Reposado Posted June 18, 2011 Share Posted June 18, 2011 So far in June I've read Road Dogs and LaBrava by Elmore Leonard. Road Dogs was awesome, LaBrava much less so.Then Flashman's Lady by Frasier. 11 Flashmans down, 2 to go. I've read them sporadically and completely out of order. Did a GOT re-read inspired by the show and am now trying out the first Mazalon book. Don't like it so far but will finish since the book store is tough to get to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mashiara Posted June 18, 2011 Share Posted June 18, 2011 I think my favorite Heyer books are The Toll Gate and The Unknown Ajax. Most of her books are eminently rereadable.Thanks for the recommendation! :) I'll add those to my list and maybe I'll get around to reading them eventually. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aschwiig Posted June 19, 2011 Share Posted June 19, 2011 I'm slowly working my way through authors recommended some time back in a thread on weird fiction, and have just finished Hidden Camera by Zoran Zivkovic, which I enjoyed a great deal. I wonder if his other books are comparable in quality; I'm certain to pick up whatever I can find by him. Also just finished M. John Harrison's The Centauri Device, which I had to struggle to finish. I'll still probably try the Viriconium sequence (which was mentioned upthread).I'm currently reading a couple of crime novels by Jo Nesbø, The Redbreast and The Devil's Cross. He sells in ridiculous amounts in my country, and is also widely available in translation. Although I'm only a casual reader of crime fiction, I think I can see why. They're well constructed, urgent, and have both an intriguing protagonist and a nice set of supporting characters. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guinevere Seaworth Posted June 19, 2011 Share Posted June 19, 2011 I just finished by re-read of A Game of Thrones. I had been reading a bunch of mediocre novels before and it was refreshing to read a well written novel with great characters and plot.It was an interesting re-read since I kept seeing the HBO series scenes and actors in my head when I read certain passages. I did not realize how much of the dialogue they used from the books (for instance Cat's conversation with Walder Frey took me by surprise as I did not know the TV took the text as verbatim *her honey is mine* :shocked: ) A Clash of Kings is next. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eponine Posted June 19, 2011 Share Posted June 19, 2011 Finished ASOS reread. I start really getting into the series about halfway through ACOK, and starting falling out a little about 2/3 through ASOS. The end of ASOS is so much about Jon and I absolutely hate how everything just comes together for him, how his enemies are such cartoons and how all the deaths of other people on the Wall kind of feel like they were put there to clear a path for emo boy. But then of course the end of Sansa chapters is so very satisfying :)Starting AFFC - and finding that I barely remember most of it - I remember the general story lines but not who is who in Dorne and Iron Islands. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SkynJay Posted June 20, 2011 Share Posted June 20, 2011 I had been reading a bunch of mediocre novels before and it was refreshing to read a well written novel with great characters and plot.Why are you reading all the mediocre novels? Since finding this forum I have only read a couple of duds, so many great recommendations are tossed out daily. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guinevere Seaworth Posted June 20, 2011 Share Posted June 20, 2011 Why are you reading all the mediocre novels? Since finding this forum I have only read a couple of duds, so many great recommendations are tossed out daily.One was a board rec that I'm not sure if I liked it or not, (Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver), another I knew was going to be mediocre, but being a completionist I had to finish the series ( Auel's The Land of Painted Caves) and the other was a recommended YA novel that didn't work for me (Cashore's Fire).Granted, the vast majority of the rec here on this board have been awesome. Hopefully my bad luck is over. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emberling Posted June 20, 2011 Share Posted June 20, 2011 Why are you reading all the mediocre novels? Since finding this forum I have only read a couple of duds, so many great recommendations are tossed out daily.It's easy when your tastes and the board's don't mesh very well - or when you care much more about reading something that's to your taste than reading something that's high quality. Think of it like how you probably prefer reading a decent fantasy to reading Gatsby, Moby-Dick, or Ulysses - only much moreso.I've fallen out of love with epic/traditional/multi-pov fantasy, so I have plenty of books recommended by the board that I just can't push myself to read, that are 'duds' for me even if they're fantastic books. The Blade Itself, Toll the Hounds - both bought on release day and still unread past the first 10 pages or so because they just fell flat. Finally found a copy of Hawkwood's Voyage to the same result. Not even bothering to try Rothfuss. FWIW, Fire fell similarly flat with me, though it's much closer to how my current tastes run.Not to mention that I read fast enough and often enough that I could easily plow through the board's recommendations faster than they come (assuming I liked them, or that I discard ones I don't like as soon as I know, because if the book I'm reading is boring things go much slower). And I've had 10 years to catch up with much of the back-log. