Books Report

[stoutfellow]

For what it's worth, what I bought at B&N on Monday, together with a few comments, is under the cut.

Most of my purchases were F/SF, a lot of them being fill-ins or extensions of series I'm following.
1) Darwin's Children, by Greg Bear. I bought Darwin's Radio a while back and wasn't that impressed, but decided to pick up the sequel anyway. Vitals left a bad taste in my mouth, but I'm not ready to give up on GB yet. If this one doesn't measure up, I'll just go back and reread Queen of Angels.
2) American Empire: The Victorious Opposition, by Harry Turtledove. This irks me. Turtledove isn't that good a writer, either stylistically or in terms of evoking wonder, but with Poul Anderson gone HT is the best (of a bad lot) alternate-history writer around. I'll probably stick with this series for another couple of volumes, at least.
3) The Short Victorious War, by David Weber. I started in on the Honor Harrington series a while back, and I'll follow it for a while yet. I understand that it gets, um, overgrown later on, but so far I'm enjoying it.
4) Crystal City, by Orson Scott Card. He's still a good writer, I think, though I wasn't impressed with the last several books in the Ender universe, and I've followed the Alvin Maker series this far, so I may as well continue.
5) The Grantville Gazette and Ring of Fire. I read 1634: The Galileo Affair unaware that there was additional material in the canon besides 1632 and 1633; I bought these to fill in the gaps. I don't think the series is much more than mind-candy, but on their own terms they're entertaining enough.
6) The Iron Council, by China Mieville. This is the third book in the series, after Perdido Street Station and The Scar. It's a distinctly unpleasant world, but Mieville is so inventive that I keep coming back for more.
7) Moving away from series and such: I heard Jane Lindskold in a panel discussion at Balticon last year, and have been (off-and-on) looking for her work since then. I picked up a copy of Through Wolf's Eyes at B&N, and am looking forward to reading it.
8) I really don't have much Heinlein in my collection, and I've been working to rectify that for the last few years. There are a few of his juveniles that I never read; among them is The Rolling Stones, which I bought on this go-round. (I still want Time for the Stars, Farmer in the Sky, and maybe Starman Jones. I haven't read FitS, and I remember enjoying the other two a great deal.)
9) Robin McKinley's Spindle's End. She hasn't let me down yet.
10) Guy Gavriel Kay's The Summer Tree. The Lions of Al-Rassan was very entertaining, and I've heard good things (and a few bad, to be sure) about the Fionavar series, so I'm giving it a go.
11) C. S. Friedman's Black Sun Rising: I bought this on the strength of This Alien Shore, which I'll probably post on sometime soon.
12) Since I read The Eyre Affair, I've been feeling sort of obligated to go read Jane Eyre itself, and B&N had a hardcover for $9.95, so I picked that up too.
13) The rest of the purchase was non-fiction, books that have piqued my interest (although I've heard negative comments about some of them): George Will's Men at Work, Niall Fergusson's Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire, and Margaret Cheney's biography of Tesla. I also bought A New History of India, hoping to get a better grip on that subject.

I introduced my sister E to the Vorkosigan series a while back, so I bought Brothers in Arms and Miles, Mystery & Mayhem for her. That leaves only Mirror Dance and Memory - which are, IMO, the climax and pinnacle of the series, but they didn't have MD, so she'll have to wait for those.

I think that'll keep me busy for a while.

Comments

[countrycousin.livejournal.com]

Haven't read a lot of these.

I don't have Time for the Stars, but I read it many years ago. Not one of my favorites. Never read FitS or Rolling Stones.

I have the trilogy that Black Sun Rising starts. The three books are self-contained, so you're not committed ;<) . I enjoyed it.

I've read some of Weber, haven't been able to get into it.

I've enjoyed a lot of the Card I've read, but also got disenchanted with the last of the Ender series. But I haven't done much of the Alvin Maker.

Enjoy your journeys!

[kd5mdk.livejournal.com]

I've been reading Niall Ferguson for a while, specifically "Empire" and "Cash Nexus" and his Alternate History anthology whose title I forget.

I get most of my AH from S.M Stirling. I gave up on Turtledove's Great War series somewhere after "Blood and Iron", I think. However, I can't write him off, because of the excellent "Ruled Brittania".

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed the Nantucket trilogy, but I put ISOTs in a different category from alternate history. I found the Draka series repulsive. (It may be good, for all I know, but I can't read it.) I do have one of his other books on my to-get list, though. (The list is on my home computer, though, so I can't check to see which one it is.)

[kd5mdk.livejournal.com]

The Drakas I completely bounced off of. However, his newer "Dies the Fire" series isn't the same (the onset and setting are really depressing in theory, but he manages to cover it up fairly well), and much more interesting to me.

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

I think Dies the Fire is the one on my list.

[mawombat.livejournal.com]

total Aral Vorkosigan-lover here, so Cordelia;s Honor is my favorite.

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

I got hooked on the series after reading Barrayar in Analog, and that and Shards of Honor do have a special place in my heart, but I think that Mirror Dance and Memory have more depth than the other books in the series. (Sorry, I'm still used to the older names for the stories in Cordelia's Honor.)