What have you been reading? - Book Discussion Thread

I'm making my way through Seveneves on my Kindle. My problems with reading such long books is that I get the desire to start something else part-way through it.

Anyone here read the King in Yellow?

Andrzej Sapkowski - Blood of elves
One of the most interesting books about the Witcher, the popular series The Witcher was based on this series of books.

I've been reading the 2017 edition of Future Noir which is a book about the making of Blade Runner. It's a fascinating read.

I am continuing may march through the "Marcus Didius Falco" mysteries by Davis. I just finished Venus in Copper (Marcus Didius Falco, #3). But to 'cleans my pallet, I am now lietening to Blood in the Water (Destroyermen, #11) and Devil's Due (Destroyermen, #12) by Taylor Anderson.

I think I need to talk about teh Destroyermen series. Maybe some of you 30-somethings remember a movie called The Final Countdown. It is set in a 1980 about a modern aircraft carrier that travelsthrough time to the day before the 1941 attack onPearl Harbor. This book series is like that buty in stead a old rusty WW 2 destroyer travels back to an alternative reality earth full of lizard monsters and monkey-cat-like people. The American Destroyermen befriends and help out their new seafaring monkey-cats (Lemurians) friends again a horde of lizard-men. It is pulpy as hell, but a nice fun read and there are 12 short books at this point, so a nice wide narrative arc. Destroyermen is what I call a Sunday afternoon book, great fun.

@marceloblvictor: One of my all-time favorites!

I'm reading The Bull from the Sea at the moment. Renault's use of language is beautiful and easily puts me in the mind of her characters.

Just finish reading Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Bradbury. It is decent, although a little too garish, especially near the end.

Now starting Smoke and Mirrors, by Gaiman.

Right now I’m reading The Maltese falcon

I'm already at book 29 of the Horus Heresy series anBLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD, SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE.

In other news, David Wong's What The Hell Did I Just Read was good. Not as great as John Dies At The End or This Book Is Full Of Spiders, but good and fun with a nice twist. I think the main characters depression was overplayed a bit this time. The parts about depression were mostly well described and they're a big part of the character and how others react to him, but somehow I still felt like it was hammered home and underlined a couple of times too many. I guess it makes me feel like the writer was underestimating the readers.

The Great Glowing Coils Of The Universe is another collection of Welcome to Night Vale podcasts in writing. They're much like David Wong's books: funny, absurd and often surprisingly insightful. I still can't find time to listen to the podcasts, but somehow can make time to read them. Go figure.

I've been making my way through Blood, Sweat, and Pixels. I'll probably write a blog about it when I'm done, but it is a good book that talks about the many different aspects of game development. Like one chapter focuses on crunch, one focuses on being a solo developer, one talks about financing your game/getting funding from Kickstarter, etc. Some chapters may feel short, since you could in theory write an entire book about the development of one of these games, but when you think about the themes and the type of story that is being told during this game's development, it starts to paint a picture of game development very well.

I am reading It finally. I'm about 1,200/1,400 pages in and I love it. I feel bad saying this but it's by far the longest book I've ever read, and I wasn't sure I'd be able to make it through it since I've never read a Stephen King book and was unsure if I'd even like it, or his style of writing. But it is fantastic. Also, it makes me appreciate both adaptations even more, both of which I was already a fan of. I think the random super sexual stuff is strange and feels awkward, but not so crazy that it detracts from the book.

Before that I read through Ready Player One and really enjoyed it, which surprised me quite a bit. I think the worst part of it was when the pop-culture references were coming fast and furious. It felt too much like the author was fighting the urge to just say "Oh my god look how nerdy I am! hehe." Overall though, I really dug the story and now I'm looking forward to the movie. I tried reading Armada after, but it was terrible.... it was the worst parts of Ready Player One multiplied by 100 and I think I only made it a few chapters in.

I'm reading Anansi Boys and Red Platoon.

The Snowman by Jo Nesbo.

