Hey!! Let's get some action going! What are we reading? - Page 1452

PurpleStar · 02-18-2015, 10:07 PM

I'm finally reading The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. Saw the movies recently and I don't want to wait to see how it ends! (Haven't seen Mockingjay yet) Got through 2 chapters and it's good.

hildea · 02-19-2015, 01:03 AM

I just finished Princess Academy by Shannon Hale. A fairy tale type of book: When the prince is old enough to marry, the priests consult various omens, and decide where in the kingdom the new queen shall come from. Normally the prince goes there, attends a few balls, and pick some suitable noblewoman, but this time the priests have chosen a really poor, remote village. So a tutor goes there to teach all the unmarried girls the basics needed to qualify for princess: Dancing, deportment, conversation... and also reading, diplomacy, economics. It turns out it's not a book about a poor girl marrying a prince, it's about poor girls getting an education, and how that affects the whole village. I liked it a lot :-)

pdurrant · 02-19-2015, 03:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pdurrant

So, onto Time Rider by Rick Mallory. My oldest bought unread ebook from May 2005.

Which turns out to not be quite as unread as I'd thought, and to be a rather pedestrian time-travel romance. That probably explains why I didn't remember reading it.

Next up: the latest Analog SF/F magazine.

HarryT · 02-19-2015, 07:18 AM

Just finished "Quincey Morris, Vampire" by P.N. Elrod, which I bought from Baen in May 2001. This is a direct sequel to Bram Stoker's "Dracula" in which, at the end of the book, Texan adventurer Quincey Morris kills, and is in turn killed by, Dracula. In this book he reawakens to find that he himself has become a vampire (but a nice vampire, not a nasty one like Dracula

) and the book tells the story of how he gets back to England and tries to tell his friends (who all believe him to be dead) what happened to him.

A very good book indeed, but I'd recommend reading "Dracula" first, if you haven't already done so.

covingtoncat73 · 02-19-2015, 12:23 PM

The Paper Magician. I'm enjoying it.

Dngrsone · 02-19-2015, 12:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hildea

I just finished Princess Academy by Shannon Hale. A fairy tale type of book: When the prince is old enough to marry, the priests consult various omens, and decide where in the kingdom the new queen shall come from. Normally the prince goes there, attends a few balls, and pick some suitable noblewoman, but this time the priests have chosen a really poor, remote village. So a tutor goes there to teach all the unmarried girls the basics needed to qualify for princess: Dancing, deportment, conversation... and also reading, diplomacy, economics. It turns out it's not a book about a poor girl marrying a prince, it's about poor girls getting an education, and how that affects the whole village. I liked it a lot :-)

Sounds like an interesting read.

Nyssa · 02-19-2015, 02:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hildea

I just finished Princess Academy by Shannon Hale. A fairy tale type of book: When the prince is old enough to marry, the priests consult various omens, and decide where in the kingdom the new queen shall come from. Normally the prince goes there, attends a few balls, and pick some suitable noblewoman, but this time the priests have chosen a really poor, remote village. So a tutor goes there to teach all the unmarried girls the basics needed to qualify for princess: Dancing, deportment, conversation... and also reading, diplomacy, economics. It turns out it's not a book about a poor girl marrying a prince, it's about poor girls getting an education, and how that affects the whole village. I liked it a lot :-)

That sounds like something both my daughter and I would enjoy! Thanks for mentioning it!

HomeInMyShoes · 02-19-2015, 02:09 PM

I finished Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. So why hadn't I read Atwood prior to this?

I picked up the second book in the series at the library at lunch and will be diving into that soon.

Quexos · 02-19-2015, 02:32 PM

I am spreading myself between 3 books these days, I swear I won't open another book till I'm done with these.

Latinandgreek · 02-19-2015, 04:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HomeInMyShoes

I finished Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. So why hadn't I read Atwood prior to this?

I picked up the second book in the series at the library at lunch and will be diving into that soon.

Enjoy! I believe that there is a TV series in production based on Oryx and Crake.

My favourite book by Margaret Atwood is The Blind Assassin, I heartily recommend it.

Brazen_NL · 02-19-2015, 05:33 PM

Thoroughly enjoyed The Warbirds, maybe because I was a pilot in a former life. Now onto part 2 of the Jack Locke series: Force of Eagles.

WT Sharpe · 02-19-2015, 08:25 PM

Blake Crouch's Wayward is getting interesting.

Spoiler:

Apache · 02-19-2015, 09:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brazen_NL

Thoroughly enjoyed The Warbirds, maybe because I was a pilot in a former life. Now onto part 2 of the Jack Locke series: Force of Eagles.

I just picked up Richard Herman's The Peacemakers and am almost finished. An excellent book and highly recommended.
Apache

Brazen_NL · 02-20-2015, 01:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Apache

I just picked up Richard Herman's The Peacemakers and am almost finished. An excellent book and highly recommended.
Apache

Thanks for the recommendation. Added it to my list.

