Return of the Book Thread

[Ironwood]

I did my dissertation on Banks.  I know what he's about. 

Doesn't stop the fact that his books used to be ABOUT and Enjoyable.  I've found the last 3 Culture books to be a slog.

That said, I dearly wish there would be more.   

[Tale]

If you're reading books to your kids get Arthur Ransom's Swallows and Amazons. So, so good.

I read that series as a kid. Stayed with me for life. It's great.

[Morat20]

I did my dissertation on Banks.  I know what he's about. 

Doesn't stop the fact that his books used to be ABOUT and Enjoyable.  I've found the last 3 Culture books to be a slog.

That said, I dearly wish there would be more.   

It's always particularly disheartening with an author dies. Even if his latest stuff hadn't been all that great, well -- everyone has their creative ups and downs. It sucks when there's no chance there'll be more.

*sigh*. A lot of the authors I really enjoyed as a teenager were guys that were seriously hitting their stride 20 years ago - -which generally means, at best, they're in their 50s or 60s. (A lot are actually dead -- enjoyed a lot of golden age stuff when I was a kid). Not that they're aren't always new authors -- and good ones -- but, well, it's shit to think "Well, this is the light thing X wrote".

Pratchett was actually worse news to me than Banks, just because it seemed...so pointed an illness. "No, you're not dying. You're just being fucked square in the talent until it's gone and you can't even remember what you used to be".

Cancer, well, it's shit but it happens and people die and it's sad. Alzheimer's, dementia -- it's the sad, slow, lingering death of personality without even the kindness of dying before everything you were is gone.

As for Bank's works -- yeah, his later works are a lot less focused. I think that's just where he's going as a writer. I still quite enjoyed them, but they were quite a bit different than his earlier works.

[Xuri]

Fuc###g tablet has crashed three times near the end of a three-paragraph long post about leaving Canada, lack of ebook-options in Norway and a plea for recommendations for ebooks I can stock up on before leaving (of WoT/Black Company/Song of I&F-style fantasy/asimov-style sci-fi). Suggestions?

[bhodi]

Line up the 6 Abercrombie books. You can start with the trilogy if you want chronological orders, or you can skip ahead to one of the standalones where his writing is a lot better. Scott lynch's The Lies of Locke Lamora was pretty good, I recommend that. As far as Asimov sci-fi, there isn't much of that style coming out. The "golden age of sci-fi" has pretty much ended. The closest I've read this year was David Brin's Existence, which I felt had some serious flaws. Recently, it's either more future-ish and out there in terms of ideas, like Blindsight or The Quantum Thief, or pure space opera like the mush that David Weber is churning out. Reynolds, Banks, and writers like them have had a lot of impact on the genre and it's been shifting heavily in that direction since the 2000's. You might like House of Suns, which I think is his best work, though I feel like it's really closer to Banks' style (especially the Algebraist, which I liked but a lot of people didn't)

On the other hand, urban fantasy is finally breeding some great writers. London Falling and Libriomancer were both excellent.

[JWIV]

For SF I really enjoyed the James S. A. Corey books so far -  Leviathan Wakes and Caliban's War.  The third book is due out this June. 

[Morat20]

Fuc###g tablet has crashed three times near the end of a three-paragraph long post about leaving Canada, lack of ebook-options in Norway and a plea for recommendations for ebooks I can stock up on before leaving (of WoT/Black Company/Song of I&F-style fantasy/asimov-style sci-fi). Suggestions?

Check out Baen. Their e-library has a lot of free books, their prices are quite reasonable (anything marked "ARC" is really marked up, but they're advanced copies that haven't finished editing. It's basically for people who don't want to wait another two months or so), and they have a lot of classic sci-fi and fantasy.

They've got the complete PC Hodgell collection (her God Stalk novels), some Saberhagen (the Berserker books) and a lot of other stuff from the last thirty or forty years. (Obviously just the stuff Baen owns).

Other than that...um, I just snapped up three James White Hospital Station anthologies which make me quite happy. :)

[Abagadro]

For SF I really enjoyed the James S. A. Corey books so far -  Leviathan Wakes and Caliban's War.  The third book is due out this June. 

If I haven't previously mentioned those then it was because I wanted to but forgot. I liked them quite a bit too.

