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Hedrigall posted:I can't remember the corpse at the end, what was that about again? I wouldn't go so far as to say "Don't read Endymion" but maybe read them not as a canonical follow up to Hyperion but as dodgy fanfiction set in the same universe. They do tell a decent, fun story with some great bits, but they're REALLY disappointing if you're expecting a true sequel. It really feels like Simmons set out to write a totally new series but decided to shorehorn it into the Hyperion universe halfway through.
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Oct 7, 2015 17:01
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I really liked most of The Terror, but the whole thing at the end with the middle-aged captain suddenly marrying a teenage girl felt very... very Simmons.
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Oct 7, 2015 17:06
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Wrong thread.
a kitten fucked around with this message at 00:43 on Oct 8, 2015 |
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Oct 7, 2015 19:49
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I recently finished reading the 'The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant' series by Stephen R. Donaldson. It's a fair bit to wrap my head around, but I found it to be a very well developed and enjoyable allegory. Planning to re-read it whenever I get some downtime.
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Oct 8, 2015 02:23
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I just finished The Autobiography of Malcolm X. I'm glad I read it because of the historical knowledge/perspective it provided, but I was unpleasantly surprised by the intense Anti-Semitism, among other things. He wasn't as great of a guy as I thought! In any case, worth the read for the reasons I've mentioned.
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Oct 8, 2015 18:50
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I just finished Empire of the Worm today. It's a dark fantasy about a quasi-Roman empire almost being devastated by the reawakening of a dark, eldritch god. I kind of liked how it treated practice of religion as mutable, like in the real Roman empire, but otherwise it was all kind of underwhelming, and I'm not a fan of having to buy the two different halves of a novel separately.
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Oct 9, 2015 05:24
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Picnic on Paradise. I really loved The Female Man so I wanted to read some of her more, I guess, straightforward fiction. I feel like I'm missing something here though, it was award-nominated and gets mentioned as being an important SF book, but it mostly read like a teenage rant about vapid modern sheeple. The love interest is an rear end in a top hat nerd who the main character obsesses over for no discernible reason. Either I'm an idiot or this is one of those ones that's important for the time/subject matter, rather than for being any good.
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Oct 9, 2015 17:09
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The Expectant Father. My wife and I have a baby due yesterday, so it was a bit of a belated read. Reading the next book (The New Father) right now, which is much better timed.
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Oct 9, 2015 18:00
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Ringworld hooked me from the start (gripes notwithstanding), and I plan on getting the rest of the 'Known Universe.' I'd been meaning to read through the Harry Potter series since the 90s when the movies began. Surprisingly quick reads (understood they're childrens/YA books), and seeing that the movies didn't need cut anything out. DKWildz fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Oct 9, 2015 |
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Oct 9, 2015 20:00
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DKWildz posted:
Including your amazon affiliate referral link in each url? Nice. Does Ringworld feel dated at all?
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Oct 9, 2015 22:10
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Raskolnikov2089 posted:Including your amazon affiliate referral link in each url? Nice. When I read it a couple of years ago I was surprised how little it did, actually. Then again, I had just gotten off an Asimov binge which really does feel dated (in a good way) so I don't know. Speaking of which, I'm just about to finish Huxleys Brave New World and I was surprised to find out it was written in 1931. It really, really does not feel dated at all. Maybe it's the lack of technical explanations and the relatively prescient grasp of genetics and stuff, but it somehow works really well. If someone were to ask me which was older, 1984 or BNW, without me knowing anything about the novels aside from having read it, I would've totally thought that 1984 preceded BNW by at least a couple of decades.
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Oct 9, 2015 22:20
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Raskolnikov2089 posted:Including your amazon affiliate referral link in each url? Nice. Just thought it might be nice to include links to things, so I grabbed them with the share button on the site. I didn't think about them being some referral link, but I since it's offensive I'll change them all around. To answer your question, the only thing that felt that way was 'flashlight laser.' Even with that I never felt disconnected from the world as I was going through it.
