The Reading Corner.

[Buster's Uncle]

Lord Foul's Bane by Steven R. Donaldson.

-Time to reread from the beginning, I think.

[Buster's Uncle]

The Illearth War by Stephen R. Donaldson.

[Valka]

I'm alternating between Voyager fanfic online (found a decent story about Tom and B'Elanna, post-Endgame) and Philippa Gregory's Tudor novels offline. I've read from Katherine of Aragon through to the death of Amy Dudley (and waiting for the novel she wrote about Catherine Parr).

[Buster's Uncle]

Oh, the print books I list in this thread are my bedtime reading.

-In the daytime online for over a month, to my intense shame and shock, I've been on Fanfiction.net reading Dragon Ball fanfic...  I can't believe there are that many Dragon Ball Z fans who can even read on high school level - and even some of the ones with shaky command of written English can spin a decent yarn...

-A lot more of it's unreadable crap of course...

[Valka]

It's interesting how so many people rag on Voyager... yet it's the Star Trek series with the most fanfic stories on that site. Not all of them are good, of course. Some are utter crap. Some of them would be readable if they were edited for spelling, grammar, and punctuation.

[Buster's Uncle]

Well, the show was a mess, from one end to the other - but it was a GREAT idea for a show.  I think I've talked about all my ideas for fixing it.  It had a lot of promise.

And incompetent execution.

[Buster's Uncle]

The Wounded Land by Stephen R. Donaldson.  -I haven't found my copy of The Power That Preserves so far...

[Rusty Edge]

I just re-read ( too numerous to mention ) / read ( a recent novella and book 8, "Staked" ) The Iron Druid Chronicles by Kevin Hearn.

It's an urban fantasy about the world's last Druid. He's mortal, but he has 21 centuries experience with magic, and he's figured out a few things in the course of surviving, like how to keep his body at age 21, and how to defend himself against the magic of others, etc.

The Irish gods used him as a pawn, and in the process of survival he managed to kill a couple of them with the help of trading favors with witches, werewolves, and a vampire. That destroyed the balance of things, and his favors put him debt to others, and event chains had him recruited into conflicts among other gods.

Beyond these sorts of adventures, the author is very funny. The Druid's magic is binding and unbinding things, and he has bound his mind to that of his pet Irish Wolfhound. The Wolfhound is good about warning him of approaching danger. < I smell dead guys > normally means approaching vampires. The best part of the books are his dog's comments about food, French poodles, cats, squirrels, Chihuahuas, etc. and general observations.

Whenever I laugh aloud, my wife asks "what did the dog say?", and I read those parts to her.

I guess the best description is Harry Dresden for dog lovers.

[Lorizael]

Along with the fiction for my lit class (Dracula right now), I'm also reading Thinking about Mathematics by Stewart Shapiro, which is the text for my philosophy of math course. Interesting stuff, if you are not bored to tears by questions about whether mathematics arises from logic or if numbers really exist, etc.

[Lord Avalon]

The Conquering Sword of Conan, Robert E. Howard, ed. by Patrice Louinet

[Valka]

I've been sorting and shelving books. And every time I think I'm done with an author, another Andre Norton, Arthur C. Clarke, MZB, or Robert Silverberg turns up. I have no idea how I ended up with THREE copies of Lord of Thunder.

I've just put in about 10 orders via Amazon Marketplace for books that are missing from series or damaged beyond reading (never trust anyone else to pack your books). When this is over I'm going to be seriously thinking about what to weed out.

But to stay on-topic, I'm partway through The Other Queen, by Philippa Gregory (a novel about Mary, Queen of Scots).

[Elok]

American Islam by Paul Barrett.  It looks at seven different Muslims in their communities to try and illustrate the tensions at work today.  A reasonably good read.  I started it after finishing Lords of the Horizons, a profoundly pulpy but basically readable history of the Ottomans.

[Buster's Uncle]

The Wounded Land by Stephen R. Donaldson.  -I haven't found my copy of The Power That Preserves so far...

The One Tree by Stephen R. Donaldson.

[Lorizael]

Just recently read Star Maker and The Lathe of Heaven in my lit class. Star Maker is a pretty accurate account of the plan for my life. The Lathe of Heaven, however, has undone everything and I'm no longer sure what's real. About to start Amnesia Moon.

[Buster's Uncle]

Lord Foul's Bane by Steven R. Donaldson.

-Time to reread from the beginning, I think.

The Illearth War by Stephen R. Donaldson.

The Wounded Land by Stephen R. Donaldson.  -I haven't found my copy of The Power That Preserves so far...

The One Tree by Stephen R. Donaldson.

It's interesting, the improvement in fluency (if such even applies to Donaldson's obscurantist writing) between the first book and the second.

Most of The Wounded Land is a bummer, with all the wading of a typical Donaldson effort, but lacking the charm of the first trilogy - still, the bit at the very end, giving camorra to the spirits of the slaughtered Unhomed, was VERY effective, akmost enough so to justify the book alone.

None of this is even my third reading -something like sixth or more; I read LFB in hardback in 1977 age 13- and while it's good that I can forget enough to enjoy re-readings, I do know that The One Tree is a favorite.  What's not to love, touring exotic new places with a bunch of good-natured giants?  What's not to love?