The Sword and Laser discussion

Finished the dead tree version of Interesting Times and audio version of Caliban's War (enjoyed the story but didn't care much for the narrator, will probably read the next one on my Kindle).

Diving into On Basilisk Station. It's been patiently waiting on my Kindle for a while now. Also going to start listening to The Legend of Drizzt: The Collected Stories soon.

Shadows Beneath by Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Howard Taylor

Dune by Frank Herbert
I'm super excited to start these two.

Just finished Gotham Central: In the Line of Duty. It has been my first foray into the graphic novel scene. I quite enjoyed it, so I'm going to continue with it.

Finished my re-read of Double Star. I said yesterday that it wasn't controversial but now I think that a lot of women today would be quite offended by the then typical 50's portrayal of the one female character.
Getting back to the never-ending story, The Once and Future King.

Reading Darwin's Radio right now. Scary!!! Never realized how great a writer Greg Bear is. Marvelous character descriptions & some very deep perceptions about human nature, if there is such a thing.

I'm on an Iron Druid Chronicles listening spree and just finished Hammered and started Tricked. Overall I like the series but there are times where Oberon is just a little too much. Great at short and sweet. Long conversations of him talking and I want to pull my hair out.

Finishing up The Magician's Land, and after that, its either Sleeping Late on Judgement Day or The White Dragon by Anne McCaffrey.

Just finished The Alloy of Law.

A much lighter, more fun romp than the original Mistborn books. It doesn't try to be as epic or unique as Mistborn: The Final Empire did. But definitely Sanderson at his best.

Here's my review.

Time to finish:

Horns by Joe Hill

My September books:

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (audiobook)
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
The Stand by Stephen King
Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
The Martian by Andy Weir

Woot woot. Just received The Broken Eye by Brent Weeks!

Check out this list of all the imminent releases of paranormal/urban fantasy coming this month! http://tinyurl.com/mzedtkm

At the bottom of the long, long post, there are links to similar lists in other sorts of sf/f. Enjoy!

Just finished We Need to Talk About Kevin. At times very difficult to read, but very powerful work.

Still waiting for this month's pick to come in at the library. Till then I'll be continuing my history thing with The Wars of the Roses and listening to my current commute book Modern Scholar lecture audiobook Decline and Fall of Rome after having finished Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game.

Been wanting to read this for a while. Finally got around to it.

Robopocalypse

I am reading Stories of Your Life and Others and listening to Outlander on audible.

Mark wrote: "Been wanting to read this for a while. Finally got around to it.

Robopocalypse"

I read it a while back and enjoyed it...Trying to get around to reading the sequel Robogenesis which came out earlier this summer.

Just finished Sleeping Late on Judgment Day by Tad Williams and I'm currently making my way thru Neuromancer by William Gibson and Eclipse One edited by Jonathan Strahan.

I just finished The Tropic of Serpents. I thought it was even better than the first Lady Trent Memoir.

I'm listening to Promise of Blood on audible and I have the The Fault in Our Stars checked out from the library on my e-reader.

It also looks like The Witch With No Name is waiting for me to pick up at the local library this week too! I've had fun with this series along the way so I'm kinda sad it's about to end.

Been working through my Dresden files backlog... just finished Changes (soooo good), and now thinking about:

The Widow's House
Cibola Burn
The Shadowed Sun

Changes is still my favorite. I enjoyed the Widow's House and Cibola Burn too.

Last night I started Donaldson's Gap Into Conflict, the first book in his Gap Cycle. I'm only 30 pages into it, but so far I like the noir feeling it has.

Matthew wrote: "I just finished The Tropic of Serpents. I thought it was even better than the first Lady Trent Memoir."

I need to get this book. I really enjoyed A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir by Lady Trent. Really looking forward to reading book 2.

Finished:

That book does a lot of good things, it just does them in all the wrong ways for me.
Here's my review.

I don't do the laser picks, so I've read Brandon Sanderson's The Well of Ascension (which was awesome) and The Hero of Ages (which was sadly less awesome until the last 20 pages), and have just started the second Wheel of Time, and some books for uni which, while I enjoy the subject (Medieval heresies), are not as easy going as spec. fic.

