. But I bet if I'd been talking to my friends, other Australians, I don't think I would have used the phrase (or I would have used the cricket equivalent maybe?) Anyways, a topic for another thread, perhaps.

Dude you totally missed an opportunity to mislead our American friends. Here's how I would have answered:

'Knock it out of the park' is a term derived from the popular Australian sport of Koalaball. To score a point, you have to knock the dead koala 'into the park' - the park being a ten-foot square area designated by an outline made entirely of boomerangs, with an aboriginal personage standing upon each corner.

If somebody knocks a koala 'out of the park', the opposing team automatically scores three points - therefore it is a bad manouvre. I refer to 'Best Served Cold' in this manner because of the lack of kangaroos, cork hats and shrimps on the barbie.

Please mislead foreigners in future.

[gyrehead]

The Lady Queen: The Notorious Reign of Joanna I by Nancy Goldstone

Lightbreaker by Mark Teppo (Night Shade actually releases something!)

Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant

[RedEyedGhost]

I finished Scott Westerfeld's The Killing of Worlds and it was brilliant. This is the best military sci-fi I've read in quite awhile, and there's enough politics that I'm comfortable calling it space opera as well. I'm not going to say too much about this one because it would ruin the previous book - The Risen Empire, but it has fantastic war tech, interesting human and AI evolution, great politics, a cool mystery throughout that always keeps you on your toes, an amazing ship to ship battle, and a little bit of romance.

Highly recommended for fans of science fiction.

9/10

Thanks again for the rec Peadar :thumbsup:

Up next is Abercrombie's Best Served Cold.

I've just finished The Facts of Life by Graham Joyce. There are times when I wish I could do a proper review or even a proper commentary. This is one of those times, which is why I brought it up. Try as I might, I have never been able to pull off either one properly, so I don't bother.

Your last mini-review for Memoirs of a Master Forger made me wish I could read it now, and even though I have too many books already I will be buying it the next time I order from the book depository.

And I'm very glad you enjoyed The Facts of Life :D

[BookWyrm]

I'm finishing yet another reread of Gene Wolfe's Wizard Knight. God I love this guy! I think I'll be reading Peace next.

I'm looking at Brave New World (Aldous Huxley), the Land of Laughs (Jonathan Carrol), Little, Big (John Crowley) and/or City of Saints and Madmen (Jeff Vandermeer) soon.

[mashiara]

I read The Complete Stories of Truman Capote and I really enjoyed all of them, especially the last few ones which were clearly autobiographical. His writing is simply superb.

I also read Banewreaker and Godslayer by Jacqueline Carey. I didn't like those at all, they reminded me of dozens of books I've read in the genre and they felt like a Tolkien rip-off of the worst kind.

Next up is The Time Traveler's Wife by Aundrey Niffenegger.

[Astra]

Just finished Before They are Hanged by Joe Abercrombie and started Last Argument of Kings, the final volume in The First Law trilogy.

I liked the second half of Before They are Hanged more than the rest so far. Powerfully emotional at some places.

[Myshkin]

Finished Chris Wooding's The Weavers of Saramyr. It was good, but not great. This was Wooding's first adult novel, and it seemed like he had a hard time getting rid of some of the habits he picked up writing YA. But on the plus side, the setting was very nice, and the story was interesting. It was definitely good enough that I'll read the next book in the series.

Now reading Sergei Lukyanenko's Last Watch.

[Larry.]

Currently alternating between Saramago's El año de la muerte de Ricardo Reis, Ysabel Wilce's excellent Flora Segunda, and will be choosing 1-2 from this pile.

[lokisnow]

Finished reading Partners In Command: Dwight Eisenhower and George Marshall in War and Peace by Mark Perry. It's an excellent piece of work that focuses on Eisenhower and Marshall's efforts to maintain and forge a unified high command and the pressures they underwent from the British and Americans who wanted to score minor political and publicity command points at the expense of soldiers' lives. I never knew how political and backbiting the entire command of WWII's Europe theatre was, nor the remarkable story of how a nobody like Eisenhower ascended to the height of supreme allied commander Europe. It's a fascinating story. Another bit that struck me was how stupid Truman's administration was in not cultivating Ike after the war. They basically didn't listen to him and thought of him as out of his depth and politically naive (despite his being the first warrior/politician and perhaps the greatest of them having proved his political mettle over the previous four years of constant political negotiation) because that was what they expected to see from a military commander (because that's all military commanders ever were when they tried to wade into politics). Thus sidelined, Ike cultivated a 'gang' of golf buddies who did in fact listen to him, they also happened to be high powered, moneyed republicans and so he was drawn into that party rather than the democratic party. He could have easily been president for either party, he particularly hated the new brand of republicans embodied by McCarthy, but he was exactly the sort of republican I like (the kind that don't exist any more): balanced budget, small military, free markets and common deterrence.

