What are you reading Thread

So the prose varies from precise and economical wordage until he decides to switch style to a more loose and flowery one? Assuming I've understood you correctly, of course.

As for me, I'm reading We Don't Need Roads, a book about the making of Back To The Future. It's roaring along at a good pace at the moment.

Fastpie wrote:

As for me, I'm reading We Don't Need Roads, a book about the making of Back To The Future. It's roaring along at a good pace at the moment.

How fast is it soaring? In the 87-89 mph range?

Fastpie wrote:

So the prose varies from precise and economical wordage until he decides to switch style to a more loose and flowery one? Assuming I've understood you correctly, of course.

The vast majority is very precise - not necessarily economical... thorough, maybe. The looser moments are terribly brief, and usually describe feelings blooming in people.

Drunkalilly wrote:

Fastpie wrote:

As for me, I'm reading We Don't Need Roads, a book about the making of Back To The Future. It's roaring along at a good pace at the moment.

How fast is it soaring? In the 87-89 mph range?

I have to review it. I'm very much avoiding that quote.

Whilst on holiday in Portugal - hence the appalling tonypanging/fronking ( ) - I read:

1) War Of The Worlds - fun, huge fun, but seemed a bit slight, as if H.G. Wells had gotten a bit bored of writing it.

2) The Red Badge Of Courage - not that I'm a huge Code Name S.T.E.A.M. fan, or anything, but this is the book from which the lead character, Henry Fleming, hails. Very intense, and, well, odd.

3) Moriarty - I loved The House Of Silk, as stomach-turningly creepy as it was. This had a good twist but was not quite in the same league, for reasons that I will not spoil.

To answer the actual question posed by the thread title, The Silkworm, the second Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling in disguise, who, if the first eight chapters are anything to go by, is enjoying being able to put swears in her work). Looking forward to seeing how it unfolds, as ever.

ZeroJones wrote:

Whilst on holiday in Portugal - hence the appalling tonypanging/fronking ( ) - I read:

1) War Of The Worlds - fun, huge fun, but seemed a bit slight, as if H.G. Wells had gotten a bit bored of writing it.

2) The Red Badge Of Courage - not that I'm a huge Code Name S.T.E.A.M. fan, or anything, but this is the book from which the lead character, Henry Fleming, hails. Very intense, and, well, odd.

3) Moriarty - I loved The House Of Silk, as stomach-turningly creepy as it was. This had a good twist but was not quite in the same league, for reasons that I will not spoil.

To answer the actual question posed by the thread title, The Silkworm, the second Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling in disguise, who, if the first eight chapters are anything to go by, is enjoying being able to put swears in her work). Looking forward to seeing how it unfolds, as ever.

See, with Moriarty it was all going so well and then That twist comes along. I'd have to reread it but I'm honestly not sure it even stands up to scrutiny. Better than House Of Silk though.

Admittedly I am not as much of a Holmes expert as I should be, but I quite enjoyed The House Of Silk. I will have to reread it to make certain, though, because I only carry 'liked it/didn't like it' impressions around with me after so long!

Oh, it's absolutely a matter of opinion; I just felt the final solution wasn't worth the build-up. Definitely a case of 'oh...it's just that.'

ZeroJones wrote:

1) War Of The Worlds

My all time favourite novel, and one of the only books I've read a fair number of times. I don't think any alien invasion story since has quite so comprehensively nailed the feeling of dread and overwhelming odds.

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3) Moriarty

Haven't even finished the original Doyle Holmes novels yet! I will get there, though, they're very enjoyable.

Quote :

The Silkworm,

Really enjoyed this, and Cuckoo's.

For my part, I just recently read The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas in almost entirely one sitting so I'm cheering myself up with a nice little Star Trek.

Cuckoo's Calling is ace - an easy recommendation.

Dragonflight, the first Dragonriders of Pern novel.  I can see why this series didn't appeal to me when I tried to read one of the later books as a teen, politics always had me skipping pages back then.  Now though I quiet enjoy a bit of verbal swordplay.   

Also finished the remarkable New Jedi Order novel Star By Star, which featured the war finally hitting its darkest point with one massive character dying, several ending up in very bad situations, and the New Republic capital falling to the invasion.

I've always wondered about Dragonriders of Pern as there is a game based on it for the Dreamcast.

