What are you reading this weekend?

Ordered a couple of October/Halloween reads from Amazon last week. Salem's Lot, The October Country and We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Starting one of them tonight - not sure which yet.

Shifter wrote:

Ordered a couple of October/Halloween reads from Amazon last week.

Ooo... I probably should do that. But instead in all reading though the otaku junk food that is Sword Art Online.

Finally finished up Soulsmith by Will Wight (the first book in the series is free on the Kindle for the remainder of the weekend I believe). It's a good book and I like the slow buildup. It's like watching a really good DBZ episode set in ancient China; the characters keep striving and suddenly jumping past what was possible before.

Still reading What It Is Like To Go To War. May return to sci-fi or fantasy after this, we'll see.

Just finished The Palace Job (reaction in the recommended books thread). Next up, the latest Laurie R. King short story collection and N.K. Jemisin's The Fifth Season.

Just finished "The Severed Streets", by Paul Cornell. Second in an ongoing series about a paranormal Metropolitan Police unit in London. I really like his writing style; at first, it seemed kind of loose and a bit disconnected, but I realized he's all about characters and psychological tension, so the style reflects more of a stream of consciousness than a discrete moving forward in regular time intervals. The disorientation that occurs sometimes as you try to track the events mirrors the situations the characters find themselves in. (I know I'm speaking obliquely, don't want to spoil anything.) Anyway, good supernatural twist on the psychological police procedural.

Starting either "Revenger", the new one from Alastair Reynolds, or "The Night the Rich Men Burned" by Malcolm Mackay, or "The Trespasser" from Tana French just showed up on my Kindle. An embarrassment of riches from the UK. Not sure what I'm in the mood for but leaning towards Mackay, I guess.

If you've never read French or Mackay, do so with all speed. I recommend reading French's stuff in order, starting with "In the Woods". (She makes a habit of continuing characters and common settings through the books, but changing the narrator every time - very cool.) And Mackay is a brilliant writer who so far has concentrated mostly on the criminal underworld in Glasgow (fictive, of course). Start with "The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter".

"The case comes in, or it comes in to us, on a frozen dawn in the kind of closed-down January that makes you think the sun is never going to drag itself back over the horizon. Me and my partner are finishing up another night shift, the kind I used to think would wouldn't exist on the Murder Squad: a massive scoop of boring and a bigger one of stupid, topped off with an avalanche of paperwork. Two scumbags decided to round off their Saturday night out by using another scumbag's head as a dance mat, for reasons that are clear to no one including them; we turned up six witnesses, every one of whom was banjoed drunk, every one of whom told a different story from the other five, and every one of whom wanted us to forget the murder case and investigate why he had been thrown out of the pub/sold bad skunk/ditched by his girlfriend. By the time witness number six ordered me to find out why the dole had cut him off, I was ready to tell him it was because he was too stupid to qualify as a human being and kick all their arses out onto the street, but my partner does patient better than I do, which is one of the reasons I keep him around. We eventually managed to get four of the witness statements to match not only each other but the evidence, meaning we can now charge one of the scumbags with murder and the other with assault, which presumably means we've saved the world from evil in some way that I can't be arsed figuring out." - Opening paragraph of "The Trespasser", used without permission.

Anyway, good reading everyone!

I'm mid-way through a weeks holiday at the moment and I'm struggling to settle on any one particular computer game to play, so this has given me the excuse to focus on the reading / audiobook listening for a while instead.

* * *

I finished listening to "IT" (all 43-ish hours of it) and it's STILL one of my favorite King books (weird 'kids having sex' scene aside...blech). I also worked my way through listening to "The Haunted" by Bentley LIttle, which I mentioned in the book recommendation's thread and was pretty good.

The Perry family's new house is perfect - except for the weird behavior of the neighbors, and that odd smell coming from a dark corner in the basement. Pity no one warned the family about the house. Now it's too late. Because the darkness at the bottom of the basement stairs is rising.

Right now, having picked up a fresh Kindle I realised I have a few things left over from the LAST time I had a Kindle which downloaded automatically so I plan to catch up on those before grabbing anything new.

Right now that means "Abiding Evil" by Alison Buck which is...ok? so far.

sleeping menace is roused deep in the darkness of the forest. For decades it grows, biding its time, reaching out to tug at the ordinary lives of those living beyond the shadow of the trees.

Their children begin to disappear.

Unaware and unsuspecting of the danger, a group of families, friends for many years, journey to a newly opened hotel. It stands alone in a clearing a mile or more within the forest boundary.

For some this will be their last reunion.

I'm half way through and it's holding my interest despite a few annoying things (I am *so* sick of the trope of the 'goth teenager who's so mad that daddy isn't paying enough attention to her that she does something really, really stupid' for one thing) and there's been a few questionable leaps of logic in places.

The other things I have waiting to be read (which I'm looking forward to) are a bunch of the "Best New Horror" anthologies. I noticed that Amazon have pretty much every edition of that in kindle format, most of them dirt cheap, so I picked up a bunch of the early volumes and I plan on reading them through in order (I think I initially started reading them around volume..20 or so, so I've got a HUGE backlog of short horror stories to catch up on).

Best thing about those particular anthologies is that the editor has a "state of horror in [20xx]" chapter at the start of each book cataloguing all (or at least, a lot) of the horror that was released across various forms of media for the previous year, which are always interesting to skim through.

So yeah. Should be perfect for a bit of late October halloween reading!

oh, and I just caved in finally and ordered a physical copy of "House of Leaves". Should get it tomorrow.

