What are you reading right now?

[Mister Jack]

After rewatching Who Framed Roger Rabbit for the umpteenth time recently I thought to myself "you know, I've never read the actual book it's based on."  I had some amazon kindle credit just for downloading the app so I used it to buy Who Censored Roger Rabbit and just finished it.  It's a far cry from the movie that it inspired, what with the word balloons and doppels, but I still just enjoy the whole humans and toons living side by side thing.  Kinda makes me wish we could have another movie about it, but that doesn't seem likely to happen anymore in the age of CG.

[deanb]

I've got that kicking around, I think from a Kindle deal a while back, should give a read at some point. Not keen on the latest Kindle update though (which is more focused on shoving the "recommended books" down your throat).

 

Currently still working my way through the Tiffany Aching books, but doing comics in the meanwhile too.

[Mr. GOH!]

I'm reading this thread right now.

 

#hopenoonealreadymakdethisjokeeventhoughthealmostcertainlyhave

[TCP]

Finished The Gunslinger, onwards to The Drawing of the Three. 

 

 

HOW CAN HE BE A GUNSLINGER WITH TWO FINGERS MISSING FROM HIS RIGHT HAND?!

 

 

Edited February 27, 2016 by The Cowboy Poet

[TheMightyEthan]

Not keen on the latest Kindle update though (which is more focused on shoving the "recommended books" down your throat).

You can change back to the old list view.

[Mr. GOH!]

Enjoy the series while the good times last, TCP. It goes downhill after a few books.

[deanb]

 

Not keen on the latest Kindle update though (which is more focused on shoving the "recommended books" down your throat).

You can change back to the old list view.

 

 

It changed it to the old look automatically after introducing the new interface because I'd previously disabled "Recommended books". Unfortunately the new look means that it doesn't show all your books, you've got to manually show the non-Kindle store books which is pretty fucking annoying.

[TCP]

Enjoy the series while the good times last, TCP. It goes downhill after a few books.

What? Really? Shit.

 

Also, should I read the new book last or where it takes place (between 4 and 5, I think)?

[Mr. GOH!]

I'm reading The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin. She's one of my favorite new fantasy authors, and the book is an interesting first novel in a trilogy. It takes place on a very tectonically active world upon which many civilizations have flowered and then been destroyed by tsunamis, megavolcano eruptions, and massive earthquakes. It's an interesting setting in that the civilization is organized around the twin concepts of a perpetually-looming natural apocalypse and harnessing the power of people who are able to magically (or not; it may be a technological ability, but it's a mystery) sense and redistribute force, i.e., they can influence the tectonic activity by sucking energy from the magma/plates/etc and redirect it to stabilize the ground (among many other things, such as killing people by sucking out all of the kinetic energy in their body and constituent cells, effectively freezing people in an instant).

 

Non-magical people hate and fear the magical, who are harshly controlled by the empire the rules the continent. The main character is a woman who has this power but has been hiding it from her village until her husband discover that their youngest has the power and therefore murders the child and flees the village with their other child as the largest earthquake and volcano ever rips the continent in two.

 

 I don't want to give any more away, but the characters and world building are great. The only annoying thing is that the chapters from the viewpoint of the main character are in second person ("You wake up suddenly as the air suddenly chills."), which I never like. Reading the author's blog, she's also an avid gamer; she references how Mass Effect 2 and 3 shaped how she treats building fictional races, which I found neat. She's a Garrus-Shepard shipper, though.

Edited April 6, 2016 by Mr. GOH!

[danielpholt]

Going to have another read of one of my favourites; I Am Legend later on today. An absolutely classic of its genre and one of those books that never seems to get much kudos. Surely I'm not the only person here to have read it? 

[Thursday Next]

I'm assuming the original not the adaptation of the "major motion picture". If so yeah, and despite missing the point itself, the original film of the book (Omega Man) was way better than the Will Smith film.

[Saturnine Tenshi]

I'm in the middle of Sword of Destiny. Trying to finish that and Tower of Swallows before getting around to Blood and Wine.

[Mal]

I just got done with The Three-Body Problem. Shit just gets crazy towards the end. Kind of wished some sides were explored more but man, what a ride. I should get the sequel and crush that in time for the final book.

[deanb]

I've heard good things of that, might give it a go.

[TheMightyEthan]

I read Three-Body Problem a few months ago and thought it was absolutely terrible. I get that it's translated from Chinese, but the translator didn't do a very good job of making the language seem natural. On top of that the basic premise is deeply stupid. It's good for about the first third of the book until you find out what's going on and then you're like "oh, that's really dumb".

