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

[PurpleStar]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I fully intend to! I have the omnibus edition of the trilogy.

I will read it too, eventually. I got the trilogy on sale for a buck.

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by HarryT

"The Blade Itself" by Joe Abercrombie. The first book in the "First Law" trilogy. Rather dark and violent fantasy, but an excellent read. Difficult to describe other than to say that, if you like fantasy, you should give it a go. A new author for me, and I'm very impressed indeed.

I really tried to read this. Several of my friends, including ones here on MR, strongly recommended Abercrombie. But I abandoned it about half way through. I could have liked it a lot, but the violence was just way too much. If this were a movie, it would be rated X for violence. I could have enjoyed it at the R level, and the book would have been a better book, IMHO, without the author losing the storyline.

Meanwhile, just finished Outback, by Aaron Fletcher, and Pittsburgh Backyard and Garden, a 100pg short work by Wen Spencer in the Tinker/Elfhome world. Both enjoyed a great deal.

[Yapyap]

Originally Posted by Yapyap

Instead, last night I started Wild Things, the latest in Chloe Neill's Chicagoland Vampires series, which I'd pre-ordered ages ago.

And have now finished it, too. Enjoyed it quite a bit - it's fluff, perhaps, but fun.

I had a hard time picking my next read tonight - opened a good half a dozen books, in various genres, and closed them again after reading half a page or so. Nothing, nothing, out of the 1100+ TBR books is currently calling out my name.

Finally settled on Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson, which I got last year and have been meaning to read for ages, but 5% in and I'm dreadfully bored. I don't care for the writing style and neither the characters nor the plot (whatever it is) have reeled me in yet. (Also, could Western authors please stop with the irritating habit of giving contemporary or very-near-future Russians middle names that aren't patronymics? It's really quite jarring to read!)

I do hope it gets more interesting soon, as I'd hate to not finish it. Maybe I'm just not in the mood for reading, in general, today.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by CRussel

Pittsburgh Backyard and Garden, a 100pg short work by Wen Spencer in the Tinker/Elfhome world.

Ah - one of the Baen freebies from 2013. I must read it soon!

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Yapyap

Finally settled on Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson, […] but 5% in and I'm dreadfully bored. […]
I do hope it gets more interesting soon, as I'd hate to not finish it.

I read Red Mars & Green Mars back in 2010. You can find my comments here and here.

I'm not sure I'd finish them if I started them this year. And I never have got onto Blue Mars and The Martians. In fact, I see I've taken them off my TBR list. I have far too many exciting books to read to spend time being bored and irritated

[Yapyap]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I read Red Mars & Green Mars back in 2010. You can find my comments here and here.

I'm not sure I'd finish them if I started them this year. And I never have got onto Blue Mars and The Martians. In fact, I see I've taken them off my TBR list. I have far too many exciting books to read to spend time being bored and irritated

Hmm. At least it's not just me then!

I will certainly give it some more time - it's a long book and 5% is far too little to decide to give up; I've had slow starting books turn out to be very good before, but I'm not expecting miracles to happen.

[alansplace]

Originally Posted by alansplace

I finished reading The Vanishing Houseboat and after researching Mildred Wirt a bit found a trio of YA mysteries (all amazon freebies) using another main character named Madge Sterling. I also found out that Mildred Wirt lived till she was 96 and worked as a journalist up to very near the end of her life. Next I'm going to read the first of the above trio, The Missing Formula (Madge Sterling Series #1) by Ann Wirt (a thinly disguised pen name).

I just completed reading The Missing Formula and I've now begun reading today's new The Hollows release (#12), The Undead Pool by Kim Harrison.

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Ah - one of the Baen freebies from 2013. I must read it soon!

Yup. And FUN! When Ms. Spencer decides to create fun characters, she has a way about her. Hal is too good to be true, and the whole premise is fun. She was right to make it a short work - it doesn't have legs for more. But it is great good fun at this length. (Hal reminds me of one of my all time favourite quotes from the US TV series "Mythbusters". One of the two presenters, Jamie, says, in perfect seriousness: "Jamie want big boom!" And promptly gets it, of course. )

[LovesMacs]

I've begun to read Killing Jesus by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard. I haven't read this duo's other books on Abraham Lincoln and Robert F. Kennedy.

I'm not far into this book but I can already say that it takes a much different approach from The Last Week by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan. The Borg/Crossan book takes texts from the Gospels and gives historical and cultural contexts. The O'Reilly/Dugard approach seems to be this: choose a point in time and write an imagined, almost novelistic retelling of what they believe might have taken place. It's very effective in drawing you into the story but I'm not sure how accurate everything is.

I have to say that I'm only as far as the initial scene-setting, where the authors have talked about the ailing and anxious Herod, the slaughter of the innocents, and now the authors have stepped backward to explain the Roman Civil Wars. It's a very macroscopic way to go about things.

[MickeyC]

Just finished Mortal Stakes by Robert B Parker. Typically great Parker read.

Just downloaded and started The Future of the Mind by Michio Kaku. Looking forward to this as all his books are great.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by LovesMacs

...I'm not far into this book but I can already say that it takes a much different approach from The Last Week by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan. The Borg/Crossan book takes texts from the Gospels and gives historical and cultural contexts....

I haven't read that particular book, but I'm a fan of both of those authors. I don't always agree with everything they have to say, but they do their homework; there's no denying that.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by MickeyC

...Just downloaded and started The Future of the Mind by Michio Kaku. Looking forward to this as all his books are great.

No denying that, either, cassi MickeyC!

[ccowie]

Finished reading The Summer Tree. I didn't like this book and won't read any of the others in the series. But, I may try another series by Guy Gavriel Kay. Apparently, he has written better material.

[bfisher]

Currently reading "Basin and Range", the first book in John McPhee's series about the geology along I-80.

[Yapyap]

Still making my way through Red Mars. It's become vaguely more interesting - enough to keep me reading for now, although not nearly enough to get me enthusiastic.

Also, it features one of my major pet peeves - Western authors who haven't bothered to make any effort to look into the naming systems/customs of other cultures and therefore come up with entirely unlikely names for their protagonists.

Spoiler:

"Nadezhda Francine Cherneshevsky" is an impossible name for a "Russian" born around 1975-1985 in Russia. So is "Maya Katarina Toitovna" (never mind that "-vna" is more likely to be a patronymic suffix than a surname suffix).

Just .. why those Western-style middle names? Why? Where are the patronymics? Why are there unexplained middle names that were a legal impossibility? Heck, even non-Russian, non-Slavic people (i.e. people with entirely different naming customs) in the USSR born at that period were not allowed to have middle names - at best, hyphenated double first names were allowed, but not without a hyphen.

(I suppose "impossible" is maybe untrue; I'm sure there were some, some, rebellious people who might have secretly given their kids unofficial middle names. But it wouldn't be commonplace, it wouldn't have been their legal name, and it would be something outlandish enough to remark on.)