Currently Reading?

[friedkitty]

Yeah, pretty much Harry Potter. I've finished that series and am currently reading the next one, which is set immediately following the events in the Percy Jackson series, but adding in the Roman mythos as well. It's pretty interesting so far.

[Wolfie]

Yep, they are Harry Potter-esque. Good books that grow with the reader and get better overall as the story proceeds. I like the second series and am currently waiting til October (?) when the next in the series is published.

[SamWiser]

It's a lot harder than see spot run. They are about the same reading level as Harry Potter, but I liked them a lot more than I liked Harry Potter. It blended humor and seriousness in a great way. Plus, he has a another series about Egyptian mythology if you like that as well.

[John]

That would be great! I love the history behind polytheistic cultures. So many tales and epics.

[willpell]

Not quite on-topic, but in terms of literature...we just lost Iain Banks a couple weeks ago, and now I just found out that Richard Matheson is dead. Hopefully he is now living inside all of his favorite paintings.

[WastesTime]

Currently reading 'Tehanu', being finished with the original Earthsea Trilogy. I must say that 'The Farthest Shore' was (at least for me) the best out of the three. Wonder how 'Tehanu' will turn out

[willpell]

One of the relative handful of things that my mother and I agree on is that Earthsea was incredibly boring.

[John]

On Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters. Darn kindles enabling me to burn through a series so fast

[Wolfie]

that's how I got through the Game of Thrones series so quickly... it was in a Kindle bundle.

[willpell]

I said before that the book I was reading at the time didn't merit naming, and I stand by that. Its sequel, however, does. "Drowned Ammet" by Diana Wynne Jones. The two are not actually connected at all, save by setting and possibly through the last two volumes of the tetralogy, which I have yet to read. The first revolved around a family of traveling musicians and was just too...well, I probably can't use the word that comes to mind without pissing people off, so suffice to say I didn't care for the tone. This one, however, is about a young revolutionary who stows away on a charmed sailing vessel after a bungled assassination attempt, and is quite lively and compelling. Not more than C-list compared to my usual preferences, but still quite an improvement on its predecessor.

[RocketScientist]

Currently reading 'Tehanu', being finished with the original Earthsea Trilogy. I must say that 'The Farthest Shore' was (at least for me) the best out of the three. Wonder how 'Tehanu' will turn out

I hated Tehanu with the entirety of my heart. I think it's the single worst book I've ever read all the way to the end. I felt like I fell into an poorly constructed morality play of wymyn powerz and menz = weaklings. Ugh. I still can't believe I paid money for that stupid book.

I really hope you enjoy it more than I did, or you're in for a miserable read.

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I've started watching Under the Dome. I'm a little freaked out by the cop lady's extreme resemblance (physically, vocally, and character-wise) to Jo Lupo from Eureka. But I like it well enough so far. It's too soon for me to tell if I'll love it or not.

New Spider-kid doesn't have the unpopular outcast look at all. Not even a little. If you put Tobey MacGuire and that kid in a room, who would you think was actually the guy who'd get beat up at school? What I'd actually like to see them do, though, is go ahead with their new Spider series continuity for new stand-alone movies, and lease out the older series continuity to Marvel for the Marvel cine-verse. Tobey would fit in much better with the Avengers than the younger guy would. If moviegoers are bright enough to handle the repeated reboots, then surely they can handle two separate comic 'verses. For that matter, I wouldn't mind seeing them do that with the Fantastic Four, either, since I hear they're already planning to reboot that. And they could have Chris Evans's little brother play Johnny Storm, so it didn't interfere with Chris being Captain America, which is a better fit for him anyway. /plan for comic movie-verse domination

Currently reading... uh... Something by Raymond Feist. I forget the name of it. It's the first one in that series about Pug. I read a couple of RF's books a while back in the Serpentwar Saga I liked the first one, but I couldn't make it through Rise of a Merchant Prince. Boring. I hope I get through this one. It seems more interesting, but I haven't had the energy for reading much lately.

[SamWiser]

I seem to be on a dragon kick. I'm reading Temeraire, and just finished the first book of another series about dragon-like creatures. After I'm finished with dragons, then I think I'm going to reread the Wheel of Time series.

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I thought that the new Spiderman was good. Macguire never really seemed that geeky, except for a few scenes in the beginning. Once he got his powers, then most of those went away. Then again, it's been a while since I have watched those Spiderman movies, so I could be forgetting things. The new one did a pretty good job of establishing that he was a geek, and kept it up for most of the movie. Now, Hollywood could have done a much better job of making both versions geeky and socially awkward, but then the main character wouldn't be attractive, and what would they do then?

MacGuire sounds good for an Avengers movie though. I thought that Fox owned the rights to Spiderman. Are they putting him in the next Avengers, or is that speculation?

[RidcullyJack]

I'm rereading The Timetraveller's Wife, because I'm only reading it while I eat lunch and/or dinner, so don't have time to immerse in a new book right now. There's a long list of new books I want to read in the summer break, if I get the chance.

Didn't like Tobey as Spidey, but I can't really say why - just didn't quite fit. Maybe it's the 'not geeky enough' problem.

