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I saw the Master and Commander movie, enjoying it.
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Aug 24, 2018 00:55
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Sham bam bamina! posted:I saw the Master and Commander movie, enjoying it. Not a brilliant adaptation (book Maturin would eat movie Maturin alive) but a great movie.
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Sep 1, 2018 14:16
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Empress Brosephine posted:That and Colour of Magic are the two most recent books I quit. Colour of Magic was just boring. If it's your first foray into Pratchett then try Guards! Guards! or Wyrd Sisters instead, they're a few books later when he found his groove and both are the start of their respective sub-series. Technically the Witches sub-series actually starts with Equal Rites, but that one's also not great and the characters are barely recognisable compared to their re-introduction.
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Sep 4, 2018 00:22
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Yannos posted:I'm a completionist so I normally never give up on reading a book or playing a video game until reach the end ... however for the first time ever I put a book away. If you were embarrassed by the succubus fairy, you would have loved the last third of the book where he uses his newly learned sex skills to integrate into a society of sexy sex ninjas. I seem to remember reading that at least the first book was more or less Rothfuss transcribing one of his DnD characters as he lived the post-college, debt-laden bachelor life, and that makes the whole thing make more sense.
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Sep 5, 2018 18:45
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Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey. I had watched a few episodes of the Expanse and enjoyed one of Corey's non-Expanse short stories, so I thought this series would be a winner. It starts off fantastic with a power balance between Earth, Mars, and the Belt. Detective Miller has lots of stuff to do when he has space crimes to investigate. Some parts that stood out were Belters being physically different from the low gravity and the discrimination against those born on planets, the weird food Belters eat, and lots of world building in a busy space port. He becomes less interesting when he starts regularly chatting with a dream girl ghost and oddly is ultra-concerned whether Holden likes him or not. Captain Holden is a weaker character. I didn't like how he has random crewmates on his away mission when their mothership is blown up, and all those crew members (strongman mechanic, cowboy pilot, dead meat medic, and female genius who always secretly loved him) instantly pledge a life debt and go on every suicide mission he suggests. The crew works when they're unknowns on a barely functioning ship facing unknown death ships, but after they receive a super-ship none of them have any experience with, they become unstoppable friends forever easily defeat any foe. It would have been better if one crew member bailed after reaching a space station and sought safer work, but nope, all willing to die for Holden, the guy who happened to be in charge of their shuttle. Their wooden, repetitive dialogue was the biggest issue. Whenever they chat in-between space fights recapping what the audience already knows, the story stops dead. One of the low points is how the solar system goes from being a messy political/economic balance with governments, corporations, and religious groups maneuvering for influence, to inert entities waiting to react to whatever Holden says. The solar system begins "the largest war in humanity's history" based on a message from Holden after he thinks Mars attacks one Belter ship. If anyone can broadcast anything to everyone without much proof and it starts a war, you'd think trolls would've reduced civilization to ashes long ago. The main villain stepped out of a Resident Evil game, right down to making zombies. There are some bright spots, Eros station being overrun was spooky and the early space fights are good, but I've got two hours left on the audiobook and even at 1.25 speed it's a return. Every Dead Thing by John Connolly. I picked this up after enjoying Nocturnes Vol. 2. I thought this would be a good entry into a detective series, as Nocturnes had great tension like bootleggers being stalked by a monster, or were fun and lighthearted such as a writer finding a warehouse where literary characters live. In this book we meet our hero, Dark & Troubled NYPD detective who immediately has his wife and daughter tortured to death while he's off in WhiskeyTown. Lots of pages detailing the crime scene of a woman and child suffering terribly. I kept going for a few more chapters to a scene where our hero sees a hitman shoot someone in broad daylight, who for good measure also shoots his hysterical girlfriend, then I chucked this in the trash wondering what the heck was up with Connolly's inability to let a woman live more than a page. I don't know if the series gets drastically better later, but this was sub-airport thriller garbage.
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Sep 7, 2018 20:35
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There have been a few books that I gave up on because they weren't grabbing me, but only two I remember giving up on in disgust. Naked Lunch and Atlas Shrugged.
