[May] What are you reading?

delericho

Legend

• May 1, 2014

• #1

A new month, a new thread.

Right now I'm reading "Little Women & Good Wives" by Louisa May Alcott. I'm really not enjoying it, but I suppose I shouldn't really be surprised by that.

Next up is "The Final Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey", by Patrick O'Brian, the latest Pathfinder, and the Fifth Doctor novel "Fear of the Dark".

 

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Kramodlog

Naked and living in a barrel

• May 1, 2014

• #2

Anarchy Explained to my Dad by Francis Dupuis-Déry. Pretty basic so far.

 

EricNoah

Adventurer

• May 1, 2014

• #3

delericho said:

Next up is "The Final Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey", by Patrick O'Brian

Click to expand...

Prepare to share your reaction when done.

Mine:

Spoiler

Punched in the gut. I knew it was unfinished, but when it just stopped mid-sentence ... oof.

 

Viking Bastard

Adventurer

• May 2, 2014

• #4

I was grabbed by the urge to to read some D&D fiction--I'm going through a stressful period pretty much devoid of gaming and I wanted something relatively light which kept my mind in the realm of RPGs--so I got myself the original Dragonlance trilogy, which I read as a teenager (and is one of the very few works of D&D fiction that I've read) but didn't actually like much.

I'm 23% percent into the first book and I'm actually liking it a lot better than I did back then, if only because it fits my parameters above pretty wonderfully.

 

delericho

Legend

• May 7, 2014

• #5

EricNoah said:

Prepare to share your reaction when done.

Mine:

Spoiler

Punched in the gut. I knew it was unfinished, but when it just stopped mid-sentence ... oof.

Click to expand...

Yeah. I read it last night, and while I don't exactly regret reading it, I think I would have skipped it had I known. Certainly, if I reread the series, I'll stop with "Blue at the Mizzen".

What I hadn't grasped going in was that it's not just unfinished in the sense of being 'incomplete' but also in the sense of 'unpolished' - although there are a couple of scenes here and there that feel right, much of it (especially the first chapter) is very rough - almost a synopsis more than the 'real' story.

It's a shame, because there's probably enough to indicate that the finished novel would have been another good one.

Still, "Blue at the Mizzen" makes for a very satisfactory conclusion to the series. I especially liked the symmetry of the end of BatM and the start of "Master & Commander" - in both cases

Spoiler

Jack receives a long-awaited promotion.

 

trappedslider

Legend

• May 7, 2014

• #6

I'm reading the Darth Bane trio again, after that I'm not sure..

 

EricNoah

Adventurer

• May 7, 2014

• #7

delericho said:

Yeah. I read it last night, and while I don't exactly regret reading it, I think I would have skipped it had I known. [/spoiler]

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I did the whole series as audiobooks; and as such I often didn't know how close I was to the end. I was in my car and Simon Vance just stops in the middle of a sentence. Boom! Punched in the gut. It really was over...

 

delericho

Legend

• May 7, 2014

• #8

EricNoah said:

I did the whole series as audiobooks; and as such I often didn't know how close I was to the end. I was in my car and Simon Vance just stops in the middle of a sentence. Boom! Punched in the gut. It really was over...

Click to expand...

Ouch. I can see how that could be painful.

The printed copy actually includes a facsimile of Po'B's hand-written version, which includes another few pages beyond that. I found it difficult to make out most of it (that's definitely one where an eBook, or a magnifying glass, would help), but I did at least get the rest of that sentence.

 

Z

Zombie_Babies

First Post

• May 8, 2014

• #9

Still working on Turgenev's Spring Torrents. I actually like it a lot. It definitely has a more modern feel than anything else I've read from that place/time.

 

Nellisir

Hero

• May 8, 2014

• #10

Still not really feeling desire for any of the unread books, and I'd not had the money last week to hit the book sale (but it is ON this Sunday), so I dove back into the open box and am rereading Death of the Necromancer, by Martha Wells. An excellent, and probably underrecognized, book and writer. One of the few takes on a late Victorian fantasy setting that I can really get into, I think in large part because she doesn't overcomplicate it. There are sorcerers and trains, witches and gas lamps.