Author Topic: What are you reading, part 3  (Read 311039 times)

PixelFish

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Re: What are you reading, part 3
« Reply #30 on: August 28, 2006, 10:49:19 PM »
Quote
I'm reading the fourth Snicket book...but I just get so bored.  I own 1-9, so I feel like I should read them, but they are just so simplistic and predictable.  I can be entertained by the narrator's wit for about 15 minutes, and then I have to put the book down.



I had the same issue, alas. A friend lent me the first nine too. I kept wanting to like the books, but about the only thing I was reading them for was Lemony Snicket's sentence-per-book about his lost love.

The adults-as-stupid schtick gets old for me too. When I got to the fourth or so book and yet another adult doesn't believe that Count Wossname is involved, despite the track record, I just kinda groaned and closed the book.

....


Am now re-reading:

+ All the City Watch books out loud with my boyfriend.

+ Komarr by Lois Bujold (again out loud with my boyfriend--whichever we read depends on our tastes for the evening)


New Reads:

+ Kate Elliot's Crown of Stars (very quietly reading, based on an OSC article recommending it)

+ David Sedaris's Holidays on Ice

+ Pippi Langstrumpf (in German, because I am trying to learn German. This means I read...oh, a page a day. Maybe I'll get done with this by the end of the year?)

Just finished:

+ Elantris and Mistborn by EUOL

+ Thud! by Terry Pratchett

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Peter Ahlstrom

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Re: What are you reading, part 3
« Reply #31 on: August 29, 2006, 01:31:14 AM »
Love Bujold. Love them all.

My wife loves Lemony Snicket mostly for the underlying mystery of which the author gives only very small glimpses in the first books.

I'm currently reading Footfall by Niven and Pournelle.

Karen is reading Protector of the Small by Tamara Pierce. She's read a bunch of her books lately.
« Last Edit: August 29, 2006, 01:33:33 AM by OoklaTheMok »
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PixelFish

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Re: What are you reading, part 3
« Reply #32 on: August 29, 2006, 03:23:21 AM »
Ooooo, I can endorse Tamora Pierce's books, or at least the Tortall ones. (The Circle of Magic ones I'm less enthusiastic about.)  I first read 'em when I was a wee tyke myself. While I think fondly of the Alanna series, as it was the first set I read, I think it's the roughest of the batch. I really enjoyed the Protector of the Small, as well as the latest, Trickster's Choice and Trickster's Queen, which follow Alanna's youngest child. She does a good job of making her heroines distinct characters despite shared attitudes.

At this last Comic-con, I got my paws on a partial manuscript of Terrier, the latest Tortall book. It's not even got an ending, and it's pretty rough in some ways, being only a partial, but eet was equally intriguing. The Del Rey people let me have it. Two years before they'd given me a ARC of Trickster's Queen and I'd blogged about that. I stayed up one night reading it, and was disappointed come morning that I didn't have the whole thing.
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Rocnerd

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Re: What are you reading, part 3
« Reply #33 on: September 05, 2006, 03:35:01 PM »
Let's see, just finished Lynn Flewelling's "The Oracle's Queen".  Good Trilogy.   Just started "The Foreigners Gift" by Fouad Ajami.  

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Re: What are you reading, part 3
« Reply #34 on: September 05, 2006, 04:05:02 PM »
tell us more about said books.

I am currently reading China Miéville's Perdido Street Station.
It's one of those SFF books that gets categorized as "literature" so non-genre likers don't have to feel bad. It also has the baggage you'd expect from such a book. THe prose is too... excessive. And everything gets compared to sex and excrement -- or at least labeled as "obscene." Seriously, I'm not even sure what i'm supposed to think when he tells me that a half-inflated dirrigible is hanging "obscenely" from a building. Anyway. It takes forever to start. And while I think it's supposed to be SF/future, he's clearly making this stuff up as he goes along. some nice ideas, but I'm beginning to think that this would be a better book if it were 300 pages instead of 839. I'm probably going to give up on it soon.
« Last Edit: September 05, 2006, 04:06:15 PM by SaintEhlers »

PixelFish

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Re: What are you reading, part 3
« Reply #35 on: September 05, 2006, 04:20:12 PM »
Perdido Street Station:

I started that two months back, and then laid it down mid-chapter, and forgot to come back to it. I'm only a handful of chapters in, and I remember some pretty imagery, and the beginnings of a plot, but little other than that. (Mostly I remember the insectoid people, and some building descriptions.)

While I want to like the book, the fact that I put it down and forgot about it til now does not bode well....
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Peter Ahlstrom

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Re: What are you reading, part 3
« Reply #36 on: September 05, 2006, 06:23:49 PM »
I just read Six Days of the Condor, a 1974 spy thriller. It was fairly entertaining, but the main character was just too lucky. The bad guy even commented on it once. Too much sex. And it was rather a Marty Stu: the main character was a spy/detective thriller book fan who got hired to work for the CIA reading and analyzing spy/detective thrillers. I rather think the author would like that too. But still, it was entertaining.

