What Books Are You Reading Right Now?

[Feytalist]

I own a short story collection of Stoker's called Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories, released by his wife posthumously, which also includes The Judge's House. Some of those stories are seriously good. Some are almost Lovecraftian.

[BWR]

That's the one I have.

[Seerow]

Just started the first Harry Dresden book. Knocked out about a third of it in 2 hours of downtime. It seems much shorter than I expected, I've just gotten too used to my thousand+ page long epics.

That said I'm enjoying it so far. Will probably finish the rest this weekend.

[Man on Fire]

Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly. After first 100 pages I must say I enjoyed it really much.

[Piggy Knowles]

Just finished Lonesome Dove. Really very impressed by it - it blows anything else I've read in the genre out of the water. I liked it enough that I bumped off some of the other things on my reading list and am moving on to McMurtry's Dead Man's Walk.

I'm getting kind of bored with The New Jim Crow - it's all pretty well-worn territory for me, so I'm thinking of moving on to something else. I'm currently waffling between Alex Kotlowitz's There Are No Children Here and Antero Pietila's Not in My Neighborhood. I'm leaning toward the latter, although I've been putting off reading There Are No Children Here for far too long.

[BWR]

I read the first Dresden book and was not particularly impressed. i'm told they get better from book 4 and on, but I have so much other stuff to read I haven't bothered. Taking a quick break from ghost stories to read Erich von Däniken's 'theories' about the Nazca lines. I've had the book for 113 years now and it was about time I read it.
It's ridiculous. I honestly can't see how he can come up with this stuff or how people can believe him.

A friend of mine likes reading conspiracy theories and alien nutjobs and whatnot on the grounds that they make for interesting unintentional fiction. He has fun stories of one of his colleagues who is a conspiracy nut, so he can regularly take the piss out of that guy with perfectly factual statements that are almost willfully misinterpreted.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by BWR
Taking a quick break from ghost stories to read Erich von Däniken's 'theories' about the Nazca lines.

Utterly absurd and embarrassing, yes. Graham Hancock is his modern-day successor.

Von Däniken's nonsense about the Nazca lines is almost hilarious when you think about it: vessels that are so complex and perfectly functioning that they leave absolutely no trace of their presence--and yet they need a ragged string of rocks to guide them in for a landing. Guess those interstellar aliens are on permanent VFR.

[Dragonwriter713]

Re reading the Cleric Quintet plus Here There Be Dragons Chronicles of
Imaginarium Geographica 1 and the 3.5 players handbook so I can better understand D&D rules.

[Cyrion]

I just finished Yann Martel's Beatrice and Virgil. The story itself is interesting, but the "afterbook" Games for Gustav asks some very pointed questions- especially just after having read the book.

[BWR]

I can sum up the Däniken book thusly:
First 200 odd pages: "Hey, I never said anything about aliens, that's just other people who haven't read my work putting words in my mouth. I'm just presenting what the lines look like and various hypotheses about them and the area"
Last 100 pages: "ALIENS!"

I have rarely been subjected to anything as disjointed, rambling and poorly thought-out jumped-to conclusions as this nonsense. Talk about cherry-picking and dismissing anything called science except when it suits his own purposes.
I don't feel the need to look at anything else he's done. And on top of all that he has the gall to call his book 'non-fiction'.

Back to something sensible like ghost stories where the authors at least try to tell a good story.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by BWR
I have rarely been subjected to anything as disjointed, rambling and poorly thought-out jumped-to conclusions as this nonsense... And on top of all that he has the gall to call his book 'non-fiction'.

Well, "fiction" does imply a coherent narrative....

And I certainly agree with your impressions. He set new standards for pseudoscience, I'll give him that.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Just started the first Harry Dresden book. Knocked out about a third of it in 2 hours of downtime. It seems much shorter than I expected, I've just gotten too used to my thousand+ page long epics.

That said I'm enjoying it so far. Will probably finish the rest this weekend.

Oh, you are in for a fun ride. If you liked the first book? MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA. (The first book is "eh", in my opinion, the second is not bad, and then starting with the third, the series begins to build and get awesome.)

