What are you reading?

[curiousa2z]

Double Dexter by Jeff Lindsay....
6th in the book series.
Also now a TV series that I enjoy very much.

[Nahtmmm]

We are currently rereading How Much For Just The Planet?, one of the best ST:TOS novels ever.

[RJDiogenes]

^^ That's set on the gangster planet, isn't it?

I'm reading Cryptic, an anthology of short stories by Jack McDevitt. It's fantastic. I feel like I'm ten years old and reading Clarke and Asimov for the first time. I don't know why this guy isn't more well known.

[huggle]

currently reading Connan-Doyle: A Scandal in Bohemia

[RJDiogenes]

It doesn't get any better than that.

[huggle]

it does: The Adventure of the Yellow Face

[RJDiogenes]

I thought you were going to say the brick-shaped planet.

But I just meant Sherlock Holmes in general.

[huggle]

OIC. I happened to find a Highlander fanfiction the other day: "Elementary, Dawson". The author copies Connan Doyle's style marvellousely. Only towards the end of the story she made a few tiny slips. Still, it was a pleasure to read. I love that rich old fashioned language. It seems that both German and English reached their zenith in the late 1800s. I wonder if that is merely a coincidence.

currently reading: Agatha Christie: A Pocket Full of Rye

[RJDiogenes]

Yeah, I love it when a writer can recreate that Sherlockian feel. Strand magazine publishes a new Sherlock story in almost every issue and they usually do pretty well.

[huggle]

they do??! I had no idea! Do they publish online as well?

[RJDiogenes]

I don't know. I subscribe to the print version.

Wait. I can check, can't I?

They actually have a bunch of complete short stories on their website, but it looks like only one of them is Sherlock Holmes. I don't think I've read this one.

[huggle]

just the thing for a rainy and ice cold morning =) Thank you!
This is the Highlander/Holmes crossover I mentioned: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/1724302/1/E ... ear_Dawson

[RJDiogenes]

^^ Cool. I'll try to read it.

And you're welcome.

[Nahtmmm]

Now we are back on Redwall, which we nearly got through some years ago. I intend to take KJ straight on to Mossflower once it's done.

[RJDiogenes]

Is that a new novel? I thought the series had finished up.

[Nahtmmm]

No, it's one of the original trilogy. It's a big series.

[trekkiedane]

Had to go into the bedroom and find the books with marks in them to remind myself just what I'm reading right now...

It would appear that I've read the first 5/6 of Terry Pratchett's Mort, 1/4 of Iain Banks' Espedair Street (part of my long in waiting tour of Banks' non-SciFi), 1/100000 of Stephen Baxter's Evolution (don't think I'll get much farther into that one; he starts out making very sure every reader understands that the beginning of the book takes place way (way, way) before anything like humans even evolved - then starts using human-centric terms to describe things!? -once is ok (I guess) but he keeps doing it and it irks me to no end!) and I still haven't read more than two stories each from Clifford D. Simak's City and Eight Worlds of C. M. Kornbluth. Plus I haven't even opened the copy of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's Roadside Picnic I got for x-mas year before last.

[RJDiogenes]

Right now I am proofreading two novels by friends, both of which I hope to see published in the next year.

[curiousa2z]

^ very cool!


just starting The Casual Vacancy by British writer J. K. Rowling. It flows well enough, but I'm feeling as if she is trying to prove that she can write an ADULT BOOK. This is not something you should buy for any book reader kids nor your gram, if you know what I mean. In fact, I'm finding the sexual scenarios have a rather gratuitous feel to them.
Anyone else read it?

[RJDiogenes]

Not yet, but the thought of erotica by JK Rowling is strangely enticing.

I finished one proofreading assignment, am still working on the second, and have just been assigned a third.

[curiousa2z]

if only it were erotica...it's not. I have no problem with erotica....Anne Rice wrote great stuff....this is not that.

Oh well, she's mega rich deservedly for the Harry Potter books...she made her publishers tons of money and this will likely have lots of folks reading it for the curiousity factor, as I did. But I skipped to the [ unsatisfactory] end and am taking it back to the library today.

[RJDiogenes]

Ah. Not erotica, just gratuitous sex scenes. Sounds like 70s Underground Comix. What is it actually about?

[curiousa2z]

two small villages and the resentment one has for the other, a heroin addicted mother and her teenaged daughter who kills herself after the three year old boy (her brother) drowns in the river because the mother's high and the girl blames herself for not watching him 24/7 which she couldnt do, and all the mean-spirited teenage bullying in the high school & the mean-spirited jockeying by adults who want the vacancy on council of one of the villages after the former Councillor dies in a parking lot of a brain aneurism. yeah.

[RJDiogenes]

Okay. Lurid mainstream Soap Opera. I guess I'll pass on that one.

[huggle]

Feeling an urge for happy ends I started simultaneousely on "The Hobbit" and Georgette Heyer's "The Grand Sophy". The latter is said to be one of her best novels and even though it's a little obvious that the quarrelling cousins will fall for each other eventually it's quite amusing to read.