Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Forums

@dd:  If you want to improve your stats fast look for the books with a high number of award nominations and list inclusions (red and black numbers on the covers).  You can bump up several stats at a time if you pick something like American Gods which has 7 noms and is on 4 best lists or Rendezvous with Rama with 5 and 7 respectively.  The WWEnd Top Nominated Books list is a good source for the big stats books.

By the way, if you don't like looking at your reading stats, DO NOT, under any circumstances, look at Englebrecht's stats.  I said DON'T look!

I've had a rocky start to July, what with my disliking all the books I've read so far:

Kiln People (2002) by David Brin was disappointing.  The premise that you could make specialized copies of yourself in order to do such things as study, scut work, extreme sports, casual sex, etc., to return 24 hours later to deliver memories before decaying was promising, but the book was a long flabby mess.  Featuring a detective using multiple copies of himself to solve a set of interlocking crimes, the book veered back and forth between noir and comic excess before finally degenerating into a farrago of mystical pseudo-science.

The Hunger Games (Hunger Games 1) (2008) by Suzanne Collins.  Perhaps the best thing to say here was that the prose wasn't actively grating and that, by and large, the pace of the book moved along.  I realize that this is a YA, but both the world building and the science were over-the-top ridiculous.  Other than that, it was a reasonably engaging ripoff of Battle Royale.

Catching Fire (Hunger Games 2) (2009) by Suzanne Collins.  I'm really the wrong audience for these books.  After I read "I really can't think about kissing when I've got a rebellion to incite" early in the book, it took a supreme effort of will to keep reading...  Everything was worse than in the previous book, even setting aside the female protagonist's endless angst over which boy she liked better.

Mockingjay (Hunger Games 3) (2010) by Suzanne Collins.  This is the book in which both the protagonist and the reader fully realize that the protagonist has practically no redeeming qualities as a human being.  Histrionic throughout, we eventually and painfully reach what is largely a non-ending.  It'll be a loooong time before I inflict another one of these teen romance books upon myself!

Fortunately, July is looking up!  I'm currently enjoying a Calvino, and have a reread of Pelevin's Omon Ra to look forward to.  Also, I think I'm going to start accelerating my Grand Master challenge reading.  I'm halfway along (6 read), but I think that I want to read books by most, or perhaps all of the Grand Masters this year.  I'm also got some books on the Cawthorne & Moorcock best fantasy list that I want to get to this month.  It sounds like everyone has great stuff in the pipeline!

@Rhonda:  Hrolf Kraki's Saga is wonderful!!  If you really like that one, you would probably like Anderson's The Broken Sword as well.  I've always been curious about eddas - what are you reading, and how are you enjoying them?  A few years ago, I read an Icelandic saga novelization, Styrbiorn the Strong by E.R. Eddison (author of the great The Worm Ouroboros) and liked it, but not as well as his other fiction.  Do you ever go to the IAFA conventions in Florida?

@dustydigger:     I've read the obligatory smattering of crime fiction:  Sherlock Holmes, some Agatha Christie, In Cold Blood, The Talented Mr. Ripley, but not too much else.  Sadly, I've never read Chandler.   I think you mentioned Ernest Bramah's detective Max Carrados elsewhere, how do you like those stories?  BTW, The Lovers holds up poorly - I read it a few years ago for the first time and thought it was weak, even considering the era it was written in.

@Scott:  I haven't read Harness' The Paradox Men, but I have read and loved his Cybele, With Bluebonnets, published in 2002, almost fifty years after The Paradox Men.  It's a great novel, beautifully and delicately written.  I'm tempted to read The Paradox Men, but it sounds like it wouldn't compare to the writing of a mature Harness.