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What are you reading? (October 2017)

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Free Audio Books
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Shelved Threads
What are you reading? (August 2017)
What are you reading? (July 2017)
What are you reading? (June 2017)
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pa22word

Member
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Seveneves by Stephenson burned me out on fiction. Back to nonfiction! I've read about 50-100 pages of all of them and I find all of them to be highly enjoyable. The one about south Korea is written in a more academic style, thus a little dry for most people, but it's a very good study of the period for those inclined. The Netanyahu book is very informative, but the author has a noted bent. When in the first 20 pages you are essentially calling the man's father a crazy hack...yeah lol Nixonland is a decent and pretty entertaining survey of the period, I'd recommend it to anyone who wants a quick refresh of the period before delving into deeper stuff.

Sleeping Beauties is okay thus far. I wish it'd get moving though.
 

Sean C

Member
My favourite of Follett's books. I saw that he wrote another sequel set in the same universe out this year, which I'll probably read at some point.

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J.Y. Yang's fantasy debut took the somewhat atypical form of a pair of novellas, notionally readable in any order (but based on what I've read, The Black Tides of Heaven should be read before The Red Threads of Fortune). In recent months I've read a number of fantasy works outside the stereotypical Western European medieval setting, whether it be the Arabian inspired Twelve Kings in Sharakhai, the Polish-inspired and Russian works Uprooted and The Bear and the Nightingale, and now this setting that draws on various east and south Asian cultures. The variety is refreshing. Author Yang is creative beyond that, from the terminology employed for magic ("slackcraft") to the decision to
take what appears at first to be a standard pre-modern fantasy world and make the central conflict one between the magician ("Tensor") ruling class and a new wave of social revolutionaries promoting technology as a leveling force
.

Another feature of the novella that will, I expect, be talked about a lot in reviews is the way this society works, where
children a raised without gender (using the "they" pronoun for an individual) and then pick one upon reaching maturity. This isn't merely psychological, either, as physiological development is also suspended (by magical means, seemingly). It's an interesting approach to character, as we follow twins who end up taking opposite paths
.
 

Sillverrr

Member
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Superior in every respect to its prequel, Shards of Honor. Although it occurs chronologically as the second book in the series, Bujold only penned this novel several years later, which shows in the maturity of her writing.

An enjoyable space opera, I find her focus on characters over technobabble to suit my preference, as hard science fiction can sometimes leave me feeling a little cold. There's plenty of political intrigue and planetary politics, but the drama is distinctly human.

I'll definitely be continuing with the next book in the saga, and I look forward to the change in protagonist to see if my opinion changes from thus far very positive.
 

kswiston

Member
Bujold-9-600.jpg


Superior in every respect to its prequel, Cordelia's Honor. Although it occurs chronologically as the second book in the series, Bujold only penned this novel several years later, which shows in the maturity of her writing.

An enjoyable space opera, I find her focus on characters over technobabble to suit my preference, as hard science fiction can sometimes leave me feeling a little cold. There's plenty of political intrigue and planetary politics, but the drama is distinctly human.

I'll definitely be continuing with the next book in the saga, and I look forward to the change in protagonist to see if my opinion changes from thus far very positive.

Wait, they make non-trash covers to the Vorkosigan books?!?

I initially skipped Barrayar in my (now almost finished) Vorkosigan read-through. I didn't have it on hand at the time, and didn't return to it until recently, after I had read through over a dozen of the books in this series.

Barrayar is one of the stronger entries, but there are plenty in that class. Unfortunately, I don't think that The Warrior's Apprentice or the Vor Game are on the same level. The Warrior's Apprentice is the better of the two, and it sets up Miles Vorkosigan, who is the focus of the bulk of the series. The Vor Game was probably my least favourite book in the series so far (I have read everything except Ethan of Athos and the most recent two novels).
 

Sillverrr

Member
I'm gonna give The Warrior's Apprentice a go ;P All I'm looking for is a comfortable read, and so far Bujold is ticking all the right boxes for me. Good sense of humour - surprisingly dark in places - and a focus on politics and alliances. As I said, Barrayar is light years (no pun intended) ahead of Shards of Honor, in terms of taking the same characters and injecting them with depth and background, so I look forward to seeing where she takes this family next.
 

