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

[Girl Read Write]

Vicious by Brandon Massey. Just finished "Full Dark, No Stars" by Stephen King--read it on Sunday.

[3dusty]

Ok, romance reader here. Finished Eyes of Silver, Eyes of Gold by Ellen O'Connell at Smashwords. It is a western romance that actually had depth and strength in the characters. A nice change from the typical romance.

I'm now reading her other book, Sing My Name. So far, I think it is going to be even better than Eyes.

[Jadon]

Currently reading Tangent by Gina Marie Wylie. It's fan fiction continuing H. Beam Piper's Lord Kalvan novel. Comes after Great Kings' War by Roland Green and John F. Carr, and instead of Carr's further novels, which Wylie didn't think captured Piper's tone correctly. I have to say I agree, and I prefer this to Seige of Tarr-Hostigos.

[boxcorner]

Originally Posted by phenomshel

It does sound good. I added it to my "to look for" list.

Shakespeare's Will, by Meredith Whitford, is available from BeWrite Books, DRM-free.

Now re-reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens).

[phenomshel]

Originally Posted by boxcorner

It is available from BeWrite Books, DRM-free.

Oh, nice, my favorite publisher!!

[Rumpelteazer]

In a reading marathon I finished Child and Preston's The Wheel of Darkness (8th in the Pendergast series). I really liked it, although with some storylines they could have done more.

Just transferred The Surgeon by Tess Gerritsen to my reader. They recently started with the Rizzoli and Isles series on tv and when I found out it was based on books I bought it immediately. I waited for a bit after reading the first of The Women's Murder Club book in case it's similar (I like to switch between series/similar book otherwise I get bored with them).

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Written in Time by Jerry and Sharon Ahern. It sounds like an interesting time-travel story, and is one of the ones in the November 2011 webscription bundle.

It was just OK. A little heavy on gun specifics, and the overall plot was a bit unconvincing and weak.

next up were the last two in the Lords of Dûs series by Lawrence Watt-Evans: The Sword of Bheleu and The Book of Silence

Each improved on the last, leading up to a satisfying and coherent conclusion. I recommend the series to any fantasy fan.

So now I'm back to D'Artagnan, and the last of the volumes put together by HarryT: The D'Artagnan Romances, Vol. 4 by Alexandre Dumas

[BearMountainBooks]

Just finished Play Dead by John Levitt. I reviewed it on my blog (www.BearMountainBooks.com). This is a book where I really wish it had been picked for a book club/discussion because I'd love to over-analyze it.

There's some really excellent scenes that I just loved; and then there's some segments where I wondered...will this strike other readers the same way??? I could have hated the ending, but strangely I didn't. It fit the book; it just fit even though it's not the type of ending I'd typically go for.

It was a really good read; Levitt remains one of my favorite authors. His work is just different enough that I always find a twist I'm not expecting. He does well in avoiding cliches, especially in the character's love-life. Always a good read.

[natasha_fawn]

Just got Heart of Bronze in the mail, an omnibus of Iron Dawn and Jericho Moon by Matthew W. Stover. Stover is one of my favorite authors, but Iron Dawn so far isn't up to the quality of his later books. It's fun, but the plot is kind of contrived. Oh well, I'm not in the mood for anything particularly philosophical right now anyway.

[phenomshel]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

Just finished Play Dead by John Levitt. I reviewed it on my blog (www.BearMountainBooks.com). This is a book where I really wish it had been picked for a book club/discussion because I'd love to over-analyze it.

There's some really excellent scenes that I just loved; and then there's some segments where I wondered...will this strike other readers the same way??? I could have hated the ending, but strangely I didn't. It fit the book; it just fit even though it's not the type of ending I'd typically go for.

It was a really good read; Levitt remains one of my favorite authors. His work is just different enough that I always find a twist I'm not expecting. He does well in avoiding cliches, especially in the character's love-life. Always a good read.

Just got this today...am looking forward to it. (After I read the two in front of it, so far I've only read the first one. Knowing this is the last one will probably make me hoard it... )

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by phenomshel

Just got this today...am looking forward to it. (After I read the two in front of it, so far I've only read the first one. Knowing this is the last one will probably make me hoard it... )

I comment on his blog now and then. Mentioning how he needs to write another one or two. Or three.

[ATDrake]

Orbit books have been reprinting several "classic" Sherlock Holmes mashups/continuations under the aegis of The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and I've been reading them in e-format from the library. They got in 7, all of which I've put holds on, there are apparently slated to be at least 11 in the series and so far I've finished 3:

Séance for a Vampire by Fred Saberhagen is apparently some sort of sequel to earlier Holmes+Dracula books that he's written.

