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Alright,  the nostalgia over Dragonlance and the Warhammer thread have kicked loose the need to write about what I've read since last Book thread.  We do have some things to look forward to this summer, as well.  Off we go:

Dead Beat and Proven Guilty,  by Jim Butcher --

Two new hardcover entries in the "Harry Dresden" series of books.  Set in modern Chicago,  but a modern world where magic and the supernatural coexist with technology.  The supernatural world is just under the surface,  and only a few "normal" people ever get more than a small taste of how odd the world can be.

Harry Dresden is a wizard and PI,  the only one listed in the phone book.  The style is noir,  with a tip of the hat to De Lint (Newford books) and Glen Cook (Garret series).  Harry is perpetually poor,  and always getting himself in over his head.  The White Council of wizards and their allies are at war with the vampires (Red Court),  mostly due to Harry, and this goes on in the background.  And the war is not going well.

Overall, another two solid entries in the series.  Harry is dealing with relationship issues, mostly a growing attraction to sometimes partner Murphy, and dealing with the temptation provided by his connection to a demon.  Michael Carpenter and his family make a reappearance,  as well as politics in the supernatural world.

I'll note that the Dresden books have been picked up for adaption by the Scifi network for a new series,  scheduled for the Fall/Winter '07.

"Nightside Books", by Simon R. Green --

Serial novellas, six in all, by the guy that brought you the Deathstalker books.  More PI/noir fantasy take.  The Nightside is the underbelly of London, where heaven and hell mix.  You can find anything here for a price,  and John Taylor can find anything with his Gift. 

The supernatural rubs shoulders with sci fi (time travellers thrown back through...  uh, time...).  You can see a gray alien panhandling next to a down-on-her-luck succubus.  In otherwords,  lots and lots of material for amusing set pieces.

The style is very, very, very pulpy.  Repitition of key phrases and lines.  Read it like you would a collection of Lovecraft or Howard stories.  I actually really enjoyed these.  Fun.

"The rest of his fucking books" Simon R. Green --

Blah.  Read 3 or 4 of his other works (Hawk & Fisher collected novels, Blue Moon, Midnight Wine) and was less then impressed.  Didn't try the Deathstalker books, if only because the only ones I saw were late in the series.

Don't bother.

(By the way,  who was that plays a MMO with this guy?  Tell him more John Taylor.  Now.)

Widdershins by Charles de Lint --

Another book set in Newford,  following up on The Onion Girl.  Catches up with Jilly and Geordie a few years after events in Girl.  Ties up loose ends,  but not alot of original ground covered.

Jilly's abusive family and how she dealt with it is covered at length again.  Feels very much like a retread of what happened in the previous book.

If you are a de Lint fan,  or have read the rest of the Newford books, might be interesting.  Otherwise,  stick to the author's collections of short stories.  Most of his best work is there, and it is worth reading if you're unfamilar with him.

Already Dead by Charlie Huston --

Noir PI vampire, modern NYC.  Interesting and very well written.  Politics and intrigue, punk and hippies.  Vampires don't have fangs,  more often mugging and using works to extract a few quarts of blood.  Or cozy up to one of the big factions.

Nice take on vampire myths.  Very interesting style,  good story.

The Immortals by James Gun --

Collection of short stories, set between now and the distant future.

Basically,  a man is born with a genetic mutation:  he's immortal.  This is discovered accidentally by a billionaire and his physician when the aging billionaire is rejuvenated by a blood transfusion.  The billionaire funds an effort to capture and study the immortal.

The stories are mediocre,  but the redeeming feature is how the spiraling cost of medical care leads to a future dystopia of a crumbling world completely focused around hospitals and the medical class.

For Dagon's sake, DO NOT LOOK FOR THIS BOOK ON AMAZON BY TITLE.  While trying to find the author my eyeballs were raped by a couple hundred wish-fullfillment vampire romance novels.

On it's own merits,  I probably wouldn't give this book a nod.  But....  if you're concerned about the way medicine is practiced in the US,  and the downfalls of the current system or a government-provided system,  it may be good for a laugh.

Pashazade by Jon Courtenay Grimwood --

This was my big pleasant surprise from the stacks of the local Borders.

Near future,  alternate history:  the Ottoman Empire never fell.  Some cyberpunk qualities,  some noirish qualities.  Set in North Africa,  in the midst of a Middle East united behind the Turks.

Less bloodthirsty,  and a bit smarter, then Richard K. Morgan's "Takeshi Kovacs" novels.

There's two books following this one,  which I haven't motivated enough to track down online yet.

Vellum by Hal Duncan --

Post-modern, stream of consciousness narration.  There are never less then three independant threads going on at the same time:  retelling of Sumerian or Greek myth, main action (near future with some cyberpunk overtones),  alternate timeline/viewpoint. 

Essentially setting up a "real" world and a backstage (the Vellum) that's more metaphoric.  Two opposing forces of unkin (something like angels,  people that have changed or become more than human) are set for a showdown.  Both sides are killing or recruiting the random unaligned.  Deals in multiple realities,  and the clash of myth/reality.

Yes, it's confusing as hell, and a bit frustrating.  If you're into it, it's very good.  If you like Simmons or Mieville,  you'd probably enjoy this.


The Light Ages by Ken MacLeod --

Alternate history,  where magic replaces technology, but set in England during it's Industrial Revolution.  Treats on class issues and identity.  Bout 3/4s through it.

If your a Mieville fan, pick it up.


Various books by L.E. Modesitt --

Fun reading.  Read the "Columbine" books,  alternate history where ghosts are real.  Basically,  since ghosts hang around after their death to disturb the living (sort of like echoes, or bad CGI), birth rates are slower and less serious warfare.

The US never formed,  and instead you have a Dutch based republic.  The lead is a professor at an Upstate NY college,  formerly a secret agent and government minister.  Follows he and his French-emmigre wife.

Standard spy-type stuff with the odd premise.

Read a selection of Modesitt's other works,  all decent reading but not really standing out to me after some time.

Valentine's Exile by E.E. Knight --

Another book (and hardcover now!!1!) in Knight's "Vampire Earth" series.  Post-apoctylptic earth,  and aliens have invaded.  Aliens that are vampires as Lovecraft might have reimagined them.  Most of earth is subjagated,  and pockets of resistance have formed and are trying to push back the invaders with the help of other aliens and what is aptly described as "technomagic".  Technology so bizarre/advanced it comes off as pseudo-occult.

If you liked Thundarr the Barbarian when you were young,  it's interesting.  The series may appeal to you Warhammer 40k folks.

"The Novels of Tiger and Del" by Jennifer Roberson --

Tradepaperback collections of Roberson's series.  Fairly straight-forward fantasy stuff.  Not bad,  but didn't interest me enough to go beyond the first two novel collection.

_________________________________________

Alright, enough for now.  Still have a pile I've gone through that really don't need another mention (most of Pratchett's stuff, which is excellent but well known).

Books on my radar:

BRUST, bitches!  New Vlad novel due in August.

A Cruel Wind by Glen Cook.  Compilation of the "Dread Empire" Trilogy.  If you like Erikson (Malazan books) or GRR Martin,  you should order this.  This was Cook's first take on gritty, realist, and morally ambiguous fantasy;  and both Martin and Erikson owe alot to Cook.  Out July 15.

Amazon is also listing Lord of the Silent Kingdom by Cook as due in Feb 2007.  Will have to research this to find out if this is a reprint or collection of past works,  or a new entry.  Fingers crossed for next book in "The Instrumentalities of the Night".

Gaiman has "Absolute Sandman" and a new graphic novel set to be released Soon (TM).

Night of Knives by Cameron Esselmont.  The co-creator of all things Malazan with Steven Erikson.  Esselmont is writing background books for the Malazan world.  In this case,  dealing with the night the Emperor and Dancer are killed and Surly takes over.  Out in trade paperback now,  and was discussed on the Other Site.

 

Of what I've so far listed,  I'd give the Grimwood book a big nod.  It's smart.  A good blend of mystery, alternate history, and cyberpunk elements.  If you like Richard K. Morgan, you'll like this.

Especially since you don't need to be exposed to some of Morgan's economic preconceptions.

Non-fiction,  I'm going to pimp Zakaria's The Future of Freedom.  Again.  He's a bright, bright man.

If the Grammar Snake feels like editing my blather, I'd be appreciative.

I haven't listed all my books on it but here is a good sampling on LibraryThing (http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?view=cellulaer).

I read some of the Deathstalker books and for the most part they are cotton candy.

Thanks for the heads-up on the Cook compilation, haven't read Dread Empire stuff yet but the Black Company is one of my favorites. Just finished off Shadows Linger for the gazillionth time last night. I nabbed the original trilogy and the first four Guardians of the Flame by Joel Rosenberg from storage a couple weeks ago and I'm alternating between the two series. Currently reading The Warrior Lives by Rosenberg. It's pretty cool reading the new stuff, because I've read the seven books I've had for years, dozens of times each (they went on the road with me, too).

I second the Martin stuff if you like Cook, I enjoyed his stuff. Haven't gotten around to the Erikson stuff, we have a few on the shelf here. I really enjoyed Modesitt's Order/Chaos stuff, too.

For non-fic, I'm reading a few great books I listed in the Guitar Thread (music theory, fretboard theory and notation reading) and 100 Questions Every First-Time Home Buyer Should Ask by Ilyce Glink, it's a pretty nice book. I've read several like it and it's the best thus far.

That is really scary. I've read a lot of those books. It's like walking back through my childhood. Even slightly obscure ones like card's treason.

I noticed I don't see a lot of the galactic mileu world (diamond mask, jack the bodiless) and the acompanying series (the golden torc),and something else, I guess you'd call it the uplift saga by Julian May.. I found most of those books to be entertaining reads.

You guys sure read a lot of books.

Well, think of it this way.. I read pretty fast, and I'm guessing most people who read a lot also read fairly fast. I can get through a midsize novel in around 4-5 hours. A lot of people watch TV, on average to the tune of 2-3 hours a night. If you put those hours towards reading, the books stack up pretty fast.

I don't read much in paper anymore, since I don't have a lot of time, so now I get my fix with audiobooks. They are much, much slower, but I still get a chance to do a little "reading" on the way to work and on my lunch breaks.

I'm due for another batch of reviews on the blog -- youc an find all of the reviews here: http://www.raphkoster.com/category/reading/

But I have to point out two books that came out recently that are very enjoyable:  The Carpet Makers, a German SF novel that reads like the Majipoor books bySIlverberg, from long ago, with a really cool worldbuilding touch; and Fly By Night, a juvenile fantasy novel that scratches the Lemony SNicket/Harry Potter itch with a light dash of the sort of book humor that the Eye Affair had (and that the later books overdid).

I enjoyed Carpet Makers more than most of this year's Hugo nominees...

I came to Cook by way of recommended reading to fill the time between aSoIaF (Martin) releases.  I have loved the Black Company series as well and my only complaint would really be that they aren't longer and there isn't more of them.  Thanks to the thread for the heads-up on the compilation of some of Cook's earlier work.

Erikson's "Malazan" series has failed to grab me in the same way.  I really want to like it but I just can't begin to digest it and get sucked in.  Twice I've tried now and it just makes me want to pick up Martin's books for the umpteenth re-read.

Which Erikson have you tried?  Stalled out on Gardens of the Moon multiple times?

I've seen it suggested that people new to the series should really start with Deadhouse Gates, the second book,  and then read the first.  Deadhouse is, for my money, the best book in the series hands down.  It's set in a concurrent timeline with book 1,  and completely different characters,  so you don't really miss anything by skipping book one other than background.

It's not a happy book, though.

The first "Dread Empire" trilogy is pretty good.  The first 20 or 30 pages of book one is heartwrenching.

Unlike the "Black Company",  generally we get viewpoints from the various sides in any squabble.  And generally every character is fairly likeable/sympathetic in a Cook way.  What's more,  at various points the antagonists express admiration or affection for the other side.

So it can really get to you when characters you like start offing other characters you like.  The death toll in the books makes Martin look like an optimist....

Edit:

Poking around for what the new Cook book is about,  found an older interview.


from: http://www.quantummuse.com/glen_cook_interview.html

Lord of the Silent Kingdom will be the next "Instrumentalities of the Night" book.

reference: http://www.malazanempire.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3133

Cook is also claiming he wants to do two more Black Company books. 

You have no idea. I work at a library and date a librarian.

I had read a decent amount my entire life, but now I can't casually mention a topic or author without her putting a few books into my mailbox. It's great.

I'm always hesitant to try to read new books. Partially because I don't want to waste money if I don't like the book (if I can't get it from a library), and also because there just so many choices, I don't wanna try pick something I don't like.

Such as Robert Jordan, or Dune to a lesser extent. I'm only on book 2 of the WoT series, but I think I've come to the conclusion that, while I am sure Jordan put a good story somewhere in these books, his style is just so painstakingly detailed that I feel exhausted trying to work through his prose - I shouldn't feel like it's work to read something that's for recreation. Maybe if his books were not basically a second-to-second play-by-play transcript of the events. it seems like the only time there's a break in the story is when the subject characters are sleeping. And Dune? I want to like it, I really do...but at least for now, I'm stalled about halfway through. I might try to pick it up again this weekend, but I think I'm already more interested in The Cleric's Quintet than Herbert.

It's a shame, because I read a shitton as a kid....then I got hooked on playing Hockey and EQ...and then pretty much all the reading I did in college was academic.

Hit up the library and find a librarian familiar with the sci-fi/fantasy section (or wherever). They can do stuff like we've been doing, cross-referencing authors by style. Probably be a couple bibliographies if the library is decently staffed. And it's freeeee!

Well, I just took out a ton more Salvatore, so I think I'm good for awhile. My friend also suggested two other authors, whose names I cannot recall offhand.

Also, what "style" would you attribute to Salvatore or Crichton (who I haven't read in years, but remembered enjoying)?

Bland hacks?

I knew someone was going to say it.

I don't get it. I've read stuff by Nobel prize winners, such as Gabriel García Márquez, and I'm not blown away by the work. I'm not saying either of the two authors are anything besides enjoyable, at least for me.

/shrug

I haven't read Salvatore, but I have read Crichton. I never said he wasn't enjoyable, but I can usually tear through one of his books in about a day. His writing not only does not strain the mind, it doesn't even give the mind a sweat. It is terse pablum-flavored popcorn full of empty. And he apparently can shit one out about every 2 or 3 months. Had he written in Howard's time, he wouldn't even have the staying power of Doc Savage's writer. But because he has easy to translate to movies books, he's sold a bazillion books.

