Return of the Book Thread

[HaemishM]

I loved Gaiman's Sandman stuff, but he has a certain quality to his writing that isn't always my cup of tea. It's almost a melancholy feel to everything, like your are buzzing the whole way through the novel or short story, and the rising action doesn't rise very high so that the climax usually isn't very climactic. It's almost like his stories are all denouement.

[Margalis]

American Gods had a lot of strong ideas and I wanted to like it but some of the execution fell really flat. I can't remember by exact complaints now but I remember having the general impression that the rough outline could have turned into something much better than it actually did.

I just finished The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and started Man in a High Castle. I've read a fair amount of Dick before, but much of it was a long time ago. Looking forward to reading a bunch more in the coming weeks. (Since I got no job!)

[naum]

American Gods had a lot of strong ideas and I wanted to like it but some of the execution fell really flat. I can't remember by exact complaints now but I remember having the general impression that the rough outline could have turned into something much better than it actually did.

This is precisely my sentiment…

[NowhereMan]

American Gods had a lot of strong ideas and I wanted to like it but some of the execution fell really flat. I can't remember by exact complaints now but I remember having the general impression that the rough outline could have turned into something much better than it actually did.

This is precisely my sentiment…

Really I think he's just not suited to book or novel format. Being pushed to get across ideas in a small amount of time/space and not having the ability to expand his concepts works really well but when he tries to develop the ideas or invest a lot more into creating worlds I feel he just doesn't do a great job of it. Sandman is the exception here but then quite a bit of that is the way the art interacts with the dialogue to achieve something I don't think he can do on his own. He's fantastic with showing not telling in those formats but when he has space to work with things he starts to fall into telling you how things are or trying to hard to sell you on ideas that just seem silly, while in short stories they get hinted at and work. I've got Xenocid, Children of the Mind and one of the Bakker trilogies arriving sometime in the next few days from Amazon. Tried to be nice and support bricks and mortar bookshops but none of the fuckers I popped into had any of them.

[HaemishM]

Finished up Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Enjoyed it immensely, probably read it in a lot less time than I would have expected for a book so large. At first I was turned off by what seemed a bit of a boring translation, but it picked up as the story went along. Very good innovation on the murder mystery genre.

My next read is Ursula K. LeGuin's The Lathe of Heaven based on the recommendations here.

[Engels]

You won't regret it.

[dd0029]

Just finished up The Neon Court by Kate Griffin, who I just found out is better known as YA author Catherine Webb. It's the third in a sort of episodic urban fantasy series that started with A Madness of Angels. One thing I really like is the very strong sense of place. London is nearly the central character in the story. The magic in the story is a very interesting mix of high and low, parts Gandalf "You cannot pass" and part paying for a motel room with a scribbled on stripper card. Then there's the mundane and the absurd mashup bits, things like:

"How do your make your living?"
I thought about this for a while. Then we said, "We destroy the enemies of the city, drive back the unstoppable darknesses and purge the night of the things that would make us fear." I thought a little bit more, "Although it doesn't pay very much."
Now it was Mr. Kim's turn to think, "You get pension with that?"

That I/we bit is something "explained" in the first book.

I really enjoyed this. I would say the series has gotten stronger as it's gone on, though part of that may be due to familiarity with the setting. The series reminds me in some ways of Sergey Lukyanenko's Night Watch series. It's as dark, but there's a fair bit more dark humor.

As a note, if you get bothered by place name dropping if you don't know where they are, skip this whole thing. Places and neighborhoods in London are thrown out with abandon.

[Sky]

My next read is Ursula K. LeGuin's The Lathe of Heaven based on the recommendations here.

Thanks for breaking my two month fiction blockage. Grabbed this off the shelf and I'm halfway through and it's difficult to put down.

[Samwise]

I'm not a big fan of LeGuin in general, but I liked that one.

[Sky]

I read Earthsea so long ago that I don't remember anything about it except that I never read any more LeGuin until yesterday.

[Bzalthek]

Finished Wise Man's Fear by Rothfuss.  Kinda disappointed.  Too much whining.

[Abalieno]

Nice books (both a thousand pages long):

[Ironwood]

Whoa.

[Ironwood]

Anyone read Heroes yet ?

Just finished it, it's just more of the same except the bloody nine doesn't appear, not bad but I wasn't sold on the main female character and the ending was totally predictable.

