Endymion - Dan Simmons

10

Action-Adventure sequel to Hyperion Cantos.  Raised more questions than it answered, hopefully there's plenty of exposition in the last book!  Pretty good, but I'm not sure what else to say since its a sequel and pretty similar to the last book really, except with more peril.  Onto the last one :).

Ready Player One - Ernest Cline

9

Reddit seemed to be going crazy over this book so I decided to give it a try, considering that everyone claimed it was an easy, good read.  In retrospect I can see why reddit loved it so much, its basically a nerd's fantasy.  A world economy dominated by a massive MMORPG which everyone plays, and you can save the world from evil corporations, become rich, powerful and famous, and get the girl, all by playing the game and  knowing lots of trivia about 70s and 80s pop culture, especially video games.  That said the setting was pretty cool, but the dialogue and plot were a bit much for me in most of the book.

The Fall of Hyperion - Dan Simmons

8

The sequel to Hyperion.  This book is a lot more traditional in its style than the last book, but its no worse off for it.  I thought it got a little too hand-wavy towards the end but other than that it was pretty good.  I'm looking forward to reading the last two books which according to the blurb might explain some of the handwaving.

End of January Summary

Its the end of January so I thought I'd just write a quick summary of how I've done so far.

In one month I'm supposed to have read 4 books and I've definitely beaten that.  I've finished 7 books so far and am half way through my eighth.  In terms of pages I've mostly been reading over the odds (I'd consider 300-400 pages a normal length).  My average page count is 491 pages so I've been reading pretty long books.
My total page count is 3439 so far.
If I continue at this rate I will have read 52 books by mid August.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Alt2elSb1RLRdC11b3lxdnFWU1Y5YmVCWnVJeVVNcHc#gid=0
This google doc is tracking my progress if anyone wants more detail (why?).

Andy :)

Hyperion - Dan Simmons

7

Enjoyed this one a lot (am now reading the sequel Fall of Hyperion).  Its told in the form of a series of loosely related short stories, with an overarching story going on behind them. This way of storytelling allows for a lot of different genres and emotions within one book: there's a crime mystery story, a hard sci-fi story, a romance, a military action story and others and it keeps the book fresh and interesting all the way through, and if there's a part which you don't find interesting, its easy to push through because it won't be long until the story completely changes again. 

The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins

6

Really easy to read, I finished it in about 24 hours (I'd say about 8-10 hours solid reading).  A cool dystopian story very similar to Battle Royale (the film).  Enjoyed this quite a bit, I found the pacing to be excellent.

Prince of Thorns - Mark Lawrence

5

I was kinda disappointed with this book, mainly because I'd read some good reviews and comments and so was looking forward to reading it.  The plot was ok, but I found that the characters were unrealistic (just about everyone is super evil to a ridiculous degree), and the world building was lacking quite a bit.  Maybe I'll read the sequel (its reviewed better than this one) but I'm not in a rush to do so.