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

[Gary J]

Originally Posted by the quiet fox

I decided I wanted to give Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series another shot, after giving up on it about 10 years back, so I picked up the first book, The Eye of the World, from Amazon a few weeks ago.

Well, that was a mistake. Not only does the e-book look like an OCR rush job with little or no additional proofreading (in addition to other improbable errors, I've lost track of how many times the word "whatever" appears initial-capped in the middle of a sentence) but it also seems I have a lot less patience for Jordan's interminable style than I did when I was a teenager. (And since I was a teenager when I stopped reading the series the first time, obviously I didn't have enough patience then either.) So I guess the question here would be... what was I thinking? I'll finish the book, but I'm pretty sure I won't be picking up any further entries.

Thanks for this description. I've never started Wheel of Time and for the silliest of reasons. The first time I ever heard of the series, the copy called it the "Whee! of Time." Just a typo or a drop of ink that didn't take or whatever, but I built up certain expectations that finding out the first word was "Wheel" just dashed to the dirt. After that, whenever I noted a discussion of the series, it was attached to words like "interminable."

You just reinforced my intentions to never add that to my TBR furlong. (If boards can be measured in "board feet" the bookshelves can be measured in "book feet." Hence my TBR furlong.)

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Gary J

bookshelves can be measured in "book feet." Hence my TBR furlong.)

Let's say that the average book is an inch thick. Then my virtual TBR shelf is little over 10 yards long. That's not even 1/20th of a furlong! I feel a lot better about it now....

[ficbot]

Okay, abandoning 'Guilty' and moving on...

English Novel: The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain (from Mobile Read)
English Other: Ultimate Fitness by Gina Kolata
Short Story Collection: Still finishing Sherlock Holmes collection
French: Le Petit Prince (still)

I do miss the collections browsing on the Sony, but I am appreciating how the Kindle lets you sort by date accessed so your most recently looked at stuff goes to the top. As you can see, I tend to have more than one book going on at once (novel in English, novel in French, a short story collection (I read perhaps one story a day; I enjoy them but don't read more than one in a sitting) and sometimes other things. So having them all handy on my home screen like that has been a big help.

I should have finished Le Petit Prince by now, but I get hung up on the verb tenses. Since my comprehension is better now, I am not looking up that many words, but then I get distracted with trying to translate the tense into English, especially when I am dealing with stuff like the passe simple which is only encountered in literature and hence I am less familiar with it.

[Kevin Gerard]

I'm reviewing a stack of Penguin Y/A fantasy novels for the Fantasy Fan website. So far, the books have been quite good. Click the link for a really good read:

http://www.fantasy-fan.org/index.php...ringer-Review/

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by pshrynk

Judas Goat was my first intro to Spenser. I still love it!

It's an interesting read so far. I have been reading in published order.

[pshrynk]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

It's an interesting read so far. I have been reading in published order.

JG was a leftover paperback in the call room when I was a resident. That led me to going back and finding the others.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

F&SF, January–February 2010

Fewer stories I really liked in this issue than I expected (although Songwood was especially good), and several that I didn't really like at all (unfortunately mostly the longer ones - e.g. the novella Ghosts Doing the Orange Dance).

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction is in it's 61st year of publication, but I'm not sure how long it's going to survive. Seven years ago, paid circulation was an average of 23,820 out of a print run of 31,985. Now it's 15,491/22,957 and has switched from 11 issues a year to six (longer) issues a year. (I've no info on ebook sales.) My subscription has a couple of years to run - I'm not sure whether I'll resubscribe. We'll see how this year goes.

Now onto Asimov's Science Fiction, February 2010. Asimov's circulation is currently around 23,000.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Fewer stories I really liked in this issue than I expected (although Songwood was especially good), and several that I didn't really like at all (unfortunately mostly the longer ones - e.g. the novella Ghosts Doing the Orange Dance).

