# What are you reading [May 2017]?



## Elodan (May 1, 2017)

Finished _The Force Awakens_ by Alan Dean Foster.  Did a nice job fleshing out the movie.  Will be reading the short stories in the book and then moving on to _Bound _by Benedict Jacka (the 8th Alex Verus novel).

I've chosen to finally finish _Expert Cube Development with Analysis Services_ (Chris Webb and Marco Russo) as my downstairs read too see what tricks they have for performance improvements.


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## Jhaelen (May 2, 2017)

I started reading 'Song of Time' by Ian R. MacLeod. It appears to be quite an unusual sci-fi novel written in a remarkably beautiful literary style. It's written from the view-point of a centenarian violinist who's preparing for her 'second life' (as an artificial construct created from her memories) when she finds a mysterious young man who's been washed ashore. Not sure yet where this will all lead, but it's quite moving.


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## Blue (May 3, 2017)

Elodan said:


> Will be reading the short stories in the book and then moving on to _Bound _by Benedict Jacka (the 8th Alex Verus novel).




I'm on the 6th Alex Verus and have 7 & 8 sitting over there taunting me.


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## Nellisir (May 4, 2017)

Based on comments here, I decided to pick up The Fifth Season, by NK Jemisin. I really like her stuff, so was a bit surprised I hadn't read it already.

And yeah, turns out I did. 

Fortunately, I also got Book 2, so I'll read that. I also have to check my boxes and find the first copy so I can return the second copy and get something else - probably one of the two Guy Gavriel Kay books I haven't read.


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## Ralif Redhammer (May 4, 2017)

Finished V.E. Schwab's A Gathering of Shadows. Really enjoyed it – it was the kind of book that as the page count was winding down, I just wanted there to be a few more. Now I’m starting Talidor’s Guest, a gift from my brother.


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## Richards (May 5, 2017)

I just started _The Killer Angels_, a Civil War novel by Michael Shaara that my son's been telling me I need to read for years now.  I'm not the history buff he is, so I'm mainly reading it because it was an inspiration for Joss Whedon's _Firefly_ - and I've already learned that Jubal Early was a historical figure from the Civil War.  I, of course, associate that name with the bounty hunter who was after River Tamm in _Firefly_.

I'm reading a Civil War novel without any interest in Civil War novels - does that seem right to you?

Johnathan


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## Blue (May 6, 2017)

Richards said:


> I'm reading a Civil War novel without any interest in Civil War novels - does that seem right to you?




My favorite book are about people.  I like (for instance) hard SF, space opera, and space navel warfare, but I also like 20-minutes-into-the-future which is a lot closer.  Civil War is like that, a lot closer then your normal habits.  but if it's got an enjoyable plot, believable characters, and decent wordsmithing, why not enjoy it.

(Of course, if it doesn't have those, then it's hard to read even if it's a favored genre.)


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## Kramodlog (May 6, 2017)

I'm gonna start the _Forever War_. It has many good critics.


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## Dwarven_Dad (May 6, 2017)

_The Name of the Wind_ So far, so good. I already knew it was going to be good though.


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## Ralif Redhammer (May 10, 2017)

Finished L. Sprague De Camp's The Fallible Fiend. A fun, light read that definitely skewers human foibles and fantasy tropes. Now I'm hitting Sir Terry's A Hat Full of Sky.


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## Flexor the Mighty! (May 11, 2017)

The Fallible Fiend was a fun story.  

Right now I've got a pile of books but I moved _Caliban's War_ to the top so I can finish watching season 2 of the Expanse.


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## Kramodlog (May 12, 2017)

Tor's monthly free ebook is _A Fire Upon the Deep_ by Vernor Vinge. http://ebookclub.tor.com/

I do not know him, but he won many awards for other works, so why not?


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## Kramodlog (May 12, 2017)

*Double P... ost*

Here there be double post, says I!


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## Jhaelen (May 12, 2017)

I don't think I'd already mentioned I've started reading 'Dark Eden' by Chris Beckett. 

It's about the progeny of a couple stranded on an alien planet. Five generations after that incident, they've devolved into a rather stagnant stone-age society, plagued by defects caused by a too small gene pool, when one of the few clever individuals remaining realizes, they'll either have to adapt and change their ways or they're doomed to become extinct.

It takes a few chapters to get accustomed to the somewhat odd language and the alien environment, but I'm now about halfway in and enjoying it.


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## Blue (May 12, 2017)

Kramodlog said:


> Tor's monthly free ebook is _A Fire Upon the Deep_ by Vernor Vinge. http://ebookclub.tor.com/
> 
> I do not know him, but he won many awards for other works, so why not?




That's the best book I couldn't stand reading.

Gem of the first water setting building.  Great concept.  Really alien aliens, not just funny foreheads but human motivations.  Good characters for the most part.

