What are you reading now?

[Vraelomon]

Started reading White Fang by Jack London.

Been reading it mainly in school, but I finally finished it just now and it was a thoroughly fantastic book. I really like Jack London's writing. And wolves, I really like wolves a bit more than I did a little bit ago.
Will probably go read more Jack London, I think I got a few more of his books on my kindle.

I think I tried to read it but dropped it. Something about some guys pushing a dead guy through the snow?

That is how it starts out, yes.

 

[HoJu]

Read his short stories about the Klondike Gold Rush. Those were always my favorite. And Call of the Wild, it's like a reverse White Fang

Coincidentally, I just started reading a collection of short stories by a Chilean author known as the "South American Jack London", Francisco Coloane. They're set in that nasty tundra in the far South of South America, around Cape Horn, as inhospitable and lonely as the Alaskan wilderness.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

Currently reading Don Quixote. Assuming the translation is even remotely faithful, this is way snarkier than I even knew possible for the 1600s. Even the prologue is hilarious and subtly self-aware.

In one part, a priest and the protagonist's household decide which books of Don's to burm so that nobody else turns out like him. It ends up being a really quite funny set of book reviews. The priest even reviews the author's own book.

My sister read the whole thing as part of her course and said it gets really meta towards the end. I think I'm going to enjoy this. What a T h i c c book though.

 

[HoJu]

Currently reading Don Quixote. Assuming the translation is even remotely faithful, this is way snarkier than I even knew possible for the 1600s.

Sounds faithful then. I have to give it another read one of these days. I read it when I was 12 or so in an edition without notes so a lot of the references and subtlety went far over my head. Even so I enjoyed it a lot, but now I should be able to appreciate it even more

My sister read the whole thing as part of her course and said it gets really meta towards the end. I think I'm going to enjoy this. What a T h i c c book though.

It's actually two books published with 10 years between them. That's why it's so thick and why the second part is more meta and self-aware.

 

[Vissy]

Picked up the newly translated Witcher book, Tower of the Swallow.

Also got Brent Weeks' Way of Shadows in the back burner, alongside Palm-Wine Drinkard

 

[AreJohn]

Currently reading The Saint for the second time. The second of three Gaunts Ghosts omnibuses. Apparently there's a 4th one in the works.

I bought it years ago because "ooh, 40k!" Not realising it was in the middle of three omnibuses, I've been sturggling to find the other two. Only ones i've found are on sites like amazon and looking at the prices I get the feeling they're not in print anymore. 

 

[Anarion]

More like "What are you already finished reading?" but what the hell.

Finished Tyrant by Christian Cameron. It's a little bit like an ancient Western on the frontier of Greek civilization with Scythians playing the role of Indians. I liked the bits with the Greeks far better than the ones with Scythians. It really shows that the author's specialty is Ancient Greece, the Greeks seemed much more believable than the Scythians. To be fair to him, we know much less about them than the Greeks.
It also suffered from some bad pacing towards the end, and the ending was really not that good. But I liked it.

Killer of Men, also by Christian Cameron, is much better. It's set around the time of the Ionian Revolt which preceded and led to the Persian invasions of Greece. This one uses a phraming device where an old aristocrat is telling his daughter about his youthful exploits. It works. Lots of battles, interesting locations and little titbits about Ancient Greeks and their neighbours. I liked this one a lot.

 

[Wellenbrecher]

A lot of his stories work that way.
He has one set towards the end of the 100 years war and then later Italy - Ill Made Knight, pretty great - and then a "spin-off" that bridges the gap between the fourth book of the Tyrant series and the fifth and gives a cool perspective on Alexander the great as a psychopathic egomaniac with bouts of being human in between.

Also the last three books of the Tyrant series are better than the first three as he does away with the silly mythic bits and the setting is more conventional, as in the wars of the Diadochi leading up to Issos.

To be fair I'm just a helpless fanboy of his stuff and style in general
I devoured his Thom Swan series just as quickly as I did away with his Traitor's Son ones.

