Return of the Book Thread

[WayAbvPar]

Finally slogged my way through The Baroque Cycle. Overall I enjoyed it, but there were some extremely dry bits to get through. Followed that up with Dzur (the latest Vlad Taltos book from Brust). Enjoyed that, although I probably gained 5 pounds due to all the food eroticism in it. Bastard.


Sadly, I am now reading Shadowrun books. They are formulaic and mostly poorly written, but I find the setting so compelling I can overlook most of it. Brain candy for the most part. Also picked up Anansi Boys, and bought the omniibus version of the O'brian Aubrey/Maturin books (read the first 4 or 5 and realized it was a helluva lot cheaper to buy the set than to buy them individually).

[Endie]

Sadly, I am now reading Shadowrun books. They are formulaic and mostly poorly written, but I find the setting so compelling I can overlook most of it. Brain candy for the most part. Also picked up Anansi Boys, and bought the omniibus version of the O'brian Aubrey/Maturin books (read the first 4 or 5 and realized it was a helluva lot cheaper to buy the set than to buy them individually).

I only read one series of Shadowrun books, and like you say they were kinda pot-boilerish, but the setting meant I actually enjoyed them nonetheless.  I think it was the first series of three released - something like "Never Deal With Dragons"? - and I actually finished them, so they can't have been awful.

Re Anansi Boys, I find Gaiman enjoyable but sometimes it seems like he's still writing comics.  I don't know why i say that, it just feels that way.  It's kinda like a video director like Jonze making movies in the focus on imagery and the density of Big Ideas.  I loved Neverwhere, and American Gods and Stardust were fun.

And I think I read the whole series of Aubrey/Maturin books just about non-stop over a summer.  I loved those, with only a couple of minor quibbles.  It made me go back and read the Hornblower series again, as well as reading up on the real wolf of the sea they're based on (and who was even more astonishing than the fictional versions): Cochrane. 

Many, if not most, of the major set-pieces in the Aubrey/Maturin series are drawn from Cochrane's endeavours, like taking the Spanish El Gamo in the brig Speedy, despite being outnumbered 2 to 1 in guns, around 6 to 1 in weight of broadside and about 320 to 55 in men.  His plan at Rochefort (much understated in the wikipedia article) sealed the question of whether the French could invade Britain once and for all, and saw him sailing a ship packed with hundreds of barrels of gunpowder (which he lit on what turned out to be a 7 minute fuse, then returned to in order to rescue the ship's dog!) and engaging numerous ships of the line simultaneously in a frigate in order to provoke his dilatory admiral into action.

[Sky]

Funny you mention Baroque, WAP. I just cleaned out the apartment to find all my overdue library books (fine exempt, bitches!) and finally found my bookmark I'd misplaced. It was in page 150ish of Quicksilver, which is where I stalled out. I was pretty good, though. Only reeeeeally overdue stuff was home buying for dummies, a great book on harp by Pete Seeger and a How to Read Music book I was working with. Well, the only stuff I'm returning right now.

Have a great bass book we almost discarded, I saved it for the patrons. It was written in 1972, filled with blues, r&b and funk. Funkin' groovy, man. Keeping that one a bit longer. Going to read some more Modesitt on-offs for now.

[WayAbvPar]

Quicksilver gets better after that- once it moves to Jack and Eliza's POVs. The entire second half of The System Of The World was very good as well.

[Krakrok]

I'm stalled around page 80 of Quicksilver. It's a piece of shit. I don't care about the mudfuck characters or the nonexistant plot I'd just like for something to happen. ANYTHING.

[Phildo]

I agree that the beginning of Quicksilver is pretty dull.  It's unfortunate that the story takes half a book to really get going, but once it does it gets awesome fast.

[Lt.Dan]

I rationalised some books to the local second-had store....bye-bye Baroque Cycle, bye-bye Mallorean, and bye-bye Transmetropolitan.

Aside from that I read Deadhouse Gates and just started Memories of Ice.  I just can't help myself sadly.  I've got the Michael Palin Diaries and Iron Council (China Mieville) parked in reserve.  My wife has just started something semi-biographical by Adam Gotnik about moving back to NYC which I'll probably have a read of too.

