mndtrp

Yeah. I saw that it was also the first of a planned three, so I don't know how important or satisfying it's going to be. I didn't put much research into what the consensus was on reading order, just saw that it was listed first and went for it. It seems short enough that it may not matter.

urrutiap

I just got back into reading Star Wars Bounty Hunter Wars Trilogy for hardcover. this year Im back to reading old Star Wars books. I still have the rest of the X Wing novels to read along with Courtship of Princess Leia, Crystal Star, the Jedi Academy Trilogy and the Black Fleet Crisis Trilogy and then re-reading half of the New Jedi Order series and then reading Fate of the Jedi series for the first time

PAG

Just finished:

brainee

Finished:

This is a book I wanted to like more than I did. I loved The Night Circus, and this certainly had the same tone as that book. And I'm usually a sucker for stories that are about a love of reading. This worked for me in parts, but at other times it turned into a bit of slog (especially in the second half when things were getting "fantastical"). It didn't help that the main character was a mopey introvert that was hard to maintain interest in.

Pointyskull

Just started:

jpcamb

I'm reading Adrian Tchaikovsky's "Children of Time" and WOW. I would not have thought a book about spiders would be so good (Aside from Charlotte's web ) but I am having trouble putting it down at night.

urrutiap

Reading the first 100 pages of WWF/WWE's The Rock's first auto bio book The Rock Says. Bought it for 80something cents from the downtown thrift store.

I used to have the first two Mick Foley books 18 years ago but they disappeared on me

PAG

Just finished:

rbrown498

Finished this; the villain reminded me somewhat of a hillbilly version of Frank Booth from Blue Velvet. It certainly wasn't bad, but I doubt I'll want to ever re-read it.

Currently reading Universal Harvester, by John Darnielle:

Bronkster

I finished rereading Contact by Carl Sagan. There's so much I had forgotten from when I read it years ago, and it held my interest as few books do. I loved re-experiencing it! Just for the heck of it, I immediately rewatched the movie (Blu-ray that I picked up a few years ago and saved for this special moment). The book is still vastly better - in my ever-so-humble opinion - but the movie was still enjoyable for what it is. Contact still ranks as (one of?) my favorite books.

thematahara

Finished Magpie Murders

Started:

Nick Danger

Too Many Cooks by Rex Stout. I've read several Nero Wolfe books in the last couple of months that I haven't listed here. This is another of the best. It has my all-time favorite scene in the Nero Wolfe series. Wolfe questions the kitchen staff of a top 1930s resort. He gets answers because he treats them like honorable men. Everyone else in the book has treated them like second-class citizens because they're Black.

I haven't seen anything like that in another book written in the 1930s.

Pointyskull

Just started:

rbrown498

I just finished this. Although it's listed as "horror" in the cataloguing info, I found nothing horrific about it...except that I wasted time reading it. It's the third book I've finished so far this year, and the third to go into the "donate" pile.

I'll start a reread of 'Salem's Lot by Stephen King tomorrow. At least I know that I won't be donating THAT one.

PAG

Just finished:

brainee

Finished:

I quite enjoyed the first book by this author (well, by this pen name ... the author has a long career of publishing thrillers under the name Michael Marshall and sci-fi under the name Michael Marshall Smith). The Anomaly was described as a cross between Indiana Jones (if Indy was in modern times, washed out of academia, and is forced to make a living through a YouTube investigative show) and The X-Files. And the first book in the series delivered on that premise. This one ... I don't know what happened. Instead it seems like a really lame entry in The Conjuring series. There's a slow build where I'm not being sold that anything interesting will happen. Then when things do happen it's told in such a muddled way it was hard to care.

Also finished:

This was a fun, quick mystery/thriller/horror. I hadn't read the author's previous two bestsellers, but I should probably check them out at some point. It's pretty upfront about being inspired by Rosemary's Baby, with a Manhattan gothic setting (a creepy old apartment building next to Central Park) and a similar build-up with a young woman gradually realizing something sinister is going on with the quirky, friendly neighbors.

cultshock

I'm in the middle of reading this one myself. I thought it was suitably apocalyptic for these crazy times we now live in and I'm really enjoying it so far.

Pointyskull

Just started:

thematahara

I read Home Before Dark a couple months ago and really enjoyed it. Nothing earth shattering, but a good story, moved quick and kept me turning the pages the entire time. I will definitely seek out more of her stuff in the future

mndtrp

Finished New Spring, the prequel to the Wheel of Time series. It was fine, clearly being used as a setup for other things. Remains to be seen how much it adds to the actual series.

Started:


The Eye of the World - Robert Jordan
The first proper book in the series. Only one chapter in, but it starts out pretty impressive.

thematahara

Finished:



Started:

PAG

Just finished:

Pointyskull

Just started:

brainee

Finished:

There were a lot of similarities to this and The Starless Sea (which I also recently finished). Both were romantic urban fantasies about doors to other worlds, a young protagonist thrown into a big quest, the magic of reading, alternating between the main story and "book within a book", and both were written in a rolling lyrical style. This just worked a lot better for me. The story seemed more focused, the characters more interesting. I liked the early 20th/late 19th century setting of this more as well.

Just started:

It's the first of a trilogy so I may be at it for a while. So far so good. The setting is something different, for me at least ... a fantasy set in Napoleonic Egypt. I'm less than 50 pages in and the writing style seems easy to read, although there's a bit of historical and cultural terminology that I'm still getting a grasp on. And it seems to be fast-paced, with already an exorcism, a djinn battling a demon, flesh eating ghouls, and a flying carpet.

Nick Danger

The Ophuchi Hotline by John Varley. I bought it as a teenager in 1977 when it was first published, and it's been in my bookcase ever since. Today's science fiction seems to use one or two ideas per novel, but this book is frothy, overflowing with ideas. The aliens kicked humanity off the Earth, surgery as a do-it-yourself project, cloning, memory recordings, casual sex, enslaved scientists, symbiotic human/alien hybrids, and a giant stream of engineering information that's beamed from the star Ophuchi. It's a wild ride.