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*cracks knuckles* Usually G33z3r starts this thread but thought I'd try out my new mod powers (not that creating threads is a mod power, but I digress...)

Now that the days are getting shorter, at least for those of us in the northern hemisphere, and Halloween is approaching, what are you reading to keep the ghouls and beasties away?

I'm reading A Night in the Lonesome October with another group, one chapter per day. They're short chapters, but we're discussing all the hidden gems along the way.

I just finished Under Western Eyes by Joseph Conrad, so I'm using Lord of Light & Deathworld 1 as palate cleansers before I go back to anything serious.

The Stone Sky. Also have Sins of Empire lined up, along with Book of Dust, Clariel, and Goldenhand.

Along with Varney the Vampire; or, The Feast of Blood which I technically started in September, I decided to jump already onto the next group read The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins.

If people felt they had trouble with the timeline jumping around in Lord of Light, be forewarned that there is frequent jumping around in this one. While the Lies of Locke Lamora had a lot of flashbacks too, they had a regular pattern so was clear when you were. I find in The Library at Mount Char the jumps are not really obvious you need to figure out by context, so takes a little more work on the reader's part. Also, wow...what a dysfunctional and sadistic group of characters! Although it's so extreme it's making me want to read more to figure out what's going on. It's a bit frustrating because it's clear the main character knows more than she's sharing with the reader, which is an interesting route for the author to take...anyways, all that from the first 50 or so pages, should be a good discussion.

Just finished Ace of Skulls (Tales of Ketty Jay). Sad to have to say goodbye to such a fun series. Deserves a reread.

This month's lineup:
Raven Stratagem
The Girl with All the Gifts
Something Wicked This Way Comes
The Shards of Honor

Whaddayaknow, two are Halloween reads :)

I just finished The Bear and the Nightingale, a Russian fairytale. Now reading The Library at Mount Char, A Night in Lonesome October and The Obelisk Gate.
Stephen Kings new book, Sleeping Beauties, is waiting in the wings!

Still doing a Buddy Read for The Name of the Wind . I finally tracked down Robin Hobbs's Farseer Trilogy, so I'll probably be starting that later this month.

Started The Time of Contempt basically the last day of September and now around 60% through it. Just in the last chapter that the story has really gotten going, found the first half really slow/uninteresting compared with The Last Wish and Blood of Elves. Too much on Geralt and Yennefer's romance/"let's talk about the superficial differences between men and women/the relationship between men and women" blah blah blah. Now that the story's finally moving forward I'm enjoying it much more.

After I'm done with this one I plan to start my Halloween reading with The Uninvited.

Just finished After Atlas (which I thought was quite good )
Now looking at :
Cloudbound
Lord of Light (should be at the library by now)
The Shadowed Sun

And really trying to get to The Way of Kings and The Gunslinger soon.....

I'm currently reading The Children of Men and Ubik. Children of Men is going slow and not fully drawing me in. Ubik is winning my attention. I've always been a big fan of PDK and this one is starting out great.

While driving, I'm listening to Autonomous. I picked this up after giving up on Not Alone. Halfway through Not Alone and I could not listen any longer. Glad I switched, Autonomous is much better. More science, better story & characters and none of Not Alone's media/PR junk.

I'm currently reading The Quest for Cush: Imaro II, the sequel to Imaro.

Im reading The Three Body Problem and have the other 2 in the series ready to start. As you all know, SF was murdered back during the New Wave, but it my be being re-born in China...Three Body so far is the pure stuff. I also got some of Otto Binder's UFO books (yes, hes THAT Otto Binder, and i didnt know he wrote that stuff either), going to give them a go. Won't be doing much as i have a bad case of sciatica from a recent hip surgery.

Just finished The Library at Mount Char. Really depressing. Had to do some light reading in between chapters to get through it (A Night in Lonesome October). We are going to New York City the 1st of November, so decided this was a good time to finally read The Witches of New York which has been on my to read shelf for a long time.

