OT: What are you reading?

Had a few days off last week so I finally finished Amateur by Thomas Page McBee - about the first transgender man to box in Madison Square Garden. I found the story much more interesting than the writing itself - I wouldn't usually read an autobiography such as this one but it was a present for a trans friend and I wanted to talk to them about it. Still working my way through Michael J Sullivan's fantasy Age of Myth - part of the Legends of the First Empire series.
 
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Been taking up my comic collection of the Phantom (which in Norway is actually good, not some of that American crap)!. Still missing quite a few issues in my target era (1980 and until it was discontinued), but I have bought a LOT of them lately. Mid 80s have been really enjoyable, with some real gems. Currently half-way through 1986, and having a blast. Almost a shame that I will probably have a job again soon, ending my easter holiday =/
 
Fahrenheit 451. I'm a lazy reader nowadays, and I only read while on the train, so it will probably take a few weeks. Should really (re)learn to read instead of browsing before sleep.
 
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Garden's of The Moon and Deadhouse Gates are finished, on to Memories of Ice now.

I'm really enjoying the series. The huge cast of characters is a bit overwhelming at first, I read that Erikson wanted the reader to feel a bit like they did not know what was going on and the the plot to emerge slowly, like Frank Herbert did in Dune. Well he definitely succeded, the Malazan Wiki was invaluable when I couldn't remember who a character was. Deadhouse Gates was much easier to pick up once I had the characters from the first book. I think the world building and magic concept is excellent. I imagine warrens a bit like skill trees in D2.

@Kinkara Some heavy stuff there. I used to push myself a bit more to read challenging stuff, but these days I'm reading to unwind. I seem to be catching up on loads of Fantasy series I have somehow missed at the moment.

My all-time favorite series (at least the 10 Erikson books). Be careful with the Malazan Wiki as spoilers abound.

Memories of Ice is such a good book.

-one last thought. Steven Erikson has been pretty active during the pandemic in participating with the various podcasts and YouTubers on books. It's cool to hear his interviews and get some insight into his writing process and how the series was developed.

I am enjoying the "Ten Very Big Books" podcast. One person doing a reread and a couple of folks new to the series. They are about to start Midnight Tides (in my personal top 2).
 
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@maxicek awesome really glad to hear you're liking it. Memories of Ice was pretty great. I was looking at the Tor reread for some "spoilerless" commentary to solidify what was going on. Spoilerless is in quotes because one of the readers on those threads is new and one has already read it, and the latter will always interject stuff like "just you wait till things get crazy in later books" etc. Sort of pseudospoilers.

@Ohomemgrande very cool. I have read the first 4 books and need to start midnight tides. Glad to hear it's a favorite. Lost steam with it several months back but should get back into it. I definitely have enjoyed the books I've read, but the grandiose style makes it easy for me to lose momentum reading it.
 
@Ohomemgrande[/USER] very cool. I have read the first 4 books and need to start midnight tides. Glad to hear it's a favorite. Lost steam with it several months back but should get back into it. I definitely have enjoyed the books I've read, but the grandiose style makes it easy for me to lose momentum reading it.

Nothing wrong with taking a break between books or even mid-book. I think it's usually better to just savor the writing and the story slowly and not try to keep up with the YouTube Book crowd that's reading a book every other day!

When I started reading the series, I think only Midnight Tides was out so I did have breaks between books once I caught up. That did make for some long breaks between books and it was a challenge to keep up with everything between books. Probably the biggest break was between Toll the Hounds and Dust of Dreams/The Crippled God, which according to my Kindle history, I bought and read the last two when the final book was published. That kind of makes sense because those last two are really one giant book cut in half where the previous 8 are more self-contained.

My experience was that I enjoyed the books on the first time through but there were some slower parts as I neared the end. The stories were still good and there were really exciting payoffs but there were parts that that "grandiose magnitude" of the world made it harder to get into at times. Some plots were difficult to see how they related to the big picture. But at the end of it all, it was a very satisfying journey.

