What BOOK(s) are you reading?

I have been devouring the Eddie Lacrosse books, by Alex Bledsoe. I'm not sure how many there are, but I am nearly finished with the fifth, and the series feels open-ended. The first book is called The Sword-Edged Blonde. These are basically hard-boiled detective novels in a fictional medieval setting with a bit of magic in the mix. Eddie Lacrosse is a "sword jockey," which is basically a private investigator with a sword. He can handle himself in a fight, but usually tries to get by on his wits. The stories are very diverse so far, including piracy on the high seas and a dark take on Camelot. This is not great literature, but definitely has a page-turner quality. I've been reading a book a week lately, and sometimes even staying up way past my bedtime to get to the end of the current book.

I'm crushing through some books like its my job.
Occasionally, it is part of my job.
These however, are for pleasure:

Collusion - Trump is a retarded Manchurian candidate.
The Stranger in the Woods - Homeless guy in Maine figures out how to steal food from cabins for 27 years.
Burnt Offerings - Stephen King's 'The Shining' is really just a pastiche of other haunted houses, including this one.
Hell House - Richard Matheson's sexually charged haunted house.
Annihilation - I'm taking the wife to see the film tomorrow. We both smoked through the first volume and thought it was interesting. We have doubts if the other books in the trilogy can follow-through after it's promising set up.
Spartacus - Howard Fast started to write this while in jail for being a communist sympathizer. Fascinating.
and I'm chipping away at
Fantasyland - Kurt Andersen helps explain why Americans are bonkers.

Hell House is excellent. Fast-paced and overflowing with horror. I read it in one swoop, taking a single break to use the bathroom and eat some food. It was a Christmas gift for my sister, but I couldn't resist reading a few pages, and then a few more... Need to check it out from the library sometime, or even just buy it. A writer for Marvel in the '70s had a similar reaction, and ripped off a lot of the story for an epic storyline in Werewolf by Night.

I recently read Hex-Rated, A Brimstone Files Novel with similar focus. It's a hard-boiled detective story in a grindhouse Los Angeles, with magic, kung fu, and some dirty sex scenes in the mix. The lead character is a somewhat ridiculous Marty Stu, but his luck is so bad that it almost makes him likable. I am looking forward to reading more Brimstone Files Novels (tm) but this first book is copy-righted 2017. Fortunately, Jason Ridler doesn't seem like the kind of fussy perfectionist who will take more than a year to write a book.

totally digging GNOMON by Nick Harkaway. I am about 1/3 in, and it's good shit.

I finished Gnomon like a week ago. That one will stick with you for a while. Highly recommended by me.

Jeb, have you read any of his other stuff? Angelmaker is my favorite, I'd really recommend that to all F:AT peoples. Gnomon is a bit more modern-novelly.

I haven't played 40k in nearly a decade and have no plans on changing that.

But I do enjoy the snack food known as 40k novels. Specifically the Eisenhorn stuff and Farseer.

Just finished Farseer again a few days ago. I've read this book at least a half dozen times in the past 17 years. Bill King is mostly known for his space wolf crap, bit this one is a singular underrated beauty. Not only is it one of the few books that explored eldar competently, and it is also nice that the trademark eldar mystique isn't ruined.

This also isn't a black library book that takes 30 pages to describe a battle to yawn inducing results.

I think the only better literary representation of Slaanesh to be found in the graphic Novel Daemonifuge.

The adventure here is fun, yet very much R rated in how this rogue trader is sucked into the intrigue of the galactic struggle 40k is known for. It's as if Han Solo suddenly had to be more than a Merc because he had a noble cause he is forced to participate in, lest his soul perish.

The crying shame here, is that a sequel never came. The one time I've bought into a GW novel and wanted to read further because I had so much fun in the adventure, and it never came. Blah.

But yay, no space marines.

I know 40k books are pretty crummy in general, but if someone were to ask me what to recommend in order to get a feel for the setting without having your intelligence insulted and maybe see a fun adventure take place, Farseer would be the sole recommendation as a one and done "So how did you like that?" exposure to 40k.

I read Harkaway's THE GONE-AWAY WORLD and it was okay enough for me to try GNOMON. I will read ANGELMAKER for sure unless GNOMON shits the bed.

