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[December] What are you reading?

Ya, Pathfinder was not a fun book to read and I'm kind of happy we aren't playing it. :D

I just finished reading Moonheart by Charles de Lint. He writes some great modern fantasy with celtic roots. I'm enjoying what I've read of his.
 

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Glad to see some love for de Lint here -- great writer and a really nice guy, too! :)

He's got another fan here. I just don't happen to be reading anything of his right now. :p

This month I'm reading American Gods, and The Well of Ascension. After that I might break my rule about not starting A Song of Ice and Fire until the series is complete. If they end up picking up the pilot, I want to have read the books before I watch it.
 

Still working my way through Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome series. Last month I read Caesar's Women in a couple of weeks, and last night I picked up book five - Caesar.

One thing that irked me about the series is that she sometimes leaves out certain events. CW ended with Caesar going off to his proconsul governship in Gaul, and this book picks up after he's been in the theater for five years. She also left out Sulla's war with Mithradates in Fortune's Favorite, after building up to it. I'm glad that a couple of new bios on Mithradates were published this year, so I'll read one of them once I finish this series.


I always suspected that she planned to expand on those periods with separate books from a different POV but, alas, with her health failing I doubt that will ever come about (if it was indeed ever intended).

Colleen McCullough’s fear as she prepares to undergo brain surgery
 

I'm currently halfway through Neal Stephenson's hefty new novel, Anathem.
Anathem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I've got a stack of de Lint that I've only read a couple of...and maybe another hundred or so other books as well.

Hey...just because I haven't read what I already have is no reason not to bring new novels into the fold.
 

Started re-reading the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan (this should take me into February or so depending upon available time)
and MYTH INC series during family story time - your family can never be too old for story time - my youngest is 16.
 

We got new puppies, it's the holidays and so there's a lot of charity work, and I got some deadlines to meet. So not a lot of free time to read, and much of the free time I have is spent studying for my exams so I can rise in rank.

I've always really liked the holidays, but at my age they're an incredibly time-consuming part of the year.

Nevertheless I've tried to read and/or listen to some good materials.


Non-Fiction

Crossing the Threshold of Hope - this time I listened to it on CD. It was like my third time reading the book and everytime I read it I notice something new and interesting, but listening to it I noticed all kinds of new stuff. The man was supremely well-educated, and a brilliant theologian.

Just about finished Lost to the West. I not only highly recommend it, I highly recommend the podcasts.

The Artist, the Philosopher, and the Warrior - A really interesting book so far about the time in 1502 when Leonardo Da Vinci, Machiavelli, and Cesare Borgia met and worked together. I'm not far in so far but it's good. Really good.


Fiction

Strange Brew - This was a short story collection of "urban fantasy." Don't get me wrong, I really like Jim Butcher, but aside from his story, most of these tails (tales) stank on dry ice. I ditched it for Lint. The kind I found on my coat pocket.

21 - Now this was really interesting. It was the last unfinished story of Captain Jack Aubrey (one of my all time favorite fictional characters). I had previously listened to it on CD, but this time I got a copy of the book. It was really fascinating because I was able to not only see O'Brian's rough draft for the story, and examine the copy in detail, but it also included a facsimile of the actual manuscript. You can tell a lot about the way a man thinks by looking at his manuscripts. Interestingly enough he handled the manuscript for this one much like I handle many of my fictional manuscripts (depending on the exact subject matter of the story - only his writing is harder to read cause I print), but in some ways his manuscript work method was very different from mine. It was fascinating to be able to examine that copy and that manuscript though. It gave me several new ideas about structure and form for a media project I'm working.

Destroyer of Worlds - As a kid I read science fiction voraciously. Then later fantasy and other types of fiction. Then for over twenty years I couldn't stomach function at all. Slowly I forced myself to read fiction again, cause my wife and buddies wanted me to try my hand at fiction writing. So I read some of it. Slowly I actually got to liking some of it again. The last category I came back to though was science fiction. Now as a kid I liked Niven a lot. Recently I've read all his new Fleet of Worlds books. And I've liked them all. But this was by far the best. The story is about many things, but mainly about a Pak Protector, and his human corollary. And a really good story at that. As with Niven the titles almost always mean something other than they originally imply and as soon as I saw one of the planetary drives explode I knew what the title really meant. Still it was awfully good. Out of curiosity I looked up Niven on his website (after all it had been about three decades since I last read anything by or about the man) and was fascinated, but not shocked to learn that he had been an advisor to President Reagan on his original Star Wars Defense initiative. No doubt because of his extensive study, ideas, and theoretical knowledge on kinetic kill weapons. Which at the time, when ICBMs were all you really had to worry about in nuke delivery would have made very effective ballistic missile killers. Nowadays though with cruise missiles, stealth, some robotic aerial vehicles and drone types, and smuggled weapons of mass destruction kinetic kill weapons seem almost quaint, except as maybe a mass deterrent. Still you gotta give Niven credit for helping out where he could. I admire that.

Bad Business - This is a Spenser book, and I gotta admit, probably he best case Spenser and Hawk have ever worked. It was so interesting and so confused that I really didn't figure out exactly what was happening, though I knew much earlier who was involved, the first time I read of the scrap-book and Hawk mentioned O'Mara's man, that Spenser actually got there only a little after I did. I highly recommend this case.


Lectures

I saw Freeman Dyson on a good little lecture/talk the other day called Nukes and Genomes. I think it was out of Stanford, can't remember. I like Dyson not only because he is a real scientist, but because he so often demolishes pop science, like Global Warming. He don't care much for Aristotle either.


I've got a The Collected Stories of Richard Yates which has a handful included that have previously slipped by me.

I've always meant to read Yates and always had other subject matter come up. Do you like his works?
 

I'm currently reading The Count of Monte Cristo. I should be done by the end of the week. I'm in a mood to start something by Stephen King next.
 


Just finished Storm Dragon and now I have begun Son of Khyber. Both are Eberron novels.


After X-mas I will either read Dragon Forge or the new James Bond novel. have not decided yet.
 

Into the Woods

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