The All-New Singing and Dancing October Reading Thread!

[Lobolover]

@ Connavar : wasn't that "Let the right on in" ?

 

[Simian]

I'm broke (and far too lazy to visit the library) so I'm reading the entire Song of Ice and Fire again, in the hope that by the time I'm done GRRM might be somewhere close to happy with the latest installment. I'm also having another stab at Quicksilver (I can never get beyond all that calculus) and out of genre, The Immoralist, by Andre Gide.

 

[Connavar]

@ Connavar : wasn't that "Let the right on in" ?

Yes of course but since i have been almost my hole life in Sweden i will read in the language of my almost first language

Which is why its a rare book to me. A story i enjoy in horror or SFF in swedish language doesnt happen. Thats why the writer is highly rated over here.

 

[Lobolover]

I don't wanna be a grammar nazi, especialy as I make tons of spelling errors myself , but should it not be "whole"

 

[Rothgar]

Currently reading The Menace From Earth, by Heinlein. I think the short story By His Bootstraps is the best time travel story I've read to date.

 

[Ursa major]

I've just finished reading God Emperor of Didcot by Toby Frost, the first sequel to Space Captain Smith.

First sentence of Chapter One: Isambard Smith ran ten yards before the jungle burst open behind him and a mass of tentacles the size of a house threw a tree-trunk at his head.

Another hilarious read. I've come to see the principal protagonist, Isambard Smith, as a combination of two Arnold Rimmers: he has the same disconnection from the world around him of "our" Rimmer**, with the heroism of Ace. Add to that the speech patterns of a refugee from a Boy's Own Paper story*** and he's a marvellous comic creation.

Much of the humour is very broad, with more than a few innuendos, and there are some groan-worthy puns (Excellent!), but Mr Frost will use anything to get a laugh and he got an awful lot from me. I particularly liked this example:

He had not been so happy since he was six, when his parents had bought him a book called Fifty Space Dreadnoughts to Colour and Keep. It had come with a grey crayon.

All in all, very silly and very funny.

I shall now have to search out the third book in the sequence, Wrath of the Lemming Men.





** - As with Arnold, Isambard did not have the best time at school. And to be fair, Isambard's realations with the "fairer sex" make Rimmer look like a consumate Romeo....

*** - To be fair, I don't think I've ever read a real Boy's Own Paper adventure, so I'm comparing Frost's book with the stereotype; either that or Ripping Yarns.

 

[Rothgar]

Now reading the collection of Bauchelain and Korbal Broach stories by Steven Erikson.

 

[Ursa major]

I'm now taking (another) detour into fantasy, with The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie.

 

[elvet]

I'm now taking (another) detour into fantasy, with The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie.

Speaking of detours, I'm reading my first SF in a long time after a steady diet of Fantasy. It's Neal Stephenson's Ananthem . I was attracted by the premise of the story, besides which any author that included logic/math calculations in the appendix piques my interest. I haven't been disappointed, in fact I can't wait to get real life out of the way to get back to the book.
Prior to Ananthem, I read The Steel Remains. I liked the whiff of SF it contained, even though it was a sword toting fantasy. Maybe that helped me seque into stonger stuff. BTW, I loved The Steel Reamins - brutal, fast-paced and explicit, with a motley crew of characters. I'm looking forward to the sequel.

 

[GOLLUM]

Speaking of detours, I'm reading my first SF in a long time after a steady diet of Fantasy. It's Neal Stephenson's Ananthem . I was attracted by the premise of the story, besides which any author that included logic/math calculations in the appendix piques my interest. I haven't been disappointed, in fact I can't wait to get real life out of the way to get back to the book.

You should read his magnum Opus... Baroque Cycle/trilogy. IMO it's brialliant!

I've got all of Stephenson's books but haven't got time to read Ananthem til next year.

I'm a big fan....

 

[Fried Egg]

Finished "The Crystal World" by J. G. Ballard and on to "The Long Way Home" by Poul Anderson.

 

[Casspar]

anything by Alistair Reynolds or Ken Macleod! great reading guaranteed.

 

[Talysia]

Just starting Brandon Sanderson and Robert Jordan's The Gathering Storm.

 

[Connavar]

The Last Defender of Camelot by Roger Zelazny

RZ keeps growing on me and his short fiction is as much quality as his great novels.

 

[Lady of Winterfell]

Well, I tried to read The Great Book of Amber by Roger Zelazny, and couldn't do it. I gave it about 100 pages, but just couldn't get into it.

I'm not sure what new book I'm going to read next, but right now I'm rereading Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey.

 

[Perpetual Man]

Have just finished Fool's Errand by Robin Hobb, which I really enjoyed, and was hoping that my next book would have turned up in the post today, but it didn't

Don't really want to start anything else until The Gathering Storm is in my sweaty little fingers, so catching up on my magazine reading.

 

[HoopyFrood]

Waiting for Godot

 

[Lobolover]

I hope youve got patience . He's noted never to come on time

 

[j d worthington]

Waiting for Godot

If you end up going from this to Ionesco's Rhinocéros, it's definitely time to check into the hospital....

 

[Pyan]

Waiting for Godot

When I worked in Motorway Service Areas as a Catering Manager in the '80s, my large restaurant had a Tannoy loudspeaker system, for lost children, missing passengers, etc.

Imagine my surprise when I was having a well-earned break one day to hear it boom out:

"If there is a Mr Godot in the building, would he please go to the foyer, where his friends are waiting for him..."

I hurried to the office, but the definitely non-Beckett reading member of staff in there was just reading a note he'd been passed by a customer - I never did find out any more about our literary prankster...


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Reading Zoë's Tale, a retelling of John Scalzi's third Old Man's War novel, The Last Colony, written from the POV of a different character from the original.