If you're curious you might want to check out the first book, Dragonflight, then.  It's a pretty fun and fast read weighing in at around 290 pages, sets up a good world for more to come, and the two protagonists constantly butting heads is a fun take on the normal way these sorts of things occur.   Don't go in expecting huge wars or battles though, it's a lot more political than that.  It's also a good example of how fiction can sometimes prophesize present reality, even though the book is almost fifty years old the parallels between the Thread threat and our own modern day issue of Climate Change and the worlds various powers attitude towards it are easily visible.


Currently reading Dragonquest, book two, now.  Already completely engrossed after the repercussions of the events of the first book are taking effect.  Also great because we at long last get a F'nor perspective. Always been curious about that guy as he seemed pretty cool from what we saw of him from Lessa and F'lar's perspectives in the first book.

Goddamn, **** just got real in Dragonquest.  Super real.  Just when I thought we'd had a climax of sorts in the middle then boom, everything goes to hell.

Super spoilers:

F***ing Kylara, I feel so sorry Prideth got her as her rider.  If it had been anybody, anybody else, none of that would have happened.

I'd love to report that I'm reading something intriguing and literary, but in fact I'm reading my millionth Star Trek novel. This one is Imzadi by Peter David, and is about the relationship between Riker and Troi. A great love story which is making me think about the way I feel and have felt, a Star Trek book full of little nods and things, and at the point in the book I just reached, a Die Hard-esque hostage situation! Top stuff. I've also been reading lots of Ian M Banks and lots of Halo, so I'm on a major sci-fi kick at the moment.

Finished Dragonquest a few days ago. An excellent evolution from the first book, with some good set-up for the next book The White Dragon. Just wish it wasn't christmas so the post system wasn't going to be so clogged I'll probably be waiting another eight or more days for Harper Hall. Its been a very long time since I wolfed a book down that fast and I'm not happy at having my flow broken.

Finished book one of the Mistborn trilogy, The Final Empire.  Read it.  Read it NOW.

JUST READ MISTBORN ALREADY GUYS!

Amazing trilogy so far. Great cast, great world, awesome action, awesome story, the complete package. READ IT!

I just finished Ghosts of Onyx, my fifth Halo novel. I enjoyed it; so much so, in fact, I will now review all the Halo novels I have read:

The Fall of Reach
Eric Nylund
Probably the best of the bunch, this one launched alongside the original XBox game. It tells the story of he Spartan programme; how the Master Chief and company were taken as children and honed into killing machines. The story manages to make the reader care about these big tough space marines, and provides context which the first game was sorely lacking. It was recently adapted into an animated film, which I'm hesitant to watch as I don't want to see Chief's face.
5/5

The Flood
William C. Dietz
An adaptation of the original Halo game, retelling the game's story while also telling the untold tales of what the rest of the Marines were doing while the Chief and Cortana saved the day. It was exciting enough, and it was nice to get the wider picture which the game doesn't provide, but reading it I was reminded of the Simpsons episode where Bart tries to read the novelisation of the Itchy and Scratchy film.
3/5

First Strike
Eric Nylund
Fall of Reach, First Strike and Ghosts of Onyx form a fairly contiguous trilogy, taking place just before Halo, between Halo and Halo 2, and during Halo 2 respectively. This is the weakest of the bunch. A tense enough little adventure through space, but it didn't have much character development or intrigue. It felt like a missing Halo game, with cool action setpieces, but didn't do much for me as a novel.
2/5

Contact Harvest
Joseph Staten
Chronicling the events at the start of the Covenant War, this is another really good one. It shows the human and alien side of the story, and makes you understand both sides of the story. On both side, there are heroes and villains, and it does a fantastic job of making the Covenant relatable while still very alien.
5/5

Ghosts of Onyx
Eric Nylund
I've only just finished this one. It was an enjoyable page-turner, the same as the rest, but the best bits are when it gets closer to the two "origins" novels. This one details the creation of the Spartan IIIs, even more tragic than Chief and the Spartan IIs, but doesn't spend a lot of time on them, instead concentrating more on one of their later escapades on the eponymous planet Onyx. Another cliffhanger ending, as well.
4/5

There you go. My conclusion so far: the best Halo novels are the ones with the name of a planet in the title.
I've already bought The Cole Protocol and Broken Circle, the latter of which I'm very excited to read. I'm sure eventually I'll buy and read all the Halo novels, but I don't like to read two books from the same series back-to-back. Next up, I'll be reading What Remains, the latest novel from NGC alumni Tim Weaver.