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Sep 8, 2018 19:44
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Leviathan Wakes is definitely a weak start to the series. I actually found it more enjoyable as a reread after knowing the outcome. I ussually recommend that folks try to get through Caliban's War before they drop the series but, given your take on Holden and friends, I'd say you are not going to like anything else in the series any better.
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Nov 12, 2018 04:15
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"The drowned and the saved" by Primo Levi, because to be honest I'd rather just have a headline that says "Terrible things happened" than fill my head with all the appalling details of the terrible things.
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Nov 12, 2018 09:12
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Hyrax Attack! posted:Every Dead Thing by John Connolly. I picked this up after enjoying Nocturnes Vol. 2. I thought this would be a good entry into a detective series, as Nocturnes had great tension like bootleggers being stalked by a monster, or were fun and lighthearted such as a writer finding a warehouse where literary characters live. Years ago, a friend recommended I read Connolly., Another friend chimed in with "how amazing" the books were. And they've won awards for crime and horror fiction. Some of the goofiest, most cliche-ridden stuff I've ever read, underlining that genre fans have appalling tastes.
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Nov 12, 2018 17:04
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Hyrax Attack! posted:Every Dead Thing by John Connolly. I picked this up after enjoying Nocturnes Vol. 2. I thought this would be a good entry into a detective series, as Nocturnes had great tension like bootleggers being stalked by a monster, or were fun and lighthearted such as a writer finding a warehouse where literary characters live. i read this entire series during a major depressive episode in early college; later in the series it turns out that the main character whose name i can't remember is a fallen angel
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Nov 14, 2018 03:42
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Abandoned Name of the Wind after a few hundred pages. Just realized I didn’t care. Catch 22 - Just got sidetracked, plan to revisit. Watergate by Thomas Mallon - Stopped after 80 pages, can’t remember why. Will probably finish eventually. I wish I’d given up on: The Fireman by Joe Hill - Probably my least favorite book I’ve read this year. Felt like The Stand but for children. Neuromancer - Boring as gently caress. Neverwhere - Awful characters, only finished it because it was the only book with me at work on a slow day. Authority, Acceptance and Bourne by Jeff Vandermeer - I don’t know why Annihilation built up enough good will from me to keep giving him a chance. The only reason I finished the Southern Reach trilogy is because the copy I have includes all three books. Bourne was just more of the same.
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Nov 28, 2018 19:54
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Action Serious posted:Abandoned Name of the Wind after a few hundred pages. Just realized I didn’t care. Yeah, Catch 22 is definitely worth a revisit. One of my favorite books right there.
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Nov 28, 2018 20:09
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I think the only book I've given up on reading in the last decade is A Game of Thrones. The first time I read it, within the first twenty pages there's this: quote:“I’d let his whole khalasar gently caress you if need be, sweet sister, all forty thousand men, and their horses too if that was what it took to get my army. Be grateful it is only Drogo. In time you may even learn to like him." Then a few years later I saw the show, and thought "there's some interesting poo poo here, maybe I should give these books that everyone seems to love a second chance." I got to the above quote again, and now that I knew that she DOES "learn to like him," and also having picked up the fact that she's like 13 years old in the books, and being familiar with some of the other weird sex poo poo, I got the overwhelming feeling of "this author is getting off on thinking about a child being gang-raped by men and horses" and slammed that poo poo closed forever.
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Dec 2, 2018 16:32
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DontMockMySmock posted:I think the only book I've given up on reading in the last decade is A Game of Thrones. And that passage is just so badly written by itself. Like, it’s so clumsy and longer than it needs to be.
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Dec 2, 2018 18:23
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Antifa Turkeesian posted:And that passage is just so badly written by itself. Like, it’s so clumsy and longer than it needs to be.
