brianjones
Member
just finished.. really quite charming!
now reading
can't remember how i came about this book but i found it in my closet.. I've read comparisons to burroughs, kafka, dick... only 100 pages so well see how it goes!
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What are you reading? (April 2014)
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just finished.. really quite charming!
now reading
can't remember how i came about this book but i found it in my closet.. I've read comparisons to burroughs, kafka, dick... only 100 pages so well see how it goes!
Maybe I misunderstood:
as you saying it's a bad series.
Moving on, Iron Druid does get waaaaaaay bigger than Anglo-Saxon mythology after the very first book. Indian, Native American, Greek, Roman, Christian, all have representives that play huge parts in books. That stuff is part of why I really enjoy that series.
But If you didn't like his writing style or Addicus as a character, that probably won't change by reading more in the series.
For Space Opera I'd like to add The Culture novels (read the first one second, it's a bit... bleak as an intro) and for Hard SciFi I'd like to nominate The Commonwealth Saga.
For Historical Fantasy I put forward Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell with the caveat that much as I love the book the term Exquisite Boredom can be apt.
If this is an established meme, I guess I've never seen it. Sorry for not getting the reference.
I'm currently reading Mockingjay just to get the series out of the way and before the film comes out later this year, such a poorly written and put together book, it doesn't even seem as if it's coming from the same author. The first two were enjoyable for what they were, this is just downright terrible stuff.
Some stuff arrived from Amazon today though, including:
The Cuckoo's Calling
Dreamcatcher
The Stand
Joyland
Doctor Sleep
Now just to try and decide which one to delve in to first.
Some stuff arrived from Amazon today though, including:
The Cuckoo's Calling
Dreamcatcher
The Stand
Joyland
Doctor Sleep
Now just to try and decide which one to delve in to first.
AngmarsKing701
Member
I wrote a blog about this very topic recently. Completely agree that you start with characters and build their world around them.
Link?
FUBAR McDangles
Member
I got The Affair + Persuader (Reacher) as well as Bourne Supremacy, Ultimatum, Betrayal, and Imperative for a total of about $20 thanks to some local sales. I read the Affair as I looked it up and saw that it was set as only the second book in the series, which means I'm not missing much by going through it. Absolutely loved it. I'm hestitant to read Persuader because it's set so far after Affair and I don't know when I'll get around to buying the rest. Am I okay to read it anyway or should I wait?
And I thought I would be okay to jump into Supremacy because I saw the movies but even just the first 20 pages were referencing an Identity that was so completely different from the Identity movie that I had to put it down and go to something else. I still haven't bought Identity even though I probably should :lol
I'll probably order the first Dark Tower book along with Identity + a few others I need to get in the next few weeks.
Just finished feed. A great novel by a great author, it melds zombie culture with modern technology, journalism and a "house of cards"-esque political background.
I give it 4.5/5 stars. The ending hurt so bad so I take away .5 of a star because why Mira Grant WHY?!!
The true rating is 5/5!!!
Its also a great starter zombie book, I'm certainly new with zombie novels but this was an easy read to get into, not too much horror or suspense but just enough.
I got this probably a year or so ago and started reading it but had to put it down. I was not engaged at all in the first 50 or so pages and I really am not sure if I'll go back to it. I hear nothing but good things about it but I have read some far more gripping zombie books before and since and I just can't find a reason to go back.
You reminding me about it might just do it though.
It actualy took me several months before I picked it up, because i'll admit it was an impulsive buy and I really wasnt all that engaged at the beginning but given some patience, the world gets more engagine, filling the pages with a lot more context and depth and you really get attached to the characters.
Ill say this tho I enjoyed the book enough to own the whole series.
Gordon0Freeman
Member
Since my last post I've listened to these...
I will definitely look into 21st Century Dead. I like your taste, what are you reading/listening to next?
Tragicomedy
Member
Forum posters usually seem more interested in stereotyping entire genres than providing specific critiques of specific authors within said genres. It's a problem I've run into with many posts I've read recently; Jimothy's being the prime example.
“All novels are fantasies. Some are more honest about it.” - Gene Wolfe
rudieboy77
Member
I had hear the fellow who wrote the Twenty Palaces books stopped writing?
not to make two posts, I listened to this today.
I may finish listening to the rest of the Zom-B books, they are really short stories. I also have a copy of this on my mp3.
It almost seems unfair to have Dresden's last chance occurring at the same time you're reading the coda to The Book of the New Sun.
Does the change in writing style bother you? I found the sudden clarity a bit jarring at first, but I think it helps set it apart.
