I have already read Guards! Guards! myself but haven't gotten to any of the Death books yet. I am enjoying them though, I love Pratchett's style! EDIT: Because I wonked up the formatting.
In the middle of The Steel Bonnets: The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers by George MacDonald Fraser. Interesting but sometimes tedious. Especially interesting because I can trace part of my family back there. Of them, Fraser says they ""were admittedly a special case. Scottish by origin, English by adoption, and ready to be either . . . . they also had a fair claim to being the worst. In murder, blackmail, theft, extortion, and intrigue they were second to none. . . ." Don't say I didn't warn you.
Books of Blood Vol 2 and 3, Clive Barker. Every paragraph of every story is rich with imagery and dripping with description. He's an amazing writer. I remembered reading his books when I was younger, so it's been a while, and experiencing the salty blood soaked fecal straw stink of Pig Blood Blues all over again is intoxicating.
Future Home Of The Living God by Louise Erdrich while reading An Irish Country Doctor by Patrick Taylor While listening to The Serpent of Venice by Christopher Moore (started off reading Taylor.... then i came across Erdrich's book..... then a coworker said "audiobooks are amazing!"....... so here i am)
Going to make a new attempt to take on the "Austro-Prussian War" by Geoffrey Wawro. Not overly long but very heavy so I hope that I will be able to finish it this time.
In an attempt to escape the flaming dumpster fire of today's reality, I purchased Rebekah Witherspoon's latest Romance RAFE: A Buff Male Nanny. Humorous title aside, it is literally all the fluff and love I needed and was filled with great, relatable characters and a hot/sweet pairing that was just what the doctor ordered. I don't normally read M/F romance but I was glad I followed the recommendations that were all over Twitter and gave it a chance.
I just finished The Incredible Journey. I read it a long time ago in public school and picked again because I was going to use it as reference for a short story I'm working on, but realized that I actually really like it... again.
i'm reading the hellbound heart by clive barker. it's only about 150 pages but it's so well written, and i think i'll be reading more of him.
I just finished The Colorado Chapters by Kathy Miner, which was a surprisingly good, very poignant, very gripping series about the world after a devastating plague decimates the population. I recommend it if you like those post-apocalyptic style books.
Just got past the Siege of Alesia in Julius Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico. Caesar does a good job of making his historical account vivid and entertaining; quite the feat considering how plain his prose is. And Aulus Hirtius manges to mimick Caesar's style almost perfectly in the Eight Commentary, which covers the parts of the war Caesar never got the chance to record.
I started to read American Gods by Neil Gaiman. Don’t know if my expectations were way too high but about 200 pages in I don’t get the hype... at all. Anyone who actually finished it, what do you like about it? Started to read Zinc boys by Svetlana Alexiewich instead and can really recommend it to anyone.
After finishing Starfish (Peter Watts), which I like it very much, I'm reading (translating actually) its sequel Maelstrom. What I like of this trilogy is that characters are weird, they're misfit psycho people turned into cyborgs to work in a geothermal station on the bottom of the ocean near a Rift (that's why are called Rifters). They are people that nobody wants around but also responsible for all the power supply grid in the mainland. They could shut the power off if they wanted to. If all the psycho crews of all geothermal stations teamed up, they could be kings and queens. But they won't. They're all so screwed up that only six of the them can stay in a station at a time and after been qualified for the job. They feel lonely, desperate, each one of them lost in his/her own personnal hell as they go through the daily duties cleaning algae up from vents, replacing power generators gear, fighting giant abyss fauna on the way... and dealing with each other obssesions inboard. What I really like is that even you never lose track of the general events, you really never know what's going to happen next. And when you find out, nothing has utterly "been solved", there's always something new to be discovered. This Maelstrom book continues the story and it's writen the same way. Also, I like very much the way all the story goes forward steadly through different character's POV. One chapter ends in a cliffhunger and it's solved from other Character's POV in another further chapter and you can sense the imaginary world setting as a whole, connected and realistic. While you are reading some character chapter, you can't help but thinking about what's going with some other character at this precise moment because you know that you're actually going to end up reading about it sooner or later. The story is quite interesting and original in the apocalyptic subgenre topic. Maybe it's because I don't think in English yet, but I think is very well literature aswell, in Spanish sounds good to me anyway. I totally recomend the Rifters Trilogy, its even free online.
Couple days ago, I finished The Interestings (wow, autocorrect had a hard time with that one), by Meg Wolitzer. It took a few months for me to read. Not because I didn't enjoy it. Quite the opposite, in fact. It was part being so engrossed in it that I didn't want it to end (you know when you slow down your reading to put off finishing the book? I'd love it if people felt that way about my writing sometime), and part being afraid that I'd be let down by the ending. Because undeneath the shiny, admirable, successful lives these characters wete leading was a big secret that created a simmering, low-grade tension throughout that I loved. And yes, I did feel a bit let down by how it was resolved. Some characterization could have been better. For instance, there was the daughter of famous, super-successful parents who showed a lot of interest in both their fields. I wanted to know more about her. Was she genuinely interested, or was it more because she was a people-pleaser? She did show signs of that trait. And was that just her personality, or did she sense the tension in her parents' marriage? Her mother was the one keeping the big secret from her father. The daughter was a secondary character. Still, I wanted to know more about her as a person, especially since her parents' marriage was a pretty big part of the story. So yeah. Flawed but enjoyable.
I've been reading Stephen Kings short story collection: Night Shift. Got through two stories so far, them being, Jerusalems lot. Was a very interesting short. I plan on buying Salems Lot sometime in the future. Didn't fully enjoy Graveyard Shift though. The pacing seemed odd to me, but the short wasn't terrible. Onto to Night Surf!
currently reading the haunting of hillhouse. then by some stroke of luck found that its a series on netflix after i started reading.
There's two books by Gaiman that I didn't particularly enjoy; The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and American Gods. American Gods is long, and painfully drawn out. Not to mention the plot holes, lame flashbacks, stunted stories within stories, and god damn it, there's not one character in the hundreds of pages that I cared a lick for.
I finished Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and Lovecraft's "The Terrible Old Man" yesterday, for Halloween themed reading.
So I was just a few pages into the book I just got and I'm thinking "Dude, this guy's totally ripping off Fight Club." Then I realized it was also a Chuck Palahniuk book. Adjustment Day. Interesting so far.
The Blood of Rome by Simon Scarrow. Or was. Only took a couple of days to polish off! I think it's the seventeenth entry now, and I think it rates quite strongly off the top of my head. Without spoiling anything, Cato and Macro are placed in quite a unique predicament in this one, and also this book has a few darker elements. I enjoyed it a lot!
D-Day Through German Eyes: The Hidden Story of June 6th 1944 by Holger Eckhertz. Absolutely fascinating, the author says it's actually a transcription of interviews his grandfather, who was a reporter for the Nazi Wehrmacht newspaper, did with soldiers on the Atlantic Wall before and after the war. There's no ideology at play here, just the view from the other side of the cliff, staring from a pillbox out at a wall of ships extending out to the horizon, firsthand accounts of what it's like to be on the receiving end of white phosphorus, the motivations for defending Europe from foreign invaders... It's a short book, but it was only a couple bucks on some Kindle bonus thing that I wasn't aware of, so I'm quite happy so far.
