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

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

Queen of the Legion by Jack Williamson

I should go to the library because it is quite a while until the next WoT book comes out.

This book is okay. I both like and strongly dislike the Giles Habibula. There are a lot of parts that are pretty much lame and the actual "battle" against the villains isn't that interesting. I don't recommend this book.

Pages: 260

House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds

This was seems like it was still set in the Revelation Space universe, but didn't particularly reference anything from the previous books. I was disappointed that the book was essentially a human interest story (including a love story) about a conspiracy theory. There were a few interesting moments, but this one wasn't really worth it for me.

Edit: I was mistaken, this isn't in the Revelation Space universe. That explains why nothing seemed to be referenced. Still, the book wasn't very good.
Pages: 576

Galatic North by Alastair Reynolds

This book is a collection of short stories in the Revelation Space universe. The back story about Nevil and the Conjoiners at Mars was really great to read--the events are referred to in other Revelation Space books, but here much of the story is explained. I love seeing the partial conclusion of the universe in the last story, Galactic North, where the galaxy has been taken over by the greenflies. I'd be even more interested in what life is like in the galaxy at that point, but seeing what most of humanity is doing is interesting as well. There are a couple of throw away stories--little bits of the universe that would never merit inclusion in a novel because they aren't important to any storyline, but that help fill out a character or an idea. I particularly like learning that the Conjoiner drives are controlled with a disembodied Conjoiner brain. I do not recommend reading this book before some of the other books in the universe because it does fill in a lot. I like trying to work out some information myself. But this is a good addition to the Revelation Space universe.

Pages: 384

The Prefect by Alastair Reynolds

This novel isn't as good as some of the earlier books in the Revelation Space series. This book was enjoyable enough, but not particularly worth the $7.99+tax. I liked the more technological parts of this book, but didn't particularly care for the more political statements or the foreshadowing of the Plague time. I am much happier that The Prefect was written after the better books in the Revelation Space series because I wouldn't want to those books ruined by the foreshadowing in this book.

Pages: 416

Matter by Iain M. Banks

This was a very enjoyable book. Instead of focusing entirely on the primitive areas or the Culture, it explores the intersection of the two and reminds the readers that the Culture is still a newcomer in this universe. This one was far better than the previous couple I read.

Pages: 624

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