What Are You Reading Now.

Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea. Only about thirty pages in and okay so far. Feeling under the weather though, so might take me a while to finish.

 

Kinda multitask reading at the moment.
Andre Norton's Star Soldiers and Tease Me (Teased and Broken) By Ashley Black
I know the second doesn't really sound my speed, but I find it kinda funny for a
Romance story.

 

Hannibal by Thomas Harris.

I've read it (and the other Hannibal books) countless times, but this is my first reading since becoming a fiction writer myself. I'm even more blown away by how masterful a writer he is. It's probably the only book I've read that gets an omniscient POV so right; the only one that I don't think would be improved by changing to limited.

Not only does he use omni POV but he mixes third person and second person, including breaking the fourth wall, and it's all seamless and wonderful.

Not only does he use present tense (which I normally can't stand) but he switches from past to present and back again in the same scene and it isn't jarring.

Anyone who wants to use omni POV should read this, in my opinion. Ditto anyone who needs an example of when breaking the rules works better than following them.

Thomas Harris may just be my writing idol.

 

Hemingway's letters.

Considering the insight into this 20th century writer's character which "comes off" the pages of his personal correspondence and through the tone it provides at different periods of his life, I fret that we have a heck of a hermunetical problem here. In just 50 years or so after his words were silenced, I feel that our vision of the man and his beliefs is inevitably and seriously tainted as time marches on. Hence, I am reminded that the past is also subject to change, as are all the things under our gaze and analysis. They (past events/situations) will change meaning simply through our present interference.

Sartre said that we can not change the actual events which have occurred, but that we can certainly change their meaning. I find comfort in that statement most of the time, other times it terrifies me.

In any case, papa Hemingway now seems to me like a guy who would be fun to hang out with for very short periods of time in the 21st century.

 

The Last Wish, it`s part of the Wicther series. I`ve read the novels and played the games but this is the first time I`ve picked up the short story books. I`m working on a sword and sorcery type short of my own so I thought I`d read it for research of a sort.

 

Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger and What-If by Randall Monroe.

 

Way of the Kings, the first novel in the Stormlight Archive series by Brandon Sanderson. It's a huge book but definitely worth the read. I love Sanderson's world building, the different cultures and their backgrounds and geographical situation in the world he's created is fascinating to read and learn about, it helps that he's a great and engaging storyteller too.
I've already read his Mistborn series, And it's one of my all time favorite book series ever. Definitely recommend that to anyone looking for a good read, even if high fantasy isn't your thing, chances are you'd still love it. Same thing for the Stormlight Archive.

The other book I'm reading at the moment is "I, Lucifer" by Glenn Duncan, this one's for my book club, and is an awesome read, and an unconventional one as well.

 

Currently reading The Rommel Papers edited by B.H. Liddell-Hart. Got about half-way through the first Hunger Games book by Suzanne Collins before I got distracted, which means I'm probably going to have to restart it from the beginning whenever I get around back around. And my friend convinced me to start reading the Quarantine series by Lex Thomas, which has been an easy, fun read. Not as big a fan of YA lit as I used to be, but I still appreciate it and find it entertaining.

 

John le Carré A Delicate Truth
Quite an entertaining plot with interesting characters, but occasionally the exposition seems to grind on a bit.

 

Just started The Twelve by Justin Cronin. I read The Passage (1st book of the trilogy) a few years ago and really enjoyed it. I had pretty much forgotten about it but saw/bought the 2nd book at the thrift store yesterday and it looks like the 3rd of the trilogy came out earlier this year.

 

I was reading The Girl on the Train (yes, I boarded the hype train - get it, lol?) and today I quit after 70 pages. Thank God the book was a present and not a purchase of my own, I would be so angry.

The biggest blunder for me was the second chapter. First chapter is a diary entry from Rachel's point of view, the second is a diary entry from Megan's point of view. Absolutely no difference between the two, exactly the same voice, only life circumstances were different. If you're writing a book from three different POVs and in first person, I think you should try and make the characters different, right?