[willpell]

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What I'd actually like to see them do, though, is go ahead with their new Spider series continuity for new stand-alone movies, and lease out the older series continuity to Marvel for the Marvel cine-verse. Tobey would fit in much better with the Avengers than the younger guy would. If moviegoers are bright enough to handle the repeated reboots, then surely they can handle two separate comic 'verses.

This would never, never happen. The reason that Hollywood reboots everything every few years is that they assume that the audience is constantly changing, and for the most part they're right; most of the disposable income is in the hands of tweens, teens, and twentysomethings, all of which by default have the attention spans of goldfish. It's not so much that a group of people can't keep track of what happened in movies five years ago, but that they're less likely to be the same group of people going to a movie now as were going to similar movies five years ago; there's a constant turnover as people go through life stages, and the populace grows yearly worldwide, so studios want to capture fresh new fans a lot more than they want to retain existing ones. But they would never risk having their audience confused by seeing two different Spider-Men in theaters within a year of each other; hell, that would put them in competition with themselves, and they routinely pay millions of dollars to buy out potential rival franchises and bury them, just to ensure that they monopolize their intended market.

[WastesTime]

I highly recommend "I, Lucifer". Addictive, captivating, funny, original, impressive. It's hard to tell a story from the viewpoint of a non-existent character whom everybody knows and loves, especially those who've seen "Devil's Advocate".

[lingrem]

I just reread "House of Many Ways" by Diana Wynne Jones. Before that I'd reread "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children" by Ransom Riggs.

[Liesmith]

I just finished "Childhood's End", "The Forever War", and "The Uplift War", and "Starship Troopers", all of them are amazing, classic sci-fi novels and I highly recommend them...with one caveat:

"The Uplift War", it turns out, is actually the third book in the Uplift series. The book doesn't feel like the middle of a series, so I didn't realize this until I Googled it after the fact.

I am working my way through an 'All-Time Top 100 Sci-fi Novels' list I stumbled across somewhere on the internet. It hasn't led me wrong so far.

[John]

Percy Jackson series Finished
Heroes of Olympus series (finished all that are in print).

[ThroughTheWell]

Liesmith, I hope that list has Vernor Vinge's The Peace War. Lovely bobbles.

The sequel is just okay, being more of a mystery that is not as inovative.

[SamWiser]

Percy Jackson series Finished
Heroes of Olympus series (finished all that are in print).

Awesome. I bought the box set off Amazon a few days ago, and I can't wait till they get here. I'm assuming you liked them since you read the Heroes of Olympus as well.

[Liesmith]

Liesmith, I hope that list has Vernor Vinge's The Peace War. Lovely bobbles.

The sequel is just okay, being more of a mystery that is not as inovative.

Nah, it's a series by David Brin. The overall setting (not the plot, so this isn't a spoiler) is a few hundred years in the future: all of the sentient, oxygen-breathing species across five galaxies exist as a galactic civilization, adhering to certain rules of conduct and etiquette, even in war. None of these species evolved...each one was uplifted by a patron species, which was, in turn, uplifted by an even older patron species. The unbroken chain goes all the way back to the mythological "Progenitors". Because of this chain, there are only a handful of galactic languages, and all knowledge is recorded The Library. As a result, if a species needs an answer to a scientific, moral, or spiritual question, they simply look it up.

Except for humanity. Humanity is a "wolfling" species: we have no patron, and all evidence points to us having evolved a star-faring level of intelligence. Before even becoming aware of alien life, humanity had civilized itself, and begun uplifting the species Dolphin and Chimpanzee, unwittingly securing ourselves honored patron status in the midst of a galactic community rife with fundamentalist factions which abhor young upstarts.


...and that's just the basic setting. All of that takes place before the first book even starts. Once I got far enough into "The Uplift War" to understand what the hell was going on, that general premise had me entirely hooked. I highly recommend it for sci-fi fans.

[ThroughTheWell]

Liesmith, I meant the 'All-Time Top 100 Sci-fi Novels' list, not anything Uplift or Brin related. The Peace War would be on my top 100.

[willpell]

I've read only one Uplift book, but I love love loved it; their picture of an incredibly advanced and peaceful galaxy-wide civilization makes me think of Star Trek at its best. I mourn for the virtually-nil possibility of it ever being filmed.

[John]

Awesome. I bought the box set off Amazon a few days ago, and I can't wait till they get here. I'm assuming you liked them since you read the Heroes of Olympus as well.

The only hard part for me is that this would have been so much better if I had started when the first book was out. Being 27 and reading about a 13 year old, sometimes I have a hard time remembering the thought processes of that age. And I don't know if I completely think that the characters are appropriately written at that age. Honestly I basically picture like a 17 yr old kid going through adulthood and his early 20's. But that's not essential for the story anyway- the greek references and myths utilized actually had me go back and look at some of the Greek stories I was unfamiliar with. Fun all around and I burned through them soooooo quick. The Heroes of Olympus is really good too, especially since they open up the scope of how many characters you are following. A nice change while continuing the story of the Demigods progression.

[Liesmith]

I just started the Rendezvous with Rama audio book, and a kindle copy of Foundation.

Holy crap, my brain cannot contain this much awesome sci-fi at once. Why did I never read these books as a kid? I'd regret all that time I spend on the Animorphs series, if it wasn't also awesome.