June 2011 Reading Thread

[Peadar]

I enjoyed the sample chapters of Miéville's Embassytown enough to order the whole thing.

I also liked the first part of Gaiman's Sandman comic series (Preludes and Nocturnes) and have bought the second one.

[IheartTesla]

About midway through this month, I realized I hadnt read the third Dunk and Egg story, so I purchased the Warrior's anthology. After finishing The Mystery Knight (which was good), I turned my attention to the rest of the stories. And it turned out to be a weak selection. I mean, Sturgeon's law should have warned me, but you'd at least expect an anthology to have some quality stuff to beat the odds.

[Calibandar]

Reading The Book of Lost Things. Haven't read it in several years, but it is absolutely one of my all time favorites. I was actually a little worried about re reading it, but I'm having a slow day at work, and don't think I have looked up from this book in 4 hours

Seriously? You can read a book for hours straight at work? What do you do?

[nickg]

I'm a machinist and an emt. Both get slow sometimes, but my machine runs for 30+ hours at a time, depending on the parts I'm making. Yes, its awesome.

Not much that I can during the run time, so there are some nights where I dont have much to do other than make sure nothing goes wrong. As long as I program it properly, and set it up correctly I have 8-12 hours with little to do.

[Ayx]

About one third of the way through Quantum Thief, what a pleasant surprise. Excellent cyberpunk with a bit of retro feel, very engaging and interesting world-building that would have been easy to overdo, but its done exactly right.

To compare to other series/world-building, I would say its of similar to:

Diamond Age

Aristoi

Culture

Takeshi Kovacs series without the gore

Translation is great except for one thing that could have been done better, except Sobornost would have sounded better as "Commonality".

[Datepalm]

About one third of the way through Quantum Thief, what a pleasant surprise. Excellent cyberpunk with a bit of retro feel, very engaging and interesting world-building that would have been easy to overdo, but its done exactly right.

To compare to other series/world-building, I would say its of similar to:

Diamond Age

Aristoi

Culture

Takeshi Kovacs series without the gore

Translation is great except for one thing that could have been done better, except Sobornost would have sounded better translated also to something like "Commonality".

I thought it was written in English? (And the russianisms, frenchisms, hebrewisms and whatever i've missed deliberate.)

[-42-]

The Naked Ape.

[Ayx]

I thought it was written in English? (And the russianisms, frenchisms, hebrewisms and whatever i've missed deliberate.)

Doh! I had him mixed up with someone. There was recently a mention of a new Polish author coming out with a cyberpunk book, that would be translated into English soon, and I assumed that Quantum Thief was that one.

My mistake. Still pretty awesome book, hopefully last 2/3rds will be as strong as the opening.

[SkynJay]

Good god, a third of the way through The Wise Man's Fear, and we are

Still in this damn school

?

The author tells an interesting story, but is crazy. This book is only supposed to be a trilogy right?

Ok, rant off, and I really am enjoying the thing.

[Guinevere Seaworth]

I finished A Clash of Kings re-read. I think this one is still my favorite of the bunch. I love all the political machinations in King's Landing and the Battle of Blackwater Bay remains as my favorite battle. It just too bad that Danaerys gets so little "screen" time in this one. I just can't wait to see the King's Landing scenes in season 2 of Game of Thrones. I like Storm too, but it is so bleak in parts (notably the RW).

I also read Johanna's Spyri's Heidi. I needed something short and sweet after reading epic doorstoppers. It was a cute story and I quite enjoyed it despite being a children's book.

I've already started A Storm of Swords re-read.

[Bahimiron]

Finished Purgatory Chasm, which was an awesome first outing. A great pickup for anyone who'd like to get in on the ground floor of what's likely to be a nice series of potboilers about an amateur sleuth solving crimes in a shitty Boston suburb.

Currently reading Sebastian Junger's War. Depressing.

Trying to decide what to cram in before ADWD hits in two weeks. I usually read pretty slow so I was going to go for something short, but I do have a couple of long plane rides next week and this weekend is going to be a long weekend, so maybe I could handle something a bit longer so long as it read quickly. Thinking of A Shadow in Summer or The Folding Knife for something shorter, with ASiS giving me a series to go back to and finish up after ADWD, or Red Seas Under Red Skies which is longer, but which is also a sequel to a book I really enjoyed and which has a sequel coming out (hopefully) within the year.

Choices choices.

This book is only supposed to be a trilogy right?

I'm getting pretty sure that the trilogy of Kvothe telling Chronicler about his life is going to turn out to just be a springboard into another series about Kvothe's modern adventures.

