Return of the Book Thread

[Draegan]

No, 2 more books to go because TOR's got bills to pay and mouths to feed.

When it's all done, I'll read them again. I quit somewhere around book 85, mostly because I realized the first half of book 85 was everyone reacting to the last chapter of book 84.

I got really fed up with what felt like 6000 pages of "And holy crap, did everyone notice that immense magical working? Let's talk about it for 30 pages, then we shall allow EVERY character still alive who can sense magic to spend 30 pages on their version of 'OMG, WTF?'".

I think there's been three or four books since then, so I figured "why not wait?".

That's exactly where I left off.  And exactly why I'm waiting as well.

[Murgos]

- Historical fiction-wise, Forester is borderline for the Hornblower books.

If you haven't tried Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey & Maturin books you should go check them out (The movie Master & Commander is based on elements from a couple of them, and of course, the characters are).

[Samwise]

Not an authoritative Top Ten since I just jotted down the first ten authors that came to mind as people whose stuff I have read or would read because their name was on it.  Ordered alphabetically.

Ray Bradbury
Roald Dahl
Neil Gaiman
Robert Heinlein
H. P. Lovecraft
Daniel Pinkwater
Neal Stephenson
Rex Stout
J. R. R. Tolkien
Mark Twain

[Ingmar]

Careful with Rex Stout, it might lead you to "Under the Andes" 

[Johny Cee]

- Historical fiction-wise, Forester is borderline for the Hornblower books.

If you haven't tried Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey & Maturin books you should go check them out (The movie Master & Commander is based on elements from a couple of them, and of course, the characters are).

Heh.  About 40 pages ago you and I had this conversation:

Me: I liked O'Brian's books well enough, but the "I'm rich, I'm poor, I'm rich!" was tired and felt unrealistic.
You: Umm.  It's almost directly based on the life of Thomas Cochraine.
Me: Durr, I'll shut up now.

[Murgos]

Oh, well.  40 pages is a lifetime.   

[Endie]

Yeah Hornblower and Aubrey are both based largely on Cochrane (a Scot who Napoleon call "le loup de mer" - the Sea Wolf) with touches of Nelson.

[Johny Cee]

Yeah Hornblower and Aubrey are both based largely on Cochrane (a Scot who Napoleon call "le loup de mer" - the Sea Wolf) with touches of Nelson.

Cursed Scots! 

I think the Aubrey books would have been better with a little less episodic padding through the middle of the series.  There were a few books in a row that felt a bit too formulaic:  Aubrey wins at sea and then fucks up on shore, Maturin deals with crazy runaway wife, repeat.

It would have been nice if some of the middle was pared down so we had actually gotten the end of Aubrey & Maturin's careers on the larger stage.  The last couple books were good, and showed some nice character development.


I've actually been working through Raymond Chandler's novels lately.  Good hard-boiled fun.

[tar]

Question though for everyone.  I know I asked somewhere, it was in a nerdrage derail, but what book would I want if I want to start reading The Culture?

While you could pretty much pick any of them as there's no over-arching story, I'd recommend reading them in order written* as some of the later ones rely on you knowing the basics of the hows/whys of the culture.

You could leave Consider Phlebas until later and go straight to Player of Games if you want a more accessible start though.

*Consider Phlebas, The Player of Games, Use of Weapons, Excession, Inversions, Look to Windward, Matter

[Khaldun]

I should have put Chandler up on my list. I actually think his prose is so fucking amazing, just stunning at times.

[Murgos]

I should have put Chandler up on my list. I actually think his prose is so fucking amazing, just stunning at times.

His prose is amazing, and I would put him easily into my top 20, but I challenge you to come up with a coherent sequence of events in The Big Sleep.

[Khaldun]

Well, that's the trick, isn't it? He was not a great plotter, and in that genre, flawed plotting is maybe more painful than in others.

[Endie]

I have been struggling through Niven and Pournelle's Lucifer's Hammer.  I came to it with fairly high expectations: I'd liked the original Ringworld book and although they got a bit ropey some of the sequels were ok.  I enjoyed Pournelle's Falkenberg's Legion series, too.  But

I think it's partly because Pournelle is a survivalist nut who is too engaged with his subject matter.  More so, he is no more capable of creating believable characters than Tom Clancy.  In fact, in that Clancy had a full three stock characters, Pournelle is actually worse.  Niven should, I am now convinced, have stuck mainly to writing the internal monologues for alien characters, where it is less jarring.

