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The Left Hand of Darkness is the only LeGuin I've ever read. I read it as an adult, and It's pretty great. I think you kind of have to accept it as the "preachy scifi" subgenre, but it's good.
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Aug 25, 2015 06:12
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Cythereal posted:Just finished The Sleepwalkers: how Europe went to war in 1914 by John Clark. I read The Guns of August a few months ago and really liked it; adding Sleepwalkers to my queue. Thanks for the post. BTW, I highly recommend Dan Carlin's Hardcore History "Blueprint for Armageddon" podcast series for anyone looking for a good overview of WWI. It's what got me interested in learning more about the war. At 6 episodes, each 3-4 hours long, it's basically a free audiobook on the subject.
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Aug 25, 2015 14:08
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Master Of Formalities by Scott Meyer I got the book via Netgallet and had the following to stay on: Meh, is my summary for this. I liked SM's first book "Off To Be The Wizard", which was a fun little parody if not ground breaking. I was hoping for more of the same, but everything just falls totally flat. Formal house surving staff in the sci-fi age, but it doesn't really do anything with the idea. There's no interesting speculation for SF fans and while I could be missing something on the more "classic" side, I'm willing to bet I'm not. Nothing really made me laugh, everyone is stupid because the plot says so including a planet of horribly ruin and aggressive people who are all horrible because they are. No one really grows and the world building fails because there's no depth or funny. There's a "twist" in the end you'll see a mile off, Read his webcomics instead. (Quick phone-post review, but that's all it deserves really)
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Aug 27, 2015 21:10
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Goblin Emperor: Solid book, good prose, bits of plot felt a bit too convenient at times. Probably Hugo worthy, but I haven't read Three Body. Shards of Honor and Barreyar: I Bought two Miles Vorkorsigan books and there was no loving Miles. Also both books were great. I, uh, assume he's the MC of the next one? Hard Luck Hank: Reasonably fun. A little clunky in places. Half a King: Abercrombie is improved vastly by having to tone down the grit for a YA audience. Liked this rather more than First Law, though the opening to the next book didn't look particularly promising. Dragons of Autumn Twilight: Oh god it's horrible. Why did I buy a Dragonlance book? I knew what I was getting into. I can blame no-one but myself for this. Well, myself, Weiss, and Hickman.
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Aug 28, 2015 05:02
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I finished The Terror from Dan Simmons. It was very refreshing after some lovely books that I have read recently. It is about the lost expedition of Sir John Franklin. If you don't know what that is...it was lost expedition of British that tried to navigate North-West passage from England to Asia in mid-19th century. More than 130 men that set sail were never seen again despite having food for 7 years and equipped with the best technology at the time. Both ships were even equipped with steam engines and central heating systems. Book relies heavily on historical facts and you learn a lot about 19th century sailing, arctic and survival in extreme cold. The book soon turns from a history novel to horror as a "thing on the ice" starts to stalk the ships frozen in arctic ice. It is trully an awesome horror-survival novel and heavily recommended if you like long stuff (it has almost 800 pages).
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Aug 28, 2015 13:48
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Ancient_Mariner posted:I finished The Terror from Dan Simmons. I can also recommend this. Simultaneously one of the best horror novels and one of the best historical fiction novels I've ever read. Amazing tale, and some of the horrific imagery will haunt me forever.
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Aug 28, 2015 13:55
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The Mistborn Trilogy by Brandon Sanderson. Saw a pic that described it as Ocean's Eleven 100's of years after Sauron had been in power. The Martian by Andy Weir 1812, The Navy's War by Daughan
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Aug 30, 2015 08:14
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Fart.Bleed.Repeat. posted:Agreed about the armies and towns and things moving on, but i think why i found it jarring was that ok so we've got our main players in their little groups- swan & josh & rusty, sister & paul- and here 7 years later, it's still just those same pairs wandering around lost, looking for each other, just like they left off at the end of Book1 - while the other side has so much more accomplishment(armies of thousands, towns destroyed in their wake), that it seems they have moved on in that 7 years I see your point. On the other hand, Sister is trying to find a girl she's never met - and whose name she doesn't even find out for several years, as I recall - in a country the size of America with no long distance communication and no transportation beyond Shank's pony and the occasional cart. It's hardly surprising that it takes seven years. All the army leaders had to do was appear strong and offer food, and people would gather to them automatically.
