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

[pdurrant]

I found the safehold series dragged a bit. But I admit I'm still buying and reading them.

[WT Sharpe]

I'm currently reading Mrs. Rudolf Dircks' translation of Arthur Schopenhauer's Essays. As always, the writings of this pessimistic gloom and doom naysayer are a pleasure to read, even when one disagrees with what he is saying. He may be the original cantankerous old man, but he's never boring. He perhaps is the only philosopher to ever seriously challenge Nietzsche for the title of King of the One-Liners. To give you a taste, the following quotations are from the book's first essay, "On Authorship and Style":

The little honesty that exists among authors is discernible in the unconscionable way they misquote from the writings of others.

The mask of unintelligibility holds out the longest; this is only in Germany, however, where it was introduced by Fichte, perfected by Schelling, and attained its highest climax finally in Hegel, always with the happiest results. And yet nothing is easier than to write so that no one can understand; on the other hand, nothing is more difficult than to express learned ideas so that every one must understand them.

On the contrary, there is nothing an author should guard against more than the apparent endeavour to show more intellect than he has; because this rouses the suspicion in the reader that he has very little, since a man always affects something, be its nature what it may, that he does not really possess.

Men should use common words to say uncommon things, but they do the reverse. We find them trying to envelop trivial ideas in grand words and to dress their very ordinary thoughts in the most extraordinary expressions and the most outlandish, artificial, and rarest phrases.

If a man has something to say that is worth saying, he need not envelop it in affected expressions, involved phrases, and enigmatical innuendoes; but he may rest assured that by expressing himself in a simple, clear, and naïve manner he will not fail to produce the right effect. A man who makes use of such artifices as have been alluded to betrays his poverty of ideas, mind, and knowledge.

A man who is capable of thinking can express himself at all times in clear, comprehensible, and unambiguous words. Those writers who construct difficult, obscure, involved, and ambiguous phrases most certainly do not rightly know what it is they wish to say: they have only a dull consciousness of it, which is still struggling to put itself into thought; they also often wish to conceal from themselves and other people that in reality they have nothing to say. Like Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, they wish to appear to know what they do not know, to think what they do not think, and to say what they do not say.

Truth that is naked is the most beautiful, and the simpler its expression the deeper is the impression it makes; this is partly because it gets unobstructed hold of the hearer’s mind without his being distracted by secondary thoughts, and partly because he feels that here he is not being corrupted or deceived by the arts of rhetoric, but that the whole effect is got from the thing itself.

[MickeyC]

Just finished The Hollow by Agatha Christie based on HarryT's reco and it was excellent. Never saw that ending coming!

[alansplace]

Originally Posted by alansplace

On Thursday evening I finished reading Skin Game! LOVED IT!

On Friday I didn't much feel like going back to Savage Run. On Saturday I got a new freebie from Amazon Kindle First, a month before the publication date - Artful by Peter David. I'm at 12% and so far it's quite unusual and very interesting.

I finished reading Artful yesterday and it was the dark, funny, and action-packed story as stated in the above.

I've always thought that Jim Butcher, with his four different vampire courts had a really fresh take on vampires but it seems he's not alone in fresh takes. Peter David has some new twists applied to vampires as well! Check it out, it's free from Amazon Kindle First to Amazon Prime members all month.

Next up Killing Orders (V.I. Warshawski #3) by Sara Paretsky

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I found the safehold series dragged a bit. But I admit I'm still buying and reading them.

Yup, pretty much my take. Somewhere along the line, I stopped reading them, mostly because I stopped buying pBooks. But now I'm working my way back through them, with a combination of eBook and audio book.

[Apache]

The last Safehold book was back on track and had lots of action.
Apache

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by Apache

The last Safehold book was back on track and had lots of action.
Apache

Good. Now I just need to get to it.

[Apache]

I have read a few good books recently.
Any Other Name by Craig Johnson. This is number 10 in the Walt Longmire Series and I thought it was very good.
Children of War by Martin Walker was number 8 in the Bruno Chief of Police series. This was another excellent book in the series.
Last Stand of the Legion: Rift by Rod Carstens. I thought this was a good book, especially as a first bookand is the first in a new series. Do be aware that were are some typos and using the wrong spelling of some words. (There for Their). It was not bad enough to ruin my enjoyment of the book.
1920:America's Great War by Robert Conroy. Another excellent book by this author. This is a what if WWI ended quickly with a German Victory and what would happen after. Germany invades the US from Mexico.
I am currently reading Those Who Dare by Phil Ward. This is the first in a WWII Series Raiding Forces. It is about an American Officer in the British Army in 1940. So far very good.
Apache

[CRussel]

I'm really looking forward to reading Children of the War, Apache, but I am really trying to not buy books this month, so it's going to have to wait until July.

