|
Smoking Crow posted:I kind of want that, but more modern. Is there one more like Uncharted or Tomb Raider? The closest thing I can think of is thriller novels with an archaeology slant from authors like Wilbur Smith or Douglass Preston.
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2013 06:29
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 18, 2024 09:32 |
|
|
I want to read a book that explains metre in poetry. Something that starts from nothing but builds up to very complex/elegant analyses of the famous poets in different genres. Even just a simple one that teaches you enough so that you can further your own learning would be fine.
|
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2013 09:40
|
|
|
Smoking Crow posted:I kind of want that, but more modern. Is there one more like Uncharted or Tomb Raider? Andy McDermott's Nina Wilde and Eddie Chase series are in that vein - archaeologist and her bodyguard adventuring around.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2013 15:05
|
|
|
Hedrigall posted:What's the dumb, fun adventure novel equivalent of films like The Mummy (Brendan Fraser version) and Indiana Jones? With historical setting (especially during wartime in the 20th century), supernatural elements, tomb raiding, etc etc? Have you tried the forum's own Andy McDermott's books? They aren't set in historical settings, but they are definitely some fun treasure hunt yarns. Edit: What Carbon Thief said.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2013 15:17
|
|
|
Sulla-Marius 88 posted:I want to read a book that explains metre in poetry. Something that starts from nothing but builds up to very complex/elegant analyses of the famous poets in different genres. Even just a simple one that teaches you enough so that you can further your own learning would be fine. Try Meter and Meaning: An Introduction to Rhythm in Poetry by Thomas Carper and Derek Attridge, or Poetic Rhythm: An Introduction by Derek Attridge.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2013 15:43
|
|
DirtyRobot posted:Try Meter and Meaning: An Introduction to Rhythm in Poetry by Thomas Carper and Derek Attridge, or Poetic Rhythm: An Introduction by Derek Attridge. Many thanks. Will check them both out!
|
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2013 15:54
|
|
|
Sulla-Marius 88 posted:Many thanks. Will check them both out! Caveat: I haven't read them, but 1) I've had the latter recommended to me by several people I'd trust for this sort of thing, trusting them enough that I've recommended the ones I did over books I actually have read/own, and 2) I've read Attridge's other work and it's ace.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2013 20:37
|
|
|
 I'm looking to read about ten books this month and I'm wanting to make them all spooky halloween/autumn themed books, but aside from Bradbury's stuff I'm having trouble finding good things to add to the list. I've read most of the classic horror stuff (sleepy hollow, hill house, dracula, etc) as well. Any recommendations for some nice spooky October reading?
Circle Nine fucked around with this message at 03:04 on Oct 2, 2013 |
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2013 03:02
|
|
|
A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny is great lighthearted halloween pastiche.
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2013 03:04
|
|
|
Circle Nine posted:
If you aren't concerned so much about your actual book counts and are into short stories, I would recommend any of the "The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror" collections, edited and compiled by Ellen Datlow, Kelly Link, and Gavin J. Grant. They are big honking paperbacks and can often be found in the bargain section of bookstores or on Amazon for about  each. These are the books that originally introduced me to authors like Mielville, Gaiman, Gregory Maguire and others when I was younger.
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2013 04:54
|
|
|
Anyone know a good book on Gilbert and Sullivan? Something biographical would work, though something analytical would work as well.
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2013 06:08
|
|
|
regulargonzalez posted:Looking for a certain type of apocalyptic book. Not post-apocalyptic but a book set at least partly / mostly in the period where poo poo is hitting the fan. The Stand, for instance, covers the beginning and the period after everyone who is going to die has died, but doesn't really cover society as it is in the process of disintegrating (probably because, in that book, the process is too quick). Something like The Road if it covered the first couple months of whatever the disaster was, instead of being set an indeterminate amount of time later. A bit late, but I have a couple of recommendations that fit pretty close to what you are describing: The Age of Miracles - Karen Thompson Walker, has a very unique post-apocalyptic premise - dealing with the consequences of time slowly stretching out. The Dog Stars - Peter Heller, similar to The Road, but not as dark.