This one involves Russian aristocracy, Victorian spiritualist fakery, and a hidden treasure/revenge plot. It's got the usual sort of name-brand period guest stars you'd expect for something with those theme elements, but actually that part was rather superfluous and said personage might as well not have been involved at all, for all that they contributed to the actual plot. Not bad, but not that great, either.

Also suffered from weird text errors: no actual typos, but missing punctuation and a bizarre "decapitation" of many words that should have been uppercased-B, i.e. "221B baker Street", as well as Bs that start sentences. Possibly someone's search-and-replace was overzealous, though that doesn't explain why it happens only half the time.

I should note that the actual formatting for this series is pretty nice. They've made an effort with little graphics under the chapter headings, put the back cover with the blurb at the end, multi-level TOC entered correctly, drop caps to start the chapters, included sample chapter excerpts from other books in the series after the main story, etc.

War of the Worlds, by sf author Manly Wade Wellman and his father, not-so-Manly Wade Wellman.

A three-way mashup between Wells, Conan Doyle, and Conan Doyle again, as Professor Challenger also gets involved in thwarting the Martian invasion. There's an interesting foreword by both the authors about the influences on this novel, which grew out of a couple of short stories and was inspired by a film.

Entertaining enough, though some of it seemed out of character: viz. Sherlock Holmes being involved in a romantic relationship and acting kind of Watson-ish about the woman in question. It seemed rather unnatural and I kept waiting for there to be a reveal that this A Clue that the aliens were influencing him.

On the funnier side, it's especially amusing the way Watson repeatedly disses Wells as a hack writer who gets things wrong (this is one of those "Conan Doyle was passing on non-fiction and we just found Ye Olde Hidden Manuscript" literary agent hypothesis tales).

No significant formatting errors or typos, just a couple of wrong-way-round curly quotes.

The Ectoplasmic Man by Daniel Stashower: Harry Houdini is accused of a crime only the world's greatest escape artist could have performed.

Best of the lot. This was a clever and entertaining tale making good use of Victorian-era tech/knowledge re: security, escape artistry, and transportation, had quite a few lovingly footnoted references to other Holmes cases and Houdini incidents, and the problem and solution were both pretty good and the characters seemed pretty in-character, though frankly, the most intriguing part of the story was this throwaway reference in the beginning:

In all my years with Sherlock Holmes I encountered only a handful of men whose wilfulness and ingenuity rivalled that of Holmes himself. One such man was William Gladstone, the late prime minister. Another was a gentleman in Cornwall who fashioned small weapons from dried fruit.

Not gonna lie, I would cheerfully read The Adventure of the Cornish Dried Fruit Weaponiser.

Recommended, though the e-book edition again suffered from a strangely fitting formatting error: occasionally passages disappeared from the narrative and were transposed elsewhere into the text. But all of it did seem to be there and nothing really missing: just escaped elsewhere.

Orbit, incidentally, charges roughly $8 for these e-books.

Now currently on David Stuart Davies' The Veiled Detective, which purports to set up and involve the characters of Watson, Moriarty, and Holmes before they became Watson, Moriarty, and Holmes.

Mildly boring so far, since a big chunk of this seems to be premised on "everything you thought you knew is wrong" and I don't read Holmes stories for bumbling incompetence, except in parody versions. I may skip this and go straight to the Teddy Roosevelt/Holmes team-up.

[kennyc]

Some books I just prefer in paper:

http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Lyric.../dp/0307265196

The Complete Lyrics of Johnny Mercer

[birdbrainbb]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

Now currently on David Stuart Davies' The Veiled Detective, which purports to set up and involve the characters of Watson, Moriarty, and Holmes before they became Watson, Moriarty, and Holmes.

Mildly boring so far, since a big chunk of this seems to be premised on "everything you thought you knew is wrong" and I don't read Holmes stories for bumbling incompetence, except in parody versions. I may skip this and go straight to the Teddy Roosevelt/Holmes team-up.

I really hated The Veiled Detective, no lie. Much better is Dr Jekyll and Mr Holmes (obvious mashup is obvious) and Whitechapel Horror (again, obvious).

[GraceKrispy]

I just finished "Luminous and Ominous." It was a sci-fi/horror kind of mix about an alien invasion of plant life and what the main character, Henry, does to survive. A really interesting tale, I thought, but the writing style didn't quite match the topic (in my opinion).