[October] What are you reading?

Mark CMG · Oct 1, 2014

Hot on the heels of finishing up the available GRR Martin books, I have picked up one I haven't read in years, Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth. I enjoyed it way back when and and loving it even more this time around.

EricNoah · Oct 1, 2014

Creeping my way through the sequel to Empire State - The Age Atomic.

Audiobook: I just started the Joe Ledger short story collection by Jonathan Maberry. But I have Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes ready to go as well.

Elf Witch · Oct 1, 2014

Right now I am reading a mystery by Rhys Bowen Queen of Hearts. I am listening on audio to the Drizzt short story collection. Up next for reading is Cold Days by Jim Butcher.

Nellisir · Oct 1, 2014

I just finished Queen Isabella, a biography by Alison Weir. It's a bit dry; a lot of information is taken from accounting books and the like, so we know who she paid and how much and usually what for, but not personal details. It did remind me how fantastically simplified D&D politics are. Everyone is backstabbing everyone and switching partners every few months. Isabella is definitely sympathetically portrayed.

trappedslider · Oct 2, 2014

Reading Light by Micheal Grant, the last of the Gone Series

delericho · Oct 2, 2014

Still working through "Bleak House" - about a third of the way through. I'm going to take a break shortly to instead read thing month's Doctor Who novel and short story, and also this month's Pathfinder if it has arrived by then, and then it's back to Dickens.

Once I've finished that, I think the next thing will be "East of Eden" by Steinbeck, but I don't know if I'll get to that this month or not.

Mallus · Oct 2, 2014

I'm 100 pages into David Mitchell's excellent -- so far -- new novel The Bone Clocks.

Picture a sprawling supernatural compulsive page-turner like Stephen King or Clive Barker write. Now picture a big literary novel up for the Pulitzer and Mann Booker prizes. Got it? Make them the same book.

It reminds me of his previous novel, Cloud Atlas, with a bit of Barker's The Great and Secret Show spliced in. There's a young-looking very old magic-y woman named " Immaculée". Can't be a coincidence.

Umbran · Oct 2, 2014

I just started The Six-Gun Tarot by R.S. Belcher. Weird West stuff. I don't now where the plot is going, but the writing style is very pleasing.

EricNoah · Oct 2, 2014

Mallus said:
I'm 100 pages into David Mitchell's excellent -- so far -- new novel The Bone Clocks.

Picture a sprawling supernatural compulsive page-turner like Stephen King or Clive Barker write. Now picture a big literary novel up for the Pulitzer and Mann Booker prizes. Got it? Make them the same book.

It reminds me of his previous novel, Cloud Atlas, with a bit of Barker's The Great and Secret Show spliced in. There's a young-looking very old magic-y woman named " Immaculée". Can't be a coincidence.

I'm curious about this one and have it on a wish list for audiobooks... wondering if I should read it or listen to it. Sounds like there are multiple narrators - does that make sense for the book?

Alzrius · Oct 2, 2014

I'm not currently reading anything at the moment, but I recently finished Larry Correia's Monster Hunter International.

It wasn't a bad book, but it left me somewhat lukewarm. I'd heard that, as his first published work, it was somewhat rough compared to his later material, so I'll probably check out the next book in the series at some point.

As it stands, I'm having a hard time pinpointing exactly why the book didn't make a better impression on me. While there were some aspects of the book that weren't personally appealing to me - the "gun-porn" aspects of the book, for example, or the story's (and main character's) libertarian attitudes - those weren't particularly off-putting. Rather, it feels like an issue of pacing; it was like the dials kept suddenly ratcheting up to 11 before falling back to a 4, and then suddenly turning up to 11 again - there wasn't build-up, so much as there were briefs periods of characterization and exposition between high-action scenes.