Reading two things right now:
and
which is a sequel to:
as always, my goodreads profile is at https://www.goodreads.com/openbuddha
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The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. Quite a good read. Will probably make an excellent movie.
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Now that I re-started my commute, Iāve re-started listening to The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome by Susan Wise Bauer.
I am enjoying it. Itās lively, and detailed, without going into long lists and charts (which are particularly awful in an audiobook ā Iām looking at you, 1491!). Itās giving me a number of interesting areas that Iād like to read more in-depth upon.
http://www.susanwisebauer.com/books/history-of-the-ancient-world/
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Have you checked out SPQR by Mary Beard? Very readable and informative.
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I read it a month or two ago. It was pretty good.
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Iāve been reading One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel GarcĆa MĆ”rquez for, oh, like 8 years. So maybe āreadingā isnāt the right word, and itās more akin to āgiving the stinkeye from across the roomā, but Iām 40% in and itās supposed to be great so Iāll try to keep going.
My first problem is the character names are all the same, or very nearly so, making it impossible for my feeble mind to keep track of who is doing what. Add to that a narrative that does not follow any single protagonist, but jumps around from person to person in a manner approaching perfect randomness. So I also donāt know who to root for, even if I knew who was doing what. Furthermore, there seems to be some fantastical shenanigans, so I donāt know whoās doing what, what is important to follow or what is actually happening. Makes for really engaging reading! 
If at the end, the point of all this is to glean that life is messy, or you make your own stories to give it meaningā¦
Ugh. Iāll be sorely disappointed.
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I liked it, but I see your point re: the characters. I kept flipping back to the family tree in the front. Technically it took me at least 24 years to read it ā a professor assigned it in college, and I started it, but I sold it at the end of the semester. I finally got another copy and read the whole thing a year or two ago.
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I recently finished In the Shadow of Our House, then Mister Satanās Apprentice, and just started Youāll Know When You Get There.
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I just started this series. What do ya think? I liked book one a lot, though it wasnāt as good to me as the Last Policeman. Topic search for unique word, FTW!
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Well, I havenāt read the Last Policeman series, so canāt compare it to thatā¦ I really enjoyed the trilogy. I should re-read them since I read the first two back-to-back and then the third one, Apex, came around a year later, so it took me a while to get the characters and story in line (I donāt know if it could stand on itās own). Itās an entertaining story that constantly teeters on the line between utopia and dystopia. I have been a terrible (distracted) reader the past couple of years ā this trilogy was one of the few to really suck me into the story to the point where I was reading at every opportunity.
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I have not read The Last Policeman, but enjoyed the first two Apex books. I just got the third on Audible and should start it later this month.
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Iron Council put me off Mieville for over a decade. Iām glad I finally tried some of his other novels as Iāve really enjoyed everything else Iāve read of his.
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What did you not like about Iron Council? I admit I liked it, although I liked the sea-kraken one better.
A time-golem? A train that lays itās own tracks? A workers revolution in a semi-tech fantasy world? What a delcious, rusty stew!
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I liked it quite a bit (caveat: I know the author).
The first book was the weakest of the three. Clearly āfirst novelā material.
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WOT? I mean, what?
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I think it was the weakest of the Bas-Lag novels by a mile. Hasnāt put me off Mieville, but it didnāt grab me like the other two did.
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I agree it is the weakest. My favorite is still āThe Scar.ā That said, I did like it quite a bit. Not the same olā fantasy tropes that have been done to death.
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Yeah, donāt get me wrong - it has many of the components of something that I should enjoy. I just didnāt - I found the pacing tedious and it always felt like the focus of the narrative was in the wrong place. I didnāt engage with any of the characters, and the overwhelming sense of futility was perhaps intentional, but I found it monotonous and overbearing.
Embassytown, on the other hand, suffers from a certain amount of flabbiness but is just so wildly weird, I couldnāt put it down. King Rat and Kraken were both fairly straightforward urban fantasy that could have been written by Gaiman, for example - but still compelling enough to keep me enjoyably engaged.
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Have you seen THIS
The Nearly Complete Works of Donald Harington Volume 2 (Kindle Edition) - $1.99 for 5 novels.
Iāve only read one of his (With, in this collection), but it was something else.
This is a re-post from another thread, but itās a limited-time offer (today only? who knows) so Iād thought Iād tell yāall. Wish I had an affiliate link!
I have to askā¦
Nearly Complete?
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