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[Celcius]

Currently reading "Thinking in Java" while I look for a new job.

 

[DagsJT]

Started reading "Storm Front" by Jim Butcher. Two chapters in and I like the style and sense of humour.

 

[Tenrius]

While I like goodreads reviews in general, I often see some very bad ones, bad to the point of being revolting. They are mostly negative, tend to be overly long and essentially come down to repeating the same point (which is "I didn't like the book") over and over in various ways. It's not that bad comments and posts are rare in general, it's just that they are often shown on the very top on goodreads book pages in particular. Or maybe I'm just being too picky.

Started reading "Storm Front" by Jim Butcher. Two chapters in and I like the style and sense of humour.

Finished it a few days ago. It's pretty neat, the premise is nice, but the plot itself is kinda predictable and not particularly eventful. I guess it's more of a "setting things up for grand events later" kind of book.

Now reading this:

Thank you BrokenFiction for getting me interested! I just picked it up randomly, but it really is paying off, being somehow reminiscent of one my recent favorites: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. I've literally been thinking that it would be nice to read something in the same vein and then this turned up.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is amazing, by the way, can't recommend it enough!

 

[Maklershed]

Started The Black Dahlia


The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy


Also going through A Clash of Kings again to refresh me for season 3 on Sunday


A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin

 

[Dresden]

Finished The Drowned Cities by Paolo Bacigalupi.

Not a fan of how, once the story shifts over to the Cities, every female in the story is

1. getting raped
   
2. about to be raped
   
3. has been raped
   
4. dead

usually a combination of at least two factors. Only two female characters actually have names--the heroine, and a slaver-woman that appears for one page who tries to capture the heroine so she can sell her as rape-bait to the soldiers--and the rest are essentially faceless/nameless, a collective of brutalized whores ("nailshed girls") who are often described as trying to keep their ragged, torn clothing on as they look about in fear.

As for the heroine, what was a resourceful and likable lead is reduced to being saved at every turn by men. When she gets captured, she thinks about

1. how her mother was raped to death like this
   
2. gets ready for rape
   
3. tries not to scream

God. The ending is perfunctory stuff. Just wraps up so neatly--after the heroine is rescued yet again by boys.

 

[mike23]

Yep! I can't go into details yet, but be assured that Goodreads will still be the same Goodreads you know and love. We will not be changing your ratings or reviews. This will be a great thing for us b/c there will be better kindle integration in the future.

More details here: http://www.goodreads.com/blog/show/413-exciting-news-about-goodreads-we-re-joining-the-amazon-family

You work at Goodreads?

Please get me a page where I can see all the unread books in series I've read. I always miss new releases on kindle indie series especially.

 

[HotHamWater]

I recently started reading Enders Game (I know, LTTP) and I'm enjoying it enough that I looked up the rest of the series. Really wasn't expecting so many. So now I'm curious, do they have the same quality and if so, what should I read next?

 

[Monocle]

I think that's the best approach. I started by adding books I've read months ago but that didn't seem fair. Now I'm also just adding books I've read recently.

I'm also reading some McCarthy right now!

About 100 pages to go and I must say: it's not like something I've ever read before. His writing style is very 'interesting' to say the least. Very cool, but I find myself reading some parts twice or thrice to understand some of the metaphors. The story itself is beyond awesome. The judge, man. The judge.

If you like what you're reading, try the Blood Meridian audiobook when you're done. It's incredible.

 

[Tenrius]

I recently started reading Enders Game (I know, LTTP) and I'm enjoying it enough that I looked up the rest of the series. Really wasn't expecting so many. So now I'm curious, do they have the same quality and if so, what should I read next?

I read Xenocide and it was pretty good, not that exciting as Ender's Game though. Tried another book, that one about the immediate aftermath of the war, didn't like it.

 

[nakedsushi]

You work at Goodreads?

Please get me a page where I can see all the unread books in series I've read. I always miss new releases on kindle indie series especially.

You mean the series page? You can get to it if you're on the book page and click through to the series (next to the book title):

http://www.goodreads.com/series/41526-wheel-of-time

Unread books would show up w/ the green "want to read" button.

 

[hardcastlemccormick]

I recently started reading Enders Game (I know, LTTP) and I'm enjoying it enough that I looked up the rest of the series. Really wasn't expecting so many. So now I'm curious, do they have the same quality and if so, what should I read next?

None are as quite as good as Game, but Speaker for the Dead and some of the Ender's Shadow books are worth reading.

 

[mike23]

You mean the series page? You can get to it if you're on the book page and click through to the series (next to the book title):

http://www.goodreads.com/series/41526-wheel-of-time

Unread books would show up w/ the green "want to read" button.

I mean a single page that looks at every series I've ever rated a book in and then shows me:

Dresden Files:
Cold Days #14

Mageborn:
The Archmage Unbound #3

Wheel Of Time:
Towers of Midnight #13
A Memory of Light #14

etc.

So rather than going through the 40-50+ series I've read one by one, I can see them all at a glance.

 

[Nymerio]

Just finished Cold Days and omg was it amazing.

Spoiler

Harry the Warden and Winter Knight, Molly the new Winter Lady and Odin is Santa Clause. Oh, and he put a gun to Mabs face. Awesome!

Crazy!
Can't wait for the next book, but now I'll have to see what I'll read next.

 

[Sliver]

Read Storm Front the past day while on vacation and liked it for the most part. Some of the dialouge was pretty cheesy "Why wont you just die!", but I will definitely be reading the next one and hoping for the best.

 

[Myriadis]

I think that's the best approach. I started by adding books I've read months ago but that didn't seem fair. Now I'm also just adding books I've read recently.

I'm also reading some McCarthy right now!

About 100 pages to go and I must say: it's not like something I've ever read before. His writing style is very 'interesting' to say the least. Very cool, but I find myself reading some parts twice or thrice to understand some of the metaphors. The story itself is beyond awesome. The judge, man. The judge.

I have to read some stuff from him. I really love the movies based on his books, it's time to read some of his stuff that didn't make it to the movies (unless, of course, the books are different enough).

I'm reading

The Physician from Noah Gordon
and so far I like it. I really like books written in some medieval setting when done well enough and this book does it quite well. So far about 150 pages in. It's a slightly shortened version, unfortunately, which is a thing Readers Digest seems to like to do.

 

[thomaser]

I'm reading a couple of textbooks:

World Englishes by Melchers and Shaw

Sociolinguistics: A Reader by Coupland and Jaworski

Don't really know what to read for pleasure, though. I have so many unread books:

Achebe, Chinua: Things Fall Apart
Aristotle: The complete texts
Azzarello and Risso: 100 Bullets (graphical novel)
Ballard, J.G.: Cocaine Nights
Balzac, Honoré de: Cousin Bette
Beckett, Samuel: The complete works
Bolano, Roberto: 2666
Bolano, Roberto: The Savage Detectives
Brecht, Bertolt: Mother Courage and Her Children
Brosgol, Vera: Anya's Ghost (graphical novel)
Burns, Charles: Black Hole (graphical novel)
Burroughs, William: Naked Lunch
Camus, Albert: The Plague
Capek, Karel: Believe in People
Cartarescu, Mircea: The Orbitor trilogy
Cather, Willa: A Lost Lady
Chandler, Raymond: Farewell, My Lovely
Chandler, Raymond: The Long Good-bye
Chekhov, Anton: Uncle Vania
Davenport, Guy: The Geography of the Imagination
DaVinci, Leonardo: The complete works (texts, drawings and paintings)
Diamond, Jared: The World Until Yesterday
Díaz, Junot: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Dickens, Charles: Little Dorrit
Eco, Umberto: Inventing the Enemy
Eco, Umberto: On Ugliness
Eco, Umberto: The Prague Cemetary
Eliot, George: Middlemarch
Foster Wallace, David: The Broom of the System
Foster Wallace, David: The Pale King
Franquin: Viggo (I think it's a complete set)
Færøvik, Torbjørn: Midtens Rike (non-fiction about China)
Gray, Alasdair: Lanark - A Life in Four Books
Gullberg, Jan: Mathematics: From the Birth of Numbers
Hammett, Dashiell: The Thin Man
Hayder, Mo: Tokyo
Hemingway, Ernest: The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber
Hesse, Hermann: The Glass Bead Game
Houellebecq, Michael: The Map and the Territory
James, Henry: The Beast in the Jungle
Jensen, Carl Johan: U-
Joyce, James: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Joyce, James: Finnegan's Wake (lol)
Kahneman, Daniel: Thinking, Fast and Slow
Kapuscinski, Ryszard: Ebony
Kostova, Elisabeth: The Historian
Lagerlöf, Selma: Gösta Berlings Saga
Lampedusa, Giuseppe Tomasi: The Leopard
Mann, Thomas: Death in Venice
Mantel, Hilary: Wolf Hall
Milton, John: Paradise Lost
Murakami, Haruki: 1Q84
Niffenegger, Audrey: The Time Traveler's Wife
O'Brien, Flann: At Swim-Two-Birds
O'Brien, Flann: The Dalkey Archive
O'Brien, Flann: The Hard Life
O'Brien, Flann: The Poor Mouth
O'Neill, Eugene: Mourning Becomes Electra
Paasilinna, Arto: Volomari Volotinens First Wife and Other Old Things
Parker, Robert B.: Looking for Rachel Wallace
Pirandello, Luigi: Six Characters in Search of an Author
Plato: The complete texts except the first four or five
Proust, Marcel: In Search of Lost Time vols. 1-4 (hurry up Penguin and release the last volumes in the cool Deluxe Edition style!)
Pushkin, Alexander: The Collected Stories
Pynchon, Thomas: Inherent Vice
Rabelais: Gargantua and Pantagruel
Roberts, Gregory David: Shantaram
Roth, Philip: Portnoy's Complaint
Shakespeare, William: Everything except Hamlet, A Midsummernight's Dream and all the non-dramatic poetry
Shaw, Bernard: Saint Joan
Sjisjkin, Mikhail: Venushair
Strindberg, August: A Dreamplay
Thomson, Hunter S.: Hell's Angels
Updike, John: The four Rabbit Angstrom novels
Vollmann, William T.: Rising Up and Rising Down
Wilde, Oscar: The complete works
... and much more. Tons of old important scientific/philosophic works and several anthologies of various kinds. And lots and lots of history books and books about literary theory.