[Soukyan]

I rationalised some books to the local second-had store....bye-bye Baroque Cycle, bye-bye Mallorean, and bye-bye Transmetropolitan.

Aside from that I read Deadhouse Gates and just started Memories of Ice.  I just can't help myself sadly.  I've got the Michael Palin Diaries and Iron Council (China Mieville) parked in reserve.  My wife has just started something semi-biographical by Adam Gotnik about moving back to NYC which I'll probably have a read of too.

Gopnik. He has a new book? Cool. His previous would have been Paris to the Moon about moving his family to Paris and living there from 1995-2000, so I guess he has now written a follow-up to it about "re-patriating" to the Big Apple. Paris to the Moon was an enjoyable read.

[murdoc]

Finished 'Eagles Brood' by Jack Whyte, which talked about the rise of Merlyn and Uther Pendragon and ends with an appearance by Arthur. 3 books in and I love the series. I need to track down the rest of the series, but in the meantime I cracked open 'Legend' by David Gemmell

[HaemishM]

I just finished Ben Bova's Saturn. I normally like Bova's writing; he's not great, but a good read. I'm surprised I managed to make it through this book at all. His characters were completely annoying, talking in almost mustache-twirling manner. He spent the whole book trying to prove a one-page political thesis about the generation of self-government on a habitat exiled to the orbit of Saturn, but the whole thing was just hamfisted. There was a subplot about a stuntman who travels with the habitat from Earth in order to pull off a big stunt at Saturn (was meant to go to the surface of Titan, but he instead becomes the first man to fly in an EVA suit through the rings of Saturn). THAT subplot was much more interesting than the main plot, and would have taken about 1/3 of the pages if he'd just focused on that. It's a real shame.

Started reading England's Dreaming, a book about the Sex Pistols and the rise of the punk movement in England. So far it's wibbling on about McLaren and his life as art schtick, which really is only moderately interesting. Never Mind the Bollocks, get to the Pistols.

[Johny Cee]

Haven't been reading that much lately.  TR gobbled some time,  and been back into TF2.

Charile Huston has a new new book out.  His The Shotgun Rule was released this summer,  and he's followed it with Half the Blood in Brooklyn last week picking up the Joe Pitt storyline.  Shotgun Rule (crime, teens, sins of the father, the '80s) is excellent,  and the Joe Pitt books are pretty solid (hard-boiled vampirish books).

Simon R Green has a new Nightside book that's alright.  I don't like the rest of the guys stuff,  but his Nightside books are decently entertaining.

Picked up the rerelease of Cook's Tower of Fear.  Good book.

Kind of stalled out reading Barker's Book of Blood.

[Reg]

I've just finished "Fatal Revenant" which is the second book in the third Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. It's wasn't as good as books in the earlier series but it wasn't the giant steaming pile of crap the Ironwood claimed it was either.  There was more Linden Avery than I really wanted but I did enjoy having a lot of the Land's backstory filled in.

I don't regret having it in hardcover and will get book three as soon as it comes out.

[Margalis]

Kind of stalled out reading Barker's Book of Blood.

Noooo. Man I'm absolutely dying to meet another person in the world I can discuss the things near and dear to my heart with.

If you aren't liking it that much I can suggest the standouts:

Pig Blood Blues
In the Hills, the Cities
Hell's Event
Jacqueline Ess
Rawhead Rex

If you don't like one of those five then either you won't like Barker or our tastes wildly differ.

[Ironwood]

I've just finished "Fatal Revenant" which is the second book in the third Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. It's wasn't as good as books in the earlier series but it wasn't the giant steaming pile of crap the Ironwood claimed it was either.  There was more Linden Avery than I really wanted but I did enjoy having a lot of the Land's backstory filled in.

I don't regret having it in hardcover and will get book three as soon as it comes out.

You didn't find the mid-book reveal and the end-book reveal to be the most obvious steaming pile ?

