Which book are you reading currently? #7

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found my copy of Pastwatch by Orson Scott Card and started it.

 

I'm rereading Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. It's about... dead bodies. Obviously. The cadaver and all that can happen to it after death, including various histories of things like embalming and dissection and things like that. I think it's quite interesting.
After that I'll probably stop being creepy and start one of the Conan collections I've been meaning to read for three years now.

 

put pastwatch on hold.. again. Reading Fatal Victories by William Weir. Very interesting stuff and not written in a dry way. It discusses how some victorious battles led to the winners' loss/destruction in the long run. An example is Hannibal at Cannae.

 

I have cruised through About a Thief, Exile's Honor, Exile's Valor and By The Sword. The continuity errors between the Exile books and the rest of the series are truly mindboggling. If you are going back and filling in the details around events mentioned in passing in your earlier books wouldn't you make sure that you are not contradicting them? I have to wonder if Lackey even bothered to look at her older books when she was writing them. Also, was the editor asleep of did he/she think that Lackey is a well established popular author so something as mundane as consistency isn't important?

 

wow, i'll definitely give that series a pass then :O

JSBB, iirc you recommended Paladin of Souls to me once before? It's recently become available in a local bookstore, do you still stand by that recommendation? Do you think I should pick it up?

 

I would recommend Paladin of Souls. It would probably be better to start with The Curse of Chalion but I think Paladin is written in such a manner that you don't have to have read Curse for it to make sense.

 

I find many D&D books nice to read. Ofcourse an obvious plot, stereotype characters etc etc, but nice for relaxing. The lost Mythal series at the moment. Good, not top notch.

 

Just finished the "The lies of Locke Lamore" by Scott Lynch. I recommend it heartily.

 

About 2/3 through Scott Lynch's Red Seas Under Red Skies. I like it more than Lies (and I liked Lies quite a bit, which is why I picked up RSURS in hardback), simply because the jumping back and forth at the beginning didn't irritate me this time around. But if Lynch keeps doing that through all seven books, I think I'll hunt him down and kick his ass.

 

The Boat of a Million Years, Poul Anderson.

 

I am reading Lackey's Oath series. I started with Oathblood and I am reading Oathbound now. Oathblood is a series of shortstories. They are decent for fantasy short stories. Oathbound so far has been remarkably free of an overall plot. So far you could some it up by describing it as "A year in the life of ...". That isn't a complaint but I suppose people looking for some epic plot would be somewhat dissapointed.

Edit: OK This really sucks. During my lunch time reading I found a couple of the short stories from Oathblood are included in their entirety within Oathbound. I think this pretty much cements the fact that there will be no central plot. Either collecting and republishing short stories or including them as part of a novel would be fine in my mind but doing both with the same story as part of a trilogy of books is absurd.

 

I just finished Body of Glass by Marge Piercy - awesome stuff. I'm not sure how obscure it actually is, having picked it up as a random thing, but it's definately a stand-out for random picks (not that they're generally bad - in fact, I seem to have a lot of luck with them. OTOH, the ones that I don't think are very good are still languishing in my cupboard, so perhaps there's some bias there )

 

This may sound absurd, but a friend recently got the Elminster series by Ed Greenwood and I thought about asking him about them. I've heard some praise and some, well, less praising things about them; are they worth it?

 

I'm reading V.J. Jone's 'The Book of Words' trilogy.

 

I am just about to start "Well of Ascension" by Brandon Sanderson

 

Reading the Stranger by Camus

 

Very consistent Tal, I could swear that you've given this same line on at least 3 separate occasions I cam remember

No mistake, I agree with him. El in Hell was crap. The only one I liked was Making of a Mage.

Currently reading Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. A friend of mine recommended it. Said it may appeal to my non-practicing Catholic personality haha

 

No Humans Involved-Kelley Armstrong
Empire of Ivory- Naomi Novik

 

Scott Lynch seems to be popular at the moment! I'm going through The Lies of Locke Lamora and I like it thus far. A friend recommended it as different from run-of-the-mill fantasy, and it certainly is.