What Books Are You Reading Right Now?

[tbergman92]

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).

That's a good idea. I'll probably end up doing that.

[Duck999]

I am now reading The House of Hades. Started it on a plane ride, almost done and it hasn't been 24 hours.

[happyturtle]

Last night I finished The Martian by Andy Weir, just published this week. Absolutely brilliant, and Hollywood is going to be ALL over this. Super realistic near future sci-fi about an astronaut stranded on Mars when his crew-mates believe him dead. So far my favourite book of 2014, which isn't saying much, but also my favourite Mars book of all time, which puts it over Kim Stanley Robinson, Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, and Edgar Rice Burroughs.

It still doesn't top Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie, my favourite book of 2013, but if they'd come out in the same year, they'd be neck and neck. Ancillary Justice is far flung future space opera. Reminiscent of the Culture books in scope, though completely different in style.

Both books are distinct for being debut novels by new authors, which means we should have a lot of good fiction coming our way over the next (hopefully many) years!

[Yora]

I'm currently trying to get my hands on an English copy of Heir to the Empire. I think I read the series only once or twice, and that must have been like 15 years ago by now.

[Duck999]

Finished The House of Hades. Still under 24 hours. I am not quite sure what I will read next.

[warty goblin]

I ended up take a bit of a break from my Winter of Russian Genre Fiction, because there's only so much misery even I can safely ingest. As a temporary antidote, I'm reading the Mouse Guard RPG, which basically seems like somebody decided to make Ron Edward's Sorcerer extremely complicated for some reason.

[Iruka]

Istanbul - Memories and the City by Orhan Pamuk. I'm rereading it since I found it quite relaxing and that's what I currently need.

[BWR]

"Magicians of Caprona" by Diana Wynne-Jones, part of her Chrestomanci series.
Wynne-Jones has a very formulaic approach to her books but all I have read have been very enjoyable, and this one is no different so far.

Also working on RLS' "The Master of Ballantrae" which has been slow going, mostly because I try to read it when I'm very tired and keep nodding off.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by happyturtle
Last night I finished The Martian by Andy Weir, just published this week.

Very interesting, thanks for the recommendation.

But the first thing I noticed, when looking at the Amazon page, was that Hugh Howey's endorsement misspelled "hull breach." Ah well.

Originally Posted by warty goblin
I ended up take a bit of a break from my Winter of Russian Genre Fiction, because there's only so much misery even I can safely ingest.

I hear you there. I tried reading Lenin's Tomb not long after it came out, and managed to get about a third of the way through. If that.

I've read Lermontov, I've read Zamyatin, I've read Ivan Denisovich, but Lenin's Tomb really did feel like a stone vault fell over on me.

Originally Posted by Yora
I'm currently trying to get my hands on an English copy of Heir to the Empire.

Hmm. I just tried looking for a used copy on Amazon.de, and I think I see your conundrum.

Well, that's the @$&%#!! Mid-Atlantic Rift for you. Ever since that thing opened up it's been hassle, hassle, hassle.




.

[BWR]

Finished "Magicians of Caprona" and "Witch Week" by DWJ. WW was a lot darker and more unpleasant than any other WJ I've read. Still good.

Will move on to a book on Hawaiian volcano stories.

[warty goblin]

I hear you there. I tried reading Lenin's Tomb not long after it came out, and managed to get about a third of the way through. If that.

I've read Lermontov, I've read Zamyatin, I've read Ivan Denisovich, but Lenin's Tomb really did feel like a stone vault fell over on me.

Worst case of this I've had is last year when I attempted a book called Dreamfall, which looked like a nice sort of grimly romantic late eighties/early nineties sci-fi. Which it was, but holy cow was it depressing. Not beautifully sad, or over-the-top flowery misery, or soft melancholy, just flat-out life sucks people are crap depressing. Really good, but I didn't have the stomach for it at the time. Maybe next summer after my sixteen hour Ph.D. exam of death I'll drink a bit too much wine and sit around beside the lake finishing the damn thing and feeling thoroughly like crap.

So now I'm rereading Song of Achilles, which is sad, beautiful, and with absolutely gorgeous prose. Also delightfully and unabashedly homoerotic.

[BWR]

I can't stomach depressing stories. The odd samurai drama or Shakespearean/Classical tragedy is fine but I feel crappy enough on my own that I don't need to depress myself even more for 'fun'.

