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What are you reading? (July 2015)
- Thread starter Maklershed
- Start date
It's good that the Robert Jackson used India as the basis of Saypuri. But cultural strangeness aren't just really there because so far the saypuris act like american.
Especially Shara's first shown conversation with her aunt and Shara relationship with Vohannes in the past
Maybe I elaborate poorly in my poirly but that's what I don't particularly like so far.
AngmarsKing701
Member
Incandenza
Banned
Toll the Hounds (Malazan Book of the Fallen #8) by Steven Erikson.
I guess with a series this huge and this dense there is bound to be some section of the story that you just never quite wrap your head around the first time through, and I think the Tiste Andii bits are that section for me. Every time it launches into another esoteric and fragmentary look at Andii history I just have to throw my hands up and admit that I have no clue what in the holy hell is going on.
That aside, it's still Malazan, with all its associated ups and downs. At this point I can accept that I'm never going to fall in love with the series but I'm so deep in that I'm sure as hell gonna see it through.
Oh, I see. That's an interesting take on it; I hadn't even considered that as an issue. I felt like the characters were well-done, but if you look at it from that angle it does lack a certain verisimilitude.
Dedication Through Light
Member
Finished Reading the Comments: Likers, Haters, and Manipulators at the Bottom of the Web
The overview of the various commenting platforms on the internet provided in Reading the Comments is an interesting refresher course on the human condition as it relates to communication skills when people are shielded by screens. While one could believe that most of the hateful comments that the writer focuses on are due to the element of anonymity, Mr Reagle shows that that is not always a barrier to inhibit comments. For example people tweeting disappointment in the actor chosen for Rue of Hunger Games fame using their real names and even school affiliations shows that people dont need to be anonymous to make rather rude comments.
I enjoyed the mix of both overview of different areas in which comments provided both comedy (Amazon parody reviews) and also provided the way for dialogue to be opened for handling cases of threats and other malicious deeds. Focusing on the malicious deeds dialogue seemed to be opened as it related to a case in which a League of Legends player was jailed for a joking threat made online. This opened the door for debate about how to tell serious from non serious threats. On the other end were the known cases of the videogame academic Ms. Anita S who faced the threats made by people who disagree with her analyses of things as harmless as videogames. Then there were the cases of people who lost jobs over their actions at coding conferences (one who took photos of people who were making bad jokes, and another who was involved in an elevator scheme). All these cases bring to light that much discussion is needed in technology realm that people need to have some sort of training with both assessing the risk to whistleblowing, but also more importantly, people assessing that they shouldnt be making rude comments to their peers. Though it seems some professionals just like being mean or are just uneducated.
The time spent on analyzing the human condition using known cases from human studies (the usual scenario of the school teacher who had students treat each other differently based on eye color, or the case in which study participants administered a shock based on their attire (if they knew the name or not, or were wearing a lab coat or not), , the case with kids going trick or treating and if they would cheat if they were alone or in a group, and lastly the usual student study in which some are prison guards and how they evolved over the course of the study) was enlightening in how it could be related to understanding why people act the way they do online in comment sections, or in Usenet, or even Linux developer discussion groups. I only wish it lasted a bit longer and was a bit more woven into the main narrative. Perhaps if it was at the beginning of the book. For example there was one case in which a Chinese mother and American mother were examined while their child were testing and while one discussed anything but the test, the Chinese mom expressed concern, and upon the next part of the test, the Chinese child scored better than the American one. It just felt like this had no place in the overall idea of "comments" though it was interesting.
