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

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

Really like this series.


Currently read/listening to Shadow of Victory by David Weber. So far not impressed.

No better than so-so, IMHO. Which won't stop me from buying the next, of course.

[CharredScribe]

Originally Posted by Nyssa

With a little under a third of the book remaining, something is brewing - but what?

The Handmaid's Tale is one of my favourites of all times. Come back and tell us what you thought of it.

[Nyssa]

Originally Posted by CharredScribe

The Handmaid's Tale is one of my favourites of all times. Come back and tell us what you thought of it.

So many people have listed this as either their favorite or towards the top of their list!

Yesterday and today are jam packed, but my fall semester has officially ended, so I'll actually have reading time this weekend!

[orlok]

Recently finished The Sellout by Paul Beatty. This is the 2016 Man Booker prizewinner, and the first time an American has won the award since the entries were opened up to writers of any nationality three years ago.

A tour de force, superbly well written, and an eye opener to someone like me in terms of understanding what living with racism day-to-day is really like. It's easy to intellectualise what it must be like, how horrible, but somehow I always felt that once you got home, behind your own front door so to speak, you could forget it for a while and feel safe. I don't think that any more. Written with great humour and feeling, a worthy winner.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by CharredScribe

The Handmaid's Tale is one of my favourites of all times. Come back and tell us what you thought of it.

The Handmaid's Tale is the December selection for the MobileRead Book Club. Why not join the discussion when it starts on December 20?

Originally Posted by issybird

The Handmaid's Tale is the December selection for the MobileRead Book Club. Why not join the discussion when it starts on December 20?

The one SF book I would be interested in was picked. Actually I've already read it and not so long ago that I should not participate in the discussion. Somewhat unrealistic, but not like most SF full of impossible "science."

Originally Posted by DrNefario

I've read something like that, recently. Was it one of the strands in Clifford D Simak's The City?

Originally Posted by BenG

There were ants in City but the situation was different.

Yeah, thanks but not the short story I'm thinking about.

[Dngrsone]

I've just finished A Dark and Hungry God Arises: The Gap into Power; the month is starting slow for me. I should still make my annual goal, though.

I've been meaning to read this for a long time, so I am going to pull the trigger now, I think: The End of the Sentence by Maria Dahvana Headley.

I cleared the cache on my reader app on the tablet, and I have 127 or so ebooks all showing installation date of Dec 31 1969.

Ah well, I was going to install a new SD card in this thing soon anyway, so it would gotten messed up when that happens anyway.

The Handmaid's Tale was one fo those not-very-SF science fiction books in my opinion, though it is kind of interesting how this past year kind of feeds into her scenario.

A more likely one to happen, though is Cory Docotrow's Little Brother.

[Rev. Bob]

I made my 2016 challenge a few books ago, but I'm still truckin'. I've got three books open at present:

Graphic novel collection - Elseworlds: Batman, Vol. 1. I've read several of these stories before, but getting the omnibus on sale was nice.
Ebook - The Union of Heroes. Barely into it, but looks like a nice take on superheroes in prose fiction.
Ent corpse - The Last World War. First of two, and reading this reminds me of all the little annoyances I'd forgotten physical books have.

The pages of my copy of TLWW are cut a little crooked, such that when looking at the right-hand page, the top margin shrinks from left to right as the bottom margin grows; the beginning of the top line is closer to the spine than the start of the bottom line. In addition, the last 64 pages and the back cover have a bit of the bottom corner shaved off, which looks really weird. It's not even uniform, but more like three rough chops to the last sections of the book.

Curiously enough, I'm due to pick up a package today which contains the movie adaptation of another poorly-made SF novel I once owned. My high school copy of The Andromeda Strain had a binding problem, where the pages were prone to falling out due to bad glue. (I forget whether there wasn't enough glue or if it wasn't properly mixed. All I remember is that pages fell out as I was reading, and other students' copies had the same problem.) Then there are the books where page sections were improperly collated, resulting either in one batch of pages appearing out of sequence or some pages being left out because one batch was duplicated.

It's a little late by the US calendar, but it's worth taking a moment to be thankful for the problems ebooks will never have. Sure, they have their own issues like bizarre formatting, but at least the one-off production bugs are gone.

[Dngrsone]

Originally Posted by Rev. Bob

... another poorly-made SF novel I once owned... The Andromeda Strain

LOL, while you're talking about the condition of the copy you had, I've always had issue with the quality of the writing: this is the one book which forces me to admit that the movie was actually better.

[CharredScribe]

Originally Posted by issybird

The Handmaid's Tale is the December selection for the MobileRead Book Club. Why not join the discussion when it starts on December 20?

Oh, I didn't know this! I think I might. Thanks for the heads up.

[Nyssa]

Originally Posted by CharredScribe

The Handmaid's Tale is one of my favourites of all times. Come back and tell us what you thought of it.

Originally Posted by Nyssa

So many people have listed this as either their favorite or towards the top of their list!

Yesterday and today are jam packed, but my fall semester has officially ended, so I'll actually have reading time this weekend!

Originally Posted by issybird

The Handmaid's Tale is the December selection for the MobileRead Book Club. Why not join the discussion when it starts on December 20?

I finished this last night and am looking forward to the discussion.

It earned 5-stars from me but I find it difficult to articulate exactly what grabbed me. I just know, that with only a few chapters remaining, I was overcome with a million thoughts and emotions.

[ATDrake]

Well, it looks like snowpocalypse outside, so I guess I'm spending the weekend reading some more library books.

Anyway, finished The Considerate Killer by Lene Kaaberbøl & Agnete Friis, 4th (and possibly last?) in their series starring Nina Borg, Intrepid Danish Danger Magnet And Part-Time Red Cross Nurse.

Apparently as a result of the previous few books, Nina has severely cut down on her involvement with a refugee-smuggling aid network and other fringe social services grey areas which exposed her and her family to danger. Nevertheless, danger comes for her anyway. This becomes a part-psychological portrait of how Nina got to where she was and how she gets out of it, and also a look into what shaped the titular antagonist, whose reluctant slide into inevitable doom we watch unfold.

Even though I'm not really sure it worked out for me in this particular installment, I do appreciate that the authors are willing to experiment with the substance and structure of their stories from novel to novel, when they could easily let them go formulaic. And that Soho Press has been pretty good about publishing the newer volumes in translation (this was released in Danish and got an English-language version within the same year, according to the copyright info), and that the not-so-local library has been pretty good about getting them in.

A few things in the story development make me wonder if this is going to be the last Nina Borg adventure (apparently both Kaaberbøl & Friis now have new separate series they've been working on), but it was a nice continuation to read this one, and if it happens to wrap up the lot, that would be okay, even though I'd still like more.

[Dngrsone]

Finished The End of the Sentence by Maria Dahvana Headley. A very nice novella.

Now starting the next Foreigner book, Destroyer.

[CharredScribe]

I just finished reading Terri Jentz's Strange Piece of Paradise. It's part memoir, part social commentary. In 1977, Jentz and a university friend went on a biking trip. While camping one night, a man ran over their tent in a truck, and then proceeded to attack them with an axe. He was never arrested for the crime. Fifteen years later, Jentz returns to the area where she was attacked, determined to find out what happened and who did it. This book chronicles that journey.

This is a good book, but it's not true crime in the sense of those sensationalised paperbacks which serve up salacious details. It is more about the "before and after", and a commentary about violence in US society, than about the gory details of the crime itself. A good read!