Currently Reading / Just Read (Books/stories/whatever)

[Petrie]

The plus side of finishing a book like TNotW or AWMF is that ~300 page books feel like a piece of cake now.

I've since finished two forgettable YA books and am now on a really good Juv/YA book, The Grimm Legacy by Polly Shulman. Unlike the two previous books, this has a strong voice and interesting characters/setting. I can't wait to see what happens in the remaining half. :)

[Petrie]

Nomi, have you read The Scorch Trials, part two to Maze Runner, yet? I haven't started it but I did pick it up today and plan on getting to that...ASAPish.

[Luet]

Yes, it was good. I plan on rereading both before the third one comes out (whenever that is...the fall, I think?).

[Syphon the Sun]

That's on my list! Right after WWW: Wonder and Throne of Fire.

[Petrie]

So, law-yer, have you read The Road? If not, what the hell is wrong with you, and if so and assuming you liked it, remind me to get you the title of a book being published later this year that is supposed to be a read-alike but specifically targeted at teens. It deals with a flooded out Louisiana, if I remember the details correctly but either way, it sounded interesting when I was hearing about it in my fancy-schmancy webinar.

There was one other post-apocalyptic type that I took notes on but I remember absolutely nothing about that one! Poor book...it sounded good, though.

[Syphon the Sun]

It's on my list, but I haven't gotten around to actually reading it. I already have it for Kindle, even!

[CezeN]

Not gonna lie, the Road didn't impress me.

It simply never lived up to the hype it achieved from all the different forum people I know recommending it.

[GS]

Does anyone have any suggestions on a new series to pick up? The most recent that I tore through were the Percy Jackson books and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series. I don't have anything in mind, but I would to find a new series.

[Petrie]

Chaos Walking, by Patrick Ness. Not sure on the technical term but the style of the prose (dialect?) might drive you crazy at first but if you can get past that, it is one of the best trilogies I've ever read, hands down. I can't remember if they say if it's a post-apocalyptic or extinction event but it is definitely a humanity starting over story. All three books are out. I suppose it's fair to warn you that I love-hate the ending but I highly recommend this series. Highly. As with anything, however, it's okay if you (general you) disagrees.

For as of yet incomplete series:

The Maze Runner series by James Dashner. It's a strong, interesting extinction event series. Book two is out, book three should be out soon-ish.

The Kingkiller Chronicles by Rothfuss. LONG books but so very worth it. The first few books I read after finishing the latest (second) book seemed like meaningless s*** in comparison; they possibly were, but I usually don't notice so much. It'll be a few years before book three is out.



I know you have some trouble with OSC now and he's a long way from being done with his new series (or some of his old ones, for that matter) but Pathfinder and The Lost Gate were both good, with Pathfinder being the stronger of the two.

[Syphon the Sun]

Just finished Throne of Fire. (Book two of the Kane Chronicles, which you might check out, Ed, if you liked the Percy Jackson series.)

This brings my grand total for the year to thirteen books. Thirteen! I should be at twenty-five, by now. My wife is at thirty-five.

I'm going to lose this year.

[GS]

I did enjoy the Percy books. I forgot Riordan had another series. I definitely need to check those out.

I have heard good things about the Kingkiller Chronicles. Long books don't really bother me. I actually prefer them because I read fast and tend to get sucked into the stories. This leads me to devote most of my time to reading. So I don't like to always continuously have a book, but it is about time to knock out a couple more.

I will definitely look into the other two as well. But you posting about post-apocalyptic/extinction stuff, reminded me that I wanted to read the Walking Dead graphic novels. My friend who I am visiting this weekend has offered to let me borrow them. Hopefully I can remember to ask him. That would be a quick and cheap fix.

[megxers]

I've decided to stop admitting how many books I've read so far this year. It just reminds me of my complete and utter lack of a social life, haha.

Right now I'm attempting to catch up with A Song of Ice and Fire before Dance with Dragons comes out. I have 100 or so pages of A Storm of Swords left and I just got a Feast for Crows out from the library so I think I will make it.

