Hey!! Let's get some action going! What are we reading?

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I've decided to start reading (or re-reading) the enormous backlog of Baen books I've bought over the last 15 years or so, most of which I've never read

Wow. Your backlog must be much bigger than mine. I also have (nearly) all of Baen's ebook output, but I *have* read nearly all of them.

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by HarryT

For my future reading, to intersperse with the detective novels, I've decided to start reading (or re-reading) the enormous backlog of Baen books I've bought over the last 15 years or so, most of which I've never read

O_o. And I thought I was a hoarder for picking up interesting-looking discounted stuff during Fictionwise sales* to sample and see if I wanted to buy more from the author/imprint later and ending up with a couple hundred titles I have yet to read.

As for me, I've got a backlog of non-leisure reading things and assignments eating up my time, but in between I'm managing to sneak in chapters of Hiromu Arakawa's manga Fullmetal Alchemist, in the French translation by Kurokawa, which they've been recently repackaging in more affordable omnibus editions (only up to tome 9 out of 27 total, though).

It's one of my favourite series, which posits a world in which "science" diverged into alchemy around the time of Newton (at least in the anime), with the principle of Equivalent Exchange being their world's version of the First Law of Thermodynamics, and deals with the effect of an alchemically-based scientific culture brought to "modern" times with technology equivalent to our world (in a non-steampunk manner) and conflict with conquered-neighbour religious beliefs and the mindset of military expansionism enabled by said alchemy.

While I've watched all the original anime adaption (both when it aired on Canada's YTV youth channel in the mid-2000s, and again when I later bought them on sale on DVD and did a nostalgia re-watch last month), I've only read a few scattered volumes of the English-language Viz translation from the library, so it's interesting going through them in order.

I understand the story at some point begins to diverge considerably from the first anime (I've ordered the second FMA anime on Blu-Ray, which is a remake more faithful to the source manga, but won't be receiving the discs for several months yet due to being tied up with another pre-order) because at the time of production, the manga was only halfway finished and the author specifically requested they make up a different ending from what she had planned.

I admit to a certain nostalgia for the original anime ending and follow-up movie, just because I'm a sucker for alternate universe historical crossovers, but it'll be interesting to see how the storyline of the manga actually unfolds (which I expect to find out sooner from watching the second anime than reading, since Kurokawa looks to have been releasing the new omnibuses at 1 every few months at best, though it looks like they're starting to speed up the rate a little).

Kurokawa's editions are pretty nice. They've printed them in the original right-to-left, and have packaged tomes 1-3 in the first omnibus at the same cost as the succeeding 2-tomes-per-omnibus volumes, which is a nice introductory price, and include all the bonus stories and materials and even translate the author's brief introductory remarks for each tome on the front flap as well.

* I actually wish I'd bought more before they collapsed, especially from the sf/f & mystery backlist imprints. Oh B&N, why couldn't you have had one last mega-sale before killing the remains of the once-fatted cow? I would have bought out almost my entire wishlist and you'd have a few more hundred dollars to keep you afloat while your corporate owners squabbled over how best to divvy up the spoils.

[Latinandgreek]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

O_o. And I thought I was a hoarder for picking up interesting-looking discounted stuff during Fictionwise sales* to sample and see if I wanted to buy more from the author/imprint later and ending up with a couple hundred titles I have yet to read.

As for me, I've got a backlog of non-leisure reading things and assignments eating up my time, but in between I'm managing to sneak in chapters of Hiromu Arakawa's manga Fullmetal Alchemist, in the French translation by Kurokawa, which they've been recently repackaging in more affordable omnibus editions (only up to tome 9 out of 27 total, though).

It's one of my favourite series, which posits a world in which "science" diverged into alchemy around the time of Newton (at least in the anime), with the principle of Equivalent Exchange being their world's version of the First Law of Thermodynamics, and deals with the effect of an alchemically-based scientific culture brought to "modern" times with technology equivalent to our world (in a non-steampunk manner) and conflict with conquered-neighbour religious beliefs and the mindset of military expansionism enabled by said alchemy.

While I've watched all the original anime adaption (both when it aired on Canada's YTV youth channel in the mid-2000s, and again when I later bought them on sale on DVD and did a nostalgia re-watch last month), I've only read a few scattered volumes of the English-language Viz translation from the library, so it's interesting going through them in order.

