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Loving Life Partner posted:Storm Front, Dresden Files book 1, picked up because the Dresden files thread made it sound fun and engaging, which it is on every level. I love the way Jim Butcher writes a wizard as a bluecollar gumshoe. There's enough hard boiled to make Harry cool but not enough to gag you on it. Just really fun to read. I just started Book 5 - Death Masks, and I think fun is just a perfect word to describe them. I think I'll start using them as "in-between" books, it's nice to have a 300something page flipper at hand in between 700 pages fantasy monsters. It's kind of funny that I've only been reading it for a couple hours and I'm already at 25% according to my Kindle, while I read the first Malazan book for what seemed like a month and the % never seemed to go up. 
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Jun 30, 2011 17:14
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Loving Life Partner posted:
If you think it's fun now, wait until you get to the good books (everything after the first half of book 3).
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Jun 30, 2011 19:40
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I just finished the graphic novel Apocalypse Nerd by Peter Bagge and "I Wish There Was Something I Could Quit" by Aaron Cometbus. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Jun 30, 2011 21:45
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I finished Neuromancer the other day and was really blown away. Between this, Forever War, and the Old Man's War series I feel like a Sci-Fi snob when I read anything else. I can't believe I never read Neuromancer before. I was always really into cyberpunk stuff and played a lot of PnP Shadowrun without realizing how many of those ideas were probably "benchmarked" from it.
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Jul 1, 2011 11:56
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Never Let Me Go- Kazuo Ishiguro Sort of a YA/Toned down sci fi set in 1990's. The perspective is from a 30 year old woman retelling her past life at an institutionalized school she grew up in. It goes through all the teenage problems-- angst, love, sex, competition. I really enjoyed it because the characters are very believable. While they do steer with their emotions a lot, its within a believable bound-- unlike books like The Hunger Games series. It uses a lot of plot devices over and over, more so because it is a retelling of a story. For instance, the narrator uses "that leads me to this" or "thats what caused that episode" and the like. Overall, it was a very good read.
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Jul 1, 2011 17:12
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I've been reading through the Horatio Hornblower novels in internal chronological order: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horatio_Hornblower#Novels I have to say, I think these are better than the space opera versions done by David Weber (Honor Harrington series, starting with "On Basilisk Station") and David Feintuch (Seafort's Saga, starting with "Midshipman's Hope"). The general bullshit involved with the navy, in particular, seems a lot more appropriate as part of 18xx than as part of 25xx or similar. So if you like the rags-to-riches, always getting screwed by the regulations or politics but somehow coming out on top in the end, type of space opera, give Hornblower a shot.
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Jul 1, 2011 19:10
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robotsinmyhead posted:I finished Neuromancer [...] I've been wanting to read this for a long time, but every time I finish a book and go to the library, it always seems to be checked out. I've read a lot of the classic sci-fi, but this one I just can't seem to get my hands on.
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Jul 2, 2011 00:18
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Just finished King's Salem's Lot for the third time. Overall I'm not a huge fan of King but Salem's Lot really stikes a chord with me. The prose isn't anything special but the story is so good and developed. He didn't out smart himself or try to get to complicated or wierd. It is a book that I'll read again every year or two. For the story itself, I like to think it's more about the town and the people in it than the vampires. A vampire plague is just an excuse to bring out the towns skeletons from it's closet.
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Jul 2, 2011 02:14
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I just finished In Her Name: Empire by Michael Hicks. Sci-fi novel set during a war between the Confederation of Humans and the "Kreelans" (what humans identifies them as). A boy named Reza is kidnapped during a Kreelan attack on the orphan planet of Hallmark where he lived as a slave. Reza is raised to learn the way of the Kreelans and the book basically focuses on his development and his struggle with his fading humanity. Thought it served as a nice debut for my new Kindle  On to the 2nd book in the series, Confederation
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Jul 2, 2011 07:32
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Minimaul posted:I finished Valis last night, by Philip K. Dick. What a crazy rear end book. I quite enjoyed it. I felt kind of crazy myself a few times as things almost made sense. It was like there was absurdness, then a nugget of some kind of sense that loosely tied into everything else and it started to make a bigger sense. But as soon as you sick back and think you just go "That's crazy!" Hey, yeah, PKD, is my favorite author. I have read about 12 of his books. I really like Valis although it is really weird. I think "Flow my Tears, the Policemen Said," is one of his greatest also. I think though "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep," might his best, but they are both up there. Have you read any Ursula K. Le Guin, she is also one of my favorites. I love the "Dispossessed."
