Spoilers What Book Are You Reading?

[kazmac]

I am about to start

Ben Aaronovitch's Whispers Underground (it's the 3rd in a series but the other two didn't seem as interesting to me.)

I just pre-ordered Star Wars: Kenobi by John Jackson Miller (Obi-Wan is my favorite character in the films), and Night Film by Marisha Pessi.

I have a bunch of used mysteries on the way too.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Ben Aaronovitch's Whispers Underground (it's the 3rd in a series but the other two didn't seem as interesting to me.)

I just pre-ordered Star Wars: Kenobi by John Jackson Miller (Obi-Wan is my favorite character in the films), and Night Film by Marisha Pessi.

I have a bunch of used mysteries on the way too.

Ah, Marisha Pessl; I must say that I really enjoyed 'Special Topics in Calamity Physics' when it came out, a clever, dark, witty, wholly original book; I'll be most interested to see what 'Night Film' is like. Please do let us know what you think of it.

 

[kazmac]

Ah, Marisha Pessl; I must say that I really enjoyed 'Special Topics in Calamity Physics' when it came out, a clever, dark, witty, wholly original book; I'll be most interested to see what 'Night Film' is like. Please do let us know what you think of it.

Thanks for the correction on Ms. Pessl's name Scepticalscribe. I am looking forward to Night Film. It sounds like it would appeal to me on several levels. 'Specialty Topics...' sounds interesting too, so if I really like Night Film I will pick that up used.

 

[GoCubsGo]

I just started the Wool series. I'm hoping its as good as people say. Next read will likely be Ender's Game. I read it a good 10-15 years ago, at least, and it was one of the first books I read cover to cover in a weekend. I wasn't much of a reader growing up. I want to read it once more before the movie comes out.

 

[Beeplance]

"Imagining America in 2033 - How the Country Put Itself Together after Bush" by Herbert J. Gans

Just got it from the local library. Hopefully it's a good read!

 

[EmaDaCuz]

I just started the Wool series.

Same here. The first "book" is a short novel. Simply fantastic.
The others are fine, but way too long.

 

[mcmul]

 

[GoCubsGo]

Same here. The first "book" is a short novel. Simply fantastic.
The others are fine, but way too long.

I hope they continue to interest me then. I don't like unnecessarily long-winded stories.

----------

"Imagining America in 2033 - How the Country Put Itself Together after Bush" by Herbert J. Gans

Just got it from the local library. Hopefully it's a good read!

Interesting. I guess there can be a fair amount of varied opinions on the idea that the country needed to pull itself together after Bush. Some would say it all went downhill after other administrations that post-dated his. I'm interested in knowing why the author chose Bush. I'm sure it's not an uncommon thought, but I'm not sure anything has been put back together since him. Unless this is more of a fantasy futuristic novel and I'm just getting all serious about it.

 

[S.B.G]

I finished David Weber's 'A Short Victorious War' which is the third book on the Honor Harrington series over the weekend. What a fantastic book and series. I'm looking forward to the next book soon.

But before I start the next Honor book, I started reading the book 'Faster Than The Speed of Light' by João Magueijo.

This book is about the author's story and theories about breaking the speed limit of light and Einstein's special and general theories of relativity. The story part is supposed to be about the author's endeavors in getting his theory out there for discussion and acceptance for discussion amongst the theoretical physicists whom are his peers. So far, I've read the first 2 or 3 chapters and he's going over Einstein's theories and how they work. So far its a good read and understandable for someone whom is not a theoretical physicist but has a good understanding of the theories and concepts of cosmology.

The book is ten years old, but it's going to be new to me (the FTL part). Once I finish it, I'll be curious to see where this author's theory has taken him, and itself, over the last decade.

Edit: This book, by the way, is a real book, hardback with a dust jacket and that wonderful book smell to it!

 

[pachyderm]

Image

getting much better as we go along...

 

[S.B.G]

getting much better as we go along...

What is it about?

 

[pachyderm]

What is it about?

FROM GOODREADS:

"Sussex, England. A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn't thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she'd claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.

Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road. Like a fuse on a firework, his death lit a touchpaper and resonated in unimaginable ways. The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly incomprehensible to a little boy. And Lettie—magical, comforting, wise beyond her years—promised to protect him, no matter what.

