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Post by waxesnostalgic on Apr 9, 2022 20:48:47 GMT
Bringing back this old standby thread!
I started listening to an audiobook of Jennifer Nielsen's The Scourge, but am not very far in yet. I've previously only read her book The False Prince, which I remember being somewhat enjoyable, but that was probably ten years ago or more. It's about a plague, but since it was published in 2016 I'm curious how it will read after the pandemic.
I'm going to begin reading the book club book soon, too. I've purchased Goldilocks by Laura Lam but haven't started on it yet.
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Post by AZAli*avenger on Apr 10, 2022 15:15:58 GMT
I've been rereading the Harry Potter books after at least 8 years.
All of the criticsms stand--the professors are unusually cruel, plenty of leaps in disbelief just to tell the story, and it's pretty obvious she's racist and ableist. I also noticed just how many adverbs she uses, and that the POV isn't nearly as tight as we like it today.
I could go through a rundown of what I think of each book, or maybe we can turn that into another discussion. Order of the Phoenix is still my favorite.
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Post by Meredith on Apr 10, 2022 16:43:17 GMT
It’s been a while since I’ve reread Harry Potter. I still like the series but had noticed some of its flaws the last time I reread. The adverbs are definitely an issue. My favorites have always been Azkaban and Goblet of Fire. Order of the Phoenix does have that nice club aspect where Harry learns to rely on a more expanded group, but he is also at his most angsty. There is a lot of like about the series despite its flaws, though I think we might have all been under mass delusion to think it was the greatest series ever or something.
I’m currently listening to the audiobook The Merciful Crow (recommended by Melanie) and I’ll soon start the book club book (probably tomorrow). I’m currently in the middle of an autobiography about Higuchi Ichiyo, which is interesting but easy to put aside for fiction. I’ve been reading it on and off the last few months.
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Post by jnwinkler on Apr 12, 2022 22:50:09 GMT
I remember, and sort of miss, how publication of the last few Harry Potter novels were communal events, with midnight costume parties at bookstores, people setting aside the afternoon on publication day to read the latest from start to finish, and so on. This said, I haven't been back to them since I finished The Half-Blood Prince. Rowling on Twitter brings to the surface thoughts about the emotional perils of fandom in general, not just the Harry Potter franchise.
In terms of my own recent reading that falls under our genre umbrella, I've made my way through three of Robert Jordan's Conan the Barbarian novels (very agreeable entertainment, which was what I was looking for at the time; popularity of the TV series meant the Wheel of Time books were checked out of the library), David Yoon's Version Zero, and N.K. Jemisin's The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.
I've also been working my way through Winston Graham's Poldark books and reading a fair few CIA memoirs and books of reportage on the US intelligence community (one of my main characters is a former CIA case officer). I have a bookmark in Jessica Nordell's The End of Bias, but will probably skim and return to the library--it has interesting things to say about how bias forms and calcifies, but has been slow going, and renewals fly past in double time since it's a new book.
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Post by waxesnostalgic on Apr 13, 2022 0:48:23 GMT
That's definitely true, the Harry Potter fandom/community was a good part of the appeal.
I know that feeling of being stuck in a research book too--you want to read it but that novel you want to read is also just waiting for you to crack open the spine. XD
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Post by michelle4laughs on Apr 13, 2022 14:02:56 GMT
I just finished reading Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. It was very good. I can see why it was nominated for a Hugo award. If you like your science fiction with a lot of science, then this story is for you.
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Post by AZAli*avenger on Apr 15, 2022 15:07:52 GMT
Prisoner of Azkaban used to be my favorite, but after rereading, I found it simply isn't harry's story. It's much more Ron's, even Hermione's, since those two are the ones with more conflict.
I read the first fifty pages of The Eye of the Worlds and really love it. I'm running into the same issue, though, as I did with Game of Thrones and Stephen King's and Brandon Sanderson's books. They're just too long, and because of that, I have no end goal in sight, so it kind of slides off my priority list.
I'm going to download Goldilocks right now.
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Post by michelle4laughs on May 5, 2022 21:19:32 GMT
I finished Mexican Gothic which is adult gothic horror and am reading Amari and the Night Brothers which is MG fantasy, similar to Harry Potter. So many good books and so little time.
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Post by onewheeloneil on May 13, 2022 15:22:47 GMT
I juuuuuuust started Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer. I saw the movie not knowing it was based on a book and LOVED it.
So far, the book has started a little slower than I expected, and hasn't totally hooked me like the movie did. In it's defense, I've been reading very short snippets before slipping into a coma each night (caring for a 1-month-old will do that to you) so I think the biggest issue is that I'm not reading it well.
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Post by onewheeloneil on May 13, 2022 15:30:21 GMT
I read the first fifty pages of The Eye of the Worlds and really love it. I'm running into the same issue, though, as I did with Game of Thrones and Stephen King's and Brandon Sanderson's books. They're just too long, and because of that, I have no end goal in sight, so it kind of slides off my priority list. Oh man, I loved the Wheel of Time so much. For me, the first 4 books didn't feel too long. But 5-9 were rough. Those were the books that taught me how to skim. I never skimmed before that. By the time Sanderson jumped in to finish them, they were back to being "long-but-don't-feel-long-to-me," and the finale of the series was excellent IMO. I joke with my wife that they were like pregnancy and childbirth. There are parts that really sucked and felt like they'd last forever, but the feeling I had when I finished it was so positive that it made me sort of forget how frustrated I felt in The Slog.
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Post by michelle4laughs on May 13, 2022 16:13:44 GMT
I'm trying to focus on finishing the Murderbot series because I am enjoying them so much. I'm on the 4th book and even though they are so short, I'm really having trouble finding the tine to read.
Wheel of Time was one of my favorite series from even before I started writing. I just love the depth of the world building, but I understand that it isn't everyone's cup of tea. It's sort of like getting hooked on a long tv series with lots of episodes in that you really get to know the characters because you spend so much time with them. That's what I like about longer books.
But it's interesting how Murderbot has hooked me and it's like the exact opposite. Each book is so short yet I still get to know the characters.
I guess I just like most everything I read. :-)
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Post by elephantguy68 on May 16, 2022 14:21:08 GMT
I'm back in my "too many books going at once" kick. I'm reading Kiya and the Morian Treasure to my girls as they doze off to sleep (they're teens now, and I'm not sure how much longer they'll let me do this with them; reading them to sleep has now become a daddy thing more than a kids' thing). BTW, that's the book my Elephant's Bookshelf Press just published--written by fellow AQC alum R.S. Mellette
I'm also trying to catch up on reading Goldilocks, and Here and Now and Then, both of which I've been enjoying but life has been too busy to read much by myself. And I have a couple nonfiction books going and need to start one that I'm doing for a book review at work.
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Post by olonoff on May 17, 2022 20:58:15 GMT
Finishing the 2nd of a two book series by Daniel Suarez. First is Daemon. The second is Freedom.
A brilliant computer game designer dies but has left behind a “Daemon” which is an artificially intelligent self replicatint agent that wreaks havoc thoughout the social and economic world, to horrifying, and ultimately world changing dimensions. I’m not quite enough of a computer nerd to get all the jargon, but it’s effective. I think it’s interesting because there are numerous protagonists, who fade in and out (and sometimes die) in a kind of tag team style. Hard to keep it going, but he succeeds pretty well.
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