Sorry for the long list, but I needed to make one for myself, so it's easier to know what I have Recommendations are welcome!
Will probably start with the last one, Oscar Wilde's complete works. It's been in my shelf for years and years. I'll also try to read Bolano's 2666 and Murakami's 1Q84 this year.

 

[Maklershed]

Don't really know what to read for pleasure, though. I have so many unread books:

Chandler, Raymond: Farewell, My Lovely
Dickens, Charles: Little Dorrit
Thomson, Hunter S.: Hell's Angels

These are great.

 

[thomaser]

These are great.

Thanks! Maybe I'll read Little Dorrit as well this year. It will be my first Dickens!

 

[foomfoom415]

After a bit of a hiatus, I've been listening to audiobooks in the car again. I could never bring myself to finish an entire book only listening to the audio. I usually listen to about 1/4 of a book in the car or at the gym, and read the rest on my iPad. Recently I finished up:



I've been on an Alastair Reynolds and this one didn't disappoint. It started off quite a bit shakier than most of his other works. I think he himself has said he struggles with near rather than distant future universes, but I think he's done a spectacular job shaping this world and fleshing it out. He took probably a little longer than necessary to lay the foundation for this new universe, but once it's in place, it feels just as realized and nuanced and alive as the Revelation Space series.

I must have spent about 3/4 of the book listening to the audiobook, just because the reader does such an exceptional job of giving voices to the characters. Every character was uniquely voiced and extremely well-acted. For probably the first time ever, I would find myself at home on the couch opting to listen to the audiobook over just reading the book. Because of this, it probably took 4x as long to finish the book. If I'm completely honest, I think my rating is probably being boosted by the quality of the audiobook. I don't know if that's copacetic, but there it is. Still, I'm looking forward to the next book in the series, which should come out this year.

After finishing the above, I immediately jumped into:



Redshirts. The novel has an interesting premise, but it feels like Scalzi didn't really know what to do with it. Scalzi's stories always move at a brisk pace. I hesitate to use the word "lazy" but he does seem to only give each scene the absolute bare minimum of exposition before moving on. I don't mind that in the Old Man Series, but this novel really suffers for it. The book feels like a rough draft and a collection of notes for a work-in-progress, abruptly finished, with a wholly unsatisfying last half.

It was also a mistake to pick up the audiobook version. I enjoy Wil Wheaton in most formats, but audiobooks are clearly not his forte. He has exactly one voice to stretch between every single character in the book. It isn't great. It's probably not fair to poor Wil, jumping immediately into his reading after finishing the fantastic reading of Blue Remembered Earth, but that's how the cards fell.

I'd have thought that Scalzi's dialog writing style wouldn't lend itself to oral narration, what with each and every single line of dialog attributed to it's speaker.

　　Every single line, she asked?
　　Every single line, he said.
　　Hmmm, she said.
　　Yup, he said.
　　Doesn't that get irksome, she asked?
　　It would, he said.
　　But, he continued, it's probably necessary, he concluded.
　　Why, she asked?
　　Because all Scalzi's characters sound the same, he said.
　　Really, she laughed.
　　Everyone in his books is either Chandler from Friends or Xander from Buffy, he explained.
　　Oh, she said.
　　So without attributing each and every single line, it would be impossible to tell who's talking he said.

I thought there'd be a good joke in there about how Wil Wheaton can only do one voice, and all Scalzi's characters are exactly the same, so it's a match made in heaven. But it seems every single review on Goodreads beat me to the punch, so I'll just say, you can probably skip Redshirts. It definitely isn't bad, but it's so underwhelming it feels like a waste of time. However DO skip the audiobook. Frankly, it's a fucking disaster.

 

[Mackenzie 92]

Amazon has The Marching Morons for 99 cents today. It's the story that inspired Idiocracy.

 

[CyclopsRock]

I have about an hour left on my last audiobook ("Wool" by Hugh Howey) and one Audible credit in my account - I like thrillers, don't care about setting (as in, I'm open to anything) and I'm a history fan, too. Hit me, GAF!

 

[dream]

I'm currently reading Twilight for a seminar and...yeah, it really isn't very well-written. I mean, I knew that going in, and I'm trying so hard to not be a lit snob about it, but each page surprises me more than the last.

 

[Bonethug]

Old thread guys. New Thread --->April

 

[dream]

I'm sorry. This novel is really messing me up.

 

[jacobs34]

Wrong thread. Oops.