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

[thatnerdychick]

Right now, I'm on the second book of 50 shades of grey. Love every word!

[Shopaholic]

I am re-reading the Harry Potter series & listening to The Thirteen Hallows. Holy crow that's a creepy, gory yet enthralling book!! I had to buy the ebook. I borrowed the audiobook from the library & liked what I've heard so far I had to buy the ebook.

The reader is doing an awesome job of all the characters and the various accents. I drove from Toronto to Niagara Falls yesterday and completely lost track of time. I was so lost in the story.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Someone bothered to make a book out of that thought experiment? Goodness me....

Yes, they did, and I read it so you don't have to!

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

...Perhaps I should write a book about someone who's kidnapped and taken to a railway bridge, where he's forced to choose whether or not to pull a lever and switch a train from the track with five people tied to it, to a track with only one person tied to it.

Hey, it worked as a song for "Tie a Yellow Ribbon 'Round the Old Oak Tree." I'm 62 years old, and I remember that story from hearing it in church as a child.

[Wingpeople]

Currently reading
The Most Beautiful Thing by Fiona Robyn
and enjoying it very much.

[tecweston]

Currently Reading:

- The Rook by Daniel O'Malley (59%)

- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (second time) (42%)

- Moby-Dick, or The Whale by Herman Melville (24%)

- Skeleton Crew by Stephen King (35%) [on hold]

Moby-Dick is long and boring. I've attempted to read it three times now over the last six years, and I'm stuck back at the part I gave up the first two times. For those that have read it, it's Chapter 32, "Cetology."

Meanwhile, The Rook is awesome. I can't stop reading it.

[ATDrake]

Now that I've got leisure time to coherently (hopefully!) comment on what I've been reading, it seems that I'm 16 new full-length books and about a dozen shorts/re-reads behind from the last time.

Anyway, the latest completed read was the late Barbara Parker's Suspicion of Innocence, a Florida-set murder mystery/legal thriller which was a freebie offering from re-publisher eReads during Read an E-Book Week, which I tried to see if I wanted to pick up the 7th in series which was a new release with the extra 15% during the Fictionwise 60% off coupon sale and would never be cheaper.

I ended up buying the lot of the 8 books in the series, which stars civil lawyer and prominent local Founding Family descendant Gail Connor who has a part-friendly, part-adversarial relationship with criminal lawyer and former kidnapped Cuban refugee Anthony Quintana, and in this first title is caught up in a family tragedy which rapidly becomes a murder mystery in which both of Our Heroes are potential suspects.

This nicely melded family tensions with the actual whodunnit case as Connor has to deal with the breakdown of one personal relationship with the discovery that the other relationship which she'd had with the deceased was not at all what she thought it was. Part of the mystery involves Connor not only discovering who murdered the victim, but who the victim actually was on a personal level and not who she'd complacently thought they'd been.

On the Quintana side, his own family drama interweaves with Connor's case in ways that at first seemed tangential, but turned out to be fairly important, though not in the way one might initially suspect.

I'm normally rather bad at these sleuthy things, but I was able to discern means/motivation for at least part of one potentially-unrelated subplot earlier than Connor did, and I did guess at who-really-dunnit for mostly the correct backstory reasons, but I wasn't sure if and how they could fit together in the end, which was something the author actually related quite well, even if the actual epilogue following the revelation seemed a bit pat.

Medium-high recommend. A bit overdramatically thriller-ish at points, and maybe a little fetishizing as regarding a particular personal attraction, but overall good character portrayals of complicated all-is-not-what-it-seems relationships and class/ethnicity tensions within the Miami community, a nicely laid out mystery plot which makes sense, as well as interesting depictions of how the criminal court/justice system seems to work in Florida.

Apparently this particular title was an Edgar Award nominee, and though it's got a few flaws, seems a rather promising start to the series, which, as I have mentioned, is available DRM-free via Fictionwise and will cost you ~ $3 with a good weekend discount coupon. (Don't read the blurb for #8, Suspicion of Rage, unless you want to be spoilered for a particular relationship outcome.)

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

F&SF May/June 2012 by Spilogale authors.

It was OK. The main story is set in the shadow thieves world, which isn't a fantasy world I particularly enjoy (it all seems rather arbitrary, with new rules and magic making plots hard to guess). But I didn't dislike any of the stories, and most of them I quite liked. The horror-ish short was disappointing, but I really don't like horror stories.

Next: F&SF March/April 2012 by Spilogale authors.

[Joshua.P]

At the moment I'm reading The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler. It's good, but I think a little bit overrated.

[caleb72]

I recently finished Speed Dating with the Dead by Scott Nicholson. It was fun, but I think Nicholson creates a ride rather than a story in this one.

I also just finished The Final Solution by Michael Chabon. I've never read a Sherlock Holmes before so I don't know whether this was a good or bad portrayal of the famous sleuth. However, I really enjoyed a take on a Holmes that had retired and grown old. It's a very short story (about 130 pages), and I think it's been written to give us a peak at the legend in his later years.

I'm now just reading a few short stories and will be starting Kraken by China Mieville. Although he's my favourite author, I tend to practice the fine art of delayed gratification with his books.

[CRussel]

Just finished the latest in Michelle Sagara's Chronicles of Elantra series, Cast in Ruin. This is the 7th(?) in the series, and a worthy addition to it. It gets a bit involved in places, as she tends to, but it's still a very good read and quite enjoyable. IF you've read previous books in the series. It really isn't a good candidate for standalone, IMO.

In this book, Kaylin makes a new friend, is schooled in etiquette by a dragon(!), instructs an avatar, and spends the usual amount of time in the fiefs, primarily in Tiamiris' fief, fighting the Shadow. Only a single desk is destroyed by the Hawk's sargent, but an awful lot of dragon flaming and roaring happens. All in all, a good book and recommended.

[Joshua.P]

@caleb72 I strongly recommend you also read the original Holmes canon. They're really great books. Maybe you could start with the short story collection The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes to see if you like it.

[Bilbo1967]

About two thirds of the way through the first Repairman Jack novel (The Tomb). Thoroughly enjoying it; at this rate I'm going to end up buying the other dozen or so

[Poppa1956]

I just finished The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie (Outstanding! Four thumbs and an unevolved prehensile tail Up!) and m now reading The Secret Adversary by the same author. (The first Tommy/Tuppence story).

Young Tuppence Cowley bumps into old friend Tommy Beresford at Dover Street tube station. It’s just after WW1 and jobs are very thin on the ground so Tuppence comes up with a plan to form 'Young Adventurers Ltd' - "Willing to do anything. Go anywhere... No unreasonable offer refused."

(— Quote from www.agathachristie.com)
IMHO, this seems more what I would expect from a freshman effort than "Styles," by which I mean it is enjoyable, but the characters plot and storyline seem less well developed. I suspect "Adversary" was written before "Styles", but published later because of the success of the latter.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Poppa1956

I just finished The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie (Outstanding! Four thumbs and an unevolved prehensile tail Up!) and m now reading The Secret Adversary by the same author. (The first Tommy/Tuppence story).
(— Quote from www.agathachristie.com)
IMHO, this seems more what I would expect from a freshman effort than "Styles," by which I mean it is enjoyable, but the characters plot and storyline seem less well developed. I suspect "Adversary" was written before "Styles", but published later because of the success of the latter.

Those are her first two novels. I don't think Adversary was written first, but I think it was written more quickly.