[Harvester]

Finished Butcher's Death Masks and started Blood Rites right away. It's getting better and better... and I need more.

Wait, I shouldn't even be here.. spoilerific hellhole.

This post has been edited by Harvester: 15 February 2011 - 05:55 PM

[Jade-Green Pig-Hog Swine-Beast]

I'm about half way through Surface Detail. I'm enjoying it, definitely, but (so far, at least) it's got nothing on the earlier Banks books.

[Slow Ben]

MWKarsa, on 15 February 2011 - 12:15 AM, said:

Finished reading Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain yesterday and throughly enjoyed it- I said it before but if you have ever worked in a restaurant or the food service industry you like this book and readily identify many characters and situations that he writes about. I've watched his Travel Channel show and he actually writes very well with honesty and humor- really a great read.

Thats a good show.


Started The Warrior Prophet by Bakker last night.

[Primateus]

I've begun on Reaper's Gale.

Haven't gotten that far though, but good stuff so far.

[caladanbrood]

Green Pig, on 15 February 2011 - 05:56 PM, said:

I'm about half way through Surface Detail. I'm enjoying it, definitely, but (so far, at least) it's got nothing on the earlier Banks books.

You just wait!! It's the kind of book that begs a re-read, I think, once you know what's going to happen.








I have a problem. The last few months, everything I've read has been awesome. Stonewielder, Surface Detail, The City and the City, The Heroes, Rivers of London, The Engineer ReConditioned. With TCG out soon and the new Jasper Fforde just afterwards, I'm terrified of reading a bad book and break the run. So my solution? I'm re-reading Player of Games this week, which will be enough to get me up to TCG and the Fforde, then I can risk other stuff.

This post has been edited by caladanbrood: 16 February 2011 - 11:07 AM

[QuickTidal]

caladanbrood, on 16 February 2011 - 11:05 AM, said:

Green Pig, on 15 February 2011 - 05:56 PM, said:

I'm about half way through Surface Detail. I'm enjoying it, definitely, but (so far, at least) it's got nothing on the earlier Banks books.

I have a problem. The last few months, everything I've read has been awesome. Stonewielder, Surface Detail, The City and the City, The Heroes, Rivers of London, The Engineer ReConditioned. With TCG out soon and the new Jasper Fforde just afterwards, I'm terrified of reading a bad book and break the run. So my solution? I'm re-reading Player of Games this week, which will be enough to get me up to TCG and the Fforde, then I can risk other stuff.

I'd have gone the other way, and read a book I KNEW was gonna be bad, to get it outta the way for the awesome books, otherwise I'd worry that I was running the risk of one of the books I was look forward to sucking. LOL

[amphibian]

I just finished reading Home Fires by Gene Wolfe.

It was terrible - by Wolfe's standards. The books reads like a three part episode of Matlock (older, very competent lawyer who gets around a bunch) combined with Speed 2 (because of the cruise ship and hijacking stuff). Wolfe managed to make all the good parts of both Matlock and Speed 2 be thoroughly mixed with awful, toss the book down out of despair stuff. I came out of it thinking "There's yet to be an ending to the Latro series and he's faffing around with this shit?" - and I'm a pretty big Wolfe fan. I've read damn near everything he's ever put out and liked almost all of it.

There's the usual anachronistic writing style that skips over some thrilling events to the musings of characters on why things went down the way they did or how it made them feel more love for the other characters. There's the usual Wolfe-style bashfully courageous male character who has an incredible heterosexual love for a woman that drives everything he does.

But what he adds is this fixation upon impotence either in action or sexually, combined with perhaps the most jarring enclosed universe of characters that I've seen in his writing yet. It's like he couldn't make the story work one way or the other, so he padded it here and there with a homage to Haldeman's Forever War that's so background as to be near worthless.

Ugh. He needs to end the Latro series before churning out more junk like this.

Pirate Freedom was a rather good pirate book, with tons of pirate info packing the pages, but didn't have much emotional heft to it for me. The Sorceror's House was alright, but not really a full fledged book. That one seemed to end about 80 pages too early. This one (Home Fires) is straight up a book that shouldn't have seen the light of day. Something's wrong with Wolfe, I speculate.

This post has been edited by amphibian: 16 February 2011 - 05:46 PM

[Zanth13]

Over the past month I have finished

Neuropath
Mister B. Gone
Sherlock Holmes: The Hound of The Baskervilles,
Empire: A Zombie Novel (this series has some promise)

and I am current reading Furies of Calderon.

