August 2016: What have you been reading?

Brian G Turner

Brian G Turner

Fantasist & Futurist
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Time for an August thread. :)

Settled into Robert Fabbri's Furies of Rome - good to be in familiar territory again. Also good to see how the character of Vespasian is developing. :)
 
Thanks for posting Brian..

Still wading through volume 1 of Proust's magnum opus In search Of Lost Time. I've been doing a bit of research on Proust which is why I haven't finished the first volume yet. His prose including the famously convoluted Proust sentence that takes on a syntactical life of its own is not to everyone's taste but there are enough moments of beauty and wisdom interspersed with cruelty and irony to encourage one to persevere in order to reap the rewards. Many people don't make it to the end of book 1 let alone the entire work but as I have been assured it is well worth the effort I will most definitely complete it.
 
GOLLUM said:
I will most definitely complete it.
Click to expand...

I await your feedback with interest.

Did you ever read any J Cowper Powys, by the way? You were interested in my reports on his books a couple of years back.

My own reading at the moment is Jonathan Bates's unauthorised biography of Ted Hughes.
 
I feel like such a light-weight after reading the above ... I'm rereading At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft. I'd forgotten how relatively restrained (for him) he was early on, and how well he set the scene. The story is still able to put me in the Antarctic and make me anxious for the narrator, no easy thing on a 3rd or 4th read.

Randy M.
 
I started reading Steven Erikson's Willful Child but just put the book down with zero intention of revisiting it. Baffling how such a talented author can make such an absolute hash of it.
 
Bought and read two new (to me) books this week.
Anne McCaffery's Nerilka's Story (which for some reason I had confused with The Girl Who Heard Dragons) and Jo Zebeedee's Inish Caraig. (Probably spelled three words right in that last sentence, but I'm having a fit of lazy and can't seem to find the motivation to do more than feel bad.)

Enjoyed both!
Bought What If: scientific answers to absurd hypothetical questions, for my son's birthday. Gave it a bit of a skim (while keeping the binding intact so he doesn't know I've read it) and enjoyed that too. Going to have to get a copy for myself.

Nice to indulge! Haven't had a new book in... well cook books at Christmas don't count, so years!
 
I'm reading an Agatha Christie - Endless Night. I find I enjoy Christie more and more as I get older and my taste and critical sensitivities increase, which seems counter-intuitive, but there you go.
 
I started with Storm Front and hosed down the whole series in about 3 weeks. So fingers crossed you enjoy it as much as I did.
 
the travelr by david lynn golemon. next: fear god and dread nought
 
@Brian Turner I read the first 4 Dresden and liked them quite a bit. I plan on reading more.

I also devoured his Codex Alera fantasy series a few years ago. I loved them, and have wanted to try them again at some point.

I also have his new hardcover on my coffee table waiting for me to open, though the sheer size of it has kept me away for the past year!
 
Read two volumes of the Jenny Nimmo fantasy trilogy for children, The Snow Spider and Emlyn's Moon, and a 70s collection of Lovecraft homages, The Disciples of Cthulhu.

And book 4 in the Flavia de Luce cosy crime series, I am Half-Sick of Shadows.
 
hopewrites said:
Bought What If: scientific answers to absurd hypothetical questions, for my son's birthday. Gave it a bit of a skim (while keeping the binding intact so he doesn't know I've read it) and enjoyed that too. Going to have to get a copy for myself.
Click to expand...

That must be the Randall Munroe book? I haven't read the book directly, but I love the site (and I mean with a love as bright as 3x10^31 fireflies), as well as xkcd, itself, of course. Anyone who hasn't gone to the site should go check it out. :)

FWIW, some of my recent favorites:
Niagara Straw
Proton Earth, Electron Moon (many involve destroying the earth--or more!)
Spiders vs. the Sun
Flagpole (one of my very favorites. "Dang.")
Microwaves (not all are abstruse, but can touch on daily life)
 
Yep! That's the one.

"What if I built a rocket pack out of machine guns all shooting down"
"What if all the lightning strikes that happen on earth in a day hit one spot"

...

I really do need my own copy :)
 
I read a book by a friend of mine in the Hard Sci Fi Genre called The Path Upwards.
The 'afterlife scenes' were a bit amusing. It reminded me a bit of A Scanner Darkly and Inception.
 
Brian Turner said:
Started Jim Butcher's Stormfront. Decent start - hoping to enjoy this.
Click to expand...

I liked the Codex Alera but found the Dresden Books to be corny. Most fantasy readers like them though. Haven't tried Aeronaut's Windlass but read varying opinions. Enough people said it was boring for me to stay away.
 
Finished Colfer's sixth offering in the Hitchhiker series and I have to say I wouldn't recommend it. Then again it wasn't terrible. Just not good enough. Anyway, now I'm resuming the book I'd started before that - Sanibel Flats by Randy Wayne White. So far it's going along pretty smoothly.
 
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