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

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

TNow for another recent purchase: What Makes This Book So Great by Jo Walton. A collection of essays about her favourite books. I suspect that this will add to my wishlist.

Which was good fun and interesting to have her take on the various books and reading habits in general all in one place. I will probably be going through it again at some point, adding some of the books to my wishlists.

Next up: The latest Lightspeed Magazine.

[Dazrin]

Originally Posted by Dazrin

Next is Assassin's Quest, book 3 of the Farseer Trilogy, by Robin Hobb. I started reading these in the late 90s and never finished this book. I am very much looking forward to it after re-reading the first two.

Well, I may have finished it back then, I at least read most of it and remember that. It might just be that the end isn't very satisfying or memorable. Overall, I really enjoyed the series, but this last book wasn't as good as the first two.

Next up is The Dispossessed for the August Book Club.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Dazrin

Well, I may have finished it back then, I at least read most of it and remember that. It might just be that the end isn't very satisfying or memorable. Overall, I really enjoyed the series, but this last book wasn't as good as the first two.

Looking back at my post when I read it a few months ago, I certainly enjoyed reading it, but I must admit that the actual events now slip my mind.

But I'm still looking forward to starting her next series.

[HarryT]

Just finished "Cat Among the Pigeons" by Agatha Christie. This was her 61st book, and was originally published in 1958. Poirot investigates a series of murders at a well-known English girls' school. This is one of the very best of Christie's later novels, to my mind. An excellent story with interesting characters. Highly recommended.

[bfisher]

Finished "The Mighty Dead Why Homer Matters" by Adam Nicolson. Astonishingly good, considering it's a book about two epic poems that were old enough to be classics to Plato.

[Dazrin]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Looking back at my post when I read it a few months ago, I certainly enjoyed reading it, but I must admit that the actual events now slip my mind.

But I'm still looking forward to starting her next series.

The new Fitz and the Fool series, starting with Fool's Assassin, is what got me started reading these again. I still need to read the Tawny Man series first though, which I know I haven't read before. Hopefully I can get away with skipping the Liveship Traders and Rain Wild trilogies, at least for now. As I understand it they are set in the same world but have different characters.

[mewmartigan]

Originally Posted by Dazrin

The new Fitz and the Fool series, starting with Fool's Assassin, is what got me started reading these again. I still need to read the Tawny Man series first though, which I know I haven't read before. Hopefully I can get away with skipping the Liveship Traders and Rain Wild trilogies, at least for now. As I understand it they are set in the same world but have different characters.

I just started the last book in the Tawny Man trilogy and I am enjoying it. I did read the Liveship Traders in between. Book 2 of tawny man has a character from the Liveship books come to Buckkeep unannounced for a short visit and there is some reference to what happened but overall Liveship definitely isn't required reading before the Tawny Man books.

If you read Liveship after Tawny Man there is one small spoiler that will have been ruined for you but it doesn't affect the main plot.

[Dazrin]

Originally Posted by mewmartigan

I just started the last book in the Tawny Man trilogy and I am enjoying it. I did read the Liveship Traders in between. Book 2 of tawny man has a character from the Liveship books come to Buckkeep unannounced for a short visit and there is some reference to what happened but overall Liveship definitely isn't required reading before the Tawny Man books.

If you read Liveship after Tawny Man there is one small spoiler that will have been ruined for you but it doesn't affect the main plot.

Thank you!

Spoilers, especially minor ones, don't bother me too much. Reading a good book is more about the journey to me than the details. Even major ones don't really bother me most of the time. For example, I read Side Jobs, number 12.5 in the Dresden Files this year even though I have only read the first three of the main series and the revelations in that won't discourage me in the least from finishing the rest of them.

Spoiler:

Snape kills Dumbledore!

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Next up: The latest Lightspeed Magazine.

Which was very good. I had read one of the reprints before, but I liked all the stories, and the novella was very good.

Next: The Bloodline Feud by Charles Stross, an omnibus of The Family Trade and The Hidden Family, the first two books in his Merchant Princes series.

Looking very good so far!

[Crusader]

Finished reading Reach for Infinity. An anthology of hard(ish) SF stories. Very good collection with some stunning stories. Read full review.

[bfisher]

Originally Posted by LovesMacs

I'm splitting most of my reading between Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August, a history of the beginnings of World War I, and Franklin Foer's How Soccer Explains the World. I'm about halfway through these books.
...
As for the Foer book, I've learned things I never knew before about the links between ultra-violent soccer (football) fans and the brutalities during the breakup of what used to be called Yugoslavia. There's more to the book than that, but I've only read as far as the discussion of who owns Brazil's football (soccer) clubs.

Thanks for the recommendation for "How Soccer Explains the World" by Franklin Foer. Just finished it and found it very interesting. It's the first thing by Foer that I've read, and I'm looking forward to his new book coming out this fall.

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by Dazrin

The new Fitz and the Fool series, starting with Fool's Assassin, is what got me started reading these again. I still need to read the Tawny Man series first though, which I know I haven't read before. Hopefully I can get away with skipping the Liveship Traders and Rain Wild trilogies, at least for now. As I understand it they are set in the same world but have different characters.

I'm on book two, about 65% through it, of the farseer trilogy based on reco's here. It is a good story and well written, but it does seem to be a bit slow at times.

[WT Sharpe]

I finished reading The City on the Edge of Forever: The Original Teleplay by Harlan Ellison, and posted the following review on Goodreads: "The City on the Edge of Forever" has long been my favorite episode of the original Star Trek TV series. I was unaware, however, of the controversy surrounding this episode. It seems the author, Harlan Ellison, was not at all pleased by the changes Gene Roddenberry insisted on, and it ignited an intense and bitter feud that was to last decades. This book contains the original teleplay, unaltered, just as Ellison intended. It's different, and extremely good, although I don't know if it would have been a fitting episode as written for Star Trek. The afterwords by cast members (Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, George Takei) are warm but non-committal as concerns the controversy, although other afterwords by others connected to the Star Trek universe seem to back up Ellison's version of events. William Shatner--who was portrayed by Ellison as a brown-nosing, two-faced, false friend--is nowhere to be be found among the afterwards. Gene Roddenberry--who is portrayed here as a lying, scheming, megalomanic with no writing ability--was deceased by the time this book came out. Has the truth come out at long last, or is this simply an angry rant by a very talented but unstable author with a temper on overdrive?

[alansplace]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

I finished reading The City on the Edge of Forever: The Original Teleplay by Harlan Ellington, and posted the following review on Goodreads: "The City on the Edge of Forever" has long been my favorite episode of the original Star Trek TV series. I was unaware, however, of the controversy surrounding this episode. It seems the author, Harlan Ellington, was not at all pleased by the changes Gene Roddenberry insisted on, and it ignited an intense and bitter feud that was to last decades. This book contains the original teleplay, unaltered, just as Ellington intended. It's different, and extremely good, although I don't know if it would have been a fitting episode as written for Star Trek. The afterwords by cast members (Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, George Takei) are warm but non-committal as concerns the controversy, although other afterwords by others connected to the Star Trek universe seem to back up Ellington's version of events. William Shatner--who was portrayed by Ellington as a brown-nosing, two-faced, false friend--is nowhere to be be found among the afterwards. Gene Roddenberry--who is portrayed here as a lying, scheming, megalomanic with no writing ability--was deceased by the time this book came out. Has the truth come out at long last, or is this simply an angry rant by a very talented but unstable author with a temper on overdrive?

That's Harlan Ellison not Harlan Ellington.

[WT Sharpe]

Thanks. Corrected. Yet another reason to prefer e-books to paper. I would have copied the name right from calibre.