So, What Are You Reading?

I'm currently reading two books: Before Green Gables by Budge Wilson, the official prequel to L. M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables, and an obscure light novel called Mia and the Forbidden Medicine Report by Fumi Yamamoto (which thankfully IS NOT an isekai novel!). I find both to be very good!

I have finished the Lyra Chronicles and have moved on to Log Horizon on the recommendation of a friend. And I'm also looking for that Voyager relaunch novel that I know is somewhere in my room, but is eluding my grasp.

Audiobook, but I think it counts - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

Kings of the Wyld now.

Finished reading Scarlet by Marissa Meyer, and began re-reading the novelization for The Nutcracker and the Four Realms. Seriously, this novelization is SO MUCH better than the movie by a long shot. Go read it!

Edited by TwilightPegasus on Jul 17th 2019 at 10:34:40 AM

Trying to get into Tigana - I'm ok with slow books usually but I can't seem to get in the mood for this one yet.

I also just read a Marissa Meyer book.

I accidentally picked-up the second book in the Renegades trilogy.

I didn't realize it was book 2 until after I finished and went to return it to the library.

I'm sort of disappointed actually. I thought it was just a non-standard narrative decision to start the story after Nora had already infiltrated the team. And I really liked the idea of it.

My current four:

Quillifer first in a fantasy series of the same name by Walter Jon Williams

Locked Doors a thriller by Blake Crouch and a sequel to his first book, Desert Places

King of Thorns second in Mark Lawrence's Broken Empire series. Don't read unless you like things grimdark.

Alpha and Omega a rare non Alternate History by Harry Turtledove. Instead it's a story about the beginning of the End Times.

The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo (as an audiobook). It's pretty fascinating, I'm about halfway through.

Giving Dragonflight a shot inbetween my first re-read of the Eisenhorn trilogy - albeit via the excellent Audible version read by Toby Longworth.

Edited by GoldenKaos on Aug 14th 2019 at 10:52:52 AM

I'm currently reading the first book in the Elsie Dinsmore series because I keep hearing it's a lot of melodramatic schlock overrun with Values Dissonance and Unfortunate Implications, and I wanted to see if it was really as bad as people say.

IT IS. Dear lord, I want to kill half the cast in this book, especially Horace Jr for being an abusive, idiotic dickhole who punishes Elsie for the most asinine reasons! And the book wants us to think Elsie is a good girl for simply putting up with him? And the book is melodramatic as all hell! Every single, teeny tiny thing is made out to be this huge mountain of drama when it has no reason to be! And people think Mari Okada's anime are melodramatic! This book is practically the KING of overwrought, saccharine melodrama! Or I might as well call it Kick the Dog the book, since Elsie is abused and punished for really asinine things.

Uprooted. It's a pretty interesting read, being from Central Europe :D

I recently bought It. Sometimes it's complicated as hell, but it has something that makes you want to read on.

The Stones of Power series by David Gemmell - gritty but idealistic heroic fantasy. Currently reading Ghost King - a very 80s fantasy take on the King Arthur myth.

Sorta unimpressed with Pern. Might give Malazan another shot.

Having recently purchased the Switch version of Baldur's Gate, I wanted to get into the Forgotten Realms novels, and picked up the Icewind Dale trilogy for $5 at a used bookstore. It's pretty good so far (1/3 of the way through The Crystal Shard), but I am never going to get over the name "Pasha Pook".

Edited by Sivartis on Oct 24th 2019 at 8:39:38 AM

La Mala Hora by Gabriel García Márquez. A sleepy Colombian village suddenly has to deal with a plague of flyers tacked up in the nights ... by someone (something?) who seems to know everything embarrassing about everyone.

Edited by Jhimmibhob on Oct 29th 2019 at 7:27:02 AM

I didn't finish the Icewind Dale trilogy, but the prequel Dark Elf trilogy was great. So I'd give that a shot even on the off-chance you bounce off Icewind Dale (I'd had enough somewhere in the middle of Halfling's Gem).

Finished Dublinesque, wow that sure turned into, to be blunt and for lack of better vernacular, furiously jerking off how well-read the author is in place of an actual narrative for the final bit after the failure to conceive an actual transition from the funeral to Riba's prophesied dream. Riba being pathetic and pinning all his hopes on a dream that had no say on reality was a fine point to end on, not funeral to character-brought-in-at-last-moment so the author can be meta.

The prose is exceptional at times, but its views on Buddhism feel downright insulting and the discussion on autism was pretty ableist.