A groundbreaking work from a master, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is told with a rare understanding of all that makes us human, and shows the power of stories to reveal and shelter us from the darkness inside and out. It is a stirring, terrifying, and elegiac fable as delicate as a butterfly's wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark."

Slow start. Good run now.

 

[hchavarria]

Currently reading The Hit by David Baldacci...

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Currently reading "Playing the Great Game" (about the 'Great Game', the diplomatic contest played out in Central Asia in the 19th century by Britain and Russia, mainly); an excellent read, and written by Michael Edwardes.

 

[=w=]

I'm currently on book 2 of the 3 book series "Zomblog".

I'm not a summer reader at all. The bulk of my reading happens in the winter and it's rare for me to even finish a book in the summer time. But this book has kept me interested.

I generally read biographies and books that I "learn" things from, but this is some pretty good light reading.

It's nothing particularly amazing. It's a pretty simple read, as it's written like a blog with various journal-like entries. It seems like a pretty realistic rendition of what would happen if there would actually be a zombie outbreak.

 

[S.B.G]

I'm currently on book 2 of the 3 book series "Zomblog".

I'm not a summer reader at all. The bulk of my reading happens in the winter and it's rare for me to even finish a book in the summer time. But this book has kept me interested.

I generally read biographies and books that I "learn" things from, but this is some pretty good light reading.

It's nothing particularly amazing. It's a pretty simple read, as it's written like a blog with various journal-like entries. It seems like a pretty realistic rendition of what would happen if there would actually be a zombie outbreak.

I didn't know you were into zombies!

 

[=w=]

I didn't know you were into zombies!

Uh, yeah, duh

 

[Zendokan]

Finally finished the 3rd book of Stephen King's Dark Tower series.

This was as far that I got 18 years ago, only the first three books were written at that time.
Now the books 4 to 7...;-D (happy like a little kid at Christmas)

 

[kazmac]

recently

Owsley and Me - Rhoney Gissen Stanley's not quite trippy enough biography about her time as L.S.D. chemist wiz and Grateful Dead soundman Owsley 'Bear' Stanley's second significant other. The one thing I will say is that this was a fun biography until she hit the 1970s then it went downhill.

Sister Pelagia and the Black Monk by Boris Akunin - Basically a younger Miss Marple in the form of a 19th Century Orthodox Russian nun. Pelagia goes undercover to discover why the ghost of a monk is haunting his namesake monastery. I enjoyed this more than I thought I would.

Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith - Excellent in so many ways. Not sure if and when I will continue reading the series, but this was just so good. I probably will pick another Renko book up somewhere along the way.

Death Metal Epic by Dean Swinford - this was so well written and brought back so many memories of my time within the Floridian death metal scene it was painful to read. All the trials and tribulations of being yet another Death Metal band trying to make a name for themselves while dealing with a very dicey independent label rang all too true. Some of it was funny though (I enjoyed the mockery of Norwegian black metal, which I still can't stand 20 years later). I won't be reading subsequent sequels though. None of the characters click for me and it's just too vivid an account - fictional though it may be.

Dario Argento - by L. Andrew Cooper. I'm pretty picky when it comes to books on Dario. I didn't like the gossip, brown-nosing yet well written book by Alan Jones and two others that were either too academic or too familiar to me. Cooper's book started out strong but quickly vanished into academic territory so back it goes. The first Argento book, Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds remains my go to for fun analysis on the director. For books on Italian genre films, I like having an easy to understand non-personal account. I so want an English language book on Sergio Martino and Edwige Fenech.

---

About to read:

The Malice of Fortune by Michael Ennis. So psyched to read a historical murder mystery with an older Da Vinci as the 'first' pathologist.

Then...

either rereading Ghoul by Michael Slade or Sister Pelagia and the White Bulldog by Boris Akunin and finally Murder on the Levithan by Boris Akunin.

 

[designs216]

I just finished Glitz by Elmore Leonard. A well crafted cop yarn about a weary detective and the psycho that hounds him.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Owsley and Me - Rhoney Gissen Stanley's not quite trippy enough biography about her time as L.S.D. chemist wiz and Grateful Dead soundman Owsley 'Bear' Stanley's second significant other. The one thing I will say is that this was a fun biography until she hit the 1970s then it went downhill.

