Just restarting the classic AO thread (15,285 posts, 1,695,599 views).
I finished the last book of the āNeverwinter Sagaā in the Drizzt series (āThe Last Thresholdā) last night, and will buy the next four in the series to read sometime in October. Started the collected short stories last night and should finish that today.
Next up in my non-Drizzt reading; I should finish the Kafka stories soon, and I want to read Lilith by George MacDonald, La Princesse de ClĆØves by Madame de La Fayette, The Well at the Worldās End by William Morris, The King of Elflandās Daughter by Lord Dunsany, and The Worm Ouroboros by E.R. Eddison before restarting my Gothic Romance read in October.
Current plan for October:
Blockquote
|A Sicilian Romance|Ann Radcliffe|
|ā|ā|
|The Mysteries of Udolpho|Ann Radcliffe|
|Caleb Williams|William Godwin|
|St. Leon: A Tale of the Sixteenth Century|William Godwin|
|Die RƤuber|Friedrich Schiller|
|Der Geisterseher|Friedrich Schiller|
|The Monk|Matthew Lewis|
|The Children of the Abbey|Regina Maria Roche|
|Wieland: or, the Transformation, an American Tale|Charles Brown|
|Rime of the Ancient Mariner|Samuel Taylor Coleridge|
|Northanger Abbey|Jane Austen|
|Thalaba the Destroyer|Robert Southey|
|The Wendigo|Algernon Blackwood|
|The Willows|Algernon Blackwood|
|The Centaur|Algernon Blackwood|
|The Great God Pan |Arthur Machen|
|The Three Impostors |Arthur Machen|
|The King in Yellow |Robert W. Chambers|
|Stories|Ambrose Bierce|
|The Boats of the āGlen Carrigā|William Hope Hodgson|
|The House on the Borderland |William Hope Hodgson|
|The Ghost Pirates|William Hope Hodgson|
|The Night Land |William Hope Hodgson|
|Dark Tales|Shirley Jackson|
|The Haunting of Hill House|Shirley Jackson|
|Rebecca|Daphne Du Maurier|
Iām reading
20 basics every christian should know
so I can teach adult Sunday School
Our group isnāt that basic though so my job is to level up the material.
Halfway through Kafkaās short stories, The Princess of Cleves, and the Riddle-Master of Hed. Going to try to finish the latter two today after barely reading yesterday (5 hour Yankee game!)
Finished Ann Radcliffeās A Sicilian Romance yesterday, and started R.A. Salvatoreās Rise Of The King. Also reading a story out of Horror Stories: Classic Tales from Hoffmann to Hodgson every day.
After Rise of the King, Iāll go ahead and read the next Drizzt book (Vengeance of the Iron Dwarf). After that are Rebecca and The Mysteries of Udolpho. Then some Shirley Jackson (The Haunting of Hill House and Dark Tales).
Reading Awaken Online: Inferno, Twelve Years a Slave, The Boy Between, and Iāve got a hold on The Thief of Always that Iāve let go to the next person in line a couple times because Iām swamped at work and only reading about 20-50 pages a day before I pass out.
havent noticed a What Are You reading thread
I picked up Hunger Games at a take one, leave one by me. It is smaller than i expected. is it the first movie? Doesnt look like there is enough there. Is it a complete story or will i need the series?
If you stop after the first it should be fine-ish. The story isnāt finished, but itās not a cliff hanger or anything. If you read the second you will need to read the third. I personally didnāt care for the third all that much, FWIW.
Yeah, I read the first, and then went onto the secondā¦ a little into the third in the Hunger Games series, I got extremely disgusted and stopped.
Just the first by itself was okay. I donāt think it was worthwhile the direction the author took it.
Right now, Iām re-reading Lord of the Rings (got a kindle version, which has hyperlinks, etc., but for this read-through Iām ignoring the footnotes/annotations)
Also listening to audiobook of Death Masks, the first Dresden Files book Iāve read (itās 4th in the series, but good series writers know how to get a reader to enter at almost any book). Not sure if Iām really into the books - started watching the TV series, which didnāt get very far but has enough episodes to be satisfying, I think.
Agree with others that you could read just the first Hunger Games book and leave it there.
I read the whole seriesāprimarily to get a feel for the view of the author on the underlying themes presented in the first book more so than seeing how the story plays out further. Bottom line: The author assumes that the population is stupid enough to go along with the dystopic solution seen in the first book; and it didnāt get any better. (Note: I also get that the audience of the book are teensāwho are coming into a world that they didnāt create; so the general theme aligns. However, IRL, there are explanations to how things came about. Nothing like that was evidentāat least nothing that would stand up to a test of its internal logic.)
The Ember Series would fall into this same bucket.
Agree with the comments re: Hunger Games. If youāre really interested in how the series finishes, just watch the 2 Mockingjay moviesā¦fairly entertaining.
Iām on book 9 of The Dresden Files. I usually read a couple every summer, and picked up books 6-9 from my local bookstore in the spring (trying to help keep them afloat)ā¦so just now finishing them.
Not sure whatās nextā¦probably Rhythm of War.
The What are you reading? thread is here.
I miss Link 
Iām currently wrapping up a classic horror short story collection, in first quarter of Mysteries of Udolpho, and close to finishing Timeless (3rd to last Drizzt book). The election slowed my reading down quite a bit, ha.
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In the middle of Larry Nivenās World of Ptaavs, and itās amusing which items in the story really date it (itās all stuff to the side, like West Berlin or everybody smoking so much), but the core concept is still really interesting. I knew about āslaver techā in the Known Universe, but hadnāt read this one yet.
Finished Positive by Wellington. It was a pretty typical zombie, end of civilization, road warrior book, but well written and fast paced enough that I enjoyed it.
I merged these two (Basically identical) topics.
I just read Lavinia, by Ursula le Guin. Published in 2008, it was her last novel (she continued to write short stories, poetry, and non-fiction until near her death, in 2018). It is a love letter to Virgil, in which she wrote a novel about a minor character in the Aeneid. Virgil, himself, makes a showing, in religious visions granted to the protagonist.
Itās a good story as a novel, but itās also interesting in its portrayal of the ancient Latin religion, and in her musings about the relationship between and author and her literary creations. In the afterward she talks about some of the research she did to write this, and thereās reason to believe that both the religion and the geography are pretty reliable. Reading it, I guessed that she made the people a little richer and perhaps more culturally and technologically advanced than they really would have been at that time, and she suspects the same in her afterward. But I think that makes for a better story.
The various battles, etc., are portrayed from the perspective of a woman who watched from the roof of her dwelling, or heard stories from the returning warriors, wounded, winners, and losers all. So itās a relatively quiet and contemplative book, despite the subject matter.
I am familiar with the Aeneid and the legends about the founding of Rome, and I might have enjoyed it more if I remembered more of my Virgil. But I think it stands on its own as a novel, and you donāt need any particular background to enjoy it.
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