Yes. Something - several things! - happen in it. I hope you’ll stick with it. I read it in high school and liked it, although I wasn’t as rapturous about it as some of my friends.
Just read Buckingham Palace by John Martin Robinson, a good one-volume history of the Queen’s London residence. Very well-illustrated, too. I had no idea the palace has changed its appearance so much - the current southern facade with the balcony dates only to 1913.
Spent last week rereading Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany. Got the urge after someone mentioned it in a “great opening lines” thread a few weeks ago. I’d read it twice before, back in the 1980s.
I’m just now starting on the Aegypt cycle by John Crowley. I’ve had time to get only a few pages into The Solitudes; the other three volumes just arrived today.
Finished The Unlikely Disciple : a sinner’s semester at America’s holiest university, by Kevin Roose. I really liked it. If you’re interested in the behavior of Christians, I think you’ll find this book fascinating. Whatever your bias going in, you’ll find something supporting it, plus something to make you think.
Just finished *Cemetery Dance *by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. Zombies! and
They killed off good-guy reporter Bill Smithback! in the first chapter!
Now reading *The Gift of Fear *by Gavin de Becker, as has been recommended by so many; for about a year now the database at the library has said it’s on the shelf, but it wasn’t – I was sure it had been stolen. Finally last weekend it showed up.
I’m about 100 pages into the new Margaret Elphinstone novel, The Gathering Night. 8000+ years ago in prehistoric Scotland, the Auk people hear rumours of a great disaster striking the shores across the country… The story is teased out on successive nights as the main characters each tell their pieces of the tale as they sit around the campfire.
It gives a real feel for how life might have been in those days, and the disaster in it is based on a tsunami that struck Scotland at that time.
Excellent stuff!
Up next, probably Cheek by Jowl, essays by Ursula K. LeGuin about the importance of fantasy… It looks interesting and it’s quite short!
Re: Duma Key, I’m not a fast reader, but I’m about a third through it and I’m completely sucked in. First-person narratives always keep me rivited, but this is very good so far. I’ll be really disappointed if it turns out to all be a dream while he’s in a coma or something.
I won’t spoil anything, but I will say you don’t have to worry about that.
I’m reading Network + Fast Pass.
Yay! Thank you, now I won’t have to read with an anticipatory wince. 
You should be almost half done by then 
Enjoy. I loved it and want to read it again but the time investment is HUGE.
I finished Left Hand of Darkness last night and immediately threw it down the hall. Not only did it fail to grab me, keep my attention, or involve me in the world in any way, it also failed to make a satisfying thump against the far wall.
Sorry, dude. What, in particular, annoyed you about it?
It’s been a long time since I read it, but I thought it was a well-written, low-key sf novel about diplomacy and coming to understand a different, gender-shifting culture. I hope you weren’t expecting space battles, because there ain’t none.
I’ve always felt a little guilty for disliking Le Guin, so I’m glad I’m not the only one. I recently gave her another try, reading The Dispossessed, and I didn’t much care for it.
I’m up to the fourth book in the Marcus Didius Falco mystery series - I’m enjoying these. And I just read The Commodore, as part of my slow second pass through the Aubrey-Maturin series.
Mainly because I never felt like I was a part of the world. Even though Dune has as many political machinations as LHOD, quite possibly more, I felt a part of that world from page 1. LHOD didn’t draw me in until two-thirds of the way through and then immediately spit me out. I understand what Le Guin was doing, and I respect it and I think she did a good job on the philosophic side. On the story side she left me, haha, out in the cold. Since my first reading of a book is for the story, LHOD failed.
I know Le Guin can write. I own and love A Wizard of Earthsea, but in that book the story took first place over The Message and I think that ultimately hurt LHOD.
This sounds interesting.
If it does, then read Stinger. I’ve read it twice. If I still had the book, I’d read it again. McCammon’s hit or miss with me – sometimes he tries too hard – but I loved Stinger. Scary, but with heart. He makes you love the characters before he kills them.
OK, thanks. Sorry it wasn’t to your liking. I can’t say it’s on my personal Top Ten list either, by any means, but to each their own.
Finished Guests of the Ayatollah by Mark Bowden of Black Hawk Down fame. It is a compelling blow-by-blow of the Iranian hostage crisis, but as a review on Salon.com pointed out, it doesn’t really offer any lessons beyond the one in history.
I am currently reading I Wouldn’t Start from Here by Andrew Mueller which is excellent, demented travel writing in the mold of Holidays in Hell. I am also in the middle of The Devil We Know by Robert Baer and The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran.
Finished Next, by Michael Crichton, involving intrigue in the biogenetic industry. A good read. Hmmm, he died a couple years after this book came out. I’m wondering if industry bigwigs might have whacked him! :eek:
Next up: News of a Kidnapping, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. A novelized account of the real-life kidnappings of 10 women during the winter of 1990 by Pablo Escobar’s Medellin cartel.
The new Deanna Raybourn. I don’t read a huge amount of genre fiction anymore, but I stumbled onto her first book, Silent in the Grave, when I got my Kindle, and enjoyed the hell out of it. It’s a cross-genre genre novel – historical romance and mystery. The main figure is Lady Julia Grey, whose husband is murdered in the opening of Silent in the Grave. She hires the Byronic studmuffin Brisbane to find out what’s going on.
The time period isn’t the usual for romance novels – late Victorian – and the author stays away from the worst of the cliches; there’s good humor, good plotting, good writing. Raybourn reminds me a bit of Jayne Anne Krentz in her Amanda Quick persona (another author – two authors? – who I pick up when I see), though with less explicit sex.
Anyway, for those who like historic romances spiced with mystery, or mysteries spiced with historic romance, I recommend her. Read 'em in order, since there’s an overall narrative arc across the books about the development of the relationship between Lady Julia and Brisbane. (Silent in the Grave is followed by Silent in the Sanctuary; the one I read yesterday – in damn close to a single sitting, all 465 pages of it – is Silent on the Moor.)