All in all it was a great read. I was initially interested due to the Amazon review focus as that has directly relation towards me (am an Amazon vine reviewer and also in the top 9500), and I was pleased to see time taken into analyzing not only fraudulent reviews or votes, but also the comments that people leave on them. There was also time on assessing what is good feedback and critique. As an aside there was time spent with one early popular amateur film reviewer and also time on fanfiction comments sections. I also liked the time spent on how some people leave reviews that are misplaced or even the paragraphs spent on people debating what makes a 4/5 review different than a 5/5 review (example use was the Kaybe carbon detector). And lastly for Amazon the time focused on paid reviews, verified reviews, and the insight into top Amazon reviewers and vine ones, as well as Goodreads bullying. I wonder if more could be said of them in a future book as it seemed the writer could have had a whole lot more content there.
Good read, good insight into review systems, comments, and more (malicious ones included, anonymous, Q/A places, and debate about if comment sections should be left open)
Minor section I liked, I must admit I love when people do leave the "first" on comment sections, it always makes me chuckle.
The overview of the various commenting platforms on the internet provided in Reading the Comments is an interesting refresher course on the human condition as it relates to communication skills when people are shielded by screens. While one could believe that most of the hateful comments that the writer focuses on are due to the element of anonymity, Mr Reagle shows that that is not always a barrier to inhibit comments. For example people tweeting disappointment in the actor chosen for Rue of Hunger Games fame using their real names and even school affiliations shows that people dont need to be anonymous to make rather rude comments.
I enjoyed the mix of both overview of different areas in which comments provided both comedy (Amazon parody reviews) and also provided the way for dialogue to be opened for handling cases of threats and other malicious deeds. Focusing on the malicious deeds dialogue seemed to be opened as it related to a case in which a League of Legends player was jailed for a joking threat made online. This opened the door for debate about how to tell serious from non serious threats. On the other end were the known cases of the videogame academic Ms. Anita S who faced the threats made by people who disagree with her analyses of things as harmless as videogames. Then there were the cases of people who lost jobs over their actions at coding conferences (one who took photos of people who were making bad jokes, and another who was involved in an elevator scheme). All these cases bring to light that much discussion is needed in technology realm that people need to have some sort of training with both assessing the risk to whistleblowing, but also more importantly, people assessing that they shouldnt be making rude comments to their peers. Though it seems some professionals just like being mean or are just uneducated.
The time spent on analyzing the human condition using known cases from human studies (the usual scenario of the school teacher who had students treat each other differently based on eye color, or the case in which study participants administered a shock based on their attire (if they knew the name or not, or were wearing a lab coat or not), , the case with kids going trick or treating and if they would cheat if they were alone or in a group, and lastly the usual student study in which some are prison guards and how they evolved over the course of the study) was enlightening in how it could be related to understanding why people act the way they do online in comment sections, or in Usenet, or even Linux developer discussion groups. I only wish it lasted a bit longer and was a bit more woven into the main narrative. Perhaps if it was at the beginning of the book. For example there was one case in which a Chinese mother and American mother were examined while their child were testing and while one discussed anything but the test, the Chinese mom expressed concern, and upon the next part of the test, the Chinese child scored better than the American one. It just felt like this had no place in the overall idea of "comments" though it was interesting.
All in all it was a great read. I was initially interested due to the Amazon review focus as that has directly relation towards me (am an Amazon vine reviewer and also in the top 9500), and I was pleased to see time taken into analyzing not only fraudulent reviews or votes, but also the comments that people leave on them. There was also time on assessing what is good feedback and critique. As an aside there was time spent with one early popular amateur film reviewer and also time on fanfiction comments sections. I also liked the time spent on how some people leave reviews that are misplaced or even the paragraphs spent on people debating what makes a 4/5 review different than a 5/5 review (example use was the Kaybe carbon detector). And lastly for Amazon the time focused on paid reviews, verified reviews, and the insight into top Amazon reviewers and vine ones, as well as Goodreads bullying. I wonder if more could be said of them in a future book as it seemed the writer could have had a whole lot more content there.
Good read, good insight into review systems, comments, and more (malicious ones included, anonymous, Q/A places, and debate about if comment sections should be left open)
Minor section I liked, I must admit I love when people do leave the "first" on comment sections, it always makes me chuckle.
