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[BriareosGAF]

Cormac McCarthy's The Crossing. Read Pretty Horses a few months ago, finally got around to this. It's good, although I preferred Pretty Horses, which my wife just finished. We were discussing the work and for some reason I was drawn to compare McCarthy's bleak nihilistic existentialism as the excellent counterpoint to George RR Martin's hack flippancy.

Now reading Faulkner's Absalom! Absalom! after failing to make much progress on The Sound and the Fury a few months ago. More cogent but still work to get through. Although it pales to the 200 pages of progress I've finally made on Joyce's Ulysses. It's really the Citizen Kane of modern literature I suppose, more respected for its technique than the strength of its narrative or characterization. But I'm committed to finishing it, at any cost...

 

[Laekon]

Just finished this, at the recommendation of my mother/sisters:

Pretty good! First book of Sanderson's I've read. I thought the magic system was very well done. Although I'll admit I never found the world itself to be particularly intriguing for the most part. The ending was pretty satisfying though.

All in all, nothing amazing, but I enjoyed my time with it.

Anyway, going to start on the second book now.

I'm reading the second book now and finding it really slow in the beginning. I liked the first one and Way of the Kings so I hopeful it will get better.

 

[Laurentius]

I'm reading the second book now and finding it really slow in the beginning. I liked the first one and Way of the Kings so I hopeful it will get better.

Hm, now I'm curious what other people's opinion on the second book is. Needing a new audio book to occupy my time (I walk an hour or two a day and really look forward to listening to a good audiobook). I definitely want to finish the series eventually. But if the second isn't as good, I might just put the series down for now and come back to it sometime in the future.

 

[cobragt4001]

Just started Sun Tzu's art of war.

 

[BTM]

Just began the trek through A Song of Ice and Fire. Hope to get through book 3 by the time season 4 begins on HBO.

 

[Narag]

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt

Glad others in here spoke well of this as it was a great humorous read. Dialogue threw me for a bit early on though given how everything was so deadpan and the last quarter had an unexpected but appropriate tonal shift but that ended well enough.

 

[ShaneB]

I finished The Last Unicorn a couple days ago, and I really liked it, but never really fell in love with it.

Going to start this next and get it out of the way before ever seeing the movie.

 

[i_am_ben]

Seeing as everyone was reading Memoirs of an Imaginary friend i decided to as well.

Pretty good. Two boys kissing still has my vote for most gut wrenching book of the year though.

Two Boys Kissing has a similar premise but is narrated by dead gay people who watch over the lives of gay kids.

 

[Maklershed]

Is someone at Amazon reading this thread? A day after Tragic recommended Pines it is one of the daily deals.

One can only hope. In case they are .. oh Amazon person, please please please please make these a daily deal:

The President and the Assassin: McKinley, Terror, and Empire at the Dawn of the American Century

The Pirates of Somalia: Inside Their Hidden World

The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps: The Best Crime Stories from the Pulps During Their Golden Age--The '20s, '30s & '40s

Great North Road

American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House

 

[AngmarsKing701]

Here's the sci-fi Amazon daily deal:

Has anyone read this? If so, recommend?

Spoiler

I know I know, only two American dollars!

 

[Mannequin]

Now reading Faulkner's Absalom! Absalom! after failing to make much progress on The Sound and the Fury a few months ago. More cogent but still work to get through. Although it pales to the 200 pages of progress I've finally made on Joyce's Ulysses. It's really the Citizen Kane of modern literature I suppose, more respected for its technique than the strength of its narrative or characterization. But I'm committed to finishing it, at any cost...

Absalom! Absalom! is a masterpiece. It was the first Faulkner I read. It's between that and The Sound and the Fury as my favourite of his. Enjoy!

 

[Tugatrix]

better man than i am, if not for school i would never read it

 

[Masenkame]

Hey gaf I need some advice.
I started reading bleeding edge by Thomas Pynchon and I really can't seem to get into it, now I'm not saying the book is not good or anything like that, but I'm finding it hard to keep up with the fast paced conversation in the book. I've never really read a book that has such fast paced conversation like this before.

Tldr; how do you keep track of who's speaking in books with quick transitions and multiple characters speaking at once.

Dude, it's *SO* postmodern that you never have any idea who's speaking. I should post my review of Bleeding Edge soon, but the short of it is that I really liked it.

With dialogue that's confusing, it's no problem to just get back to the start of that thread of conversation and start it over, paying more attention. The fast paced dialogue usually is just two people talking, and context is always given if participants change or come in. If that's the most of your problems with this novel, then you're good to go. It's all the references and verbal tics and slang/colloquialisms that likely turn people off. Also, Yiddish.