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2013 18:35
|
|
|
jacksonchan posted:
I thought about recommending this one, along with The Things That Keep Us Here by Carla Buckley. They both fit the parameters of the initial request pretty well, but I didn't think either one of them was great. Both were good, but neither was great. EDIT: I felt like elaborating. The Age of Miracles is written from the perspective of a pre-teen girl, and is as much a coming-of-age novel dealing with family drama than it is apocalyptic. And The Things That Keep Us Here is written from the perspectives of a wife and husband trying to protect and provide for her family as a pandemic wreaks havoc on the globe. I really wanted more of the apocalypse and less of that one particular family surviving in their suburban house (Spoilered for very general plot synopsis just to be safe, but I promise they're vague enough not to actually spoil the plot.) After typing that I'm reminded of a book called The Ruins by Scott Smith. Not exactly apocalyptic in the sense the whole world is ending, but more of a survival horror type book. poo poo gets dark enough to FEEL like the apocalypse. I actually caught this one as a book on tape and I still think about it from time to time. It was also made into a movie in 2008 but I never did see it. It would also perfectly with this request: Whalley posted:I want to read something that'll scare the poo poo out of me. So far, my list of books that have actually unnerved me is woefully short; there's House of Leaves, The Exorcist, Hell House and The Haunting of Hill House. The short story The Yellow Wallpaper was also surprisingly haunting and scary. Kathe Koja's The Cipher was like reading a horrible migraine, but something about it other than the awful prose really struck a chord too. On my list on goodreads, I've got The Terror by Dan Simmons coming up, but that's the only book on my to-read list that's really horror that I expect to make me feel kinda nervous. timp fucked around with this message at 20:15 on Oct 2, 2013 |
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2013 20:02
|
|
|
jacksonchan posted:A bit late, but I have a couple of recommendations that fit pretty close to what you are describing: Thanks! Circle Nine posted:
One of the few books to really creep me out is House of Leaves
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2013 06:45
|
|
|
Circle Nine posted:
The New Dead is an anthology that collects zombie stories by modern horror authors, including Joe Hill, Joe R. Lansdale, Max Brooks, and others. My friend got it for me because I love horror. I was a bit skeptical, but it's actually a lot more hits than misses. There are some disturbing stories, some creepy ones, one or two funny ones, and some are kind of emotional. The majority of the stories are good, and at worst they're readable. Plus you might find a new author you like. Goodreads page Amazon page
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2013 14:56
|
|
|
Circle Nine posted:
If you want something that has a super halloween-y feel (like, the supernatural, but also that feel of autumn, old colonial American architecture, etc.), then A Discovery of Witches would fit the bill, but it's also very much a grown-up, less dumb Twilight. Like, it's very much a love story, but it's written by an academic (the opening scenes take place in the Bodleian Library), so it's got some cool ideas that play on the historical figure of the vampire, witch, etc.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2013 15:37
|
|
|
DirtyRobot posted:If you want something that has a super halloween-y feel (like, the supernatural, but also that feel of autumn, old colonial American architecture, etc.), then A Discovery of Witches would fit the bill, but it's also very much a grown-up, less dumb Twilight. Like, it's very much a love story, but it's written by an academic (the opening scenes take place in the Bodleian Library), so it's got some cool ideas that play on the historical figure of the vampire, witch, etc. This made me think of the other Twilight by William Gay. Southern gothic about a creepy undertaker and the hitman he assigns to destroy our hero. Described on Goodreads as "an adventure through the Harrikin, an eerie backwoods filled with tangled roads, rusted machinery, and eccentric squatters-old men, witches, and families among them-who both shield and imperil Tyler as he runs for safety." It's really solidly written and I absolutely loved it. It's a great time of year for such a thing.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2013 17:48
|
|
|
Does Reamde start picking up at any point? I do most of my reading via Audible, and I just finished Stephenson's Baroque Cycle which took me about three years to get through in its entirety, mostly due to cutting in other books along the way. Honestly I feel almost a little lost now that all of it's done. I've loved everything else I've read by Stephenson, even Zodiac. I think the plot may be going somewhere (I'm currently At the part where Zula, Peter and Wallace are about to meet the Russians after they failed to fulfill the Reamde ransom), but the writing isn't really hooking me. I get that Stephenson is writing a book partially about video games for people who don't necessarily play them, but the style he's using seems to lack the his usual wit and resorts to explaining things in a much dryer, duller manner.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2013 19:22
|
|
|
Strange Matter posted:Does Reamde start picking up at any point? Yes, and it rarely slows down once it does.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2013 19:30
|
|
|
Reamde is terrible. I wouldn't waste my time (except of course that I already did as I also like Stephenson, but this one was a big miss).
