JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?

[Phrubruh]

So far, it's loads better than the movie.

I bet the characters lips are even in sync. 

[Nathan]

With the Jedi all but wiped out in the grim aftermath of Order 66, the Empire’s power seems unchecked. But one lone Knight continues to fight the good fight–against all odds and when all else fails.

Deep in the bowels of Coruscant, Jedi Jax Pavan ekes out a living as a private investigator, a go-to, can-do guy for the downtrodden. Now a mysterious Zeltron knockout named Deejah approaches Jax with a case that needs to be cracked: to find out who killed her artist lover Volette, brutally murdered hours after his triumphant unveiling of a dazzling new light sculpture with obvious links to lightsaber pyrotechnics.

Finding Volette’s killer won’t be easy–too many secrets, too many suspects, and all kinds of motives. But with the droid I-5YQ’s help, and ex-reporter Den Dhur’s excellent snooping skills, the investigation is soon operating like a well-oiled machine.

Unfortunately, there’s a far more efficient machine hunting Jax. It’s a deadly game of cat-and-mouse as the clock starts ticking toward the final explosive showdown . . . to see who strikes first and who will die first.

[Phrubruh]

I've started reading the Charlie Bone series. They are kind of a Harry Potter ripoff but better written.




When he is 10 years old, Charlie discovers that he is able to look at photographs and hear conversations and even thoughts that were taking place at the time the photo was taken, a legacy of his ancestor the Red King, whose descendants all have different magical abilities. Charlie hears one conversation that sets him on a search for a girl who has been missing for years, and when he begins attending Bloor's Academy, an elite boarding school for the rich and the endowed (as the Red King's descendants are called), his life becomes full of intrigue and danger. Charlie, his friend Benjamin, and other allies try to unlock the secrets of a mysterious case that could get the girl back, while the sinister Bloors and Charlie's ghastly relatives who are endowed try to thwart them. While the parallels with Harry Potter are obvious, this fantasy has its own charms, chief among them being the endoweds' often-odd magical abilities. The writing is deft, most of the characters are intriguing, and Charlie Bone is an appealing boy. The story is marred by some predictability, and the role of the endowed in this otherwise contemporary, unmagical society is not clear. Many aspects of the book are not fully thought out, making it less compelling than it might be. However, this is the first of a projected series, so it will be interesting to see if some of these vague points are resolved. A flawed but worthwhile offering for avid fantasy fans.


 

[Chris M]

Currently reading "Brave Men, Dark Waters" by Orr Kelly.  It traces the history of the SEAL teams from their days as UDT's and the training for that and how they got their inspiration from the USMC's Scout's and Raiders from WWII.  It goes into their actual participation in combat during the Korean War and leads up to their actual creation by JFK in 1961.  It doesn't cover today's conflicts around the world, but does include the Panama invasion and their limited participation in Desert Shield/Desert Storm.  IMO, Kelly is one of the foremost authors of special operations.

[Darth_Anton]

I burned through A Walk in the woods pretty fast. Loved it. Now I'm working on a collection of short stories about Terraforming.

[Nathan]

[Nathan]

[Daigo-Bah]

I just read the Last of the Jedi #4 by Jude Watson, and am now reading The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier (which has a lot of narrative to go with the comic book portions).

[Phrubruh]

On two book two of the Charlie Bone series.



In this sequel to Midnight for Charlie Bone (Scholastic, 2003), Nimmo continues the saga of the endowed descendants of the Red King, who attend a very Hogwarts-like boarding school called Bloor's Academy. "The Time Twister," a marblelike ball with the power to transport people through time, brings Henry Yewbeam from 1916 to present day Bloor's. His evil, scheming cousin Ezekiel, who was responsible for sending him to the future, is still alive, and Charlie Bone must protect Henry and find a way to send him back into the past. This is a breezy read, even at its 400-page length. Sadly, there are plot elements that seem to come totally out of the blue or that just don't make sense. The power with which each individual child is endowed, such as the ability to create storms or to transform into a bird, seems arbitrarily created to provide dramatic rescues. A painting of a wizard named Skarpo is left for Charlie by one of his aunts. As readers of the first book know, Charlie can hear voices in pictures, and they now discover that he can actually enter them as well. Oddly, Henry seems unfazed by his trip through time and by the modern world. The unexpected plot twist at the end is strangely unclimactic, and seems to pass by so quickly that any sense of triumph at the outcome is lost. Charlie Bone is a likable character to whom kids will turn to for a fix after they've finished the latest Harry Potter for the fifth time. For libraries where fantasy is popular.

[Ben]

I finished Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer last week. Only took a few days to read- I couldn't put it down. I started reading The Fellowship of the Ring tonight, starting my fifth trek through Middle-Earth.

[Chris M]

^^^That's brave going through the LOTR trilogy more than once. I love to read, but it was all I could stand to get through those books once.  It may be a really, really long time before I can trek through them again.

[Phrubruh]

I'm on to the third Charlie Bone book, "Charlie Bone and the Invisible Boy".



In this third installment in the series, another semester at Bloor Academy is about to begin, and, as usual, chaos ensues. At home, Charlie's Uncle Paton disappears, then returns ill and powerless. Charlie's friend Benjamin heads off to Hong Kong, and his grandmother Maisie leaves to take care of her sick sister. At the same time, a new and sinister student named Belle arrives and quickly establishes herself as a force to be reckoned with. A new art teacher has joined the staff to find his younger brother, Ollie Sparks, turned invisible by a blue boa (snake, though there are feathers involved) controlled by the evil Ezekiel Bloor. Charlie and his friends try to come up with ways to help Ollie and Billy Raven, the poor orphan being manipulated and tormented by the Bloor clan. One of the strengths of this story (and the whole series) is the way both regular people and those who are magically endowed work toward common goals. A weakness is the lack of progress toward identifying and rescuing Charlie's father, who is barely mentioned in this outing. Still, it's a wild roller-coaster ride of a story, and will more than satisfy not only fans of this series, but those who are exhibiting symptoms of Harry Potter withdrawal.

[Nathan]

[Keonobi]

Free Lunch by David Cay Johnston.

[Nathan]