Topic: Books You're Currently Reading?

@FuriousMachine
Haha. Think we've been down this innuendo route with PKD before we I'm sure somebody once alluded that they inherited their love of Dick from their mother. Ahem.

Well I think I'll certainly have to check out Altered Carbon at some stage then. Just that my to read list is becoming by a bit bloated... A booklog if you will.

Edit: And a bit more digging it seems I had already read one of the Maddaddam book, Oryx and Crake, and I didn't remember anything Cyberpunk about that. Again could be my memory, so I re-checked the list it was on and it says post-cyberpunk, as in set in the world where that society has fallen and the world is rebuilding. So that maybe not a good example to go to.

I also just thought of Ready Player One by Ernest Cline which would probably belong. But more of a YA thing in my opinion but I enjoyed it due to the nerd culture 70/80s references. And very little in common with the film adaptation which I didn't like so much.

I've read 200 pages of Bleak House now, I'm a fifth of the way through the boo, and while the plot seems complex, with many characters and threads to follow, I think I am following the 'gist' of it and there is certainly plenty of intrigue a foot, I have only ever read Little Dorrit by him, apart from this one, which I also enjoyed, and am looking forward to moving onto David Copperfield ,next.

@sorteddan Embrace the booklog, my friend! It is unavoidable 😉 Mine currently stands at 1094 books, so I should be through it in no time 😝(I am hereby appropriating the word "booklog", BTW; hope you don't mind)

MaddAddam still looks interesting, so it stays on said booklog.

I also liked the Ready Player One novel, but couldn't stand the adaptation and the latter almost managed to tarnish my perception of the former. Did you read the sequel? If so, is it as good? I've yet to read it as I sort of feel it will be awful, but that is probably the taint of the movie bleeding through and poisoning my mind.

And that PKD innuendo made me properly LOL! Excellent stuff!

Been off my schedule/rhythm these last few weeks, which the summer months usually do, so my time spent reading has been a bit less than normal.

I finished Michael Connelly's The Waiting a little while back. It is the latest Ballard/Bosch novel, and it is a bit weird as this is the first time since I started reading these books nine years ago that there isn't an unread one waiting on my to-read list. Strange feeling.
Anyway, this was another rock solid Ballard/Bosch (x2) novel. I was a bit wary when the Black Dahlia case became a part of the story, but I needn't have worried, it was deftly handled and came with a satisfying conclusion, in my opinion.

I've also read the penultimate Murderbot novella, Fugitive Telemetry, which was another great Murderbot novella, where our favourite SecUnit gets embroiled in a murder mystery. It doesn't reach the highs of the best entries in the series as none of the new characters (human or otherwise) are quite as memorable as previous favourites (Miki is sorely missed). Still very enjoyable, though

I am currently finishing up my sojourn in the Murderbot universe with the (long) novella/(short) novel System Collapse and I'm enjoying it so far.

@FuriousMachine
We seem to be in a similar mind over some things then. No I avoided Ready Player Two as I also thought it wouldn't live up to the first and probably also mainly thought that the to how bad the film was, in my opinion.

Oh and I only have a booking of 30 or 40 or so so nothing compared to your library. It's just that I don't spend as much time reading as I once did, or probably should, or wish I did so the books I buy literally just go on the to read shelf until I pick one up that I'm in the mood for.

@sorteddan Well, I guess I should clarify that I haven't actually purchased any of the 1094 titles yet, which is why the list is able to grow so long. I typically don't buy a novel until it's its turn (I've previously made the mistake of buying trilogies where I ended up hating the first book, so stopped doing that). As I almost exclusively read digitally, there really is no need to plan my purchases
(oh, and the list is now 1093! Getting there!)

@FuriousMachine @sorteddan I thought Oryx and Crake was such a good book but found the two sequels a little disappointing. It's the only stuff I've read by Attwood so I should probably check out more of her work.

I also really enjoyed Ready Player One when I first read it. It's not the most intellectually challenging book or anything but I enjoyed the overall concept and references, and it was just a fun and easy read.

As for myself, I've just finished reading Juice by Tim Winton who is another author I haven't read anything also by before. This sounds like something a bit different from him and came highly recommended from a few people. It's in the "cli-fi" genre (a term I hadn't heard before looking stuff up about the book after finishing it) and one I really enjoyed with the story following one man's survival in a semi-post apocalyptic Australia set generations after climate change has ravaged the world. There's a lot more to it than that but I didn't know anything else going into it but really enjoyed the book.

@FuriousMachine I abandoned Bleak House by Charles Dickens, as I found it, upon reflection ,to be similar to most of what I have read by him, and it was admittedly a bit silly of me to expect otherwise, but, yes, it is very drab, gray, bland and boring. I would advise you, from my personal opinion as someone who has read a lot, to avoid his work, as celebrated as an English author, as he is, and steer you more towards Middlemarch by George Eliot, if you want a decent English classic, as that work is far superior.

I am now reading Sekiro: The Second Life of Souls by Ludovic Castro, which is far more enjoyable, but I wouldn't recommend that one to you, either, Furious, as someone who has no intention of playing the game due to your aforementioned dislike of it's core mechanics!