But...

You know how some books you can't put down?  This was the opposite, the book I couldn't keep reading.  Some point of view characters just annoyed me so much I kept on putting the book down.

I forced myself to finish.  It's got so many parts that are amazing, but as a whole it did not work for me and I have no intention to re-read.

I've read other works of his, set in different parts of the setting (and once you get to know the setting, different parts REALLY means different), and enjoyed them.  But not this one.

How the heck do you rate "Great book; did not enjoy"?

I really hope you enjoy it - the setting deserves love.  It just did not work for me.


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## Kramodlog (May 12, 2017)

Blue said:


> That's the best book I couldn't stand reading.
> 
> Gem of the first water setting building.  Great concept.  Really alien aliens, not just funny foreheads but human motivations.  Good characters for the most part.
> 
> ...



As reader I'm more interested in settings and plots, than in characters and their emotions. This might be very well be my kind of book.


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## Jhaelen (May 15, 2017)

Blue said:


> How the heck do you rate "Great book; did not enjoy"?



Sounds like the category of books I consider 'Ulysses' by James Joyce to be a part of. I fully realize it's the work of a genius, but it was a real slog to read. I'm kind of glad I did, though, because I now have a better idea what it's like. It's a piece of art, and also a bit akin to what us software engineers call a 'proof of concept'.

It's also a category I like to use for music: I make a point to differentiate between music I consider bad, and music that I don't like. Many don't seem to get the difference, but to me it's obvious. I believe you can define a set of objective criteria that allows you to tell good music from bad, but you cannot do that to decide if you enjoy music or not.

Finally, I had a related discussion about movies: E.g. I really like some of the movies by Michael Haneke, e.g. Funny Games, or The White Ribbon. But they can be really painful to watch at times. So, when I recommended them to a friend, he asked me: "Why should I watch a movie that isn't entertaining? Why watch something that isn't fun to watch?" To which, unfortunately, I didn't really have a completely satisfying answer, except that I consider it important for some reason to sometimes watch these kind of movies, if only because they make you think about them. In fact, it's likely you'll never get them fully out of your mind again; they become a part of you.


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## megamania (May 15, 2017)

King's The Wastelands and I now understand people's comments about the Dark Tower movie.


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## Kramodlog (May 15, 2017)

megamania said:


> King's The Wastelands and I now understand people's comments about the Dark Tower movie.



Which comments exactly?


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## megamania (May 16, 2017)

I didn't see how the movie preview was much like the books.  That was at page 70 of The Wastelands.  By page 100 it became clearer to me.   Now at around 150 I am looking forward to it.


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## Istbor (May 16, 2017)

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

By Neil deGrasse Tyson


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## Blue (May 19, 2017)

So I finished the last two Alex Verus books that are out, and found out that the last out (#8) was just published in April of this year, so I have a wait for #9.

This series grew on me, starting from a dependable read but not fantastic.  One can always draw parallels between books, and the likely Urban Fantasy with wizards and a light council is the Dresden books.  Like Dresden, Alex has a few good friends, and also like Dresden he ends up in ever hotter water for his Pyrrhic victories.  But it's not a copy-cat.

They are relatively quick reads, and enjoyable.  Give them a solid 7.5-8 out of 10.


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## Jhaelen (May 19, 2017)

I've finished 'Dark Eden' by Chris Beckett. In retrospect it reminded me a lot of William Golding's classic novel 'Lord of the Flies'. Good stuff!

Now, I've started reading 'Air' by Geoff Ryman. It's set in a fictionalized version of Kazakhstan, in a small peasant village. They're about to get connected to the 'Air' network, which is basically the internet with a direct brain interface. In the wake of the first test, all kinds of accidents happen as their senses are overloaded, and the protagonist gets trapped in the mind of an old woman as she dies, thereafter sharing her memories.


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## Ralif Redhammer (May 19, 2017)

Finished reading Charlie Holmberg’s The Glass Magician, the second in the series. While not quite as awesome as the first book, it still was quite excellent. Now I’m reading The Forgotten Beasts of Eld by Patricia A. McKillip. It was in storage at my library, so it has an excellent old book smell.


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## trappedslider (May 22, 2017)

Lately while working on mods for FO4 I've been listening to audio books and figured something out for myself. I prefer audio books were it's either a cast ( World War Z) or the reader does different voices for the characters (Harry Potter).

I'm currently on book 2 of HP.


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## Eltab (May 25, 2017)

Picked up Zahn's new book _Star Wars: Thrawn_.
Because I'm working 10-hour shifts, I can only read the book in small spurts, or I'll never get any sleep.  I'm seriously tempted to stay up all night reading anyway.


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## Ralif Redhammer (May 25, 2017)

Finished The Forgotten Beasts of Eld – to me it seemed a true lost classic of the fantasy genre. Lyrical, it felt like a forgotten piece of folklore.

