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

Dedman, it's a favourite series of mine. Enjoy it. The whole Scions saga was the best run. I liked the various legacies Brooks explores in that mini-seres.

Jonathan Linvgston Seagull is on my ngihtstand right now, ready to get into it when I go to bed tonight.

The Ancient Future by Traci Harding, an Author who lives near me. Its the first in a Trilogy...and pretty damn good. Highly recomended

World War Z by Max Brooks (son of Mel). Great zombie book that tells the stories of the survivors of the war against the zombies. The "author" travels around the world collecting survivors' stories in hopes to avoid the plague coming back. Very original and well written.

Brooks wrote a book previous to this one called The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead. I haven't gotten that one yet but it is supposed to be more in the humor vein than WWZ is.

If 28 Days Later was more your type of zombie film than I think you'll enjoy WWZ.

Rereading Thackeray's Vanity Fair. That's my most recent go to book when I give up on a newer book that I just couldn't get into. The book I put down was The French Revolution by Carlyle, which when I bought it, I didn't realise was an epic poem of sorts. Yuh-huh, I'm smack dab in the middle of a classics binge.

I just finished reading The Good Fairies of New York. It was a good fun light hearted read. Now onto The Time Traveler's Wife...

I just finished re-reading Smoke and Ashes, the third novel in Tanya Huff's "Smoke And..." series. I think it's the 4th time I've read it (I just love it!). The series is a spin off of her Vicki Nelson books (which they are making into a syndicated series in Vancouver).

I'm debating what to read next. I'm leaning toward something gay (naturally), but will have to check my bookcases and see what grabs me

I'm between books. That's a very strange place for me to be in. I'm thinking of going back to reading Wicked, but I got distracted from it the first time. I'm not sure if that's my fault or the books.

Wicked was not what I expected (for some reason I thought it was going to be comedic), but I definitely think it's worth reading. I also enjoyed the sequel: Son of a Witch.

Haven't posted in almost a year???

Well I read the last 4 Harry Potter books since then. The Nibelungenlied as well. Pretty cool reading some heroic tales almost a thousand years old. And I liked it better than Le Morte d'Arthur to tell the truth. A bit more exciting.

Anyways reading the Sun Also Rises currently. I have never read it. Also haven't read any Hemimgway since highschool. Thought I'd give it a shot.

I have been trying to get my hands on a copy of Peter S. Beagle's sequal to his classic "The Last Unicorn" for a very long time. My womderful husband picked up a signed copy of "The Line Between" for me for Christmas. I didn't even know about this printing. I am such a lucky girl geek.

My husband and a friend of ours have been pouring through Orson Scott Card's "Empire." Our friend had it with him at a restaurant and my husband read 2 chapters by the time the waiter returned with our drinks.

As always you can read my weekly comic list on my blog http://wndola.livejournal.com/

I haven't checked this thread in at least a year, but I might reread some pages when I get a chance (your comments, once online, may always be read dear posters! ).

I just picked up three cool books with a Christmas Gift Card at Barnes & Noble:

- 'On Sparta' by Plutarch, following my love for all things Greek & Roman

- The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, which I've never had the pleasure of reading

- 'The Brothers Karamazov' by Dostoevsky. I'm a huge, huge, huge fan of 1840-50's Russian Romance Literature, and I've always wanted to read this one, as it contains very compelling arguments for and against the existence of God.

Hmm... I'm currently reading (well, technically, listening to on CD when I'm in the car) Salmon Rushdie's Shalimar the Clown. It's fairly interesting as a study of the origins of "terrorism", but nothing mind-blowing.

Oscar Wilde. I completely forgot I have his complete works now, and I haven't read any of them. I'll have to get on that.

I'm rereading Winter Rose by Patricia A. McKillip. Great book, almost poetic, but that's appropriate given that it's based on the Ballad of Tam Lynn. McKillip has written a sort of sequal to it called Solstice Wood that I'll be reading next.

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Has anyone else read this? It's overwritten in my opinion. I like the ideas, but she puts too much into her exposition. I find that more of a hurdle than her complex philosophical ideas.

Yep, she does. I tried to read it over the summer. I got a little way into part 3 and gave up. Her philosophy is interesting, although I don't agree with all of it, but I had a really hard time caring about any of the characters and it is totaly overwritten. She needed a good editor, IMO.

Have I mentioned that novels that end with cliffhangers are really annoying?

I got my Border's Books email yesterday and it was highlighting a new book by Dan Simmons. I have enjoyed Dan Simmons' work since he was a baby writer (young 20's) and published a series of vampire books featuring Valentine who was a pre-teen immortal who could sing like an angel but was as depraved as a demon. Then Simmons began writing historical fiction, and his latest work is called The Terror which takes the reader into the lives and mysterious deaths of the crews of the 1850's explorer ships The Terror and Erebus in the polar ice cap. The ships were found, and theoretically the crew should have survived since they had more then enough supplies. Over the years several crewmen were found frozen and perfectly preserved by the cold. But as medicine became a more exact science, it was discovered that all of the food and water and lemon juice and tinned meats were all canned in lead lined cans. The punishing cold wasn't bad enough, the crewmen succumbed to madness...... Anyway this looks like a fantastic read.

Oh, creepy. I like sea mysteries. Probably because I'm land-locked.

