Author Topic: What are you reading?  (Read 845570 times)

Alasdair5000

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Reply #2425 on: April 15, 2014, 06:34:43 PM
The first volume of Bendis' run on Guardians of the Galaxy which, aside from a really dickish comment about Captain Britain, is fun.

Armored, the John Joseph Adams power armour anthology. First piece is literally 33% exposition (Protip writers: NO ONE needs to know the descent velocity of the world your story is set on. NO.ONE.), some fullbore right wing chestbeating and a couple of really close to the knuckle racial metaphors. Payoff is surprisingly great and the two stories that follow that I've read so far are a vast improvement.



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Reply #2426 on: April 15, 2014, 06:55:12 PM
I keep trying to decide if I want to actually read Guardians of the Galaxy first, or watch the movie. Is it as quirky as the movie looks?

I read the run back in the early 90s, I think, but it was a completely different team, and they were Very Serious.


Alasdair5000

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Reply #2427 on: April 15, 2014, 07:07:15 PM
It's not remotely serious now:) I would highly recommend waiting a couple of months and grabbing the first omnibus of the Abnett/Lanning run. It's both a huge influence on the movie and WONDERFUL. Their chief of Ops in the books, as I recall, is a Russian cosmonaut dog granted psychic powers byu the same cosmic rays that changed the Fantastic Four:)



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Reply #2428 on: April 15, 2014, 10:14:16 PM
Just finished Shaman by Kim Stanley Robinson and it was an amazing read.  I wouldn't really call it fantasy, but it is more in the vein of the Jean Auel books. 


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Reply #2429 on: April 16, 2014, 01:07:05 AM
I'm currently reading "The Longest Day" by Cornelius Ryan.  It's the classic account of D-day, published in 1959 and written while memories of the Allied invasion of France were still fresh.  So far, Ryan is doing a remarkably good job of presenting the German point of view, and using lots of quasi-fictional techniques to make the story fresh and personal. Although he's clearly more interested in narrative flow than exploring every byway of disagreement among historians, he does acknowledge some controversies, such as questions about when an why Rommel was absent from his command post when the invasion occurred.

I'm reading it in preparation for a trip to the Normandy battlefields with my parents this fall.  I'm also hoping to get through "Guns at Last Light" before the trip.  It's a much weightier and more recent account.  It will be interesting to compare two very different approaches to the subject matter. 

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Reply #2430 on: April 21, 2014, 12:47:39 PM
Mur Lafferty, The Shambling Guide to New York

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Reply #2431 on: April 22, 2014, 12:13:43 AM
Rereading A Feast for Crows by George R.R. Martin. I was flipping through it again, and discovered I didn't remember half of what went down. Coworkers bought me Dance With Dragons, so I want to re-check in to SoIaF and really experience it fully.


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Reply #2432 on: April 24, 2014, 02:39:54 PM
Currently listening to both Daryl Gregory's Afterparty and Kate Atkinson's Life After Life, and enjoying both.


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Reply #2433 on: April 24, 2014, 02:45:29 PM
I'm trying to read "A Highly Unlikely Scenario" by Rachel Cantor, but the lack of quotation marks is getting on my nerves. I may have to switch to something different.

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Reply #2434 on: April 26, 2014, 03:40:51 PM
I'm trying to read "A Highly Unlikely Scenario" by Rachel Cantor, but the lack of quotation marks is getting on my nerves. I may have to switch to something different.

I had that same reaction to "The Kindly Ones" buy Jonathan Littel. After 100 pages without page breaks or quotes I hurled that monster tome into the trash.

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Reply #2435 on: April 28, 2014, 04:04:17 PM
I'm trying to read "A Highly Unlikely Scenario" by Rachel Cantor, but the lack of quotation marks is getting on my nerves. I may have to switch to something different.

I had that same reaction to "The Kindly Ones" buy Jonathan Littel. After 100 pages without page breaks or quotes I hurled that monster tome into the trash.

I gave up after about 15 minutes and started reading GRRM. I've never read Game of Thrones, but now I'm wondering why someone didn't force me to, because once you get past the first chapter, it's quite engrossing. I got through about 25% of the book last night.

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Devoted135

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Reply #2436 on: May 21, 2014, 04:08:18 AM
Finished up Valente's Fairyland series, so very cool. :)

Read my friend's second book, Morningside Fall by Jay Posey. LOVED it. Western SF with a very strong tech bent.

Now diving into A Dance with Dragons. Already so much better than the fourth book, and it'll be nice to not have to worry about spoilers anymore. However, it won't be nice to join the ranks of everyone who is waiting impatiently for the series to end already.



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Reply #2437 on: May 21, 2014, 03:30:20 PM
Yeah, that's one thing that's made me not want to read the last two books too soon.

(Spoilers, OTOH, make me want to read them ASAP.)


