What are you reading?

[Doria]

Currently reading "Girl on a train" by Paula Hawkins. It is a fun, quick read.

Just finished a jog thru some of Arthur C Clarke's books. I really liked "Rendezvous with Rama". I thought it captured the essence of good sci-fi, filled with wonder and exploration.

Next up was "Childhood's End", which I liked on the whole but struggled with the pacing of the middle of the book. But there were some ideas in that book that made me want to look to the stars again for questions and answers.

Lastly, I read "The Songs of Distant Earth", and wouldn't recommend that one. Neat idea but Clarke's weakness of character development comes through and it became a struggle to finish.

I have not read Childhood's End since probably fifth grade, but at the time, I loved it. I'm sure as an adult, I would likely have technical critiques such as you mention, but back then, it blew my mind!

I have plugged this series in The Walking Dead thread, but I'd recommend anyone interested in zombies or spec ops stuff to check out the Arisen series. It's a collaboration between two authors, one of whom was known more for (relatively) accurate military thrillers and one who covers the sci-fi/drama stuff. If you can suspend disbelief to get you to the zombie apocalypse, it's a great book(s). The caveat is that it's published serially, so the wait between installments can be painful. The other caveat is that I've not liked the two recent sections as much, and I suspect that the absence of one of the two writers is the cause. However, there's still a ton that's really fun. You can find it on Amazon; there may be other places, but that's where I stumbled across it. And because the installments are so inexpensive, you can try it for almost no cost (like maybe 2 or 3$?). Actually, with Amazon, if you read it and hate it, you can just return it on the kindle, if it's not too much later.