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2013 00:45
|
|
|
Strange Matter posted:Does Reamde start picking up at any point? I do most of my reading via Audible, and I just finished Stephenson's Baroque Cycle which took me about three years to get through in its entirety, mostly due to cutting in other books along the way. Honestly I feel almost a little lost now that all of it's done. I've loved everything else I've read by Stephenson, even Zodiac. I think the plot may be going somewhere (I'm currently At the part where Zula, Peter and Wallace are about to meet the Russians after they failed to fulfill the Reamde ransom), but the writing isn't really hooking me. I get that Stephenson is writing a book partially about video games for people who don't necessarily play them, but the style he's using seems to lack the his usual wit and resorts to explaining things in a much dryer, duller manner. I thought Reamde was ok, but not close to any of his other books. You should check out the audiobook of Diamond Age if you haven't already - it's read extremely well and it's one his best books, in my opinion.
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2013 00:52
|
|
|
Chas McGill posted:I thought Reamde was ok, but not close to any of his other books. You should check out the audiobook of Diamond Age if you haven't already - it's read extremely well and it's one his best books, in my opinion. I'll stick with Reamde for now, since the three opinions I've gotten so far are "It's very exciting", "It's terrible" and "It's okay."
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2013 01:27
|
|
|
It does pick up some after that point, but I feel overall it was one of his weaker books. I especially thought if detailed descriptions of MMO design and being inside the MMO was going to take so much word space, it should have been a plot point or even mentioned in the latter half of the book. It seemed like it was a hook to a certain subset of people, and once the adventure/spy stuff started it wound up completely sidelined and ignored. Bhodi fucked around with this message at 03:00 on Oct 4, 2013 |
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2013 02:55
|
|
|
Reading Reamde was the only time I ever had the thought 'Neal needs a better editor.' I'm a colossal Neal Stephenson fanboy so this was sort of jarring to me.
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2013 03:05
|
|
|
Thanks for all the recommendations. I've got 9 novels and 4 short story collections so this should be a pretty darn spooky October.
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2013 03:41
|
|
|
Circle Nine posted:Thanks for all the recommendations. I've got 9 novels and 4 short story collections so this should be a pretty darn spooky October. If you run out, anything by Harry Crews is pretty gothic.
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2013 04:25
|
|
|
Looks like a lot of you are Neal Stephenson fans. I've never read anything by him. Which of his books would you recommend one start with?
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2013 08:01
|
|
|
timpanihilistic posted:
This is a good recommendation. I'm about a quarter of the way through and it has some legit scary, creepy scenes and the tension is great so far.
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2013 08:40
|
|
|
Sir John Feelgood posted:Looks like a lot of you are Neal Stephenson fans. I've never read anything by him. Which of his books would you recommend one start with? Try Snow Crash. Cyberpunk with Sumerian mythology and linguistics. It's crazy fun; the opening chapters of the book deal with a high-stakes, high-speed pizza delivery.
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2013 09:03
|
|
|
Sir John Feelgood posted:Looks like a lot of you are Neal Stephenson fans. I've never read anything by him. Which of his books would you recommend one start with? Depends. Snow Crash and Diamond Age fall in a near-future cyberpunk milieu (although all his works share similar themes) and books like Cryptonomicon and Reamde are more grounded in current and past realities. Anathem is a very interesting s/f book that is pretty standalone as well. Snow Crash was his breakthrough so it's typically read first, but if you have any interest in WWII codebreaking or data havens in the 90s, read Cryptonomicon.
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2013 09:46
|
|
|
Snow Crash was my first book by Neal Stephenson and I loved it, and I think what's most interesting about it is how all the disparate elements (the virtual reality stuff, the bizarre post-America corporations running everything, the sumerian mythology and the real world harpoon combat) actually blend together. It's also helpful to realize that Snow Crash is both a satire of cyberpunk tropes and a fully realized cyberpunk story. I'd read that before anything else, honestly, because it's probably Stephenson's most accessible novel.
