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

[DiapDealer]

I just finished Joe Abercrombie's The Heroes (one of those Bankrupt Nihilistic Fantasies that has Leo Grin up in arms over at Big Hollywood).

I liked it a little better than his previous Best Served Cold, but that may be only because I was more familiar with the characters in this one. Don't get me wrong, I love the fact that someone is writing something that can be even loosely described as "stand-alone fantasy" in this day and age, but I get the feeling that these three planned stand-alones are simply better-than-average-filler between his First Law Trilogy and the next series.

And further (only for those who have read all the books)...

Spoiler:

All fans fell in love with the character of the Bloody-Nine (Logen Ninefingers) - who came to a rather ambiguous "end" at the conclusion of the First Law Trilogy. Abercrombie has been dangling the potential return of the Bloody-Nine in both books since then. He will continue to dangle that carrot in the third planned stand-alone. It's getting a little old. Bring Logen Ninefingers back or kill him permanently. I'm cool with either one... just stop rubbing a fantastic (but absent) character in the readers face in order to sell books that are good, but less than stellar.

I also read and enjoyed the latest installment over at Ray Gun Revival (Memory by Michael Merriam) and the first story in James H. Schmitz's Telzey Amberdon collection. (Yes, I have a weakness for golden-age space opera).

Now I'm starting A Shadow in Summer. The first book in Daniel Abraham's Long Price Quartet tetrology. I was bullied into it after sticking my foot in my mouth in a thread on another forum.

I kid... my arm didn't have to be twisted very far at all.

[Latinandgreek]

Originally Posted by Michael McLovin

Currently re-reading Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami.
Just needed my Murakami fix until i can get 1q84.

I've been dying to read iq84! My Japanese isn't good enough to read it in the original language (although I'd love to), and the English translation isn't out yet, unfortunately. I love Norwegian Wood, maybe I should re-read it, too...
I've been contemplating getting the Croatian translation of "Dance, Dance, Dance", as I don't think it's abridged, like my English translation is.

[bjones6416]

I finished "A Room With a View" the other day. Is today the day to begin the discussion?

[maianhvk]

I'm re-reading Stefen Wolf's TKKG series. It's been a long time.

[SeaBookGuy]

Originally Posted by Latinandgreek

I've been contemplating getting the Croatian translation of "Dance, Dance, Dance", as I don't think it's abridged, like my English translation is.

I listened to Dance, Dance, Dance as an unabridged audio -- Rupert Degas does a terrific job narrating Murakami!

[pilotbob]

Just finished _The Well of Ascension_.. good book. I'll get the the third one soon.

But, my next read will be _The Ark_ by Boyd Morrison.

BOb

[Crusader]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I just finished Joe Abercrombie's The Heroes (one of those Bankrupt Nihilistic Fantasies that has Leo Grin up in arms over at Big Hollywood).

I actually ordered all Abercrombie's books from Amazon.co.uk today. For the first time ever they are offering free shipping to South Africa, so I just had to make use of it. What better way than getting some deeply discounted hardback copies of Best Served Cold and The Heroes and the entire paperback First Law Trilogy.

Now I've got to put myself on a book buying ban....

[ATDrake]

Finished Snake, by Drake Stutesman who surprisingly turned out to be a woman, if that wasn't a typo on the blurb on the back of the book.

A little less compelling than Oyster in the same series, perhaps because the author of that one was also an English Professor whereas Stutesman edits some Cinema and media magazine, or perhaps because the first half of the book was devoted to the snake's symbolism in myth and religion throughout time from pre-historic Neolithic artwork through to modern evangelical Christian snake-handling sects.

Frankly, that much symbolism all in one extended chunk was kind of boring and I skimmed over that until the book picked up again with some interesting stuff about how venom is being used for modern day medicinal purposes and how snakebites used to be treated with bad medicine in the past.

A nice volume in the series, even if not quite as interesting for me as the other one I tried, and recommended for people who like this sort of pop-science/culture stuff.

Also returned to the library Alison's Wonderland, an anthology of fairy-tale based erotic romance stories in Harlequin's Spice imprint, edited by Alison Tyler, of m/f and f/f shorts by both female and male authors.

