October 2009 - Whatcha readin'?

[Mexal]

I finished Return of the Crimson Guard by Esslemont and I have to say, it was a pretty good book. The writing isn't as good as Erikson in pretty much all respects but the story plodded along and was entertaining. It was great to be back into the Malazan world and to be riddled with badasses.

As a result, I'm now reading Dust of Dreams. So far, it's good though it's starting to get all philosophicy at all points which is annoying but even still, I'm happy to be reading it. The only problem is that I leave for vacation next Friday and I don't want to take this book as it's massive.

I bought Lamentation by Ken Scholes (I think that's his name) as my travel book and will start that next Friday.

[Borque]

Definitely a difficult read, in many different ways. The final chapter is powerful, but it also made me feel physically ill a little bit.

Yes, I can understand that. At that point I was fairly desensitized though.

However I didn't get the epilogue and what the deal with the fire in holes really was about.

And to anyone thinking of trying McCarthy - I would recommend starting with The Road which is shorter and in my mind at least equally powerful.

[Deornoth]

Finished reading Robert J. Sawyer's 'FlashForward'. I loved the concept but the incessant info-dumping made the execution very clunky indeed... My full review is over Here. I'm now back into 'The Sad Tale of the Brother's Grossbart' and a couple of others as well.

[chitman13]

This month I've finished off:

Fast Ships, Black Sails edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer. Good, but not great - probably a 60/40 split of stories I enjoyed to those I didn't, but it was worth it for the good ones.

Makers by Cory Doctorow - an interesting look at a possible future economy and society, and it was enjoyable for what it was.

Mindstar Rising by Peter F Hamilton - I really enjoy this one and although it's dated with the sea level rises it still packs enough entertainment in its pages.

The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King - possibly the one in the series I don't like as much as the others baring, perhaps, Song of Susannah, but I need to re-read that one to make my mind up. I liked the way King continued the story of Roland and think it's one of those books that needs to be written to set up the characters for later on.

Now reading The Red Wolf Conspiracy by Robert VS Redick in the hope I'll get this and the sequel read this month (although doubtful). Enjoyable so far and the world-building and history make for very interesting characters and confrontations. Liking the way it's headed very much.

[Procrastimancer]

I'm currently reading Contract by Si Spurrier. Decent book so far, but the it is often repetitive to the point of redundant.

[palin99999]

Finished When the Nines Roll Over: And Other Stories by David Benioff - 8/10 - Some of the best short fiction I've ever read; really engaging stuff.

Starting Charlie Huston's My Dead Body

[Astra]

Finished The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. The book is one big repository of powerful emotions. Telling the story by Death is a brilliant idea. Probably one the best books I read in the last 20 years. A good demonstration of how WWII looked to ordinary Germans.

Cannot decide what to read next because I am still with Liesel Meminger...

[BookWyrm]

After finally finishing Darrell Schweitzer's Mask of the Sorcerer, I'm starting Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House.

So far: I'm impressed by the writing, Shirley Jackson is defining her characters through their shortcomings. I feel bad for Eleanor, her shortcomings remind me of my own, (not that I am self-pitying), she is shy, paranoid and prone to fancy. Luke is just a spoiled brat from a privileged family. He is a liar and a thief. Theodora seems brave, maybe overconfident, and utterly self-obsessed. She seems like the type that would overlook a lot of what Luke could pull off(making her a possible victim of his in the future?). Shirley Jackson has prepared a psychological mess. I'm so pumped. :read:

[Bellis]

I'd been meaning to pick up some Capote ever since the Philip Seymour Hoffman bioflick.... In True Blood puts all the true story fictionalizations of Dave Eggers and Steve Lopez quite to shame. The Grass Harp is just a strangel;y lyrical single sitting, actually single breath, exhale.

Also:

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders - a fine short story collection by Daniyal Mueenuddin, all about class non-mobility in modern Pakistan.

The History of Love - Nicole Krauss - above average for a lit-fic darling, really very nice

The Egyptian - Mika Waltari - I can totally see why this stands out among historical fiction fans, but too much of it dragged for me to unreservedly sing its praises. It's also really depressing.

[RedEyedGhost]

I'm half way through Lamentation, and it's very good... but not good enough to make me finish before starting Charlie Huston's My Dead Body which I'm now ~20% through.

So that means I still need to do write ups for Grave Peril, MultiReal, Darker Angels, and the excellent Memiors of a Master Forger by William Heaney... :/

[Larry.]

Been reading some interesting books lately. Almost done with the Library of America anthology of H.P. Lovecraft's stories. Very good, plus I love LoA's books as artifacts. Dave Eggers' The Wild Things is very moving in places and at worst is merely very solid. It's a loose adaptation of the screenplay that he and Spike Jonze wrote of Maurice Sendak's classic Where the Wild Things Are.

Read three graphic novels today. The adaptation of the fairy tale The Brave Little Tailor, by Olga Dungina and Andrej Dungin is very nicely-rendered. On a recommendation, I imported the two-volume Sharaz-De by Italian artist/author Sergio Toppi. Very good, raw imagery there highlights a nice adaptation of The Arabian Nights.

William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch and Clive Barker's The Books of Blood were as good as I expected.

Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse took a while before I warmed up to it, but the ending is superb.

