What Are You Reading??

Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman.

The novel uses two alternating first person narratives. One narrative is told from the point of view of Fatale, a female cyborg who is recruited by the superhero group The New Champions as they investigate the disappearance of superhero CoreFire. The other narrative is told from the point of view of Dr. Impossible, a supervillain who possesses super-human strength and intellect and suffers from Malign Hypercognition Disorder ("evil genius" syndrome), as he escapes from jail and makes his thirteenth attempt at taking over the world.

 


Also Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala, a first person account by a boy of civil war in West Africa as he becomes a child soldier, and Binti, an odd future space fantasy novella by Nnedi Okorafor of a girl going to university.

The Warriors - Sol Yurick.

Big fan of the movie. Turns out the book uses elements of Anabasis by Xenophon. Might try reading that next.

Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls by Alissa Nutting. The best short story collection in the universe! I love it so much.

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman

The problem I have with fantasy is I don't know why I'm caring about Dust or daemons or the Master or some gloomy British college. We'll see if I can get past chapter 3.

The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman

The second book in Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy. The Golden Compass turned out far more engaging than I originally expected, mostly because Lyra Belacqua is such an engaging character. The Subtle Knife seems like it'll be strong too. Will Parry is a grand addition to the stories.

Are any of these banned or controversial?

The best Chinese fiction books of the last century

- Available in English
- Published after 1900
- Written by a Mainland or Greater China-born author.

20 Becoming Madame Mao
19 The Vagrants
18 The Man With the Compound Eyes
17 When Red is Black
16 Decoded
15 Empire of the Sun
14 A Dictionary of Maqiao
13 Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
12 The Book of Sins
11 Northern Girls
10 The Noodle Maker
9 Dream of Ding Village
8 The Good Earth
7 Cat Country
6 Last Quarter of the Moon
5 Fortress Besieged
4 Red Sorghum
3 Love in a Fallen City
2 To Live
1 The Real Story of Ah Q and Other Tales of China


(Meaning: if I give that list to students....)

Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson  - serious Sci-Fi - this guy seems an expert on Mars geology and topography.

So many books, nothing to read. 

I like zombies, but I've read all the survival horror I can for a while. I like scifi, but maybe Ancillary Justice was enough. And apparently we're leaving dystopias and swinging back to triumphalist, happy endings now (I'm possibly looking at you Kim Stanley Robinson, though I haven't read 2312 yet). I, to my surprise, like fantasy too, but His Dark Materials filled up that cup fairly to brimming. What I did just finish reading was Archivist Wasp by Nicole Kornher-Stace, and that book had it all! A post-apocalyptic technoghost story with archaic worldviews and journeys to unreal dimensions! Fantasy meets scifi in a big booyah bang with a muscular girl hero. Enjoyed it!

Now I have nothing left.

How I live Now by Meg Rosoff (2004)

I love this book with all of my little tiny heart. It's YA, and Chinese book info sites list it as a "children's book", and I'll be 50 soon. So, Elizabeth/"Daisy", fifteen, escapes her father and stepmother by travelling to England to live outside London with her real mother's sister's family. Real mother's sister is a bigwig and often not present because everyone's been Living With The Threat Of War for a long while now. In fact, she leaves the day before a series of large explosions cripple London. The war is noticed by Daisy and the cousins only as a loss of electricity, phones, and as time wears on, food. What the movie of this book didn't quite get is it's the characters and the relationships this story is about, along with the roles of privation and plenty.

YA's not for everyone, I suppose, but I liked this one.

Dracula by some unknown guy.  Brad Stokeman or something like that.

Damn is the pace slow.  Dozens of pages in before the first drop of blood gets spilled.  Think I may die of boredom before the plot gets moving  Seems like the sort of book ETR would like.

It is the sort I would like. Unfortunately, the numerous hollywood adaptations has ruined this fantastic novel for people. It is meant to be slow. Dracula is hardly in it. The novel is about pretty much everything else than a vampire. It is trying to tackle things like science v. religion, women's rights, The New Woman, Atavism, fear of invasion, jingoism, British class system, the burgeoning popularity of Alienist (early term for psychology) just to mention a few themes.

I am currently reading "The Open Veins of Latin America" by Eduardo Galeano. Ripping good history book.

Weird, cold book. But honest-to-god hard scifi.