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funkybottoms posted:...if you like learning about the Swedish Constitution. Bone, you should check out Jo Nesbo, Jussi Adler-Olsen and Henning Mankell, all of whom do dark Scandinavian mystery/thrillers better than Stieg Larsson (in my opinion). Thanks for the suggestion! I just finished The Girl who Played with Fire. I tore through it, and enjoyed how it played out a little more than the first book. Already started the third, though right now it still feels like I'm reading the second. I'm optimistic though!
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Nov 16, 2013 05:36
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Just finished up The Universe vs Alex Woods by Gavin Extence. Not my usual fair (meaning no zombies, and it wasn't fantasy or urban fantasy). Basically, it's the story of a kid who gets whanged in the head by a meteorite. Surprisingly good, some parts were kinda dry and over verbose, but overall it's a damned good book. I actually teared up at one point in the book, which is kinda rare for me. Think it's something like 2$ or 3$ on kindle (or was when I bought it), so it's worth grabbing if you want to read about a kid who gets beaned in the head by a meteorite and his life afterwards. Surprisingly sweet book.
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Nov 16, 2013 23:38
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Just finished book #2 of the "Shoal Sequence" by Gary Gibson, Nova War. Suffered a bit from "middle book syndrome," and dragged along in a few parts, but overall, I'm having a lot of fun with this trilogy. Fairly derivative, but sometimes that's not a bad thing... If you're looking for a straight-up Space Opera, this would scratch that itch rather well.
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Nov 18, 2013 22:39
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Sketches by Boz, by Charles Dickens. I'm on a Dickens kick.
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Nov 19, 2013 02:56
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Limits of Power by Elizabeth Moon. Now to wait for the final book in the series, which doesn't come out until the end of May. 
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Nov 19, 2013 05:17
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Just finished This Book is Full of Spiders by David Wong of John Dies at the End fame. Good book, and funny, but I felt like it lost its luster even before the halfway point. Reminded me a lot of Palahniuk. It was pretty graphic at times, but at the same time reminiscent of a Cohen Brothers fiasco movie.
robotsinmyhead fucked around with this message at 17:53 on Nov 19, 2013 |
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Nov 19, 2013 17:47
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Mockingbird by Walter Tevis. A future dystopia where humanity is on the downward spiral after restructuring and automating everything to fulfill all their needs. As a result, the population is in a drug-induced coma, the technology that keeps them complacent is slowly crumbling away, and no new children are being born. It centers on a couple who have learned the lost art of reading and a super-intelligent android programmed with human urges but no way to fulfill them who is tasked with maintaining the collapsing world. It kind of reminded me of The Giver in that the main character is rediscovering something essentially human that was previously lost and begins to see the ills of their society.
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Nov 20, 2013 05:53
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Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie, 4 stars. Blurb: quote:On a remote, icy planet, the soldier known as Breq is drawing closer to completing her quest. Breq is both more than she seems and less than she was. Years ago, she was the Justice of Toren--a colossal starship with an artificial intelligence linking thousands of corpse soldiers in the service of the Radch, the empire that conquered the galaxy. An act of treachery has ripped it all away, leaving her with only one fragile human body. And only one purpose--to revenge herself on Anaander Mianaai, many-bodied, near-immortal Lord of the Radch. I have real mixed feelings about this book. Looking back on it now that I'm done, I really enjoyed the worldbuilding. It seems like Ann Leckie put ten times as much thought into the worlds and cultures and languages of this book, than most science fiction authors do in theirs. The Radch empire is such a robust creation, and for everything we learn about it during this novel, it feels like there are dozens of books worth of unwritten detail under the surface. The characters and their interrelationships, and the broader politics in this book are also complex and well formed. The core concept of a once-omniscient AI forced to inhabit a single human body is fascinating to say the least, and it makes Breq/Justice such a compelling character. I've gotta give a lot of kudos to Leckie for all of the above. With her future books I really think she could be a great successor to Iain M Banks' space opera legacy (you know, if Banks wrote about evil slave-driving empires instead of utopian socialist societies). But then I look at my start- and end-date for this book (over a month apart) and think, why did it take me so long to finish? The simple answer is that it was plodding. So plodding — with whole scenes and chapters taken up by conversation after conversation. There's a tiny smidgen of action in the last 40 or so pages, but the first 350 pages of the novel were just the constant machinations and ruminations and conversations of characters. I would have liked more descriptive passages about the worlds Breq visits and the ships and technology and so on. But I guess that's more hard-sf content, while this is mostly a social-sf story. In the end, I guess I didn't hate all that slow-building non-action. By the climax, things are slotting into place nicely, and the characters have had a lot of development. The taste of action at the end promises more excitement in future books. This was a rewarding book for sure, but with its snail's pace, it made it so hard to focus on when I have lots of other books demanding my attention. Rating: 4 stars — despite being a bit of a slog to read, the book had an interesting world and a great, complicated main character and I simply want to know what happens in the next book. I'm looking forward to more about the alien races, which were in the background for this first excursion.
