#FridayReads - October 21st, 2011 Edition

For those not familiar, #FridayReads is about discussing what you're currently reading. As the FAQ states, it "promotes literacy and a passion for reading." Here is the entire Twitter feed for the #fridayreads hashtag. Through talking about what I've been reading, I'm hoping to accomplish a few things: make myself think a bit about how exactly I'd describe something I've recently read, let people know about books I've enjoyed, and hear from my readers about what they are reading.

Since my most recent #FridayReads post (two weeks ago) I finished reading the novel Agent to the Stars by John Scalzi. It went in all sorts of directions I wasn't expecting, but maintained its tone throughout and was, on the whole, a lot of fun. There's an introduction to the book which is available online and which tells about the background of him writing the novel. He ended up being a sort of pioneer in the indie publishing eBook world with this novel, making several thousand dollars posting it for free and letting people send him donations if they liked it. Interesting stuff!

Sunday Links: October 9, 2011 Edition

We're now down to just over three weeks until NaNoWriMo starts. The NaNo site is supposed to be re-launching with an updated version tomorrow (October 10th). So once that is live, it should be worth popping over to check out the changes if you're participating this year.

I'd be interested to know what sort of prep work any of my readers who are planning to do NaNo are doing. I know that some people do absolutely no prep at all and other people have detailed outlines, character descriptions, etc. in advance. 

Now for this week's links!

#FridayReads - October 7th, 2011 Edition

On the Fridays when I'm not dissecting short stories, I will be talking about what I'm currently reading or have recently read. I usually have three-to-five books that I'm reading at any given time, so I expect there should be a lot of different books over time that I'm able to let people know my thoughts about. These aren't going to be full-fledged reviews, but I hope that it's enough to give you an idea of what I thought about a book and whether you might like it or not.

I finished one of the three books I was reading in my last #FridayReads post. That was The Postmortal by Drew Magary. This one surprised me a bit, I had expected it to be less serious than it ended up being. I'd already noted that a couple weeks ago when I was only about 25% of the way through the book, but it got progressively darker throughout. I think it's fair to say that Magary paints pretty much a "worst case scenario" for what could happen after a cure for aging. At the same time, it's hard to really refute his general thesis that this could very easily be the worst thing to happen to humanity.

I'm also still reading Agent to the Stars by John Scalzi. That one continues to be amusing, though I'm not sure exactly where it's going to end up going. I didn't think to talk about the cover last time. I love the cover to the paperback copy I have (it's the same that shows at the Amazon link above). It's got this late-50s/early-60s feel to it that which, even though the story isn't set during that time period, doesn't feel out of character with the story itself.

More (including my two new reads for these two weeks) past the jump...

#FridayReads - What I'm Reading

I'm reading several things that I'm really liking right now, so this seemed like a great time to do a #fridayreads blog post. Before I get to the titles, yes, I'm one of those people who reads multiple books at the same time. (Oh, not at the same-same time. You know what I mean... I don't finish one before I start another.) I have been for as long as I can remember. When our house isn't in the middle of major renovations, there's usually a gigantic stack of to-be-reads and just-finished-readings and being-reads and started-but-didn't-finishes sitting on a nightstand by our bed.

That brings up another point.