![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabby"To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions:
What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?"
My responses:
Currently reading The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch and Sashenka by Simon Montefiore.
Most recently finished reading The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking by Oliver Burkeman.
Next up: The Dark Side of the Earth by Alfred Bester. (No, not that one.)
On hold: Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt by Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco.
Should you generally be interested in my reading material, I log everything because I'm a nerd that way.
In other news, I miss![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wouldprefernot2's "What are you reading?" posts. And. Well. I miss wouldprefernot2 in general.
What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?"
My responses:
Currently reading The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch and Sashenka by Simon Montefiore.
Most recently finished reading The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking by Oliver Burkeman.
Next up: The Dark Side of the Earth by Alfred Bester. (No, not that one.)
On hold: Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt by Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco.
Should you generally be interested in my reading material, I log everything because I'm a nerd that way.
In other news, I miss
wouldprefernot2's "What are you reading?" posts. And. Well. I miss wouldprefernot2 in general.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-12-26 10:55 pm (UTC)Recent finished reading: Libba Bray's Gemma Doyle trilogy (A Great and Terrible Beauty, Rebel Angels, The Sweet Far Thing)
Reading next: probably Zoe's Tale by Scalzi, since it comes after the one I'm in the middle of now.
But also Ekaterina Sedia's shapeshifter anthology Bewere the Night and a book I can't recall the author of called 10 Days to a Less Defiant Child (title is a ridiculous exaggeration, it's more like 10 different strategies for dealing with highly contrary kids such as mine, but I strongly suspect each one would take weeks to implement at all effectively). I had both of those out as e-books from the library, but I had too many e-books at once, and those two both expired before I'd finished reading them.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-27 11:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-28 06:19 am (UTC)And the library has a fair number of e-books available - nowhere near as large a collection as they have of print books, but enough to be useful. Anyone with a library card can download them via the library's web site: http://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/books-video-music/downloads-ebooks/ The first section, Overdrive, is where you're most likely to find SF&F books, etc. I use that enough that I just bookmarked the Overdrive page directly, but there are other e-book sections as well that I should really check out one of these days.
E-books come in several formats, but the two most common are .epub and .mobi. .epub is an open standard that can be read by a variety of devices; .mobi is Amazon's Kindle format, basically. Library e-books are generally .epub. To read them, you can either use a dedicated e-reader, or an an e-reader app on a smartphone or computer. When I first started reading e-books, it was mostly on my phone, using an app called Stanza, but then Dianne ended up giving me her Nook e-reader, since she didn't use it much any more after getting an iPad. E-readers mostly have an unlit screen that actually looks pretty close to the look of a printed page, which is easier on the eyes than a glowing screen (and less likely to keep you awake at night), but the downside is needing light to read by. I think some newer ones have optional backlighting.
With the library e-books, you need to install a program to handle the annoying DRM that lets them only be signed out for a limited time. If you download them to your computer, and then sync them to an e-reader or other device, you use Adobe Digital Editions for that. If you're downloading directly to your phone, there's an Overdrive app that will do that plus act as a reader. The time you sign them out for is typically three weeks, as with regular books, unless you set it to be less in your Overdrive account preferences. Just like with regular books, you can put holds on e-books, or return them before three weeks are up (via Adobe Digital Editions). You can't renew them, which is kind of annoying, but you can just sign the same book out again if no one's put a hold on it. I've also noticed that my e-reader tends to give me a bit of a grace period when a book expires - if I have a particular book open on it when it expires, it will let me keep reading for a few more days, but if I close that book and start another, I can't go back to it - it will just tell me it's expired. Also I think if I sync it with the computer during that time it will expire the book. But I've been able to keep reading an expired book for as long as three days past its date - not sure if this is a deliberate feature or an accidentally helpful glitch or what.
Anyway, that's most of what I can think of to say about them... Let me know if you have any questions.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-26 10:57 pm (UTC)Currently reading: The Internet
On deck: The Internet
That's pretty much it.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-26 11:28 pm (UTC)But the last thing i read was the second game of thrones book.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-26 11:53 pm (UTC)the moral animal by r. wright.
in a different voice: psychological theory and women's development by c. gilligan
dr. tatiana's sex advice to all creation by olivia judson
the dreaming brain by j. allan hobson
battle royale manga
the hunger games book 1
no subject
Date: 2012-12-27 12:23 am (UTC)Shadow of Saganami by David Weber (Honor Harrington series)
What did you recently finish reading?
Honor Among Enemies by David Weber (Honor Harrington series)
What do you think you’ll read next?"
In Enemy Hands by David Weber (Honor Harrington series)
I am really in love with Honor Harrington right now. She's kind of like Xena Warrior Princess but in space and without the obvious subtext. I'll probably put Shadow of Saganami on hold as soon as I can get In Enemy Hands (the next book in the series) simply because Saganami is in the "honoverse" but not really about Harrington.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-27 12:36 am (UTC)Reading now: Oxford, by Paul Streitz, about the Earl of Oxford and various theories surrounding his heritage and role in Shakespearean Theater. (Sensing a theme yet?)
About to read: The Violinist's Thumb, by Sam Kean, about DNA in the formation of hoo-manz. Science stuff! :D
no subject
Date: 2012-12-27 01:21 am (UTC)The Counterinsurgency Era, by Douglas Blaufarb
Recently finished:
Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, by Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco
Next up, probably:
Hybrid Warfare and Transnational Threats, edited by Paul Brister
I think this year I should perhaps log my reading too. at least, the ones I get to finish.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-27 11:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-27 02:01 am (UTC)Recently finished reading: Charles de Lint, Memory and Dream. Before that was the Hunger Games trilogy.