Really ?  It didn't insult your very intelligence ?  The backstory didn't sound like a 1st Edition D&D campaign ?

Fair enough.

[JWIV]

I've just finished "Fatal Revenant" which is the second book in the third Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. It's wasn't as good as books in the earlier series but it wasn't the giant steaming pile of crap the Ironwood claimed it was either.  There was more Linden Avery than I really wanted but I did enjoy having a lot of the Land's backstory filled in.

I don't regret having it in hardcover and will get book three as soon as it comes out.

You didn't find the mid-book reveal and the end-book reveal to be the most obvious steaming pile ?

Really ?  It didn't insult your very intelligence ?  The backstory didn't sound like a 1st Edition D&D campaign ?

Fair enough.

The two reveals were more than slightly obvious - this last trilogy  series has been more than a little hamfisted and blatant, and I'm not entirely sure why other than he's trying too hard to make us wallow in angst and not enough time taking time to set things up and be subtle.   In for a penny, in for a pound as it were - but I'll still be picking up the remaining books and hopefully this will end the series for good.

Otherwise, I'm listening to Ken Follet's Pillars of the Earth right now and reading Michael Flynn's Rogue Star.

 

[Reg]

You didn't find the mid-book reveal and the end-book reveal to be the most obvious steaming pile ?

Really ?  It didn't insult your very intelligence ?  The backstory didn't sound like a 1st Edition D&D campaign ?

Fair enough.

Well, like I said it wasn't as good as the previous trilogies but I certainly didn't hate it like you did. You aren't going to be picking up book 3 in hard cover right?

I've got no problem with the reveals or the backstory. My problem is that he hasn't given me a character that I like or care about yet. Even the giants just seemed like caricatures of themselves without anything to seperate them from Generic Giant Character number 3 in the previous series.
 

[Ironwood]

 You aren't going to be picking up book 3 in hard cover right?

I'm a very strange man.  I might.

[Morat20]

Even the giants just seemed like caricatures of themselves without anything to seperate them from Generic Giant Character number 3 in the previous series.

Foamfollower was the only one I ever connected with -- mostly because of his original conversation with Covenent, and later for the really acute despair that overtakes him. I didn't really care much for the "Go take a bath in molten lava, you'll feel better" solution, but I did find him an engaging and very empathetic character and felt he was probably the best symbol of the sort of toll the war was taking.

I think only Mhoram was a character I liked more.

Covenent, of course, can go choke on crushed glass. But then, I'm not supposed to like that fuck.

[Ironwood]

See, I hear that a lot.  I liked him.  He was the only fucking honest person of ALL of them.

[HRose]

You guys really need to try The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie. I'm pretty sure you would all love it.

It's also part of a trilogy that will be completed in March, and early review say that each book is better than the previous. I don't know how, since the first book is AWESOME. And it has one of the most badass parties ever.

[Morat20]

See, I hear that a lot.  I liked him.  He was the only fucking honest person of ALL of them.

Covenant? No he wasn't. He lied to himself constantly. He was brutally honest to other people, but made up for it by lying so much to himself. About what was real. About what he really felt. About what was right. He didn't want to accept the responsibility, so he fucking lied like a madman to avoid it.

I mean in the end, it didn't matter if the Land was all a dream or real -- what you decide matters. If it was in his head, it just meant it mattered to him. If it was real, it was because he was a part of something real. Instead, he ran and hid from that and lied to cover it up.

Of course, that was sort of the point. He was supposed to be a contradiction.

[lamaros]

Finished some stuff recently:

Clive Cussler! Valhalla Rising! Was rubbish. Really bad compared to some of his earlier books. Too much crap about the past, tired storyline that was more farcical than fanciful, etc. Disappointing.

Also just finished The Selected Letters of Malcolm Lowry. Very interesting at most points, with some really excellent letters in there.

