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

[astra]

Finished a bunch of books.

Child of Flame (Crown of Stars 4) by Kate Elliott.
One of the best in the series so far, but I am now more than 1/2 through book 5 and it is even better. Looks like the writer matured while writing the series.

Farnham’s Freehold by Robert A. Heinlein
Not too bad. Didn't find any anti muslim notions. Don't know what all this fuss was about.


Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Some of the ideas are brilliant. A few glimpses of future which is now are so true that I cannot imagine how someone could predict it so many year ago (it applies to Heinlein's book as well).

[Peadar Ó Guilín]

The Bright of the Sky by Kay Kenyon.

[astrodad]

Started the super long edition of The Stand. We'll see how long I last.

[desertgrandma]

Originally Posted by jplumey

Started the super long edition of The Stand. We'll see how long I last.

Looking forward to your thoughts.........

[desertgrandma]

Just finished reading "The Time Cavern" by our own Todd A. Fonseca.

I first downloaded a sample from Amazon, out of curiosity. The first paragraph got me hooked......so I bought the book. Todd tells me he's marketing it for the 9-12 yr old set......(correct me if I'm wrong here) and I think its perfect for them. Its also a great 'light' read for an adult.

So, my own quick thoughts. Written from a 10yr olds point of view, "Time Cavern" tells the adventures of two friends trying to unravel the mystery of a boy who went missing 100 years past. How they go about it, and what they learn along the way makes the story move right along.
Mr. Fonseca throws in a LOT of information about different cultures, (Amish), science (gasses and what they do) responsibility, even astronomy, weaving it all seamlessly into an interesting story that should hold the interest of any young science fiction fan. I guess thats what I like best about this book. By the time a young person has finished it, he'll come away with more than just a good read. He'll come away knowing a little more about the real world. And thanks to the great ending, he'll be looking forward to more adventures with Aaron and Jake.

Here's wishing success for you, Mr. Fonseca!

[DixieGal]

Thanks for the review! Time Cavern is on my To Be Read list.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by seajewel

I noticed that my .lrf conversions in calibre have very large file sizes (3.5 MB) .. I've tried the .prc ones which make smaller files but I don't like the formatting of chapters as much. I'll see if the large files run slow on my computer first, I guess, because calibre doesn't handle lrf2lrf natively and I'm partial to my margins and font size.

ETA: on second thought, I think I'll try messing around with lrf2lrf because I've run into "nasty html code" before.. and it resulted in 4 second page turns. OR... do what I usually do.. download your .prc versions and try converting it. Thanks!

If you did not message the HTML code before running it through Calibre, you will get rather poor results. The HTML code was rather nasty and needed work. What about my conversions don't you like?

[Todd A Fonseca]

Originally Posted by desertgrandma

Just finished reading "The Time Cavern" by our own Todd A. Fonseca.

I first downloaded a sample from Amazon, out of curiosity. The first paragraph got me hooked......so I bought the book. Todd tells me he's marketing it for the 9-12 yr old set......(correct me if I'm wrong here) and I think its perfect for them. Its also a great 'light' read for an adult.

So, my own quick thoughts. Written from a 10yr olds point of view, "Time Cavern" tells the adventures of two friends trying to unravel the mystery of a boy who went missing 100 years past. How they go about it, and what they learn along the way makes the story move right along.
Mr. Fonseca throws in a LOT of information about different cultures, (Amish), science (gasses and what they do) responsibility, even astronomy, weaving it all seamlessly into an interesting story that should hold the interest of any young science fiction fan. I guess thats what I like best about this book. By the time a young person has finished it, he'll come away with more than just a good read. He'll come away knowing a little more about the real world. And thanks to the great ending, he'll be looking forward to more adventures with Aaron and Jake.

Here's wishing success for you, Mr. Fonseca!

Desertgrandma, thank you so much for taking a chance on The Time Cavern! I appreciate your support and thoughtful review.

Also thank you to a number of you from the board. You've all been very welcoming and I really appreciate it.

[Elsi]

Originally Posted by Elsi

I'm now reading Old Man's War by John Scalzi and The Onuissance Cells by our own Steve Jordan -- both on the Kindle. Since I've read so much SF and Fantasy recently, I may set one or both of these aside and read something completely different. Who knows.