[Syphon the Sun]

I did enjoy the Percy books. I forgot Riordan had another series. I definitely need to check those out.

He has a spin-off of the Percy books, too (which you might have read and clumped in with the Percy books), with the second due out in the fall, I believe.

[GS]

Yup. I lumped it. I am looking forward to the new book in the fall.

[fawkes]

Started reading Simon Pegg's Nerd Do Well. <3

[Luet]

Oooooh! I didn't know he wrote a book! I love him. Must go find.

[Petrie]

It only took me three unbelievably long weeks but I finally finished a book. Booo to stress.

I now have Beth Revis' Across the Universe and Eleanor Brown's The Weird Sisters, which I am ashamed to say I only picked up because of the jacket. It's pearl-toned, shimmery, and has green swirlies on it. This whole judging a book by its cover thing can't backfire, right? *grin*

[locke]

just finished a reread (of sorts) of Game of Thrones. I listened to the audiobook.

Very low budget audiobook, which I expect is to be expected for an audiobook made in the late nineties.

But great voicework.

Listening to Ron Chernow's Washington now.

Reading Snow Crash and Nurture Shock on the side when the mood strikes me.

A few months ago I finished listening to The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume One. I can't imagine reading it, but listening to it, since most of it was dictated, was a delight.

[Jayelle]

I just read Tamar by Mal Peet a couple weeks ago. It was in the YA section of the library, but I'm not sure if it's really YA.
Great book - it's about the Dutch resistance during WWII, part spy-thriller, part fictional memoir, part mystery, part romance. I couldn't put it down.

[Syphon the Sun]

Listening to Ron Chernow's Washington now.

Me, too! Well, I have been, for a while, when I'm able to listen to audiobooks.

[steph]

Well, I just got Les Miserable from the library. All 1232 pages of it. I have 7 1/2 weeks to tackle this before I go see the show again. (I think I should have started the book sooner!) Brian's listening to it on CD right now. If I'm struggling with the book, I may have to go audio. Wish me luck?

[locke]

I have been reading A Dance with Dragons, hence the lack of posting

[Janus%TheDoorman]

Just finished A Dance with Dragons, and, well... that was kinda disappointing. There are a lot of reasons for that, and there's not a single one that can be pointed at, but the biggest one is probably that this book series has thrived on setting up expectations and then twisting them in delightfully shocking ways, but the plots in this book are mostly predictable and where they aren't, it's not a huge unexpected shock throwing you off, just sort of weird meanderings. This is obviously a bridging section of the story, where lots of characters have to interact with other characters in specific ways to setup future events, but the end of the book just leaves the outlook for the future even more hazy than when it started.

After that, it's probably mostly the choice of perspective characters that makes the book a little awkward. The previous books excelled at introducing critical bits of information and plot development from the perspective of characters you least expected it from, but in these, because the plots are so interwoven that they can only be told from the perspective of very central characters, those characters own thoughts and motivations get mired down so as not to give the reader too much information, and the characters themselves suffer for it.

I have no doubt that the story will sort itself out, and the actual writing is still well done and pleasant to read, but I'm still disappointed at having to give this book, say, a 3/5.

[locke]

The most remarkable thing happened about 2/3rds to 3/4 of the way through A Dance With Dragons, I was starting to like A Feast for Crows more and more. I think that's because so much of the thematic counterpoints to Feast are in Dance, they really are brother novels, and the one without the other suffered mightily for not resolving its overall thematic points.

I may be the only reader who never expected Meereen to be resolved in this book. I've thought it was apparent since 2001 (when I read A Storm of Swords) that it would take an entire book for the Westerosi to reach Dany in Meereen, I expected the final chapter of the book would be Tyrion finally arriving in Meereen, appear before Dany's court only to be clapped into irons with Dany announcing she intended to let her dragons feast on Lannister flesh. After we learned of everyone else traveling to Dany in A Feast for Crows, I assumed it would take most of Dance to get them to Dany, I didn't expect her to be leaving or ready to leave Meereen at the end of the book, I did expect one of the dragons might be dead or captured, but none of these predictions came to pass.