[Piggy Knowles]

Almost finished pushing my way through the Lonesome Dove series. I'm currently about halfway through Streets of Laredo. Thus far I like it better than either of the prequels, but it still doesn't hold a candle to Lonesome Dove itself.

After finishing The Corner I didn't quite have the heart to jump right into There Are No Children Here, so I moved to lighter fare - Patricia McKillip's 2012 collection of short stories, Wonders of the Invisible World. I bought it a year ago but only read two stories from it, but now that I'm diving back in, I'm really enjoying it. I don't actually read a lot of fantasy, and I've never been a huge fan of the novels I've read by Patricia McKillips, but this has been fun. I think in a lot of ways her prose style is better suited to the shorter form.

(I also must confess that it feels particularly refreshing in contrast to the Lonesome Dove series, a long-form Western that could teach George R.R. Martin a few tricks about how to screw with your emotions and be absolutely brutal to main characters, and The Corner, which makes the Wire look cheerful in retrospect.)

[Gnoman]

I've been reading Hanging Time, the second book in a series of mysteries by Leslie Glass. It is, charitably, okay. The characters are flat, weak cutouts, the personal and professional relationships are about as stale as a forty-year old box of crackers, and the author makes the crucial mistake of not making the chase for the killer interesting. This is particularly bad as this book reveals the identity of the killer (barring a cheap plot twist) very soon into the book, and it becomes a matter of "when and how will they catch her?", which is not my preferred style even when well done, and this is not.

For a book I pulled from the recycle bin to read on breaks at work, it is tolerable, and just decent enough (at least, the writing is good in the technical sense) for me to consider attempting another book in the series for comparison. Barely.

[IthilanorStPete]

Finished Consider Phlebas by Iain Banks today, finally completing my read-through of the Culture books (although it's been a while since I read Excession or The State of the Art).

On its own, it was a very good book, though I had some issues with it. It's a solid adventure story with some great action sequences; probably the most cinematic of any of the Culture books. Horza was an interesting protagonist, Balveda a good representative of the Culture, and the supporting cast was good. Spoilers for the ending:

Spoiler

Show

The ending was rather...frustrating. The story ended up seeming rather pointless; almost the entire cast dies, the course of the war isn't much affected. The antagonist Idirans were technically defeated, but they were introduced too late for that to be much of a climax. There's some character development, but it doesn't seem to reach a proper ending; it feels like Horza's arc was building towards something, but he didn't quite reach it before dying.

As part of the Culture series, it fills in a bit of background detail for some of the other books, but nothing essential. Look to Windward is the most relevant sequel, but it covered its own background well enough. I'd heard Consider Phlebas throws too much information at the reader to be a good introduction to the Culture, but I didn't find that to be the case - the problem is too little information on the Culture itself. (If you want a book that really overwhelms the reader, look at Hannu Rajaniemi's The Quantum Thief)

Now that I'm finally done with the series, I'm contemplating a re-read/commentary/Let's Read of the Culture series. Does that sound interesting to the SF fans here?

[warty goblin]

(I also must confess that it feels particularly refreshing in contrast to the Lonesome Dove series, a long-form Western that could teach George R.R. Martin a few tricks about how to screw with your emotions and be absolutely brutal to main characters, and The Corner, which makes the Wire look cheerful in retrospect.)

I'm guessing you've never read Meathouse Man then? That's the one where Martin really shows how grim, depressing, loathsome storytelling that leaves you wanting to shower or possibly drive off a bridge is done. A Song of Ice and Fire is a charming yarn about human redemption by contrast.

Edit: Yeah, just reread Meathouse Man. For a story that gets to the corpse brothel by paragraph 4, and ends with 'Of all the bright cruel lies they tell you, the cruelest is the one called love.' it's surprisingly depressing.

[happyturtle]

Finished Consider Phlebas by Iain Banks today, finally completing my read-through of the Culture books (although it's been a while since I read Excession or The State of the Art).

On its own, it was a very good book, though I had some issues with it. It's a solid adventure story with some great action sequences; probably the most cinematic of any of the Culture books. Horza was an interesting protagonist, Balveda a good representative of the Culture, and the supporting cast was good. Spoilers for the ending:

Spoiler

Show

The ending was rather...frustrating. The story ended up seeming rather pointless; almost the entire cast dies, the course of the war isn't much affected. The antagonist Idirans were technically defeated, but they were introduced too late for that to be much of a climax. There's some character development, but it doesn't seem to reach a proper ending; it feels like Horza's arc was building towards something, but he didn't quite reach it before dying.

