Topic: Books You're Currently Reading?

@Elodin Have it on my wishlist, but haven't pulled the trigger yet. Heard many good things! The same can be said of Murderbot Diaries, as well (also on my reading list). Glad to hear both are worth the time

Finished the rather short The Bride Wore Black by Cornell Woolrich, a classic pulp noir from the 40s. I had never heard of this book or its author until it was mentioned in a Stephen King novel I recently read, and I am glad I decided to check it out. The prose can be a bit challenging due to idioms and expressions used at the time that may be unfamiliar, but anyone who's seen old gangster movies should be fine. Excellent stuff, four stars.

More good stuff from William Gibson's Burning Chrome collection of novellas and short stories, too. The latest I read, Hinterlands, was a very intriguing novella exploring the negative effects of encountering a superior civilization on the human mind and the lengths we'll go in order to further our understanding of the universe. Would have loved a full length novel of this one, as it was ripe with potential. Five stars.

And now, back to more contemporary crime fiction with another Harry Bosch novel, Michael Connelly's Two Kinds of Truth

@FuriousMachine Thanks for the info on the Bride Wore Black, Adding to my to read
Ist, sounds interesting. Also the Mention of Hinterlands reminded me of Dragon Age inquisition. What a slog that was. I enjoyed the rest of the game though.

@Elodin I've started DA:I twice and never managed to finish it. My first attempt ended some time after I reached the second hub, if memory serves (where I could romance the Spanish-looking beauty... Isabella?). Will give it a third, strong effort at one point, but my cooling off of Veilguard has pushed that project a bit down the list. When I get around to it, though, I will try to approach it with a non-completionist mindset, trying to get through the missions/quests with some story meat on them and ignoring as much of the mindless busywork as feasible.

I was planning on posting last night, but ended up reading a little later than planned. January was a good month for the start of my 2025 reading. I started off light with The Ghost Cat, initially it was to be my final book of 2024, but that changed. After that I read Impossible Monsters. A book about the original culture war, Dinosaurs Vs Religion, I've always loved Dinosaurs and find Theology fascinating, even though not religious.

Next up was Deluxe Saga book 1 as I'm behind, so doing a reread to catch up. Then after that Fullmetal Alchemist: Fullmetal edition volume 12 loved both of those. Also read Bowling with Corpses by Mike Mignola, I can't get enough of what that man does!

I technically shouldn't be posting about those last 3 in this particular forum but it's still reading.

My final book for January was Empire of the Damned. I cannot tell you all how brilliant this series is. Book 3 which is the final book in the series can't come soon enough (the back end of this year, hopefully.) A top contender for an all time favourite trilogy if he nails the 3rd book. Some epic stuff is going to go down in that one, Can't wait. Highly recommend books 1&2.

My first book of February is the second Star Wars: New Jedi order books. Lots of fun and better than what Disney is putting out there imo!

@MightyDemon82 Empire of the damed is fantastic! I wholeheartedly agree! Jay Kristoff is a great writer.

They're comic books, aren't they? The word "book" is right there in the name, so I vote they are definitely within the parameters of this forum

"Impossible Monsters" added to reading list, that one looks really interesting!
And when we're closing in on the release date of the final "Empire of the vampire" book, I'll kick those up to the top of my queue, as I'm really curious about them

Fiction: “Wool” by Hugh Howey. I’d recently finished watching the TV adaptation, Silo. Brilliant show and I’m loving the book. Highly recommend.

Non-fiction: “The Meaning of Geese” by Nick Acheson. Lovely account of the author’s travels around Norfolk, UK to follow our native geese and migrant birds during the pandemic. Good read for anyone who loves geese or nature in general.

@Kisrah I recommend reading the two other books in the Silo series as well. While the quality dips a little bit in book 2, IMO, they are still good and worthwhile reads for those who enjoyed the first one

This weekend I have finished Star Wars NJO: Darktide II Ruin.

Got through some smaller books also which were The Wood at Midwinter by Sussana Clarke. A lovely fairy tail type short story with fantastic illustrations. H.G. Wells The Time Machine and The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery.

Tonight I will start The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells. It's also nice and short so probably finish it before I head to bed.