Mr-Joker

Banned
Currently reading this;

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This is my King's novel so far I am enjoying it but I think that picked up the third book in the series as it seem to refer to the first book but the book does a decent job in filling the blank, though I feel that Rowling does it better with her Strike novel.
 

kswiston

Member
I'm gonna give The Warrior's Apprentice a go ;P All I'm looking for is a comfortable read, and so far Bujold is ticking all the right boxes for me. Good sense of humour - surprisingly dark in places - and a focus on politics and alliances. As I said, Barrayar is light years (no pun intended) ahead of Cordelia's Honor, in terms of taking the same characters and injecting them with depth and background, so I look forward to seeing where she takes this family next.

Most of the stuff that you mention is present in The Warrior's Apprentice. I think that I gave it a 4/5 on Goodreads. I'm not suggesting that it is bad. However, that book and the Vor Game depend on a number of convenient coincidences to drive the plot forward (especially in the Vor Game), and it started to get annoying for me personally. She is much better at avoiding the overuse of coincidence later in the series.

The characters are still well developed, with the mixture of humor and some dark stuff as you mentioned. For a writer who focuses on Space Operas and Fantasy, Bujold is really good at writing mental health issues in a sympathetic and believable manner. Aside from his physical handicaps (as a result of the stuff in Barrayar), Miles is a manic depressive, and that is addressed several times throughout the series.

One of my favourite characters in the series is actually his cousin Ivan Vorpatril. Ivan starts off as fairly two dimensional pretty boy doofus, but Bujold really fleshes him out as the series progresses.
 
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A cool sci-fi thriller where the protagonist is a centuries old entity, a “ghost”, that moves into and beteeen bodies with a touch, inhabiting their lives, as it hunts down an organization tried to assassinate it. The plot has been interesting in exploring the kind of personality and mindset such a being would have, and a lot of clever uses of such an ability, how one could protect against it, how you could identify if someone is possessed, and so on
 
I used to read all the time when I was younger but apart from the odd spurt of reading ebooks my ability to sit and read has atrophied drastically. However, I picked up the novelisation of Alien Covenant recently as it was only £2 so thought it was worth a punt. I liked the film [an unpopular view I know but each to their own] and Alan Dean Foster suggested a competent if uninspired work. He has improved quite a lot as a writer since he tackled the novelisation of the original Alien film however but given that this is since 1979-ish one would hope so! He also used quite a few words that are unfamiliar to me so I have a list of words to look up which is always nice.

An enjoyable read; nothing extraordinary but I finished it in 2 or 3 days so a good page turner despite knowing how the story would play out. What struck me most of all though was how much I enjoyed the simple act of being engrossed in a book. It was not just the experience of being taken out of myself into another world but the lovely tactile sensation of a physical object in my hands and the reduced strain on my old man eyes. Once finished I felt almost bereft from not having a replacement lined up. I was forced to dig through boxes of books to find something else to read. I settled on A E Van Vogt's Slan with it's handsome Chris Foss cover. I remembered virtually nothing about it except that I regarded it highly as a child and it involved a race of telepaths. I was quickly engrossed however and quickly polished it off. Now I am just waiting until the morning so I can descend on my local library with a list of authors and books to hunt down!
 
I just finished reading 10% Happier. Interesting book on meditation, I am planning to get into it.

Currently reading Javascript & jQuery :p which I bought yesterday from chapters for $50
 
Currently reading this;

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This is my King's novel so far I am enjoying it but I think that picked up the third book in the series as it seem to refer to the first book but the book does a decent job in filling the blank, though I feel that Rowling does it better with her Strike novel.

Am I understanding correctly that this is your first Stephen King book? This is a horrible way to be introduced.

Dude. You gotta stop that book now and go back to the first one. Yeah I suppose you could read book three, but you're going to get so much more out of it if you read the first two.

Book one is okay. I really liked book two.
 
