What are you reading?

[bigsleepj]

Currently reading John Connolly's Every Dead Thing. Pretty creepy.

[rocklobster]

Starting The Mark of Athena soon.

[Atria35]

Finished Mermaid's Madness, onto Red Hood. Pretty awesome stuff. Glad to see the focus shifting onto the other princesses.

[Vilo159]

Rereading The Hobbit by J.R.R Tolkien in preparation for the movie release coming up.

[Lynna]

I started reading I Am Not a Serial Killer by Dan Wells. I love it so far! It's so well written. I'm a bit nervous that it might be a bit gory for me, but I'm reading it anyways.

[FllMtl Novelist]

I started reading I Am Not a Serial Killer by Dan Wells.

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Talk to me obsessively about it when you're done?

[SierraLea]

I dug up some old favorites for Christmas break, some of The Ranger's Apprentice.
Has anyone read the series Vampire Kisses? Is it clean, or a Twilight readalike?

[FllMtl Novelist]

Has anyone read the series Vampire Kisses? Is it clean, or a Twilight readalike?

I kind of doubt anyone else has read any of it so... Well, I read the first volume of the manga and skimmed the preview in the back for one of the novels. I vaguely remember a reference to the main couple having slept together in a coffin overnight, though I don't remember the reason for it and I don't think there was any innuendo. My friend was interested in it and I know she read some, but we never talked about content levels so I have no idea how it is in that department. It's definitely not LOTS OF SEX EVERYWHERE, ALL THE TIME, but I can't guarantee it's unobjectionable either.

[Atria35]

I dug up some old favorites for Christmas break, some of The Ranger's Apprentice.
Has anyone read the series Vampire Kisses? Is it clean, or a Twilight readalike?

Wait, Twilight had sex? o.O (only paritally kidding here - the movies were more graphic than the books, where the books only skimmed a mention of the wedding night and it was not graphic at all).

[Cleanedbyblood]

I just started reading The Case For Christ by Lee Strobel. I had a lot of people tell me to read it, and I found it for $4 at Goodwill. Its really good.

[Atria35]

Finished the Princess Chronicles. Dang, but that was an ending that I did not expect. I definitely don't think that this is a series for most people on here, because this goes to the traditional stories of the three princesses and gives them an even more realistic bent (as much as possible with magic still involved - for instance, Sleeping Beauty was woken from her sleep by childbirth, but there is no happily ever after; she's forced into marriage with the father and kills him because she's so disgusted and horrified and runs away to save herself. Snow White? She killed her stepmother, but becomes a political exile because of the turmoil it causes among the nobles. I highly enjoyed it, but the ending to it all was heartwrenching. Main characters did not get out alive. For some, the whole series was a downhill slide for them! I wouldn't say it's a favorite series, but it's one that I won't forget soon.

Started the book Spellwright. I rather enjoy this take on magic - utilizing physical stregnth to create it, and the spells actually being spelled out and needing to be grammatically correct and all that. It leads to some fairly corny lines ("I can censor everything you do"), but still very intriguing.

[the_wolfs_howl]

Finally picked up That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis and managed to finish it. Good stuff, though very weird and dense and hard to follow.

I also finally finished ICO: Castle in the Mist by Miyuki Miyabe, now that I'm on break and have time to finish it.

[SierraLea]

Forget Vampires. I found a sequel to Howl's Moving Castle, one of my favorites! Dude, I am so reading that!

[Neane]

Stuff I recently read:

Dancing With Eternity - So, for those of you interested in the vidya, the author, John Patrick Lowrie was the voice of the sniper in TF2. This leads to some hilarious reviews on Amazon.

Anyway, gimmick reviews aside, this is actually a really good sci-fi story. It's the mid-3rd millennium, and humanity has essentially done away with death by combinations of different technologies. Mo, the main character, is stranded on a backwater planet for tax evasion, but he gets an opportunity to get back into space by signing along with a very dangerous mission - so dangerous that it's actually possible to die. It's about 500 pages detailing a trip across the galaxy, looking at the ways humanity has changed as the result of immortality and the ways it's stayed the same.

Dancing With Eternity is a little uneven, since there are parts where Lowrie avoids infodumping at the expense of really slowing down the pace of the novel, but overall it's really good. Would definitely recommend it to anyone interested in sci-fi. Would probably be a great Christmas present for anyone over 16.

The Forever War - Joe Haldeman's sci-fi reimagining of the Vietnam War. After humanity discovers a race of aliens known as the Taurans, it promptly begins fighting with them. The narrator is drafted to be at the vanguard of the military effort to destroy the Taurans. His assignment: be the first wave to secure strategically important planets and hold them until relieved or scraped off the planet by a Tauran invasion force.