Just finished this. Great book. It gave me a better understanding of the causes of both crises, the consequences of policy makes actions and what they could have done better. He offers a very convincing argument. One complaint is that I wished he succinctly summarized his view of the causes of the GD. The narrative flips back and forth between GD and GR, America and Europe, and he talks about other explanations that arent so persuasive. The consequence is that keeping track everything concerning his views on the GD gets a bit difficult.
I would definitely recommend it. It was a very interesting and entertaining read.
The group of people that definitely came off the worst are European politicians and technocrats. Blithering idiots since pretty much every choice they made was a bad one. The award for the biggest blithering idiot definitely goes to Brian Cowen, the former leader of the Irish government, who in September 2008 agreed to insure every financial asset in Ireland's banks up to 100k Euro. Not just deposits, every asset. This was apparently decided while playing golf when one of the leaders of an Irish bank. The only problem with this is that Irish banks had a higher gdp than Ireland and those banks went quickly bust, resulting in every Irishman having to shill out 14.5k Euro to cover that idiotic guaranty. It would have been FAR less if no such guaranty were made. I am honestly surprised that the Irish people didn't break into his house, drag him outside and murder him in the streets.
flatearthpandas
Member
If I remember right, my preference in descending order was 3 > 9 > most of the others > 1. So hopefully 9 will be a nice perk for you as well.
Just wait for the last 250 pages. Shit gets real
That book blew my mind when I read it, because I wasn't really a fantasy reader before that. My brother recommended it on a whim and it took me months after buying to actually start reading it. Fantastic stuff.
Seraphis Cain
bad gameplay lol
My first Murakami book, and honestly the first book I've read in enough years that I don't actually know how many it's been. Recently got a cheap tablet and at the same time discovered my state's digital library, so I've decided to start reading again. Part of the reason I came into this thread, actually, was to see what people are reading so I could have some stuff to check out. It's been so long that I don't know who's good and what's worth reading.
Anyway, about the book. I really enjoyed it. Actually blew through it in about a day, I enjoyed it so much. There were some things I was a bit iffy on
(like how the Haida thing wasn't resolved and how the book ended a bit abruptly)
sometimes that's just how life goes (at least for the first thing). Sometimes things aren't always tied up in a nice neat bow.
So yeah, I think I'll browse through this thread a bit and see what people are reading, and go from there.
Switch Back 9
a lot of my threads involve me fucking up somehow. Perhaps I'm a moron?
Oh god please no.
I blitzed through the first 3 books of the Lightbringer series by Brent Weeks. I think I read a book every 1.5 days even with work.
Really liked how the main character (but is he really?) is this fat guy with crippling self esteem issues, but the way it's handled doesn't make me hate him as he's not made out to be completely pathetic.
After burning through that and now stuck waiting for the final book, I have begun another series:
Really liked how the main character (but is he really?) is this fat guy with crippling self esteem issues, but the way it's handled doesn't make me hate him as he's not made out to be completely pathetic.
After burning through that and now stuck waiting for the final book, I have begun another series:
So, this book... I’m so on the fence on whether or not I liked it. I can’t remember the last book that left me so puzzled as to if I actually liked it or not. Anderson isn’t the best writer in the world, and his prose can sometimes get on my nerves, he definitely tends to over-explain stuff that is perfectly deductible from the context of the story at that point. On the other hand though, he knows how to build a story. This book has one big problem though, it was written as the introduction to a seven-book series from the get-go. As such, most of this book consists of introductions. There are many Point-of-view characters and the chapters are short. The first half of the book it took me half a chapter to get settled back into a character, which was definitely distracting. I would have preferred less POV’s at the beginning, some of them definitely could have been introduced at a later point and at least one I could have done without completely. It’s likely this issue is less prevalent when reading, instead of listening to the Audio Book as I did, but it’s a lot to take in.