About 3 years after that, I did a reread and did the whole series in about 9 months. That's when it went from an enjoyable series to my all-time favorite. The third time through the series was even better, lol.
 
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@Ohomemgrande @Luhkoh I haven't dipped too far into the wiki, just generally the first lines of some of the characters to remind me who they were at first. Now I'm on book three it is easier as the additional cast of characters isn't as overwhelming as the first book.

I do see a lot of Elric parallels with Anomander Rake from what I have read in the first book. It will be interesting to see how this impression changes as I read the series.
 
Just finishing up Into Darkness The 5th book in Terry Goodkind's Children of D'Hara Series. Continuing the story of Richard and Kahlan.

I recently read the first four books in the series (The Scribbly Man, Hateful Things, Wasteland and Witch's Oath) and before that, The Nicci Chronicles (Death's Mistress, Shroud of Eternity, Siege of Stone, Heart of Black Ice), Dances With Wolves Novel, 2001, 2010, 2061 and 3001 books by Arthur C. Clarke.

I might look into the novel version of The Never Ending Story as it contains more than the first movie, then possible all of the Dragonlance books in order that I have not yet read.

Might even look into some of the Diablo and World of Warcraft Novels.
 
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Currently reading books by Feist. Officially they're a whole bunch of short series (like 10 and mostly trilogies). But they have one world and a couple of the same characters in all of them, so it's more like 1 big series. Nice reads, but i'm starting to near the end of it so i'm not sure what i'll be reading after that.
 
Finished the Wheel of Time and the Broken Earth series a few months back, picked up the 2nd book in The Expanse series, but it's been very slow going. For some reason I've just been lacking the motivation to read lately. I totally blame 2020.
 
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A decent first contact sci-fi book I've just finished.

 
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I started rereading the cradle series. The latest book came out in it a little bit ago and I freaking loved it so much that I wanted to start from the beginning immediately. These books are more like fast and fun reads, rather than literary fantasy epics. But they are sooooo good. You others who like fantasy in here have got to check them out. Almost done rereading book 1 and I'm liking it at least as much as my first time through.

I also finally finished battle ground, so am caught up on dresden files books. honestly I thought it was a disappointment. The plot was all over the place and had no focus, and it felt like harry had no agency either. He was mostly standing around waxing poetic about the violence around him, which in a dresden book, "poetry" should be used sparingly in my opinion. And since peace talks was just a setup book, battleground's mediocre payoff made peace talks look like a completely useless entry in the series (not to mention I thought it had some issues even just as a setup book.. had too much weird sex stuff in it i thought).

Needless to say, I don't think butcher should've divided it up into 2 books. So yeah wanted to rant a little. It wasn't THAT bad, but definitely doesnt inspire confidence for me as the series continues to get bigger and bogger. Aren't there some other dresden fans in here? @Grisu @Noodle what did you guys think of it (and tag any other dresden fans if I've forgotten them). I thought books like 11-15 have been quite consistently very good, so was looking forward to this book a lot, but it got completely overshadowed by wintersteel for me (the latest book in cradle, which I mentioned above).
 
Ok sometimes I cheat with Audible but ...
Edward Snowdens "Permanent Record"
James Nestor "Breath"
Pete Walker "Complex PTSD"
Wilie Collins "The Moonstone"
 
Fellow LOTR nerds:

I don't know what you're reading now, but I just found out what we'll be reading next summer:


"Topics include Elvish immortality and reincarnation; the nature of the Valar, the god-like spirits of Middle-earth; the lands and beasts of Númenor; the geography of the kingdom of Gondor; and even who had beards. "
 
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I'm thinking of delving back into Dragonlance, I've read the major books, Chronicles, Legends, and plenty of the others both before and after The War of The Lance. I was thinking of reading them all. In order. Starting from the beginning time wise, not publication wise.

- Apparently there's a new Jason Bourne book out this year too: The Bourne Evolution
 
Fellow LOTR nerds:

I don't know what you're reading now, but I just found out what we'll be reading next summer:


"Topics include Elvish immortality and reincarnation; the nature of the Valar, the god-like spirits of Middle-earth; the lands and beasts of Númenor; the geography of the kingdom of Gondor; and even who had beards. "
*nerdish drool*
Thx for the tip, PB .)
 
