Baby-Faced Jan 2018 Edition!!

trappedslider said:

On my reading list are the following:
The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner by Daniel Ellsberg

Soon I will be Invincible and Crooked both by Austin Grossman

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You'll have to tell me how Crooked is. I've got a particular relationship with Soon I Will Be Invincible, one of the very few books where I can pick it up to read just a section. The Dragon Never Sleeps by Glen Cook is the other. That's not putting it down, it's that it's got some specific things that I enjoy either thinking about, or re-immersing myself in. SIWBI has some fantastic deconstruction and great lines, but there's also points where it's been "I've been through that awkwardness myself, let's just move on".

I've also ready YOU: A Novel by him just a few months ago. It felt almost Neil Stephenson-esqe in it's slice-of-life techie travelogue-ness, but the main plot seemed to be secondary to experiencing the characters.

Okay, finished Artemis. Fast read. I haven't laughed at loud while reading this much in quite a while. Not that it's a comedy, it's just the wit and turn-of-phrase of the very-real-feeling protagonist.

Take four parts The Martian hard-technical thriller, and mix in two parts others characters and drama/baggage, and one part spy movie (not spy book), flavor liberally with snark, and make it move fast - that's my recipe for Artemis.

Yes, that does leave you with only 4/7 The Martian type of hard-tech. It did have to make room somewhere if it wanted to keep moving - and it does it well.

Mallus said:

Finally got around to Jeff VanderMeer's "Southern Reach" trilogy. I'm just starting the 2nd book, Authority.

Annihilation was was amazing, in ways I can't quite articulate yet, despite to say the whatever else the book is, it works as a page-turning thriller.

"Environmentalist cosmic horror"? "Eco-Kafka?" "Sad story of the breakdown of a marriage"? Regardless, the writing was exceptional.

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Yep. The most impressive novel I've read in years. I'm really curious if the movie will live up to it.

Finished the Fires of Heaven, in the great Wheel of Time read-through. It ended on a heck of a note, but the middle part really slowed down. I knew this sort of thing was coming, but it was still rough to power through. More grating, though, was the increase in dated gender ideas in the writing.

Next up is Sir Terry’s Wintersmith. Figured it was appropriate winter reading. Except the temperature just went up to the 50s & 60s, melting all the snow and ice around here!

I'm just starting up Stephen King's Finders Keepers.

Johnathan

Okay, with both [MENTION=46713]Jhaelen[/MENTION] and [MENTION=3887]Mallus[/MENTION] recommending it, I just picked this up. It's on my pile.

I've finished 'Red Seas under Red Skies' and just started with 'The Republic of Thieves', the third and final installment in the 'Gentleman Bastards' trilogy by Scott Lynch. Apart from learning a few new nautical terms, I found Red Seas rather underwhelming. I was especially disappointed by the predictable fate of Jean's love interest. Speaking about love interests: Apparently, in the third novel Locke's somewhat mysterious engagement with Sabetha is finally revealed. That might become interesting...

It is a problematic trope, to be sure. I've liked all of the Gentlemen Bastards books, but that part was a weakspot, to be sure.

I finished Wintersmith. So good. Now I’m re-reading A Wizard of Earthsea, for obvious reasons.

Jhaelen said:

I've finished 'Red Seas under Red Skies'....I was especially disappointed by the predictable fate of Jean's love interest. .

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Nellisir said:

Thirty-Eight: The Hurricane That Transformed New England

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That was the one that flattened Katherine Hepburn's home in CT. I've been to the place where her house used to be. A lot of folks around here actually lived through that.
I should read that book sometime.


I just finished reading Thieftaker by D.B. Jackson...

If you liked the Dresden Files novels or are a fan of 18th-century history, you'll probably like this one. It's not a great novel, but the story is good and the characters are entertaining.
Ethan Kaille is a thieftaker and conjurer in pre-Revolutionary Boston, circa 1765, very much a Harry Dresden-like character although the general tone of the book is somewhat more serious and a little darker. An outsider with an infamous past and a conjurer in a time when using magic can get you hung for witchcraft, he ekes out a living finding stolen merchandise, relying more often on his wits and physical combat skills than his magic. Hired by a rich merchant to find a brooch worn by the man's daughter the night she was murdered (and secretly try to solve the murder as well), Kaille quickly finds himself in far over his head and up against opponents he has no chance of beating through magic alone.
I rather enjoyed the book's treatment of magic, and of it's presentation of the city of Boston. Both are integral to the story but neither one overshadows the character interaction.


I'm currently just barely started on The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, but I haven't really had the time to read more than a few pages at once so it hasn't really hooked me yet. I'm starting to wonder if I'll actually finish it since it so often ends up getting set aside for other things I need/want to do...
I'd love to read Soon I Will Be Invincible again, but I have a large pile of unread books I need to get through first before I start rereading things .

Jhaelen said:

I've finished 'Red Seas under Red Skies' and just started with 'The Republic of Thieves', the third and final installment in the 'Gentleman Bastards' trilogy by Scott Lynch. Apart from learning a few new nautical terms, I found Red Seas rather underwhelming. I was especially disappointed by the predictable fate of Jean's love interest. Speaking about love interests: Apparently, in the third novel Locke's somewhat mysterious engagement with Sabetha is finally revealed. That might become interesting...

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Red Seas was the weakest of the three in my opinion as well.

As a side note, Republic isn't the final book, it's just the last book to come out.