Things I've read lately

So it was an outage for 89 days and I didn't read much and didn't update this with any of the books.

Absolution Gap--A reread, but good.
On Basilisk Station--Enjoyable
Bright of the Sky--Mostly interesting, but probably not enough to pay for the book on Kindle.
Installing Linux on a Dead Badger--Very funny. You should read it.
The Paradise War--Kind of interesting, but less so when I discovered that this is part of a long series. Neat that an established author put something out for free on the Kindle.
The Softwire: Virus on Orbis 1--Another free book. This was okay, but geared toward young adult or something.
The Paths of the Dead--I don't know why I keep reading these books. Plot is just fine, but the writing style annoys me.
The Jennifer Morgue--I liked The Atrocity Archives and some of the later works in this series better, but this one suffered by being read very slowly over a week or two.
One of Our Thursdays is Missing--I don't know why I keep reading these books.
How to Live in a Science Fictional Universe--Not that good.

A Clash of Kings--Partial reread to prepare for the upcoming 5th book.
The Color of Magic--I got about half way though one night before I needed to go to sleep.
Way too much stuff at work--I spent the first portion of the outage reading. Stuff about why the analysis done on nuclear fuel and nuclear cores and whatnot is done correctly. I think that got up to ~2000 pages not including graphs and the pages I skipped. But that doesn't count toward my total.

Hugo nominees thus far:
Novella
"The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers beneath the Queen's Window" by Rachel Swirsky--This was rather good. If there weren't an Alastair Reynolds up in the same category, I would vote for this.
"The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang--I read this one a while back (during the nomination period) because it seemed likely to get a nomination. It was interesting, but a lot more about people's feelings than I liked.
"The Maiden Flight of McCauley's Bellerophon" by Elizabeth Hand--This one didn't explain enough before the end. And just not that interesting.
Best Novelette
"The Emperor of Mars" by Allen M. Steele--I listened to this one on a podcast, StarShipSofa. But I read it again for now (because I couldn't remember whether the name was the same). This feels like a strong contender to me. Neat that this was largely meta-sci-fi.
"Plus or Minus" by James Patrick Kelly--Not actually that interesting. There is possibly potential in this universe, but this story was not compelling.
"That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made" by Eric James Stone--I think I want to reread this one during a non-outage time. There were definitely interesting ideas here and the religion aspect somehow didn't throw me off.

Pages: I'm saying 20 pages/novelette and 85 for novellas as I don't know the pagecount due to reading on Kindle.
4113

Truth by Terry Pratchett

I picked this up because (when I started) things were going kind of crappy and Discworld is funny and not entirely depressing.

Pages: 368

The Merchants' War by Charles Stross

I wish I had realized that this was the fourth book in the series. All the same, it is very well written. There were enough clues about the main magic of this universe for me to figure things out reasonably, and the explaining parts were talking tactics for upcoming battles, so  I think it would have been fine even if I had read the books before. I am interested in the characters. I am sort of unhappy that this is a tightly linked series because I don't have time to read the following two books (or go back for the first three) until May or June. But they are high on my list.
Pages: 336

The Knight by Gene Wolfe

Annoying main character. Cliffhanger ending to make sure you read the next book. Wolfe made an error with that, because I am not going to pick up the next one even though it is at my normal library.
Pages: 430

Elegy for a Young Elk by Hannu Rajaniemi

More trying to figure out what to nominate.
http://subterraneanpress.com/index.php/magazine/spring-2010/fiction-elegy-for-a-young-elk-by-hannu-rajaniemi/

This one was okay, but not anything I'd want to win a Hugo. 

Halting State by Charles Stross

This one was kind of neat. A combination of tech and spies and nerds. It was lacking something, though I'm not sure what. I just wasn't as pulled along as I should have been.

Pages: 336

The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang

I'm trying to figure out what to nominate for the 2011 Hugo Awards, and I found this on some random person's list of neat things.

This story was fairly long--enough so that I read it over the course of two days instead of a couple hours in one night. That detracted some. But I did not particularly like that the story did not have any clear climax and that the ending sort of petered out instead of ending more normally.

I do not think this one is worth a Hugo. The last time Chiang won a Hugo, it was definitely worth it. Not this time.

http://subterraneanpress.com/index.php/magazine/fall-2010/fiction-the-lifecycle-of-software-objects-by-ted-chiang/

Path of the Fury by David Weber

Why didn't I start reading David Weber earlier? I know why I have not read him since December or so--the book covers for his main series have too many women and too many women who are there for sex appeal. I don't want stories driven by interactions between a man and a woman as such, I want explosions. David Weber just doesn't put the explosions on the cover of his book, he hides them inside.