Ecotopia

Twenty years have passed since northern California, Oregon, and Washington seceded from the United States to create a new nation, Ecotopia. Now, this isolated, mysterious country welcomes its first American visitor, jaded reporter Will Weston, who explores a society structured around sustainability and social justice. Innovative and unsettling ideas unravel everything that Weston knows to be true about government, economics, and human nature and ultimately force him to choose between two competing views of civilization.
Since it was first published in 1975, Ecotopia has inspired and challenged readers throughout the world. This fortieth-anniversary edition includes Callenbach's final essay, ''An Epistle to the Ecotopians,'' written in the weeks before his death in 2012, and a new foreword by Callenbach's close friend and Heyday publisher, Malcolm Margolin

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XXL-XS: New Directions on Ecological Design

Architecture must not only be functionally green, but its formal, conceptual and physical properties also need to constitute a novel and integrated living material system, one that can flourish within the larger world around it.

XXL-XS represents the emerging discipline of ecological design by assembling a wide range of innovators with diverse interests. Geo-engineering, synthetic biology, construction site co-robotics, low-energy fabrication, up-cycling waste, minimally invasive design, living materials, and molecular self-assembly are just a few of the important advances explored in the book. At one extreme are massive public works, at the other, micro to nano-sized interventions that can have equally profound impacts on our world. From terraforming to bio-manufacturing, a whole new generation of designers is proposing unique ways of confronting the difficult challenges ahead. In this way design becomes a totality of relationships that affects all disciplines, which can no-longer be thought of as self-contained fields, each handled separately by narrowly focused specialists. Globalization demands a restructuring of the profession, as we know it. This requires a new breed of generalists who can work across fields and engage research on multiple sites around the globe. Today we need planetary designers versed in the craft of integral design.

Our thesis is therefore both global and performative in scope. We need an architecture that is more than just a constellation of bio-picturesque images, digitally generated surface effects, and conventional materials. We seek a holistic architecture that uses the best techniques to connect directly with existing natural systems while creating a renewed ecology that can sustain itself well into the future. Along these lines, many of the projects featured in this book simply abandon the old tropes and construction processes of the past by creating numerous green alternatives that proliferate along unexpected pathways.

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The New Wild: Why invasive species will be nature's salvation

In The New Wild, Pearce goes on a journey to rediscover what conservation should really be about. He explores ecosystems from Pacific islands to the Australian outback to the Thames estuary, digs into the questionable costs of invader species, and reveals the outdated intellectual sources of our ideas about the balance of nature.

Keeping out alien species looks increasingly flawed. The new ecologists looking afresh at how species interact in the wild believe we should celebrate the dynamism of alien species and the novel ecosystems they create.

In an era of climate change and widespread ecological damage, we must find ways to help nature regenerate. Embracing the ‘new wild' is our best chance.

510E%2Bdv4kPL._SX319_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg
 

aravuus

Member
Still reading It

it-2.png

(love this cover)

About 20 to 25% in, haven't read it at all for a week or so since I've been either busy or too tired every day, but hopefully I'll be able to put an hour into it tonight. Still loving it, though.

Although admittedly I've been rethinking my next book a bit and while I am still super interested in The Stand, maaaaybe I should read a shorter book in-between these two lol. Maybe the fifth Harry Hole book. Been a while since I've read a crime mystery/thriller book, and Jo Nesbø writes a fucking good crime mystery/thriller. Also I'm excited for the Snowman movie, so.
 

Egida

Neo Member
I posted this in the September thread, didn't realize October came during the weekend.

Finished a few days ago:

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It was an interesting short read, the kind you keep thinking about after closing the book. Now onto the ending: So as I understand, the girlfriend does not exist (well she does, but she never became his girlfriend). All the time we are reading Jake's notes about what would have happened if he gave her his phone number that night at the pub and the life he envisioned for them. He's the old, lonely man who worked during 30 years at the high school. He's also the man who showed up in the girl's window. The man who ended his life.

I think my favorite part was the dialogue with the girl at the ice cream shop. It's that mix of creepy, eerie feeling and sadness when you realized what's going on what I love the most of these kind of stories.

Also, reading late at night, that What are you waiting for? What are you waiting for? What are you waiting for? chapter gave me the creeps.

Now I'm reading another recommendation, The Haunting of Ashburn House. I love the setup, I'm like 25% in and I already feel so sorry about the main character, the poor thing.

