It's a very good book. I only wish the second one lived up to the high bar that 2033 set.

Right now I'm reading Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising. Only about 40 pages in but so far it is excellent. Very intricate descriptions and naturally flowing dialogue.

Yes, Red Storm Rising. Those early Clancy's were very tasty. I loved RSR and Hunt 4 RO.

I have now grown bored with Metro (the character was just going on and on about which stations he would navigate through, not once but 50 times in internal dialogue). It drove me crazy. Plus I never related to the Nazis and Reds thing. Yes, it makes sense, but for some reason it bores me.

Now I am reading Fire Starter (Stephen King). Great characters. Depth. Feeling. Much better!

This post has been edited by Winter Wolf: Mar 26 2016, 02:40 AM

oh I like a bit of Stephen King. I've just bought a compendium of his shorter stories that I found in a second-hand book store, looking forward to starting it.

I have challenged myself to read 24 books this year and I'm slightly ahead of schedule, currently on my 11th book of the year, Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice. It's creeping me out a bit with the age of one of the characters. Just feels a bit... wrong. I can see how this has influenced a lot of vampire books since though.

I think the reason Artyom details so many stations is to help build the lore of his universe. It's the same reason there is a station map in the first few pages. I still think 2033 was excellent.

The Nazis and Reds are presented as more of a commentary on why their systems of government are broken than anything else.

Yeah I also bought Hunt for Red October and Executive Orders with RSR but haven't so much as opened them yet.

At 1045 this morning, during lunch, I finished my fourth reading of Gene Wolfe's The Shadow of the Torturer, volume one of The Book of the New Sun. Took me bloody long enough, nearly an entire monthly to wade through 260 pages. In ye olden days I might have polished it off in two days, surely no more than a week. Be that as it may, I intend to continue on with volume two, The Claw of the Conciliator. Gotta love that name.

This post has been edited by Decrepit: Apr 5 2016, 05:09 PM

I've started reading Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six which I picked up dirt-cheap a while back. I'm not far into it, but it's good so far.

At 1534 I finished my third reading of David Stenn's Clara Blow: Runnin' Wild. The lady certain lived an 'interesting' life to say the least. It's easy to feel a great deal of sympathy towards her, especially up until the end of the silent film era. On the other hand I find it hard to empathize with her. Past a certain point in her life even sympathy often flies out the window. She was all too often her own worst enemy. Many situations she frequently found herself in could easily have been avoided by a more savvy, astute person. That said, the deck was stacked against her from the beginning. She deserved more happiness from life than she received. Or so I feel.

I became hooked on the book while searching for books relating to the silent film era some years ago. Amazon.com (US) allows us to read much of its opening chapter. For good or ill those pages set the tone for what is to come.

I've not yet decided whether I'll now return to The Book of the New Sun or move on to something else.

This post has been edited by Decrepit: Apr 14 2016, 11:39 AM

Well, that went badly.

I bailed on Rainbow Six about three-quarters of the way through. Damn, was that book a mess. On so many levels. Id say more, but I'd probably just end up ranting about it

Edit: And I've now started reading The Silmarillion

This post has been edited by Callidus Thorn: Apr 14 2016, 04:35 PM

Since I'm heading for his home town on a business trip, I started reading the Bloodsong trilogy by C Dean Andersson, an ex-colleague of mine - his day job was writing technical manuals for the software I develop.

And then I started reading Wikipedia to follow all the Norse mythology it borrows from. Found Ratatoskr, who might be related to someone here.

I keep forgetting to mention I settled on re-reading Guy Gavriel Kay's River of Stars and am now on page 250 of 632. It is something of a followup to his Under Heaven, which I re-read not long ago. Occurring hundreds of years apart, River of Stars can be read stand-alone, but you do miss out on a good many references to the earlier title. Both are fiction (published as fantasy) based on ancient China. Under Heaven focuses on an alternative 8th century Tang Dynasty and events leading up to and the beginnings of the An Shi Rebellion. River of Stars focuses on an alternative 12th century Song Dynasty and events around the Jin-Song Wars. Both are excellent.

Speaking of Kay, he snuck one in on me. I just found out he has a new title scheduled for release this spring!, Children of Earth and Sky, set in a fictionalized Renaissance Europe not long after the fall of Byzantium. I will almost assuredly buy it at release, funds permitting.

At 2038 this evening I finished my second reading Guy Gavriel Kay's River of Stars. Not yet sure how I'll spend my reading time until the release of his new novel later this month.

I am in the midst of reading Orson Scott Card's Seventh Son, the first book in his The Tales of Alvin Maker series. It's been a my library for many years. Never bothered to read it before. Not sure why, except that I'm not a big Card fan. Then again I can say the same about a good many authors I've read, to one degree or other. I quite like one of his very early fantasy works, the 1983 Hart's Hope, or did during all previous reads. Ender's Game, despite being Sci-fi, a literary genre I normally have little sympathy for, was enjoyable enough that I bought its followup. Couldn't get beyond a few chapters in that book. Seventh Son being fantasy, I figured it might be worth a try but, as mentioned, couldn't bring myself to read it . . . until now.