[bhodi]

I haven't updated in a while; here are the books in my out-pile:

Anne Rice - Interview with the Vampire:   It was pretty good, but I hated Lestat so I'm not interested in the rest of the series. I actually preferred The Historian...
Ayn Rand - Atlas Shrugged:  Objectivism is.. lame. It doesn't hold up to scrutiny, but the book was well written and entertaining.
Arthur C Clarke - The Light of Other Days:   This book was really, really good. Easily my favorite on this list. He's still got it. It's a what-if novel focusing on the impact of a new technology on social and governmental changes; specifically, a tomorrow-future world invents where a viewer that lets you see anything, anywhere.. and later, anywhen.
Poul Anderson - Man Kzin Wars I, II, III: I wanted to go back into the "Known Space" Universe, so I re-read these three short story compilations. I love the Kzin. Scream and leap, indeed.
David Drake - The Tank Lords: I had heard some good things about this short story collection of military sci-fi, and while it was decent enough, I really think I prefer the novel format for getting engrossed in a world.
Dan Simmons - Hyperion:  This one was recommended on here, and I read it... It wasn't terrible but I don't think it was as exceptional as people thought. I'm going to read the sequel and see if I enjoy it as much.
Phillip Pullman - His Dark Materials (series); Not bad, I'm actually on the last book now. Light and fun reading, and I can see why people compare it to harry potter. It's no harry potter, but still fun.
David Sedaris - Me Talk Pretty One Day:  I borrowed this book from a friend; I really enjoy his self-deprecating prose.
A. Conan Doyle - Adventures of Sherlock Holmes:  I'm not sure what I expected, but it was a lot more than this book delivered. I understand it's older, that it's historic, and that the writing didn't bother me overmuch, but the plots of every single short story "mystery" were pretty much transparent. Maybe that's because they've been used and re-used in tons of other novels, but I just found it kind of dry.
Michael Crichton - Congo:  I had heard this book was a lot better than the movie, and it was. It's a shame he can't write stuff like this anymore, what with Timeline and Prey finding new lows on my list of enjoyments.
Steven Gould - Jumper: One of my favorite books as a kid, I decided to re-read it since the movie's coming out. The movie is closer to the second book than the first, from what I understand, but this book is still solid - a coming of age story about a guy with the power to teleport.
George E. Dawson - The Right of the Child to Be Well Born:  This one takes some explaining. It's a book on eugenics, written in 1912 buy a professor of psychology at the "Hartford School of Religious Pedagogy". My friend lent it to me as a joke, but it was pretty interesting. Some of his assertions are dead wrong, but it's really interesting to see how the time period shapes entire thought, even from a scientific standpoint. His perceived role of religion in life and children is quite plain, and I don't think that even modern devotees would find the type of bigoted light he shines on those subjects comfortable.

I'm going to read Cat's Cradle with the book club next.

[Ironwood]

George E. Dawson - The Right of the Child to Be Well Born:  This one takes some explaining. It's a book on eugenics, written in 1912 buy a professor of psychology at the "Hartford School of Religious Pedagogy". My friend lent it to me as a joke, but it was pretty interesting. Some of his assertions are dead wrong, but it's really interesting to see how the time period shapes entire thought, even from a scientific standpoint. His perceived role of religion in life and children is quite plain, and I don't think that even modern devotees would find the type of bigoted light he shines on those subjects comfortable.

Is it possible to expand on this without it hitting the Politics board ?  I'm intrigued.

[bhodi]

Let me type out some passages for you to give you an idea. Finished typing the below, and wow, it's a lot of text. I can type more of you want, but this should give you an idea. After typing the biological fitness, I'm only giving choice selections from "Moral Fitness for Parenthood". There's more where this came from... I should really type out the entire essay entitled "Religion and Eugenics" since I couldn't find any good summary paragraphs that captures the essence of crazy that this guy is peddling...

