What are you reading?

[dubiousbystander]

I'm checking out Wild Cards IV: Aces Abroad. Among the many readers are some Highlander alumni, including Clancy Brown, Adrian Paul, and Richard Moll! This is my first Wild Cards book, and I have several issues with the storylines. Sometimes it's the treatment of women.

[~mj~]

Revisiting some Stephanie Plum, it's still pretty fun.

I read those, they are fun but really repetitive imo

[dubiousbystander]

I read that recently! And White Gryphon after, and then Silver Gryphon. Not bad at all, though the baddies...

[Ceridwen]

Revisiting some Stephanie Plum, it's still pretty fun.

[~mj~]

Turn Coat ~ Jim Butcher

[dubiousbystander]

I've been enjoying "All Rights Reserved", which actually is a very good book. As I'm listening to the audibook, I have no idea how well edited it is, but it's bizarrely realistic and possible, without being about women getting turned into reproductive slaves. Although that threat is held over two characters' heads in an attempt to defeat them.

In a time when words and actions are copyrighted, and nearly every action and word must be paid for, with monitors on your wrist and in your eyes, kids are allowed to speak as they please until their fifteenth birthday. Speth, when a friend commits suicide in front of her on her day, refuses to say another word, and pretty much take any action that could legally qualify as communication. Since her first paid-for words were supposed to be a speech with all kinds of phrases to her sponsors, if she speaks those words first, everything will be... okay. But she won't. Several other people start to follow her lead.

Speth's parents were taken from them and indentured owing to an ancestor having supposedly pirated music. I say supposedly, because there's a nagging suspicion that it may be fabricated. Her sister supports the family as best she can, and companies sponsor her because of her striking resemblance to a popular actress. Except that SPOILERit turns out the popular actress does not exist, and is a computer-generated facsimile... of her sister! Bastards.

Speth is recruited by a special crew of Placers, people whose job is to secretly put products in consumers' homes in the best way possible to lure them to buy.

Disasters strike as the lawyer and his people who control society try to get Speth under their influence. Amongst other things, they take her sister. SPOILERThey murder her brother.

Things come to a head in a very high-paced confrontation. I don't know how it will end yet. I'm 22 minutes to the end.

[Colleengael]

If there were words and you enjoyed reading them then yes it counts.

[~mj~]

I just read a needlework blog, does that count?

[dubiousbystander]

Just finished A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller. It was good. The ending was... interesting.

[~mj~]

A Nun in the Closet ~ Dorothy Gilman

[dubiousbystander]

Due to a fellow Highlander fan, I was introduced to the Casca series. The Eternal Mercenary created by Barry Sadler. The series books are currently being written by a gentleman named Tony Roberts. He's been writing them since 2005. It's largely a good series. I'm still very early in it and could see why, from the first, some people believe it was the inspiration for Widen's Highlander. https://casca.net/shop/12-casca-books

[dubiousbystander]

Presently enjoying The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan!

[BellaHamilton]

I am reading articles about art like https://artscolumbia.org/essays/what...t-essay-42533/

[dubiousbystander]

Oh! I forgot! I'm also listening to Dracula (Blackstone Edition) narrated by Robert Whitfield. It's a good listen!

[dubiousbystander]

Now reading the ebook for The Saga of Larten Crepsley 1: Birth of a Killer.
Listening to the audiobook for The Saga of Darren Shan 11: Lord of the Shadows

[Rioghan]

The rubber band ~ Rex Stout

[TheWolfEmperor]

I just downloaded a new book by the team that wrote Spy the Lie. If you're writing a mystery novel and you want to make your "interrogation" scenes seem a lot more realistic, this book is great. Spy the Lie is the first one and it goes over the various ways that people try to deceive you. And Get The Truth is the follow up book that goes into detail about how to get someone to spill the beans when they really don't want to.

[Ceridwen]

Privateer by by Weis an Krammes. The second in a series that is apparently based in a world previously described in a a novel I never read. Their assumption that the reader has read it makes getting a grip on the world a little slippery.

[dubiousbystander]

I am now enjoying The Devil is Not Mocked & Other Warnings: Selected Stories of Manly Wade Wellman (Volume 2). Between ebooks, audiobooks, and books, I tend to be "reading" several things at a time. Thus I am also enjoying Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and War of the Worlds: Goliath by Adam J. Whitlatch.

[Kat]

And now I'm onto the 2nd in an E.J. Copperman's cozy mystery "Edited Out". I really should have entered my local library's Summer Reading Contest. Though, having only found out about it in late July, didn't seem like I'd have much of a chance winning anything.

[dubiousbystander]

I'm reading The Third Cry to Legba and Other Invocations : The Selected Stories of Manly Wade Wellman (Vol. 1). A long time ago, I read a few of his Silver John books. This is all new to me. I enjoy his writing.

[Kat]

Just finished "The Pope of Palm Beach" by Tim Dorsey. Serge is a rather strange fellow. Now I'm starting Murder Past Due by Miranda James. I'll see how she does, this is the first of her series I've read.

[~mj~]

In Search of England by H.V.Morton

[dubiousbystander]

I am listening to Sleeping Beauties, by Stephen King. About halfway through now, and gritting my teeth in a kind of fury. "I stand for all women!" By terrorizing them, making them completely helpless, etc etc etc. Don't seem to be the best audience for this book, but at least it's not hard to suffer through the audiobook to find out if I can believe how he ends it.

[Cyrus The Great]

In the last few months, I have been re-reading from my collection of Larry Niven books. I am currently reading "World of Ptavvs". It is told from several different perspectives. One is that of an ET who has been in stasis for two billion years who suddenly finds himself awake among humans somewhere in the near future. The ET is a Thrint, whose species has the power to control the minds of all other creatures, including, unfortunately, most humans. Other perspectives are human characters. Typical of Larry Niven, it is a richly imagined and entertaining story.