Yeah, they're definately not "tough" books. I sprinted through Timeline in a single day. I guess I just don't normally read fiction for the challenge - I have plenty of books I used in history classes to hurt ym mind with.

Give me a general idea of what you like,  or other books you like,  and I can get you a reasonable amount of similar offerings.  I go through a couple hundred new books a year,  and a huge amount of rereads,  so most likely I've hit at least a couple books by most Fantasy authors.  There are people here as or more widely read.

Raph seems to be filling his newfound free time well.

Been working through the Scifi folks in the last year.  Went through most of Heinlein, bunch of Asimov, Kim Stanley Robinson, Simmons, bit of Clarke.  Got a couple comps of short story authors now (Varley, Dick, Ellison).

Generally, I prefer the humor and interesting posting style of the folks here to more dedicated lit/fiction discussion boards.  Too often you have to wade through Vault quality crap about who would win in a fight, Gandalf or Elminster.

It's not like I'm looking only for fantasy, though that's mainly what I've been picking up lately as far as fiction goes...I'll admit though, as far as fiction goes, I'm nto widely read...at all. Heck, when I was looking stuff up in the county library, I couldn't even understand where the call numbers were pointing me to at first - I haven't touched a non-fiction book in a library since high school probably.

I dunno, some of the stuff I have read in the last few years that I've liked besides Salvatore are :

 Follet's Pillars of the Earth (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0451166892/sr=8-1/qid=1152308776/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-1379302-6422328?ie=UTF8). Apparently he's doing a sequel, though I have no idea how that would possibly work. All the main characters still alive are old at the end of the book. Maybe the sequel will focus on their kids, I don't know. I don't thinkt he book even needs a sequel, but I'm not the author...

Son of the Revolution. (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0394722744/qid=1152308901/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/104-1379302-6422328?s=books&v=glance&n=283155) Loved it, but it's not fiction.

erm...Looking through my book collection, it seems to be pretty much entirely made up of history books from college. I read some old Greek such, such as the Illiad and Odyssey, and some other history-oriented books....but very little fiction.

So I guess I can't even tell you what I like, because I myself don't know....kinda sucks, but oh well. My buddy suggested George R.R. Martin, who I only remembered by just now going to BarnesandNoble.com and looking for the cover that I remember him pointing out in the store. I have no idea if he is any good.

Found that one in an antique store on Kauai, HI.


I'll have to check those out as I haven't heard of them before (though Diamond Mask sounds familiar for some reason). I usually buy based on cover art (ohh shallow) plus back description or known authors.

---

I liked The Cleric's Quintet and if you like that you'll probably like the Icewind Dale series as well. I don't care for Dune all that much and prefer scifi books more in the vein of Hyperion.

I guess I'll have to remember to check out Hyperion next time I make a library run. At least they have that.

Anyway, I currently have checked out Jordan's "The Great Hunt" (which I probably will not finish...I hate not finishing a book), and Salvatore's Cleric Quintet, Icewind Dale series, and the series that comes after it.

I really don't read too much fiction anymore, but The Masters of Rome (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0380710811/sr=8-1/qid=1152312634/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-4033392-2802327?ie=UTF8) series has been absolutely phenomenal.  It was recommended off of another forum I frequent, and after reading the first one I went to Amazon and ordered all of them.

It's historical fiction focused around the Roman Revolution.  Starts with Marius and Sulla, and goes all the way up to Augustus.  Friggin' great series.  It's just too bad that McCullough's eyesight is failing her, and she's working on the last book in the anthology right now.

Sweet I love a good book thread.  Is this all fantasy stuff?  Speaking of fantasy, did anyone ever read the book the Legend of Nightfall? I foget who it was by, but I'm still surprised by it.  Mainly because I picked it up from a used bookstore once when I was super bored like 5 years ago, and it turned out to be really effing sweet and I had never heard of the author before.  The protagonist had a pretty cool ability that I don't remember ever seeing before: he could change his weight at will.  So falling from great heights he just became light as a feather and so on.  The guy thought of really neat ways to implement the ability in the novel, as the guy was a thief/rogue type person.

I can't wait for three angry cockgoblins to tell me how stupid I am for liking something they don't.

Based on recommendations I picked up some Gaiman stuff.  Neverwhere and American Gods  were fantastic. Some of the best stuff I've ever read.   Smoke and Mirrors  was touch and go, but that's what you get with a collection of short stories.  I'll definitely be picking up more of his work. Stardust and Anansi Boys worth reading?

I'm finishing off Cook's Black Company books so I'll take a look at that anthology of his earlier work.

I don't know who recommended Michelle West's Sunsword books.. but I had a really hard time with the first and stalled about 200 pages in.  It was just really feminine and really slow.  I think Feast for Crows or something came out while I was reading it, so that might have had something to do with it.  Does the pace pickup in the series somewhat? The setting was definitely interesting.

Read King's The Stand while I was on vacation. Some of his best work, IMO.  Can't believe it took me this long to pick it up.  Any other books of his you'd recommend if I also enjoyed Eyes of the Dragon and the entire Dark Tower series?

For King, I really like Bag of Bones.  There's some actual good writing in there, unlike some of his other novels like, say, Desperation.   And I reaaaaally didn't like Eyes of the Dragon, but to each his own.  :-)
Neverwhere and American Gods were good, but I thought the writing was sometimes clunky and the cliches were heavy (In American Gods, the main character's name is fucking SHADOW!).  You can very much tell Gaiman's written a lot of comics.  Unless I'm thinking of someone else and he hasn't written any comics at all.     

Tim O'Brien is an author I can't recommend enough.  He doesn't do fantasy, but instead focuses on the Vietnam war with some of the best prose I've ever read about the subject.  Not a political book though, so don't avoid it for those reasons.  Sit down in a Barnes and Noble and read the first chapter of The Things They Carried (some of you have probably read it in high school/college), and odds are you'll go buy it, drive home, and read the rest of it.  If you're looking for something lighter, read Tomcat in Love (romantic comedy but he does manage to work in Vietnam, of course), one of my favorite books.  If you get through those and you like them, In the Lake of the Woods is much darker but also good. 

If you like short stories, The Best American Non-Required Reading series is great.  If you want something fucking hilarious, pick up Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris (do the 'read the first chapter/story in B&N' thing).  I've never met a person who's read it and said they didn't thing it was great.  (Maybe one of this cynical lot?  :-) )

Oooh yeah.  I have to recommend House of Leaves to anyone who likes their books a bit post-modern and/or a great ghost story.  Awesome writing, love the interwoven narrative between the storyteller and the story itself.  The text is a bit, um, visually complicated in parts, but I liked that.  If post-modernism isn't your thing, you'll probably want to skip this though.

Seriously.  Check these books out.  They all rock. 

Does anyone have any good Post-Apocalypse books to read?  Or even any decent zombie books (already reading Walking Dead)?  I always liked those when I was younger but haven't read anything that didn't turn to trash halfway through.  The 'Dread Empire' books mentioned sound interesting, I'll check those out on amazon.

Editted out my quote of Strazos.  Hit my post button too soon.

I like historical fiction, so I just ordered the first two of that series.. so it damn well better be good!  8-)

Just finished Old Mans War (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0765315246/sr=8-1/qid=1152330517/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-1790695-2626323?ie=UTF8) which is very good scifi - mature writing not the fluffy crap. Waiting for his second novel to come out in paperback. Currently reading The Hostile Takeover (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0756402492/qid=1152330643/sr=1-4/ref=sr_1_4/104-1790695-2626323?s=books&v=glance&n=283155) trilogy, which is another scifi series (all in one book). The first book was great, the second one I'm having a harder time getting into. So.. I just bought Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385498721/qid=1152330670/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/104-1790695-2626323?s=books&v=glance&n=283155) for casual reading this weekend.

Read different seasons and salem's lot. Shawshank redemption in particular is one of my favorites.

Gaiman:  Stardust is very good.  Reads like a bittersweet fable.  Anansi Boys is good,  but not up to the level of American Gods.  Gaiman has done alot of work in comics,  and most of it very, very good.  Coraline,  which was aimed at young adults,  is also supposed to be very good.

King:  The Dark Tower.  Really, you should read it if you haven't already.  Gives you a different perspective on the rest of his work.  Gunslinger, especially, is a favorite of mine.  I wasn't as fond of the last four books,  still pretty good though.  Surprisingly,  I've never read The Stand.  Have to add it to my list.

Pick up King's early collections of short stories.  That stuff is gold.  "Mrs. Todd's Shortcut" (can't remember which collection it's from, but one of the first two) might be my favorite short story.

Michelle West:  I read the first book in the "Sun Sword".  It didn't really do that much for me,  but I know one of the folks here is a big fan (Merusk maybe?),  so it might just be a taste thing.

I'm sorry if my original post was fantasy heavy,  but I literally just pulled up a stack of books I'd finished lately and went down the line.  I do have a pile of Vonnegut and Hunter S. Thompson to go through.

Non-fiction....

I have a couple books on the French and Indian War I've been reading lately.  Alot of casual reading on Roman history,  skimming or reading a chapter or two and putting it down.  Books on Hamilton, Gengis Khan, and Tamarlane.

The Road to the Dark Tower by Bev Vincent --  Short analysis of the Dark Tower books examing the themes and character development.  Pretty interesting footnote to the King books.  Moves along at a good pace, informing without really stalling out on any subject.

Dinner at Deviant's Palace by Tim Powers maybe?  Powers is a speculative fiction guy,  if you haven't ever read anything by him.  Post-apoctalyptic California, where the protagonist gets involved with a bizarre cult.  Powers is good, but kind of an interesting writing/narative style that might be a little off-putting.  I had a little trouble getting into the first book or two I read by him.

"The Vampire Earth" series by E.E. Knight is kind of fluffy post-Apoc stuff.  There are pseudo-vampires (genetically engineered killing machines) and pseudo-zombies (victims of a mysterious "ravies" virus) running around.

Really can't think of much else with zombies, per se.  I don't think they make the transition from film to paper too well.

Post-apoc sci fi has generally been in heavy decline for the last few decades,  and regular sci fi outside of Star Wars/Trek type stuff for the last decade.  Bujold cranking out Miles Vorkisigan books up until 2002 or 2003 notwithstanding.

I see a few people interested in historical fiction, so I thought I'd mention Alfred Duggan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Duggan). He wrote several books based on actual events, places and people in various different time periods. I've only read Winter Quarters and Count Bohemond myself but I enjoyed both and hopefully I'll get around to reading the rest eventually.

If you like fictionalised accounts of real events they're worth a read, he did his research well and visited almost all of the places referenced in his works.

Re: Crichton and Salvatore-

I see a large difference. Crichton's books (especially his earlier work) at least have some sort of interesting spin or plot device to make them moderately interesting. The are certainly fluffy mind candy- no substance at all. My opinion on Salvatore is probably well known by now, but let me just reiterate: he is teh uber sux.

Finished William Gibson's Pattern Recognition Friday on the plane. Broke out Ender's Game (which I have steadfastly refused to read for decades due to being scarred by some shitty Card series someone foisted on me in my teens), and read nearly the entire book at the airport and on the flight home (will finish it today at work as soon as I quit trying to look busy). Next up is Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?- I have STILL never seen Blade Runner, so I thought I would check the book out first. After that, I also bought the omnibus of the first 10 Amber Chronicles, then All Tomorrow's Parties, and then I will probably read Dune (tried years ago and couldn't get into it, but I am willing to give it another go).

After a few years of mostly non-fiction, I am in the midst of a self-indulgent fiction orgy. Good times!

Yeah, I'm happily amidst that phase now. Started with LE Modesitt's Recluse stuff, moved into GRR Martin's Fire and Ice stuff and now back through the Cook and Rosenberg I mentioned earlier. I'm really enjoying them all, but the Cook and Rosenberg is especially fun because it a) held up over the years (I first read them when I was in my teens) and 2) have several new books in the series I haven't read.

There is really no need for that.  As I recall the book and movie share little more than theme theme and a few names.  The directors cut of Blade Runner is EXTREMELY faithful to the overall theme of the book though.

I just noticed this thread -- ironically, I'm running a Nightside-inspired campaign for some friends. They wanted something "different" and with "wide-open character creation". None of them have ever read Green, so...*shrug*. I have a wealth of someone else's work to draw upon.

Books to recommend: A Fire Upon the Deep, and the collected works of Terry Pratchett.

Still reading O'Reilly books when I'm not scanning electronic documentation.  Last thing I read was some chapters in Intermediate Perl, and the last I scanned was a section of Tivoli Storage Manager help files.  I find this stuff a lot more interesting than fiction, but I have been led to believe that view is abnormal.  Still, Intermediate Perl is long overdue and I recommend it if -- like me -- you have trouble jumping from basic programming to the Advanced Perl book.

I used to kick ass in BASIC back in the early 80s.

Colbert on his D&D experiences (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycLc1QZnVTs)

Having learned BASIC like everyone else, I'll just say that shit won't fly now.  Apparently GOTO is the Debbil.  Everything smells like C, which is not bad at all... except that I can't program in C.  Damn my non-computer-oriented education, and thank Jebus for Larry Wall.

Awesome.

Finished Ender's Game. Very interesting book, but I was not a big fan of the last 50 pages or so; it felt really rushed, and the 'surprise' ending wasn't much of a surprise at all. Still, I can see why it is popular, especially for a younger crowd. Thumbs up.

Jump statements ARE the devil.

So I just hopped in Acorn books on Polk, looking for a bunch of stuff from the thread.  I didn't find much but I did pick up Gaiman's Neverwhere for $2.10 so its all good.  I also saw the 4th book in the Hawk & whatever series by Simon Green but nothing from "Nightside".

I've got a list now though so I'll stop at a few more random book stores and see what I can find.

Well, unless your working in ASM.  But then I guess you could say you were in hell already...

Just started reading the Starship Troopers book....it's pretty engaging, at least moreso than Dune.

I'd say ASM is more purgatory. ADA is hell.

Heinlein is pretty good,  and Starship Troopers is probably my favorite.  Of the sci fi "masters" (Clarke, Asimov, Heinlein),  I think his work holds up the best with time.

Just keep in mind when you read him that he's writing the equivalent of literary trolling.  He liked to kick the hell out of socially accepted ideas.  He takes a run at government, democracy, sexual mores, and gender roles at different times.

You sound like historical fiction might be your thing,  if you enjoy or are knowledgable about history?  There's some pretty good historical stuff out there.  From Three Musketeers to the "Hornblower" or "Aubrey & Maturin" books.

Contempory scifi,  Simmons does alot with historical or literary bases. 

I'd say stay away from "Hawk & Fisher". 