Since posting this message on 24 July, I have read:

• The Nerd Who Loved Me, Vicki Lewis Thompson
• Old Man's War, John Scalzi
• The Mysterious Benedict Society, Trenton Lee Stewart
• New Moon, Stephenie Meyer
• Love Over Scotland, Alexander McCall Smith
• Eclipse, Stephenie Meyer

Of these 6 books, 4 were read on the Kindle. The Nerd Who Loved Me was a paperback which I'm sending to a fellow book swapper, and Love Over Scotland was an audio book (unabridged CDs) which I started listing to in early April.

YTD totals:

Kindle: 35
Paper: 46
Audio: 4
------------
85 books, 30,212 pages

Adventure: 1
Chicklit: 6
Classic: 3
Fantasy: 11
Historical: 4
Mainstream: 6
Mystery: 32
Romance: 2
SciFi: 20


Currently reading:

• Breaking Dawn, Stephenie Meyer
• The Door Through Space, Marion Zimmer Bradley
• The Bookfair Murders, Anna Porter
• The Onuissance Cells, Steve Jordan

[seajewel]

You're right, I uploaded both your version and the version I converted from Peter Watts' original html file (through calibre).. I tried opening the latter, and my Reader took over 10 minutes to format, and locked up again after five pages. Your version is fine, not saying anything is wrong with it at all! I'm just used to using calibre to set my margins to around 10~20 so that there is a little bit of white space (personal preference, I understand many people do not feel the need for any white space at all, but I like having a little bit of extra margin on the Reader screen itself) and I set my font to 8.5 because the font I use is somewhat large. However, I found that your version is definitely great and readable and I will stick to it. I did notice that the Behemoth mobipocket file you uploaded errors on convert to lrf, though, which is why I'm using the .lrf file you uploaded. Thanks for going through the work, Watts' original version is definitely impossible for those of us who have no idea how to work with html.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

If you did not message the HTML code before running it through Calibre, you will get rather poor results. The HTML code was rather nasty and needed work. What about my conversions don't you like?

[pilotbob]

Ok,

I gave up on Orphans of Chaos... it just got too weird for me.

Now reading A Touch Of Evil... yet another TOR freebe. It is starting out a bit slow... yes stuff happens, but maybe not a good action writer.

BOb

[DixieGal]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Ok, I gave up on Orphans of Chaos... it just got too weird for me.

Nice try anyway. I tried it again after your recommendation, but just couldn't stand it. And I take it from your latest post that it doesn't ever get any better. Oh well, there's plenty more books out there to enjoy, that's for sure!

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

I'm trying to get through L.E. Modesitt's Flash before my reading time/ability grinds to a complete halt.

I am planning a redesign of the SJB, and in the middle of working on that, came up with 2 new story ideas. So I'm developing all 3 at once, and sooner or later I'll hit critical mass, and won't be able to concentrate on more than 4 words at a time in this book!

So far, I'm really enjoying it, though it takes its time to really get going.

[pshrynk]

The Mirror Cracks by our very own Steve Jordan. Spoiler alert: I don't think there's a butler in it to do it.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by seajewel

You're right, I uploaded both your version and the version I converted from Peter Watts' original html file (through calibre).. I tried opening the latter, and my Reader took over 10 minutes to format, and locked up again after five pages. Your version is fine, not saying anything is wrong with it at all! I'm just used to using calibre to set my margins to around 10~20 so that there is a little bit of white space (personal preference, I understand many people do not feel the need for any white space at all, but I like having a little bit of extra margin on the Reader screen itself) and I set my font to 8.5 because the font I use is somewhat large. However, I found that your version is definitely great and readable and I will stick to it. I did notice that the Behemoth mobipocket file you uploaded errors on convert to lrf, though, which is why I'm using the .lrf file you uploaded. Thanks for going through the work, Watts' original version is definitely impossible for those of us who have no idea how to work with html.

I did just what you did at first and tried to use the HTML as it was. I first loaded it into Book Designer. Then I ended up using html2lrf on it. Had to work on it and it was not as easy as it should have been to convert it. At least it's ok enough to read for now. It won't get any better then what we have here. Not sure why Behemoth did not convert. But I sugget you go to the Calbre sight and post a ticket to get whatever is broken fixed. And attach the file as well.