What Book Are You Reading XV - The Pile Keeps Growing!

[PhroX]

Thanks a million for mentioning this, I enjoyed a lot Lions of Al-Rassan and was not aware of the existence of this.
One book more to the list

Well, Kay has done quite a few of that type of novel - he describes them as "history with a quarter turn to the fantastic". Basically any of his works except The Fionnavar Tapestry (which is a more traditional fanatsy) are of that type. I feel he was still finding his style a bit in the first couple, Tigana and A Song for Arbonne, so while they're still good, they're a step down from his later stuff, but anything from Lions onwards is a great read. Most of them are set in the same universe, and there's some references across them, but apart from the two Sarantine books, they're stand alone stories so don't worry about a reading order.

 

[Birdjaguar]

This year has been yet another bad one for reading thus far.

I finally finished The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty, a fantasy story based in the Mesopotamia region and Egypt, including all the various djinn and fantastical creatures you might expect. It was a solid story, 5/5, and probably one of the best books I've read that is based around Middle Eastern lore and conventions. The characters are not really likable, but the story's pacing is quick enough to ensure you're not spending too much time idling.

I enjoyed the entire series!

 

[Takhisis]

This year has been yet another bad one for reading thus far.

I finally finished The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty, a fantasy story based in the Mesopotamia region and Egypt, including all the various djinn and fantastical creatures you might expect. It was a solid story, 5/5, and probably one of the best books I've read that is based around Middle Eastern lore and conventions. The characters are not really likable, but the story's pacing is quick enough to ensure you're not spending too much time idling.

I'm not sure what the meaning of ‘bad’ is here.

 

[Synobun]

I'm not sure what the meaning of ‘bad’ is here.

Not reading very much.

 

[Smellincoffee]

Just finished John Steinbeck's partial adaptation of Mallory's Le Mort d'Arthur, The Tales of King Arthur and his Noble Knights. I had Monty Python lines in my head the same time. This was my first proper dive into the Arthurian myths, so I was in for many surprises. Didn't realize Uther Pendragon was a lech with the self-control of Trump, for instance, who begot Arthur by knocking up one of his vassals' wife.

 

[warpus]

I started reading Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer, a book I've been meaning to read ever since I got the privilege of hiking around the Himalayas with a Sherpa just over 5 years ago now.

The way everything is described, the base camp, how it began, the descriptions of those first attempts, the slightly dated literary style.. it all comes together so well! I haven't found much time to read lately, but I definitely can't wait to get out to the cottage this year to just lie back and read for a couple hours at a time. Also want to get back into reading some more Iain M. Banks novels. Ever since he's passed I slowed down my take-in of his books.. Surface Detail is one I want to read.. I started reading it years ago and life got in the way. It was fascinating, I'll probably end up reading it next.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I just started the Terraformers by Annalee Newitz. Sci Fi 60,000 or so years in the future.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Starting The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

I finally finished The City of Brass

Lions of Al-Rassan was really good,

Some other fantasy novel recommends, based on these:

Tigana (1990) by Guy Gavriel Kay
Perdido Street Station (2000) by China Mieville
Elantris (2005) by Brandon Sanderson
Shadowbridge (2007) by Gregory Frost
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (2010) by N.K. Jemisin
City of Stairs (2014) by Robert Jackson Bennett
The Grace of Kings (2015) by Ken Liu
Twelve Kings in Sharakhai (2015) by Bradley Beaulieu
Foundryside (2018) by Robert Jackson Bennett

 

[Smellincoffee]

Our Man in Charleston, about a British consul in South Carolina in the 1850s and 1860s, who was officially a diplomat but also surveilled the South and did his best to keep the UK from involving itself in Lincoln's war.

 

[Synobun]

Some other fantasy novel recommends, based on these:

Tigana (1990) by Guy Gavriel Kay
Perdido Street Station (2000) by China Mieville
Elantris (2005) by Brandon Sanderson
Shadowbridge (2007) by Gregory Frost
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (2010) by N.K. Jemisin
City of Stairs (2014) by Robert Jackson Bennett
The Grace of Kings (2015) by Ken Liu
Twelve Kings in Sharakhai (2015) by Bradley Beaulieu
Foundryside (2018) by Robert Jackson Bennett

I've read Perdido and found it obnoxious, but Elantris was great. I have not heard of the others, so I suppose I'll check those out. Eventually...

 

[privatehudson]

Max Hasting's Operation Pedestal on Audiobook - can't stand his opinion pieces in the paper, but he's a decent enough historian
The Light Fantastic on Kindle - Re-reading Pratchett because he's my all time favourite author
The Body by Bill Bryson in paper format - My favourite living author

 

[Takhisis]

Just finished Robert Heinlein's Tunnel in the Sky (1955), a story about weird ‘pioneers’ being put through a supposedly PVE training session as preparation for colonising earth-like planets.

Spoiler :

Of course, something goes wrong and there's a mini-Lord of the Flies situation. A forerunner of the Hunger Games at times.

 

[Kyriakos]

I'll be finishing the Feynman book today, 10 pages left.
All in all, in my view the first third was more interesting. Then again it is certainly not a book on math or physics; mostly a collection of funny incidents, narrated with positivity and some humor.

