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

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by Crusader

Just finished reading Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and I'm not sure what to think of it. It was quite thought-provoking at times, but it also felt quite disjointed.

Originally Posted by Marrella

I agree. I have listened to this a couple of years ago and couldn't quite fathom what all the fuss was about. Maybe science fiction can only be great literature if it describes a horrible future?

I recently finished Farthing by Jo Walton. It is some kind of scifi/murder mystery crossover set in an alternate Europe where Hitler won WWII. The Jews are still unwanted almost everywhere and mixed marriages are frownded upon. I think it reads a bit like an Agatha Christie mystery set in a parallel world and I liked it quite a bit. It is the first book in a trilogy (though it is self-contained) and I am tempted to buy the other two as well.

I read that around 40 years ago, but don't remember it being about a bleak future. Maybe I'll have to revisit it.

[WT Sharpe]

I just looked at the plot summery on Wikipedia for Brave New World, and I think I may be confusing it with another book. In the book I was referring to, there was an extraterrestrial.

Oh, well. I'm old. That's my excuse for today.

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@DixieGal: Hi there!

[captkjaneway]

Desperately trying to get through The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery - a bit of a pretentious yawner for me so far....may give the Dresden opener, Storm Front a go instead....

[Crusader]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

In the book I was referring to, there was an extraterrestrial.

Now that might have improved it considerably!

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by Crusader

Now that might have improved it considerably!

I now realize I was confusing it with by Robert A. Heinlein. The central character wasn't really an extraterrestrial, but a human raised on Mars who was fully integrated into Martian ways. When he came to Earth, he might as well have been an extraterrestrial, as he had learned psychic abilities such as telekinesis from the Martians and viewed everything earthly as very foreign. Now that I've thought about it, I've never read Huxley's Brave New World. Just goes to show you can't always take everything I ever say as gospel.

One of the things I recall from Stranger in a Strange Land is his co-workers, who had learned from the protagonist how to develop their own psychic abilities, walking around the office while their cigarette packs floated in the air behind them.

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by alansplace

Ah ha! Ok then I'm at least partly correct.

On a related note, have you seen this new omnibus (just $9.95)?
Attachment 90321

Hadn't seen that omnibus, but glad to know it's there. No big deal for me, since I have all four of them (along with a couple of Liam Campbell short stories) already as eBooks. But at $10 it's a great deal, for sure.

Finished listening to Command Decision, #4 in the Vatta's War series by Elizabeth Moon, and am well into A Fine and Bitter Snow. Enjoying it a lot. I think I'll finish this one and go right on to #13, A Grave Denied.

[alansplace]

Originally Posted by CRussel

Hadn't seen that omnibus, but glad to know it's there. No big deal for me, since I have all four of them (along with a couple of Liam Campbell short stories) already as eBooks. But at $10 it's a great deal, for sure.

Finished listening to Command Decision, #4 in the Vatta's War series by Elizabeth Moon, and am well into A Fine and Bitter Snow. Enjoying it a lot. I think I'll finish this one and go right on to #13, A Grave Denied.

The short stories appear to be included as well!

From Dana Stabenow's web site:

More Liam Than You Can Handle
August 7, 2012 by Dana

For the first time, all four Liam Campbell e-novels and all two Liam Campbell e-short stories under one cover:
Attachment 90321
My e-publisher, Gere Donovan Press, writes

Newenham, Alaska is a Bush town with a six-bed jail, a busted ATM and a saloon that does double-duty as a courtroom. It’s a wide-enough patch to warrant a state police presence, though, and Trooper Liam Campbell is it, posted there to spend some much-needed time in the wilderness. Campbell didn’t expect the new job to be simple, but finding his ex-lover crouched over a headless body is a hell of a way to get off the plane.

Couldn’t have put it better myself, and all this Liam goodness available for the bargain basement price of $9.99! I took a quick venture into higher math, and after I corrected my backwards caculations for the correct frontwards ones, that comes out to

0.00002813 cents per word!