So I was expecting a travelogue for the Essos portion of the novel and I thought it was magnificent. It didn't feel like worldbuilding, each step of the journey for each character felt like the next logical progression of getting characters through a brutally tough journey in an attempt to win a prize they have no real hope of capturing. I especially loved Tyrion's chapters and how his role shifted and degraded and degraded some more. Kinslaying gets you punished, and make no mistake, there's a significant thematic parallel between Theon and Tyrion, Penny and Jeyne. It is fascinating to see the thematic inversion play out between the two T characters.

The arc of the North took me completely by surprise, and it is what ultimately makes me appreciate Feast more. We've known for some time that Martin wanted to Parallel Dany and Cersei, what I never understood was that Jon would be the third part of that Parallel and his rule would be every bit as as clumsy and dangerous as their respective rules are. When Jon makes a pair of bone-headed decisions in his final chapter it is the last straw, and the sudden turn of events that climaxes the novel is downright Shakespearian. And the novel concludes with one of the best written chapters of the entire series that finally fulfills a character evolution (that the character has been resisting) I've been hoping for since the very first book. Not the epilogue, which was also cool, the final POV chapter, I mean.

Overall there was just about nothing I disliked about this novel, it was all I wanted and more, the ten years of waiting have made me in turn frustrated, anxious and eventually patient, this is every bit as good as Storm of Swords, in my opinion, and if it and Feast were a single novel, it might even rank better (I doubt I'll ever rate any of them above AGOT, I'm just so in love with that first book).

also, goddamn the Arya chapters were so incredible

[Gravity Defier]

For those who like dystopian YA, I suggest taking a crack at Veronica Roth's Divergent. I'm 62 pages from the end so I can't guarantee the ending is all that great but, while it starts off kind of slow and questionably, it has been getting stronger as it goes along.


I never did say what I thought about Across the Universe. I liked it well enough but the revelations at the end were upsetting in a way I wasn't all that fond of. Worth the read, not sure I would change it if I could but hard to accept.


After Divergent I have The House of the Scorpion lined up; I hear they mention my city/region in the book.

[Dr. Mobius]

I've started reading book 10 of the Wheel of Time series again. It's going better this time. I think the main reason I couldn't finish it last year was I got burnt out trying to read them all back to back.

[locke]

I'm reading Snow Crash, silly me, I spent the first two hundred pages thinking it was a relatively new book and being fascinated at the thought of a book set in a sideways alternate universe that was a different 'now' or near future but that progressed based on what we thought in the late eighties/early nineties. then I flipped to the front of the book and saw it was published in 94 and I feel a bit disappointed.

I love the terms of the book. so accurate. Burb-claves. Bimbo-boxes (SUVs). Barbies, Clints (for online noobs). hilarious.

[Luet]

Okay, so I'm terrible at writing book reviews but here goes an attempt.

I just finished two very different non-fiction books about WWII. One, I didn't even finish and I HATE not finishing books, so that should tell you how much it bored me. It was called Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory by Ben McIntyre. I think it would be more interesting to someone already really into history, war, military, etc. I'm more casually interested in all things non-fiction and need a book to be really well written and interesting in order to get me interested in the subject matter. I have read whole books on topics like Mao Zedong, the Mayflower and first hundred years of the pilgrims, and other historical topics and loved them. But they were incredibly interesting. This book was SO slow and didn't have any main character to follow or root for (or against). Anyway, I gave up about 2/3 of the way through.

The next book I read was completely the opposite. It was called Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. It is a biography of a man named Louie Zamperini. He was an Olympic runner, who became an air force bombardier, crash landed and survived in a raft for over thirty days, then survived for years in a Japanese POW camp. I literally could not put this book down and read it in a couple days. It was powerful.