Pretty much anything from Gaiman is gold, though.

Has anyone read Laura Resnick's Disappearing Nightly?  I've heard some offhand good things mentioned,  but haven't managed to find a copy yet.

@ Sky:

If you mind browsing through used books online,  Cook has a bunch of out of print titles which are pretty good.  Passage at Arms,  essentially "Das Boot" in space with lots of Cook paranoia and negativism, is a favorite of mine.  Tower of Fear is a one shot fantasy book that's real interesting.

The Dragon Never Sleeps is out of print,  and supposed to be one of his best.  It used to have a regular spot in the "100 best scifi/fantasy novels" website, before the site went out of date.

I still haven't tracked down a copy yet, though.


Bujold also has a new book due out on October 1st.  Don't see much info on it yet,  so will do some digging.  Doesn't look like she's going back Miles Vorkosigan any time soon.

I commend you on Modesitt as a choice for fantasy fiction.  Recluse restored my faith in story-telling as an art, once upon a time.  'Gravity Dreams' intrigued me, too, from his collection.

I liked the Recluse books too but Modesitt's habit of writing out sound effects annoyed and distracted me until I learned to tune it out.

Am I the only one that noticed that?

I've also been reading some Martha Wells books. Death of the Necromancer is a good stand alone book set in what feels like a parallel version of 19th century England where magic and technology both work. It even has it's own version of Sherlock Holmes and Watson. There's a trilogy set about 20 years after Death of the Necromancer that's also fun so far.

I never noticed that, I guess. I enjoyed his take on magic, with Recluse being located over an iron vein, thus anchoring order. And the tie to crafting trades ordering chaos. Good stuff, most books just kinda throw in magic so offhandedly, I like at least a nod toward believability, within a given framework.

If you liked Gravity Dreams you might try his Parafaith War and it's sequal The Ethos Effect.

parafaith war is one of my favorite novels, ethos effect didn't quite live up to the first but it was still good.

I've noticed authors -- at least the long running ones -- tend to ultimately hit a stage where some notion just takes over, and all their books tend to reflect it. (If they avoid the Monster Long Fantasy Series trap).

Moddesitt seems to find the intertwining of ethics, power, and society to be a subject he can't let go of. His books tend to be about the ethics of power, and situations in which individuals (or small groupings) have to handle an ethical dilemna resulting from uncommon power -- in short, if you DO have the ability to change society, and think it should be changed -- how do you know you're right? And should you be making that choice for everyone?

Alan Dean Foster just got obsessed with the English language. I've had to look up words he's used, and I haven't had to resort to a dictionary in 20 years.

The less said about the obsession Chalker got himself into, the better.

very true, if you check out the wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._E._Modesitt%2C_Jr. , the recurring themes section, and look at the book list, it's really apparent.

Hey, someone added a whole parafaith war entry.. it wasn't there last time I looked! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Parafaith_War

Edit: something I really like and wish people did more, is supplement the narrative with fictional texts. I like that. It was done in this book, and in dune, to great effect.

I tend to agree -- when it's done well, it's a great addition to the book. Shows planning -- or at least good editing -- and helps highlight themes and bring certain subtleties to light.

Not really pertinent, but the final 100 pages or so of the second book of The Cleric's Quintet made me want to cry...

*A bunch of pages about dwarves killing orcs and shit*

*Some elves killed some goblins*

*Some trees killed some giants and caught on fire*

etc etc....the big battle at the end of that book just went on for what seemed like half the book. I was tempted to just skip ahead.

I was scared off when I browsed upon it in a bookshop. It sounded a bit too Nancy Drew.

I like Heinlein but I find his earlier stuff way better than his later stuff. I think Farnham's Freehold might be the worst book I've ever read.

For people who really like stuff like Dick and Heinlein I say pick up some old copies of some of the monthly short-fiction collections that used to run, "Fantasy and Science Fiction" for example. (Or maybe "Science Fiction and Fantasy", I forget) Those things are pure gold. They have trashy pulp to cerebral concept stuff, each issue has something new and interesting, some very well-established authors and some one-shot weirdos.

Just make sure to stop when you start to get into the 1980s. Then they turn to crap.

I love reading those old collections, you get exposed to so many interesting authors, stories and concepts, it's really a treat.

I've been digging back through oldie sci-fi.  Man in the High Castle, Canticle for Leibowitz, and a compilation of Ray Bradbury short stories.  Great stuff.  Really interesting ideas and characters.  I seriously can't understand how people read "Monster Long Fantasy Series" (thanks morat).  Even incorporating relatively grown-up themes doesn't hide the fact that they are bloated, pulp stories centred around a very narrow hero character.  there's nothing wrong with this per se, but I went through that stage reading the Belgariad.  Now, it's so bad it seems half the sci-fi section is part x of something.  

That said, I'm currently reading Neal Stephenson's The Confusion.  I picked it up for $5 and I did like Cryptonomicon - what could possibly go wrong?  Sadly, now I remember why I never finished Quicksilver (its predecessor).  I just don't give a shit about the characters and the story.  All the main characters are practically omniscient, it's like reading a story in god-mode - I know who's going to win and I still have 300 pages to go.

Luckily, I just got some books back from long-term storage.  I've got some great non-fiction.  Chaos by James Gleick, Genius (bio of Richard Feynman) by James Gleick, Chickenhawk (bio of a vietnam helicopter pilot) and a bazillion cook-books.

A Canticle for Liebowtiz still rates up there are some seriously good shit. It's a damn classic. I never bothered reading the sequel thing he finally wrote. Didn't want to risk it sucking.

If you're fond of classic sci-fi, you should try The Lathe of Heaven.

I did my much-delayed book review post. It's here: http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/07/12/new-book-reviews-the-swing-of-a-cats-tail/.

Thanks. I think I'll pick up The Carpet Makers and also give Lisa Tuttle a fresh try. I first discovered Tuttle because she married (and divorced) one of my favorite quirky British SF authors a long time ago, Christopher Priest. While she's a great writer, she seems to prefer to write short stories, and the novels I've read seem a bit strained.

Oh yeah, I'm so done with online worlds. Irl, the most cunning cocksucker wins. Online reflects that pretty well. Oblivion may be lonely, but I don't have to worry about some 3rd party progging hackwad hopped up on red bull showing up to....enhance the experience.

Finished Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?. Holy fuck, what a depressing book. Very well written, however. I also ordered the Blade Runner Director's Cut DVD, so I can see how far it goes from the book (which is quite far, from what I have heard).

All Tomorrow's Parties is next (sitting on my desk now). Then either the Amber Chronicles or Betting Thoroughbreds (Daddy needs to get his gamble on!).

Philip Dick there fucking wrote anything happy. Dystopian hell all the way.

Are you drunk?

"Amber Chronicles" is The Great Book of Amber, right?

It's very good stuff, though the last five books are a bit weaker.  If you feel like picking up more Zelazny after,  make sure to ask first.  Zelazny was very, very prolific and not all of it was great.  One of those authors that was brilliant but had some money issues,  and churned out too much stuff for the paycheck.

I don't now about the Amber stuff being written now.  Supposedly,  Zelazny told close friends not to continue the series (includes Brust and Wolfe, among others.) 

I have some real issues with near-future cyberpunk/scifi stuff.  Their economic systems are too kludged for me to suspend disbelief,  and are usually gapping holes of ignorance for anyone with a background in developmental economics.

I think I did the same thing, Righ,  when I originally glanced over it.

It was later that I came across some positive comments on it.

The Great Book of Amber : The Complete Amber Chronicles, 1-10 (Chronicles of Amber)  (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0380809060/sr=8-1/qid=1152826690/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-7848898-8156616?ie=UTF8). Ya, same thing. I have read them before, but I was itching to re-read them. Really glad they come in one edition now!

Zelazny also wrote one of many decent post apocalypse stories that got mutilated on the screen: Damnation Alley. Tinseltown also screwed up On The Beach (Shute), A Boy And His Dog (Ellison), Make Room! Make Room! (Harrison) and The Postman (Brin). It's something of a tradition, and more recent the film, the more extreme the screwups, or so it seems.

I just finished The Nymphos of Rocky Flats (http://"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060833262/ref=sr_11_1/104-3442021-3872744?ie=UTF8") its a decent little book about Vampires and detectives and even some EBEs. I enjoyed reading it. It went by very fast, and the ending felt a tad rushed, but all in all a decent read. Specially if you like the Dresden Files type of stuff.

I now feel like some more Dresden Files, but I read them all. Anyone know of some thing similar?

P.S. Add Nymphos to spell checker?

Any movie with Paul Winfield being consumed by flesh-eating cockroaches in Salt Lake City can't be all bad.

A few off the top of my head:

Cook's "Garrett" books.  More a traditional fantasy world.  Except with mass corruption,  generations long war in the background,  and race animosity/riots.  If you read Butcher's afterwords,  he singles out Cook along with Tolkien, Zelazny, et al as an influence.  Very similar tone to the "Dresden" books.  They've been collected in omnibus "3 novels per book" collections.

Checking it out, Sweet Silver Blues is the first book in the series,  and you really want to read them in order.  Looks like the 2003 omnibus is now out of print....  So maybe this isn't a good choice.

Lord Darcy, by Randall Garrett.  A collection of short stories about an investigater in an alternative world (more Victorian England) where a kind of pseudo-magic rose instead of technology.  More Sherlock Holmes then hard-boiled.  Some author at Baen has a hard on about this guy,  so despite the fact the stories were written a while ago the collection is in print now.

Simon Green's "Nightside" books.  Have a similar feel.  Talked about them earlier in the thread.


There's alot of shit in the "supernatural detective" genre.  I'd skip over most of the stuff,  especially Hamilton and her ilk.

I did the audio book of On The Beach on a road trip from south Fla to NYC, only a supreme act of will kept me from ramming the car into an innocent tree to bring an end to it all.

Also, how can you not like Don Johnsons big screen debut?

Let me rephrase that: If there's a book he wrote that didn't take place in a fairly bleak setting, in which screwed over characters tried to work out what the hell was wrong with their lives, I missed it. Admittedly, it's been almost 15 years since I read most of his books -- but I can't remember any that had a terribly happy ending.

Also, I seemed to have failed to place the word "never" between "there" and "fucking". His worlds and writing weren't happy bubble-gum places.

Mickey Spillane dies (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/artsentertainment/2003133421_spillaneobit18.html)

Didn't realize he wrote Batman and Sub-Mariner issues in the 40's.

Anyways....Perhaps his brand of literature is considered low brow, but I think the man was a poet in his own way. Kind of like Rod Serling. Both of their styles were no less impressive than, say, Kerouac -- With stories more intriguing to boot.



[EDIT] Better article (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/18/arts/18spillane.html?hp&ex=1153195200&en=45641259c235d756&ei=5094&partner=homepage) at the NYT.

Yes.  Please Do.

Loved Patttern Recognition. (My ex has on many occasions accused me of being the male version of Cayce. Scarily enough, I did have her job for a while...) But then, I'll read anything by Gibson. Kludged economies or not, his plotlines have always been well-paced as far as I'm concerned. Neuromancer, for example, while in some cases highly implausible, reads like a Dashiel Hammett or Raymond Chandler thriller on crank. I love that. Besides, from the second I read, "The sky above the port was the color of a television tuned to a dead channel" I was in for the haul.

Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash (of course) which is brilliant for the first 75% of the book before coming to a muddled mess. Utterly forgivable, considering the opening sequence. Who of us wouldn't want to be "The Deliverator" for just one night? Especially if you need to make people listen to Reason. The Diamond Age actually made me cry in places.

Dick's A Scanner Darkly, which is like bad trip in print. Paranoid, depressing and altogether too real in some places. (The movie does it justice, BTW)

In non science fiction, there's the mysteries of P.J. Tracy that I'd highly recommend, starting with Monkeewrench (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0399149783/103-7928343-0447834?v=glance&n=283155) A serial killer mystery that surrounds a group of game designers with a haunted past. It's a bit chick-litish, but it's damn good.

And of course, I'm going through my yearly read of The Great Gatsby and a couple of Shakespeare's selected works (Richard III and A Midsummer Night's Dream this go 'round.)

Ironically enough, I bought the first books of the Dresden and Nightside series the day before this thread started.  Read both of them while also re-reading in order my Gibson books at the same time.  Finished Virtual Light last night, next up is Idoru.

Think I'm going to go down to the bookstore ("No! I do not want your stupid discount card!") this afternoon and pick up the second books in those series as well.  It's been a while since I've indulged myself in a book buying frenzy, and if I thought I could get away with it, I'd buy as many Dresden and Nightside books as the store had. (By get away with it, I mean explain to the husband why I just dropped about $100 at once on books that will probably last me a week or so).

I also subscribe to the Azimov's and Analog periodicals and have for at least 10 years now.  There are some great short stories in there, and some of the serials end up as full novels eventually (Like Allen Steele's Coyote stories).  It's a great way to read new shorts by well-known authors and to find new authors as well.

I've tried several times to get into the Amber Chronicles of books, and have never been able to finish them.  They just did nothing for me and after not being able to even read the first few books (and they weren't very thick IIRC) I finally donated them somewhere. 

The Legend of Nightfall was written by Mickey Zucker Reichert IIRC.  She also did the Renshai books.  Those were interesting, but I don't think I ever picked up the second trilogy for whatever reason.

I need to look over my Vlad Taltos books (have the trade paperbooks with 2 books in one) and see which I'm missing so I can catch up on those as well.

You should really get the discount card.

Honestly, if I bought more books there I would consider it, but the store is BAM Books a Million, and the only location I know of is down in the office building here.  I don't buy enough books here to make it worth it.  If I go down this afternoon and buy two books, that will probably make.. 6? I've bought here this year if that.  Probably just the 2 the other week and 2 today.

There is a Waldenbooks (are they Borders now?) that offers a discount card as well, but it's the same as at BAM.  I only stop in when I have time before my train leaves, and don't often buy anything there.  Once or twice a year isn't worth paying ~$10/year for a discount card.

I buy at Barnes and Noble or online which tends to be discounted already.  Or I hit up used book stores looking for older books that I missed. 

Now, if I still bought books like I did back in college and for a few years after I got out - then I'd be all over a discount card.  Buying 2-3 books every other week was not unheard of for me, so it would have definitely saved me money.  Plus, I don't care for the idea of paying for some annual card just so I can be privileged enough to be given a discount.  If it were a "buy 10 books, get the 11th free" deal, that didn't have a fee associated, I'd do that.  Just me I guess.

I always liked The Coldfire Trilogy by C. S. Friedman.

Oh, and there was finally a sequel to The Legend of Nightfall.  Not as good as the first, IMO.