(And yeah--they're a fast read. They're paced like a comic book or TV show.)

I've been reading The Last Wish aka "The Witcher: the book", with no knowledge of the Witcher games (or almost none). Interesting read, so far. The pastiches of fairy tales are amusing.

[Feytalist]

I've been reading The Last Wish aka "The Witcher: the book", with no knowledge of the Witcher games (or almost none). Interesting read, so far. The pastiches of fairy tales are amusing.

It's quite good, innit. I like how Sapkowski plays with the traditional folk tales. Also that Geralt is aware of pretty much every fairy tale trope out there.

Annoyingly, the newest English translation isn't available over here yet. Guess I'll have to wait awhile. Sigh.


Also I quite liked the first two Dresden Files books. The fanbase seems to totally ignore them; but they were simple, toned down. Pretty good on their own merit, I think.

[Wardog]

I've recently finish Dune (got it for Christmas) and Revelation Space (from a second-hand book sale).

I've just started on Game of Thrones (got the entire series in a sale for £30).

I've also intermittently reading Herodotus's Histories.

[Seerow]

Oh, you are in for a fun ride. If you liked the first book? MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA. (The first book is "eh", in my opinion, the second is not bad, and then starting with the third, the series begins to build and get awesome.)

(And yeah--they're a fast read. They're paced like a comic book or TV show.)

I've been reading The Last Wish aka "The Witcher: the book", with no knowledge of the Witcher games (or almost none). Interesting read, so far. The pastiches of fairy tales are amusing.

Glad you said that, because the Werewolf fetishization in the second book was turning me off. I'll be getting around to the 3rd sooner or later, not sure if I'm going to start that or read Dune first. Or if I'm putting it off until after Words of Radiance and doing a Way of Kings reread over the next couple weeks.

[Aolbain]

I'm putting it off until after Words of Radiance and doing a Way of Kings reread over the next couple weeks.

I've meant to do that for awhile now but it's just so long!

[Seerow]

I've meant to do that for awhile now but it's just so long!

I've already read it two or three times. I love the book. But yeah it is rough to get through when you can only put an hour or so a day towards reading instead of being able to marathon the book in a day or two.

There's also an ongoing re-read going on over at TOR, so if you just want a refresher without reading everything again yourself you can check that out here.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

It's quite good, innit. I like how Sapkowski plays with the traditional folk tales. Also that Geralt is aware of pretty much every fairy tale trope out there.

The moment I started copping to the folktale references, I got this big "heh heh heh" inside.

Glad you said that, because the Werewolf fetishization in the second book was turning me off. I'll be getting around to the 3rd sooner or later, not sure if I'm going to start that or read Dune first. Or if I'm putting it off until after Words of Radiance and doing a Way of Kings reread over the next couple weeks.

Very little werewolf in the following books.

Spoiler: For anyone who wants to know just how much werewolf there is

Show

The lycanthropes have yet to resurface, and there's been no loup-garous or hexenwolves around. The Alphas are the only werewolves who stick around, and they're a great supporting cast.

[Palanan]

So, a couple new books for me. I finished Michael Drout's short course on Norsemen today--this was The Norsemen: Understanding Vikings and Their Culture. Drout is always informative and enjoyable, and as someone who consciously followed in Tolkien's footsteps, he can read Old Norse with energy and authority.

That said, the course was much shorter than I would've liked, and with only a brief historical overview; much of the course focused on detailed examinations of the Icelandic sagas, such as the Laxdæla Saga, Njál's saga, Egil's Saga and so forth. This plays to Drout's strengths as a linguist and a professor of medieval literature, but the course really should've been called "The Icelandic Sagas and their Cultural Context." But that said, I did enjoy it, and I'm looking forward to Drout's longer course on the Anglo-Saxons.

In the meantime, I'm working my way through David Beers Quinn's North America from Earliest Discovery, somewhat dated these days, but still the single best book on the early exploration of North America I've yet to read. I started reading an ILL copy, made it halfway through and liked it so much I ordered a used copy from Amazon.

