What Are You Reading?

The one thing with the older books is that you can tell an editor was on the writers' backsides keeping them in line and writing to hook the reader.
Can't say the same for many current editors. And after a time, the established writers' editors seem to forget what their job is, thus giving us stale cardboard and styrofoam cakes to digest instead of meat and potatoes and fine wine.

Finished "the Onion Girl", starting "Widdershins" later this weekend.
Both Charles deLint.

I just finished a re-read of the Warlord Chronicles because after book 5 of the Saxon Tales I was jonesing for more, and Derfel and Uhtred are essentially the same character. Cornwell's take on the Arthurian mythos, to me, is the definitive one, followed closely by the 'Down the Long Wind' series written back in the early 80's by Gillian Bradshaw.

I was so hot for the latest installment of the Saxon Tales that I had my sister pick me up a hardcover copy of The Burning Land in England about two months before it was released over here. Then I devoured it in about two or three sittings. I've read that entire series twice through as well.

Just finished the following in the Ender's Game and Shadow Saga series:

Ender's Game (1985)
Speaker for the Dead (1986)
Xenocide (1991)
Children of the Mind (1996)
A War of Gifts: An Ender Story (2007)
Ender's Shadow (1999)

Currently reading:
Shadow of the Hegemon (2001)

Then to wrap up a complete immersion into all things Ender and Orson Scott Card these last six are next:

Shadow Puppets (2002)
First Meetings (2002) - short story collection
Shadow of the Giant (2005)
Ender in Exile (2008)
Shadows in Flight (forthcoming)

So far they have been excellent and hard to put down. Not too much depth on the "science" side like say Isaac Asimov but great fiction that includes a lot of space travel and planetary stuff which I can get into. Also the cool thing about all these books is that they can be read in the order they were originally written in or in chronological order.

All in all they have been a nice break from the heavier historical and technical stuff I have been reading over the last year or so.

For those of you not lucky enough to get a lot of Canadian content in your literary lives...Charles deLint.

Some of my favourite fantasy.

The Blind Side by Michael Lewis.
I'm also stuck about halfway through the second part of the Dune trilogy.
And a couple chapters into The Innovator's Dilemma.

Hoping to at least finish The Blind Side this weekend...

Had the Archer's Tale handy (another Bernard Cornwell gem), and just ran out and picked up the 4th Saxon book, Sword Song.

I've read the six books of Frank Herbert's original Dune cycle, as well as the three prequel books by his son. I took a glance through the Butlerian Jihad works. The base story seems competent and has some interesting stuff in it, but the quality of the writing was so subpar I couldn't force myself to read it.

I do have a bit of hope for the later two novels that finish up the Chapterhouse storyline based on Herbert's notes. Probably will start those before long.

But Cornwell has really grabbed my attention.

Oh, what I'm really interested in is something on the history of science, especially as it grew out of the middle ages into the renaissance. I need to go back and watch Connections again, but I want to do some research on the topic for my own work. Anyone read anything on that that they found illuminating? Thanks!

Pick up Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, starting with Quicksilver. Isaac Newton, pirates, Muslims, finance, alchemy and world history. Did I mention the pirates?

Your research is finished.

Just started in on Guns, Germs, and Steel.

Indeed. Mucho recommendacios.
If you want non-fiction look for stuff by John Gribbin, he's written a lot on science history.

On Being a Pagan - Alan de Benoist

Tech books

Roger MacBride Allen. BSI Starside: The Cause of Death
Science Fiction mystery. Good read so far.

Finally finished all 12 books in the Ender's Game and Shadow series.

Just picked up the following...

Bernard Cornwell's:
The Archer's Tale (per Demiurge's recommendation)

The Warlord Chronicles
The Winter King
Enemy of God
Excalibur: A Novel of Arthur

S.M. Stirling's:
The Emberverse series (per Marso's recommendation)
Dies the Fire
The Protector's War
A Meeting at Corvallis
The Sunrise Lands
The Scourge of God
The Sword of the Lady

"Alexander the Great" by Robin Lane Fox. Apparently the main source for Oliver Stones piece of shit film, but I won't hold that against it, as it is allegedly the definitive work on the subject.

^Incidentally, part of Robin Lane Fox's agreement with Stone to advise on 'Alexander' was that Fox would be able to participate--on film!--in one of the cavalry charges. Fox does a commentary on the Blu-Ray of the film and points himself out on several occasions. It's during the battle of Gaugamela, if I'm not mistaken...

Starting the 5th Cornwell Saxon book now.

Been hearing great things about S.M. Stirling, have to pick that up too.

So many great books, it really pisses me off we only get around 80 years some times! Ah well, maybe they'll have enough nanobots repairing my cells in my blood stream when I hit 60 that I'll get some more time!

Let alone to write one (or twenty) of my own.

Bah, don't bother with any of the swill written by KJA and Brian Herbert. The books they supposedly wrote based on Herbert's "notes" are utter garbage and in all likelihood a complete fabrication of KJA's hack mind.

Last four:

The Crimson petal and the white by Michael Faber
A history of the world in 10 1/2 chapters by Julian Barnes
Hail, Hail, Rock and Roll by John Harris
A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toldz

Next up... maybe a quick trip to sci-fi ish ville with The City and The City by China Mieville

"Fabric of the Cosmos" and "The Elegant Universe" by Brian Greene. Tough reads if you aren't fairly well versed in Physics and Superstring Theory, but he does an amazing job of making both fairly understandable for the average reader.

"Plague Ship" and "Lost City" by one my all-time favorites, Clive Cussler. If you are into modern Action/Adventure with a little mystery thrown in, I cannot recommend Cussler enough, absolutely brilliant.