At least in this novel, Pynchon adds some context to a bunch of his references, and if you have some idea of 90s/early 00s news/history and nerd/pop culture, you won't be too lost.

I've only read this novel and The Crying of Lot 49 by Pynchon, so I don't much know his "harder" books. These two novels were relatively straight forward and "easy", though there's still density to be found.

 

[Mannequin]

dantehemi's post reminded me that I really wanted to try some Pynchon, so I ordered V and The Crying of Lot 49 yesterday. Looking forward to reading them.

 

[TTG]

I finished Wolf Hall yesterday and immediately moved on to Bring Up The Bodies. It's such a great change of setting and pace. I've not read any fiction set in the 16th century England and it's been years since the last venture into political intrigue or historical fiction. Totally coincidentally, I was listening to something on Marin Luther and the religious climate in Europe at the time, so that did provide a lot of context.

I don't mean to imply that the novelty(in my case anyway) is all there is to it. It's expertly put together, never does it feel contrived. The cast of characters is wide, but it's never confusing or overwhelming. The language is pretty damn good as well. Also, there's no flowery, melodramatic fluff that permeates the book or grand speeches or pages expounding the tender emotional state of some character the way contemporary books about the royalty/nobility tend to be. Well worth it if you feel like being transported into that world for a couple of hours at a time.

 

[ClassyPenguin]

Cormac McCarthy's The Crossing. Read Pretty Horses a few months ago, finally got around to this. It's good, although I preferred Pretty Horses, which my wife just finished. We were discussing the work and for some reason I was drawn to compare McCarthy's bleak nihilistic existentialism as the excellent counterpoint to George RR Martin's hack flippancy.

Now reading Faulkner's Absalom! Absalom! after failing to make much progress on The Sound and the Fury a few months ago. More cogent but still work to get through. Although it pales to the 200 pages of progress I've finally made on Joyce's Ulysses. It's really the Citizen Kane of modern literature I suppose, more respected for its technique than the strength of its narrative or characterization. But I'm committed to finishing it, at any cost...

Good choices all around.

 

[MrOogieBoogie]

reading for the first time...

You're in for a treat.

Starts off a bit slow but absolutely picks up.

 

[Uriah]

Slowly crawling through It. And almost finished Swamplandia.

 

[Paganmoon]

Finished Flash Forward:

And damn, how can you fail so miserably with such a great concept? Firstly, having the thickest protagonist of all books I ever read, making the protagonist of Shift: Omnibus (which was the book I read prior to this one) seem like the sharpest person ever. And to add to it all, there are countless inconsistencies (that can't just be waved away with, things change).
Things that "they couldn't know" but should be easy as hell to figure out. Man, I really loved the concept but the execution was really bad. So much so I think even the TV-Series handled it better.

Hoping The Name of the wind is a better book than the last two books I've read, I don't think I'll handle another dud very well...

 

[foomfoom415]

Finished Flash Forward:

And damn, how can you fail so miserably with such a great concept? Firstly, having the thickest protagonist of all books I ever read, making the protagonist of Shift: Omnibus (which was the book I read prior to this one) seem like the sharpest person ever. And to add to it all, there are countless inconsistencies (that can't just be waved away with, things change).
Things that "they couldn't know" but should be easy as hell to figure out. Man, I really loved the concept but the execution was really bad. So much so I think even the TV-Series handled it better.

Yeah, this was really crummy. I was surprised at how much worse it was than the TV series. Great premise wasted on an absolutely terrible execution. Robert J Sawyer has some great ideas, but he's such a poor writer.

 

[Nezumi]

Reading:

About 70% done. I like the book but I really think that so far this is the weakest in the series. Mostly because I really don't care that much about the new characters. It is not that they are unintersting or anything but

Spoiler

I really liked Bobby and Avasarala and hoped that I would read more of them

.

Also listening to:

So far this seems a lot different than the first two books. Darker and more subdued, which means that finally that strange melancholic voice of the narrator fits to what's actually happening in the book. I'm still not a fan of his voice though, or better some of his voices. I like his Loiosh but absolutly hate his Cawti.

 

[Tragicomedy]

Finished reading Pines by Blake Crouch. A strong ★★★★. Things went quickly from eerie to WTFJUSTHAPPENED in the last segment of the book. It came close to going too far and losing me, but it treads a fine line and I think it stayed on the good side of crazy.

One to book #2, Wayward Pines.

 

[Paganmoon]

Reading:

About 70% done. I like the book but I really think that so far this is the weakest in the series. Mostly because I really don't care that much about the new characters. It is not that they are unintersting or anything but

Spoiler

I really liked Bobby and Avasarala and hoped that I would read more of them

.
.