Yeah.  He really, really needs to write a different book next time.  Just as long as he doesn't do it like Morgan did.

[Quinton]

I am on a crazy Patrick O'Brian kick right now.  I read the first 3 books some years back after may officemate of the time was enthusing about them, enjoyed them quite a bit, but got distracted with various other things.   Recently I re-read the first book (Master and Commander), and then started on volume four.  I'm now (a couple months later) halfway through the 10th book (The Far Side of the World) and the series just keeps getting better and better.  I've been interspersing other books to not overdo it, but am moving ahead at a steady pace.

Something that I love is that Aubrey and Maturin are very definitely of their time, and not modern characters in an age of sail setting.  O'Brian's writing is highly enjoyable.  If you haven't read any of these, give the first book a shot, at the very least.  Probably not for everyone, but certainly worth giving a look in case it's for you.

[Murgos]

If you haven't read any of these, give the first book a shot, at the very least.  Probably not for everyone, but certainly worth giving a look in case it's for you.

A word of warning though, O'Brian uses a lot of period vernacular and terms specific to sailing.  Don't let it intimidate you, he provides plenty of context and explanation for the things you need to understand and the rest just sets the tone.

A Sea of Words (which my wife just got for me) claims that there are ~8000 different words in the 20 Aubrey & Maturin books that aren't in common usage today.

[Quinton]

A Sea of Words is definitely handy reference.  I've found that straight immersion has worked pretty well, but I do also hit the 'net for resources from time to time or look stuff up in ASoW.  There are still a number of things I can't visualize perfectly regarding the operation of age of sail tall ships, but I'm slowly learning, and the books are quite enjoyable even though I'm as much a lubber as Maturin.  I do find the now running gag of Stephen attempting to explain some piece of jargon to somebody and getting it horribly wrong rather amusing.

I found these diagrams of the HMS Leopard (the "horrible old Leopard" as mentioned in Desolation Island) to be instructive as well:
http://www.lorkaest.de/Leopard/LorKaest4/big/01_05.gif
http://www.lorkaest.de/Leopard/LorKaest4/big/01_06.gif
http://www.lorkaest.de/Leopard/LorKaest4/big/01_07.gif
http://www.lorkaest.de/Leopard/LorKaest4/big/01_08.gif

[Sheepherder]

The real question is whether you can tie a figure of eight on a bight.

[bhodi]

Haven't updated here in a while.

I listened to Suzanne Colin's Hunger Games and started the 2nd book in the trilogy before I put it down. It was pretty decent young adult fiction but it had way too much of a female bent for my liking. I was expecting battle royale and I instead got twilight. Still, it was well written and interesting, and my eyes didn't get THAT tired rolling at the poor protagonist who was unable to choose between two perfect men she kind of liked while confiding in her gay clothes designer best friend.

I also, like Haemish, listened to all three books of Larsson's Millenium trilogy (girl w/ dragon tattoo / men who hate women, etc.) An absolutely fantastic read once you get past the first quarter of the first book (because it starts out slow). I really, really enjoyed this series even though I am not normally one for a murder mystery. I highly recommend it and it has very wide appeal, so I really think anyone who reads fiction at all would like this series. The author's background is pretty interesting as well.

I read some random things, liked the cracked.com editor Robert Brockway's book Everything is going to kill everybody and James May's How to land a A330 Airbus and Other Vital Skills. Also re-read mountains of madness on a whim, and two of David Sedaris's books.


Maybe I'll read The Lathe of Heaven next.

[WayAbvPar]

I am on a crazy Patrick O'Brian kick right now.  I read the first 3 books some years back after may officemate of the time was enthusing about them, enjoyed them quite a bit, but got distracted with various other things.   Recently I re-read the first book (Master and Commander), and then started on volume four.  I'm now (a couple months later) halfway through the 10th book (The Far Side of the World) and the series just keeps getting better and better.  I've been interspersing other books to not overdo it, but am moving ahead at a steady pace.

Something that I love is that Aubrey and Maturin are very definitely of their time, and not modern characters in an age of sail setting.  O'Brian's writing is highly enjoyable.  If you haven't read any of these, give the first book a shot, at the very least.  Probably not for everyone, but certainly worth giving a look in case it's for you.