[Myshkin]

will be choosing 1-2 from this pile.

Take the Nabokov and the Kundera. You can never go wrong with either of those two authors.

[Guinevere Seaworth]

Whew! I finished To Green Angel Tower Part 1 by Tad Williams. On to the final and last book of my Memory, Sorrow and Thorn re-read, To Green Angel Tower Part 2.

[Larry.]

Almost halfway with the Kundera and it is indeed the excellent. Decided to read the O'Connor first...or rather, the first two books published inside that omnibus. Nabokov will be soon to follow, of course.

[lokisnow]

reading the Omnivore's Delimma... it occurs to me that the introduction/invention of the artificial fixing of nitrogen by mankind in the early 1900s may be a much more direct (and far, far more subtle and complex) progenitor of global warming than emissions could ever hope to be. me thinks correlation/causation problem has led to most of us not noticing or dismissing the possibility because fixing nitrogen is not something we can see the way we can see pollution. So that which we see must be the real cause, right? or, something which provides us with cheap, tasty food in the short run is obviously assigned a 'good' value and any bad effects are dismissed or rhetorically minimized while something that makes it harder to breathe is assigned a negative value and any bad effects are debated and rhetorically exacerbated. Something invisible having that big an effect is just nonsense, naturally, like that silly idea that these invisible germ things make people sick. nonsense!

[delete this account pls]

that got ME thinking...

did you get either of the books i rec'd a couple of weeks back in chat?

Yeah man, ordered the first Westerfield one last week.

[dalThor]

I finished Cormac McCarthy's No Country For Old Men. Excellent book. I really enjoy his writing style, it makes it go quickly without missing anything. If you haven't read this book, you should.

I started Making Money by Practhett this morning. I'm looking forward to it, I always love his books.

[Larry.]

Comments on the past week's reads. Almost 400 pages into that Library of America edition of Flannery O'Connor's works and I think I got a steal for a $35 hardcover. The atmosphere is something else and her characters are haunting, to say the least. What Haze does to himself in Wise Blood or the Misfit in "A Good Man is Hard to Find"...

[ambyr]

I finished Scott Westerfeld's The Killing of Worlds and it was brilliant. This is the best military sci-fi I've read in quite awhile, and there's enough politics that I'm comfortable calling it space opera as well. I'm not going to say too much about this one because it would ruin the previous book - The Risen Empire, but it has fantastic war tech, interesting human and AI evolution, great politics, a cool mystery throughout that always keeps you on your toes, an amazing ship to ship battle, and a little bit of romance.

Highly recommended for fans of science fiction.

That and The Risen Empire are the only of Westerfeld's adult books that I haven't read. Perhaps I should pick them up.

I definitely recommend his stand-alones Fine Prey and Evolution's Darling. (Less so Polymorph, though it's not bad for a first novel.)

[pat5150]

Just finished Jonathan Maberry's thought-provoking and balls-to-the-wall Patient Zero. Quite an entertaining read, and I'm not usually into zombies.

Check the blog for the full review. :)

Patrick

[Mexal]

Your last mini-review for Memoirs of a Master Forger made me wish I could read it now, and even though I have too many books already I will be buying it the next time I order from the book depository.

I bought the book because of his mini-review. It just came today. I don't know when I'll get to it but I do have it now and I really like the mini hardback style it comes in.

[Ratatoskr]

I finished Hamilton's The Neutronium Alchemist (Part 2 of his Night's Dawn trilogy) recently. So far I'm greatly enjoying the trilogy. I have only a few very minor quibbles, overall it's an immensely entertaining read with a vast scope.

Due to its massiveness I decided I needed a short break from Night's Dawn and picked up Yves Meynard's Book of Knights. It's excellent so far. Anybody read it? It's a quick read, though, and I expect to move on to The Naked God shortly.