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

[Elektron]

James Potter and the Curse of the Gatekeeper on my Kobo

[CRussel]

Just finished listening to the superb Patrick Tull narration of Around the World in 80 Days. Followed by a quicky, The Physicians of Vilnoc by Lois McMaster Bujold. Read quite well by Grover Gardner. Made me want to re-read (or re-listen) the earlier Penric stories.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Next up: Flight of a Witch by Ellis Peters. #3 in the Felse family series. I've definitely read this one before in paper, but I'm re-reading the early ones, as I now have up to #13 in ebook.

Most enjoyable, although a little pretentious in parts. But on the whole a good plot and cast. I'm looking forward to the later books.

Next up: TBD. I'll be using the calibre Pick a Random Book function, but I'm away from my calibre installation at the moment.

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Most enjoyable, although a little pretentious in parts. But on the whole a good plot and cast. I'm looking forward to the later books.

I loved the Felse series in my teens, but when I started a re-read in late 2018, the bolded bit was what really struck me. I got through the first six before needing a break from the overweening self-conscious 'cleverness'.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Next up: TBD. I'll be using the calibre Pick a Random Book function, but I'm away from my calibre installation at the moment.

It's The Dead of Jericho by Colin Dexter. The fifth in his Inspector Morese series. (When the random selection is one of a series, I read the first unread one of the series).

[Uncle Robin]

PGW's A Small Bachelor - interesting that in his preface he describes it as one of his favorites because of how easy it was for him to write, while implicitly acknowledging that others may not view it similarly. It doesn't quite have the Wodehouse sparkle I was expecting, to be sure.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

PGW's A Small Bachelor - interesting that in his preface he describes it as one of his favorites because of how easy it was for him to write, while implicitly acknowledging that others may not view it similarly. It doesn't quite have the Wodehouse sparkle I was expecting, to be sure.

A Small Bachelor is one of my favorite Wodehouse novels. Sheer delight. I’ve just started Summer Moonshine; I can’t tell how it’s going yet.

[astrangerhere]

I'm currently reading Invisible Planets: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation , edited and translated by Ken Liu. I picked this up a while back after I had completed Liu Cixin's Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy. So far the stories have not disappointed.

I particularly liked this from Ken Liu's introduction to the book:

China is going through a massive social, cultural, and technological transformation involving more than a billion people of different ethnicities, cultures, classes, and ideological sympathies, and it is impossible for anyone—even people who are living through these upheavals—to claim to know the entire picture. If one’s knowledge of China is limited to Western media reports or the experience of being a tourist or expat, claiming to “understand” China is akin to a man who has caught a glimpse of a fuzzy spot through a drinking straw claiming to know what a leopard is. The fiction produced in China reflects the complexity of the environment.

[Rev. Bob]

Finished up my reread of Tom Holt’s first “Kevin Godson” novel, Only Human and plunged right into the I-guess-it’s-a-sequel, The Management Style of the Supreme Beings.

For the uninitiated, Kevin is God’s other son, Jesus’s younger brother, of whom very little is expected. Both novels start out with Dad and Jay going fishing, leaving The Kid in the nominal care of his Uncle Ghost. The first book involves Kevin accidentally hitting some keys on the divine Mainframe and thereby wreaking havoc on Earth. The second makes no explicit mention of the first’s events (at least so far), but has Dad and Jay return to tell Kevin that they’re selling the family business, meaning he’ll have to move out. Instead of coming along with them in their new RV, he strikes out alone.

If you’re okay with a satirical look at religion and like Douglas Adams’s style of humor, I recommend both. (Well, at least so far. Full disclosure, I’m only a third of the way into the sequel, so it is theoretically possible that it could go seriously wrong… but I doubt it.)

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by issybird

A Small Bachelor is one of my favorite Wodehouse novels. Sheer delight. I’ve just started Summer Moonshine; I can’t tell how it’s going yet.

I'm halfway now and significantly more gruntled 😁

[Uncle Robin]

A Small Bachelor ended up being a satisfying 4-star read. Now back to Bruno in A Shooting at Chateau Rock

[ReadingManiac]

I've moved on to Jack Dawkins now, but next up is The Secret of Crickley Hall. I love a good haunted house story.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

It's The Dead of Jericho by Colin Dexter. The fifth in his Inspector Morese series. (When the random selection is one of a series, I read the first unread one of the series).

And now we have the Morse we know. A good mystery, and I'm annoyed I didn't get the main plot point.

Then I read Whirigig World. Two very short articles on the planet in Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity.

And now I'm starting on The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood. A freebie I picked up back in 2010.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

And now I'm starting on The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood. A freebie I picked up back in 2010.

Style over substance, IMO. Not to my taste at all. 2/5.

Next up: Prince Otto by Robert Louis Stevenson. Part of a Delphi Classics Complete Works I picked up back in August 2015.

[Uncle Robin]

The Curious Charms of Arthur Popper by Phaedra Patrick. I picked this one and her Library of Lost and Found up cheap, and am glad I did. Because I raced through Library feeling no connection with any of the characters. Curious Charms was her debut and at 10% done it is sufficiently more engaging to suggest there's truth in the old saw "everyone has one book in them".