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

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I've just finished "The Compleat McAndrew" by Charles Sheffield, originally bought in April 2000. This is a part of my "catch up with my old Baen books" project.

VERY highly recommended to anyone who enjoys hard SF.

Darn. Not in my library of Baen books, and not currently available for purchase. In fact, many of the Sheffield books are unavailable, though some are still for sale. Including the bundle editions at an average price of $5/book. But not the McAndrew book, which sounds like one I'd really enjoy.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by CRussel

Darn. Not in my library of Baen books, and not currently available for purchase. In fact, many of the Sheffield books are unavailable, though some are still for sale. Including the bundle editions at an average price of $5/book. But not the McAndrew book, which sounds like one I'd really enjoy.

Sorry - I didn't check before posting the recommendation; I should have done, so my apologies .

I've always bought every Baen bundle as it was released, right from when they started in 1998 or 99. Pleased I did now, since many of the older books are indeed no longer available to buy. I guess Baen have lost the rights to them. Curiously enough, though, this particular book is still available for me to download, whereas many of the books no longer sold can't be downloaded.

[booklover6]

I am reading Parasite by Mira Grant and it is SO good. I suppose it is a medical thriller novel.

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Sorry - I didn't check before posting the recommendation; I should have done, so my apologies .

I've always bought every Baen bundle as it was released, right from when they started in 1998 or 99. Pleased I did now, since many of the older books are indeed no longer available to buy. I guess Baen have lost the rights to them. Curiously enough, though, this particular book is still available for me to download, whereas many of the books no longer sold can't be downloaded.

It depends on the rights. In most cases, unless the author is a real [], they continue to be able to service users who have already bought the book. Only if the author demands they remove them completely are they no longer available to previous purchasers. After all, you bought the book, and the author presumably got his or her share of that purchase.

In this case, one suspects that not only have the rights reverted, but getting them back is made more difficult because one is dealing with an estate, rather than the original author.

I have bought most Baen bundles since I got my Kindle. And even gone back and bought many earlier ones as I ran across stories I wanted that were in those earlier ones. This is one reason I'm so sad that they had to remove the ability to buy bundles after the books shipped. But until I got my Kindle, I had zero interest in eBooks. I even had a couple of Weber CDs from buying the hardback of a book, and I never bothered to do more than look at what they were and put them back on my spindle of old CDs. For me, reading on the computer is just not comfortable. Probably in large part because I already spend WAY too many hours in front of my monitors. Reading needs to be a break.

Sadly, in looking around, no one seems to be selling this book. It is, however, available on the darknet. Which puts me in the usual quandary, since I will never go that route when I can purchase. But have occasionally when it was the only option available, and usually when I had already purchased the pBook. (Harry Potter, for example, before they became available. And then, of course, I bought them as soon as they were available. )

[Russell Brooks]

Struggling to get through DEAD OR ALIVE by the late Tom Clancy.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Russell Brooks

Struggling to get through DEAD OR ALIVE by the late Tom Clancy.

Nothing to do with Clancy other than having his name on the cover. It was written by a gentleman by the name of Grant Blackwood.

[DrNefario]

I just finished The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon. A Pulitzer winner, to add an air of respectability to my year's reading. I liked it. It's about two young Jewish cousins in New York at the outbreak of WW2, one of whom is a refugee from Czechoslovakia. They create a golden age comic book, and various things happen over a number of years. It's quite a long book, broken into distinct parts that almost stand alone.

Part way through I took a break to finish New Orleans Mourning by Julie Smith, the first of many freebies I have picked up from that author, and another prize-winner, this time an Edgar. Another good one, but it was darker than I expected. A member of a highly dysfunctional upper-tier New Orleans family is murdered, and a former member of that social circle, ex-deb Skip Langdon, is assigned to the investigation. And I thought Britain was class-conscious.

In the process of reading a very interesting book, On the Trail of Genghis Khan: An Epic Journey Through the Land of the Nomads by Tim Cope. I am about half way through this at the moment. I am finding it both and educational and entertaining read. Part personal travelogue, part contemporary cultural study, and part history lesson as the author recounts his his 2004-2007 journey from the birth place of Genghis Khan in Mongolia to the Danube River in Hungry entirely by horseback following the path the Mongol armies would have taken in the 13th Century.