Tragicomedy
Member
Are you referencing Urth? If so, I purchased it last night and will be starting it this evening. I hope it's super clear, since I have a thousand questions from the previous four books. I was looking at the publication date and realized it came out much later. That explains why I had no idea it even existed until it was referenced on GAF. If I had read the earlier books back in the 80s (ignore that I would have been under three years old when they were published), I would have been ticked to not have a more definitive ending. Hell, the fourth book says there's more to come in the story....
I did make it about 25% through the third Dresden book. More of the same. I need to appreciate it for what it is: a pulpy supernatural detective story. I'm sure the contrast with Wolfe will be hilarious.
Recent , popular fantasy then. Abercrombie, Lynch and Sanderson for starters.
Yeah, sorry. I thought you might have started it since you made that post last night. But yes, his style is much more clear and it answers a lot of questions and explains things you didn't even know you didn't know!
He's doing something else, apparently. I found a Kickstarter for some fantasy junk. He did stop work on Twenty Palaces indefinitely though, because it just wasn't selling.
rudieboy77
Member
Thank you for the link.
The Affair is actually a relatively recent book, but it is a prequel. I think it's actually the second or third prequel he's written so far, and it probably works well to read it early on. But if you want the real beginning of the series, you have to read Killing Floor, which is very good and sets up the basic mechanics of the Reacher series. I think it follows directly after the Affair in the time-line. Once you've read Killing Floor Skipping around in the series isn't generally a big problem because they don't really tell an ongoing story. And you don't even have to start with Killing Floor. Several of the early books work as a good introduction. I personally started with Echo Burning, and that worked very well.
The Persuader is an excellent book, one of the best in the series if I'm remembering correctly, but I'm not sure how it would be to jump into it straight from The Affair.
Yeah, the Bourne books are very different from the movies. The character has a different (darker) personality, and the whole thing is very cold-war oriented.
The first book and first movie are the most similar, but even those have huge differences, and after that the plots continue to diverge pretty drastically.
Reading Brandon Sanderson's The Alloy of Law.
Finished the Mistborn series early this month. The last book, Hero of Ages, dragged but I enjoyed the bittersweet ending. The Final Empire is still my favorite.
I may be burnt out on Mistborn. It has it taken me a while to get into the pace of Law. It reminds me of Batman with a touch of Sherlock Holmes with Legend of Korra thrown in for kicks. I should have waited to read it this summer, before the fifth book, Shadows of Self, releases.
Finished the Mistborn series early this month. The last book, Hero of Ages, dragged but I enjoyed the bittersweet ending. The Final Empire is still my favorite.
I may be burnt out on Mistborn. It has it taken me a while to get into the pace of Law. It reminds me of Batman with a touch of Sherlock Holmes with Legend of Korra thrown in for kicks. I should have waited to read it this summer, before the fifth book, Shadows of Self, releases.
The Culture Vulture
Member
Finished Blood Meridian and The Beckham Experiment. Now if The Judge hasn't fucked my head up enough I've started House Of Leaves.
Maklershed
Member
Oh so many. First and foremost being Make Room! Make Room!, one of my all time favorite books. Also, Lucifer's Hammer, Earth Abides, Parable of the Sower/Parable of the Talents, Alas Babylon, Swan Song. I have a bunch more but they're more in the vein of 'the world is fucked up already and people are now surviving'.
EDIT: I didn't like them quite as much as the books I've already mentioned but Cyber Storm, World War Z, and Robopacalypse also fit your criteria.
Former GAF book club book A Visit from the Goon Squad might be what you're looking for.
FUBAR McDangles
Member
Ah okay. I'll probably add Killing Floor to my soon-required list then. I really liked the style of Affair and look forward to the rest. It doesn't hurt that I really enjoyed the film.
Do you know if the post Ultimatum books are directly-related to one another? Can I skip around with those or should I get them in order?
Can't say. The only thing I know about those is that they're written by Eric Van Lustbader. I read the first few books of his Nicholas Linnear/Ninja series when I was a teenager and thought they were pretty cool, but I have no idea how his style would translate to writing about Bourne.
The three Ludlum novels do have a definite continuing story and need to be read in order.
WarrenMax007
Member
Thanks.
Killing Floor is very good. It's predictable at times. And Child's dry writing is sometimes hard to read. I did that. I did that. I said. He said. She said.
You know what i mean. But it's fast paced and easy read.
So that's the Mistborn Trilogy finished, overall pretty good, the 3rd being slightly better than the first two for the 2nd half of the book although the final 10% wasn't quite as strong as the rest of that half.
I will read Mistborn: The Alloy of Law at some point in the near future no doubt, but how do his other books compare.