I found very different to the first two, and not a positive change either. I agree about the characters too,

Spoiler

Anna was just bland, and I'll hold on on my the rest of rant till you finish the book

Still, I'm really looking forward to the next book.

 

[hythloday]

Finished The Way of Kings. Fabulous book. FABULOUS. I went back and read some passages again because they were awesome and then I read the Stormlight Archive wiki and found out I didn't pick up on some things for some reason.

Spoiler

Like Shallan possibly having a Shardblade omg

. Also convinced the spouse to start reading it because he has a Nook too and we're on the same account.

My new read is:

I attempted to read this years ago. I got to the end of Chapter One, decided it was silly and stopped. This time I'm trying to keep an open mind. This is the first book of Neil Gaiman's that I've read and I find that I actually do like his writing.

After I'm done with this I'll probably go back and try more Sanderson, because while I didn't like Mistborn, I'd still like to give some of his other books a shot because The Way of Kings was so good.

 

[ShaneB]

Yeah, really sounds like I'll make Way of Kings my christmas time marathon book with all this praise.

 

[Tragicomedy]

Finished The Way of Kings. Fabulous book. FABULOUS. I went back and read some passages again because they were awesome and then I read the Stormlight Archive wiki and found out I didn't pick up on some things for some reason.

Spoiler

Like Shallan possibly having a Shardblade omg

. Also convinced the spouse to start reading it because he has a Nook too and we're on the same account.

Spoiler

Not just possible, she absolutely does.

I'm not sure anything else Sanderson has done comes even close to The Way of Kings. The other three or four things of his I've read weren't of that calibre.

 

[lightus]

Finished up Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie earlier this month. I felt it was decent, but doesn't match the trilogy. I loved Friendly, Morveer and Cosca but I missed Logen and Golkta.

Halfway into Caliban's War right now. I'm enjoying it quite a bit. The pages are just flying by!

Already looking ahead to my next book. I can't decide between The Terror, Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend or The Way of Kings.

I'm really interested in The Way of Kings but not sure if I want to go through another 1K+ page book right now. Decisions decisions...

 

[Necrovex]

I wasn't even ten pages in that I almost quit World War Z. When a person is talking to someone on the phone, he cannot *see* someone's facial expression. A first-person narrative cannot become omnipotent out of the blue and then revert back to an average person.

Oh well, I'll continue to plug away at World War Z. I love zombies...I just hope the writing doesn't slay me.

 

[Jimothy]

I wasn't even ten pages in that I almost quit World War Z. When a person is talking to someone on the phone, he cannot *see* someone's facial expression. A first-person narrative cannot become omnipotent out of the blue and then revert back to an average person.

Oh well, I'll continue to plug away at World War Z. I love zombies...I just hope the writing doesn't slay me.

The rest of the book doesn't get much better. I gave up like halfway through.

 

[kswiston]

Finished War and Peace after 6 weeks and moved on to this:

Should be able to get through it this week on audio book. Unfortunately, I spend so long commuting, that I don't have much free time for actual reading now that work is busier.

 

[Necrovex]

The rest of the book doesn't get much better. I gave up like halfway through.

I have nothing else to read at the moment, so I am going to see if I can continue to grind through it. It's a good way to kill time at work when there is nothing else to do.

Finished War and Peace after 6 weeks and moved on to this:

Should be able to get through it this week on audio book. Unfortunately, I spend so long commuting, that I don't have much free time for actual reading now that work is busier.

The Road is on my shortlist of books I must read. I tried to read it once before, but I got distracted.

 

[Paganmoon]

I attempted to read this years ago. I got to the end of Chapter One, decided it was silly and stopped. This time I'm trying to keep an open mind. This is the first book of Neil Gaiman's that I've read and I find that I actually do like his writing. .

Read this a few years ago, and I've read a couple of his other books since, and this is easily his best book imo. Loved the writing and the story, but unlike you I was hooked from the first few pages, so we might have different tastes.

I wasn't even ten pages in that I almost quit World War Z. When a person is talking to someone on the phone, he cannot *see* someone's facial expression. A first-person narrative cannot become omnipotent out of the blue and then revert back to an average person.

Oh well, I'll continue to plug away at World War Z. I love zombies...I just hope the writing doesn't slay me.

Yeah, this book was a real bore to get through for me, didn't much like the writing, and the style gave absolutely no sense of urgency, so it wasn't really exciting either.

Finished up Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie earlier this month. I felt it was decent, but doesn't match the trilogy. I loved Friendly, Morveer and Cosca but I missed Logen and Golkta.

