Just finished The Empire of Gold by S. A. Chakraborty, the final book in The Daevabad Trilogy. I loved the series, a couple more series like this, and I would’ve to add Chakraborty to my favourite authors list.
Haven’t started anything yet, may go with next book in Elly Griffiths’ Dr. Ruth Galloway mystery. They are quick and easy to read, and work as good palette cleanser.
So, what have you been reading or listening lately?
- Finished Sandra Newman’s Julia - retelling Orwell’s 1984 from this character’s perspective, and I ended up re-reading the Orwell original in parallel with it. Julia adds a great deal of texture and additional layers to the original, whilst staying extremely faithful to it at least for the first half. In the third quarter, Newman takes the plot in some new directions that I can imagine some purists may object to insofar as they could be seen as diluting Orwell’s message. However, this is still entirely consistent and, once this extention has taken place Newman concludes her tale in a way that feels absolutely true to Orwell’s style. Overall, very impressive.
- Currently reading T. Kingfisher’s Nettle & Bone. I have read a couple of this author’s other books and found them engaging and enjoyable, if rather too similar to each other, so had some idea what to expect here. In fact this is surprisingly different to either of the others. Still fairly engaging, but the deliberate ‘fairy tale’ setting of this one seems a bit inconsistently applied and is leaving me rather distant from the world of the book. I appreciate that this is not the aim of the tale, but more texture and world building would keep me more involved. At the two-thirds point things are dragging a bit. However, I am enjoying it in general and it makes its points clearly enough.
First, I have been watching Sienfield, and whenever I see Newman mentioned, my brain goes “Hello, Newman” in Jerry Sienfield’s voice. I think it has “ruined” the name Newman for me. 😀
Julia sounds interesting, I’ll probably just re-read 1984 before reading it though, reading in Parallel rarely works for me.
Almost done with Forsyth’s The Dogs of War, good book.
Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline
How are you liking it? I loved the first one, but have heard the second one isn’t as good.
It’s actually better than I expected, but I agree that the first one is better.
Walkaway by Cory Doctorow. Half way through and it’s fun. I normally read nonfiction so it’s been a nice change of pace.
The most recent Ant-Man movie had a subplot where Scott Lang had written a book called Look Out For The Little Guy. Marvel actually released it and so I read that. Other than a few moments that were a bit too one the nose as being references to moments in the movies, it was a pretty enjoyable read.
Beyond that, I had paused The Aeronaut’s Windlass by Jim Butcher to read the Ant-Man book, and I should have that finished very soon and on to the novella Warriorborn to get ready for the new book out on the 7th. That said, I’ll probably read Travis Baldree’s Bookshops and Bonedust first since it comes out the same day.
How are you liking Cinder Spires?
Have you read Legends and Lattes? If yes, how did you like it?
Legends and Lattes is great. It’s a fun diversion that works well as a refresher when life is more distracting but you want to keep up a reading habit or when you’ve just gotten off some heavier books.
I’ve now finished the first book and the novella for Cinder Spires. It’s more of an ensemble book and the characters are interesting. But like many ensembles it be a bit frustrating when it jumps between characters at chapters. But the chapters are short.
