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October Reads


mashiara

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Hmm...sounds like I should read The Scar.

Yes, read it now. I would recommend reading Perdido Street Station first, but it doesn't matter that much. There are only some minor connections. I seem to be in the minority in that I actually preferred Perdido slightly over The Scar.

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Shadow of the torturer ended in a really weird place, in my opinion, although as I got closer to the ending, I had a feeling it would happen. Sort of reminded me of A Feast for Crows when I hit the "Meanwhile, on the Wall" thing. Had to re-adjust to Claw of the Conciliator - I'm 40-50 pages in, I think, and finally getting used to things

the abrupt disappearance of most of the characters from SotT. I knew Dorcas would disappear, but not everyone else except Jonas, who the reader hardly knew at that point, too!

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Almost finished with "Changes" by Jim Butcher. Wow, this book has been super entertaining so far. If the ending holds up, it will definitely elevate the entire series to new heights. Hope to finish Side Jobs and Ghost Story just in time for the release of Cold Days at the end of November. Then I will finally be all caught up on the Dresden Files.

Sort of stuck in the middle of Game of Kings, which has been on hold while I read about three Dresden File books in a row. It's starting to get better though.

Plan to start "Love in the Time of Cholera" later today.

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50 pages into Forge of Darkness, and I can definitely see what Erikson was saying about a style change for this trilogy. So far it's definitely more of a closed-in, intimate atmosphere, with the narrative unfolding in a more "traditional" point A to point B manner. And the prose is probably the best I've read from him, just gorgeous in more than a few spots thus far.

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Almost finished with "Changes" by Jim Butcher. Wow, this book has been super entertaining so far. If the ending holds up, it will definitely elevate the entire series to new heights. Hope to finish Side Jobs and Ghost Story just in time for the release of Cold Days at the end of November. Then I will finally be all caught up on the Dresden Files.

Sort of stuck in the middle of Game of Kings, which has been on hold while I read about three Dresden File books in a row. It's starting to get better though.

Plan to start "Love in the Time of Cholera" later today.

Give yourself some time in between Changes and Ghost Story, I did and I thoroughly enjoyed both of them. A lot of people seem to hate GS because they were expecting more of the same after Changes. I still have about half of the stories in Side Jobs to read... I've been saving them for whenever I need a Dresden fix.

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Yes, read it now. I would recommend reading Perdido Street Station first, but it doesn't matter that much. There are only some minor connections. I seem to be in the minority in that I actually preferred Perdido slightly over The Scar.

I have read PSS. I liked it, but not enough to move onto more Mieville.

Just finished The Left Hand of Darkness. It was a very different and interesting read. I could not read LeGuin's Earthsea stuff, and I can't read a lot of YA books, but The Left hand of darkness is not at all like Earthsea. Genderless humans is such a strange idea to try and even think about.

Up next needs to be one of my smaller paperbacks so it is easy to take hunting. That leaves the following options that interest me right now:

Corvus

Gormenghast

Troy: Lord of the Silver Bow

A Betrayal in Winter

Under Heaven

and a few others I can't think of.

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Up next needs to be one of my smaller paperbacks so it is easy to take hunting. That leaves the following options that interest me right now:

Corvus

Gormenghast

Troy: Lord of the Silver Bow

A Betrayal in Winter

Under Heaven

and a few others I can't think of.

I would go with Under Heaven or Gormenghast.

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I'm obsessed with this Gene Wolfe stuff. It is more Alice in Wonderland than ever. I do feel like every once in awhile something is obvious to me and not to the narrator (just a couple times) but he's supposed to be "unreliable" so maybe that's why? I haven't found him THAT unreliable yet, so I wonder if some big surprise/twist is still coming or what. Sometimes I just find him a bit oblivious.

the Jonas thing, which I thought the author virtually came out and told the reader a few chapters before he picked up on it. I didn't pick up that he was a robot specifically until the "biological materials" part 2-3 chapters before the actual specific "reveal" but even before that Severian seemed slow on the uptake that there was obviously something quite out of the ordinary going on at all, or maybe he was just giving him space? Also, I'm pretty sure Dorcas is the person whose hand he grabbed in the lake with the dead bodies, presumably bringing her back to life, and he still hasn't picked up on it. Maybe I'm just wrong? It seems so obvious though.

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I finished Alastair Reynold's Blue Remembered Earth. I can see why there were a lot of comparisons with 2312. And like 2312, I found the book rather dull and boring. Both books felt like sophomoric efforts to me, which is rather disappointing. Oh well.

Now planning to start Rapture by Kameron Hurley and I'm really looking forward to this one.

I'm obsessed with this Gene Wolfe stuff. It is more Alice in Wonderland than ever. I do feel like every once in awhile something is obvious to me and not to the narrator (just a couple times) but he's supposed to be "unreliable" so maybe that's why? I haven't found him THAT unreliable yet, so I wonder if some big surprise/twist is still coming or what. Sometimes I just find him a bit oblivious.

the Jonas thing, which I thought the author virtually came out and told the reader a few chapters before he picked up on it. I didn't pick up that he was a robot specifically until the "biological materials" part 2-3 chapters before the actual specific "reveal" but even before that Severian seemed slow on the uptake that there was obviously something quite out of the ordinary going on at all, or maybe he was just giving him space? Also, I'm pretty sure Dorcas is the person whose hand he grabbed in the lake with the dead bodies, presumably bringing her back to life, and he still hasn't picked up on it. Maybe I'm just wrong? It seems so obvious though.

The unreliability is certainly part of the obliviousness I'm sure. And Gene Wolfe doesn't really big surprises or sucker punches. He's much more subtle and clever so you really have to pay attention. Which is why, when I was reading Book of the New Sun, I learned to take almost NOTHING at face value.

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Finished the second Book of the New Sun, um, book. Have to take a little break before reading three and four because I have some other stuff to do! Quickly reading Philip K. Dick's "Flow my Tears, the Policeman Said." He's sort of like Raymond Chandler or Bukowski for me. Some books are better than others, but no matter what I almost always enjoy them. There's just a fundamental pleasurable-ness for me to the type of stories they tell, which is ironic because the stories themselves are not usually at all pleasant!

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The Magicians

The Magician King

I loved them both.

Right now I'm reading Winter Ghosts. It's coming across as rather simplistic, although the writing is pretty.

I just started a book titled "The * Magicians" by Lev Grossman. Had never heard of it or him but it sounded interesting. First 20 pages or so are OK. I'll see if it grabs me - I'll usually stick a book out for 50 pages before going on to something else - some authors are slower to get started than others.) I don't mean it's awful so far or anything - just not gripping.

* on edit - my mistake - The "The" in the title is in very small letters between author and "Magicians"

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