Read:
To Your Scattered Bodies Go, wasn't a fan. ★★☆☆�
The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter, not for me though anyone who likes sherlock will like it. ★★☆☆�.
The Drowned World, which started off nicely, all-dreamlike and with great imagery of a world returning to prehistoria, but the plot really falls off the rails at the end. ★★★☆�

Currently reading:
Shards of Honor, which i'm almost finished and has been great. My second romance(?) read of the last couple weeks.

After that might do a re-read of The Library at Mount Char. I did just read it earlier in the year but it was so good i dont mind another go.

Finished The Eyre Affair last week. Didn't find it all that great, but maybe I just expected more humour and shenanigans ... Started Legend this month, and I like it a lot more. Having a hard time keeping track of who's who though.

Not sure yet what my next read will be. Either Ready Player One or Uprooted. Or Dragonlance Chronicles Trilogy: A Dragonlance Omnibus, but I fear I won't make my reading challenge this year if I do that (seeing as that's 3 books in 1 ...).

Finished The Library at Mount Char...it was...different? Will keep my comments for the discussion.

Decided to dig out an old favorite The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux. Been a long time since I last read it.

I have finished The Fires of Heaven for my WoT series re-read. Not my favourite book in the series (view spoiler)[ but the ending, with Moiraine and Lanfear, one of the best twists. Moiraine is one of my favourite characters in this series and even though I know the outcome, it gets me every time. Positively tragic) (hide spoiler)]

I'm planning on getting started on:
Sister Mine
Lord of Chaos
Shards of Honor
The Jewel and Her Lapidary

But first I'm going to read a non-fiction non-sci-fi/fantasy-related book first for a change of pace.

Was sick this week so got a lot of reading done. Finished both The Time of Contempt and The Uninvited, and since I didn't manage to get my hands on the next planned Halloween books I wanted before the one I wanted to read closer to camping I've started Baptism of Fire. So I'll finish that this week then start The Hound of the Baskervilles towards the end of the week before going camping.

Also started The Murders in the Rue Morgue yesterday, since I thought it's been a while since I read any Poe stories so thought I'd do a bit of rereading this month.

Davy wrote: "Not sure yet what my next read will be. Either Ready Player One or Uprooted. Or Dragonlance Chronicles Trilogy: A Dragonlance Omnibus, but I fear I won't make my reading challenge this year if I do that (seeing as that's 3 books in 1 ...)."

All three are nearly 400 page books, even if its an omnibus I'd count them all as individual books. Think you're cheating yourself otherwise if it means you won't make your challenge, despite having read officially three books!

I've been planning a Dragonlance chronicles reread too, not sure if it'll happen this year or next. But I haven't read them since the early 2000s so really would love to as I can't say I remember much other than that I enjoyed them.

Brendan wrote: "
The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter, not for me though anyone who likes sherlock will like it. ★★☆☆�.
[..."

That's on my reading list, and I do love me some Sherlock. Though that's basically why I put it on my list to begin with, the marriage of all those old school horror and/or sci-fi classic references with Sherlock just sounded fun as hell!

I'm reading Gene Lancour's newest book Resurgence of Empire. It came in the mail yesterday!!

Felt the urge to add an anthology to this month's books. Vampires, Wine, and Roses...though it doesn't have an auspicious start, trying to take a snippet from Romeo and Juliet and claim it is somehow vampiric just because it happens to mention blood. What is it with anthologies picking the worst story as their opener (and specifically this one, given there's so much actual vampire stuff out there the editor felt the need to warp other things to fit). At least the second story is properly vampiric (Master of Rampling Gate by Anne Rice) though again not that exciting for me since I read it before ;)

Starting Shards of Honor audiobook.

I just finished Parasite, the first of a trilogy. I gave it 3 stars, but am not sure when/if I'll read the other books. It was pretty slow going. Not a very good heroine.
/review/show...

Jim wrote: "I just finished Parasite, the first of a trilogy. I gave it 3 stars, but am not sure when/if I'll read the other books. It was pretty slow going. Not a very good heroine.."