I have just completed the chapters covering his journey through Kazakhstan. This was particularly interesting as it provided a glimpse of the new challenges facing the people of Kazakhstan in the post-Soviet era. Having previously read The Silent Steppe: The Story of a Kazakh Nomad Under Stalin by Mukhamet Shayakhmetov in which the author recounted the destruction of the traditional nomadic way of life by forced collectivization under Stalin in the 1920s and 1930s. The breakup of the Soviet Union has forced the Kazakhs to once more redefine there lives economically and culturally.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I read Cloud Atlas. I found it to be a mish-mosh of confusing stories that are linked by a thread the size of a human hair. It was awful and I would hope nobody else wastes their time reading it. it has no cohesion. It has no real plot. It's not really science fiction. It's more like an sf wannabe that fails at it big time.

I thought it was very good and it succeeded as an sf-bok. It has cohesion and it has a theme and each individual story of course has a plot.

[caleb72]

Originally Posted by tompe

I thought it was very good and it succeeded as an sf-bok. It has cohesion and it has a theme and each individual story of course has a plot.

I haven't read it myself although I intend to someday. I did attempt to watch the movie though. It was a very tedious exercise and I gave up without finishing it. Urgh! Not even the calibre of acting employed saved it for me. I'm guessing the book is much better though and I really enjoyed 'Black Swan Green'.

[Stephjk]

Originally Posted by DrNefario

I just finished The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon. A Pulitzer winner, to add an air of respectability to my year's reading. I liked it. It's about two young Jewish cousins in New York at the outbreak of WW2, one of whom is a refugee from Czechoslovakia. They create a golden age comic book, and various things happen over a number of years. It's quite a long book, broken into distinct parts that almost stand alone..

I read this at the beginning of the year, a departure from the norm (pre MR Bookclub days) for me. Enjoyed it very much.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Analog SFF, January 2014 by Dell Magazine Authors.

Definitely an above-average issue. But it's much too early to tell whether the change in editor has had any effect.

And I'm currently reading F&SF November/December 2013 edited by Gordon van Gelder.

F&SF has a tendency to publish 'literary' fantasy, which I dislike. but not in this issue, so far.

[bfisher]

Finished The King's Grave: The Discovery of Richard III's Lost Burial Place and the Clues It Holds by Philippa Langley and Michael Jones. It gives the background to the successful search for Richard III's remains in 2012, and discusses the back story of his reign in parallel. Quite interesting. Josephine Tey did a good book as an Insp Grant murder inquiry on a part of Richard's story (the princes in the Tower) in The Daughter of Time. It's interesting to compare her arguments with Langley and Jones.

[BookGyrlinMO]

Finished All the Flowers in Shanghai last night, rereading Lady Chatterly's Lover for a book challenge on GR.

[dreams]

The Delphi Agenda by Rob Swigart

Originally Posted by dreams

I can't believe I actually started this so long ago and still haven't finished it.

Spoiler:

So much has continued to come up that I have only been reading things that I can fit in here and there. So, throughout the summer, I've read many a gardening book (square foot planting, companion planting, garden pest control: pesticide free, how to compost, etc.) and have filled in the other times with a lot of short history freebies from amazon; Mark Black and Charles Rivers Editors. None of which are memorable or worth rereads. Hopefully the coming fall and winter will allow longer time periods for reading.

I did finally finish it and enjoyed it enough that I wish I hadn't stopped and started it so many times. I do enjoy adventures and this was about "an ancient document that reveals a secret so explosive it could change the world—a document they’ve been tracking for centuries. Led by a sadistic priest and a vicious but very accomplished nun with excellent military cred, their mission is to destroy the document—no matter what the cost in blood."

The next one that I enjoyed reading was The Blood Gospel (The Order of the Sanguines 01) by James Rollins and Rebecca Cantrell. "The unlikely trio of a military forensic expert, a Vatican priest, and archaeologist come together when an earthquake in Israel uncovers buried tomb, including a missing book rumored to have been written by Christ's own hand" My son loaned this to me, but, after starting the pback, I really wanted it on my Kfire. So, I found it at my library and downloaded it. My son didn't like it and, since we enjoy a lot of the same books, I was afraid I wouldn't like it. I loved it and look forward to what happens in the second book. Sergeant Stone from the City of Screams by James Rollins and Rebecca Cantrell is in this book.

Now I am trying to find something to hold my attention and starting and stopping various ones I've already downloaded.