Next on my desk, at least for the moment, is Thomas Penn's Winter King: Henry VII and the Dawn of Tudor England, which just came out a couple of years ago. And at some point, I need to pick up again with Allen Steele's Coyote series...but the history of Renaissance exploration has me fascinated for now.

[warty goblin]

Stumbled on an English translation of Henreich Schliemann's account of his excavations of Troy the other day at the used bookstore. This is going to be fun.

[tbergman92]

Personally, I'm with Feytalist and perhaps some of the others on here that I missed--I'm in the middle of quite a few books right now.

Let's see....
I'm about to start book 3 of the Legend of Drizzt sequence (as soon as I get paid); I'm in book 2 (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe--chronology before publishing order) of my reread of Narnia; I'm reading Crime and Punishment; about a hundred pages into book 9 of The Wheel of Time series; rereading Ender's Game, as I just watched the movie; about to start my reread of the Harry Potter series; I'm reading various works of world literature for a course at University (currently Moliere's Tartuffe); Just finished Mythborn by V. Lakshman; starting the Tristopolis series by John Meaney; almost done with Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson, and I'll be moving on to The Way of Kings in preparation for his release of its sequel in March; and finally, rereading John Twelve Hawks' The Traveler, as I just found its sequel at a goodwill.

Oh, and I'm, as usual, reading The Silmarillion and short stories by Max Dubinsky, Isaac Asimov, and Ray Bradbury on the side.

I also just finished the Codex Alera series by Butcher, and the Mistborn series by Sanderson. I'm in the middle of the Worm serial online, but I got bogged down and haven't been back in about a month.

I tried GoT, but found myself having trouble restarting it after I put it down around the fourth book. It was a great read while I was in it, and I'd keep reading it for some time after picking it up, but it just feels daunting to pick it back up and recall all of the plot and character development for each storyline (which of course just gets worse the longer I wait to come back to it).

[Eachuinn]

Beowulf, A Feast for Crows and a rather large collection of Lobo comics.

[Balain]

Currently reading Duncton Stone. Then going to read Myth-Quoted

[Duck999]

I have read many books recently. Currently, I am reading children of men. Great book! I will soon be reading other books, since I usually finish books in under 5 days, though I haven't been reading as much recently.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

I tried GoT, but found myself having trouble restarting it after I put it down around the fourth book. It was a great read while I was in it, and I'd keep reading it for some time after picking it up, but it just feels daunting to pick it back up and recall all of the plot and character development for each storyline (which of course just gets worse the longer I wait to come back to it).

I had to start from the beginning when I picked the series back up.

[Math_Mage]

I'm reading The Left Hand of Darkness.

[tbergman92]

I had to start from the beginning when I picked the series back up.

Bleh. That gives me even less incentive to start back.

[SaintRidley]

The Old English translation of Exodus, the history of al-Andalus as written by Ibn al-Qutiya, Michael Cronin's Translation in the Digital Age, the twelfth book of the Florentine Codex, and Douglas Robinson's Translation and Empire are on the docket for the next couple months. Add in [REC]: Los Relatos Perdidos (hoping to translate it).

[BWR]

I tried GoT, but found myself having trouble restarting it after I put it down around the fourth book. It was a great read while I was in it, and I'd keep reading it for some time after picking it up, but it just feels daunting to pick it back up and recall all of the plot and character development for each storyline (which of course just gets worse the longer I wait to come back to it).

After book 3 I decided to just ignore it until it wsa finished, andthen read it all in one go. Same with WoT (I put it on hold around book 8).

Apart from my Victorian and Edwardian Ghost stories (of which about 1/3 were only by the loosest definition or in no way whatsoever ghost stories), I've reread Charlie Stross' Atrocity Archives for the Nth time, Worm: a stroy of capes (after having seen it praised to heaven and back by certain people; it was ok. good for a superhero story but I didn't really like Taylor) and am about to embark upon the Epic of Gilgamesh.

[Closet_Skeleton]

History books mainly

I'm half way through The German Genius: Europe's Third Renaissance, the Second Scientific Revolution and the Twentieth Century by Peter Watson.

I also have Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and The Histories (Herodotus) on sort of hold.