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[RepairmanJack]

What's the deal with these Christopher Moore books? Are they good? Are they meant for teens?

They're pretty light hearted and funny and mostly pretty good. I wouldn't really say they're for teens unless maybe his vampire series is, which is actually the only books of his I haven't read, but the rest of his stuff I wouldn't say are for teens. Just my opinion, but I think his stuff is great.

Edit: I would compare his style a lot to Terry Pratchet with more cussing.

 

[Amentallica]

I love them, too, but they were just too much for a lot of readers.

I'm reading Predictable Irrationality by Dan Ariely, a recommendation from my Secret Santa Mod Book Club partner.

This book is fantastic! Had to read it for one of my classes. Love Ariely's books. His other one is great, too.

 

[Jaevlar]

In my experience, PKD doesn't do much in the way of rehashing. He's one of the most creative science fiction writers so every one of his books seem to be bursting with novel ideas. I like Ubik and The Man in the High Castle to go along with Androids.

Androids is fantastic. A true 5-star sci-fi classic. If I were you, I would move on to either The Man in the High Castle, A Scanner Darkly, or The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. I didn't love Ubik as much as these, but to each their own.

I've gathered as much when I've looked him up, nice with diversity, albeit in a genre/genres. Will definately check out "The Man in the High Castle", seems like an interesting plot. I really plowed through Do Androids... Felt like ages ago that I was this drawn in by a book.

I loved Ubik. One of my favourite Philip K. Dick novels. I would even say one of my favourite novels in general.

Will check it out when I have the time to read amongst all the other things currently occupying precious reading time. Too bad my library only carries the Swedish version of the book, guess I will have to dig deep and buy it.

 

[eznark]

Decided to jump back into the Abyss.

Have a long drive coming up and this seems like a good one for that

 

[Nola]

Is anyone going to try read Armada by Ernest Cline?

Me! I really enjoyed "Ready Player One," despite having to google some of the 80's references...

 

[Never Forever]

Just finished Go Set a Watchman.

Spoiler

I think I primarily found it interesting as a relic of the process of writing To Kill a Mockingbird and how that novel came to be, with the development of its themes and characters. There's one part in particular where you can tell that they basically just took the pre-Mockingbird manuscript of Watchman and published it as-is. It'll definitely be incredibly valuable in the field of Mockingbird studies and will rejuvenate them, as manuscripts and different versions of texts do.

The problem with it from a literary perspective is that it is very clearly her first manuscript and it shows in the writing, and from a plot perspective it's also quite an unexciting read. The extent of the plot is basically what all the articles said: Atticus is a racist. However, of course, this carries a different meaning to us as modern readers who are familiar with the 'finalised' version of Atticus, almost, as opposed to any father figure to any female protagonist. The way this conflict is resolved feels quite unsatisfactory, as it sort of jumps along a bit and I found it difficult to follow the logic in places. The actual novel would have been redrafted if it had continued in this form.

It's interesting because I always felt that Mockingbird was an incredibly accomplished debut, as it is marvellously deftly written and plotted; obviously, this demonstrates the extent of the artistic process 'behind the scenes'.

Blah, bit disorganised and poorly written, but I had some thoughts I wanted to get down, and I didn't want to irritate my friends considering that this would probably be approaching uni levels of critical discussion for them and there's a moratorium on that.

Also this month: I've read Breakfast at Tiffany's (Truman Capote), Red Dragon (Thomas Harris) and The Trial (Franz Kafka). I feel like I've written enough about Watchman to release me from writing reams about them, but they were quite enjoyable. Going to move on to the Silence of the Lambs now.

 

[Freeza Under The Shower]

This book is fantastic! Had to read it for one of my classes. Love Ariely's books. His other one is great, too.

The (honest) truth about dishonesty? Yes, it's great.

Little heavy on the matrix testing.
(this will make sense after reading it)

spoilers:

Spoiler

everybody cheats. EVERYONE. by 25%, but no more than that if they're not 'that guy'. I don't remember the result of having an actor play that part though, I would have to look it up. Interestingly however, and almost at the end, so it's not explored much further, in-out group mechanisms play a fundamental part in people's use of the 'veto muscle' aka not-cheat. If someone from team A cheats, members from team B (the actual case is Duke and another university) do not cheat at all.