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Oct 9, 2015 22:35
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DKWildz posted:Just thought it might be nice to include links to things, so I grabbed them with the share button on the site. I didn't think about them being some referral link, but I since it's offensive I'll change them all around. Nah, it was actually respect for your hustle man. Just came across as sarcastic because internet. I have an affiliate account too, but I'd never have the sticktoitness to link like that. Just finished The Blade Itself Starts pretty slow, and not much happens, but it ends up pretty good.
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Oct 10, 2015 07:07
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I just finished Zoo City by Lauren Beukes, which is a neat little urban fantasy/horror novel about people who get magically attached animal companions for committing sins wrapped around a nice detective story in South Africa
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Oct 10, 2015 10:01
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Dark Run by Mike Brooks I've been internet buddies with Mike for a number of years now - so this is very much "ohh my friend got a book published". I liked it, wasn't great but a fun little space action romp. Rag-tag crew, evil political figure, in over their heads, a daring and dangerous mission, all that. The opening chunk isn't great, but it hits a stride after that and never really stops. Something you could easily see in TV sci-fi show. Also has inventive swearing a in mix of languages
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Oct 10, 2015 20:24
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Zairak posted:I recently finished reading the 'The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant' series by Stephen R. Donaldson. Try as I might, I could not get into that series. I only got halfway through the first book and it just seemed to forced/strained. Does it let up further in the series and hit its stride?
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Oct 10, 2015 21:08
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nworbcaz posted:Try as I might, I could not get into that series. I only got halfway through the first book and it just seemed to forced/strained. let's be real here, the series under discussion features a character called "Lord Foul the Despiser" and also has a a part where the protagonist rapes someone. It's not going to be hitting any strides.
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Oct 10, 2015 23:22
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nworbcaz posted:Try as I might, I could not get into that series. I only got halfway through the first book and it just seemed to forced/strained. It definitely hits its stride later on - the second and third books of the first trilogy were probably my favourites - but "letting up" is not really something that the series does. It is pretty unremittingly bleak.
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Oct 11, 2015 05:18
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A human heart posted:let's be real here, the series under discussion features a character called "Lord Foul the Despiser" and also has a a part where the protagonist rapes someone. It's not going to be hitting any strides. The Sin of Onan posted:It definitely hits its stride later on - the second and third books of the first trilogy were probably my favourites - but "letting up" is not really something that the series does. It is pretty unremittingly bleak. That seems a little... like it might not be a good book. I tried reading it too and gave up a little ways in.
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Oct 11, 2015 05:39
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GreyPowerVan posted:That seems a little... like it might not be a good book. I tried reading it too and gave up a little ways in. We go through this every 50 pages or so in the SF thread. Covenant's rape of Lena is committed when he's on the very edge of absolute madness and literally the first thing he does afterwards is vomit in a fit of self-loathing. He spends the entire of the First Chronicles trying desperately to atone for it and every time he feels that he may have come close to expiating his crime he encounters another reminder of how his actions destroyed the life of everyone they touched. Yes, it's grim, but the argument thrown out by someone who hasn't read the books is always "we're meant to sympathise with this guy?" and the answer they'd get if they had read them is no, we are not.
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Oct 11, 2015 17:14
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Jedit posted:We go through this every 50 pages or so in the SF thread. Covenant's rape of Lena is committed when he's on the very edge of absolute madness and literally the first thing he does afterwards is vomit in a fit of self-loathing. He spends the entire of the First Chronicles trying desperately to atone for it and every time he feels that he may have come close to expiating his crime he encounters another reminder of how his actions destroyed the life of everyone they touched. At the risk of sounding callous, the rape scene wasn't something that really bugged me in the story. The writing just seemed so... Amateur? Not sure if that's the right word but I had a hard time with it because the writing was just bad. Based another poster's comment, maybe I'll revisit it and try to get through the second book.