Such a deal.

[carld]

Started nibbling at Marion Zimmer Bradley's The House Between the Worlds since one reviewer described it as classic urban fantasy. I'm not really seeing that yet, but it's a decent ordinary-man-encounters-the-fantastic sort of story so far.

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by alansplace

The short stories appear to be included as well!

Excellent. For anyone who hasn't tried the Liam Campbell books of Dana Stabenow, I highly recommend them. They aren't quite as good as the Kate Shugak stories, perhaps, but still quite well written and full of Alaska. All they're really lacking, IMNSHO, is Mutt.

Originally Posted by carld

Started nibbling at Marion Zimmer Bradley's The House Between the Worlds since one reviewer described it as classic urban fantasy. I'm not really seeing that yet, but it's a decent ordinary-man-encounters-the-fantastic sort of story so far.

Been a while since I read this. I may need to re-read it. I've got several of the MZB Darkover books on my Kindle right now, thinking about starting into them again.

As i have only just acquired my Kobo, I decided to trawl the tinternet to see what i could obtain.
At the moment I am reading
"Post Captain (1972) by Patrick O'Brian"
But as i am finding some old classics from my younger days this may change
quickly.

[ProjeKtWEREWOLF]

I'm halfway through the new Graham McNeill novel 'Priests of Mars'. It's a Warhammer 40K story set around a Mechanicus 'explorator' fleet which is to investigate a strange and rapidly ageing region of space. Pretty good read so far.

[maianhvk]

So I started the Ranger's Apprentice series by John Flanagan. Those are nice quick reads, but overpriced...

[tecweston]

Just Finished:

- The Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle - making my way through a second read-through of the canon. So far I've read The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, A Study in Scarlet, and The Sign of Four. I was going in order of my favorites but I think now I'll just go in order in publication for the rest of them.

Currently Reading:

- Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins (48%)
- The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss (28%)

[poohbear_nc]

Chelsea Cain has created one of the most chilling yet charming serial killers -- a worthy successor to Hannibal Lector -- with Gretchen Lowell, the so-called Beauty Killer - a stunningly beautiful seductive blond who really, really, really enjoys her vocation. But wait! There's more! Mix in Archie Sheridan, the police detective she kidnaps and tortures for 10 days .... but doesn't kill ... who falls in love/becomes enthralled by her. The two embark on a tap-dance of fascination, revulsion, cat-and-mouse games co-dependent relationship that tears apart Archie's life and family. It's a stunningly original premise for a mystery series, beginning with Heartsick in 2007, and continuing into its fifth installment Kill You Twice. This is NOT a series for the squeamish, as Gretchen's myriad methods of murder are lovingly described in gut churning grisly detail. Cain's books are compulsively readable - as you wonder what Gretchen won't do next ....

Cain has put the thrill back into the thriller genre.

[orlok]

Originally Posted by poohbear_nc

Chelsea Cain has created one of the most chilling yet charming serial killers -- a worthy successor to Hannibal Lector -- with Gretchen Lowell, the so-called Beauty Killer - a stunningly beautiful seductive blond who really, really, really enjoys her vocation. But wait! There's more! Mix in Archie Sheridan, the police detective she kidnaps and tortures for 10 days .... but doesn't kill ... who falls in love/becomes enthralled by her. The two embark on a tap-dance of fascination, revulsion, cat-and-mouse games co-dependent relationship that tears apart Archie's life and family. It's a stunningly original premise for a mystery series, beginning with Heartsick in 2007, and continuing into its fifth installment Kill You Twice. This is NOT a series for the squeamish, as Gretchen's myriad methods of murder are lovingly described in gut churning grisly detail. Cain's books are compulsively readable - as you wonder what Gretchen won't do next ....

Cain has put the thrill back into the thriller genre.

Being a Dexter fan, I like the sound of this. Thank you pooh.