Re-read "Madness Season" by C.S. Friedman on my trip back from R&R, one of my favorite Sci-Fi books.

"The Cleric Quintet" by R.A. Salvatore, finally finished everything he's written outside of Drizzt novels (usually finish those within 24hrs of release, lawl.) Definitely my favorite Fantasy author, bar none.

Re-read the LotR trilogy about a month back... just to remind myself how much better they are than the movies. >.>

Had a copy of Frank Herbert's "Dune" mailed to me in a random package, still haven't read that but it sounds like a lot of people are fans so I might have to now...

Trying to get someone to send me the Terry Goodkind "Sword of Truth" 11 book series as well. I started it a few years back and got to around book 8 which was the latest at the time, and absolutely loved every single book. Definitely much more enthralling than Robert Jordan's similarly sized series imho.

And, about to start Scott McClellan's "What Happened" (The Bush Jr administration) just because it's sitting on the shelf, and I hate to leave a book unread.

Finished my bio of Paine and now I'm on to Jospeh Ellis' Founding Brothers.

I've been quite neglectful of my thread here, so I thought an update on what I've read since posting last is in order.

From the top:

Bernard Cornwell - The Warlord Chronicles

The three books in the Warlord Chronicles are excellent and gripping. Not a traditional take on King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, it's gritty and realistic with all the daily dirt and lice infested details of 5th century life recreated masterfully and insterspersed with historical data giving it weight and believability. Cornwell's writing style and use of language is for lack of a better word, superb. He mixes beautiful, poetic descriptions with cold, blunt realism, so what you're reading is less a story and more a window into events that might well have happened. Each sentence is so well crafted that I was tempted to read it out loud. Arthur is not a king and there is no Round Table. I truly enjoyed Cornwell's take on Launcelot as well and it was a nice wrinkle to see Launcelot taken off the pedestal so many books have put him on (a la Thomas Mallory's Le Morte d' Arthur and many others). I heartily recommend this epic and sweeping saga on all things Briton and Arthurian.

S.M. Stirling - The Emberverse

I don't think I could of followed up the Warlord Chronicles with a better series than Stirling's Emberverse, between these two series I have enjoyed some of the most pleasurable and satisfying reading in my life thanks to recommendations from Demiurge and Marso. What a great immersion into the themes of "surviving" on this planet called Earth and "the human condition" both these series are!

The six books are an alternate history, post apocalyptic series set in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. The primary focus of the first three books is how people survive 500 years of technological progress in a "changed" world after an event called The Change has occurred. The series explores the major themes of balkanization, human dependency on technology, myth and magic and group dynamics and relationships in the quest for survival.

To really appreciate this story, you have to be aware of the depth of research and the accuracy on such things as bow and weapon construction, medieval combat, organic farming with only manpower and horses, the challenge of training horses, the challenge of surviving in the wild and the challenge of individuals forming groups and "clans" to pool resources and survive. Stirling presents it superbly.

My only minor gripe with the series is Sterling's frequent sidebars into Wiccan rituals and lore which as a subject do not interest me much and I found myself skimming through some pages to get to the good stuff. This small personal nitpicking of the series in no way should discourage anyone from reading this excellent series.

Currently reading:

The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson (per Evenflow's recommendation), a panoramic, colossal series of three 900+ page books that are part romance, part adventure, part potboiler, part scientific treatise, part religious tome and part political saga. The series delves into the themes of history, science, alchemy, sex, piracy, politics, war, economics, architecture, cryptology and disease.

I've just started the third and last book of the series and will post a more detailed and thorough review that this series so richly deserves.

In the que:

Daniel Boorstin's non-fiction Knowledge Trilogy which should definitely keep me busy for a while.

Working on Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid MacCulloch, an exhaustive history of the religion that delves into philosophical underpinnings in place centuries before Jesus and recounts events up to modern times.

Practicing a lot of Russian lately. A Russian co-worker is helping me with my pronunciation.

Finally picked up a copy of Atlas Shrugged and will be giving it a go soon.

The only thing I'm reading right now is a long list of Korean verb conjugations.

Picked up Boorstin's Knowledge Trilogy myself, I've read a few chapters at random while at lunch. Last one was a take on the development of the University in Paris, and before that was the creation of the Benedictine Order. That's in the Seekers.

Also been doing some research on water mills as a background setting for some stuff I want to write.

On the non-book front, downloaded Connections by James Burke and have gotten through the first three. My 4 year old stopped me in the middle of the last one - he was watching with me and told me I couldn't watch any more because he wanted to see it with me.

And DVR'd two shows last night on Discovery - Alien Solar Systems and Alien Moons. Hopefully there might be some decent ideas there on life bearing moons around gas giants.

With water wheels. And Benedictine Monks.

^Where are you downloading Connections from?

Nowhere that I can discuss due to the terms here at this website, sorry, shouldn't have brought it up.

But if you are jonesing for Connections, youtube has the all up in 10 minute chunks:
http://www.youtube.com/user/JamesBurkeWeb

These are evidently OK per the Burke estate.

And there's a great hour long interview with Burke about the first series here:
http://www.archive.org/details/JamesBurkeReConnections_0

Try reading something by Laurence Krauss as a counterpoint to Greene. There's a real debate in physics about how valid string theory is. It's not as open and shut as Greene's book might imply.

(Although I've read it too, and agree that it's excellent.)

Some Buried Caesar, by Rex Stout. Archie & Nero get mixed up in one bovinecide and two homocides while exhibiting some orchids at the state fair. Especially fun is Archie's brief stint the local jail where he and another inmate organize an inmate's union as a way to bug the local PD and to pass the time.

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