That said, the world that is being build is definitely interesting. Set in the far future, the human race is now a space-faring civilization, having launched several generation ships a couple of centuries before the start of this book, they encountered an ancient alien race called the Ildirans. These aliens teach them how to build stardrives that use a fuel (Ekti) that is mined from gas giants. After this event, humanity splits up into three factions, the Earth’s Terran Hanseatic League (better known as Hansa), which is basically a huge company run by a chairman, that uses a figurehead King to rule the humans. There’s the roamers, nomadic humans that live on starships and spacebases, mainly populating the many Ekti mining operations. And finally there are the green priests from the planet Theroc, who have discovered sentient trees (known as the Worldforest) and merged with them, changing their skin to green (and using photosynthesis) and allowing them to communicate with the trees through thought. These trees can communicate instantly over large distances, allowing green priests to communicate instantly with one another on different planets.
The story starts with the Hansa using an ancient artifact from a mysteriously extinct insectoid race, called the Klikiss, to turn a gas giant into a sun. They do so to make the moons around the gas giant habitable worlds to live on. Even though there are plenty of habitable worlds to live on, many of which still have ruins from the Klikiss race. The Ildirans, being an old and set-in-their-ways race, do not understand the human’s ambitions and reasoning, causing much conflict. Often seeming like a parent -> child relationship. From there the story slowly builds, mostly focusing on politics. The relations between the different factions is strenuous at best, none of them trusting the others. The Hansa are looking to replace their aging puppet king with a younger model, elsewhere, researches are exploring Klikiss ruins to find out more about the race and what led to their doom. Helped by three ancient insectioid Klikiss Robots, left behind but with no memory of what happened to their builders.
All in all, as we jump from one character to another, we learn more about the Hansa, roamers, Ildirans, green priests and the fate of the Klikiss race as the story progresses and the world that unfolds is deep and feels lived in. While a slow build at the start, the book ends on a high note, building to a good climax that leaves you wanting more. Further emphasizing this book’s role as an introduction to the world and the players in it, instead of more-or-less confined story with a clear three-act lay-out. This makes the book very hard to rate on its own. I could definitely understand people giving up on it before the midway point based on this, but once you make it past that, it definitely picks up.
In the end, I’m giving this book 3 out 5 stars, the world is interesting, and the latter half is interesting enough to keep on going with the story and delve further into the world. However, it takes very long to get there and the prose is not without flaws. Based on that I would have probably rated it 2 out of 5, but I have a feeling this book gets better once you head further into the story, so based on its potential, I’m adding an extra star, it left me interested enough to keep on reading the next book, so I can’t with good conscience give it too low a rating.
The last 250 pages are the best I've seen in the fantasy genre.
Atraveller
Banned
Is this wrong to say? Loved the characters she created in the Farseer trilogy. (Kettricken in particular) Fool's Errand is also a really great romp. Not a fan of Hobb?
Maklershed
Member
Wow this sounds really interesting. Never heard of The Saga of the Seven Suns before. Despite the lukewarm review I'm definitely adding this to the wishlist. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on it.
Aiii's review
Finished Isaac Asimov - The Stars like dust and Asimov - The Currents of Space. I think I leave the Empire series unread it really doesn't hold up in comparison to the Foundation and Robot novels and stories.
Not sure what to read next. I have The Diamond Age by Neal stephenson sitting on my Kindle but I really should get around and finish A brave new World. Maybe I read Kafka - The Trial or Metamorphosis again or some of his other stories.
Not sure what to read next. I have The Diamond Age by Neal stephenson sitting on my Kindle but I really should get around and finish A brave new World. Maybe I read Kafka - The Trial or Metamorphosis again or some of his other stories.
Atraveller
Banned
Wrong? No. Disagree? Yes. Assassin's Apprentice is the only book that I regret buying in the last 2~3 years.
Aw man, really? What didn't you like about it?
sparky2112
Member
Toll the Hounds (Malazan Book of the Fallen #8) by Steven Erikson.
