July - what are you reading?

[Mycanid]

Ooo ... Finished 1001 Arabian Nights finally. A good read.

Think I will pick up "Orthodoxy" by G.K. Chesterton again. Good book to re-read from time to time.

 

[Chaldfont]

Ahh, what an epic ending. You won't be disappointed (I hope).

I CANNOT put down Naomi Novik's Termeraire trilogy. Burned through Book 1 (His Majesty's Dragon) in one day, took three for Throne of Jade, and I'll be starting Black Powder War on the train ride home tonight. Not a towering classic of the genre, but she can write page-turning prose, and I am enjoying following the characters. She's no C. S. Forester, but who is? Dragons going to war in Napoleanic-era Europe is apparently a genre I never knew I needed to have fulfilled. Good thing someone else did.

Those books are great fun. The next one comes out in September, I think.

I came pretty close to running a Savage Worlds game based on those books at Gen Con this year. I was going to have players team up, one playing a captain and the other playing his dragon.

 

[Wombat]

Think I will pick up "Orthodoxy" by G.K. Chesterton again. Good book to re-read from time to time.

Chesterton is always a thoughtful and interesting (and witty!) read -- glad to see another fan.

My brother used to have a yellow t-shirt with an image of him in black, hunched over a bit, wearing his ever-present pince-nez, with the legend, "I think I shall not hang myself today."

(Oh, and on my own part I have finished THE book -- Thanks, Jo, for the long, strange trip.)

 

[Tolen Mar]

Well, read THE book in a week. Yeah yeah, I know. I just don't read that fast or for that long of a stretch at a time. Usually.

So I went to the library and realized I neither wanted Scifi or Fantasy at the moment and so hit the astrophysics section.

I recently read "A Brief History of Time" and enjoyed it thoroughly (so much so that I was dissapointed that " A Briefer History..." was just a new edition with better ilustrations). So now, I have "The Universe in a Nutshell." I can't help thinking that while I would be confused through much of the discussion, Professor Hawking would be an intensely interesting person to talk with.

But since his works count as a 'light' read, I have another waiting nearby, "The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimension, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory" by Brian Greene.

 

[Mycanid]

Chesterton is always a thoughtful and interesting (and witty!) read -- glad to see another fan.

My brother used to have a yellow t-shirt with an image of him in black, hunched over a bit, wearing his ever-present pince-nez, with the legend, "I think I shall not hang myself today." ...

Woohoo! Hats off to another GKC fan! He's actually one of my fave authors - so far that I have his collected works ... which is massive (dare I say "larger than life")....

It's amazing the output that guy could do all at the same time.

 

[Darth Shoju]

I'm just about done The Children of Hurin and I've found it enjoyable so far, if not as engaging as LoTR (which I ascribe to tCoH not being really finished). After that I've got a bit of a queue:

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (Susanna Clarke)
The Fionavar Tapestry (Guy Gavriel Kay)
The Robots of Dawn; The Caves of Steel; The Naked Sun (Asimov)
Hominids; Humans; Hybrids (Robert J. Sawyer)
And Quiet Flows the Don (Mikhail Sholokhov)
The Brothers Karamazov (Fyodor Dostoevsky)

I *really* wish I was a faster reader.

 

[Pielorinho]

The Fionavar Tapestry (Guy Gavriel Kay)

Is this your first Guy Gavriel Kay? If it is, I recommend that it not be . In my opinion, it's by far his weakest book (or trilogy); what's more, it's almost in a different genre from his other work. His other books tend to be alternate histories of a world similar to earth but different enough that he can, for example, guiltlessly create new dialogue and motives for the Byzantine Emperor Justinian and his Empress Theodora. The Fionavar Tapestry is kind of like a cross between every Tolkien rip-off you've ever read and the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon.

If you've read everything else by him, though, or if you really dig the Shanarra books, you might like Fionavar (and I don't mean that to be a slight: I certainly have fluffy books that I enjoy).

Daniel

 

[Tolen Mar]

Yes to both. It is bad pastiche.

I want to thank you Celt for helping me to avoid a stinker. A quick thumbthrough had me convinced as well.

 

[Darth Shoju]

Is this your first Guy Gavriel Kay? If it is, I recommend that it not be . In my opinion, it's by far his weakest book (or trilogy); what's more, it's almost in a different genre from his other work. His other books tend to be alternate histories of a world similar to earth but different enough that he can, for example, guiltlessly create new dialogue and motives for the Byzantine Emperor Justinian and his Empress Theodora. The Fionavar Tapestry is kind of like a cross between every Tolkien rip-off you've ever read and the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon.

If you've read everything else by him, though, or if you really dig the Shanarra books, you might like Fionavar (and I don't mean that to be a slight: I certainly have fluffy books that I enjoy).

Daniel

It is my first Kay. This is the first time I've really heard anything but positive reviews of Fionavar (of course, I'm only going with what my friends say - I've never read an actual review.) I figure I'll still start there though as my friend just gave me the trilogy for free the other day. Thanks for the tip though: I'm sure I'll be reading his other stuff soon enough.

 

[The Grumpy Celt]

Chronicle of the Narvaez Expedition by Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca. In 1527, following a failed expedition by Spanish conquistadors, he wandered through North America for nine year among the natives before finally returning to Spain.