Little but gutted with how it finished with Vin and Elend, really felt like they deserved to have a go at a normal life or what they did being told to being told to their friends, what can I say I enjoy a happy ending when there has been a big sacrafice by the main character(s) maybe it wouldn't have been so bad if you knew if Kelsier, Vin and Eland were in some kind of after life or are gods hanging out with Sazed, if Tindwyl had been mentioned then I would have gone with afterlife, ahh well I'm going with Gods.
I will read Mistborn: The Alloy of Law at some point in the near future no doubt, but how do his other books compare.
Return to the Whorl
It took a while because I got totally distracted by stuff last week and couldn't read much, but I finally finished it yesterday. It's a really strange book, and I have a lot of mixed feelings about it. I appreciate the effort put into it to give it a unique tone which sets it apart from the previous two books, so each entry in this trilogy seems like they have their own narrative characteristic, but at the same time I feel like Wolfe perhaps tried a little too hard here to have a ton of layers and build connections between everything in the Solar Cycle universe. Some of it felt a bit too convenient to me. What I did like a lot was how the voice of a character can denote changes in personality, something Wolfe has always been good at but he uses it to a heightened degree here. Some of the events and encounters were interesting too, especially those which expanded on the setting of the Whorl which weren't touched on in Long Sun.
In the end though, I found the entire account in Short Sun to be lacking conviction. I'm sure this was also the intent, given the narrative gimmick framing the entire work, but while it does make for a very entertaining read at times, especially in the second book, by the end I can't help but feel there's a lack of satisfaction compared to how I felt about New Sun and Long Sun. I wonder what others who have read it share that same feeling upon finishing the final book.
So I started reading Belgarath the Sorcerer despite knowing I don't really like it, read about 80 pages, decided I really don't like Edding's style anymore, and tossed it back on the shelf to moulder in another decade's worth of dust or something.
Why do I even keep this series around? I should pack it into storage or something.
Why do I even keep this series around? I should pack it into storage or something.
Hahahaha. Yeah. Eddings stuff is what I read as a teenager and I really can't stand any of that stuff anymore. I still have Belgarath the Sorcerer and Polgara the Sorceress somewhere on the shelf though. Not that I'll ever read them again!
postcyberpunk
Banned
Some of the anecdotes were really funny-- Beckman at his first team dinner and who was going to pay the check, Posh buying out the Galaxy store, Donovan being a douche.
Going to finish Pattern Recognition today and move on to this cyberpunk anthology.
Read most of the stories before in other anthologies, but it has been a while and I am looking forward to the introduction and the author's take from a 2013 perspective.
Mackenzie 92
Member
The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers is a daily. Great book.
The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers
The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers
Vanillalite
Ask me about the GAF Notebook
PassiveObserver
Member
Reading Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse and it's taking a while. Also reading Readme by Neal Stephenson but my new 2DS is going to cut into my reading. Two books behind on my Goodreads goal of 24
MoonsaultSlayer
Member
I've just started Tyrannosaur Canyon by Douglas Preston. My wife bought it for me on a whim because I'm a dino-nut and I'm enjoying letting it take me wherever it wants to take me. The premise grabbed me: "A moon rock missing for thirty years... Five buckets of blood soaked sand found in a New Mexico canyon... [...] The greatest scientific discovery of all time... What fire bolt from the galactic dark shattered the Earth eons ago, and now hides in that remote cleft in the southwest United States known as... Tyrannosaur Canyon?"
D
Deleted member 1235
Unconfirmed Member
literally anything by brandon sanderson that's even semi recent is a good bet. guy is a machine.
How was Ark? It's been on my to read list for a while, never available at my local sci-fi bookstore though.
Mackenzie 92
Member
Not quite fitting your requirements, but what about Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (set in the 60s)? Or even Infinite Jest (not much rock'n'roll, but it has EVERYTHING else)? Then there's On the Road if you are willing to go even further back in time. Naked Lunch might also fit somewhat, but I haven't read it myself yet.
Don't know how many of you have read R. Scott Bakker's The Second Apocalypse, but he has finally delievered the third book of the second trilogy:
http://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2014/03/08/the-closing-and-opening-of-covers/
I highly recommend his books if you like fantasy. This is epic fantasy with a philosophical twist, there's basically a lot of philosophy in his books. At least in the first three books, and even if you're philosophy noob like me you'll be fine. In fact you might gain some appreciation for it. The events themselves are heavily borrowed from history, but it's riveting stuff nonetheless. The characters are brilliant. I love how deep Bakker goes in them and how he analyzes them.
