Amph What book are you reading right now?

I'm really liking Night Watch so far.

 

Just reread RM Meluch's Myriad. It's old fashioned pulp space opera, full of US Space Marines with swords and blasters fighting tentacled aliens and cyborg Space Romans. Light and fun reading.

 

Over the last two days I have read most of Stranger in a Strange Land. Utterly disquieting particularly in the author's ability to make wrong seem right and right seem wrong.

 

A Storm of Swords. Been on this one for a good three years. I'll read a good hundred pages and put it down for months. Well, I'm back to it, and already made significant progress. Alas, I'm at a Dany chapter... I'll slog through her chapter and keep it up! I'm right before the purple wedding.

 

i'm re-reading Moonraker. i need some new books.

 

Dragon Avenger book 2 in Age of Fire by E.E. Knight.

 

Right? I found that book to be really creepy. Heinlein has a way with energetic prose (I recommend both Starship Troopers & The Puppet Masters for less weird, much more compelling reads), but there was a moment when I just suddenly tumbled to the fact that this book wasn't going to be a criticism of the whole sexual doctrines of the main character, but that Heinlein actually believed all that nonsense. Really unsettling. It's kind of reading like a satire and then you realize that he's serious. Did you read the longer version with all of the stuff originally cut from the first release reinstated? I did. Oof. Frankly, it creeps me out the degree to which the book has kind of infiltrated nerd culture; every time I hear someone use the word "grok" I just want to ask them why they think the book is anything other than creepy sexual wish-fulfillment.


A Monstrous Regiment of Women (1995) – Laurie King



After having such a positive reaction to The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, the first book in King’s series about precocious Mary Russell and her adventures with an aging Sherlock Holmes, I picked up the second book with a lot of excitement. Add to that the best frigging title I’ve encountered in a very long time and the focus of the book, a quasi-Christian mystic cult led by the feminist spiritualist Margery Childe, and I was super into it. I love feminist takes on Christianity, mystical takes on Christianity and all that good stuff, so I was very excited. Unfortunately, this book, while well-written, just is nowhere near the quality of the first book. The solution to the mystery at the core of the book, a series of murders with connections to Childe’s temple, is the most obvious solution possible – I literally figured it out about a third of the way into the book. Also, I didn’t like at all the direction this book took the Russell-Holmes relationship; just saying that is probably a spoiler, so I’ll just go ahead and say that they do indeed “fall in love” and begin a sexual relationship, which I found ridiculous. It seemed very out of character for both of them and the nearly forty year age difference between the two is just beyond creepy, especially since Holmes says that he’s secretly been in love with her since they first met, which was when Russell was FIFTEEN. The book does have strengths. King’s prose remains top notch, particularly for the mystery genre and there’s a late section of the book where Russell is captured by the villains and subjected to a lot of cruelty that’s genuinely harrowing and deeply disturbing. But the flaws of the book are just too deep for this to be one I recommend. And, sadly, I now have no interest in pursuing the rest of this series. Above average. Whatever. 2 ½ stars.

tl;dr – second book in series butchers both of its lead characters and features a mystery that’s insultingly simple; still, wonderful prose and a few genuinely harrowing sequences elevate the book a bit. 2 ½ stars.

More Book Reviews!

 

Rogue: I read the first half straight through. The second I read about four chapters then got an odd feeling it was going to go straight to Creepy and Bizarre City at lightning speed. I skipped a good swath but when I started reading again it read like a sex prophet cult with a twisted Christ complex and I do not even want to discuss the rationalising of cannibalism! Disgusting. One of the sickest things I've read in a long time.

 

Because only the word has really disseminated to that extent and not the book? Like, I read maybe 50 pages of Stranger in a Strange Land before I got sufficiently bored that I put it down and never picked it back up, never got to much of anything, and grok was still used several times. It's a good word.

Anyway, Orville Prescott hated the book, so it can't be all bad.

 

Star Wars: Razor's Edge by Martha Wells

 

Knight of Shadows by Toby Venables

 

In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson.

 

Sunshine by Robin McKinley.

 

Dragon Outcast E.E. Knight, Age of Fire #3.

 

Forest Forensics -- Tom Wessels

 

Just finished book 5 of Series of Unfortunate Events. I'll start book 6 tomorrow.

 

Star Wars: Slave Ship, Book 2 of the Bounty Hunter Wars. I liked the first book well enough, so I decided just to read the rest of the trilogy.

 

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

 

Gifted Hands: The Dr Ben Carson Story. True inspirational story of a poor as dirt black boy from Detroit who became the best neurosurgeon in the world, and apparently written for attention-span-challenged teens. It was a quick read, and gave me a feel for Carson, who may be running for president.

 

NF - just started The Trouble With Europe by Roger Bootle. He's an economist and a columnist for the Daily Telegraph newspaper. (UK). It's just out in paper here. It's a look at the problems with the European Union (and the euro). It's pretty interesting so far. The paperback has updated content since the hardcover.

 

The Future of the Mind by Michio Kaku

 

Just the story on a farm boy who learns the way of the Force embarking on a mission that could guarantee a major victory for a rebellious alliance with aid from a Jedi, Princess, Smuggler, First Mate, and two droids in all the films...in iambic pentameter by Ian Doescher.

 

I've got the TPM SW Shakespeare book coming from Amazon US.

 

never mind

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Home from the Vinyl Cafe by Stuart McClean. Stories about ordinary people and the joys and sorrows of ordinary lives; it's not bad, but it lacks that je ne sais quoi that his radio program has.