It would be interesting to see if that result also holds up when correlating with intelligence though. I mean, (highly) gifted individuals tend to be aware of their 'group of one' status, if you will. But whether that is common or makes any difference is what would interest me

 

[kswiston]

I love them, too, but they were just too much for a lot of readers.

I guess I can see that. I teach science and math, and love history, so I guess I have the right background to enjoy the Baroque Cycle books.


Only tangentially related to books, but I just learned that Julie Dillon is now an acclaimed sci fi and fantasy artist. I am sure this is not news to those following that scene. However, I used to talk to her via email about drawing and her video game fan art back in the 90s before I sort of drifted away from the hobby. She had some tutorial articles about character drawing on her website during that period. Needless to say her style and talent have evolved immensely in the last 15-20 years. Pretty cool.

You can get one of her art books, along with other books previously featured on Kickstarter through Humble Bundle at the moment for those interested.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books

 

[aidan]

Only tangentially related to books, but I just learned that Julie Dillon is now an acclaimed sci fi and fantasy artist. I am sure this is not news to those following that scene. However, I used to talk to her via email about drawing and her video game fan art back in the 90s before I sort of drifted away from the hobby. She had some tutorial articles about character drawing on her website during that period. Needless to say her style and talent have evolved immensely in the last 15-20 years. Pretty cool.

You can get one of her art books, along with other books previously featured on Kickstarter through Humble Bundle at the moment for those interested.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books

Julie's great, and won a very well deserved Hugo Award last year.

She did the art for my website's header! I was blown away when I found out she created one of my favourite pieces of Chrono Trigger fan art.

 

[BumRush]

Just finished Galveston by Nic Pizzolatto on a flight. I liked but didn't love it. 7/10

 

[Amentallica]

The (honest) truth about dishonesty? Yes, it's great.

Little heavy on the matrix testing.
(this will make sense after reading it)

spoilers:

Spoiler

everybody cheats. EVERYONE. by 25%, but no more than that if they're not 'that guy'. I don't remember the result of having an actor play that part though, I would have to look it up. Interestingly however, and almost at the end, so it's not explored much further, in-out group mechanisms play a fundamental part in people's use of the 'veto muscle' aka not-cheat. If someone from team A cheats, members from team B (the actual case is Duke and another university) do not cheat at all.

It would be interesting to see if that result also holds up when correlating with intelligence though. I mean, (highly) gifted individuals tend to be aware of their 'group of one' status, if you will. But whether that is common or makes any difference is what would interest me

It's been a while since I've read his work.

Spoiler

That one experiment where individuals were given an arithmetic test (I believe it was an arithmetic test) and asked to report how many they had correct in order to be compensated with money. Many definitely tried to take advantage and artificially inflate the number correct when they knew they were told that no one would be checking the work. Then afterward it was shown, if I remember correctly, that even the idea that one is being watched can significantly reduce/curb cheating. I believe that's how it went.

 

[Snowman Prophet of Doom]

P&V's translation of Notes from Underground is wonderful, and illuminates the universality and modernity of Dostoevsky.

I could see calling Tolstoy "of his time," as his prose, as beautiful and lyrical as it is (the P&V Anna Karenina is really gorgeous btw), is stately and demure in a way that, to me, defines classic realist fiction.

Dostoevsky's work is much messier and uglier, so focused on the dark depths of humanity, with characters prone to Tourette's-like outbursts. I can't help but see a bit of myself in the Underground Man. And I see the Underground Man everywhere in contemporary entertainment: in Travis Bickle (hell, Taxi Driver started as an adaptation of the novella), David Brent of The Office, Kenny Powers, and so on. The man did not write time capsule fiction but work that has endured and directly inspired great twentieth/twenty-first century art, by digging deep into the grimy innards of his characters.

