Other Books you are currently reading?

New Dresden files book Battle Ground announced for September after Peace Talks in July.

 

Trying to read the Witcher books. But the early ones being short stories compiled into a book, I find myself reading one of the short stories, putting the book down, and forgetting it for a week because I feel like I finished it even though I'm only, physically, half way through.

 

Babylon's Ashes - book six of The Expanse series

 

Persepolis Rising - book seven

Spoiler

Anyone else think book six was written as though they had initially planned it as the series finale?

 

@David, re: the Expanse books

Spoiler

It has felt to me like the last couple of books have been a little bit less coherent in terms of the overarching plot. That said, I believe that they always intended it to be nine-book series (and certainly as far back as Cibola Burn they talked about it being 9 books).

 

I didn't know that was a series of books. I remember a short-lived TV series and just assumed that's all it was.

Didn't know that, thanks.

Spoiler

It's just the end of Babylon's Ashes felt like "and they all lived happily ever after".

 

Part way through Natives: Race & Class in the Ruins of Empire which I'm enjoying.
Just finished Why I'm not longer talking to white people about race which I thought was good, and I probably would have found more eye opening if I hadn't already read some of Natives.
About to start Black Tudors The Untold Story

Always been a fiction guy, so feels good to be able to read some stuff for education.

 

The Pursuit of the Pankera, a recently released book by Robert A Heinlein based on reconstructed notes.

 

I finished Dune by Frank Herbert and started reading The Five by Hallie Rubenhold.

Earlier I finished both books by Alma Katsu (The Hunger and The Deep). Both brilliant reads.

 

Just finished my re-reading of the expanse prior to first read of book 8 - I cant wait for the next two series on Prime...!

 

Really didn't enjoy The Five. Way too much feminist agenda and mindbogglingly insane jumps to conclusions to fit the picture the author is trying to paint.

Finished King's latest short story collection (four stories, all of them novellas) If It Bleeds. Enjoyed most of them, but King does apparently feel the need to shoehorn some political correctness into his stories nowadays. Pretty weak and slightly irritating, to be honest.

Now reading The History of Bees. Interesting start, haven't made it any further into the book yet.

 

Having read Dune, i've moved onto Dune Messiah; half expecting to have to empty the sand out of my shoes i've read so many mentions of it...

 

Could you give a couple of examples?

 

I'm nearly finished with A Perfect Spy by le Carré.

It's excellent, but very slow, ponderous and long-winded. It's structured like a retrospective biography, a high ranking British spy goes AWOL and secludes himself to write his memoirs about his entire life. Meanwhile, he's being ferociously hunted by lots of people who can't figure out if he's defected, gone mad, or what.

It starts out with a boring, languid few chapters and picks up towards the end, which is a pretty standard le Carré shape. You have to expect that, and just have faith in the author that it's going to all be worth it, and ease your way through the first half of the book. Lots of lavish descriptions, detailed characters, places, setting up stuff for later. It does all come around and fit together. But my God, the attention span required...

 

Sure.

Spoiler: The Five #1

The author wants to show that we should care about the women behind the image (the press has built for over 100+ years) of "the Ripper's prostitute victims", so she goes into very detailed descriptions of their lives, relationships and why we should feel sorry for them. In the end four out of 5 victims were alcoholics, two (maybe three) were actual prostitutes, all of them couldn't hold down jobs or relationships, all of them got offered (often extensive) support which they either turned down or wasted to fall back into alcoholism and all of them had a temper (I think it was three who got arrested at least once for disorderly behaviour). The author always tries to play all of this off by saying "they were women and thus had a bad position in society and we should look kindly upon their small-ish issues". Sometimes she goes on for pages about how the poor girl was having a hard time to get by because of all those bad men around her, then the author spoils all of what she built by mentioning by-the-by that the girl was also an alcoholic and had been for several years. It's hard to feel sorry for people who wasted all the chances they were presented with (from several sources: family, husbands/boyfriends, providence, ... you name it).

Spoiler: The Five #2

The author goes into a very interesting discussion with the reader and herself in the conclusion about who actually should be considered a prostitute. She seems to say that a woman who only sells her body for sex on two days a week (and works a "respectable" job the other days... or doesn't have another job altogether) is not a prostitute. Strange stuff. But then she goes on towards saying that the porn industry (which is mainly run by men and exploiting women as the author repeatedly mentions) was founded upon the Ripper murders. I just couldn't follow her reasoning anymore by that point.

Spoiler: King - If It Bleeds (the story)

Holly, the protagonist, gets invited for Christmas to join her friends, the family Robinson, for the celebrations and dinner. King describes the preparations, where Holly is during them, what she does, what the others do and how this will be both exciting and scary for Holly. Then, out of the blue, he mentions that the Robinson family usually is "gender-neutral", but not on Christmas when the women toil in the kitchen .....

Spoiler: King - Rat

The protagonist, about to be stranded in a cabin in the woods by a storm, ignores all the warnings on the weather channel, from locals and his own wife to stay in said cabin because he thinks weather channels always exaggerate when reporting about upcoming storms. He speaks with his wife on the phone and says exactly that to his wife, adding "you know that". She then starts a short but completely random rant about how that is mansplaining and how men always use "you know that" to belittle women when speaking to them. There is absolutely no hint before or after that scene that the protagonist does actually fall into the habit of mansplaining at regular intervals or even at all.

Forgot one thing: King can't stop mentioning in his stories how stupid Trump is, how people who voted Trump are stupid and how his protagonists (obviously an extension of himself in that aspect) would never vote Trump. Because Trump is stupid, y'know? Stupid Trump. Really, Trump's stupid.

I think that it's fine to mention it once in a book, but repeating it doesn't really make it more interesting or fun. If I share the opinion I'll agree the first time, if I don't I won't after several mentions. I fail to see why he feels like he has to do that. His storytelling is definitely strong enough to stand on its own without these shenanigans.

 

Tiamat's Wrath - book eight of The Expanse series.

Been saving this one - haven't read anything in a few weeks.

 

did a re-read to build up to it; was so worth it.
but it did remind me that although the tv series is good, the books are great.

 

I MUST get going again with The Expanse, I think I read 3, and then the next one wasn't available at the library...
I think I've forgotten more than I remember so far.
Time to look for a set on ebay!

 

I've been toying with the idea of reading the Wheel of Time series for ages, as I quite like Brandon Sanderson. Well, no, I love him. But Wheel of Time is a huge undertaking. Is it worth it?

 

Sandworm by Andy Greenberg, all about the hacking crew and the new era of government sponsored cyber shenanigans. Really interesting read and quite scary if you sit and think about some of the things they've already done like turning off the power grid . Serious business, some of it could be right out of a Hollywood movie.