From "Moral Fitness For parenthood"

On the negative side of moral character an equally illuminating light is shed. The resistance to evil of every description becomes at once a much larger task than the conservation of individual welfare. Howbeit, it becomes a vastly more inspiring and hopeful task in proportion as its ends are larger. Organic appetites are thus to be regulated and used in the interest of posterity, no less than in the interest of the individual life. The supreme temptations of the sexual life are to be met and overcome by young men and young women with eh vision of parenthood before them, and the relation of the exercise of sexual functions to healthy and efficient children that may some time be born to them. No more powerfully inhibiting impulse could be invoked than that associated with the pride of virile fatherhood and chaste and beautiful motherhood. Similar conditions hold true of other moral temptations. What man or woman would practice any vice if they could see their own lives as the media of transmission in racial progress? What man or woman could abuse their bodies or their minds, in any way whatsoever, if they saw in every violation of the moral law which they committed, the possible disease or death of that portion of the human race that may be numbered among their posterity?

In the essay entitled "Biological Fitness for Parenthood"

... It may, therefore be said that all men and women , at their best, are instinctively eugenicists. How else, indeed, could mankind have built up the measure of vitality, wisdom, and goodness of heart that it has achieved?

Emerging from this process of instinctive sexual selection in the direction of parental fitness, there have gradually appeared customs, usages, and laws that, in one form or another, have become binding upon human society and now constitute the standards of parental fitness the world over. Thus certain conditions of organic and psychical life, and a certain adaptability of sex to sex, are recognized among all civilized peoples as indispensable to wedlock. On the surface, these popular standards of conjugal, and,. in the last analysis, parental, fitness may seem to have little uniformity and little rational basis, yet they serve to establish the principle, that, true to the fundamental instincts of procreation, the conscious evolution of custom and law is toward a eugenic view of parenthood. Wherever physical deformities or weaknesses, mental disease or incompetency, too great disparity in age, or any other factor likely to affect the number and quality of offspring, is regarded as an obstacle to marriage, there is evidence that the popular mind recognizes that some degree of biological fines for parenthood is necessary.

Modern science has made explicit and intelligible the facts and principles of parental fitness which age-long instinct and racial customs and laws have already universally, if, indeed, dimly, apprehended. Biology, in it's wide inductive studies of heredity during the last half century, has established the fact that the propagation of all forms of life follows laws that are definite and ascertainable. The life of man is no exception to these laws. The conditions that underlie fitness for human parenthood are begining to be determined with some degree of certainty. As a result, the conviction is growing among intelligent men and women that it would be possible rapidly to improve the quality of children born into the world.

While the method of transmission of qualities from parent to offspring is not yet fully understood, and while scientists differ as to whether or not acquired qualities may be inherited, there is no difference of opinion regarding the really vital aspects of heredity. Thus all will agree that the qualities human beings are born with, may be transmitted to their offspring. Moreover, all will agree that the qualities acquired after birth, in so far as they affect the vitality of the individual, may affect the vitality of his offspring through the germinal elements. So that, either in the matter of physical deformities or disease, or in that of mental disease, the case is clear that if the specific disability is not transmitted, nevertheless a condition of diminished vitality may be transmitted which will favor the outcropping of the same disability on some other. Any thing, in short, that is a vital factor in the life of a parent, such as the various physical organs and mental traits, may, if modified through disease or misuse of any kind, become, directly or indirectly, a vital factor in the life of the child.

Therefore does the testimony of science corroborate racial instinct, and customs and laws well-nigh universal, that men and women should not become parents if they are physically and mentally incapacitated to bear healthy children. This incapacity may take the form of congenital tendencies to some radical disease of body or mine, like tuberculous, cancer, or insanity. It may take the form of acquired disease that has become so deep-seated and fixt as to affect the germinal elements. It may take the form of old age, when, through diminished vitality, the germ-cells have lost their energy. But in whatever form this organic or psychical degeneration may appear, it should run its course within the lives of the individuals afflicted. It should not be handed onto other individuals and other generations. It may not be, indeed, without peril to every individual involved, whether parent, child, or society at large. This is the stern bur inexorable law of life. We are bound to believe it is also a beneficent law,because upon it's fulfillment the evolution of all life has depended. The sooner the world consciously and fearlessly faces this truth, the sooner will it end much of the misery and unhappiness that afflict mankind.

[Margalis]

Hyperion was the best of the bunch, if you didn't like that you probably won't like the rest.

Congo was better than the movie -- but still awful.