Coldfire's a really good one. While we're on the subject, two good series that haven't been mentioned yet are the gap series Stephen R. Donaldson.. in fact none of his work, the three white gold wielder books, have been mentioned yet... and for cheesy pulp sci-fi goodness don't forget the lensman stuff by good ol' E Doc Smith.

I read the "Nightside" books the same way I watch "The OC" its a guilty pleasure, and you keep going even though you know it sucks. I couldnt finish the last Nightside book that just came out. I got halfway through and I read the last "Im John Taylor, and I find things. People run from me, cause of my reputation, its really not as bad as I make it seem, but nothing is as it looks in the Nightside". Jesus, you could probably find variations of that same line in every single chapter of his books and it just got to be to much. Honestly as authors go, he is pretty crappy. His best work being "Shadows Fall" (IMO).

Craving supernatural and detective stuff, I picked up The Vampire Files (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0441010903/qid=1153284022/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/002-8313882-8648804?s=books&v=glance&n=283155) its a collection of the first 3 books by P. N. Elrond. Bloodlust, Lifeblood, and Bloodcircle. Dont let the horrible names fool you. It was a very absorbing read. Defenetly better that the nightside. Ugh. I shudder just thinking about that now.

Im John Taylor, I wear a white trenchcoat, I find things, thats what I do....

My girlfriend has the B&N discount card. Despite the fact we both work in a library, thus mostly jot down ISBNs of interesting stuff, we always end up buying stuff. A trip to B&N is like a 4 hour excursion for us. Load up on books, find some comfy chairs and dig in.

The music section being hooked into allmusic.com is teh awesome, as well.

The Barnes and Noble discount card works online too. I finally broke down and signed up, and it paid for itself in the first couple of months I had it (I have been buying books like a madman the past 6 months or so). Pretty good deal for $25 if you buy a lot of books.

I wouldn't be calling them literature, and I admit -- I read them because they're short, easy little mysteries. And I find the world he created interesting enough to steal for a PnP campaign.

Shadows Fall was good -- I loved Blue Moon Rising. I've only read one of his Deathstalker books, and I found it sort of so-so.

Other posibilities:

Brust's "Vlad Taltos" books --  Vlad is an assassin.  Highly magical world,  more like a "what would the world look like if we all had magic instead of technology".  Same kind of feel as the Dresden books for the first couple books,  different feel for some of the others.  Read in publication order,  since they aren't really written in chronological order.  Collected in omnibus volumes available everywhere.

Nightwatch --  Just came out in the States,  translated from the Russian.  Set in Moscow,  urban fantasy.  Read it tonight,  found it to be pretty interesting.  Being made into a movie now.

The Nightside books are very much a guilty pleasure reading.  The style is overblown and very, very pulpy.  I enjoyed Green's bursts of imagination, coming up with alot of great secondary characters and villains.

I read Elrod's books in high school, I think.  The first few are interesting,  because it's as much or more detective stories but the main character has a supernatural edge.  I read one or two of the later ones a few years ago and they really were more blah.

If you haven't read them,  I though Steakley's two books were really fun. 

Vampire$,  about a team of vampire hunters killing vamps for money with some support from the Vatican.  Made into a movie by John Carpenter,  fun in a bad B-movie way,  and a bunch of low rent sequals straight to Scifi.

Armor is a sci fi book that reuses the Jack Crow and Felix characters, but in a far future.  Exoskeleton wearing infantry in a war against insects.  Sort of the flipside to Starship Troopers.

Yes,  Steakley uses the same two characters in both books.  Even though one is set in the far future,  and one is set now.  It's odd, but interesting.

Just to keep this thread alive, this list (http://www.phobosweb.com/features/100books/top100index.html) has been making the rounds for a few days, and I find I've read only about half the books on it. Not good.

I have only read 8. Where do I turn in my nerd card?

In my defense, I have read tons more fantasy stuff over sci fi. Also, I prefer cyberpunk sci fi vs ships and robots and shit, which is grossly underrepresented on that list.

Only 7 and wtf is Starship Troopers doing at #5? It is a good story, yes, but it cannot compare to even the shadow of something like 1984.

I, too, have had a preference for fantasy over sci-fi.

3.5. I lose. Do I have to buy an e-Machine now instead of building my own system or something?

I MUST REPENT! What is my penance?

I don't think it's an ordered list.

I scored 18 or 19, not counting a couple I've skim-read.  It seems like an awfully shitty "top 100" list.

Alot of Asimov stuff is amazingly dated now.  Not the "history" so much as the story telling technique, mannerisms, the conversation between characters, etc.  Clarke has a little bit of the same problem, as does Dick.

Quite a bit of Dick's stuff got written to convey a particular point of belief the author held,  which then means the story flies in the face of research and commonly accepted theory since.

Heinlein, on the other hand,  has aged very well.

C.J. Cheryh is all over that list.  WTF?  I've tried to read a few of his/her books (the fantasy ones), and bogged down to the point I gave up.


It's sort of funny where the line between sci fi and fantasy gets drawn, no?

Books I was surprised to see on this list:

Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
Lord of Light, by Roger Zelazny
Shadow of the Torturer, by Gene Wolfe
A Princess of Mars, by Burroughs
I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson


I mean....  I Am Legend is post-apoctlyptic, sure.  But it's about fucking vampires and the last man on earth.  That's scifi??

Shadow of the Torturer and Lord of Light are supposed to be far future settings,  but there's so many fantasy elements and unexplainable stuff going on I can't picture labeling it generic sci fi.  Frankenstein as well.

Not to mention,  why wasn't Lovecraft on that list if you're taking a very liberal definition of "sci fi".

Ahhh, well.

Funny, I picked this up a few days ago before reading this post. I played the demo of the game, and it wasnt horrible. I remember a thread about it here, saying it was from a very famous book in russian. Its not *great* and the plots are all a bit to twisty, you know some times when it smells like shit, and tastes like shit, its not always a fillet disgused as shit. Also, if my boss treated me like their boss does, I would have quit a LONG LONG time ago, but I guess in russia, its a bit more harsh, and so people except it. I think it loses a bit in translation also.

All in all not a horrible read. Its 3 books in one. I started on the third book last night. Also, the movie has already been made, you can get it on DVD at blockbuster. And since im reading the book, I might give the game another try.

Frankenstein was the one of the first real sci-fi novels. That, the Time Machine, War of the Worlds.....they were the origins of the entire mode of storytelling.

Les Mis -- any Hugo, for that matter -- is a massively dense and prose-heavy work by modern standards. (The guy was effectively paid by the word, so he liked to drag it out). That doesn't mean you count it out a classic fiction -- it's merely in a style much different than the current.

I missed I Am Legend. Loved that one.

Heh.

I have a weakness for books that deal with spirituality/morality,  especially in a context of what's essentially atheism.  I found the differences between the "good" and "evil" sides,  and the moral relativity of the peace,  a very interesting background.

The story itself is too heavily plotted,  with too many twists and turns for the sake of twisting and turning.

I liked it better then Morphiend.  It was a fun and interesting read,  that didn't make me feel guilty about having read and enjoyed it.

Read The Lies of Locke Lamora last weekend.  Heist/crime caper,  following a group of thieves in a city that feels a hell of a lot like 16th century Italy.  Alchemy replaces technology,  with some advances beyond our tech (alchemical heating blocks over ovens/stoves, fruit trees that produce alcoholic fruit, etc).  Very, very little magic.

Modern vernacular.  The characters liked to say "fuck" alot.  At other times,  they're channeling a bit of Dumas.

Short summary:  Gangs of New York meets Oceans 11,  set in Ren Italy.

I'd read this thread more if it channeled Dumas (and "Books That Say 'Fuck' Alot" ^TM) more often.

Not trying to be a dick, but seriously.....These kind of discussions inevitably become the sci-fi and fantasy threads. I don't know how to jump in.

I've read a lot of Dumas, what are you looking for?  A reccomendation?  Read the UNABRIDGED version of Count of Monte Cristo and the full 5 books of the Three Muskateers.

Really, the classics are just that.  Everyone is worth a read.  Even better they are usually cheap or available in multiple copies at the library.

Lately I've been working my way though the Aubrey/Maturin stuff by O'brien, my only complaint with them is that I know it's a finite experience.

Also, the first book of the Mazatlan Books of the Fallen sucks compared to the second and third.  If I had started with the first book I never would have finished it.  The second and third books are very strong though.

I bought Twenty Years After a while ago,  and never got into it.  I love Three Musketeers and the Count though.

The Aubrey and Maturin stuff is pretty good.  Kind of episodic in the middle,  I felt,  but that could have been my fault as a reader.  I got into them and plowed right through so I was reading multiple books a day.  I did skip one book near the end of the series,  to my absolute chagrin when I read the next and found out what I missed. 

Mutiny on the Bounty is a classic,  and it's an amazing read.  The movie adaptions don't do it justice at all.

You can get Erikson's other Malazan books from the uk Amazon, since they won't be available here for some time.  Six in the series now,  and word from Erikson's advance readers is he's delivered the seventh in it's entirety for screening. 

Gardens of the Moon is weaker,  mostly I think because he hadn't found his own voice yet.  In parts it feels like a Martin ripoff, in parts a Cook ripoff.  Two and three are probably the best,  but the rest are pretty good.  They don't get any happier, either.  Some big deaths of major characters in the latest.

I started working my way through the "Sharpe" books.  Historical fiction,  British infantry in the Napoleonic Wars.  Enjoyable.

I really liked the "Hornblower" books, too.  Similar to the Aubrey & Maturin stuff.

I've read Monte Cristo (unabridged). It's one of my favorites. Dumas or most other classics I don't need a recommendation for. If I haven't read one, then I have a good idea where to look anyhow.

And yes, the classics are just that. The only thing I'll bitch about is that I can't find cool editions/hard bindings these days without paying hundreds of dollars (especially Monte Cristo, unfortunately).


Anyways, my point is: I just like "Book Threads" to be about all kinds of books more often than not. There's been like 10 of these discussions, and they all end up becoming about fantasy and sci-fi.

And not even that: They all eventually become about Robert Jordan (although this one has been rescued from that fate because of duse's thread.....For now).

Or in other words, I posted some news that Mickey Spillane just died and no one said shit. They'd rather talk about Elves. Fuck. If anything, talk about Shopgirl or the Female Eunuch for a change.

Honestly Stray,  I'd love to talk about some of the other things out there...  but most people seem to want to talk about the fantasy/scifi stuff.  I read shittons of history stuff as well,  but no one really gives a horse's ass about the latest bio of Tamarlane or Genghis Khan.

Maybe a few words from you about one or two overlooked books you love?  I always like good recommendations,  and might get us on the right track.  Been meaning to break into some old school noir/detective stuff....   There a good place to start?

In fantasy's defence,  easily half the stuff that gets mentioned is in a couple relatively new genres,  like cyberpunk (Richard K. Morgan, that Snowcrash guy I haven't forced myself to read yet) or speculative fiction (Gaiman) or some of the post-modernist stuff (Mieville).


On the edit:

I'm reading Cormac Mccarthy's Blood Meridian now,  which is sort of a violent western.  Heard alot of good things.  Have two Hunter S. Thompson books picked up on the cheap I've got slated for next.

EDIT: Sorry double post, delete please.

I've read 23 of the books on that list. What do I win?

Books I read:

1: Dune - I liked it

2: Starship Troopers - I read this in serialized form in old sci-fi mags. (I'm not that old, they are my dads) It might be an abridged or novella version though, not sure

3: Frankenstein - Boring as all hell

4: Space Merchants - AWESOME. Everyone should read this. "Space Merchants also buzzes with ideas that are as enduring today as they were in the novel’s heyday. " This is very true. Timeless.

5: Gray Lensman - Its worth it to read at least one of the Lensman books - they are the definition of Space Opera. You CANNOT get more space opera than Lensman. The dashing hero, hot lovely girlfriend, giant lasers, giant space-faring brains - super cheese. (All the Lensman books are really interchangeable, not sure how they picked this one)

6: The War of the Worlds - worth a read.

7: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea - I read it but remember little.

8: The Time Machine - same with this one really. I remember the movie though with the evil cave dudes!

9: Ender’s Game - pretty good but I saw the ending coming miles away.

10: Stranger in a Strange Land - I should probably read this again because I remember loathing it the first time, as I do most of Heinlein's later work.

11: I, Robot - yeah, Asimov does come off as dated. The three laws of robotics are kind of corny and his novels about them became kind of gamey Agatha Christie style nonsense. (How do we get around the laws this time???)

12: To Your Scattered Bodies Go - fans of historical fiction may like this. The Matrix also borrowed heavily from this. Really heavily. It's really as neat concept but it loses steam over the course of the series. I would certainly read the first one or two. (There are 4 or 5 total)

13: Brave New World - bored me to tears for some reason.

14: 1984 - classic.

15: The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyl And Mr. Hyde - didn't do much for me but I can say I've read it.

16: Snow Crash - really amusing, kind of loses steam when the "data dump" part of the book hits. The main plotline is actually kind of lame but the writing and characters and the overall world are great.

17: Fahrenheit 451 - no pithy comment

18: Flowers for Algernon - read this when my sister had to read it in middle/high school.

19: Puppet Masters - entertaining pulp.

20: Cat’s Cradle - pretty trippy.

21: Alice in Wonderland - yes I've read this.

22: Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - no comment needed?

23: I Am Legend - I can see how this is sci-fi, IIRC it does have modern trappings like houses, cars, etc.

24: Mars - I remember thinking this was boring, can't remember why.

25: Hyperion - Excelllent book, from what I understand the second was also excellent but went downhill from there. Very imaginitive and memorable. Strongly suggested.

Random observations:

Jack Vance - Jack Vance is an author that everyone should read. I love the way old sci-fi sounds so much more erudite, like people were speaking a totally different language back then, and Jack Vance may be the best example of that. Its really like reading English from an alternate universe. Kind of sorry to not see him on the list.

Greg Bear - he sucks. I dislike most hard science fiction, him being a good example.

Ursula K. Le Guin - I've never liked any of her stuff. Maybe I'm just not getting it because I find it downright awful.

Edit: The list is pretty biased towards older work but then again that's when most of the good sci-fi was written. The 80s marked a huge dropoff in SF quality. It's downright painful to try to read the anthology magazines like F&SF from the 80s, it's like the whole genre turned to shit overnight.

<------HISTORY MAJOR

Though admittedly, most of the stuff I was reading while back in school was really...heavy stuff.

Read greg bear's "songs of earth and power" compilation and get back to me about how much he sucks.

