December 2010 Reading Thread

[Arbor Gold]

I'm reading The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan. I've been in the mood for some epic fantasy after reading Matterhorn and rereading East of Eden, so I pulled this one off my shelf and am giving WoT another go. Ten years ago I made it to book...five, maybe? We'll see how far I get this time.

[Biter]

I'm getting started on P.D. James The Children of Men and don't really know how I feel about it yet.

[TheEvilKing]

I'm currently reading The Price of Spring by Daniel Abraham and Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson.

[Astra]

I am going to read A Shadow in Summer by Daniel Abraham

Lots of good reviews on forums and I have got the first book as a free ebook from Tor.

Gave up on this because I didn't find the rest of the series in a decent ebook format.

So, at the moment I am uncertain what to read next:

Tears of Artamon by Sarah Ash

Valen by Carol Berg

Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (although, it is not fantasy and I don't think I want to read non-fantasy at the moment)

Maybe...Warlord Trilogy by Bernard Cornwell?

[Starkess]

My husband got me a Kindle for our anniversary (the paper anniversary, get it? :)), and I've already downloaded way more classics than I can read any time soon. I love reading classics, so I'm gonna gorge on them for a while before I start actually paying money for e-books. (Which I'm still hesitant to do, as if I want to read something enough to BUY it, then I probably want to have a paper copy...but that's just habit speaking I suppose...)

I downloaded Les Miserables, and it's way easier to read now that I'm not trying to force open a 3-pound paperback. So still plugging away at that! (It's freaking long!)

[palin99999]

Finished:

Storm Surge by J.D. Rhoades - 6/10

Starting:

Three on a Light by Victor Gischler

[Stone-Made-Soft]

I've been reading The Games That Changed the Game: The Evolution of the NFL in Seven Sundays by Ron Jaworski. I've finished the chapters on Sid Gillman's Vertical Stretch, Bud Carson's Cover-Two Defense, and Don Coryell's Roving-Y. I'm currently reading the chapter on Walsh's West Coast Offense. I'm enjoying it immensely. I would have appreciated more diagrams though.

[Peadar]

I've just started The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross.

[beniowa]

I finished reading Walking the Tree by Kaaron Warren. It's marketed as fantasy, but it's really set in a post-apocalyptic society living on an island mostly taken up by a gigantic tree. The setting is very interesting and much of the book is taken up with the main cultural practice of the novel's title, in which children and their teachers spend five years visiting all the different communities of the Tree. Unfortunately, the setting doesn't make up for writing, which is clumsy and amateurish. Characters that are supposed to be complex come across as simple, bland, and insipid. The communities themselves just blend together after a while. The book nominally has a plot, but Warren forgets about it for a few hundred pages before finally resolving it and then it just fizzles out. This could have been a much more enjoyable book in the hands of a better writer.

Now reading The Quiet Woman by Christopher Priest.

[Vrana]

Finished Vargas Llosa's The Time of the Hero. Huh, don't think I've ever felt this lukewarm about a nobel laureate before. Will have to give some other books of his a chance.

Now I will try to finish Bulgakov's Master and Margarita. I must have set a world record in loosing half-read copies of this book on trains and buses. Ah well, 7th time's the charm.

[Teng Ai Hui]

I just finished The Blade Itself. I'm not sure what to read next: Before They Are Hanged, Hunger Games, or Book of Evidence.

[Ski the Swift]

Just finished Evan Wright's Generation Kill, wow! It's strange how a book can be so funny, insightful and yet so scary at other times. I'll move onto Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms.

[Lyanna Stark]

"The Quantum Thief" by Hannu Rajaniemi. So far it's brilliant. The techno slang is a bit confusing, but it really adds to the atmosphere. The russian/scandinavian touch feels refreshing and interesting as well. "Sobornost technology" just rolls of the tongue, doesn't it?

[Cuchulain]

Finished Esslemont's Stonewielder last week. It's a great follow-up to RotCG and a worthy addition to the Malazan series.

I also managed to read two of James M. Cain's novels: The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity. Both are great, fast-paced stories that can be finished in one sitting.

I'm not sure what to read next - maybe one of Spillane's Mike Hammer novels.

[Guinevere Seaworth]

I really enjoyed Aliette de Bodard's debut Servant of the Underworld. It is a nice blend of fantasy, historical fiction (Aztec) and a murder mystery. It also reads as standalone novel. I'm looking forward to her next book Harbinger of the Storm.

I think I'll tackle Lion of Ireland by Morgan Llywelyn next.

[Datepalm]

"The Quantum Thief" by Hannu Rajaniemi. So far it's brilliant. The techno slang is a bit confusing, but it really adds to the atmosphere. The russian/scandinavian touch feels refreshing and interesting as well. "Sobornost technology" just rolls of the tongue, doesn't it?

I was really surprised to find out he was Finnish, actually. The writing felt so smoothly...english.

Reading Jasper Kent's Twelve - started a bit slow, but i'm getting into it now, though horror still really isn't my cup of tea, and Gabaldon's Outlander, per recs in the recent romance threads. (even slower)

Next its either Surface Detail or The Windup Girl.