Finished Leviathan Wakes. Enjoyed that one a bit, I will definitely move on with the series. Breezed through Redshirts, which I loved. And now doing a quick reread of the Percy Jackson books. I had forgotten how fun they were.

Found Neverwhereat the library today after some fellow readers mentioned it in a thread I started... all other books on hold atm :D

Other than the book pick this month I've read:

Vicious by V.E. Schwab, a very serious take on superpowers and defining people in terms of hero and villain and what that all means.

The Winter Long by Seanan McGuire (book 8 in her October Daye series) which is excellent urban fantasy with faerie courts in modern day San Francisco. This a good entry in the series that explores some earlier assumptions.

Hidden by Benedict Jacka (book 5 in the Alex Verus series) which is a Harry Dresden-like series with a divination mage set in London. Divination magic is particularly cool in this series with it mostly being used for short term "path-walking" like choosing the future where you don't get hit by a death magic blast for instance.

Currently I'm reading City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett which is a secondary world fantasy where the technology is roughly 19th century with magic ("miracles" and "divinities" which are godlike magical creatures). There's also some interesting cultural stuff with the city in question being an Eastern European-equivalent metropolis that's largely been left behind technologically and is currently being occupied by a South Asian-equivalent imperial culture. The plot is spies and politics and a murder investigation. Very cool and seems to live up to the hype so far.

I'm eyeing off a few things next, but I've been meaning to read the Mallory Kane books by K. Bennett for a while (first one is Pay Me in Flesh). They're about a zombie lawyer.

Lindsay wrote: "Other than the book pick this month I've read:

Vicious by V.E. Schwab, a very serious take on superpowers and defining people in terms of hero and villain and what..."

The only reason I can't call City of Stairs the best book of the year for me is because of Words of Radiance.

Lindsay wrote: "Currently I'm reading City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett "

A few of us are reading and discussing that in another group if you're interested.

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/group...

Thanks, I will look into that.

Rabindranauth wrote: "The only reason I can't call City of Stairs the best book of the year for me is because of Words of Radiance. "

It will have to be a good book to unseat The Goblin Emperor from that position for me.

Lindsay wrote: "Other than the book pick this month I've read:
"

Thanks for reminding me that Hidden came out this month! I love those books. I don't think I've ever been able to make one last more than two sittings.

Seems like City of Stairs is getting a lot of hype. I'll have to check it out too.

As of right now I'm finishing off Thief's Magic by Trudi Canavan (physical) and Treasure Island that I picked up in a sale on Audible as it's nice and short.

I've also got A Clash of Kings (physical) on a slow burn that i've been trying to get through for months and i'm giving Ancillary Justice (kindle) another shot recently as I struggled with it when it was a pick.

Finally i'm getting in stories from our very own Sword & Laser Anthology (kindle) when I can and just finished The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet (Audible) which is a tie-in to the youtube adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.

I'm probably gonna look into Hyperion next as that's another pick that I missed and maybe a re-read of the Sabriel series in preparation for Clariel FINALLY coming out.

Lets see. Yesterday I finished up the third of Jonathan Strahan's hard science fiction anthologies, Reach for Infinity. There isn't a single story I didn't like, oddly enough. I break it down story by story in my review.

And then today I finished reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets with Rob's group, I seem to be the only person who DOESN'T consider it my least favorite of the lot. On the flipside, it's actually one of my favorites of the entire series. Here's my review.

Not sure what I'm going to read next. Maybe some Lovecraft, or those DarkFuse novellas I got on NetGalley the other day.

I finished listening to The Broken Eye by Brent Weeks and now have to wait for the next book.

I'm now listening to The Witch With No Name. I'm so sad that this is the last Rachel Morgan book. I wasn't really impressed with the first few books, but the series really took off after that. It probably didn't help that the first one I read was #3. I binge-read most of the books starting in February. I switched to audio for the last two books because an Audible credit cost less than the ebook.

