Books: What have you been reading?

[Old Man Ollie 1962]

The Hero With An African Face: Mythic Wisdom Of Traditional Africa, by Clyde W. Ford

[The Whovian]

I couldn't get past the second chapter of the Man in the High Castle. I really wanted to like this book, but the jumbled word and pacing are bad. The tv show is one thousand times better than the book.

[Photon Torme]

Light stuff- Dave Barry's I'll Mature when I die and his Financial Book. The a Monk Book where Monk and Natalie visit Randy in his new town and help him out with some Burgluries and a murder and some other stuff.

[maeda]

I couldn't get past the second chapter of the Man in the High Castle. I really wanted to like this book, but the jumbled word and pacing are bad. The tv show is one thousand times better than the book.

That's PKD for you

[Deathstroke]

I finished reading the Linda Castillo thriller Prayer For Silence today.

[tombo]

Just saw a military sci fi I really liked the look of called Chaplains War, checked kindle for it and turns out the writer is a figurehead of this sad puppy thing. sigh.

[Photon Torme]

Read Sk's Bazzar of Bad Dreams back in November. Beat story is The Little Green God of Agony imo. Reading Amy Pohler's Yes Please.

[t hedge coke]

It's been so long since I've read The Dreamthief's Daughter it's like a dream, itself, to me now. I really love the author Michael Moorcock has become, even if his patriarchal tones, irl and in fiction, can still come on a bit grating to me. He uses such gorgeously comfortable language, and is, I think, one of the finest authors we have in English today, for working with the inescapable fact that all people are ignorant of something at any given moment, but interpret things anyway. Like Kurt Vonnegut, he's market-savvy enough to know the right authorial tone will carry the right audience smoothly over the top of all sorts of pitfalls. If the patriarchal surety loses me, the tones of elegiac optimism do buoy me happily along, and who doesn't love a good old-fashioned hunt for the Holy Grail that isn't ever actually about the Grail, but whatever's missing in the hunters' lives?

I don't think I'll ever find a love for the early Elric stuff or the novel, The Eternal Champion, but his later work consistently makes me feel I should go back and give some of it another shot (which I rarely do, and won't be at this time).

[Ragdoll]

Childhood's End by Arthur C Clarke

Holy smokes, this book was brilliant. One of my new favorites.

I liked some of the predictions that came true IRL, like the commentary about how much TV would be produced in the future. He pretty much predicted the Golden Age of TV we are currently living in, and how there would be a steady steam of such high quality content designed to leave viewers always feeling like they aren't caught up on enough of the popular shows.

spoilers:

I liked the ending with getting to watch Earth get destroyed. The overmind was a pretty crazy revelation, I like the idea that what we considered Gods were just servants to some other God. It felt like it went full Lovecraft with the ending, just more sci-fi than horror. The concept of time ripples moving backwards in time was crazy. Does anyone view the overlords as evil in the end? Or are their actions justified? At the end, were they saying that Overlord scientists are actively seeking a way to fight the overmind, and that until they find something that could work, they have to keep doing what they are doing? Or are they gigantic passive pussies who are just accepting that everything is fucked?

end of spoilers

Next book to read is the final Reckoners book by Brandon Sanderson

[Hiromi]

Just finished The Red Sea, first book in the The Cycle of Galand trilogy, sequel to the Cycle of Arawn trilogy

[Ragdoll]

Just finished Brandon Sanderson's Calamity, really satisfying end to the trilogy

Finally read this book. I loved it!!! Best book of the trilogy for sure. Great fights and cool revelations.

[Deathstroke]

I finished the Julie Hyzy mystery Eggsecutive Orders yesterday.

[codystarbuck]

Just picked up Kim Newman's The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School. The book centers around a girl's school, with a group that has special abilities. It's a combination homage to boarding school tales, while also mixing in elements of things like the X-Men and other paranormal training grounds and mysteries. Newman is a master at this kind of stuff and featured the characters in a short story, in Mysteries of the Diogenes Club (exploring the background of a heroine, Kentish Glory). Newman is a fantastic writer, as his friend Neil Gaiman will attest. The book should appeal to comics fans of many tastes. I also picked up a collection of Kipling's The Jungle Book and Kim. If only it also included his poems and Just So Stories.

[Ragdoll]

Bernard Cornwell's The Pale Horseman, the second book in the Saxon chronicles, which are the basis for the show The Last Kingdom. They are some great historical fiction with lots of gore and Game Of Thrones style politics.

Richard K Morgan's Altered Carbon. This book was amazing. It's all about a future where people can download their consciousness into new bodies after dead, and explores how this would impact crime in the future. I will definitely be reading the two sequels and watching the Netflix show when it comes out.

[Hiromi]

So I'm now reading Dawn of Wonder: The Wakening, Book 1 by Tim Gerard Reynolds(a 30 hour long book so it's one of the heftier I've had in a while), and having been on this fantasy kick for a few years now I've read a number of messed up tragic childhoods, for protagonists but this one just wins.