Amph What book are you reading right now?

I'm jumping back into my reread of Legends with Jedi Trial. I remember hating this the first go around. Let's see how I like it years later.

 

I think there are a total about 150 Legends novels (not counting Young Jedi Knights or any of the kids' oriented books). If that figure is accurate, I'm about a third of the way through, having started back in August. I'm averaging 2-3 days per book, with the longest time spent reading was "The Approaching Storm," and other books in between some of the Legends novels.

 

Yeah, that sounds about right. I never read the YJK books, so I can't speak to whether they are any good or not, but the Glove of Darth Vader "books" you can completely skip. There were aspects of their premise that were admittedly interesting, but the writing was abysmal and some of the characterization was beyond attrocious. Han Solo baking a pie=

 

I'm including the Junior books (at least the ones I have). I'm maybe 1/5 through. I didn't realize how few novels there are in comparison to the # of books I have!! Now I want to count! *chuckles* I have maybe 260 of them, so I feel like there should be more novels?!

It takes me longer than I'd like to read, and my reread was on hiatus with the new canon. I also was reading other books in between because I need a mental break every few books. I want to reread the Glove of Darth Vader books for their humor value. Trioculus is absolutely ridiculous.

 

Uh, excuse me, those books had a robot Leia that could shoot lasers out of its eyes that was engineered specifically for the purposes of assassinating a three-eyed would-be tyrant on his wedding day. They are art.

 

I did read Dune Messiah recently. It was interesting in that Dune was epic big where this was more close up and intimate.

 

You have an....interesting definition of art then.

 

Loving it so far. I'm only a couple hundred pages in though.

 

Finished Blood Meridian, and after giving it enough time to simmer, started The Road.

 

Dragon Age
The Stolen Throne

 

Well, Han did tell Luke they were going to have company.

 

Monster Volume 1 by Naoki Urasawa.

Just started reading it the other day. It's really good.

 

The Yellow Admiral. O'Brian continues to challenge his characters, now taking Stephen's and Jack's wealth away with temporary financial troubles and forcing Jack to worry about the coming end of the war, with its inevitable massive cutbacks to the Navy, likely scuttling his career, currently in some political disfavor, and stranding him as a "yellow admiral" -- an officer promoted from post-captain to rear admiral, as is inevitable given the purely seniority-based system, but not given a command and shunted to the side where he cannot be further promoted, ending his actual career in the Navy with disgrace. Oh, and Sophie finally finds proof he was cheating and throws him out of the house. It is not an unhappy book -- everything is eventually resolved -- and indeed its willingness to push the characters is part of the pleasure, continuing O'Brian's tremendous character development.

It also allows more of a shorebound focus, a change of pace at which O'Brian always excels. Stationed on the Brest blockade, Jack and Stephen are often in England, dealing with politics, enjoying home life, interacting with the strongest members of the supporting cast. One of the main plotlines is Jack's opposition to a petition to enclose the commons of his ancestral manor, and there's a whole chapter of Jack and Stephen wandering around Jack's lands, talking about enclosure, rural life, hunting, tradition, and the agricultural revolution. O'Brian is clearly fascinated by the historical way of life, by this period of rapid change, by the way the medieval was still alive even as the first period of what we would really recognize as the modern world was being born, and he trusts that the reader will likewise find this fascinating. And it is.

O'Brian also finally concedes to reality and returns to the timeline. Having run through many years in a few books early on, after he realized that he was going to be writing these books for the rest of his life and was interested only in taking the characters forward, not going back for side stories, O'Brian essentially asked the reader to allow him more war because he was about to run out, and sent Jack and Stephen on a lengthy series of missions out of the main theater of war that ran outside of time -- covering several years' worth of events without explicitly acknowledging the flow of time in the outside world, much like M*A*S*H running far longer than the Korean War. Thus indulged with a cocoon of infinite time between 1812 and the end of the Napoleonic Wars, he ran for books and books (the bulk of the series), but here he finally brings that to an end. Acknowledging, perhaps, his advancing age, O'Brian starts the process of wrapping up the Napoleonic Wars, bringing us all the way up to the start of the Hundred Days, and giving us a hint of what's ahead for Jack after the war is over. It's interesting stuff, with the prospect of a major change to the status quo. A great book.

 

What did you end up thinking of Blood Meridian? I love the last 60 or so pages when

Spoiler

Glanton dies

and all hell breaks loose. Probably the most tense and scary reading experience of my life. The Judge is absolutely terrifying.

 

Yeah, it really is an amazing read. I've heard some people say they can't make it through, but I couldn't get enough. Every single paragraph is poetry, and yes, the Judge is now one of my favorite fictional characters (I say fictional even though he's based on a supposedly real person). A haunting experience.

 

12 Years a Slave

 

Finished The Road, moving on to Neil Gaiman's American Gods.

 

best book ever

 

So that was better than I initially felt, but still not the greatest, at least as a Star Wars book goes.

Now reading Star Wars: Before the Awakening

 

The Han Solo Trilogy I: The Paradise Snare

 

Finished Before the Awakening and going to start on Republic Commando 1 today. I'm excited for the RC reread.

 

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Trouble And Her Friends by Melissa Scott. I was looking for this for a long time. If you look up cyberpunk essential reading this one almost always makes the list.

 

I think that's why Dune Messiah sometimes gets a bad rap. The focus and scope both change (Not unlike The Empire Strikes Back coming out of Star Wars). Dune is my favorite novel of all-time, but Messiah isn't far behind.

I ended up bailing on Alan Dean Foster's The Force Awakens novelization. Maybe it's because the movie is still too fresh in my mind, but I just couldn't get into it. So I moved on to A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms by George R.R. Martin. It's nice to be back in Westeros.

 

One thing I noticed about "Paradise Snare" of the Han Solo Trilogy is how Han's childhood/"education" is akin to Oliver Twist. Garris Shrike is a combination of Fagin and Bill Sikes, with the "pickpocket" game played by the droid.

 

I've come to the conclusion that Havac reading the Aubrey-Maturin novels is essentially Christmas come early, and almost as good as reading the books oneself.

The passage in Wine Dark Sea when Stephen realizes Jack has been "playing down to his level" in their music sessions is absolute brilliance, one if my favorite moments in literature. It so perfectly captures their friendship.