Been a couple of months so lets see... I've read:

Urban Shaman by CE Murphy
The Silent Blade by RA Salvatore
The Spine of the World by RA Salvatore
Masquerades by Jeff Grubb and Kate Novak
Storm Front By Jim Butcher
Fool Moon by Jim Butcher
Ill Wind by Rachel Caine


Urban Shaman by CE Murphy Not a bad little yarn by a first time novelist. It had some pacing issues but kept me interested for the most part. I'll read her follow up book to see if she got better. I'd give it a strong B+. It's kind of a modern urban fantasy noir piece told in the first person account of a female police mechanic. She's quippy, and smart alecky, and generally likeable. What Murphy does with this tale is she takes the tired-old-yelling police captain type and turns him into a respectable character. My one knock on this book is that a lot of the major action in the book takes place while the heroine is asleep or unconscious.

The Silent Blade and The Spine of the World are (I think) books 11 and 12 in the Legend of Drizzt series from the Forgotten Realms setting. Salvatore is an excellent writer. These books seem a little out of place with the rest of the series so far, but that's a minor knock when you look at them on their own merits. I can't recommend Salvatore enough... especially his Drizzt books.

Masquerades by Jeff Grubb and Kate Novak
This was the fourth book by Grubb and Novak that had something to do with their Alias character from the Finder's Stone trilogy (Forgotten Realms). Again... this story just seemed a little out of place when viewed as a whole with the previous trilogy. On it's own merits... its a better than average read. Alias had some weak character moments that were out of step with how she'd been portrayed before, but overall the book kept my attention. Decent read... not great, but decent. It just lacked the energy of the original trilogy and if I read it on its own without knowing Alias' background... I'm not sure I would have liked the character at the end of this one.


Storm Front and Fool Moon By Jim Butcher

These two books were diamonds in the rough for me. I stumbled across these on amazon.com and read the recommendations and ratings. Harry Dresden is the main character of this series and he is America's only openly practicing Wizard for hire. He's even in the phone book. I like this series. Dresden is based in Chicago and Butcher writes him very well. He's always in a tough situation and they only get worse, until he finds a way through. Some of the situations had me laughing out loud in the first book. The second book was a good take on Werewolves. The style of these books? They're very noirish, but with a modern, fantasy twist. And Dresden is like a macabre Indiana Jones. Right behind Salvatore, Butcher is the best writer that I've read in a while.

Ill Wind by Rachel Caine
This book was a lot like Urban Shaman in some respects. Strong, yet vulnerable female lead coming into new powers and learning how to function while being pursued by the bad guys and other entities. She's sassy, smart alecky, and very quippy as well and just a little more sleazy than the Urban Shaman. This was the first in the Weather Warden series which has a bunch of books with weather related titles: Ill Wind, Chill Factor, etc. Of the books I read since last posting, this was the weakest. Having said that, it was still a decent read. It's got muscle cars, djinns, and elemental power wielders. Some of the twists are hard to see coming, but I wouldn't put this book above a "Beach Read" status.

That's almost it for now... I got half way through the second book in David Edding's Belgariad, The Queen of Sorcery, and put it down. I know a lot of people here love that series but the first two books have had a difficult time keeping my attention. I start reading them, and find myself wanting to read something else. I'm going to finish it someday, but man they are tough for me to stay "into".

I'm finished Winter Rose by Patricia A McKillip and on to Solstice Woods. It's a contemporary fantasy novel which gives it a different feel from the first book. Winter Rose is never really given a location and time period. I was quite surprised to find it set in New York. Still, it's a good book. I'm looking forward to the rest of it.

Now reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. It's one of those books I feel like I should've read but never have. It's certainly good and deserves its status as a classic, but "required reading for the human race", as it says on the cover blurb? I'm not so sure about that.

I recently finished off the Complete Calvin and Hobbes.

I've read half of a book called Eddie Bear, Private Detective, which is an omnibus of two novels provided by the Sci FI Bookclub. I enjoyed it as it's written in a style that reminds me of Douglas Adams.

I just started Dan Simmons, The Terror. So far it's off to a promising start.

Currently reading Silent Victory by Clay Blair. It's a comprehensive history about the U.S. Pacific submarine forces in WWII. among my many addictions, I just can't pass up a good read about WWII.

I just picked up 1776 by David McCullough. 28 pages into it. It looks like a breezy sort of read.

I'm reading the Crown of Stars series by Kate Elliot. It's that rarest of rarities a huge epic that's actually finished. I'm rereading volume 5 right now (there's 7 all together) and it's really excellent.

The first time I heard of the series I thought it was just another "kids save the world" type story and I passed it by, but the description of the second book made me realize that there was more to it. I'm glad I took another look at it. The "kids" were 16, adults in their culture, and the series takes place over several years. There's also a lot of other great characters.

The three main characters are:

Alain, a young man sent to work at the local lords estate where he finds he can control a pack of dogs that no one but the Count is supposed to be able to command.

Liath, a young woman who's been on the run her whole life, but she doesn't know why. After her father's murdered she ends up as a slave to a corrupted priest.

Sanglant, the firstborn, but bastard, son of the king. He's content to fight battles and seduce women, but the king has other plans no matter what the laws say.

Elliot really knows her history. It's set in a medieval type world heavily based on the real world. The big difference (aside from the names) is that the people believe in a god that's a dual entity both male and female. That's had a huge impact on the culture. This is the best use of a medieval Christian-type church I've ever seen in a fantasy novel. Elliot really understands the impact it had on the society.

I'm going in to detail about this series because it seems to be marketed at teenage girls. It even has a heart and rose motif on the cover. Personally, I think it would appeal to older readers more, and not just women. The subject matter's just as mature as The Song of Ice and Fire, although it doesn't go into such graphic detail. At first I thought the story was a bit predictable even into the second book, but pretty much all my predictions turned out to be wrong. The plot is seriously twisty once you get into it.