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What are you Reading Now?

Steerpike

Felis amatus
Moderator
Is it similar to the TV series (if you watched it) or did they take creative liberties? I loved the world building there, but the series itself wasn't really for me, especially the love triangle in which two girls sacrifice themselves while the hero goes on adventuring.

The series starts more with the Elfstones of Shannara, rather than Sword. Brooks was involved, I think. They made the TV show more teen oriented and did take liberties with the book. I think they tried to keep the same basic story line. At least in season 1. Not sure about season 2 of the show.

But it has been quite some time since I read Elfstones, so I'm going off memory.
 
The series starts more with the Elfstones of Shannara, rather than Sword. Brooks was involved, I think. They made the TV show more teen oriented and did take liberties with the book. I think they tried to keep the same basic story line. At least in season 1. Not sure about season 2 of the show.

But it has been quite some time since I read Elfstones, so I'm going off memory.
There's season 2? I don't have it in my Netflix account.
 

Antonius

Scribe
Thoroughly enjoyed 'The Courage To Be Disliked' by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga. It helped opened my eyes with what's been going around me and also contributed to ideas for my attempt at NaNoWriMo this year.
 

Mytherea

Minstrel
Just finished a reread of The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin (one of my favorites) and am now starting Uprooted by Naomi Novik (which I'm very much enjoying).
 

Dark Squiggle

Troubadour
Just finished a reread of The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin (one of my favorites) and am now starting Uprooted by Naomi Novik (which I'm very much enjoying).
Left hand of Darkness is great, the only thing is i didn't realize the MC was male until the end and I'm still not sure if LeGuin did ot on purpose or not ?:/
Just finished Shepherd's Crown. It's hard to believe that's the end of Discworld. Terry Pratchett has come a long way from Color of Magic. I would have liked to have seen Rincewind, The Luggage and The Librarian once more, and I would've liked to see more than a glance of Ponder Stibbons. However, it was almost perfect. Tiffany is the height of Discworld's maturity, the perfect representation of where the journey has taken us as readers from the aimless yet vigorous meandering of Rincewind to a character who is strong and deep, and lovable and a role model.

Granny Weatherwax's funeral was in way Terry Pratchett's.
When Tiffany says, "I can't be Granny Weatherwax for them. I can only be me, Tiffany Aching.", it is almost as If I can hear Terry Pratchett telling the next generation "go forth and conquer. Take my place, but don't be me, be yourselves. Discworld is over, but new worlds are about to begin."
 
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skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
Currently reading a Ross Macdonald novel, The Chill, which is just standard detective novel fare. Also reading In Calabria by Peter S. Beagle because his prose is worth reading regardless of the story.
 

Gurkhal

Auror
Currently reading, after going back and forth somewhat, "The Empires of the Silk Road" by Christopher Beckwith. Its mostly so that I can cross that one from my box as having read it.
 

Mythopoet

Auror
Currently reading, after going back and forth somewhat, "The Empires of the Silk Road" by Christopher Beckwith. Its mostly so that I can cross that one from my box as having read it.

Is it not a good read? Because it sounds like yet another book that I really need to get.
 

Gurkhal

Auror
Is it not a good read? Because it sounds like yet another book that I really need to get.

Its totally ok. Its just that its not a favorite subject of mine so I'm not all over it to get its knowledge. The funny thing is that I did buy it on a whim years ago and now I'm finally going to read it and not let it be another of the "This looks interesting, I'll buy that..." and then I'll forget about it and never read it.
 

Gurkhal

Auror
Now I've ordered "Taras Bulba" and "The Cossacks and Other Stories" (including "The Cossacks", the three "Sevastopol Stories" and "Hadji Murat", all by Leo Tolstoy). I've been waiting a long time to read these, and other stories and books regarding the Cossacks, and now I hope to finally start getting my hands on them. :)
 

Mythopoet

Auror
I recently finished Carnacki: The Watcher at the Gate by William Meikle, a collection of short stories about a character created by William Hope Hodgson who is now in the public domain. I very much enjoyed Hodgson's original Carnacki, Ghost Finder stories so decided to see how well this new author writes them. The stories themselves were... entertaining enough, but nothing special. Meikle's version of Carnacki has a vastly reduced vocabulary which he apparently tries to make up for by making him repeat British slang terms over and over. (His Carnacki is never scared or frightened, but is almost always in a "funk" and nearly everything is "bally".) More importantly, this Carnacki never runs across a situation where supposed supernatural phenomenon are actually caused by human agents as the original Carnacki does. In fact, every single story in The Watcher at the Gate deals with "creatures from the Outer Darkness" and nothing less and Carnacki nearly always defeats them by standing in a pentacle and chanting something or other. It becomes monotonous. Meikle is simply no Hodgson.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
The Chill, Ross Macdonald.
Trying to read The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch but the prose doesn't bear up well next to Macdonald, and the plotting still less so. I've given up on so many fantasy books, though, I'm going to stick this one out.
 

Mythopoet

Auror
Currently rereading The Two Towers and remembering just how great the Ents are as a unique fantasy race. Walking, talking tree-people have become a trope since, but the Ents are really something special. The way Treebeard talks makes them feel real.

