Over the course of the last year, I've been trying to keep track of books I read on LibraryThing (they have a groups/forum type section in addition to their awesome book cataloging capabilities). ( book list! )
That's a hell of a list! I, too re-read a *lot* - you've seen me track my new reads on Visual Bookshelf on Facebook, but I've been too bored/ashamed to track most of my re-reads. (Exception: I had already read and enjoyed _The Domesday Book_ (the novel, not the medieval census) when you recommended it, so I listed it so you would know I wasn't ignoring you. :) ) My re-reads are the things I read in overlap with my family, so they're much more heavily British and Irish, less sci-fi fantasy - lots of Maeve Binchy - but the same purpose.
I'm in the middle of Anathem now, along with six other books. (That was something that tracking my books did reveal to me that I didn't expect - I keep a lot of different books going at once!) It's good, but I'm hoping from everyone else's reactions that it'll get even better as it goes on.
Chewie & I just gave The Invention of Hugo Cabret to a couple of friends of ours without reading it, and they loved it (they also love rare Tim Powers chapbooks!) so I hope you do too.
(A) How are the non-Endymion series Simmons books? I really liked those four, but haven't ventured past.
(B) Have you read either of the following -- Thunderer by Felix Gilman or The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe? The first came highly recommended on Crooked Timber (crookedtimber.org), and the second is one of the new classics that I've actually read (and enjoyed).
I was disappointed with Ilium & Olympos. They weren't bad, but I didn't enjoy them as much as Hyperion/Endymion, which just blew me away. The Ilium series felt like it wasn't as tightly constructed-there were a couple places where I thought it was kind of inconsistent, or certain key elements didn't get explained, etc. Some cool ideas in them, to be sure, but they just didn't impress me in the same way. One of the problems may have been that the characters were much less engrossing, and you spend less time with them (compared to the lengthy Canterbury-tale style character backgrounds spread across the first book of Hyperion). I have not read either of your two suggestions; I'll look for them at the bookstore. We have a used bookstore that we visit every month or two for new acquisitions, and our list of stuff we're looking for is running a little low, so new ideas are good!
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I'm in the middle of Anathem now, along with six other books. (That was something that tracking my books did reveal to me that I didn't expect - I keep a lot of different books going at once!) It's good, but I'm hoping from everyone else's reactions that it'll get even better as it goes on.
Chewie & I just gave The Invention of Hugo Cabret to a couple of friends of ours without reading it, and they loved it (they also love rare Tim Powers chapbooks!) so I hope you do too.
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(A) How are the non-Endymion series Simmons books? I really liked those four, but haven't ventured past.
(B) Have you read either of the following -- Thunderer by Felix Gilman or The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe? The first came highly recommended on Crooked Timber (crookedtimber.org), and the second is one of the new classics that I've actually read (and enjoyed).
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I have not read either of your two suggestions; I'll look for them at the bookstore. We have a used bookstore that we visit every month or two for new acquisitions, and our list of stuff we're looking for is running a little low, so new ideas are good!
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