ATDrake · 02-20-2015, 02:25 AM

So, my reading time's kind of been curtailed by the holiday acquisition of a Mac-compatible external Blu-Ray drive with which to watch all my Region B import discs. OTOH, I did discover that a number of apps with which I can read comics are reasonably compatible-ish with my BlackBerry PlayBook, so I've been catching up on those.

Kind of apropos to the recent announcement of another Harper Lee novel, first GN I finished on the PlayBook was Capote in Kansas by Ande Parks & Chris Samee, a fictionalized true-life account of Truman Capote's writing of his classic true crime account, In Cold Blood.

It turns out that Capote was a close personal friend of the To Kill A Mockingbird author, and she shows up at certain points in the narrative, having helped him smooth his way among the locals so that they would actually talk to him after he'd initially alienated them with his high-falutin' New Yorker ways, and they talk about life, the universe, and everything human nature and the writing of her book and his.

For storytelling reasons which the creators explain in the afterword, her part isn't nearly as large as it was IRL, and they also have a lot of nifty notes and script excerpts about how the GN came to be and their research efforts and various decisions in making it.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The actual story was quite good, done in black-and-white ligne claire-ish style, focusing on Capote and the town and the various ways in which they do and don't manage to intersect until finally, things start to work out and he can actually begin to write his book.

It's a very personal kind of story that focuses on the core of the characters underlying the "characters" that society assigns them, delving beneath Capote's semi-flamboyant façade, and the seemingly hardened exterior of one of the killers, and the grieving reserved stoicism of the victims' surviving family.

As mentioned, this came with a lot of nifty behind-the-scenes extras which help flesh out the story behind the story.

Highly recommended if you're interested not just in true crime accounts, but the process of researching and writing them at both 1st and 2nd-hand removes. This was part of my Humble Bundle Oni Press purchase and well worth the top-tier $15 price I paid for it (and got a bunch of other comics to read, too). I'm starting to wish that I'd auto-bought a number of other Humble Bundle comic book bundles, as in retrospect a lot of them had rather promising-looking things in them, and given my reading habits, as long as there was at least one title in there that I enjoyed, enough that its paper or other digital purchase cost would have come near the top-tier price I usually pay to get all the stuff in an HB, it would have worked out for me.

I'm starting to think that skipping on comic book/ebook HBs just on the grounds that they don't have "enough" stuff that looks like it'll grab me at first (as opposed to the themed ones where I'm just flat-out not interested because I don't read/watch the franchise/genre, like the Doctor Who & My Little Pony & Star Wars & Halloween horror ones, which would have been an unwise allocation of my money), are actually false economy on my part, and I'm going to go by an "as long as there's at least two things where the story looks interesting and the sample reads well or there's a title I own in paper that I wouldn't mind having a DRM-free digital copy of as well as some extra stuff thrown in, I'll get it" rule from now on.

02-19-2015, 07:18 AM	#21769
HarryT eBook Enthusiast Posts: 85,544 Karma: 93383043 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: UK Device: Kindle Oasis 2, iPad Pro 10.5", iPhone 6	Just finished "Quincey Morris, Vampire" by P.N. Elrod, which I bought from Baen in May 2001. This is a direct sequel to Bram Stoker's "Dracula" in which, at the end of the book, Texan adventurer Quincey Morris kills, and is in turn killed by, Dracula. In this book he reawakens to find that he himself has become a vampire (but a nice vampire, not a nasty one like Dracula ) and the book tells the story of how he gets back to England and tries to tell his friends (who all believe him to be dead) what happened to him. A very good book indeed, but I'd recommend reading "Dracula" first, if you haven't already done so. Last edited by HarryT; 02-19-2015 at 12:25 PM.

02-19-2015, 08:25 PM	#21777
WT Sharpe Bah, humbug! Posts: 39,072 Karma: 157049943 Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Chesapeake, VA, USA Device: Kindle Oasis, iPad Pro, & a Samsung Galaxy S9.	Blake Crouch's Wayward is getting interesting. Spoiler: The sheriff's business has now brought him into contact again with his ex-partner with whom he had an affair that almost wreaked his marriage. He was older than her at the time, but now she's eight years older than he is.

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02-18-2015, 10:07 PM	#21766
PurpleStar Wizard Posts: 1,620 Karma: 11387182 Join Date: Nov 2012 Location: Canada Device: Kobo Libra 2, Kobo Clara 2E	I'm finally reading The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. Saw the movies recently and I don't want to wait to see how it ends! (Haven't seen Mockingjay yet) Got through 2 chapters and it's good.

