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May's What Are You Reading Thread


Werthead

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My readings from this last month.

A Shadow in Summer, by Daniel Abraham. I found the book interesting but I would not number it among the best of the year. I had that feeling of "the plot cannot be that because it's so obvious" and then: "oh, well". I will read the following books though.

Orphans of Chaos, by John C. Wright. I liked this book and I'm looking forward to read the following one of this series.

The Empire of Ice Cream, by Jeffrey Ford. I think that this one is one of the best books of the year. Great stories by a master storyteller. Pick any one of the tales, it does not matter, everyone is magnificient. My favourite is Botch Town, a novella with lots of autobiographical references.

Red Lightning, by John Varley. I consider this novel one of those in which the influence of 11/9 can be more clearly seen. In another discussion about sci-fi in the near future I said that Red Lightning is the counterpoint to Dan Simmons' Olympos. I believe that both books portray the two opposed reactions to those terrible events, two ideological stances and two ways of telling a story: Simmons builds a baroque structure, rich and terrifying in its surface but shallow as the message that tries to convey, Varley, on the other hand weaves what seems to be a light tale of teenage heroes, rockets and space adventure but this story is deep and meaningful. Varley’s answers are not simple because the matters he tries to address are not simple.

Gettysburg, by Stephen W. Sears. I decided to surrender to my American Civil War Buffness and buy this book as well some other from this author. A really interesting book, I couldn't stop reading this one, Sears makes some interesting points about the battles command and considers Meade as the general that did things right in front of Lee who really failed in more than one aspect before, during and after the three days of the battle.

Now I'm reading two books, something that I rarely do but in a stupid moment of weakness I started reading Jeffrey Thomas' Letters from Hades and Nick Mamatas' Move Under Ground at the same time and now I cannot stop reading neither of them. Serves me.

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My boss loaned me a trilogy by an Australian named Fiona something. First book is Myrren's Gift second is Blood and Memory. The author is apparently a friend of Robin Hobb's, and you can clearly see Hobb's "influence" in these books. The problem with these books (so far) is: having horrible and "shocking" things happen to the main characters is pointless if the author doesn't make you care about the characters. Oh, and it turns out her husband is a publisher. :tantrum: Still, the books are fast-moving and fairly entertaining.

snow "the reader's first urge upon reading your description of a horrible rape/murder should not be to laugh" leo

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Joel Spring, Deculturalization and the Struggle for Equality.

Grad school can make it difficult to catch up on the pile of cool SF/F books on our apartment floor.

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Shitty posts in General Chatter.

Yep, me too. Think since I joined this forum I have had less time for reading my book. Mind you it is all the book's fault simply because it sucks ass. It's a Swedish book, in bad bad Swedish, written by a woman called Monika Fagerholm. The book is calles Den Amerikanska Flickan, meaning The American Girl.

Dont read it. It's AWFULL! :tantrum:

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Gettysburg, by Stephen W. Sears. I decided to surrender to my American Civil War Buffness and buy this book as well some other from this author. A really interesting book, I couldn't stop reading this one, Sears makes some interesting points about the battles command and considers Meade as the general that did things right in front of Lee who really failed in more than one aspect before, during and after the three days of the battle.

I might have to let my Civil War nerd out and check this book out. :D I'm almost finished with The Darkness That Comes Before by R. Scott Bakker, and I am definately going to pick up the next book once I get paid. :)

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I feel scattered right now, reading several things, and very little time to read it seems like:

Slogging through The Warrior Prophet, though it's starting to pick up in the final 150 pages. Can't really determine if the slog is because I've only been able to read a few pages at a time

Just started Wodehouse's "Code of the Woosters". Looks to be really fun.

Listening to Harry Potter 5 on my iPod.

Throwing in a short story or two by Connie Willis when I don't feel like reading the others.

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I've just started The Broken Crown by Michelle West. I'm about 70 pages in, and it is rather confusing. I got the sense of being thrown in at the deep end, just like with Erikson. But there is also plenty of interesting stuff to keep me going.

One of only three books I've ever put down without finishing, I found it to be just that bad...

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Godel Escher Bach - the Eternal Golden Braid

I read half of that about 10 years ago. I liked it, but half of it went right over my head. It's high up on the list of books I want to re-read, partly because I think only about a third of it will go over my head now.

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I'm about 250 pages into gardens of the Moon. Its fairly complicated but i am enjoying it. Could be one for the long haul, another epic series to occupy my time.

I'm about 450 pages into Gardens of the Moon. It's really heating up. :thumbsup:

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I always read many books at once. Here are some I'm working on now:

The Civil War: A Narrative (Shelby Foote)

The Chronicles of Narnia (re-read)

The Creators (Boorstein) (re-read)

Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)

The Book of Three (Alexander) (re-re-read)

The Divine Comedy (Dante)

The Book of Knights (Meynard)--This one I got as a recommendation from this site!

The Darkness That Comes Before (Bakker)--Also as a recommendation from this site.

Bulfinch's Mythology (Bulfinch)

Shardik (Adams)

Life in a Medieval Village (Gies)

The Final Gate (Weis/Hickman) (re-read)

Endymion (Simmons)

The Amber Spyglass (Pulman)

Red Harvest (Hammet)

The Dark Tower, book 7 (King)

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