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

[Hampshire Nanny]

Originally Posted by PurpleStar

I finished up Top Secret Twenty One by Janet Evanovich. I thoroughly enjoyed it! She is getting back on track with the series I think.

Finished it over the weekend. Loved the fact that Randy Brigs had such a big role. He's absolutely my favorite character. (Could be that I identified with his computer programmer attitudes?)

Originally Posted by bloodlover

Next I plan on going through Jane Austen. Can't decide where to start from but I am guessing the famous Pride and Prejudice would be good.

I just pulled Persuasion onto my Kindle from the MobileRead library. I've put [url=http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006NZ77JI/]For Darkness Shows the Stars by Diana Peterfreund onto my wishlist at Amazon. Since the reviews say that this is a retelling of Persuasion, I want to have read the original before I tackle the newer story.

Originally Posted by Hampshire Nanny

I'm still reading Earth Awakens, the third book in Orson Scott Card's First Formic War series. It's basically the pre-story for Ender's Game. Next up, I'm resuming the Honor Harrington books. I'm reading in the "chronological order" shown in Wikipedia's article "Honorverse", so the next book I'll read is Torch of Freedom, the second novel in the spin-off "Crown of Slaves" series. This book, as with the rest of the series, came from Baen eBooks.

Finished Earth Awakens at lunch today and I'm going to take a diversion to read two library books which showed up from hold requests I placed earlier. Reading Running Blind by Lee Child (Jack Reacher #4) and The Martian by Andy Weir. I may have to get a copy of Man Plus by Frederick Pohl to read for comparison with The Martian.

[speakingtohe]

I am trying not to read Martha Grimes Richard Jury books too quickly. Since they have become available at the library or since I have spotted them I have read seven. I like to save and savour books in a series I really love.

They are a bit whimsical, mildly amusing, well done mystery plots (IMO) and often told from various POV without me wondering what is happening.

As I said, and have probably said before I just love them and one is beckoning me now.

Helen

[gmw]

I just finished The Last Dark, the fourth and last book of the The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, by Stephen Donaldson. In fact, I went right back to the start and re-read all the early books first. ... But now I'm at a bit confused over my reaction to this last series.

Re-reading the first and second Chronicles was good. I still enjoy them, perhaps not to the extent of back when I first read them, but still very good books, all of them.

The first book of the last Chronicles, The Runes of the Earth, made a really good start. Powerfully written and feeling consistent with what had gone before. The second book, Fatal Revenant, started to lose it for me. The introduction of the Insequent didn't convince me that we shouldn't have seen them before now, if they really existed, and it was starting to feel like I had all-powerful beings coming out my ears. It can get quite confusing. As you progress into the third book, Linden seems to start to resemble Covenant from the earlier books in various ways, not sure if this was intentional.

I'm starting to think that I should have left a gap between reading the second Chronicles and the last. The text contains many reminders of what went before (even reminders of what went before in the Last Chronicles), and that repetition gets a bit much in places. By the end of the third book I was feeling a bit like "enough already, I've got the point". And then the last book ...

The Last Dark was mostly good. The conclusion worked for me, if perhaps a little predictable. For his importance to the series, Jeremiah wasn't as convincing as other characters, but then he wasn't given much air-time. In contrast to the rest of the story in this last series, the end felt excessively brief ... so I must have liked it enough to still be wanting a bit more. Hence, my confusion.

I'm guessing I will have to sit down and re-read them again (in a year to two) before I can really make up my mind. I certainly don't regret reading them, or anything like that. Donaldson writes well (if you like this sort of thing), but this last series felt bigger and more confusing and that has made it more difficult to come to terms with.

[Stitchawl]

Having fun reading "The Cuckoo's Calling," J. K. Rowling's crime novel, published under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. Difficult to get past the first two pages, but she mellows out with her use of adjectives by page three, and it's pretty smooth and funny reading from then on!


Stitchawl

[HarryT]

Just finished "Destination Unknown", by Agatha Christie. This was her 56th novel, and was originally published in 1954.

Hilary Craven, a deserted wife and bereaved mother, is planning suicide in a Moroccan hotel, when she is asked by British secret agent Jessop to undertake a dangerous mission as an alternative to taking an overdose of sleeping pills. The task, which she accepts, is to impersonate a dying woman to help find the woman's husband, Thomas Betterton, a nuclear scientist who has disappeared and may have defected to the Soviet Union...

A typical Christie thriller, involving international conspiracies and missing nuclear scientists, but one of her better ones. Highly recommended.

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by CRussel

Silkworm, OTOH, is settling down to be more interesting. There's less of the detail about the goriness of the crime, and more about the who and how of it.