I goofed big time yesterday. Saw that Guy Gavriel Kay's Children of Earth and Sky is a last in print and available at our (semi) local Barnes and Noble, for 30% off! Or so I thought. Very unlike me, I made a special trip into town to buy it. Only, once in the store I found out that the 30% discount is online only. Needless to say I drove home empty handed. Ordered it off Amazon. Had I dug a little deeper while online that morning I could have discovered the truth of the discount and saved myself a couple of bucks in gas money.

(The good thing about ordering through Amazon, aside from the book being discounted as much as at online B&N, is that combined with two items already in my Amazon Cart, I qualified for free shipping.)

This post has been edited by Decrepit: May 11 2016, 11:48 PM

At 2241 yesterday evening, 12 May 2016, I concluded my initial reading of Orson Scott Card's Seventh Son, book one of his The Tales of Alvin Maker series. Not expecting Children of Earth and Sky to arrived from Amazon until mid next week, I will move on to volume two, Red Prophet.

I enjoyed Seventh Son, which resided unread in my library for decades, more so than anticipated. Don't believe I currently own any volumes beyond Red Prophet.

ADDENDUM: To my surprise I do indeed own book three, and oddly a second copy of book two. (One copy of book two has water damage from when my hot water heater went bad some years ago, damages around ten books at the bottom of a cardboard box on the floor in the patch of escaping heater water. But . . . I had to have acquired the second copy years before then.)

This post has been edited by Decrepit: May 13 2016, 02:18 PM

I finished The Sea Wolves: A History Of The Vikings by Lars Brownworth. Much of it I already knew. But he puts everything together in one place, which is nice. There were also things I was unaware of, such as Ivar the Boneless' Irish conquests (he was probably the most powerful Viking warlord to ever live). All in all a good read if you are interesting in viking history.

Just read Gardens of the Moon the first book of the Malazan Book of the Fallen series.

I'd picked it up cheap a while back, along with the second book in the series. And if that's anything like the first is, it's pretty much a given that I'm going to be picking up the rest of the series. Gardens of the Moon was fantastic, from start to finish.

This post has been edited by Callidus Thorn: May 13 2016, 09:04 PM

At 0938 this morning I finished my first reading of Orson Scott Card's Red Prophet, volume II of The Tales of Alvin Maker. I'll likely begin volume III, Prentice Alvin, during lunch.

At 0747 this morning I concluded my initial reading of Orson Scott Card's Prentice Alvin, volume III of The Tales of Alvin Maker. By modern standards I read it incredibly fast, faster than I've read a book in some years. Well, no, that's not quite right. It's not so much that I was reading any more quickly than I normally do. Rather I was able to retain focus for long stretches of time, an ability I was beginning to suspect lost forever.

As I do not currently own any of further volumes in the series I'll next read Guy Gavriel Kay's newly published Children of Earth and Sky, which I had already made a small dent in before deciding to continue on with the Alvin Maker books.

To my delight, I discovered that "The Prophet of Lamath" is now available on the Kindle. I owned the paperback when it first came out, and intended to get the next books in the series, but was never able to do so.

(Back in those days, I would buy the first book in a series, hoping to find a sustained string of good reads- but money was tight, so the tiny bookstore's stock could get rotated before I got back to some of them....)

So far, it is living up to memory of an enjoyable experience- what with the "identity crisis" of the 2-headed dragon, Vicia-Heinox and the introduction of Pelmen (who will eventually become the Powershaper).

I'm continuing to work my way through the Malazan series, currently on book 8. Up until this book, I've found them all to be great, but book 8 is different. The style changes, and while there's still the big buildup to events that I know I'll get to sooner or later, unlike the previous books there just isn't any real information about it being dished out. I'm more than 70% of the way through the book, and I'm still wondering mostly the same things I did after the first hundred pages.

It seems that Erikson has stopped giving answers that would enhance the buildup in favour of near endless philosophy and introspection, with a few gratuitously melodramatic deaths thrown in. The latest of those was a character from one of the early books, and while I know it's significant to the plot that he's dead, not really knowing what's going on(beyond that it's a convergence) means that it doesn't have the impact it should. I know that it will trigger a couple of minor details in the plot, but since I've no idea what those details are actually contributing to, it just comes off as meaningless.

This is the first of the Malazan series that I've been disappointed with, because the author just doesn't seem too inclined to let me know whats really going on. With the previous books there always seemed to be enough information to understand what was going on. This book strikes me as being like a murder mystery where you're not sure if there's even been a murder, if it's being investigated, or if it's even a mystery to any of the characters.