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Nov 20, 2013 09:18
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Just finished Spring Snow. I wish it had been 50 percent longer. Going to start The Count of Monte Cristo today, I'm really excited about it.
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Nov 22, 2013 23:04
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The Bone Season, by Samantha Shannon. Picked this up mostly on a whim, because I heard it was "'the next big thing'". Yeah, I wasn't expecting much, and it certainly starts out reading like a bad cyberpunk novel. Someone desperately needs to sit Shannon down and explain to her how to write exposition properly, because this was some really clumsy loving exposition. The terrible made-up fantasy gibberish- and I say this as someone who grew up immersed in and loving all sorts of made-up fantasy gibberish- was especially jarring. But as soon as she stopped building her world and started playing with it, everything seemed to fall neatly into place and the plot flowed, I'm not going to say rapidly- the book is nearly five hundred pages long with only one plot thread- but it had a measured, very deliberate pace. If there was a glaring weakness, beyond the introduction, it's probably the romantic subplot. I knew exactly where that was going as soon as our protagonist said that the tall dark and handsome supernatural creature was "the single most beautiful and terrible thing [she]'d ever laid eyes on" ( ), and it was definitely veering into wish-fulfillment fanfic territory in places.I don't think it's destined for international commercial success on the scale of JK Rowling, but I'm definitely tuning in for the next installment. Also nearly done re-reading Jan Lars Jensen's Shiva 3000. Sometimes I reread books I loved when I was a teenager and discover that they're kinda crap. Sometimes I reread them and discover that they're even better than I remember; this definitely belongs in the latter category. Jensen clearly has no problems with exposition- he knows exactly when to show and when to tell, and when to sketch lightly and when to draw to detail. The prose has this great, not subtle, exactly, but understated quality without ever being unclear. Makes me even sadder, now, that the book drove him insane and he'll probably never write another novel. 
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Nov 23, 2013 04:43
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Autonomous Monster posted:I knew exactly where that was going as soon as our protagonist said that the tall dark and handsome supernatural creature was "the single most beautiful and terrible thing [she]'d ever laid eyes on" ( Exactly where I stopped- not to mention poo poo got real stupid once what was really going on was explained.
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Nov 23, 2013 12:32
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Clive Barker's Coldheart Canyon. What a piece of poo poo book, and what makes it even worse is knowing that Barker is a very capable writer. I kept reading it past page 200 because the premise is interesting and I wanted to check if there was something even remotely interesting or well crafted happening but no, it's really boring and overall terrible.
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Nov 23, 2013 19:43
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funkybottoms posted:Exactly where I stopped- not to mention poo poo got real stupid once what was really going on was explained. Yeah, I honestly can't say I blame you. Though, I guess, having given it a mostly positive review, I'm kind of obliged to say, if you still have the book, to maybe give it another chapter or two? That was also the exact point where things started to improve, for me. The nadir.
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Nov 24, 2013 02:48
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Just knocked out Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro and it was pretty much a stinker. It dragged forever and would have been more palatable as a novella half its length. The entire "plot" of which there isn't much is pretty spelled out in the first couple of chapters, so all of the "big reveals" really aren't. It's more like a character study but without the characters having much of a personality. The narrator is as bland and uninteresting as possible and only really has one scene where she isn't just sort of a robot blandly describing events. I get that they wanted to make them feel detached, but its really hard to develop empathy for a character as interesting as a cardboard box. Tommy, because he showed the capability for growth and emotions was 100x more interesting than Kathy (or Ruth, or anyone really) and it probably would have been a much more interesting story from his PoV.
