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

[DiapDealer]

Catching up on The Expanse series with the most recent novella The Vital Abyss. A prequel with a little back-story on the protomolecule itself.

[Cinisajoy]

Just started TekLab by William Shatner.

[HarryT]

Just finished "A Plague of Demons", by Keith Laumer, which I bought from Baen in 2003. This is the fourth volume of Baen's collected works of Laumer, and all the stories in this volume have the theme of human contact with hostile aliens. A superb collection - I enjoyed all the stories. Very highly recommended.

[covingtoncat73]

The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon (Ladies #1 Detective Agency) by Alexander McCall Smith. I have read quite a few of these and they are enjoyable and soothing.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by mewmartigan

Finished the Reckoners series by Sanderson. They were entertaining...wonder if he'll revisit that world later.

According to his State of the Sanderson 2015 address:

I have not closed the door on doing more in the world, but it will not be for a while. If I do return, it will be like a Mistborn return, where the focus of the books shifts in some way and I create a new series. I like leaving endings as endings, even if the world and some of the characters do progress.

It is something I am looking forward to, although honestly I just want to see more of all his worlds anyway, so which ones should he prioritize?

[Dazrin]

Originally Posted by Dazrin

Next up: The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu and translated by Ken Liu. 2015 Hugo recipient and Nebula, Locus, Campbell and Prometheus award nominee, runner up from April's Book Club vote and something that has been on my library hold list for almost 4 months. It finally came in about a week ago so I need to get it read before moving onto something else.

This would have been an excellent choice for April's selection. Very interesting and well written, although there are some minor quirks from translation I suspect. I won't say much more because it will be in January's runner-up poll too and I will be voting for it then. Unfortunately for me the next book in the series, The Dark Forest, is not available from my library yet and the final book hasn't been translated yet but will be this year.

Next Up: The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann.

In 1925, the legendary British explorer Percy Fawcett ventured into the Amazon jungle, in search of a fabled civilization. He never returned. Over the years countless perished trying to find evidence of his party and the place he called "The Lost City of Z." In this masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, journalist David Grann interweaves the spellbinding stories of Fawcett's quest for "Z" and his own journey into the deadly jungle, as he unravels the greatest exploration mystery of the twentieth century.

[BenG]

I'm on a Wodehouse binge right now, alternating between Jeeves and Blandings Castle. So far I've read What Ho, Jeeves, Something Fresh, Leave it to Psmith, and am currently on Joy in the Morning. I usually read these on break at work.

When I have more time I'm reading Iain M. Banks' Use of Weapons.

Also I'm reading/listening to Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton, though that's going slow because I'm listening more to the Hamilton cast album that the audiobook. The book itself is very readable/listenable. Hamilton was one of the more interesting of the founding fathers and this is the book that inspired Lin-Manuel Miranda to write the musical.

[Dngrsone]

Finished The Maids of Wrath by Josh Vogt; now working on Pope Joan by Donna Woolfolk Cross.

[CRussel]

Currently re-reading The Steerswoman, this month's MobileRead Book Club selection. And enjoying it yet again, while discovering new things in it. Highly recommended, and then come join us for the discussion of the book starting on the 20th. Everyone is welcome, no additional signin or commitment required.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Let's go for a near-certain winner: Grantville Gazette #65, edited by Bjorn Hasseler

Enjoyable as usual.

Originally Posted by covingtoncat73

The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon (Ladies #1 Detective Agency) by Alexander McCall Smith. I have read quite a few of this and they are enjoyable and soothing.

I agree completely. I've enjoyed reading each one as it's come out.

Originally Posted by CRussel

Currently re-reading The Steerswoman

A worthy winner. I shall see if I can get in a re-read before the 20th.

But next up: Analog SF magazine for June 2016.

[mewmartigan]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

According to his State of the Sanderson 2015 address:



It is something I am looking forward to, although honestly I just want to see more of all his worlds anyway, so which ones should he prioritize?