I guess with a series this huge and this dense there is bound to be some section of the story that you just never quite wrap your head around the first time through, and I think the Tiste Andii bits are that section for me. Every time it launches into another esoteric and fragmentary look at Andii history I just have to throw my hands up and admit that I have no clue what in the holy hell is going on.
The re-read at Tor.com is incredibly detailed. I'm not yet beyond book 2, but it's been years since I read the first two and when I finally read 3, I'll do all my refreshing there.
kinoki
Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey.
Half-way through the forth part of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. I'm surprised that these books are getting thinner as they go. So used to the fantasy-trope of adding 200 pages per book.
Atraveller
Banned
The protagonist for starters, he's irrational, mopey, not charismatic at all, and didn't really do all that much. To me the only unique thing about the settings is the naming custom, but it's cheesy. I hated the fact that a sizable chunk of the story was dedicated to petty in-fighting (I really can't understand that previous post about the author doing political stuff well), in the face of a seemingly invincible threat. And then there's no resolution to the enemies the book spent the first half building up, sure, it's a planned trilogy(maybe), but I have no interest in going further.
sparky2112
Member
They're all more or less the same size, aren't they?
kinoki
Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey.
The 4th one is 597 pages in the edition I'm reading. Had to do some googling but here are the lengths of the books in the translation I'm reading:
- 496
- 587
- 665
- 597
- 446
- 301
- 403
I understand disliking it for some of those reasons, but the fact that there was no resolution to the enemies strikes me as an odd reason. As you say, it's a trilogy. Why would you resolve the seemingly invincible threat in the first book?
sparky2112
Member
It kills me that when people say 'Proust', they are usually referring to Swann's Way. For my money, the last two 'books' are where the payoff is and make Swann's Way pale in comparison.
kinoki
Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey.
I've gotten some interesting comments when reading this. Everything from "only read the first book" to "only read the last book" and so far I must say I enjoy the various themes each book presents. It also feels good that I'm past the half-way point, that it's easy sailing from here on out.
sparky2112
Member
I'll be the first one to admit that I struggled with the middle portion of the work with the seemingly endless salon scenes. Once past that/those, however, I was pretty much glued to it, so even though burnout was high at that point, I charged through, which I think serves as testament to how good the last third is. If you've ever experienced unrequited love, it's mind-blowing.
Atraveller
Banned
Yeah, my post was worded badly. There's nothing wrong with long story arcs, but with me being bored by the book, the book ended on "people did some unimportant things and the big bad is still out there" certainly didn't help.
It would be better for Farseer trilogy if the first book could be read as a standalone. Take Mistborn for example, Kelsier's crew spent most of the team dealing with their immediate objectives, with the "higher powers at work" only started to be hinted at the later half of the book, then only at the end, the book revealed there's more to the situation than it seemed. It tried make the readers looking for more, and it worked in my case.
flatearthpandas
Member
When you're less established you basically have to write like that. I think Sanderson would have done it differently if he could have. No publisher will buy a series most of the time so a first book has to stand alone. It might seem like having each book do that seems like a good idea but it seems to me it usually means you spend a whole book dealing with what may ultimately be a trivial issue in the grand scheme of things you want to pursue. I think that works best if you want the series to be a bildungsroman or episodic. Doesn't work that well for what a lot of people seem to want to pursue and i think a lot of times the first book ends up being pretty weak relative to the rest of the series because of that.
Toll the Hounds (Malazan Book of the Fallen #8) by Steven Erikson.
I guess with a series this huge and this dense there is bound to be some section of the story that you just never quite wrap your head around the first time through, and I think the Tiste Andii bits are that section for me. Every time it launches into another esoteric and fragmentary look at Andii history I just have to throw my hands up and admit that I have no clue what in the holy hell is going on.
That aside, it's still Malazan, with all its associated ups and downs. At this point I can accept that I'm never going to fall in love with the series but I'm so deep in that I'm sure as hell gonna see it through.