[wolverine]

Finished Towers of Midnight last week and was a little underwhelmed. Read Vance's "The Last Castle" and I thought it rocked. He can really fit a lot of stuff in a very short book. This just happened to be one I found at a local bookstore and it sounded good so I got. The only other book I have read by him is Dragonmasters and that was pretty sweet too.

Think I will start Dune or Lymond #2 next.

[Rooster]

I thought I should start working on my sf backlog so I picked up some Vance books from my shelves, namely Dragon Masters, Languages of Pao, and the Alastor books. DM was a good romp and Pao surprised me positively even for a Vance work. Trullion was one of the few disappointing books I've read by him, Marune wasn't heavy on content but I still liked it a lot, and Wyst was quite good.

Next up was my first Clarke book: The City and the Stars. I was quite surprised by how it didn't feel very dated at all. I definitely have to look up for some additional Clarke for my next shopping spree.

Then I read David Brin's Uplift trilogy, though it's not a trilogy in the traditional sense. I knew Sundiver was separate from the other two but I hadn't realized Uplift War was independent of Startide Rising. It's a shame, because it coloured my expectations on the book. It was good, certainly, but by that time I was itching to read more about the SR posse. That was a damn good book. Sundiver was a pretty nice mystery as well. It's just frustrating that the "trilogy" as a whole raised far more questions than it answered. If anyone can say whether Brin continues this trend in the second trilogy without giving any details, I'd appreciate it.

Next up was Donaldson's Gap Cycle, of which I had read the Real Story way back when, but now decided to cap it off by reading the rest. That was an intense ride filled with excellent characters, plotting, machinations and tension. The lattermost was especially evident in Forbidden Knowledge, which practically bled stress. I have to add another notch for Donaldson besides the Covenant one.

Finally on my sf list I read Dan Simmons' Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion. The cantos is recommended in each and every sf thread created so I thought it was high time to give it a shot. Hyperion was very, very good. Fall of Hyperion not so much. It's not that it was a bad book; it had some brilliant moments, but it didn't compare to its predecessor at all. Kind of like Ilium & Olympos, really. Initially I had thought to continue reading the Endymion set, but reading about space-Yeats tired me so much I went and read Towers of Midnight, which I quite liked even though it had some serious structural issues. It felt like a middle book of a trilogy despite being the thirteenth installment, but at least it whipped up my appetite for A Memory of Light.

[nickg]

Reading Dune which I have never read, then moving on to The Great Hunt. I started Dune last night and could not put it down. For some reason, it made me thing of The Dragon Never Sleeps by Glen Cook, which is a book I absoultely love.

[VarysTheSpider]

I downloaded Les Miserables, and it's way easier to read now that I'm not trying to force open a 3-pound paperback. So still plugging away at that! (It's freaking long!)

It took me a whole summer but sooo worth it. I would have killed to have my Kindle back then though.

I've developed a habit of reading two books at the same time recently. Currently:

Boxer, Beetle by Ned Beauman.

This has kind of blown me away a little bit, partially because I was expecting it to be pretty awful. Firstly, I got it as a present from someone who doesn't know my taste in books too well, which sucked, because then I felt obligated to read it knowing full well it's outside my comfort zone of science-fiction and 19th century Russian literature. Actually, I had no idea what it was about, apart from it not being about either of those things. Secondly, because the author is 25 (the same age as me! The fuck? Why aren't I this good?) Thirdly because it's this young upstart's debut novel, and fourth and fifth because I have absolutely no interest in beetles or boxing. Oh, and my friend mentioned something about the 1930s. "Oh, wow," I exclaimed, with probably too much enthusiasm.

And yet, the more I read, the more I liked, and as I'm nearing the finish I have to say it's really fucking good. At the beginning of the novel, in 2010 London, we are introduced to a man who collects Nazi memorabilia. He spends most of his time in his flat because he's one of the few hundred people in the world to suffer from a medical condition that causes him to sweat piss.

From there we are introduced to one unlikable character after another, as the story shifts back and forth from a 2010 thriller to a 1930s drama (where most of the action is set). In the 1930s the story follows a British aristocrat, an admirer of Hitler and eugenics researcher, who comes across a boxer who he thinks will aid him in his eugenics work. As the book goes on the two stories get more intwined.

There's a lot of different things going on here. Beauman writes just as easily about graphic gay sex or social theory, and it's pretty much all seen from the point of view of pretty distasteful people. The "Fascist dinner party" is probably the highlight so far, as 10 fascists sit around the dinner table and discuss the issues of the day, lurching from the semi-sensible to the lunatic. All of the characters are unique with their own beliefs, quirks and hang ups. And there's awesome dark humour running through the narrative, as someone crashes into people "like a bad idea into a hungry nation". Going to keep my eye of this guy.

The Evolutionary Void by Peter F. Hamilton.

I'll probably write a more substantive post in some Hamilton thread. This guy's my favourite author writing at the moment.

The last of this trilogy hasn't disappointed so far. I just love Hamilton's futures, it's like putting on a comfy pair of slippers, except the slippers have boobs and weapon-enrichments. Everything is so well thought out, so (mostly) plausible. It just never stops being cool, that's what it is. It gives us a positive, hopeful view of the future but doesn't detract from the plot. And yeah, I love the story of the Void too. It's like a homage to the classic tale of farm boy turns hero, but without the good/evil crap... and with more boobs.