Finished up Jonathan Maberry's Code Zero this week. It's not terrible, but some of the gaming stuff he includes in it varies between kind of awkward and kind of fascinating. He gets the fringe elements of youth in general pretty well. The villain cultivates those individuals through special personalized gifts and bideo games tailored to their antisocial behaviors. It's not so much a condemnation of games, thank God, but a condemnation of those who would prey upon the antisocial and the dangerously disenfranchised, which is both a welcome and timely take on things.

It's a bit unfortunate that the actual gaming side of things sort of reads like what it is - a person slightly out of his element talking about games in general. He almost but not quite gets it all right, leaving things feeling a bit like an uncanny valley in a literary sense, but given that the novel is a big dumb actioner about zombies and hulking behemoths, it's probably the least problematic point of contention I had with the novel.

He's not a bad writer - in fact, Maberry's early horror stuff was really decent. But the formulaic Joe Ledger stuff needs new life, and it's still bizarre to me how world-changing events just aren't even hinted at in the next novel. For example, at one point, two of Joe's relationships are with what is basically a vampire and a straight-up alien clone, but those characteristics, outside of the books the characters originate in, are never mentioned again. It's meant to draw people to read all the books in the series without spoiling things, but it reads like a recurrent bout of amnesia.

I'm pretty hype for Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson in a couple days. Will be reading the fuck outta that this weekend.

Recently, I've finished Snow Crash and Artemis, both in audiobook form.

Snow Crash was a really interesting take on the concept of language and religion as a "virus." It was weird, and it just kind of ends with no denouement whatsoever, which was disappointing.

I pre-ordered Artemis in the hopes that Andy Weir's second book would be better than his first--or at least improve upon the issues with the first. The Martian was a sincere effort with a great premise, an interesting main character, and some truly terrible dialogue. It also veered dangerously close to milking (current) nostalgia in a way that didn't make sense for the setting and at times felt forced. I don't think I'm alone in worrying that Weir's second book might turn out to be as lifeless and cringey as Ernest Cline's second book.

I'm happy to say that Weir took some of the criticisms of his first book to heart, because Artemis is a solid improvement across the board. The main character is relatable and flawed, but likable. The supporting cast of characters is varied in terms of characterization, motivation, and diversity.

If you liked The Martian for its hard science and potato economics, then Artemis is the book for you! Artemis has both the hard science/realistic sci-fi of its predecessor, and an interesting look at what economics might be like in the moon's first permanent settlement. The mystery that unfolds throughout the book is plausible and makes sense. The dialogue is so much better than the dialogue in The Martian. The nostalgia is kept to a minimum. The audio book is narrated by Rosario Dawson, who does a fantastic job with character voices and internal monologues, although some of the narration aspect of her performance fell flat (I'd give her performance a solid 9/10). I really enjoyed Artemis.

i'm still on game of thrones, i wish i never started.

I am very tempted to read Robert Falcon Scott's diary. I do wonder how it reads, though or whether I'll just be waiting for the stingers that everybody quotes.

Right now I am reading The Dangerous Summer by Ernest Hemingway. It's very good, although the introduction is a bit long winded at 40 pages. The information in it is good if you're unfamiliar with Spanish bullfighting but it's quite a big part of the text so it felt like a bit of a slog. The actual Hemingway stuff is fantastic though, and the story surrounding the writing and editing of the book itself is pretty interesting too.

Just started The Master and the Margarita. Only read one chapter but already enjoy Bulgakov's writing style. Later I'll post my complete impressions.

I picked up a dirt-cheap Kindle version of Masters of Doom, out of curiosity. It's fun reading about the early Carmack/Romero days, but the book is terribly written. It reads like the dialogue in Ready Player One except the authors here seem completely earnest in their use of "gamer" and other such cringe-worthy terms that I would expect more from local TV news programs.

Otherwise I just started Shock and Awe which is a study of glam rock. I'm not far enough into it to pass judgment yet, but as a big fan of the genre it's held my attention so far.

Reading a book (well I guess it's more of a magazine - it's ancient, on the front cover it says "only 65p!") about the North African WW2 campaigns. I'm currently building a "desert rats" army in miniature gaming models so it's really interesting to also be reading some of the history of that theatre.

My friend wrote his first book, so I'm supporting him. Orphan: Suffering

I'm currently reading The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie and Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson. Two best fantasy authors currently writing,

@kainin: I LOVE The Heros.