Someone recommend me a recent fantasy book please
Strange the Dreamer

Book one is okay. I really liked book two.
Is book two much better than the first? I read Mr. Mercedes and thought it was an okay book, but nothing special.
 

datsunzep

Member
finishing up Snow Crash
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Then, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? before 2049 comes out
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and then finally Leviathan Wakes
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Strings

Member
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Almost done. Super strong collection of shorts.

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Haven't read any other Shuichi Yoshida, but really enjoying his voice and will likely check out more.
 

Killua

Member
Awesome! Much thanks for the heads up dude!

Been thinking about getting ubik for a while now, great timing for that deal.

No problem. =) I was just looking through my wishlist when I saw they were on sale. I hear Ubik really good.
 
Close to finishing

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Well written and somewhat interesting but I am having trouble getting fully into it. Close to the end though, so we will see.

Plan on tackling

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and then

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lightus

Member
Getting close to finishing up A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin.

Really enjoying so far. It's a simple yet focused story which I appreciate after reading a bunch of Gene Wolfe back-to-back.

Want to get in the spooky October mood after this one though so thinking about Stephen King next. Want something pulpy. I've already read Salem's Lot, The Dark Tower, The Stand, and 11/22/63. Which should I read next? Is the Shining worth a read if you've seen the movie?
 

MilkBeard

Member
Decided to read Half a King by Joe Abercrombie because of the talk of his series in the past thread. Had the copy since I bought it on sale a while back.

So far I'm finding it enjoyable, although a bit more simplistic (in prose and depth) than I thought. Hopefully it picks up. I'm around 40 pages in.

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pa22word

Member
Getting close to finishing up A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin.

Really enjoying so far. It's a simple yet focused story which I appreciate after reading a bunch of Gene Wolfe back-to-back.

Want to get in the spooky October mood after this one though so thinking about Stephen King next. Want something pulpy. I've already read Salem's Lot, The Dark Tower, The Stand, and 11/22/63. Which should I read next? Is the Shining worth a read if you've seen the movie?

The shining the book is nothing like the shining the movie, just fyi. I like both but there's a reason king hates the movie, lol

As far as pulpy king goes I'd say skip the novels and head for the short fiction. He's a lot more experimential and playful in them at times than he would be if he had to write a huge novel. Night Shift and Skeleton Crew shouldn't be missed, nightmares and dreamacapes and just after sunset if you want more after that. I found everything's eventual to be merely okay, but still some good stuff there.
 
Finished in September

It
Fight Club 2 (Graphic Novel)
Final Girls
What The Dog Saw

Currently reading

The Handmaid's Tale
You're Never Weird On The Internet
 

pa22word

Member
Decided to read Half a King by Joe Abercrombie because of the talk of his series in the past thread. Had the copy since I bought it on sale a while back.

So far I'm finding it enjoyable, although a bit more simplistic (in prose and depth) than I thought. Hopefully it picks up. I'm around 40 pages in.

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Yeah I got the book a year or two ago and reached the same conclusion and dropped it. Not a bad book by any means, just a little too YA for my tastes (disclaimer: nothing wrong with that, I just don't tend to like fantasy that much in general). My little sister loved it though, made a good gift and now she's a big fan of his.
 
The New Wild: Why invasive species will be nature's salvation

In The New Wild, Pearce goes on a journey to rediscover what conservation should really be about. He explores ecosystems from Pacific islands to the Australian outback to the Thames estuary, digs into the questionable costs of invader species, and reveals the outdated intellectual sources of our ideas about the balance of nature.

Keeping out alien species looks increasingly flawed. The new ecologists looking afresh at how species interact in the wild believe we should celebrate the dynamism of alien species and the novel ecosystems they create.

In an era of climate change and widespread ecological damage, we must find ways to help nature regenerate. Embracing the ‘new wild’ is our best chance.

510E%2Bdv4kPL._SX319_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

That is a lot of ecology based books to read at once! I'm most curious though about what your thoughts are on this one when you are finished. The foundation of Pearce's argument seems based on Peter Kareiva's latest works on establishing "new conservation", which is a much more human-centric i.e. no biodiversity for biodiversity sake, novel ecosystem conservation approach, except taken to it's most logical extreme. If you haven't read his "What is conservation science", which is his spin on Michael Soule's classic "What is conservation biology", I would check that out too, and Soule's response piece on New Conservation.

