[August] What are you reading?

[Nellisir]

I'm in a state of waffling with books this summer, finding it hard to land on something. I'm trying to get through Monster (A. Lee Martinez I think is the author) - it's good at quirky but not so good at likeable. I have two recent purchases in a stack to attack next: The Affinity Bridge, and A Talent for War.

Having the same waffling problem with audiobooks recently. I'm currently flipping between The Long Earth and The Rook. I listened to Mindy Kaling's Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? as a change of pace - not as good as Tina Fey's Bossypants but fairly entertaining.

Have you read Bridget Jones' Diary?

 

[Nellisir]

Years Best SF Vol. something or another. I just spent 5 days in NH, and am gearing up for almost 3 weeks in Thailand, so not a whole lot of reading getting done - except that I've bought a Nexus 7 and a Kindle Paperwhite (latter has not yet arrived), so need to invest in some ebooks (and pillage Project Gutenberg, I guess - having trouble finding free books at Amazon. Maybe if I search by author?)

 

[ghostcat]

Years Best SF Vol. something or another. I just spent 5 days in NH, and am gearing up for almost 3 weeks in Thailand, so not a whole lot of reading getting done - except that I've bought a Nexus 7 and a Kindle Paperwhite (latter has not yet arrived), so need to invest in some ebooks (and pillage Project Gutenberg, I guess - having trouble finding free books at Amazon. Maybe if I search by author?)

Have you tried Smashword?

OK its self published stuff but some of its pretty good. In fact some of the free samples have even tempted me to purchase the rest of the series.

 

[Richards]

I just finished up Two Graves, the latest Agent Pendergast novel by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. I think next up will be Michael Crichton's Micro, which he was working on when he died and which was finished up by another author, Richard Preston.

Johnathan

 

[Derren]

I just finished Blood of Tyrants (Temeraire book 8) and quite liked it.
At first I was sceptical about the amnesia plot, but I think it was resolved well and also gave the main character his gentleman like behavior back which he lost in the latest books.

The book finishes with a nice setup for the finale in book 9 with a interesting moral quandry but that wasnt all that unexpected.

Some downsides, the newly introduced support character didnt get much space in the book and apparently also leaves again at the end.

 

[Nellisir]

Read Shift (sequel to Wool), by Hugh Howey. Now reading Dust, the third book. Reading on the Kindle Paperwhite is mixed. I don't mind it, but have to tap a lot, and its a real hassle to go back to look something up.

 

[NewJeffCT]

Now reading The Gathering Storm by Robert Jordan/Brandon Sanderson. Pretty good so far, about 25% of the way through.

 

[Emerald88]

I've finished reading about the first quarter of H.P. Lovecraft stories, which isn't as much as it sounds, since his early stories tend to be rather short. So, I've still got a lot of reading to do...

I tended to skim read those after a while, they all follow pretty much the same structure. Still fun though, and some of the stuff he comes up with is genuinely weird.

I'm currently finishing up Apocalypse Jukebox, a look at our obsession with the end of the world (nuclear/religious) in popular American music. Everyone from Coltrane and Dylan, to Devo and Greenday get examined.

Also read London's Overthrow by China Mieville yesterday. Instead of fantasy, this is a straight up sociological/political essay about London just before the Olympics. Nice quick read and in my opinion more interesting than a lot of his fiction (which I am a fan of).

Two volumes into the Fear Agent series by Rick Remender, Tony Moore and Jerome Opena. On the surface it's a fairly brainless action sci-fi with a heavy vintage sci-fi/western influence. But the chatracters are deceptively well developed, and I genuinely have no idea where the story will go next.

 

[Jhaelen]

I tended to skim read those after a while, they all follow pretty much the same structure. Still fun though, and some of the stuff he comes up with is genuinely weird.

I've been tempted to skim them, but refrained from doing so, after I didn't get what was going on in 'The Outsider'. So even if some of them are arguably rather boring, you have to pay attention. I mainly enjoy how he picks up old stories, places, and characters in later stories, e.g. in 'The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath' which features plenty of 'cameo' appearances.

I've now read 6/7th of the stories and definitely prefer the later, longer ones. Today I finished 'The Dunwich Horror' and started with 'The Whisperer in Darkness'.

 

[Michael Silverbane]

I'm just starting Three Hearts and Three Lions by Poul Anderson and The Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey.

On audiobook right now, I've got queued up Farewell My Lovely by Raymond Chandler, read by Elliot Gould. This is the second Phillip Marlowe book by Chandler. I listened to the first book The Big Sleep, also read by Elliot Gould a few months ago, and very much enjoyed it.

All three are kind of older fiction (Riders is the oldest, originally published in 1912).