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

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I still have 48 (including this one) unread books from 2005 and 2006, so I'd better get a move on if I'm going to finish them all this year.

Yes, I'm having a push this year to try to reduce my Baen backlog. Last year I managed to get through about 15 months' worth of Baen books, but with the additional year I bought, that means I only reduced the backlog by 3 months. Given that I have 15 years to catch up on, that means it'll take me about 60 years to catch up with current purchases .

[CRussel]

I've already decided that some of my Baen Backlog is going to just stay unread. Though I admit, I have found some gems in there.

Right now, I'm reading the eARC of Dragon in Exile, the new Liaden book from Sharon Lee and Steve Miller. Now go away quietly and leave me alone, I'm busy.

[Hampshire Nanny]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Yes, I'm having a push this year to try to reduce my Baen backlog. Last year I managed to get through about 15 months' worth of Baen books, but with the additional year I bought, that means I only reduced the backlog by 3 months. Given that I have 15 years to catch up on, that means it'll take me about 60 years to catch up with current purchases .

At least some of the Baen Bundles contain repeats. You only have to read a book once, not every time it was included in a bundle. Maybe that gets you down to a 50 year time frame.

[Hampshire Nanny]

Originally Posted by Hampshire Nanny

I'm not sure what's up next -- probably The Leper of Saint Giles by Ellis Peters, book 5 in the Cadfael mysteries.

I didn't read The Leper of Saint Giles right away, but I did complete it this past week. I also read Echo Burning, the 5th Jack Reacher mystery by Lee Child, and A Modern Witch, a delightful new approach to witchcraft by Debora Geary.

Currently reading Hyperion by Dan Simmons and The Iron Wyrm Affair by Lilith Saintcrow.

[Dngrsone]

I'll admit, I'm kind of interested in reading a Jack Reacher novel, based on the movie, though the movie makes him seem fairly pulpy (as in pulp-fiction) as a character (Remo Williams comes to mind)...

[Hampshire Nanny]

Originally Posted by Dngrsone

I'll admit, I'm kind of interested in reading a Jack Reacher novel, based on the movie, though the movie makes him seem fairly pulpy (as in pulp-fiction) as a character (Remo Williams comes to mind)...

The movie wasn't as good as the book.

[Bilbo1967]

Originally Posted by Hampshire Nanny

The movie wasn't as good as the book.

I'd second that. It's been discussed at length in other threads here, but Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher is just wrong!

[WT Sharpe]

It's been a while since I read the strange and quirky novel The Pines by Blake Crouch, but fans of the trilogy will be happy to know that the long-awaited TV adaptation starts in May.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Next up: Shadow Worlds by Darrell Bain and Barbara M. Hodges.

An OK parallel worlds story, even with the vast plot holes, much unnecessary drama, and a little gratuitous sex.

Next up:
Lightspeed Magazine #57 edited by John Joseph Adams. The February 2015 issue.

[HomeInMyShoes]

February by Lisa Moore. Might be the best book I've read since Cannery Row.

[WT Sharpe]

Just finished Furious Cool: Richard Pryor and the World That Made Him by David Henry and Joe Henry. I gave this one five stars for the raw and emotional portrait it drew of the comedian. I came away liking him less as a person but understanding some of the forces that nurtured both his genius and his inner demons.

Now it's time for The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, this month's Mobileread Book Club selection. It promises to be a tale of high society, low morals, and raging hormones from this ever popular author.

[alansplace]

Originally Posted by alansplace

Last evening I finished reading No Game for a Dame! It was an excellent noir mystery novel and very reminiscent of Sara Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski but doing the noir genre one better by setting the story in the 1930s. Loved it!!

I just borrowed my monthly free selection for February from the Lending Library. I chose The Crazy Mixed-Up Corpse (Ed Noon #8) by Michael Avallone!

Before this past weekend I finished reading The Crazy Mixed-Up Corpse (it was as enjoyable and entertaining a read as have been all the previous Ed Noon Mysteries that I've read)!

I recently experienced a BBC/PBS/Masterpiece mini-series called Death comes to Pemberly and was impressed with it despite my slight lack of agreement with some of the casting! Found out it was a P.D. James mystery and went for the novel (Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James). I'm reading it now and so far I'm really enjoying the experience.

[Lin2412]

Finally continued World War Z reading. I first watched the movie a long time ago, but I find the book more engaging (the reason I initially liked the movie was because of the actors, or in this case it was because of one particular actor..)

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by CRussel

I've already decided that some of my Baen Backlog is going to just stay unread. Though I admit, I have found some gems in there.

Right now, I'm reading the eARC of Dragon in Exile, the new Liaden book from Sharon Lee and Steve Miller. Now go away quietly and leave me alone, I'm busy.

Wonderful, as expected. This book ties together and brings forward a whole raft of stories. There are lots of gems here, but I'll avoid overt snerkers, except to say that Kareen turns out to be a more interesting person, and more useful, than simply someone who yells at Val Con.

Next up, Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence, the MR Book Club selection this month.

[Dazrin]

Originally Posted by Dazrin

Right now my page count for January is 3,856 which is 9 pages short of my all-time high reading month. Maybe I need to read a short tomorrow instead of Split Second.

I am not sure why I keep forgetting to actually update this thread, but once again it has been more than 2 weeks.

I continued my "I want to read a new thriller series" theme by reading Split Second by David Baldacci, the first in the King and Maxwell series. Also the third new series I have started this year. I have one more on hold at the library and then will decide which to try to continue. Split Second was a good story but I didn't enjoy it as much as the Camel Club or Point of Impact, so it will probably be near the end.

I finished January with 4,368 pages read, over 500 pages more than any other single month for me. As expected February isn't going quite as fast, although I am certainly enjoying it.

First was the cyberpunk stand-alone Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, which was published in 1992. Apparently this book is one of the best in the sub-genre, which I am not very familiar with, but I wasn't enamored by it. It is very dark and the slang used was difficult to follow a lot of the time. There are a lot of similarities between it and the more recent Ready Player One but RPO is a much better story in my opinion.

Somewhere in my wandering around the internet I came across "The Marching Morons" by C.M. Kornbluth and I needed to see what it was if only to figure out what the title meant. Apparently it is one of the inspirations for the movie Idiocracy and was written in the early 1950s. Sounded interesting and when I was looking for that I found out it was actually a sequel to another short story "The Little Black Bag" that was written a year earlier and has since won a retroactive Hugo award. Apparently Frederik Pohl encouraged him to write the sequel after reading TLBB, I for one am thankful. I ended up reading them in published order and enjoyed both quite a bit. Both were excellent and hold up fairly well to the passing of time which a lot of SF doesn't do.

Currently reading Firefight by Brandon Sanderson, the Reckoner series #2, which my library just procured on my recommendation, which also meant I got to be first in line. Yay!