[Wilshire]

Finished The Divine Invasion by Phillip K Dick. Am not compelled to read the rest of the VALIS trilogy. Kind of fun, but maybe too bizarre.  What a change in pace reading a book thats <200 pages .

Up next will probably be 2001.

EDIT
It turned into a dissertation and/or history lesson on religion, which is not what I was looking for via sci-fi reading. That being the case, should I stay away from PKD?

[Alia]

Not all of PKD, but yes, quite a lot. Try Ubik (this one gave me quite a lot of nightmares - I read it much too young), Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and if I was to choose one PKD's book that one should really, really read, this would be The Man in the High Castle.

[Wilshire]

Thats good. I plan on reading Androids, and probably Castle if I like that one.

[SilentRoamer]

Ok well I really couldn't decide what to read. My choices were:

Patrick Rothfoss: Name of the Wind
Brandon Sanderson: Alloy of Law
James Corey: Leviathan Wakes
Daniel Abraham: The Dragons Path

So I decided to ignore all of the above and continue my read of Adrian Tchaikovskys Shadows of the Apt series (10 book series currently on book 7) after taking a break from it last year. Anyway the break seemed to do me good as I seem to have a renewed interest in the characters and am plodding through it at a nice and steady rate.

[SilentRoamer]

What would you count towards a total?

So obviously some books are a lot longer than others. The Machine Stops at 40 pages would only qualify as a short. I think I am going to detail both my story and short story reads. Putting a 40 page book towards my yearly word count seems a bit of a cheat, but then again if reading huge tomes only count as a single book then why should short stories not?

Interested on thoughts on where people think shorts, novellas and novels have their arbitrary size splits?

[Wilshire]

Well, a lot of the older sci-fi stuff sits around 100-200 pages. I'd still consider that a book. Any shorter than that and you're right, seems like it may not count, but its still arbitrary. The "fairest" way to count would be total words read, but thats a huge pain and the year is almost half over anyway.

[SilentRoamer]

Yeah I think I am going to just draw a limit at 100 pages. 100+ is a full story and <100 is a short.

I am not including graphic novels at the moment but if anyone wanted to I would be happy to add.

[Royce]

@Wilshire  Most of his books are borderline madness manifested, so if that is not your cup of tea then you might just leave him alone:)  UBIK is a must read though, so read that one. Androids is of course also a winner. You probably know this but the movie Blade Runner is based on Androids.

Do not listen to me though, because I love every word that guy put on paper:). Kind of a Dick bias.

[Wilshire]

Its appreciated Royce. I'm not sworn off him at all, just thought Divine Invasion was rather a bit odd.

[Wilshire]

On my way through 2001, enjoying it so far.

[Royce]

Yeah 2001 is one of my all time favorite sci fi novels.

I finished The black prism by Brent Weeks and although it is better than Night Angel I still struggle a bit with this dude. He has toned down the ninja blockbuster shit that defined his first series, and he is pretty good at twisting the plot around. Fairly entertaining but not overly impressed so far. The second book in this series is supposedly way better than the first so I might give it a go.

[Wilshire]

Finished 2001 and it was pretty incredible, definitely recommend to anyone who wants to read sci-fi.

On my way through The Gods Themselves, about 1/2 way and its also very good.

How many way that now? I lost track . JS&MN, MoI(?), HoC, 2001, Divine Invasion... I think that was it. These short sci-fi's are making my 10 goal more approachable, but I doubt I'll finish Malzan by the end of the year. There is yet time though.

[SilentRoamer]

Hey Wilshire,

I am going to go back through this thread and make sure everyone's totals are updated on the first page. I am sure you can hit your 10 mark if you push for it. I really like The Gods Themselves, it is one of my favourite Asimov books so let me know what you think of the ending.

Well I finished Adrian Tchaikovsky The Heirs of the Blade which is book 7 in a 10 book series. It is really surprising that Tchaikovsky can keep things fresh at this point and still slowly reveal more history of his world. This is a series I will definitely be finishing. I will buy the remaining books in paperback as well to match my set. I find Tchaikovsky frustrating in that the story is better than the telling - not to say the telling is bad but the prose could be better. The story, however, is very interesting and he does a great job of weaving a believably large and epic world.

Anyway now I have Abercrombie's The Last Argument of Kings which I am going to move onto almost immediately.

[Wilshire]

Finished The Gods Themselves.

This was a fantastic book.

[Garet Jax]

If it wasn't for my two month hiatus from work earlier this year, my total would be 0...  Hopefully I can squeeze one or two in by the end of the year.