The "here is now things should be after the asteroid/bomb/epidemic etc" agenda is painful.  And pessimistic belief in a dystopic future is one thing but jerking yourself off to how all people are a meal away from wickedness can be stretching it.  Particularly when it comes to asserting that well-armed groups of highly-trained men will begin organised rape-and-murder sessions within minutes of a series of asteroid strikes and who will by default resort to cannibalism before week two is up (despite now living in a land where the wildlife/livestock:humans ratio has multiplied by fifty or so).  I know that trauma and freedom from restraint will lead to degeneration in many, but there is no psychological process or justification.

Basically, it starts to rain and everyone who isn't right-thinking on the topic of small government loses interest in venison.

Almost nobody has personal motivations beyond the urge to have sex or a single mother looking for her son, who is portrayed as an unlikable, hormone-controlled superbitch.  By week four there are several unlikely examples of separated family members re-united after the mass die-off whose reactions range across the full sweep of human mild disinterest.  Grown men may, indeed, be hooking up with repeatedly-raped fourteen-year-old girls in girl scout uniforms after only a few days in the hills, but you have to be careful just how enthusiastic you are about portraying it.

And the plots points are just rubbish.  Minor, non-spoiler throwaway incident: group of boys rescue group of girls by killing large, rape-happy biker gang (lots of rape going on up in here), who are all in tents, including the guards they set.  No explanation is given as to how these teenagers cleanly kill all the bikers without firearms, but more importantly, since they stumble across them all zipped up in tents, we don't even know how they knew that they had this group of violated damsels-in-distress.  Maybe they just saw some nice tents and decided to kill for them.  We are repeatedly told that a 99% die-off leads to a vast shortage of camping supplies, anyway.  There's tons of this rubbish.

There is a black group, but they are all - I said all -criminals and drug-dealers who were together because their welfare "bribes" were cut off and had been robbing houses and killing "honkeys".  Man, they hate whitey.  Not like the token good black astronaut who chuckles away at farmers' jokes about sitting at the back of the space capsule, obviously.  He knows they're just good ol' boys having some fun.  By the time some white folks have set up a functioning economy a few weeks in, the Brothers have killed a quarter of their own numbers in fights over women, only one of whom gets all hysterical and worked up about a little thing like them originally kidnapping them after their husbands in front of them.

I could go on.  There is barely a well-written paragraph.  Even the hard science is a pile of crap.  They should have read King's The Stand, or Wyndham's Day of the Triffids, and then sworn to observe a strict 200-year exclusion zone around current Earth when choosing subjects.

[Khaldun]

It is a terrible, terrible book. I remember reading it after The Mote in God's Eye, which I kind of liked, and then I was AH AH IT BURNS reading Lucifer's Hammer. I think you're absolutely right about why: Pournelle grabs the steering wheel and does an ideological Mary Sue as well as contributing his ham-fisted prose. I'm guessing Niven did the book as a favor to him more than anything else, it's really not his style at all.

[Johny Cee]

I should have put Chandler up on my list. I actually think his prose is so fucking amazing, just stunning at times.

His prose is amazing, and I would put him easily into my top 20, but I challenge you to come up with a coherent sequence of events in The Big Sleep.

The confusion does lend an organic feel to the narrative, though.  Especially since thrillers/mysteries tend to feel like everything is wrapped up with neat little bows by the end.

It was really interesting for me, since I love Cook's "Garrett" books.  I can see why it's labeled "Chandler meets Tolkien" now.

[JWIV]

It's pop culture book time for me!  

The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite: David Kessler  

It takes the "Repeat a single idea over and over for a 100 pages" method of writing a NY Times bestseller approach.   The last chapter or so is tolerably okay, the rest of the book is close to rubbish.    Also.  Food Scientists are secretly in the employ of the Illuminati or maybe the Alien Lizards and are focused on enslaving humanity to pseudo-food.

The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game: Michael Lewis

I really really love the football talk of the book.  Michael Oher's story is compelling and is well told, but the football discussion is really what's grabbing me.  Which means that I better avoid the movie, because there is no way they are going to spend any time discussing football history and the evolution of the current offensive schemes employed in the NFL.

[WayAbvPar]

The Blind Side was a good book. I wish he would have written it a couple of years later though- it would have been interesting to see college and the NFL draft behind the scenes with Oher.

