The General Book Thread

[warty goblin]

We have one of these in Other Games for gaming, it's a good way to talk about a game you're playing that's not worth starting a very short thread for. So why not have one for books too? I'm guessing I'm not the only functional book addict in these parts...

So at the moment I'm reading Sense and Sensibility alongside Firestarter. While in the middle of one of my periodic obsessions with The Iliad. It's an odd combination, to say the least.

[Cristo Meyers]

Hadn't been doing a whole lot of reading until recently. There was the first two The Walking Dead compediums that I blazed through (though being up for an hour or so at random intervals every night for a week due to a cold helped) and then nothing until I went on vacation this past May. That was the two rulebooks for The Dresden Files RPG (surprisingly entertaining reads) and Joe Hill's newest: Nos4a2.

There's something about Hill's work. Heart-Shaped Box and Nos4a2 especially. It's hard to put down, even if it does inspire self-loathing because I know I could never be that good at writing. Horns not so much. There was just something about it that made me thoroughly uncomfortable reading it.

Now it's A Dance With Dragons. It's so far an improvement over A Feast for Crows, but that probably has more to do with it having characters I actually want to read about rather than a couple that I care about, and a bunch that I can't even understand why they have their own chapters.

Got a handful of Stephen King and Joe Hill novellas that I discovered in the Kindle App Store after that. Then I'm probably going to be stuck re-reading what I have. There's just so little out there I find interesting these days.

[BWR]

"Star Kings" by Jack Vance and browsing through "The Apocalypse Codex" by Charles Stross for the second time.

[Eldan]

I just got The Complete Alcatraz by Brandon Sanderson. Now, I wasn't sure how good a young adult novel by Sanderson would be. Then I saw one thing that convinced me.

I opened up the last page. And there I read (paraphrased):

"And then millions cried out and died in pain. I hope you are happy.



Footnote: this is a fake last page I included for those who engage in the terrible practise of skipping to the last page. If you came to this page in the properly approved way, those millions are instead happy and cheering for you."

Then I knew I had to buy that book, no matter the rest of the content.

[Drakeburn]

Well, I finished The Halfling's Gem by R.A. Salvatore. My local library had a book sale, selling a lot of old books. I came upon some other Forgotten Realm books, and my mother found the Dragonlance Chronicles that I read, but I couldn't believe my luck that I found the Legend of Drizzt book. And I bought it for 50 cents. Not a bad deal.......

Despite the typos that were in the book, it was pretty entertaining. The book does a good job of informing the reader of what happened in the previous book, so it made it easier for me to jump into the book.

In my opinion, I would give it a 3.9 out of 5. Who knows, maybe the newer prints have all the typos ironed out.

[warty goblin]

Originally Posted by Cristo Meyers

That was the two rulebooks for The Dresden Files RPG (surprisingly entertaining reads) and Joe Hill's newest: Nos4a2.

I find RPG manuals to be often quite enjoyable fluff reading. I don't play 'em anymore, and don't have much desire to do so. But as somebody trained in mathematics and statistics, I always enjoy looking at how people model things.

Now if only the local used book store had something left on the shelves besides a bucket of old D20 OGL sourcebooks. D20 may be the most dull statistical model ever conceived.

There's something about Hill's work. Heart-Shaped Box and Nos4a2 especially. It's hard to put down, even if it does inspire self-loathing because I know I could never be that good at writing. Horns not so much. There was just something about it that made me thoroughly uncomfortable reading it.

I've gotten over my self-loathing due to reading well written things. Now I just soak in the accomplishment.

It was either that, or only read stuff I could imagine myself writing, which would have been a truly massive quality cut.

Now it's A Dance With Dragons. It's so far an improvement over A Feast for Crows, but that probably has more to do with it having characters I actually want to read about rather than a couple that I care about, and a bunch that I can't even understand why they have their own chapters.

I should reread Dance. Really, I should do a from the beginning reread of the entire series, since I've forgotten a lot of the details in Book 3 and onwards, having not read them for six or eight years now. But that'll have to wait, since I just finished rereading a bunch of Martin's other stuff, and there's only so much of his particular brand of romantic despair I can take at a time.

[JoshL]

Currently reading The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. Not my favorite by him, but man is he good. Up next is the Island of the Day Before by Umberto Eco, which is the only Eco I've never read (don't know why I never got around to buying that one before). Prior to that I binged on all the Charles de Lint books I own and read the first Dresden Files book.

[dehro]

Finished The Long Earth, by Pratchett and Baxter.
I still prefer Discworld novels, but this was rather good. can't wait to read the sequel.
that's two books by Pratchett that aren't about the Discworld though.. I'm starting to think he's getting all the things off his chest that he put off to give us more Discworld.. and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we will still get one or two of those..

lately I read in spurts.. nothing for weeks followed by an allnighter or two with a new book or re-reading (which I seem to do a lot) an old book.
I'm waiting for the third installment to the Demon Cycle, by Peter Brett, to come out in paperback.