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ormond Posted June 20, 2011 Share Posted June 20, 2011 Since my last post in this thread I've finished reading:Forest of a Thousand Daemons by D. O. Fagunwa, translated by Wole Soyinka. This was really more like a series of folk tales strung together by a loose narrative than a novel. But it was very interesting to read an African fantasy book. Some of the fantastic characters, like Ajantala, the strongest infant in the world, were quite interesting. It was fun to see what sort of fantastic conceits Yoruba culture came up with.The Etched City by K. J. Bishop. This is evidently this Australian author's only book. I think a lot of GRRM fans would like it. It's a "low magic" fantasy set in a rather violent and unjust alternative world. One of the two main viewpoint characters is a jaded woman physician, and the other is a former mercenary soldier turned into an organized crime lieutenant. The latter is guilty of several atrocities. Bishop does remind me a bit of Gene Wolfe and Stephen Donaldson in being an author who likes to use obscure vocabulary. She does a good job, however, of describing the squalor and danger of a large tropical city with a thriving criminal underworld. It's a book that deserves to be better known by those on this board than it seems to be. I have now just started Show Business by Shsshi Tharoor, a comic novel about an actor in India's Bollywood film industry. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nickg Posted June 21, 2011 Share Posted June 21, 2011 Reading The January Dancer by Michael Flynn. I wasn't exactly drawn in at first, but I really enjoyed the writing style. Something about his prose just clicked with me, and I was hooked pretty soon.Up Jim River is the sequel. Will most likely read it next. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Contrarius Posted June 21, 2011 Share Posted June 21, 2011 I am now re-listening-to Shadow of the Torturer. Anyone who suffered through the original recordings of these books MUST give themselves the pleasure of hearing the new version. Just sooooooo much better. :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry. Posted June 21, 2011 Share Posted June 21, 2011 Reading a lot of cross-genre works. Just finished reading Matthea Harvey/Amy Jean Porter's Of Lamb, which is much more than the sum of its parts. Also finished Shirley Jackson's Hangsaman, which was a nice slow burn to an explosive conclusion and Blake Butler's Scorch Atlas. which was a decent experimental read. Reading some of the recent McSweeney's issues now. good stuff on the whole. Last week, I read the new Minister Faust e-book, Journey to Mecha, Chris Adrian's The Great Night, and C.E. Morgan's All the Living. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterbound Posted June 21, 2011 Share Posted June 21, 2011 Finishing up Evolutionary Void, after that i'm gonna chew up Feed, although i started reading when it was first released and hated the intro.. have to give it another shot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
siemprepe Posted June 21, 2011 Share Posted June 21, 2011 Finished the iron wars by Kearney and can't wait to finish the last two books.But this weekend I found a second hand copy of Baudolino by Umberto Eco (a book that I never heard about).The blurb seemed interesting and now I am 150 pages in and the book is really entertaining. So I am glad that I picked this up even though I didn't hear about it upfront. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Contrarius Posted June 21, 2011 Share Posted June 21, 2011 Baudolino is great. Just be prepared for a lot of esoteric absurdities. ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lummel Posted June 21, 2011 Share Posted June 21, 2011 Seconded. Baudolino is one of my all time favourites. Romps through one medieval myth after another.If you've read anything else by Eco and liked it then don't deprive yourself of Baudolino. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blackwater Posted June 21, 2011 Share Posted June 21, 2011 someone recomended jim butcher's dresden file series and i started with first. it was boring. maybe the second will be better if i find time to read it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
palin99999 Posted June 21, 2011 Author Share Posted June 21, 2011 Finished:The White Luck Warrior by R. Scott Bakker - 9/10Starting my re-read of ASoIaF Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Contrarius Posted June 21, 2011 Share Posted June 21, 2011 someone recomended jim butcher's dresden file series and i started with first. it was boring. maybe the second will be better if i find time to read it.The first two are not as good as the rest of the series. Don't give up yet! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seli Posted June 21, 2011 Share Posted June 21, 2011 I finished Seeds of the earth by Michael Cobley. I think there is a story in there, but the author went too crazy with the SF decoration, resulting in a book I would not recommend. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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