The Berlin-Baghdad Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany’s Bid for World Power by Sean McMeekin and The Taste of War: World War II and the Battle for Food by Lizzie Collingham (interesting subject I’d never encountered before: the role of food production and distribution in the second world war).
I finished #4 in the Laura Ingalls Wilder series, “On the Banks of Plum Creek,” and started “By the Shores of Silver Lake.” I love how the writing in the series gets more mature as Laura does. “Silver Lake” started out really sad and I was sobbing in the first chapter. 
I’m also reading “The Terror” by Dan Simmons but am having a bit of a hard time getting into it. Has anyone else read this one? Does it get better or am I better calling it quits before I get 350 pages in and feel like I have to slog through the rest?
I just finished it. You won’t be disappointed. She keeps getting better.
Wow, it’s August already? I missed July completely!
So, I tore through The Long Earth by Pratchett and Baxter. Really good book with an amazing number of ideas. Most of the mixed reviews I’ve seen were from people who didn’t realize this was the beginning of a series, so not all questions were neatly wrapped up at the finish.
I also ripped through Redshirts by Scalzi. Really enjoyable quick read, with lots of questions asked and answered. I especially liked the three codas at the end.
I also read the first two books in The Expanse series byJames S. A. Corey. It’s been a while since I had read good, fun space opera, and this scratched that itch and much more. Can’t wait for the rest of the books to come out.
Right now I have just startedThe Apocalypse Codex by Stross, and I’ve been picking at The Weird compilation by Jeff and Ann VanderMeer. It’s been hit and miss, but mostly hit.
I read this one and really liked it. Found it informative and creepy. Dan Simmons tends to be a slow starter, but in The Terror things pick up action-wise in the middle. The book is pretty bleak throughout, so if it’s the tone you don’t like, it doesn’t get any more optimistic.
I absolutely loved The Terror - it was my favorite book I read in 2011. I loved it from the first page, though, so I can’t really tell you if it gets better. It does take a while before things start happening. I see on Goodreads that some people found it tedious and many thought it was too long, so you wouldn’t be alone.
I’m reading John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, a Private Life, by Paul C. Nagel. So far it’s good. It’s focusing very tightly on his personal life, with only brief mentions of the larger events that are taking place around him. It has a very negative take on Abigail Adams, calling her “a calamity as a mother”.
I’ve also just started The Long Ships, which is a Viking adventure novel written in the 1940’s by Swedish author Frans G. Bengtsson. The introduction is by Michael Chabon, who swears that the book is *really *good. So far it’s quite funny.
Gonzo: The Life of Hunter S Thompson. It’s an oral history edited by Jann Wenner. It’s easy reading, as it’s snippets chopped up into short passages. I’ve read a lot of Thompson’s stuff, and I already know much of his biography, but it’s interesting getting the perspective of people who knew him best. And there aren’t many punches pulled.
Ooh - this looks like something I’ll have to pick up. (I’m such a sucker for Everest tales.) Let us know how it goes.
I started (and finished) Tomorrow, When the War Began yesterday while staying home recouping from a bout of food poisoning. Kind of a post-apocalypic young adult book; several teens go camping in the bush in Australia and return to find that a non-specified enemy has invaded their country. It goes really fast, and was fun enough. I’m interested enough to possibly pick up one or two of the sequals (there’s like 7 now, I think), but if I don’t, I don’t feel like I’ve missed anything.
I’m going out for lunch and have my Kindle with me, so I’ll be starting something new this afternoon - looking forward to it!
Thanks, TheMerchandise and Eleanor of Aquitaine. I think I’ll keep at it for a while and see how it goes. I have definitely really enjoyed parts of it but then it will drag for a few pages. I’m looking forward to when it gets really creepy.
I think I may just have a really bad case of “what’s-next-itis.” Sometimes I just get so wrapped up in what’s next to read on my list and the excitement of starting something new that it diminishes my enjoyment of what I’m currently reading…which, of course, I had been dying to read not so long ago. I just need to relax and enjoy.
