What are you reading this year 2020?

[Richards]

I finished Praying for Sleep and while it was a good story I'm afraid I've become attuned to Jeffery Deaver's more recent works, such that reading one of his earlier novels like this made it all too easy for me to spot the plot twists coming. I suspected almost at once that the escaped mental patient wasn't quite the way he had been depicted and I also suspected the killer at the end for what he was about halfway through the book. So still a good read but not as exciting as it would have been had this been one of the first of his books I'd ever read.

That said, I'm about to start another of his earlier works, A Maiden's Grave, about a hostage negotiator dealing with a madman who kidnaps a bus-load of deaf girls and their teachers. Apparently a movie was made of this, with James Gardner - I've never seen it.

Johnathan

 

[dragoner]

Sounds like a Traveller adventure...?

Almost exactly, Norton's Free Traders, Solar Queen series especially, had to be a huge influence on Traveller, most written in the 60's, about 10 years before Traveller was published.

 

[Nellisir]

Just reread CJ Cherryh's The Goblin Mirror. Like all her fantasy stuff, it kinda gives me a headache, but I did better than I have in the past. It's a decent enough book. Nice little micro setting.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Almost exactly, Norton's Free Traders, Solar Queen series especially, had to be a huge influence on Traveller, most written in the 60's, about 10 years before Traveller was published.

Ok, adding it to my list.

Just reread CJ Cherryh's The Goblin Mirror. Like all her fantasy stuff, it kinda gives me a headache, but I did better than I have in the past. It's a decent enough book. Nice little micro setting.

Ah, have the Fortress series (Fortress in the Eye of Time et al) on my to read list. But I experienced similar headaches after reading Cyteen. Her writing is great (loved Chanur series, liked Downbelow Station and 40,000 in Gehenna). Guess I'll need to not read late at night.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Just started reading the Da Vinci Code series. Finished Angels & Demons already, and am 2/3rds of the way through Da Vinci Code.

Both books are well written and have interesting plots, even though they are basically filled with inaccurate historical speculation.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Just started reading the Da Vinci Code series. Finished Angels & Demons already, and am 2/3rds of the way through Da Vinci Code.

Both books are well written and have interesting plots, even though they are basically filled with inaccurate historical speculation.

Enjoyed Da Vinci Code - read it because I wanted to see the movie (but usually like to read the books first). Then never did see the movie lol.

We can talk Lost Symbol when you've finished that too. I will say in Lost Symbol though there's one scene description that still sticks with me of a bunch of floating candles on an underwater lake/cistern/ or something. I don't recall what it's place was in the narrative, but just that it was a really cool setting.

 

[dragoner]

Ok, adding it to my list.

First one of the Solar Queen series is sargasso of space written as Andrew North, though later reprinted as Norton:

If you like e-books, project gutenberg also has a couple more of the series, plague ship, and voodoo planet:

Books: andre norton (sorted by popularity)

Project Gutenberg offers 62,275 free ebooks for Kindle, iPad, Nook, Android, and iPhone.

www.gutenberg.org

 

[Nellisir]

Ah, have the Fortress series (Fortress in the Eye of Time et al) on my to read list. But I experienced similar headaches after reading Cyteen. Her writing is great (loved Chanur series, liked Downbelow Station and 40,000 in Gehenna). Guess I'll need to not read late at night.

I've read almost all of her sci-fi (I eventually quit the Foreigner series after it started on the 19th trilogy or whatever), and most of her fantasy. The SF I can handle but my brain hurts. The fantasy is generally just...confusing. I read the first book of the Fortress series and didn't bother with the rest, because I had no idea what had happened. But...I've gotten almost all of them used, so I'm going to try again.
Her earliest stuff is excellent and readable.
I do wish her characters would sleep. They're all so TIRED!!!

 

[AmerginLiath]

I’m surprisingly not a fiction guy, so I’m taking advantage of being stuck alone in an apartment for a few months to read a lot of classical philosophy. I spent the first two months plus reading the complete works of Aristotle (although I’ll admit to skimming a bit through the animal biology works), and I’ve moved onto a survey of Neoplatonism (The Enneads of Plotinus, various fragments of Porphyry, now partly into Iamblichaus’ On The Egyptian Mysteries) ducking back into bits of Plato as needed for reference. Depending on how long I’m able to spend time doing this, I want to get around to going through Early Christian Neoplatonism and Jewish Aristotelianism to meet at being able to reread Thomas Aquinas with all the peremptory philosophical bases covered.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Finished reading Storm Season. It was like going home; Thieves World was a series much beloved by me when I was just getting into D&D.

Now, gods help me, I'm reading Rona Jaffe's Mazes and Monsters.