Love these. Read the first 6 or 7 or so, bought the whole set, then wandered off into other things for a bit. Need to go back and finish them. Wish I would have waited to buy the set until I had my Kindle though 

[Quinton]

Sadly, they are not available for kindle.  I recently bought the rest of set in paperback.

[bhodi]

Sadly, they are not available for kindle.  I recently bought the rest of set in paperback.

Oh, really? I seem to have the entire series (20 books?!) on both epub AND mobi. PM me!

[Morat20]

Who publishes them? A few houses do their own e-publishing. Baen is the biggest one I'm aware of.

[bhodi]

The publisher info on the ebook is listed as HarperCollins. Because it's quality ranking is 4/5, I suspect it's an edited/reviewed OCR with a scan of the front cover added.

[tgr]

I just gave up on R. Scott Bakker's "The Darkness That Comes Before" after reading 3/4th or so in, and still not feeling enthusiastic about the book in any way, shape or form. Sigh.

[Morat20]

I just gave up on R. Scott Bakker's "The Darkness That Comes Before" after reading 3/4th or so in, and still not feeling enthusiastic about the book in any way, shape or form. Sigh.

I feel that way about the first Entire and the Rose book. I just couldn't stick with it. It (and something called Galatic traders? Clipper something? Some sci-fi thing) seemed popular series, but....

[Engels]

Ya, I made it through about a half of The Darkness That Comes Before and had to put it down. Just awfully pretentious, dropping names of pretend places to build 'intrigue' all the danged time, making things purposefully obscure to make the author feel he was 'complicated'. Just piss poor imagination. The first chapter was good enough. Gene Wolf-ish, but dropped the ball after that.

[Quinton]

Just finished up Home Fires by Gene Wolfe.  Somewhat different from his other stuff, but still highly enjoyable.

[FatuousTwat]

I'd like to add another vote for The Darkness That Comes Before being shit.

Finished The Stone Canal, The Casini Division, the first three Foundation books (I think I might actually have a first edition of that) and the Eisenhorn omnibus (WH40k) by Dan Abnett.

All were pretty good, but I'm pretty sure I would never read any of them again. I'd not read any WH40k books before, and although these were readable, I really don't see what the fuss is about. Is Gaunt's Ghosts that much better?

[Khaldun]

I'm close to giving up on The Judging Eye. I appreciate what Bakker's trying to do, but the pretentions are dialed up too high, too evenly. It's fine to have that tone around the march of the Aspect-Emperor's forces, but the Esmenet sections really need a different tone or feel. He's reaching too hard for a philosophically grandiose "epic" scale of action, and trying to accomplish too much of that with overwriting.

[Sky]

Just read what may be the worst book I've ever finished. Just enough of a good concept that it kept me reading long enough to want to stick around for the punchline ending. Ancient Shores by Jack McDevitt. Alien artifact found on a Sioux reservation, tensions between government and nation.

[Salamok]

Just read what may be the worst book I've ever finished. Just enough of a good concept that it kept me reading long enough to want to stick around for the punchline ending. Ancient Shores by Jack McDevitt. Alien artifact found on a Sioux reservation, tensions between government and nation.

My worst book ever finished would be Dennis L. McKiernan's blatant rip of Tolkien.

[Arrrgh]

I'd like to add another vote for The Darkness That Comes Before being shit.

Finished The Stone Canal, The Casini Division, the first three Foundation books (I think I might actually have a first edition of that) and the Eisenhorn omnibus (WH40k) by Dan Abnett.

All were pretty good, but I'm pretty sure I would never read any of them again. I'd not read any WH40k books before, and although these were readable, I really don't see what the fuss is about. Is Gaunt's Ghosts that much better?

The Vampire Genevieve omnibus is good. Anno Dracula is also back in print. Great vampire novel. No one sparkles.

Jack Yeovil = Kim Newman.

[Sheepherder]

My worst book ever finished would be Dennis L. McKiernan's blatant rip of Tolkien.

I read this post and knew exactly which books you were talking about.

[Salamok]

My worst book ever finished would be Dennis L. McKiernan's blatant rip of Tolkien.

I read this post and knew exactly which books you were talking about.

Well according to the wiki he started out by writing a sequel, then the Tolkien Estate said no to that, then the publisher told him to change it up enough to avoid the IP issues and write a prequel to his sequel (aka rewrite the LoTR) so it all made sense.  As far as I remember no one was slinging that explanation about back in 1986 though.