Series: Silver Ships by S.H. Jucha

• The Silver Ships (Silver Ships,#1)
• Libre (Silver Ships, #2)
• Méridien (Silver Ships, #3)
• Haraken (Silver Ships, #4)
• Sol (Silver Ships, #5)

A very light and simplistic space opera, but fairly well written with lively interesting heroic characters. You don't listen (or read) for the realistic human interactions or plot, you read it because it pulpy and fun.

I finished reading Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson in about a week. Not bad considering it's a 1200+ page book. I really enjoyed it, but I'm a giant Sanderson fanboy so take anything I say about his stuff with a grain of salt.

Tried to read Something from the Nigthside by Simon R. Green. Got about a quarter of the way through it before I decided to put it down. Just none of the characters clicked with me, and I didn't find the world building interesting enough to keep me going.

I am also re-reading the Dresden Files since the next book is (allegedly) coming out soon(ish). I just started reading Small Favors today. I freakin' love the Dresden Files. This is the 3rd or 4th time I've read through the series. When I got my first e-reader way back in 2011 I had just gotten introduced to the series, and I think I read the whole thing (13 or so books at that time) in a month or two.

At the 7th chapter of "East of Eden" by John Steinback. His way with words and imagery is just a joy to read. I tried to read "Grapes of Wrath" but Eden just grips you by the third chapter onward, which doesn't happen to me often. It's really something.

Also thinking of reading "Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere" by Kawakami Minoru, a Japanese light novel series famously impenetrable and incredibly dense with its world building. Fell off twice before because I got bored, but something about it is alluring. It's filled to the brim with anime nonsense but I have some immunity to it after a lifetime of consuming Japanese stuff.

Last book I read was Bakemonogatari volume 1 by Nisioisin. Not the best book I've read, but very charming and unique and has a sense of style even with just text.

I was in the mood for a dose of fantasy and of romance so I started reading the Sharing Knife quadrilogy...quartet? There's four goddamn books okay lol. I finished the first one and I too think I'm in love the MC. Heck, I think I'm in love with both leads. The romance arguably develops a little fast, but as the book goes on, you totally buy into why they fall in love.

In regards to the leading lady, there's something that goes down shortly before the start of the book and in the interest of not trying to spoil anything, I will just say that I deeply appreciate that what actually happened wasn't what I thought might've happened. After years and years of every character in every medium having some overtly tragic backstory, it's refreshing that what she went through, while sad, was not beating you over the head with how dark it was. In fact, I'd say it's relatable more than anything else which only adds to her charm.

I took a few weeks off to catch up on some games, but I'm excited to jump into book 2 especially given how book 1 ends.

I've been listening to the audiobook of Harry's Last Stand, by Harry Leslie Smith. I don't know how I'd never heard of this man before, but he's amazing. He's a British World War II veteran who grew up in poverty and he tells the story of how his generation, upon returning from the war, built the the British social safety net that has subsequently been gutted.

The guy is 94 years old and is currently crowdfunding a campaign to travel to various refugee camps around the world in an effort to raise awareness and try to find a solution to the world's refugee crisis.

He absolutely fucking eviscerates the wealthy in government and business, pulling no punches when it comes to calling out those who wield political and economic power.

In the first paragraph of the book, he writes this: "In November, when our nation remembers her fallen soldiers and honours the lost youth of my generation, the Prime Minister, government leaders and the hollow men of business affix paper poppies to their lapels and afford the dead of war two minutes' silence. Afterwards, they speak golden platitudes about the struggle and the heroism of that time. Yet the words they speak are meaningless because they have surrendered the values my generation built after the horrors of the Second World War."

Surprisingly (and refreshingly), he doesn't fall into the all too common habit of blaming millennials and the younger generation for the current economic situation the Western world finds itself in today.

It's a short book, less than ten hours in audio, but it's intense.

Reading All Quiet on the Western Front. It's very good. I'm reading a Swedish translated paperback but the language is beautiful and poetic at times. Going to have to order The Road Back and read that one as well.

Still working my way through my re-read The Dresden Files. Just finished Turn Coat today, which is book 11 out of 15, I believe. Still really like this series.

