Finished reading the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. Will start reading The Lost Hero, but first I want to read something else... haven't decided what yet.

I read Ethan Hawkes "Rules for a Knight".

Really good.

Many hated God Emperor of Dune. Most likely because the setting changes dramatically from the one of Children of Dune, and the story departs quite a lot from the original Dune.

However, in a second reading it improves a lot. Maybe because you know what you should not expect and appreciate it on its own.

Just finished Blood of Elves. I intended to start the Witcher books with the short story collections but I happened to be given this one for Christmas and not the others, so I figured I'd go ahead and read it.

I found it engaging but I think being a fan of the games helped me out. Without that hook I probably would not have found it a satisfying read as it's very much the first chapter of a longer saga and is building to whatever happens in the rest of the books. It's mainly Ciri's origin/coming of age story, with Geralt playing a supporting role in an espionage subplot. Fortunately, Ciri is kind of adorable and funny, so I didn't mind too much.

Heretics of Dune - Frank Herbert. Starting Chapterhouse now.

I recently discovered Thomas Ligotti, a weird/horror fiction writer that's quite reclusive. I had never heard of him or his works and they're quite good so I found it very strange and contradictory. The Washington Post calls him the "best kept secret in contemporary horror fiction" and he just might be.

Ligotti's philosophy is pessimisting and antinatalistic, so if that's not your thing you might feel strange reading his works because he's very, very convincing. I just finished reading The Conspiracy Against the Human Race, one of his non-fiction works, written as a philosophical treatise on the dreadfulness of the human condition.

Highly recommended.

He does sound interesting, I'm going to look him up. Have you read any of his fictional works too?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Songs-Dreamer-Grimscribe-Thomas-Ligotti/dp/0143107763/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1448222565&sr=8-1&keywords=thomas+ligotti

This. It's also available on Google Play Books.

He has written quite a lot of short stories and novels as well and there are collections of those floating around. I will get to them as soon as I can.

I'm getting behind of my comic donalds.. Next week.. To the library!

And I finally got around to A Dance with Dragons. Only been waiting there on a shelf since... May 2012 I think, after all. And only some six and a half years since I read the others. The series helped bridge the gap, I'd have been far more lost otherwise, but also highlighted the differences between where they're going with that and the actual story.

I once read a review stating that A Dance with Dragons is a 1200-page book containing perhaps 200 pages of action, which with a bit of effort may have even been squeezed into 100. Which is true, and I’ll also add that some of that action is not presented directly, as it happens, but summarized as the memory of one character or another, after the fact. If what you seek is excitement, a thrilling read that makes you forget to breathe as your heart races and you feverishly turn the pages, you won’t find it here.
A book like this couldn’t be the first or the last in a series, and in a less epic one it wouldn’t belong at all. Yet here it does, and that’s because it’s a formidable, mind-bogglingly detailed, example of worldbuilding. Yes, it does contain the next part of the story, as well as occasional humor, wisdom and further evidence, if any more was needed, that the author doesn’t shy away from, well, anything, but its main purpose is to present this world, or at least certain parts of it, in incredible detail and allow you, the reader, to live and lose yourself in it for a while. You’ll probably gloss over much and more, I know I did, but if there’s anything you do want to know about this world, you’ll likely find it here.
It can get confusing though, and not because of all those details but because it at first covers the same time span as A Feast for Crows yet still includes a few parts that would have belonged there instead, and then continues past that point yet still doesn’t present everything, leaving the reader with glimpses of stories, important elements still shrouded in mystery. Of course, that is in part done on purpose, yet that makes it no less frustrating, plus that, for all its size, the ending seems rather rushed and then cut short… Which I understand the author actually admitted it was.

Helmet For My Pillow - From Parris Island to the Pacific by Robert Leckie

Leckie's memoir was used as one of the source materials for the HBO miniseries, and Band of Brothers follow-up, The Pacific. It is told from the view of a private who didn't always follow the little rules in the Marine Corps, one of those desired by the legendary General, and later pacifist, Smedley Butler when he said, "Give me a regiment of brig-rats, and I'll lick the world."

Leckie enlisted in the Marine Corps the month after Pearl Harbor and the early part of the book follows him and his friends in training at Parris Island and New River. Though a few of his closest friends are named at some point in the book, he continually uses descriptive nicknames (which carried through into the mini-series), such as the Chuckler, the Runner, Hoosier, Lieutenant Liberal, Major Major-Share, Souvernirs, The Artist, The Scholar, etc., which gave him some freedom. (Some of the nicknames were used contemporaneously and the author was known during the war as Lucky.) The book, published in 1957, is noted for its accurate depiction of the campaigns in which the First Marine Division took part.

Leckie was among the first on Guadalcanal and Peleliu and also saw combat on New Guinea and on New Britain at Cape Gloucester, with time spent at Melbourne, Pavuvu, Goodenough, and Banika. He suffered injuries from blast concussion on the 2nd day at Peleliu and thus didn't have to fight on Okinawa. Those that were injured on Peleliu were the lucky ones; Leckie's battalion of about 1500 ended that battle with 28 combat-effective soldiers. Of nearly 11,000 Japanese on the island at the time of the assault, 19 soldiers survived (202 overall including foreign laborers). Pretty shocking...

Leckie began the war as a machine-gunner and was later an intelligence scout. The book is really pretty amazing in its description of man-to-man fighting. He doesn't spend much time on military analysis of the campaigns (though after this, his first book, he became a military historian writing over 30 books) and describes the conditions on the ground. During fighting and between the fights. It is as brutal as one would expect when reading of WWII in the Pacific. The enemy was the jungle and disease as often as it was the Japanese army & navy. Leckie was a writer from the age of 16 (covering sports in his local newspaper in New Jersey) and his prose is really well written.

