What are you reading this weekend?

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I have recently started The Night Market by Jonathan Moore and also have Evicted on the to-read pile.

Godzilla Blitz wrote:

I'm in the back half of Name of the Wind. Can't say enough good things about it. Wonderfully crafted.

I have to give this another chance. I started reading the book a couple of years ago and put it down half way through. I don't really remember much about it. With that said, this book comes up time and time again. I saw it earlier today on Ursula K. Le Guin's recommended books list.

Shifter wrote:
Godzilla Blitz wrote:

I'm in the back half of Name of the Wind. Can't say enough good things about it. Wonderfully crafted.

I have to give this another chance. I started reading the book a couple of years ago and put it down half way through. I don't really remember much about it. With that said, this book comes up time and time again. I saw it earlier today on Ursula K. Le Guin's recommended books list.

Her endorsement is on the book as well.

So far, anyway, I feel like there are three distinct sections to the book. The first section sets up the main story, and frankly, had me a bit bored. The second section reminds me of Oliver Twist. The third section, where the book really shines, is the whole Harry Potter for adults section. I'm not sure what's coming next, but I've enjoyed each subsequent section more than the previous one.

I don't know, though, if you got halfway through and it didn't grab you, maybe it's not worth another try? That's kind of like the Lord of the Rings trilogy for me. I've tried it three or four times and can never make it past halfway through the first book. It just isn't for me.

Picked up the last 4 books in the Sandman Slim series. Really enjoying it so far, took a break to read book 1 and 2 of the Alex Verus books.

Alex Verus is amazing. Comfort reading, curled up on the couch with a nice cup of hot beverage.

I'm reading the ridiculous, completely engrossing "Red Rising" series by Pierce Brown. Finished the eponymous first book and am into the second. It's well-written, and the characters are decent, but the setting is just ridiculous. And that's fine! The story follows the archetypal hero's path, and the main character is literally, physically turned into a Gary Stu, but the entire ruling class is like that, so... Okay? I guess? Mars is in the process of being settled by humans, who have spread out across the solar system (Mercury is an agricultural planet? Go with it...) and in the course of this growth, humanity was violently taken over by a deeply hierarchical group that put into place a "Brave New World" style society, gengineered of course, and which maintains its powerful families through stark competition modeled vaguely on Roman social virtues. Of course anyone who reads history knows how stable *that* was...

It's all got the feel of the old school SF approach; set up an interesting background, plop the characters into it, and create lots of exciting situations for the players to careen around in before escaping by the skin of their teeth. Pulp, in other words, but well-written and enjoyable.

Gonna be doing some traveling this weekend, so I'll hopefully get the chance to start book two of N. K. Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy, The Obelisk Gate. I'm also knee deep in Steven Erikson's House of Chains.

Sapiens by Harari

Funny, just bought that myself. Hope it's good. I want to see how it compares to the slightly more recent "Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived", which is data-rich but very entertaining. And the author has a sly way with references and humor, too.

So far, it is really good. A bit bleak, but good.

A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea: I'm early in, but if this is an accurate telling this guy has led a super tough life. Sad, but interesting.

HEX by Thomas Olde Heuvelt, about a town that's been cursed for hundreds of years by a witch. I've just started, and the start is creepy, but not too out there, but I really don't know where it's going, except that the teenagers are going to be causing trouble...

This one's a little out of my usual reads, but I'm enjoying it so far.

Hex is good.

Im coming here for a reading recommendation, I hope its the right spot. I've really enjoyed The Expanse series, almost done with book 7 (after starting in November. Im not usually such a fast reader). I'm tough to please when it comes to fiction. I get bogged down in lots and tend to quit part way.

The Expanse series is told in a style that keeps me in it. Things happen and they're described with the weight they deserve, no more. There are no long diatribes about object descriptions or personal histories. It's basically just each character's 'voice' in the here and now and there's no time to be noticing the nitty gritty and describing it.

Any thoughts on where to go next? Mostly Im interested in sci fi

Some series I've already been through recently enough to remember them: Uplift, Foundation, Ringworld, The Name of the ___ (bounced off), Fear the ___ (enjoyed), The Three Body Problem (bounced off), all of the Lovecraft

Luna: New Moon, by Ian McDonald. Great stuff.

polypusher wrote:

Im coming here for a reading recommendation, I hope its the right spot. I've really enjoyed The Expanse series, almost done with book 7 (after starting in November. Im not usually such a fast reader). I'm tough to please when it comes to fiction. I get bogged down in lots and tend to quit part way.

The Expanse series is told in a style that keeps me in it. Things happen and they're described with the weight they deserve, no more. There are no long diatribes about object descriptions or personal histories. It's basically just each character's 'voice' in the here and now and there's no time to be noticing the nitty gritty and describing it.

Any thoughts on where to go next? Mostly Im interested in sci fi

Some series I've already been through recently enough to remember them: Uplift, Foundation, Ringworld, The Name of the ___ (bounced off), Fear the ___ (enjoyed), The Three Body Problem (bounced off), all of the Lovecraft

I've really liked the Expanse series, too, so maybe some of the following would be up your alley:

--Pretty much anything by Peter Clines. I'm a big fan of 14, The Fold, and the Ex-Heroes series.