[Reposado]

About midway through this month, I realized I hadnt read the third Dunk and Egg story, so I purchased the Warrior's anthology. After finishing The Mystery Knight (which was good), I turned my attention to the rest of the stories. And it turned out to be a weak selection. I mean, Sturgeon's law should have warned me, but you'd at least expect an anthology to have some quality stuff to beat the odds.

Did the exact same thing. Only read Warriors 1 in paperback and, like you, didn't find much interesting other than D&E. Now I want go back and reread TSS but can't find my copy.

I posted earlier this month but it is still June. After quitting Mazalan, I read the aforementioned anthology, then Last Call by Powers. I was looking for Anubis Gates after reading the book list thread, but the B&N only had Last Call and Stranger Tides. Didn't love it, but liked it enough to put the rest of the Powers catalog on my to-read list. Next I have Autumn of the Patriarch (saw it in same thread, had read several by Marquez but not that one) and then a re-read of ACOK. That should take me into July.

[nickg]

Reading Anno Dracula by Kim Newman. Its awesome, I'm dumb for not reading it sooner. I had somehow convinced myself that I wouldn't like it.

Anyone know if his Warhammer stuff is any good? Might give it a try.

[Bellis]

I finished Sleight of Hand, a short story collection by Peter S Beagle. Beagle is one of those authors, like Gene Wolfe, who's operating on an entirely different level of brilliance, and he doesn't disappoint.

I'm also re-reading AFFC on my new Kindle :)

[beniowa]

I finished Sleight of Hand, a short story collection by Peter S Beagle. Beagle is one of those authors, like Gene Wolfe, who's operating on an entirely different level of brilliance, and he doesn't disappoint.

I'm also re-reading AFFC on my new Kindle :)

I finished Sleight of Hand recently myself and completely agree.

I also finished my re-read of A Storm of Swords. Monster of a book, but a fantastic read.

Then I read Feed by Mira Grant and I kind of wish I hadn't. I'm not really a zombie fan, though the political angle did catch my interest. Nevertheless, it took the Hugo short list to get me to pick it up. Thank goodness I didn't have any expectations because I'm afraid the book would have failed to meet them. I did think Grant (aka McGuire) did a good job imagining civilization after a zombie uprising, but I did have some problems with her premises regarding the actual virus as well as the evolution of media/blogging. I hoped the political conspiracy might save it, but frankly I didn't find it believable. It was plausible yes, but not believable. It wasn't even original either. It might have helped if the characters were compelling, but I found them boring, stupid, or both. Oh well.

Like Bellis (oops Belle now ;)), I'm reading A Feast for Crows.

[Larry.]

Currently alternating between several books, including the following:

David Anthony Durham, The Sacred Band (Oct. 2011 release)

Drew Magary, The Postmortal (Sept. 2011 release)

Douglas Perry, The Girls of Murder City: Fame, Lust, and the Beautiful Killers Who Inspired Chicago

Lila Azam Zanganeh, The Enchanter: Nabokov and Happiness

[PeterWilliam]

Finished Abraham's The Dragon's Path last night. While 2011 is only half over, it's already the front-runner for my 'read of the year.' While I could not stand the ending to the Long Price series, The Dragon's Path was great at piquing interest and laying the foundation for a very promising series. There were a handful of POVs, all of characters trapped amidst inexorable circumstances. Abraham has some great characters going with this one. Everything about the Sinir Kushku alone was worth the read.

Books 3 through 6 of Tchaikovsky's Shadows of the Apt arrived yesterday, so moving on with Blood of the Mantis. This series has been better than average so far, but I'm stuck waiting for it to really 'break out.' Hope it does.

[Daeric]

For some weird reason the sister dropped off a couple of random books at the house the other day and I started reading John O'Farrell's An Utterly Impartial History of Britain, or 2000 Years of Upper Class Idiots In Charge.

His humour in some parts of it fairly strange and doesn't fit and in other parts its amusing. He does at least get most of his facts correct even through alot of the times hes only dealing with a certain period in the broadest of terms.

[jdiddyesquire]

Currently alternating between several books, including the following:

David Anthony Durham, The Sacred Band (Oct. 2011 release)

Ridiculously eager to get my hands on this.

[Teng Ai Hui]

Just finished A Shadow in Summer and was disappointed. IMO, it didn't live up the praise given it here. The plot was interesting, but I couldn't get emotionally invested in any of the characters. Another problem I had was that I never believed the antagonist could ever be defeated.

I'm not sure what to read next, Red Mars most likely.