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Aug 30, 2015 10:34
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Off to Be the Wizard was a quick read, recommended by a friend who said that if you liked the sort of goofyness/cheesy reading of Ready Player One, I'd like it. It's definitely not the best written book ever, but it was well worth the money. Definitely the nerd equivalent of a trashy novel. Gone Girl was the next book I read, which isn't exactly the same type of book as OTBTW. I thought it was very good, and better than the movie because you really get into Nick's head in the books that you just can't get into in the movie. A friend said he didn't like Affleck's acting because he just sorta seemed disinterested and like he didn't care, but that's exactly the point - with the movie you don't get that it's part of the character like you do with the book
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Aug 30, 2015 13:52
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Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County: A Family, a Virginia Town, a Civil Rights Battle (Kristen Green): Five years after Brown v. Board of Education (of which a Prince Edward case was included among the five in Brown), Prince Edward was ordered to integrate. Whites opted to remove funding and close the public schools. The whites organized a private school, Prince Edward Academy (now known as Fuqua) while the schools stayed closed for four years until court ordered to reopen. There's some good writing here, especially a chapter about those too poor to afford other options and simply went uneducated for four (or more) years. Green is a native of the county and attended the segregation academy, giving her a personal interest. That's fine, but at the end of nearly every chapter, she feels the need to interject the current parenting and experiences of her multiracial family with her multiracial husband. That and her own bio in the intro is trying to convince you that she is not a racist. She may have grown up ignorant and her family had historical ties with the school, but she's totally not a racist. The other issue I had is that she jumped over 2-3 years of story. This is what some black parents did when the crisis began, the private school opened, Kennedy is elected and big jump to Bobby Kennedy helping to step up the pressure to reopen the schools. Very fascinating overall, though, for its history. I would recommend it as a Civil Rights starter book about how lovely southern whites were(are). RC and Moon Pie fucked around with this message at 01:14 on Sep 1, 2015 |
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Sep 1, 2015 01:08
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Wastelands 2
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Sep 1, 2015 02:17
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Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson, and got the happy surprise of readable YA fiction. Quite different in style from his other work and the twists were a little telegraphed although I missed the steelheart weakness. Onwards to Firefight.
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Sep 3, 2015 10:01
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A Scanner Darkly by PK Dick. Lots of mixed feels, it's loosely autobiographical insofar as his time spent addicted to amphetamines in the late 60s. I can see where it's also one of his most accessible works since it reads for the first 3/4s like Burroughs-lite drug lit. His weaving of paranoia and conspiracy through the story helps guide it along, I think.
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Sep 3, 2015 17:11
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To Rule The Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World, by Arthur Herman. It's a history of the British Royal Navy with an emphasis on the geopolitical impact of the navy's history and its interactions with the rise, preeminence, and eventual decline of the British Empire. Recommended to me by the history book thread and well worth the read if you're interested in the subject. The history of the Royal Navy impinges on a lot of historical periods and events and this book does take time to at least briefly consider most of the non-British events and perspectives involved, though the only extensive review of non-British perspectives come with Napoleon and 20th century Germany. I found the book accessible and enjoyable to read, if perhaps a touch hagiographical for my taste - the book does not like to linger on the Royal Navy's defeats and miscalculations except as part of a slide into bitter melancholy about history once the book hits World War Two and beyond. Still, it's a good overview of a broad subject from its beginnings to ending with the Falklands conflict, and I found it very readable and accessible. Recommended.
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Sep 3, 2015 19:51
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Armada Ernest Cline Well, that was certainly the wreck that everyone seemed to expect. I think I actually preferred Ready P1 to this, if i had to pick. Thankfully I do not have to make that choice. I think the story in the first was at least interesting , but this one it was just trash Also did I loving read right in the acknowledgements that he is working with Spielberg on a film adaptation of ready player one?
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Sep 5, 2015 03:04
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BashGhouse posted:
I love this series. I dunno why, but I do. It helps when the dude's main battle cry is "EAT SUCK, SUCKFACE" and it goes over as well as you'd expect. The short stories are also pretty awesome, and I'm about 95% sure they are on kindle unlimited with the regular series.
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Sep 5, 2015 10:21
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Fart.Bleed.Repeat. posted:Armada Ernest Cline Yes. Spielberg plans to direct. It's definitely in his wheelhouse, though, so it could be a better movie than a book.
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Sep 6, 2015 23:56
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Under the Banner of Heaven by John Krakauer It covers the history of Joseph Smith, the LDS church and polygamist Mormon sects alongside some more recent events like Elizabeth Smart abduction and murders by the Lafferty brothers in the 80s. The subject matter was very interesting to me, I wasn't familiar with any of those subjects and the history of the LDS church and Joseph Smith is crazier than I imagined. It shifts chapter to chapter between the modern events and the historical stuff, each chapter is about 12-20 minutes long.
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Sep 7, 2015 00:45
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Just finished Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee. Like many people, I was a big fan of To Kill A Mockingbird, but I really fell like this book fell short. The buildup to the big surprise at the end was boring and just...not needed. And the ending of surprise! Atticus is actually racist and not the perfect human being Scout thought he was just was....not interesting to me. Really kinda disappointed in the book.
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Sep 7, 2015 11:22
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Just finished A Little Life.. it was so beautiful but just so loving heartbreaking. It will be everywhere by the end of the year I feel.
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Sep 8, 2015 00:34
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The Liveship Traders trilogy by Robin Hobb. It was a very engaging read with a lot of depth in an atypical fantasy world. It's more about characters than events, and there are few acts of overt magic. As the series goes on and the characters age, so too does the storytelling mature. It does a great job of showing the reader the personality of the characters and how they cope with the tumultuous changes that characterize (to me) the series. These books (written as one story) do a really great job of making the reader feel despair, too. Some situations are unfixable or seem so, and it's hard not to weep with the characters. I just started the Farseer trilogy, so I should have a short review of that up in the next week or two as well.
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Sep 8, 2015 02:33
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I just finished Reamde by Neal Stephenson and ... don't bother. Look, it's surprisingly readable page-to-page. You'll want to know what happens next. But Stephenson has basically reinvented the Robert Ludlum novel, except with a lot more digressions about MMOs. It's super-long and needs editing badly. There's tonnes of tech-porn, details about guns and routers and cars, replete with brand names. The settings get an excruciating amount of detail, to the point where in the climax I swear that piles of rock and clumps of trees are getting loving paragraphs. There's the wildly successful MMO that everyone in the world plays from spec ops operators to money launderers to MI6 operatives. And the MMO sounds like your most power-tripping teenage session of D&D. There's an excess of badasses, to the point where I was getting them all confused. It reads like a treatment for a movie, right down to the zany asian chick, laconic Russian badass, unkillable super-terrorist. Everyone gets paired off at the end with their love interest. If you haven't worked it out, I am officially done with Stephenson.
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Sep 8, 2015 13:53
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City of Glass by Paul Auster. I think the two days were the fastest I've ever read a single book. Some really fun and interesting po-mo-noir and vaguely theological/linguistic poo poo going on, though I maybe feel like it kind of went off the deep end into its own rear end in the last 1/4th or so. Actually, edit: maybe the delving into its own rear end and spiraling out of control functions as a solid critique of post-modern wanking. marblize fucked around with this message at 15:15 on Sep 9, 2015 |
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Sep 9, 2015 02:02
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Hell to Pay: Operation DOWNFALL and the Invasion of Japan, 1945-1947 by D. M. Giangreco. A popular derail in many subforums on SA is the morality/justification of the atomic bombing of Japan, and one of the most common arguments in favor of the bombing is that Operation Downfall, the planned Allied (primarily American) land invasion of the Home Islands. This is perhaps the most involved and in-depth look at Downfall and its opposite number Operation Ketsu-Go (the planned Japanese defense of the Home Islands) yet written. As you might expect, this is not a happy book. Operation Downfall would have been one of the largest and most complex military operations in human history, as evidenced by the amount of time this book spends covering the mammoth scope of the logistics Downfall would have required. While I try to refrain from offering judgment about the atomic bombing due to its tendency to spark massive derails, this book provides a thorough look at a closing chapter of World War Two that I think everyone, regardless of nation, should be glad never happened. Hell to Pay is meticulously researched and includes a wealth of information from primary sources both American and Japanese. The writing is nothing special, but there's lots of detail about everything that would have gone into Downfall, especially if logistics (for example, the largest and most complex military blood supply network in history was established for Downfall) are your thing. Recommended if the subject is of interest to you.
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Sep 9, 2015 04:57
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Ashley's War, about female soldiers working alongside Rangers in Afghanistan. It kept reminding me I was reading about women in the worst possible ways. Actual quotes: "This is the dream team, Nadia thought. They are confident, they love the work, they are tough, and they know how to put on eyeliner." "Sarah Waldman, MP and former Girl Scout who loved sewing as much as survival training, stood before a cluster of surveillance monitors at the operations center." A good story told badly by a mundane writer. It brings up interesting subjects, but there has to be better books out there.
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Sep 9, 2015 13:54
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^ Maybe try I Am A Soldier Too: The Jessica Lynch Story? Huge bummer about the weird rape account controversy, tho
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Sep 9, 2015 14:53
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Hedrigall posted:I can also recommend this. Simultaneously one of the best horror novels and one of the best historical fiction novels I've ever read. Amazing tale, and some of the horrific imagery will haunt me forever. I heard nothing but positive things about Dan Simmons. There's another one by him called "The Abominable", which is about these guys who decide to go climb Mt. Everest in search of a missing expedition in the early part of the 20th century and soon encounter a "revelation" more terrifying than they could ever imagine. I plan to pick this up in the near future.
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Sep 10, 2015 08:36
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I don't know, I wasn't a huge fan of Carrion Comfort. The Terror and (looking at Wikipedia) Summer of Night sound promising, though, so I'll check them out.
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Sep 10, 2015 09:58
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Immortan posted:I heard nothing but positive things about Dan Simmons. There's another one by him called "The Abominable", which is about these guys who decide to go climb Mt. Everest in search of a missing expedition in the early part of the 20th century and soon encounter a "revelation" more terrifying than they could ever imagine. I plan to pick this up in the near future. How much you enjoy that book will depend on how interested you are in mountain climbing. Simmons' loves to show off his research in his historical novels, so if arctic exploration, Hemmingway, Dickens, or whatever the topic is, doesn't sound like your thing, give the book a miss. The arctic exploration one is The Terror, which is fantastic, though the ending's a bit poo poo (Simmons is a lot like King in that regard). I understand that The Abominable wasn't well received, but I thought it was OK, despite a big sorta dumb twist that reveals that the book is basically Scooby Doo on Everest. Carrion Comfort has a killer climax. That book escalates marvellously. Easily one of the best thrillers ever written. Don't read Flashback. Don't read the Endymion books (But absolutely read Hyperion). High Warlord Zog fucked around with this message at 11:11 on Sep 10, 2015 |
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Sep 10, 2015 10:56
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marblize posted:City of Glass by Paul Auster. You should really read the whole New York Trilogy, the books are even better when read side by side.
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Sep 10, 2015 11:33
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Permutation City by Greg Egan. Greg Egan is quickly becoming my favorite author. If you like Big Ideas sci-fi that'll give you plenty of brain candy to savor, read this man's stuff. Permutation City may be the most deliriously dense package of great concepts tempered with surprisingly poignant ruminations on the nature of reality, consciousness, death, and what it means to be human. Just a truly fantastic book, everything sci-fi should be. The book is about a near future where minds can be copied into digital landscapes, neuron for neuron, however, being a "copy" is really only reserved for the sick, dying, old, and eccentric rich people. Normal healthy people who are copied and run tend to kill themselves within hours without exception. The protagonist makes a copy of himself and cheats by disabling the ability to self-terminate, and the copy, through experimentation with his meat self, discovers a fundamental truth about reality that'd allow him to give copies everywhere the means to run their own paradise and never fear the destruction of earth, lack of computing power, and decay, true immortlaity! However, it sounds like complete insanity, is he right? Is he a fraud!? Read! Loving Life Partner fucked around with this message at 13:29 on Sep 10, 2015 |
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Sep 10, 2015 13:22
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elbow posted:You should really read the whole New York Trilogy, the books are even better when read side by side. I want to! My girlfriend doesn't have the others and it seems like they might only come in the set now, so we have to double up on city of glass, eff. Might just pop into barnes and noble and plop down at the cafe for an afternoon or 3.