[HoosierDaddy]

Finished Against All Things Ending, book 3 of the Final Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. And, I guess assuming that after two trilogies the third series would be a trilogy as well was a bad assumption. I enjoyed book three more than the previous two, simply because we actually got stuff accomplished and the characters finally started to be mortal.

Looking forward to book 4, which is hopefully the final book.

[Mentalist]

Finished "The Nights of Villjamur" last night.

The worldbuilding was great, the story--not so much.

[Salt-Man Z]

HoosierDaddy, on 16 February 2011 - 11:07 PM, said:

Finished Against All Things Ending, book 3 of the Final Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. And, I guess assuming that after two trilogies the third series would be a trilogy as well was a bad assumption. I enjoyed book three more than the previous two, simply because we actually got stuff accomplished and the characters finally started to be mortal.

Looking forward to book 4, which is hopefully the final book.

Yeah, it was announced from the very start that it was going to be four books. (Heck, the Second Chronicles were intended to be four as well, but the publisher insisted on squeezing it into a trilogy.)

[cerveza_fiesta]

Well I abandoned Catch 22 at last. Read another 100 pages and fuck that. Terrible book IMO.

Luckily, I had a major geek session with an old friend while I was away last week and he leant me

"Lord Foul's Bane" by Donaldson.

Really, really liking it so far. Tomas Covenant is such a prick.

[Salt-Man Z]

cerveza_fiesta, on 17 February 2011 - 01:14 PM, said:

Really, really liking it so far. Tomas Covenant is such a prick.

Nice! Most people react to that book with one of those sentiments, but not usually both!

I just finished Zoe's Tale last night. Good, and a nice companion to The Last Colony, but I'm not sure how well it would work on its own without having read the earlier book. (Okay, I guess, since the book was pretty much a success.)

Still have a few days until The Crippled God arrives, so I've started in on Gene Wolfe's Peace. So far it's...weird.

[caladanbrood]

tCG

[QuickTidal]

Salt-Man Z, on 17 February 2011 - 04:12 PM, said:

I just finished Zoe's Tale last night. Good, and a nice companion to The Last Colony, but I'm not sure how well it would work on its own without having read the earlier book. (Okay, I guess, since the book was pretty much a success.)

Yeah, this seems to be the running theme with ZOE'S TALE. I prefer THE LAST COLONY.

[Salt-Man Z]

QuickTidal, on 17 February 2011 - 08:55 PM, said:

I prefer THE LAST COLONY.

I'm not sure how I feel. I found TLC (ha!) frustrating because Roanoke kept getting jerked around and everyone was pretty much always in the dark to a degree. And there was a lot of stuff that was a little too convenient. And ZT had a much more personal connection with the narrator.

Granted, if I was frustrated by the behind-the-scenes maneuvering in TLC, in ZT it was even worse because practically all the action was behind-the-scenes. However, at that point I already knew what was going on.

I think it's probably safe to say that the two together make for a better story than either one by itself.

[Abyss]

Finished Patrick Lee's THE BREACH and sequel GHOST COUNTRY. Details in the ded'thread but short version - highly recommended as fun, fast reads with a bit of work for the thinkymeatzez.

Next was Liz Williams' SNAKE AGENT: AN INSPECTOR CHEN NOVEL. I totaly enjoyed the futurscape/chinese mythology mash up and the characters were solid. The story tended at times to have to have virtually random things happen for really weak reasons that came across as silly rather than anything useful, but not bad, good humour and a really interesting setting. I'll read another in this series.



Now while waiting for TCG am reading Sanderson's ELANTRIS at long last. I get what everyone likes about this book.

[QuickTidal]

Abyss, on 18 February 2011 - 05:12 PM, said:

Now while waiting for TCG am reading Sanderson's ELANTRIS at long last. I get what everyone likes about this book.

Yeah, you can see shades of future Sanderson in Elantris. It's pretty awesome.

[Chance]

Re-reading Will of the Night and then on to re-reading Wise Man's Fear which was one of those books I just can't decide about after a single read.

[Obdigore]

Chance, on 18 February 2011 - 06:11 PM, said:

Re-reading Will of the Night and then on to re-reading Wise Man's Fear which was one of those books I just can't decide about after a single read.

Wait... Re-Reading Wise Mans Fear?

Did I miss the release ro did you get it super early?