What are you currently reading?

Posted by: @ronclinton

↑

Posted by: @tacomadiver

↑

I tried to get my wife into it, but she gave up after the Waste Lands. Just wasn't for her.

 

She's not alone. I've tried twice and got, like your wife, as far as book 3 the second time around, and ultimately just had to throw in the towel. It was at the moment that I understood fantasy is just not for me, no matter how gritty and rough-hewn the Dark Tower saga seemed to suggest it was.

 

The third book was the last one in the series that I enjoyed...Books four through seven just got more and more self-indulgent as they went on. By the time he concluded the series, I wanted to drive to Stephen King's house, knock on his door, and whack him over the head with the book when he answered. I didn't read another King book for almost twenty years. (I bought his books, I just didn't READ them. I sure showed him!)

I started reading Terry Lamsley's two-book set THINGS SEEN AND UNSEEN. This is one of those "So nice I'm afraid to touch it" books. So far I've only read Ramsey Campbell's introduction, but it is a typically gorgeous Centipede production. 

I never considered DT as fantasy. Not when I read it the first time. For me, it was just another King story. The Talisman felt more fantasy to me, probably because it was more coming-of-age. 

For me, the line is clearly with high fantasy like Tad Williams. NO THANK YOU. 

I'm going to attempt the First Law Trilogy and the Thomas Covenant trilogy before abandoning the genre. 

Posted by: @dannyboy121070

↑

I started reading Terry Lamsley's two-book set THINGS SEEN AND UNSEEN. This is one of those "So nice I'm afraid to touch it" books. So far I've only read Ramsey Campbell's introduction, but it is a typically gorgeous Centipede production. 

I have all of Lamsley's work in other limited volumes, so I made the very difficult decision to pass on the Centipede omnibus. Doesn't stop me from still wanting it, though...

Also:

Someone -- and I'm sorry I can't recall who it was -- asked me to give my thoughts on my current read, THE HILL IN THE DARK GROVE by Liam Higginson. I'm halfway through and my interest in it has kind of plateaued and diminished to the point where I'm not sure yet if I'm going to push on. It's a case study of a new author (this is his debut novel) who has not yet embraced the show-don't-tell approach, with its third-person objective (mostly) POV w/ minimal dialogue and often too much extraneous information. I understand what Higginson is attempting to do, and perhaps my mood just isn't matching his style at the moment, but I'm not clicking with it with the way I'd hoped, given the pastoral Welsh setting, isolation, ancient evil, etc.

If anyone would like this signed and numbered HC, I'll pass it on at what I paid it from Goldsboro Books ($47) and will throw in free shipping. Call it $45 shipped. FWIW, I don't believe it's hitting the States in its U.S. edition until late summer. If no takers, I'll probably just set it aside and try the second half later...maybe it'll strike me differently down the road.

Goldsboro listing:

https://goldsborobooks.com/products/the-hill-in-the-dark-grove-fresh-ink-edition?_pos=1&_sid=0c65912da&_ss=r

I started reading THE ENTITY, by Frank De Felitta, the other night. Barely a few dozen pages into it, and it's already incredibly disturbing. 

KPB shared a story over on substack. I didn't have access to read the entire story but that guy can sure write.

https://kealanpatrickburke.substack.com/p/attaboy?utm_id=97758_v0_s00_e232_tv4_tp1_a1demo0daw6uo7&fbclid=IwY2xjawRwWqtleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETE3V1laWkR0MmFPSXZzNHNhc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHlCG3n5XTEoY7rjezHKz1Ry62-Lxs7RyDwglS2-5k5L4RSpidngo5bH-dOuC_aem_QHKffYAQgjj37vZY7BiOIA

Due to school, it took me an incredibly long time, but I finally finished John Langan's The Fisherman. From what I've gathered, this book tends to be divisive. People either love it or they DNF the heck out of it. I, for one, am in the love it camp. Yes, I had to restart the book about ten to fifteen pages in to realign my expectations to what the book was versus what I wanted it to be. However, once I gave in to its measured pace, I found it be an amazing novel. 

It is possible some of my love is due to the fact I was prepared for the embedded narrative that takes up most of the novel's length. This seems to be the part where most people quit. The same thing happened with Cronin's The Passage. A lot of folks didn't like the time jump after becoming so invested in the present-day story. I'm a big fan of embedded narratives, so I loved this section. I read some reductive critiques about the book being

All that being said, I'm now bummed I missed out on the Nepenthe limited edition that is currently in the works. 

Oh hey - we have spoiler tags! I hadn't tried that yet - glad to know they're there and they work.

Started Jack Vance's "The Last Castle" and "The Dragon Masters." 

I'm just plowing through THE ENTITY at a crazy speed...a very engrossing book. Overwritten in spots, but a compelling story nonetheless.

Finished THE ENTITY last night (Excellent book!), starting Rachel Harrison's PLAY NICE in a few minutes. I really enjoyed her earlier novel, CACKLE, so I'm looking forward to this one.

I started the three-volume hardcover set of Alan Moore's PROMETHEA comic, which is a kinda reread for me..."Kinda", because I have the original issues in floppies, and I don't think I ever fully got through the series. This can be a challenging, dense book, filled with huge ideas and concepts, some of which I don't fully grasp, but it certainly holds together better when read as a whole than it does in semi-monthly chunks. 

@dannyboy121070 I have fond memories of those Alan Moore books from his America's Best Comics line. Promethea may have been my least favorite, but I was MUCH younger back then, and like you said, they're dense.

I have some of the collections for League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Top 10, and Tom Strong that I really should revisit and finish. I last read these series when they first came out in floppies.

There 3 books by Stephen King that I have not read. Two of them are The Talisman and Black House. I need to remedy that before the final book comes out so they will be started within a couple of months.

I think I read Black House when it came out (reading The Talisman right before that since I hadn't read it before) - so it's been AWHILE since I read these.

Posted by: @lazlo

↑

There 3 books by Stephen King that I have not read. Two of them are The Talisman and Black House. I need to remedy that before the final book comes out so they will be started within a couple of months.