Finally, I just finished reading Jeff VanderMeer's just-released Booklife: Strategies and Survival Tips for the 21st-Century Writer. Kinda surreal to see my name in full there, but this book will receive a very positive review from me not because of that or because I've come to know the author, but because there are so many helpful tips for writers...and even for people such as myself who aim to be essayists more than fiction writers.

So a review of Booklife and a review of VanderMeer's Finch (just went on sale on Amazon, although it won't be out in regular stores until Nov. 3) will go live on my blog either tomorrow or early in the week.

[beniowa]

I got a good portion into Redemption Ark before being tempted by Charlie Huston's My Dead Body. It's a bit of a step up from the last book, which was mostly setup. The final book in the series had plenty of action and plot resolution as well as resolutions for most of the major characters and players. Joe Pitt got some character evolution without changing too much. On the negative side, the book dragged in a couple places while skimping in others. The ending for Joe was a little surprising for Huston, but was believable. Definitely a series to be recommended.

Now back to Redemption Ark by Alastair Reynolds.

[mashiara]

All you people reading My Dead Body... I should just break down and order it.

I read Stephen King's Just After Sunset. Short stories are a tricky thing and I think King used to do a lot better than that, most of them felt weak to me. I did enjoy some of them and it's kind of ironic that my favorite was The Cat from Hell, which he admits is one of his old ones.

I read Mariana by Katherine Vaz. It's a book that is based on the story of a Portuguese Nun who wrote 5 famous (infamous?) passionate love letters back in 1667 or so, after her affair with a French officer. While there still is a debate going on about whether she was indeed the author of those letters, the book followed her from her early years and her forced entry into the convent -something very common those days- to her death. It was an interesting read and I enjoyed it, even though the writing made me sigh at times.

Last book I read was Eurydice Street: A Place in Athens by Sofka Zinovieff. Anyone who's thinking about moving here or anyone who's truly interested in modern Greece should read this book. It's not a novel, it's more of a memoir, if you want to call it that. The author had visited Greece as a student and loved it, then later on married a Greek abroad and twenty years later they decided to move back here with their kids. The book shows how she dealt with her first year here, how great the shock was at times and how different from her expectations, and how come she came to discover things of beauty even among all the crazy moments here. Many of you have heard me rant about the insanity that reigns here at times, this book deals with this honestly and has a perfect humorous, passionate and at times ironic view of modern Athens and its citizens. It offers great insight about living and surviving in modern Greece and I only wish there were more pages to it.

Later today I hope to start Carol by Patricia Highsmith.

[Peadar]

I finished My Dead Body by Charlie Huston.

Up next, The Devil You Know by Mike Carey.

[TheEvilKing]

Finished The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle. A nice change of pace from dark, modern, epic fantasy.

Next up is Nick Harkaway's The Gone-Away World.

[delete this account pls]

All you people reading My Dead Body... I should just break down and order it.

I just did. :)

[Isis]

I found Joe Abercrombie's Best Served Cold to be a perfectly acceptable airplane read, mostly well-constructed though I would say the characters weren't as memorable as in The First Law. But I've found that in general, his style of writing and plotting is not really my cup of tea. Which is odd because I like KJ Parker, who is arguably more cynical and darker and purposeless. Sorry Isis - I suspect we disagree on this author.

I don't think we're radically far apart in our views actually. The only thing I've read so far by Parker is the Engineer Trilogy (I have The Company close to the top of the TBR pile though), which I thought was brilliant - probably the best thing I read that year in fact. I enjoyed and admired it so much - it really lit something on fire inside of me. And I can't get enough of that dark, realistic, non-happy ending style.

The are lots of things I enjoy about Joe's writing. For example, I do tend to give credit for anyone who writes something that flows well and is easy to read* - where an author does something that takes me out of the story for even a second then we start dropping points in terms of scoring that book. I consider 'easy to read' and 'great storyteller' to be two different qualities. Sometimes an author is both, sometimes not. I'd put Joe into the first category and Pat Rothufss into the second category (the classic example of a great storyteller being Le Guin). I'm going to stop there and not get into a detailed analysis, but suffice it to say I think that we're thining along the same lines in that Joe writes books that entertain us, but that there is definitely room in the 'books I genuinely loved' club for K J Parker. Hopefully that makes some sense even though I just rambled along the surface.

*Obviously, a book can be great and not be easy to read.

[Werthead]

I'm re-reading Rob Grant's Incompetence.

I'd forgotten how flat-out hilarious this book is from start to finish.

"Did you still consider him a threat?"

"We already had reports that the man had fired shots at police officers expediting their duty. We couldn't afford to take chances with public safety."

"And you don't think firing a heat-seeking missile on the main public motorway to Munich was in any way compromising the public safety?"

"No."

"Especially since the missile missed its intended target and instead obliterated a small tanning factory, killing several cows?"

"The cattle were all scheduled for slaughter anyway."

"So it's all right for the police to blow them to chunks of stewing meat with a heat-seeking missile?"

"Yes."

[Bellis]

I broke down and went to the Barnes and Noble to get My Dead Body. I'm glad I did. It starts off very strong, though the ending is somewhat weaker. But overall, this is a good series, and so different from what I normally read that I'm glad I read it.

[kcf]

I finished up Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld - this one is pretty good. Probably the most enjoyable steampunk I've ever read (and yes, it's YA). Full review.

Back to Fast Ships Black Sails edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer while I wait for TGS.