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2013 13:34
|
|
|
Strange Matter posted:Snow Crash was my first book by Neal Stephenson and I loved it, and I think what's most interesting about it is how all the disparate elements (the virtual reality stuff, the bizarre post-America corporations running everything, the sumerian mythology and the real world harpoon combat) actually blend together. It's also helpful to realize that Snow Crash is both a satire of cyberpunk tropes and a fully realized cyberpunk story. It pretty much concluded cyberpunk as a genre, for me. (Yes, I'm old enough to have been reading that kind of stuff before that book came out.)
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2013 13:39
|
|
|
Groke posted:It pretty much concluded cyberpunk as a genre, for me. (Yes, I'm old enough to have been reading that kind of stuff before that book came out.)
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2013 13:44
|
|
|
Circle Nine posted:
Dark Harvest is probably the most on point Halloween recommendation I could give. Read it last year at Halloween. It's short but really intense and a lot of high octane fun. Summary: Winner of the Bram Stoker Award and named one of the 100 Best Novels of 2006 by Publishers Weekly, Dark Harvest by Nroman Patridge is a powerhouse thrill-ride with all the resonance of Shirley Jackson’s "The Lottery." Halloween, 1963. They call him the October Boy, or Ol’ Hacksaw Face, or Sawtooth Jack. Whatever the name, everybody in this small Midwestern town knows who he is. How he rises from the cornfields every Halloween, a butcher knife in his hand, and makes his way toward town, where gangs of teenage boys eagerly await their chance to confront the legendary nightmare. Both the hunter and the hunted, the October Boy is the prize in an annual rite of life and death. Pete McCormick knows that killing the October Boy is his one chance to escape a dead-end future in this one-horse town. He’s willing to risk everything, including his life, to be a winner for once. But before the night is over, Pete will look into the saw-toothed face of horror--and discover the terrifying true secret of the October Boy . . . “This is contemporary American writing at its finest.”--Publishers Weekly (starred review) on Dark Harvest
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2013 16:51
|
|
|
Archibald Cox posted:Magic realism is often associated with the Latin American Boom" If that's your interest, you could check out A Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or work by Isabel Allende, Julio Cortazar, or Asturias' Men of Maize. If you're willing to branch out, I'd also recommend Midnight's Children or The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. I'd also like to toss in Téa Obreht's The Tiger's Wife. It's probably one of the better magical realism books I've read in the past couple years or so, and it takes place in the Balkans.
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2013 22:10
|
|
|
Ah, okay, now I'm getting into Reamde. It took me a bit to realize that the actual plot of the book is "Russians are the most banal gangsters in the world, unless you threaten their dental plan." Now I'm onboard.
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2013 04:59
|
|
|
I was just reading this Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rider_Waite_Tarot_deck inspired partly by the cards in Persona 4 Is there any good occult fiction out there? Most of what I've dredged up seems to be works by people who actually believe in it. I'm looking for something with secret societies like the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and that group in that one Sherlock Holmes movie, but where the magic actually works and so does the story.
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2013 05:30
|
|
|
TopherCStone posted:I was just reading this Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rider_Waite_Tarot_deck inspired partly by the cards in Persona 4 Rosemary's Baby is the only book I can think of like that. There's loads of films with this general theme but I'm coming up short in the book department. I'm assuming you don't want urban horror stuff like Dresden Files? e: The River of No Return regulargonzalez fucked around with this message at 06:56 on Oct 7, 2013 |
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2013 06:52
|
|
|
TopherCStone posted:I was just reading this Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rider_Waite_Tarot_deck inspired partly by the cards in Persona 4 You might want to look into Tim Powers. Especially Last Call (playin' poker with Tarot cards, mixin' up the creation of Las Vegas with the Fisher King legend, etc.) and Declare (featuring the secret occult history of the Cold War).
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2013 07:41
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 18, 2024 09:32 |
|
|
regulargonzalez posted:Rosemary's Baby is the only book I can think of like that. There's loads of films with this general theme but I'm coming up short in the book department. I'm assuming you don't want urban horror stuff like Dresden Files? Dresden Files is a bit on the silly side compared to what I'm looking for, but I'll look into Rosemary's Baby and The River of No Return. Thanks! Groke posted:You might want to look into Tim Powers. Especially Last Call (playin' poker with Tarot cards, mixin' up the creation of Las Vegas with the Fisher King legend, etc.) and Declare (featuring the secret occult history of the Cold War). I'll check those out too, thanks!
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2013 12:33
|
|