Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION The Anywhere Machine So what are you READING?

I started reading one of Patterson's books a few years back while on vacation at the beach. The house we rented had it in their library... I put it down after fifteen pages. It just didn't grab, much like the Cross movies. They are weak and thin in my opinion.

A few weeks later I read a blurb from Stephen King on James Patterson and he said that he didn't like his writing because all of his stories tend to be the same one over and over again (paraphrasing of course). Having read a few King novels over the years, I respect his opinion on fiction novelists.

Good to know minesurfer. "Thin" is the perfect word.

(And yeah, King is the man!)

Well with those recurring character novels, writers have a tough line to walk. Readers want the same good story, but writers then get dissed for not writing too creatively. Poe and Christie and Doyle faced similar criticisms.

I just read my first Jonathon Kellerman novel. It was good, and Alex Delaware is a skewed take on the hard boiled pi. But I can easily see the books getting formulaic.

I'm working my way through A Confederacy of Dunces and it's intriguing and quirky for sure.

I'm reading a debut book by Elizabeth Kerner, 'Song in the Silence'.

So far, like the wonderful title, the book is lovely and interesting.


She writes in first person, which usually isn't so good, but in this case, it means that at least one of the charaters that I've come to like very much, is going to survive!
lol

Dragons are done to death, how do they keep inspiring so many different, and often fantastic, stories?!


I recently skimmed a child's picture book, if that's possible, about a little tree that found Spring, Summer and Winter to be easy seasons.
But AUTUMN is hard ~ then you see it trying to get the colors right!
Lovely litte book.

Reading Rainbow had books about eggs this week.
One was Rashashana's Eggs. The story was about a wounded goose who is taken in by an old peasant woman.
The goose accidentally knocks over a basket of decorated eggs, breaking them (those beautiful Ukranian colored marvels).

The woman shows the eggs that she makes throughout the year in Moscow. She usually wins, but . . .

Before this happened the goose was laying a plain egg every day, which the woman was eating.
After the accident, every day there was an egg but it was designed and colored in the shell, itself.
The woman blew the eggs out and kept the shells.

Finally, the fair came and the goose was healed.
The woman won the prize, the goose was gone but the next morning she found an egg, Rashashana's last, on her bed, shaking and breaking.
Out came a beautiful baby goose who stayed with her 'forever'.

The illustrations were just unbelievablly lovely, but they took the story even farther but showing us the artist.
She looked just like a younger version of the Ukanian woman!
She made a decorated egg for us, too.

I love kids books!

Currently reading "Kings Dragon" by Kate Elliot.
I discovered Ms. Elliot through her Gate series, which is pretty good.
The book I reading now is not good however (though it weas her first published novel).
Not saying the book is actually bad, cause its not. However her prose doesn't flow nicely and her fiction events thus far seem to be rehashing of actual historical events with a fantasy bend.
All that being said I'm going to stick with the series, cause I know (based on her gate cycle) that she improves dramaticly as a writer, and I think it may be interesting to see HOW she eveolves thoughout this series

I love authors who write with a word flow and rythm that make them beautiful to read out loud.
It doesn't happen very often though.

Patricia McKillip(sp) has writen some gorgeous prose.
Her 'Beasts of Eld' is especially lovely.

LeGuin's 'EarthSea' books are equally wonderful in your mind or on you tongue.

I really need to have a go at EarthSea one day soon. I have several of LeGuin's short story collections, all of which have at least something worth reading more than once. Compass Rose is probably my favorite.

You really ought to get all three of them AND The Wind's Twelve Quarters which has an extra Earthsea tale in it. A voracious reader will knock them out in practically no time and yes(!) they're fantastic.

I'm a sucker for well written fantasy and I just picked up a new Darkover novel called The Alton Gift by Deborah Ross (who 's been doing a pretty decent job of continuing MZB's works) and a new Pern novel called Dragon Harper by Todd McCafferey (likewise doing a very nice job of continuing the work with his mother's excellent Pern series).

Oh yeah, I've been looking for a few Heinlein novels to fill a couple of gaps in my collection so I picked up The Rolling Stones. I'd forgotten how much fun that book is.

robert jordan.

LeGuin' last Earthsea book is the adopted daughter of Ged(the burned out wizard) and the girl under the temple.
It's truely wonderful, the kind of end to a series that I wish #50 had been.

I've packed it away somewhere, darn it, or I'd tell you the name of it.

Y'know..that sounds familiar.

I enjoyed the Todd McCaffery novel. He started out ok, not all that special, but he's starting to grow into the role pretty well. This one was pretty good overall. His primary characters have emotional depth now (not all of them but more than ever before) even if they're perhaps a bit too competent. So far he does have a habit of not filling in much of the background but it works well enough if you've been aboard the Pern stories for a while. He doesn't have to fill in too much because you already know a lot of it, a great advantage to working inside an already existing framework.

The Darkover novel was good. I might like them better now than I did when Bradley was writing them, they're less driven by MZB's social agenda. It picks up after the Terrans have left Darkover where the people and the government are left with a power vacuum.
It was hard to put down.

I haven't found the LeGuin book yet, but I think the title is 'Tehanu'.

Todd's doing better, I think, too.
I really enjoyed the characters in his mini, except for the bad guy. I thought he was around for just too long!

I've always liked the watch whers!