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Dec 2, 2018 18:34
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Also abandoned American Gods. The vignettes/throwaway chapters were stupid and Shadow was boring. A lot of it seemed to be "I sure know a lot about mythology, don't I, folks?" Wheel of Time I tried to read three times IN PRISON and wasn't able to push my way through the first book. I was reading the thirtieth anniversary edition and it had typos in it that (because prison) I compared to older editions and the typos had survived every reprint. Generations of editors didn't even read that poo poo. But really, the map of the Two Rivers (or whatever it was) tipped me off that the dude sucked at fantasy. You know how? Rivers don't work that way. A big monolithic river doesn't come out of the mountains and split into tributaries. Get serious about world building, motherfucker. And Then We Came to the End seemed like it could have been great, but after the overly drawn-out middle section they cut back to the office characters and I realized I had no one to root for. None of them were likable or redeemable, which is my main issue when I read. Wizard's First Rule was going strong until they cut to the villain. The author had been doing great, keeping the villain ominous and unseen for the first section (where someone was waiting in the protagonist's house for him, and they knew he was dangerous but couldn't see him). Then it finally cuts to the villain and he's some douche who puts spittle in his eyebrows and obsesses over cleanliness. The WInd-Up Bird Chronicle, or, as I like to call it "The Bound-Up Turd Chronicle" because nothing ever happened. 1Q84 because I kept having to read each characters' experience of the same things. Also, the whole premise of that book is about the female protagonist entering a different world by doing something out-of-the-ordinary, in her case going through a tunnel. ...But she was already loving REVENGE MURDERING PEOPLE FOR PROFIT. Isn't that more going down the rabbit hole than trespassing in a highway tunnel? I mean gently caress.
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Apr 14, 2019 01:52
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I can't for the life of me get through Slaughterhouse Five
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Apr 19, 2019 20:14
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Really? That book is tiny.
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Apr 19, 2019 21:54
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You can read it in a day if you want to. There are about nine adjectives in total. But I bet the trick is wanting to. If you don’t like it and want to try Vonnegut, the other ones people tend to like are God Bless You Mr. Roswater, Breakfast of Champions, and Sirens of Titan. Dark horse contender for this era is probably Mother Night. Breakfast of Champions is my favorite by far. It’s like the depressed alcoholic version of Slaughterhouse Five.
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Apr 19, 2019 22:19
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having a lot of trouble getting through Slaughterhouse Five, Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace the novelization, and Hop On Pop.
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Apr 20, 2019 01:20
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I still can't get through A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It's just so boring.
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Apr 29, 2019 16:10
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Minenfeld! posted:I still can't get through A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It's just so boring. You have to be a 12-year-old boy who likes at least one of: a) superhero comics b) Monty Python c) fantasy novels d) Dr. Who. This may only be true pre-2000.
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Apr 29, 2019 16:49
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Antifa Turkeesian posted:You have to be a 12-year-old boy who likes at least one of: a) superhero comics b) Monty Python c) fantasy novels d) Dr. Who. This may only be true pre-2000. Hmmm, yes, only middle-school males have liked the book. 
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Apr 29, 2019 17:28
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xcheopis posted:Hmmm, yes, only middle-school males have liked the book. literal children and manchildren, yeah
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Apr 29, 2019 17:30
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I think I like the book, but my memory might be skewed toward the highlights by my not having read it since middle school.
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Apr 29, 2019 17:45
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Minenfeld! posted:I still can't get through A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It's just so boring. Have you tried the radio show? Adams had more of a gift for writing witty dialogue than he did for writing prose in general.
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Apr 29, 2019 19:23
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cloudchamber posted:Have you tried the radio show? Adams had more of a gift for writing witty dialogue than he did for writing prose in general.
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Apr 29, 2019 19:28
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Adams really shines in those text adventure games he did. The descriptive text format suits his gifts better than pretty much anything.
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Apr 29, 2019 22:14
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I wasn't aware that he did radio or text adventures. That may work better than the book.