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Sep 10, 2015 15:49
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outlier posted:I just finished Reamde by Neal Stephenson and ... don't bother. This echoes my thoughts exactly when I finished that. At some point it even became clear he just mashed two of his books together just to make this even longer. I finished Kłamca - Papież sztuk the other day. After the weak ending of the Kłamca main story, I'm happy that Cwiek started doing these between books. The characters are really enjoyable, the settings neat and this book does some pretty interesting things with the narrative. Just a shame it'll probably never be translated to English for others to enjoy 
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Sep 10, 2015 18:05
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I've been under a shitload of stress lately, so I haven't really been sleeping all that well. In order to get brain to the point where I can stop thinking about work, I've been reading until I'm pretty much asleep, so I've read a ton of books over the last 2 weeks. I finally finished up The Eight by Katherine Neville. I'm not a big chess fan, not that it was really necessary to enjoy the book, but she really gets into the chess allegories. It follows 2 storylines, one in revolutionary era France, and one in the early 1970's in NYC and Algiers, and concerns finding a legendary chess set that is worth a fortune but also has mystical properties. The French storyline is much more interesting in my opinion. I thought the ending was rushed. Next up was The Hogfather and Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett, which pretty much wraps up my Death arc for Discworld. I think Thief of Time was absolutely fantastic and is probably my favorite one yet. Hogfather was also quite good. This is probably more for the Pratchett thread, but the books I've read so far would be Thief of Time>Reaper Man>Mort>Hogfather>Soul Music. The Martian by Andy Wier was next. I enjoyed it a lot, although I rolled my eyes at the "Pirate Ninja" unit of measurement. I was impressed that most of the science in the book was real, and thought he did a pretty good job for someone who isn't a writer for a living. I have amazon prime, so every now and then I get a free book from them, so I read The Empty Quarter by David Robbins. It was a decent story, sort of Clancy-lite. It's about pararescue jumpers in the Middle East. The guy definitely had a hardon for military acronyms. Next up is The Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson. I was told to go in blind, that it was about divers off of the Jersey shore finding something awesome. I'm assuming it is the story of the divers finding a U-Boat that I heard about a while ago.
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Sep 10, 2015 20:56
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marblize posted:I want to! My girlfriend doesn't have the others and it seems like they might only come in the set now, so we have to double up on city of glass, eff. Might just pop into barnes and noble and plop down at the cafe for an afternoon or 3. ...or go to the library?
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Sep 10, 2015 23:06
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Archer666 posted:This echoes my thoughts exactly when I finished(Reamde). At some point it even became clear he just mashed two of his books together just to make this even longer. I got the real feeling that he started with the MMO plot and either ran out of steam or figured that people couldn't get excited about virtual world hijinks, so he slapped on the terrorist subplot that takes over the second half of the book.
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Sep 11, 2015 09:25
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I'm not sure that Stephenson has ever started with a plot as opposed to a bunch of things he wants to talk about.
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Sep 11, 2015 16:35
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funkybottoms posted:...or go to the library? this is 2015 i don't know how libraries work are you off your rocker?
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Sep 11, 2015 18:04
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marblize posted:this is 2015 i don't know how libraries work are you off your rocker? You go in and sit down with your laptop and use their wifi to order books from B&N online...
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Sep 11, 2015 18:27
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Archer666 posted:This echoes my thoughts exactly when I finished that. At some point it even became clear he just mashed two of his books together just to make this even longer. I'm glad I'm not alone in the Reamde disappointment. The novel felt like you could place markers where Stephenson lost interest in things after really being into them (MMOs, guns, the characters) culminating in losing interest in writing the book altogether. As for Simmons, I thought The Terror to be absolutely superb. Summer of Night is also very enjoyable. It's a grand, unapologetic, Eighties style horror potboiler. I'd avoid the sequel-of-sorts, A Winter Haunting, which I saw as Simmons clearing his throat and apologizing for the previous book. Robot Wendigo fucked around with this message at 00:43 on Sep 12, 2015 |
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Sep 12, 2015 00:41
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