Sorry, I don't read much of anything but scifi/fantasy; I pretty much read to escape reality, and historical stuff (except for historical fiction, like sharpe's) doesn't really do it for me... neither do biographies except for stuff like lewis black's nothing sacred.

Push it further -- the bulk of people in Victor Hugo's day were reading...Victor Hugo. They weren't reading Chaucer. :) It's no surprise that people prefer modern writing to 'classics', if only because modern writing -- in style, language, and plot -- reflects modern society. (Even fantasy and sci-fi).

For a crude example, take Asimov's Foundation -- that's Golden Age sci-fi, the sort of thing that a hundred years from now will be read as a "Classic" of the genre. It's heavily dated. They're flying around in fission-powered starships. (Heinlein with his giant computers is just as bad).

Fifty years ago, they weren't writing very much about genetic manipulation or nanotechnology -- but now you have Blood Music and Neuromancer.

Look, complaints about how people only read modern trash and now literature aren't anything new. Victor Hugo was a popular writer. He wrote serials printed in newspapers, was paid by the word (he was as bad as Jordan at dragging shit out), and wasn't considered a literary genius at the time --- he was looked at the way Stephen King's looked at now. A prolific and very popular writer, but not some literary master whose works are going to be assigned to children 100 years from now.

Personally, I don't find it surprising how popular sci-fi and fantasy have become -- society and technology are rapidly evolving and our understanding of the universe is exploding -- is it really that shocking that people are either looking towards tommorow's changes (sci-fi and speculative fiction) or back at a simpler or more mysterious time (fantasy)?

Hardly. Hugo, while still getting paid by the word, was still respected on intellectual/literary terms. He was considered a national treasure even while alive. Anyone who could read was reading him along with older stuff.

It was Dumas who was popular on a lowbrow/vulgar level. His biggest readership were people who couldn't even read at all. Peasants, children, and the like -- People who had to be read to. Literary types wrote him off for the most part.



Just to be clear, I never said that. I'm just asking that y'all spread it out a bit. If someone made a thread called "The Music Thread" and just ended up talking about Tupac and Biggie, I'd raise my voice about that too. I have nothing against modern literature -- It's just that I haven't seen many references to modern literature except stuff from one genre.

Tupac and Biggie are artists -- if the discussion of modern music was only talking about rap, that would be closer.

Those genres are popular. That's what people read. What else SHOULD we talk about? Unpopular genres? Stuff people don't read? Sci-fi, fantasy, horror -- that's the bulk of modern literature (and the last is mostly due to Stephen King alone. There are other, perhaps even better, horror writers -- but he's the reason the genre is popular). Tolkien made modern fantasy popular -- god knows where I'd trace sci-fi to...the pulps of the 50s, I suppose. There's straight up fiction, but a lot of THAT has fantasy or futuristic elements these days. (We are living in the future, so to speak). Like Wicked or The Time Traveller's Wife -- I would call either of them strictly fantasy or sci-fi. I'm not sure where I'd catalogue either of those.

We could do Oprah's book club -- the works she chooses are VERY widely read, and not strictly genre limited (although you can more or less tell her taste in reading by her choices).

I can't see much of a point here beyond "People here all seem to be reading sci-fi and fantasy, and I wish they read other stuff too.". I don't talk much about historical fiction (or alternate history stuff), or technical works, or science popularizations (I've read the bulk of Gould's Natural History essays, for instance) because they require references most people don't have, and have smaller reading bases.

Ok, I thought you were kind of cool before, but that right there is just as irritating as anything Mediocre would say.

If you want to turn a simple request to discuss books on a wider level into an excuse to "debate" and troll me with stupid shit like the above, then just fuck off. Please. You win. Whatever.

Stray, Morat is kinda right here. We discuss the books we read/have read. If you want to discuss books on a wider level, open the discussion. I've mentioned cooking books and music instruction books I've been interested in, but it doesn't generate conversation and I let it go. Sci-fi/fantasy fiction is apparently our common denominator here.

I've read Cook and Martin, not Dumas.

I'm not trying to troll. I'm trying to understand your point. Is it simply you'd like to talk about other books, other genres, of the sort that aren't terribly popular among the users of this board? Are you just tired of any book thread resulting in conversations about sci-fi or fantasy books? Or are you making a larger point about the strength of those two genres, presumably at the expense of another? I'm not trying to "win" anything -- I'm just trying to understand what your point was.

Most of that would probably lead to an interesting conversation (unless you're just wanting to talk about other books in general, which is just a function of popularity -- I have a hard time finding folks here to discuss my burning love of Gilbert and Sullivan with too. And they're freaking awesome). I mean, a conversation about why so many of the folk here like sci-fi and fantasy so much, or why fantasy and sci-fi have become increasingly popular (outside of Oprah's Book Club) while still seeming to be something one must apologize for....

What's wrong with Sci-fi and fantasy? What's wrong with it being more popular than, say, historical fiction or straight-up fiction?

I think you can pinpoint ANY era after the invention of the printing press and find a specific style of literature that was common and widely read. Some of it went on to be classics that later generations bitched current ones never appreciated. :) It's the same with movies, too. I suspect it'll be true of games as well. Any form of entertainment.

I sympathize if it's just a case of liking stuff that's not as universally read -- I understand the feeling. My library's got books that were out of print ten years before I got my hands on them. The liklihood of anyone here recognizing Godstalk is pretty slim, for a fantasy example. :)

How about everyone discuss books they read. Simple.

I read Jose Canseco's book on steroids and it was great. I also read the latest Baseball Prospectus book - boring as watching grass grow.

---

My only complaint about people discussing so much sci-fi and fantasy is that both genres had their peaks a while ago.

Does wading through a suprisingly decent 3.5 conversion of Al-Qadim for a PnP game I stupidly volunteered to run count as "reading"? If not, hmm...I just started a book on the Civil War. Something Angels or other -- can't recall the exact title offhand.

I read the instruction book for Titan Quest about 10 times.

I read the Legend of Zelda - A Link to the Past guidebook about a hundred times. I got it for free from Nintendo Power back in the day, at least a year before I actually owned a SNES.

I just finished this myself about 10 minutes ago. A masterpiece.

My point is: It's a big world out there. Wtf?

And that's not even mentioning non-fiction. Just fiction alone is a big world. Even popular fiction.

And I'm not saying to not talk about fantasy or sci-fi. Go ahead. I'm just wondering if people have anything else to suggest. Just talk about what else you guys are reading, y'know? It doesn't have to be so complicated.

Secondly, barring Harry Potter, fantasy and sci-fi are not the most popular kind of fiction. Any number of comtemporay authors, from Hornby to Murakami to Wolfe to even Patricia Cornwell sell just as many (and in some cases more) books than fantasy authors. Step outside a bit.

Hell, for every decade "fantasy and sci-fi" have been the so called "most popular genres for fiction", I can think of plenty "unpopular" authors in each one that will still be remembered a hundred years from now. There won't be many fantasy and sci-fi fiction writers from the past hundred years total who will be remembered that way. Just take the 50's and 60's for instance: More people have read and praised the works of Mailer, Capote, Nabokov, Marquez, Salinger, or Kerouac over anything done by Asimov, Bradbury, or Herbert. Three of science fiction's heaviest hitters don't stand a chance against Lolita alone.

Alternatively, one can just gauge from films and see that fantasy and sci-fi are not the most popular form of storytelling.

All that being said: Conan, Dune, and PKD still kick all kinds of ass. I don't hate these genres completely.

You know you're getting heated over books, right?

Fuck it. It's better than politics.

And yet you miss the point or fail to make one with just as much aplomb here  :-D

I've been reading nothing but sci-fi/fantasy with the occasional Bruce Campbell biography for years now, mostly due to these threads. Too many great suggestions.  I've stopped reading just about everything else.  No more Dan Brown, Clive Cussler, etc (only read because my parents have lots of them and they're quick easy reads). No more classics since I've graduated and don't have to write papers on them. 

I could have my wife write up something on the heap of historical romance and chick novels (only way I know how to classify stuff like The Devil Wears Prada) she's read over the past couple years.. but you don't want that. Trust me. 

Ohh and Stardust was excellent.  I think it's time to finish off The Black Company (once I manage to remove myself from my PS2.. gogo Shadow Hearts).

Ok Stray, go read this if you really want something outside of sci-fi/fantasy. (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0394722744/sr=8-1/qid=1153873286/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-1379302-6422328?ie=UTF8)

Thank god for Margalis, I scored a 14 on that list and I should never "win" something like that around here.  Skipped whatever the hell Stray and Morat were up to it looked stupid...

Oh I did read Gaiman's Neverwhere nothing amazing, I could have gone for some more romance between the leads frankly since its not like it was a book to take super seriously.  Cool world as usual Gaiman's imagination is impressive.  I liked most of the Sandman stuff better though tbh and I'm not a comic fan by any means.  No regrets, finished the book quickly enjoyed most of it, thanks for the heads up.

There are all these interesting sounding series that I want to check out but seriously buying anything in a book store has gotten really difficult.  I guess I'll order some stuff on online but damn it seems like none of these series are done.  I can read fast but honestly I dont retain details well at all.  So are there any good series (scifi over fantasy but either is fine) that are actually completed?  :-)

A guy made a simple request for discussion about genres in addition to fantasy and sci-fi. That's it.


The only stupid thing about it is that my post wasn't understood the first time around.

But I understand. Reading is complicated. Even moreso when you skip it.

Stray,

The point isn't what we're reading.  It's what we're reading in common.  Surprise, surprise,  a bunch of gamers/mmo players have tended to read scifi/fantasy/horror, and have some opinions on it.  It's not a discussion unless more than one person wants to talk about the subject.

The best way you can reroute the conversation is to write something about a book you particularly enjoy or think should be read.  Right now,  you're just berating us for our tastes in entertainment reading.

Most of the time, our other subjects never come up because we collectively don't give a shit about 17th century theory,  or technical manuals, or music theory, or whatever.

I did that before....Probably in "Book Thread" 4 or 5. It was a book about pirates. Pirates. No one said a word then....And I don't really have anything better than that now.

Do you need a hankie?

Word.

Where they space pirates? Because I think I could get behind that. :)

I need a little help. I was reading the Black Company books. I think I read the first 3. Anyway, my local books store doesnt have any more, so I am going to buy them on amazon.com, could some one list the order that the series goes in, as amazon is kind of confusing.

Thanks.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Company (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Company):

Novels
1. The Black Company (May 1984)
2. Shadows Linger (October 1984)
3. The White Rose (April 1985)
4. Shadow Games (June 1989)
5. Dreams of Steel (April 1990)
6. Bleak Seasons (April 1996)
7. She Is The Darkness (September 1997)
8. Water Sleeps (March 1999)
9. Soldiers Live (July 2000)

Spin-offs
The Silver Spike (September 1989)

Unreleased
1. A Pitiless Rain (TBA)[1]
2. Port of Shadows (TBA)[1]

I've only read the first 3 as well. I think Silver Spike fits chronologically between White Rose and Shadow Games but Croaker isn't the narrator. That soldier guy who hangs with Raven in The White Rose is the narrator.

Right now I'm reading the Liveship Traders trilogy by Robin Hobb. I read her Farseer trilogy a while back and that was a depressing piece of work. This one doesn't seem quite as bleak but its not a happy story. Almost done with Mad Ship and I've got Ship of Destiny waiting on the bookshelf.

The most recent Harry Potter book just came out in paperback. I need to go pick that up since I'm too cheap to buy hardbacks. I heard someone dies in this book...(what color is sarcasm again?)

My dad is always tossing Robert Ludlum books at me. While they are entertaining, most of the time the character's speech annoys me. They're always witty and know the exact thing to say at all times, especially the protagonists. I'd just like to see the main character just go "Umm... humm... urmm... I got no fucking clue." I read the Bourne Supremacy first and then saw the movie. They were 2 completely different things.

Not too long ago I read "Life of Pi" by Yann Martel. Really good book. A young Indian boy and his family are travelling across the ocean when their ship sinks. His dad is a zookeeper and is bringing many of the animals along. The boy is the only human survivor who made it into a lifeboat. Unfortunately he now gets to share that lifeboat with an orangatan, an injured zebra, a hyena, and a 3 year old bengal tiger.

You managed to get into what looked like some penis-fencing in my book thread.  No shit I skipped it, I come here to read about books.  I always skim threads like this, if a book's general description sounds good I'll read the replies in detail and see if anyone had additional comments.

P.S.   Space pirates 4tw.  Lets talk about those.

In the interests of rerailment.

I picked up and have been picking through Kim Stanley Robinson's 'Forty Signs of Rain' (relatively new; published 2004), which so far is basically a KSR book about biotech and global warming. I'm not sure how those plot threads will tie together yet (or if they will at all, in true KSR fashion).

I'm about 150 pages in, and it's very definitely the standard KSR style so far - there's an absolutely dizzying panopoly of different characters and viewpoints used, the text is relatively dry and there's a large number of disparate, barely-related plot threads being spun off, some of which I can see colliding in the future.

It's not (yet?) what I'd call 'gripping', but it's a better outing than 'The Years of Rice and Salt' by this point. Not quite as good as 'Red Mars' but probably better than 'Green Mars' and 'Blue Mars'.

In my opinion, KSR still needs to work on vivifying his prose; coming off of a re-read of 'A Canticle for Leibowitz', '40 Signs of Rain' seems really languid.

Silver Spike is concurrent with Shadow Games, there is some shared events between the two books but no interaction between characters.

When I re-read the series I always read Silver Spike 4th as the rest of the books continue on from Shadow Games and it would feel odd to jump back to Silver Spikes time-frame and characters after the rest of the series.

I think Murgos is right...  read Spike before Shadow Games.  The story flows better that way.  It doesn't make a huge difference, though, since no plot elements are spoiled between the two.

Silver Spike is really, really, really depressing.  The amorality is turned up pretty high too.  Might be the most fatalistic Cook book,  slightly ahead of Old Tin Sorrows and Tower of Fear.

I just rediscovered the public library system.  It's changed a lot since I was a kid that's for sure.  Up to 30 books out at a time!

As a result, I've been able to read a whole pile of graphic novels that I've wanted to read but didn't want to buy - stuff like Preacher, AKIRA (vol 1-4), X-men eXtinction series, The Invisibles.

I've also been raiding the bargain bin at the local gaming store and picked up a copy of the 3rd edition Gamma World Gm's handbook and a couple of adventures.  I'm not planning on gaming again anytime soon but for $5 each they're still a pretty good read.

However, after this recent binge on sci-fi i'm looking for some different, light reading.  I don't want to see another 900 page novel for a while.  Maybe I'll re-read Catcher in the Rye.