On a completely different note, I've started rereading the Dorothy Sayers Lord Peter Wimsey books, beginning with the first novel, Whose Body?. What a delight these are. Some of them I'm going to read in eBook, but some I'll read as Audible books, especially where I can get ones read by Nadia May (aka Donata Peters, aka Wanda McCaddon). I'm already totally immersed in the book, and enjoying it immensely.

Finished Silkworm. Mixed feelings about it. Ultimately, I enjoyed it, but the first 1/3rd was just not at all enjoyable. I _did_ figure out who the killer was very early on, though the clue was not exactly something that I'd expect everyone to get, just something that I personally have some knowledge about.

Next, I read the very last Peter Wimsey story, The Haunted Policeman, and am now moving on to read the last Belasarius book, The Dance of Time.

[Rumpelteazer]

I'm currently half-way through "A Discovery of Witches" by Deborah Harkness, the first part of the All Souls Trilogy (the last book will be released next week). I like her take on the whole vampire/witch/daemon genre.

Deep in the stacks of Oxford's Bodleian Library, young scholar Diana Bishop unwittingly calls up a bewitched alchemical manuscript in the course of her research. Descended from an old and distinguished line of witches, Diana wants nothing to do with sorcery; so after a furtive glance and a few notes, she banishes the book to the stacks. But her discovery sets a fantastical underworld stirring, and a horde of daemons, witches, and vampires soon descends upon the library. Diana has stumbled upon a coveted treasure lost for centuries-and she is the only creature who can break its spell.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Now for something completely different. The Talisman Ring by Georgette Heyer, first published in 1936 and I bought it back in August 2012. A delightful Regency romance adventure.

Yes, most enjoyable. Completely obvious, but good fun.

Now for Time by Stephen Baxter. First of a trilogy.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Now for Time by Stephen Baxter. First of a trilogy.

An excellent and thought-provoking book, to my mind. "Time", "Space", and "Origin", the three books in the trilogy, are "what-if" stories featuring the same characters in three very different universes. There's also a book of short stories, "Phase Space", set in the same universe(s). Baxter is my favourite living "Hard SF" author.

I'll be interested to hear your thoughts on it, Paul.

[DrNefario]

I finished the brand-new Joe Abercrombie, Half a King, last night. I enjoyed it a lot, although I guess it's not really breaking new ground. It is kind of pitched as YA, meaning it has a young protagonist, less swearing, and is fairly short, but otherwise it's the typical collection of great Abercrombie characters. It's basically a revenge tale set in a viking-esque fantasy world.

Before that I read Shelter by Susan Palwick. On paper it doesn't sound great - it's a relatively near future SF novel largely about dealing with a disturbed child - but I really enjoyed it. I didn't know what it was about going in, and maybe it's better approaching it that way. These days I seem to really enjoy stories about ordinary people and their small struggles a lot more than stories about supermen, especially when they're this well conveyed.

I've also recently been picking my way through the short fiction for the 1939 Retro Hugos, which are being awarded this year alongside the regular Hugos. My main impression so far is that 1938 SF is total garbage, but I've still got a fair bit to get through. Of the five short stories, only the humorous Arthur C Clarke (How We Went to Mars) is worth the time of day. (It's not in the Hugo voter packet, but it is in the free sample of The Collected Stories of Arthur C Clarke.)

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Yes, most enjoyable. Completely obvious, but good fun.

Yes, one of her better ones. I love knowing I have every single one of her books in eBook format, to go back to whenever I want a smile. And at such delicious prices I don't even feel guilty.

[alansplace]

I finished reading both The Silkworm and The End is Nigh. I enjoyed The Silkworm a lot and The End is Nigh a bit less (it was ok as it contained both some really good and some not-so-great stories).

I've just begun reading my choice from the July freebies offered from Amazon Kindle First, Inamorata by Megan Chance.

[Dr. Drib]

Just finished an Ed Noon private eye novel.

These are a hoot, written back in a time when political correctness wasn't a concern - especially if you were a private dick wearing a fedora and carrying a 357 magnum. This was a time when fists flew and the babes danced and the drums beat a rhythm to the tune of a dunga-dunga-dum.

Here's the one I just finished, "The Voodoo Murders", by Michael Avallone:

http://www.amazon.com/Voodoo-Murders...ed+noon+kindle

[Dr. Drib]

Currently reading (and almost finished with) the first volume of the 12-volume series, "A Dance to the Music of Time," by Anthony Powell.

If you like long sentences (and I do), and if you enjoy writing that probes deep into characters (as I do), then you might enjoy this series.

[benham]

Act Of War by Brad Thor and Desert Death-Song, a book of short stories by Louis L'Amour.