As part of the Culture series, it fills in a bit of background detail for some of the other books, but nothing essential. Look to Windward is the most relevant sequel, but it covered its own background well enough. I'd heard Consider Phlebas throws too much information at the reader to be a good introduction to the Culture, but I didn't find that to be the case - the problem is too little information on the Culture itself. (If you want a book that really overwhelms the reader, look at Hannu Rajaniemi's The Quantum Thief)

Now that I'm finally done with the series, I'm contemplating a re-read/commentary/Let's Read of the Culture series. Does that sound interesting to the SF fans here?

My husband and I finished Consider Phlebas recently, and I think it's the weakest of the Culture books. If I were an editor, I'd have taken a hacksaw to great parts of it, and, as you said, strengthened the ending. There was a bit near the beginning where every member of a mercenary team is introduced and described, one after another, without any clue to the reader to tell us which members will actually become characters we need to know. Predictably, few of them have an important role in the story.

There were a few scenes that I thought would make excellent movie set-pieces:

Spoiler: Major spoilers.

Show

The megaship hitting the iceberg, the destruction of the Orbital, and the giant train. Heck, the saga of the dying Idiran dragging themself along the length of the train and getting it going, the early clues that reach the next station that disaster is approaching, and then the crash itself could almost carry an entire movie. That was definitely the strongest part of the book.

However, there isn't enough of a coherent story to hang those scenes on. Add in the two really disgusting scenes that seemed there mostly as shock pieces - the execution-by-sewage and the island of the Eaters - and I think it's one I won't return to.

A Let's Read of the Culture Series is a great idea though.

[BWR]

I enjoy following "let's read/watch/play/listen to"s so please start one, but I won't be participating. I read "Use of weapons" and "Look to windward" and just got a big 'meh' out of both, and I have way too many unread books kicking around my apartment already to bother buying authors who haven't impressed me so far.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by warty goblin
Maybe next summer after my sixteen hour Ph.D. exam of death I'll drink a bit too much wine and sit around beside the lake finishing the damn thing and feeling thoroughly like crap.

Meaning your prelims are coming up? Trust me, you don't want to finish that book right after your prelims. Not from how you've described it.

The evening that I finished my prelims, I went out to dinner with my two best friends in grad school. I was thoroughly dane bread, but it was still a fantastic evening.

Originally Posted by warty goblin
That's the one where Martin really shows how grim, depressing, loathsome storytelling that leaves you wanting to shower or possibly drive off a bridge is done. A Song of Ice and Fire is a charming yarn about human redemption by contrast.

Urf, ya.

As it happens, Season Three of Game of Thrones came out earlier this week, and I just finished it late last night. It left me with a sick, ugly feeling, that crept back into my consciousness as soon as I woke this morning. It stayed with me for much of the day. I was actually relieved not to have to watch anymore tonight.

I haven't read any of the novels, only seen the three seasons from HBO, and at this point I don't really feel like spending a minute on Season Four. I'm sick of caring too much about characters and watching them die in explicitly gruesome ways. It's too much cheap manipulation; there really doesn't seem to be much else to it. If that's all Martin has to say, I'll pass.

Originally Posted by BWR
I can't stomach depressing stories...I don't need to depress myself even more for 'fun'.

Yeah, there's this, too. Entertainment should actually, you know, be enjoyable.

Tonight I went for an episode of Chuck. I'm smiling just thinking about it. That reaction didn't happen with last night's viewing.

[warty goblin]

Meaning your prelims are coming up? Trust me, you don't want to finish that book right after your prelims. Not from how you've described it.

The evening that I finished my prelims, I went out to dinner with my two best friends in grad school. I was thoroughly dane bread, but it was still a fantastic evening.

After years of taking tests, I've learned to accept that I almost always feel horrible afterwords. Sometimes the best thing to do is let out the clutch and be unreservedly wretched and miserable for a while. Perfect time for a truly agonizing book.

Urf, ya.

As it happens, Season Three of Game of Thrones came out earlier this week, and I just finished it late last night. It left me with a sick, ugly feeling, that crept back into my consciousness as soon as I woke this morning. It stayed with me for much of the day. I was actually relieved not to have to watch anymore tonight.

