What are you reading?

[dubiousbystander]

I'm reading a horror anthology, "The Best Horror of the Year, Volume 4", put together by Ellen Datlow.
Also reading (continuing my history reads) "Whispers Across the Atlantick: General William Howe and the American Revolution" by David Smith.
Amusingly, though I am still impressed with our having won, I am far less surprised by the fact, now. Good heavens, Howe and the others made so many mistakes...

[Ceridwen]

Dragged out my (incomplete) set of Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody series for some fun reading.

[Cyrus The Great]

Just finished "The Sandman: Overture" last night. Today I will start reading another Sandman related graphic novel called "Endless Nights". Neil Gaiman is an amazing writer!

[dubiousbystander]

I have started reading "The Killer Angels" by Michael Shaara, about the battle in Gettysburg.

[Cyrus The Great]

I am currently reading a graphic novel based on the book "Small Gods" by Terry Pratchett. In Pratchett's Discworld, Gods, large and small are real, but their existence waxes and wanes based on how many believers each has. Also, these Gods are not always clear on how their expect their believers to behave. Life and death, war and peace, all hang in the balance. Pratchett uses his unique sense of humor to teach us lessons that a few wise readers might put to good use in their own lives.

[Cyrus The Great]

I am currently reading Neil Gaiman's graphic novel "1602". The cast is populated by a number of Marvel Universe characters who are living in the year 1602 instead of the present. The action takes place mostly in England, Spain, and America. Among the superheros that have been translated into the past are: Nick Fury, Dr. X, Magneto, and Peter Parker. It is a very engaging and well told story with numerous surprises. I am enjoying it very much!

[Cyrus The Great]

I started another Neil Gaiman graphic novel: "The Graveyard Book". Its a fun story about a little boy who grows up in a graveyard amidst a multitude of ghosts and various other night creatures. Its rather vague about the location of the graveyard, but one of the ghosts is a Roman who mentions being on an island. Also, there is a Celtic burial mound. So, the location is probably somewhere in England.

[Cyrus The Great]

I have been reading the "A Brides Story" series of Manga written and illustrated by Kaoru Mori. I have just finished volume 3. The story is set in various Central Asian locations in the 1800's. In the first three volumes, the action took place in locations just east of the Aral Sea. In volume 4, one of the characters will be traveling through Persia en route to Turkey. The author has very carefully researched the cultures that the main characters are a part of. The stories told are very engaging. The illustrations are beautifully detailed. There are no superheroes, just ordinary people in a culture very different from anything I have ever experienced or learned about, doing their best to live in sometimes very difficult circumstances. Overall, these are some of the best graphic novels that I have ever read.

[Cyrus The Great]

I just started to read the Marvel graphic novel "Eternals" written by Neil Gaiman. The story centers around an Eternal who has forgotten who he is. As the story opens, he is a medical student who has lost his girlfriend and isn't getting much sleep. In the hospital, he is visited by a man, who claims to know him, and who tries to convince him that he is an immortal super being who has been alive for half a million years. The sleep deprived "med student" thinks he is crazy and tells him to get lost! Things get even more interesting after that.

[dubiousbystander]

Between access to two digital libraries, being in an online book club, and grabbing e-books or visiting the Internet Archive, I have in my currently reading/I'll get to it soon list: "Remote Control", by Nnede Okorafor. A novelette about a girl who has an encounter with something that suddenly makes her able to generate deadly killing energy. Not sure how I feel about this one. There are apparently two other books in the future of this same reality, but I don't yet know if I'll try them.

For the book club I recently finished "The Future", by Naomi Alderman. Three of the world's richest people disappear while escaping a nascent pandemic, and a survivalist finds herself marooned with them.

For next month I finished "In the Lives of Puppets" by T J Klune. A boy raised in the depths of the woods by a robot father has been rebuilding decommissioned junked robots, so his best friends are a Roomba named Rambo and a medical robot named Nurse Ratched. Then he saves a quite temperamental fighting robot. But when the Authority finds out where they are, his father hides him, but is taken away. The boy and his three companions go on a rescue mission.

Just started the March book. "The Deep Sky" by Yume Kitasei. One of the richest women in the world has launched a colonizing ship loaded with specially trained young women and lots of sperm stored so they can get pregnant. But something fishy is going on. Deadly sabotage endangers the mission, with a laundry list of possible culprits.

"Broken Code: Inside Facebook and the Fight to Expose Its Harmful Secrets" by Jeff Horwitz, was recommended by a friend who used to work for it.