[Saturnine Tenshi]

Recently finished Sword of Destiny. I've come to find that I really enjoy anthologies when they're in the same setting (and clearly recognizable as such), or when they're centered around the same character. Rather than one drawn out tale, it's several smaller tales strung together that seem more related than an anthology that just covered a genre or theme.

[deanb]

So there was an earlier tweet about a dating app where it's photos of bookshelves instead of pictures of you. So in the spirit of that, despite Kindle n a bunch of boxes of my books being in my mums attics) here's what I have atm:

http://imgur.com/a/cSjcM

 

That Profanisaurus Rex I've never actually read or even know why it's there. The rest I imagine are "Oh yeah that makes a lot of sense knowing what I know of Dean".

 

Archers Goon is one of the few YA books I've quite enjoyed, should throw it at my younger siblings one day. Trying to hunt down Adrian Mole for one of my now teenage siblings too.

[deanb]

 

Kingkiller Chronicles: The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

 

Was recommended this by a couple folks at geek club I attend, took a bit for me to get into it, but now most of the way through the second book n awaiting the final part of the trilogy.

 

It tells the tale of "Kvothe" who is a sort of legendary hero currently sort of retired under the identity of "Kote the innkeeper". A Chronicler (with a capital C) arrived and Kvothe has started reciting his tale over a span of 3 days (one for each book). From his childhood as part of a group of travelling performers, to their murder by the "Chandrian", a group considered to by equivalent of bogeymen in this world, his time as an orphan beggar, then him joining "the university" to learn this worlds equivalent of magic in the form of "Sympathy" and "Naming" (hence "the name of the wind" title) and his adventures there. The top cover is pretty accurate for that part, because he's got no family, and certainly not from a noble or wealthy merchant family like most families, he spends a lot of the book absolutely destitute.

 

It's quite interesting, sort of a story in a story, with stories within that from his trouping background. Every now n then it brings to the present in the inn where the talks of the townspeople (who are unaware that their innkeeper is "Kvothe the Kingkiller/Bloodless" despite a minor bit of

)

give some background that at some point during Kvothes past he's maybe set into motion some pretty big events and has reason to be "retired" (presumed dead by most). He's a bit of an asshole near the start, mainly as he's quite naturally talented in both music and magic. He's one of the youngest students, and became a member of the "Arcanum" within 3 days of starting the uni which sort of makes him a bit bigheaded. But the second book he's mellowed at quite a bit sorta through a variety of fuck-ups n a foray into the wider world where he's not as big as he is on campus.

 

Bookwise it's pretty solid, and some nice building of internal references such as Kvothes love for cloaks with lots of pockets in (he even encourages a fae who is making him a cloak from shadow and moonlight to include lots of pockets which was the height of this obsession). It's a bit clunky in foreshadowing, usually setting things up like the chapter exactly prior rather than letting things build up a bit and you go "oh that's what the reference from that story told near the start is in relation to". Instead Chapter 21 he'll describe this unstable reagent used in his artificing and then chapter 22 it's like blown up or something. Also I'm pretty sure one of the characters just vanishes at some point. One element of foreshadowing that I guess hasn't panned out yet but still annoys me is the references to his eyes changing colour. It's never really covered if it's a race thing and it seems sort of to be something Kvothe is unaware of him doing it, apart from him mentioning it when reciting his tale. 

It's quite neat world that has been built up, and he's done a couple spin-off books set in the world I might check out (sort of "Fantastic Beasts" style).

 

Recently been trying to find my old copy of Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 & ³/_⁴ for my younger teenage sister. It's worth a read if you've not read it. 1980 UK through the lens of a somewhat self-absorbed teenage boy. I imagine some of it might go over the heads of Americans but chunks should be relatable especially if you were ever aged 13 & ³/_^4. The latter books are a bit pants imo as he progresses into adulthood. I'd guess Sue Townsend phoned them in a bit after the first two.

 

 

April 2 1982

10am: Woke my father up to tell him Argentina had invaded the Falklands. He shot out of bed because he thought the Falklands lay off the coast of Scotland. When I pointed out they were eight thousand miles away he got back into bed and pulled the covers over his head.

[MetalCaveman]

Finished The Strain, book one in the Guillermo del Toro & Chuck Hogan vampire trilogy.

 

Starts out strong, but it tends to jump between characters a bit too much, there's also some parts that get a bit boring around the middle, but then it picks back up until

that ending, damn that was annoying as hell, like, I know you're setting up a trilogy, but still, couldn't find a better way to let the master escape?

 

Eph: "I'll be the one that kills the master!"