Weber has a very neat way of taking something from mythology/folktales and mixing it in with space opera--with enough cybernetic stuff to make it feel sort of on the edge of things even though those ideas have been around for a long time. The cybernetic things reminded me of the Culture novels. At any rate, in this book the old idea that Weber borrowed was the Furies from Greek mythology, hence the title of the book.

There are a lot of explosions, some very fast ships, and a mostly satisfying ending. Oh, and there are more books in this series.

Pages: 512

Saturn's Children by Charles Stross

One of the first blurbs inside the cover stated that this book "oozed sex on every page" or something similar. It doesn't, though the cover makes it something I wouldn't read at work*. There is some graphic description in here, but not much.

And after saying all that, I'd like to point out that I read it because I'm on a Stross kick right now, not because it looked like a sci-fi "romance" novel. There were interesting ideas in here, mainly dealing with a weird robot civilization that was largely weird because humanity had died out and thoroughly killed every biosphere capable of supporting it at the same time. I think this book should have had less sex in it because even though the fact that the main character was built in a factory to be a concubine and it was a big part of the unfolding of the story, it felt unneeded. Of course, the dedication was to Asimov and Heinlein--robots for Asimov, gratuitous sex for Heinlein.
Pages: 321

The Man Kizn Wars by Larry Niven, Poul Anderson, and Dean Ing

I think I have read this book previously, I know that when I was last in the hospital, my dad brought me some books and the fourth (I think) book in this series was among them. He also brought be the Isle of Dr. Moreau while I was in the hospital for some kinda serious surgery.  At any rate, I found this book enjoyable and while the stories on the whole aren't particularly memorable for me, I do tend to remember two of the neat plot points. I remember the last story more because it feeds into some of the later Known Space stories. I like the older sci-fi stories where the entire story seemed like a way to discuss the neat idea (using buckyballs to keep a planet wide goo from eating your ship, for example).

Pages: 289

Eric by Terry Pratchett

I was confused about who Eric was. I thought he was the guy who married DEATH's daughter, but he isn't.
This book didn't have many amusing footnotes. I did not notice many even remotely amusing puns. I don't recall laughing out loud a single time. I didn't like this one much.
Pages: 197

To Rule in Amber by John Gregory Betancourt

This was a less than interesting end to the trilogy. It felt like a fast explanation of the remaining story, instead of telling the story. Perhaps the publisher figured out that no one really liked the books because they weren't by Zelazny. This technically finished the trilogy, but left a lot of loose ends. Also, this feels like a novella because the font, line spacing, and margins are all large.

Pages: 310

The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross

The Laundry short story, Overtime, was nominated for a Hugo last year. Also, I read it on Tor.com. Finally, Charles Stross has a good blog and he pointed out the chronological order of the Laundry universe books a week or two ago. Luckily, the bookstore had exactly one copy of this book (it's the one to start with), and no others in the series.

This book had some dark moments, but was overall fun. I appreciated that (at least for now) the minor romantic subplot has been taken care of, as that would get in the way of the rest of the story. I used some of the historical knowledge from Cryptonomicon for some of the references to WWII code breaking. And it is sort of interesting to compare this universe to the Thursday Next universe--this one wins easily for me, and not just because the romantic subplot is a major part of the plot in the Thursday Next books. I'll be looking out for these books in the future.

Pages: 368

Warriors edited by George R. R. Martin

Yet another thing Martin is doing instead of working on his Song of Ice and Fire books. This collection was okay, but the best part was finally reading some David Weber and deciding that he is kick ass.

Pages: 736

Her Smoke Rose Up Forever by James Tiptree Jr.

This is a story collection (short to novella length) rather than just the title story. While some of these stories are clearly pretty amazing, reading 508 pages of depressing, hopeless, slightly insane stories is a bit much. Given some sort of choice, I'd have rather gotten 3 collections instead of a single one.

Pages: 508

The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson

I liked this book more than a lot of Sanderson's other books. The science of the universe's magic isn't as explicitly explained here as in other books. It feels a bit less like a lecture because the entire world is rediscovering everything it forgot generations ago. The main characters aren't as young as in some of Sanderson's other books, which makes their journeys of self-discovery less annoying. I don't like the interludes with the Truthless killer guy. I do like that there was one failed love story already in this book. I sort of don't look forward to the fact that this series will be something like 10,000 pages spread over 15+ years (extrapolation for both numbers). I wasn't reading epic fantasy when WoT started, so I didn't experience the years of waiting. This will be like WoT all over again, except more laid back. I hope it doesn't get the same sort of community as WoT. In another WoT comparison, I appreciate that there seem to be a limited number of main characters.

Pages: 1008

Juggler of Worlds By Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner

This was okay. I coincidentally received Protector for Christmas while reading this. I thought this spelled out a few too many things, rather than leaving them implied. But it was good to read some of the back story about Nessus and Lewis. Also, this one kind of had a happy ending.

Pages: 349