Zoe's Tale - Dunno if I posted about it yet, but I've read most of John Scalzi's Old Man's War series. Zoe's Tale is pretty much a retelling of the previous book (The Lost Colony) from the point of view of the protagonist's daughter. There were a couple of factors that kept me from liking the book as much as the other books in the series, namely the fact that most of it was a rehash, and that Scalzi kind of let his personal snark get a little out of hand. It's interesting in that it does give a reasonable story to a huge deus ex machina in The Lost Colony, but honestly this book would have probably worked better as a novella more than anything.

Man Against the Future - Brian Young is a cool guy (I know, I met him) but I could not bring myself to like this collection of his short stories. A lot of them are not-so-subtle political parables, smugly told. On top of that, almost every story has an unfinished feel to it. They're extremely short, and while a few of them actually have some reasonable development, I can't recall a single story here that I finished reading and saying "That was perfect." or even "That was pretty good". The whole book was kind of meh. At least my copy's autographed.

This makes me kind of worried about reading Young's Operation Montauk. I think the premise will keep me interested anyway - a WWII British soldier finds himself stranded in the Cretaceous with a bunch of lost time travelers after a plan to go back in time and kill Hitler goes horribly awry.

Neuromancer - I love William Gibson's writing, I really do, but boy is the first quarter of this book dense. It took me three or four tries before I finally penetrated the book to the point where momentum took over and carried me through to the end. It's an interesting story, especially with Gibson's baroque style, but yeah. It's a little much at times.

Pump Six and Other Stories - A collection of Paolo Bacigalupi stories, charting his development as a major writer. It's interesting to see his development from a cyberpunk writer to the types of stories that he writes these days (see, The Windup Girl). His short stories can be pretty intense experiences. Most of the stories are about people set against the backdrop of slowly collapsing or post-collapse civilization. But they're not simply character sketches - a lot of them really do seem like they're possible futures not that far around the corner.

Roadside Picnic - I'll bookend this post with another vidya related book, Roadside Picnic. Written by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky in the 1970s, this is generally considered to be one of the best examples of science fiction writing of the late Soviet era. Also fairly well known by gamers as the basis for the game S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

An alien visit occurs, but as quickly as the visitors arrive, they leave again. There's no evidence that they even noticed humanity, but they did leave around lots of shiny loot (swag) that interests people. Some of it is beneficial, some of it is deadly. All of it is contained within a highly dangerous bizarro wonderland (The Zone) created by the extraterrestrial visit. While there is a professional institute dedicated to venturing into the Zone to collect and study these artifacts, there is more money to be made as stalker - illegally entering the exclusion zones to collect artifacts for resale on the black market. Red is a former stalker now working at the Insititute, but his life circumstances are dragging him back into his former trade. Roadside Picnic[/i is a fairly pessimistic look at humanity, combining the Lovecraftian insignificance of mankind and the overly bureaucratic and inefficient governance of the USSR by the late 70s. [i]As with Dancing With Eternity, I can't recommend this one enough.


And I am currently reading:



Say what you want, at least it has charm.

[AnimeGirl]

Currently reading Adventurers Wanted: Slathbog's Gold. (I am currently in chapter 5 right now).

I am seriously liking this story. The synopsis of going to slay a dragon and take the treasure reminds me a lot of The Hobbit in ways, only this is easier to read. Plus, the company is only 8, and a mix of races. And....our eighth is from our world! A 15 year old boy named Alex who saw a sign in the window n o one else can see. Some dude named Mr. Clutter sells adventures, and applies him for this one. I find that to be a very fun concept. A few of the character are already very likeable from the start (I always imagine Skeld with Vic Mognogna's voice XD). I also like those magic bags you can actually GO INSIDE and it has rooms to store your stuff (that would be so useful if they existed!)

I will have a full report on this when I am done (will probably finish in 2 weeks or less, at the rate I am going).

[LastLfan]

Djvergent.

[SierraLea]

I finished Castle in the Air, the sequel to Howl's Moving Castle today. I loved the ending, even if I did know what was coming. It was good to see the old gang again.

[FllMtl Novelist]

I finished Castle in the Air, the sequel to Howl's Moving Castle today. I loved the ending, even if I did know what was coming. It was good to see the old gang again.

There's another sequel called House of Many Ways, if you want more. I've never read any of the sequels, though, so I have no idea how good any of them are.

[rocklobster]

Forgot to mention I read Unplanned and tomorrow I plan to start Erak's Ransom, the 7th book in the Ranger's Apprentice series.

