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

Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2013 9:44 am
by Gravity Defier
I'm about 2/3 through As I Wake by Elizabeth Scott. It's a pretty fast read and interesting enough that I stayed up later than I should have to read more of it. I'm pretty eager to see how it ends.

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

Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2013 10:06 pm
by Gravity Defier
I'm about 2/3 through As I Wake by Elizabeth Scott. It's a pretty fast read and interesting enough that I stayed up later than I should have to read more of it. I'm pretty eager to see how it ends.
It was a disappointing/anti-climactic ending.

I genuinely enjoyed this book but be forewarned if you're thinking about picking this up, the plot leads to basically nowhere and the characters are extremely underdeveloped, not to mention hardly anything is explained/followed up on. Why did I enjoy it, then? It had a lot of potential and I think the idea it tried to put forth was interesting/enjoyable.

Saga came in, so I'll be tackling that next, followed by Because It Is My Blood, the sequel to All These Things I've Done, in which chocolate and caffeine are outlawed and mafias have taken over the business of selling them on the black market.

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

Posted: Tue Jan 08, 2013 9:22 am
by Gravity Defier
Hey, Alea! Good to see you've been reading as much as I have. :P

Up after Because It Is My Blood, Shubin's The Universe Within: Discovering the Common History of Rocks, Planets, and People.

I think I can also safely say that my enjoyment of an e-reader is entirely dependent upon the reading material I have on it and how much I want to read it in whatever format I can get my hands on. That is, with real books, if I'm not dying to read it, I can still be good about making myself do it but with the Kindle, if it's not a dying to read type, I'll wait until there is one.

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

Posted: Wed Jan 09, 2013 10:13 am
by Mich
Fine, I can contribute.

So a new Dresden Files book, Cold Days, came out, what, in November? And because I am morally opposed to hardcover, or because I just own all of the rest of the books in paperback and am morally opposed to non-matching collections, I hadn't read it before Christmas despite every fibre of my being wanting to know what happens when Harry returned to... well, spoiler alert, I guess. At the end of a 14-book series.

Bottom line, I read it digitally, instead. I figured that counted as not ruining my collection.

I was worried that the series was straying too far from its proven formula, which is: small myth arc reveals while Harry solved a mystery, great character development, and things mostly being to normal by the end with some significant changes. But it did not! Basically. I just love sinking back into that world, where every character is likable and interesting, the mythos is deep, proven, and awesome, and I literally cannot wait to pick it back up again. And it was all of that. Plus, the reveals that happened in Cold Days are just ridiculous. I mean, things that can't be retcons, they've actually been in place since the second book.

I am a big fan of it. But man, living in the Dresdenverse sucks.

Anyway, after that I finally finally read Monster Hunter International, which my friend had been hounding me to do for at least a year. And it was pretty fun! Basically it's about a mercenary group who hunts demons, vampires, werewolves, all that jazz, in order to collect bounties that the US government sets up. The writer is clearly more of a gun-lover than a long-time writer, and he has some weird way of presenting some circumstances and plot points, but I really enjoyed it. Plus it was pretty much X-COM, only in novel form and pretty much also set in the Dresdenverse.

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

Posted: Wed Jan 09, 2013 10:27 am
by Luet
I recently read Call the Midwife (first of the autobiographical trilogy) because I enjoyed the TV series. It was very good and actually had many of the same stories as the show. I'm now reading Ruins, which is good but LONG, and I hate that I'm going to have to reread it when the third of the series comes out.

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

Posted: Thu Jan 17, 2013 8:41 pm
by Gravity Defier
I am being forced, for work, to give an audiobook a chance. I just can't wrap my head around these (which is not to say they don't serve their purpose for some very appreciative audiences, e.g. the blind, dyslexic, struggling readers, etc.).

Of my own choosing, I'm also reading Faces From the Past by Deem (nonfiction) and Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Sloan (fiction).

I've heard good things about the latter (comparisons to Ready Player One made me pick it up), so here's hoping.

