What are you reading?

I have also been reading Earthsea recently and I've been loving it. Ursula is one of my favorite authors. I've seen that edition in my local bookstore and the only reason I haven't bought it is because it's so large. What's your experience been with reading it? Is it hard to hold?

 

Yes! I’ve been reading it sitting on the sofa with the book in my lap. Reading in bed is possible, but you can’t hold the book up. You have to rest it on your chest. The illustrations are great and typesetting is nice so it is a pleasure to read, just inconvenient.

Worst part about the size: too heavy for my NYC subway commute.

I’ve finished book one. About to start book two. Loving it so far. Compelling characters, beautiful writing, and I love when books with magic take a “no free lunch” approach to spells. It’s not free power. It’s dangerous, and things must be kept in balance. Very cool.

 

I finished the all four Book of the New Sun books. What a series. Should I keep going on to Urth of the New Sun? I’ve been reading along with a podcast and it seemed like it wasn’t as good as the original four books.

 

Another Malazan update from me. I guess I skipped posting about book 8, Toll the Hounds, it was amazing too.




But I just finished book 9, Dust of Dreams, and im honestly kind of flabbergasted how fantastic it was. Maybe not quite as good as book 3, Memories of Ice, but holy shit it was good.


On to The Crippled God and the end of this truly fantastic epic fantasy series

EDIT: Jesus I need to read more, took me an entire year to read toll the hounds and dust of dreams

 

I have been exploring the substack world lately and have found a few diamonds in the rough including:

https://www.robkhenderson.com/

I really like his approach and find his "luxury belief's" idea a useful decoder ring for several things these days.

 

Posting this here rather than the film thread...

I tried reading 3 Body Problem, but did not like the writing style so I quit. Just binge watched S01 of the Netflix series and very much enjoyed it. I went in thinking if I like the show I might give the book another try, but now I am wondering, for anyone who has read the books and seen the show - does the second book take over where the streaming series leaves off? Thinking maybe I will try reading The Dark Forest and see if I can get into it more, but probably don't want to do that if the series and the book diverge a lot. Thoughts are appreciated.

 

I can't really answer the question about the tv series as I haven't watched either of them yet, but I can say that The Dark Forrest is way better than the first book. I nearly dropped the series after the first one, finding the over arching plot in many ways to be kind of contrived, but the second book is amazing. I would highly recommend it and 3rd book.

 

I haven’t started the show yet. i need to. I’ve heard vaguely that it diverges a lot from the book but that doesn’t usually bother me that much in adaptations. I love all of Liu’s books but I agree with Soup that book 2 is better.

 

She and Her Cat,
From a jappanese writter, it's about a the same story but from the perspective of the cat and "she"

 

Getting into the Star Wars literary universe, which is quite satisfying to get more Republic & Empire backstory and understanding of Imperial politics & motivations/machinations.



The story of Palpatine's rise was great, the prequel movie trilogy offers just a glimpse.

Just finished the first book of Zahn's second Thrawn trilogy - one of the most fascinating characters in the SW universe.



Will read his first-published Heir to the Empire trilogy afterward, which takes place a few years after Return of the Jedi. From what I gather, that non-canon "Expanded Universe" continuation of the Luke/Leia/Han story centered around Thrawn is significantly better than the disappointing sequel movie trilogy.

Not the greatest in Science Fiction writing, but a very fun read.

 

Have never had any interest in manga, but this interested me enough to order it from Amazon.

 

So, can anyone write Star Wars stories? I'm guessing not but how many people do now?

 

I went through a couple dozen of the Star Wars Universe (or "canon" I believe) about 20 years ago. I understand there were at least 100 back then. At the time George Lucas outsourced these to known/popular SF writers. I believe Lucas (or his people) would give or "approve" a basic plot, but the author had much leeway on everything else including the characters. It was all very uneven, with some books being quite good, but many were only mediocre (I did not finish 2 or 3). I enjoyed what the canon did with children of Lea and Han - much better than what Disney did.

The fact that Lucas himself did not follow the direction of the SW 'canon' when he started the movies up again was something of a scandal to many who had read them. What Disney has done with since taking over I don't know, but their version of the SW universe diverges significantly more from the 'canon' then Lucas'.