I understand the story at some point begins to diverge considerably from the first anime (I've ordered the second FMA anime on Blu-Ray, which is a remake more faithful to the source manga, but won't be receiving the discs for several months yet due to being tied up with another pre-order) because at the time of production, the manga was only halfway finished and the author specifically requested they make up a different ending from what she had planned.

I admit to a certain nostalgia for the original anime ending and follow-up movie, just because I'm a sucker for alternate universe historical crossovers, but it'll be interesting to see how the storyline of the manga actually unfolds (which I expect to find out sooner from watching the second anime than reading, since Kurokawa looks to have been releasing the new omnibuses at 1 every few months at best, though it looks like they're starting to speed up the rate a little).

Kurokawa's editions are pretty nice. They've printed them in the original right-to-left, and have packaged tomes 1-3 in the first omnibus at the same cost as the succeeding 2-tomes-per-omnibus volumes, which is a nice introductory price, and include all the bonus stories and materials and even translate the author's brief introductory remarks for each tome on the front flap as well.

* I actually wish I'd bought more before they collapsed, especially from the sf/f & mystery backlist imprints. Oh B&N, why couldn't you have had one last mega-sale before killing the remains of the once-fatted cow? I would have bought out almost my entire wishlist and you'd have a few more hundred dollars to keep you afloat while your corporate owners squabbled over how best to divvy up the spoils.

Chapters has been known to have Viz manga on sale, I think I recall a friend of mine picking up the some of the Eng. omnibus editions at Chapters for 30 or 40% off or so.

I am about halfway through the manga (perhaps a bit further), and I really enjoy the series. My local library has copies of the manga so I usually just take out volumes from there. I never got a chance to watch the series on YTV - I wasn't in Canada at the time, but I used to love watching anime on YTV. Funimation does offer free (and legal) viewing of the second Fullmetal Alchemist series on YouTube, both in the subbed and dubbed versions, if you want to get a head start on watching the series before your edition gets delivered. I've watched the first 10 episodes or so.

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by Latinandgreek

Chapters has been known to have Viz manga on sale, I think I recall a friend of mine picking up the some of the Eng. omnibus editions at Chapters for 30 or 40% off or so.

I'm just waiting for Chapters to offer one of their periodic 10% off entire purchase discount coupons for their online store, then I'm going to order the complete box set of the single-volume Viz translations which comes with a bonus tie-in novel (not written by Arakawa) and some kind of poster thingy. The Viz omnibuses are in the same state as the Kurokawa ones, being only partway through the series and on a slow release schedule.

Originally Posted by Latinandgreek

Funimation does offer free (and legal) viewing of the second Fullmetal Alchemist series on YouTube, both in the subbed and dubbed versions, if you want to get a head start on watching the series before your edition gets delivered. I've watched the first 10 episodes or so.

Thanks for the tip. I actually have the 1st and the umpty-somethingth episodes free via iTunes when they were a giveaway promotion, and though I've watched both and am looking forward to viewing more, I'm overall content to wait for the Blu-Rays. I'm not going to have free leisure time to seriously watch anything until this semester is over (and I kind of want to be able to use my computer to do other things while I watch, instead of trying to juggle open windows for the least cluttered viewing/browsing experience). Also, I love bonus features and I've heard there are some fairly good ones included.

[KrisLadau]

Just gave up on Tathea by Anne Perry (I don't quit on a book very often -- this is now one of them).

Yesterday I started East of the Sun by Julia Gregson and can't put it down.

[Latinandgreek]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

I'm just waiting for Chapters to offer one of their periodic 10% off entire purchase discount coupons for their online store, then I'm going to order the complete box set of the single-volume Viz translations which comes with a bonus tie-in novel (not written by Arakawa) and some kind of poster thingy. The Viz omnibuses are in the same state as the Kurokawa ones, being only partway through the series and on a slow release schedule.



Thanks for the tip. I actually have the 1st and the umpty-somethingth episodes free via iTunes when they were a giveaway promotion, and though I've watched both and am looking forward to viewing more, I'm overall content to wait for the Blu-Rays. I'm not going to have free leisure time to seriously watch anything until this semester is over (and I kind of want to be able to use my computer to do other things while I watch, instead of trying to juggle open windows for the least cluttered viewing/browsing experience). Also, I love bonus features and I've heard there are some fairly good ones included.

Chapters has a coupon code for $5 off of online orders of $30 or more. The coupon code for this month is march2013. You can use it on as many orders as you want, and you just change the name of the month to reflect the current month if you use it in the future. I haven't used the coupon these past 2 months, but I've used the code many times in the past.

