reading Currently Reading (non-GA)

[Palantir]

On 12/5/2018 at 11:55 AM, Thorn Wilde said:

 

...there was a movie? 

I was very disappointed by the movie which didn't have the special appeal that comes with Susan Cooper's wordcraft.

[Thorn Wilde]

4 minutes ago, Palantir said:

I was very disappointed by the movie which didn't have the special appeal that comes with Susan Cooper's wordcraft.

Ah, too bad. Well, then, there's no point in my watching it. I adored those books as a teenager... They were wonderful.

[Page Scrawler]

2 hours ago, droughtquake said:

When I worked in a bookstore, I read a ton of LGBTQ biographies.  ;–)

You should read Jack Andraka's biography, Breakthrough. After a close family friend died of pancreatic cancer, Jack resolved to find a better way to test for the disease. His patent is currently in trials, but if produced for consumers, it could help save people from pancreatic, ovarian, and lung cancers! He's been openly gay since he was 13, and he's very passionate about helping kids learn to love science (and themselves). 

[Ron]

I'm currently reading three author's works, two on Kindle and one paperback (from wayback). I'm reading Elantris (revised 10th anniversary edition) by Brandon Sanderson, after having read it first back in 2005, and The Dragon Bone Chair: Book One of Memory, Sorrow and Thorn (again an anniversary edition) by Tad Williams, which I first read way back in the late 1980's (I think, at least once more after that)  -- both on Kindle. The paperback book is a favorite from wayback (I know, another one) that was first published in 1980 (now out of print) by David Brin called Sundiver ( @Palantir you might well like this series - human engineered sentient dolphins, among other species) which is the first part of what eventually became a devided six book series: The Uplift novels. Anyway, some good books are worth rereading and I can highly recommend each of these.

 

All of these stories I read long enough ago that there is a lot of refreshing going on in my mind. Of course, it all seems familiar, too, and that's why I'm able to do three works at a time. Tad Williams' work is left to my time at the laundromat, Sundiver is a just-before-bedtime story (paperback - no artificial light from my iPhone or iPad) and Elantris is a whenever story.

 

My reading list is part of why I haven't been as active on GA as I have been in the past. Mostly, what I'm trying to do is write my own science fiction work and I've been reading new things and old as part research, and also toward getting my mind in the right groove. We'll see.

[Palantir]

44 minutes ago, Ron said:

I'm currently reading three author's works, two on Kindle and one paperback (from wayback). I'm reading Elantris (revised 10th anniversary edition) by Brandon Sanderson, after having read it first back in 2005, and The Dragon Bone Chair: Book One of Memory, Sorrow and Thorn (again an anniversary edition) by Tad Williams, which I first read way back in the late 1980's (I think, at least once more after that)  -- both on Kindle. The paperback book is a favorite from wayback (I know, another one) that was first published in 1980 (now out of print) by David Brin called Sundiver ( @Palantir you might well like this series - human engineered sentient dolphins, among other species) which is the first part of what eventually became a devided six book series: The Uplift novels. Anyway, some good books are worth rereading and I can highly recommend each of these.

 

All of these stories I read long enough ago that there is a lot of refreshing going on in my mind. Of course, it all seems familiar, too, and that's why I'm able to do three works at a time. Tad Williams' work is left to my time at the laundromat, Sundiver is a just-before-bedtime story (paperback - no artificial light from my iPhone or iPad) and Elantris is a whenever story.

 

My reading list is part of why I haven't been as active on GA as I have been in the past. Mostly, what I'm trying to do is write my own science fiction work and I've been reading new things and old as part research, and also toward getting my mind in the right groove. We'll see.

 

Wow! Those a some great stories you're reading @Ron  I haven't read Elantris but I have all the others in my (paperback) collection. I particularly enjoyed the Uplift series. My favorite David Brin novel is called 'Practice Effect' and it's a novel I'd recommend to anyone who likes speculative fiction.

[Thorn Wilde]

1 hour ago, Ron said:

My reading list is part of why I haven't been as active on GA as I have been in the past. Mostly, what I'm trying to do is write my own science fiction work and I've been reading new things and old as part research, and also toward getting my mind in the right groove. We'll see.

 

Yay for writing sci-fi! I wish you all the luck. Don't suppose you've ever read any of Ursula K. Le Guin's science fiction? If you haven't you should check her out. I can recommend The Left Hand of Darkness, which is super interesting and I think definitely counts as a queer novel, as well. Also any of her science fiction short stories, of which there are many.