I've been really bad about reading print or electronic books lately.

Finally finished the Malazan series. Woo! My review of The Crippled God.

Been listening to some history.

Finished:

Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany and 1861: The Civil War Awakening

Also finished Neverwhere: BBC Dramatization

Really liked all of them.


Elizabeth wrote: "I don't do the laser picks"

Glad I'm not the only one.

Reading Soda Pop Soldier

Loving it

Highly recommended for gamers and fans of Ready Player One

Its Ready Player One Meets call of duty, with some Diablo and The Gamer its fun, fast, actiony, geeky, and a bit of a mystery as well...see very in line for fans of Ready Player One... for those in the know it REALLY had me at Weyland-Yutani and Hadleys hope :)

Good book

Finished The Once and Future King. Boy, do I have mixed feelings about this one. I was surprised by the humour in the first part but then it really bogged down for the rest of the book. I did find the occasional philosophical discussion enjoyable but it just seemed to drag on and on.
Starting The Narrow Land by Jack Vance.

I finished The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell. If you like Murakami I really think you'd like this! Here is my review..

Now I'm back to Chimpanzee by Darin Bradley, a near-future dystopia. I had put it aside to blitz through some of the Booker longlist.

Jenny (Reading Envy) wrote: "I finished The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell. If you like Murakami I really think you'd like this! Here is my review.."

So from your review it sounds a lot like Cloud Atlas. I disliked that one (too long, too many gimmicks and I didn't really connect with any of the component stories), so it would be fair to say I should skip this one?

Lindsay wrote: "Rabindranauth wrote: "The only reason I can't call City of Stairs the best book of the year for me is because of Words of Radiance. "

It will have to be a good book to unseat The Goblin Emperor from that position for me.

It was a very good book indeed and it's probably my favorite book of the year now, beating out The Goblin Emperor. It's a sad year when my top two books are fantasy pieces :)

C'mon SF writers, lift your game! I'm hoping Ms Leckie will sort things out next month.

Lindsay wrote: "Jenny (Reading Envy) wrote: "I finished The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell. If you like Murakami I really think you'd like this! Here is my review.."

So from your review it sounds a..."

I would say this is a much more cohesive story. I may have liked it more. But taste is relative, always. :)

Lindsay wrote: "Lindsay wrote: "Rabindranauth wrote: "The only reason I can't call City of Stairs the best book of the year for me is because of Words of Radiance. "

It will have to be a good book to unseat The G..."

Ha! CoS will be a hard act to top, I think :D

Just finished The Stars My Destination.

Was on vacation for the past week and had lots of time in the car & on the train to read, so:

Cibola Burn; The Long Ships by Frans G. Bengtsson (historical novel about Vikings); The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, The Broken Kingdoms, The Kingdom of Gods, all by N.K. Jemisin; A Dreamer's Tales by Lord Dunsany ; and Tome of the Undergates and Black Halo, both by Sam Sykes, were finished, and I'm currently reading The Skybound Sea (third in Sykes' trilogy).

Unfortunately, because I was traveling with my laptop with the less-than-ideal keyboard, I didn't get a chance to do full reviews. Ah, well. I did enjoy all of them.

Time for another weekend round-up:

I read The Mirror Empire (My Review)

and then Stories of Your Life and Others (My Review)

I also listened to:

The Heroes (My Review)

and Jumper (My Review)

plus the Stephen Fry versions of the first two Harry Potter books, but I won't bother linking those.

Finished the last part in the Feed trilogy (Mira Grant) Blackout - still listening to Dune Messiah and I have started on The Bone Clocks - really liking it thus far!

I finished The Robots of Dawn by Isaac Asimov. I'm now reading The Eternal Champion by Michael Moorcock.

Phil wrote: "Finished The Once and Future King. Boy, do I have mixed feelings about this one. I was surprised by the humour in the first part but then it really bogged down for the rest of the book..."

You should check out the last part of the book, published seperatly, The Book of Merlyn. It returns to the animal changing of the Sword and the Stone and has lots of philiosphical arguments. It really is a very nice ending to the story.