I haven't read any of the novels, only seen the three seasons from HBO, and at this point I don't really feel like spending a minute on Season Four. I'm sick of caring too much about characters and watching them die in explicitly gruesome ways. It's too much cheap manipulation; there really doesn't seem to be much else to it. If that's all Martin has to say, I'll pass.

I'm about halfway through Season 3, and having read the books I know what's coming. Can't say I'm looking forwards to it, but that's really rather the point.

Yeah, there's this, too. Entertainment should actually, you know, be enjoyable.

I donno, I find too much of the straight up enjoyable stuff tends to dull my emotions. Occasionally something genuinely unpleasant that leaves me feeling like crap is good for me. Makes me more empathetic. Often its the feelgood stuff that I think brings out worse parts of myself.

[happyturtle]

After years of taking tests, I've learned to accept that I almost always feel horrible afterwords. Sometimes the best thing to do is let out the clutch and be unreservedly wretched and miserable for a while. Perfect time for a truly agonizing book.

<snip>

I donno, I find too much of the straight up enjoyable stuff tends to dull my emotions. Occasionally something genuinely unpleasant that leaves me feeling like crap is good for me. Makes me more empathetic. Often its the feelgood stuff that I think brings out worse parts of myself.

When my depression starts to act up, I reach for the horror fiction. There's something really cathartic about it. This link really sums it up the best:

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog...ction-on-.html

[warty goblin]

When my depression starts to act up, I reach for the horror fiction. There's something really cathartic about it. This link really sums it up the best:

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog...ction-on-.html

That was a very interesting article, thanks for the link. Makes me want to try the author now.

I can't say the reason I read stories about horrible things happening to people is quite the same. My life has been remarkably fortunate; my entire family is healthy both mentally and physically, I am paid well enough for my time, and have had at least my fair share of opportunities, some of which I haven't squandered. There aren't a whole lot of privileges I haven't enjoyed.

I think that stuff like the grimmer bits of Game of Thrones or similar are essentially a reminder that bad things happen. Stories where everybody I care about ends up OK and obstacles are more a chance for awesome fight scenes and witty one-liners never really make me leave my happy little emotional corner of life. And I'm exceedingly glad I get to live in my happy little corner of life, don't get me wrong, but stories which take place there don't exactly require a lot of compassion or thoughtfulness. On a diet of nothing but fun little adventures and witty reparte, I find I simply am less emotionally engaged. I am not sure this says anything good about me, mind, but I'm pretty sure that's how I work.

To be clear, I am not saying I only read or watch things about horrible tragedy, or that depressing things are the only works that bring out my better side. I read and watch a lot of pretty low-impact stuff, but I don't think I would be better off if that were the only media of which I partook. I also find something like Cloud Atlas very empathetic, and also a really uplifting movie in a lot of ways. Heretically, I think I like the movie of that better than the book.

[Eulalios]

Bought my daughter the Kindle edition of Chesapeake and found myself perusing it again, as well.

Also still trying to finish (and have to re-download) a free book written in around 1900 about a contemporaneous (fictional) cattle drive up out of Mexico into South Dakota. The book seems well-informed and is quite educational about the logistics and mores of dry plains herding. Can't remember the title. :-(

[Eldan]

Found a Tad Williams series I hadn't read before, Dirty Streets of Heaven and Happy Hour in Hell. Not his best work, but interesting. I'm quite sure that Noir/Urban Fantasy isn't quite his genre, especially noticeable when he drops it a few chapters into the second book and writes high fantasy instead.

[BWR]

I tried reading a book on Hawaiian volcano legends but ended up putting it aside. While I am interested in the stories themselves the book is very annoyingly written. It's bascially a mix between what I assume (based only on how it reads in English) minimalistic retelling of various stories and jarring interruptions to tell of variations on the story.
I'm fine with artistic liberties taken to make the stories flow better in the target language, as long as this is clearly stated in the introduction. I prefer with the translation being as literal as possible, even if you could 'improve' it with some embellishments.
I'm fine with a scholarly look at variations on the story and similarities and differences between them. What I am not fine with is a mix of bland stories and poorly organized vague inserts about "some stories say X, others say Y".

