What are you Reading? Agleam April 2019 edition

[Ralif Redhammer]

April Fools Day doesn't count as a proper day, so here is the new April reading thread, right on time .

As I said in the last one, I'm currently reading N.K. Jemisin's Fifth Season.

 

[Blue]

Reading Passage of Arms by Glen Cook and Medusa's Web by Tim Powers.

Medusa's Web is starting out pretty quickly into the fantastic-du-jure that Tim Powers is known for, with a fresh take on the supernatural-behind-the-real-world in every book. I've been a fan of his sicne I first read Anubis Gates, though the Fault Lines series and Declare are my favorites. I put this to the side because I just finished reading a very magic-behind-the-world SF book (Ninefox Gambit) and I wanted a bit of a "palette freshener" before jumping into it.

Which leads to Passage of Arms. I enjoy Glen Cook in his different incarnations, but he's not one of my top favorite authors. But I had just reread for the Nth time The Dragon Never Sleeps as a random pick-up. o far it's almost a travelogue of a particular type of SF military service. It's not quite action, definitely not drama. At this point it's more that we're along for the ride of a journalist who is along for the ride as well -- I can't point at anything in particular and call out "plot!". For all that the travelogue is good enough that I'm still reading.

After those two the top of my TBR pile is two of Charles Stross' Laundry files. May the the most recent two, or there may be one even more recent that that.

 

[Kramodlog]

Reading Makers by Cory Doctorow. It is my first novel by him. 60 pages in and I'm underwhelmed. I wanted to read his new novella collection Radicalized, and wonder if he was worth reading. Makers had been lying around on my shelfs for a while and started digging in. Now I wonder if Radicalized is worth it.

Anyone read Doctorow and survived mild boredom?

 

[Jonathan Tweet]

I finished Origins of Political Order by Francis Fukuyama. It covers the history of political power from prehistoric times to the French Revolution, and it has changed the way I see society and politics in pre-modern societies. Really eye-opening.

 

[trappedslider]

Reading Makers by Cory Doctorow. It is my first novel by him. 60 pages in and I'm underwhelmed. I wanted to read his new novella collection Radicalized, and wonder if he was worth reading. Makers had been lying around on my shelfs for a while and started digging in. Now I wonder if Radicalized is worth it.

Anyone read Doctorow and survived mild boredom?

Little Brother was good IMO

 

[Blue]

Reading Makers by Cory Doctorow. It is my first novel by him. 60 pages in and I'm underwhelmed. I wanted to read his new novella collection Radicalized, and wonder if he was worth reading. Makers had been lying around on my shelfs for a while and started digging in. Now I wonder if Radicalized is worth it.

Anyone read Doctorow and survived mild boredom?

I've enjoyed a bunch of Doctorow in the past. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom might have been my favorite. But I haven't read any novels he's written in the past decade so I can't say where he is now.

 

[carrot]

Just finished reading The Grey Bastards by Jonathan French. Its... a bit hit and miss. Some nice ideas and intriguing characters, but one or two plot holes meant that it didn't always hold my interest. Still will probably pick up the sequel when it's out.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I've got that one in my to-read pile. The premise caught my attention - as far as I know, there's only a handful of books from the perspective of orcs.

Just finished reading The Grey Bastards by Jonathan French. Its... a bit hit and miss. Some nice ideas and intriguing characters, but one or two plot holes meant that it didn't always hold my interest. Still will probably pick up the sequel when it's out.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

The Fifth Season is done. Woof, that was a good one. The author wrote that it was a challenging book to write, and in the beginning, it was so to read. But the book rewards patience and paying attention, putting pieces of the puzzle together.

Now it’s onto something lighter, with a re-read of Myth Directions by Robert Asprin.

 

[trappedslider]

Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War by P. W. Singer (Author), August Cole (Contributor)