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What are you reading? (October 2012)
- Thread starter Maklershed
- Start date
The Horror the horror
Banned
Yes, absolutely. I just got finished reading it.
It's a post-apocalyptic story, where humanity is forced to live in these separate underground facilities, "silos," due to the fatal climate of the outside world. No one remembers what outside is like, or what it's like to be outside, and the mere outspoken curiosity of the outside world is punishable by death from those in power. It's the story of a few people daring to challenge the status quo, even if it means losing their freedom or their lives.
Personally, I think it was very well written, with excellent pacing, and entertaining characters (good main ones, but weak secondary characters IMO).
Maklershed
Member
Definitely
One of the best books I've read this year.
Last month I finished the Dragonlance Chronicles trilogy, and now I have started the next trilogy:
I'm in chapter 5 and I'm loving it so far. Very interesting seeing how Caramon fell apart after these two years while his brother did the opposite. I feel sorry for Tika having to deal with this, while apparently the other heroes of the lance had a good two years...
I'm also intrigued by Kitiara... I keep wondering if she will eventually change sides for good.
I have also got for my kindle RA Salvatore's Homeland and see if I get into the Forgotten Realms novels as well.
I'm in chapter 5 and I'm loving it so far. Very interesting seeing how Caramon fell apart after these two years while his brother did the opposite. I feel sorry for Tika having to deal with this, while apparently the other heroes of the lance had a good two years...
I'm also intrigued by Kitiara... I keep wondering if she will eventually change sides for good.
I have also got for my kindle RA Salvatore's Homeland and see if I get into the Forgotten Realms novels as well.
sparky2112
Member
Edit: Started this a few days ago. Liking it so far.
Oh. So. Good.
The Horror the horror
Banned
Last month I finished the Dragonlance Chronicles trilogy, and now I have started the next trilogy:
I'm in chapter 5 and I'm loving it so far. Very interesting seeing how Caramon fell apart after these two years while his brother did the opposite. I feel sorry for Tika having to deal with this, while apparently the other heroes of the lance had a good two years...
I'm also intrigued by Kitiara... I keep wondering if she will eventually change sides for good.
I have also got for my kindle RA Salvatore's Homeland and see if I get into the Forgotten Realms novels as well.
Unfortunately, Legends is where your journey pretty much ends, as everything nose-dives afterwards.
As for RASalvatore, the Icewind Dale and Dark Elf trilogies are money. A few of the books that follow are decent, but the quality starts to go downhill after Servant of the Shard, and never picks up again.
That sounds like an endorsement
I have it sitting on my nightstand, so I suppose I don't have an excuse to neglect it any longer. I just hope that it has much more in common with Lolita than Speak, Memory. The latter felt like such a narcissistic exercise in navel-gazing that I couldn't bring myself to finish it. A more apt title might be "Portrait of an Ivory Tower."
Have you read Lolita?
My path through Nabokov so far has run:
Invitation to a Beheading
The Eye
Mary
Lolita
Pale Fire
Pnin
Pale Fire > Lolita > Invitation > Pnin > The Eye > Mary, for my money.
Easystride
Member
Hmmm, should I get Leviathan Wakes or The Black Prism? I don't like to get more than one book at a time cause I get tempted to start the other book.
GalacticSushiman
Member
Not sure if published in English.
NekoFever
Member
I finished Halo: Primordium this morning as part of an effort to get up to date on the Halo fiction before Halo 4. My first Kindle book as well.
It wasn't as good as Cryptum but is better than some of the crappier Halo novels. Kind of meandered for about 2/3 of it before getting really good towards the end, which, funnily enough, is the same complaint I had about The Forge of God from the same author, which I read earlier in the year.
Now that I've got a Kindle, I'm working on some of the ebooks I've picked up in sales over the last year or so. First up is Tokyo Vice.
It wasn't as good as Cryptum but is better than some of the crappier Halo novels. Kind of meandered for about 2/3 of it before getting really good towards the end, which, funnily enough, is the same complaint I had about The Forge of God from the same author, which I read earlier in the year.
Now that I've got a Kindle, I'm working on some of the ebooks I've picked up in sales over the last year or so. First up is Tokyo Vice.