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May 2, 2019 17:08
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Fintilgin posted:I've bounced off Master & Commander like... five times? Pisses me off, because it seems like a series I should love, and want to get into, but just can't seem to manage. MeatwadIsGod posted:If all the 18th century British Navy jargon is giving you trouble, there are some great reference materials like A Sea of Words by Dean King. I'm almost done with the sixth book in the series and Patrick O'Brian is probably the best historical fiction writer out there. The characterization is so drat good, and once you get a decent handle on the jargon then the books really open up. I went through Master and Commander breezing past terms I didn't know, admittedly, but still loved the characters. skasion posted:Aubrey-Maturin definitely takes a couple books to get into stride. Sham bam bamina! posted:I saw the Master and Commander movie, enjoying it. I'm going to recommend a different tactic for Aubrey / Maturin's naval jargon:  Just beep over the parts you don't understand. As you keep reading it'll all slot together eventually. Then you start over again at the beginning and it's like you're reading a whole new book, eternally recurring, because with each passage through the text you understand more of the text, like learning a language. If that doesn't work, watching a film can be a great way to shoehorn open a text that you find otherwise inaccessible. I never managed to get into Jane Austen until I watched a few film versions and it all clicked in my head. My personal reading white whale is In Remembrance of Things Past. .I've never made it further than about 400 pages into Swann's Way. The problem is that each page is so beautifully written that I end up falling asleep; the text is just this insurmountable beautiful sedative. And then as I fall asleep I drop the book, lose my place . . . I should get an ebook version and just keep it by the bedside.
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May 2, 2019 17:52
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House of Leaves - started off great but then I didn't feel like turning the book sideways to read or trying to figure out which of the subtexts and margin comments were important and which were just made up references. Cool book to put on my shelf though.
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May 4, 2019 07:05
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Antifa Turkeesian posted:You can read it in a day if you want to. There are about nine adjectives in total. But I bet the trick is wanting to. If you don’t like it and want to try Vonnegut, the other ones people tend to like are God Bless You Mr. Roswater, Breakfast of Champions, and Sirens of Titan. Dark horse contender for this era is probably Mother Night. Mother Night is a great book for right now. “We are who we pretend to be, so be careful who you pretend to be” is a message the “but my racism is IRONIC” types need to internalize.
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May 4, 2019 07:09
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SilkyP posted:House of Leaves - started off great but then I didn't feel like turning the book sideways to read or trying to figure out which of the subtexts and margin comments were important and which were just made up references. Cool book to put on my shelf though. I stopped reading it because I didn't have faith that it would be resolved in a satisfying way. Can anyone spoil it for me? His other book where you had to turn it upside down was too gimmicky for me to even attempt
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May 9, 2019 05:05
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Christoph posted:I stopped reading it because I didn't have faith that it would be resolved in a satisfying way. Can anyone spoil it for me?
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May 9, 2019 12:25
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SilkyP posted:House of Leaves - started off great but then I didn't feel like turning the book sideways to read or trying to figure out which of the subtexts and margin comments were important and which were just made up references. Cool book to put on my shelf though. The bibliographies are just window dressing. It really doesn't matter which are real or not (hey look, a theme!), like, nobody in their right mind would actually read that collossal page-spanning list of buildings. The prose "subtexts" (I think you mean footnotes?) are obviously part of the story though. Re: turning the book sideways, that's not hard and doesn't happen often enough to be annoying really...
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May 12, 2019 22:28
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the johnny truant bits are boring and not worth reading. just read the part about the spooky house and have fun
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May 12, 2019 23:01
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All I remember about the Johnny truant parts are he did lots of drugs and had lots of sex with lots of women
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May 12, 2019 23:04
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Ya spooky house parts seemed dope
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May 13, 2019 07:41
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:My personal reading white whale is In Remembrance of Things Past. .I've never made it further than about 400 pages into Swann's Way. The problem is that each page is so beautifully written that I end up falling asleep; the text is just this insurmountable beautiful sedative. And then as I fall asleep I drop the book, lose my place . . . This one is me too for the exact same reason.
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May 14, 2019 03:45
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I don't think I've disliked a book the way I've ended up on Book of the New Sun in near on two decades. I didn't want to drop by the official thread with some pithy shitpost given recent news but since putting it down it's been kind of gnawing at me. People seem to really like his work and I've seen "fantasy literature" get tossed around more than once which I guess is in a way apropos because 20 years ago I was 16 and actual literature was similarly torturous to read, though at least it wasn't couched entirely in synonyms.
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May 14, 2019 04:03
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