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Oct 11, 2015 20:52
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I just finished Ready Player One. I mean, after all, it had a ton of good reviews, surely everything I've seen on Something Awful totally panning it was just backlash, right? Ugh. I'm not even sure what else to say. Ugh. It wasn't so terrible as to make it unreadable or anything, it's just that it's hard to imagine an author more blatantly attempting to elevate spectrum-disorder characteristics to not just cool, but DESIRED. I'm sorry -- the jerkoffs behind me at the local showing of Ghostbusters reciting every line will never attain widespread, fawning recognition for their social ineptitude. People who relentlessly play out scenes from Monty Python will continue to make everyone else cringe. I read the blurb in the back from his new book; am I right in assuming that being an outcast who happens to be great at old video games is exactly what we need to save the world!!!?
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Oct 12, 2015 20:37
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I just finished The Lord of the Rings, which has taken me most of the year to read. I didn't have the difficulties that a lot of people on this board have had with it, and what I've taken away from it is that this is a book that somehow manages to feel like the most epic, world-spanning thing ever and yet it still comes in at a length where it could be published in one volume (I got that one-volume edition on Kindle.). I don't see that a lot, especially not to the degree it's accomplished here. Well worth my time.
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Oct 13, 2015 05:17
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Solitair posted:I just finished The Lord of the Rings, which has taken me most of the year to read. I didn't have the difficulties that a lot of people on this board have had with it, and what I've taken away from it is that this is a book that somehow manages to feel like the most epic, world-spanning thing ever and yet it still comes in at a length where it could be published in one volume (I got that one-volume edition on Kindle.). I don't see that a lot, especially not to the degree it's accomplished here. Well worth my time. It's absolutely amazing and my only problem with the book (which I love regardless and will re-read until the day I die) is that the cozy English feel of most of Fellowship gets replaced with a more archaic tone as the story progresses. I mean things like "And Aragorn came to the forest, and looked upon it, and thought that it was good, and spake he thus," sentences like that. I end up missing the tone of the first third. Fellowship will always be my favourite part. Also, gently caress everyone who hates the songs/poems. They're masterful, every single one, and they just add to the rich tapestry of the work.
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Oct 13, 2015 05:43
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Hedrigall posted:the cozy English feel of most of Fellowship gets replaced with a more archaic tone as the story progresses. this seems to fit the narrative fairly well though
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Oct 13, 2015 09:50
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copied from the recommendation thread but, Has anyone read MZD's The Familiar? I read and enjoyed House of Leaves and Fifty Year Sword but thought that Only Revolutions was unreadable. My fear is that MZD is a one hit wonder. I found an interesting review which noted that House of Leaves was his take on film, Fifty Year Sword was a take on the campfire story and Only Revolutions was a take on music. The Familiar is apparently a take on the television show.
