What book are you reading...

Re-reading book 1 of Wheel of Time. Feels nice to revisit this world and it’s characters.
 
Steampunk said:
My opinion on RP2 is that it was only written because of the success of the first one. I can imagine the publishers insisted that Cline write a follow-up to capitalise on the success of the first. All the culture references seem to need explaining (widen the market to those who were not there at the time), the story is a repeat of the the first book, and the ending is particularly poor. One of the characters also puts Jodie Whittaker's Dr Who ahead of David Tennant's (unforgivable). There's a few other SJW tropes which date already, but it's pretty much the first book again, but without the charm.

The first book I felt was a love letter to the era, the second is for love of the money from writing a sequel to a hit book. It has no soul.
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Damning report of the book, I will give it a read and set expectations lower as I loved the first one.
 
Grey M@a said:
Damning report of the book, I will give it a read and set expectations lower as I loved the first one.
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I really liked the first book as I was an eighties teenager, and although it's not a great work of art, it's a lot of fun, and somehow greater than the sum of it's parts. The follow-up just seems to not work, and even though it has the same recipe, it just doesn't seem to hang together into an enjoyable whole.
 
Thought I'd finished the Chronicles of the Black Company by Glen Cook with the end of Soldiers Live - only to find there is a 'final' novel planned - A Pitiless Rain. Sadly it appears to have been planned since 2000 - so probably best not to hold my breath...

Overall, an enjoyable series - although I found the later books not as engaging as the first 3. Thought I might try his Garrett P.I series next - has anyone on here read them/have an opinion?
 
Magician : Raymond E Feist

It's one the few books I have read multiple times. I would love it to be turned into series. Films are so yesterday (unless of course the film is 3hrs long)
 
Finished the old mans war series, some great ideas and execution in there but it does go off track a little at points & Zoe's tail is just annoying.

Just started Steven Kings The Stand, cause why the hell not. Well, mostly because its seriously depressing in the current climate, not the best bedtime reading really.
 
I've decided to reread the main Jack Ryan sequence written by Tom Clancy. I'm doing them in internal chronological order excluding the John Clark prequel. So far I've done Patriot Games and Hunt for Red October, both of which are brilliant great technical details brought together with grounded spy stuff, fanciful but not Matt Reilly levels fantastic thriller. Now on Cardinal of the Kremlin which technically has aged the worst because the strategic defense initiative never panned out but otherwise it's great so far.
 
I’m reading “Company Aytch”, by Sam Watkins for about the third time.
Watkins was a Confederate private soldier in the U.S. Civil War, who served in Company H. First Tennessee Regiment from 1861 to 1865, until his company were surrendered to Gen. Sherman in North Carolina in April that year.
He went through major battles, like Shiloh, Chattanooga, and Nashville, and his brother David served in the First Tennessee Cavalry.
 
Decided to put Ready Player Two on the back burner and started reading Chernobyl Prayer: Voices from Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich. Only just started it, heavy going but fascinating so far.
 
The Rage of Dragons (The Burning Book 1) By Evan Winter

So, Friday had some free time and went searching for a new book to read. Was looking for good fantasy novel. An author in the same vein as David Gemmell. I just happened to check the Kindle store on Amazon before doing any series looking and saw The Rage of Dragons as a recommended book. Tried a sample, loved it, bought it and finished the book by Sunday evening.

Good world building, interesting use of Magic and Dragons. Are there flaws, sure, but nothing that detracted from the book for me.
 
Had a thought today. How far do you go with a new book before giving up on it? A few chapters? 50 pages?

I think for me, I need a hook or something exciting or unusual to happen in the first few chapters to keep me going, or if you can 'see' that it's going somewhere interesting and it's just setting the scene perhaps.
On the odd occasion, writing style can really put me off though. Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian was too much for me, despite reading The Road.

One of my favourite books/series, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I found really arduous for the first 100 pages with my first read so I really pushed myself to continue in that case and it paid off.
 
I really don't give up with books, it takes something special to make me give up a book or series. Only one I've given up on in recent times is Peter Brett because of the weird rape stuff.
 
Shamikebab said:
I really don't give up with books, it takes something special to make me give up a book or series. Only one I've given up on in recent times is Peter Brett because of the weird rape stuff.
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Yeah that wasn't the best. I'd forgotten most of that with having read it a few years back, but it's not pleasant.

Only one I've given up on in recent memory is some dodgy crime novel called The Surgeon by Tess Gerritsen. I thought it would be cheesy, but god, it was bad. Actually, Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn too, I just found it pretty boring and the young girl stuff was a bit... iffy. The TV series wasn't much better.
 
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