It's October. What are you reading?

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Thanks Joan! The best bit is that they get better! Honestly, I promise they do.

I’m going to have to concede defeat on A Turn of Light. I really wanted to like this book, because it’s got a great premise and is an unusual fantasy about the guys at the bottom of the social scale, but at the end of the day, it’s just not for me. I find it slow and a bit twee and, now that a romantic triangle has loomed into view, it feels a bit sickly for my tastes. The funny thing is that the village life, which struck me as unconvincing, appears to have been pretty well-researched. I don’t think it’s a bad book though, just not my sort of thing.
 
The Wolf's Hour by Robert R. McCammon.

Oh man - Best. Action. Opening. Ever.

Many action-thriller writers could take a leaf or two from McCammon's book. Seriously good fun and great writing - I can picture it like an action-adventure movie in my head as I read, with Richard Armitage as the lead character.
 
I've just finished Kendell Elliott's Hidden the first of the "Bone Secrets Novels." It was a pretty good mystery, but it was pretty formulaic. From early on you just knew what the climatic scene was going to be like. It was also borderline erotic for a mystery. I've moved on Silent Witness by Rebecca Forster. It is the sequel to Hostile Witness and it has taken the nice little ending with a bow on top of that book and digs deeper into the main characters. I like it really well so far. I'm continuing to read A Call to Duty by David Weber and Timothy Zahn. Not a bad read so far, but it's certainly not an early Honor Harrington book either. We'll see if I change my mind by the end.
 
I started The Worm Ouroboros, but really struggled to get into it due to it's dated writing style. I'm sure there is a good story in there but I gave it 50 pages and it didn't grab me one bit.

Instead I picked up The Drawing of The Three, by Steven King, which has grabbed my attention straight away. Looking forward to this one after the first one I devoured in the hospital waiting room. :)
 
Finished Lev Grossman's The Magicians - not bad, even if the main dude was seriously getting on my nerves for being for bloody depressed and mopey all the time. Now onto The Chimera Vector by Nathan M. Farrugia.
 
Lord Soth said:
Well yes that is true! By the way - just wondering... are you a feminist that fights nerds, or a nerd feminist that fights others? :)
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I'm a feminist nerd who works to end violence against women. So no, I don't actually fight with anybody although I do fight to change cultures and communities that normalise violence against women (which is still pretty much, er, most cultures).

And the term "nerdfighter" was coined by John and Hank Green and it's basically a huge online community of nerds and geeks who work together to raise funds and awareness for social justice causes :)
 
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The_Bluestocking said:
The Wolf's Hour by Robert R. McCammon.

Oh man - Best. Action. Opening. Ever.

Many action-thriller writers could take a leaf or two from McCammon's book. Seriously good fun and great writing - I can picture it like an action-adventure movie in my head as I read, with Richard Armitage as the lead character.
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I was only talking about that book the other day! I liked it a lot.


I was reading Into the Storm, the first book in Taylor Anderson's 'Destroyermen' series, but I had to put it aside in the end cos it was doing nothing for me.

I've started David Gemmell's Lion of Macedon instead. Forty pages in and I'm hooked already.
 
HareBrain said:
Just finished Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust. Not really sure what to say about it, except that it provides an insight into a time and social group I'm glad I never inhabited. Very good though.
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I teach a literature course in which we begin with Malory and end with Waugh. The Arthurian element in the latter is given force by their having read hundreds of pages of Morte Darthur some weeks ago. Handful is superb, a devastating rendition of society. I relish the Princess. Now there's multiculturalism for you.
 
Do you also examine the alternative ending in your class? It seemed incredibly weak to me. I liked the Amazonian stuff, though I gather many critics thought it had no place in the book.
 
The_Bluestocking said:
The Wolf's Hour by Robert R. McCammon.

Oh man - Best. Action. Opening. Ever.

Many action-thriller writers could take a leaf or two from McCammon's book. Seriously good fun and great writing - I can picture it like an action-adventure movie in my head as I read, with Richard Armitage as the lead character.
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I'll have a look, sounds interesting.

Just read Brent Weeks' The Broken Eye; enjoyed it immensely. I wasn't too sure about the first Lightbringer novel, I liked the second and really liked this one. The series is definitely maturing nicely.

Also just finished The Book of Life, the last of Deborah Harkness' All Souls Trilogy. A satisfying conclusion, though in my opinion the second book is the best.

Now I'm reading Sebastien de Castell's Traitor's Blade. Enjoying it so far. Nice bit of swashbuckling fun so far, with some darker undertones alongside.
 
Finished reading Eyes Like Sky, and Coal, and Moonlight, a collection of short stories by Cat Rambo.

Here is a part of what I said about the book on my blog:

There is a sadness to many of these stories, a darkness lurking around the edges, though there is hope, too, and transformation. Those that impressed me most were the title story, “Her Eyes Like Sky, And Coal, And Moonlight,” “Magnificent Pigs,” “The Towering Monarch of His Mighty Race, Whose Like the World Will Never See Again,” and “The Dead Girl’s Wedding March.”
 
Now adding the following to my October reading pile:
  • Danse Macabre by Stephen King - His thoughts and theories about what scares us, what works in Horror fiction, and why Horror fiction matters.
  • Anna Dressed In Blood by Kendare Blake - This is an AWESOME fast-paced action-packed YA book about a teenage ghosthunter and an unusual urban legend ghost.
 
I'm painfully aware that I don't make time to read enough (and also that the first rule of writing is to read...a lot!), so if I join in this thread I'm hoping it will make me a bit more concious of my pitiful consumption rate.

So - just started The Book of the New Sun - and I'm staying away from the Gene Wolfe thread until I've read all of them.
It's pretty different from the style/genre of things I've been reading over the past couple of years, and I'm looking forward to it.
 
Darkchrome said:
I'm painfully aware that I don't make time to read enough (and also that the first rule of writing is to read...a lot!), so if I join in this thread I'm hoping it will make me a bit more concious of my pitiful consumption rate.

So - just started The Book of the New Sun - and I'm staying away from the Gene Wolfe thread until I've read all of them.
It's pretty different from the style/genre of things I've been reading over the past couple of years, and I'm looking forward to it.
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Read Shadow of the Torturer and savour it for a bit before diving into the rest. Magnificent, gnomic, and wonderful, and quite different from anything else. The following books are equally good in their way, but nothing is quite as satisfying as that first hit.
 
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