What are you reading in 2022?

[Scottius]

I found a copy of Callahan's Crosstime Saloon on my recent used bookstore trip and am starting it now. I've been interested in it since I first became aware of it via seeing a copy of the GURPS sourcebook about it. A chapter in and I'm intrigued.

 

[Nellisir]

I read Broken Homes, #4 of the Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch, and got annoyed because I still didn't have book 3, and so quit reading for a month or so. (I don't get my logic either.) But I got over it, and then then it showed up, so all was good.
I've read

• Whispers Underground (#3 RoL) and
• Broken Homes (#4 RoL), by Ben Aaronovitch. Wicked good.
• Bone Silence, by Alastair Reynolds. Not bad, but the font size & spacing really bothered me initially. It's like YA size, or halfway to Large Print Edition, or something. It's a 400-page book inflated to 630 pages.
• Inhibitor Phase, also by Alastair Reynolds.

Bone Silence was good; Inhibitor Space was disappointing. Wooden characters and dialogs. It's part of his Revelation Space universe, and can be read independently, but there are a lot of "in" references and feels like a somewhat forced effort to "get the band back together" rather than inventing new characters.

I also read almost all of the 2e Birthright material. I finally got the original boxed set and (just yesterday) Blood Enemies of Cerilia. (I've had the regional boxed sets since forever.)

 

[Richards]

I finished The Andromeda Evolution and was surprisingly impressed - it not only read very much like a Michael Crichton novel (which it very obviously wasn't, the book having been written many years after his death), but it was a very logical extrapolation of what came before in the original novel.

So now I'm moving on to a new book and considering I'm going to be spending most of tomorrow on a military aircraft flying between three Air Force Bases, I'm tempting fate just a little by choosing a novel named Crash & Burn. (If anything happens to my plane tomorrow I'll have at least earned an ironic death.) This is a novel by Lisa Gardner, an author I've read before and was suitably impressed by for her name to have stuck in my memory. Crash & Burn fortunately doesn't involve military aircraft but rather a wife involved in a car accident leaving her with scrambled memories - and a very good chance that someone out there is trying to kill her.

Johnathan

[Edit: I survived my day flying around in a military aircraft while reading Crash & Burn - so that's a relief. The book's pretty good, too - I'm now over halfway through it.]

 

[Zaukrie]

I'm reading Slaughterhouse Five. Which is interesting, given I'm analyzing the writing line crazy....

Edit.... What an awful sentence. Would fit right in....

 

[Cadence]

Still reading the "Songs of the Dying Earth, Stories in honor of Jack Vance" anthology. Elizabeth Hand's "The Return of the Fire Witch" was awe inspiring (?, terrifying?) in terms of the number of words it has that I don't remember ever seeing before... in spite of this being my second or third time towards the anthology.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I've not read it yet - since this is another re-read for you, I take it it's worth checking out?

Still reading the "Songs of the Dying Earth, Stories in honor of Jack Vance" anthology. Elizabeth Hand's "The Return of the Fire Witch" was awe inspiring (?, terrifying?) in terms of the number of words it has that I don't remember ever seeing before... in spite of this being my second or third time towards the anthology.

 

[Cadence]

I've not read it yet - since this is another re-read for you, I take it it's worth checking out?

I really like it. All of the authors express a love for the original Dying Earth in their afterword blurb about how they first encountered it, and it shows in the stories they wrote. No matter which of the original books you like, there are some stories that go with it - sometimes continuing characters from it, sometimes with new ones.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I finished reading Tolkien's Book of Lost Tales vol. 1. Fascinating stuff. While I wish I had gotten to it sooner, I am glad to now have so much more Tolkien stuff to read. Seeing his developing ideas evolve is a great glimpse into his mind. It's also interesting to see the languages evolving - in early form, they appear to show much more of the Finnish influence.

Now I am reading Abraham Merritt's The Metal Monster.

 

[Richards]

I finished Crash & Burn and have now moved on to another Lisa Gardner thriller, this one called Love You More and written before Crash & Burn - in fact, it deals with events mentioned in the other book, so I already know a bit about what's going to happen. Oops. Oh well, it's still a good read with enjoyable characters - a state trooper shoots her husband and her six-year-old daughter is now missing and it's up to grumpy detective D. D. Warren to find the girl and unravel exactly what happened.

Johnathan

 

[Scottius]

I found a copy of Swords Against Darkness III while doing a used bookstore run today. Never seen that one before and judging by the fact that I can't seem to find a copy for sale on Google or eBay after some searching I'm guessing it's pretty rare. Looking forward to diving into it soon.