 

I'm reading Shantaran [ ?] written by an Australian guy, true story, escapes from prison, flies to Bombay, pretends to be New Zealander possibly for twenty years, but I don't know yet, being on page 100 of 400.

 

A have a copy sitting on my "to read" pile. Maybe I won't bother now

 

I don't wanna scare you @Correl Elnream . They made a movie, so some people think it must be good.
I read it's similar to Gone Girl. So if you read that one and liked it, then you maybe you'll like this one as well.

But don't read it if you don't like journalistic style. I disliked The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and the author of that one was a journalist. Paula Hawkins was also a journalist. So if you're like me, disliking the journalistic style, don't bother.

 

I just finished Embassytown, by China Mieville. So far I've read Kraken, King Rat, Perdido Street Station, The City and the City, and most recently, Embassytown. I've got such mixed feelings about Mieville's work. Kraken (typing on a tablet, going to forgo the italics from now) was the first one, and it was pretty good. Warmed over Neil Gaiman Neverwhere in many ways, but still an enjoyable read. King Rat, on the other hand, was half-microwaved Anansi Boys (also Neil Gaiman), and Perdido Street Station? Well, I could see why it could be liked, but it just wasn't to my taste, so I decided to skip the rest of the trilogy.

So I sound pretty down on Mieville, don't I? Yeah, but The City and the City was absofuckinglutely blindingly brilliant. I've read it three or four times in two years. I've bought copies of it as gifts for family and friends. I want more of it, I've cast the movie in my head, I've tried to figure out what it would be like if the city where I live was Beszel...

And then I read Embassytown, which... Well, it's not technically bad. There aren't any plot holes, or extraneous characters, or anything like that. And while Mieville has always been an ambitious world-builder, this one goes too far. Set in the distant (interstellar travel is fairly commonplace) future, it has all sorts of cool hip neato slang that sounds like a teenager read too much William Gibson, and there are aliens that are incapable of lying, and speak with two mouths, and it's obviously something about colonialism but I don't care about the aliens or the humans or the world or the other worlds or ohmygod it was so freaking boring....

Will I buy more Mieville? Probably, but I'll read the reviews very carefully first.

 

Currently reading waffle.

 

Northanger Abby by Jane Austen - for the first time.

I'm a little under halfway through and I haven't immersed in it yet the way I did with all her novels, except Sense and Sensibility. But I feel that this is written as if Ms. Austen just thought 'haters gonna hate' and wrote whatever she wanted. As a result it's not the most nuances of her writing but it has a charm that's unique to it.

I'm enjoying it a lot but it probably won't be my favourite of hers.

 

Brave New World.

It's been fine so far but it hasn't wowed me in the way I was told it would.

 

It's about 15 years since I read it, but I didn't get Brave New World at all. I know I didn't finish it. I remember it feeling exceptionally heavy-handed. Checking wikipedia for a reminder, the social stuff sounds interesting, but I have no memory of that aspect. What sticks in my mind is the OTT 'science is evil' bits (the hatcheries, the eugenics).

I'm (still) reading The Saragossa Manuscript and absolutely loving it.

I've also started on Wuthering Heights on the grounds that it's a classic I assume I won't like, and I want to test that assumption. Feels a wee bit cartoonish so far. I'm not entirely buying the characters.

Also 'reading' a book on Chinese characters (characters as in word, not fictional people). So far my favourite learning has been that the character for 'website' combines the character for 'to stand' with the character for 'open country'. 'Stand in open country' is a nice way to conceptualise a website... if that is how the language works, which it might not be because the character for 'friend' is the character for 'moon' written twice?

 

And "meat" is two people in a box.

Disturbing.

 

I can't disagree with your thoughts so far. I like the idea behind it but so far the execution isn't great.

 

Seriously? That is...

 

Person:



Meat:



I don't think it started that way, but that's where it stands now.

 

Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach. Started out slow, but I've really gotten into it. It's amazing how he can build up tension out of nowhere, very well plotted, especially since the whole "plot" plays out over the course of an afternoon.