[HaemishM]

Just finished First Contact (In Her Name: Book 1). It's available for free on Kindle (as is the first book of the second trilogy in this series - this trilogy is the prequel to the other one which got published first). If you like space war invasion type of books, it's decent. It reads as if it's the novelization of a Michael Bay splody action space war movie only with slightly (just slightly) deeper characters. There are some parts that drug on and were really not good and some parts that were silly and the aliens themselves seem illogical at best. It is free, though and you could read worse. I won't pay to read the rest of the series, though.

[ghost]

Have you finished the audio versions of your books yet, Haemish?
 

[WayAbvPar]

Finally finished Homicide:A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon. Fascinating read. I really like Simon's eye for detail and storytelling style. Have moved on to The Corner, which so far is a little uneven (but I am still early in the book). He drew heavily on both of these works (and some of his own experiences at The Baltimore Sun) to write The Wire, which is the best television show ever made.

[Khaldun]

Reading Kij Johnson's At the Mouth of the River of Bees. Very great short stories.

Delbanco's College. Good book about the history and current situation of American higher education.

David Toomey's Weird Life, analysis of the science of extremophilia and its implications for understanding extraterrestrial life. Good stuff--very compatible with Paul Davies' The Eerie Silence and Ward & Brownlee's Rare Earth as further thinking about the Fermi Paradox. Maybe life is rare, but also maybe we have cognitive or scientific limitations to our abilities to listen for or perceive it. It's only been a very short time since we came to understand that life is much more resilient and present in places that we'd previously imagined it could not exist in.

[Sky]

Have you finished the audio versions of your books yet, Haemish?
 

Wasn't Ironwood going to read them?

[dd0029]

Just finished up Cowboy Angels</w> by Paul McAuley. It's got a really cool premise about American Exceptionalism applied to dimensional traveling that carries it through to the end. One kind of let down is that that really neat idea is yoked to a somewhat tedious spy thriller. But that idea and the alternate realities created are enough fun to carry through to the end.

[ghost]

Have you finished the audio versions of your books yet, Haemish?
 

Wasn't Ironwood going to read them?

Maybe we could get you to do some really classy guitar riffs in the scene changes? 

[Sky]

Ironwood sings Zep.

"There's a wee lassy who sure that you should shut yer fookin trap, ya cunt." - Stairway to Heaven

[Abagadro]

That would be a definite improvement over the original.

[HaemishM]

I'd buy that.

[dd0029]

Picked up Brandon Sanderson's novella, "The Emperor's Soul" as I was leaving the library on Friday. This was everything good about Sanderson. It's a really good quick read. I finished it up in about an hour and a half.

[dd0029]

Picked up The Petrovich Trilogy by Simon Morden. It's an omnibus of the first three books in what looks to be a continuing series. I really enjoyed the first book, Equations of Life. I also like the follow up books, but they are somewhat different in tone. Anyway, these bill themselves as post apocalyptic sci-fi. That's a fairly apt description, but it's somewhat different from the more "traditional" post apocalyptic stuff as you still have computers and civilization. It's just confined in enclaves. This is set in London after some sort of limited global nuclear exchange. Japan has apparently sunk into the ocean. The story follows Samuil Petrovich who is some sort of expatriate Russian grad student. He's sort of a geek fantasy who swears a lot in Russian. He has a very weak heart, so he spends a fair amount of time almost dead from his heart giving out on him. There's Japanese gangsters, crooked cops, bodyguard nuns, quantum computers and virtual realities. I'd call this sci-fi urban fantasy.

[bhodi]

I'm just finishing up the third book of that series. It's pretty good. It's supposed to be 'post-apocolyptic' but it's really more near future, sci-fi urban fantasy is a good description. For a moderately gritty setting, the named characters have a serious case of the protagonist - they're invincible in scrapes, are the best in the entire world at everything they do, happily run into stupid situations and even when they do dumb things it all works out fine in the end. Plus, there's a literal deus-ex-machina to solve any serious problems or handwave over any technical impossibilities. The world doesn't really feel alive because unless you're a named character you're only suitable for either the 'minion' or 'passive, easily led, quietly competent civilian' role.

That said, it's still a fun, easy read and really enjoyable as long as you don't think too hard about technology, political implications, or how flat and black-and-white the world is compared to the named characters.