I got an email from the library that my other order had come in – alas, I had already started Return of the Crimson Guard, an 800-page novel!


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## Blue (May 25, 2017)

Finished The Obelisk Gate, the second book of N.K Jemisin's Broken Earth series.  Still very much enjoying it, but I wish there was more movement.  The first book was three different stories weaving together as you slowly figured out the connections between them.  This is 70% continuation of one of those stories but mired in one place, and 30% another story with the same sense of newness and exploration as any of the stories in the first book.  Much happened in that 70%, but it still felt mired compared to the exploration of the setting (or maybe exploration of the implications of the setting, it wasn't a travelogue) that happened in the first book.

Started the first books of The Inheritance Trilogy by her.  The very distinctive voice she uses to tell the Broken Earth series is not here.  It's good and well thought out, I am enjoying it.

The Inheritance Trilogy is bound in one book at it would work as a boat anchor.  My thoughts towards it is that Robert Jordan had forced the book binding industry to follow Moore's Law.  So I have a "book on the go", which is the kindle version of Wearing the Cape by Marion G. Harmon.  Funny, for as much as I enjoy superhero RPGs, movies and animation, I'm very rarely a reader of novels.  This has been good, a bit of a deconstruction of what it means to be a super.  Lots of exposition since the protagonist is a brand new super who is learning about what that means, but it doesn't bog down.

Talking about books deconstructing superheroes, if that tingles your senses I need to recommend Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman.  It's not a fantastic book in terms of plot - rather uneven and some of the villain self-pity gets to me.  But I've reread it many times.  The parts about being a super, what it means, why they do things, and the whole culture, is though provoking and excellent.  You cheer for the villain as much if not more than for the heroes because you understand and empathize with his motivations. And perhaps under the cowl he's less of a jerk.


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## Nellisir (May 26, 2017)

Finished _The Obelisk Gate_, and yeah, what Blue said. Though I still haven't found my copy of Book 1, which makes me sad and a little annoyed. 

I read_ A Crown for Cold Silver_, which was REALLY good - one of those "couldn't put it down & read way later at night than I meant to" kind of books. _A Blade of Black Stee_l just jumped way, way up on my to-buy list. 

_The Dumas Club_, by Arturo Pérez-Reverte, was also good and a lot of fun.

I think there's another book or two I've read, but I'll have to check at home. Currently reading _Girl Waits with Gun_, by Amy Stewart, which is pretty good.


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## Nellisir (May 26, 2017)

Ralif Redhammer said:


> Finished The Forgotten Beasts of Eld – to me it seemed a true lost classic of the fantasy genre. Lyrical, it felt like a forgotten piece of folklore.




You should read the Riddlemaster of Hed trilogy.  _The Book of Atrix Wolfe_ is also really enjoyable. I've read a bunch of McKillip in recent years, and they're generally all very good.


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## Ralif Redhammer (May 26, 2017)

The Riddlemaster is also on my library list; I definitely need to read more McKillip!



Nellisir said:


> You should read the Riddlemaster of Hed trilogy.  _The Book of Atrix Wolfe_ is also really enjoyable. I've read a bunch of McKillip in recent years, and they're generally all very good.


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## Nellisir (May 26, 2017)

Ralif Redhammer said:


> The Riddlemaster is also on my library list; I definitely need to read more McKillip!




Some of them really struck me, and some were a bit more meh, but I can't actually recall which was which was which without looking at my shelves...which are at my (other/old/ex's) house. I do have _The Tower at Stony Wood_; _In the Forest of Serre_; and _Winter Rose_ on my to-be-read shelves right now, so I haven't read those. Pretty sure I've read _A Song for Basilisk_; _Od Magic_; _The Book of Atrix Wolfe_; _The Bell at Sealey Head_; and _The Bards of Bone Plain_. 

Seems like someone should have abstracted a setting from McKillip's novels by now. Something to google later.


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## Richards (May 27, 2017)

I just finished _Doppelganger_, the first novel by Marie Brennan.  It's a fantasy, set in a world where when a witch is born, her identical doppelganger is also born and is to be killed within 5 days of its birth.  Otherwise, when the witch turns 25 (and has completed her training and is ready for spellcasting), she must seek out and kill her doppelganger because until she does her spells will be overpowered and likely kill her (and anyone else in her vicinity).  I honestly only picked it up because it was fifty cents at a library book sale and looked like it could be good; however, I really enjoyed it, to the point where I might actively seek out the next book in the series, _Warrior and Witch_.

And now I'm reading another fifty-cent book sale purchase, this time a Star Trek: The Next Generation novel called _A Time to Be Born_ by John Vornholt.  It's kind of blah, which is bad news because I have two more in that series in my "to be read" pile.

Johnathan


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