What are you reading?

I am a particular fan of Chandler. For those who enjoy Harry Dresden, you owe it to yourself to read some of this sort of thing, so you can appreciate the use Butcher makes of the American mystery genre's conventions.

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Things I've read recently include ...

In the past week:

Tim Akers, Heart of Veridon. Just started. Appears to be a story about a criminal in a world a bit like a fanciful 19th century.

Emma Bull et al., Shadow Unit, Book 1. Written by one of my favorite less-prolific authors and some of her friends, the conceit here is that it's like a TV show in prose form. The story itself is kind of reminiscent of The X-Files.

Christoper Golden, et al., Don't Be Afraid of the Dark/Blackwood's Guide to Dangerous Fairies. Basically a promotion for del Toro's upcoming film, but still a nice little scary story about, well, dangerous fairies. I'm still not sure why del Toro's so obsessed with tooth fairies, though.

William Hope Hodgson, Carnacki the Ghost Finder. Reread. Stories about a supernatural detective by an important turn of the (20th) century fantasist. One thing I find interesting is that some of the hauntings in these stories are fakes, while others turn out to be genuine.

Harold Lamb, Wolf of the Steppes, the first collection of some novels about an ex-Cossack traveling in Central Asia in the early 1600's by a prominent adventure writer of the '20's and '30's.

Norvell Page, Prince of the Red Looters. A 1935 pulp novel of the Spider.

Don Hutchison, The Great Pulp Heroes. About notable hero pulp magazines of the 1930's and their authors.

In the past month or so:

Devon Monk, Dead Iron: The Age of Steam. Supernatural/Western/"steampunk" mashup. (I put "steampunk" in quotes because, like many works given this label, it involves only a little steam and no punks at all. The latter is okay by me; Your Mileage May Vary.)

Andrew P. Mayer, The Falling Machine. A novel about 19th century superheroes. See Ironik's "Superhero Fiction" thread for more information. (In this case, my assessment was similar to his.)

Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Chessmen of Mars. The only public domain Barsoom novel that I hadn't previously read.

M. K. Hobson, The Native Star. Supernatural/Western mashup, labeled as "steampunk," though it featured neither fanciful steam technology nor punks. Had kind of a Romance feel.

Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Princess of Mars, The Gods of Mars, and Warlord of Mars. Public domain Barsoom novels that I had previously read, though not since the early '90's.

Jim Butcher, Ghost Story. About wizard private eye Harry Dresden. A good addition to this generally excellent series.

D.M. Cornish, The Foundling's Tale: Part Two: Lamplighter and Part Three: Factotum. Adolescent lit about a boy in a 17th-century-like society where monsters are feared and exterminated. The author has a frustrating tendency to create neologisms when existing words would do just as well. Each of the three volumes is about 25% glossary. Illustrated by the author.

Mur Lafferty, Playing for Keeps. Rather poor novel about characters with weak superhuman powers and how superheroes are all jerks. Oh, well. At least it was cheap.

Peter V. Brett, The Warded Man and The Desert Spear. Novels about a world where demons routinely slaughter humans every night. The hero discovers a way to fight them, then another character embarks on a crusade against them. Apparently the first two of a five-book series.

Selections from John Klima (ed.), Happily Ever After. Assorted stories in the fairy tale mode, varying quite a bit in quality.

George R. R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons. Most recent volume of his interminable epic, A Song of Ice and Fire. One of the better entries in the series, though it convinced me that, in the words of Monty Python, "He's just makin' it up as 'e goes along!" and isn't building toward any resolution other than, "Then everyone died."

Jim Bernheimer, Confessions of a D-List Supervillain. A cheap e-novel about, well, a D-list supervillain. Not great, but had some entertaining moments. Worth the low price.

High points from earlier this summer:

George R. R. Martin, the rest of A Song of Ice and Fire. See prior comments. As an aside, after reading all of this in a couple of weeks, the Russian novel no longer intimidates me.

Jim Butcher, the Codex Alera series. Butcher's "standard fantasy." Nothing all that special, but contained some good plotting, as I would expect from his Dresden Files series.

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Yeah, I read a lot.

I tried "reading a lot" once. I wanted to see how many novels I could finish in a year, reading at an accelerated pace (well, for me). At the end of the experiment, I realized that I didn't remember any of the stories. In fact, at one point, I accidentally bought a second copy of one of the books because I didn't remember reading it!

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is this a historical novel or an actual history?

Actual history, trying to piece together the history of Carthage (as opposed to the "bad name" it was given over time.)

Not deeply into it at this point (more involved with the Insurgents book, as I started it first) but looking forward to spending quite a bit of time with it.

Book on hold: China, a history. Very thick, and not something I'd suggest just dipping a toe into if your'e not slightly familiar with it. Doesn't help that - not being stereotypical here - it seems every third Wu, Hu, and Xi just rotate out to fight each other. Very easy to lose track of who's doing what to Wu - er, who, and why.

Probably going to start over with that and a notepad - and some ancillary book. I never manage to get a grasp on Chinese or Russian history.

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Yep, I've been on a total Dresden fix these last couple of weeks.

My favorite of the MtG books!

You are so cool.

*****

Let's see, what am I reading at the moment...

THE DRESDEN FILES by Jim Butcher - yes, the entire series. I always have several books going at the same time, so I'm back-and-forthing through the whole series picking up on details I missed the first time.

THE EIGHT by Katherine Neville - I love this book. I would love to see a really good movie or miniseries made of it.

VERTICAL RUN by Joseph Garber - similar in spirit to DIE HARD, but with a hell of a driving story behind it. If you've not read it, do.

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I've only read that book once, well really I only read half that book once. I found the WW2 stuff so fascinating, one night I just started skipping all the modern day chapters.

Post an update to if this is any good. I was going to pick it up a few weeks ago and didn't.

I'll have to keep the Carthage book in mind. Much as I like a good historical fiction (as my 2 listings indicate) I find a good book on obscured history quite enlightening.

Your description of the China book reminded me of the time when I checked out the library's tape copy of the autobiography (journals? its been so long) of Marco Polo. I'd intended to have it keep me alert as I drove to Long Island and back from SC. I did learn a few things, but I think I should have had a notebook and pencil to write things down. It was surprisingly deep and not something to keep me awake on the road. I think I chose an audio Star Trek novel for my next trip.

I've actually got a suggestion for you: God's Chinese Son, by Johnathan D. Spence. Smaller subsection of Chinese History - called the Tai-Ping Rebellion. Of course, it would more accurately be called a revolution...

Lies! The most boring (and certainly the worst) textbook ever created was my first-year Contracts book, by Willis (I think). The text was so badly written that the first sentence took me half an hour to read.

The best textbook ever written, on the other hand, is Richard Kieckhefer's Magic in the Middle Ages, a really, really interesting read on a subject with few books treating it exclusively.

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I strongly second Grey Pilgrim's recommendation of Howl's Moving Castle. Howl is one of my favorite characters in literature. I consider it far superior to the scattered, muddled anime based on the book.

Amusingly, one of my favorite history books is Witchcraft in the Middle Ages by Jeffrey Burton Russell. At first glance I thought that's what you were talking about...