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

[covingtoncat73]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

I just started Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. It's pretty good go far, but I wasn't at all thrilled by the $16.99 price at Amazon. I even checked my local library first for the ebook, but that was a no-go.

Totally worth it. I love Sapiens.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by covingtoncat73

Totally worth it. I love Sapiens.

I sometimes think they're a pain in the butt, myself.

[cromag]

Originally Posted by cromag

...
I'm not sure what I'll be reading next. I'll try to check in before December.

Well, I came up with something.

I don't know why, but for some reason I started thinking about a book I read back when I was twelve or thirteen years old -- The Universe Between, by Alan Nourse. I tracked it down, bought it, and I loved it again! But this is very much a "way the future was" story, and it was a Young Adult story even back in the mid-60s.

It's a mash-up of High Threshold and The Universe Between, novelettes that originally appeared in 1951 issues of Astounding Magazine. There were some obvious updates during the 1965 "mashing" but even those are a bit dated now.

Still, the writing was good, the parallel universe storyline was pretty original, and I liked the ending. It's available at Amazon (US, at least) from Prologue Books. There were very few typos and scanning errors.

Now, back to wondering what I'll read next.

[Luffy]

Along with A Dance with Dragons, i'm re reading The Murder on the Orient Express. A previous attempt has seen me give up on the book. But this time, I'm sticking with it to the end.

[covingtoncat73]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

I sometimes think they're a pain in the butt, myself.

And the book explains why.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Next up: Artifact by Gregory Benford. Bought back in July 2008!

I also started The Bloody Red Baron by Kim Newman, a sequel to Anno Dracula.

I've abandoned it. I can no longer suspend my disbelief at his insistence on keeping overall history (except for the prime minister and the monarch of the UK) while introducing vampires. If the story or the characters were better I might manage it.

[Luffy]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

If the story or the characters were better I might manage it.

That's the only thing that could matter for many readers. The book should have a redeeming factor, and most books that don't have any saving grace for most readers are also called bad books.

[Dngrsone]

Finished The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story by Hyeonseo Lee. I liked this one a lot. Sorry, it's too early in the morning for me to write a decent review...

Meanwhile, I went straight into The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion, which I picked up from the library on recommendation, probably my search for fun books some months ago. I really liked this one as well and will be reading the sequel soon enough.

Right now, I've cracked open (figuratively, it's an ebook... and no! I do not crack spines, TYVM) Explorer by C. J. Cherryh, the sixth Foreigner book. I have a lot of nice reads in the queue right now, and it's hard to decide which to pick up.

[Dazrin]

Originally Posted by Dazrin

Next up: Steampunk! a collection of 14 short stories edited by Kelly Link.

This was an okay collection, nothing that I found particularly noteworthy but in general the stories were fun. I did skip the two graphic stories, they are too hard to read on an e-ink kindle.

Next up: Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett. Discworld #15 and City Watch #2. Should be fun.

[bizzybody]

Silo 49: Deep Dark. Book 2 of the Silo 49 series by Ann Christy, set in Hugh Howey's Silo universe.

Turns out there's quite a number of other books in that world by other authors, even some *gasp* officially approved fanfic.

[Rev. Bob]

Originally Posted by Rev. Bob

I changed course and am about a quarter of the way through With the Lightnings. So far, it's okay. The main character feels a lot like Dudley Moore's Arthur in space, but not quite so useless. Given that there are several more books about him, and that the series doesn't appear to be comedy, I'm hoping that he'll change his ways before the end of the book. If that's the plan, I can accept it as necessary that we see the "before" persona as a baseline to show his growth. Still lots of pages left for story and character development, after all...

Finally finished that - which was okay but didn't knock my socks off - and dipped briefly into Lavie Tidhar's The Bookman before noticing that the punctuation needs to be smartened - which probably extends to the other two books in the trilogy as well. So, while I dither on which prose novel to start next, I'm oscillating between the back half of the Spider-Man Clone Saga (Ben Reilly V2 of 6) and reading subtitles on The West Wing (just started season 3 of 7 and may finish the series before Election Day at this pace).

It's a little surreal to be juggling three White House narratives in my head at the same time, particularly when the nonfiction one is the most bizarre. At least The West Wing and Designated Survivor make sense...

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I also started The Bloody Red Baron by Kim Newman, a sequel to Anno Dracula.

I've abandoned it. I can no longer suspend my disbelief at his insistence on keeping overall history (except for the prime minister and the monarch of the UK) while introducing vampires. If the story or the characters were better I might manage it.

Now reading Venus Prime by Paul Peruss. Apparently based on a novella by Arthur C Clarke, it seems to have an interesting start.

[drjd]

Originally Posted by drjd

Next up, Rendezvous in Black by Cornell Woolrich.

Which was an entertaining read. Now is the time for some serious reading, so I'll take up In Search of the Big Bang next, by John Gribbin.

[richvalle]

I finished The Unseen, book 4 of the Krew of Hunters series. Good enough to read. Some history mixed with supernateral and murder mystery. I gloss over the sex scenes she puts into every book.

Reading The Regulators - book 2 of The Guardian Interviews. Another zombie series this one with supernatural people fighting against them. Done as a series of interviews with each person interviewed picking up the story where the last person left off. Pretty good.

I'm at the very end of Horizon Storms - book 3 of theSaga of Seven Suns by Kevin J. Anderson. Has anyone else read this series? I'm curious enough about the story to see what happens but I just read a 400 page book where not all that much happened. There are so many characters the story is following the overall story doesn't move all that much.

[covingtoncat73]

I thoroughly enjoyed "Darker Shade of Magic." The world-building felt fresh, the characters were well-fleshed and complex, and it had the kind of "darkness" I like.

I am now reading Howl's Moving Castle. I would have known about and been all over Diana Wynne Jones if I had been a British child, I believe. Anyway, I adored Dogsbody, which I read after read Neil Gaiman's thing about it in "View from the Cheap Seats."