I'm not saying Dostoevsky was a bad or worthless writer. He could be quite good, at times, and his lack of formal stiffness is a comparatively modern quality. But the way he portrays that "ugly side of human nature" has not, in many respects, aged all that well, for it's always filtered through a lens of moralizing distortion. That's not to say that a work having a Christian perspective necessarily makes it bad, but while Dostoevsky was ahead of his time in his willingness to so prominently feature fuck-ups, rabble, and other folk far from the idealized mean of their time and place, his tendency was more to portray them as somewhat pitiable clowns or stereotypes, rather than really plumbing that ugliness for what it is and what it does to people.

That he was not someone with 150+ years of psychological research to draw on is not, of course, a flaw unto itself, but mixed with the sometimes over-the-top moralizing, the narrative flab, the dips into melodrama, and you have a perfect cocktail for someone whose work is undoubtedly sometimes intriguing and deservedly influential, yet at the same time fails to hold up in ways that are difficult or impossible to ignore over a century later.

 

[commish]

Finally finished Seveneves and moved on to reading Dune again. Love that book.

About Seveneves:

Spoiler

This should have been two books. The first book could have ended with the seven eves arriving safely at the cleft. It would have been a great book. The second book/sequel could be set 5000 years in the future and fleshed out that future world/storyline quite a bit. As it stands, the future world's story is a bit flat/abrupt. I suppose there might be/could have been a sequel told from the Pinger/Grounder (lolololol) perspective.

It was probably just me, but I thought all along that the uncle was going to survive. I thought the author just talked about the uncle and the preparations too much to just kill him off. The people in the submarines surviving makes no sense, but I am guessing that's a story Stephenson wants to tell at some later point.

 

[RELAYER]

Lol'd @ "Dostoevsky fails to hold up"

Also you keep telling us that "moralizing" (what does this mean) is somehow bad but never say why.

 

[Hanzou]

Glad you're having such a great experience with The Elfstones of Shannara (especially after a typical middling experience with tSoS). It's one of my favourite books ever, and I wish more people would give it a shot instead of brushing Brooks off after reading tSoS. You're going to love the ending.

So I read sword of Shannara a couple years ago and did not enjoy it very much if at all. It just felt like such a lotr rehash and just very fantasy trope filled. It was written in the 70s I eleven so it would not have been so overplayed when it was initially released but reading it a couple years ago it was just boring.

Does the series get better? I think I already have the next couple books as I bought them all at once for like 50 cents each. I love fantasy books and even do like "Dungeons and dragons" style fantasy but I was so turned off with the first one.

 

[Christoff Yurievich]

Just finished Galveston by Nic Pizzolatto on a flight. I liked but didn't love it. 7/10

Good description. The ending just felt too neat after how brutal (?) the rest of the book was.

 

[aidan]

So I read sword of Shannara a couple years ago and did not enjoy it very much if at all. It just felt like such a lotr rehash and just very fantasy trope filled. It was written in the 70s I eleven so it would not have been so overplayed when it was initially released but reading it a couple years ago it was just boring.

Does the series get better? I think I already have the next couple books as I bought them all at once for like 50 cents each. I love fantasy books and even do like "Dungeons and dragons" style fantasy but I was so turned off with the first one.

Let me convince you why I think Brooks is worth reading. The first book is certainly the weakest of the first eight in the series. Many of the later books are also poor, but they stand alone well enough that you can easily read the best early ones and skip the later ones.

 

[arglebargle]

This book is fantastic! Had to read it for one of my classes. Love Ariely's books. His other one is great, too.

I love them, too, but they were just too much for a lot of readers.