[Atria35]

Because I ended up going to Powell's in Portland (yes THAT Powell's, the bookstore that extends more than one city block, that is busy at 11 PM on a Saturday night, and has every book your little heart could desire), I have a few that I'm started on:

A Town Like Alice
The Lies of Loch Lamorra
Prestige of the Sword
Spellwright

[Winry]

Currently reading Theft of Swords by Michael J. Sullivan. So far it's an interesting, very easy read.

[Xeno]

I've been reading a number of books. Some of them I won't name on here because it'll cause a bit of a tizzy, others I'm working on though are Cosmos by Carl Sagan, Darkly Dreaming Dexter, Dearly Devoted Dexter, and Dexter in the Dark by Jeff Lindsay, and:


If you seriously want to know about the United States around 1870 through present day, read this book.

[FllMtl Novelist]

Darkly Dreaming Dexter, Dearly Devoted Dexter, and Dexter in the Dark by Jeff Lindsay

Ooooh, I read the first of those and really liked it. How's the rest of the series so far?

[uc pseudonym]

If you seriously want to know about the United States around 1870 through present day, read this book.

From a quick search I take it this is about American imperialism. Is this more of an introductory book, or would you recommend it to people who've read more about the topic? I'm no expert, but it's not like the idea is completely new to me (I'm hoping to read Killing Hope soon).

[Xeno]

If you seriously want to know about the United States around 1870 through present day, read this book.

From a quick search I take it this is about American imperialism. Is this more of an introductory book, or would you recommend it to people who've read more about the topic? I'm no expert, but it's not like the idea is completely new to me (I'm hoping to read Killing Hope soon).

I've only gotten to the end of World War One in the book. I would imagine you could consider it introductory, however, it is incredibly thorough and in-depth on it's topics. Chapters will end in one place, and the next chapter will pick up somewhere in time before the end of the previous one with overlapping information. I'm not new to the concept of American Imperialism, but I am as far as getting the hard facts in this form, so I wouldn't know of any other books to recommend or cross reference with other than what is in this book's reference.

Ooooh, I read the first of those and really liked it. How's the rest of the series so far?

Quite good. I haven't actually started on the third one yet, but the other two are great.

[Yamamaya]

If you seriously want to know about the United States around 1870 through present day, read this book.

From a quick search I take it this is about American imperialism. Is this more of an introductory book, or would you recommend it to people who've read more about the topic? I'm no expert, but it's not like the idea is completely new to me (I'm hoping to read Killing Hope soon).

I've only gotten to the end of World War One in the book. I would imagine you could consider it introductory, however, it is incredibly thorough and in-depth on it's topics. Chapters will end in one place, and the next chapter will pick up somewhere in time before the end of the previous one with overlapping information. I'm not new to the concept of American Imperialism, but I am as far as getting the hard facts in this form, so I wouldn't know of any other books to recommend or cross reference with other than what is in this book's reference.

I saw that book at Borders and was quite interested by it. It looks very similar to People's History of the United States(even the back of the book mentioned Howard Zinn would have been proud of the book). If you have never read People's History, it's a great book, although it goes through the entirety of U.S. history from 1492 to the beginning of the 21st century.

[Makachop^^128]

I'm reading right now The Bradbury Chronicles, and Hans Christian Andersons The complete fairy tales and stories that I just got in the mail today

[Atria35]

Finally able to cross A Town Like Alice off of my reading list. In many ways, it's a book of it's time (everyone is racist and doesn't even know it), but at the same time startlingly progressive when it comes to what one woman survives during the war and later does for a town. It's definitely good... but I don't think I'll read it again.

[the_wolfs_howl]

Read Hamlet for class. Eh, not my favorite Shakespeare by any means....

[ich1990]

“The Titan’s Curse” by Rick Riordan

Better and better. This is a great continuation of the series, albeit a mite uneven. 9/10



“The Battle of the Labyrinth” by Rick Riordan

Continuing in good form, Riordan tell yet another solid tale and manages to make old stories fresh again. The final battle was anti-climactic, but it sets itself up well for the series finale. 7/10



“The Last Olympian” by Rick Riordan

This is everything I could have wanted out of a final volume, barring the weak showing from Hades and his half-blood son. Aside from that minor flaw it was excellent: the entire island of Manhattan is turned into a violent battle zone, with a pitched multi-day battle engulfing pretty much everyone who has ever been mentioned in the series. The fighting and following resolution was expertly handled, and I applaud Riordan and his enjoyable series. 10/10



“How Much Money Do I Need to Retire?” by Todd Tresidder

Unlike most books on retirement, this isn’t a horrifically boring rehash of retirement accounts and index investing. It does cover those topics, but also goes far beyond that into alternative lifestyles and investment vehicles while never straying far from common sense. It is simple enough to read that anyone should be able to understand it, while also covering far more topics, better, than the average “Retirement for Dummies” book. 8/10