I’ve just finished Crooked, I loved it.
(ETA: I can also heartily recommend Saad Hossain’s Escape From Baghdad, though I didn’t love the ending, but even so).
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Yes, please!
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Concurrently reading Ancillary Mercy and rereading Anansi Boys (because we started listening to the audiobook on a road trip and that convinced me it needed a reread).
The Welcome To Night Vale novel should show up on my doorstep this evening too, so that’s next.
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I’m currently reading the …sixth?… yes, the sixth draft of the first novel in a yet-to-be-published trilogy. The latest version re-arranges the plot a bit and pulls in parts from the later books-in-draft, and it’s probably better than the previous versions, but I’m not sure I can tell any more. I think I missed a draft somewhere along the line, but five times is probably as much as I’ve read any book, and always over a much longer span of time, too.
Oh, well, back to the wordmill…
Edit: Argh! The third draft of the second book has just arrived! I’ve gotten so far behind… 
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The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury.
This was quite possibly the first novel I ever read. (Yeah, I know it might be more easily classified a novella, but whatever. I couldn’t have been more than 7 or 8, so it was a novel to me.) Other possible first novels, Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Shining, or The Swarm.
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I just finished Mark Laidlaw’s Dad’s Nuke:
Continuing the discussion from TOM THE DANCING BUG: When Gun Proponents Go Ballistic:
With this cover:
Continuing the discussion from TOM THE DANCING BUG: When Gun Proponents Go Ballistic:
Doesn’t quite wrap things up in the end in a way that feels deliberately planned, I’m not sure I feel about the whole, but after the slow start I enjoyed just about every part of it.
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Laidlaw of Half-Life fame? Yes.
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What?!?!?! No! Laidlaw of Nutrimancer fame. It’s the best cyberpunk parody-pastiche out there, with the possible exception of Bethke’s Headcrash - who could forget the proctopod, right?
(And don’t we all secretly want one, anyway?!?)
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Laidlaw’s The Thirtyseventh Mandala was pretty good low-key horror, I thought, though it’s a long time since I read it. In the original Half-Life, you’d find that and maybe another of his books if you searched all the scientists’ lockers before putting on your environmental suit at the beginning of the game. And BB linked one of his short stories a while back, about the Plateau of Leng and parasitic fungi.
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I just finished the audio-book of Neil Stephenson’s SEVENEVES (or however it should be capitalized. The link is to the wikipedia page, which contains a plot summary. AVOID IT IF YOU WANNA READ IT.
I quite enjoyed it, regularly felt aghast at characters actions, and horrified by the fate of the planet.
Still want to know what became of the Mars mission, but I guess that’s pretty obvious, although I was hoping for sort of a Spin surprise.
Speaking of Spin, I liked the first book a lot better than the rest of the trilogy. Unless I haven’t read the third book (Vortex); not sure. Axis (book 2) was good, but not as gosh-wow as Spin.
Just finished Steven Erikson’s The Bonehunters - book 6(?) of his Malazan series. I enjoy these, but by gum they are dense. Gotta admire an author who’s so happy to kill off characters, though.
Before that was Tad Williams’ Sleeping Late on Judgement Day - the end of his ‘urban fantasy’ trilogy - kinda noir with angels and demons. Enjoyed it, but looking forward to his return to Osten Ard with his next series.
Time for a change next, going to read some Oliver Sacks (The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat), but also some graphic novels, slowly working my way through Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing and also Hellblazer - and thanks to @TobinL I’ll be reading some Judge Dredd too.
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After November dies down, I hope to work on Eddie Campbell’s Bacchus vol 1 - a big fat telephone book-compendium that I thought I heard about in here, but can’t find back the citation.
I’m now listening to IMB’s Use of Weapons during The Commute.
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Book related in that I’m finally finishing the last GoT book …
But y’all saw this today yes?
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I didn’t know it was even written yet.
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I KNOW NOTHING
srsly, not understand. How many people have come back from the dead in GoT? HBO skipped the weird mom and all that, but still…
No, I mean the last one that was published. We’re all waiting for the rest! Stop writing the show and write the damn books already!!
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I read Bernard Cornwall’s book on Waterloo.
He is very good at expressing just how homicial war can be.
It’s an easy read. Not a heavy duty text book.
Lots of dead horses, if that kind of thing bothers you.
I tried reading Aftermath, the Star Wars book. But I can’t get enthused. I should. I love the damn silly movies, but in the written form it just don’t grab me.
Maybe my head is in non-fiction mode at the.moment.
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Me?
How much of an advance can you offer me?
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A week ago, I finished Kim Stanley Robinson’s “2312”, which I enjoyed. This was the first novel I’ve read with my biological eyes since between 1-2 years ago, as they weren’t functioning adequately. I liked the detail of how Earth life was always striving to find new areas to inhabit in the solar system. There was a lot of fun detail about art through the centuries, and the terrarium design of asteroids and other habitats. Also I enjoyed the Mercurial character of protagonist Swan Er Hong.
This past week I gave mine eyes a rest and listened to the audiobook reading of Neal Stephenson’s “SEVENEVES”. I find the story and detail extremely engrossing, and could scarcely avoid binge-listening to the first two of three parts. NS seems to gave gotten some criticism for the dense descriptions of people’s solutions to many crises and logistical problems, but I loved it. It very much suits how I think, with me usually wishing that such stories went into more detail and conceptual depth with these aspects of the stories. The third part, taking place 5000 years later, is a big shift in tone and dynamics - further differentiated by being read by a different person than the first two. A was busy around this time, so benefited from a two-day break before resuming. The third part didn’t work well as a self-contained story, but provided a few interesting bits of extrapolation from the first two.
Tonight, the eyes have it once again. I am finally starting Octavia Butler’s “Xenogenesis”, aka the “Lilith’s Brood” trilogy. But I need to do so very carefully, because it is a library book with extensive damage to the binding.
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A box of smarties and some Rye?
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