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

Posted: Thu Jan 17, 2013 8:57 pm
by elfprince13
Finally read the Hand of Thrawn duology (Timothy Zahn) and started on The Tower and The Hive (Anne McCaffrey) over break.

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

Posted: Thu Jan 17, 2013 9:00 pm
by Luet
I am currently rereading "A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary" by Anonymous because I remember liking it so much the first time and I tend to reread things I like.

Then it's on to "Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail" by Cheryl Strayed. I guess I'm on a non-fiction kick.

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

Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2013 7:21 am
by wizzard
I was worried that the series was straying too far from its proven formula, which is: small myth arc reveals while Harry solved a mystery, great character development, and things mostly being to normal by the end with some significant changes. But it did not! Basically. I just love sinking back into that world, where every character is likable and interesting, the mythos is deep, proven, and awesome, and I literally cannot wait to pick it back up again. And it was all of that. Plus, the reveals that happened in Cold Days are just ridiculous. I mean, things that can't be retcons, they've actually been in place since the second book.

I am a big fan of it. But man, living in the Dresdenverse sucks.
Holy crap did I love this book! I got worried that he was losing it after Ghost Story, which was a bit of a lull, but he cranked it right back up with this one. And in context, I now think Ghost Story was perfect, like a little interlude before things got heavy again.

I think next on my plate is finishing up the Wheel of Time, which I'm not sure I ever really believed would end. I haven't read any of the Brandon Sanderson stuff, and it's been long enough that I'll probably have to reread Knife of Dreams, just so I know what's going on. I also have to figure out how I'm reading it, seeing as I left my Nook on a plane in Toronto over Christmas :(

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

Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2013 10:01 am
by Mich
So I gobbled down There are Spiders in this Book, Dude Seriously Don't Read It, the sequel to John Dies at the End that came out this October. It was good! It was a little more coherent than JDatE, but that means also was missing a lot of the craziness, which was a little disappointing. The narrative followed the main character as well as his friends, instead of sticking purely to the main character in first person, with only first person during the actual main character's segment. Which was a little weird, especially since the segments following the rest of the cast still had the main character referred to in the third person instead of the expected first person.

That was a lot of sentences describing something that doesn't matter that much.

Anyway, I liked it, and even though it seemed better edited and layed-out than JDatE, and has a really awesome name, I don't know if I like it as much. It didn't seem as horror-y. I am excited to finally see the movie one of these days, which looks pretty ridiculous.

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

Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2013 8:31 pm
by Gravity Defier
Faces From the Past by Deem (nonfiction)
If only my jr high and high school science classes were even a fraction as interesting as this book, I might have enjoyed them more. This book was so much fun.
Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Sloan (fiction).
10 pages in and I'm a little bit in love with it. We'll see if it holds up the further into it I get.

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

Posted: Mon Jan 21, 2013 10:11 am
by Gravity Defier
Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Sloan (fiction).
10 pages in and I'm a little bit in love with it. We'll see if it holds up the further into it I get.
It both held up and was somehow realistically anti-climactic, which made me love it a little bit more. I was genuinely worried it would be like a few movies/stories I've seen/read where it's great until it jumps the shark by getting supernatural where it shouldn't. I haven't read many books this year so far but it's a favorite already.

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

Posted: Mon Jan 21, 2013 12:24 pm
by LilBee91
And it is added to my list.

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

Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2013 3:21 pm
by Gravity Defier
:)

My attempt at listening to an audio book yesterday failed miserably. If I tried working on coloring while listening, I quit hearing distinct words and merely heard background/white noise. If I stopped coloring and poked around online, same problem. When I stopped doing everything but focusing on the playback, I first "lost" the story, then fell asleep. If this weren't for work, I'd take that as a sign that audiobooks are for people who are not me and give up.

Latest book I've picked up is The Lover's Dictionary by David Levithan. It has an interesting premise, though I'm not expecting much by way of story. I've looked through it and it really is definitions, sometimes very small, on a whole page.