Next up: either Les Miserables, The Colour of Magic (I suck, I've read hardly any Pratchett, which I need to rectify), or a book set in Prague called City of Dark Magic. I'm a sucker for Urban Fantasy, especially when set in awesome cities I know.
The Gentleman Bastards sries (all two of 'em) is awesome, though Lynch seems to be taking his time over number 3. Interestingly, his partner is Elizabeth Bear, who was at the centre of the Racefail imbroglio a few years ago, though I don't think they were together at the time.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-27 03:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-27 04:50 am (UTC)Re Bear and Racefail - it started over something she wrote, but ended up spiralling out to include a lot more authors than just her. My recollection is that she seemed to eventually (after being initially defensive) try to engage with the criticisms made of her work and try to learn something out of it all, but by that time so many other people had jumped into the fray, some of them very overtly racist and abusive, that nothing she said was going to make much of a difference any more. The impression I got was that while she'd made mistakes, she wasn't a terrible person, but a lot of terrible people jumped in to defend her, which made everything exponentially worse.
An additional complicating factor is that one of the genuinely terrible people, who has written some really appalling things, has an unfortunately similar name to hers - Elizabeth Moon. So sometimes people seem to meld them into one entity, or at least mix up which one did what. The really awful Islamophobic stuff was Moon, not Bear.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-27 11:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-27 11:54 pm (UTC)But the passages from Bear's book - ugh - this is why white people avoid writing about black character entirely because they really don't want to have such awful stereotypical silliness attached to them. But then taht means that they write books where everyone is white.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-28 12:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-28 06:42 pm (UTC)His perspective is that people can be too careful and as an actor, he gets offered a LOT of roles which basically come down to Black Judge with Three Lines.
So that's bad too. (a side note - he was so pissed off at a Joe Lansdale story that was basically "black people get chased down and killed by white rednecks" that he wrote Bloodbath at Landsdale Towers which is the first story I read by him - the white people don't fare very well in it - in fact, some reviewers called the story overtly preachy which is weird. I thought it was hilarious.)
I was thinking about thsi when watching Django Unchained. Particularly Samuel Jackson's Uncle Tom character who is a different person depending on who is around him. It was cool writing that managed to use those cliches and comment on them at the same time.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-28 05:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-30 10:43 pm (UTC)Yeah, that was pretty much my impression of where Elizabeth Bear fitted into the whole thing. Well, I will avoid Moon but perhaps read Bear as I have heard good things about her (not least on this comment thread).
no subject
Date: 2012-12-27 02:57 am (UTC)Recently finished Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters
Next....the Picture of Dorian Gray, maybe...or perhaps The Lunatic at Large.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-27 03:27 am (UTC)and
Wild by Cheryl Strayed
2) The last book I read was Just Kids or maybe it was Djibouti or maybe it was Life.
3) I have no idea what I'll read next.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-27 03:34 am (UTC)I'm actually bummed out because I was hanging out outside teh hotel at CONvergence and I had a choice of either hanging out with Scott, Elizabeth and company or flirting with this woman that I met in the most stupid way possible (ie, the "oh sure, show me your short stories" way which then leads me to reading the damn things and trying to be nice because I'm flirting but I'm also highly critical) and while I'm looking at her chart of characters (which was way more interesting than the story itself) Scott was nearby talking about a friend from LARPing days who became a Nazi for a time and really how hard it is to maintain a friendship with a man who has way too much to say abotu the Holocaust and Jews. Seriously, THAT was a conversation that I wanted to hear.
(I also just finished reading a book by someone that I like personally but the book was boring ass steampunk with dull characters and some bullshit about clocks)
no subject
Date: 2012-12-27 11:10 pm (UTC)Lynch's style, conversely, is so far up my alley it's not even funny.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-27 11:56 pm (UTC)Trying not to say much else. I'm halfway through it so you already know the scene or it's a very minor part of the book but fuck I'm so hooked on this book that I'm probably just going to blow off all the work that I should be doing and stay up tonight trying to get through the last 350 pages.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-28 12:05 am (UTC)That fucking bird.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-27 12:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-27 11:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-29 02:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-27 02:56 pm (UTC)Recent - Finch
Next - Kraken
no subject
Date: 2012-12-27 11:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-28 06:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-27 03:04 pm (UTC)That answers all three questions, really! I am a bit one-track minded at the moment.
I have a kindle now, though, so will be open to suggestions to take my mind off breasts!
no subject
Date: 2012-12-27 05:29 pm (UTC)I'm not reading anything. I don't know how I turned into such a non-reader. It alarms me.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-27 11:01 pm (UTC)The main reason I read as much as I do is my commute. Well, and that long stretch of being mostly bedridden and unable to sit down got me in the habit of reading before I fall asleep at night.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-28 03:45 am (UTC)I used to at least read The New Yorker on my long commute, Increasingly, I find the subway too distracting and I knit instead, if there's elbow room.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-28 07:12 pm (UTC)Enter the fanboy ...
Date: 2012-12-27 08:18 pm (UTC)Most recently finished reading: The Hobbit, by you-know-you.
Next up: God only knows, but possibly a re-view of Neil Young's Waging Heavy Peace with an eye to a better review.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-27 11:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-01 06:01 am (UTC)Last read a pile of books I won as a doorprize at a poetry reading...best not to name them.
no subject
Date: 2013-01-02 09:34 am (UTC)I miss him too. [sadface]