I've always been a sucker for fairy-tale re-imaginings (sex optional) and this was an okay addition to the field. Some of them were clever and imaginative, others had no noticeable fairy-tale/folkloric element and seemed to have been an excuse to write a story involving an "ordinary" fantasy like spanking. Granted, I skipped over the more boring stories so I might have missed something.

Mild recommendation if fairy-tale derivatives are your thing and you also like them sexed up (mind you, given how some of the originals went, "up" is really not that far from the source). There's too high a proportion of straw to gold otherwise.

Best-written/most entertaining (not necessarily congruent qualities, I should warn you) of the lot in my opinion were: Beauty and the Beast's BDSM boundaries negotiation, the D&D game that takes a decidedly kinkier LARPing twist, the resetting of Rumplestiltskin among the aristocracy of Lancastrian England, Snow White's stepmother's magic mirror voyeurism, the cybersex encounter of Cupid and Psyche, and the final 100 word drabble with a hilariously unconventional rescue of a maiden from a monster.

Now currently on Margaret MacMillan's Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World, about the Treaty of Versailles. I'm about 5% in and so far it's pretty promising, establishing the backgrounds and personalities of the main negotiators.

However, it's marred by flaw in the e-book edition, which doesn't link the footnotes in the text to their references. And it's not just my library-to-Kindle conversion that's at fault; they're missing in the original when I check the ADE download too.

[SeaBookGuy]

Are the footnotes citations (in which case I don't generally care if they're linked), or commentary ("The confrontation caused such bad feelings that Martha executed a will the next day disinheriting Percival with the proverbial dollar.")?

[DixieGal]

Are you guys as anxious to see/read the new Nebula nominees as I am? As far as I can tell, they have not posted the list yet.

[DixieGal]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Just finished _The Well of Ascension_.. good book. I'll get the the third one soon.

But, my next read will be _The Ark_ by Boyd Morrison.

BOb

So you recommend it? Just this week, I sold my 505. Getting it ready to ship, I found Mistborn and bunch of books that I thought were gone with my stolen computer. I want to re-read it soon.

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by SeaBookGuy

Are the footnotes citations (in which case I don't generally care if they're linked), or commentary ("The confrontation caused such bad feelings that Martha executed a will the next day disinheriting Percival with the proverbial dollar.")?

Citations, it looks like. The author basically does her commentary inline in the text.

It's the principle of the thing, really. Grates on the nerves to have these dead little superscripts sprinkled throughout that you can't click on to see where they lead. All the while on the bus, I was wondering exactly what the heck extra the author might have had to say.

Plus it's sloppy. If the publisher's got one malformatted book out there like this where the linking doesn't matter all that much, you can bet they've at least a few more where it does, and the Gentle e-Reader may be missing out on supplementary value that can only be measured in milli-Pratchetts.

[DixieGal]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

Citations, it looks like. The author basically does her commentary inline in the text.

It's the principle of the thing, really. Grates on the nerves to have these dead little superscripts sprinkled throughout that you can't click on to see where they lead. All the while on the bus, I was wondering exactly what the heck extra the author might have had to say.

Plus it's sloppy. If the publisher's got one malformatted book out there like this where the linking doesn't matter all that much, you can bet they've at least a few more where it does, and the Gentle e-Reader may be missing out on supplementary value that can only be measured in milli-Pratchetts.

Last week's Overdrive update for iPad was supposed to allow the footnotes to work, but it didn't for Pratchett's Sourcery. It almost worked. Except the asterisks just shuttled to the first footnote, and there was no way to get back to the page.

[ATDrake]

My condolences. You just can't read Pratchett without the footnotes*. I have no idea how people with Kobos cope and hope they get the firmware update which includes that promised feature Real Soon Now.

* Although, since it sounds like you can get there and not back again, it might just be the book is likewise badly done† with one-way linking only. This is where the Kindle's Back button comes in handy on books I've had that were like that.

† A plague on both their lazy-@$$ conversion houses!

[DixieGal]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

My condolences. You just can't read Pratchett without the footnotes*. I have no idea how people with Kobos cope and hope they get the firmware update which includes that promised feature Real Soon Now.

* Although, since it sounds like you can get there and not back again, it might just be the book is likewise badly done† with one-way linking only. This is where the Kindle's Back button comes in handy on books I've had that were like that.

† A plague on both their lazy-@$$ conversion houses!

Nicely done!