[murdoc]

After reading a couple of duds, I started in on a book I have been meaning to read forever - Scott Lynch's "The Lies of Locke Lamora". Just barely into it, but it's got me hooked right away. Really enjoying it so far.

[bhodi]

That's a really good book, but it gets dark towards the end. The second wasn't as good, and the third is out uh, next month? The author has had depression issues and almost didn't write the third book.

[Ironwood]

Really ?  That's a shame.  I personally loved the hell out of the first one.  Best bit of fantasy writing I'd read in a long while.

[Quinton]

The first one was awesome.  The second one had some good moments but just didn't work as well as the first one overall, though I still enjoyed it.  I'm hoping the third book moves back toward (or above) the bar set by the first one. 

[dd0029]

Just finished up Seeds of Earth by Michael Cobley. This was fun popcorn space opera. It's chock full of deus ex machina, but even then it's fun. It's got aliens, ai, robots, spaceships, lots of entertaining bang zoom and a planet full of inexplicably Scottish Russians. Not great literature by any stretch, but it's got whatever it is that makes for fun.

[Bzalthek]

I realized a while back I never read any Terry Pratchett before (though I still fondly remember the playstation Discworld game, and still have memorized the dialogue by the priest of Offler which stood on a corner).  Anywho, I picked up the some audio books from the beginning, and then some more.  I love these books, especially as read by (mostly) Nigel Planar. 

[Morat20]

I never did get to play that game. :(

I suggest snagging Good Omens, as well -- he coauthored it with Neil Gaiman. Not Discworld but..good. :) Pratchett's Discworld stuff starts picking up around Small Gods and turns into "if this shit isn't required reading in high schools and colleges, English departments shouldn't exist" somewhere around Tiffany Aching.

[Bzalthek]

Oh I've had Good Omens for a while.  I've been a Gaiman fanboy since Sandman.  If his name is on it I buy it.

[lamaros]

Oh I've had Good Omens for a while.  I've been a Gaiman fanboy since Sandman.  If his name is on it I buy it.

 

[Hammond]

Read a couple so so books recently. Rick Gualtieri Bill the vampire series has a new one out  Holier Than Thou overall the book was just so so. Also thanks dd0029  for the Seeds of Earth suggestion it was a nice fun read. Not sure if I will read the sequels or not yet. I have read so many books in the last few months I am running out interesting books to read.

[Ironwood]

Currently reading Wool, since it finally came out over here in paper.

I can see why it grabbed people.  It has a nice flow to it, though my SoD is taking a pasting.

[dd0029]

Also thanks dd0029  for the Seeds of Earth suggestion it was a nice fun read. Not sure if I will read the sequels or not yet.

Yeah, the only reason I picked up the sequels is that my library had them. I enjoyed the first, but not enough to pay $7 for the Kindle edition. I know that most of the cost of the book is not the physical item, but paying the same for a digital thing as a physical thing is still a mental hurdle.

[HaemishM]

I just finished The Betrayal of American Prosperity, a non-fiction book on why America's economy, trade and manufacturing has gone to shit in the last 50 years. The author's experience in trade negotiations for Reagan, Bush Sr. and Clinton certainly gives him some credibility, but most of his solutions end up as out there stuff that could never be achieved in this political climate, or worse. He keeps repeating the canard that corporations in the US pay more in taxes than any other nation, while conveniently forgetting that most don't pay the standard rate at all (like GE paying no taxes on billions in profit).

I've started on a re-read of Proust's Swann's Way though I'm not sure if I'm going to finish it or start on A Feast for Crows.

[murdoc]

The first one was awesome.  The second one had some good moments but just didn't work as well as the first one overall, though I still enjoyed it.  I'm hoping the third book moves back toward (or above) the bar set by the first one. 

Just finished the second one. Felt the same way you guys did, it had it's moments, but it wasn't as good as the first one. Felt the ending was really rushed and there was never the sense of 'how are they going to get out of this?' that the first one had for me. It ended up pretty much the way I thought it would. It felt like he just tried to do too much with it. I would have been happier if all the Pirate stuff had been separate from the Sinspire stuff.

Having said that I still really enjoyed it. It had some great moments and I really like the characters. Really looking forward to the next one, but I see a release date of October 8th. At least it's this year.

Next book on my list is Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence. Starts out pretty savage, so not sure what to expect but have heard pretty good things about it.