What Are You Reading, Part 2

[Jondesu he/him]

6 minutes ago, AliasSheep said:

Just finished Blue Mars.  That series was, an experience.  I really, really liked them.

Next I'm reading Albert Camu's L'étranger, which is going to be fun.  And probably take forever.

I need to read the Mars Trilogy, I'll put it in my list. Have you read the John Carter of Mars series? Starting with A Princess of Mars, IIRC. Very different, but it's really intriguing. I'm a fan of unusual perspectives, and a first person narrative told in third-person (it's John Carter's story that he wrote down himself, but organized into a book and narrated by his nephew, I think is how it worked), is definitely not common. Made for a really fun read despite a bit of archaic language.

jW

[AliasSheep]

Just now, Jondesu said:

I need to read the Mars Trilogy, I'll put it in my list. Have you read the John Carter of Mars series? Starting with A Princess of Mars, IIRC. Very different, but it's really intriguing. I'm a fan of unusual perspectives, and a first person narrative told in third-person (it's John Carter's story that he wrote down himself, but organized into a book and narrated by his nephew, I think is how it worked), is definitely not common. Made for a really fun read despite a bit of archaic language.

jW

I haven't unfortunately, but I keep seeing the series mentioned, so I'm more and more inclined to read it.  It looks pretty interesting, and it'd be cool to see the originator of the term "Barsoomian"

[Sunbird she/her]

@Jondesu and @AliasSheep, I read the first three John Carter books and liked them. (The first one is indeed A Princess of Mars btw.) I enjoyed the movie too.

[StormingTexan he/him]

John Carter series is one of my favorites 

2 hours ago, Jondesu said:

I need to read the Mars Trilogy, I'll put it in my list. Have you read the John Carter of Mars series? Starting with A Princess of Mars, IIRC. Very different, but it's really intriguing. I'm a fan of unusual perspectives, and a first person narrative told in third-person (it's John Carter's story that he wrote down himself, but organized into a book and narrated by his nephew, I think is how it worked), is definitely not common. Made for a really fun read despite a bit of archaic language.

jW

Same here I really enjoyed this series and it's fun to read in a early 1900s language. It's actually really imaginative when you consider how long ago the books were written. 

Of course the movie was horrible.. 

[maxal she/her]

On 8/17/2016 at 11:39 AM, DSC01 said:

That's The Tawny Man trilogy. I would read The Liveship Traders trilogy first (though you don't have to; the stories are only slightly related to each other). I still haven't read The Rain Wild Chronicles, which is sort of the sequel to The Liveship Traders. I read maybe half of the first of the four books in that series (The Dragon Keeper), and for whatever reason, I just couldn't get into it. However, I have read the first two books of The Fitz and the Fool Trilogy (the last book doesn't come out until next year), and I like that series well enough. There's also a novella, The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince, which I have not read. There's a whole lot to read for those who are really into that world.

The Rain Wild Chronicles have a much different feel than Hobb's other series: I can understand why a reader would enjoy her other work, but not this one. For my part, I rather liked them, but I was disappointed on how the last book turned out...

Spoiler

Pesky love triangle

 

[Briar King]

Chiming in on Fitz. I've read 1-6 which are truly great reads esp bk2. I'm waiting on 7-9 to all be out in paperback before I purchase so I can read all 3 at once for less$.

[Straw he/him]

Currently on House of Chains in The Malazen Book of The Fallen series. The writing gets better than Brandon's after Gardens of the Moon and Deadhouse Gates.

Edited August 20, 2016 by Straw

[mattig89ch he/him]

So, I just finished the first Dragon Age book.  And I have to say, I rather liked it.  Its not perfect, to be sure.  But it gives the characters more depth, and helps to round them out.

There are some conflicts with the first game though.  And the the narrator for the audible version clearly didn't do his due dilligence, when figuring how to pronounce things (pronouncing the 'th' in thaig, when the game leaves the h silent).  But the book was good overall.