 

[Antonis]

a "spin-off" that bridges the gap between the fourth book of the Tyrant series and the fifth and gives a cool perspective on Alexander the great as a psychopathic egomaniac with bouts of being human in between.

God of War? I liked that a lot, besides enjoying it and finding Ptolemy(Ptolemy I Soter is the protagonist) a really nice and easy to sympathize with character, I confess I share the author's view of Alexander.

 

[Wellenbrecher]

I actually read that one first and then started the Tyrant series, which was a bit confusing in the in between bits
But yeah, I loved it.

 

[crodio]

I finished "cakes and ale" by W Somerset Maugham
I found nothing amazing about it. The setting is interesting, but the characters, except the three or four main ones, add nothing at all most of times. I found the talk about literature a bit boring. The book apparently was trying to ridicule some contemporary author/s.
At some point there's this terribly nostalgic air that reached me doe. It's a bitter book imo.
NaN/NaN would read again maybe in 30 years

 

[Dryvus]

Sounds like you should cheer up with some cakes and ale.

 

[crodio]

;^)
I don't think there was a single cake in the novel. What a scam

 

[crodio]

Late mattia Pascal
I didn't expect this to be so darn funny

 

[Lumos]

"Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen", which I finally obtained. Bujold, a paragon of a military sci-fi author, is as fantastic as ever, and this book specifically reminds me of "A Civil Campaign" in more ways than one, especially with its mostly light-hearted tone. Good stuff. Couple this with the sublime translation, which properly underlines the mood.

 

[Wulfburk]

Battle of Britain by James Holland. Quite big but its a real page turner. Loving it so far, and it does a great job in explaining all the technical stuff and also on taking a personal level, having lots of pages on each chapter dedicated to british and germans on all positions, be Hitler, Dowding, some RAF pilots, and etc.

It started with the Battle of France which was a great read, the maps were very helpful too. Looking at some maps on the encirclement you'd think there was no way the BEF would manage to evacuate.

 

[Vissy]

Nothing but Blue Skies by Tom Holt, his tried and tested absurdist humour once again is very enjoyable. The gags are funny and the imagination of the author seeps through. Solid entertaining reading, maybe not for those who look for a bit more serious story or solid plots.

 

[Beny]

Finished The Nights Watch by Terry Pratchett. Always great to go back tp Pratchett now and then, always get such a warm fuzzy feeling when all the characters and place names get dropped.

Started The Martian. Which is the base for the Matt Damon film of 2015, I actually had it on my shelf from a birthday and didn't realise I'd spoiled it for myself by accidentally watching the film. But so far the book has been so much more detailed and better done. Only half way through but thoroughly recommend to anyone with an interest in things sciencey. The amount of research Wier put into this is astounding.

EDIT:

Tom Holt

Read one of those about Thor or something. Was pretty funny If I remember rightly.

 

[Danath]

After reading Hyperion Cantos, I decided to try more of Dan Simmons. Ilium/Olympos starts like Hyperion: no context no, introduction, no explanations. Again you really start to understand what is what by the end of the first book.

Funny view of the Trojan war, in which the gods are in fact superhumans empowered by science (force fields, nanobots, teleport...) living in the Olympus of Mars, but apparently created by somebody else, as they don't seem to realize they are just recreating the Iliad and all the Greek mythology. Only one who knows how the play will go is Zeus, and some experts on the Illiad who have been brought through time to actually record the war, but are forbid of telling anything to the gods. And then there are robots living in the satellites of Jupiter, confused with the energy readings they are getting from Earth, and other humans in another Earth living like the eloi of The Time Machine.

 

[Lumos]

Illium/Olympos were interesting, but the ending felt a little contrived and left me with unanswered questions. The Cantos series was better, in my opinion.

For an example, I really, really wish we'd gotten an explanation about the

Spoiler

voynix: who made them, how, why, EVERYTHING. But alas, there was nothing. Also, that super-convenient nuke-carrying submarine that was present right where they needed it, when they needed it, was an awful way to fix an ending.