Definitely recommended to anyone interested in the history of the USMC in the Pacific campaigns of World War II.

----

The text of Major General Smedley (2x Congressional Medal of Honor recipient) Butler's War Is A Racket.

Last month I finished:

The Best of Harry Harrison By Harry Harrison

20 short stories from a book i got for 1.50$. A steal even if a couple stories are real stinkers. Seriously great stuff. For sure I will be seeking out more from him. Especially Make Room Make Room since the roomates subplot was rewritten for an anthology and is included in the best of. I even watched Soylent Green after and was shocked at how much they missed. I mean a 12 page short story had more content than the entire film.

Mona Lisa Overdrive by William Gibson

The difference in the quality of writing between Neuromancer and this is simply astounding. Neromancer was no slouch and was very well paced but page for page MLO packs more detail into a sentence than Neuro did in half a page. The verbal imagry is very rich if a bit obtuse at times when dealing one particular character. Since I had recently played Gabrial Knight, Sins of the Fathers I was reasonably versed in the terms commonly used in Voodoo. Not knowing that would have made that particular part of the plot very confusing I imagine. I was happy that I did not have to read Count Zero to understand this.

Arkham Tales by H.P Lovecraft

Just a collection of a few Lovecraft tales that take place in and around Arkham. Some I had not read before like Herbert West Reanimator, which should not have made me as tense as it did. I had been exposed to the concept a hundred times already and always found it maudilen. At one point it actually made me jump and that coincided with the rapport of a dropped bowl on tiled floor. The author just had a knack at making anything believeable and everything important.

I just stumbled on this thread, never noticed it before!

I know which books I've finished the past few months, but I don't recall exactly when I finished each one, so I'll only list the ones I know I finished in 2016.

Galactic Effectuator (Jack Vance)

This book is really two unconnected sci-fi novellas, sharing the same protagonist. If I had to pick a single favourite author, it would be Jack Vance. A resourceful and clever hero, villainous badguys, battles of words, a mystery to unravel, all in Jack Vance’s own unique prose. A very fun read, definitely recommended!

Ready Player One (Ernest Cline)

I finished the book, but I didn’t enjoy it enough to recommend it. On the one hand, the story seems to be meant to appeal to people who grew up in the 80’s (as I did), but on the other hand the writing/characters/plot are very juvenile (perhaps intentionally so by the author?) and just did not appeal to me. Not recommended.

Saga of Old City (Gary Gygax)

This is the first fantasy novel of Gord the Rogue, written by the co-author of Dungeons & Dragons. I enjoyed the start of the story about Gord’s childhood, but it begins to go downhill later on when he gets embroiled in affairs of state. I still enjoy this book as a guilty pleasure from my childhood, but I’d probably not recommend it to others. For anyone wanting to try Gord the Rogue, I’d recommend starting with Night Arrant (below).

Sea of Death (Gary Gygax)

The third Gord the Rogue novel (I did not read the 2nd this time around because I didn’t enjoy it at all previously). This is another guilty pleasure for me, there are a number of interesting happenings (particularly the pulpy adventures beneath the Sea of Dust) but others which are significantly less so. I have unashamedly marked the ‘bad’ chapters in my book and skip over them completely when I re-read the book. Overall, not recommended to others though.

Night Arrant (Gary Gygax)

This book is actually a collection of short stories, all featuring Gord the Rogue. These stories, clearly inspired by Leiber’s Fafhrd and Grey Mouser, are action-packed and humourous adventures. These are by far the most enjoyable Gord the Rogue stories, and I would recommend this book to others :).

Discourse On Colonialism by Aimé Césaire

Césaire was a Martinican poet, playwright, and politician closely linked to (and a founder of) the négritude movement among black francophones originating in the 1930s, which sought to overcome the effects of colonialism and unite the African diaspora. He was the mayor of Fort-de-France and also spent time as Martinique's representative to the French National Assembly. His good friend, Leopold Senghor, was the first president of Senegal.

Discourse on Colonialism is fiery, poetic, hard-hitting, angry, and very intelligent. The subtitle - Fuck This Shit - is merely implied. :) It makes the case that the colonizer winds up as brutalized in psyche as the colonized. He makes a mockery of the post-"discovery" rationalization that the colonizer was bringing civilization - the colonized were always brutally decivilized. One of the conclusions reached is that the results of the Nazis are the same results of the history of the world - we only noticed it because it happened in Europe.

First published in 1950, I read the 1955 version, which is the version that most people encounter. I first read it over 20 years ago - it was good to return. I wish there had been a formal follow-up by Cesaire, but I should look out for more of his writing and ideas post-1955. I do have a large volume of his poetry, including Cahier d'un retour au pays natal, but D.O.C. was written as the colonial system was being dismantled and I'm curious about what he may have thought about those results.

Cesaire was definitely a leftist - remarking in the 1960s interview by the Haitian poet René Depestre included at the end of my edition - that the dismantling of the colonial system and uniting of the diaspora could never have originated on the right. He was a communist when this essay was published, but after the 1956 Hungarian crackdown he became disenchanted and left the Communist Party, spending the rest of his life as a more independent revolutionary.

I assume many have read this, but if you're interested in the topic of colonialism and post-colonialism, this is one of the places to start.

Dracula (Bram Stoker)

It’s easy to see why this book is so famous and has inspired so many others, it does have a good story inside. Unfortunately however it’s buried beneath a lot of verbose Victorian prose. Only recommended if you’ve got the patience.