This series has been both awesome and a chore to read. He just has too many characters and too much random shit going on. I really wish it was more focused. I'm on book 9, will finish one of these days. I have to be in a certain mindset when I read these books. I think the series would have been better served had it been about 4 books shorter.
I blitzed through the first 3 books of the Lightbringer series by Brent Weeks. I think I read a book every 1.5 days even with work.
Really liked how the main character (but is he really?) is this fat guy with crippling self esteem issues, but the way it's handled doesn't make me hate him as he's not made out to be completely pathetic.
I just finished these yesterday! Though I took 3 weeks, not four and a half days (crikey). I'm mostly indifferent to Kip, but Gavin is cool as I'm partial to overpowered characters on occasion - so as you can imagine I loved the second and third books lol. I'm desperate to find out what happens
I love Hobb. I understand how many people don't, but I find this critique even odder than the previous one
Atraveller
Banned
"It's not just boring, it's boring and incomplete."I love Hobb. I understand how many people don't, but I find this critique even odder than the previous one
sparky2112
Member
Part of this is a weakness of fantasy in general; I don't see a whole lot of rigorous editing going on. Readers expect big books, so there's little incentive for an editor to chop heavily away at something. There is absolutely no way the Malazan books were heavily scrutinized - Erikson's output was simply too great and rapid to have him pour over revisions to the text, and he himself has said he doesn't do them. What's on the page is on the page. Do all fantasy writers get away with that? No, of course not. But I don't think they're necessary getting the screws put to them, either, and it ain't because their writing is uniformly fantastic.
You Know Nothing
Member
See GRRM.
Feast and Dance are both overly indulgent, meandering, and fairly pointless in the overall plot. World building is nice and all. But there's a line and GRRM crossed it with those two.
flatearthpandas
Member
Even if you don't like it, check out The Importance of Being Earnest and the older movie. Not that Dorian Gray is bad.
Yep, I had The Importance of Being Earnest as a potential follow-up.
Agreed, and we both can probably post 15 examples without much effort. It just gets trying after a while. It's okay in a shorter series - I did read 8 of these books, after all. But at a certain point, it gets more frustrating than anything.
It's also why the best fantasy/sci-fi books tend to have one thing in common - they are relatively short (compared to these 800+ page books). I'm in the middle of re-reading Dune, and it just moves so fast and so tight. It's amazing. I felt Ender's Game was similar - tight, cohesive, without wasted pages (even when he was chilling on a lake).
I never read Wheel of Time, but I'd imagine it has some books that are completely throwaway.
I can understand some of those criticisms. The protagonist is basically a vessel to be punished and beaten up...for all 3 books. He goes through sooooo much shit and just takes all of it and gets through all of it. I enjoyed reading what scenario Hobb would come up with next to torture him because in many ways, it does read like survival fiction.
The second book is soooooo fucking good. They go a lot more into the human and animal connection, skilling, etc. Loved the hell out of it. The conclusion was good too, but I didn't love the third book as much as the first or second...and how they deal with the big bad in the end is also an issue of division amongst fans.
Right. I don't think that the universe as a whole is quite as dark, but Fitz's story is.
Though I've always felt that part of what made Fitz's story interesting was that so much of what made it dark was Fitz's distinct lack of genre-savvinness. At every turn, he makes bad decisions, and while you can tell he's well-intentioned, you can also see (when you step outside his perspective) how he was screwing up.
I'm reading The Goblin Emperor, as you know, and I think the comparison between Maia and Fitz is rather interesting. They are not in precisely identical circumstances - emperor is hardly akin to a minor princeling - but the basic idea of being thrust into court life and circumstances you were unprepared for is similar. So, I find myself imagining Fitz in this book now, and it's not a good look.
Well, I'm not sure it's any more incomplete than the first book of any other fantasy trilogy I've read. It ends on something of a cliffhanger / hook intended to keep you interested in coming back.