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What are you reading? (November 2014)

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Andrew Korenchkin

Andrew Korenchkin

Member
I'm getting back into the Cirque Du Freak series again. Currently going through the prequel. I'm so glad Shan decided to return to the series.

They are still young adult books and not the most advanced books I've read (I love Wuthering Heights, after all), but they're a lot of fun to read.
 
R

Ratrat

Member
Andrew_Korenchkin said:
I'm getting back into the Cirque Du Freak series again. Currently going through the prequel. I'm so glad Shan decided to return to the series.

They are still young adult books and not the most advanced books I've read (I love Wuthering Heights, after all), but they're a lot of fun to read.
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Darren Shan is the only author I've sent a fan letter to. :eek:
Though that was for Demonata, the better series until book 5.
 
M

Mumei

Member
Mr.Mike said:
There is a fourth.

And it is terrible. I forced myself to read them though, because of how great the first two were. Maybe part of the reason that I have such a negative opinion of them now is because I forced myself to read them instead of reading them because I was enjoying the experience.

But the first two books were great. I read Ender's Game at around 12 and it became my younger self's favourite book, I thought Speaker was pretty great to. Thankfully young me didn't force myself to finish the third book.

I have found that I like Speaker more now that I'm older, having now read the entirety of the main series. Perhaps I should read the Shadow series.
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I know; by "all three" I didn't mean all of the books featuring Ender, but all three of the books we happened to be talking about at the time (Game, Shadow, Speaker for the Dead). I've read Children of the Mind and Xenocide, too!

And no, they weren't that good, even to my pretty undiscerning teenaged-tastes
 
A

Ashes

Banned
#4 Inferno (Dan Brown) - Cooing doves, mixed metaphors, and some glaring historical inaccuracies aside, I really enjoyed this.
 
L

Lucumo

Member
9780141040288.jpg


Just finished this yesterday. It was ok, nothing special. The ending was predictable though, what a shame.
 
W

Woorloog

Banned
For once i would have gotten an ebook over a printed book. But no, it isn't simple in anyway. Cheaper, yes, but i need an account, and some stupid app that isn't even available for Windows Phone apparently. No simple PDF? No buy then. Guess i'll find something else to read, and hope i find print version from here later (very unlikely).
 
S

studyguy

Member
Finished An Assassin's Apprentice by Robb Hobb.
Moving on to this now, second in the series.
18138189.jpg


I tried Blood Song once, hated it and put it aside.
I tried again, made it past the intro and found myself enjoying it more and more.
We'll see how this second one goes. Just general low fantasy.

Mumei said:
I know; by "all three" I didn't mean all of the books featuring Ender, but all three of the books we happened to be talking about at the time (Game, Shadow, Speaker for the Dead). I've read Children of the Mind and Xenocide, too!

And no, they weren't that good, even to my pretty undiscerning teenaged-tastes
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I personally enjoyed Ender's Game if only due to the fact that it was one of my first jumps into SciFi, looking back on it I remember it fondly. I wouldn't say it was anywhere near my favorite titles, but I don't think it's bad so far as it's very much directed towards younger readers. The film was atrocious btw. Jesus.
 
T

Tragicomedy

Member
Necrovex said:
I guess it's due to not reading Ender's Game prior to seeing the film, but I thought the film was, at least, decent.
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You are not alone. I love the book. I love the film.

There were two big contributers to me loving the movie. First, I've always wanted to see a big screen adaptation of the book, so it could have a wider audience. Secondly, I watched it with my wife who was 100% unfamiliar with the book. Seeing the look on her face at the ending was priceless. I imagine I looked exactly the same way when I first read the book back in the mid-90s.
 
D

DiscoShark

Banned
Just finished up ...
81TvUAlRcML.jpg
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And man putting this off for so long was a serious mistake. Initially I was turned off by its non-relation to anything Robot/Foundation/Empire based since those worlds were the ones in which I've enjoyed Asimov's work the most but I should honestly never have underestimated the guy's knack for world building. The concept, a world in which an extra-dimensional group of humans guide the civilization into a state of optimal happiness and minimal suffering by tweaking small happenings on Earth and letting those effects butterfly across the centuries, is an interesting one but can be unwieldy given the scale in which Asimov's work entails. Immediately I was conflicted between this given reality and one in which Humans had taken on the scale of a galactic empire. There's no way, I rationalized, that these small happenings would effect everything else happening in the galaxy. Without getting into specific details of course I can say that any potential problems with the world were neatly addressed at individual points in the book. And it serves as a testament to Asimov's attention to detail that these potential shortcomings were brought up and talked about.

So the concept grew on me as I read through the thing but the next major issue for me came with respect to the main protagonist. A person who was frustratingly stiff, prudish, and an overall pain to deal with. His reaction to the introduction of the female protagonist initially made me just set down the book for the day and go off and do something else. At a certain point this shifts though, and as you learn more about the world Harlan, our protagonist, becomes less a stiff personality who trudge through the major events in the book and more an extension of the world building as a process. The attitudes of the protagonist neatly reflect the world in which Asimov himself created. He's not just a random set of traits stuck on a basic human frame but rather the natural conclusion of the writing process. Asimov creates a world and then asks himself what sort of people does such a world create and Harlan serves as, I believe, the pinnacle of that process. He grew on me.

Its been a while since I've taken on an Asimov book after burning through the majority of his works in my first year of college but End of Eternity, despite being mostly segregated from the major worlds he created, stands as one of his absolute best works. Check it out, GAF.

Big shoutouts to :
Nakho said:
In addition to all the other great books already said by others gaffers, I can't recommend enough End of Eternity, by Asimov. Such a sweet, short, self-contained book, with some of the best plot twists I've ever seen.
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Back in the October thread for recommending it. It's definitely a treat.
 
S

Salazar

Member
Ashes said:
Finally settling down to read A time of Gifts. Recommended in this very thread way back when.
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I just bought The Broken Road. Beautiful thing. He expresses regret in it that his sentences of memory lack "the sharp edge of immediate recording".

Naaah m8

You're really, really good.
 
V

Verdre

Unconfirmed Member
Finished Six Feet Over It by Jennifer Longo

This book has a bad cover and a truly awful title that made me think it would be some kind of snarky little book, but it's actually a slow, melancholy story of a girl struggling with death and life. Sadly, Longo's book goes off the rails at the very end into a truly stupid place and her prose is nothing to write home about, but over all I really enjoyed it. Definitely YA, though.
 
C

Celegus

Member
Anyone else here have a morbid curiosity about the Warrior Cat books? Such a completely insane premise, yet every time I go to the book store, there seems to be another one. Has anyone taken the plunge? Are they "so bad it's kind of good" or just plain bad? Or even legitimately good?!

As far as real books go, I'm loving City of Stairs so far. Urban fantasy + eastern European themes? Yes please!
 
P

postcyberpunk

Banned
I haven't been much into fiction lately, which means I still haven't read the new William Gibson (WTF is wrong with me?), but these have been keeping me busy:

9780195365627


9780312446345.jpg


413XBRF20FL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg


cinema-243x366.jpg
 
B

Brakke

Banned
Almost done with the whole Wool thing. I have seriously enjoyed it, it's been a really pleasant surprise.

For a total and complete change of pace, I'm going to read Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century next.
 
C

commish

Jason Kidd murdered my dog in cold blood!
studyguy said:
Finished An Assassin's Apprentice by Robb Hobb.
Moving on to this now, second in the series.
18138189.jpg


I tried Blood Song once, hated it and put it aside.
I tried again, made it past the intro and found myself enjoying it more and more.
We'll see how this second one goes. Just general low fantasy.
Click to expand...

Man I forgot I even read these books. They are okay... entertaining enough while you're reading them, but utterly forgettable the second you stop.
 
C

Celegus

Member
commish said:
Man I forgot I even read these books. They are okay... entertaining enough while you're reading them, but utterly forgettable the second you stop.
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I read the first one and couldn't tell you a single thing that happened or a single character's name. Couldn't figure out what are the rave reviews were about.
 
B

besada

Banned
Kameron Hurley's Mirror empire did not get better. As bad as her description is, her pacing for big moments is worse. After building it up for three chapters, one of the big climactic moments just sort of fizzles on the page, followed by another series of fizzles as she ties up various story lines. And none of them produce much in the way of excitement. As weird as it is to read the first book of what is obviously a series and skip the rest, I have a hard time imagining going back for more.

Next up, I'll be doing Carl Hiaasen's new book, Skink -- No surrender, which will finally focus on his wonderfully insane ex-Florida governor turned eco-terrorist.
1527zpJ.jpg


And then onto Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu, who is supposedly a Chinese science-fiction megastar, just recently available in the U.S.
 
S

studyguy

Member
Celegus said:
I read the first one and couldn't tell you a single thing that happened or a single character's name. Couldn't figure out what are the rave reviews were about.
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No I agree, they're sort of filler.
The second one isn't really doing much for me right now. I don't think it's terrible but certainly not the best thing I've read this year.
 
S

Shiv47

Member
Celegus said:
Anyone else here have a morbid curiosity about the Warrior Cat books? Such a completely insane premise, yet every time I go to the book store, there seems to be another one. Has anyone taken the plunge? Are they "so bad it's kind of good" or just plain bad? Or even legitimately good?!

As far as real books go, I'm loving City of Stairs so far. Urban fantasy + eastern European themes? Yes please!
Click to expand...

If you mean the Warriors series by Erin Hunter, I wouldn't bother with them if you're not the target audience, which is about 9-12 year olds. My 9 year old buzz sawed through most of the cat ones, but won't read the dog and bear(?) ones, because they aren't cats. My cursory skim of a couple of them leads me to assume an adult is not going to get anything much out of them.
 