I haven't read Pearce's book, but from the abstract it seems very black and white and based on the title one-sided in a field that is currently very contentious, though I doubt even those in the New Conservation camp would view invasives so favorably. One other note from the book summary, it makes a strawman about the outdated balance of nature paradigm, which pervaded ecology in the late 1800s/ early 1900's, but all modern ecologists now nature is dynamic. Seems to paint the field in a false light. One last thing is, there is always losers in these invasion dynamics and possible extinctions. sure this opens up niches and the possibility of filling them with new/different species, but we still lose biodiversity, which I believe is valuable in itself and even for human health, for example lower disease transmission due to ticks in more bio-diverse forests or perhaps undiscovered medicinal plants with interesting secondary metabolites.

Sorry for this long post, but this topic and the book got me all hot and bothered. Interesting new areas in field, have fun exploring!
 

Fuu

Formerly Alaluef (not Aladuf)
Started reading The Handmaid's Tale, 19% in and it's very engrossing. Haven't watched the show yet.
 
Is book two much better than the first? I read Mr. Mercedes and thought it was an okay book, but nothing special.

I thought so, only because for the first half of the second book, it seemingly has very little to do with the first book. It tells a whole new story (one I liked), and then in the second half of the book, it starts to draw in characters and plots from the first book and ties everything together.
 

TheOfficeMut

Unconfirmed Member
I'm not a big fiction reader by any means but I decided to check out what free e-books I could through my Prime membership and found a Star Wars book. I'm about 30 pages into it.

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Do any of you have recommendations of books being offered for free through Prime?
 
Getting close to finishing up A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin.

Really enjoying so far. It's a simple yet focused story which I appreciate after reading a bunch of Gene Wolfe back-to-back.

Want to get in the spooky October mood after this one though so thinking about Stephen King next. Want something pulpy. I've already read Salem's Lot, The Dark Tower, The Stand, and 11/22/63. Which should I read next? Is the Shining worth a read if you've seen the movie?
The Wizard of Earthsea is a timeless story.mthemclimax of the book is fantastic.

I finished the Shining last month and it’s completely different from the movie. All the characters are different and much more complicated. Kubrick just took the premise and made something else.
 

Servbot24

Banned
Just finished Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Kimmerer (good read). Now onto Reality Is Not What It Seems by Simon Carnell.
 

Arenesus

Neo Member
I've had a really hard time finding a book recently after taking a short break from reading.

Alastair Reynolds's The Prefect has brought me back and I'm three quaters of the way through after only just a couple of days. I'm absolutley loving it.

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I'll probably read Chasm City next as I really enjoy the world of Revelation Space.
 
I've had a really hard time finding a book recently after taking a short break from reading.

Alastair Reynolds's The Prefect has brought me back and I'm three quaters of the way through after only just a couple of days. I'm absolutley loving it.

89195.jpg


I'll probably read Chasm City next as I really enjoy the world of Revelation Space.
I have to get back into his work. I read maybe 3-5 of the chasm city books but I literally can't remember a thing about them. I loved them at the time of reading though.

Currently reading the first Mistborn book. I had just finished the first two words of radiance by Sanderson and despite not being a bug fantasy fan I enjoyed the heck out of them so thought I'd go on to check out some of his older works. Anyone have any recommendations for his best stuff?
 
Witty and honest book about going through the 12 Steps. I think this book is going to help a lot of people who wouldn't be into sober memoirs or dry sobriety guides. Food, phones, sex, social media, mental restlessness, etc. are all addictions, too.
 

MrOogieBoogie

BioShock Infinite is like playing some homeless guy's vivid imagination
I've just finished Slaughterhouse-Five, and I liked it enough. Quite disturbing at times.

This is the second Vonnegut book I've read, and while I enjoyed it more than Cat's Cradle, I'm just not super into his writing style or structure.
 

Strings

Member
Do any of you have recommendations of books being offered for free through Prime?

The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis is free on Kindle Unlimited and an absolutely fab read. Follows a female chess prodigy through her life as she battles substance abuse and alienation.

It sounds super heavy, but it's handled in an extremely relatable and entertaining way.
 
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