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Jul 3, 2011 01:02
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pkd3001 posted:Hey, yeah, PKD, is my favorite author. I have read about 12 of his books. I really like Valis although it is really weird. I think "Flow my Tears, the Policemen Said," is one of his greatest also. I think though "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep," might his best, but they are both up there. Have you read any Ursula K. Le Guin, she is also one of my favorites. I love the "Dispossessed." "Do Androids..." is the first book of his I read. It's up there as one of my favorites, but Flow is still the top favorite. I have The Devine Invasion on my list of his next books to read. So I'll dive into that soon. I'm doing about 1 PKD book a month, give or take. I don't want to binge through them all though so I'm taking my time. I've never heard of Le Guin. I'll have to check her out. Any starting point recommendations? Just finished A Time to Love and a Time to Die by Erich Maria Remarque. It was drat good. Similar to All Quiet.. But from what I've seen Remarque is a bit of a one trick pony. Even with that in mind A Time to Love was great and I still want to read his other stuff. I really like his dialog and he paints some beautiful (war) pictures.
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Jul 3, 2011 03:31
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Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography by David Michaelis. A very detailed and well-source bio. When it came out I remember some fuss about the portrayal of Schulz was perhaps too negative, but I didn't get that from the book itself -- Schulz comes off as an entirely blank personality, with no notable characteristics aside from an anachronistic (for the postwar period) prudery and a habit of amassing petty greivances for assumed insults, most of which happened entirely in his head. Neither of these are strong or outlandish enough to create an interesting person to read about, and I finished the book wondering how such a man could have created a strip that had such personality and originality. Michaelis never really answers this question. I think the book fails on this point alone. By that I mean that while Schulz's experiences as a kid clearly showed lots of isolation and loneliness, and he also displayed plenty of drawing dexterity, the author never shows where Schulz's creativity came from. It's one thing to be a lonely, marginalized kid, it's an entirely different thing to turn that experience into art. I'm not really interested in Schulz as a lonely kid, I was hoping to find out more about the artist side. I didn't get much of that in this book. There is another thing that drove me crazy: the author made a choice to call Schulz throughout the book as "Sparky", the nickname by which he was known to all of his friends and family. Imagine, if you will, reading a biography about the national leaders of wartime Europe, but instead of "Churchill" or "Hitler, you read about "Winnie" and "Dolphie" on every page. It's a ridiculous choice, I have no idea why Michaelis made this decision, it took me out of the narrative constantly. That may sound peevey, but I don't think so: biographies have a well-established tradition of calling the subject by his surname, using his first name only when the subject encounters family or other people with the same last name -- not a problem in this book, since there aren't a lot of Schulzes in his life, mostly his father, who the author refers to as "Carl". The author made a conscious decision to call Schulz by a ridiculously juvenile nickname. The book is clearly well sourced (the author had access to private papers and was able to interview many of the people Schulz grew up with) and while the sources are listed at the end, they aren't marked inline, which makes it impossible to find out where a quote came from. Not a big deal in a non-scholarly bio, but an annoyance nonetheless. One really good thing about this book is that the author sprinkles Peanuts strips throughout, inline with the prose. It's an inspired decision, because most of the strips chosen highlight the topic of the surrounding paragraphs, reminding us just wide the emotional palate of the strip was. dokmo fucked around with this message at 04:39 on Jul 3, 2011 |
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Jul 3, 2011 04:09
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pkd3001 posted:Have you read any Ursula K. Le Guin, she is also one of my favorites. Just finished A Wizard of Earthsea and to be honest I wasn't exactly blown over. Maybe I just bought into hype and set my expectations too high, but it really didn't feel like anything too special.
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Jul 3, 2011 11:09
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Minimaul posted:"Do Androids..." is the first book of his I read. It's up there as one of my favorites, but Flow is still the top favorite. I have The Devine Invasion on my list of his next books to read. So I'll dive into that soon. I'm doing about 1 PKD book a month, give or take. I don't want to binge through them all though so I'm taking my time. N... Never... never heard of her....? Well, um, since you like PKD, go with The Lathe of Heaven, which is considered something of an homage to PKD, who was a friend of hers.