 

[Kyriakos]

Finished Feynman - the planes do not land - and starting this:

(edit: now read chapter 1, around 1/3 of the novel)

 

[Josu]

Some other fantasy novel recommends, based on these:

Tigana (1990) by Guy Gavriel Kay
Perdido Street Station (2000) by China Mieville
Elantris (2005) by Brandon Sanderson
Shadowbridge (2007) by Gregory Frost
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (2010) by N.K. Jemisin
City of Stairs (2014) by Robert Jackson Bennett
The Grace of Kings (2015) by Ken Liu
Twelve Kings in Sharakhai (2015) by Bradley Beaulieu
Foundryside (2018) by Robert Jackson Bennett

Elantris is excellent, my Sanderson's favourite book.
Although enjoyed Perdido Street Station,fails in some point I was not able to identify despite having many guidelines of great fantasy novels, .

 

[Kyriakos]

Having now read 2/3 of the Uncle Petros/Goldbach book, I have to say it is becoming increasingly annoying. The first third was nice, but then the author presented the protagonist as being in touch with so many prominent figures of the early 20th century, that it resembles a farce imo. Among those are Caratheodory, Hardy, Littlewood, Ramanujan and Turing.
Imo this could have been avoided, while keeping the story's theme intact.
From a literary standpoint, there are other issues too. Eg the protagonist is rather sketchy, while his esoterism isn't described as a counterbalance.

Edit: later on, even Godel talks to the protagonist.
I mean, ok, surely interjecting a fictional person there does not help with immersion. Let alone when the figures are so famous - as well as their work - that you can't help but feel annoyed at this magical intruder.
Then again, in shame I do confess that the "geometric" method employed by Petros, in his attempt to use algebra to arrive at the truth of the Goldbach Conjecture, was the one I too had pondered (2d shapes as non-primes, 1d as primes; though in my case it was a basic start to some thoughts about the twin prime conjecture) But not even this makes me feel sympathetic ^^

Edit 2: Read the whole book now. It has problems, of the literary type. As I said, in my view the first third is the best. That said, literally the ending sentence is nice.

 

[Spidernova]

Some other fantasy novel recommends, based on these:

Tigana (1990) by Guy Gavriel Kay
Perdido Street Station (2000) by China Mieville
Elantris (2005) by Brandon Sanderson
Shadowbridge (2007) by Gregory Frost
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (2010) by N.K. Jemisin
City of Stairs (2014) by Robert Jackson Bennett
The Grace of Kings (2015) by Ken Liu
Twelve Kings in Sharakhai (2015) by Bradley Beaulieu
Foundryside (2018) by Robert Jackson Bennett

I've read both Grace of Kings and Perdido, and loved both of them.
I'm reading A Song for Arbonne right now, and its a lot of fun so far. The plot threads are starting to come together.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I just started the Terraformers by Annalee Newitz. Sci Fi 60,000 or so years in the future.

I'm over halfway through and well, I'm bit disappointed.

From science fiction visionary Annalee Newitz comes The Terraformers , a sweeping, uplifting, and illuminating exploration of the future. Destry's life is dedicated to terraforming Sask-E. As part of the Environmental Rescue Team, she cares for the planet and its burgeoning eco-systems as her parents and their parents did before her. But the bright, clean future they're building comes under threat when Destry discovers a city full of people that shouldn't exist, hidden inside a massive volcano. As she uncovers more about their past, Destry begins to question the mission she's devoted her life to, and must make a choice that will reverberate through Sask-E's future for generations to come. A science fiction epic for our times and a love letter to our future, The Terraformers will take you on a journey spanning thousands of years and exploring the triumphs, strife, and hope that find us wherever we make our home. "Brilliantly thoughtful, prescient, and gripping." -- Martha Wells, author of The Murderbot Diaries

Not really.

Spoiler :

The author is not great with words. The best way for me to describe is this book and its characters is "cartoony". I keep imagining the story as an animated, very young adult movie. Unsophisticated. In addition, they (the author's pronouns) have absolutely no sense of geography or the reality of distances. Characters walk 1000 miles in two days while doing research; from a hilltop they can see distant cities across jungle and savannah at an equal distance. There are more. Perhaps their planet is flat and doesn't curve. I suspect I will push on through to the end. The author managed to work lots of today's hot buttons into the story: environmental balance, carbon footprints, gender, AI, personhood for animals, capitalism, genetic engineering and slavery.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

Plodding through  Zanoni and it's pretty much as you would expect: long, convoluted run-off sentences, melodramatic language, dark mysterious hero, pure-as-driven-snow heroine, if you've read Victorian novels you get the idea. However, I found the following quip delivered by the beautiful heroine's plain nurse quite uncharacteristically and beautifully poignant in a very quite sort of way (emphasis mine):

and you have eat nothing all day. If you don’t eat you will lose your beauty, my darling, and then nobody will care for you. Nobody cares for us when we grow ugly,—I know that; and then you must, like old Gionetta, get some Viola of your own to spoil.

 

[Kyriakos]

The Lost Letter (by Gogol)

It isn't his best story (in fact it is rather trivial), but Gogol was a very important writer.