Now that I've finished that mess, time to read my first Octavia Butler book with Kindred

Edited by Nouct on Nov 1st 2019 at 12:39:58 PM

I finished the first 8 books in Jo Nesbo's Harry Hole series in the last few months.

Overall they were fun reads and I think Nesbo does have some legitimate literary talent. Even the first two books which are widely agreed by many to be the worst and clunkiest, have sparks of genuine brilliance and skill that show there's potential. However, I think that turning this into such a long series has some problems because of how depressing the overall narrative gets.

To explain, I'm actually not the kind of person who normally complains about things being too dark and depressing unless I think it's just poorly executed. I don't mind Downer Endings if I feel they fit the story, which I know some people can't stand. But I do think it's something that works better in a "shorter" format, like a movie or a singular story. If you have a longer narrative that people get invested in and continues for years, it's a lot harder to keep people invested if you try to do something like that. And while the books are mostly self-contained barring some important plot points that get carried over in some instances, everything's still in continuity with each other and it can get difficult to keep reading because nothing seems to improve, and in fact gets worse for the protagonist and his personal life with each passing book. I've been dreading reading the next book (Phantom) because I heard it has a massive Downer Ending which is not what I would have liked after how depressing and violent the last book was. I honestly feel that the series could have concluded multiple books ago and it would have been fine.

This is before getting into the Unfortunate Implications and use of questionable/potentially exploitative plot devices like the frequent victimization of women and how certain nonwhite characters are treated. It's not even that the books are particularly conservative/right leaning, since one of the main villains early on in the series is described explicitly as a crypto-fascist corrupt cop. It just feels somewhat ill-considered sometimes.

Edited by Draghinazzo on Nov 1st 2019 at 11:30:26 AM

Read the first three books of The Saga of Darren Shan after coming across the movie on Netflix, finding it enjoyable enough, then wondering why fans of the books kept ragging on it.

Dunno if I'll continue, though. The first book had the most interesting premise for me, in that this kid is dragged into a blatantly unfair deal with this vampire and there's nothing he can do about it. The events that led up to the deal being made and what happened after it were fun to read too. But in the books after the first one, I felt like all that happened was just...stuff. Stuff that was not all that related to the situation that had been set up in the first book. And for all that some bits are hilariously gory for being in a kid's book, I felt like I had to read through long stretches of not a lot happening to get to the interesting bits.

Also Crepsley's personality in the movie was a fair bit more interesting to me than Crepsley's personality in the book, so there's that too.

My current four:

No Proper Lady by Isabel Cooper about an agent from a demon ridden future sent to the 19th to kill the man and destroy the book that caused said future.

The Institute by Stephen King

Carter & Lovecraft by Jonathan L. Howard, a modern Cthulhu Mythos story featuring an ex-cop turned private detective and H. P. Lovecraft's last descendant. Considerably less humorous than his Johannes Cabal books

Imprudence, second in Gail Carriger's Custard Protocol series which is a sequel to her The Parasol Protectorate series.

Edited by tricksterson on Nov 11th 2019 at 11:52:37 AM

Giving Gardens of the Moon another shot. Man, I know Erikson chucks you in the deep end on purpose, but man his writing style is hard to get through. I do get tired of writers who are pretty light on visual details though - give my imagination some kind of springboard, rather than expect it to do all the lifting...

Currently reading Chris Colfer's newest book, A Tale of Magic. It's a nice little book, though its really preachy in regards to its morals and the side characters are all really shallow and flat. The main characters are fun though, if a bit on the cliche side.

Edited by TwilightPegasus on Nov 18th 2019 at 3:27:16 PM

Man, the more I learn about ADHD the more I'm getting actively annoyed with Steve Erikson for deliberately gatekeeping "people with no patience" away from his series by making Gardens of the Moon really, really tough to read. His logic is that people without patience will not be able to keep up with his hugely complex plots later on in the series, so best give them the hint from the start that they aren't welcome by writing the most brutal Lost in Medias Res introductory novel to have ever existed. This confusing mess of a narrative has very few actual hooks for the reader to latch on to, so ADHD readers who could totally keep up with crazy plots later on (because of hyperfocus - being able to pay attention A LOT in something they're super interested in) might not even get there because the writing is actively confusing and doesn't give the reader much chance to latch on to any character or thread and build their interest - exactly the kind of thing ADHD brains will bounce off in a second. Not because they "lack patience" or "can't handle the complexity" but because you need to give them some kind of an "in" and you're refusing them even the simplest handhold.