How is your Murderbot reading going?

@Thrillho It is all too often that the sequels don't live up to the first novel in a series, but fortunately, I've rarely experienced that the dip in quality is severe enough to not merit the read.
Juice sounds interesting; added it to my list

@BlAcK_Sw0rDsMaN I've reached the end of Murderbot's adventures for now, but I'm sure he's out there right now having more adventures just waiting to be published 😉
I'll be posting my thoughts on that together with my thoughts on the novel I'm currently reading, which is a surprisingly creepy horror story, later on.

I've added Middlemarch to my classics project and I think I will still get in one or two of Dickens' most known tales in there, too. I've never read him and I want to give it a try, even if it may end up being a dud. Not sure which yet, though. Probably A Christmas Carol or, more likely, Oliver Twist (I'm quite familiar with "Carol", but only somewhat familiar with "Twist", so that is the one I am most interested in).

@FuriousMachine Yeah, I can’t think that I’ve read a huge number of trilogies but it’s normally the way. I’m just onto the third book in Alastair Reynolds’ “Revenger” trilogy and hoping for good things.

I read his “Revelation Space” trilogy with the first book being incredible but diminishing returns for the others (although still good).

@Thrillho I have Revelation Space on my reading list, so glad to hear that it's good! And if I like it, I'll be sure to add Revenger as well

@Thrillho
Glad to hear your opinion, thanks. I was previously unaware that it (O&C) was part of a trilogy and you have, for the time being anyway, convinced me not to bother seeking out than others.

Ernest Clibe just be wondering how everybody read his first book and enjoyed it but nobody got even bothered with the sequel!

I recently finished System Collapse, the seventh and most recent entry in Martha Wells' "Murderbot Diaries". Length-wise, this one straddles the line between novella and novel and I find that the Murderbot books work best when they clock in at under 200-250 pages. This was a great entry in the series! I always enjoy them more when Murderbot has other bots with messed up personalities to bounce off of and with this one we get a lot of interactions with ART (and offshoots) that are at times quite priceless.
Here's hoping the next one isn't too far off! Five stars.

And just now I finished Incidents Around the House by Josh Malerman. This novel, told from the perspective of a little girl haunted by an entity she calls "Other Mommy", was my first encounter with the author, but it will definitely not be the last. It was delightfully creepy and really drew me in, which doesn't really happen that often with stories of this kind. I felt I was living with Bela, her parents and "Other Mommy" and shared their dread of what was happening to them. I really loved this one and even though I felt the finale dragged on a tiny bit, it's an easy five stars for me.

Next up is The Long Walk by Stephen King (as Richard Bachman) and I should be done with it in time for the adaption that drops ilater in September

@sorteddan It's so bad you've even forgotten his name

I think the other problem from Cline was that he had a big in-between the two "Ready" books (Armada?) that got panned by the critics.

@FuriousMachine Those two Reynolds series are quite different but enjoyable in different ways. The Revelation Space series are proper "hard sci-fi" and each book has three parallel stories that all come together. Whereas the Revenger ones are classed as young adult books in some places, although not by Reynolds himself. I think it seems to mainly be because the main protagonists are teenage girls which some people seem to be a bit sniffy about. But the two best words to really describe the series are Space Pirates!

@Thrillho I'm on board for Space Pirates! I don't mind YA or teenage girl protagonists, so that won't be a problem. I read the Mirador series by Dan Wells earlier this year and while I thought it was only OK, that was down to the books feeling too "safe" or, rather, there was never any believable peril for anyone, I felt. The protagonists were a teenage all-girl VR e-sports team and easily the best part of the series.

@Thrillho
Hmmm. My autocorrect has gone a bit weird. It now invents new words!
Think I read Armada and yeah, it was pretty forgettable and underwhelming. I think it started well but didn't really build on it.

@sorteddan When I read the synopsis and fact it was full of pop culture references it made me think that Cline certainly knows the niche he’s trying to fill in the literary world

@FuriousMachine That is certainly a unique role for a set of protagonists in a book!

@Thrillho Indeed! And they are a well-written fun bunch, too. The novels are set in 2050 and the VR setup is quite similar to Cline's in Ready Player One, actually. The setting and characters were interesting enough to easily get me through the books and the stories weren't all that bad, either, but you quickly realise that nothing bad will happen to anyone in the series whenever there is danger, so the sense of danger and suspense completely evaporates.
Looking at my previous comment, I feel I came off a bit too harsh, so I felt like elaborating. I did, after all, award them three and four (out of five) stars in my reviews, which corresponds to "good" and "very good" in my rating scale

I didn't finish the Sekiro book, by Ludovic Castro, but I did start, and am now about halfway through, Nature Matters: Vital Poems from the Global Majority ,edited by Mona Arshi and Karen McCarthy Woolf, which is a series of poems, all centred around nature, exclusively by BAME writers. It's very good so far, and, needless to say, thematically focuses on issues with regard to race, gender and identity in addition to the central 'nature' theme.