The Reading Corner.

[Unorthodox]

Whacha readin'? 


I'd suppose a lot of Scifi from this board. 

Not much a reader, myself, actually.  But, Nov-Jan I do find some time, and whenever on business travel.


Presently working through 2 series simultaneously. 

Well, the first is a "series" in a very loose sense. 

The Pendergast novels from Preston and Child.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloysius_X.L._Pendergast


As detective novels, I don't know that I would actually recommed them highly.  They are full of flaws, and if you let it, that can really derail them.  They want to be on the brainy side, but at the same time are rather ludicrous in their "science".  They also seem to universally suffer from a mid book slow down.  What I really come to appreciate, however, is the richly detailed descriptions of insert grim locale featured this novel here.  Grisly catacombs, fetid underground chambers, cobbled altars built of human remains...THIS is why I read these books.  Otherwise, it's your standard Sherlock Holmes made way too long.  Detective novels should remain on the shorter side.   


The second series is a total accident, actually.  Picked up as a book on tape for a drive, my son really got caught up in it.  I've been reading these to make sure he's actually doing HIS reading.

The Wardstone Chronicles.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wardstone_Chronicles

Young reader crap you can fly through in a night.  Will never be as popular as Harry Potter, but for my money, it sure makes a better set of stories.  Darker than Harry, no doubt.  There's a movie that's in production, but it appears to have been horrendously miscast for how the book was written.  But, you could do full on horror with some of these books, so I don't know what kind of reimagining the movie really is. 



Speaking of books on tape.  If you're into that kind of thing, I strongly recommend The Old Country.  http://www.amazon.com/Old-Country-Mordical-Gerstein/dp/0307245446/ref=sr_1_1_title_2_aud?ie=UTF8&qid=1352752666&sr=8-1&keywords=the+old+country

Marvelously read by Tovah Feldshuh, I don't think it would be quite the same reading it yourself as hearing her, and that is a rarity in audiobooks. 

[Buster's Uncle]

Currently, I'm rereading through an anthology series.  I'm on [pauses to go to bedroom and grab] Year's Best SF 10 right now.  Good stuff.

[cryopyre]

The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson. It's about a future with nanotechnology, where, since material goods are easily manufactured and no longer scarce, institutions rely on intellectual property to make a profit. One of these institutions provides "the feed" which is a monopoly on intellectual property and constituent materials used to assemble things. One of the characters wants to create "the seed" which would be a form of nanobots which can instead use surrounding materials to create things instead of relying on the centralized system of tubes of "the feed".

I started reading it after I finished Snow Crash: another Neal Stephenson novel.

[Unorthodox]

Anyone here read the ender's books? 

been considering bruning through those before the movies start to hit. 

[cryopyre]

Anyone here read the ender's books? 

been considering bruning through those before the movies start to hit.

I've read Ender's Game. But that's it.

Pretty good, though.

[Buster's Uncle]

Yes.  They're genuinely very good.  You will personally relate to the gifted kid in horrible situations of the first book; I know I did.

Now, I've only read up to Children of the Mind, the main series, not any of the parallel Ender's Shadow stuff, which strike me as being exactly like when Anne McCaffrey kept writing Dragon books long after the story was done, or Anne Rice and a new pointless vampire book every year or two.  I dunno if those guy ran out of ideas, or they were paycheck novels or what - but Card is always very readable, and I imagine that even his paycheck novels, or whatever they are, are still excellent reads.

[Unorthodox]

You don't strike me as an Anne Rice type, BU....

Heading to the library in a few, will see what catches my eye. 

[Buster's Uncle]

I don't fit the profile of a Rice fan, no - but Queen of the Damned was possibly the best book I read in the 80's, and that's against several thousand other books.  Everything else in the series has been a let-down by comparision.  What can I say?  When she's good, she's good. 

Same goes for Steven King.  Not my sort of stuff, but he's REALLY good at it.

[Unorthodox]

I only read Interview, Lestadt (sp?), and Queen of the Damned.  Couldn't be bothered with the rest. 

[cryopyre]

Has anyone here read The Killing Star? That's one of my favorite hard SciFi novels.

[Unorthodox]

Last scifi I read: 

Warhorse by Timothy Zahn, based on the fact I liked his star wars trilogy. 

It was....

Surprised I made it through it. 

[Buster's Uncle]

My impression of Zahn -and I may or may not have read stuff by him; I've read a LOT of books in my life, and it's hard to keep track- is such that hearing the Thrawn stuff is so good and by him comes as a surprize.  But word on Thrawn is 100%...

I only read Interview, Lestadt (sp?), and Queen of the Damned.  Couldn't be bothered with the rest.

You stoped in the best possible place - though I liked Memnoch the Devil a lot...

[Rymdolov]

Timothy Zahn has written at least one really good short story (can't remember the name), in which a human and an alien find themselves in a room with only a strategy game to keep them company.

I've read the Ender stories and even the Shadow series. The first book and the second, Speaker for the Dead, are good reads, but then the decline started. Actually, I'd rather recommend the Shadow books than the third and fourth Ender books. Like BU said, Card is always entertaining. Even the book Empire, about a very-near-future civil war in the US between red and blue states, is a good yarn, but I wouldn't recommend it. Card is politically naive and seems to assume that culture and religion is the same thing, which makes his books annoying from time to time.

[Buster's Uncle]

For that matter, if you can't stomach Card's family values world view, reading his stuff is a craphoot.  Some of his work really crams it down your throat if you don't like that, some doesn't.  Specifically, if you have a problem with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, you probably won't like the favorable mentions of Mormons that pop up. 

See also my recent post in the Election thread about his turn to insane politics - I haven't read anything written by him in the last 12 years, and cannot say how it's reflected in the work.

However, he really is very good...

[Unorthodox]

So the library doesn't carry the next book in the Pendergast novels.  Only have the Ebook copy, but I don't have a tablet/reader doodad.  Anyone actually like reading on those?  They had samples of all of them at the library, and didn't see much difference other than brand/price and size. 

Probably head over to Barnes and Noble at lunch.