I picked up the second novel in the series, and am going through that one now.  It is interesting how much Marrik knew about the darkspawn and grey wardens before the first games events.  You don't really get that impression in the first game.  It might make me start up a new game, just to re-play that first area, and watch for things you didn't notice w/out the books.  that and I'm interesting in seeing what more I can do with a mage, now that I know a bit more about possibilities (the entropy magic, looks awesome).

Edit: So I just did some digging, and realized that Maric's son, is the guy we meet in the beginning.  And Marric isn't in the first game.

I honestly thought that first king we meet was Marric.  Forget what I said about the conflicts in the books.  The books, as far as I know, are perfect the way they are.  Story wise at least.

Edited August 21, 2016 by mattig89ch
Spelling Correction

[Jondesu he/him]

Went to the library today and ended up picking out Earth Unaware, the first of a prequel trilogy to Ender's Game. I didn't even know it existed, nor that he'd written as many as he did.  I though there were 8-10 books in the Ender universe, but there appears to be quite a few more, this trilogy included.  It's great so far, which is no surprise considering how much I loved the others I read (I think I'd read the first 6-7 in the series).

jW

[Briar King]

11 hours ago, Straw said:

Currently on House of Chains in The Malazen Book of The Fallen series. The writing gets better than Brandon's after Gardens of the Moon and Deadhouse Gates.

Just wait. He gets even better.

[Argent he/him]

Went through The Guns of Empire pretty quickly, and found it every bit as enjoyable as I remember the previous books in the series to be. A little heavy on the battle descriptions early on, but it eased off those about halfway through. Great ending too. I am not sure why I thought this would be the last book in the series, but it's clearly not so, and that's a good thing.

Having fallen behind on my reading challenge, I decided to pick something short for once, and so I plowed through Mark Lawrence's collection of short stories Road Brothers. Fans of his first trilogy, The Broken Empire, will likely enjoy this a lot, as it is very focused on Jorg and his companions. 

I am now back to a series I started more than a decade ago (Orson Scott Card's Tales of Alvin Maker) and had been postponing finishing for something like half of that time. I am currently reading The Crystal City, the sixth book in the series, and will likely jump into its sequel immediately after so I can finally put the series to rest.

[Left he/him]

30 minutes ago, Argent said:

Went through The Guns of Empire pretty quickly, and found it every bit as enjoyable as I remember the previous books in the series to be. A little heavy on the battle descriptions early on, but it eased off those about halfway through. Great ending too. I am not sure why I thought this would be the last book in the series, but it's clearly not so, and that's a good thing.

Having fallen behind on my reading challenge, I decided to pick something short for once, and so I plowed through Mark Lawrence's collection of short stories Road Brothers. Fans of his first trilogy, The Broken Empire, will likely enjoy this a lot, as it is very focused on Jorg and his companions. 

I am now back to a series I started more than a decade ago (Orson Scott Card's Tales of Alvin Maker) and had been postponing finishing for something like half of that time. I am currently reading The Crystal City, the sixth book in the series, and will likely jump into its sequel immediately after so I can finally put the series to rest.

Ummm, is the sequel out? I've been waiting for years, but I thought he'd just abandoned the Alvin world. 

[Argent he/him]

By "sequel" I meant the last book. I was thinking of this one, but it looks like it is just a short story. The Crystal City might be the last one.

[Dunkum he/him]

my understanding is that he intends/intended to write a seventh book (makes sense really) called something like "Master Alvin" (a continuation of the apprentice and journeyman titles from earlier), but to the best of my knowledge he hasn't written it yet, and I have no idea how far along he might be.

[Briar King]

Got a ? for any of you that have read a good many of both Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms bks. Which is better in the long haul? 

[Argent he/him]

Aaand done with The Crystal City. I will echo my Goodreads review and say that I finally figured out what my (biggest) problem with the series is - it feels fake. Conversations, interactions between the characters, and the plot, none of those things feel organic. I thought this might be because the language feels odd to me, but no, everything just feels too mechanical. The book itself was alright, it's not like it was unreadable or anything, and I still wish the story would be completed one day, but I wouldn't hold my breath for it.