I'm reading Predictable Irrationality by Dan Ariely, a recommendation from my Secret Santa Mod Book Club partner.

is this worth reading for someone who has read a bunch of other behavioral econ stuff (nudge, thinking fast and slow, papers/articles)? i have read a decent amount and it starts to get redundant. is ariely sufficiently different from thaler, kahneman, etc to make the books worthwhile?

just finished blood meridian

mccarthy's writing is amazing in this. almost poetic. really great characters and sense of place. but extremely violent and the writing can be challenging (beautiful, but not straightforward). definitely worth reading, but requires a specific mood, or the violence can be a lot to take. after reading this and the road in relatively short order, i may need to space out the mccarthy books a bit before the abyss starts to look back into me.

started red notice just a few days ago

surprisingly poorly written and the author/main character can also be a bit self indulgent and unlikable. but the (ostensibly true) story is engrossing enough, and moves quickly enough that neither is a huge hindrance, at least not for very long.

im actually reading it at the encouragement of my boss who uses it as an example of why my organization does not invest in russia. the lack of respect for the rule of law is something easy to think about in the abstract but this book really helps to fill in what that means on the ground and how costly it can be.

 

[Nuke Soda]

Reading The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. About 540 pages in and I am loving it. Brandon Sanderson put some serious time into the world building of this book, like an insane amount of details in this world he has created. Very impressive and makes what is going on that more immersive. Already have the sequel ready for when I finish this one. I honestly don't know where this book is going, which as somebody who predicts plot points and twist fairly well it is nice being in uncharted waters.

Picked up Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel and can't wait to read it, maybe as an intermission for The Stormlight Archives.

 

[aidan]

Picked up Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel and can't wait to read it, maybe as an intermission for The Stormlight Archives.

Yeeeeesssssss!

 

[Nuke Soda]

Yeeeeesssssss!

It was this thread that put the book on my radar.

 

[Mumei]

I had a pretty horrible time with P&V's translation of Gogol. Their process goes like this - V translates, and P goes over it with a "literary" mind, and they adjust as necessary to fit the nuances of the original text, all the flaws included. At least that's what I remember of some profile of the pair in some magazine; the result, anyway, was fucking unbearable for Dead Souls. God bless Guerney.

The Translation Wars in The New Yorker.

I started Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates tonight. There's an affecting moment early on when the host of a news show he's on brings up a certain photograph of a black boy hugging a white cop in Baltimore, and asks him about "hope." He knows then that he has failed, that nothing he's said that night has mattered. He follows it by describing a Dream, which is America as experienced by those who believe themselves to be white, and 'Dream' then becomes a pejorative that the black body is measured against, and failed.

It's all very early on of course - that particular passage occurs at like the 8% mark, and I'm at 20%ish. But the despair is tangible.

My copy arrives tomorrow! I should be finished with H is for Hawk by then, which is making me think about a blurb on my copy of The Once and Future King where the author is referred to as "a fierce and damaged man." I think it's going to make rereading that story more poignant when I do.

I'd also intended on finishing the City of Stairs this week, but I came across the book's website, which has this incredibly mundane background art with the most mundane interpretation of the setting possible. Not that the book's cover is any better, but now I can't think of anything else when I try to read it. I suppose there's always next year.

Pfft. Don't let a little thing like that put you off!

And I finished A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara last week. It's one of the best I've ever read.

Makler has his work cut out for him for next month.

Speaking of: How are we handling next month, if this continues? I hope it does, because I couldn't participate this month. Will it be by fiat again, or are we going to do suggestions in this topic or what?

 

[Snowman Prophet of Doom]

Lol'd @ "Dostoevsky fails to hold up"

Also you keep telling us that "moralizing" (what does this mean) is somehow bad but never say why.

I didn't say that his work "fails to hold up", period. I said his work fails to hold up as modern relative to other authors from a similar period. Moby-Dick and Leaves of Grass both predate The Brothers Karamazov, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was written only four years after it, and all three stand up as far more modern works of literature, communicate more with less, and are far more complex and plausible interpretative models of reality than any Dostoevsky work I've read. That doesn't mean Dostoevsky is NOT good, however. In fact, he's quite a bit better than any contemporary acclaimed author I've read, and at his best, he was a writer who could wrangle with serious philosophical issues with grace and chew a deep concept down to its core, in a good way. Nobody can fault the 19th Century Russkies for ambition and balls.

