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Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer The Climb by Anatoli Boukreev & G. Weston DeWalt Both are books about the 1996 Mount Everest disaster, Into Thin Air is the more dramatic and gripping book and worth reading first as it gives an incredible sense of foreboding and really gets into your head. Jon Krakauer, a journalist and mountaineer, was a client on one of the expeditions and was on assignment to cover the climb. Having read it I became interested in finding out more, and discovered the controversy which Thin Air caused. The Climb is in part a defence of Boukreev who came in for heavy criticism from Krakauer and in part a clarification of events. It is written in a more technical style and fills in a lot of questions. Both are well worth reading and have left me with a taste for more real life tales of adventure and disaster. If anyone can point me towards more books like these I would really appreciate it.
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Dec 15, 2006 05:28
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I've just finished Joe Abercrombie's First Law Trilogy, a modern fantasy series and frankly a breath of fresh air after the some what over bearing epic fantasy I've read of late. Conceived, written and finished as a trilogy, with it's primary characters introduced in the first book and a manageable level of threads to the story. It's very led by it's characters and definitely a very modern fantasy tale. It probably won't appeal to everyone, but if your looking for something a little more light weight in your heroic epic fantasy then it's worth a go. The story was possibly a bit predictable in parts, but it was always fun.
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May 27, 2009 21:13
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Finished Gardens of the Moon, Malazan Book of the Fallen, Book 1, a book as dense, clumsy and awkward as it's title. I was hoping for another good long epic to keep me busy on my daily train ride but unless anyone can tell me that the author improves dramatically then I don't think this is it. Whilst waiting for the new Joe Abercrombie book I grabbed a couple of short books I'd not read in ages, Starship Titanic by Terry Jones, based off the Douglas Adams game I never actually played was utterly forgettable. The Carpet People by Terry Pratchett was short and fun, just as I remembered it, I look forward to reading it to my son when he is a bit older.
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Jun 23, 2009 12:20
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Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie. A simple, violent, black and often funny standalone story about revenge. This is set in the same world he created for his First Law trilogy and takes place in the war torn city states of Styria where our lead character and her brother are betrayed, he is murdered and she just about survives being thrown off a cliff. Her aim is to kill the seven men she holds responsible regardless of who gets in her way, assisted by a cast of new and old characters. Shivers is great, and Cosca returns to provide the comic relief and a few excellent scenes. If you like First Law you will like this, but I may recommend you take a break as it may come off as feeling a little familiar. I would also say that it is a little to long and seemed to drag on a bit in places. However, it was still a really enjoyable read, with great characters just like First Law. For anyone new to his books I would say start with the trilogy, you could read this as a stand alone but you would miss a lot of references and would miss out of some of the deeper threads that he is building across his books.
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Jul 3, 2009 12:59
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Niven! I just finished 'A World Out of Time' which I picked up in a second hand book shop a while ago, really enjoyable tale along the lines of The Time Machine, with the antagonist being flung into the far distant future. Well worth tracking down and contains one of the best openings to a sci-fi book I've read. Thanks to looking it up for this thread I just found out it's part of a series as well. It also contains that other Niven trade mark, namely at least one sex scene, preferably with an alien.
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Dec 15, 2009 18:17
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Protagonist would make more sense, getting my 'agonists mixed up. I'll make this a more useful post, I have also recently finished two non fiction books. Home Run tells the story of allied evaders and helpers behind the lines in Nazi europe. It uses interviews and diaries to piece together many tales of individual escapes and the structures build up to help people get back home. I was left with a massive respect for the efforts of the resistance workers, many of whom were young women, being captured for them meant torture and death. Jack Tar The life and times of the common sailor in Nelsons navy. I've read a lot of fiction set in this period and a lot of non-fiction, and it pretty much all concentrates on the officers. This book attempts to give you an idea of what life was like for your average tar. Well worth a read if that period of history is of interest to you. Jekub fucked around with this message at 18:45 on Dec 16, 2009 |
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Dec 16, 2009 18:35
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