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

Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2013 12:59 pm
by Gravity Defier
Halfway through John Stephens' The Emerald Atlas and loving it so much. It's the book I switched to audio book for work purposes (though I'm following along with the actual book, too) and it just may be the book that turns me into an audio book fan.

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

Posted: Wed Feb 20, 2013 1:09 pm
by Luet
I just started the Wool Omnibus by Hugh Howey. Finished the first part of five and it got me hooked quickly. Anyone heard of it or read it?

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

Posted: Wed Feb 20, 2013 5:08 pm
by Gravity Defier
I've not read it but I've heard nothing but great things about it.

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

Posted: Fri Mar 01, 2013 5:04 pm
by Luet
So, I loved the Wool Omnibus. It was one of those books that I was so excited to read every night and was so sad when it was ending. There are three Wool prequels that I'm starting now and then he has a YA series called Molly Fyde/Bern that I'm going to read next. I hope I like them too.

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

Posted: Tue Mar 26, 2013 5:52 pm
by Gravity Defier
I'm almost on a book a day schedule for the foreseeable future, thanks to work. We go to the middle school and do booktalks twice a year and this spring, I am doing my first outing.

I need to help read books so we'll know if it's good enough to add to the list of books we mention only, I've also been getting books in that I wanted to read for me personally, so I'm feeling a little stressed, trying to balance both.

For work:
Emily’s Dress - Burak (Reading, ~30 pages in)
The Theory of Everything - Johnson (To read)
Jepp, Who Defied the Stars - Marsh (To read)
My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece - Pitcher (Read...enjoyed)
Out of the Easy - Septys (Read...enjoyed)

For me:
Requiem - Oliver (Read...enjoyed less than #2, about the same as #1)
The Gate Thief - OSC
Outpost - Aguirre

I've also requested the book Kelly mentioned in her thread, on Netgalley. We'll see if I'm approved for that.

Eleanor and Park, by Rowell, is also on the way for me. That is both a personal and work read.

I'm sure I'm forgetting more and will be assigned more.

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

Posted: Wed Mar 27, 2013 6:21 pm
by Gravity Defier
Emily’s Dress and Other Missing Things - Burak
LOVED this book.

And Some Quiet Place is now loaded to my Kindle, so I'll be trying to get to that by early next week. :)

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

Posted: Wed Mar 27, 2013 6:25 pm
by VelvetElvis
GD, I've been loving my audio books or the Song of Ice and Fire series. The actor that reads them (Roy Dotrice) is great.

I'm reading the Stormlord series by Glinda Larke. It's pretty solid.

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

Posted: Thu Mar 28, 2013 11:57 pm
by allenwatson23
I just finished Jeffrey Deaver's new James Bond book. It was fantastic!

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

Posted: Fri Mar 29, 2013 12:18 am
by Mich
Finished rereading Watchmen for the dozenth time. I can't believe that there are still little dumb things I've missed, references or interesting transitions or tiny scraps of information. Or maybe I've just read it enough that I've forgotten what I know. Which is, really, awesome, because that means I get that fun feeling of finding Waldo every time I read it.

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

Posted: Fri Mar 29, 2013 1:07 am
by locke
I finished re-reading The Darkness that Comes Before and moved on to a reread of The Warrior Prophet (book 2 of the second apocalypse)

I just came across this passage, which I love because it's on it's face a very interesting piece, but on a reread there are all sorts of layers of revelation going on here that make this incredibly significant in retrospect.
“What happened?” Kellhus asked.

The nameless knight smiled, but there was a strange and subtle incongruence in his expression, something like glimpsing the difference between white eyes and yellow teeth.

“Three days ago,” the man said, “our lord heard rumour of a village some miles to the west, so we rode out, hoping for plunder …”

Kellhus nodded. “And what did you find?”

“Nothing … I mean, no village. Our lord was wroth. He claims the others—”

“What did you find?”