Also finished The Grinning Man, a short story in the Alvin Maker world. It felt better than most of the actual books, probably because it didn't seem to be trying as hard. It was just a fun story.

I am now reading the last book in John Scalzi's Old Man's War, The End of All Things. I am trying to wrap up whatever series I have fallen behind before I start new ones (Max Gladstone has been recommended a lot, for example).

[DSC01 he/him]

I've tried to read The Gentlemen Bastards a couple of times and kept getting distracted after the first few pages of The Lies of Locke Lamora. I could tell that I was going to like the series, but I just never managed to get into it. Well, I'm up to page 345 in Red Seas Under Red Skies, so I guess it finally took. Definitely a good series, and I probably chose a good time to get into it, since the next book drops next month. 

[Andarist he/him]

Reading Four Roads Cross by Max Gladstone. Looks to be another stellar entry in the Craft series. 

I recommend this series to everybody. Really innovative use of magic and gods

[Sunbird she/her]

On 8/15/2016 at 11:44 AM, Renoux said:

I'm currently reading a very interesting non-fiction book called "How We Speak." It's an analysis of regional speech in America. It's quite fun reading the dialect of the area where I live as analyzed by an outsider. 

That does sound interesting! (I'm an English language major, so languages in general interest me more than they do most people. Or maybe I decided to major in English language because I find languages interesting. *shrug* )

I'm having a hard time finding it on GoodReads or Amazon. Can you tell me the author's name?

In other news, I'm about 2/3 the way through a book called "Ella Minnow Pea: A Progressively Lipogrammatic Epistolary Fable" by Mark Dunn.

It's pretty funny. Here's the blurb from GoodReads:

Spoiler

Ella Minnow Pea is a girl living happily on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina. Nollop was named after Nevin Nollop, author of the immortal pangram,* "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." Now Ella finds herself acting to save her friends, family, and fellow citizens from the encroaching totalitarianism of the island's Council, which has banned the use of certain letters of the alphabet as they fall from a memorial statue of Nevin Nollop. As the letters progressively drop from the statue they also disappear from the novel. The result is both a hilarious and moving story of one girl's fight for freedom of expression, as well as a linguistic tour de force sure to delight word lovers everywhere.

 

Quote

Lipogram (noun): a written work composed of words chosen so as to avoid the use of one or more specific alphabetic characters.

Quote

Pangram (noun): a sentence, verse, etc., that includes all the letters of the alphabet.

 

 

[Briar King]

Blowing through Dragonlance 1. On pg 212. It's like a breath of fresh air reading this Old Skool fantasy after the last 15 yrs of modern high fantasy stuff.

[Argent he/him]

Done with The End of All Things. I found it a really solid book - not necessarily exceptional, but very good at least. The story told through a few novellas with different protagonists is a different way of telling it, but it works.

I think I'll jump into Book of Cain now.

[Zathoth]

@Orlion Determined I finally finished Perdido Street Station, really liked it, thanks.

Now... I dont know what I want to read... maybe I'll just continue Dresden Files... or I'll read Neverwhere or The Ocean At The End Of The Lane... or I could continue Lightbringer, maybe start reading City of Stairs...

Choices, choices...

[Orlion Blight he/him]

City of Stairs is great, but also has a slight Perdido Street Station feel to it...so depending on your mood, you may want to read something else.

[StormingTexan he/him]

Finished Knife of Dreams. Things really started picking up. This has been one of my favorites so far. On to The Gathering Storm.

[Eki]

Not sure exactly what I've read since last time I posted here, but I finished Ancillary Sword, which I liked. In many ways very different from the first book. Probably getting to the third book fairly soon!

I also read some Discworld books: Equal Rites and Guards! Guards!, and currently reading Sourcery.

I understand Esk doesn't show up again for like thirty books or something, and that we barely learn what happens to her in the years just after her book, which makes me sad. Sourcery basically acts like she never existed. :/

I also bought Dune. Mostly because it's a classic... I have a feeling I won't really like it (except the worldbuilding), but we'll see.