Amph What book are you reading right now?

The Silmarillion, by J.R.R. Tolkien

 

Legacy: Volume 3: Claws of the Dragon

 

Has anyone read Robin Hobb's Assassin books? There appear to be 15 in the entire series but not all of them feature the same characters unless I'm reading it wrong.

 

I have not. Sorry

I'm currently reading Obsidio. The books in the Illuminae Files trilogy just decline with each one.

 

I've read her Liveship Traders trilogy, which I think is set in the same world. She's very good, though I felt the ending of the trilogy I read felt a bit rushed, rather like she had suddenly ran out of room and had to tie everything up quickly. Really enjoyed her writing, though.

 

The Book of Lost Tales, Part 1. J.R.R. Tolkien was an incredible writer, so it's great to have the chance to peek behind the scenes at the gradual evolution of the mythology he created. Christopher Tolkien deserves a lot of appreciation for his work organizing and presenting his father's work; it's a rare combination to have a son both so touchingly devoted to his father's legacy to have the drive and dedication for this project, and with the literary skill to pull off the mammoth task of curating and editing Tolkien's lifetime of papers. Here, in the first of twelve volumes of Christopher's History of Middle-earth project, we get a look at the first half of the earliest stage of Tolkien's legendarium. It's really neat to see how much stuff was part of Tolkien's vision from the beginning, and how much there was that changed radically. There's also a lot of detail that fleshes out the way Tolkien conceived of certain components of the setting, which often didn't survive in the rather condensed form in which we ultimately got The Silmarillion. Tremendously interesting, both the stories and the commentary from Christopher.

 

Going through the "A Series of Unfortunate Events" books, it is nice to read them again, the last time was 8 years ago! This is certainly my favourite book series.

 

@Moll I found that after reading 3 or 4 in a row, you need a mental break. But it's definitely nice to read them "all at once" and see how the story progresses

I am reading In the Land of the Big Red Apple by Roger Lea MacBride.

 

Shadowborn by David Dalglish, 3rd of his Skyborn trilogy. I'm sad it's the end of the series; it's a world I'd love to visit for real. Lots of plot and action in this one, but not enough to totally overwhelm character development. And the action is very well written.

 

Finished; Pulse by Jeremy Robinson. A special forces team using the call sign "Chess Team" (each member's codename is a chess piece; King, Queen, Knight etc.), an egomaniacal billionaire, the legendary hydra, an army of regenerating zombies, Hercules (Yes, the Hercules)! It's junk food, but tasty junk food. - 7/10

About to begin; Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo. It and its sequel are breathlessly praised, so I'm giving 'er a go.

 

Star Wars: Legacy Volume Four: Alliance

 

Bards of the Bone Plain was enjoyable. Quite poetic in its pros.

Starting up Markswoman by Rati Mehrotra, fantasy assassin genre.

 

The Scissors and the Sword by Ethan Fox.

 

Is there an author's cut to that novel?

 

City of Fortune: How Venice Ruled the Seas, by Roger Crowley. A history of Venice's time on top of the Mediterranean trade, it's engrossing, featuring fantastic prose from Crowley and some interesting details about Venice's role in connecting Europe to the Islamic world, as well as Crowley's characterization of Venice as an unexpectedly modern city, a proto-capitalist state in the Middle Ages. Its main limitation is that while Crowley is a great writer, with lively prose that brings historical figures and situations to vivid life and great use of quotations from primary documents, he's not on the same level as a historian. His focus remains fairly narrowly on Venice's military adventures and its fit into the geopolitical situation of the Mediterranean; he touches fairly little on the city itself, its culture and government, its expanding holdings in Italy. It's a rather narrowly focused narrative, compounded by some uneven pacing, as Crowley devotes the whole first third to a very detailed accounting of the Fourth Crusade, in which he locates Venice's rise to power, then gives the rest over to Venice's time as the primary power of the Mediterranean, until the Ottomans beat it down. Throughout which, Crowley frequently slows down to give extensive accountings of particular campaigns and battles that he regards as critical. And while it's all good reading, it doesn't give the fullest picture of Venice, and makes you think Crowley would be better suited to writing narrower military histories rather than taking on a topic quite so broad. I'd have loved to have seen him flesh out his telling of the Fourth Crusade into a full book. While I really liked the book, which was a quick, engrossing read, and will seek out more from Crowley (who mostly has written more narrowly focused histories), it didn't deliver everything I think it could have.

 

On the Other Side of the Hill by Roger Lea MacBride

 

The Perfect Weapon by Delilah Dawson. First time I've read any new SW in ages. Short story about a bounty hunter. Nothing deep and not that interesting. If this is typical of nucanon, it's no different from old canon (which I lost interest in years ago).

 

There are reasons why I don't care about many NUCanon stories. This includes the movies. I've found at most 5 that I really like of the over 20 I've read.

I'm reading Star Wars: Vector: Volume 2 which brings together the "Rebellion" and "Legacy" comic subseries

 

I am reading by Tracy Slater "The Good Shufu: Finding Love, Self, and Home on the Other Side of the World".
This is a delightful and affectionate memoir of a professor of business and marketing teaching foreign executives in Osaka Japan, where she meets an executive who is charming and handsome and brings to her a sense of inner serenity. Her journey, their journey, is sweetly detailed, as she acclimates to a new home-place culturally and pragmatically. LOL
As one with Japanese roots as well, and a deep love and fascination for historic and modern Japan, this story resonates, and loving couple-centric journeys, it REALLY does.

 

The Batman Chronicles Volume Four.
This book collects Detective Comics #51-56, Batman #6 and 7, and World's Finest Comics #2 and 3. Features the first appearance of Scarecrow.

These stories were published between May-November of 1941.

 

Battlefront II: Inferno Squad. Just borrowed the book from the local library and like it so far. I liked Iden's story from the BF2 campaign and saw the book at my local Target so I decided to borrow it.

 

Red Sparrow

It's really quite tedious and very dry. I've heard the movie is too.

 

Little Town in the Ozarks by Roger Lea MacBride

 

I found Markwoman in the regular scifi section but I think it was meant for the teen fiction section. It was a good world build, the assassin's are basically Jedi, and I might consider sequels.

Oh here we go with the 7th Grey Man novel, Agent In Place by Mark Greaney.

 

True Crime Addict: How I Lost Myself In the Disappearance of Maura Murray, by James Renner

Couple more chapters to go. I love missing persons cases and MM's is my favorite. The book doesn't go into quite as much detail as I'd prefer and a lot of it memoir, but it's an easy ready, a page-turner, and I recommend it if you're a fan of MM's case.

5/5

I've read the entire series 4 or 5 times, (the early books too many times to count), last time a couple years ago and I'm 26. There's always something new and so many hidden details / clues.