[theangelJean]

Fellow book addict here. Been trying to wean myself off buying books that I don't need to own - I used to be unable to pass a bookstore and regularly come out with $200 worth of books (mostly fantasy). Last time I decided that I didn't need "3 top 100 novels for the price of 2" and could go to the library instead. Took me a while, but I'm finally reading My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin. Next is The Life of Pi - time to see what everyone is on about.

Originally Posted by warty goblin

there's only so much of his particular brand of romantic despair I can take at a time.

Hmm, that's a good description of Martin's style that I haven't heard before. Also neatly encapsulates why I stopped after the first novel.

As for The Long Earth, I kind of liked it but the open ending jarred for me. One of the things that I particularly like about practically every other Pratchett work is that all the loose ends are tied up neatly. I guess that's what you get when you set out to write a "series" ... I just feel like by now we don't need a teaser to keep us coming back for more.

[warty goblin]

Originally Posted by theangelJean

Hmm, that's a good description of Martin's style that I haven't heard before. Also neatly encapsulates why I stopped after the first novel.

A Song of Ice and Fire has a higher despair/romance ratio than most of his earlier works. The sci-fi Martin wrote in the eighties isn't cheerful by any stretch of the imagination, but it's pretty much dripping with a sort of oldschool romance. Well, except for Meathouse Man, which is crystallized depression.

As for The Long Earth, I kind of liked it but the open ending jarred for me. One of the things that I particularly like about practically every other Pratchett work is that all the loose ends are tied up neatly. I guess that's what you get when you set out to write a "series" ... I just feel like by now we don't need a teaser to keep us coming back for more.

I think I OD'd on Pratchett this year, since my local used book store usually had lots of his stuff for quite low prices. By the last one I read, I was getting heartily sick of narrative causality.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Cristo Meyers
There's just so little out there I find interesting these days.

I've spent years in that space. I know how that goes.

What snapped me out of it was the Mistborn trilogy. Brandon Sanderson convinced me there's still someone out there who knows, not just how to write, but how to make me care about who and what he's writing about.

--And that said, the last novel I read was The Alloy of Law, which builds on the Mistborn trilogy with a combined Western/Victorian flair. I haven't seen the new Sherlock Holmes with Robert Downey Jr., but I'm pretty sure Brandon Sanderson has.

Originally Posted by JoshL
Up next is the Island of the Day Before by Umberto Eco....

Acquired that years ago, paged through it briefly. Seemed...odd, and ordinarily I thrive on odd. But Umberto Eco just doesn't...work for me. Or maybe it's just not the right time. Books sometimes wait for the proper moment, even if they have to wait for years.



As for current reading...I started Ken Scholes' Lamentation, but couldn't really get into it. Same with Ian Banks' Excession, again just a few pages in. Instead I read The Tragedy of the Whaleboat Essex, by Nathaniel Philbricke, which I picked up from a book cart when my mother was in the hospital a few weeks ago. Not quite as detailed or in-depth as I would've liked in some places, but a really compelling read.

At the moment I'm reading The Commodore, by Patrick O'Brian, which is as nuanced, hilarious, insightful and artfully worked as the many previous books in the Aubrey/Maturin series. I've been going through them pretty much constantly over the past couple of years, and the voyage they just finished was my favorite yet--ranging from Jakarta to Hawai'i to the highlands of Peru, as told in The Thirteen-Gun Salute, The Nutmeg of Consolation, The Truelove, and The Wine-Dark Sea. (It usually takes several novels to cover one of Aubrey's involved circumnavigations, as well as Maturin's equally involved intelligence work, which is often part and parcel of Aubrey's missions.)

As for nonfiction, I've just started reading The Sea Venture, about one of the early colonial voyages that crossed the Atlantic in hopes of bringing settlers to a new life in Jamestown. The book is written by a journalist rather than a historian, and it shows--I've already spotted a number of errors--but they've just now run aground on a reef, so my attention is well and truly caught.

.

[dehro]

That particular book by Eco.. is one of the 2 by him that I had a hard time getting through.
I'm not sure why this was the case. Read it some 10 years ago, so I don't remember.

[Eldan]

Since The Long Earth was mentionedI should mention the last book I read before this one: A Blink of the Screen, a collection of mostly non-Discworld Pratchett short stories. Now, I did not much care for the last few Pratchett books, I must admit. Dodger was unremarkable, Making Money was a re-thread of Going Postal, but not as good, Unseen Academicals was a bit weird but probably still the best of them and Snuff... well, it wasn't good.

But A Blink of the Screen was a lot of fun. It covers everything from Science Fiction to epic poetry about Hippie Hitchhikers. The reason I remembered it just now is that it contains a pretty damn interesting short story called The High Meggas, which seems to share a lot of ideas with The Long Earth (which I haven't read).

