What Are You Reading Now?

[Raven]

I finished The Lies of Locke Lamora. Have to say, it was a page turner. It was well told, with a thoroughly arresting fantasy world. The story takes place pretty much entirely in a single city, and it mostly follows the workings of the criminal underground and a con artist named Locke Lamora. The presence of magic and such adds extra complications to his trade. If you're looking for a book with morally superior heroes, this is not it.
I've not been doing this for books, before, but I'd say I'd give it a 6 out of 10. It was a page turner, very interesting, compelling world, but I'm not sure that I'd want to continue on in the series. It was a satisfactorily stand alone book, I'm not ruling out that I might pick up another, but I'm also not sure I feel like I want to spend a bunch more time with Locke Lamora the character.

[Coír Draoi Ceítien]

I finished The Auctioneer just this Sunday. It, too, was a great page-turner - more of a thriller than a horror, though there were some horrifying/dreadful aspects about it. It was certainly worth the wait for the publisher to get a hold of it, and I hope it becomes more popular.

As for my next, I'm considering Dean Koontz's Whispers, which seems to be a suspense thriller with horror overtones, which is par the course for Mr. Koontz's output. However, I'm also considering another early 70's horror classic - Thomas Tryon's The Other (a psychological story) - and another shorter fantasy - Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions (you can probably expect to see both this and The Broken Sword soon on the Recommended Reading). I'm still reading Peake, of course, and I intend to finish it, but I want to do something shorter, as well.

Also, I can't make any promises or estimates on release dates, but I'm really thinking about adding another entry to the Masters of Fantasy series. I still have several lists of authors lined up already, and it's bee since February/March that we last heard from it. Some I really want to get to, and others are really in need of more knowledge on the part of readers. I just have to make time for it.

[Raven]

I've just barely started The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Boat of Her Own Making, and judging from the first couple pages, it's going to be good. I'll post again when I finish it.

[Coír Draoi Ceítien]

I'm already a chapter into Whispers, and it looks to be promising, although more of a thriller (meaning little, if any, horror - not complaining, of course). From the looks of it, these are going to be some long chapters (30+ pages), so I don't know how quickly I'll be done with this one.

On the fantasy/sci-fi side, I've forgone my previously mentioned suggestions and gone with my birthday present for this year - Tales of the Dying Earth by Jack Vance, an omnibus collection of all four novels in the setting Mr. Vance created. I'm already over 70 pages in, and it's really good, though they're more a series of interlinked stories than straight novels. I've already spoken of Vance and the Dying Earth on Masters of Fantasy, but here's a link to one of the resources again, just to catch you up:

https://www.blackgate.com/2013/06/02/the-dying-earth-an-appreciation/

I'll definitely be recommending it at some point!

[Coír Draoi Ceítien]

Well, I've stalled on Peake and Koontz, but I intend to get back to them at some point. I'm one story short of finishing the first quarter of Vance's book, and I finished John D. MacDonald's acclaimed thriller Cape Fear a few days ago - wonderful read, highly recommended.

With Halloween fast approaching (just 9 days away as of this writing), I really wanted to read something seasonal, but I didn't want to pay a whole lot of money on Amazon right now, and what I was looking at wouldn't be here until mid-November. Also, after our personal get-together and a few comments made during that time, I suddenly had the urge to get back into short stories (hence my "Brief Shout-Out" topic), as I feel I had been neglecting them. Therefore, I managed to satisfy myself both ways by picking up Stephen King's Night Shift, his first collection of stories from 1978 made up of everything that he had previously published in magazines plus a few new tales. King is a writer I really admire - I wouldn't make all of the choices he's made in his life, and I certainly won't say he's the incomparably best writer I've ever experienced, but I really dig his sheer commitment to the craft, and I feel that he's earned a place in the pantheon of great noteworthy American authors. He's the writer who most inspires me to take up writing, though I never do. Maybe I will, someday, when I feel I have some good stories to tell.

[Coír Draoi Ceítien]

Well, I haven't gone back to Peake and Koontz yet, and I've even set Vance aside, but I have every intention of going back. Just recently, I've put most of my energy into King's Night Shift, which I just finished a couple days ago, and Tim Powers's The Drawing of the Dark, which I also finished. I also restarted Dickens's The Pickwick Papers, but while I intend to finish it as well, for the past couple days, I've been focused on the big one - Alexandre Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo. This one is going to be a task, given that my Modern Library edition (which I am 98% sure in unabridged) is 1,462 pages long! (That's 117 chapters!) Thankfully, it's a real page-turner, having put 200 pages behind me already.

I've also started looking over Dorothea Brande's Becoming a Writer, a slim volume, and I'm really encouraged by it. I hope I can clear up some of my psychological problems and get to writing at some point.

[Coír Draoi Ceítien]

I've done some more setting aside - Monte Cristo is on hold for a bit, as is Pickwick - but I've also gotten a quarter of the way through Vance. Right now, I'm trying to focus on one of my Christmas presents as well as a title I've bought for myself recently. The former is Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré, a very influential Cold War spy novel from 1974 that served as an antithesis to James Bond and was later adapted into both a miniseries starring Alec Guinness for the BBC and feature film starring Gary Oldman; it moves at its own pace, and I'm really interested in it. The latter is Lew Wallace's Ben-Hur, which I've barely started and can't give a steady impression of right now, but I'm hoping to be just as taken by it.

