March 2016: What Have You Been Reading?

[ratsy]

I finished Ready Player One last night. I really did like it. It was a fun read with a lot of old, classic 'geek' references that I'm sure resonated with a lot of people. The twists weren't too hard to spot coming, but they were still well executed. I am actually looking forward to seeing how they adapt this to screen. There will be a lot of licensing fees I would guess!

I think I will most likely move on to Calamity by Brandon Sanderson.

 

[pambaddeley]

Read book 1 of Louise Lawrence's Llandor trilogy, Journey Through Llandor and onto book 2, The Road to Irriyan.

 

[Pedro Del Mar]

Last night I finished R. Scott Bakker's The Thousandfold Thought, first in his Prince of Nothing series.

Definitely recommend it. Wish I'd started it ages ago.

 

[SilentRoamer]

Last night I finished R. Scott Bakker's The Thousandfold Thought, first in his Prince of Nothing series.

Definitely recommend it. Wish I'd started it ages ago.

Hey Crooksy,

Not sure what you mean: The Darkness that Comes Before is the first book in The Prince of Nothing trilogy, then The Warrior Prophet and concluding with The Thousandfold Thought - Fantastic series and one of the best fantasy yarns out there IMO.

 

[Pedro Del Mar]

Oops! Apologies, I finished The Darkness That Comes Before, next up is The Warrior Prophet

 

[SilentRoamer]

No worries Crooksy - I remembered you posted about starting the series so I thought you might have misposted.

The Warrior Prophet is my favourite of the first trilogy, not to say the other books are not great quality but TWP has some of my favourite scenes from the series.

 

[SilentRoamer]

I am reading Zelazny's Courts of Chaos the fifth book the Amber Chronicles.

Really enjoy Zelazny's prose and pacing - he really says a lot in a short space.

 

[aThenian]

Just finished The Magicians by Lev Grossman and The Gap in the Curtain by John Buchan. Both interesting reads. Might start a thread if anyone is interested in discussing.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

I am about to start Leonard: My Fifty-Year Friendship With a Remarkable Man (2016) by William Shatner with David Fisher. I assume that really means "by David Fisher." In any case, this is an account of Shatner's relationship with Leonard Nimoy. Yes, another book for us Trekkers.

Well, that was pretty minimal. Not much more about the two actors than I already knew.

Next:

Gateways (2010) edited by Elizabeth Anne Hull. This was a ninetieth birthday present to the editor's husband, Frederik Pohl. Much of the book is taken up with "You're a great guy, Fred" essays, but there's also a considerable amount of original fiction by various authors.

 

[tobl]

I finished Ready Player One last night. I really did like it. It was a fun read with a lot of old, classic 'geek' references that I'm sure resonated with a lot of people. The twists weren't too hard to spot coming, but they were still well executed. I am actually looking forward to seeing how they adapt this to screen. There will be a lot of licensing fees I would guess!

I think I will most likely move on to Calamity by Brandon Sanderson.

try Armada next i liked it also.

 

[tobl]

Just finished The Magicians by Lev Grossman and The Gap in the Curtain by John Buchan. Both interesting reads. Might start a thread if anyone is interested in discussing.

didn't take to the magicians. not even the tv series

 

[thaddeus6th]

Still on both Outlaws of the Marsh and Selwyn Raab's Five Families (although I'm almost onto volume III, of IV, of the former).

 

[aThenian]

didn't take to the magicians. not even the tv series

I've put my impressions here - hoped to get other peoples' opinions. What didn't you like? For me I think it boiled down to the spoilt over-privileged characters, and it felt a bit invented and over-clever, rather than a world which sucked me in.

Didn't even know there was a TV series.

 

[Clockworkbot]

I just finished 'The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet' by Becky Chambers. Was readable enough and I really enjoyed it in parts - in particular her imagining of the different alien cultures. But the whole thing was rather saccharine, and it felt a bit like a series of vignettes, with an apparently major plot point being introduced and then either resolved incredibly easily and quickly, or left unresolved and put aside for the rest of the novel. Would be interested to hear what other people thought.

Also reading 'The Pike' by Lucy Hughes Hallett, about the life of Gabriele d'Annunzio. Fascinating guy (if pretty odious in personality and ideology by most accounts).

 

[hitmouse]

I had a very similar reaction to the Chambers book when I read it a few months ago. I think I posted my comments on this thread back then.

 

[tobl]

I've put my impressions here - hoped to get other peoples' opinions. What didn't you like? For me I think it boiled down to the spoilt over-privileged characters, and it felt a bit invented and over-clever, rather than a world which sucked me in.

Didn't even know there was a TV series.

it's a new series on tv. honestly for me it was the pace of the book,just didn't catch me. As for the series is like a teenage series trying to be adult.

 

[aThenian]

As for the series is like a teenage series trying to be adult.

Can imagine that.

 

[soulsinging]

I finished Ready Player One last night. I really did like it. It was a fun read with a lot of old, classic 'geek' references that I'm sure resonated with a lot of people. The twists weren't too hard to spot coming, but they were still well executed. I am actually looking forward to seeing how they adapt this to screen. There will be a lot of licensing fees I would guess!

Just finished this one myself. I enjoyed it as well, though a lot of the references went over my head (the early video game and Japanese comic stuff), so I might not be as nerdy as I thought. I am looking forward to seeing the movie as well. For as much as it was set in a virtual world, I thought the human interactions were very effective and helped give it a stronger finish than I might otherwise have expected.

Now I'm taking a crack at Wool by Hugh Howey. I'm intrigued by the premise, though I fear it may wind up like the film Snowpiercer, where the message hits you over the head and kind of swallows the story. I'm also flipping through Star Wars: Scoundrels by Timothy Zahn in between. The newest movie jump started the Star Wars geekdom that the prequels killed for me, so I'm testing the waters of some of these books again. There are a shocking number of them now and some massive multi-book arcs... I may have to make my way to the sub forum to get some help separating the wheat from the chaff!

 

[ratsy]

Yeah the Japanese stuff wasn't familiar to me, nor were the early 80's ataria games, but it didn't really matter for the context of the book.

I started Wool a couple years ago, but never got past the first chapter. I'm not sure why, but I do want to read it sometime.

For me, I'm about 100 pages into Calamity by Sanderson. It's moving along quickly, if anything.

 

[pambaddeley]

Well, that was pretty minimal. Not much more about the two actors than I already knew.
.

I looked at the book in W H Smith's, came to the conclusion that it looked pretty thin and put it back. Glad now I didn't buy it.