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

[cromag]

Originally Posted by cromag

They were good. Dead Creek relied on some medical science that I think was exaggerated, but it was based in fact and well handled. Dead Water was a good story that also added some depth to the local characters.

I'll be getting more in this series soon -- sooner if Kobo has another contest and I get some decent coupon codes. My local library only has the most recent titles in the series.


Just starting City of Dreams, by Anton Gill.

I liked it -- even better than the first in the series, City of the Horizon. It might be that I'm more familiar with the setting than when I read the first, but I think the writing is tighter and the plot resolution more direct.


Next up, some miscellaneous short stories to fill in while my schedule is in a bit of flux.

[elaysee]

I finally got around to reading Claire North's The Serpent, the first of her Gameshouse novellas, which had been waiting patiently for a couple of months. Bought the second and third immediately upon completion of the first. As it turned out, the first was my favorite of the three, but I don't regret buying or reading the others.

These are slightly fantastic fantasies, with those elements playing a small role in the main story. North uses a somewhat mannered voice, with an unknown "we" observing the action, and frequent parenthetical insertions of backstory, so you might want to see whether a sample works for you.

Blurb for the first:

Spoiler:

In 17th Century Venice exists a mysterious establishment known only as the Gameshouse.

There, fortunes are made and fortunes are broken over games of chess, backgammon and every other game under the sun.

But those whom fortune favours may be invited to compete in the higher league . . . a league where the games played are of politics and empires, of economics and kings. It is a league where Capture the Castle involves real castles, where hide and seek takes place on a scale as big as the British Isles.

Not everyone proves worthy of competing in the higher league. But one woman, who is about to play, may just exceed everyone's expectations.

Though she must always remember: the higher the stakes, the more deadly the rules . . .

[Dazrin]

Originally Posted by Dazrin

Next up: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Trilogy 1) - Douglass Adams

Enjoyable as always.

I have now started Joyland by Stephen King. So far it has been an interesting look at an amusement park but I am sure he has something planned here and I look forward to the payoff on this one.

Edit: I really enjoyed Joyland. The whodunit was somewhat predictable but that isn't why we read Stephen King. It was very well written and thoroughly fun.

Next up: Calamity by Brandon Sanderson, the last book in the Reckoners series. Just released 2/16.

[charlyee]

Re reading Murder on the Orient Express

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Dazrin

Next up: Calamity by Brandon Sanderson, the last book in the Reckoners series. Just released 2/16.

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!
(I just got it.)

I kind of have to go to sleep about now, but I know exactly what I am going to be doing tomorrow...

[Fbone]

Speaking of Sanderson, has anyone read The Rithmatist?

[eschwartz]

Yes.

Quite fascinating, although I am afraid the name Joel always makes me think of the character from The Merlin Conspiracy.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Wonderful by Jill Barnet. A freebie I picked up back in 2011. I suspect I'll abandon this, but I'll give it a little longer.

Now abandoned, and the other two in the trilogy discarded. Thankfully all freebies. And they had such pretty covers.

The main problem is that the author has no appreciation of simple physics. You can't siphon water from a well, and even if you could, it wouldn't cause the walls of the well to collapse. And you can't easily drain a moat onto the surrounding fields in just a morning, for obvious reasons.

If the author shows herself clueless in things I know about, I can't trust anything that I don't know about. If it's a historic fantasy, I like to know that the non-fantasy bits are as truthful as possible. I suspect that if I checked, I'd find her history bits as wildly inaccurate as her physics.

Sigh.

Now onto another of Fred Saberhagen's Dracula series: A Question of Time

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

The main problem is that the author has no appreciation of simple physics. You can't siphon water from a well

You could dig a deeper well to syphon it into .

Clearly the author is pretty clueless if she is unaware that you can only syphon something from a higher level to a lower one, 'cos gravity is what makes it work!

[timebug]

Just finished the first 24 ebook versions of Alan Hunters series of George Gently novels. I loved them. Easy paced cerebral stories, along the lines of Holmes or Morse, rather than a 'cop book' with all that modern policing stories entail.
Starting in, I believe 1955 Hunter wrote on average, one per year. The stories themselves seem to be set a couple of years before the publication date, so the first one (Pub 1955) seems to occupy a period in the earlier fifties, around 1952 at a guess.
No sidekick named Bacchus, no car chases, gunfights, or explicit violence/sex/excess in general! I eagerly await the release of the remaining 22 books in epub format. Wonderful, old fashioned stuff (but NOT old and creaky, let me add!) for a Gentle reading experience (Pun half intended, maybe!)

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by timebug

I eagerly await the release of the remaining 22 books in epub format. Wonderful, old fashioned stuff (but NOT old and creaky, let me add!) for a Gentle reading experience (Pun half intended, maybe!)

It's been quite a while now since any more were released. I do hope that the remaining books come out as ebooks.

[Dngrsone]

First, I'd like to thank the computer gods for cut-and-paste...

I finished Wreck of the Whale Ship Essex Illustrated: Narrative of the most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex that Inspired Herman Melville's Moby Dick by Owen Chase, which, despite the new printing date is a collection of very old stories: two books (or, perhaps one and a half, because the second one seems like it was cut off after the pertinent parts were got) written by survivors of the Essex sinking, plus a bunch of semi-related newspaper articles from the 18th and early 19th centuries mostly centering on the topic of whales who attack ships.

So, despite the language (people back then tended to take forever to get to the freakin' point when speaking or writing), the content was pretty interesting. One might even say informative, if it weren't coming from an era of journalism that cared about accuracy about as much as Herodotus did.

I mean, I would like to believe the story of sneaking up on a sleeping whale cow and milking her was true (at least the milking parts, not the trying to keep a calf as a pet part), I'm going to have to reserve judgement unless or until I run across a vetted scientific article that corroborates any of that.

Overall, the theme does suggest that whales are smart enough to infer that ships which launch boats are bad and that the more aggressive bulls were pretty intent on destroying said ships in defense with some success.

I liked the read, worth what I paid for it (nothing), but I probably won't read it again unless I'm going to cite portions for some argument in the future.

Meanwhile, I am reading Brilliance (Book one of a trilogy) by Marcus Sakey.

[Hampshire Nanny]

Originally Posted by Fbone

Speaking of Sanderson, has anyone read The Rithmatist?

I have it both in eBook and audio. Tried listening to it and gave up in frustration. I think this is one that's going to require reading the text.

[charlyee]

Brain

Dermot Davis.

Got the suggestion from this forum and liking it so far.

[bert501]

Originally Posted by Fbone

Speaking of Sanderson, has anyone read The Rithmatist?

It was inventive and very well done; I liked it quite a bit and hope for a sequel. The only problem with the book was the illustrations on my Kindle. They are a major part of the story and I had to switch over to a big clunky tablet to "see" everything. Definitely wish I had checked out the hardback from the library!