Also did my traditional reading of A Christmas Carol. Short enough that I could get through it in a couple of lunch breaks at work. As you might guess by the fact that I read it every year it's one of my favorite books.

Between those two, I tried to get into Joe Hill's NOS4A2...and sadly I just couldn't get into it, and put it down about 30% of the way into the book (a bit shy of 300 pages). As I was reading it I thought it was very in the vein of Stephen King, which I know to most people would be a good thing, but King's writing has always been more miss than hit with me. The only book of his that I can say I like is Salem's Lot. I got sick and tired of The Stand when I forced myself to read through the whole thing some years ago, didn't enjoy The Gunslinger enough to pursue the rest of the Dark Tower series, and was generally luke-warm on the other books/short stories of his I read. It wasn't until after the fact that I found out that Hill is one of King's kids. I'll probably recommend it to a friend of mine who is a big King fan, but it just wasn't for me.

My parents got me Game of Shadows. It's about the roid scandal in sports, so far pretty good. I remember the day Mark McGwire, plead guilty to substance abuse. I was in the hospital for CO poisoning so I watched his speech on the hour for 4 hours. Anyways, the book is done by 2 SF reporters, if you like sports so far a good read.

It's so awesome that off-topic has a book-thread. My new year resolution for 2018 is to getting back into reading books again.

I've finished At the Mountains of Madness by Lovecraft and it was amazing! It's my first book that I've read written by him.

Reading Shadows over Innsmouth right now, and also really loving it.

I think I'm gonna read Artur Gordon Pym next, but not so sure yet.

I'm in the middle of too many books / have a mental hang up finishing anything whether video games, books, or tv shows :(

Vineland, Thomas Pinchon- Very good, takes a while for his style to hook you but it does.

The Last Kind Words Saloon, McMurtry- It's okay... doesn't compare to lonesome dove series or last picture show, but what can?

Death by Accident, Bill Crider- Very fun murder mystery like most of Crider's works.

Little History of the World, Gombrich- Brief world history written for kids, not very in depth but good for general knowledge. Well written and easy to read.

Moonshine War, Elmore Leonard- He's the best! Not very far, and it's a slower start than his other works I've read but I'm still liking it.

Not the last book I finished but I have to recommend it: Ghost Story, Peter Straub- Best horror novel I've ever read. Still really upset it's over.

City of Refuge by Kenzo Kitakata, its OK. Maybe a bit dull, it just feels kinda standard crime story. Its slickly written enough and simply the setting of Tokyo is appealing enough to me. I'm trying to read contemporary Japanese writing that isn't Murakami.

Also started with The Terror, which when I reserved at the library didn't know was 900+ pages, but I'll bite. It seems interesting enough from the first couple of chapters. Could be a good January evening read.

If you haven't already read The Call of Cthulu I would really advise doing so. Herbert West-Reanimator is also a ton of fun if a bit different from what you are used to with Lovecraft.

Sadly it's been a good couple of years since I've read anything purely for pleasure. That's all changing again though. Yesterday I received Bruce Campbell's second autobiography, Hail to the Chin: Further Confessions of a B-Movie Actor in the mail. I've already started and, as predicted, it's pretty great so far. There aren't many people who could make describing buying and renovating their Oregon home entertaining. His Bubba Ho-Tep chapter is hilarious, too.

Yeah, I want to read them all! It's just a matter of which order I'm gonna read them :D

I spent a month or so getting through Words of Radiance, which I really liked. Authors of fantasy still need to stop being in love with their own word count. The audibook is 48 hours long. I don't know how to compare it to The Way of Kings, really. Being a second a book in the series, it was a lot different. I was a little disappointed by the characterizations of the Parshendi. We only just learn that they are a people with a fascinating culture, only to have them transformed into an even greater personification of unknowable evil by the end of the book. It feels like a waste. And holy shit, but Sanderson cannot write romance. The love triangle is terrible. Just about everything else, aside from the DBZ-style battle, I enjoyed.

I started listening to The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher, read by her and Billie Lourd, and some of the journal entries in it are fucking heart-wrenching. I'm glad it's a story that Carrie Fisher was able to tell before she died. She's also fucking hilarious.

