July 2017: What are you reading?

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I did once come across someone who put the Contents at the back now you mention it. That was just so bizarre I passed straight by.

I could have sworn SoIaF has them in the front, or at least my copies, not that I can find them right now to check.
 
Don't know about now, but when I started reading glossary's were ordinarily at the back with indexes and footnotes. But contents list or character list? Never.


Randy M.
 
The Big Peat said:
I did once come across someone who put the Contents at the back now you mention it. That was just so bizarre I passed straight by.

I could have sworn SoIaF has them in the front, or at least my copies, not that I can find them right now to check.
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I just looked at my paperback editions (which I've not read) and they are at the back.:)
 
Thanks to having to take my car in to the shop twice during the last few days, I got a fair amount of reading done.

I finished Death's End by Liu Cixin, thus completing the trilogy. Very good indeed, with lots of mind-expanding Sense of Wonder on a vast scale.

By way of contrast, I also read, in one sitting, Ray Bradbury's slim little book Farewell Summer (2006), a sequel to Dandelion Wine (1957.) With very short chapters, lots of white space, and many one-sentence paragraphs, this is probably a novella. It's very Bradburyian, with all the metaphors and naive but sincere sentiment that implies. The mood is wistful, which befits a work which I would guess the author thought of as his swan song.

Next up:

Slippage (1997) by Harlan Ellison, a collection of stories (and one screenplay) from 1988 to 1997.
 
Four in the morning and wide awake so scrolled through my TBR ebooks.
I have settled on P C Wren's classic Beau Geste. I know I read a few of his Foreign Legion stories back in 1971 & '72 but so long ago they might as well be new to me.
See how it goes....
 
Big Peat, the instruction to only use black ink when filling our the self-assessment tax form is almost literally the last thing in the instructions.

Still making slow progress (just due to lack of reading time) with Emperor's Edge. I do like the writing style, straightforward but engaging.
 
Most of the books I have read, that have had character lists etc.,have had them at the back.
I never bother with them.If I can't understand who the characters are by around page 50,I don't read the book.
 
Vertigo said:
Ah that's a bit of a worry I will be getting around to that one eventually. The problem with Reynolds is that when he's good he's really good and I don't want the book to end but when he's not so good I really start noticing just how long his books are....
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Finished Revenger now, not gonna spoil it.

It COULD ideally have been
a bit shorter, I got the impression here and there it was padded out needlessly.

A space opera will always be one of my reading choices however. :)
 
thaddeus6th said:
Big Peat, the instruction to only use black ink when filling our the self-assessment tax form is almost literally the last thing in the instructions.

Still making slow progress (just due to lack of reading time) with Emperor's Edge. I do like the writing style, straightforward but engaging.
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Hah! That's brilliant.

Also, there was me thinking I was the only one who'd read that book here. Its fun. Will be interested to hear if you feel like progressing at the end.
 
Enjoying Distant Neighbors, the selected letters of Wendell Berry and Gary Snyder. I'm also (re)visiting things by these authors also.
 
Big Peat, you mean with Emperor's Edge, right? Paying taxes isn't optional :p
 
The Blade Itself just starting it never read any of Joe Abercrombie so here goes
 
Welcome to Chrons. I really liked that trilogy, although it's some time since I read it. Hmm. Maybe I should have a rare re-read.
 
I finished the following books fair recently -

Servant of the Underworld by Aliette de Bodard - As mentioned, I love the idea. But... there's not really a murder mystery here. There's a murder, and they spend a bit of time solving it, but there's not much of a mystery, and they spend half the time dealing with temple politics/family business/doing magic. All of which is cool but there's a lot going into a little here and I might go so far as to say too much into too little. Some of the threads that get introduced and then semi-resolved feel like they'd have done better with 2-3 books. It then ends with a massive magical fight. I'm really not sure what I ultimately think of it.

Kushiel's Exile by Jacqueline Carey - It picked up then trailed off again. The book is too long with too much repetition of the same emotions, and the best character dynamics in the series are nowhere to be found and crucially, victory feels somewhat cheap. Which is okay, except in this series so far, it's felt very hollowing. Boo! Boo!

Water and the Wild by Jo Zebedee - Took me a while to get going, mainly because I didn't find Simon all that engaging to begin with, but once we got onto Amy and her family it was all gravy. Gravy made from people's sweet salty tears.
 
Gilly said:
Thanks I love Sci-fi / dystopian books so hoping for lots of recommendations here
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Reading now an engrossing first novel, David Williams's When the English Fall, told as journal entries by an Amish husband, father, and farmer, with a precognitive daughter, and the time when a solar storm knocked out the grid and technological society, it seems began to come apart -- I'm about 75 pages into it. If it keeps up at this level of quality it will be a notable book for my reading this year.

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