[Coír Draoi Ceítien]

REALLY mixing up my reading here. Still working on Tinker, Tailor and Ben-Hur, but I've also started John Steinbeck's East of Eden - really good - and another fantasy novel, that being Lord Dunsany's The King of Elfland's Daughter - also really good.

Also, on a whim and after a small bit of research, I decided I wanted to pick myself up a new Bible. I got an NKJV Reader's Bible, which is set up for ease of reading by eliminating chapter and verse distinctions to make it read like more of an actual book while keeping the form of the classic King James text. (Got nothing against my Apologetics Study Holman Christian Standard Bible, but I just prefer some of the classic, well-known wording better.) Here's the link for it:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0785216103/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00__o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

In addition, because I've been interested in it for quite a while and I wanted to further understand the viewpoint, I got a copy of the Qur'an via the Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition line; I intend to eventually get some books explaining it in a Christian context, but I feel I'm doing any interfaith dialogue a disservice by being ignorant of the original text.

[Raven]

I Just finished reading The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairy Land in a Boat of Her Own Making. Yes, it took me a long time but I've been keeping busy in other ways.
I'd recommend the book. It was a good read. If she writes a sequel I'd probably read it, too. It was a mix between Lewis Carol, the Never Ending Story, and The Chronicles of Narnia. Something in that realm.

[Raven]

As an addendum to the above, I've moved on to Patrick Rothfuss' The Name of the Wind. After the first 50-or-so pages, I can see why Bear was recommending it so thoroughly on the basis of writing style. He is, for the most part, a good word-smith. The story is also engaging to this point (though can't help but acknowledge the fact that it is a fantasy novel that begins with a tavern. . .).

[Raven]

I just finished The Name of the Wind. I'm not sure if "finished" is the right word because I devoured it. I even stayed up until well after midnight reading by the light of a lamp one night, which is not something I've done in a good while. Quite an enjoyable read and I will be ordering the next in the series. Something Coir said, though, may apply. The third book is not out yet, and that makes me a bit nervous. Hopefully, Rothfuss will not prove to be a Martin when it comes to completing a series. . .
I would be displeased by that.

[Raven]

So, I'm currently reading Six of Crows, which is a fantasy heist story. So far so good.

But I wanted to write that I also finished The Wise Man's Fear. This is the sequel to The Name of the Wind, bringing me up to date in that series. Now I'm stuck in the same position as with Game of Thrones -- hoping for a finish to the story. I think there is a much better chance with Rothfuss than with Martin. At any rate, The Wise Man's Fear, ca 1100 pages in my copy, was also a page turner but I do not know how Rothfuss plans to cap off this storyline with just one more book. I could see it done with another 2,000 pages or so (as in, two books), but at the pace he's been going I do not see how we can reach a conclusion with just one more book. Maybe that's why it's taking a while.

The later part of Wise Man's Fear had some issues, I'll say. This includes a somewhat adolescent-feeling take on sexuality (and the herb-chewing contraceptive was an easy out) and I'm also a bit confused by some of the spots that Rothfuss breezed over. Did we not get the trial scenario or the shipwreck and pirate stuff just as a matter of time considerations? It felt a bit clipped.

Any thoughts?

[Coír Draoi Ceítien]

Not really. I haven't read the books yet, but I HAVE heard somewhere that his intention is for this trilogy to be the opening sequence to a much larger story yet written. I'm not sure how I feel about that. Taking on a sequence is a large effort with no guarantees. One will just have to wait and see.

Here's an article on Tor about it: https://www.tor.com/2018/03/07/patrick-rothfuss-kingkiller-chronicle-prologue-the-doors-of-stone-book-3/

I've been so hooked on my computer lately that I really haven't been doing much reading at all. I'll try to get back into it.

[Raven]

I just finished Uprooted by Naomi Novik. It was a serious page turner. This fantasy book has its roots (har har) deeper in European folk tales (think Grimm, although her influences seem to be more eastern European) and the shades of horror, suspense, and enchantment than anything resembling a Tolkien-influenced world. In short, it was a suspenseful read and a mysterious world full of lurking danger and a real sense of a truly horrific evil that was being combated. I do have a couple small critiques, but I don't want to include them as this is a book that could really be hurt by spoilers. I'd recommend for adult readers.


As an addendum, I did finish Six of Crows. It was not on the same level with Novik or Rothfuss' books, but I still may get the sequel as it kind of finished mid-train in the narrative. Six of Crows started slowly and took me some time to get into, but it was a page turner by the end, and despite its flaws, there are some quality aspects to it. As I said, I may get a copy of the next book so I can finish the story arc.

[Coír Draoi Ceítien]

Probably against my better judgment, I've got about four books going again (one which I technically haven't even started yet). I was going to pick up Peake's Gormenghast novels again, but I've let other things come first; I'll get to them soon enough, hopefully, for the recommended reading. For my four current choices, I've just started The Complete Stories of Robert Louis Stevenson, having gotten one third of a larger story under my belt, and I also have Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales ready to pick up, though I've made quite a few excuses not to; I've also read the first few chapters of Frank Herbert's Dune, and just tonight, inspired by the recent Hulu miniseries, I've started Joseph Heller's Catch-22. Yeah, it's probably too much, and knowing myself, I'm probably going to skip one or two of them eventually. For right now, I'm at least making an effort to do something about it.

Also, keep a look out for some changes on the blog. I can't say when I'll get to it, but if you haven't got the indication from one of my most recent forum topics, I'm planning on pursuing a new avenue.