As for moralizing - seriously, a Google search will of course reveal what is meant by such a commonly-used word. There's not necessarily anything wrong with a work of art being didactic, in the macro, but when the thing being preached comes across as a dated oversimplification - like Dostoevsky's interpretation of Christianity and the nature of "sin" in the human experience - it's natural to take notice and point that out. And when said moralizing is done via an excessively bulky (and not in the expansive Whitmanian sense) and sometimes conventional and predictable narrative, as Dostoevsky is prone to, it's just as natural to say that this is a flaw. Being flawed is not the same thing as being bad, just as not holding up as modern relative to other notable contemporaries is not the same thing as not holding up at all.

Moreover, my whole point in the first place is that the worldview of a Victorian Englishman is likely not that different from a Russian Orthodox Christian living in the same period, meaning Garnett's translations likely captures something about the worldview that more "modern" translations like P&V likely miss.

 

[Maklershed]

Speaking of: How are we handling next month, if this continues? I hope it does, because I couldn't participate this month. Will it be by fiat again, or are we going to do suggestions in this topic or what?

Suggestions in this thread would be great. I know last month some asked for Go Set A Watchman and I remember Ashes recommend Three Men in a Boat.

 

[Mumei]

Suggestions in this thread would be great. I know last month some asked for Go Set A Watchman and I remember Ashes recommend Three Men in a Boat.

I still feel ambivalent about Go Set A Watchman because of the questions about how it was published. Obviously you shouldn't go off of what I'd be interested in, but it's not my vote.

Here are some fiction books that were published this year that are on my to-read list currently:

In the Country: Stories, by Mia Alvar
The Boatmaker, by John Benditt
The Green Road, by Anne Enright
Speak: A Novel, by Louisa Hall
The Buried Giant, by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Star Side of Bird Hill, by Naomi Jackson
Get in Trouble, by Kelly Link
Music for Wartime: Stories, by Rebecca Makkai
God Help the Child, by Toni Morrison
Young Babylon, by Yu Nei
Girl at War, by Sara Novic
Uprooted, by Naomi Novik
Church of Marvels, by Leslie Parry
The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, by Natasha Pulley
Night at the Fiestas: Stories, by Kirstin Valdez Quade
The Book of Aron, by Jim Sheppard

I'm not really pulling for any of these in particular, but I thought I'd put them out there as possibilities if people want to something topical, so to speak.

 

[TTG]

Finally finished Seveneves and moved on to reading Dune again. Love that book.

About Seveneves:

Spoiler

This should have been two books. The first book could have ended with the seven eves arriving safely at the cleft. It would have been a great book. The second book/sequel could be set 5000 years in the future and fleshed out that future world/storyline quite a bit. As it stands, the future world's story is a bit flat/abrupt. I suppose there might be/could have been a sequel told from the Pinger/Grounder (lolololol) perspective.

It was probably just me, but I thought all along that the uncle was going to survive. I thought the author just talked about the uncle and the preparations too much to just kill him off. The people in the submarines surviving makes no sense, but I am guessing that's a story Stephenson wants to tell at some later point.

Seveneves spoilers:

Spoiler

Yea, people surviving underground was an obvious turn. I think he felt like natives on Earth also needed some diversity, so he added the sea people. On the whole, everything past the time skip was underwhelming(well, maybe apart from the cool armor). On one hand, I want a sequel because most of the book is good bordering on great and the initial event is compelling and still a mystery. On the other hand, he's dug himself some holes to climb out of. I don't like the racial division via genetic modification, that whole deal felt ham fisted. I never bought their ability to terraform a whole planet considering where things left off in the cleft. Stephenson bungled some fundamental elements when he projected the story into the future, maybe they're not beyond salvage, but I don't see obvious solutions.

I didn't say that his work "fails to hold up", period. I said his work fails to hold up as modern relative to other authors from a similar period. Moby-Dick and Leaves of Grass both predate The Brothers Karamazov, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was written only four years after it, and all three stand up as far more modern works of literature, communicate more with less, and are far more complex and plausible interpretative models of reality than any Dostoevsky work I've read...

