What are you reading (May 2005)

[Hand of Evil]

Witch Hunter and Witch Finder...both are Warhammer novels. Pretty good too...

Have to agree, just finishing up Witch Hunter and will be starting Finder, very good reads.

 

[Benben]

The Black Gryphon by Mercedes Lackey. Normally Laceky is low on my "want to read" fantasy list, but I found the Gryphon trilogy for cheap at a used book store. I'm also wraping my head around the romantic fantasy genre, so I can do a good job for my upcoming Blue Rose game. The premise of the book is an interesting twist on fantasy war novels, as the plot of the story follows a convalescing gryphon and the healers he interacts with. It's just a few steps away from being MASH. Unlike most Lackey novels the characters all have great senses of humor which makes her more purple prose tolerable.

Gilgamesh by Stephen Mitchel. It doesn't look to be a scholarly translation, in fact it's not a translation at all but a reworking of availbable translations and made into a more coherent whole. This is fine by me as other translations of Gilgamesh that I've read have been rather stale. After this will be Derrek Hine's post modern rendition.

 

[Draken]

Finally finishing The Dying Earth compilation (and found it quite boring, to tell the truth), I moved to greener fields and I am currently reading Soul Music. Only on page 50 so far but have already had some good chuckles.

From that, Stephen King's Desperation and then Orson Scott Card's Memory of Earth.

 

[danbuter]

Just starting "On Basilisk Station". I read it years ago, and loved it. I plan on reading the first 3 books, as I've had them on my "to read" shelf for a while.

 

[Tolen Mar]

Just starting "On Basilisk Station". I read it years ago, and loved it. I plan on reading the first 3 books, as I've had them on my "to read" shelf for a while.

I enjoyed the first several of those...after a while though, I started finding it repetitive.

On another note, I just found a copy of 'nine princes in amber.' Finally my collection is complete (well, sans the prequals anyway)! Do you have any idea how annoying it is to own books 2-9 of a series, but not #1?

 

[ShrinkyLink]

I'm reading the original Star Wars: A New Hope novel. It's not the novelization of the movie, but a novel based on Lucas' original screenplay - apparently before Lucas implemented quite a few changes to some of the characters.

I remember reading that when I was 12, and I can still quote lines from it. I always remember the line about the blaster fire hitting the Falcon like 'an angel falling from the sky'. Nice line, Mr. Luc--er, I mean, Foster.

Still reading Gardens of The Moon by Steven Erikson, Dungeon Master's Guide 3.5, and the June issue of Asimov's.

 

[Gentlegamer]

Just finished "The Fallible Fiend," and now onto "The Goblin Tower," both by L. Sprague de Camp.

 

[WayneLigon]

Still working on The Reality Disfunction. Really starting to get into it now, and by page 348, all the various plot threads and seperate peoples are starting to come together in a very organic natural way.

Cool Stuff I'm stealing for future games:

The idea of the affinity gene, which basically gives people a kind of radio-telepathy with others and with the ships and habitats, is a wonderful idea.

I like the idea of the quasi-living habitats and starships; the Tranquility habitat takes in asteroidal material to use as fuel. All the interior apartments and housings are grown by coral-like action. Organic material is provided to every living space via glands in the walls free as a by-product if you want it, so no-one starves.

The Edenist habitats are always in orbit around gas giants; they have hundreds of kilometers-long filiaments that stand out from one end of the station. As the habitat rotates for gravity, the filaments are rotated through the massive magnetosphere of the planet, thus generating electricity for the habitat. On an ocean world, very long filaments depend from the bottom of the floating city things, granting them a bit more stability and generating electricity from the temperature contrast between the cold depths and sun-warmed surface waters.

 

[Pielorinho]

Just last night I finished reading Stephen Pinker's fascinating book The Language Instinct (the source of my enigmatic new .sig--it's actually a grammatically correct sentence), and now I'm returning to The Last of the Wine, a novel set in ancient Greece.

Daniel

 

[Wombat]

Polybius, The Rise of the Roman Empire

Plutarch, Fall of the Roman Republic

Tacitus, Annals of Imperial Rome

Reading for pleasure? I know not of what you speak.

What, no Livy? I love Livy!

Due to a recent move, I am working through books I find at hand. So far I have read Maskerade and Perdido Street Station. Oh, and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Next up? Well, I got a metric load of Osprey/Men-At-Arms books available, so probably go through 4-5 of those...