"House of Leaves" arrived yesterday (day after ordering - thank you Amazon Prime!) so I'm going to start digging into that.

I've also started on the second anthology of "Best New Horror" (1990) and since I want to clear off some of the older things I had lingering around on my kindle/amazon account before I start grabbing new things, I'll also probably try to get through "The Well" - by Peter Labrow, which I must have purchased at some point. It's 300 pages so it should be a quick read.

Working through The Fold, by Peter Clines. It's a popcorn sci-fi novel that doesn't try to be anything more than entertaining. I can totally respect that. Having a great time with it so far.

I'm gonna start Wolf Hall this weekend. Always heard good things!

oof.. Note to self. Probably wise not to try to read "House of Leaves" as a last thing at night kind of a thing. Not because it's particularly nightmare inducingly creepy per-se, just because it's so dense you really need to be firing on all cylinders to keep track of the two different story threads.

pyxistyx wrote:

oof.. Note to self. Probably wise not to try to read "House of Leaves" as a last thing at night kind of a thing. Not because it's particularly nightmare inducingly creepy per-se, just because it's so dense you really need to be firing on all cylinders to keep track of the two different story threads.

Intrigued, I took a look at reviews of House of Leaves on Amazon and I'm.... Intrigued! What a cool idea for a book. Looks like it may be too time consuming for me at the moment but I'll keep it on my wishlist.

I started reading North by Night by Katherine Ayres today. It's an epistolary novel about the Underground Railroad in Ohio in the 1850s. Not sure what to think of it yet, but as I'm not that familiar with the UR, I thought that this might be a good way of dipping my toes into the topic.

Also, I'm currently rereading Neil Gaiman's Sandman, which holds up surprisingly well.

Reading "A Night Without Stars", second in the Commonwealth Chronicles from Peter F Hamilton. I'm enjoying this series. He's beaten his old "death by exposition" pacing problems and tells a pretty good set of stories in each book.

I'm reading The October Country by Ray Bradbury. It's been on my 'to read' list for years and figured October may be a good month to read it =). I've always enjoyed Bradbury's short stories.

Still trying to clear out some older stuff before getting to the new things I have on my Kindle, so I am reading "The Well" by Peter Labrow which I'm only a couple of chapters into and I'm still undecided on whether I like it or not, but I'll persevere.

pyxistyx wrote:

Still trying to clear out some older stuff before getting to the new things I have on my Kindle, so I am reading "The Well" by Peter Labrow which I'm only a couple of chapters into and I'm still undecided on whether I like it or not, but I'll persevere.

..actually, scratch that. I was intially thinking it was just going to be a grim Paedophile/serial killer thing, but it's starting to get a whole lot weirder and more interesting. 27% through it (thanks Kindle!*) Actually curious to see where it's going now.

* "Percentage complete" indicators in books are a terrible/genius thing to inflict on someone who plays a lot of games

MrMetonymy wrote:

Working through The Fold, by Peter Clines. It's a popcorn sci-fi novel that doesn't try to be anything more than entertaining. I can totally respect that. Having a great time with it so far.

I am always pleasantly surprised by his books. Light, quick, easy reads that are enjoyable. I am reading The fold this weekend as well.

Bonnonon wrote:
MrMetonymy wrote:

Working through The Fold, by Peter Clines. It's a popcorn sci-fi novel that doesn't try to be anything more than entertaining. I can totally respect that. Having a great time with it so far.

I am always pleasantly surprised by his books. Light, quick, easy reads that are enjoyable. I am reading The fold this weekend as well.

I'm on something of a Peter Clines binge at the moment. I went back to the Ex-Heroes series and I'm currently wrapping up Ex-Isles, then onto 14. Again, it ain't Shakespeare, but not everything has to be. There's just something inherently satisfying about a good tale well told.

SuperFreakanomics - bit late to these but enjoying them enormously

Shifter wrote:

I'm reading The October Country by Ray Bradbury. It's been on my 'to read' list for years and figured October may be a good month to read it =). I've always enjoyed Bradbury's short stories.

I just finished a re-read of The Martian Chronicles.

Last month I cleaned out out my bookshelves with the intention of only keeping what I plan of rereading. I had planned to start with the Lord of the Rings series, but after this week, I think a change is in order...

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/1SIyUrK.jpg)

Been almost as long since I've reread HGttG as LotR, though I did reread Dirk Gently earlier this year.

Think it's time to reread Octavia Butler's Parable series, starting this weekend.

Will continue my re-read of Fumi Yoshinaga's What Did You Eat Yesterday?. I also plan on driving to Quebec city tomorrow and checkout the comic book store at the mall. I expect to spend a lot of money.

Still reading "The Dark Forest". It picks up speed as it goes along, very nice.

I'm going to finish my NetGalley copy of The Bear and the Nightingale. An interesting fairy tale set in Russia. I am about 1/3 through Dark Money but need to take a break because it is making me so angry and I don't need any more election/politics for a couple days.

Checked out 'City of Thieves' by David Benioff from the library. Recommended to me by a few people.

I've been reading The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck and despite the fact that I picked it up solely based on the title (because, honestly, why not?), it's actually a great read. I wasn't expecting its practical mix of buddhist philosophy & stoicism, but I've been really impressed so far.

It's might also be the best book to suggest to co-workers who are having a sh*tty day.

Shifter wrote:

Checked out 'City of Thieves' by David Benioff from the library. Recommended to me by a few people.

I recently picked that up myself.

I'll be getting back to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. A friend at work is waiting for me to finish so we can talk about it.