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

[SeaBookGuy]

Earlier today I finished Gillian Flynn's Dark Places. Recommended for those who like twisted, King-like thrillers, but I'd suggest reading her first book Sharp Objects before this one - the plots aren't related, but this one'd be harder to get into I think.

[GraceKrispy]

Ok, I just finished a book called "Promise Kept"- it's a dystopian kind of novel about the world after the "Passing." I found some good and some "needs work" in it. My review is here.

[maianhvk]

Well I'm on Mortal Instruments series now, halfway through the 2nd book already. Not that I hate it, but I don't like it very much.

[DixieGal]

I was thinking that maybe i'm still traumatized and couldn't concentrate on reading. But now I think maybe it is just a lousy book. Maybe it is time for a rofl comedy?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DixieGal

I was thinking that maybe i'm still traumatized and couldn't concentrate on reading. But now I think maybe it is just a lousy book. Maybe it is time for a rofl comedy?

Time for some Discworld I suspect.

I'm reading a Star Trek book that's somewhat heavy going. But I'm not sure yet what I'll be reading after that. Will it be the book Club selection, will if be another In Death mystery? Another Women's Murder Club mystery, another Discworld story? I have no idea just yet.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by DixieGal

I was thinking that maybe i'm still traumatized and couldn't concentrate on reading. But now I think maybe it is just a lousy book. Maybe it is time for a rofl comedy?

It's *always* a good time for a rofl comedy!

[covingtoncat73]

Originally Posted by DixieGal

I was thinking that maybe i'm still traumatized and couldn't concentrate on reading. But now I think maybe it is just a lousy book. Maybe it is time for a rofl comedy?

Try Christopher Moore. I find his stuff hilarious (Fool is a favorite), a hilarious and ribald recounting of King Lear from the point of view of Lear's Fool. Also, if you want to move to Florida, Carl Hiaasen would be funny and appropriate.

[orlok]

Originally Posted by covingtoncat73

Try Christopher Moore. I find his stuff hilarious (Fool is a favorite), a hilarious and ribald recounting of King Lear from the point of view of Lear's Fool. Also, if you want to move to Florida, Carl Hiaasen would be funny and appropriate.

Funny, Hiaasen came straight to mind for me too. Not out and out comedy, but written with tongue firmly in cheek, and with a humorous and jaded view on what motivates people.

[caleb72]

Originally Posted by GraceKrispy

Ok, I just finished a book called "Promise Kept"- it's a dystopian kind of novel about the world after the "Passing." I found some good and some "needs work" in it. My review is here.

Thanks for the review. Another book I'll miss. You are quite the filter lately. I'm with you on The Handmaid's Tale though - I loved it.

[DixieGal]

It was a Discworld book, but it STUNK! It was "The Amazing Maurice..." Long title, but more interesting than the story. I will skip it, and check ou Hiasson. Thanks for the idea!

I wonder if the library has his books?

[BearMountainBooks]

Hiassen never did a thing for me...not necessarily bad mysteries, but his humor always seemed forced. I only read one of his books though, so it may not have been representative of his cache.

[anijh]

I just finished reading A Reason To Believe by Gov. Deval Patrick. It's a good book but not worth all the hype it's been receiving IMO. I read it in hardback format since May has been a terrible month for me as far as eReaders go. I lost my Kindle 3 and my nook 1st edition has started having issues. Thankfully Barnes & Noble is replacing it for me.

[ATDrake]

I finished Frederik-without-a-C Pohl's 1975 memoir The Way the Future Was, which I got from Baen's 10-books-for-$40-USD Pohl bundle, and it was excellent.

In between the usual anecdotes about growing up in New York during the Depression and being one of the early SF founding fans etc., Pohl's had the rare experience of being both an aspiring amateur and a paid professional writer, as well as a magazine editor and a literary agent, which is kind of like a hat trick of publishing industry involvement.

