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Happy New Year all, and let's hope that 2022 is better than 2021 😀

Happy New Year, Tony, and indeed let's hope so!

Still got another five and half hours of the old year to go, and by now most of Europe has already switched over too, let alone Australia whose fireworks were on TV when I got up this morning :)

Happy New Year!

The minutes to midnight here in the UK�

The minutes to midnight here in the UK�

Or even ten minutes...

Five minutes...

Five minutes...

HAPPY NEW YEAR☺☺

HAPPY NEW YEAR☺☺

Happy new year!

Tony wrote: "Happy New Year all, and let's hope that 2022 is better than 2021 😀"

Ditto. Happy New Year. 🙂�🌷�🎈

Just finished "The Fifth Season" by N. K. Jemisin. Great world-building.

A couple of days ago I finished "Iron Walls: A Burning Embers Dystopian Anthology". Dystopian fantasy/sci-fi of all types. One of my own stories is in there, but I hadn't read the others until now.

And so starts my Science Fiction themed year (though I plan to mix up with some mystery, historical and of course fantasy). And to get things started, I'll be beginning with:

Dune by Frank Herbert

This is a re-read of the first 6 books by Frank, and will follow up with the million or so books by his son Brian. To achieve that in one year I'll need to read about two Dune books a month.

Now, I get the pleasure of poking through my pile of nearly 300 potential books to pick from and decide what else I'll tackle at the start of this year...ones that are large hardcovers will get priority (if I don't like one it will free up the most space on my overloaded shelves!) I've also got some movies on my PVR waiting for me to read the books first so Scott's Ender and Asimov's Robot stories are going on my list. I can also catch up on some group reads I missed :) And don't forget finishing up series I've already started!

Also gotta figure out what will go in my Bingo slots...

Gemini Warrior by J.D. Cowan

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!!

The first book I finished for the new year was very blah: Death Beach. You'd think with such a cheerful title that it would have been exciting, but it was fair at best. I then tried two separate samples of fantasy books, and neither one did a thing for me. So I went rooting around in my kindle library and decided to re-read some David Gemmell, starting with Lord of the Silver Bow.

Completed:
text:


Audible:

==========================================
Authors:
Jabari Asim, Becky Chambers, J.S. Dewes, Anthony Doerr, Lindsay Ellis, Louise Erdrich, Jessie Greengrass, Nathan Harris, Alix E. Harrow, Kazuo Ishiguro, Stephen King, Nicole Kornher-Stace, K.J. Parker, Diane Setterfield, Rivers Solomon, Amor Towles, Catherynne M. Valente

Narrators:
Juliet Stevenson

The Apothecary Diaries 04 by Natsu Hyuuga

I finished the second in the Troy series, Shield of Thunder, which ended on a note of unresolved world mayhem. I am now re-reading the last in the trilogy, Fall of Kings.

The Golden Maiden and Other Folk Tales and Fairy Stories Told in Armenia by A.G. Seklemian

Almost finished reading Dune, I'm in the appendix section right now :)

BTW, anyone else notice that one of the Fremen is called "Geoff"? Its like calling a dragon "Bob" or something :o)

The other books I've been working on in parallel
- The Accidental Apprentice by Amanda Foody (freebie on rivetedlit.com)
- The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion by Margaret Killjoy (freebie from Tor.com on my eReader, started last year)
- La Grande Croisade by Bryan Perro (from a book exchange box someone in my neighbourhood set up...book 10 in a long series but so far not hard to figure out what's going on)

The Untold Story by Genevieve Cogman

Finished Dune including the appendix. Also finished The Lamb will Slaughter the Lion. I was just thinking how Dune was like LotR, both have epic worldbuilding over a period of millennia, they both required appendices to fill in the blanks, there is a lot of new language in Dune though of course nothing like the elven language in LotR, they both had singing (didn't remember that about Dune though I knew Halleck was a musician). And in both cases the sons continued where the fathers left off, though one only published his father's work while the other went ahead and did new writings, but I have to assume Herbert must have had some extensive notes.