[Teleku]

Eh, I enjoyed reading the Congo book, it was good fun.  Congo, Jurassic Park, and Sphere where all good reads to me.

[Endie]

Let me type out some passages for you to give you an idea. Finished typing the below, and wow, it's a lot of text. I can type more of you want, but this should give you an idea. After typing the biological fitness, I'm only giving choice selections from "Moral Fitness for Parenthood". There's more where this came from... I should really type out the entire essay entitled "Religion and Eugenics" since I couldn't find any good summary paragraphs that captures the essence of crazy that this guy is peddling...

Stuff

In A.N.Wilson's After the Victorians he lists some of the famous writers and intellectuals who were staunch eugenicists on a level that Hitler and his Tiergarten IV project would have been proud of, together with the odd quote.  It makes for uncomfortable and unpleasant reading.

[Ironwood]

That's some vile shit.

[Krakrok]

Let me type out some passages for you to give you an idea. Finished typing the below, and wow, it's a lot of text. I can type more of you want, but this should give you an idea. After typing the biological fitness, I'm only giving choice selections from "Moral Fitness for Parenthood". There's more where this came from... I should really type out the entire essay entitled "Religion and Eugenics" since I couldn't find any good summary paragraphs that captures the essence of crazy that this guy is peddling...

Reminds me of this weird book from 1922 on Project Gutenberg.

[Mazakiel]

I've been reading the Dread Empire and Black Company collections that came out recently, I'd forgotten just how good Cook is at what he does.  Though finally getting to read Dread Empire, I've found Erikson's Malazan borrows a bit more from Cook than I had initially realized.  Especially in the Mocker/Kruppe area. 

[Triforcer]

Er, Eugenics wasn't just the province of "teh evil conservo religious crazies."  Many of the early heroes of the birth control/abortion rights movement (including women, such as, for example, Margaret Sanger) weren't pushing it on a 60s-style women's rights theory.  They viewed those things as a good way to eventually eliminate Catholics, Jews, and blacks (by encouraging those populations to use birth control/abortions). 

[Abagadro]

Er, Eugenics wasn't just the province of "teh evil conservo religious crazies."  Many of the early heroes of the birth control/abortion rights movement (including women, such as, for example, Margaret Sanger) weren't pushing it on a 60s-style women's rights theory.  They viewed those things as a good way to eventually eliminate Catholics, Jews, and blacks (by encouraging those populations to use birth control/abortions). 

Sorta. Sanger's eugenics was directed more towards the "unfit" and "disgenics" which was based upon health and to a certain degree class, not race/ethnicity/religion, etc. A lot of her stuff has been quoted out of context (usually in attacks against Planned Parenthood) as when she calls for improving the "race" she is talking about the human race or, often, the "American race", neither of which had to do with Jews, blacks, etc.

A lot of her ideas about eugenics were indeed screwed up, but they weren't "racially" based in the way you assert.

[Endie]

Edit removing long reply because that would have ended up with a politic board discussion.

Suffice to say that loads of countries, especially Germany, Sweden and the US, were pretty vile about compulsory sterilisation as part of a eugenicist program; it was more widespread than we like to think; and it doesn't get discussed much because both left and right - including several major intellectual figures - come out of it badly.

[HaemishM]

Anne Rice - Interview with the Vampire:   It was pretty good, but I hated Lestat so I'm not interested in the rest of the series. I actually preferred The Historian...

Glad I wasn't the only one who fucking hated Lestat. I'd say you can read the second book even through your distaste for the character, because it's well-written. But beyond that (Queen of the Damned and past that), don't fucking bother. Lestat is the constant obsession and he gets even more fucking annoying. Stabby annoying.

Ayn Rand - Atlas Shrugged:  Objectivism is.. lame. It doesn't hold up to scrutiny, but the book was well written and entertaining.

If you think that's lame, try reading the essays in Capitalism. It makes the objectivism of Atlas Shrugged seem downright cuddly. I loved Atlas Shrugged when I read it, but it was at a time in my life when I really needed it. I'm quite glad to realize that I soon realized just how full of shit she was soon after reading the book.