[Former Member]

2 hours ago, Page Scrawler said:

You should read Jack Andraka's biography, Breakthrough. After a close family friend died of pancreatic cancer, Jack resolved to find a better way to test for the disease. His patent is currently in trials, but if produced for consumers, it could help save people from pancreatic, ovarian, and lung cancers! He's been openly gay since he was 13, and he's very passionate about helping kids learn to love science (and themselves). 

Back in the ‘90s, there were a bunch of First-Openly-Gay biographies. I remember one was the first Openly Gay FBI agent (J Edgar was never Out of the Closet). Greg Louganis’ Breaking the Surface came out during that period too.  ;–)

[Palantir]

1 hour ago, Thorn Wilde said:

 

Yay for writing sci-fi! I wish you all the luck. Don't suppose you've ever read any of Ursula K. Le Guin's science fiction? If you haven't you should check her out. I can recommend The Left Hand of Darkness, which is super interesting and I think definitely counts as a queer novel, as well. Also any of her science fiction short stories, of which there are many.

 

OMG, Thorn! You read stacks of books which I love. The Earthsea Trilogy (now six books) is absolutely wonderful and my pick as best of her works. - hauntingly beautiful ideas and a multi-layered storyline - also a Taoist element which challenged my thinking.

[Thorn Wilde]

1 hour ago, Palantir said:

 

OMG, Thorn! You read stacks of books which I love. The Earthsea Trilogy (now six books) is absolutely wonderful and my pick as best of her works. - hauntingly beautiful ideas and a multi-layered storyline - also a Taoist element which challenged my thinking.

My mum gave me the Earthsea trilogy (her old copies) when I was about 11 or 12. I loved them straight away. I think The Tombs of Atuan is my favourite. My mum's a huge Le Guin fan, so she pushed me in that direction pretty early. Left Hand of Darkness is definitely my all time favourite, because the whole gender thing is just such a fantastic idea, but I also love The Dispossessed. Speculative fiction is what I like best about sci-fi in general. There are so many good stories in the Hainish Cycle. All of those short stories are fantastic. I've got The Found and the Lost and The Unreal and the Real, so I think by now I have basically all her short stories and novellas. As for her novels, The Word for World is Forest is amazing, and one of the more recent ones, The Telling, I really enjoyed. 

Edited January 12, 2019 by Thorn Wilde

[Former Member]

When I was about 12, one of my Aunts sent me The Hobbit. It didn’t appeal to me initially, but when I tried it again later, I devoured it and begged for The Lord of the Rings series. To tell you how tight money was, they wouldn’t buy the all three books at the same time, I had to wait. But my minister father was happy to supply me with several CS Lewis series! They also gave me several (hetero) coming of age books too. In high school, I got Watership Down.

 

After I started working, I started reading Ursula LeGuin, Anne McCaffrey, Andre Norton and Robert Heinlein. I read all of Heinlein's books (I think) and later realized I didn’t agree with his Libertarian politics. Piers Anthony and Alan Dean Foster were also early favorites.

 

Octavia Butler was a more recent favorite, recommended by my best friend. Samuel R Delany was one I had to search hard for because his books were often out of print. With most of the other authors I read, I didn’t go out of my way to find all their books.

 

 

I once had huge collections of novelizations of Doctor Who, Star Trek, and Star Wars. All those are long gone, victims of multiple moves and eviction. I used to have multiple hundreds of books, but nearly all of them were mass market paperbacks. I left my hardcover Harry Potter books and the two Tales of the City hardcover compilations (the first six Tales published as two books) behind when I was evicted. Of the several dozen I have now, more than a dozen are hardcover, including all the Tales of the City books (repurchasing the two compilations and buying the last three separately since they were never published in hardcover compilation form).  ;–/

[Thorn Wilde]

20 minutes ago, droughtquake said:

When I was about 12, one of my Aunts sent me The Hobbit. It didn’t appeal to me initially, but when I tried it again later, I devoured it and begged for The Lord of the Rings series. To tell you how tight money was, they wouldn’t buy the all three books at the same time, I had to wait. But my minister father was happy to supply me with several CS Lewis series! They also gave me several (hetero) coming of age books too. In high school, I got Watership Down.

 

After I started working, I started reading Ursula LeGuin, Anne McCaffrey, Andre Norton and Robert Heinlein. I read all of Heinlein's books (I think) and later realized I didn’t agree with his Libertarian politics. Piers Anthony and Alan Dean Foster were also early favorites.

