The Librain……retired

Hello and welcome to this week’s post about the books I have been reading. Unfortunately, I was taken into hospital last week and was unable to concentrate on reading ebooks or writing blog posts. I have finished two books since my last Reading Roundup and here is the first one…

Ooh, the anticipation! I have been waiting for the next episode in Pierce Brown’s epic Red Rising Saga with so much excitement: Light Bringer (Red Rising Saga #06). This must be one of my favourite series of all time! This is the (too short) blurb:

“Darrow returns as Pierce Brown’s New York Times bestselling Red Rising series continues in the thrilling sequel to Dark Age.

“The measure of a man is not the fear he sows in his enemies. It is the hope he gives his friends.”—Virginia au Augustus

The Reaper is a legend, more myth than man: the savior of worlds, the leader of the Rising, the breaker of chains.

But the Reaper is also Darrow, born of the red soil of Mars: a husband, a father, a friend.

The worlds once needed the Reaper. But now they need Darrow. Because after the dark age will come a new age: of light, of victory, of hope.”

Well, that doesn’t say enough! I really urge science fiction fans to seek out this amazing series. OK, here is my inadequate response – please read other, better ones on Goodreads…

Light Bringer by Pierce Brown
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I have had to wait a day after finishing this book before I could recover enough to write a response.

And that is… shock, horror, sadness and a tiny bit of hope!

How can mere black squiggles on a screen evoke such emotion? How can they make the human brain respond so passionately?

Read some of the other reviews!

I struggled with this book because my post stroke brain couldn’t remember enough of the back story. Some of it returned as I read on and I hope we don’t have to wait so long for the next episode in the saga. Mind you, it was worth the wait. The previous book, Dark Age, was truly bleak and grim. This one, while also tragic and terribly so in places, had chinks of light. There were moments of black humour and also episodes where this reader could see the possibilities that the positive vision of the future might just prevail.

Now everything seems to be set up for the next book and I am sure Pierce Brown’s amazing imagination and writing skills won’t let his avid readers down. No pressure there then!

View all my reviews

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Well, how could I find a book worthy to follow that? Luckily, I had a reservation waiting, so I turned to…

I seem to be working my way through Blake Crouch’s work as many of his books are on our ebook catalogue. This one, Pines, was part one of a series: Wayward Pines. It seems that this is also a TV series, although I haven’t seen this. Here is the blurb:

“Secret Service agent Ethan Burke arrives in Wayward Pines, Idaho, with a locate two federal agents who went missing in the bucolic town one month earlier. But within minutes of his arrival, Ethan is involved in a violent accident. He comes to in a hospital, with no ID, no cell phone, and no briefcase.

As the days pass, Ethan’s investigation turns up more questions than Why can’t he get any phone calls through to his wife and son in the outside world? Why doesn’t anyone believe he is who he says he is? And what is the purpose of the electrified fences surrounding the town? Are they meant to keep the residents in? Or something else out?

Each step closer to the truth takes Ethan farther from the world he knew, from the man he was, until he must face a horrifying fact – he may never get out of Wayward Pines alive.

The nail-bitingly suspenseful opening installment in Blake Crouch’s blockbuster Wayward Pines trilogy, Pines is at once a brilliant mystery tale and the first step into a genre-bending saga of suspense, science fiction, and horror.”

I read this quite quickly and then wrote this short response:

Pines by Blake Crouch
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Interesting and gripping science fiction with amazing twists in the plot – so I can’t say very much about it! There are more books in the series, so I am going to read the next part as soon as it becomes available on our ebook library.

View all my reviews

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Apologies for the brevity, but I wrote it just after coming out of hospital last week (more about that in Friday’s post). At least I have now recovered enough brain power to be able to read properly again and I am about halfway through my next book.

More about that in next week’s Reading Roundup!

Happy Reading to you all.

Love and best wishes,

Anne

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P.S. I read this a few days ago and found it really interesting. What do you think?

The Therapeutic Power of Reading: How Reading Can Reduce Stress by Danju
https://discountproducts8.wordpress.com/2023/08/24/the-therapeutic-power-of-reading-how-reading-can-reduce-stress/

Hello visitors and friends and welcome to this week’s post about the books I read. In last week’s Reading Roundup I wrote that I had almost finished a book. I didn’t finish it in time to write about it, after all reading should be savoured and not rushed!

So, here it is…

The book was Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary, the third book I have read by this author. This is the blurb:

“Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission – and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish.

Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.

All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.

His crew mates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, he realises that an impossible task now confronts him. Alone on this tiny ship that’s been cobbled together by every government and space agency on the planet and hurled into the depths of space, it’s up to him to conquer an extinction-level threat to our species.

And thanks to an unexpected ally, he just might have a chance.

Part scientific mystery, part dazzling interstellar journey, Project Hail Mary is a tale of discovery, speculation, and survival to rival The Martian – while taking us to places it never dreamed of going.”

The book took a lot of concentration and effort for me to read, mainly because of the tons of science or “science” in it! Anyway, I wrote a response on Goodreads:

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As I finished this book I felt very satisfied and positive. After all, I had managed to read something with a huge amount of science when my own knowledge of this huge subject area is minuscule! OK, I skipped a lot and, of course this book is science *fiction* so much of it could be complete nonsense for all I know. However, I really enjoyed the whole thing and I am glad that I chose the book.

Then I read a few of the reviews on here. Loads are very positive and reflect my own responses, but many others are much more negative. One of these latter reviews was very detailed and explanatory and I began to understand this person’s objections, such as the lack of characterisation beyond stereotypes, the swift language acquisition of both the “hero” and a the alien, and the rather repetitive series of disasters and solutions throughout the book. It was very similar to The Martian too.

But, I read the book at a very low point in my week and finished it feeling uplifted. So, for that reason, and others (I loved the alien, even if “he” did look like a spider), I give this book four stars.

View all my reviews

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Once again, I am only a few hundred pages from the end of another book. However, I am definitely not going to rush this one as it is part of one of my most favourite series of all time! This book must be savoured until the final explosion! More about this next week.

Happy Reading to you all.

Love and best wishes,

Anne

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