Meh, I would trade in Moby-Dick and Huck Finn for a Dostoevsky any day(haven't read Leaves of Grass). And I really like Moby Dick! Between Crime and Punishment, The Possessed and Kramazovs there's probably 10 characters that I would put up there with the absolute best literature has to offer. There are great clashes between different philosophies wrapped into good fiction... it's as good as it gets. Dostoevsky wrote some didactic, instructive endings, but it's not as if his books are suffused with it. Beyond that, I'm not up for putting an entire library of work in context with literature world wide at the time, so I'll wrap up by saying, Leave Dostoevsky alone!

 

[Maklershed]

So far I'm enjoying Jude's story the most. Does it get into

Spoiler

how he injured his back

? It wasn't really

Spoiler

a car accident

right?

 

[Mumei]

So far I'm enjoying Jude's story the most. Does it get into

Spoiler

how he injured his back

? It wasn't really

Spoiler

a car accident

right?

It gets into it, and that would be telling.

 

[Haly]

A Little Life
My first thought was: "You know, no one writes these kinds of stories about programmers, or physicists. Or mathematicians."

 

[Shaffield]

25 pages in and I'm cracking up, McInerney is so damn funny

 

[Mumei]

A Little Life
My first thought was: "You know, no one writes these kinds of stories about programmers, or physicists. Or mathematicians."

Where are you at?

 

[besada]

is this worth reading for someone who has read a bunch of other behavioral econ stuff (nudge, thinking fast and slow, papers/articles)? i have read a decent amount and it starts to get redundant. is ariely sufficiently different from thaler, kahneman, etc to make the books worthwhile?

Maybe. It's in the same area, and there's definitely some retrod ground (particularly regarding free as a price point), but there are some cognitive failures discussed here I haven't seen in some of the other books. But it's coming from the same general place as Freakanomics/Nudge/etc. by pointing out how we are not rational consumers. It's focused on the predictability of particular types of irrationality.

 

[Haly]

Where are you at?

Jude has a lot of pain. Willen feels bad.

 

[Snowman Prophet of Doom]

Meh, I would trade in Moby-Dick and Huck Finn for a Dostoevsky any day(haven't read Leaves of Grass). And I really like Moby Dick! Between Crime and Punishment, The Possessed and Kramazovs there's probably 10 characters that I would put up there with the absolute best literature has to offer. There are great clashes between different philosophies wrapped into good fiction... it's as good as it gets. Dostoevsky wrote some didactic, instructive endings, but it's not as if his books are suffused with it. Beyond that, I'm not up for putting an entire library of work in context with literature world wide at the time, so I'll wrap up by saying, Leave Dostoevsky alone!

Melville, Twain, and Dostoevsky ALL wrote books with strongly didactic messages, but Moby-Dick and Huck Finn's messages flow from a deeper, leaner, and more realistic and nuanced portrayal of characters' behavior and consequences. Compare Dostoevsky's characters' philosophical struggles with, say, the way that Twain cogently and humorously captures the childlike yet intelligent logic that propels Huck to his ultimate denunciation of slavery, and there is an unmistakable melodrama and more apparent artifice to the former. Compare Melville's depiction of, say, the way the men of the Pequod interact with the way the Karamazovs interact, and one clearly has a better understanding of the ins and outs of masculine interaction, even accounting for socioeconomic and geographical differences.

I have much respect for Dostoevsky as a writer, but the parody of Russian novels' sometimes hamhanded way of wrangling with philosophical issues that Woody Allen penned in his movie Love and Death has a core of truth to it. That's not to discredit the Russian novelists' many merits or to deny them their continually important place in history. Heck, if we were to go by pure enjoyment, I probably would put Dostoevsky behind Twain but ahead of Melville, because Melville's art has that kind of hermetic quality that is so often a concomitant of visionary greatness, whereas Dostoevsky's has an unmistakeably human, funny, and approachable quality even in its worst moments.

 

[Mumei]

Jude has a lot of pain. Willen feels bad.

Oh. Well, that clears that up, then.

 

[lt519]

Is anyone going to try read Armada by Ernest Cline?

Just picked it up on my Kindle, I've been waiting so long for this book. Gonna start it Monday when I get back home and have time to dive into it.