After those I have Klara & the Sun, The Buried Giant and a biography on Rasputin lined up.

@Kisrah Those are on my TBR list.

@FuriousMachine Sound good to me I will keep letting you all know what Comics/manga I've read in here along with my other books!

@MightyDemon82 Excellent, I love to get some recommendations in that area as well, even if there's already a backlog.
I'm also very interested to hear what you think of "Klara & the Sun" when you're done with it. I have it slotted among the next 10 books on my reading list, so I should be getting to it some time later this year

Finished Two Kinds of Truth by Michael Connelly, another great Harry Bosch novel. This one covers two cases and while one of them was used in a season of the tv show, I still found it very compelling on the page. Also, this novel has an incredibly satisfying courtroom resolution, courtesy of a guest appearance from Mickey Haller a.k.a. The Lincoln Lawyer. Four stars.

The latest short story I've read from William Gibson's Burning Chrome collection is called Red Star, Winter Orbit, co-written by Bruce Sterling.
Interesting, but not the best of the collection, about the first man on Mars, colonel Korolev, who is stuck aboard a failed Soviet orbital station. Three stars.

Now it's back to classic Dean Koontz novels again, and Watchers is the next one out. I read this once back in the day, but can only vaguely remember a golden retriever being chased by a monster and a movie adaptation starring Marc Singer, of "V" fame. Might have to track that one down after having re-read the novel

I just learned something very fascinating and that is that the Icelandic translation of "Bram Stoker's Dracula" has been translated to English.

"Now hang on just a minute, Mr Machine, why would there be a need to translate a book from Icelandic to English when the original book was written in English?", I hear you ask.

Apparently, when the book was translated into Icelandic in 1901 by Valdimar Ásmundsson, he felt that the story needed something more, so he added characters and re-worked the plot, turning it into something that is, according to the blurb, "shorter, punchier, more erotic, and perhaps even more suspenseful than Stoker’s Dracula"

This re-worked version has been translated back into English, is called Powers of Darkness and is now added very high up on my to-read list!

Makes me wonder if this has happened to other works and even if there are re-writes like this that remain undiscovered. Fascinating

@FuriousMachine Sounds like a truly thrilling read. Added Powers of Darkness to my to-read list as well, just now. Hopefully we can discuss it at length with virtual coffee and virtual scotch by a virtual fireplace on a moonlit winter's evening, with plenty of beautiful virtual vampiric women, sprawled at our feet, of course. 😉

@BlAcK_Sw0rDsMaN That, good sir, sounds like an excellent idea! I must admit that I have not been able to shake the adolescent fascination with "the brides", as it were, that I've had since first encountering Dracula & co in my teens, so they would fit right in as far as I'm concerned Coffee and scotch is also among my real life vices, so I'm all in with this plan.

Well, I finished Middlemarch by George Eliot today and I have to say it was a breathtaking read. 785 pages but it was worth it, much better than Moby-Dick in my opinion, but then again ,that's an apples and oranges kind of thing, now, I'm just preparing to move on to the next great work of World Literature.

As an addendum, I will just say that Eliot's work gets much darker and goes much harder towards the end than a lot of her contemporary writers did, fully impressed.

Edit: Just started Rock, Paper, Scissors and Other Stories by Maxim Osipov and it's amazing so far. Apparently the contemporary Russian literary answer to Chekhov.

@FuriousMachine Oh yeah, I’ll be following up with those. I picked up the trilogy on Kindle, which includes Shift and Dust too.

I think I'd describe Osipov's Short Stories as the definitive Chekhovian literature, or 'Chekhovlikes', if you will ,outside of Chekhov's work, itself.

Finished Maxim Osipov's Rock, Paper, Scissors and Other Stories and found it to be a thoroughly enjoyable read. A sort of contemporary Chekhovian-look into life in Russian social circles in the early 00's. I'd highly recommend it, especially for someone whose interested in Classic Russian writers like Tolstoy, Chekhov and Dostoevsky but hasn't the patience to read one of those voluminous old tomes.

Following up Maxim Osipov's collection of Short Stories with a shorter work by George Eliot, Silas Marner ,it's promising so far, and looks far more digestible than Middlemarch ,at first glance. Especially considering it's about a quarter of Middlemarch 's length.