Amph What book are you reading right now?

I think I liked the 2nd one better. I'm guessing you liked the fight between Gabriel...just as I type this I cannot recall the name. In the middle of it Gabriel realizes he is protected? And he never stops with too much time on side characters. The 4th slow down a bit as the characters seem to need the rest. The 5th is a chess battle. After battle. After battle.

 

Not sure if there is a Malazan thread on this board but to any here that like this series here is a recent Erikson interview that you should watch! Some info for all of his books and the coming Karsa trilogy.

http://fantasyhotlist.blogspot.ca/2017/11/black-gate-magazine-interview-with.html?m=1

 

Youth & the Bright Medusa (1920) – Willa Cather

This is Cather’s second collection of short stories. I think, with The Troll Garden coming out so early in her career, she kind of wanted a do-over, so this book contains four new stories and four stories from The Troll Garden. Cather picks the right four from The Troll Garden for sure and reorders them so that this book actually ends with the best story from The Troll Garden, also the best story in this book, the brilliantly painful A Death in the Desert. She has, I should note, revised the stories from The Troll Garden and I think she’s overdone her revision of A Wagner Matinee; she’s stripped a lot of the more abstract language out of it, going for a kind of more grounded style, though it is still beautiful. Of the four new stories, Coming, Aphrodite is the best, I’d say; it’s a genuinely character based look at a romance between two young artists and the ways that they self-sabotage. It has a perfect ending in my opinion. The book is cleverly arranged, really, with the two best stories filling both the first and last slots. It’s better on the whole than The Troll Garden and I’d recommend this as the better starting place if you’re interested in Cather’s short stories. 3 ½ stars.

tl;dr – book collects both new & previously published short stories to make a great collection; more polished than her first collection, it’s a brilliantly curated book. 3 ½ stars.

 

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (1997) - Jean-Dominique Bauby

This book is really fascinating if you know the background, which is that Bauby was completely paralyzed and wrote the entire book by blinking his left eye for a transcriber. He died shortly after it was published. That said, while the subject material and circumstances are fascinating, the book itself isn't very well written. I don't know if it's the English translation, but the whole thing just seems really self-indulgent and over-written. (Perhaps justifiably.)

Before this I finished Post Office by Charles Bukowski. It was fine, a very honest if plainly written book. I enjoy his poetry more. I plan to read Ham on Rye soon, which I've heard is Bukowski's best novel. I believe Post Office was the first novel he published.

 

The Big Nowhere by James Ellroy

 

Fiction - Nothing Stays Buried by P.J. Tracy. The author name is actually a pseudonym for mother and daughter team P.J and Traci Lambrecht. It's mentioned in the author notes that P.J. passed away in Dec 2016 (heart disease, from what I saw online). I'm a great fan of their Gino and Magozzi series and I hope Traci continues the books.
Non-fiction - going to start This is Your Brain on Parasites a bit later. I been waiting for this to come out in pb and got it this past week from Amazon UK.

 

I finished Hardcore Twenty-Four by Janet Evanovich last night and I'll start on The Best of Star Wars Insider Volume 4 today.

 

I read a few of Evanovich's books but went off them after either #3 or #4. Just not my cup of tea.

 

Artemis - not quite as fun as The Martian

 

It didn't get as good reviews here. I might get it in PB. I won't splurge on the HC.

 

About to start on DNT.

 

Ummmm... Darth Nihilus Trilogy?

 

Dark Nest trilogy. SWpants - you might want a can of Raid nearby for that.

 

If only, right?

LAJ_FETT mm, and a flamethrower, right?

 

I've heard of that one. I've heard that I don't want to read it.

 

Yeah, it was OK, but kind of forgettable. It’s basically a pallet cleanser, as it’s sandwiched between the New Jedi Order and Legacy of the Force. It kind of hints at Jacen falling to the dark side, but that plot really plays out over the course of LOTF.

 

Cibola Burn. Best book of the Expanse series yet. The characters are solid, and Holden continues to steadily improve as a lead character. And the plot is really fascinating, centered on the colonization of a newly-discovered world where desperate, stupid, but squatters find themselves contesting for a claim to the planet with a UN-chartered corporate scientific expedition. Both sides have sympathetic characters, but both also are flawed, the squatters harboring a delusional group of would-be resistance fighters bent on terrorizing the competition off their world, while thanks to their attacks, the formal expedition ends up under the control of a sociopathic security chief who luxuriates in the opportunity to play sheriff and kill people. Extremism on both sides makes things worse for Holden, who's sent to mediate. Also, the planet's full of ruins from the extinct ancient aliens who built the gateways to get there, and maybe holds clues to what took them out. There's a lot going on, built around a strong plotline and a really great villain who has a strong presence throughout the story. The characters get developed really well. It's a great read and definitely shows the series getting better and better with each book.

