November 2010 Reads

[wolverine]

Started Towers of Midnight after finishing Davey this weekend. Wish I had more time to read and wish Perrin could have been killed off 3 books ago.

[WhiteHaven]

Started Towers of Midnight after finishing Davey this weekend. Wish I had more time to read and wish Perrin could have been killed off 3 books ago.

You tellin me that this sucker is living that long? Shit, I am reading Volume four and he is going on my nerves.

Well, as long as none of the boys think this again:

Mat knew his way around with girls but not he, Perrin/ Rand always how to treat women /Perrin was the shit when it came down to lay down women/ zomg we are fucking emos

I'll be glad.

[The Evil Hat]

You tellin me that this sucker is living that long? Shit, I am reading Volume four and he is going on my nerves.

Well, as long as none of the boys think this again:

Mat knew his way around with girls but not he, Perrin/ Rand always how to treat women /Perrin was the shit when it came down to lay down women/ zomg we are fucking emos

I'll be glad.

Yeah, they might mention that a few more times.

[Tehol]

towers of midnight.

i......i hated it, there said it.

because of this steaming pile of sh**t now i hate words like gasped,growled,grunt, and light!

why keep reading this?because i need to know how this ends,that's all i care about now.

[Cuchulain]

Finished John Wyndham's The Midwich Cuckoos. Not a bad novel, but a bit dull at times.

I also read Michael Chabon's The Final Solution. It's a well-written tribute to Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, but I found the plot a bit underwhelming. Maybe my expectations were too high.

As I'm doing my Master's thesis partly on hard-boiled detective fiction, I intend to read several of the genre's classics. First up is Chandler's Farewell, My Lovely.

[beniowa]

Last night I finished Veteran by Gavin Smith. This debut novel is marketed as a "gritty" scifi in the same vein as Altered Carbon and I can certainly see the similarities. Veteran isn't quite as well written and has a fairly predictable plot, but it's a pretty entertaining read. It also has a wider scope than Morgan's book and the grittiness doesn't seem as forced. All in all, I'm looking forward to more books by this author.

Up next is The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack by Mark Hodder.

[Guinevere Seaworth]

Whew, 7 thick books later I finally finished Kate Elliott's Crown of Stars series. I thought she tied up the loose plot threads nicely without it being too rushed. Overall, I enjoyed the series even though it could've been 1 or 2 books shorter. I would read more of Kate Elliott novels in the future.

I need a break from fantasy and plan on reading Bill Bryson's At Home: A Short History of Private Life next. I loved his A Short History of Nearly Everything, and this is along the same vein except he talks about the history of kitchens, bathrooms, bedrooms, ect.

[nickg]

Just finished Shogun by James Clavell. I can't believe I am only just getting around reading it, or that I let it sit on my bookshelf for 2 years. Great book. I haven't been up until 4 in the morning reading in quite a while.

[siemprepe]

Reading towers of midnight and shadowmarsh.

Reading is going to go a lot slower since I am also reading a lot of computer related books now.

[palin99999]

Finished:

Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane - 7.5/10

Starting:

Small Crimes by Dave Zeltserman

Rilke on Black by Ken Bruen

[Raskolnikov]

Just finished Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. It was my first Murakami read, and I was pleasantly surprised. Will definitely read other Murakami novels from now on.

I just started The Passage. No comment yet.

[Horza]

Been really getting back into this 'reading' thing:

William Gibson's Zero History - an alright but slightly too gentle denoument to his 'sci-fi of the present' trilogy(?) - anyone with a passing memory of Pattern Recognition (which I also read this month. I read Spook Country first because I believe* in in medias res, punks) can unpack the central M(a)cGuffin pretty damn quick and while he has at times dialled the edginess too high in certain books I felt the pendulum went too far in the other direction with this one.

Paul Kearney's Monarchies of God. I really enjoyed the first few volumes - it was like ASoIaF with gunpowder and werewolves but somewhere along the way it went from a vast, epic series of events to 'Corfe vs The Drooling Inbred Aristocrats of Torun (and some Merduks)' resulting in a heavily rushed final volume what was deeply unsatisfying (apparently earlier editions were slimmer still... :o ).

