Eat any good books lately Worf?

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

I tried one of the Nightside books. Maybe it's because I started in the middle of the series, but I gave up about half of the way in. Might also be that I don't like kitchen sink cosmologies and the Nightside world rules are a little bit crowded for my tastes.

[LittleRaven]

I read the first 6ish Nightside books. I liked them well enough...but I find Green runs out of road faster than, say, Butcher. I generally found the earlier books to be more enjoyable.

[Steve]

Yeah, the Greenverse is basically everything thrown together much like a US comic book setting (that is, magic and superscience and cosmic stuff all wrapped together), so I can get not enjoying that element.

I'd say that the weakest Nightside book was... crap, the one with "Uncanny" in the title, after the book with the Walking Man. But the following book, "Hard Day's Knight", is my favorite one after the big initial arc of the first six books.

The Drood series has kept a decent steam for the most part, although again Green let at least one book - "From a Drood to a Kill" - meander quite a bit. Thankfully the following two books remained pretty much on task.

[Fixer]

I finished Victory of Eagles in the Temeraire series. One of the best in there in my opinion, despite the Author's liberties with Napoleonic era British geography and population density in order to have a big battle involving London

I'm probably going to take a break from the series for a while though. Apparently the next book, Tongues of Serpents, is another Empire of Ivory affair, being almost entirely world building while lacking any real story or stakes. Empire of Ivory took a force of effort to read through and I think I need to refill the willpower bar before I attempt another.

On the science fiction side, I picked up the second of the Fear saga, Fear the Survivors on Audible. While the author is most definitely an amateur I could overlook that for the first book's entertaining X-Com style premise. Unfortunately the second book fails to capitalise on the interesting story prospects left over from the team's victory in the first book. A bio-engineered alien plague wiping out huge populations of humanity that couldn't be inoculated in time, a massive disaster forcing an evacuation of much of the US's eastern seaboard. Both of these are these are minor footnotes in a book which focuses more on politics and long winded descriptions of advanced technology.
I actually felt sorry for R.C. Bray reading this. 20 hours of professional narration on an amateurish first draft of a book.

So, my next book is the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Got it free from Amazon, and it's one of those books that every seems to own but nobody has actually read. Might be a nice palette cleanser.

[ChiggyvonRichthofen]

I'm reading some Flannery O'Connor, starting with Wise Blood.

[FaxModem1]

So, my next book is the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Got it free from Amazon, and it's one of those books that every seems to own but nobody has actually read. Might be a nice palette cleanser.

I read it a few years ago, it's a bit plodding, and unless you're heavily interested in a rich journalist taking a vacation while researching someone's family tree, the mystery is a tad dull for most of the book.

------

I just finished Gone Girl. Quite a good read. Very interesting book playing on the perception of a crime, and the reality of a crime, and how America mostly cares about the spectacle around it, and that it's mostly about handling the narrative than about the truth.

[Steve]

I'm reading more of the J.A. Jance titles I've yet to read. The good news is that Jance is good at writing characters and exploring their motivations.

The bad news is that she's good at this with all characters, including piece of shit scumbag murderers and rapists when they're the antagonists. A strength, certainly, but it clashes with me and forces me to put the book down to take the evil scumbag content in tolerable dosages.

[ChiggyvonRichthofen]

I'm taking a break from the dark and depressing Flannery O'Connor to read Blood Meridian.

[Fixer]

So, my next book is the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Got it free from Amazon, and it's one of those books that every seems to own but nobody has actually read. Might be a nice palette cleanser.

I read it a few years ago, it's a bit plodding, and unless you're heavily interested in a rich journalist taking a vacation while researching someone's family tree, the mystery is a tad dull for most of the book.

------

I just finished Gone Girl. Quite a good read. Very interesting book playing on the perception of a crime, and the reality of a crime, and how America mostly cares about the spectacle around it, and that it's mostly about handling the narrative than about the truth.

You weren't wrong about Girl with the Dragon Tatoo. I didn't have the force of will to get through to the end of that.

Picked up Expeditionary Force book 5: Zero Hour. Still loving this series. Quite funny, and makes the effort to come up with clever solutions to the endless problems the crew end up in. Annoyed slightly by the two 4th wall breaking moments. One which included the three alien clones Nicc-1701, Thex-1138 and Liv-426. Up until that point, even though there have been funny moments, they've all been played straight and in universe an this little wink at the audience just irked me.

Picked up a 40K novella called the Greater Evil based on the Tau Empire. Which I figure is worth reading for that corny name alone. After that, going to go through the Inquisitor Eisenhorn trilogy again. I've been getting back into 8th edition on the tabletop and feel like I need a universe refresher

[Admiral X]

I have recently finished reading "The Count of Monte Cristo," and it was kind of interesting given that I'd watched the anime first. It was kind of fun because I'd keep imagining the character's voices as those from the English dub of the anime. And while I think the anime is one of the closest adaptations, it was also interesting to see all the changes that were made. I mean, aside from being set in some distant future that somehow manages to closely resemble early to mid 19th century Europe, which I'm convinced was only done to have an excuse for a mech suit battle. Of course, in a lot of ways, the anime is actually much darker than the book, given how much further the count goes for his revenge in the anime, and the fates of all those involved. Let's just say a lot more people die in the anime.