Finished up the first book of Richard Morgan's fantasy trilogy (The Steel Remains) recently and it was so good and weird that I immediately ordered the next two. His novels are always a bit like a fever dream to me, I feel like I'm crawling out of some diseased pit as I emerge from them. I mean that in a good way?

Also I read the first two books that the TV series The Expanse was based on and enjoyed both quite a bit. I have too much to read. Plus piles of lit coursework. Hooray!

I have just finished reading the book the Alchemist, it's great

I just read Lovecraft's The Music of Erich Zann. Very eery and, as always, very atmospheric and imaginative.

Next up on my Lovecraft list, The Festival :D

I'm on a bit of a non-fiction kick at the moment.

Fire and Fury is a great read. This look behind the scenes of the Trump presidency is a real eye-opener.

Andrew Marr's History of the World is an incredible book. Paired with playing the latest Assassins; Creed, it's really eye-opening how civilised the world was thousands of years ago.

This should cover most of the stuff I read in December/January

Right now I'm listening to an audiobook called Beneath the Scarlet Sky that's about the story of a fella who was a member of the Italian resistance towards nazis in the latter years of the second world war. It's a fiction book based on the story told by the real life man to the author. The guy seems to have started out at 17 as a guide taking jews and other refugees over a mountain to Switzerland, then enlisted with the nazis and by sheer luck became the driver for a highest ranking general in Italy and helped the resistance as a spy. This is such a crazy story that it kinda seems like it could be some bogus story a guy came up with to help himself justify joining the nazis to avoid being drafted once he turned 18 then sent to the Eastern front to likely die which is what he is told happens to most of the Italian draftees when his parents beg him to enlist. But the author did research and claims to have verified it as much as he could soooooooo I mean, I guess this guy was just fucking bad ass.

Also I actually am actually reading an actual book with my eyeballs right now (that happens less often these days as listening to audiobooks has sorta become the more common book intake method for me) called Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea which surprise surprise is about the history of the number 0. Turns out it is kinda complicated and math is a lot more dangerous and volatile than the boring grade school math class leads you to believe, though nowadays you're not as likely to be executed for revealing a mathematical secret, like say the existence of irrational numbers, or imprisoned for being heretical. I've found the story of how 0 went from a placeholder mark in accounting ledgers to a number of great mathematical significance (along with its counterpart concept infinity) interesting.

Before this I took a look at the history of slavery in the US from a couple different perspectives. To get the personal perspective of people who lived as slaves I finished Twelve Years a Slave. I then watched the movie. And before that I also finished another book called Jubilee which I think I mentioned in here previously.

And also for a wider perspective on how significant slaver was to the US as a country I finished a book called The Half Has Never Been Told. This book goes from the early days of the US up to the start of the civil war and examines how closely the growth of the US is tied to slavery. It also takes a look at some of the beliefs about slavery, that it was an inefficient and failing system, that its decline was inevitable, and that it didn't really help the US economy, and argues that these ideas are completely bogus. Slavery was so efficient that for a time supply of cotton reached demand, something that was thought to be impossible at the time as the demand for cotton was so great, and the cotton bubble burst, though the cotton market rebounded eventually becoming stronger than before and was still growing leading up to the civil war. And as cotton was basically the most important commodity of the time (cotton was then pretty much what oil is today) dominating the cotton production market is what boosted the US's economic standing in the world and this fueled/funded the industrial revolution that went on in the north, and compelled US expansion so that more cotton could be produced by slaves. It also gives an honest look at what it was like for the slaves, and that's certainly terrible. I happen to think it was a book everyone from the US probably should read.

Why I have been going down this particular rabbit hole at this particular time I cannot say, except to say that it is a subject I feel I needed to learn more about, and still do.

I also finished The Proud Tower by Barbara Tuchman, a book that's a collection of long essays analyzing the state of Europe and the US prior to the outbreak of the first World War. Some chapters (like the one on the anarchy movement of the late 18 and early 1900s) were more interesting to me than others (like the one that mostly was an examination of German music at the time, particularly the career of Richard Strauss) but I enjoyed it on the whole.