V

Verdre

Unconfirmed Member
besada said:
Kameron Hurley's Mirror empire did not get better. As bad as her description is, her pacing for big moments is worse. After building it up for three chapters, one of the big climactic moments just sort of fizzles on the page, followed by another series of fizzles as she ties up various story lines. And none of them produce much in the way of excitement. As weird as it is to read the first book of what is obviously a series and skip the rest, I have a hard time imagining going back for more.
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This makes me glad I gave up a few pages in.
 
C

Clevinger

Member
Finished the Southern Reach trilogy. I loved it for the most part. They kind of felt like Gene Wolfe books, but with much better characters.

Mumei said:
For my money, the creepiest moment in the series occurs in the second book. Spine-crawling.

*shudders*
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*pats head*
 
S

ShaneB

Member
Mr.Swag said:
The cover put me off, looks cheap.

Guess you shouldn't trust a ....
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Meh at the cover, doesn't matter!

Skilletor said:
It starts to get really good a little but further on. Slow build up, but the coming payoff seems like it'll be great. Love the characters in this.
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Yeah, I'm completely sucked into this story. I'll finish it tonight or tomorrow with a good marathon session.

Mackenzie 92 said:
Didn't even know this was out. Just purchased it.
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You'll really like it! You need to read Child Thief and/or Red Winter!
 
S

Shengar

Member
Jarlaxle said:
Gormenghast%20Novels_595.jpg


Still reading Titus Groan at a snail's pace. Hoping to finish it this month.
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I have this, the hardcover edition with introduction by Michael Moorcock in my shelf since 2 years ago. But somehow I feel that I'm not ready yet to experience this.
 
C

Christoff Yurievich

Member
I'm roughly 10% into Mr. Mercedes and it's so weird. It's like reading an episode of NYPD Blue written by Stephen King featuring "It" and "Christine" by Stephen King. He needs to not be meta anywhere except in The Dark Tower.
 
E

Enco

Member
Are there any books that follow a 'life in a day' structure from different cultures around the world?

Would be cool to see how things work and get a peek into other lives.
 
A

AngmarsKing701

Member
FYI Amazon and Hachette signed some sort of agreement. To celebrate, Amazon is running a sale on Hachette books (at least the Kindle versions).
 
C

Celegus

Member
Shiv47 said:
If you mean the Warriors series by Erin Hunter, I wouldn't bother with them if you're not the target audience, which is about 9-12 year olds. My 9 year old buzz sawed through most of the cat ones, but won't read the dog and bear(?) ones, because they aren't cats. My cursory skim of a couple of them leads me to assume an adult is not going to get anything much out of them.
Click to expand...

That's what I figured, I just get a kick that such an insane thing exists. My wife and I often threaten each other with making the other read them, or talk about how amazing they are despite knowing nothing about them.
 
M

Mumei

Member
I started reading Robin Hobb's Assassin Apprentice and Virginia Woolf's The Waves. The Waves is challenging. I don't think I've read stream of consciousness before, and I love the way that narrative moves between the characters. It really does feel like waves.
 
N

Necrovex

Member
Mumei said:
I started reading Robin Hobb's Assassin Apprentice and Virginia Woolf's The Waves. The Waves is challenging. I don't think I've read stream of consciousness before, and I love the way that narrative moves between the characters. It really does feel like waves.
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I've read this type of reading style back when I pondered about being an English major at the university. I *hated* that type of writing!
 
S

Shiv47

Member
Celegus said:
That's what I figured, I just get a kick that such an insane thing exists. My wife and I often threaten each other with making the other read them, or talk about how amazing they are despite knowing nothing about them.
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For sheer entertainment value you should find a kid who's read them (the younger the better) and have them try to explain it all to you, with all the clan affiliations and cat nicknames for stuff in the world of the story. It's pretty amusing.
 
M

Maklershed

Member
SolKane said:
Great book, although Bukowski is a farthing the writer that John Fante is.
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My only experience with Bukowski so far is Post Office, which I read right after Dreams of Bunker Hill and I could definitely see the influence. I plan on reading Ham on Rye next.
 
S

SolKane

Member
Maklershed said:
My only experience with Bukowski so far is Post Office, which I read right after Dreams of Bunker Hill and I could definitely see the influence. I plan on reading Ham on Rye next.
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Ham on Rye is his only good book, I think, but I'm of the opinion that he's an extremely overrated writer.
 
I

Incandenza

Banned
e9781400065677.jpg

The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell

I'm two-thirds through and sort of considering giving up. It started promisingly, but I'm just now reaching the tail end of 300-ish pages of borderline insufferable characters and evasive hinting at a fantasy plot that doesn't seem to be much more than a basic "secret underground war between two factions" type story. It's not like Mitchell's prose or literary insights are so great that I'm willing to put up with it either. I think I've reached the point where Things are actually starting to Happen now, so maybe it'll get a little more interesting, but I'm pretty damn disappointed so far.
 
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