One of the things I learned from reading several bios of the Queen this year was that, when she was in her late teens, her mother gave her a summer reading list that was entirely composed of Wodehouse titles.
I finished A Dance with Dragons recently, and Ive almost finished slogging threough Jules Verne’s North and South. I recommend it only to completists. Also, this free Nook Book has the worst computer-completion I’ve ever seen. I’m going to start a thread on it when I’m finally done.
I’ve started Tales of Neveryon (Samuel R. Delany autographed my copy!) and Garrett P. Serviss’ Edison’s Conquest of Mars, a book I’ve wanted to read for quite a while. The paperback edition includes the original 1989 illustrations and supporting material. This book introduced the Disintegrator, space suits, the story of Earth Guys fighting back against the invading aliens, and a host of other ideas that have become SF staples and cliches. It’s not really very well written, but it bubbles with interesting ideas. A weird fossil.
I also have a stack of books I picked up to read, and now can’t find.
I just finished Let’s Pretend This Never Happened: (a mostly true memoir), by Jenny Lawson. Maybe it’s just that I don’t read many humor books, but this was so lite I found myself just skimming the last half and looking longingly at the TBR pile. However, the author is a Stephen King fan and also included pictures of her pug, so points for that.
Just started on Cleaning House: a mom’s 12-month experiment to rid her home of youth entitlement, by Kay Wyma. I’m already having some doubts about this one. For instance, her epiphany about how spoiled her kids are was brought on by her teenage son’s fantasizing about whether he’d rather have a Lamborghini or a Porsche. Big whoop. Also, something about the tone of the writing has me thinking she’s going to bring up religious faith soon, and when she does, I’ll be finished reading this book. sigh Or maybe it’ll be full of great ideas for me to implement at home.
Almost done with David Guterson’s novel Snow Falling on Cedars. Well-written, though slightly overdone at times, and very well told. The characters are vivid and the setting is too; I’m a sucker for books where the setting is essentially another character.
I must admit I’m almost afraid to finish it. I don’t think it’s going to end well. I hate unhappy endings when I’ve grown to care for the characters…
Season of the Witch was awful. It’s in the recycling bin.
March Violets by Philip Kerr, on the other hand, is pretty awesome. Kerr is a bit too fond of metaphor when describing characters, but the metaphors are snarky fun, so that’s okay. Violets is the first in his Berlin Noir trilogy, set in 1936. I’m not a historian but it seems that he’s done his research. It feels pretty realistic.
The Crimson Petal And The White. I’m enjoying it.
I just finished a book called La saga de los longevos (Saga of the Long-lived Ones), a novel by Eva García Sáenz (sort of science fiction, set in the present). As far as I can tell it’s her first; it looks like she may have ideas to turn it into a series. No vampires, glowpires, werewolves, templar knights or zombies in sight, but there’s a bunch of archaeologists, some Cro-magnons, some Escites, some Vikings…
I’m looking forward to any new books she publishes. Now working on Operación Hagen, a novel about the German atomic program in WWII, which would be a lot more interesting if the author was either less of a fan of the guys in spiffy grey uniforms, a better writer, or preferably both. A minimal comprehension of the technical aspects would have been nice too 
I’m reading Hornblower and the Atropos, my first Horatio Hornblower novel. It’s alright. Bit of a slow read, but part of that might just be having been used to the soft pablum of my Star Trek novels! 
Waiting on Amazon.ca to send me my first Leslie Charteris novel!
Finished The Clockwork Vampire Chronicles. As I’ve said, an homage to Gemmell, but IMO, not as good. It could have used a good editor, it wandered a lot repeated itself too often. The squabbling of the main protagonists got old and redundant quickly.
Still, for the most part, I enjoyed it.
I just finished A Clash of Kings. It wasn’t 5 minutes before I’d changed my mind about not reading past the TV series, so now I’m onto A Storm of Swords.
Resistance to Martin is futile. Hope you like the next one too!