wednesday reads n' things
Robert Jackson Bennett's Foundryside went on sale yesterday! I loved this book, guys, and I want you all to read it, not least because I'm planning to nominate it for Yuletide. Here's my review (at GoodReads) if you want more info.
What I've recently finished reading:
The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell. After watching the Sharpe series on TV, I read one of Cornwell's Sharpe books and found it terribly boring. So I was a little apprehensive about reading this, after watching the TV series based on these books, particularly since Uhtred is kind of 10th-century Sharpe. But I liked it a lot! Uhtred as a narrator is alternately boastful and disarmingly honest about his shortcomings, and I love the element of the story being told by adult Uhtred looking back on his childhood, the combination of the naivete of the youth as mediated by the later understanding of the grown man.
That said, this is a man's book for men, with women relegated (mostly) to their traditional roles - which is reasonable for a historical novel, and I have to say that it made Brida's complete disregard for those traditional roles all the more delicious. I also have to admit that I skimmed some of the pages and pages of painstaking description of battle. (Instead I lingered over the historical notes at the end!) But overall it was a great book and I'm looking forward to reading the next one.
What I'm reading now:
I've started listening to Before the Devil Breaks You, the third book in Libba Bray's series The Diviners. January LaVoy is a fabulous audiobook reader, and she does a wonderful job on this series.
Speaking of audiobook readers, I was saddened to learn recently that Katherine Kellgren, one of my favorites (among other things she read Monstrous Beauty which I reviewed last week) died of cancer earlier this year at the far-too-young age of 48.
What I'm reading next:
Ted Chiang's Stories of Your Life and Others finally came in at the library for me, so probably that. Except that I also picked up Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries by Kory Stamper, which my brother recommended to me, so I might start with that. Or I might read them both at the same time. Well, not at the same time, but you know what I mean!
What I'm watching now:
One more episode to go in S2 of Westworld!
What I'm watching next:
I don't know! Maybe The Terror, since
sovay recommended it, and also it's got Tobias Menzies in it.
What I'm playing now:
I know I had said I was going to play Witcher 2, but I was in a funk on Sunday afternoon and wanted to play something RIGHT AWAY, and it turned out I hadn't actually downloaded Witcher 2 yet (I bought it on gog.com), and B was using ALL THE BANDWIDTH because of a crisis having to do with getting cut off from his Dropbox account, so I fired up Dragon Age: Origins again to continue playing the DLC Leliana's Song, which I'd started a while back and got bored with. It did the job of distracting me from the funk I was in, and it also developed enough plot that I got interested in it again, so - I'm almost finished with it, I think, but I might actually go on and play one of the other "little" DLCs when I am done.
Crossposted from isis at Dreamwidth where there are
comments. | Comment at Dreamwidth
What I've recently finished reading:
The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell. After watching the Sharpe series on TV, I read one of Cornwell's Sharpe books and found it terribly boring. So I was a little apprehensive about reading this, after watching the TV series based on these books, particularly since Uhtred is kind of 10th-century Sharpe. But I liked it a lot! Uhtred as a narrator is alternately boastful and disarmingly honest about his shortcomings, and I love the element of the story being told by adult Uhtred looking back on his childhood, the combination of the naivete of the youth as mediated by the later understanding of the grown man.
That said, this is a man's book for men, with women relegated (mostly) to their traditional roles - which is reasonable for a historical novel, and I have to say that it made Brida's complete disregard for those traditional roles all the more delicious. I also have to admit that I skimmed some of the pages and pages of painstaking description of battle. (Instead I lingered over the historical notes at the end!) But overall it was a great book and I'm looking forward to reading the next one.
What I'm reading now:
I've started listening to Before the Devil Breaks You, the third book in Libba Bray's series The Diviners. January LaVoy is a fabulous audiobook reader, and she does a wonderful job on this series.
Speaking of audiobook readers, I was saddened to learn recently that Katherine Kellgren, one of my favorites (among other things she read Monstrous Beauty which I reviewed last week) died of cancer earlier this year at the far-too-young age of 48.
What I'm reading next:
Ted Chiang's Stories of Your Life and Others finally came in at the library for me, so probably that. Except that I also picked up Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries by Kory Stamper, which my brother recommended to me, so I might start with that. Or I might read them both at the same time. Well, not at the same time, but you know what I mean!
What I'm watching now:
One more episode to go in S2 of Westworld!
What I'm watching next:
I don't know! Maybe The Terror, since
sovay recommended it, and also it's got Tobias Menzies in it.
What I'm playing now:
I know I had said I was going to play Witcher 2, but I was in a funk on Sunday afternoon and wanted to play something RIGHT AWAY, and it turned out I hadn't actually downloaded Witcher 2 yet (I bought it on gog.com), and B was using ALL THE BANDWIDTH because of a crisis having to do with getting cut off from his Dropbox account, so I fired up Dragon Age: Origins again to continue playing the DLC Leliana's Song, which I'd started a while back and got bored with. It did the job of distracting me from the funk I was in, and it also developed enough plot that I got interested in it again, so - I'm almost finished with it, I think, but I might actually go on and play one of the other "little" DLCs when I am done.
Crossposted from isis at Dreamwidth where there are
comments. | Comment at Dreamwidth