 

[mu cephei]

Suggestions in this thread would be great. I know last month some asked for Go Set A Watchman and I remember Ashes recommend Three Men in a Boat.

I like Mumei's suggestion of current books, because I always seem to read these 'event' books about three years after everyone else is done with them. However, the event book at the moment is obviously Go Set a Watchman, which I am not going to read.

My nomination is The Vorrh by Brian Catling. From The Guardian review

The Vorrh is a semi-tropical forest older than mankind. It is immeasurable and apparently has no centre. Somewhere within it lies the Garden of Eden and near it roam Adam, Eve and their children, degenerate cannibals, or so some believe. Every story about the Vorrh is true and untrue, every narrative embodies countless other narratives, all taking place within the forest. The Vorrh, like so much in this novel, is sentient. It might be intelligent.
...
[the book has] some of the best qualities of a Pynchon novel. Indeed, Pynchon is Catling’s nearest comparison. His themes are the many forms of psychic and physical colonisation. Combining several different kinds of narrative, as well as referencing many more, Catling borrows from popular and marginal sources to tell a story which has all Peake’s remorseless drive and remains in the mind the whole time one is away from it.
...
Like an early Ballard novel, The Vorrh does not promote exoticism for its own sake yet is full of wonderful, telling imagery and a strong sense of resolution. For all its page-turning story, it is a poet’s novel, a serious piece of writing.

 

[Nymerio]

Done with Ethan of Athos, on to Labyrinth

 

[aidan]

Done with Ethan of Athos, on to Labyrinth

That cover.

 

[koopathecat]

25 pages in and I'm cracking up, McInerney is so damn funny

I just finished this. So damn funny. Short, sweet and to the point

 

[aidan]

Still better than the covers that show Miles as a 6-foot buff typical milsf protagonist.

Jeez. That book's just destined for bad covers:

 

[besada]

Jeez. That book's just destined for bad covers:

I'm up to Mirror Dance and haven't seen a decent cover yet.

 

[aidan]

I'm up to Mirror Dance and haven't seen a decent cover yet.

You don't like these?

(Okay, that last one was a GURPS module, but still...)

 

[Nymerio]

That cover.

Jeez. That book's just destined for bad covers:
]

Lol, yeah I normally just post the cover from goodreads but I that looked like some kind of placeholder so I went to amazon. Hardly an improvement.

edit: holy shit these covers.

Where are the hands holding the title coming from oO

 

[aidan]

GAFfer whatevermort (James Smythe) has had his novel, Way Down Dark, optioned for film by Studio 8 according to Deadline. Awesome news!

 

[fakefaker]

Finished up Beyond Redemption by Michael R. Fletcher last night and have to say it's one of the best non-traditional fantasy books I've read this year. With the unique world building where crazy people change reality with "delusions", to the intriguing characters, the dark humor that lightens a very bleak setting, and the insidious plotting of characters at every turn...it's truly a amazing book. Highly recommended for those seeking something different with their fantasy.

And now to read the big book of summer with A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth.

 

[Maklershed]

GAFfer whatevermort (James Smythe) has had his novel, Way Down Dark, optioned for film by Studio 8 according to Deadline. Awesome news!

Whoa! Congratulations whatevermort!

 

[Haly]

Maybe I should get a gig doing book covers. Let's see what I can do with this.

 

[whatevermort]

GAFfer whatevermort (James Smythe) has had his novel, Way Down Dark, optioned for film by Studio 8 according to Deadline. Awesome news!

Thanks, Aidan! I'm pretty thrilled - even if nothing ever comes of it, they're a great studio, and the conversations about possibilities for the movie have been mind-bogglingly fun!

 

[Mumei]

I like Mumei's suggestion of current books, because I always seem to read these 'event' books about three years after everyone else is done with them. However, the event book at the moment is obviously Go Set a Watchman, which I am not going to read.

My nomination is The Vorrh by Brian Catling. From The Guardian review

That is also on my list and I'm not sure why I forgot to list it! I would like that, I think.

also:

1) Vorkosigan Saga covers are spectacularly bad. It's truly stunning.
2) Congrats to whatevermort!