Fall is here! Or at least, close enough to see coming! I am a big fan of fall and since I was laid off on the 23rd, this year I’ll have more time to enjoy fall and read!
I just finished Fate’s Edge (The Edge, Book 3). It was OK. In general I like their plots but they use the same sub-plot in every book and it has grown tired: Strong woman meets strong man who must conquer her and win her love.
I hate him, he is arrogant (but hansom!) I must have her, she is beautiful and challenging!
*He must never know how much I want him
I think I am falling for her
I love you
I love you
the end
*I had already ordered one of their next books, but I think after that I will leave their worlds for a while.
I have started the newest Odd Thomas installment. It is startling slowly for me, but I usually enjoy them.
I picked up Blueprints of the Afterlife on a whim and I’m really enjoying it. Disparate characters drawn together by a mysterious stranger in a dystopian Seattle.
The New Iain Banks culture novel drops this month as well as Dodger from terry Pratchett. It’s his take on Dickensian London.
Also pre-ordered for the Kindle…Rapture of the Nerds a collaboration from Stross and Doctorow.
I just got back from Barnes & Noble (it’s across the street from work) where I purchased Gone Girl and travel books for London and Paris. Funny thing is I NEVER buy fiction (I’m a librarian and am fundamentally opposed) but I want to read Gone Girl really badly and there are 85 people ahead of me on the waiting list. I’ll donate the book when I’m finished.
(I would make the title a link but my irk computer doesn’t allow that function)
I’m listening to Stephen King’s It and seriously wanting grab the narrator by his absurdly exaggerated delivery, offer him a nice balloon and drag him into the storm drain.
Just finished Gone Girl. I enjoyed it a lot. I loved the dual unreliable narrator angle.
When I first started reading Amy’s “diary” entries, I thought wow, this is pretty bad…seems really fake. I loved it when I found out later that it really was fake.
Probably going for The Dog Stars next. I bought it for my Nook last week.
Founding Brothers, by… um… the guy who wrote it. I can’t remember! I know so little about American History. I was a history major, but my focus was ancient history.
Clive Barker’s Books Of Blood 1-3. Earlier Clive Barker stuff. It’s entertaining, but I much prefer, his from only a few years later, The Damnation Game and Weaveworld.
Just (a couple minutes ago) finished 1634: The Baltic War, by David Weber and Eric Flint. About to start 1634: The Bavarian Crisis, by Eric Flint and Virginia DeMarce. Both books are part of Flint’s “1632” alternate-history series, in which a small town is mysteriously transported intact from West Virginia, 2000 CE, to central Germany, 1631 CE.
I just finished The Gods Themselves by Asimov. I realised as I was reading it that a short story I read a few years ago, “Gold”, was a spin-off of this book. It was about a novel very like this one being adapted into a movie using a new cinematic technique. I didn’t remember much about the story (which is lucky, I read it again just now and it was full of spoilers for the book) but the premise of an alien species with three genders, Rational, Emotional and Parental, stuck with me. There was a character in the short story, a stand in for Asimov, who explained “There are always people who say I don’t include sex because I don’t know how, so - out of vainglory, I suppose - I wrote this novel just to show that I could do it. The entire novel deals with sex. Of course, it’s alien sex, not at all like ours.”
Now I’m starting The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. It seems like it’s going to be a fun read.
I’m about halfway through Hinterland by Caroline Brothers, a tale of two Afghani boys escaping the Taliban after their parents deaths ,trekking from Iran and eventually across Europe with the goal of reaching England, where they believe jobs and school await them. Its a little bleak but its well-written and a quick read.
Finished The Unquiet Bones by Mel Starr, medieval mystery featuring a surgeon/sleuth. Liked it a lot.
About halfway through Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher by Timothy Egan. It’s the life of photographer Edward S. Curtis. It’s simply excellent. My copy is an ARC from Vine but I have to buy the hardcover. The ARC doesn’t include all the pictures, and I’m thinking the photo quality will be better with the hardcover.
Just finished Wool by Hugh Howey which was mentioned in the August thread or somewhere else on the board - thoroughly enjoyed it.
Have now started Mongoliad by Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear and others which I am quite enjoying as well. Looking forward to book 2 coming out later this month
I finished Delirium, by Lauren Oliver. The book takes place in a dystopian America in some unspecified point in our future, where love is thought to be a disease at the root of all the world’s problems. People are systematically cured of love at the age of 18. The heroine, Lena, is counting down the days to her cure until she meets a boy and falls in love.
When people mock the readers of YA, it’s because of books like this. I was incredibly annoyed by everything about this book.
I’m now on to the meatier Seductive Poison, about the Peoples Temple and life in Jonestown.