December 2020 Reading Thread

[Foxbat]

Now just starting Lucius Shepard’s The Ends Of The Earth

 

[tobl]

Anyone read Larry Correia? Is he a good writer? I found Monster Hunter International on Amazon (US) for free and it's not bad so far.

i'm a big fan of his monster hunter series.not so much of the rest of his work. and, there are some other things i don't like. as for the insurance agent it's even stranger than you can imagine.

 

[williamjm]

One or two Culture books are best read in order but most are stand alone and that is certainly the case for Surface Detail. However it is a pretty weird (in a good way) book and probably not the best introduction to Banks' Culture books.

While I agree the series can mostly be read in any order I think there is one subplot in Surface Detail that has an extra meaning if the reader is already familiar with Use of Weapons.

 

[Galactic Bus Driver]

@tobl

I just finished the first of the Zone War series by John Conroe, one of the authors you recommended. Pretty good read. Moving on to book 2 now.

 

[Vertigo]

While I agree the series can mostly be read in any order I think there is one subplot in Surface Detail that has an extra meaning if the reader is already familiar with Use of Weapons.

It's been a while since I read Surface Detail so I probably just can't remember that bit. The next in my re-read of the Culture books is Look to Windward, then Matter then Surface Detail. So I'm a few books off reminding myself!!

 

[tobl]

@tobl

I just finished the first of the Zone War series by John Conroe, one of the authors you recommended. Pretty good read. Moving on to book 2 now.

ah i'm glad you like it.the demon accords are good too. i'm a bit on the fence over the shadows of montshire series but it's not too bad yet.

 

[Parson]

I finished Valor's Duty by Kal Spriggs. It is the fourth in the series "Children of Valor." I had begun to feel about the series the same as I came to feel about David Weber's "Safehold" series. Interesting idea, characters I liked, but --- it never goes anywhere! .... This book relieves some of that pressure. The struggle moves more out in the open and the sides are becoming more clearly understood. I've now started Valor's Stand book 5 in the series.

 

[AE35Unit]

Going to read Let it Bleed by Ian Rankin. New author for me. Its Rebus book no° 7. I wanted to get hold of the first one, Knots and Crosses but this'll do as an intro to the author. Plus it's set in winter. I always like to read books in season for some reason.

 

[tobl]

Soooo.... Reading ready player two. So far is annoying and morose. But there's a lot of book yet

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

While I was away from the computer for a week, I made some progress in my pile of old SF paperbacks.

The Silent Sky by Lloyd Biggle, Jr. is a 1977 retitling of the 1967 collection The Rule of the Door and Other Fanciful Regulations. If you open the book to the title page, you'll see yet another title, this time Out of the Silent Sky. In any case, it collects stories from 1957 to 1965.

The Diploids by Katherine MacLean is a 1962 collection of stories from 1949 to 1953. The front cover has the title has The Diploids and Other Flights of Fancy. Anyway, both collections were pretty good.

Double, Double by John Brunner is a 1969 novel. It's pretty much a monster movie. Creature from the deeps of the sea emerges, with the ability to absorb other animals (yes, including people) and take on their characteristics. It was OK, for that sort of thing. Very much of its time, with a rock-n-roll band as major characters.

I have just started Pacific Edge by Kim Stanley Robinson (1990), his vision of a utopian version of Orange County, California, in the late 21st century.

 

[tobl]

So..... Ready player two... Didn't liked it. Feel free to make your opinion but for me it was a waste. A lot of poor rich Kids, obscure references and annoying writing

 

[Ian Fortytwo]

I'm currently reading Sandi Toksvig's autobiography. Very cleverly written, making it readable.

 

[Vince W]

So..... Ready player two... Didn't liked it. Feel free to make your opinion but for me it was a waste. A lot of poor rich Kids, obscure references and annoying writing

I have been expecting this sort of reaction. I'm waiting to hear a few others to decide if I bother with it.

 

[Pyan]

Going to read Let it Bleed by Ian Rankin. New author for me. Its Rebus book no° 7. I wanted to get hold of the first one, Knots and Crosses but this'll do as an intro to the author. Plus it's set in winter. I always like to read books in season for some reason.

General opinion seems to be to start the series at number 3, Tooth and Nail, and go back to Knots and Crosses and number 2, Hide and Seek later on, just for completion.
I've the complete set, and I'd agree - Rebus isn't really Rebus until a couple of books in. A bit like The Colour of Magic isn't really that good an introduction to the Discworld...

 

[AE35Unit]

I don't think it matters where you start to be honest. Good thing as I don't have the option to buy books willy nilly

 

[Danny McG]

My second attempt at reading The Constant Rabbit by Jasper Fforde.
I DNF last time because it simply wasn't my kind of story, however I think it deserves another try.

 

[Thiswriterinme]

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.

Back in school, I never read the assigned reading. I only read books for myself, even as far back as elementary school.

Now that I have Kindle Unlimited, I've dipped back into the classics and started reading all the books I missed back in school.

 

[Parson]

Finished Valor's Stand by Kal Spriggs (book 5 of The Children of Valor). I like that the series now has moved into more what I would call Military S.F. The downside is that even I, a person who does not see typos well at all, finds a few of these in the book. (Does that mean there are a lot of them? Could be.) But, if and when book 6 appears I'll read it because the characters are likable, the plot believable, the action on both the personal and corporate fronts are not all that predictable. So all in all a pretty good book.

Moved back into The April Series with And What Goes Around (book 6) by Mackey Chandler. I think I'm ready to put up with more unexamined Libertarian philosophy. We'll see.

 

[williamjm]

I read Neil Gaiman's Season of Mists which I thought was excellent. The plot twist in the middle was particularly good, even if I should perhaps have anticipated it since I've seen the TV show inspired by it.

I also read a couple of (very) short books by Philip Pullman in his His Dark Materials universe, Lyra's Oxford and Serpentine. They are both fairly slight stories but have some good character moments for Lyra and Pan in the period between The Amber Spyglass and The Secret Commonwealth. Serpentine also tied in quite well to the discussion we were recently having in the HDM TV series thread about people with difficult relationships with their daemons. I also thought it was interesting how Lyra's Oxford had some clear references to the events in The Secret Commonwealth even though it was written over a decade beforehand, Pullman seems to have planned things a long time in advance.

I've now started The Doors of Eden by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It's been an interesting start so far although the excerpts from the scholarly work on alternative paths for evolution on Earth do break up the narrative a bit.

 

[dask]

Finished The Good Shepherd by C.S. Forester. Realistic minute by minute look at what it was like to be on a destroyer in the U-Boat infested waters of the North Atlantic during World War II. While not action packed like Saving Private Ryan or 1917, it was exciting at least in the way the dueling scene in Barry Lyndon was exciting. (It really was, by the way. I’m not trying to deceive you.) I did not know when I started the novel that Tom Hanks new movie, Greyhound, was based it but now am very much looking forward to seeing it. Good book. Recommended.

Now reading “Thomas Jefferson, Social Architect“ by (Charles) Phillips Russell, another biographical sketch in Biography: Varieties And Parallels, edited by Dwight Durling and William Watt. I’m enjoying Russel’s presentation much more than some of the others. If only he could have written the essays on King George III and IV. A little life never hurt the dead.