What are you reading ?

Indeed. Your name is Ripper, and I claim my five pounds.

Once again, and it's a personal mantra of mine, skip the movie/telly show, and pick up the bloody book. I remember in my youth reading and thinking, "Wonder how this would look on a screen."? Older me yells at that silly youth, it looks like total rubbish, you git!

Cicero, three speeches before Caesar, and after that Aristophanes, The Birds.
Everything translated, of course.
Cicero could fire his verbal guns fairly well, I think.

I finished Foxglove Summer yesterday, another great entry in the Rivers of London series. This novel takes place outside of London for the most part, except maybe the first ten pages or so. It's nice seeing the coppers in a smaller town/hamlet, and how life functions there compared to the bigger cities, different methods that the police use because the people can be quite different than your average city dwellers. Something rather significant happens at the end, but I'll have to read the next book before knowing just how profound it might be.

I've been on a Jack Vance catch-up.
Recently re-read The Dying Earth, The Eyes of the Overworld, and Cugel's Saga, so I could finally read Rhialto the Marvellous. I've had it for over 25 years*, so good to finally get to it.
Verdict: good, but not as good as its predecessors. The story that the book is sold on is actually pretty minor (in both accomplishment and length), but I guess it makes for a better blurb than "wizard gets made unpopular by jealous fellow wizard - shenanigans ensue" - which is what the bulk of the book is about.
Still, love Vance, thumbs up.

[*not unusual given that I have a collection of literally 1000s of old SF&F, so there is plenty there I haven't got to, but unusual in that I waited so long to read something from a fave author]

Finished reading Cold Forge a little while ago. One of the better Aliens novels I've read - but it sort of overextended its welcome towards the end, where I grew a little tired of the one-note characters.

Also, the horror/action wasn't very effective.

Then again, I'm not sure anything can really match the first two movies here.

Scratch that, Alien Isolation was much more powerful when it comes to the sheer sense of dread.

Too bad the game itself was about 10 hours too long

Well I decided to read the Vespasian Series instead, and so far it's not to bad.

Link - http://www.robertfabbri.com/

26 AD: Sixteen-year-old Vespasian leaves his family farm for Rome, his sights set on finding a patron and following his brother into the army. But he discovers a city in turmoil and an Empire on the brink. The aging emperor Tiberius is in seclusion on Capri, leaving Rome in the iron grip of Sejanus, commander of the Praetorian Guard. Sejanus is ruler of the Empire in all but name, but many fear that isn't enough for him.

Sejanus pies are everywhere careless words at a dinner party can be as dangerous as a barbarian arrow. Vespasian is totally out of his depth, making dangerous enemies (and even more dangerous friends – like the young Caligula) and soon finds himself ensnared in a conspiracy against Tiberius.

With the situation in Rome deteriorating, Vespasian flees the city to take up his position as tribune in an unfashionable legion on the Balkan frontier. But even here there is no escaping the politics of Rome. Unblooded and inexperienced, he must lead his men in savage battle with hostile mountain tribes“ dangerous enough without renegade Praetorians and Imperial agents trying to kill him too. Somehow, he must survive long enough to uncover the identity of the traitors behind the growing revolt.

Several reasons have compelled me to start rereading the entire Covenant saga, the two main being that it has been quite some time since I last read the first six books, and I'm in a deep line waiting on some books from the library. Yesterday I blew through the first three hundred pages of the first book without even realizing two hours had just completely flown by!!

Originally Posted by Carnifex
Several reasons have compelled me to start rereading the entire Covenant saga, the two main being that it has been quite some time since I last read the first six books, and I'm in a deep line waiting on some books from the library. Yesterday I blew through the first three hundred pages of the first book without even realizing two hours had just completely flown by!!

Is that The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen R. Donaldson which I read years ago? If so I have to re-read it, and I missed a few books over the last few years.

Aye Couch, that's the one. My second favourite series of all time, and I'm hoping to get another visit to the Land sometime before I shuffle off this mortal coil, maybe Donaldson will put out the next set when he's in his nineties. =p

I tried reading Covenant when I was young and it went over my head so gave up, he just seemed like a whiny little so and so and I didn't appreciate the quality of the writing. About 5 years ago I scored copies of the whole series from a neighbour for free so tried I them again. Very glad I did. Really enjoyable.

Originally Posted by Carnifex
Aye Couch, that's the one. My second favourite series of all time, and I'm hoping to get another visit to the Land sometime before I shuffle off this mortal coil, maybe Donaldson will put out the next set when he's in his nineties. =p

What's your first favorite series?

Also, do you actually have physical copies of all these books you read? I assumed you use a Kindle, but then I saw you mention about waiting for some books from the library.

My favourite series by far is the Black Company collection, by Glenn Cook. I tried to use a device to read with three or four years ago once, but I missed the actual interaction with the book far too much to continue reading that way. At one point when I lived in Maryland, I owned over five thousand books but gave ninety-five percent of them to my son when I left the area. Now I own maybe five hundred of my favourites, and the local library is one of my best friends

I plowed through Lord Foul's Bane in almost record time, I blame my progress entirely on the lack of football yesterday. In total I believe I chugged through that novel in under six hours. Of course, that means this morning I grabbed the Illearth War off the shelf and dived straight in!

Found Lukian's Symposion, a very cynical satire tale of a philosopher's dinner that gets outta control.
What I've read about him shows me that he was a satire write after my taste - very intelligent and with a very sharp eye. A bit like Martial, but more focuussing on ancient philosophers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucian He might have been a Syrian.

I read in the afterword to that book that that Galen/Galenius had written the tale that Lukian had written meaningless sentences on a paper - and brought them to a philosopher, claiming that these sentences were actual "wise words" from another philosopher, in odeer to get them deciphered and interpreted. He suceeded in what we would nowadays call a "troll attempt" and not only that philosopher took these meaningless sentences for real, but also several pholologists.

As far as I can see him, he seemed to have been a real Schelm (personally, I don't like the English word "rascal", because it has an too aggressive sound in my ears) and a master of satire.

Is number four worth reading ?

What do you mean with "number four" ?

There is a book called: "I am number four"

I was just going over my digital library of epub books and browsed my collection of Michael Moorcock books. I think I'll put Rome on hold and read those instead.

Hmm I''ll start with his Chronicles of the Last Emperor of Melniboné saga.

Originally Posted by you
There is a book called: "I am number four"

Is it a precessor of "Number 5 lives !" ?

NO:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorien_Legacies
-
It is the first book and the second book is power of six; there is a
"fall of five" later on in the series….

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
Is it a precessor of "Number 5 lives !" ?