Now to go from Herbert to Asimov with The Complete Robot by Isaac Asimov

And on my ereader continuing the third of the Tor novella four-pack with Passing Strange by Ellen Klages

I finished Farilane and have been reading Fog Season (gaslight fantasy) and two John Scalzi books, The Android's Dream and The Human Division.

MOAR! Monsters Know What They're Doing by Keith Ammann

Lucky you, Audrey!!!! Without giving anything away, how was Farilane? I'm looking forward to it!

Michelle wrote: "Lucky you, Audrey!!!! Without giving anything away, how was Farilane? I'm looking forward to it!"

Very good, and the ending destroyed me emotionally.

I have finished my first book for the year - Wild Kingdoms, the second book in the Florin and Lorenzo series. Fairly similar in style to the first.

Am re-reading Dune ...after a few decades.
I gave my original copy away so had to start new but not surprisingly it's not hard to buy. Was worried that the language would seem dated but I am well into it. I warmed up by re-watching David Lynch's film (much slated but also much cut by producers) with its way over the top Harkonnens (Ho-ho). Not been able to see new film yet as I am a frequently-locked-in old lady in rural Cornwall.
I also read Sheri S Tepper's The Fresco (December, sorry). I was a bit disappointed - not in the writing as such but its kind of manifesto/black&white quality. Aliens come to earth and speak to struggling but virtuous woman whose life changes miraculously as does everybody's.
Still ... a bit of revenge is sweet, there's humour, it could almost be seen as a kind of Alien "It's a Wonderful Life". Ho-ho-ho!

Finally got around to picking up K G's book 'Awakened I'm Only Dreaming of Dragons,' which I hope to start later. � It looks like a fascinating premise and should be a good read. �

Reading Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, lots of science in this Science Fiction.

Garyjn wrote: "Reading Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, lots of science in this Science Fiction."

That was so fun.

Currently reading Michael Moorcock's "The Jewel in the Skull," the first Hawkmoon novel.

Lyndon that post gave me a sudden burst of nostalgia for all the connected Moorcock books... Hawkmoon, Corum, Elric etc, which I first read way back in 1900 and can't quite remember. As a teen, I used to paint pictures based on the books... It all seems along time ago... I'm feeling old now and going for a lie down.☺☺

Robin, I remember that! We were in that cave on the hill, remember?

Michelle wrote: "Robin, I remember that! We were in that cave on the hill, remember?"

Oh yes, the one with all the pictures of bison and antelopes on the walls. It made my pictures stand out a bit. Quite a bit of eye rolling ensued from the other cave folk... :-)

Robin wrote: "Michelle wrote: "Robin, I remember that! We were in that cave on the hill, remember?"

Oh yes, the one with all the pictures of bison and antelopes on the walls. It made my pictures stand out a bit..."

They were just jealous. You were much better at your drawings than they were :)

Oh, that guy who just used to do the hand prints... He was so proud of them. I tried not to laugh when he could see me... 'nice hand prints Ugg! Keep it up dude. Had you thought about trying footprints?'

:)

Robin wrote: "Lyndon that post gave me a sudden burst of nostalgia for all the connected Moorcock books... Hawkmoon, Corum, Elric etc, which I first read way back in 1900 and can't quite remember. As a teen, I u..."

The mention of Michael Moorcock’s books bought back fond memories for me also. I read them in the 70’s as a young boy.

I initially found a copy of The Hobbit in my school cafeteria. It was a required book for some classes and I’d always see a few lying around. One day, out of boredom I picked one up and that, as they say, was that.

I devoured it and promptly went through the libraries of New York trying to find the LOTR trilogy. This was the 70’s and it didn’t have the large appeal it does today. Only a couple of branches had the books and the few that did, didn’t have many and they were often checked out.

Once I was done with those, I spent the rest of my youth scouring library branches and bookstores for fantasy books in the same vein. That’s how I found Elric.

I still remember searching whenever I’d visit a bookstore, trying to find the next book in the series. It wasn’t like today where you can get almost any book delivered to your door. In those days you had to physically track and hunt them down like beasts in the literary wild.

Sometimes I’d find a copy of Elric or Hawkmoon out of order and I’d put it aside, like a treasure, to be devoured once I had found and read the prior book or books in the collection.