 

Except that when the master is weak and the only thing needed is the killing blow, the one sword swing that will end the fucking invasion saving everyone, that will kill all the vampires currently terrorizing New York, he stops and instead saves Setrakian, the old man that has spent all his life trying to kill the master, the one that insisted that this was lilely their only chance at killing him... Seriously? It's actually hard to describe how dumb this thing was, I was expecting the master to just suddenly call all vampires under his control to him, distracting Eph and thus allowing him to escape, instead we get the usual "goody two-shoes prefers to save one life dooming millions others because horror works this way" thing. Specially annoying as Setrakian could have survived long enough to let Eph kill the master, go over and help him and then be like "We won! Yay!"

 

Then there's the epilogue, where Eph stares at the now-vampiric Kelly (ex-wife, long custody battle which he lost, etc.) and decides to let her escape, after having established earlier that, once transformed, vampires won't stop until their loved ones are also transformed, so now he knows she won't stop until their son is a vampire, that the master know his weaknesses (and where he lives, where he works... everything about him really ) and still decides that the best course of action is to let a vampire that will hunt his son to the end of the world escape intact.

 

 

Overall, an enjoyable vampire story that focuses on vampires being scary bloodhtirsty monsters, but one that falls short in some areas, certainly a book written as the first part of a larger story so there's a ton of unresolved mysteries and characters that only show up for a couple of pages at the end but that will undoubtedly play a bigger role in the following books.

 

It's also been turned into a TV show if anyone prefers that, though from what I've seen, one of the characters was changed considerably from the book version which has caused some issues among fans, specially due to said character's role in the series. The show so far covers books one and two, with the next season being about book three.

[deanb]

I recently wrapped up Mort. Nice to get into Pratchett book after a long time away. It's like a comfortable blanket.

[deanb]

Shadow Campaigns:
The Thousand Names and The Shadow Throne.

 

So read these on recommendation of person that recommended Kingkiller. It's kinda good, it's quite character focused, with a large edge of napoleon era light fantasy. The first book follows a colonial army on the march to reclaim the throne of a...well colony. So yeah has that subtext going throughout it. It's written in how I'm to understand GoT is written with like segments written from a specific characters point of view. Which is interesting when it then refers to other characters. So you're reading "Winter"s segment and she talks of Captain D'Ivoire, which takes a bit to process is "Marcus" (who in his segments he'll chat with "Lieutenant Ihernglass"). You don't ever get the view point of one of the main characters, the colonel (and later "Minister of Justice" then "Minister of War") Janus. Which is purposeful, since he like to keep many people sort of in the dark on things, given his main political enemy is the head of intelligence it sorta makes sense.

 

But yeah, vast majority is sort of Napoleon era kinda of world, with the odd touches of fantasy in the form of "demons" that can be bound to a soul and grant various gifts such as near-immortality, captivating an audience, superior agility etc. (specific to one demon). There's like a subplot of a long thought disbanded "church of the black" that are trying to get rid of these demons (while using their own) in a kind of inquisition style way. 

 

I think if I knew a lot more about field battle tactics I'd maybe get a lot more out of it, I kinda get quite lost during the battle sequences, it gets a bit hard to visualise during those bits.

[deanb]

So given the recent news I figured I'd give Dune a shot, but I got about a chapter or so in and there was just waaayyy too much gobbledegook thrown in too quick and it just kind of put me off. Maybe down the line, but for now a no.

 

So instead I dived into Ready Player One (since that's also on the list for getting a movie*) which I've been enjoying so far. I guess it's a bit easier to get into given it relies a bit on 80s references alongside being grounded mostly in this big VR system which we're well aware of now.

 

*btw that Kingkiller Chronicles is also lined up to get a movie headed by errr...person whose name I can't remember but did Hamilton. *googles* Lin-Manuel Miranda. 

[deanb]

 

I know what I'm not reading.

 

I am currently giving Ian M Banks "Culture" series a shot.

[TheMightyEthan]

I love the Culture novels so much. I want to go back and read some of the ones I read first again, now that I have a better understanding of what the Culture is and how it's set up.

 

I was reading the Dark Tower series. I made it to the 6th one before I lost interest this time, which is better than the 4th one which is all the farther I made it the first time.

[Hot Heart]

Actually got through the first of the Dresden Files books after putting it off for so long. I liked it, overall. The various characters were pretty interesting but I wasn't too enamoured with Dresden himself...

 

There's some great tension-building and almost comical setups towards the end but there's one early on that irked me, where he's "persuaded" to make a love potion he doesn't actually want to make, with no other justification other than the chaos it was bound to cause later on.

 

Not sure if I'll continue with the series but I can only assume the writing does improve and it delves deeper into the lore of the magical side of things.