The man blinked. Panic flashed from the stoic weariness of his expression. “A child,” he said hoarsely. “A dead child … We were following this trail, something worn by goatherds, I think, cutting across this hillside, and there was just this dead child, a girl, no more than five or six, lying in our path. Her throat had been cut …”

“What happened next?”

“Nothing … I mean, we simply ignored her, continued riding as though she were nothing more than discarded cloth … a-a scrap of leather in the dust,” he added, his voice breaking. He looked down to his callused palms.

“Guilt and shame wrack you by day,” Kellhus said, “the feeling that you’ve committed some mortal crime. Nightmares wrack you by night … She speaks to you.”

The man’s nod was almost comical in its desperation. He hadn’t, Achamian realized, the nerve for war.

“But why?” he cried. “I mean, how many dead have we seen?”

“But not all seeing,” Kellhus replied, “is witness.”

“I don’t understand …”

“Witness is the seeing that testifies, that judges so that it may be judged. You saw, and you judged. A trespass had been committed, an innocent had been murdered. You saw this.”

“Yes!”
the man hissed. “A little girl. A little girl!”

“And now you suffer.”

“But why?” he cried. “Why should I suffer? She’s not mine. She was heathen!”

“Everywhere … Everywhere we’re surrounded by the blessed and the cursed, the sacred and the profane. But our hearts are like hands, they grow callous to the world. And yet, like our hands even the most callous heart will blister if overworked or chafed by something new. For some time we may feel the pinch, but we ignore it because we have so much work to do.” Kellhus had looked down into his right hand. Suddenly he balled it into a fist, raised it high. “And then one strike, with a hammer or a sword, and the blister breaks, our heart is torn. And then we suffer, for we feel the ache for the blessed, the sting of the cursed. We no longer see, we witness …”

His luminous eyes settled upon the nameless knight. Blue and wise.

“This is what has happened to you.”

“Yes … Yes! B-but what should I do?”

“Rejoice.”

“Rejoice? But I suffer!”

“Yes, rejoice! The callused hand cannot feel the lover’s cheek. When we witness, we testify, and when we testify we make ourselves responsible for what we see. And that— that— is what it means to belong.”

Kellhus suddenly stood, leapt from the low platform, took two breathtaking steps into their midst. “Make no mistake,” he continued, and the air thrummed with the resonance of his voice. “This world owns you. You belong, whether you want to or not. Why do we suffer? Why do the wretched take their own lives? Because the world, no matter how cursed, owns us. Because we belong.

“Should we celebrate suffering?” a challenging voice called. From somewhere …

Prince Kellhus smiled, glancing into the darkness. “Then it’s no longer suffering, is it?”

The small congregation laughed.

“No,” Kellhus continued, “that’s not what I mean. Celebrate the meaning of suffering. Rejoice that you belong, not that you suffer. Remember what the Latter Prophet teaches us: glory comes in joy and sorrow. Joy and sorrow …”

“I s-see see the wisdom of you-your words, Prince,” the nameless knight stammered. “I truly see! But …”

And somehow, Achamian could feel his question …

What is there to gain?

“I’m not asking you to see,” Kellhus said. “I’m asking you to witness.”

Blank face. Desolate eyes. The nameless knight blinked, and two tears silvered his cheek. Then he smiled, and nothing, it seemed, could be so glorious.

“To make myself …” His voice quavered, broke. “To m-make …”

“To be one with the world in which you dwell,” Kellhus said. “To make a covenant of your life.”

Bakker, R. Scott (2008-09-02). The Warrior Prophet: The Prince of Nothing, Book Two (Kindle Locations 4395-4412). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.

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

Posted: Tue Apr 02, 2013 12:00 pm
by Gravity Defier
To Read List:
Outpost -YA AGUIRRE
The gate thief -FANTASY CARD
Eleanor & Park -Fic ROW
Crewel -YA ALBIN
After the snow -YA CROCKETT
Wasteland -YA FICTION KIM
Shades of Earth -YA Revis
Some Quiet Place

Just finished:

Jepp, who defied the stars -YA MARSH

I've been trying to branch out of my reading comfort zone a bit and thought I'd try some historical fiction. Jepp was a very slow, rough start for me. It's not that I thought it was poorly written or a bad story, I just wasn't in the mood for it. But the more I pressed, the more I grew to love Jepp and his story and the faster it started to go.