And a book called Ramsey's Gold. Which, stop me if you've heard this before, is the story of a guy who is a treasure hunter named after Francis Drake going into the amazon to find a lost city and mythical treasure. It was an enjoyable enough book despite the extremely familiar premise.

Anyway look out for the book I write about an older guy and young girl surviving in the world after a spore outbreak turns people into pretty much zombies.

Your tastes line up similarly to mine. I don't much care for Morgan's fantasy work, but I did love his sci-fi and near-future stuff. Have you read Joe Abercrombie? He writes really fantastic grim fantasy fiction too. Very good stuff.

As for me, I finally, finally, finally finished up Charlie Huston's Hank Thompson pulp trilogy. It's one of the best modern takes on the genre, with a protagonist that just can't win. The third book is the weakest of the bunch, but nothing I've read of Huston dips lower than good-to-great, so it was still a high-quality read. Not sure what I'm going to move onto next, but I'm kinda thinking maybe Wayward Pines or something similar.

Since going back to college I haven't felt the urge for much pleasure reading. Last month I did read Ham on Rye by Bukowski and connected with it in a way I haven't with a book in a long time. I'm very glad I didn't read this when I was a teenager because it would have made me more of a misanthrope than I am now. I've had acne from the age of 12 to current day (age 26). The degree of it has varied from cystic to not so bad; I'm currently at not so bad. Bukowski suffered from bad cystic acne, as did the protagonist in this, and some of the shit the character felt in regards to it hit so close to home I was glad I read it now since the intensity of my embarrassment and hatred of my skin has calmed down.

He does a fantastic job of making the reader sympathetic to this kid become a gigantic asshole and it instantly became a top ten for me.

@adamlevine: The actual book? I have the graphic novel version and it's lovely, you might be interested if it's not the one you've just finished!

I'm working my way through The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan. I've always been a fan of high fantasy, devoured Lord of the Rings and the extended Middle-Earth mythos in high school, and more recently A Song of Ice and Fire recaptured my love of fantasy fiction. Been reading some Pratchett to but figured I could try digging into something a it meatier than Pratchett (though, admittedly, not quite as good).

The Wheel of Time is what, 14 books? I don't know if I want to read them all, but this first one is alright so far.

I've finished a few more audiobooks since my last post. The first was Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus. It's a really interesting look into the rabies virus. It covers both the science of rabies, and the history of it. The book discusses rabies as having a hand in myths about vampires and werewolves. I had no idea, but tens of thousands of people die from rabies every year, primarily in parts of the world which don't have the infrastructure in place to properly vaccinate their canine populations. And it's fucking brutal, effectively 100% fatal in humans if one doesn't get vaccinated upon infection.

After that, I decided to listen to I Am Legend (which, interestingly, is mentioned in Rabid as a work of fiction about a virus). I had seen the Will Smith movie from a decade ago, and I was familiar with the ending, but I wanted to listen to it because it's a classic. It just so happened to flow nicely from the nonfiction book I had just finished! Wow...I Am Legend is truly incredible. Dark, sad as hell, but also a beautiful and unflinching look into the damaged psyche of a man. I'm not a huge fan of zombies...I enjoy (well, "enjoy," heh) The Walking Dead, but I'm not by any means a fan of zombie fiction. That said, if you are a fan of zombie fiction, you should definitely check this book out. While it labels the antagonists as "vampires," much of the modern lore of zombies can trace its origins back to this book (and George Romero even cited it as an influence). There's something fascinating about going back to a work that essentially launched a genre, or at least the modern incarnation of that genre. And the ending is just fantastic. Spoiler: Essentially, the main character is introduced to the fact that the vampires have created a new society. He's spent years killing said vampires (arguably, he was not really aware of their full sentience). So they execute him. In his final moments, he realizes that just as vampires used to plague the dreams of superstitious people in older times, he himself has become the nightmare of this new society of vampires. A new superstition, passing into the unassailable fortress of forever. I am legend."

Just finished Kafka on the Shore. Going to start Jordan Peterson's 12 rules for life and 1Q84 next. On a bit of a Murakami binge.

I'm about halfway through The Eye of The World. The first book in The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan.