What are you reading?

Chris P

Likes metaphors mixed, not stirred
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The Mosquito Coast by Paul Theroux. I think I saw the last fifteen minutes of the movie years and years ago. I'm interested to see if the scenes I remember are in the book.
 

Locke

Lost the instruction manual
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I read Lock In by John Scalzi cover-to-cover this past weekend, and have been occasionally dipping into Encounter With Tiber by John Barnes and Buzz Aldrin on my tablet.

Looking at what everybody else reading is making me feel very commercial...
 

BrumBall

Keep Right On
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The Corpse Reader by Antonio Garrido. I'm about 30% through and I don't think I've ever read a character with as much bad luck as poor Ci!
 

Taylor Harbin

Power to the pen!
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I'm in the last 300 pages of James' Michener's "Chesapeake." Got half-way through it last year and picked it up again to get my mind off school.
 

Megann

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From the Honor Harrington series On Basilisk Station
 

Chase

It Takes All of Us to End Racism
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I'm halfway into Revival by Stephen King. So far, so good.

It's required reading, as I've collected every SK novel and anthology of shorts since Carrie. Some better than others but all enjoyable and instructive.
 

ResearchGuy

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Killing Cupid (A Jaine Austen Mystery), by Laura Levine. Fluffy. I'd finished what I had been reading, and it was a choice last night among a thousand-page tome on The Rise of Christianity, or a bio of Constantine the Great, or something light. I went toward the light.

--Ken
 

DiDonovan

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At any given time I have 2-3 books going simultaneously. This means I can pick up and read whatever strikes my fancy at the moment, as I read many genres. Just finished Irene Woodbury's A Dead End in Vegas, though, for my 'crime/detective' genre - and it's not your standard 'whodunnit' so that's why I'm recommending it.

Dave is about to go to the airport to pick up his wife, who has been in Phoenix for a week at a teachers' conference, when he gets the phone call: it's the Las Vegas police - and she's been found dead in a casino hotel room. As Dave comes to find out about his wife's secret life, her passion for an Internet stranger, and the illusions of his own world, he becomes increasingly involved in a hunt that comes full-circle to probe his family, friendships and psyche.

Now, if you're expecting a light 'whodunnit' type of mystery filled with entertaining twists, then A Dead End in Vegas might not be your cup of tea. Its intent is to wind emotional impact and high drama into its saga and it packs this into chapters steeped in tones of inevitability and despair as readers learn just how deeply poor decisions affect every life involved.

As seems inevitable with all good reads, the ending arrives all too soon. It feels abrupt: like the reader's been led down a garden path of complexity only to have everything snap to logical attention within a few short chapters. But that can be said of many a good book where readers might wish for as long and drawn-out an ending as in the rest of the book. Sometimes it's just hard to say 'goodbye'.
 

Grrarrgh

Not so new, not so much a kid
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I just finished listening to Alan Cumming's memoir Not My Father's Son and it was great. Cumming narrates the audio book and does a great job with it. I highly recommend it; it's definitely not your standard celebrity memoir/bio.
 

threetoedsloth

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Finished Exile's Honor by Mercedes Lackey. It actually turned out better than I thought despite it's flaws. Now I'm working on Wizard's First Rule by Terry Goodkind. Will probably read some literary fiction afterwards.
 

TheUnknownWriter

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I've been reading Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song. It's long. But it feels sort of relevant today since my Twitter feed is exploding with Ferguson news and the book sort of deals with people being neglected by society and corrupted by a flawed system. Maybe I'm just seeing a pattern because I want to? I dunno.

Special Topics in Calamity Physics (along with my obsession with the Serial podcast) had me craving another mystery, so I started a classic, The Maltese Falcon. It's... It's O.K. Very "of it's time." And it feels really prototypical, but I suppose that's partially because it's the foundation of an entire genre. I mean I'm enjoying it, but... Meh. I'll be psyched when I get through it and can start something more interesting.
 

xDream

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I'm reading "Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes" (YA). I supposedly read it a while ago, but I really don't remember anything that happened. I might've read it during my awful "skimming" phase..
 

Jack McManus

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Recently completed:

Pronto by Elmore Leonard. Introduces the character Raylon Givens of Justified on the AMC network. I hadn't read anything by Leonard before the TV series aired, and so was unaware of how big a fan I already was of his work -- many of my all-time favorite films were adapted from his novels and screenplays.

The Bounty Hunters, Leonard's first published novel came out a year before I was born. That's over sixty years ago if anyone's counting. Reading it as an aspiring writer the omni voice jumped out at first, but the compelling story triumphs. Goes to show that the story's the thing, first, last, and always.

Die Trying, Lee Child. The second in the Jack Reacher series. Another author completely unknown to me before I saw the trailer for the film Jack Reacher. I decided to skip the movie and get the book it's based on, One Shot, and from there I was hooked. Since then I've read a half-dozen or so of the series on a Kindle app for my smart phone.

On my to-read list is Pat Conroy, among others. Also need to get more Terry Pratchett done.
 

BenPanced

THE BLUEBERRY QUEEN OF HADES (he/him)
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Bonkers, Jennifer Saunders' autobiography. On a real biography/memoir kick lately; nine of my last 12 book purchases have been biography or memoir.
 

Jack McManus

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The Heretic by Joseph Nassise.

From the Author
This dark and gritty urban fantasy novel is 66,000 words in length and is the first book in The Templar Chronicles series in which modern Templar knights defend mankind from supernatural threats and enemies. Think "Constantine meets SWAT" and you'll get the idea. :) (Amazon)

I haven't read much UF, but this was offered for free from Bookbub, so what the heck, I sez, give it a look. Finished it in a couple days. Will look for the others in the series.
 

Lhowling

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"Forbidden" by Tabitha Sazuma -- "Seventeen-year-old Lochan and sixteen-year-old Maya have always felt more like friends than siblings. Together they have stepped in for their alcoholic, wayward mother to take care of their three younger siblings. As de facto parents to the little ones, Lochan and Maya have had to grow up fast. And the stress of their lives—and the way they understand each other so completely—has also brought them closer than two siblings would ordinarily be. So close, in fact, that they have fallen in love. Their clandestine romance quickly blooms into deep, desperate love. They know their relationship is wrong and cannot possibly continue. And yet, they cannot stop what feels so incredibly right. As the novel careens toward an explosive and shocking finale, only one thing is certain: A love this devastating has no happy ending." -- Amazon

I'm reading because it has been so highly reviewed and has no HEA.
 

ishtar'sgate

living in the past
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Close to Home by Lisa Jackson. Possibility of a ghost lurking around an old mansion under renovation. I'm over half way through the book but the ghost is still only a possibility. Rats.
 

Brightdreamer

Just Another Lazy Perfectionist
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Eh, what the hey, been a while...

Last Finished: The Untamed (Book 1 of the Dan Barry series), by Max Brand. A classic Western with a supernatural twist. The wildborn "Whistling" Dan has uncanny powers over beasts and a strange yellow light in his eyes when riled... as he is when the notorious outlaw Jim Silent draws first blood in a fistfight. From that moment on, a rematch is eventual, and not reason nor danger nor the voice of the woman he loves can turn Dan from his destiny. By modern standards, the characters and story are rather melodramatic, light on logic in favor of action. The hero Dan Barry is essentially a prototype superhero before the term existed, in addition to being the distillation of most every preadolescent boy's imagination, especially when being a cowboy was the ultimate dream. Some of Brand's prose is nice, but overall I found it too dated to fully enjoy.

(Before that, I read a quick "writing" guide on Kindle. I had never read a writing guide that started by dismissing the notion that proper grammar has any place outside of a college textbook... TBH, I only finished it out of morbid curiosity about what kind of guide such a person could pen.)

Currently Reading: Your Inner Fish, by Neil Shubin. The story of evolution as revealed by our bodies and correlations in the fossil record and the natural world. Just started it, but thus far it's accessible to undereducated readers like me.

I'm picking at a Kindle title, too, though I'm on the fence about whether I'll press ahead and finish at this point. It's a YA action piece, but the logic's stretching credulity and I'm getting a little tired of being jerked back and forth between two characters, not to mention waiting for someone to explain just why everything is happening and what the two MCs are going to do about it.

I haven't gotten back to Warbreaker (Brandon Sanderson) in a while, largely because I just keep having other things to do than pick up a hardcover.
 
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