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Nov 24, 2013 08:07
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Just finished the Mortal Engines by Phillip Reeve, the first book. It was really well done and it deserves a place among classic YA books like Harry Potter. I loved how tight the action is and it felt very atmospheric. Also Hester 
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Nov 24, 2013 08:42
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Brave New World. They tried forcing us to read this in high school to become one with society; I resisted. I wanted to think on my own. Whoops. I missed out on a pretty drat good book.
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Nov 25, 2013 05:57
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Just finished reading The Name Of The Rose primarily whilst listening to crazy IDM music. So any sense of atmosphere, setting or tone in my brain that occurred during the reading is probably hosed up beyond any resemblance of what the author envisioned in any way shape or form. It was decent though. I think I'll start Middlemarch or finish The Brothers Karamazov tomorrow. I didn't choose these books for any particular reason though, it's not like I have taste in literature. I really just grind my way through top-100-novels-of-all-time lists. Not creative.FrozenLederhosen posted:Just finished Spring Snow. I wish it had been 50 percent longer. The Count of Monte Cristo is really really awesome. Enjoy!! The Consultant fucked around with this message at 07:54 on Nov 25, 2013 |
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Nov 25, 2013 07:51
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The Consultant posted:The Count of Monte Cristo is really really awesome. Enjoy!! Man, Alexandre Dumas kicked rear end; I read the whole Musketeer series some years back (yes, all of it) and it was awesome too. Personally I just finished rereading Iain Banks' The Wasp Factory, about twenty or so years after the first time I read it, thanks to its selection as the book-of-the-month here this month. It was pretty great this time around as well; remembering the broad details of the plot allowed me to concentrate on the prose and imagery more, and my own different perspective (fresh early-20s university student, vs. early-40s family man with small children) brought additional value to the reread. As did the bitterness of the author's recent death (Banks has been one of my favourite writers for those entire twenty years). Very highly recommended.
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Nov 25, 2013 12:13
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Philthy posted:Brave New World. They tried forcing us to read this in high school to become one with society; I resisted. I wanted to think on my own. I recently blasted through Denis Johnson's Nobody Move and Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. The Johnson book I grabbed on a whim since I knew the name and some of his short stories and the cover was cool. Was a nice, low key, grimy noir and not totally what I expected, but still really enjoyable. I picked up Oscar Wao after seeing Diaz speak at my school (he's funny and smart as hell) and read something like 150 pages in a day. Seriously, it was nuts. It's one of those novels that's somehow zippy and dense as gently caress all at once and I love any novel that can blend sci-fi/fantasy into it without it getting too overwhelming or obnoxious (does get close, sometimes, though).
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Nov 25, 2013 15:39
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Just finished Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier. She did an incredible job in creating a very unsettling atmosphere in the setting (mysterious inn set on the coast near dangerous moors), but Rebecca was much, much better. One of the disappointing aspects in Jamaica Inn is that there's a romance stuck in there that is bizarre and unsatisfying. To du Maurier's credit, at least she acknowledges (by having the main character acknowledge) that the guy is a creep and an rear end in a top hat and is only attractive to her because he's good-looking and she's lonely. The romance feels unnecessary, though, and like something added in a later draft to please an editor.
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Nov 25, 2013 21:56
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bowmore posted:Just finished the Mortal Engines by Phillip Reeve, the first book. It was really well done and it deserves a place among classic YA books like Harry Potter. I loved how tight the action is and it felt very atmospheric. One of my very favorite series ever. I read all 7 books in publication order over the years and then last year I listened to the audio version in chronological order. It was a marvelous experience and (though many disagree) really enjoyed them more that way. Fever Crumb A Web Of Air Scrivener's Moon Mortal Engines Predator's Gold Infernal Devices A Darkling Plain Absolutely fascinating and the author's ability to take a unlikely strategy (mobile cities) and make the world credible and emotionally affecting. Good choice Sir!
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Nov 26, 2013 03:32
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Just finished Five Billion Years of Solitude. In short it's about our place on the universe, the hunt for exoplanets, the history and mechanics of our planet and the inevitability of our extinction should we make no efforts to become an intergalactic civilization. Kinda depressed now, but I enjoyed every part of it less the history of the earth which seems to read like the book of Genesis of the bible (this happened, then that happened, then this happened, then that happened. Zzzzzzzzzz)
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Nov 26, 2013 07:37
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Watcher of the Dark - Joe Nassise Damned good book. I love the Jeremiah Hunt Chronicle, and was floored by the first one. The second one was pretty amazing and I wasn't sure how he could really top it, but the third book kicked all kinds of rear end. The main character is Jeremiah Hunt, and as explained in all 3 books, his daughter was kidnapped. He spent years looking with no luck and slowly going insane until he ran across an old preacher with no eyes, who told him he could help him find her. Well, turns out taking the mysterious old non eyed Preacher's advice was not a good thing. He performs a spell that while allowing him to see all the hidden things in the world (ghosts, goblins, wee wickie beasties) it has the unfortunate side effect of burning out his eyes (and bringing him to the notice of the things we don't see). The first book has him looking for his daughter and getting caught up in a murder spree. The second book has him in New Orleans attempting to figure out what a strange warning was about, and the third book has him in L.A. hiding out from the events of the first 2 books. It's weird to say that the book is well written because of the world building, when you are talking about a character that is functionally blind 90% of the time, but Nassise really nails it. It's not often someone actually writes about New Orleans and manages to actually make the city feel real as opposed to the way it's presented in the movies. He does it again with L.A., and focuses less on the actual street names and "went here to this place and got food" sort of mentions, and focused more on the motivations of the various characters. It's a hell of a ride, and you do get to learn a bit more about The Preacher as he's called. He is one creepy son of a bitch. Weirdly, he never really does anything in the books. Most of the creepy baddies in books tend to kill various people, children, dogs, act rapey, deranged or just plain evil. Preacher doesn't do that, he's just creepy all by himself. He helps (most of the time), but holy gently caress this guy is just unnerving. It's not often a character shows up and I get chills, but this one makes me feel like I'm walking into a dentist office in silent hill. If you liked the first book, you'll love this one.
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Nov 26, 2013 09:30
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I just finished Blood Rites (Dresden Files #6). I don't love the Dresden books, but they're the perfect level of pulp entertainment to be an easy go-to in between reading other books - I've been tending to pick up one of these and they're the perfect filler for a few days as I choose my next read. Anyhow, there was a pretty big development in this volume. Personally, I was pretty stoked about the half-brother reveal, I have always thought Thomas was a cool character. I like the way Butcher deals with the juxtiposition of sexy powerful vampire and dark, semi-shameful monster. I started China Miéville's The City and The City last night and got sucked in very quickly... We will see how it turns out, but so far I am really enjoying his writing. civilian.d fucked around with this message at 16:02 on Nov 26, 2013 |
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Nov 26, 2013 15:58
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bowmore posted:Just finished the Mortal Engines by Phillip Reeve, the first book. It was really well done and it deserves a place among classic YA books like Harry Potter. I loved how tight the action is and it felt very atmospheric. One of my favorite final lines of dialog in a book is at the end of that one: “You aren't a hero and I'm not beautiful and we probably won't live happily ever after," she said. "But we're alive and together and we're going to be all right.” Considering what just happened, it was amazing.
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Nov 26, 2013 16:15
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civilian.d posted:I just finished Blood Rites (Dresden Files #6). I don't love the Dresden books, but they're the perfect level of pulp entertainment to be an easy go-to in between reading other books - I've been tending to pick up one of these and they're the perfect filler for a few days as I choose my next read. Any book about a wizard protecting a porn studio is a good one  Seriously thought, Dead Beat (the next one) is one of my hands down favorites in the series. You are gonna love it.
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Nov 26, 2013 16:49
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I read The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly. I loved it, but I'm not sure how to put it into words. I guess it felt like a fairy tale type story aimed at adults (or maybe teenagers), and something about that just feels refreshing. Afterwards I read Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke. Some things rubbed me the wrong way about it, like every problem on Earth being resolved within 50 years, which I know, the human race was helped towards that, but it still felt a bit unrealistic to me; maybe I'm just a cynic. The whole book though, especially the last part, struck me as quite unique, but maybe I need to read more SF. Afterward that one, I read The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester. It wasn't bad, but I did have a few problems with it. Part of this is the fact I was told it was "The Count of Monte Cristo" but in space. I was like "awesome, one of my favorite books!" I'm well aware the parallels are deliberate, but yeah, I was rather bothered when it turns out Foyle is a horrible person who rapes another character (this part also really baffled me, because I had a hard time figuring out -why- he did it, not that it's ever justified, but more that it seemed to have little point (other than setting up conflict later on). Maybe it was to drive home how messed up he was, but honestly it really bothered me. Other than that aspect, if nothing else, the ideas in the book, like how jaunting changed the world, were really interesting. I also really liked the writing style in the final parts of the book. The last book I finished was The Maid: A novel of Joan of Arc by Kimberly Cutter. As people can probably guess by looking at my posts in this thread, Joan/Jeanne is one of my favorite historical figures. It's probably my favorite of the novels about her yet, because she comes off as really human in this one. She has a temper problem, she has desires, she isn't immune to pride. It makes her seem less divine, and while you can hear her voices in the story, it's quite open to interpretation if they're divine or some sort of insanity, which is actually kind of nice. The writing is a bit wonky at times, but otherwise pretty good. The one thing I'd mention to anyone thinking of reading this novel is to either have Wikipedia open while you read it, or read a different book about Joan/Jeanne first. The novel sort of assumes you're familiar with the time period and people. It's not a problem for me, because yeah, I read about her a lot, but I think a newcomer would be very confused.
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Nov 26, 2013 23:03
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tonytheshoes posted:One of my favorite final lines of dialog in a book is at the end of that one: specklebang posted:One of my very favorite series ever. I read all 7 books in publication order over the years and then last year I listened to the audio version in chronological order. It was a marvelous experience and (though many disagree) really enjoyed them more that way.
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Nov 27, 2013 01:15
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I finished Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin and I of course don't know what to think yet. Instead I'll quote what's become one of my favorite passages from any book I've read.quote:Stalking about their suddenly darkened apartment thirty floors above the East River, Martin and Abby weathered one of these storms in primal fright. This was the first time either had seen such a performance and been old enough to appreciate it. Martin remembered a few small thunderstorms, but there is all the difference in the world between a storm ten miles away and one right overhead. Hardesty and Virginia were at work, and Mrs. Solemnis was taking a typically unshakable nap. When the two children couldn't wake her, they thought that she had been killed by the storm, and they went into the kitchen to peep out the window toward Hell Gate.
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Nov 27, 2013 05:07
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bowmore posted:Yeah it's one of those lines that give you tingles Always read in the order they were written.
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Nov 27, 2013 05:35
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bowmore posted:Yeah it's one of those lines that give you tingles In my opinion© which as I mentioned, is NOT a popular opinion, I would go in chronological order. Why? Because I felt I wanted to understand more about a)how this all came about b) the obscure references to people like Charlie Shallow make more sense c) you'll understand more about Shrike (or Grike in the US versions) origins and thus his reaction to Hester makes more sense and the whys and wherefores of the aircraft development etc. is much more apparent and less fantastical if you read them in order. But that's just me - I'm big on chronology and I've done this to other series with existing prequels. Neal Asher is a good example of the value of following chronology over publication dates. I liked every book in the entire series and Fever Crumb is another unforgettable character like Hester, Anna Fang and Shrike.
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Nov 27, 2013 22:06
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Shrike is such a better name than Grike, why did they change it for the Americans?
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Nov 27, 2013 23:13
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bowmore posted:Shrike is such a better name than Grike, why did they change it for the Americans? Another book was released around the same time and had a major character named Shrike so Scholastic made the decision which the author was not pleased about but has no control. But otherwise, I think the books are near identical. I've collected both the US and UK editions.