So I started on Fritz Leiber's "The Green Milennium"

[Feytalist]

I do read some depressive stuff, but it tends to affect me much less than other depressive media. I also happen to find it cathartic - except the really no-way-out, no-resolution kind of situations. Speaking of; Richard Morgan's stuff tend that extreme. Market Forces for example. Pretty good and fast-paced high-tech noir writing, but by the end of the book you just hate everyone in it. And in the world. Including yourself.


Finally got Sapkowski's translated Times of Contempt. Looking quite forward to that. Also started Deadhouse Gates, the second Malazan book. I swear I need a cheat sheet for all the characters. And places. And concepts.


'Course, I really should be "reading" my course notes But really - the inner workings of pension funds are so much less interesting than... pretty much anything else, really.

[Kudaku]

For Hornblower in space, there's always Midshipman's Hope and its several sequels.

The first one came out in about 1994, and I was really impressed by the deeply tortured protagonist, who made hard moral choices and hated himself for it. I followed the series for several more books, and while the main character never seemed to really grow, I still enjoyed the stories.

Until I finally read an actual, original Hornblower novel.

I started reading this series a few weeks ago after finding it compared to the Honor Harrington series (which I found flawed but enjoyable) and I'm still desperately hoping for some, or any, kind of development for the main character - Nick. The universe is interesting, some of the side characters are noteworthy, and the writing is not awful - but the main character. My God. He's an anti-Sue. He sucks at literally everything he tries to do (navigation, commanding, leadership, gunship piloting, physics, math, marriage), constantly lashes out at literally anyone around him for his own inadequacies and then apologizes 30 seconds later, and compounds his constant failures with the Lawful Stupid alignment turned up to 11 (you touched the captain to save his life? Well, that's a whuppin').

He's such a quivering little pile of indecision that I constantly marvel how he made it through ANY kind of armed forces training, let alone an officer's class.

I'm on book 3 right now because I'm desperately hoping it's gonna turn around.

[Vaynor]

Well, I'm currently reading or just recently finished a few books:

Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood
Closely Watched Trains by Bohumil Hrabal
Season of Ash by Jorge Volpi
Herzog by Saul Bellow
and I'm rereading one of my favorite books, The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz

[thorgrim29]

I'm rereading the Black Company books, up to Bleak Seasons right now, and I'm remembering why I didn't like the Glittering Stone books the first time around.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Eulalios
Also still trying to finish (and have to re-download) a free book written in around 1900 about a contemporaneous (fictional) cattle drive up out of Mexico into South Dakota.

If you're interested in Southwestern cattle drives and the culture around that, or just looking for a good Western book in general, I'd strongly recommend Tough Trip Through Paradise by Andrew Garcia. This is an autobiography of sorts, written by a frontiersman and former cattle rustler who made a living as a hunter, trapper and drifter in the Montana wilderness.

Much of the book deals with his gradual separation from white culture and his slow integration into Indian life. Tough, honest, very grim in places, an excellent look at the Montana frontier in the late 1870s. Definitely worth a read.

Originally Posted by Kudaku
...but the main character. My God. ...He sucks at literally everything he tries to do (navigation, commanding, leadership, gunship piloting, physics, math, marriage), constantly lashes out at literally anyone around him for his own inadequacies and then apologizes 30 seconds later....

I'm on book 3 right now because I'm desperately hoping it's gonna turn around.

Not really, I'm sorry to say.

The books are modeled on (that is, shameless ripoffs of) the Horatio Hornblower novels, which are classics and much better done. I didn't realize that when I first started reading the Hope novels. As you've already noted, the main character advances in rank, but still remains much as you see him now. I dropped the series after about four books, I think. Feintuch's characterizations are extremely shallow in places--most places--and after several books the series wore very thin indeed.

Originally Posted by warty goblin
I think that stuff like the grimmer bits of Game of Thrones or similar are essentially a reminder that bad things happen.

For my part, I don't need reminding of this; I'm aware of it every day. And if this is Martin's only point, there are other ways to deliver it without reveling in the results.

For me, especially with Season Three, there's been a growing frustration with the deliberate emotional manipulation involved. He's developing characters just to shock you when they're unexpectedly killed.

I guess the question for me is whether there's anything in the later books that would remotely justify my caring about Season Four. There are still several characters I more or less enjoy, and would like to follow; but it's not worth it to me if Martin can't do more with them than devise convoluted ways of eventually killing them off.