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

Posted: Tue Apr 02, 2013 6:04 pm
by Cassandra
Just finished:

Ender's World :D

Don't judge, I've been very busy with classes. They call this junior year term in my despartment, "the death march."

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

Posted: Tue Apr 02, 2013 8:06 pm
by LilBee91
Just finished:

Ender's World :D

Don't judge, I've been very busy with classes. They call this junior year term in my despartment, "the death march."
I'm just more than halfway through that. I don't have that good of an excuse though--I've just been reading other books.

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

Posted: Tue Apr 09, 2013 11:59 pm
by Gravity Defier
To Read List:
Outpost -YA AGUIRRE
The gate thief -FANTASY CARD
Wasteland -YA FICTION KIM
Shades of Earth -YA Revis
Some Quiet Place
Dualed - YA Chapman
Without a Summer - Kowal


Just finished:

Crewel -YA ALBIN: REALLY disappointing. Nothing happens and not in an interesting, world-and-backstory building way. Just...nothing happens.
The Shadow Society - YA Rutkoski: Interesting premise, a standalone (a rare beast in YA these days), somewhat disappointing execution but I don't regret reading it
After the snow -YA CROCKETT: Hmm. Reminded me a bit of The Road by Cormac McCarthy, only less awesome because it's told in the voice of an uneducated teen...kind of Huck Finn style. There was also a whole lot of not much happening but in an interesting, tolerable way.

Eleanor & Park -Fic ROWELL: OH MY GOD. Read this NOW. Or yesterday. As soon as you can. It was such a tragic, endearing, sweet, touching, never-want-this-book-to-end story.

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

Posted: Wed Apr 10, 2013 5:04 am
by Rei
I just finished reading the third Earthsea novel, and I am quite tempted to stop there. It finished quite nicely as I suspected it would such that, for the time being, I feel no need to read the other books which followed decades later. And it would give me a chance to read the latest Thursday Next novel before Blue Mars becomes available at the library.

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

Posted: Wed Apr 10, 2013 9:08 am
by buckshot
As a devoted Browncoat I love any Firefly/Serenity stories and I found this Kevin Bell's website "harriers and heroes" and he has three really good web books there free of charge . So far they are the best storys in the verse so far.

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

Posted: Wed Apr 10, 2013 9:18 am
by Mich
I just finished reading the third Earthsea novel, and I am quite tempted to stop there. It finished quite nicely as I suspected it would such that, for the time being, I feel no need to read the other books which followed decades later.
This is exactly what happened to me a few years ago. It felt wrong to continue. Has anyone read them?

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

Posted: Wed Apr 10, 2013 11:27 am
by LilBee91
I've read all of them. I liked the fourth one, but the others were just alright. I don't think you're missing anything great by not reading the newer ones, but they don't ruin the story either.

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

Posted: Wed Apr 10, 2013 12:02 pm
by Rei
I'll keep that in mind, then, for future. The volume I'm borrowing from a friend has the fourth one in there, and it feels odd to not finish the bound volume, but I don't want to burn out on it either. I'll probably at least get to reading Tehanu at some point.

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

Posted: Wed Apr 10, 2013 12:54 pm
by Luet

Eleanor & Park -Fic ROWELL: OH MY GOD. Read this NOW. Or yesterday. As soon as you can. It was such a tragic, endearing, sweet, touching, never-want-this-book-to-end story.
On my list now. :)

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

Posted: Wed Apr 10, 2013 1:41 pm
by Gravity Defier
Hooray! Just be forewarned, it does deal with some heavy topics that can be disturbing. But I don't think it does so graphically.