What are you reading this year 2020?

[Imaculata]

I just started on House of Leaves, after hearing a lot of weird and positive things from friends. House of Leaves is a maze of a book. It is bizarre, surreal and puzzle-like. Everything is odd about this book. From the weird title, and the cover that is slightly shorter than the pages. From the opening pages, where the word 'house' is always written in blue (which is consistent throughout the whole book), and starts off with the words 'this is not for you'. Heck, even the chapter list is bizarre, running from roman numerals to normal numbers. Many chapters in the book also have footnotes, which may be references to other books, but occasionally they are entire side stories of their own. Fonts can also differ from character to character, and the lay out on some of the pages reflects the weirdness of the story. The book encourages the reader to unravel the mystery of the story and judging by the reviews, this may deserve more than one reading.

The book revolves around a fascinating concept: A house that is larger on the inside than on the outside. Lets see how deep the rabbithole goes.

 

[KahlessNestor]

Reading Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett.

Still reading Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow.

Still reading The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe by Heather MacDonald.

Finished Star Wars Edge of the Empire: Far Horizons source book.

Started reading where I left off in the Star Wars Adventures core rule book.

Started rereading Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson.

 

[dragoner]

Finished Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson, it was ok, I felt the ending wasn't so great. I had picked up three of the Forerunner series books by Andre Norton, except realized there were more, I read Storm Over Warlock on my kindle from Project Gutenberg, now I am reading Ordeal in Otherwhere. I also bought Night of Masks, which is related to Catseye, and Forerunner, plus other related books Judgement on Janus, and Victory of Janus; then two more in the Moon Magic, or Free Traders, or Moon Singer series: Flight in Yiktor and Dare to Go A-Hunting. Her writing is somewhat pulp, good however, and filled with the sci-fi tropes of free traders, aliens, colonies gone wrong, and more; easy to use in making an SF setting material from.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I absolutely loved that book. With a lot of stories of great warriors, it all comes so easily to them (or you get at most a chapter of training montages), but Tau's great skill felt earned, bit by painful bit.

And it looks like the sequel is coming in November!

I just finished Rage of Dragons by Evan Winters this morning,

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Finished Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson, it was ok, I felt the ending wasn't so great. I had picked up three of the Forerunner series books by Andre Norton, except realized there were more, I read Storm Over Warlock on my kindle from Project Gutenberg, now I am reading Ordeal in Otherwhere. I also bought Night of Masks, which is related to Catseye, and Forerunner, plus other related books Judgement on Janus, and Victory of Janus; then two more in the Moon Magic, or Free Traders, or Moon Singer series: Flight in Yiktor and Dare to Go A-Hunting. Her writing is somewhat pulp, good however, and filled with the sci-fi tropes of free traders, aliens, colonies gone wrong, and more; easy to use in making an SF setting material from.

Andre Norton is a linchpin of SF Tropes - especially those types found in Traveller. I really loved her work as a youth. I tried reading one of her books recently, and it didn't hold up. Maybe I should revisit the BeastMaster series or start off with either the Forerunner books or the Solar Queen...

 

[dragoner]

Andre Norton is a linchpin of SF Tropes - especially those types found in Traveller. I really loved her work as a youth. I tried reading one of her books recently, and it didn't hold up. Maybe I should revisit the BeastMaster series or start off with either the Forerunner books or the Solar Queen...

I wound up reading her again by finding Moon of Three Rings in a box of stuff, and realizing I hadn't read it. Now I'm sitting here with ten Andre Norton books I haven't read before. haha

I'm always looking for new stuff, I have read up through Shadow Captain by Reynolds, Banks has died, and others I read, aren't always that good, or not filled with the modern tropes, in particular the future being a dystopia, which in turn just feels like grim-dark teen angst. At least some of the older authors didn't automatically go in that direction, not to say they are perfect, because they are not at all, just more varied.

 

[WayneLigon]

Gamerchanger by L.X. Beckett

First there was the Setback. Then the Clawback. Rubi Whiting is a member of the Bounceback generation, the first free from the trials and troubles of the late 21st century. She works as a freelance solicitor (all work is freelance, contracted for short terms to supplement your basic income) and so she comes across Luciano Pox. Pox is being persecuted by an unknown and unidentifiable entity that has driven his global social score into the toilet, something that is very hard to climb back out of. Because the entity might be an emergent Strong AI, an investigator attached to the UN AI monitoring agency also gets involved.

Good mystery, great characters, twisty-turny plot and - best of all - a bright and hopeful future.

 

[Wishbone]

I like the Black Company, but Glen Cook is a weird writer and definitely not for everyone. That's cool. There are critically acclaimed and best-selling authors (Rarely the same!) that put me to sleep. Read what you like, it's the best way!

I remember reading the first book in The Black Company on a scifi fantasy kick my senior year of high school and enjoying the book for what it was but not picking up the series. My favorite fantasy series from that era was The Culai Heritage three-parter (Magician's Law, Demon's Law, Death's Law).

I finished Century Rain (good but not great for A. Reynolds, which is still very good; 7/10) a few days ago and started Endymion. I've put off reading this for years because I got sucked into Hyperion so hard, but I probably waited too long - I really can't remember what happened. Oh, well.

Wow, I've had the Hyperion audiobook for something like 5 years and never finished it after giving up on it a few chapters in. Might be a good thing to put on for walking the dog.

 

[Richards]

I finished the Baba Yaga trilogy I'd been reading; very enjoyable, and the third novel leads into a new trilogy that sounded intriguing enough for me to poke my nose into Amazon.com to see if they were available...unfortunately, at least one of them is out of print. So on to other things (at least for now). I picked up a science fiction short story collection edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg, entitled Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories: 20. This one has a dozen short stories that were all originally published in 1958. Some of them I've read before, but it had been long enough ago that they were still a good read. I'm about halfway through despite only starting the book yesterday, but I was on a plane most of the day and that provides for a lot of reading time.

Johnathan

 

[Nellisir]

Wow, I've had the Hyperion audiobook for something like 5 years and never finished it after giving up on it a few chapters in. Might be a good thing to put on for walking the dog.

Reading Endymion, I'm remembering what it was like reading Hyperion. I don't know how it translates to audiobook, The writing isn't convoluted; the characters are understandable; the story moves along well, with little mysteries popping up and being solved fast enough to keep things moving, and the big mysteries are regularly brought up and examined so they're familiar when we do finally confront them.