I agree, I haven't read anything of Sanderson's that I didn't like. The magic system in Warbreaker really stood out to me.

I finished A call to Duty by David Weber and Timothy Zahn. Before book 2 I am taking a break to read the new Star Wars book Bloodline.

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

A worthy winner. I shall see if I can get in a re-read before the 20th.

But next up: Analog SF magazine for June 2016.

Nothing like a long plane flight to catch up on the reading! Finished my re-read of The Steerswoman just as we were touching down in Toronto. Just sitting here in the hotel room, trying to decide what's next. Probably back to the Heyer I started before I got side-tracked.

[DMcCunney]

Fiction and Non-fiction at the moment.

The non-fiction book just about finished is Peter F. Drucker's "Managing in a Time of Great Change." It's a collection of articles Drucker wrote that appeared in the Harvard Business Review between 1992 and 1995. They are all on the general theme of managing in a post-capitalist society. Despite being written over 20 years ago, they are still highly pertinent, and illustrate the fact that businesses and governments tend not to learn from errors, as actions that have been proven wrong are still repeated. I consider Drucker's "Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices" to be the single best book on the subject I've read, and recommend anything Drucker wrote. This is simply another good work from a management theorist I've never seen do a bad book.

The fiction just completed is Ian Douglas's Star Carrier: Deep Time, the sixth book in a series centered on the Star Carrier America, a space going fighter carrier and her battlegroup. Earth is united under a Confederation of which the United States of North America is an uneasy part. We've expanded out into the galaxy, and met a race called the Aglestch, who are vaguely arachnid, and galactic traders. The are also members of something called the Sh'Daar collective, a group of races under the command of something called the Sh'Daar. The Sh'Daar become aware of humanity through the Aglestch, and pass word to Earth that we will become part of their polity, and that we will abandon certain technologies The technologies involved are things seen as critical to human development, and the Sh'Daar ultimatum is not well received. The events will lead to a civil war on Earth between the USNA and the Confederation, at the same time fighting erupts between humanity and various Sh'Daar client species.

Douglas is a pseudonym of William R. Keith, whose Warstrider series under his own name I previously read. Warstriders is set in a universe where Imperial Japan rules Earth, and a colony settled from North America is in rebellion against them. I got a laugh from Keith at a convention when I told him he almost made the giant fighting suits of Japanese Anime believable. (I normally see such things as big targets for current weaponry.) Keith has a knack for creating truly strange alien species, like the Xenos from Warstriders, who live in planetary mantles, one per planet, and divide the world into rock and not-rock. They are sentient, but have no concept of anything beyond the world they inhabit, or that there might be any other sentients in existence. The Star Carrier books are full of even weirder aliens.

Lots of fun, and recommended if you like military SF and odd alien species.

Also up in non-fiction is Joseph Schumpter's "Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy". Schumpeter was an Austrian economist (and briefly Austria's Finance Minister) and a contemporary of John Maynard Keynes. Like Keynes, he considered himself inspired by Marx. But he felt Marx "asked all the right questions, and got all the wrong answers". The book is a lengthy analysis of what Marx got wrong and why.
______
Dennis

[drjd]

Originally Posted by drjd

Finished Shills Can't Cash Chips by Erle Stanley Gardner. Once again a fast action tale of extortion, falsification, murder and robbery; of Donald Lam stepping over the boundaries of the law and then side-stepping.

Next will be Fish or Cut Bait (1963), another Bertha Cool-Donald Lam mystery.

Finished Fish or Cut Bait by Erle Stanley Gardner. Enjoyable cozy mystery. Next in pipeline : (1964) - Up for Grabs. Including this book, only five more remain in the Donald Lam - Bertha Cool series in my TBR.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

But next up: Analog SF magazine for June 2016.

Also a very good issue.

Moving swiftly on: Asimov's SF, June 2016 edited by Sheila Williams