Maklershed
Member
I haven't read The Black Prism (though I think I'll order it now) but I absolutely recommend Leviathan Wakes. Not only is it a great story but it comes with The Dragon's Path, book 1 of the Dagger and Coin series which is really good too.
Too add a bit to this post, here's what is available:
Ubik
Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said
The Man in the High Castle
A Scanner Darkly
The Best of Phillip K Dick
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
The Exegesis of Phillip K Dick
The Penultimate Truth
Now Wait for Last Year
VALIS
The Simulacra
Eye in the Sky
Counter-Clock World
The Divine Invasion
The Transmigration of Timothy Archer
bengraven
Member
Really shockingly entertaining book about the grasslands of America. I got it because of my sudden interest in the Pleistocene but it covers the entire history, down to the old west and even into modern small town America. And the narrator is quite entertaining, telling stories of his road trip to all these sometimes ancient, sometimes historic sites.
Reading this ^ until I can find a decent encylopedia of N. American prehistoric mammals for a novel I'm writing. It's a fantastic book, though very very sparse, and very very expensive. $80-90 for the hardcover, $70 for the Kindle edition? It's not THAT comprehensive nor researched. It's a 200 page kids book with one badly scanned/chosen black and white pic per animal. It's more of a "fun facts" kind of book than a textbook, which I had assumed it was based on the price.
Don't blame me if I had some people do me favors.
Also, for fun, reading:
And Sing the Body Electric.
Damn my beloved Bradbury for not putting more of his books in e-book format, though. Even my huge local library only has these books, Something Wicked (which I've read four times) and a couple of his newer novels. I really want to read October Country and The Halloween Tree...wait, maybe in the juvie section...? Talking to myself here...
bengraven
Member
Oh and I finished The Night Circus last week and really really loved it. Which shocked me. I was put off by the "romance novel" comparisons that were being fed into it, plus the black and white gothy imagery associated with the novel. But I fell for the writing and the characters and the circus itself - I didn't want it to end. I was so into it I ended up doing some Twitter messaging back and forth with the author just letting her know how much I loved it - the first I've ever done any kind of correspondence with an author.
I would be cool with a book that was just chapters describing different tents.
But no sequel. No fucking sequel.
Unless it took place in modern times and starred
, doing nothing to change the ending of the last book.
I would be cool with a book that was just chapters describing different tents.
But no sequel. No fucking sequel.
Unless it took place in modern times and starred
Bailey and Poppet
SpinningBirdKick
Banned
Gamers At Work
I'm about three quarters of the way through this now.
Reading Gamers at Work makes me glad that I bailed out of the gaming industry when I did more than 10 years ago. I sensed a disruptive change coming that panned out as I envisaged.
The book is an enjoyable read that evokes two emotions in me. Happiness that I dodged the bullet I saw coming and a little sadness that things got worse as I expected.
Finished Sagan's Dragons of Eden and am halfway through with this:
hated it it at first cause it was entirely not what I expected (bought it blindly based on the good reviews) but after I kept reading I started to like it. It's very confusing cause it jumps between characters and time periods but very well written and fun to read.
hated it it at first cause it was entirely not what I expected (bought it blindly based on the good reviews) but after I kept reading I started to like it. It's very confusing cause it jumps between characters and time periods but very well written and fun to read.
Wow, thanks for the heads up! I almost bought it this past week because of the Verge book club and the book Ubik! Will definitely pick this one up now!
Koroviev
Member
This is the best sale ever! It's just too bad that "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"-- my personal favorite -- isn't included.
Of those available, I would recommend Ubik and A Scanner Darkly. I think I'm going to pick up Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said and The Man in the High Castle.
Ubik is one of my favorites. The Man in the High Castle is good, I also liked Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said.
I picked quite a few of these that I hadn't read yet - I'm on the edge about the VALIS trilogy though, from what I've heard of it I have the feeling it might be a bit too much for me.
Maklershed
Member
On the hard copy side I finished The Innocent Man and started Thunderstruck
Thunderstruck by Erik Larson
Thunderstruck by Erik Larson
Just because of the brutality or why?
