Amph What book are you reading right now?

The Phantom Menace novelization

 

Shift by Hugh Howey

 

Powers Of Detection edited by Dana Stabenow. This is a short story collection of fantasy/mystery. Ran into a nice True Blood surprise as one story features Sookie Stackhouse.

 

Almost finished reading The Honor of the Queen. Great follow-up to On Basilisk Station.

 

Here comes the next "Game of Thrones"

 

The Giver by Lois Lowry

 

The Graveyard Book (2008) – Neil Gaiman

There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife . . . The knife had done almost everything it had been brought to that house to do.

In The Graveyard Book, fantasy master Gaiman follows the adventures of a young boy named Bod (short for Nobody); his entire family is murdered by a mysterious man named Jack in the creepy opening pages (helped along greatly, as the entire book is, by Dave McKean’s beautiful illustrations) and he’s taken in to be raised by the ghosts in a nearby cemetery. The book is a bit more like a book of linked short stories for a while; in each chapter Bod is a year older and he has an adventure of some kind that’s fairly disconnected to the other events of the book. Some of these, like the particularly weird “goblin gate” chapter, just aren’t as good as the others, but mostly there’s a high level of quality. For whatever else you can say about Gaiman, he’s got an imagination like few others; I don’t think I’ll soon forget The Indigo Man and the Sleer, for example. Once Jack begins to reappear, at first only in reference, but soon enough in person, in the book, things get substantially better as the growing Bod and the murderous Jack find themselves on a collision course. Both are aiming to bring a little closure to the night Bod’s family was murdered, if you know what I mean. Jack’s a really great character, as is Bod’s main companion in the graveyard, the mysterious Silas, a man neither alive nor dead, but somewhere strange and in-between. But the real strength here is the bizarre, enchanting and compelling world-building; this is typically one of Gaiman’s strengths and this is a book that fires the imagination to think about what might lie just off the borders of the pages and starts the reader to dreaming on his or her own. What more can you say? 3 ½ stars.

tl;dr – Gaiman’s creepy, witty tale of a baby brought up by ghosts is imaginative, if rambling; the mysterious Jack is a great villain and his conflict with the growing boy feels suitably mythic. 3 ½ stars.

More Book Reviews!

 

About a third of the way through The Martian. Very fun read. Think Apollo 13, but on Mars.

 

If you're liking the book, definitely see the film. Pretty good - though some of the book is cut.

 

I intend to see the film. It's been nice to see a succession of relatively realistic astronaut movies over the past couple of years.

 

Star Wars: Jedi Apprentice 11

 

The Long Utopia (4th in 'The Long Earth' series).

It's all a bit dull and clunky, to be honest, but I'm committed to the series now.

 

Archmage, Salvatore

 

The Mauritius Command. Normally, when I'm fifteen hundred pages into one subject, my mind starts to wander a little. As much as I might be enjoying it, my brain starts to want a little variety, to look forward to the next thing more eagerly than more of the same. But right now the only signal my brain is running up is make more sail. I cannot get enough.

This time around, O'Brien has a wonderfully tight book focused on the campaign to take Mauritius and La Reunion, which gives it a lot of narrative drive and a heavy dose of action. It's also a great scenario to show off both main characters, with Jack now a commodore who must learn to manage battles (and his problematic lot of captains) without being in the thick of the action, and Stephen in his element as a spy, managing propaganda and bringing off grand intelligence coups in his signature subdued style. It's all the usual depth of character, with Jack's maturation complementing Stephen's usual ponderings, with even greater thrilling military punch than usual. Top-notch.

 

Press Start to Play, a collection of video game-themed science fiction short stories, and The Merchant of Venice.

 

MUCH better than the movie itself IMO. Brooks smoothens the rougher edges.

Just finished: Star Wars - Lost Stars by Claudia Gray. SW enters the YA fray. You know it's a new era when you come across the term bad-a** in a SW novel. Gray seems like a good writer dumbing down her material for the audience here. There are far too many coincidences and way too much melodrama. Probably a novel best suited to those under 16, though the reviews suggest most people are digging it. - 6/10

About to begin: The Martian by Andy Weir.

 

Yeah, Anakin saving the injured Tusken Raider is a nice counterpoint to what he's going to do to the Tusken camp in Ep. II.

 

Nice one. Yeah, it does. Obviously that wouldn't have fit into the actual movie, but it's one of the best parts of the novelization. That's the primary reason to read a novelization IMO. If done well, they can flesh things out a bit more and add material that wasn't in the movie.

 

'salem's Lot - to get myself in the Halloween spirit. Enjoyable, but King's trademark unnecessary exposition really shines through at times, as if writing for word count rather than anything relevant.

 

Rogue Planet

 

Re-reading The Oath by Frank Peretti. One of my favorite christian suspense books.

 

Amazon 100 scifi/fantasy books to read in a lifetime

A few thoughts. I have not read most of what they chose.

Do Androids Dream Electric Sheep? is overrated.

I just bought Sword Of Shannara today.

Red Mars? I didn't care for it.

The Windup Girl was boring.

Lord Foul's Bane. Because it is the first one of ten? I loved it but others in the series are better.

Just bought Forever War today as well.

Not a single Conan book? Childhood's End but not Rama? No Culture books? No Ethshar if even only Misenchanted Sword?

 

Outbound Flight