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction is in it's 61st year of publication, but I'm not sure how long it's going to survive. Seven years ago, paid circulation was an average of 23,820 out of a print run of 31,985. Now it's 15,491/22,957 and has switched from 11 issues a year to six (longer) issues a year. (I've no info on ebook sales.) My subscription has a couple of years to run - I'm not sure whether I'll resubscribe. We'll see how this year goes.

Now onto Asimov's Science Fiction, February 2010. Asimov's circulation is currently around 23,000.

I'm hoping the "move" to ebook will keep them in business.

[Dr. Drib]

I can highly recommend John Irving's newest novel, "Last Night in Twisted River: A Novel."

I've already written some of my thoughts about this novel when I was still in the process of reading it.

I finished about 1 month ago and found that - like most of Irving's work - it's a wonderful commentary on life. It's also a ruminative study of the Artist and the Artistic Temperament. Because of this, it's necessarily a study of John Irving, a kind of autobiography - but not really. It has autobiographical elements from Irving's life, but the story is pure Story, a drama with characters that will come to own you.

I'm not going to write an exhaustive review of this deeply satisfying and rich novel - I don't have the time and no one's offering me any money - but I want to leave with this main idea (which is my opinion):

Irving is a committed Artist, one who is deeply concerned with the Human Experience. In his best work, he displays the best and worst of what it means to survive in this world, whether it be to fail with dignity, or to love with the committed contradictions attendant upon such a choice. He presents us with characters that display our own foibles. He shows us the foolish face we sometimes wear; but, he also shows us the majesty of being Human.


Don


Now, back to killing Zombies and roasting dead, furry creatures.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

I can highly recommend John Irving's newest novel, "Last Night in Twisted River: A Novel."

...

I'm not going to write an exhaustive review of this deeply satisfying and rich novel - I don't have the time and no one's offering me any money - but I want to leave with this main idea (which is my opinion):

Irving is a committed Artist, one who is deeply concerned with the Human Experience. In his best work, he displays the best and worst of what it means to survive in this world, whether it be to fail with dignity, or to love with the committed contradictions attendant upon such a choice. He presents us with characters that display our own foibles. He shows us the foolish face we sometimes wear; but, he also shows us the majesty of being Human.


Don

Agreed. I can't recommend this highly enough. I loved every minute of it and it is still in my head, I think of some piece of it quite often. As I said elsewhere, it may very well be his best.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by pshrynk

JG was a leftover paperback in the call room when I was a resident. That led me to going back and finding the others.

Can someone please explain the following...

The next Spencer novel is Looking for Rachel Wallace. Looking for it as an eBook finds... http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/d...=9780307569707. Clicking the Buy Now button brings up other online eBook stores that do not have this. So why cannot Random House sell it when they say it exists?

[Ea]

I'm in the middle of "Your Movie Sucks!" by Roger Ebert. Most of it is funny - and some parts are REALLY funny!

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by Ea

I'm in the middle of "Your Movie Sucks!" by Roger Ebert. Most of it is funny - and some parts are REALLY funny!

I'll have to check that out. For my money, there was no more enjoyable pair of critics to watch than (the late) Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. Not that I haven't enjoyed the work he did after Siskel died (especially those shows with Richard Roeper) but Siskel and Ebert had a real chemistry.

[EQ&#]

I am reading the Janet Evanovich series "Stephanie Plum."

It never disappoints. Funny and fast paced.

Also discovered a blog, "The Girl Next Door Grows Up" which is also a very funny, quick daily read.

[omk3]

I read "The baboons who went this way and that" on the plane from Uk to Greece, a collection of african folktales retold by Alexander McCall Smith. The stories are beautiful, bittersweet and funny, and the illustrations, though very simple at first glance, add a certain charm to the stories too. I am generally interested in folktales from around the world, so this collection picked up almost by chance from the library was very refreshing.
The language was simple, maybe too simple for my liking, but this is often the case with folktales, isn't it? I've seen people around here asking about books with simple english for language learners: this would be a very good choice.