I've only read the first three which like you is a fairly contiguous trilogy and one of the graphic novels based in the universe but always been good. I used to have a picture of all my Halo stuff but not sure if I still got it

That this thread should be made current again on the very day that I finish reading For Whom The Bell Tolls is astounding. Ass town ding.

The bizarre prose that I spoke of months ago persisted throughout the novel but not to its detriment. Sharing the adventures of Robert Jordan, and the memories of his reluctant colleagues, was a powerful task. I'm glad I read it.

Next up is Henning Mankell's Faceless Killers, which has sat on my shelf for many years.

Ooh, I read that a while ago. Hemingway's prose is... more than a little purple, but I liked that. It had a pretty good story behind it as well. It's almost like he's a good writer or something.

I'm currently reading Daniel Deronda, which is a George Elliot novel and which I've almost managed to wreck already. The back cover's already come off. It's ponderous, like many classics of the era, but Elliot draws good characters. Even if I do want to give young Gwendolen a kick in the corset.

Finished The Well of Ascension (book two of the Mistborn trilogy) and am about to start The Hero of Ages.

Well of Ascension had its fair share of dull parts, and could have easily been a hundred or so pages less instead telling us some stuff rather than showing (a particular scene with Elend Venture arranging the dismantling of various wood houses for fire wood for the poor comes to mind, I get the point was to establish he actually puts his ideals in to practice but we really didn't need the better part of an entire chapter devoted to it), but boy when it hit the nail on the head it really hit the nail on the head.

Action scenes continued to be brilliant, the main characters continued to be engaging as they developed and generally likeable, plot twists again managed to elicit big reactions from me upon their unveiling, and the world continued to be a richly developed thing.  Once again the book managed to straddle the line between depressing and enjoyable with its mix of light and likeable cast and dark almost hopeless world (which got VERY hopeless in the final hundred pages or so).  

Ultimately Sanderson more than made up for the simpler writing, which if anything was more a positive than a negative due to the sometimes meandering nature of the book (imagine if the book had spent eons waxing poetic about the boring stuff), while weaker than the first book it was still by and large a engrossing read and I am very very excited to see how this trilogy closes out. I once again also say, if you haven't read this series you are missing out.

Finished the final book of the Mistborn Trilogy The Hero of Ages upon waking up today.  Possibly not the smartest move given how it ended, my feels.

I'll start by saying this series is, without a doubt, one of THE best fantasy trilogies around.  A modern classic.  The world that was created, the cast of characters, everything about it was expertly crafted and fit together in ways you wouldn't think possible.  

Plenty of authors have one, sometimes even two, books that come together in a perfect click.  Nailing that for an entire trilogy, especially one whose novels are rather on the large side, is far tougher.  Yet Mistborn pulled it off.  

Vin deserves a special mention.  Pulling off a good female lead is, in my opinion, something a lot of things absolutely suck at.  Vin is one of the few.  Vin is awesome.  

Speaking of awesome, those final few fights were something else!

SUPER ULTRA SPOILERS DO NOT OPEN AT ALL IF YOU EVEN THINK YOU'LL READ THE TRILOGY!!!!!!:

Now, what to read next. . .  How does one pick a book to start after finishing something like Mistborn?  Dune maybe?  I hear that's supposed to be a genre great.

Dune is very good, but don't bother with any of the subsequent ones.

I line my books up on the shelf by my bed in the order I'm going to read them. This lets me plan ahead and have, say, a light and breezy Star Trek after something that might be grim. It also forces me not to read two from the same series in a row. If I was reading Mistborn I'd have had the first one followed by something like Star Trek or Halo I know I'll enjoy, in case I didn't like it, then something classic that might be a bit of a chore, then some page turner I'm excited about, then I'd let myself read the second one.

Recently, I've finished Ian M Banks' Look to Windward. Not the best Culture novel, but almost entirely from alien and mechanical characters' perspectives, which was interesting.

I just picked up a huge collected Lovecraft edition, but I don't think I'll read it all in one go.