I read it back when we had our group discussion of Parasite. As I said there, it was slow, saved only by the introduction of Tansy midway through. I thought I'd read the sequels to see if annoying plot holes/coincidences would explain themselves in later books, but still haven't gotten around to it. (In fact, I seem to have that history with Seanan McGuire: Newsflesh, Wayward Children, Velveteen, InCryptid, October Daye & Parasite all one-and-done for me. I didn't dislike them, just didn't feel hungry for more.)

I haven't read anything else by her under either name nor had I read her author bio until now. Thanks for the heads up. Now I feel even more strongly about my last couple of paragraphs in my review.

Had a really rainy long Thanksgiving weekend so finished Phantom of the Opera pretty quick.

Thought I'd read Midnight Crossroad by Charlaine Harris before watching the show so that's next on my list. It isn't Halloween scary but it's got vampires and other monsters in it so it meets my October criteria.

The Fairytale Curse by Marina Finlayson

Origin - dan brown

I've been reading a lot of Halloween books:

1. Halloween by Paula Guran
2. Dark Harvest by Norman Partridge
3. Johnny Halloween by Norman Partridge
4. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving (this was an audiobook, narrated by Tom Mison of "Sleepy Hollow" fame)

And also a couple of others:

1. Fool's Assassin by Robin Hobb
2. On Basilisk Station by David Weber

All good reads. I'd recommend Dark Harvest if you're looking for a well-written Halloween story.

@Scott You should add The October Country or Something Wicked This Way Comes . Both are Halloween classics, in my opinion.

Saul wrote: "@Scott You should add The October Country or Something Wicked This Way Comes . Both are Halloween classics, in my opinion."

I have not heard of The October Country. Adding it to my TBR list now.

Something Wicked This Way Comes... Wasn't there a movie made about that one way back when? Regardless, I've never read it.

Thanks for the suggestions!

Nautilus wrote: "Origin - dan brown"

I didn't even know it was out yet. Let me know what you think. I enjoyed The Da Vinci Code but the last couple Langdon books have been stinkers. Still, they're usually worth reading just for all the art and history information.

I'm hopelessly behind reading my SF&F magazine... (there are baseball playoffs, football season, and a bunch of new TV shows I haven't decided are crap yet), but I squeezed in...

Sins of Empire by Brian McClellan
Set in his Powder Mage gunpowder fantasy world. I was a bit surprised several characters from the previous trilogy showed up among the newcomers (for some reason I thought this was otherwise new.)
I found the return to the world a light, enjoyable read. I like McClellan's quick-paced storytelling.

Journeying into YA territory with Graduation Day, and just finished Timeline, by Michael Crichton.

A Dragon of a Different Color by Rachel Aaron

I finished Cloudbound - Wilde. And Lord of Light - Zelazny ...
And I wanted something fun so I got Six Wakes (because I still can't face starting the 10,000+ pages of the storm light archives yet..)

Read: We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. An atmospheric character study that reminded me a lot of Gormenghast. Similar to Gormenghast there's no explicit fantasy elements, but it has an otherworldly vibe. It's definitely not horror though. ★★★★�.

Re-read: The Library at Mount Char, to get ready for the group read. I love this book so, so much. ★★★★�.

Currently 50% of the way through Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny. It hasn't grabbed me yet, and some awkward sentences ("Like all libraries, it was full of books.") and a fair amount of misogyny is throwing me off. Lord of Light was a slow burner too so it may still recover.

Finish reading Midnight Crossroads. It was ok, a paranormal mystery (fortunately not a romance) but it took Mr. Snuggly to make me really get into it. I think it being the first book there was a lot of setting up the town and it's inhabitants so the next book should be able to get into a faster start.

This one was a big deal when it first came out but the reviews didn't turn out so great, but I bought it at the time so figured I should get around to reading it and make my own opinion. At least if I hate it I can free up the shelf space! - Dracula the Un-Dead by Dacre Stoker

Noumenon by Marina J. Lostetter is a big sprawling mess of a space opera that packs half a dozen familiar scifi concepts into its 400 pages.

