What are you reading?

[TJMac]

I discovered the author John Connolly and the 'Charlie Parker' series. I find them entertaining, but I would not recommend them for most people. Very dark, with touches of supernatural, with fallen angels and demons.

Started reading 'Ark' by Stephen Baxter. I probably should have read 'Flood' first. (Ark seems to be a sequel.)
At any rate, I find myself laboring thru it, as the characters don't really appeal to me, and I cant get past the idea that mystery reserves of water from inside the earth are spewing out and all land mass is being covered. The point I am at in the book now, remarks that the waves are lapping at the Mile High marker on the Denver, CO capitol steps. Not sure if I will get through it.

And I noticed a couple Lee Child novels I hadn't read yet, so I grabbed them at the library.

TJ

[Solfe]

That's a kid that's been fooled one time too many and is now wise to your tricks.

I think he is. "Working" with him can be a meta-game and maybe that is my fault.

I picked up Against a Diamond Sky for my Kobo. I can't wait to start reading it.

[Gillianren]

Started reading 'Ark' by Stephen Baxter. I probably should have read 'Flood' first. (Ark seems to be a sequel.)
At any rate, I find myself laboring thru it, as the characters don't really appeal to me, and I cant get past the idea that mystery reserves of water from inside the earth are spewing out and all land mass is being covered. The point I am at in the book now, remarks that the waves are lapping at the Mile High marker on the Denver, CO capitol steps. Not sure if I will get through it.

He was the guest at the sci-fi convention I was at last week. I had one of his books out from the library so long I had to renew it twice, and it went back not merely unfinished but unstarted. I felt kind of guilty, but I just wasn't interested. But he's co-writing the new Terry Pratchett (Pratchett's return to sci-fi after decades away), so I'll read that, at least.

I'm reading Kevin Smith's new book. As with all Kevin Smith, there's good stuff in there if you can get past the sophomoric jokes. What I find interesting is that he appears to be pretty much done with filmmaking because it isn't fun for him anymore. He has no interest in doing a job that isn't fun, because he watched his father do it and doesn't want to have that life.

[Solfe]

I just stumbled across Princess of Landover by Terry Brooks in a Bargain bin today. I had forgotten about the Landover Series, so I switched books.

[Parrothead]

Finished "The Redeemer". I have a couple of other "Harry Hole mysteries" by Jo Nesbo on hold. While waiting, decided to give "Raise The Titanic!" by Clive Cussler a re-read. Last read it, late 70's.

[ToSeek]

Working on The Dervish House, which is wonderfully evocative (set in a near-future Istanbul) but is tough going. Each section introduces a whole bunch of new characters, and it's only around page 50 or so that he finally starts to tie any of them together.

[Fazor]

After we left the restaurant last night, we walked across the street to Barnes and Noble. I always love the "Classics" section, where cheap but timeless works like Verne, Twain, Dickens, etc live. It saddens me that their "classics" section is about 1/10th the size as the nearby "Teen Paranormal Romance" section . . . and also saddens me that I've already read about a third of the books in it.

I ended up picking up a translation of Homer's The Illiad, since we only read select pieces and passages back in high school, and that was 14 years ago now.

I couldn't be overly-intellectual though, so I also picked up the much less cheap Marvel 'Civil War' collection from the comic book (refuse to call them graphic novels) section.

[Gillianren]

Hey, the term "graphic novel" has a fine and glorious tradition, having been invented by Will Eisner himself. But Civil War is a comic book anthology, so far as I'm concerned. To me, there is a difference. But I get kind of snobby about it.

I'm reading Born to Be Hurt: The Untold Story of Imitation of Life, by Sam Staggs. This guy liked that movie way more than I did. In that he didn't, apparently, think it was a silly and overblown work of melodrama. Though he did think half of it was. He quite accurately points out that it's really two movies grafted together, and the one about the black characters is a lot more interesting than the one about the white characters.

[SeanF]

It saddens me that their "classics" section is about 1/10th the size as the nearby "Teen Paranormal Romance" section . . .

It saddens me that "Teen Paranormal Romance" actually is an entire section.

[Fazor]

It saddens me that "Teen Paranormal Romance" actually is an entire section.

Four, actually. Two entire rows front and back. The "classics" made up a stand-alone display in the middle of the main aisle. And the reference section was a single set of shelves, so 1/4th the size. *sigh*

[mfumbesi]

I'm currently reading "A short history, of nearly everything" (long tittle It might not be 100% correct here). I've just finished, "The Disappearing spoon" highly recommended read. I'm discovering (to my disappointment) that some of the big contributors to the human knowledge were nasty, nasty souls. Stealing other people's discoveries, back stabbing, petty, deluded and down right vile characters, it has been truly depressing.

[Gillianren]

It is, yes, A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson. And The Disappearing Spoon was a lot of fun and contained no real surprises about human nature to me.

[R.A.F.]

Am currently re-reading First Man....the bio of Neil Armstrong...excellent book.

[TJMac]

I just found Dust of Dreams, by Steven Erikson, at the library. Book Nine of the Malazan Empire. It's disturbing me, because somehow I know I read Book Ten, and I seriously have some of the time line confused. In typical style, Erikson is bringing things together, but I have to admit it doesn't all add up for me at this point.

TJ

[GeorgeLeRoyTirebiter]

I'm finally getting around to reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks — I forgot that I had it on my Kobo™-brand electronic fake-book machine.

[Solfe]

I just finished The Stranger by Camus. I didn't like it... the first 1/3 was great then it was pretty grim from there.

I am working on La Gallina Degollada and El Almohadón de Plumas by Horacio Quiroga. These are short stories, but it may take me the better part of the weekend to get through them.

