[March 2015] What Are You Reading?

[Richards]

I just started 77 Shadow Street by Dean Koontz. But I recently finished a pretty cool urban fantasy, Deadtown, by Nancy Holzner. It's apparently the first in a series (although it's completely standalone), and it was interesting enough for me to try to hunt up the others.

Johnathan

 

[delericho]

Just finished The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

I'm not sure if I've ever felt so much like pumping my fist and cheering at the end of a book as I did that one. Hell yeah! Anne Bronte died far, far too young. Excellent, excellent book.

Cool. We have a copy of that lying around here somewhere - guess I'll have to read it at some point.

I finally finished "Gone With the Wind" this morning, which I enjoyed a whole lot more than I thought I would. Though it was a bit disconcerting when I realised just how closely Han Solo is based on Rhett Butler.

I'm now starting on "The Pagan Lord", but won't get that finished before it's time for the next thread.

 

[Nellisir]

Just dropping in to say that The Six Wives of Henry VIII (Alison Weir) actually goes along pretty well. It helps that I've read Wolf Hall (Hilary Mantel) (and something else related??) so the names are familiar, but it's moving even without that. I am thinking of writing out a timeline, though. Ms. Weir necessarily jumps around a bit.

Reading history always makes me appreciate just how amazingly basic and dull fantasy politics are. No one would believe how fast alliances form and dissolve. England is friends with Spain against France, then neutral with both, then friends with France and neutral with Spain, then enemies with France again and friends with Spain, and now Flanders is getting into the deal, and the Scots, and Henry's daughter Mary is going to be married to the Emperor, no, the Dauphin, no the Emperor, no someone else....all in the course of 2-3 years. And they're all cousins, so the Pope has to grant dispensations, and the Queen of Castile is a loon so her dad takes over which he really ought not to do but does anyways and her son is going to be the ruler of all of Spain in the body of one actual person which hasn't happened in, like, ever, AND he'll be the Holy Roman Emperor, except he's going to give part of it up to his younger brother after a bit....

 

[Crothian]

I started the Southern Reach Trilogy. The first book called Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer. The book is creepy and it sets up slowly. It offers an interesting world and builds a nice mystery with half truths and lies that the reader discovers alongside the narrator. At this point it could be fantasy or science fiction I'm not sure which. It will depend on how the define all the weird that is going on in the novel.

 

[The Grassy Gnoll]

Concurrently, The Vanishing witch by Karen Maitland, The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss, and Trigger Warnings by Neil Gaiman. Also, recommend Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow - verse novel about werewolves on LA, what's not to like?