In it, people have discovered a quite simple way to travel to alternate Earths, which they have numbered by their distance to ours. I.e. you travel to +1, which is already densely settled, from there to +2 and so on. The differences get bigger and bigger.
The main character is a lone, well, explorer you could probably say, who went into the Meggas, millions of worlds away from Earth, which is about as far as you can go before you hit the point where Earth no longer exists due to changing cosmic conditions.

[dehro]

the long earth does take the basic ideas of that tale, yes...

[Feytalist]

Hmm. I happened to like Snuff. But it certainly wasn't his best. The Science of Discworld books I found massively entertaining.

I've been rereading a couple of David Gemmell books, and low and behold, I come across one I hadn't read before: Morningstar. It was... odd. I think he was trying to experiment a bit with writing styles and narrative styles. First-person narrator, non-heroic main character, and some delightful time-travel bits. Still enjoyed it, though.

I've also read The Execution Channel, by Ken MacLeod (of Newton's Wake, etc). A non-SF book. Very confusing (intentionally so, I think, since it has to do with disinformation, a bunch of spies running around not knowing what the hell, and intentionally misleading theories). An interesting premise, and the climax comes totally out of left field. I'd recommend it, but I'm thinking you need to read it at least twice.

Also I've just finished The Name of the Wind. A bit late to the party, i'm aware. I was hooked since the second paragraph (I'm told that's a common occurrence, heh). So yeah, this one is good. Very good. I'm about to go get the next one. Has anybody read it yet? Any thoughts?

[Eldan]

The wise Man's Fear is by no means bad, but not quite as good as the first one. I think it probably needed another round of rewriting and editing, the story feels a bit disjointed and too drawn out at times. Still better than a lot of other books and the language stays beautiful.

[Feytalist]

Yeah, the language is what got to me right from the start. And the world-building also jumps in right from the get-go.

Well, I'm getting it anyway. That and The Rithmatist, if I can even find it here yet.

[Liffguard]

Just read Abbadon's Gate by James S A Corey (a pen name for the collaboration of Daniel Abraham and Ty Finck). Some good old-school space opera with a big dumb object. What makes it compelling is that the big dumb object doesn't really drive the plot, it's more of a catalyst for the tensions that exist between the various characters. And the main "villain" for want of a better word, is a very well realised character.


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[dehro]

question about Rothfuss' books
on another forum the issue of sexism was raised. is that something you've noticed in his books, or is it just how the character sees and relates to the ladies?

[Eldan]

I'm bad at detecting Sexism. Really bad. That said, the main character learns how to be amazingly good at sex from a fey in book two. Does that count? Oh, and the more or less main female character makes her living "spending time" with various wealthy patrons.

[Feytalist]

Hrm. I never noticed anything, really, other than the usual fantasy-book type tropes. But I'm also rather bad at spotting these types of things. Nothing really jumped out at me.

(Although this:

Originally Posted by Eldan

That said, the main character learns how to be amazingly good at sex from a fey in book two.

makes me slightly leery of the next one. I mean, really.)

[Liffguard]

Just read Abbadon's Gate by James S A Corey (a pen name for the collaboration of Daniel Abraham and Ty Finck). Some good old-school space opera with a big dumb object. What makes it compelling is that the big dumb object doesn't really drive the plot, it's more of a catalyst for the tensions that exist between the various characters. And the main "villain" for want of a better word, is a very well realised character.


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[Kitten Champion]

I just finished Salvatore's Neverwinter. I can't say I like it, or the last 5 books really, but my completionist tendencies are a harsh mistress.

I think what I dislike about Salvatore the most is his utter lack of subtlety. He explains everything even when it's apparent to the reader. It rather reduces the level of thoughtful engagement you have with his works, which could be there. He deals with moral complexity and ways people see the world, but the more he goes into the more barren it feels. I also have issues with his female characterizations, but he's not been that adept with characters in general aside from the protagonist and a few others so perhaps I'm just too conscious of that aspect.

I'm going to start Kazuo Ishiguro's The Unconsoled to get the taste out my mouth.

[CynicalAvocado]

I'm currently reading A Dance with Dragons, then i have some books on the American Revolution I acquired from my brother.


I've also been meaning to re-read 1984

[warty goblin]

Wrapped up Stephan King's Firestarter yesterday. Overall good, but not spectacular. Loved the ending though.

Now I'm rereading Caroline Alexander's The War that Killed Achilles since I'm in the mood for some Iliad commentary. I'm not 100% sold on her interpretation, but it's well written and, most importantly, she avoids applying modern understanding and ethics to it as much as possible. It's not possible to cut such things out completely of course, there's too much distance of time and culture between the modern first world and the Greek dark ages to really lay all the baggage aside, but she does a better job than some other authors I've read.