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

P.S. I noticed there was some Agatha Christie discussion a few pages ago.

I was a big fan of hers in my teenage years and have been wanting to get some of those omnibus editions of her works so I can catch up on all the stories I missed out on.

Here's a link to a newspaper article listing her Top 10 mysteries...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/sep/15/top-10-agatha-christie-novels

Somehow I've only managed to read two of them (And Then There Were None and Endless Night) but The Murder of Roger Ackroyd has long been on my Must-Read list and this article does a fantastic job of keeping it at the top of that list!

You know its odd, despite all the reading I do, I've never read Agatha Christie. I never seem to get around to it.
I have to some day, I know I'm missing out.

I'm re-reading Isaac Asimov's classic Foundation trilogy for the first time in almost 30 years. I finished the first book this morning. The man was just so damed intelligent.

I'm about to start "Hocus Pocus" by Vonnegut. It's a new one for me, and I'm a fan of his work.

D'Shai by Joel Rosenburg. had Hour of the Octopus for years and couldn't find D'Shai. Found it and only read it twice. Been a couple of years so I'm going through it again.

Now reading book three of Lois McMaster Bujold's "sharing knife" series, called "Passage"
Not your typical fantasy fare, Bujold is a superb writer (with 4 hugo's to her credit). She has a very interesting take on magic in this series that works well. The cultural differences between the farmers and lakewalkers are well done, with tensions between the two being excellently portrayed.
However be forewarned, this book is classed a "romantic fantasy" and has more to do with the unlikely relationship between a Farmer woman and a Lakewalker man than it does with the slaying of hordes of evil-doers (though there is that too!)

Dedman, you're just a sucker for the romances

I'm reading "Ship of Magic" by Robin Hobb. Excellent book, a little tough to get into if your not a seafaring individual, but definetly worth it! I used to be stuck in the 'young-adult-vampire-drivel' category, but Dedman has gotten me completely hooked on a few different fantasy authors, and I can't thank him enough!

i'm reading the runelords....flew through numbers one and two, but number 3 is dragging.

i also read the furies of calderon but i liked runelords better.

funny, i started reading the time machine cause it was on my phone and i had nothing to read. kinda cool and a bit strange reading something in the second person...

I just finished reading "Dune," which I hadn't read in about 30 years. I thought the book was great all those years ago. I still think it is a pretty good read. Currently, I am reading the 8th Tarzan book - "Tarzan the Terrible." I am such a sucker for finishing a series, and there are 24 book in the Tarzan series. Luckily, Burroughs is always a pretty nice read.

Dedman, I might have to check out some of Bujold's work. Thanks for the tip!

No problem, its an excellent series. Her other fantasy novels are more stand-alone types but are really well written too. I haven't read her sci-fi stuff but with a writer of her quality, I expect it to be good as well.

I've moved on to a new Russell Kirkpatrick series "The Broken Man" the first book is called "Path of Revenge".
His writing is more epic in scale. I enjoyed his first series "Fire of Heaven" and this new one is turning out to be good as well.
I'm only a couple of hundred pages in, but I'm hooked!

Dandelion Wine by Bradbury. Its the essence of summer for kids boiled down into a novel. Very good.

Also reading Hotel Pastis by Peter Mayle.

I'm now on the final book of the "Broken Man" series.

Kirkpatrick is an awesome world builder, creating several distinct cultures and "mind-sets" in his books.
There's a revelation in this series which turns the events of his first series upside down and the series as a whole casts several characters in an entirely new light.
Excellent, engaging prose as well. This series has been keeping me away from my games and up late at night.

Bought and read Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.

Fun read.

I'm finally tackling Orson Scott Card's Ender series. I'd only ever read the short version of "Ender's Game" before, but recently I was browsing through a table of remaindered books at a local discount store, and started flipping through Shadow Puppets and got intruiged. So I picked up half a dozen of the books when I went to my local library to drop off a poster for "The Pirates of Penzance".

There are plenty of people out there who agree, of course, but I've never considered any of the Dune books to even be Frank Herbert's best work, let alone the best SF novel ever. When it comes to Herbert, I prefer his "Bureau of Sabotage" stories, especially the first novel in that setting, Whipping Star.