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Oct 13, 2015 18:09
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I just finished Nine Princes in Amber. I had heard of Amber previously but had never gotten around to reading it. It was an interesting book and I read it basically straight through, but I am undecided if I will read the rest of the series. I've also read The Name of the Wind, but I found it fell vastly short of the critical praise. The main character is stronger, smarter and luckier than everyone he meets and the impression I got during the reading of the book was that any difficulty that the protagonist found himself in was never any real threat to him, despite the author's attempts to frame it as such. I never felt he was in peril, so his solutions and escapes felt tired and forced. I wasn't entirely bored by it, but I'm doubtful that I will read the rest of the Kingkiller chronicle. First Book of Swords by Fred Saberhagen was a book I decided to read because I knew I'd read some books about swords from him when I was a pre-teen and liked them. Apparently I read the Lost Swords series. Saberhagen's book feels like it targets a young adult audience but I've seen nothing that would suggest that was the case either in the marketing of the book or in the reviews (or Wikipedia article). That said, if you assume the book was intended for a younger audience it is entirely fine for what it is. I wasn't bored reading it, which is faint praise. Based on my previous history I might read another book or two. Rendevous with Rama was very good. I have discovered that I enjoy Clarke as an author. I'd read Childhood's End earlier this year and had liked it well enough. I also quite liked the Odyssey novels, so this was an easy purchase. I'll continue on with the Rama series, after I read a couple more fantasy novels. I sound pretty negative, in retrospect, which I regret. I'm just looking for a decent fantasy series I can sink my teeth into. Back to browsing Amazon's Kindle offerings! Xir fucked around with this message at 16:57 on Oct 14, 2015 |
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Oct 14, 2015 15:28
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Solitair posted:I just finished The Lord of the Rings, which has taken me most of the year to read. I didn't have the difficulties that a lot of people on this board have had with it, and what I've taken away from it is that this is a book that somehow manages to feel like the most epic, world-spanning thing ever and yet it still comes in at a length where it could be published in one volume (I got that one-volume edition on Kindle.). I don't see that a lot, especially not to the degree it's accomplished here. Well worth my time. LoTR is a treekiller epic, where actually a lot of stuff happens. Until many modern fantasy epics which are even longer and spend a lot of time spinning their wheels. Based on the recommendations upthread, I pushed Reza Aslan's Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth up my reading queue. I wasn't bowled over as much as those readers were, but it's still a great book. Ultimately, the question does arise as to how much of what Aslan says is justified or reasonable. Few of us are biblical scholars and we have to take a lot of what he says on faith, from a field that is rife with interpretation, confabulation and mystery. During the text (and in depth in the footnotes), he does give some time to opposing views. In balance, there seems to be a number of indisputable cases where his thesis is borne out: the New Testament is a heavily doctored story of a Jewish nationalist, paved over by later non-Jewish followers.
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Oct 14, 2015 15:55
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outlier posted:Based on the recommendations upthread, I pushed Reza Aslan's Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth up my reading queue. I wasn't bowled over as much as those readers were, but it's still a great book. I started to read Zealot when I was gripped by the sudden urge to read something popular and topical for once. Unfortunately for my opinion of Reza Aslan as a scholar, I was also taking a college course on the new testament. I had to put Zealot down after a few pages because it became clear that he had done less research I had during the course of my undergraduate class. Some of the "speculation" that he makes about the early life of Jesus is framed as an educated possibility, when these ideas have been outright disproven by more rigorous academic sources. He wanted to tell a cool story, but framing it as historically plausible was either ignorant or dishonest on his part.
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Oct 14, 2015 20:31
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Xir posted:I just finished Nine Princes in Amber. I had heard of Amber previously but had never gotten around to reading it. It was an interesting book and I read it basically straight through, but I am undecided if I will read the rest of the series. (How do you even finish Nine Princes and go "yeah, I guess I'm kinda interested in what happens next, but not that much"?)
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Oct 14, 2015 21:19
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Xander77 posted:Read the first five books, at least. They're about the size of a single WoT / GoT novel combined, and... oh, roughly two or three orders of magnitude greater in quality. I didn't dislike it at all. I may have allowed the extremely positive reviews of a few people lead me to expect being blown away. I guess another problem might be that the characters are somewhat difficult to relate to initially. I'll probably give the next book or two a read. I think I'll try Paradise Lost again before I do though. For an idea of things I do like, I have reread Wolfe's Book of the New Sun a few times. I greatly like that series.
