[June] What are you reading?

[Anavel Gato]

Right now I have started the following:

Return of the King--Tolkien
Shadows of Lucifer--Collected Stories for Demon:the Fallen.
Sorcerer--Troy Denning (Archwizards book 3)

and a bunch o' comics.

 

[Gizzard]

So to sum up, my rankings are Kiln People -> Bones of the Earth -> I'm starting not to care -> Hominids -> The Years of Rice and Salt, with The Scar upcoming.

I was saving The Scar and Bones of the Earth for last, figuring that they'd be my two favorites. (And therefore being the dessert of my Hugo meal.) I'm going to have to hope I like Bones of the Earth better than you did - I don't think I can bear to slog through another mediocre book.

I agree with the commentary on Kiln People, especially the idea that it could have been a lot more. To me, the book would be great either as a detective story with one big twist and a bit of a moral, or as a more philosophical exploration of the meaning of cloning and the Kiln tech. The first 100 pages head off strong in the first direction and I had really high hopes for the book as straightforward entertainment. But, in the next two sections Brin paints himself into a bit of a corner plotwise and the book spirals into bigger and more outlandish realms. Particularly, the scope of the ideas he addresses in the third section takes a huge jump in scale; at that point I kinda missed my simple green clone going about his simple chores.

Still, I enjoyed the heck out of the book overall and would recommend it.

 

[Severion]

I just finished "2061" by A. C. Clarke. Left me cyrious as hell about "3000". gotta find that one.

I just started "The Incompleat Nift" So far i like tha main charecter and his sidekick, the writing is deacent but occasionally dips (briefly) into the juvinile. Overall, a fun read.

 

[Dinkeldog]

Good Omens

 

[Gizzard]

I'm in full Hugo mode; I can see the voting deadline looming and want to get everything read. Nothing like a deadline for motivation.

Anyway, I read Coraline by Neil Gaiman the other day. It's sort of a fairy tale in the tradition of the Brothers Grimm - dark and spooky. It's short, it's actually nominated in the Novella catagory. I liked it a lot. I think the fairy tale may be the perfect outlet for Gaiman's talent; it's not so long that the plotting becomes a problem and the genre allows you to cram tons of wild imagination into a short space.

When I finished that I started on Swanwick's Bones of the Earth and am about 75% done. I'm also enjoying that one a lot. The whole book flows smoothly, Swanwick realizes that he's a storyteller and he's a good enough craftsman that I read practically all of it in one sitting. The book itself reminds me a lot of what Kage Baker has been doing lately with her short stories and recent novel about time-travel and corporate intrigue. Swanwick himself wrote two short stories Scherzo with Tyrranosaur and something else that I can't quite remember which were alternate versions of some of the sections of this book. I actually find that a bit distracting; that I am thinking about the short stories and comparing them to what he wrote here, so I'd recommend reading them later if you are interested in following up on Bones of the Earth. I believe Scherzo won a Hugo it's year, though it could be that I only felt that it should have won. ;-) Sometimes I get confused in that way.

 

[EricNoah]

I just finished another great sci fi book from Stephen Baxter. "The Time Ships" is a "sequel" to The Time Machine, and it is just incredible. The hero from the story decides to return to the future in his machine to save the woman he left in danger, only to find that as he travels forward into time again the timeline is different than it was the first time. He ends up in the far future and discovers a very advanced and peaceful race of Morlocks, and from there it just gets weirder. You get to visit a couple of different alternate Earths at different times, and ultimately the hero is taken back to the very beginning of the universe itself. As much as the original story was a tale of the utter futility of existence in some ways, this sequel reverses that with a conclusion that is incredibly life-affirming and triumphant. A great read.

 

[AuroraGyps]

Good Omens

I just finished that the other night. I really enjoyed it. Started on The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant (see Stephen Donaldson thred).
I also read The Magnificiant Wilf this month and liked that too. This month I started alot of books and just couldn't get into them... hopefully next month will be better.