Sister Pelagia and the Black Monk by Boris Akunin - Basically a younger Miss Marple in the form of a 19th Century Orthodox Russian nun. Pelagia goes undercover to discover why the ghost of a monk is haunting his namesake monastery. I enjoyed this more than I thought I would.

Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith - Excellent in so many ways. Not sure if and when I will continue reading the series, but this was just so good. I probably will pick another Renko book up somewhere along the way.

Death Metal Epic by Dean Swinford - this was so well written and brought back so many memories of my time within the Floridian death metal scene it was painful to read. All the trials and tribulations of being yet another Death Metal band trying to make a name for themselves while dealing with a very dicey independent label rang all too true. Some of it was funny though (I enjoyed the mockery of Norwegian black metal, which I still can't stand 20 years later). I won't be reading subsequent sequels though. None of the characters click for me and it's just too vivid an account - fictional though it may be.

Dario Argento - by L. Andrew Cooper. I'm pretty picky when it comes to books on Dario. I didn't like the gossip, brown-nosing yet well written book by Alan Jones and two others that were either too academic or too familiar to me. Cooper's book started out strong but quickly vanished into academic territory so back it goes. The first Argento book, Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds remains my go to for fun analysis on the director. For books on Italian genre films, I like having an easy to understand non-personal account. I so want an English language book on Sergio Martino and Edwige Fenech.

---

About to read:

The Malice of Fortune by Michael Ennis. So psyched to read a historical murder mystery with an older Da Vinci as the 'first' pathologist.

Then...

either rereading Ghoul by Michael Slade or Sister Pelagia and the White Bulldog by Boris Akunin and finally Murder on the Levithan by Boris Akunin.

Actually, odd that you should mention the Sister Pelagia books, by Boris Akunin, as I have heard excellent things about them (including some stunning reviews from writers I respect); I've never read any of them, and now you have piqued my curiosity and my interest.

Re the Arkady Renko series, by Martin Cruz Smith - with the possible exception of the latest one, Three Stations which was very weak, and the pretty good (but not excellent) Havana Bay, all of the others are really excellent and well worth reading. (They are, in the order in which they follow Gorky Park - Polar Star, Red Square (Havana Bay comes next), Wolves Eat Dogs, and Stalin's Ghost.

 

[Prof.]

Just arrived in the post, I'll start reading it tonight/tomorrow.

 

[0dev]

Just downloaded The Great Gatsby after enjoying the film.

 

[kazmac]

Actually, odd that you should mention the Sister Pelagia books, by Boris Akunin, as I have heard excellent things about them (including some stunning reviews from writers I respect); I've never read any of them, and now you have piqued my curiosity and my interest.

Re the Arkady Renko series, by Martin Cruz Smith - with the possible exception of the latest one, Three Stations which was very weak, and the pretty good (but not excellent) Havana Bay, all of the others are really excellent and well worth reading. (They are, in the order in which they follow Gorky Park - Polar Star, Red Square (Havana Bay comes next), Wolves Eat Dogs, and Stalin's Ghost.

The Sister Pelagia books definitely owe a lot to Agatha Christie. Akunin is very adept at really showing off 19th Century small village Russia and touches upon faith and prejudice rather realistically. I liked that Pelagia was so much more than she seems too. Akunin makes her a very strong woman without rubbing it in your face (it's very organic.) And I enjoy her superior, The Bishop Metrofanii. There were a lot of fun details too. ...The White Bulldog is the first Sister P. book, I will be reading that over this weekend. ...The Black Monk was the second in the series.

Thanks for the heads up on the Arkady Renko series. Polar Star and Red Star both sound excellent so I probably will seek those out in the near future.

 

[cambookpro]

Just downloaded The Great Gatsby after enjoying the film.

Hope you enjoy it - I did. Thought it was a fantastic book.

Ben Aaronovitch's Whispers Underground (it's the 3rd in a series but the other two didn't seem as interesting to me.)

I just pre-ordered Star Wars: Kenobi by John Jackson Miller (Obi-Wan is my favorite character in the films), and Night Film by Marisha Pessi.

I have a bunch of used mysteries on the way too.

I love Ben Aaronovitch - looking forward to the fourth book, Broken Homes, coming out at the end of the month!