What are you reading in 2023?

[overgeeked]

However by the time I noped out of the Murder Womens' club, I felt manipulated in the extreme. I've got no desire to read any more Patterson

What made you feel manipulated?

 

[dragoner]

For space opera I really like Leigh Brackett Leigh Brackett - Wikipedia

 

[Eyes of Nine]

What made you feel manipulated?

Just the formula for the chapters - it creates a "false" sense of suspense. Or maybe more accurately enhances the suspense (because fictionally there is also suspense) using a formal technique as opposed to a narrative technique

 

[Old Fezziwig]

Started The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson last night. I picked up the Three Californias  omnibus when I moved to California and loved it, so I thought I'd try something else by him. I have the Mars Trilogy, too, but I wanted a standalone novel for now.

Finally finished this one. I found it frustrating and thought-provoking, ambitious but ultimately unsuccessful. The narratives about Frank, May, and the titular Ministry worked better for me than the vignettes did -- the latter often felt superficial and sometimes unpleasantly polemical. I often had the feeling of being lectured, which was a bit grating, especially as I generally agree with the arguments that were presented. Oh well.

 

[Clint_L]

Some good recommendations here. I've read the Gentleman Bastards books - they're fun! I liked Strange and Norell, too. Dune is a classic and I read the series when I was a teenager. I've read most everything by Gaiman. The rest, I'll have to check out!

 

[Zaukrie]

Some good recommendations here. I've read the Gentleman Bastards books - they're fun! I liked Strange and Norell, too. Dune is a classic and I read the series when I was a teenager. I've read most everything by Gaiman. The rest, I'll have to check out!

Vlad Taltos books by Brust?

 

[Old Fezziwig]

Trying something a bit different: The Hope That Kills by Ed James, the first of the DI Fenchurch series. I'm about ten percent in so far, and it's pretty paint-by-numbers right now, but I expect I won't really know if it's any good until it's over. There's a lot of time for it to get weird or interesting.

EDIT: I'm somewhat hopeful after reading this from Warren Ellis (THE HOPE THAT KILLS, Ed James) --

About a quarter of the way in, it starts to get odd. Halfway through, you realise that there may be something wrong with Ed James, because this is batshit. The real plot, when it emerges, is kind of grand guignol in its conceptual grotesquerie and hysteria. I was not expecting that. Nor was I expecting the arc of character development in Fenchurch, which – not to spoil it, but — does the thing these books never do. It brings some warm peace to the Single Terrible Thing and takes away its defining power over his personality. I was impressed by that.

 

[Zaukrie]

There's a jack reacher book in my little library. Maybe I should read it.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I finished REH's Conan of Cimmeria. A mixed bag, with some high points, but also some very problematic stories.

Now I'm reading Larry Niven's The Magic Goes Away.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

Trying something a bit different: The Hope That Kills by Ed James, the first of the DI Fenchurch series. I'm about ten percent in so far, and it's pretty paint-by-numbers right now, but I expect I won't really know if it's any good until it's over. There's a lot of time for it to get weird or interesting.

It was fine, a page-turner, good on the procedural end of things. I don't regret reading it, but I don't know that I'll be back for the next eight books — this was published in 2020, so that's, uh, quite the pace. Also, the summaries for the next five books start like this (from his website):

• "On a busy London street, a young woman is attacked in broad daylight and left bleeding to death on the pavement."
• "When the body of a young City lawyer is discovered on an East London building site, assaulted and brutally murdered, initial enquiries lead DI Simon Fenchurch to a driver employed by Travis, a controversial new app-based cab company. Within days another woman is found murdered, Fenchurch finds that she’s another Travis driver."
• "A university student is found strangled to death in her bedroom..."
• "The body of a young woman is found in a London hotel room, the victim of a suspected poisoning."
• "When a young woman is killed, squashed between a London bus and a white van..."

Good Lord, is there something you want to talk about, Ed?