02-19-2015, 01:03 AM	#21767
hildea Wizard Posts: 1,250 Karma: 64273280 Join Date: Sep 2013 Location: Norway Device: PocketBook Touch Lux (had Onyx Boox Poke 3 and BeBook Neo earlier)	I just finished Princess Academy by Shannon Hale. A fairy tale type of book: When the prince is old enough to marry, the priests consult various omens, and decide where in the kingdom the new queen shall come from. Normally the prince goes there, attends a few balls, and pick some suitable noblewoman, but this time the priests have chosen a really poor, remote village. So a tutor goes there to teach all the unmarried girls the basics needed to qualify for princess: Dancing, deportment, conversation... and also reading, diplomacy, economics. It turns out it's not a book about a poor girl marrying a prince, it's about poor girls getting an education, and how that affects the whole village. I liked it a lot :-)

02-19-2015, 12:23 PM	#21770
covingtoncat73 Wizard Posts: 2,745 Karma: 83407757 Join Date: Mar 2011 Device: Kindle Paperwhite, Lenovo Duet Chromebook, Moto e	The Paper Magician. I'm enjoying it.

02-19-2015, 02:09 PM	#21773
HomeInMyShoes Grand Sorcerer Posts: 19,226 Karma: 67780237 Join Date: Jul 2011 Device: none	I finished Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. So why hadn't I read Atwood prior to this? I picked up the second book in the series at the library at lunch and will be diving into that soon.

02-19-2015, 02:32 PM	#21774
Quexos Member Retired Posts: 1,999 Karma: 11348924 Join Date: Jan 2011 Location: Limbo Device: none	I am spreading myself between 3 books these days, I swear I won't open another book till I'm done with these.

02-19-2015, 05:33 PM	#21776
Brazen_NL Slobbering Dog Posts: 454 Karma: 2522512 Join Date: Feb 2015 Location: NL Device: Kindle PW2/iPad/iPhone	Thoroughly enjoyed The Warbirds, maybe because I was a pilot in a former life. Now onto part 2 of the Jack Locke series: Force of Eagles.

02-20-2015, 02:25 AM	#21780
ATDrake Wizzard Posts: 11,517 Karma: 33048258 Join Date: Mar 2010 Location: Roundworld Device: Kindle 2 International, Sony PRS-T1, BlackBerry PlayBook, Acer Iconia	So, my reading time's kind of been curtailed by the holiday acquisition of a Mac-compatible external Blu-Ray drive with which to watch all my Region B import discs. OTOH, I did discover that a number of apps with which I can read comics are reasonably compatible-ish with my BlackBerry PlayBook, so I've been catching up on those. Kind of apropos to the recent announcement of another Harper Lee novel, first GN I finished on the PlayBook was Capote in Kansas by Ande Parks & Chris Samee, a fictionalized true-life account of Truman Capote's writing of his classic true crime account, In Cold Blood. It turns out that Capote was a close personal friend of the To Kill A Mockingbird author, and she shows up at certain points in the narrative, having helped him smooth his way among the locals so that they would actually talk to him after he'd initially alienated them with his high-falutin' New Yorker ways, and they talk about life, the universe, and everything human nature and the writing of her book and his. For storytelling reasons which the creators explain in the afterword, her part isn't nearly as large as it was IRL, and they also have a lot of nifty notes and script excerpts about how the GN came to be and their research efforts and various decisions in making it. But I'm getting ahead of myself. The actual story was quite good, done in black-and-white ligne claire-ish style, focusing on Capote and the town and the various ways in which they do and don't manage to intersect until finally, things start to work out and he can actually begin to write his book. It's a very personal kind of story that focuses on the core of the characters underlying the "characters" that society assigns them, delving beneath Capote's semi-flamboyant façade, and the seemingly hardened exterior of one of the killers, and the grieving reserved stoicism of the victims' surviving family. As mentioned, this came with a lot of nifty behind-the-scenes extras which help flesh out the story behind the story. Highly recommended if you're interested not just in true crime accounts, but the process of researching and writing them at both 1st and 2nd-hand removes. This was part of my Humble Bundle Oni Press purchase and well worth the top-tier $15 price I paid for it (and got a bunch of other comics to read, too). I'm starting to wish that I'd auto-bought a number of other Humble Bundle comic book bundles, as in retrospect a lot of them had rather promising-looking things in them, and given my reading habits, as long as there was at least one title in there that I enjoyed, enough that its paper or other digital purchase cost would have come near the top-tier price I usually pay to get all the stuff in an HB, it would have worked out for me. I'm starting to think that skipping on comic book/ebook HBs just on the grounds that they don't have "enough" stuff that looks like it'll grab me at first (as opposed to the themed ones where I'm just flat-out not interested because I don't read/watch the franchise/genre, like the Doctor Who & My Little Pony & Star Wars & Halloween horror ones, which would have been an unwise allocation of my money), are actually false economy on my part, and I'm going to go by an "as long as there's at least two things where the story looks interesting and the sample reads well or there's a title I own in paper that I wouldn't mind having a DRM-free digital copy of as well as some extra stuff thrown in, I'll get it" rule from now on.