This month I’ve been rereading Halo: Primordium. Good book but just as depressing as I remember. I’ve also started working my way through the OpenLDAP Admin manual trying to wrap my head around LDAP.
So what have you all been reading? What did you think of it?
I’ve started A Memory of Light. The last book in the Wheel of Time series.
And I’m also reading Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Oh man, I am so excited for you! That ending is amazing for the series. WoT is how I found my way to Brandon Sanderson. Now that I’ve read a lot of his stuff I understand that he excels at endings; its probably his biggest strength.
Thanks, I’m really looking forward to it! It’s been a long journey through these 15 books. And Brandon Sanderson is great, I love the Mistborn and Stormlight books, but Elantris is one that really gripped me. Such a interesting and well-written story.
I also loved Elantris. Warbreaker was similarly great, imo.
I’m on book 6 of the Wheel of Time, after reading all of the Cosmere lol
Nice! Reading WoT takes a while, but it so worth it
That’s awesome. Elantris doesn’t get enough love from Sanderson fans, I think because his other work is so strong where in Elantris he was still finding his voice as his first published work. But I read it after books 1-4 of the Stormlight books and while it was clearly an early work and in comparison it’s not written as “well,” a lot of the key things are there. Compelling story, good character work, and compared to most fiction, really well written. It’s just when put next to his later works it feels a bit “less.” But obviously, his strength is really his character work, and some of them were a bit flat, but that villain… man that really showed what he can do with a character. And of course his story ideas are always just so unique and awesome.
And I don’t know how much of Sanderson’s background you know but it was the first Mistborn book that got him Wheel of Time. His telling of that story is actually really touching to me as someone who loves books and how they can affect people.
Yeah it takes so much dedication and practice to become a successful writer, so it’s really remarkable that he wrote such a great story as his first novel. It shows his unique mind. And the raw (if you can call it that) feeling of Elantris adds to the charm for me. Its like seeing the writer grow and evolve before your eyes.
Oh wow, I didn’t know that! And so far I’ve enjoyed how he wrotw the WoT series. Keeping in touch with the overall feeling of the books, but still writing within himself and not trying to emulate Robert Jordan.
I’m about half way through The Gathering Storm, the antipenultimate book of WoT. I can finally no longer call myself “the biggest Brandon Sanderson fan who’s never read one of his books”, since I was a big fan of him from his Laws of Magic essays, his writing lectures, and his YouTube channel, but I’ve never read any of his novels.
His solo books probably won’t be the next thing I read once I finish WoT, but I am looking forward to trying him out.
Rereading Mort by Terry Pratchett. Also And Another Thing by Eoin Colfer.
How is And Another Thing? Loved H2G2, but I read several of the Artemis Fowl books as a kid and can’t really imagine Colfer nailing Adams’s style (though I admit the latter H2G2 books began to loose their punch anyway). If anyone, I would’ve accepted Pratchett picking up the series, but alas.
The jokes aren’t as great, nor is the writing, specifically compared to Douglas Adams’ work. However, it isn’t bad, and pretty OK when consumed in the form of an audiobook. I am mostly reading it because the ending of Mostly Harmless left me sad and I wanted to read more stories involving the characters.
I am mostly reading it because the ending of Mostly Harmless left me sad and I wanted to read more stories involving the characters.
I kinda liked the bleak ending, it reinforced the theme of cosmic scale. I liked the Mark II, I liked the whole tidy Beta wrap up. I can’t imagine a very satisfying way to continue past that point.
The don’t dislike the ending of Mostly Harmless. It’s a very tidy wrap up with how earth finally gets destroyed once and for all, along with the main characters. However, that being said, I was glad to read about their further adventures in the same universe.
I’m reading “So You Want to Be a Game Master” by Justin Alexander and “The Way of Kings” by Brandon Sanderson.
I also have “Needful Things” by Stephen King and “The Great Hunt” (The Wheel of Time book 2) by Robert Jordan sitting at roughly 50%, but they currently are in pause; unfortunately reading more than 2 books simultaneously is difficult if you also have to work.
I’m reading book 6 of the Wheel of Time. It’s pretty great, I started the series after finishing the Cosmere books. A friend suggested them since Sanderson finished the series for Jordan.
Man, Lord of Chaos is so good
I’ve just finished “The Sparrow” by Mary Doria Russell. A sci-fi story where it’s the Jesuits who are sending the first mission to contact an alien species. It was a really great book, some of the best sci-fi I’ve read in recent years. The author really knows how to write great characters you care about, despite the fact that you know it’ll all end in disaster from the very beginning.
I’ve now started “Gardens of the Moon”, the first book of the “Malazan Book of the Fallen” series. The series is somewhat infamous for being very complicated and difficult to read, so we’ll see how it goes. The author definitely likes to use some very obscure vocabulary, good thing I have an ebook reader with a built-in dictionary.
The Sparrow sounds interesting. I’ll have to add it to my list.
I started on the Tawny Man triology by Robin Hobb, love it so far!
I just started Children of Memory. I Really enjoyed the first two books.
I finished the Farseer Trilogy recently, which I fell in love with. Rarely have I read such compelling characters with such emotional depth. So I’ve done a 180 and started Malazan: Book of the Fallen!
Swastika Night (1984 but with Nazis and written before WWII)
The Gnostic Gospels (not quite as interesting as The Origin of Satan, but by the same author)
Sh!t Went Down (one page per day of historical events)
Acquired this month: Gaza Writes Back, A Rome of One’s Own, The Ugly American, If We Burn
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Light novel named To Be the Eminence in Shadow. Compared to other JP novels out there, this translated version truly has distinction of people in dialogues (that means you can clearly notice who is speaking), which is very pleasing to say the least
I am reading The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight by Andrew Leland.
The Naked Woman by Desmond Morris.
Over December I read Scott Hawkins’ Library at Mount Char, T. Kingfisher’s Paladin’s Faith, Ben Aaronovich’s Moon over Soho, and I just finished Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology last night.
Mount Char was a wild ride. I’m still processing it a bit. I enjoyed it a bunch though.
Kingfisher is amongst my favorite authors right now, and while I’m not typically a Romantacy person, the World of the White Rat books all have a lot of great Fantasy and the romance portions are integrated well.
I started Rivers of London a while ago, but dropped off so I’m trying to pick it back up. It’s good, especially if you’re a Dresden Fan. There’s quite a few similarities in style.
Norse Mythology has always been interesting to me, and Gaiman’s integrates a bunch of disparate sources to make a pretty good set of stories.
Just started Rise of Empire, Volume 2 of The Riyeria Revelations. I’m normally a pretty picky reader (Sanderson has spoiled me…) but this series is just plain solid so far. It’s not great in any area, but it does well in most. Vol 1 felt a bit like a mix of LOTR and Wizard of Oz. Just a quest to find a thing and picking up folks with necessary skills along the way. The character development could use some fleshing-out, but that seems to be happening a bit more in vol 2. Overall, I recommend this series (so far), good fun.