I recently purchased a couple of omnibus volumes of Heinlein juveniles from the Science Fiction Book Club, and enjoyed them quite a bit (I'd never read Rocket Ship Galileo or The Star Beast before), but I was a bit put off by the high number of proofreading errors in both volumes. Another case of over-reliance on spellcheck software, no doubt.

I Finished my last book and have moved on to another.
Now readsing "Toll the Hounds" by Steven Erikson, part od the "Malazan books of the Fallen" series

Not digging this book so far (I'm about 200 pages in). I think most of my problem (despite the book being well written) is the fact that I haven't read this series in a very long time, making it hard for me to get up to speed on things.

Let's see, recently I finished "The Bourne Identity." This is certainly the best spy thriller I have ever read. I first read this book many years ago, and proceeded to read many other Ludlum books - the funny thing is, I didn't like any of the others. Even the subsequent Bourne books were lame. I finally decided Ludlum wrote only one good book and his rep was built off of it. Oh, and my wife and I both hated the recent movie.

I finished the 9th Tarzan book, "Tarzan and the Golden Lion," which was pretty good.

I didn't seem to enjoy Dune nearly as much as I did when I was in my teens. Opinions change over time, I suppose.

I also bought one of the more expensive books I have purchased - Heinlein's "The Man Who Sold the Moon and Other Stories." I paid $1.80 for it. The thing is, I only bought it for one story. "Let There Be Light" hasn't been reprinted anywhere else that I can find, so I bought the book just for a 20 page story. I paid about 9 cents per page, so this is equivalent to paying $45 for a 500 page book. Still cheaper than comic books though....

I'm reading "I was told there'd be cake," a collection of essays by Sloane Crosley ... kinda like a female David Sedaris ... a couple of laugh out loud moments, including one reference to Smurfette's closet ...

I am currently reading "Raptor" by Gary Jennings. This man must have put a staggering amount of research into each of his historical novels. Can anyone recommend any other novelists who wrote historical fiction? Thanks!

The last new thing I read was "Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter." Was surprisingly good, especially for those who happen to have read some Lincoln biographies.

Y'know, as I was composing my previous post I got to wondering if anyone has read any James Michener. Has anyone here read his books and care to venture an opinion/endorsement?

I just finished "Raptor," so now on to the 10th Tarzan book, "Tarzan and the Ant Men."

I just finished a Forgotten Realms novel, "Pool of Twilight," which was surprisingly good! I just started Heinlein's "Waldo & Magic Inc."

^^^ As a D&D geek I used to love those old Forgotten Realms books. I seem to remember thinking Pool of Twilight was one of my faves too.

I'm currently reading a book called Adverbs by (I think) Daniel Handler who was the author of those Lemony Snickets books. Though unlike that series, this book is for adults.

I'm enjoying it so far but it's a very hard book to describe. I'm about halfway through and there are no main characters (so far), no consistent location or time-period to the chapters and wildly varying tones (the most frequent being comedy and tragedy). If I had to pick one thing to say it was about I would say 'Love' in all it's many shapes and forms. It's a very different book but I love that about it and the author's skill with words and wordplay is simply excellent. It's got me interested in reading the Lemony Snickets books now too.

Blacula, "Pool of Twilight" is the third book in the trilogy. "Pool or Radiance" was ok, and "Pools of Darkness" was kind of a struggle to get through, but the third book was just so good! One of the few Forgotton Realms books not by Salvatore or Niles that I really enjoyed!

^ Gosh. I can't remember anything about that trilogy of books other than their names. And the covers. I think my brother had a poster of one them on his wall MANY years ago.

I really enjoyed most of those 'Forgotten Realms' books though. I read the 'Icewind Dale Triolgy' which was great but I was never a Drizzt fan so I quickly bored of all the follow-ups that focused on him. I remember 'The Curse of the Azure Bonds' trilogy being a lot of fun too. I liked a lot of those 'Harpers' books too but can't really remember who appeared in them or what they were about.

That series of books was so ubiquitous in bookshops once upon a time though. What ever happened to them?