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Evening everyone. I'm actually working on a pretty long list of books right now. Chalk it up to my ADHD. I'm pretty far in the majority of these books minus the one with an asterisk as I just got that in today.

1. Ernest Hemingway on Writing
Not what I thought it was when I ordered it but I like it nonetheless. Very short read. I think I have like 20 pages left. Probably get to that this weekend.

2. Fire Lover by Joseph Wambaugh
wall of text I wrote
This one I read when I first started my M.S. in safety. At the time I was also a volunteer firefighter and most of my professors for safety were as well. One of them recommended this book because of my B.S. in criminal justice. It's one of those true crime books but it's a step above those books you find at the airport. This is a very well researched book that relies pretty heavily on recorded statements by John Orr as well as testimony during his eventual trial. It's written in a way so that the average person doesn't have to fight to stay awake while reading the court aspects of it. It's honestly a very well written book and always manages to elicit a more violent inward emotional response. I've read it three times. Twice for a 50 page semester-long class assignment where I did just so much research into the historical cross between law enforcement and fire fighting. Basically my eventual point was that it makes little sense to have law enforcement and fire fighting as two separate entities. I emphasized the glaring lack of real funding for fire investigators. Something interesting I found out during my research phase was that fire investigators across the board have higher rates of self-diagnosed and officially diagnosed PTSD compared to law enforcement, emergency medical personnel and fire fighters not in an investigative role. I put a spoiler tag here to talk more about this book but I am not giving anything away that you can't ascertain from the back cover.

Book spoilers
The book is about John Orr. He was one of those guys that always wanted to be law enforcement but could never quite make it click getting a job. So he went the firefighter route ending up in a position as a fire investigator. He was also an aspiring arsonist. He basically did a lot of bad shit. People died. Millions (possibly a billion I don't remember) of dollars in property damage. The guy was a ****.

3. The Only Good Indians*
Just picked this up. Excited to start reading it tonight.

4. The Long Walk by Stephen King
All time favorite book. I think I have less than 50 pages to read. I'll finish this tomorrow morning probably.

5. Dune by Frank Herbert
Only about 30 pages in but it's looking good so far

6. Hail to the Chin: Further Confessions of a B Movie Actor by Bruce Campbell
I love Bruce Campbell. I'm not gay but if Bruce Campbell tried to kiss me I'm probably not going to turn away. He has three books total and this is the first one I have started reading. I'm halfway through and honestly it's everything I expected and wanted it to be. I love this man.

7. The Friendly Orange Blow by Brian Dear
Love me some technology history books. This one is pretty cool. Started out listening to it on audible but the narrator sucked. So I picked up a copy and I'm about halfway through. I'll probably finish this one next week.

8. Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon
Again, love me some tech history books. This and The Friendly Orange Glow are both really well done.
 
Bit of a bump as I am just adding it to the updated Links thread.

I'm currently reading House of Chains, book four of The Malazan Book of The Fallen. I really like the series so far, it is truly fantasy on an epic scale.

I was going to break after no. 3 to read Joe Abercrombie's Age of Madness Trilogy, but found out the Kindle version of the third book isn't out until September, so I'm going to keep going on the Malazan until later in the year. I read The Trouble with Peace when it came out, but I plan to read the whole trilogy in one go.

Still no sign of The Doors of Stone (Rothfuss) & The Winds of Winter (GRRM). The Thorn of Emberlain also seems to have no date again.
 
@maxicek how far are you in house of chains? I liked that one a lot. That being said i read it like a year ago and still havent started midnight tides. Malazan is good but feels like a lot of work 😅.
 
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I have just finished the first part, I'm with the Adjunct now. Yeah, one of the problems is that you get a whole new set of characters each book, so it takes you until about 1/3 of the way in to work out their relationship to the characters in the previous books.
 
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