I'm reading the Sonoma Diet right now.
Scanning really, before I start it in March.

(snip)

Yellow Kid:

Quote

You really ought to get all three of them AND The Wind's Twelve Quarters which has an extra Earthsea tale in it. A voracious reader will knock them out in practically no time and yes(!) they're fantastic...

Actually I do own The Wind's Twelve Quarters, but had completely forgotten that it had some of the Earthsea stuff in there.

D'oh !!

There's a type of story where an author takes a fairy tale and rewrites it ~ fleshes it out into a novel.

I have a number of them, but I read a new one the other day called 'The Goose Girl' by Shannon Hale that was pretty fantastic.

She's a princess, although not a very good one, it seems.
But her aunt taught her to talk with animals when she was little, particularly birds and horses.

Later, while a goose girl, she learns how to talk with the wind.

The next book is a continuation of characters and deals with Isi's best friend, Enna ~ a forest girl who learns to talk with fire.

Great stories and great takes on having a superpower as teens.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick.

Winner of the 2008 Caldecott Medal.

The inside jacket describes it as combining elements of picture book, graphic novel, and film. The New York Times review described it as a silent film on paper. It's a delightful story of a young orphan boy hiding in a train station, an old man who runs a toy shop, and a young girl. It's a mystery that evolves into a preoccupation with mechanical things that evolves into a celebration of film. Highly recommended for both the story and the innovative way it is told.

Got up to page 100 in Neal Stephenson's Anathem and dropped it. Read the last chapter to see what I'd missed... there seemed to be something about multiverses but there was just too much of something. Maybe this is a book that could benefit from being turned into a comic book series or GN, since visuals might help transcend some of the dictionary-ness of it. Stephenson's books are hit or miss for me.

I finished Sorrow of Young Werther by Goethe. It was good. Now reading Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller. One of the best books I've ever read.

Whoa, that's quite the praise, Jorge! I may have to check out Tropic of Cancer (I have two books I need to read first...)

I'm reading Godel, Escher, Bach and quite enjoying it. I should have read it sooner!

Not only is it awesome, but it's named after three of the most awesome people ever!

Mrs. Astor Regrets by Meryl Gordon. I don't go for celebrity bios generally, but this is more the story of the legal battle over Brooke Astor (and her money) in her final years - she lived to be 104. As her mental faculties declined, her only son (allegedly) started to play fast and loose with the legalities, forcing her to sign new wills in his favor, stealing valuable property from her homes, firing her long-time staff. One of the grandsons took his father to court over this and got a guardian appointed. A timely book, since the trial of the son, Tony Marshall, has just begun.

Any story about families squabbling over great wealth can generate a lot of interest, and it's a riveting tale in that sense. However, it's also very sad, to see how easily an old person can be abused and how many of her friends were aware that something was wrong, but did nothing.

That's too heavy for me!


I read kids books, mostly.
(There are some adult stories in the mix, of course, but not zillions of them.)

I recently discovered a new author, Tamora Pierce.
She writes teen fantasy and does it very well.

Her first quartet is about Alanna, a girl who wants to be a knight in a world of magic, where there hasn't been a female knight in over 100 years.
The 4 books cover her years from 10 to 20, give or take a few months.
I still have the fourth one to read when my library gets it in.

It's a mini-Legion story, really.

Eifelheim by Michael Flynn. Aliens (who look like giant grasshoppers) crash land in a 14th century German forest. Lucky for them, they are near a small village with a very well educated, but thoroughly Christian, priest. Father Dietrich determines, through logic, that they are not demons, but travelers from afar in need of charity - and conversion. The Krenken determine that they need these backward idiots to survive the winter and repair their ship.

It's a complex story, with lots of 14th century history. There's also a 21st century plot which serves to frame the medieval story.

What I found particularly interesting was how Dietrich, with his education, managed to grasp some of the advanced tech ideas, but explain how they work in terms of his own world's technology - and how he got most of the villagers and their lord, Manfred, to accept them. On the other hand, the Krenken listen to Dietrich explain Christianity to them and they hear what they want to ... for example, that an all-powerful lord from the heavens will return to Earth, with the power to fix everything. They figure this means some superior, space-traveling overlord of Earth will be dropping in shortly and help them repair their ship. Some of these scenes are quite comical.

The story sounds interesting!

I can feel for Father Dietrich.

Christians are supposed to preach the Good News to every living creature, but I don't know if crashed space grasshoppers are part of the plan.
lol

Actually, I don't think they could be part of our plan for a relationship with God.

They'd probably have to have their OWN plan for a relationship.

Sort of like the Narnian's relationship with God formed through Jesus as King Aslan, the lion, in the C.S.Lewis stories.

Drood by Dan Simmons. Charles Dickens, leading novelist of the age and amateur mesmerist. Wilkie Collins, his friend and sometimes collaborator, who never quite rises to Dickens' level, consuming ever-increasing quantities of laudanum and opium. A mysterious, evil personage named Drood. Is Drood real, a creation of Dickens' fertile imagination, or one of Collins' complex opium fantasies? Is Dickens trying to kill Collins, or is Collins trying to kill Dickens? A 770 page mystery/thriller exploring the nature of envy and reality, that was very hard to put down. (I'm so glad I dumped Anathem to read this.) Exciting, creepy and historically interesting.