AngmarsKing701
Member
Finally finished Pandora's Star. Good book but holy Christ get an editor in there stat. That thing could have had about 2/3 of it chopped down. Like slogging through enzyme-bonded concrete.
Picked up Rendezvous With Rama. Figured it was short enough for me to finish it before Abercrombie's Red Country comes out Nov 13.
eattomorro
Neo Member
AzureSkies
Member
Just started reading William Blackwell's Phantom Rage which is currently free on the Kindle store for today.
Personally, I wasn't a fan of the cover but my friend recommended the book to me and I can't say no to free. I'm only pretty early in but so far it's an enjoyable horror book by a little known author, it's worth checking out.
Link to the book:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008F6GV86/?tag=neogaf0e-20
Other than that? I'm currently reading Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.
I'm currently on the 10th Chapter and I'm really enjoying this book right now. It's taken me forever to get around to reading it but I am so glad that I started reading the book, it deserves all of the praise that it gets.
Personally, I wasn't a fan of the cover but my friend recommended the book to me and I can't say no to free. I'm only pretty early in but so far it's an enjoyable horror book by a little known author, it's worth checking out.
Link to the book:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008F6GV86/?tag=neogaf0e-20
Other than that? I'm currently reading Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.
I'm currently on the 10th Chapter and I'm really enjoying this book right now. It's taken me forever to get around to reading it but I am so glad that I started reading the book, it deserves all of the praise that it gets.
I was surprised at how Bernard countered his exile to Iceland, seriously. I didn't see it coming like that.
Decided to pick up my Kindle for the first time this year in an attempt to get back into reading regularly. It's been a while since I've picked up something that I was able to stick with.
Went to the my unread list and chose the top book - The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie.
Surprisingly enough, it's totally sticking. The characters are by far the strongest aspect of the book. Very interesting POV characters, all with flaws who can be real scumbags in certain situations. The only negative I can think of at the moment is that the world feels slightly...underdeveloped. Like I'm just not getting a strong sense of what this world is like, where certain things and places are, the history of how the society in the book came to be, etc.
Some people are going to roll their eyes at this, but I honestly think the feeling stems from reading A Song of Ice and Fire recently. Not that I'm at all suggesting that ASOIF is the first fantasy series to have a strong setting nor am I suggesting that it's the absolute best, but I just finished Dance With Dragons late last year so it's fresh on my mind. Reading those books, it just feels like Martin has everything single aspect of that universe covered. You learn an obscene amount about what feels like every person and ever place in that world. You also get an incredible amount of history and lore that happened before the books. Sometimes hundreds of years before the books. It really helps bring it all to life.
It's probably an unfair comparison because The Blade Itself seems to simply have a smaller scope than ASOIF, and that's totally fine. Not everything has to be ASOIF. But I guess I'm just really into that epic scale. With The Blade Itself, I feel like I'm missing something in regards to the setting.
Still a very good read so far, though. And to be fair, it's the first book of a trilogy, so I'm sure things will become more fleshed out as the series goes on.
Went to the my unread list and chose the top book - The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie.
Surprisingly enough, it's totally sticking. The characters are by far the strongest aspect of the book. Very interesting POV characters, all with flaws who can be real scumbags in certain situations. The only negative I can think of at the moment is that the world feels slightly...underdeveloped. Like I'm just not getting a strong sense of what this world is like, where certain things and places are, the history of how the society in the book came to be, etc.
Some people are going to roll their eyes at this, but I honestly think the feeling stems from reading A Song of Ice and Fire recently. Not that I'm at all suggesting that ASOIF is the first fantasy series to have a strong setting nor am I suggesting that it's the absolute best, but I just finished Dance With Dragons late last year so it's fresh on my mind. Reading those books, it just feels like Martin has everything single aspect of that universe covered. You learn an obscene amount about what feels like every person and ever place in that world. You also get an incredible amount of history and lore that happened before the books. Sometimes hundreds of years before the books. It really helps bring it all to life.
It's probably an unfair comparison because The Blade Itself seems to simply have a smaller scope than ASOIF, and that's totally fine. Not everything has to be ASOIF. But I guess I'm just really into that epic scale. With The Blade Itself, I feel like I'm missing something in regards to the setting.