You know, here's 2 light reading books about film. One is supa long, the other isn't. But they're both very light reading and really fucking enjoyable.

Agitator - The Cinema of Takashi Miike (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1903254418/sr=8-2/qid=1153974628/ref=pd_bbs_2/103-1503150-5314257?ie=UTF8) (427 pages)

You'll have to check out this one from the library:
The Emperor and the Wolf: The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0571199828/sr=1-1/qid=1153974685/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-1503150-5314257?ie=UTF8&s=books) (848 pages)

I've recommended them before but I'll keep recommending them until someone reads them. I think Stray read Emperor and the Wolf. Not sure though. But they're both damned good.

I'll pick the Mifune book.  Definately.  Not sure how I missed you recommending that the first time.

Edit: yikes, that's hard to find and expensive...

You know where I live. Worst come to worse, you COULD borrow my copy. Libraries probably don't have it either despite what I said. I picked it up the day it came out though (still expensive back then - like $40 or something) and I don't think they've done a second printing. A long time ago a paperback was announced, but I guess that fell through.

Edit: Well damn, I might have to reneg on that and put it in the safety deposit box. Goddamn book from BN.com resellers is $141.50 - $243.50. Yeesh, had I known that would happen when it came out, I'd have picked up 5 copies. For $59 I suppose it's a steal. Or at least, that's what Ebay would have you believe (http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?from=R40&satitle=emperor+and+the+wolf). Whoever likes Mifune and Kurosawa AT ALL would be a fool not to be it at $59 (http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0571199828/ref=dp_olp_2/103-0964902-2941415?ie=UTF8) actually. It would seem that book is SHOCKINGLY EXPENSIVE everywhere. But don't ignore my recommendation of Tom Mes' Agitator, it really is a great look at Takashi Miike.

Hi! Interloan kicks ass. We have 43 libraries in our system.

Anyway.

I think I've read the first four Cooks, they're up on deck after I finish the Rosenberg stuff (on Not Quite the Three Musketeers right now). The second Rosenberg series has started out ok, but it's much more normal fantasy fare (with orks, no less). I miss the aspect of having Earth people in the fantasy world, it kinda put a nice twist on what could have otherwise been a very bland fantasy world.

And for Stray, I found a bunch of woodcarving and hand tools books at Barnes and Noble last night ;)

edit: We don't have that book, Schild. Whoever those guys are ;) But it is amazing how lucrative the secondary market for books is. We're beginning to change our policy from recycling old books or selling them at a book sale for $1/ea to reselling them on Amazon. One three-volume set went for $300!  :-o

I picked up Silver Spike from my book store last night. They didnt have the 5th 6th or 7th book, so Ill have to amazon those.

This is like a part time job for me. Not as much these days though, since the store that was giving me the most cash closed down (I wonder why....).

Maybe...Space Pirate Amazon Ninja Catgirls would hold more interest?

Your forgot Nude.

Reminder:

August 8th for the new Brust book.  Vlad makes a return after....  5 years?

Woohoo!!!!

"Millenium" by Felipe Fernandez Armesto is as good as it gets.  "A history of the last thousand years."

My girlfriend recently got me the "Gangsta Rap Coloring Book" as a gift, and it's awesome.  Has even the people you wouldn't quite expect, like Brotha Lynch Hung and DJ Screw.  I nearly died laughing when the drawing of the Geto Boys was labelled "not drawn to scale".

"Access All Areas", a "User's Guide to Urban Exploration" written by the late Ninjalicious, is the ultimate in DIY spelunking guides.

"Charlie Wilson's War" is really effing long but not bad for a skim; read it now before Tom Hanks bastardizes it in the movie version.

"Lord Vishnu's Love Handles" is a freaky semi-spy novel that conjures up more than a little of that Chuck Palahnuik magic.  I recommend it.

A novelization of Snakes On A Plane was recently released.

The Discoverers by Daniel Boorstin is quite possibly the greatest non-fiction book I have ever read, and I'm going through it again for the third time.  A history of 'man's journey to know himself and the world around him'.

Rosenberg's series is taking a nosedive imo. I'm on the second book of the second series (Not Quite Scaramouche).  He's still got Walter Slovotsky and a few Other Side characters, but he isn't really focusing on them as much, and the whole twist of his books was seeing a fantasy world through the eyes of someone from our world. Also, ten commas in one paragraph/sentence. This man needs a new editor.

Yeah I read those books years ago and lost interest during the second series as well. I don't think I've read anything else of his since. Has he been grinding out novels set in that universe like whats-her-name with the Deryni series?

Honestly,  not too impressed by Dzur.  Vlad returns to Adrilankha for the first time in quite a few books.  Lots of old friends have a walk through.  The writing is eerily like Zelazny,  but not much of a sense of fun.

It might be the fact the wait has been so long....   

Not much of substance happens.  (Some minor things,  but don't want to spoil even the minor stuff.  One very fun moment at the very beginning of the book [first 15 pages])

Been reading some Hunter S. Thompson.  Finished off Hell's Angels,  and almost done Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.  Fear and Loathing is fun....  Hell's was decent.  Nice to see where all the forum flavor text came from.  Any other Thompson stuff worth the effort to find?  I picked up those two on some Borders discount shelf.

Been on a reread tear of the Black Company books....

I am convinced that Under The Volcano, by Malcolm Lowry is the greatest book I have read in my life.

Reading Hunter T reminds me of the summer and autumn of 1989.

Pretty much all of it. The Curse of Lono is fantastic, what with the writing and the Ralph Steadman artwork all over it. It was the first Thompson I'd ever read. The Great Shark Hunt is a good compliation of stuff.

As an aside, I picked up Hyperion earlier this week, and I'm really liking it so far. What's the correct sequencing of the books?

Hyperion, then Fall of Hyperion.

Endymion and Rise of Endymion follow,  though not really as good.

Heading off to Maine next week and I forgot to reserve books for the trip! I put holds on the rest of Glen Cook's stuff (Silver Spike onward) and the last Rosenberg. Lo, today I come into work (last day before vacation) and Silver Spike, Shadow Games, and Dreams of Steel are all sitting in my box. Woohoo!

Heh, just finished Hyperion in 2 days.

Awesome. Excellent use of the Chaucer-esque use of Frame Story. Loved the vivid differentiation of the different characters and their stories. Reading each story felt distinctly different. I guess I'll have to pick up Fall of Hyperion when I can.

am I the only one here who reads books that aren't intended to broaden my  mind or give me cred in the literary scene?

The only things I'm reading currently are Kim Harrison's Hollows books (alternate universe where vampires and werewolves and witches, etc coexist with modern day humanity. The main character is a witch who is also a PI and her vampire roomate who wants to share blood and be her lesbian lover as well as a pixie who lives in her garden and a werewolf who needed her to register in his pack so he could get promoted in his insurance job. Trying to describe it doesn't do it justice)

I'm going through sort of a noir/fantasy kick lately. I'm at work and can't think of any other examples but I'll let you know if I do.

That actually sounds pretty funny.

I re-read Flatworld the other day.  Hell of a book.

The next book is pretty good.  Good windup to the story.

I'll warn you that the Endymion books are not nearly to the same level,  but pretty good.

If you've just read The Illiad,  Simmons' Illium is pretty good.  I haven't motivated enough to read the next book, though...  Olympos.

I've read a few of Harrison's books.  Kind of entertaining,  but fairly "meh".  A very Mary Sue lead character with alot of author wish fulfillment built in...     

If you're reading noir-fantasy,  pick up Butcher's "Dresden" books.  The first few are collected in omnibus now,  so the price should be pretty good.  Overall,  great entertainment reading with Scifi Channel making a series out of it this winter.

As flawed as Rachel is I don't think she qualifies as a Mary Sue. I mean the girl has fairly large problems and usually gets herself into alot of trouble through doing something stupid. Besides, a Mary Sue-ish character can be fun in original fiction if well written, see Honor Harrington for a good example.

Just finished reading 'The Book of Jhereg" which has the first 3 Vlad books in it (Jhereg, Yendi and Teckla). Half-way through Jhereg I order the next four. Damn good stuff, thanks guys.

Also, just ordered World War Z:An Oral History of the Zombie War (http://"http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/0307346609/sr=8-1/qid=1156283828/ref=pd_ka_1/702-4820296-7806436?ie=UTF8&s=gateway") which is written by the guy who wrote the Zombie Survival Guide. Not released yet, but with Dead Rising out, I'm on a zombie kick again (just reread the first 4 TPB Walking Dead too) and it sounds pretty damn interesting. More of a serious look at the whole Zombie holocaust thing.

I envy you- reading the Taltos books for the first time is pure joy.

I am nearly done with the first 5 books of the Amber Chronicles. I am amazed at how much I had forgotten...still very good books.

Who what?

Steven Brust's "Vlad Taltos" books.  Good, good stuff.

Erikson's House of Chains,  book 4 in the Malazan Book of the Fallen is out now in trade paperback in the US.  Not as good as Deadhouse Gates or Memories of Ice,  but pretty damn good.  Mostly ties up the Raraku plot threads,  and quite a few characters get their just/unjust desserts.

Just finished "The Algebraist" by Iain M Banks.  Not as good as some of his other works but still a pretty good read.

Also read "Y: The last man" graphic novel, didn't care for the premise or the characters and can't stand "Ghost in the Shell" graphic novel.  The good news: libraries are free.

Anyone ever read The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down?  It was a fascinating intro to Hmong culture and their migration to America, which I previously knew almost nothing about.

Just read Carter Beats the Devil which was quite a fun read. Very loosely based on an actual 1920's illusionist, it's in no way high literature but it's got some cool stage magic stuff.

Also started reading the Flashman novels, a nice series if you like non-serious historical stuff. Flashman is your quintessential English cad running around the world sleeping with random women, he's also a remarkable coward who keeps winding up in situations where he comes out a great hero. It's a half decent dig at the whole Boy's Own style hero with lots of interesting British Imperial history thrown in.

Same here.  It confused me at first beacause I thought it would be a Culture book and it took a while to adapt to the different way of things working.

It was still pretty interesting.  Banks is one of the few remaining Sci-fi authors who follow the old model of using Sci-Fi as a way to explore social problems.

I'm a big fan of Banks, which is probably fairly obvious. Odd, though -- asked to name my favorite contemporary authors, and they're all from the UK. Pratchett, Gaiman, Banks.....

My problem with Simmons -- and it extends to Olympus is that the first book is always good. It's cool, it's mysterious, it's awesome. And then he explains it all, and it sucks.

I'd have preferred to end with Ilium. Achilles' response to Zeus was classic. :)

The Fall of Hyperion was very good as well.  Partially because it seemed to leave society at a new crossroads,  with no idea how things were going to go from there.

Both the Endymion books were much worse,  though still readable and fairly entertaining.  The religion lines were especially mediocre.

Almost done Ambrose's Band of Brothers.  Watched the miniseries one too many times on the History Channel.  Entertaining.  Also working on a history of the Byzantine state, Twenty Years After (sequel to The Three Musketeers), and getting back into a history book on the barbarian invasions of Rome compiled from the lecture notes of a early 20th century professor.

Just finished RR Martin's Game of Thrones. I found it to be quite excellent. I guess I'll have to catass the rest of the series.

Heh....  I enjoyed the series,  but not enough to reread it.

There's a big correlation between liking Martin's "Song of Fire and Ice" and Erkison's "Malazan" books.

Nothing wrong with rereading Song of Fire and Ice.  I've done it a couple of times, actually.

I'm rereading Erikson now, though.  Just started back into Bonehunters.

And yeah, I'd have to agree about the correlation between the two.

I like Erikson a little more only because Martin is taking way too long to write these days.

And they both make Jordan and Goodkind look like rank amateurs.

I couldn't even finish Goodkin's first book. Garbage. I've tried to get back into Jordan a couple times now, but I can't make it through his first book anymore. I think I read up to book 7 or so originally. They are so popular, I have most in hardcover through discards from the library (we get a lot in donations and can't take them all, $1 hardcover ftw).

I have one more to get to in Rosenberg's series, that series has gotten severely stale and gone in the direction of bland mainstream fantasy. He should have had Deighton bring another group through or something, anything, to keep the feel of the original books, as the cool part of his books wasn't the fantasy world so much as real world people dealing with it and growing as characters. Ah, well.

Finished the Silver Spike over vacation and I'm into the first book of the South now (Cook). Cook kicks ass eight ways to wednesday.

In non-fic, I'm reading a great book on the science of music called This Is Your Brain On Music by Daniel J. Levitin. Did you know there are hardwired points in the brain to identify pitch? A 440Hz A tone has it's own place in the brain. But we don't know how the brain breaks down intervals and chords. Fun read.

Personally, I think the first and second books of the south are pretty weak compared to the preceeding three books and SS but Bleak Seasons (book 7)  is as strong as anything he's done.

Well, it's definitely doing some transitioning, but I'm enjoying it. Introducing the Nar and Wheezer is pretty nifty. The clash of the two strains of Black Company, coming together to kick ass. Old Taken popping up.

I'm reading the books of the South now too (Brust is my train to work books, Black Company is my home reading). I'm enjoying them, but not as much as I enjoyed the books of the north.

Things are picking up though, so I have hope.

I've reread 'A Song of Ice and Fire' 3 times now. Most recently just before 'A Feast for Crows'. LOVE LOVE LOVE that series. Will reread again when 'A Dance with Dragons' is about to be released.

Shadow Games is interesting because it's the transition from Croaker from annalist (closet romantic/idealist, and chief moral voice in the company) to Croaker as Captain....

Croaker as Captain is a scary guy.

I've always liked Bleak Seasons, She is the Darkness, and Water Sleeps.  Soldiers Live is good, but...  such an anticlimatic book.

I wont go very far with this because I don't want to spoil anything for Sky and whoever else is reading the series but one of the things I really like about the series is the different voices of the annalists.  Cook is one of the few writers that is capable of changing the entire tone of the narrative depending on whose voice he's using.  A lot of writers try to do different voices but they all sound sort of the same (Jordan for instance).  There are very solid differences between Croaker and the other annalists.

You practically have to read between the lines with Croaker to understand whats really going on, Case is matter of fact and has a good sense of humor but no where near Croakers dead pan sarcasm or sense of the big picture. 

Yeah, I noticed a very distinct similarity between the prose of Martin and Jordan, with the chief difference being that something happens in seemingly every chapter of Martin's book, while Jordan drags everything out for a few hundred pages, whether it's something as important as a character learning something about themselves, or as simplistic as eating breakfast and breaking camp.