In a Time of Treason by David Keck. Apparently everyone hates this guy and his books? Eh. I really dig 'em. Some of his prose can be a little oblique but he summons up a creaking, haunted, mythbound old Kingdom while paradoxically keeping it muddy, bloody and steeped in the dismal realities of medieval life - folks you can smell the shit and sheep fat dripping off the books :D Characterisation and pacing could be better and where In the Eye of Heaven was a bit of a slow burner Treason swings into almost Eriksonesque epic territory - though the prowling hellhounds and grim omens could stand to be scaled back by say, a third.

David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet had been on my list for ages and I was right into it from the get-go. A lot of the commentary around it seems to reflect a disappointment that after dumping a bildungsroman on us he hasn't gone and written Cloud Atlas II: Cloud Harder. Pah, I say. The customary command of setting, voice, narrative and that rich, warm, humanism and sense of wonder are there in spades and about the only quibble I have is a few themes were a little too familiar (Shiranui/Papa Song's...).

* no I don't

[Grack21]

In a Time of Treason by David Keck. Apparently everyone hates this guy and his books? Eh. I really dig 'em. Some of his prose can be a little oblique but he summons up a creaking, haunted, mythbound old Kingdom while paradoxically keeping it muddy, bloody and steeped in the dismal realities of medieval life - folks you can smell the shit and sheep fat dripping off the books :D Characterisation and pacing could be better and where In the Eye of Heaven was a bit of a slow burner Treason swings into almost Eriksonesque epic territory - though the prowling hellhounds and grim omens could stand to be scaled back by say, a third.

I enjoy Keck(man that sounds like a dirty word) quite a bit, but those books certainly aren't for everyone. They're really bizarre, and kind of remind me of what it's like to be on ambien. They remind me a bit of Wolfe's The Wizard Knight, another serious that gets alot of love/hate.

[Horza]

True. There's this trippy, John Boorman's Excalibur quality to his work that really rewards tuning in. Though, again, for all that he has a really good line in broken teeth, muck and toil.

[Inkdaub]

I am about two thirds through Jemison's The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms and I am enjoying it. So far it's an impressive debut no question. I liked the description of the second book more than this one so I am actually looking forward to this one ending so I can get to the second. Something about Jemison's writing is pleasant to read and is a bit different from other fantasy I have read. Her prose isn't as flowery...her sentences a little more direct...I don't know that I can put my finger on it exactly.

I will read either Connelly's 9 Dragons or Abercrombie's The Blade Itself next.

[Cuchulain]

Finished two Raymond Chandler novels: Farewell, My Lovely and The Long Goodbye. The two novels are different (FML is very action-focused, while TLG is more about creating a mood and offering social criticism), but both are great. Also, I love Philip Marlowe. He's one of the great characters of twentieth-century literature.

[RobMRobM]

I finished Towers of Midnight - enjoyed it. I rank it a hair above The Gathering Storm. I agree with commenters that Perrin is aggravating in the early part of the book but that gets much better later. Also agree there were a few plot developments I expected to be addressed in the book that didn't make it in - but I really enjoyed some of the creepy things happening in one particular location right near the end.

I also read Cryoburn, which is typically well done Bujold/Vorkosigan. Not as good as my favorites (Mirror Dance and Memory) but solid. Very nice ending, which makes the book worth reading for Bujold fans. Best part for those interested in reading Vorkosigan books is there is a disk included that has for free all of the Vorkosigan books and novellas except for Memory (which seems to have been forgotten). I did my own reread of these books in anticipation of Cryoburn coming out and it was nice to read the ones I hadn't got to (novel Shards of Honor and the novellas Borders of Infinity and Labyrinth). Will say it again - if you are interested in what these books are about, Baen books has free on line the brilliant Nebula/Hugo winning novella The Mountains of Mourning, in which Miles has to investigate a babykilling in backcountry Barryar. If that doesn't get someone excited about reading the other books in the series, nothing will.

Also finished Hiassen's Star Island, one of his madcap South Florida books about a Britney Spears-type trainwreck and her very sane actress-double who get kidnapped by an aggravated papparazzo. Fun read, but not up to his best (e.g., Skinny Dip).

Am now about to start re-reading Erickson's Deadhouse Gates to coincide with Tor.com re-read and will also start Simmons' Hyperion. I've never read any of his and am excited about it.

Rob

[Gormenghast]

Started, and wrote down some impressions, The Tyranny of the Night by Glen Cook.

It has the potential to be better than even the Black Company for me.

[Bellis]

All Clear by Connie Willis. A readable sequel to Blackout, with some unexpected developments at the end. But waay over-written.

[Returned]

Just ordered bakker's first trilogy, since it seems to be so popular around these parts.