A whole generation fleet with 100,000+ people is sent to investigate a stellar anomaly that may be a Dyson sphere. The novel changes timeframe & character sets approximately every 50 pages for a new sub-story. The actual Big Dumb Object that's the mission's raison d'être gets about 50 pages before it's time to pack up and go home. Add a couple of crew revolts and the AI becoming likably sentient for in-flight entertainment.

Lostetter seems to want to look at notions of genetic destiny and communal purpose: Reproduction of the crew is via cloning, each clone slotted to replace its ancestor at a specific job. If your genetic ancestor was an engineer, you're going to be an engineer, all very Brave New World.

If a generation ship managed by a sentient AI is to your taste, read Aurora instead. Its science makes sense.

I like finding unknowns and read this gem, Egbert's World. It was a perfect read for this time of year, fast-paced, imaginative, adventurous; an excellent piece of fantasy fiction that had an Arthurian, Alice in Wonderland and Narnia feel to it.
Moving onto my next read that will be Armarda by Ernest Clyne.

I just finished Queen of Shadows, so I'll hopefully get to the next book in the series in November. I feel like I'm always playing catch up.

I'm also in the middle of Old Man's War. This is my first Scalzi book, and I am really enjoying it. It had me laughing so hard...there were tears.

Just finished with Age of Myth and it was pretty okay. Nothing as epic as Sanderson but it's refreshingly light. Had issue with some of the character names but I'm looking forward to reading Age of Swords.

P.S. I have no reading history of the Riyria Chronicles but I still enjoyed this!

I finished reading The Obelisk Gate and just started The third book in the trilogy The Stone Sky. Slow going. I liked the previous 2 books a lot. Not sure about this one.
Also read The Accidental Alchemist which was really fun in audio books and a good escape from the more gruesome reads this month. Rendezvous With Rama was good in audio. DNF The Witches in New York. Too much of a high school history book for me right now. I will try it again when I’m more in the history mood.
Still reading A Night In Lonesome October a chapter at a time. Love it and will probably reread once a year.

A couple of new items on the copyright front from the Internet Archive (archive.org). The Internet Archive is now leveraging a little known, and perhaps never used, provision of US copyright law, Section 108h, which allows libraries to scan and make available materials published 1923 to 1941 if they are not being actively sold. That means a lot of old content available to us.


The Boston Public Library announced the transfer of significant holdings from its Sound Archives Collection to the Internet Archive, which will digitize, preserve and make these recordings accessible to the public. The Boston Public Library (BPL) sound collection includes hundreds of thousands of audio recordings in a variety of historical formats, including wax cylinders, 78 rpms, and LPs.


These initiatives plus the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine are preserving & making a lot of historical material available. Here's a pretty good explanation of why this is so important:

Read The Last One. I really enjoyed it. It's not great literature, but I liked the story and the characters.

Now I'm reading Draigon Weather. My son actually picked this up in a little store in North Carolina. Turns out the store was owned by the author so they had several copies for sale. Didn't really know anything about it, but my kid knows if he asks for a book, I'll buy it! Turns out it's a pretty good read. Wish the author had been in the store that day. We could have had her autograph our copy.

Thought you made a typo and meant Dragon Weather :)

Finished Dracula the Un-Dead...I have to agree with many of the 1 star reviews that given it was an "official" sequel since it has the Stoker name on it, it kind of flew in the face of the original. But if you read it as just yet another take on Dracula, I felt it wasn't all that bad, gave it a 3.

