Read the entirety of I Am Not A Serial Killer by Dan Wells today. (Car trip, whoo for not having to drive! ) I enjoyed it! MC is a sociopath obsessed with serial killers, but is determined not to become one. And then a serial killer strikes his small town, he ends up discovering it's actually a demon, and goes head to head with it. Good read, I found the MC a fascinating character. It's first in a series and I'm going to be picking up the next one for sure.
Finished reading Thin Air by Richard K. Morgan. Working on Havoc from Chris Wooding and rereading A Rope of Thorns by Gemma Files.
@X Equestris commented in other post Spoiler: Fantasy Post https://www.writingforums.org/threads/%E2%80%9Cfantasy%E2%80%9D-for-the-more-mature-audience.160092/ about The Wizard Saga (Andrzej Sapkowsky) and I got curious. I'm finishing the first book "The Last Wish" without even notice it. It totally hooked me.
It's one of the best series I've read. I'm enjoying Asimov's Foundation series at the moment. I like an author who trusts in the intelligence of their reader - even if that trust is misplaced...
I've got sixteen books on my shelves that I want to read before I buy anymore. I've heard that Karen Traviss is good at military science fiction, so I'm reading her first Gears of War tie-in novel, Aspho Fields; after that I'll be reading Black and British: A Forgotten History, by David Olusoga; and then I've got a few anthologies and short story collections waiting for me.
Starting now The Sworf of Fate (Andrzej Sapkowsky), the second book of the Saga of Geralt of Rivia. Yoohoooo
Picked up Outlander by Diana Gabaldon on sale yesterday on Amazon Kindle. You know, the one that has a TV series based on it? Never seen the series, but so far, the book is really good. I recommend it if you like historical fiction with a touch of fantasy.
Getting close to being done with the Wheel of Time series, which I've been reading off and on for the past year and a half. Just made it out of the Robert Jordan novels and I'm onto the Brandon Sanderson books. So far The Gathering Storm has been pretty damn good and a much needed step up in pace from the later Jordan novels.
I'm in the middle of the Saga of Geralt of Rivia. Starting number 4 now. I'll finish the Saga this week.
I stumbled upon Battle Mage by Peter Flannery. I just started reading it. It's pretty good. He only has a couple of other books out. He is a Scottish author and I like his style so far.
I recently finished Hari Kunru's White Tears. It was a page-turner but got too depressing to be enjoyable. I've got a small stack of books from the library and hopefully one of them will keep my attention for the next read.
Finished reading Thin Air by Richard K. Morgan. Interesting to see a hibernoid MC in Hakan Veil. He’s like a warmer and snarkier version of Kovacs. Spends the whole novel snarking at the nationalistic Martian governor and the poor saps who keep voting him in, the organization in charge of interplanetary travel, and just about everyone else, including himself. The other characters get in some nice jabs at him, too: early on, he makes some half-assed sexual gestures toward his female superior, and she tells him she’ll fuck him when he’s the last man alive on Mars and she can’t find a woman she likes who owns a strap-on. There’s a great section near the end making fun of sexual politics, subtly but definitively tarring everyone involved. Aside from these themes, you have all the usual violence, backstabbing, and radical bio-augmentation. The added emotional depth makes the conflict all the more exhausting to read, which I mean as a compliment. You can definitely feel the author’s views leaking into the text, but it has this air of being angry and tired with humanity as a whole, instead of a one-sided political tract. Read Havoc by Chris Wooding this week. Nice breather after all the bitter sci-fi stories, but for a horror novel, it’s a little too optimistic for my tastes; well, that’s YA for you. Finished it last night and started Eon by Greg Bear. My classes are ending next week, so I’m gonna see if I can get Trouble and Her Friends from the library to read over Christmas break. Trying to read a more even ratio of male and female authors. The human population is (roughly) split in half between men and women, so it feels limiting to only read books from one camp or the other.
Currently reading The Outsider, by Stephen King. I had never heard of it when someone recommended it, though so far, it's pretty good. Not his best by any means, but it's pretty decent, and the story is very intriguings. In short, it's a murder mystery where they have more than enough proof to arrest the killer... except he has a water-proof alibi? Quite intriguing, in other words. And considering it's Stephen King, almost anything goes. Time travel? A dopple-ganger? Demons? Aliens? Twins? Who knows? I'm still early, but so far, I really enjoy it.
I just finished Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich. .....I don't know how I feel about it. It was good, suspenseful at some parts, hard to read at others (graphically yet artfully describing murder by strangulation). Without spoiling what its about *entirely*: Girl is wanted by government. Girl goes into hiding. Girl gets ratted out and captured, girl escapes, girl goes back into hiding, girl gets captured again. The end. All the relationships she made in her struggle to survive are moot by the end. it literally ends with her resigning herself to die in captivity. It ends with her in a cell, remembering a time when she was younger, with her parents, playing in the snow. I felt like I needed more. It was good and then it just stopped. so many questions unanswered. This one character showed up a few pages from the ending... then never showed up again. the MC was like "She was there one day and gone. I never saw her again".... why was she even mentioned then? Was it to give the MC some hope and then to darken her realization that no one was coming to save her when the character didnt show up again???? I need closure, damnaggit!
Started Hitch 22, Christopher Hitchens' memoir. Hilarious at times, poignant at others. Never a bore. He's a major inspiration to me.
Just reread 1984 and read Animal Farm for the first time, both by George Orwell. 1984 blew my mind when I first read it and it still holds true today and Animal Farm was a good read too. I'd recommend them both if you want to read classics that have a cynical outlook on the politics of the modern world.
Nightfall and Other Stories by Isaac Asimov, figured since I will never finish the Foundation Trilogy (cause it is boring ), that I would give a collection of his shorts a go. So far it seems to be an easier and better read for me.
Some of my favourite of his are his Azazel short stories. Not his typical sci-fi (or sci-fi at all), but still fun to read and a pretty good example of his writing style.
