October Offerings - What tantalising tome are you reading?

[GOLLUM]

You know the drill.

A new month, so what book are you currently checking out?

 

[Aleksei]

I read the first book in the gap series, by Donaldson, yesterday and I can't say it was my cup of tea. Probably won't read the rest of the books. I think the next book I'll take on will either be the second one in the Uplift series, by David Brin, or a post-apocalyptic book called Wolf and Iron, by Gordon R Dickson.

 

[williamsjr]

Just about to start 'The Light of Other Days' by Arthur C Clarke and Stephen Baxter. Haven't opened the cover yet - so hope it's a good one.

JW

 

[T5.2]

Almost finished with We Claim These Stars (Poul Anderson).
After that I will begin reading At Midnight On The 31st Of March (Josephine Young Case).

 

[Joel007]

I put down The Magician - Feist, partway through to have a go at The Fourth Bear - Jasper Fforde, and then Wintersmith - Terry Pratchett. Then back to Feist

 

[Marky Lazer]

Finishing Willful Creatures (short stories) by Aimee Bender, somewhere down Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-5, and started Maurice Level's Night and Silence (short stories).

 

[the smiling weirwood]

bleargh! American Gods by the ever so talented Neil Gaiman.

 

[Stormpirate]

Reading both The Mother Tongue, by Bill Bryson, and Dead Witch Walking, by Kim Harrison.

 

[iansales]

Finished Other Edens, edited by Christopher Evans and Robert Holdstock, then read Deathwing, a Warhammer: 40,000 anthology featuring stories by Ian Watson, Charles Stross and Storm Constantine. Next up is Olivia Manning's The Balkan Trilogy. Might take a while to finish, this one...

 

[Cerberus]

Patern Recognition - William Gibson

 

[Mouse]

I'm reading Forest Mage by Robin Hobb.

 

[aarti]

Still reading Wilkie Collins' Armadale for a group read, and also reading Lois McMaster Bujold's The Curse of Chalion. Which I'm COMPLETELY absorbed in!

 

[jackokent]

Cold Mountain, Charlse Frazier

 

[nixie]

Finished Feist's Ino a Dark Realm now back to Colleen McCullough's The Grass Crown

 

[dwndrgn]

Just finished Phantom by Goodkind and enjoyed it. Next should be either Bead's Pickle or Dragon's Tongue depending on when I get them back (my friend borrowed them while I was finishing up Phantom).

 

[Carolyn Hill]

(Someone borrowed Bead's Pickle? Wow, that's cool. )

Still rereading Kim Harrison's novels, in order to write reviews.

 

[Stenevor]

Finished Feersum Endjinn - Iain M Banks and half way through 1984.

 

[dwndrgn]

(Someone borrowed Bead's Pickle? Wow, that's cool. )

I think it's cool too! (though it means I have to wait to read it now) She's not generally into scifi but she wanted to check it out anyway. She normally reads whatever books come her way (she doesn't work a lot of hours and spends most of the time at home with her 8 month old baby boy) and quite often it is her MIL's old romance novels and whatever I've got to hand...she was tired of romance so decided to see what kind of pickle Bead was in. She was also especially keen since you are part of this website - she has liked all of the books from Mark and Teresa so far.

 

[Culhwch]

I've just started Madeline Howard's The Hidden Stars. Only one chapter in so far, but I'm liking it... Puts me in mind of Bernard Cornwell's The Winter King, particularly the landscape. Oh, and opening with a birth probably helps.

 

[ravenus]

King Rat - China Mieville

Chanced upon this little gem and picked it up immediately and it's a grimy gory fun read. While not up to the emotional depth and visual scope of works like Perdido Street Station, this has a lovely superhero graphic-novel kind of style. The protagonist is an obvious variant on existing superheroes that have a problem with their heritage, like Hulk or Man-bat or Swamp Thing or others of that ilk. While the characters cannot be described as particularly layered or empathizable (which renders their deaths not as poignant as the ones in PSS), none of them are annoying and the story, which takes a clever spin on a certain fairy tale, moves at a brisk clip and provides a satisfying if never really surprising conclusion.

----------------------

Went through a few more EA Poe stories, including another incredibly boring Dupin story called The Purloined Letter (I've decided that I strongly dislike all the Dupin stories and find him to be a verbose irritant), but mostly pleasing ones like Masque of Red Death, Cask of Amantodillo, Imp of the Perverse, Pit and the Pendulum, Island of the Fay. One can definitely see the sort of stuff that inspired a certain Mr. Lovecraft and made him such an ardent Poe devotee.

One of the more droll stories was The system of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether, set in an insane asylum, which was nice but the joke carried on for too long and this story was much better adapted by Robert Bloch in one of his collections.

------------------------


Apart from this also read the very arresting play The Fire and The Rain by noted Indian playwright Girish Karnad which puts forth very interesting moral dilemmas drawing from minor incidents from the Indian mythological epic Mahabharata.

-------------------------
Also re-read most of Stephen King's mind-blowing tear-jerking novella The Body