 

Octavia Butler was a more recent favorite, recommended by my best friend. Samuel R Delany was one I had to search hard for because his books were often out of print. With most of the other authors I read, I didn’t go out of my way to find all their books.

 

 

I once had huge collections of novelizations of Doctor Who, Star Trek, and Star Wars. All those are long gone, victims of multiple moves and eviction. I used to have multiple hundreds of books, but nearly all of them were mass market paperbacks. I left my hardcover Harry Potter books and the two Tales of the City hardcover compilations (the first six Tales published as two books) behind when I was evicted. Of the several dozen I have now, more than a dozen are hardcover, including all the Tales of the City books (repurchasing the two compilations and buying the last three separately since they were never published in hardcover compilation form).  ;–/

 

My dad read me The Hobbit when I was 7, I think. I liked it a lot, but the 'back again' part got boring.  The copy in my bookshelf is in Finnish and illustrated by Tove Jansson, the creator the the Moomins, if they ever made it across the pond. She was a wonderful illustrator, and when The Hobbit was first translated into Swedish, it was with her illustrations. For the 100th anniversary of her birth the book was rereleased with her drawings, but sadly only in Finnish, which I don't speak. I bought it anyway.

 

Narnia was my first fantasy series. My mum read them to me as soon as I was old enough to understand anything at all. Before that there were some books by Swedish children's book author Astrid Lindgren, who wrote wonderful fantasy stories for kids, though.

 

I got the first Harry Potter book for Christmas '97, when I was 9 years old. I still have it, it's a first edition. Nearly all of them are, except the second and third books. I pre-ordered those things, got them the day they were released. I wrote and read so much Harry Potter fanfic... I recall one in particular I read that actually predicted Snape and Lily's friendship before The Deathly Hallows even came out. It was very good.

 

The first sci-fi I got into was a YA series called Animorphs. There were 54 books in the series, plus a few extra novels. The books weren't long, you could read one in an afternoon if you didn't have much to do. They were not great books, but I devoured those things and I loved them so much. I still have them all. I think of them as a gateway drug. At the time they seemed amazing, but they got me into some much heavier shit later.  

 

Heinlein's politics aside, he did write some wonderful books. The Door Into Summer comes to mind.

Edited January 12, 2019 by Thorn Wilde

[Thorn Wilde]

Omg, just starting listening to Jack of Hearts and I am dying! The guy who reads it is amazing! Laughing out loud on the metro! 😂😂😂

[Page Scrawler]

While I'm waiting for The Whispers to be delivered in the next couple of days, I finished a book called Saint Death, by Marcus Sedgwick.

In the shanty-town of Anapra, the border fence between El Norte and Mexico is stalled at the foot of a mountain. It would be so easy for Arturo Silva to cross the one hundred yards onto American soil. But he's not a fool like so many others, who fall prey to the coyotes and drug cartels. He doesn't dare let himself have those kinds of dangerous delusions of a better life. Then he runs into an old friend named Faustino, who's in desperate need of help. Los Libertadores aren't a drug cartel, at least not directly, and Faustino has stolen money from his own boss to make a new life for his girlfriend and her baby in America. These two lost souls struggle in a race against time, but when Santisima Muerte, Our Most Holy Lady of Death, has Her eye on you, time may be the one thing you don't have left.

Edited January 13, 2019 by Page Scrawler

[Page Scrawler]

Firestarter, by Tara Sim. The trilogy is complete, I can't wait to read the end!  But now I'll have to find something else to obsess over once I'm done. 

The crew of the Prometheus is intent on taking down the world’s clock towers so that time can run freely. Now captives, Colton, Daphne, and the others have a stark choice: join the Prometheus’s cause, or fight back in any small way they can and face the consequences. But Zavier, leader of the terrorists, has a bigger plan—to bring back the lost god of time.

As new threats emerge, loyalties must shift. No matter where the Prometheus goes—Prague, Austria, India—nowhere is safe, and every second ticks closer toward the eleventh hour. Walking the line between villainy and heroism, each will have to choose what's most important: saving those you love at the expense of the many, or making impossible sacrifices for the sake of a better world.

[Former Member]

Can they reset our nuclear clock? It’s been sitting at 11:58pm for quite awhile now. Jerry Brown just made this year’s announcement a few days ago…  :–(

[Thorn Wilde]

Right now I’m reading Siege Line by Myke Cole. It’s the third book in a military fantasy trilogy. The second trilogy set in the same universe. They’re really cool books. This trilogy is a prequel to the other one. The first trilogy, beginning with a book called Control Point, is about magic harnessed for military use, people with magical powers being forced into military service, running black ops. This one is set before all that starts to happen, when magic is new. Very cool. The first book is called Gemini Cell.