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Jul 3, 2011 11:15
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dokmo, good post. I just finished The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Skloot turns a densely knotted history into an easily followed narrative thanks to years and years of dedicated research. I loved how, as the author becomes more and more personally involved with her subject, she allows her own personal experience to penetrate the narrative, until what begins as a purely scientific piece of nonfiction becomes an intensely subjective & personal story about 3 strong women. This narrative shift resonates nicely with the book's subject, too. I wish the prose had been more lively. It's merely serviceable. Skloot obviously felt it was important to preserve the integrity of her subjects' voices (since they had been misrepresented and misunderstood for years and years of previous journalistic coverage). Her limp prose does help those voices stand out, but I felt like the book could have been a little richer.
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Jul 3, 2011 15:20
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Mastiff posted:dokmo, good post. Oh HeLa cells. At least they grow fast in culture.
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Jul 3, 2011 16:04
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Just finished today Darwin's Children by Greg Bear. Thought it was a really good book and would defiantly recommend it, hopefully my local library has more by him. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin%27s_Children
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Jul 3, 2011 22:19
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funkybottoms posted:N... Never... never heard of her....? Well, um, since you like PKD, go with The Lathe of Heaven, which is considered something of an homage to PKD, who was a friend of hers. Heh, yeah. I'm a little behind on this whole reading thing. Cool. I'll look for that one next time I'm at the store.
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Jul 4, 2011 01:06
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Minimaul posted:Heh, yeah. I'm a little behind on this whole reading thing. Hey, you're reading the good stuff, that's all that matters!
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Jul 4, 2011 01:26
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Minimaul posted:"Do Androids..." is the first book of his I read. It's up there as one of my favorites, but Flow is still the top favorite. I have The Devine Invasion on my list of his next books to read. So I'll dive into that soon. I'm doing about 1 PKD book a month, give or take. I don't want to binge through them all though so I'm taking my time. My first absolute love in sci-fi was "The Dispossessed," by Le Guin. It was really amazing, but I think only if you like the more philosophical sci-fi. Never read Remarque. I am going to read Solaris next, so hopefully it is an enjoyable book.
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Jul 4, 2011 01:59
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LooseChanj posted:Just finished A Wizard of Earthsea and to be honest I wasn't exactly blown over. Maybe I just bought into hype and set my expectations too high, but it really didn't feel like anything too special. I loved "The Dispossessed," it is my original favorite by her, that first got me into sci-fi. That is a really great book, along with the "Left Hand of Darkness." I recommend both.
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Jul 4, 2011 02:02
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funkybottoms posted:N... Never... never heard of her....? Well, um, since you like PKD, go with The Lathe of Heaven, which is considered something of an homage to PKD, who was a friend of hers. Yeah, they actually went to high school together in Berkeley and graduated the same year from high school at the same school. Ironically they never met but both became very famous sci-fi writers. I like PKD better, but I think PKD is my favorite author, so Le Guin is really great also.
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Jul 4, 2011 02:05
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dokmo posted:Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography by David Michaelis. It's been a while since I read this, but I remember having some of the same problems as you; it was odd to hear Schultz called Sparky throughout and I felt like either he was somebody who completely expressed himself through the strips or somebody I didn't learn anything about. I also remember reading chapters where it felt like Michaelis was trying way too hard to create something memorable.
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Jul 4, 2011 03:35
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Just finished Life of Pi. The book starts out reasonably boring but interesting, and turns quickly into a thrilling adventure with equal measures of edge-of-your-seat and informative moments. The ending is just stellar though. All the overarching themes of the book, both the obvious and the subtle ones, come together in a beautiful way. Definitely recommended.
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Jul 4, 2011 18:45
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Just finished Civilwarland In bad Decline and prior to that Pastoralia, both short story collection by George Saunders. Holy god, what a revelation, can't believe me it took this long to have read his works, haven't laughed out loud in a long time while reading. But along with the fantastic satirical humor, some of the stories are very dark making for a great synergy.
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Jul 4, 2011 20:51
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Just finished Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson. It definitely cements Thompson as one of my favorite non-fiction authors. The whole thing is shocking yet exciting at the same time. It also includes one of the greatest similes I've ever read - "The outlaw motorcyclists were more out of place than a group of Black Muslims at the George State Fair".