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Nov 28, 2013 03:48
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Finishing up The Black Dahlia now, which means I'm all done with the L.A. Quartet. I gave American Tabloid a read before Dahlia and, while I enjoyed it, what I was really in the mood for was more hardboiled detective nonsense. Now I'm debating continuing with the Underworld USA trilogy or going in a completely different direction with either more Asimov or The Skystone. Or I guess I could try his Lloyd Hopkins trilogy, but Dahlia already felt much less refined than Big Nowhere, LA Confidential and White Jazz (though White Jazz was almost impenetrable at points). Not sure if I'll enjoy it.
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Nov 29, 2013 20:55
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I just finished The Palace Job by Patrick Weekes and it might not have been "The Lies Of Locke Lamora", I though it did a great job in the same genre. I might have found this book right here on SA but I don't remember who to credit. Anyway, for $4.00, I thought it was quite the bargain.
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Dec 1, 2013 00:23
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Burning Paradise, by Robert Charles Wilson (The Chronoliths, Spin, etc.). An alt-history scifi story, set in 2014 in a world where WWII didn't happen and technology therefore didn't progress quite as fast (jetliners just starting to appear and so on). This is due to a Mystery, which our characters have an inkling of and don't really appreciate (this being the setup to the plot). Pretty good, though maybe not on the level of Spin. Typically RCW in tone - somber, even bleak at times - with believable non-cardboard characters and some solid-looking science beneath.
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Dec 1, 2013 10:48
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A A 2 3 5 8 K posted:I finished Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin and I of course don't know what to think yet. Instead I'll quote what's become one of my favorite passages from any book I've read. Winter's Tale is an awkward sort of book - it's longwinded, cryptic, indulgent, sentimental and possibly meaningless. (I shudder to think what the movie is going to be like.) I once read that it is the favourite book of dreamy impractical young men. But it works despite or perhaps because of that. There's dozens of beautiful passages like the one you quoted, because it's an can indulge in these side-stories and irrelevant details. A book that will be meaningless to most readers of SA, but I just finished Don Walker's Shots. It's probably one of the most Australian books I've ever read and verges on being culturally untranslatable. Walker was the piano player and songwriter for a famous Australia band in the 80s, and "Shots" is a very impressionist, flow-of-consciousness memoir from his youth, through the band days and then travelling around the world. He explains little, gives almost no back story or context, there's just incidents and pictures gathered from his life. quote:Poor Billy Keeper. Hangin' in the barn, discovered on Empire Day, the afternoon making its long eventful way to cracker night. In truth, something hangs low over the grown-ups all day, like they all knew, like they had a delegation secretly doing it, everyone waiting, then the ealry afternoon siren sweeping out from town, the yellow ambulance through the railway gates, through the picnic ground and down to Keeper's farm. A great book but - as said - very niche.
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Dec 1, 2013 13:48
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Just finished Bill Brysons A Short History of Nearly Everything and really enjoyed it. As a science minded person it was cool to see both an outside insight into my field (physics) as well as a really brief primer on nearly every other field of science. I came out of it wanting to read more on nearly every subject he talked about. Bryson does a really good job of being both wide ranging as well as reasonably complete and manages to keep most of what he talks about fascinating. If anyone has interest in science of any time, or just wants to learn more about life, earth, humans, etc, I'd highly recommend it.
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Dec 1, 2013 18:52
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outlier posted:Winter's Tale is an awkward sort of book - it's longwinded, cryptic, indulgent, sentimental and possibly meaningless. (I shudder to think what the movie is going to be like.) I once read that it is the favourite book of dreamy impractical young men. But it works despite or perhaps because of that. There's dozens of beautiful passages like the one you quoted, because it's an can indulge in these side-stories and irrelevant details.
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Dec 2, 2013 01:12
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Just finished Naive. Super by Erland Loe I think I picked it up while looking at a bunch of recent and slightly indie fiction. It's had a bit of a reputation - you can find webpages of quotes from it. The narrator is an anonymous 25 year-old who, in a fit of anomie, drops out of university to think about things, while minding his brothers apartment. The slightest of books, you could easily knock this over in an hour or two. Even given that, it's a simple, light read as the narrator makes lists of things that make him happy, looks up swear words in a library catalogue and plays with children's toys. The language is also very plain and a little staccato, perhaps due to the translation. Not a deep read, not a great one, but maybe a comforting, pleasant one for when you're a little depressed and needing a bit of low-key comfort.
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Dec 3, 2013 20:03
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