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Oct 14, 2015 21:33
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Snak posted:I started to read Zealot when I was gripped by the sudden urge to read something popular and topical for once. Unfortunately for my opinion of Reza Aslan as a scholar, I was also taking a college course on the new testament. I had to put Zealot down after a few pages because it became clear that he had done less research I had during the course of my undergraduate class. Some of the "speculation" that he makes about the early life of Jesus is framed as an educated possibility, when these ideas have been outright disproven by more rigorous academic sources. He wanted to tell a cool story, but framing it as historically plausible was either ignorant or dishonest on his part. Well, drat. This is what I feared. Would love it if you had read the whole thing and could give an opinion, but I guess I can still take away some of the ideas from it. I was especially taken with the martyr Stephen getting large parts of his theology wrong. Biblical study seems like a really catty, snarky field. I read some criticism of Bart Ehrman's work that was basically just ad hominems and repeated assertions without argument that he was wrong.
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Oct 15, 2015 18:59
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outlier posted:Well, drat. This is what I feared. Would love it if you had read the whole thing and could give an opinion, but I guess I can still take away some of the ideas from it. I was especially taken with the martyr Stephen getting large parts of his theology wrong. I mean, he probably makes a lot of good points. His background is in religion and sociology, but not history. The gist of the thing that turned me off of it is pretty early on he's talking about how Jesus was basically a construction worker and would have helped build this nearby roman town where he would have come into contact with some roman philosophy. My textbook had a section that specifically debunked this, as the roman developement had been determined to have happened much later than the time Jesus. So I don't really know what else he got wrong or got right, but the fact that he was extrapolating for pages of what-ifs based on something that seemed to be a thoroughly debunked premise was enough for me to put it down. Aslan is a professor of creative writing, so connecting all these dots gave me the impression that his book was not academically as rigorous as it was being presented as and that just turned me off. Also for transparancy in this issue, my textbook was by Ehrman, so it's possible that the issue is not as clearcut as it seems from perspective. The class I was taking was basically teaching us methods that historians use to analyze and understand the context of historical texts and we weren't really looking at things from a religious perspective. I learned a whole lot about the Bible, and the atmosphere of religion and philosophy in that part of the world during the time of Christ. Zealot just felt like a step backwards to a more pop-pseudo-history, but it's entirely possible that I judged it too fast. I am not a historian or a serious scholar, so I won't be offended if you take my opinion with a grain of salt.
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Oct 15, 2015 19:20
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The Turn Of The Screw, by Henry James. What a staggeringly dull book. Picked it up due to vague recognition of the title, and the review snippets on the back declaring its 'finesse', and that it's 'timelessly unsettling'. It is neither timeless nor unsettling: the prose is so florid and meandering that every page is practically watermarked 'Copyright 1898', not to mention the snippets of suffrage-era gender politics (at one point referring to 'the inferior sex', even). The density of its writing totally robs what could be genuinely exciting or creepy scenes of any impact. Also, Henry James loves using the word 'literally' for emphasis, so much that you could make a drinking game out of it. It's a short book, a classic ghost story archetype complete with too-innocent children and a large stately home to get spooked in. And maybe there's something I'm missing, because it does have a reputation. But it was a slog to read, 120 pages felt like 400, and the climax just confused me.
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Oct 19, 2015 13:46
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Xir posted:I just finished Nine Princes in Amber. I had heard of Amber previously but had never gotten around to reading it. It was an interesting book and I read it basically straight through, but I am undecided if I will read the rest of the series. These opinions are back to front. Read the first five Amber novels, don't read any more Rama.
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Oct 19, 2015 14:05
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Gertrude Perkins posted:The Turn Of The Screw, by Henry James. What a staggeringly dull book. Picked it up due to vague recognition of the title, and the review snippets on the back declaring its 'finesse', and that it's 'timelessly unsettling'. It is neither timeless nor unsettling: the prose is so florid and meandering that every page is practically watermarked 'Copyright 1898', not to mention the snippets of suffrage-era gender politics (at one point referring to 'the inferior sex', even). The density of its writing totally robs what could be genuinely exciting or creepy scenes of any impact. Also, Henry James loves using the word 'literally' for emphasis, so much that you could make a drinking game out of it. It's a short book, a classic ghost story archetype complete with too-innocent children and a large stately home to get spooked in. And maybe there's something I'm missing, because it does have a reputation. But it was a slog to read, 120 pages felt like 400, and the climax just confused me. I had to read it for some lit classes but never actually finished it. I guess it's one of those works that was important at the time and is only vaguely interesting to someone actually engaged in literary theory and history.