[Gillianren]

I gave up on the Imitation of Life book. It was interesting whenever it was talking about the movie, but the guy needs a better editor, someone who will remove random tirades against a certain large religion or complaints about Nicole Kidman's makeup in The Hours. (He said she looked more like Golda Meir than Virginia Woolf; I didn't remember what Virginia Woolf looked like, and my roommate didn't remember what Golda Meir looked like, but between us, we were pretty sure he was wrong.) He also gave you far more information than was required about some parts and not enough about others. A very uneven book which does not make me want to run out looking for his book about All About Eve.

I have started Infernal Devices, by K. W. Jeter, but it doesn't seem promising. Overblown steampunk.

[ToSeek]

For something lighter after reading The Dervish House, I delved into the young adult Monster Blood Tattoo fantasy series. I've finished Foundling and am about halfway through Lamplighter. Unfortunately, the author is falling down on the job and hasn't come out with the third book yet.

[Gillianren]

The book I had been reading reminded me of what I dislike about Dickens. I have moved on to The Girls of Murder City: Fame, Lust, and the Beautiful Killers Who Inspired Chicago, by Douglas Perry. The advantage to reading a certain type of nonfiction is that the subtitle makes very clear what the book is about.

[Parrothead]

Finished "Raise The Titanic!". Enjoyed it, a fanciful tale, but entertaining. I am currently reading "The Devil's Star", a "Harry Hole mystery" by Jo Nesbo. I've been enjoying this series, eventhough I've been reading them out of order and running into some spoilers.

[ToSeek]

For something lighter after reading The Dervish House, I delved into the young adult Monster Blood Tattoo fantasy series. I've finished Foundling and am about halfway through Lamplighter. Unfortunately, the author is falling down on the job and hasn't come out with the third book yet.

I don't know how I got this idea, but the third book actually came out in 2010, and I'm reading it now.

[HenrikOlsen]

I don't know how I got this idea, . . .

I'm guessing it's because Googling "Monster Blood Tattoo" gets you to http://www.monsterbloodtattoo.com, which only knows about two books?

[eburacum45]

I picked up Against a Diamond Sky for my Kobo. I can't wait to start reading it.

You're welcome!

[Gillianren]

I'm finishing up Dragonhaven, by Robin McKinley (a Mothers' Day present to myself), and am starting Doris Kearns Goodwin's No Ordinary Time: Eleanor & Franklin Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II. Which is research. And I have to tell you, if your research lets you read Doris Kearns Goodwin, you must be doing something right.

[mike alexander]

Boeing, Integrated Manned Interplanetary Spacecraft Concept Definition, Final Report Vol.1, Summary, January, 1968 and subsequent sections.

Design and mission plans for a nuclear thermal-powered spacecraft for Venus and Mars missions in the 1979-1990 regime.

Can we go back and try again?

[ToSeek]

I'm guessing it's because Googling "Monster Blood Tattoo" gets you to http://www.monsterbloodtattoo.com, which only knows about two books?

Yeah, I think that's it. Later on I went to the author's site and found out about the third one. Penguin's falling down on their marketing!

[Paul Beardsley]

I'm reading Extinction Point by Paul Jones, a self-published book which I mentioned on the "To Kindle/Nook or not to Kindle/Nook" thread, which I was enjoying at the time but am now finding quite annoying. It got a lot of 5-star reviews but I won't be giving it more than 4.

It's quite well written, though not in a literary sense, and there are some cliches and odd uses of punctuation. But it's well written enough to enable the reader to picture what's going on and move through it at a reasonable pace. There are what I call "writedownisms" where the protagonist has thoughts and makes observations that would only occur to her if she were writing the book as it happened, which she's not. (Made-up example not from the book: if an author has his heroine fend off a bear with a chair, he might notice that "bear" and "chair" rhyme, but it would be ridiculous to have the heroine notice it too.)

But the real killer is this. Without giving too much away, the protagonist has good reason to suspect that she is the only person left alive in New York, possibly the whole world. As far as she knows, the thing that killed everybody is still at large, and might well be a danger to her if she ventures from her apartment. This thing has a name: blood rain.

She's a reporter, and pretty savvy with technology. From the safety of her apartment she phones up people she knows, only to get voicemail. She switches on the TV, but the news channels only show dead anchors at their desks. She decides she will check social media sites later, then goes out foraging.

So why in the name of sanity doesn't she Google "blood rain"? Why doesn't she go on the internet at all?

If there are any updates on the internet, she will know she is not the last living person on Earth. If someone has posted new information about the red rain, she may be able to take advantage of this when she leaves her apartment building.

This is idiot plotting. There is simply no way that a worldly-wise journalist with reasonable IT skills would fail to do something so obvious and so important. And even if the plot requires that she doesn't know about the rest of the world yet, it would have been easy enough to have her try to access the internet and find the server down - heck, that would even add to her motivation for leaving the apartment.

Incidentally the apartment block has been full of dead people for over a day, and she hasn't mentioned the smell.

[Gillianren]

Made-up example not from the book: if an author has his heroine fend off a bear with a chair, he might notice that "bear" and "chair" rhyme, but it would be ridiculous to have the heroine notice it too.

Alas, not if I'm the heroine. Even when it's completely ridiculous, I notice things about words. There's also a certain amount of hysteria involved!

[Paul Beardsley]

Alas, not if I'm the heroine. Even when it's completely ridiculous, I notice things about words.

Okay, but then it would be an established part of your character.

There's also a certain amount of hysteria involved!

I'm not sure what you mean here. Do you mean in real life, or as an excuse for the author?

[Gillianren]

I mean that people think things in an emergency situation that don't make sense or help, because their brains are trying to work too fast and the clever part gets in the way. You'd be amazed what people report having thought of in times of incredible stress of one kind or another. Though I'll admit "so this is it; I'm going to die" is pretty popular.