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by Latinandgreek

Chapters has a coupon code for $5 off of online orders of $30 or more. The coupon code for this month is march2013. You can use it on as many orders as you want, and you just change the name of the month to reflect the current month if you use it in the future. I haven't used the coupon these past 2 months, but I've used the code many times in the past.

I've been slowly buying up deluxe oversize graphic novel editions on my wishlist in small batches with the $5 monthly coupons. But waiting for a 10% (which they seem to do maybe twice a year) for the FMA box set will give me a $14 discount instead of a $5 one.

[Stitchawl]

[quote] Originally Posted by Stitchawl View Post
I'll be glad when I finish it ('11/22/63') and can move on to something else.
Stitchawl

Originally Posted by pilotbob

You certainly seem to be an Outlier in this opinion.

BOb

It's not the first time, and I doubt it will be the last.
I wonder if I was just really psyched up about it from all the comments, and expected more? It's not a 'bad' read, just not the spell-binder I was expecting.


Stitchawl

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by Stitchawl

It's not the first time, and I doubt it will be the last.

I appreciate that different people have different opinions of books. That's what keeps life interesting.

BOb

[Rumpelteazer]

Yesterday, I finished Karin Slaughter's Faithless, another good instalment of the Grant County/Georgia series. However, like many other readers I'm getting a bit annoyed with the main characters' on again/off again relation.

I'm now reading The Burning Bridge by John Flanagan, the second instalment of the Ranger's Apprentice series.

[alansplace]

Originally Posted by alansplace

Hmmmm...well I ripped through Stand by for Mars! and really had a good time doing so. It was a real nostalgia trip and I even went to Youtube and viewed some clips from 1952 TV (kinescope ugh!!) during the read. What fun (and what terrible quality video)! Anyway I never even started Though Not Dead. So I'm going to be reading it now and I'll read the 12th Nancy Drew Mystery Story, The Message in the Hollow Oak along with it.

I very much enjoyed reading The Message in the Hollow Oak. But Dana Stabenow's Though Not Dead was just plain extrordinary! Wow!

I enjoyed Though Not Dead so much so that I'm already a good way into Restless In The Grave which is the 19th of the Kate Shugak novels as well as the 5th of the Liam Campbell novels and it's quite engrossing so far.

[Gazella]

Just started The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce. A slow start so far but I've read that it gets much better once the protagonist embarks on a quest which I'm assuming is going to be a strange one.

[DrNefario]

I finished The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell about a week ago. I liked it, overall. It's an unusual take on a first contact story, being on one level a straightforward SF tale, and on another an exploration of faith. The characters are mostly likeable and interesting, and I found the (not intrusive) religious stuff interesting even as an atheist. We know from the start that there was some kind of disaster, and there's a constant tension over when things are going to go wrong, and what actually happens. Worth a read.

After that, I went straight into the 900-page fantasy Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey. It's a troublesome one, this. I think the central premise will put a lot of people off, but I am really liking it so far.

Fantasy protagonists often have some kind of special power marking them out for greatness. They are the most powerful wizard in the world, or the finest swordsman, or most skillful assassin, or some such. In Kushiel's Dart, the protagonist's gift is that she loves pain. It's an erotic fantasy, and quite dark, at that, but if you can live with that, it has a rich, interesting world (basically ours, but skewed), and so far a fairly gripping story. I'm already looking up the rest of the series.

[DiapDealer]

I Finished Oz Reimagined: New Tales from the Emerald City and Beyond -- a collection of short stories (obviously inspired by L. Frank Baum's Oz books/characters) edited by John Joseph Adams. Although there were several stories that were really good (Robin Wasserman and Ken Liu), there were three that "stole the show" in my eyes: Rachel Swirsky's "Beyond the Naked Eye", Orson Scott Card's "Off to See the Emperor" and Jonathan Maberry's "The Cobbler of Oz."

Say what you want about OSC (and I've said it myself: I'm not a fan of the man), but his "Off to See the Emperor" is far and away the only story in the collection that even came close to capturing the magic, tone and childish wonder/whimsy that I remember from reading the original Baum stories as a boy.

Next up: Ransom by David Malouf.

[HomeInMyShoes]

I finished Charles Stross's Rule 34. Good fun. I love his writing.

And I'm just about finished reading Michael Frayn's Spies which is really really enjoyable. Maybe the best book I've read this year so far.