[Ard]

The confusion does lend an organic feel to the narrative, though.  Especially since thrillers/mysteries tend to feel like everything is wrapped up with neat little bows by the end.

It was really interesting for me, since I love Cook's "Garrett" books.  I can see why it's labeled "Chandler meets Tolkien" now.

I'm weirdly at odds with myself on the Garrett books.  I love the writing style, and the stories for the most part, but at the same time, it's usually 100% deus ex machina where he just bumbles into the situations and the solutions, and that always annoys the crap out of me.

[Quinton]

I read Steven Erikson's Gardens of the Moon after seeing assorted mention of his stuff here.  Enjoyed it quite a bit.  I'm now about 1/3 of the way into Deadhouse Gates, which is also proving to be a fun read.  It feels kinda like Glen Cook meets George RR Martin at times, but in a good way.

[MahrinSkel]

It is a terrible, terrible book. I remember reading it after The Mote in God's Eye, which I kind of liked, and then I was AH AH IT BURNS reading Lucifer's Hammer. I think you're absolutely right about why: Pournelle grabs the steering wheel and does an ideological Mary Sue as well as contributing his ham-fisted prose. I'm guessing Niven did the book as a favor to him more than anything else, it's really not his style at all.

Lucifer's Hammer was originally going to be Footfall, the publisher made them change the focus (disaster fiction was big in that period, alien encounters kind of played out).  I wouldn't be surprised if Pournelle wrote 90%+ of it after the change, there's not a lot of it that "feels" like Niven.

--Dave

[Ironwood]

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel is actually quite good.  Not sure where it's going, but it's keeping my interest.

[Sky]

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel is actually quite good.  Not sure where it's going, but it's keeping my interest.

I had that out to read a couple years ago, but got distracted by a penny or boobs. Have to get back to it.

Still working through Modesitt's later recluce stuff, three books into stuff that wasn't published last time I read through the series (for the first time). It gets so much better, but after playing DA so much the last couple of days all the names got to swirling around my brain. Might have to break out some non-fic until I finish playing DA, and that's a good thing.

[Samwise]

I've been reading a lot of nonfiction lately.  It's kinda weirding me out. 

Currently I'm on Reclaiming San Francisco: History, Politics, Culture, which is a series of essays about San Francisco's history as a haven for commie liberals.  Before that it was What Happened at Vatican II, which is about what the title says.

[Morat20]

Hey! I noticed PC Hodgell finally got her God Stalk novels reprinted. Which is good, because someone stole my copy of God Stalk, and I never read the rest (Seeker's Mask and Dark of the Moon).

I'll have to order that, although I feel I'm like the only person to have ever read it. That and White Wing --- one of the downsides of inheriting a bunch of books is that occasionally you get a single book without anything else by that author, or a single book in a trilogy, and find that while good -- it's out of print.

Hard to find, even in used book stores.

[FatuousTwat]

Just finished Woken Furies, I think it ended the series well, but I'm still disappointed that there will most likely be no more of them. Also finished The Next 100 Years, written by the CEO of STRATFOR, one of the worlds largest private intelligence firms. It was pretty good... The style felt a bit weird, but he got his claims across and backed them up pretty well.

[Johny Cee]

The confusion does lend an organic feel to the narrative, though.  Especially since thrillers/mysteries tend to feel like everything is wrapped up with neat little bows by the end.

It was really interesting for me, since I love Cook's "Garrett" books.  I can see why it's labeled "Chandler meets Tolkien" now.

I'm weirdly at odds with myself on the Garrett books.  I love the writing style, and the stories for the most part, but at the same time, it's usually 100% deus ex machina where he just bumbles into the situations and the solutions, and that always annoys the crap out of me.

It works for me.  Garrett repeatedly describes his technique as "pulling at loose threads until something turns up".  The fact that the stories rarely tie up in a nice neat package is one of their strengths.  Also, the fact that there are so many bittersweet or negative endings.

Old Tin Sorrows is a favorite just based on how ultimately depressing the ending is.



Just read Vandermeer's Finch.  Was good, though I'd rate it below Shriek.  It really fuses together a bunch of disparate genres....  it's kind of a alt world-noir, but with heavy elements of spec fiction and scifi, a heavy patina of Orwell, and good dollops of fantasy/steampunk.  There are two or three pages of author quotes raving about the book (including Richard K Morgan and Donaldson) that actually served to turn me off a bit.