 

Cibola Burn. Best book of the Expanse series yet. The characters are solid, and Holden continues to steadily improve as a lead character. And the plot is really fascinating, centered on the colonization of a newly-discovered world where desperate, stupid, but squatters find themselves contesting for a claim to the planet with a UN-chartered corporate scientific expedition. Both sides have sympathetic characters, but both also are flawed, the squatters harboring a delusional group of would-be resistance fighters bent on terrorizing the competition off their world, while thanks to their attacks, the formal expedition ends up under the control of a sociopathic security chief who luxuriates in the opportunity to play sheriff and kill people. Extremism on both sides makes things worse for Holden, who's sent to mediate. Also, the planet's full of ruins from the extinct ancient aliens who built the gateways to get there, and maybe holds clues to what took them out. There's a lot going on, built around a strong plotline and a really great villain who has a strong presence throughout the story. The characters get developed really well. It's a great read and definitely shows the series getting better and better with each book.

 

The Seven by Peter Newman, the third book in the Vagrant Trilogy.

 

I just wanted the Raid. If I was rating all the SW books this trilogy would fall near the bottom of the list.

 

Dark Deeds by Mike Brooks. 3rd in his series of SF adventures focused on the smuggler crew of a tramp freighter in a dystopic universe with a Firefly flavor. Plotwise, this one is kind of an Ocean's 11 heist, but much darker. Interesting characters and a twisty plot. I hope he keeps writing these.

 

One of Ours (1922) – Willa Cather

One of Ours is the story of Claude Wheeler, a good Midwestern boy who finds himself running up against failure and disillusionment on every side in the days leading up to World War I. This is the book that won Cather the Pulitzer Prize and it was her best seller when it came out. It caused a lot of controversy as well with many critics feeling that Cather romanticized World War I. I think the critics were missing the point though; the last two sections of the book deal with Claude’s experiences of the War and it is, I think, rather jarring to see the way in which Cather writes about the beauties of the landscape and the high ideals of the conflict. But the entire point of the book, I think, is that Claude is an idealist in all the worst ways; he always believes too strongly in things and finds himself devastated when they fail to live up to his expectations. In the final chapter of this book, we see that disillusionment with the war & the military summed up nicely by Claude’s mother. Claude remains too close to his own perspectives to realize that disillusionment will come from this quarter as well, but his mother sees all too well the ugliness & tragedy of the war. It’s a daring move by Cather. One would anticipate the book ending with Claude finally coming to the realization of the tragedy of the War, but Cather ends the book without Claude ever coming to that realization; it’s only Claude’s mother who truly understands, even as the other characters struggle to do so, that the War is the tragedy of an entire generation of young men who are being destroyed by it. At well over 500 pages, the book is ultimately too long, I think; a lengthy section of the book takes place on the troop ship as Claude and his fellow soldiers are being shipped across the ocean to France and that section could have been cut down substantially. But Cather’s writing is top notch in other ways. Claude is one of her most layered characters yet and he’s her most frustratingly flawed to date as well, in the best sense of the word “flawed.” The section of the book given over to Claude’s courtship of and marriage to a young woman named Enid Royce is almost certainly the best and the scene of their wedding night is some of Cather’s best character writing yet, a brutal and bitter descent into frustrated disillusionment for Claude. The book doesn’t ever quite cohere as I think Cather wanted it to and, beautiful as much of it is, there’s simply too much in the way of extraneous material & too many undeveloped characters populate the edges of the story. Still, it’s a brilliant character portrait that remains challenging and unsettling in all the right ways. 3 ½ stars.

tl;dr – this book has some of Cather’s best character-based writing yet, but it struggles with a meandering plot; still, it remains gripping and compelling despite overlength. 3 ½ stars.

 

The Collector - John Fowles (1963). This is a very well written book describing a kidnapping from the point of view of a kidnapper. The book is interesting as it shows the ways in which the protagonist justifies his actions to himself and how he is able to maintain a sense of moral superiority. As one would expect, the book takes some rather dark turns and can make for uncomfortable reading. That said, the protagonist is fascinating and I am struggling to put this book down.

 

Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder

 

Just finished; Sahara by Clive Cussler.

At nearly 600 pages, it's far too bloated for a simple action adventure novel. There's just not enough story here to sustain over that many pages, and any fun is bogged down and lost in the mire. With its ticking clock premise, the pace should be tick-tick-tick-tick-tick, not tick......tick......tick......tick.

Currently reading; Planet of Adventure by Jack Vance.

A compilation of 4 novels focusing on the adventures of Adam Reith, the sole survivor of an Earth scout ship that crash lands on a distant alien world. It/they has/have a good reputation as a fun, pulp-style adventure, but early on the deluge of unpronounceable alien species names has created speed bumps between me and my enjoyment.

 

I remember reading that in one night , it really is a brilliant book .

ever read The Magus? , same author , one of my favorites .

just been reading The Princess Diarist , I've got to the part where she talks about her affair with Harrison , there's nothing sexually explicit but she's very honest , it does feel a bit 'voyeuristic' reading it somehow , Carrie has a great turn of phrase .

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