Now on to the second Midnight Crossroads book (before I watch the TV series, often TV shows mash multiple books together and don't want spoilers) - Day Shift by Charlaine Harris

Aaaannnd...was going to go to the library this week to grab the much delayed The Dispossessed, and the upcoming Cordelia's Honor, but both are out. Finally decided not to play nice anymore and put reserves on them. I wonder if the Dispossessed is really that popular or if it's the same person. If its the same person they must be transcribing the book by hand :)

Brendan wrote: "Read: We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. An atmospheric character study that reminded me a lot of Gormenghast. Similar to Gormenghast there's no explicit fantasy elements, but it has an otherworldly vibe. It's definitely not horror though"

I definitely disagree about it not being horror. If you look at the history of gothic fiction/horror, We have Always Lived in the Castle certainly fits in as a late gothic novel. It may not fit into the post-1960s conception of the horror genre, but certainly fits right in with the old gothic classics. That style of horror is much more subtle and atmospheric, more about the unraveling of an unsettling truth. Fiction deliberately written to make people feel uncomfortable/unsettled and play off social anxieties. Gormenghast also fits into gothic fiction so it makes sense that you would compare the two.

Anyways, have finished a bunch of books since last posting:

Baptism of Fire (Witcher series) 4/5
The Hound of the Baskervilles (Mystery/gothic Halloween read) 3/5
Mapping the Interior (Horror/Halloween read) 4/5
±á´Ç°ù°ù´Ç°ù²õ³Ùö°ù (Horror comedy/Halloween read) Not sure what to rate yet. 3.5-4/5 stars

Looking for some more horror. Not sure what's next yet.

This month I have ticked off Lord of Chaos for WoT re-read (the middle section of the series is so slow).

I also got through three of my books for my author geography bingo challenge:
Sister Mine by Jamacian author Nalo Hopkinson which was a really nifty urban fantasy with a magic/mythology which was new to me. I really enjoyed it. I found it to have a really unique perspective.

Binti by Nnedi Okorafor which I was really looking forward it - it's been recommended to me so many times as a good example of Afrofuturism buuuuut... it kinda fell flat to me. It wasn't bad, enjoyable in fact, but my expectations may have been too high. A relatively straight forward short sci-fi story.

The Queue by Egyptian author Basma Abdel Aziz was a spine-chilling dystopian novel, the subtlety, the creeping horror, the disturbing sense of familiar-unfamiliar... It was really good, especially for a sub-genre I'm not usually into.

I also read Shards of Honour for the group read. I'm save my thoughts for there but overall, not bad, but not my cup of tea.

NekroRider wrote: "I definitely disagree about it not being horror. If you look at the history of gothic fiction/horror, We have Always Lived in the Castle certainly fits in as a late gothic novel. "

That's fair. I more meant for Geezer and others who dislike that sort of thing that it isn't a scary novel.

I.......still have not finished Shards of Honor. A bit restless since the characters became unlikable and the plot is just weird and rather unsettling.

It does not help that I am struggling with Something Wicked This Way Comes due to the stylistic phraseology thing Bradbury applied. Need more concentration which means I'll also be very slow in finishing this book.

Maybe I'll entertain myself with some other fun books in between.

Finished Vampires, Wine & Roses...not the best vampire anthology though it had some really nice ones in it, while at the same time having several that were arguably not vampire related at all (a scene from Romeo and Juliet??) However next year I will make sure not to read as many books written in 19th century gothic lit format (in addition to most stories in that anthology I read The Phantom of the Opera, Dracula the Undead, and still working on the never-ending Varney the Vampire). The more formal writing takes a bit more mental power, and the style is more subtle and less straightfoward story telling.

Which made finishing off Day Shift by Charlaine Harris a nice relief. Turns out this series also takes place in the same world as her Sookie series, had some minor character crossovers in this one. Didn't realize that though it explains why people seemed to know vampires exist.

By chance I stumbled across a Sookie anthology in a used bookstore - A Touch of Dead. I'd read most, but not all, of the stories in it before (some stories are in anthologies that are out of print). Still have time left in the month to finish that along with Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis by Anne Rice...reviews are pretty bad for this one (like having Atlantis involved wasn't a hint that the plot would be a bit silly) but I've been reading a Vampire Chronicles book every October for *years* now so didn't want to stop while there was still one to be read. And as much as the plots can be so absurd as to be downright ridiculous, I still like the way Rice writes.