I was eventually able to complete and read Elric and Hawkmoon (and oh, what a glorious feeling that was back then) but the other Champion books were much too hard for a young boy to find. It wasn’t until the 2000’s that I began seeing them widely available (with the advent of the internet and Amazon etc.)

To this day, I have not read all of them � due to the usual time constraints of adulthood and a plethora of books to read now. But one day�

As for what I’m reading this month:

Berlin Game by Len Deighton. A cold war spy thriller, one of my favorite series by one of my favorite authors.

Before They Are Hanged by Joe Abercrombie. I’d started and stopped this series a few times over the years. I recently read some of his later books in the same world and enjoyed them much better. So, I figured I should finish the first trilogy so I could have a fuller understanding of the world and prior events and appreciate the later books even more.

Lord of the Silver Bow by David Gemmell. This one has been in my pile for quite a while. I started the Drenai book but didn’t quite take to it and never found time to return. After seeing the Troy book mentioned in this thread, I pulled it out of the pile and started it, and am enjoying it.

Lord of the Silver Bow is very good, Bill.

Bill wrote: "Robin wrote: "Lyndon that post gave me a sudden burst of nostalgia for all the connected Moorcock books... Hawkmoon, Corum, Elric etc, which I first read way back in 1900 and can't quite remember. ..."

Bill, this makes me even more nostalgic. :-) I started picking up the Moorcock Eternal Champions books in my late teens in the library as and when I could and mostly out of sequence just as you described. I was lucky though, because most of them were reissued in paperback here in the UK in the mid 70s. I was working by then and was able to pick up loads of them and fill in the blanks. I still have them, though I haven't opened them in a long time. I just looked at them on the shelf and was surprised how slim the volumes are... If anyone were to write such a series now, it would be fully expected that each book should be a doorstop sized blockbuster. Have fantasy books got better for generally getting bigger? I don't know that they have... :-)

Back when Amazon was all books, I got some out-of-print sequels I'd been looking for. They'd track down books for you.

I finished The Android's Dream and am focusing on The Human Division -- just a coincidence that they're both Scalzi books -- and I may start Binti at the same time.

I've always wanted to read the Elric books, just haven't gotten around to them yet!

For now still working on Asimov's robot stories (halfway through 600+ pages worth) and enjoying them. I get a little kick when he mentions what year the story is taking place in, like 1998 or 2005, and then compare his speculations to what actually came about. Most of the stories are humorous but each has a specific idea explored that makes you think.

Robin wrote: "Have fantasy books got better for generally getting bigger? I don't know that they have... "

No, of course not. Short but sweet is definitely a positive, and also easier to hold, some of those monster hardcovers I can't read for long periods of time, not because they aren't good, but because my arms feel like they are going to fall off. Of course LotR was supposed to be one book so it's kinda a lot bigger than we think of it as three smaller ones :) Mind, it's still shorter than anything in the Song of Ice and Fire series....

And there's also a downside if the books are big (and generally that means they take time to write/publish) and the series long, readers can lose interesting. SoIaF is of course one extreme example but my sister is frustrated with Steven Erikson too, she feels it's been so long since she read the first book, when the next one comes out, she'll probably have to start over :) Maybe good thing I haven't started it yet, it's a pretty daunting series indeed.

Ghost in the Lore by Jonathan Moeller

Robin wrote: Have fantasy books got better for generally getting bigger?

I think it depends. If it’s a story you really enjoy then I think bigger is better. We all would like to spend more time in worlds we love with characters we like.

But I think fantasy is a genre that just naturally lends itself to longer stories. Often, they’re not about finding a criminal or finding true love or something focused like that. Usually they’re more about worlds and empires and societies, with large casts of characters and various locations. So I think a story would naturally have to be longer in order for the author to fully tell their tale.

Finished Passing Strange. It is a historical novella set in WWII San Francisco from the POV of both LGBTQ and Asian characters. The magical aspect is very subtle, but I love the fact one of the main characters is a pulp horror magazine cover artist :) Especially after reading all those Lovecraft stories.

Now reading The Black Tides of Heaven by Neon Yang, the fourth and final book in the free Tor novella collection. It will also fill my Silkpunk BINGO slot.