He's got some great insight (still relevant to today's amateur aspiring professional writers, I should think), on how the needs and expectations of all those three jobs vary, and how he tried to make them intersect maybe a little more than they would have otherwise.

Also, he's got some great publishing industry stories, from the apparently awesome rejection slips from the now-defunct sf magazine Wonder*, to John W. Campbell's tips on how to get Robert A. Heinlein to write a story for his magazine†.

Plus he wrote advertising copy to promote books and such for many years (which explains the thoroughly satirical bent of some of the stories in the Best of Frederik Pohl collection I've also been reading) and he has some really funny anecdotes about coming up with winning sales-copy‡.

Highly recommended for sheer entertainment value regardless, but especially so if you have any interest in science fiction fandom/publishing history and/or the mechanics of how writers/editors/literary agents and the publishing industry interact. Plus it's got examples of Pohl's own early Vogon-esque poetry.

I don't know if this is the only volume of autobiography that Pohl wrote, but I'd gladly pay for another. And I think he won the fan writer Hugo last year for his blog, which I'll have to check out now.

Baen's e-book edition has this minor weird thing where the footnotes are placed after the paragraph in which they're footnoted, which is perfectly readable, but within tables for some inexplicable reason, which is slightly less readable, especially when the footnoted matter (e.g., the Vogon-esque poetry doesn't fit into one "page" on the Kindle's display).

* Came with a checklist of about 30 things that had gone wrong with your story in the editor's eyes, with the appropriate stuff checked off, e.g.

( ) Plot stale
( ) Errors in science
( ) Material offensive to moral standards

and lots more. And, to take the sting out of it, there was a jolly little "translation" of a "Chinese rejection slip." ("Your honorable contribution is so breathtakingly excellent that we do not dare publish it, since it would set a standard no other writer would be able to reach."

† "The trouble with Bob Heinlein is that he doesn't need to write. When I want a story from him, the first thing I have to do is think up something he would like to have, like a swimming pool. The second thing is to sell him on the idea of having it. The third thing is to convince him he should write a story to get the money to pay for it, instead of building it himself."

‡ Free examples for a coffee-table artbook on huntable wildlife:

… so I wrote up a dozen or so sample appeals for postcard testing and we sent out thousand-piece mailings to test them out. I tried all the angles I could think of—

The book is beautiful and will impress your friends. . . .

With this book you will be better able to kill, crush, mutilate and destroy these beloved game beasts. . . .

This book will teach your children the secrets of wildcraft and keep them from turning into perverts and drug addicts. . . .

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Jem by Frederik Pohl

Outdated. Even ignoring that, I don't think the story holds up very well. The aliens and planet start out interesting, but not enough is made of them. I certainly couldn't suspend disbelief about the economics. Disappointing.

Next up, something light I bought in a fictionwise sale back in mid 2009. New Moon by Stephenie Meyer.

I found the first book better than I'd expected, and the second is looking interesting. It certainly seems that becoming a (Stephenie Meyer) vampire is all upside at the moment, so it's not surprising that the heroine is keen to become one.

[GraceKrispy]

Originally Posted by DixieGal

I was thinking that maybe i'm still traumatized and couldn't concentrate on reading. But now I think maybe it is just a lousy book. Maybe it is time for a rofl comedy?

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

It's *always* a good time for a rofl comedy!

DANG! That is *exactly* what I was going to write, ** and all! I might have said "It is" instead of "It's," though

Originally Posted by caleb72

Thanks for the review. Another book I'll miss. You are quite the filter lately. I'm with you on The Handmaid's Tale though - I loved it.

"Handmaid's Tale" was one of the first books I read when I was just out of college and I decided to diversify my reading choices. I went to the library and decided to start with the "As" and choose any book that had an interesting looking spine. I spent a long time on "Atwood." Sadly, I recently checked out "Year of the Flood" but just could not get into it. I don't know if it was just not as good, or if I'd grown away from her writing, or if it just wasn't the right time to read that particular book.

Now I'm itching to read "Handmaid's Tale" again.

---filterin' away....