What are you reading ?

Originally Posted by philpulman
I'm started with a couple of Robert E. Howard novels. What would you recommend to read by him?

Don't know about "novels" (wasn't really his specialty), but I've read all his Conan stuff, and some of his Kull, Solomon Kane, and Bran Mak Morn stuff. I also have this collection of miscellaneous fantasy and horror stories.
I'd recommend just start by reading his Conan stories. Grab this list and systematically work your way through!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert…_the_Barbarian

What Shagnak suggests is perfectly valid, my recommendation would be to read either the Kull tales or Conan to begin with. If either of those strike your fancy, the other likely will as well, and that just opens the door to all of Howard's works for you to enjoy!

I'm still on Dead Man's Hand, book seven of the Wild Card series, and really enjoying it. I've not re-read this one in at least a dozen years, likely even more, and it's more similar to the prior book than the earlier ones in the series, in that only Miller and Martin did the writing here, so it's more of a traditional novel than a mosaic. I believe at this point they also had Claremont as a consultant, and having him give you tips on how to write superhero tales is probably like asking Buffet for financial advise, you are likely to get some solid tips. Overall, I'm not sure just how much actual writing Martin did with this one, as the style seems almost pure Miller. I believe this was written during the time Martin was busy with Beauty and the Beast also, so that might have been a factor.

Originally Posted by Carnifex
In fact, it made me think of something that doesn't really happen all that often: a series that, as the books accumulate, actually get better! I'm talking about such storied series as the Amber Chronicles…

Are you suggesting that the last 5 books were better than the original pentalogy? Oof. I read them all, but I spent the entire time wishing they were more like the early books. I don't use it here because there's already a Corwin, but I've used it a lot over the years for character names, logins, etc because of how much that the original pentalogy (and the Tellarium game) means to me.

Reading Moonheart by Charlie Lint. It's a book about a rich girl, living in Ottowa, that gains magical powers from a ring once worn by Taliesin, the bard. She just so happens to live in a magical house too and the story feels like a hippy's tale after some bad acid. It's okay, but I liked it much better when it first came out.

Ahh I should have clarified, I did mean the original first five books, not including the second series. Yeah that second set doesn't really hold a candle to the first, and goes off on some rather wonky tangents, lol. And I say this with love as a serious Roger Zelazny fan, no offense intended!

I also thought the last 4 covenant books weren't as good as the previous ones. I love the series, but I felt at times he overdid the whole psychology and emotional part of it and it regularly became a drag. I also got the idea that despite everything that had happened to someone like Linden, she had not grown from an emotional perspective as she had the exact same insecurities and doubts as in the previous books, which I found strange.

Despite that, I did enjoy them.

Agreed, Myrthos, I'm a huge Covenant fan from the seventies, and those most recent four novels just didn't live up to the prior six. I get what Donaldson was trying to do and there are parts of the most recent books that I love and enjoy, having some of the history of the Land fully explained was pretty nice, yet it could have been so much better, I think.

Bah and I forgot to mention that I finished Dead Man's Hand this morning, which pretty much wraps up several long-running tales over the past four volumes, with both Hartman's presidential bid and Ti Malice's final disposition fully spelled out for us. We'll see Hartman again later in the series, yet his glory days are gone, he'll never have the public love and trust that he'd had for so long, after what's happened in the last few books.

The next set of Wild Cards brings up some new foes, so I'm looking forward to getting those to re-read.

Started reading "Shikasta" by Nobel laureate Doris Lessing. She actually wrote 5 Sci-Fi novels in her Canopus in Argos series, Shikasta is the first one.

It's very different from any other Sci-Fi I've read. It's in the soft Sci-Fi category. Definitely not action oriented, more philosophical. But I like it. Only problem is: Reading it requires attention, and I usually do my reading in bed, before going to sleep. We'll se how it goes.

pibbuR who sadly is more familiar with Sirius than Canopus.

Read through "Asterix in Spain",
and just bought myself "Mickey & la terra des ancients".

This Mickey Mouse album is just stunning. At least for me. Imagine Mickey Mouse completely re-imagined. I mean, completely re-imagined !
I have never seen such a drastic change of setting with so much known characters before. It's as if one would put Batman into an ancient rome setting !

It's an European production - and it shows. Imho.
Maybe it's just prejudice from my side, but the recent Mickey Mouse albums are putting the "too-much well-known" characters in an completely new setting. And when i say "different", then I mean "different.

I like this new art direction. It breathes new creativity in characters that have been … almost "ridden to death" … so to say.
I don't think that anyone at Disney could do such a departure from everything known, so to say charting unknown territories with these new settings.

Over the past two days I was reading a freebie from Prime entitled, "Blood on the Bayou". It's a thriller, the first in a series, and has very adult topics, yet seems like the story and dialogue were written for elementary-aged folks. The story was ok, yet I won't be going any further into the series, I'll find something else more to my liking.

So I requested a book a few weeks back from the library, and it just got delivered yesterday to my Kindle, so I dove right in. It's another one of the anthology collaborations that seem to be semi-popular these days, I'd read one a few years ago called Warriors, and this one is called Rogues. You've got authors like Ambercrombie, Martin, and many others known and unknown tossing some good yarns into the mix, so far I've only read two of the tales and both were excellent!

I just polished off the Farian War trilogy by K.B. Wagers, and am now reading the latest Beyond The Starts anthology as a palette cleanser. I'll probably move on to Alastair Reynolds' new novel Inhibitor Phase, but I may re-read the original Revelation Space trilogy to refresh my memory on the world first.

Originally Posted by khaight
I just polished off the Farian War trilogy by K.B. Wagers, and am now reading the latest Beyond The Starts anthology as a palette cleanser. I'll probably move on to Alastair Reynolds' new novel Inhibitor Phase, but I may re-read the original Revelation Space trilogy to refresh my memory on the world first.

I was impressed and enjoyed The Farian War set. I’m currently re-reading early Banks’ culture novels - still impressive

I finished the Rogue anthology today, a solid entry similar to the Warriors books. You've got world-renown authors here like Rothfuss, Miller, Abraham, and Martin himself, though his tale is more of a narration, not an actual story. It does feature Dark Sister, though! Gaiman, Vaughn, and others have entries here as well, and lest I forget, likely one of the most respected fiction authors of all time, Lisa Tuttle, has a nice tale. You cannot go wrong reading this.

Last night I started reading The Eye of the World, book one in the Wheel of Time series. I've only ever read this book once before, roughly thirty years ago, and I recall not enjoying it a lot, and now a hundred pages in, I'm remembering why. This is the only book I own in the series(even got it signed some years ago), so if I don't feel the urge to continue afterwards, I'l jettison this for something more to my liking.

What is it about the book that you don't like?

Originally Posted by Carnifex
Last night I started reading The Eye of the World, book one in the Wheel of Time series. I've only ever read this book once before, roughly thirty years ago, and I recall not enjoying it a lot, and now a hundred pages in, I'm remembering why. This is the only book I own in the series(even got it signed some years ago), so if I don't feel the urge to continue afterwards, I'l jettison this for something more to my liking.

How can you not like the greatest Fantasy series ever written?

Ok, we all have different taste and Jordan spends a lot of time on meaningless things sometimes, so his books can be a bit slow, but if you look at the overall story, lore and world building, nothing else comes even close.

As for what I don't care for in the book, it just seems extremely bland, at least the first hundred pages. It does pick up after that, yet getting to that point is….painful.

And oh my, how many other series would I put ahead of this one….quite a few! Different tastes indeed, and I've never read past the fourth book, so I don't truly have an opinion on the entire series, simply the ones I've read up to now.