I really liked that one, too (the title is actually Leviathan Wakes). The second book is nearly as good, and I believe there’s a third one due this year. The other author is Ty Franck, who works for George R. R. Martin, and I first heard of the book when Martin plugged it in his blog. (In the same post he also mentioned another book that turned out to be terrible, so I’m glad I read this one first or I might have disregarded his other recommendations.)
:smack: Thanks for the correction. After making that post, I searched the board for posts about the book and predictably got zero hits; it wasn’t until I corrected the title that I found all your posts recommending it!
Martin is one of those authors, like Le Guin, whose recommendations I take as a cautious positive for a book. Both of them have recommended books I thought were stinkers, but overall they both have a good record for me.
And I have the sequel on hold from my library; hopefully it’ll come in tomorrow.
I’m caught up with the whole series and eagerly awaiting the next book. I thought Kill the Dead was the weakest so far, but the series gets good again in the third and fourth books. So I’m basically advising: even if you don’t think **Kill the Dead **lives up to Sandman Slim, stick with it anyway.
I’m currently in the middle of Her Royal Spyness, by Rhys Bowen. Mostly because the audiobook is narrated by Katherine Kellgren, who does an amazing job in the Bloody Jack series. So far, it’s a fun look at being upper-class yet poor in London in the 30s.
Yep, I read that last fall and also loved it 
I loved that. It made me want to branch out and read more non-fantasy stuff, which is pretty much all I’ve read my entire life. Any suggestions for stuff with a similar feel?
Finished off Chasing Doctor Doolittle the other day, much to my surprise–I was looking at the page count on the Kindle and expecting another hundred pages, but oops! That was all bibliography. Still, an interesting read, recommended for those who know in their hearts that the critters we share the earth with are more than just furry/scaly/feathery machines.
Now having another trip through Watership Down, thanks to its mention last month.
Sick home with the flu, so I’ve got the chance to catch up on my reading. Last week, I finished a couple of things that had been lingering on my Kindle and/or nightstand:
Kate Griffin’s A Madness of Angels, the first in the Matthew Swift series of urban (London) fantasy. I enjoyed this one very much: Matthew is a much less streamlined, much craggier, and in some ways a more interesting character than Harry Dresden (though I’ll have to see how he evolves…). And the writing was excellent, too, so I’m going to look for the next one soon, The Midnight Mayor.
Right now I’m reading Bob Woodward’s Obama’s Wars, which is good, but not for Woodward’s writing. He’s a great journalist, no doubt, but he manages to make everything he touches read like the New York Times articles. Not good enough for a 300 page book; but interesting insights into the first two years of the Obama presidency and its changes and problems in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Also up: John Rateliff’s The History of the Hobbit. Quite fascinating! Reading it, I almost wish Rateliff had done the work on HoME, since his notes and analyses are much more useful to me than Christopher Tolkien’s; but then, he had one short book, and not an entire life’s worth of creative writing to edit.
I’m contemplating starting on Ready Player One, Hope: A Tragedy, or Richard Ford’s Canada next…we’ll see…
Well, the aforementioned Mr. Penumbra’s 24-hour Bookstore has a similar feel to me. Also good: Neal Stephenson’s Reamde and Wool, if you haven’t read those yet.
I guess I put all of those in the “Present-Day or Near-Future Speculative Fiction” category. Anyone got a better name for it?
I’m finally reading The Handmaid’s Tale for the first time. It is gutting me. I have a husband and a young daughter. We’ve been trying to have another baby and failing. A reactionary revolution blamed on Islamic fundamentalists? There’s just way too much about this book that is hitting way too close to home. Almost as bad as watching Precious while nursing my week-old baby daughter, hoo boy, what a trip that was.
Finished Lansdale’s Lost Echoes. It was all right, not one of the better ones. I’m going back now to an early Lansdale, The Magic Wagon. My edition makes it look like a kid’s book, but it’s catalogued as a Western and the excerpt on the back contains the N-word.
“Twenty Minutes Into the Future”?
And thanks, had meant to look into the 24-Hour Bookstore one when it was posted, will definitely find it.
Somehow, I have not gotten in that much reading lately.
I reread Stephen King’s 'Salem’s Lot as part of a book group. It must be 20 years at at least since my last reading. It was keen to revisit some early Stephen King, it’s still a very creepy book. And as a King fan, interesting to see some ideas and concepts that ended up making more appearances in later works.
I am about 1/4 the way through Sharp Objects, by Gillian Flynn. I thought her Gone Girl was one of the biggest page turners I read last year. This is just as compelling, but the story is more about violence against children, and it’s very present in the story. It’s a viscerally hard read. This has changed a lot for me since becoming a parent. I mean, I wasn’t heartless before – I didn’t look forward to reading books about child victims of violence, but after having a baby, it’s a whole new level of aversion. I probably wouldn’t have picked it up in the first place if I had known more details of the plot.
You probably know that the troubled, tragic Father Callahan appears in some of the Dark Tower books: Father Callahan - Wikipedia
The Crying Tree, Naseem Rakha. Although I figured out early on what the revelation was going to be (confirmed with dismay by my spouse), the book is well written and worth continuing with to the end.
As a big fan of Ready Player One, I guess I’ll have to check out Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore.
I’m working through Doomsday Book by Connie Willis right now. I’m somewhat torn on it. I like the writing and the story, but I feel like I’m getting far more detail than is necessary for my enjoyment. In many scenes Willis will describe and then repeat what’s happening. It gets exhausting. The plot is interesting, but I hope she becomes a better story teller because I have a couple more recent books of hers on my shelf waiting.
Finished Darkly Dreaming Dexter, by Jeff Lindsay. It was okay. It did turn out to be basically the first season of the Dexter TV series but in condensed form. Some differences but largely recognizable. I picked this up in the library on a whim and only learned from this thread that there are more books. I don’t feel the need to read another one.
I’ve been back to the library, and next up it’s back to Michael Connelly and his Harry Bosch series with Echo Park.
Finished Imperative: A Quinn Larson Quest, a mediocre urban fantasy. It held a few surprises, but didn’t really catch me and I will probably not read the rest.
I’m glad I’m not alone in this. I’ve read the first four Dresden books over the past several years, and even though I have the sequels, I can never seem to put them at the top of my to-read piles. I just don’t find him the least bit compelling. However, I enjoyed the heck out of the first book in the Iron Druid series.
I swapped Joseph Ellis’s excellent short history of the Framers, Founding Brothers, with a graduate student in health policy who gave me Penny Le Couteur and Jay Burreson’s Napoleon’s Buttons, about important molecules in history - nutmeg in European trade, vitamin C in sea exploration, tin in Napoleon’s invasion of France, etc. I’ve just started it and it’s OK, but so far I think she got the better deal.
Thank you wonderlust! I had thought I was the only one underwhelmed there…
So I finished Curses by Aaron Elkins. I liked it but I have to laugh at the premise, all that work to prevent a piece of highly circumstantial evidence that any decent lawyer could demolish in 10 minutes from being found? Miss Marple was right when she said it’s the stupid criminals that get caught.