[Wil]

Recently re-read The Magicians and it was pretty much as awesomely weird as it was the first time. Arctic fox sex still threw me for a loop, though.

Re-read it because the sequel, The Magician King, came out on Tuesday and it was about five times more awesome than the first book. Though, it had more fox sex and makes me question Lev Grossman's fetishes...

Now, back to A Dance with Dragons. Hopefully it starts picking up soon... the fact that I was able to drop it at a quarter through to read two four-hundred page books doesn't say much for ADWD.

[Platypi007]

I'm currently reading:

The Moral Landscape, by Sam Harris
The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins
The Collected Stories of Bertrand Russell

and I'm working through Head First C# but that isn't only reading, but doing exercises and such, too.

I need to add some history to my mix, thinking I'll pick up 1493, by Charles Mann to compliment 1491 which I read a few years back.


Recently finished:

The latest issue of The Choral Journal from the ACDA (American Choir Director's Assn)
Darkly Dreaming Dexter, by Jeff Lindsay (I almost stopped reading this because the first chapter was so much like the first bits of the series, but when I read the last page (something I never do) I realized it ends very differently, so I kept at it. Enjoyed it lots.)
Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation, by Isaac Asimov
Nightfall, by Isaac Asimov


Recently attempted:

Spinoza's The Ethics. Second hardest read I've attempted, the first being Ulysses. I was not able to make it through more than a few pages of that one.

[Luet]

Was that your first time reading the Foundation trilogy or a reread? It's one of my favorites, I reread it every couple years.

[Platypi007]

First time I'd read Second Foundation, second time for the other two, though. I plan to read the whole series but after four Asimov books I decided to take a break from Asimov for a bit.

[locke]

I finished rereading Nurture Shock. Reread Moving Pictures. Started rereading a Clash of Kings.

But I also finished Snow Crash which was an epic and amazing. It's an awesome science fiction book in the sci-fi tradition. Some of the cognitive science regarding language acquisition is now outdated, but it was still a fun ride especially all the biblical aspects of the book.

Basically a Snow Crash is when your computer crashes, and you get snow (like on an old TV screen), only someone has started dealing a new drug called Snow Crash. It's not just a computer virus, it's a virus that can jump from computer to humans (the way this is explained actually makes sense in a weird and roundabout way). Hiro Protagonist is a high speed pizza delivery driver, a former hacker and the world's greatest swordsman, enlisted by his ex to try to stop the corporate authorities attempting to use Snow Crash to dominate and enslave the human race, but he doesn't get deeply involved until his friend and former partner Da5id is Snow Crashed.

I loved it so much I immediately went out and bought the next book Neal Stephenson wrote. So I'm currently reading The Diamond Age.

[neo-dragon]

Was that your first time reading the Foundation trilogy or a reread? It's one of my favorites, I reread it every couple years.

You've probably mentioned this before, but have you only read the original trilogy or have you read the prequels (Prelude and Forward) and the sequels (Edge and Earth) as well? What about the Robots and Empire novels?

[mr_thebrain]

a kingdom besieged by raymond e feist. he's my favorite author. he's had a couple books that were subpar for him, but still good. but you could tell the writing style suffered. he wrote them during his divorce. the books following his divorce got back in stride though. however, the last two series he wrote got to a slow start. like hard to get into at first cuz he's introducing new characters. but after the first 2 chapters they got really good and were almost as good as the first three series he wrote. unfortunately i'm on the first chapter of his newest series and it's having the same problem. can't wait for chapter 3!~

i might set it down for a bit, he only writes a book a year so i have some time and once i get into his books they only take me a couple days to finish cuz i can't set them down. so while i can set it down i've been thinking of picking up ender's game again. i want to finish reading it and loan it to logan. we're talking about writing a song inspired by it. and logan's a seriously great lyricists. between the two of us, we should be able to write something pretty special. besides, he's never read the book before. i'm all for getting somebody hooked on EG.