Still a very good read so far, though. And to be fair, it's the first book of a trilogy, so I'm sure things will become more fleshed out as the series goes on.
Maklershed
Member
^ That's gonna be my next Kindle book. Thanks to McKenzie 92's recommendation for Abercrombie (and reminder that have The Blade Itself unread on my Kindle) and the fact that I'm hungering for more fantasy after getting caught up in The Dagger and Coin series.
Emerson
May contain jokes =>
I don't think it's that crazy. If there's a fantasy series with a better-developed world than ASOIAF, I surely haven't read it.
Monocle
Member
The Thursday War by Karen Traviss.
I think Karen Traviss is a thoroughly mediocre writer who imposes her personal morality on characters in a heavy handed manner. Her careless treatment of previously established canon is obnoxious and has reduced my opinion of her work considerably. That said, she's fairly capable at keeping a tangled plot comprehensible and evenly paced, and she enlivens her descriptive passages with entertaining details.
I liked Glasslands enough that I plan to read the full trilogy. Some of Halo's extended universe is dull, especially when the human military is involved, but a lot of the deep lore concerning the Forerunners is really juicy, and so far there's been just enough of it in each book to sustain my interest. Halo novels are always quick reads anyway, so why not?
I read through that box set, as well as A Dance with Dragons, earlier this year on GAF's recommendation. You're in for one hell of a ride. It's a wonderful series. Not the strongest writing, in all honesty, but packed with unforgettable characters and so much delicious intrigue. The world (so richly realized), the twists (oh, what twists!), and the overarching narrative are some of the best you can find in any fantasy epic. The hype is certainly justified.Just picked up
today. Hope it's as good as everyone I know says. Will start reading it sometime later this month when I finish The Hunchback.
Avoid spoilers at all costs! Especially for the later books. Even chapter headings count as spoilers, since you're better off not knowing which characters survive. That means even a peek at a book's table of contents could disclose too much. Trust me on this.
P & V produce the best Dostoyevsky translations, bar none.
The audiobook is brilliant too. Its narrator absolutely nails the Judge. He draws out the poetry in McCarthy's prose.Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West
One of my favorite novels ever, just doing a re-read. Love it.
sparky2112
Member
I would be really interested to know how hands-on editors are in fantasy vs. other genres. It seems to me that 'heft' is seen as nothing but a plus in fantasy - more book = better book (at least as far as fan perception). I'd almost bet my last nickle that fantasy authors struggle far, far less with cuts/general editing than other authors...
Edit: I should throw Sci-fi in there as well, considering that's where Hamilton resides, but I don't think sci-fi suffers (in general) from bloat nearly to the degree that fantasy does...
I personally think his short story collections are the best. But definately read A Scanner Darkly. Its the best drug novel I've read.
Currently reading Cloud Atlas btw
teruterubozu
Member
Bolded my favorites.
Save Valis, Divine, Transmigration and Exegesis for when you really fall in love with PKD. His latter books can be pretty heady. Exegesis is about 1,000 pages of philosophical rambling.
Aquavelvaman
Banned
Pointedly practical.
Koroviev
Member
I ended up getting Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, and Man in the High Castle. I've already read Ubik and A Scanner Darkly, both of which are excellent.
Nice. I definitely think it's worth it. Like I said, great characters, and I've come across some unique twists to the universe that already have me intrigued about the entire series.
Yeah, like reading ASOIF I always have the impression of a big world that continues to exist no matter where the current POV character is currently located. Sometimes in The Blade Itself, I get the feeling that the universe only exists in like a 2 mile bubble around each of the main characters.
They get worse.
sparky2112
Member
Well, sometimes internet whipping boys really do deserve the abuse. Were you not warned about him ahead of time?
I liked it, he he..main characters pretty much kept me hooked on the series..
Tawney Bomb
Member
Been slacking on Slaughterhouse Five.
Not sure what I'll read after that.
Been curious about Erik Larson, might give him a go.
Not sure what I'll read after that.
Been curious about Erik Larson, might give him a go.