(It was quickly made into a movie entitled Three Days of the Condor which starred Robert Redford.)
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PixelFish

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Re: What are you reading, part 3
« Reply #37 on: September 05, 2006, 10:09:10 PM »
Forgot to mention that I picked up the first book of what seems to be the latest David and Leah Eddings series, The Dreamers. I didn't set particularly high standards for it, because while I enjoyed their first few series when I was much younger, the writing got rather repetitive and the "said-ism" is pretty rampant. (You know, when the author consults a thesaurus every time a character says anything, ie. Polgara murmured, Barak groaned, Belgarath gloated, Garion muttered, etc.)

Anyway, I'm only about halfway in, but even more than the Althalus book, this one almost reads as a parody of the Eddings' style. Characters seem rehashes of other characters: Eleria being a direct copy of Flute/Aphrael, right down to the obsessive kissing and silly names for other characters, Rabbit being the Silk/Talon character, Zelana being a cross between Polgara and Ce'Nedra, and so on. I can't say whether I'd recommend this to past fans or not. I'm relatively tolerant of the early series flaws and quirks and this one is irking me.

Also, as with most of the Eddings books, you could more or less skip right over the theologically inclined prologue setting up the myths and story themes. The flowery language they tend to go for there usually ends up killing any vitality of the myths they are trying to create.
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Rocnerd

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Re: What are you reading, part 3
« Reply #38 on: September 07, 2006, 09:25:13 AM »
Lynn Flewelling's, The Oracle's Queen, is the third book in the Trilogy that started with The Bone Doll's Twin.  A land where only Queen's are supposed to rule or the land will suffer.  Naturally a king is in charge at the moment and has been killing off the female offspring with claims to the throne.  An oracle sends a vision to one wizard concerning the next queen to be born who must be saved.  A spell is cast, a girl becomes a boy, the story begins.  I liked the books even though I found the whole concept a little disturbing at times.  After the Bone Doll's Twin is the Hidden Warrior and then the Oracle's Queen.  I enjoyed all three.  The author has several other books set in the same land that are all connected but stand alone novels using the same characters (though not the same as in the Bone Doll's trilogy).

The Foreigner's Gift is the author's impressions from people who he has met and interviewed in Iraq.  A little different from what I normally read, but heard an interview with him on NPR and liked what I heard, so bought the book.  Only just past the first chapter.  
« Last Edit: September 07, 2006, 09:26:29 AM by Rocnerd »

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Re: What are you reading, part 3
« Reply #39 on: September 07, 2006, 01:26:28 PM »
I absolutely loved the first 3/4 of Bone Doll's Twin, but then the story and the theme and the characters all changed and it wasn't the book I wanted anymore, so I stopped. I think I only have 50 pages left, and I just can't bring myself to finish it.

Perdido Street Station, on the other hand, I only got 50 pages into before giving up. It didn't engage me on a "cool story" level or a "good writing" level, and without either of those the "neat world" level isn't enough.
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Re: What are you reading, part 3
« Reply #40 on: September 10, 2006, 04:27:41 AM »
Well, I've just finished reading Fall of a Kingdom by Hilari Bell. Now, I have nothing to read.
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Re: What are you reading, part 3
« Reply #41 on: September 11, 2006, 12:54:42 PM »
I just read Twilight by Stephenie Meyer.  She's LDS and she said that people keep asking her what a good Mormon girl is doing writing vampire novels.  Anyway, it was pretty enjoyable but it seemed to be more about the set-up, characters, and setting than about an actual story.  I'm going to try the sequel.
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Nessa

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Re: What are you reading, part 3
« Reply #42 on: September 11, 2006, 03:22:10 PM »
I saw an article about her in yesterday's Deseret News. Sounded interesting to me, too.

Currently reading The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue.
« Last Edit: September 19, 2006, 07:35:10 PM by MrsNessaC »
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Re: What are you reading, part 3
« Reply #43 on: September 23, 2006, 04:00:53 PM »
I'm currently rereading the Protector Of the Small series, by Tamora Peirce, as well as The Magician's Guild by Trudi Canavan, and i'm trying to force myself through the Scarlet Letter for class[blech]
 
I JUST finished PEEPS by Scott Westerfeld, which is about vampires, and another by him, The Midnighters, about these five kids who can walk around during the 25th hour of the day, while we petty mortals wait for twelve o'one to roll around.

I'm also just starting on rereading the Bartimaes Trilogy, a child's series about a demon summoner in an alternate world's version of England.
 I NEED to go to a bookstore soon.
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Re: What are you reading, part 3
« Reply #44 on: September 23, 2006, 05:00:56 PM »
If you like Peeps and Midnighters, you'll LOVE the Uglies trilogy, which I think is the best of Scott Westerfeld's work. Science fiction in a not-too-distant future, in which everyone is ugly till they turn 16, and then they get the "pretty surgery" and get to go to New Pretty Town and be bubbly and happy. Commentary on our present-day obsession with beauty and a great story in and of itself. Chimera reviewed it here a while back--take a look.
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