[Hampshire Nanny]

This week (Monday through Sunday), I'm participating in a Library Book Read-a-Thon. The objective is to focus your reading on books obtained from the library and participate in discussions on the books you're reading, the library you use, etc. So far, I've completed two library books: Independent Study by Joelle Charbonneau and Sub-Human by David Simpson. Both are eBooks.

Independent Study is a YA science fiction book with a dystopian theme. It's the second book in the series, following The Testing. The final book in the trilogy, Graduation Day, will be released in another week. I checked this book out from my public library through their Overdrive subscription. I wonder how quickly my library or Overdrive will get a copy of Graduation Day.

Sub-Human is the first novel in Simpson's Post-Human SF series. It was actually the third book that was written/published, but since it's the prequel, when the omnibus edition was released, Sub-Human is identified as the first in the series. I borrowed the omnibus edition through the Kindle Owner's Lending Library -- a perk of being an Amazon Prime member.

Currently I'm reading (also library books) -- Post-Human by David Simpson and Sorcery & Cecelia -or- The Enchanted Chocolate Pot by Patricia C Wrede and Caroline Stevermer. Enjoying them both!

[danskmacabre]

Currently reading Skin Game by Jim butcher

Also took a few books out of the library on Wicca, Psychic Phenomena and Seances and various other occult subjects recently.
Sort of reading them at the same time as Skin Game.

[CharredScribe]

Reading Sight Unseen by Robert Goddard. I have read everything he has published and loved it, but this is really one of his best. Read it years ago so can't remember the story progression or ending at all, which is great for mysteries.

Reading is picking up again. Been having a few slow weeks, but looks like I'm getting back into a groove

[HarryT]

I've just finished "Taken at the Flood", by Agatha Christie. This was her 47th book, and was originally published in 1948. The US title is "There is a Tide", both titles of course being taken from the famous speech from Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar":

There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.

The Cloade family are entirely dependent upon the largesse of their wealthy relative, Gordon Cloade. When Gordon unexpectedly marries a young widow, and is then killed in the Blitz in London, all his money goes to his young wife, leaving the Cloade family in financial difficulty. A man then appears in the village suggesting that perhaps Gordon's wife's first husband did not, after all, die, and that therefore her marriage to Gordon was invalid, but he is then murdered. Poirot assists Superintendent Spence to solve the mystery.

A very fine detective story indeed, and the first appearance of Superintendent Spence, who would go on the appear in several more Christie novels. Highly recommended.

[orlok]

Originally Posted by CharredScribe

Reading Sight Unseen by Robert Goddard. I have read everything he has published and loved it, but this is really one of his best. Read it years ago so can't remember the story progression or ending at all, which is great for mysteries.

Reading is picking up again. Been having a few slow weeks, but looks like I'm getting back into a groove

Good to hear you are getting your mojo back. I'm a big fan of Robert Goddard - the only one I haven't read is his latest, The Ways of the World, which is on my soon-to-be-tackled list.

Now reading #2 in the Chronicles of St. Mary's time travel series, A Symphony of Echoes. A great start, where our intrepid historians are pursued by Jack the Ripper through pea-souper London alleyways.

[DrNefario]

I haven't posted in here much lately. I'm still attempting to read an Agatha Christie short story every day, in addition to my normal reading. (And currently also in addition to Hugo shortlist short fiction reading. I'm starting to run out of free time.) I have technically just finished reading The Thirteen Problems, the first Marple collection, although I'm actually reading Miss Marple and Mystery, one of the three Complete Stories volumes containing all the Marple and non-series stories in chronological order. I've had to resort to making a spreadsheet to figure out how the three Complete volumes map on to the (UK) canonical collections.

The thing is, I am now pretty much caught up to where I am in the novels. I read Murder at the Vicarage a few weeks ago, which was published in 1930, and I'm now up to around 1932 in all three of the Complete Stories sets. I might need to find another short story source, or just take a break until I've read more of the novels. I'm trying to read things in more-or-less chronological order of publication. I guess it won't hurt if I finish off Hound of Death and get started on the Parker Pyne stories.

I've read a few stories from the two late posthumous collections, now, Problem at Pollensa Bay and While the Light Lasts. The former seems to be a useful rounding-up of some stray stories, including a couple of Harley Quins and a couple of Parker Pynes. The latter seems to be barrel-scrapings and retreads.