Best Served Cold was probobly the weakest of the books, though I can recommend The Heroes, probably my favorite of the stand alone books.

 

[i_am_ben]

Finished War and Peace after 6 weeks and moved on to this:

Is war and peace worth it? I bought it a month ago but I didn't make it past the first chapter.

 

[El Daniel]

Great fighter, terrible person.

 

[O.DOGG]

OK, so yesterday I started All You Need Is Kill. Maybe not the best choice but I couldn't resist the cover art.

 

[NekoFever]

I wasn't even ten pages in that I almost quit World War Z. When a person is talking to someone on the phone, he cannot *see* someone's facial expression. A first-person narrative cannot become omnipotent out of the blue and then revert back to an average person.

Oh well, I'll continue to plug away at World War Z. I love zombies...I just hope the writing doesn't slay me.

I honestly can't see what people like in that book. Thought it was terrible. The characters are thin stereotypes that all talk with the same voice.

 

[nakedsushi]

I honestly can't see what people like in that book. Thought it was terrible. The characters are thin stereotypes that all talk with the same voice.

OMG yes, this. I stopped less than 10% into the book and moved on to something else. The movie was better than the book. Yes, I said it.

 

[Kaladin]

I thought about doing a LTTP thread, but I doubt many people would get it...

Started reading....

and I'm loving it. What took me so long to read this classic?

 

[Skid 4 Dead]

I'm reading Sin City. I've finished The Hard Goodbye, A Dame To Die For, The Big Fat Kill, and i'm just starting That Yellow Bastard. These comics are so badass I just can't seem to put the books down.

 

[obin_gam]

There, finished The Terror by Dan Simmons. The bulk of the book was fantastic, and quite literary bone chilling in the descriptions of the events that takes place in the bitter cold landscape of the 19th Century Artic to the poor men of Franklin's Lost Expedition.

But.

The ending segment.

What the fuck happened?

Spoiler

I would have been fine with Crozier dying, or at least only being saved by Lady Silence and nothing more. But instead the book went on and on with him marrying her and having two children and even getting a new name, before the last page or so getting some conclusion to the main story. He's not THAT interesting of a character. The events and settings are far better than the characters in this book so I dont get why Simmons ended it with the snoozefest that happened.

Now, onto Leviathan Wakes, after all the praise this has gotten here, I have very high hopes

 

[SCHUEY F1]

Picked up S. by Doug Dorst and JJ Abrams. Probably has been posted in the thread already, but it is seriously one of the coolest concepts I've seen. Supposed to be similar to House of Leaves. I just love the concept and the production values.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BEe9a_fXA4

edit: still very early in the book

 

[Dawg]

Arrived today

 

[survivor]

Finished reading The Last Unicorn. It has a lot of elements of fantasy that I missed reading about ever since I finished LOTR. An actual fantasy world with wonder and mysteries and real magic that isn't always rational instead of some complicated RPG battle system.

On a side note, I really hate all the covers for this book. All the depictions of the unicorn are far too ugly. I wish they did more covers similar to the one above.

 

[ShaneB]

My god at that Dune cover, gorgeous.

Spoiler

I need to read Dune sometime.

 

[Dawg]

My god at that Dune cover, gorgeous.

Spoiler

I need to read Dune sometime.

I don't usually buy a book because of its cover, but I've been looking to buy Dune for a while now and the hardcover was exactly the same price as the paperback version, £6,49 on amazon.co.uk.

And it looks so good.

 

[-Mr.Green-]

I'll start reading:

Short stories about people who live in a town called, well, the title says it.

 

[Hari Seldon]

Finished reading The Last Unicorn. It has a lot of elements of fantasy that I missed reading about ever since I finished LOTR. An actual fantasy world with wonder and mysteries and real magic that isn't always rational instead of some complicated RPG battle system.

Did you like it? How would you compare it to other fantasy?

 

[Hari Seldon]

Currently reading this, a little over halfway through.

I don't know what I think about it. The premise is outstanding, however the execution is a little lacking. It is like Dilbert mixed with Sci-Fi lol.

Just finished this before I started:

Outstanding. The book is free on gutenberg, but the audio version is read superb. It is Red Badge of Courage level outstanding, except it is a fictional account of the authors own experiences.

 

[Maklershed]

Finished book 5 of The Black Company and on to book 6 (although Goodreads says this is book 4)


The Silver Spike by Glen Cook

 

[AngmarsKing701]

This page -

Yes, glorious cover...

Mmm-hmmm. Mmm-hmmm. Keep em coming...

What in the. Who the. I don't even-