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Reply #2438 on: May 21, 2014, 08:52:52 PM
I just got done with a Twain kick, A Connecticut Yankee... was actually pretty good, if you can get through the jokes that he pounds down over pages. It was also kind of interesting to see the originals of many. time travel jokes.  I am moving onto "Illustrated Man" by Bradbury. 

I'd really like to get into some contemporary stuff, but most of the newer books I have read just have not impressed me.  I found "The Road" extremely redundant and "American Gods" well written and very  interesting, but it ran off of the tracks after he left Wisconsin, got boring, and lost any type of clear messages that it had.  Then I predicted the ending and lost interest. 

Any suggestions??



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Reply #2439 on: May 21, 2014, 11:27:52 PM
I just got done with a Twain kick, A Connecticut Yankee... was actually pretty good, if you can get through the jokes that he pounds down over pages. It was also kind of interesting to see the originals of many. time travel jokes.  I am moving onto "Illustrated Man" by Bradbury. 

I'd really like to get into some contemporary stuff, but most of the newer books I have read just have not impressed me.  I found "The Road" extremely redundant and "American Gods" well written and very  interesting, but it ran off of the tracks after he left Wisconsin, got boring, and lost any type of clear messages that it had.  Then I predicted the ending and lost interest. 

Any suggestions??

RE: Illustrated Man - Have you read Bradbury's October Country?

For contemporary, I think you should pick up a copy of Joe Hill's 20th Century Ghosts.

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Reply #2440 on: May 22, 2014, 12:02:06 PM
I tried to read Dorothy Must Die and The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes, as well as the novelization of Goldeneye (one of my favorite Bond films), but couldn't get into them.

Now reading Richard Roberts's Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain. It sucked me in very quickly, despite some really awful puns in character naming.

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Richard Babley

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Reply #2441 on: May 22, 2014, 09:00:27 PM

RE: Illustrated Man - Have you read Bradbury's October Country?

For contemporary, I think you should pick up a copy of Joe Hill's 20th Century Ghosts.

From Bradbury I have only read 451 and the Martian Chronicles.  I love his poetic style.  October country sounds interesting.  Hill sounds good too, I think I'll move onto him, and then back to Bradbury.  That is if something doesn't come inbetween...



Devoted135

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Reply #2442 on: May 24, 2014, 04:43:18 PM
Yeah, that's one thing that's made me not want to read the last two books too soon.

(Spoilers, OTOH, make me want to read them ASAP.)

You've only read the first three, yes?



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Reply #2443 on: May 27, 2014, 09:40:47 PM
Yeah, that's one thing that's made me not want to read the last two books too soon.

(Spoilers, OTOH, make me want to read them ASAP.)

You've only read the first three, yes?

Correct!  :)


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Reply #2444 on: May 29, 2014, 05:19:26 AM
Just started with A Briefer History of Time


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Reply #2445 on: June 09, 2014, 06:04:29 PM
Orange is the New Black. It was on the New Books cart at my local library last Thursday and I didn't have anything better to pick up.
Then the wife and I started watching the teevee series on Saturday.

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Devoted135

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Reply #2446 on: June 11, 2014, 04:38:05 PM
I received Harry Turtledove's The Great War: American Front for my birthday so I'm starting it now. It's an alt history based on the premise of "what if the Confederate States did well enough during the Civil War that Britain and France decided to officially recognize them as a sovereign nation? And how would that affect WWI?" The friend who gifted it to me spoke very highly of the series. Should be interesting. :)



lowky

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Reply #2447 on: June 12, 2014, 03:38:12 AM
Rereading the Black Company books by Glen Cook, on the second book now.


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Reply #2448 on: June 17, 2014, 05:40:57 PM
Finished the Kushiel trilogy (the first three books of the six-book cycle) by Jacqueline Carey.

Read the novelization of A Million Ways to Die in the West by Seth McFarlane -- not bad, though some of the material didn't translate from screen to page.

Now reading A Clash of Kings by GRRM. Follow along here.

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Reply #2449 on: June 18, 2014, 05:06:45 AM
I'm about one-third of the way through "The Glass Sealing," Book Three in The Darkside Codex.  Since have a book slated to be part of this series, it's partially "work reading" for me, but I'm enjoying it a great deal. 

This book is concerned with class conflict in the world of Southwatch, a city that is divided vertically between it's elite -- who live on the upper stories of the the tallest buildings or on airships that float above them -- and the lower classes, who live in the regions below the perpetual "dark cloud" of toxic pollutants that hovers over the city, pierced only by the tallest buildings. A Steampunk world, it's currently experiencing the growing pains of industrialization, including unemployment caused by the introduction of robots.

In addition to being a fun read, with dirigible-driving "air pirates," an "independent woman of independent means" and a disgraced academic, it's also a way to look at some of the real issues in our world.

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