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Jul 5, 2011 05:35
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3 books off of my pile this week: A visit from the Goon Squad as part of our book club. No one "got" the title (I did, but only because my predilection was to look for Goon throughout the book, and I noticed both quotes), and no one particularly liked it. We all felt it was disjointed, and the likable stories were too short. Griftopia was pretty good, but it was the first time I read a book and I felt like each piece of information was the tip of some greater truth, but all the tips fit well together and told a cohesive story. Also made me a bit upset about the financial picture of this country. The Final Empire was really good and I loved the magic system(s) and the characters. I started into Well of Ascension but got bogged down pretty quick and started losing interest in the political games. I hear it picks back up pretty quickly
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Jul 6, 2011 01:05
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Recently finished Zero History by William Gibson and The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. Zero History was an odd bird, but I ended up loving it. I don't think I would like it as much if I wasn't already familiar with the author through Neuromancer, as this book was almost like a distorted, deconstructed version of that book. It had many of the same elements and quirks, but they were simultaneously more modern and less high-tech. Now that the frightening, commercial-gadget dystopia he predicted in 1982 has more or less come to pass in many ways (and in many ways he never predicted), Gibson can now tell a Gibson story in the modern day with relative ease. The Sprawl doesn't need to be named as such, since it is simply the reality in which much of humanity exists. What formerly required plot devices like a Sim/Stim deck and Matrix now only requires an iPhone with 3G and WiFi. The book absolutely bleeds cool, and really showcases Gibson's ability to evoke the crispness of the almost fetishistically (not in the sexual way) hyper-hip modernity-as-future spheres in which all of his characters operate. I immediately wanted a sequel as soon as it was finished, and to my delight, discovered that it is actually the third in a series. I will definitely check out its predecessors. The book itself is about Ms. Hollis Henry, a one-time rock star working for the mysterious and insightful CEO of a hugely successful PR firm. He tasks her with hunting down the genesis of some terminally slick "secret brand" clothing, its creator and methods of dissemination to the ultra-cool clients that wear it an impossible to pin down secret. He hopes that the former rocker still has the connections and hipness to go places he can not, as only the genuinely cool seem to be in the know of how to get this stuff; no "suits" allowed. As she gets deeper into the search, strange loyalties and unexpected motives arise. Skeletons come out of closets and threats come out of nowhere. Why do people seem willing to wiretap and kill over impeccably cut Japanese denim? I also enjoyed The Hunger Games immensely. I feel like it probably had flaws in characterization, but the book was paced so fast and so well that you never get a chance to dwell on them. I'm eagerly starting on the second in the series, Catching Fire. The first book, for those who are not aware, is about a girl in a lovely, starving coal-mining town (District 12 out of 13, though 13 was utterly cratered for inciting revolution) being selected via lottery for a Battle Royale-style culling of children. There's a lot more to it than that, and it's a quick read. Give it a look if you like kids being forced into nightmarish deathscapes, a'la Lord of the Flies, Battle Royale, and Deadman Wonderland! 
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Jul 6, 2011 02:54
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Just finished Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides last night. It's a really incredible read and he proves himself just as capable as another Greek master Nikos Kazantzakis in creating sprawling epics that touch on a variety of themes ranging from the similarities between artistic/religious explanations and scientific ones to how patterns of behavior and experience emerge again and again in a family line. Also I recommend The Virgin Suicides, his first novel, especially as a much shorter introduction to his work before tackling the 500+ page Middlesex.
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Jul 6, 2011 06:14
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UUriffic posted:Just finished Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides last night. It's a really incredible read and he proves himself just as capable as another Greek master Nikos Kazantzakis in creating sprawling epics that touch on a variety of themes ranging from the similarities between artistic/religious explanations and scientific ones to how patterns of behavior and experience emerge again and again in a family line. Also I recommend The Virgin Suicides, his first novel, especially as a much shorter introduction to his work before tackling the 500+ page Middlesex. Middlesex is my favourite book to this day, I read it in about a week while traveling around China, weirdly enough. It's just an astonishing story from beginning to end and Cal is such a well written protagonist. Reminds me, I need to preorder Eugenides' upcoming 3rd novel The Marriage Plot (and I still have to read The Virgin Suicides) The Marriage Plot: Amazon posted:
Sounds pretty amazing although I don't know if I will love it as much as Middlesex without any GSM themes, which interest me most in fiction. Hedrigall fucked around with this message at 06:25 on Jul 6, 2011 |
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Jul 6, 2011 06:22
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That's awesome, I hadn't heard a third novel was about to be released! Luckily I got a little birthday money recently, I'll have to preorder it.