Also read Lovecraft Unbound, which was a pretty solid collection of short stories inspired by Lovecraft.  Solid listing of authors, including Chabon, Monette, Caitlin Kiernan, and Joyce Carol Oates.  Overall, probably the best batch of Lovecraft inspired short stories I've read....

The Court of the Air also hit the paperbacks so I picked it up.  Decent enough alt-world steampunk, though there were a bunch of weak spots.

[Sky]

We just got in Carlin's sortabiography. Now I've got to find the time to read it.

[Ingmar]

Finished re-reading all the Sherlock Holmes stories, and have moved onto a non-fiction book called Tokyo Vice, by an American who worked for several years as a crime reporter in Japan. Pretty interesting so far, lots of stuff about the yakuza et. al.

[JWIV]

Just finished listening to Hunter's Run.  It's relatively decent if you can get past the I AM WRITING A PHILOSOPHY PAPER AS A SF BOOK that serves as the main plot.

[K9]

Just finished A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexzander Solzenitsyn

Very easy to read, very well written.

[WayAbvPar]

Read that in school a million years ago. Have always meant to go back and re-read it and his other stuff.

[Ingmar]

Read that in school a million years ago. Have always meant to go back and re-read it and his other stuff.

I read the Gulag Archipelago many years ago. Let's just say it isn't readable in the same way.

[lamaros]

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel is actually quite good.  Not sure where it's going, but it's keeping my interest.

I remember enjoying that when I read it back in 2006. Long, but enjoyable. I haven't had any desire to read it again anytime since then, and I glanced at some of the other stuff she had written and couldn't get into it either, but JS & MN was fun.

Read Dickson Carr's Three Coffins. Enjoyed it for the most part, but was pretty underwhelmed once it was all said and done. Best bit was probably the mini-rant/essay on detective stories.

Wanting to read Burn Me Deadly http://www.amazon.com/Burn-Me-Deadly-Eddie-LaCrosse/dp/0765322218/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259115488&sr=1-2 , but I guess I'll wait for the paperback...

[Johny Cee]

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel is actually quite good.  Not sure where it's going, but it's keeping my interest.

I remember enjoying that when I read it back in 2006. Long, but enjoyable. I haven't had any desire to read it again anytime since then, and I glanced at some of the other stuff she had written and couldn't get into it either, but JS & MN was fun.

I think Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is the one of the most critically acclaimed genre novels of recent years.  Her only other book is a collection of short stories, notable for a story that borrowed Neil Gaiman's setting of Wall (from Stardust) for a story on Wellington and a short story about the man with the thistle-down hair. 

I've thought about re-reading it, but just the size of the damn thing discourages me.

Read Dickson Carr's Three Coffins. Enjoyed it for the most part, but was pretty underwhelmed once it was all said and done. Best bit was probably the mini-rant/essay on detective stories.

Wanting to read Burn Me Deadly http://www.amazon.com/Burn-Me-Deadly-Eddie-LaCrosse/dp/0765322218/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259115488&sr=1-2 , but I guess I'll wait for the paperback...

Fantasy/noir or fantasy/hardboiled, there are a few options.  Cook's Garrett books (Sweet Silver Blues the first, though continuity isn't a big deal), Mike Carey's Felix Castor books (reads very much like John Constantine, except Castor is probably a bit more pathetic), and Vandermeer's Finch (though it's the same setting as previous books, very different narrative structure).

I think Mieville's latest has alot of noir elements, but I've been waiting for it in paperback.

[lamaros]

Fantasy/noir or fantasy/hardboiled, there are a few options.  Cook's Garrett books (Sweet Silver Blues the first, though continuity isn't a big deal), Mike Carey's Felix Castor books (reads very much like John Constantine, except Castor is probably a bit more pathetic), and Vandermeer's Finch (though it's the same setting as previous books, very different narrative structure).

I think Mieville's latest has alot of noir elements, but I've been waiting for it in paperback.

Yeah I ordered a couple of those the other day :) Darn shipping to Australia, though.

I know I've said it before, but I wish Peter F Hamilton would write some SF/crime/hardboiled/whatever stuff, instead of just including elements of it his space operas. He's really enjoyable when he does it. Re-reading Fallen Dragon at the moment...