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

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

Lots of books in December

 I got behind in writing down what I'm reading, so here's everything I missed.

Gateway by Fredrick Pohl
Okay, but not that great. I prefer happier books

Pages: 278

Beyond the Blue Event Horizon by Fredrick Pohl
Not actually that interesting, not much happens, and leaves off annoyingly.
Pages: 336

Dragonseye by Anne McCaffery
Not much happened in this book. I didn't really care about most of the characters.
Pages: 416

Protector by Larry Niven
This book is enjoyable. I had read it before.
Pages: 224

The Carpet Makers by Andreas Eschbach
This was interesting, but the towards the end things went far too slowly. Lots of plot threads were quickly introduced because they contributed to the ending.
Pages: 304

Misspent Youth by Peter F. Hamilton
Kind of weird, but okay. An awful lot of sex is implied, like if Heinlein had made sex a bigger plot point. Yes, sex can be a bigger plot point than in Heinlein and the book is still sci-fi. I'll give this author another try or two, but I don't particularly recommend this book. Some interesting commentary on politics and family relations though.
Pages: 416

Riverworld and other stories by Philip José Farmer
Riverworld was okay, I wasn't super fond of some of the other stories because they dealt more with religion and crazy people than I was interested in. I would like to read more in his Riverworld series.
Pages: 264

The Golden Apples of the Sun and Other Stories by Ray Bradbury
This wasn't very good. I only kind of like Bradbury, so that isn't surprising. I thought it was silly to include scanned copies of the manuscripts for two of the stories.
Pages: 247

A Tower of Midnight by Brandon Sanderson and Robert Jordan

I am really glad that I was very high on the hold list for this book. Tor and Brandon Sanderson did a good job getting interest up for this book between the sale of the prologue for $2.99 (I didn't buy it though) and the Great Hunt where Sanderson hid chapter titles for ToM with his Way of Kings books. The chapter titles then decoded a chapter of ToM on Sanderson's website. I only kind of enjoyed the chapter because I am only willing to read a certain amount about how Mat is now married and only looks at women to offer them to his men. Yeah.

Well, this one seems just slightly better than book 8. I don't care for Perrin develops as a wolf person.

Pages: 784

New Spring: The Novel by Robert Jordan

I read this one pretty close to when it came out. By that time, I was sort of impatient that Jordan hadn't written another book for WoT. I enjoyed understanding more of the back story. I had recently (within a year or so) read earlier books in the series where Moraine and Lan had larger roles, so it was more interesting on the first read than it was this time.

Pages: 334

Knife of Dreams by Robert Jordan

I'm getting ready for A Tower of Midnight and therefore reading some of the books earlier in the series in a random order. It isn't actually that useful because now I'm kind of confused about what happened when.

I liked that a lot happened in this book. Perrin rescued Faile, Mat actually got married, Rand lost his hand, and Elayne won the throne. It seems action packed (in terms of moving the plot along), though Gathering Storm has even more actual events. Initially, I thought I was reading book 9, which is a very sucky book. But Knife of Dreams is worth reading as more than a time filler. And I'm kind of swamped with books right now so I don't need any time fillers. I'll probably read one more WoT book before November and it will probably seem slow in comparison.

Pages: 880

The Gathering Storm by Brandon Sanderson and Robert Jordan

So maybe I should have read some of the other WoT books before jumping ahead to the one published last year, but I got ahold of an ebook and it was only a few days to finish it. I was very impressed with Gathering Storm on the first read because so much happened and there weren't as may repetitive statements ("she tugged her braid"). I'm very excited for the next book to come out in November.

Pages: 1120

Crossroads of Twilight by Robert Jordan

In preparation for the next WoT novel in November (I'm 17 on a hold list for 25 books) I'm rereading some of the older books. Also, I have run out of books to read and the library has been closed all of Labor Day weekend. This book was moderately annoying the first time I read it. I really disliked the Halmia character and I thought it was stupid that Egwene didn't think to connect Halmia to the headaches. Also, not much happened in this book. The neat parts of cleansing the source happened in an earlier book. Eh. This was okay reading for a long weekend, even if I was distracted by the internet every twenty minutes.

Pages: 680

Also, wonderful that StarShipSofa won a Hugo. I got the supporting membership just so I could vote for them.

Children of Dune by Frank Herbert

I was still out of things to read and I recently read Dune, so Children of Dune came next (I don't own the one between the two). This was okay, but not nearly as good as Dune.

Pages: 416

Dune by Frank Herbert

I ran out of library books and wanted something light to read while I finished up a section of the training at work. Dune is a very good book, as is well known. I particularly enjoyed the conversation with classmates about both Dune and sci-fi in general.

Pages: 544

Look to Windward by Iain M. Banks

These Culture books are due back rather soon (perhaps even yesterday), so I'm not reading other things between. This book was okay, certainly more interesting than the last one. I have a difficult time telling whether I'm less interested as the stories continue because I've read lots of stories or because they are actually getting lamer. The Culture idea is really nifty, but is most interesting when I'm learning something new about the universe, not when I'm just following around a couple characters and when it is generic sci-fi/space opera.

Pages: 357

Excession by Iain M. Banks

Another Culture book. I interrupted my reading of Palimpsest because at least the Culture books aren't completely depressing/desperate stories, but more on Palimpsest later.

The main thing that struck me about Excession is how the Culture novels tend to use the story premise that a ship (fully sentient) decides that it will only talk to one person. The rest of the Culture always needs information or some action from that particular ship for some reason, so everything comes down to one person agreeing to go do some random thing, usually just for about a week. It seems a bit much that this giant society depends on specific individuals for anything, particularly given that it is a decentralized society. But the book was still fairly enjoyable.

Pages: 499

Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks

The third Culture novel. I didn't care for this one nearly as much for a few reasons. First, the novel dealt mostly with non-Culture people, so it wasn't about the differences between how people normally think and how people in Culture think. Second, I didn't enjoy the split way the story was told, jumping between things that happened in the past (where generally bad things were happening) and things that happen now in a way that didn't explain anything until the end of the book. Then, when I got to the end of the book, I found that I actually didn't want to know anything about the scenes from the past. Third, I did not like the main character, a feeling that was strongly amplified by the ending of the book. I am glad that I read this book because I expect some of the later books to reference Use of Weapons, but this was not a particularly enjoyable read itself.

Pages: 512

The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks

Second book in the Culture series. Two things particularly interested me in this story. The first was an interesting ecosystem of one of the worlds. Jupiter has the storms that never end, the great red eye; this plant has a single band of land around the equator and there is a fire that moves around the plant on a yearly basis. I enjoyed that Banks wrote out some of the ecosystem instead of leaving all the background just in his head. The second interesting part was the plot itself. Banks told the old story of  "outsider comes in, beats everyone at some game, and wins the kingdom/empire" from the perspective of the gamer. He made the empire a horrible place, but didn't try to lecture me about it. The story was a story, with only enough didactic overtones to build a better understanding of the culture the outsider came from for the rest of the books in the series.

Pages: 416