Also reading Vampire Hunter D volume 7: Mysterious Journey to the North Sea part 1. D never fails to deliver. I love these books.

Also forgot to mention I recently read all 3 (currently published) volumes of the comic Monstress by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda and which won the Hugo award for best graphic story the past two years and totally deserves it. Normally I shy away from stories with lots of graphic sex and violence (and in this case it's literally graphic) but somehow this story just completely reeled me in and won't let go. The further I read the more I like the main character, Maika, and want to see the rest of her journey to discover who and what she is. Also the art is breathtakingly gorgeous in full color. (Which I'm not used to since I normally read manga.)
 
Just started both Red Sister and City of Stairs and I am having such trouble getting into both. Red Sister seems promising but I feel that City of Stairs will be only satisfying in world building. So many authors seem only able to create characters the emotional equivalent of rain soaked cardboard and I have a nasty suspicion this author will be one of them. Purely because of an unplaceable similarity to China Mieville who has a wonderful (if deeply messed up) imagination but falls short in other areas for me.
 
Currently rereading The Two Towers and remembering just how great the Ents are as a unique fantasy race. Walking, talking tree-people have become a trope since, but the Ents are really something special. The way Treebeard talks makes them feel real.

Also reading Vampire Hunter D volume 7: Mysterious Journey to the North Sea part 1. D never fails to deliver. I love these books.

Also forgot to mention I recently read all 3 (currently published) volumes of the comic Monstress by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda and which won the Hugo award for best graphic story the past two years and totally deserves it. Normally I shy away from stories with lots of graphic sex and violence (and in this case it's literally graphic) but somehow this story just completely reeled me in and won't let go. The further I read the more I like the main character, Maika, and want to see the rest of her journey to discover who and what she is. Also the art is breathtakingly gorgeous in full color. (Which I'm not used to since I normally read manga.)
The Two Towers is my favorite out of the LOTR trilogy and I love treebeard and the ents
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
I'm reading Gregory of Tours (well, jump-reading), which led me crab-wise to a book by Charles Oman called "Things I Have Seen" which is a memoir of sorts. Oman was an important medieval historian. Wrote the classic work, The Art of War in the Middle Ages (long since superseded).

I'm very much enjoying the memoir, which begins with him seeing Napoleon III and Princess Eugenie when he was a child, to various turn of the century events mostly forgotten now, to interesting chapters on post-WWI Europe. He spent two months on the Rhine in 1919, and went to Italy in 1921. Wrote the book in 1933, so the perspective is interesting. And being a medieval historian, the prose is of course stellar. :)

May all gods bless the Internet Archive.
 

Insolent Lad

Maester
Rediscovered the 'Sanctuary' series and am into the third book ('Shadow of Sanctuary'). While I was at it, picked up the first of Asprin's 'Myth' series. I had fond memories of all these but they don't quite live up to them now. Still, decent enough to fill some idle time.
 

Mytherea

Minstrel
Just started both Red Sister and City of Stairs and I am having such trouble getting into both. Red Sister seems promising but I feel that City of Stairs will be only satisfying in world building. So many authors seem only able to create characters the emotional equivalent of rain soaked cardboard and I have a nasty suspicion this author will be one of them. Purely because of an unplaceable similarity to China Mieville who has a wonderful (if deeply messed up) imagination but falls short in other areas for me.

I couldn't get into Red Sister, myself. I found the number of PoV shifts at the beginning a little too frenetic, and since I wasn't familiar with the world, it gave me a sort of readerly whiplash. Totally unmoored, and couldn't get attached to any of the characters since they zipped past so quickly. As for City of Stairs, personally, I loved it, but it does take a bit to hit its stride. Lot of world-building in the beginning, lot of situational setup for the payoff at the end. BUT I may be biased and remembering it with rose-tinted glasses. It's been awhile since I read that one, though I finished City of Blades earlier this year and quite enjoyed it.

Just finished Runaway Vampire and Immortal Nights (both by Lyndsay Sands). Technically more PNR than fantasy (though... they kinda stray into science fiction? Sort of? I mean, sort of vampires due to blood-powered nanos, a technology from the lost city of Atlantis? The series... hits a lot of genres) and are super-quick reads (like, I can knock one out in a day and a half of casual reading, a day if I really dedicate myself). They're fun, though the newer/later ones are a bit more serious than the first ten. The first ten, I'd routinely burst out laughing (my favorites still being the one with the 600-year-old social recluse warrior-turned-writer who was writing biographies for his family but his publisher branded them romance novels, and now his new editor has wrangled him into attending a romance convention, and the one with the vampire who'd gone on vacation human, got turned, and her whole town, feeling guilty for pushing her toward the vacation in the first place, adopt her as honorary town vampire). These... eh. They're darker, more serious. Not as outrageously, wonderfully campy as the others.

Oh, and finished Uprooted by Naomi Novik, which I very much enjoyed and am now on hold for Spinning Silver, though I've got a few weeks to wait.

And I'm now just starting The Grey Bastards by Jonathan French for an extreme change of reading pace.
 
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