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Oct 19, 2015 14:17
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Finished Doctor Bloodmoney by PK Dick this weekend. It's one of his better novels, about the communities and individuals that emerge after nuclear war. As would be expected, there's all kinds of Dick-ian strangeness and his usual preoccupation with reality, the mind, death, etc. shine through. I'm very taken with how often Dick approaches communication with the dead (key parts of both Doctor Bloodmoney and Ubik), and the development of side/supporting plot -- in this novel, particularly, an astronaut whose launch fails and he winds up stuck in orbit around the planet (serving as a kind of disc jockey/radio host for the broken countries below). Still no luck on my UBIK tattoo. I thought I had an artist for a while, but it's petered out. One day!
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Oct 19, 2015 14:33
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Just finished Philip Kindred Dicks' We Can Build You. This is where Pris (Frauenzimmer) comes from, who was integrated into Blade Runner (she was not in Do Androids...). I'm not sure if she is an android or not in this, but she is skinny Lolita type that uses dark makeup to great dramatic effect. I really love the idea of building robotic versions of Civil War era politicians, then appointing them CEO / Lawyer for the company that built them. PKD really came up with some wacky poo poo. To the guy contemplating reading the Amber novels above, go for it. Zelazny's prose is pretty great, I powered through the (original) Amber novels really quick. Probably helped that I had the two part collections with the Vallejo covers. The conclusion is not really satisfactory in my opinion, but hey, he did another 5 book continuation series that I am starting now! By the way, Dues Irae (Dick + Zelazny) is pretty great too.
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Oct 22, 2015 23:56
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We Don't Need Roads: The Making of the Back to the Future Trilogy by Caseen Gaines Not a bad behind-the-scenes look, but there's less and less info on each of the subsequent movies. The making of the third movie gets one short chapter while the first movie got at least four. I really would have liked a lot more about the writing of each film as well. The bulk of the stories are about the production. It also would have benefited from looking at the wider franchise, with more fleshed-out info about the ride, the animated series, the Telltale game, and so on. Each of these things gets a few paragraphs at most in the final chapter. I will forever hold up the incredible How Star Wars Conquered the Universe as an absolutely perfect and comprehensive guide to an entire franchise and fandom. This book just didn't match the depth and width of coverage of that one. Still, it was entertaining, full of interesting tidbits about the movies, and a good companion to watching the trilogy during the all-important month of October 2015. 4 stars? maybe 3.75
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Oct 23, 2015 01:22
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When The Professor Got Stuck In The Snow, by Dan Rhodes. A breezy and fantastically silly satire of "New Atheism" and its prophet, Prof. Richard Dawkins. En route give a talk in a small English town, the Professor and his "male secretary", Smee, get stuck in the countryside and are forced to tage refuge at the home of a retired vicar and his wife. Personalities clash, problems are solved, and there is a lot of gleefully childish Viz-style humur. At its heart though, the book isn't just a satire of a single person - it's surprisingly warm and earnest when it wants to be. Very fun, and I hope the good Professor reads it to the end. Dial H, Vol. 2: Exchange, by China Miéille, David Lapham, Alberto Ponticelli. Just as fun as the first volume. Strange dials allow people to transform into randomly-selected and strange superheroes, like Bumper Carla or Captain Lachrymose. This second arc hugely expands the world of the comic, and it's here that things get really rushed and complicated. They knew the series was being shitcanned, so they packed as much into the last few issues as possible, for better or worse. It's still great fun, very Miéville in scope and mood, and left me sad that we likely won't be seeing any more of this.
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Oct 24, 2015 00:44
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