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

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Next up: Analog SFF March 2012 by Dell Magazine Authors.

Another good issue. I'm enjoying the serial.

Next: F&SF, May 2005 by Spilogale Authors. One of the backlog of 2005 and 2006 issues I bought in a Fictionwise sale a while back.

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by Fbone

Next is Inherit the Stars by James Hogan.

Not so good. An outlet for his personal views. Science was off the wall. Rated D [1 star].


Next is Death Sentence by Alexander Gordon Smith. The third book in his Escape from Furnace YA series.

[ATDrake]

Finished another 2 in Poisoned Pen Press' 99 cent early-in-series DRM-free introductory mystery sale. I can see I have another 2 authors/series to add to the future read-from-library/purchase-on-sale list.

Donis Casey's The Old Buzzard Had It Coming, 1st in her Alafair Tucker series set in rural Oklahoma in the 1910s, was the better of the two, although both were at least reasonably good.

The whodunnit overall was one that I was actually able to get right for once despite its plausibly expanding circle of suspects, but mainly because I consider myself far more bleakly cynical about human nature than the relatively sheltered farmwife and small-town denizens which populate this tale, despite their harsher and more practically-oriented lives.

What makes this story is the depiction of said lives in the simply matter-of-fact background setting and little details, mentioned so casually, which bring home everyday existence in a time before public transit, hospitals, and even indoor toilets and electric lights, much less so many other things we nowadays take for granted, had found their way to even moderate-sized country towns.

This is very definitely a small-town murder mystery, distinct from the nosy cosiness that might be considered the natural province of a female amateur sleuth with a domestic occupation and a tendency to be both stubborn and inquisitive in a tiny community setting, by depicting quite well the insularity and isolation of said community. While it is the sort of place where everyone knows everyone else and what they're up to, and have gossiping about that as a major pastime, it's hardly a charmed circle of acquaintances suddenly startled by gasp!swoon! murder.

In fact, it's the sort of bleakly realistic place where the interaction which separates the relatively privileged and well-connected denizens from the less fortunate which is aptly described by the following passage:

She and Shaw and their friends and neighbors had all known of and deplored the situation at the Day place, but it was not unheard of for a man to drink to excess, or to determine that work was more important than education for his children, or to keep his wife at home.

It was no one else’s business, and none of the neighbors would have interfered. They would have helped any member of the family who asked, but no one had asked.

This is not only a time and place before plumbing and telephones, but also before Child Protective Services, domestic abuse shelters, and any protection from a law that doesn't even exist yet, where the only attempt at recourse, much less justice, may turn out to end in murder.

Your neighbours may be kindly and bring over the occasional offering of non-posthumous supplies and goods to help you out a little (although I didn't particularly observe that and it looked like the food donations only came in afterwards), but that's as far as their concern goes and they'll consider it only right to leave you and your children to a fairly hellish existence from which death is a welcome escape, and make excuses to themselves for doing so after tragedy strikes.

In any case, medium-high recommend for a fairly good historically-set story which is good at showing the period, as well as a telling a reasonably realistic story based on things that could have been fairly standard in that period and setting, and wrapping it up with a decent mystery of who-really-dunnit when the potential candidates were so many because the victim was just that kind of guy.

Also, it comes with recipes, if you happen to feel like trying your hand at making 1910 country dishes.

The other mystery was the more modern but still past-oriented Artifacts by Mary Anna Evans, which I'll get to after I've had something to eat. And this is already a giant wall o'text anyway.

[tecweston]

Just finished:

- 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami - A decent novel. The beginning grabbed me but I'm not sure I liked the ending very much. The climax seemed too easy for our protagonists, and the final "Ushikawa" chapter seemed to set up something that never paid off.

Currently reading:

- 11/22/63 by Stephen King (39%)

- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (37%)

- A Feast for Crows by George R.R. Martin (31%)

- A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin (20%)

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Fbone

Not so good. An outlet for his personal views. Science was off the wall. Rated D [1 star].

Yes. In his later books Hogan becomes some weird fantasist rather than an SF writer. But it's pretending to be science fiction, which just turns me off completely.

[Joy736]

I'm starting The Sinner by Tess Gerritsen (Rizzoli Isles series, book 3).
I've already read some of her books before (obviously books 1 and 2 of the Rizzoli Isles series among others) and I've always loved them. I know I'll love this one too.

[Dr. Drib]

Just finished "The Lady Killer," by Ed McBain, part of the 35-novel special-price purchase from Amazon.

I'm going to start today on "The Night Circus," while indulging in another Ed McBain novel. Those novels are short and only take a couple of days to read. I expect to have them all read by the end of this year, while also reading the "serious" literature that I like.




Don

[WT Sharpe]

I need to get crackin' on finishing Black Rain by Masuji Ibus. It's the January MobileRead Book Club selection, and I'm nowhere near ready. I've let too many other books & magazines get in the way. Starting now, it's the only book I'm reading. All the rest have gone to the back burner.

[Latinandgreek]

I'm trying to finish off several books that I've had going for a while; I've realized that trying to read several books at a time is a sure way to slow down your reading, and I've found that I am getting less enjoyment out of my books this way. The fact that I've also got several books on the go for school is not helping matters, either. Hopefully I will be able to pare my reading down this week and come back fresh next week with only one book being read for pleasure reading.

[WT Sharpe]

It hurt that I just got a Kindle Touch and have been reading two books on it (Leaves of Grass {Deathbed Edition} by Walt Whitman and People of the Book: A Decade of Jewish Science Fiction & Fantasy, an anthology by various authors edited by Rachel Swirsky and Sean Wallace) as well as trying to finish up everything I've been reading on the K3 (on which 2 new magazines have appeared—the latest issues of Science News and Philosophy Now along with the other books I'm reading: the aforementioned Black Rain by Masuji Ibuse, How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival by David Kaiser, and yet another re-read of the Bible {NRSV}).

[banjobama]

Originally Posted by Latinandgreek

I'm trying to finish off several books that I've had going for a while; I've realized that trying to read several books at a time is a sure way to slow down your reading, and I've found that I am getting less enjoyment out of my books this way. The fact that I've also got several books on the go for school is not helping matters, either. Hopefully I will be able to pare my reading down this week and come back fresh next week with only one book being read for pleasure reading.

I also seem to always have several books going at once. I think I'll also try this week to focus on one to finish and from then on just read one at a time.

[tecweston]

Currently reading:

- 11/22/63 by Stephen King (39%)

- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (37%)

- A Feast for Crows by George R.R. Martin (31%)

- The Woman in Black by Susan Hill (28%)

- A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin (20%)

A Dance with Dragons was a library book and it expired today so it'll be a few weeks before I get back into that or A Feast for Crows. But The Woman in Black is another library book that came in this week so I've started that in the meantime.

[The Terminator]

I'm onto Mitch Rapp #3 Separation of power. Still reading Les Mis and The world according to Clarkson.

[coderserdar]

jack higgins - midnight runner

a good sean dillon novel too.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Next: F&SF, May 2005 by Spilogale Authors.

Unfortunately, much of the issue is taken up with an 'eldritch horror' kind of fantasy, which really goes nowhere, and isn't to my liking at all.

Next: And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. Her 34th book.