Shellhead wrote: I recently read Hex-Rated, A Brimstone Files Novel with similar focus. It's a hard-boiled detective story in a grindhouse Los Angeles, with magic, kung fu, and some dirty sex scenes in the mix. The lead character is a somewhat ridiculous Marty Stu, but his luck is so bad that it almost makes him likable. I am looking forward to reading more Brimstone Files Novels (tm) but this first book is copy-righted 2017. Fortunately, Jason Ridler doesn't seem like the kind of fussy perfectionist who will take more than a year to write a book.

Thanks, just ordered it.

Colorcrayons wrote: Just finished Farseer again a few days ago. I've read this book at least a half dozen times in the past 17 years. Bill King is mostly known for his space wolf crap, bit this one is a singular underrated beauty. Not only is it one of the few books that explored eldar competently, and it is also nice that the trademark eldar mystique isn't ruined.
The crying shame here, is that a sequel never came. The one time I've bought into a GW novel and wanted to read further because I had so much fun in the adventure, and it never came. Blah.

Also thanks and ordered. But no sequel? The version I ordered is "Farseer (Eldar Trilogy)" so I'm wondering if you read the trilogy or if there are two more novels you didn't know about?

Same book. I have no idea why the eldar trilogy is tacked on to it. I know for a fact nothing else was made for it. I occasionally check.

just started reading NO-LIMIT HOLD 'EM for advanced players: Emphasis on Tough Games by Matthew Janda. It's super good so far. His last book read like a textbook and was tough to digest and get through. But this one is super accessible and fun to read so far. Only 35 pages in though...

I just finished Joe Abercrombie's latest trilogy. Half a King, Half the World, and Half a War. I really enjoy the worlds he has created. Low fantasy grimdark with a bedrock of post apocalypse. He has a knack for naming and personality.

the_jake_1973 wrote: I just finished Joe Abercrombie's latest trilogy. Half a King, Half the World, and Half a War. I really enjoy the worlds he has created. Low fantasy grimdark with a bedrock of post apocalypse. He has a knack for naming and personality.

I read his Best Served Cold recently, and liked it better than his First Law trilogy. I don't think Abercrombie's world-building in the First Law books was all that great, but he IS great at characterization and plot. Very, very entertaining stuff, with a dark sense of humor. So few fantasy authors recognize that it's okay to be funny. Even Tolkien dropped in a joke every once in a while.

I've been reading a lot of Bernard Cornwell recently. I discovered him after watching and enjoying The Last Kingdom on Netflix. Cornwell is so fucking great. I plowed through the first four books of his Saxon Chronicles, and loved all of them. Then I tried The Winter King, which is a re-telling of the King Arthur story. It was good, but not nearly as fun as the Saxon Chronicles.

I also tried reading The Last Days of New Paris by China Mieville, but gave up after 100 pages. I LOVE China Mieville. I've read every novel the guy has written, but this one ...way too fucking weird for me.

Thursday Next: First among sequels by Jasper Fforde has been lying around the house for a couple of years now and I suddenly felt like trying it. One of my better decisions of the last months. Very funny, very smart, lots of great ideas and characters.
The protagonist is a mother and house wife (in addition to being a book-jumping, time traveling jurisfiction agent hunted by the chronoguard) which gives the thing a certain edge. Also, ghosts and vampires.
I'd love to live in a world where reality shows are called Samaritan Kidney Exchange and in order to keep running, the world's governments are regularly coming up with increasingly moronic plans to deal with the growing stupidity surplus. Wait a minute...

Finished the tenth and latest book in the Sandman Slim series, The Kill Society. The ending of book nine seemed pretty damn final, but repeated trips to and from Hell throughout the series raised an obvious question as to whether death would really be the end of anybody in this series. This latest installment included some nods to the Mad Max movies, though nearly all the action takes place outside of vehicles. The main character, who actually dislikes the nickname Sandman Slim, has never clearly been described aside from the extensive scarring, but I always picture him as a combination of Vin Diesel and Ron Perlman. Fun tough guy dilalogue interspersed with action, treachery, and general nastiness, sprawling across Earth, Hell, Heaven, and more obscure locations.

Last Days of New Paris is deliberately weird, in that every page has at least one Surrealist reference. The notes at the end helped me get the 90% of them that went past me. I have Mieville's October on the shelf, but haven't gotten to it yet.

Thursday Next is really good, and he keeps that up for a surprisingly long time. I think there's one or two that I haven't read, but I've read about four of those. Fforde's Shades of Grey is also excellent, and I wish he'd get back to that at some point. It was basically left hanging for a sequel that hasn't arrived.