Finished Tariq Ali's The Clash of Fundamentalisms, now moving onto Joinville & Villeharouin's The chronicles of the Crusades. For those of you battling on the Ret... erm, Politics board - if you've not read Ali's work, i highly recommend you do. Also looking for good stuff that's related to anthropology.

When I started it I wondered if I had read it before.  The initial plot was was pretty similar to Consider Philbeas.

I just caught up on a couple Deadwoods off the DVR on Sunday, then dove back into Shadow Games. Croaker's narrative was imagined as having Al Swearingen's voice. It was pretty cool.

Banks once talked about movie adaptations of his films, and said that Consider Phlebas was at the top of his list -- and he didn't care if the whole damn thing sucked balls, as long as one scene was done right -- the Clear Air Turbulence's escape from the GSV bay. I've got to admit, I'd pay money to see that too.

Cook's A Cruel Wind is released this week.  The original Dread Empire trilogy from the '70s, and the grand-daddy of all "dark fantasy"/realistic fantasy.

Steven Erikson has released the prologue from Reaper's Gale,  Book 7 of the Malazan series.  Link here. (http://www.malazanempire.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5781)  Formatting on that page isn't great.  Supposedly, the entire manuscript has been turned over to the advance readers for impressions,  and may be at the publishers now.

Johny, I love you!!!

Thanks for providing that link, seriously.  I love the Malazan series!!!!!

Hell, I even signed up at amazon.co.uk JUST to get Bonehunters earlier.

Hmm....I'm a book fanboi.  How tragic.

On the Malazan series:

I've been meaning to pickup Esselmont's book/s.  A long-time friend of Erikson,  he helped in building the Malazan world.  Esselmont is writing a series of standalone one-shot books on various big events in the Malazan world.  The first,  Night of Knives, is out now from an independant publisher and details the night the Emperor and Dancer are assassinated.

If you browse through the Malazan Forums, watch out for Kallor's posts.  The guy is an advance reader for Erikson,  and likes to drop teasers and tidbits meant to stir up the fanbois to madness.

A taste of his ways:

He's already dropping hints that there's a big character death in Reapers Gale.  He also likes to update his sig with a few lines from unpublished books meant to cause mass speculation on the plots of unreleased books.

At Strazos:

If you like Martin's "Song of Fire and Ice" try Erikson's Deadhouse Gates.  Second book in the series,  but the first two books are largely standalone.  Deadhouse is a better read then Gardens of the Moon, the first book.  Really an amazing book.

Gardens starts at a quick pace, and there's alot of undercurrents in it.  It makes alot more sense when you've been introduced to the series by something else.

So true, Johny.

I have discovered the evil of the Kallor :P

And all must worship at the altar of Deadhouse Gates.  That's a book I could just keep rereading all the time.

Gardens of the Moon, good.

Deadhouse Gates, better.

Memories of Ice, one of the best I've ever read.

Don't give up on the series if Gardens of the Moon doesn't grab you right away.

THought you guys would like to know that while at WorldCon, I:

- ate breakfast next to Larry Niven
- cleaned spilled coffee off of Harlan Ellison
- stood next to George R. R. Martin and didn't pester him about when the next book is coming out
- stalked John Scalzi
- had dinner with Nancy Kress
- shared a table with Peter Beagle
- chatted videogames with Todd McCaffrey for a good 45 minutes
- signed next to John deChancie
- discovered Pat Cadigan is a UO fan

It's amazing to compare how accessible creators are in the SF world versus in the gaming world.

You are a stronger man than I. 

Probably because most books don't have official forums  :-D

You disappoint me, since you didn't immediately follow this sentence with the phrase "before stabbing him in the eye with my salad fork."

He may have a caustic personality and some backwards ideas about the internets and copyrights, but you can't deny his contribution to 'speculative fiction'.

I'm a loudmouth douchebag as well, but no one is lauding my contributions to speculative fiction.

You haven't won 8.5 hugos, 3 nebulas, 5 bram stokers, and 4 writer's guild most outstanding teleplays. Yet.

I've just started to get into the Xanth series.  I've read the first couple books, and so far I haven't found any references to having sex with children (this board has given me to understand Mr. Anthony brings this up a lot).  Wait, there was the scene where the illusionist lady took many forms to seduce Bink and one was of a 14 year old... :-P

Stop now while you're still enjoying it. The Xanth series just gets worse with each novel after the first two or three.

Yeah, he has something about underage sex on the brain. He gets asked pretty regularly in interviews, and he denies it, and when asked specifically about the girl in his mode series and others, he states that he's writing about people who act in a natural fashion, and also says he doesn't feel 18 is an appropriate age for arbitrary legal intimate relationships, and doesn't see anything wrong with younger if the circumstances are approrpriate. Some of this may be slightly wrong, since I'm doing it from memory, unable to pull up the exact interview I'm thinking about.

Also, dear god man. Get thee to a web designer! (http://www.hipiers.com/)

Oh, hey, according to wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piers_Anthony) he finally wrote another mode book in 2001. I guess I should re-read the series, I kinda liked it.

Read Firefly (not a Xanth novel). You'll lose all desire to ever read anything he writes again.

Yeah, I liked his Incarnations stuff, but little else. The first few Xanth books were cute, if brainless, but he should have stopped there. I did LOVE them when I was lik 12, though.

As for sex with kids on the brain -- yeah, no fucking kidding. It's like Jack Chalker's obession with transexuals.

Just finished Tim Powers Three Days to Never.  Very good book.  Speculative fiction set in the late '80s,  focusing on Einstein's secret family and research in time travel.  The family gets involved with the paranormal agents of the Mossad and a private paranormal/spy organization that may have had connections to Nazi Germany at one point.

Powers writes some very interesting post-modern sci-fantasy/speculative fiction. 

Still working on Twenty Years After.  A littlle slow going now,  as D'Artagnion is still assembling his old friends and pulling himself out of a rut in life.  Been picking at Vance's Dying Earth, too.

I'm very envious that Raph got to hobnob with some great (or at least interesting) authors.

I thought Chalker's obsession was forcing all his female characters to become prostitutes.

That too. But I can't count the number of times characters change genders or end up she-males (or he-females or whatever the fuck you call it). There's one particularly memorable example of a chick that ends up hot as shit when dressed. It's just that when the clothes come off, she's packing a fully working dong and -- and this is the really fucked up part -- her tongue works like a giant dick. I kid you not.

That's gotta be awkward first thing in the morning.

New Gaiman collection of short stories out now.  Some pretty good stuff, a fair amount of stories from other compilations.  I can't say enough good things about the man.  The closest we have to a contemporary "master" of speculative/horror fiction.

Of note:  The Shadow (from American Gods) short story that went into the Legends II compilation a couple years back.

There's also a new Kage Baker "Company" novel out now in hardcover.

Or when you drink some icewater and suddenly start lisping because shrinkage.

Back to books. Currently reading 'The One Percent Doctrine" by Ron Suskind. It makes me sad and angry. Even more than I was before.

On my last Vlad book Issola and am sad. Don't think there was a single book of the nine I've read that I didn't like. Great, great stuff.

Currently reading Confronting Iran (http://www.amazon.com/Confronting-Iran-Failure-American-Foreign/dp/0465003508/sr=1-1/qid=1159481450/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-8125326-2844033?ie=UTF8&s=books), a pretty sobering look at the history of relations between Iran and the US.

I'm a zombiephile so I was extremely pumped when Max Brooks realeased his second book:

World War Z (http://www.amazon.com/World-War-Oral-History-Zombie/dp/0307346609/sr=1-1/qid=1159487271/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-6817696-5396839?ie=UTF8&s=books)

Very good book.  The guys my hero.  Getting paid to write about zombies.

I am currently re-reading Harrington on Hold 'em Vol. II. Since poker is my primary source of income for the time being, it's good to keep everything fresh.

Do you play online? Bet you are a big fan of port security right about now  :cry:

Yes, I play mostly online. I am planning on moving to AC next summer though.  :-D And yeah, Bill Frist is now my arch nemesis.

Fiasco is another good read to make your blood boil.

I have The Robert Greenwald Documentary Collection on the way from Amazon to keep the blood hot for now, but I will check Fiasco out. Also looking forward to Woodward's new book.

I found my copy of Issola the other day, and I realized that I had never actually read it! It is like Christmas morning for me =)

Issola is probably my favorite Vlad book.  Over the years, Orca and Issola have risen in my opinion.

I'm working on Suburban Safari,  which is about a woman in Maine observing and getting more information about the plants, creatures, and bugs in her suburban yard.  Light reading, sort of interesting,  and I read almost 3/4 in a couple hours.

Also reading an economic analysis of Europe before the Industrial Revolution.  Interesting if you like that sort of thing.

Issola was great. I can't imagine if I had read it in 2001 and had to wait 5 years for the next one... oh, I guess I can imagine that feeling thanks to George RR Martin.

I think the only Vlad book I was sorta 'meh' about was the one where Cawti gets involved with the Easterners (since I read them all BANGBANGBANG, sometimes without even looking at the book title, I forget what happens in what book).  Other than that, couldn't get enough. I think this ranks up 2nd to the Game of Thrones stuff as my favorite series.

Anyone here familiar with Robin Hobb aka Megan Lindholm, and her Farseer Trilogy? Or her Soldier's Son series? She's a local-ish author here in Washington State, but she's got quite a following. http://www.robinhobb.com/

Robiin Hobb is great. She's written 3 trilogies so far based in the same world and vaguely connected and I've read them all. Great stories although she does have that female author problem of either making her male characters either Alan Alda clones or rapists.

I'm a complete non-zombiephile.  I don't think I've seen any "_____ of the Living Dead" movie, ever.  Nor have I ever seen the first book from this author.  I didn't even like Resident Evil.  All that aside, this book is fucking awesome.  It's not a novel in the usual sense, it's a collection of fictional interviews with survivors of a worldwide zombie plague.  A doctor from China, a soldier from India, an American housewife, people from every country and walk of life.  Every facet and detail of the story is so believably drawn, all the characters so distinct, that it's surprisingly easy to suspend disbelief when it comes to the zombies.  Once you make that little leap, everything else flows naturally.

Hmm. Is that really why you generally don't like zombie films? I don't understand. It's fiction. What else are you supposed to do other than suspend disbelief? It's not like Wookies are any easier to suspend disbelief with.


Also, zombie films are not about zombies. It's unnecessary to have to care about or "believe" in that element to enjoy them. Zombie films are about disaster and survival. The actual "zombie" part is just a backdrop to amplify that. All of those elements that you like about this book (about the situations the survivors are going through) is the template for every zombie movie ever. Even the bad ones.


You should watch Dawn of the Dead at least. Remake or original. Your choice. Both are exemplary.

I never thought I'd say this, but I prefer the remake.

It's not that I dislike zombie movies in particular.  It just takes something I really think I'm going to like to get me to sit in front of a screen for two hours, and none of the zombie movies I'm aware of managed to grab me that way.  Nor do I know anyone who's into them.  I did catch that one that takes place in the UK but isn't a comedy, and I thought it was pretty good.  "24 Days Later" or something to that effect.

As for suspension of disbelief, I'm just commenting on the fact that this book makes it really damned easy.  That wasn't measuring it against anything else, zombie-related or otherwise.  /shrug

Just read part one of Stephen Donaldson's Gap series.  Pretty nice novella and really interesting notes about how the story came together.

Continuing my journey through classic sci-fi with "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" by Philip K Dick.  Great sci-fi - complex themes, great story, interesting characters, and layers upon layers upon layers.  Bladerunner only really scratched the surface.

Cool, I'm glad you liked it.  I have read the Survival Guide, but I don't personally own it - yet.  Organize before they rise! (http://www.randomhouse.com/crown/zombiesurvivalguide/)

I recently re-read (for about the 15th time) Helm (http://www.amazon.com/Helm-Steven-Gould/dp/0812571355/sr=8-3/qid=1160354596/ref=pd_bbs_3/002-8883309-6339231?ie=UTF8&s=books) by Steven Gould.  Man that is a great book.  That lead me to Deshi (http://www.amazon.com/Deshi-Martial-Thriller-John-Donohue/dp/0451412087/sr=1-1/qid=1160354701/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-8883309-6339231?ie=UTF8&s=books) which is John Donohue's second book after Sensei, but I liked Sensei better.

I had read all of Modesitt's Recluse Chronicles, but didn't realize he had another storyline set going so I'm reading Darkness (http://www.amazon.com/Darknesses-Second-Book-Corean-Chronicles/dp/0765346338/sr=1-2/qid=1160354817/ref=sr_1_2/002-8883309-6339231?ie=UTF8&s=books) right now which I think is like book 2 of 5 or something.

I've been on a zombie high lately and finally figured out that the new King book, Cell, has some zombitude in it.  I'd kind of given up on the old guy after the accident and From a Buick 8, but I'll probably pick it up after I rip through this Corean Chronicle series.

I am considering picking up Beyond Good & Evil by Nietzsche. I've been told it's pretty good, has anyone here read it?

The Gap Series is AWESOME and, as I've said before in previous book threads, EVERYONE should read it.

It may, however, be offensive to some.

I've read pretty much everything by Neitzsche. If you're already familiar with the philosophical thought that preceded him, then go ahead. Otherwise, you're better off starting with other things (Schopenhauer, Hegel, Keirkegaard, Augustinian Christianity, all the way down to Plato's metaphysics). Neitzsche was just as reactive and annotative as he was someone offering his own "original" thoughts. It's not easy to understand what he's talking about or rebelling against taken on his own.

Either way though, it's all very boring. And people who go through the trouble of actually recommending Neitzsche are 18 year old wannabe nihilists who don't know a damn thing about life.

Read old Robert E. Howard Conan stories instead. Conan is narrative, and therefore more fun. He's also the best example of Neitzsche's Ubermensch, if there ever was one.

[edit] Cliffnote version: Neitzsche rebels against absolute interpretations of the world, whether that be absolute reason, absolute views of justice, love, and truth, absolute ideals (as in Plato, general metaphysics, and general religious thought). The only absolute in his mind is Human Will and Ego. The Will and Ego are "truth" and transcend everything. This is what is meant by "Beyond Good and Evil".

I'll second the Awesomeness of the Gap series and third and possibly forth too the level of potential offensiveness. You won't forget reading these. It's been years since I last read them but Nick, Morn and Angus are still fresh in my mind as characters, which given the usual state of my memory is a pretty amazing accomplishment :)

Thirded. Way back on page one or two of the thread I recommended it to someone who thought all Stephen R. Donaldson wrote was trash, after hating his white gold wielder books.

He definately can write loathsome characters.