 

Myke Cole is a former US Coast Guard. These books do not romanticise military life at all. They’re gritty and interesting and very well written. Plus Myke is a really cool guy. I had a beer with him once. 

[Palantir]

10 hours ago, Thorn Wilde said:

Right now I’m reading Siege Line by Myke Cole. It’s the third book in a military fantasy trilogy. The second trilogy set in the same universe. They’re really cool books. This trilogy is a prequel to the other one. The first trilogy, beginning with a book called Control Point, is about magic harnessed for military use, people with magical powers being forced into military service, running black ops. This one is set before all that starts to happen, when magic is new. Very cool. The first book is called Gemini Cell.

 

Myke Cole is a former US Coast Guard. These books do not romanticise military life at all. They’re gritty and interesting and very well written. Plus Myke is a really cool guy. I had a beer with him once. 

Sounds very interesting and made me think of the military scifi of Elizabeth Moon and Mercedes Lackey who use female characters as their main protagonists.

[Thorn Wilde]

42 minutes ago, Palantir said:

Sounds very interesting and made me think of the military scifi of Elizabeth Moon and Mercedes Lackey who use female characters as their main protagonists.

That sounds awesome. Definitely gonna check those out.  

[Page Scrawler]

Like a Love Story, by Abdi Nazemian. Available June 4th, 2019.

It’s 1989 in New York City, and for three teens, the world is changing.

Reza is an Iranian boy who has just moved to the city with his mother to live with his stepfather and stepbrother. He’s terrified that someone will guess the truth he can barely acknowledge about himself. Reza knows he’s gay, but all he knows of gay life are the media’s images of men dying of AIDS.

Judy is an aspiring fashion designer who worships her uncle Stephen, a gay man with AIDS who devotes his time to activism as a member of ACT UP. Judy has never imagined finding romance...until she falls for Reza and they start dating.

Art is Judy’s best friend, their school’s only out and proud teen. He’ll never be who his conservative parents want him to be, so he rebels by documenting the AIDS crisis through his photographs.

As Reza and Art grow closer, Reza struggles to find a way out of his deception that won’t break Judy’s heart—and destroy the most meaningful friendship he’s ever known.

[Page Scrawler]

Right now, I'm reading Charlie Hernandez and the League of Shadows, by Ryan Calejo.

Charlie Hernandez grew up listening to his grandmother tell tales about monsters from Latin and Hispanic mythology. He always dismissed them as just stories, a game they'd play. He should have known better; his abuela always hated games. Now, his parents have disappeared after their house burned down, and he's growing horns out of his forehead. Charlie doesn't have any idea why or how this is happening, but maybe Violet Rey, the girl he's crushing on, can help him find some answers.

Edited March 2, 2019 by Page Scrawler

[Former Member]

13 minutes ago, Page Scrawler said:

Available June 4th, 2019.

Did you jump into your time machine again? You flubbed up the settings by a couple months. What about the timelines? Did you change our future again when you not only came back in time, but posted that message?  ;–)

[Page Scrawler]

3 minutes ago, droughtquake said:

Did you jump into your time machine again? You flubbed up the settings by a couple months. What about the timelines? Did you change our future again when you not only came back in time, but posted that message?  ;–)

NO! I'm not reading it now, though it would be nice to get an ARC. I saw the summary on Goodreads, and I thought it sounded good enough to share.

[Page Scrawler]

2 minutes ago, Dmrman said:

Droughtquake doesn't know you... Had a meatless Monday on Thursday affair thing... Maybe you better explain The time Issues... ARC is that like an AiRomatic...Carrot...? Like a fine wine Aged...??? sorry just had too...!!!

ARC stands for "Advance Reader's Copy".  That's how the books always get the reviews printed on the back. And we've been eating so many meals lately with bacon, sausage, hamburger, etc, I decided to make a change and have some vegetarian food for dinner tonight.

[Former Member]

The temperatures I’m the Bay Area are dropping precipitously. We’re going from highs around 60°F (and lows around 50°F) to 50°F highs (and below 40°F at night). And water is supposed to be just falling from the sky during the next four days! Unbelievable!  ;–)

 

 

When I worked in a bookstore, we used to get the occasional advanced copies, but they used a different term that I just can’t recall right now (gutter copy?).  ;–)

[Former Member]

They also say we’re supposed to be getting some sort of weird fluffy ice stuff falling on our highest peaks… it just doesn’t make sense!  ;–)