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Jul 6, 2011 06:51
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Finished The Great Gatsby today. It's one of those books I should have read in high school and only just got around to. I liked the way it was written - there's some great prose in it - but I'm not head over heels over it, either. I'm glad to have read it, though.
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Jul 7, 2011 03:42
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Hedrigall posted:Middlesex is my favourite book to this day, I read it in about a week while traveling around China, weirdly enough. It's just an astonishing story from beginning to end and Cal is such a well written protagonist. Reminds me, I need to preorder Eugenides' upcoming 3rd novel The Marriage Plot (and I still have to read The Virgin Suicides) Eugenides is really cool in person too. He spoke at a small dinner I was at about a year ago and was very willing to answer questions about writing.
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Jul 7, 2011 03:47
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Just finished The Art of Racing in the Rain. Before I read it, I'd had a few people tell me they were off put by the title because books that involve car/racing culture tend to center around it exclusively. Very good read, and I don't think you really have to care at all about cars to enjoy it. The brief insights into racing culture are more an accessory/device than they are a theme. Also read Bossypants. Tina Fey is a comic genius and will have you laughing loudly and embarrassingly in public. It's also a pretty fascinating insight into the world behind SNL and the journey from aspiring comic to making it big.
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Jul 7, 2011 04:54
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Read Slaughterhouse Five for the first time. I enjoyed it, but mostly it reminded me how little I enjoy sci-fi. I appreciate that Vonnegut's playing with the genre's tropes for a greater purpose but I can't bring myself to care about galactic zoos or the various possible interpretations of those scenes. I like how time travel in this novel is almost just a literalization of the kind of time travel we do when reminded about our past, and how for someone suffering PTSD a traumatic past remains ever-present -- but I'm not sure why memory needs to be literalized in order to make that point.
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Jul 7, 2011 22:14
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Just finished Perdido Street Station by China Miéville after a recommendation in this subforum. I am really glad I discovered this author! Having just gone through Iain Banks' Culture series I am taken aback by his use of language. He actually does something with it, rather than simply convey facts and thoughts as Banks does, although that style may fit his technological universe better. Sometimes he goes overboard though. A few of his more adventurous comparisons are a little wonky: "organic swiftness that seems to belie intention, like gore from a wound." (The Scar) Really? Another thing, when he thinks of a fancy word like "vertiginous" there is a good chance he'll use this a few more times on the following pages (why didn't his editor jump in?). Still, as far as language is concerned I like his arabesque style. Story is cool too, or rather, the universe is. I like to think that what he did in PSS is a creative re-interpretation of the industrial age. The fact that he is from London (I think) gives him the needed credibility to do exactly that. Somehow he is too focused on everyone being miserable and everything turning out badly though. In contrast to that there are some convenient deus ex machina moments (the Weaver saving the day twice and the criminal at the end) that seem a little odd. But enough of my own negativity. As I said I'm glad this book and author were recommended to me.
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Jul 7, 2011 22:46
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lllllllllllllllllll posted:
I actually had the opposite reaction, and didn't enjoy the story. I detailed it over in the China Miéville thread, but suffice it to say there were just too many details that I was hung up on, and you mentioned one of them in your spoiler tag.
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Jul 8, 2011 01:48
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about Perdido Street Station
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lllllllllllllllllll posted:Another thing, when he thinks of a fancy word like "vertiginous" there is a good chance he'll use this a few more times on the following pages (why didn't his editor jump in?). Still, as far as language is concerned I like his arabesque style. Someone recently asked him on Goodreads about his overuse of certain words, and his response was good: quote:Q: Do you use a copy editor? If so, why did they let you use a word like "puissant" more than 20 times in The Scar? The book is excellent, but it turns into a find the puissant hunt after the first 10 or so. By the way, I do love your work, and I found The Scar, with its themes of willfulness and will-lessness amazing, but that was something that really got my goat.
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Jul 8, 2011 03:11
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That's interesting, he uses words in the same way as a scientist does in a research writing or a philosopher in a paper, or at least that's what I get out of that Q&A. In science and philosophy of course, you want to use the same words when you mean the same thing because language must be precise, like a clockwork machine.
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Jul 8, 2011 04:17
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UUriffic posted:That's interesting, he uses words in the same way as a scientist does in a research writing or a philosopher in a paper, or at least that's what I get out of that Q&A. In science and philosophy of course, you want to use the same words when you mean the same thing because language must be precise, like a clockwork machine. You are just precious.
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Jul 8, 2011 06:19
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