The overall series is called The Second Apocalypse and is divided into three parts:
The Prince of Nothing:
- The Darkness That Comes Before (2004)
- The Warrior-Prophet (2005)
- The Thousandfold Thought (2006)
The Aspect-Emperor
- The Judging Eye (2009)
- The White-Luck Warrior (2011)
- The Unholy Consult (forthcoming)
and a third part which will most likely be a duology.
http://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2014/03/08/the-closing-and-opening-of-covers/
I highly recommend his books if you like fantasy. This is epic fantasy with a philosophical twist, there's basically a lot of philosophy in his books. At least in the first three books, and even if you're philosophy noob like me you'll be fine. In fact you might gain some appreciation for it. The events themselves are heavily borrowed from history, but it's riveting stuff nonetheless. The characters are brilliant. I love how deep Bakker goes in them and how he analyzes them.
The overall series is called The Second Apocalypse and is divided into three parts:
The Prince of Nothing:
- The Darkness That Comes Before (2004)
- The Warrior-Prophet (2005)
- The Thousandfold Thought (2006)
The Aspect-Emperor
- The Judging Eye (2009)
- The White-Luck Warrior (2011)
- The Unholy Consult (forthcoming)
and a third part which will most likely be a duology.
WarrenMax007
Member
Thanks. I'll take a look
Decided to go ahead and read The Alloy of Law, the 300 year time jump works to refresh the series in a good way even though I could have read another trilogy based just years after the first books if things had ended a little differently.
Cant wait to see how the world is fleshed out in the next "short story" and then the next trilogy.
when a series changes its main characters I always resent the new characters a bit, I cant help it especially if im quite attached to particular characters. The shorter length of the book definitely gave the story a faster pace so the book didn't really click for me till about 40% through, later into the book im thinking "huh, quite like the new characters guess the time jump was justified" then boom a voice in the mists and a big smile on my face.
I had to go back to the last book about a 20-30% of the way though this, I had a realisation that I couldn't recall what happened to Marsh in the last book, reread the ending assuming i must have forgotten what happened as I finished it about 4am, seeing Marsh isnt mentioned after the beheading I got bad messy spikey feelings considering the kidnappings. When Marsh appeared I was a little gutted, really wanted him to get ripped to shreds by god Vin, but he survived and im assuming he is the bad guy considering Marsh is their Grim Reaper but nope, seems several of my questions I had at the end of the last book have been answered
I had to go back to the last book about a 20-30% of the way though this, I had a realisation that I couldn't recall what happened to Marsh in the last book, reread the ending assuming i must have forgotten what happened as I finished it about 4am, seeing Marsh isnt mentioned after the beheading I got bad messy spikey feelings considering the kidnappings. When Marsh appeared I was a little gutted, really wanted him to get ripped to shreds by god Vin, but he survived and im assuming he is the bad guy considering Marsh is their Grim Reaper but nope, seems several of my questions I had at the end of the last book have been answered
Cant wait to see how the world is fleshed out in the next "short story" and then the next trilogy.
rudieboy77
Member
Listened to this today...
Got through about 25% of this...
Still not too sure about The 100, might stop listening.
Got through about 25% of this...
Still not too sure about The 100, might stop listening.
He takes his head out of his ass a little more with every book. He recognized the problems of the first trilogy and set out to resolve it in the second.
Anyway at least he's not as grating as Goodkind. That's something right? RIGHT?
If you read Flood and enjoyed it, you should read Ark, otherwise it's probably skippable.
Ark covers from the end of Flood until some sixty years later and tells you what happens to the multiple Ark projects, as well as major characters from the first.
It was not my favorite Baxter book. Baxter's not who you go to for excellent prose and deep characters in the first place, but that's particularly on display here. He bites off a lot and manages to mostly chew it, but character depth and prose get sacrificed to barely workman-like levels.
It's unclear whether it will lead to a third book in the series.
Honestly, if you want to read about the drowning of the world, Kim Stanley Robinson's 40/50/60 Days series is better in nearly every regard.
I agree. The philosophical view presented in the book disgusted me. Totally turned me off from the series. I am a huge fan of Dostoevsky and Thomas Mann, so philosophical characters that I disagree with don't inherently turn me off, but I didn't find his characters all that interesting and his philosophy seemed very shallow. Its been a LONG time since ive read them so I might be mistaken, but I remember it being some twisted Nietzsche super-man bullshit, right?
I just finished:
This was a fantastic book. I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to get a feel/sense of the period and the thoughts/actions of the major players. Note though, that it is not a chronological history, but snippet of several very important events that you can glean insight on the motives/thoughts/actions of the major founding fathers.
I am about to start this. It looks very interesting and is on a topic I basically know nothing about.
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