--Altered Carbon, by Richard K. Morgan. It's a cliche, but the book really is better than the series. Also try his A Land Fit For Heroes series (even though it's moire fantasy than sci-fi), starting with The Steel Remains.

Alan Furst. Night Soldiers

Furst is uniformly good, and sometimes great. Night Soldiers is one of the latter. Dark Star is also very good, as is Spies of the Balkans (which is maybe his best). But the whole loosely inter-related series is worth reading. Comparisons are usually made to Graham Greene ("The Third Man", "The Quiet American") and Eric Ambler (whose work I have not read, but it's a precursor to the reality-spy fiction of Le Carre, who started near the end of Ambler's career).

I say loosely-related because a few prominent characters are shared between novels. They are also all set in the same period of time (1933 - 1944, mostly in Eastern Europe). And, uniquely for a series this long, in every one, there is a visit to a particular bistro in Paris. Go figure.

I finally, FINALLY finished Fire and Fury. It was good, but I read non-fiction so. Very. Slowly. It just took me forever to get through.

So thanks to email newsletters and the like, I've got TOOOONNNS of books in my backlog. Thankfully I can arrange Kindle books in collections, so I've got one called "To Read Next" with the most interesting-looking stuff.

So this morning I chose The Ember War, the first book in the Ember War Saga by Richard Fox. Yes, Dick Fox.

The book starts off with a probe coming to our solar system and checking us out, to see if we have the potential to deal with this massive oncoming alien threat. Once it determines that we have a slim, but slightly positive chance of success, it contacts a human that it uses to grant us with marvelous technology, and in the sixty years before the invasion, we advance technologically a LOT, but not really in any other way. There's still infighting and sabotage and espionage and the like, even though we apparently know the threat is coming.

So yeah, pretty fun so far.

Should be finishing up Lock In this weekend and will be starting Snow Crash shortly thereafter.

EverythingsTentative wrote:

... will be starting Snow Crash shortly thereafter.

First time? Enjoy!!! It's a good 'un.

Currently (listening) to "No Sharks in the Med and other stories" by Brian Lumley. Scratching that "body horror" itch something horrid! (Although very much "of its time" in places).

I'm going to try to finish the Saga omnibus this weekend before packing it away for a move.

Well I was on target to read most of JG Ballard. Ya know, bleak, psychological trips through the horrors of human existence, often through a lens of societal collapse.

So maybe something else.

I‘m in the middle of reading Philip Kerr‘s Berlin noir series and I have just finished “March Violets”. I am still not sure if I love or hate it. At times it seems unnecessarily violent and misogynistic (the way Bernie thinks and talks about women is rather irritating), but then again the plot twists in the first novel are quite exciting up until the last 40 pages or so, where it gets bonkers and quite frankly a bit stupid. Naturally, a story set in 1930s Germany HAS to include a KZ.

Spoiler:

Bernie is sent to a KZ as an inmate to identify a guy on the run. Accidentally he meets that guy in the “hospital“ and of course he seems to get out easily after acquiring the info he looks for.

“The Pale Criminal” is next, but I kinda need something more uplifting right now.

IMAGE(https://i.ibb.co/K6G2Ycb/berserk-vol1.jpg)

I've been hearing about Berserk for years. I got the first volume for Christmas and I finally cracked it open. It took a while, but to be fair it is a pretty big book to crack open. I'm not that far into it, but I'm having a lot of fun. Guts is a little cliche, but the book is from the 80's. I give cliche characters from that era a pass.

Also, I started reading the Red Rising series after a friend hyped it up to me. I typically dislike science fiction literature, but Red Rising really isn't the Asimov type of book. I'm also not that far into it so far, but it feels like a Sanderson book. Light, breezy fantasy more focused on the action and characters than the technology. And that's exactly how I like my sci fi.

Just finished Lock In. I didn't realize that the book centered around a disease that spread uncontrollably. Good timing I guess. It was very dialogue heavy and had characters literally stacked on top of characters, so at times it was hard to follow. I guess that's why the author put "he/she/they said" after every spoken bit but damn was i tired of saying said internally. This is the first book that I can remember where I actively skipped those phrases.

Overall, would recommend.

On to Snow Crash. I've heard good things.

Snow Crash was incredibly visionary for its time, and was very present in the thoughts of the people creating the early Internet. Some of it will seem trite and boring, because in a sense, it inspired those things into being. People liked Stephenson's ideas so much that they implemented some of them.

I haven't read it in a number of years, but I remember it as still holding up pretty well, nonetheless.

I'm making a bit more of an effort to read a bit more at the moment...

Am halfway through Half the World by Abercrombie. The central book of the series aimed at a younger audience, this means it's a lot less gritty, but still a decent read.

If I finish that I've got The Fog waiting on the side.

I'm listening to Ready Player One.

Although he's getting a bit old for it now I suppose, I try and read a classic book to my son now and again. He found the trailer for the film adaption a lil amusing, so when spotted David Copperfield in the kids section of library I picked it up and we're reading that together.

ET, Locked In was written with techniques that mask the gender of the narrator.

Robear wrote:

ET, Locked In was written with techniques that mask the gender of the narrator. :-)

Holy sh*te you're right

Edit: I also went ahead and started The Southern Reach Trilogy audiobook.

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