May '08 What are you reading?

[HeavenShallBurn]

Absolute War by Chris Bellamy, it really drives home the conditions and brutality of the Eastern Front. How vicious it was and how bad the losses were while Roosevelt played games with Churchill instead of opening a second front.

 

[Krug]

The Keeper by Sarah Langan. Atmospheric horror piece, though she tends to repeat herself.

 

[Storm Raven]

Burroughs' Mars Trilogy. About frickin' time, eh?

Aren't there eleven books in Burrough's Barsoom series?

Or do you mean Robinson's Mars trilogy?

 

[Graybeard]

I just started reading Tall Stories by Tom Holt.

 

[GoodKingJayIII]

I'm really enjoying Ilium by Dan Simmons. I tend not to like heavy sci fi very much, but his book is an excellent mix of all the things I love. His pacing is as close to perfect as I can imagine. He also uses the present tense narrative (which I tend to dislike) very well. I'll definitely be checking out some of his other books.

After this one, I'll be concentrating on Tobias Wolff's recent book of short stories, Our Story Begins. Then Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash.

 

[Mallus]

I'm really enjoying Ilium by Dan Simmons.

My (unsolicited) advice: buy the sequel/second half, Olympos, but stop reading it between half the two-thirds through. The ending is a trainwreck that'll have you wishing for deus ex machina (it ends with an almost totally left-field deus ex deus) and depending on your political inclinations, you might just want to fling it across the room (hint: if you like Simmon's recent diatribes, you'll be okay. If you liked the sympathetic characters in the Hyperion Cantos, for instance Fedman Kassad, then you'll be flinging...).

Which is a shame, because some it is very, very good (like the Eiffelbahn jounrey).

 

[GoodKingJayIII]

I'm not terribly familiar with Simmons or his politics. I'll have to see how the first book turns out before I buy into the second (the Earth humans just met Odysseus and learned the truth about the faxnodes and how that ties into the 100-year life span and "going to heaven" with the humans.) I'm still relatively early in the story, so it could certainly take a turn for the worst. I'd be more upset about a poor ending than an author's political leanings, unless they're being rammed down my throat.

 

[Croesus]

Absolute War by Chris Bellamy, it really drives home the conditions and brutality of the Eastern Front. How vicious it was and how bad the losses were while Roosevelt played games with Churchill instead of opening a second front.

After you finish Absolute War, take a look at No Simple Victory by Norman Davies. His main thesis is that Western histories of WW2 have given far too much emphasis to the war fought by Britain and America, and far too little to the Russo-German conflict.

 

[Wombat]

Now reading Charles de Lint's The Blue Girl -- great book ... which is something I can say about nearly all of his writing.

 

[Amellia]

Chronicles of Chrestomanci, by Diana Wynn Jones.

Such a fantastic book, it's always just as good (if not better!) each time I reread it.