Heh, don't even get me started on Hegel and Hegelianism and the damn Young Hegelians. It gives me painful flashbacks.

Yeah, I've read that one. If you've read other Nietzche, you'll like it. If not, it can be a bit dense.

I've finished Confronting Iran, which ended up being much more history and much less contemporary events, but gave me a decidedly different take on the history of Iranian-US relations than I thought. It glossed over Iran's historical ties with terrorist organizations a bit more than I'm comfortable with, but opened my eyes about some events in the past I'd never critically examined. It's worth reading if only for seeing a different side of the coin than any journalist in this country will offer.

I'm currently reading No God but God (http://www.amazon.com/No-god-but-God-Evolution/dp/0812971892/sr=1-1/qid=1160407197/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-8018087-7196847?ie=UTF8&s=books) by Reza Aslan. It's a critical examination of the history and evolution of Islam from Pre-Islamic Arabia to present day. The author is a smart guy, a professor of comparitive religion (I think). He was on either the Daily Show or Colbert Report a few months ago promoting it. It's a very well-written book, entertaining even for those who aren't into religious scholarship. 

I have to disagree with some of what Stray(!) says about Nietzsche. Although I am one of those who was an "18 year old wannabe nihilists who don't know a damn thing about life", I continued to read him through my 20s and the more I read, the more influential I saw him to be. I'm now 36 and I still think Nietzsche is very very good stuff.

We take a lot of what he said for granted these days; a lot of his attitudes have taken over the modern consciousness and his stuff now doesn't seem all that special.

I also think that Nietzsche is a good starting place for philosophy in general simply because of his use of the aphorism and common parlance to explain concepts. If you start earlier, with Hegel or even Aristotle, you'll find that you have to learn an entire sublanguage just to 'get' what they are on about.

On the other hand, reading Nietzsche as beginning philosophy is like watching the Daily Show to get your world news. Sometimes you may have enough background on the history of the situation to be in on the joke, but if you're an ignorant putz who doesn't bother picking up the paper, 90% of John Stewart's jokes will fly over your head.

Before Beyond Good and Evil I would recommend starting with The Gay Science. It is often considered the first clear beginning of his thought process and sheds light on many of the obscure and inexplicably dark passsages within BGE.

Edit to fix Stray's name!

Damn, what's with everyone forgetting my name today? I'm Stray. Not Strazos. I'm Stray. Not Sky.  :-D

That being said, what is there to disagree with? I made no condemnation or affirmation of Nietzsche. I merely described and summed up his philosophy. The comment about nihilists was a joke directed towards people who reccomend his books as casual reading material (think Paul Rudd in Clueless). Not Nietzsche himself.

[edit]

Err...Nevermind. You're saying you disagree with my statement that Beyond Good and Evil isn't a good starting point. Fair enough. :)

Heh heh, sorry about the name mix up Stray. I corrected the post. Blame it on not enough morning coffee. I too have a beef with self-styled nihilists pushing ole Fred like the little red book at a hippy concert, since it encourages others to dismiss his entire philosophy out of hand, or as something that doesn't merit the time to be read.

As for starting material, I would recommend Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience, Ovid's Metamorphoses and Aristotle's Poetics.

A good 'antidote' to Nietzsche would be Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov.

I admitted to liking Dostoevsky around here once.

People pointed and laughed.

Ew, philosophy.

Anyway, I do recall seeing a hardcover collection of Robert E. Howard Conan stories somewhere recently.  I don't have it yet, but I plan on picking it up eventually.  I mean I don't care about the uberleetmensch or whatever, but the old Conan stories just kick ass.  All of my dad's ancient little REH paperbacks have long since dessicated and crumbled.

I just finished Altered Carbon (http://www.amazon.com/Altered-Carbon-Richard-Morgan/dp/0345457684/sr=8-1/qid=1160415165/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-7729242-2801526?ie=UTF8&s=books) by Richard K. Morgan. I enjoyed it. So I read the next one, and that was good to. Now im reading Market Forces.

There are 3.  Market Forces is a totally different universe and, to be honest, not as interesting.

Woken Furies, Altered Carbon and, er, the one with Angel in the title.

Broken Angels.  Not as good,  but still a fun read.

Mmm..zombie movies. There aren't many good ones. The original Night of the Living Dead is by far my favorite for a dramatic zombiflick. My girlfriend hates zombie movies, I've tried to explain that the beauty of NotLD is not the zombies, but the human interaction, human nature defeats them, not the zombies (which are actually extremely easy to overcome). Zombies = plot device.

For comedy zombies, the Return of the Living Dead was a favorite with my band. But the more recent Shaun of the Dead is pretty good, too.

But this is the book thread. Woops. Probably going to have to buy a copy of Cruel Wind by Glen Cook because we don't have it in the library system and I'm just about finished with Soldiers Live.

I finished the first 3 books in the Taltos series last night. Didn't care for the 3rd one, and the first 2 seemed a bit formulistic.

Philistine!

I just finished Issola and completely loved it. I am sorely tempted to go buy the compendiums of of the first 6 books of the series, since the originals are probably scattered to the 4 corners of the earth by now. The first Taltos book I read (I can't even remember which it was) was given to me by a friend who worked in a bookstore when we were in high school- it was one of the coverless free editions  :evil: The good news is I was instantly addicted and have bought 10-15 of Brust's other books, so it was good advertising.

Donaldson wrote about that in his little Gap primer in Book One.  He shelved the book for a long time because he thought it revealed something about his own character that he wasn't comfortable with himself.   

Thank you, and Stray, for the in-depth replies. It was a good friend that recommended him, so I am definitely going to check him out.

World War Z is awesome.

So....Am I the only one who's been reading these new Dune books? They're light reading and all, but the basic gist of these stories have been pretty great.

Up until now, all of the recent novels have been prequels. The new series is a sequel (consisting of 2 novels), and picks up where Chapterhouse Dune ended (Frank Herbert died after writing Chapterhouse, leaving one of the most uneasy feeling cliffhangers ever). The first part of this series was just released --- "Hunters of Dune" --- The second part comes out next year.

If you're a Dune fan, I recommend them (and just in case you were thinking it, these aren't the product of some corporation trying to ransack and cash in on Herbert's legacy. They're based on Frank Herbert's notes and outlines, and written by his son. They seem to be very much a labor of love).

Picked up the first Black Company book based on this thread. Very good.  Bookstore had the 3rd one and I ordered the 2nd. I cheated a bit and started reading the 3rd.

After Issola, I broke down and bought the 3 compendiums (Book of Jhereg, Taltos, and Athyra) and am thoroughly enjoying another trip with Vlad and Loiosh.

Blah.  Broken Angels is number two in the series,  still very good.

Woken Furies is trending into a false dichotomy of neo-Marxist rebellion vs. nu-feudal pseudo capatalism.

I enjoyed the action (especially since Morgan generally has one huge "WTF???" series of amoral events per book), but the overall plot was...  silly.

You are a lucky bastard, getting to read the Black Company for the first time.

I read most of the books way out of chronological order,  starting with Bleak Seasons to She is the Darkness and back to the beginning, and still thoroughly enjoyed it.  The big love it/hate it point in the series seems to be the Forest of Cloud sequence...  You either go through that and chase down the rest of the books,  or you drop it and demand the book to be banned.

Has anyone picked up A Cruel Wind (by Cook, again)?

I gibber in places about the Dread Empire series being the fundamental basis for most of the recent "dark fantasy" or noir epic fantasy like Erikson and Martin, but people just tend to look at me funny.  :cry:

There seems to be a new Bujold fantasy book out.  Unrelated to her previous fantasy works,  and looks to be kicking off a trilogy/series.  The blurb on the cover makes the story sound kind of trite,  but then again Bujold is a damn fine storyteller so who knows.

I was thinking of picking up A Cruel Wind, but I just finished Soldier's Live and I need a break from Cook.  I take a long time getting through his books due to not always being able to follow the action.  Some of his sequences just throw me for loops.  Plus, man.. a lot of characters met rather perfunctory ends.  At least people went out with a big ass bang in Silver Spike(still my favorite of his, but I enjoyed the entire series). Dunno, reading Cook leaves me satisfied but exhausted.

I picked up Storm Front, the first book of the Dresden Files.  Enjoying it a lot so far. 

So, anyone recommend what series I should dive into next (I may not come out of the Dresden books for a while though)?  Some series I've enjoyed lately: A Song of Fire and Ice, The Black Company (entire run) and admittedly the War of Souls (crappy Dragonlance but fun). Thinking of seeing what these Vlad Taltos or Mazalan Books of the Fallen are all about. Unforunately I can only get them online... the Barnes and Noble near my house likes to stock the latest stuff but doesn't realize people tend to buy series.

I picked up the first Song of Ice and Fire book awhile back. Read through about half of it and set it down. It just didn't grab me. I'll finish most books that length in 2 days (if I like them, of course), but I struggled, falling in and out of sleep, just to get through half of that one.

After hearing so much about it though, I figured that'd be the thing to win me over to fantasy (like I've mentioned before, somehow only REH's Conan has appealed to me).

I picked up the first Black Company novel recently too. I haven't cracked it open yet though.


* Not trying to hate. I'm just saying...

 

That one didn't really hook me until about 400 pages in.  But I liked it enough to keep reading until that point. My mom who has a fairly high tollerance for fantasy couldn't get remotely far into the book before putting it down. But she gravitates more toward anything Orson Scott Card has written and she absolutely LOVED every Gaiman book I lent her.  She did manage to make it through the first Wheel of Time book and enjoy it, but didn't feel like comitting to the series.

Black Company is a completely different feel.  It took me longer to get into the first book (although in less pages, Cook reads slow).

Now please, before Margalis chimes in with ASOFAI hate (a book thread tradition), can we just suggest me a new series? :roll:

What kind of new series Rasix? :)

I'm in the middle of re-reading the Exiles series by Julian May, it's been a while but it's just as good as I remember it being. It's sort of fantasy done through the lens of SF, if that makes any sense. Starts with The Many Coloured Land. If you haven't read it already, it's worth giving it a try.

Forest of Cloud? When they set up Whisper for Taking? That's a great scene, how could you not like it? Bah.

I liked the Black Company all the way through, just finished Soldiers Live. I've had the original trilogy since it was published but hadn't read beyond that until this year, it was always my favorite. It got a bit obnoxious toward the end with the constant South stuff, I missed the north and the ever-changing locations and towns. Dejagore this, Taglios that, will the Daughter of Night and Narayan get kidnapped again, will they escape (yes to both every time). It got a bit old, but Cook really wrapped the series up nicely. I was hoping they'd bring the Limper back again, he was such a great enemy who just...wouldn't...die!

I'm thinking I'll have A Cruel Wind under the xmas tree.

I liked Fire & Ice, I wish they hadn't done Jaime so wrong, he was my favorite character. That series is rough on characters.
Magician by Feist was great. Cook, Martin and Feist are probably my favorite fantasy authors.

Here (http://www.amazon.com/Book-Jhereg-Vlad-Taltos/dp/0441006159/sr=8-1/qid=1161103366/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-7085997-0801703?ie=UTF8)

$11 + shipping, or buy all "Book of"s and get free shipping.

Gyah, 3 bucks cheaper than Barnes and Noble even with my membership card.  I wouldn't have bought this stupid card if they weren't a mere mile from my house.

I'll have to check out Feist too.  Blurbs make it sound like something I'd really like.

I think it's time to go on a book buying binge.  So much good stuff. And unlike games, they're platform independent.   Where am I going to find the time? I guess I'll just have to forgo sleep until New Year.

Yeah, I have a B&N card too, and Amazon almost always beats their online prices (especially if you buy $25+ and go for the cheap shipping). I still buy enough books in the B&M B&Ns  :-P to cover the cost of the card (and I get decent email offers all the time that further mitigate the cost), but it would be nice if they could beat the 'zon.

Feist's first series (Magician/Riftwar) is fantastic, as is the Daughter of the Empire stuff with Janny Wurts (sp?). His later stuff was good, but not up to the standards of those two, IMHO.

I love being able to buy used on Amazon. Just thought I would add that in.

What's the proper order for that taltos stuff? I'd like to check out the first one in the series and know which order to reserve them (libraries, people, libraries ;)). Thanks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Brust


There's also "Book of" omnibuses you can pick up: Book of Jhereg, Book of Taltos and Book of Athyra.

As for libraries, eh, I like having the book when I'm done with it.  I like sticking it on the shelf and then being able to return to it anytime I can.  I like having a collection of books I love.  It's kind of the same with renting games for me. 

Read Wee Free Men and Hat Full of Sky last week -- Prachett's "teen" witch books. I think at this point he'd be hard pressed to write a bad book, and he'd have to work just to write a mediocare one. I enjoyed both of them -- a lot. Enough so that I preordered Winterspring. I also finished up Nix's Abhorsen books -- really good as well.

I just finished The Initiate Brother and am working on Gatherer of Clouds. I think the author's name is Russel. They were loaned to me by a friend. Pretty good fantasy in a pseudo-China setting. It's really good -- has a solid feel for the culture and world he's built.

The publishing order is as Rasix posted (which is probably the easiest way to read them, especially with the omnibuses). The chronological order the events take place in would be Taltos, Yendi, Jhereg, Teckla, Phoenix, Athyra, Orca, Dragon, Issola, Dzur. Some day I will read them in that order and see how it flows.

 
Same for me. I love to re-read my favorites every few years, or be able to loan it to a friend who I think would enjoy it.

You guys hate freedom.

I am starting to lean toward libraries for some of the 'current events' books I read, since they are soon irrelevant and I will almost assuredly never read them again. Someone needs to start a Netflix spin off for books, since I am way to lazy to actually get to the library.

I'm not much of a collector of things, but I do like collecting books. And if I end up really liking something, I'll go out of my way to get antique and/or fancy editions of these things.

As for popular fiction books mentioned in this thread -- It just doesn't cost much to snatch up a cheap paperback somewhere. Half of the time, if I go to a library, these novels are checked out anyways. And once I have my mind made up to read something, I don't feel like waiting.

Learn Hold-Fu. I usually start placing holds well in advance of when I want to read something. Of course, working here and being fine-exempt helps me keep stuff on the shelf longer :) I was going to nab that Musharraf book but it already slipped out, damned patrons are quick. I just leaned on a librarian to order the new Dawkins book, I  :heart: Dickie Dawkins. Also need to get a hold on the new Woodward.

I buy a lot of books, mostly used books because I'm cheap. Ok, not so much cheap as not wealthy. But it's a mishmash of stuff. The ability to get most books within a couple days (even if it's checked out, there's another copy in the system somewhere) has spoiled me.

I assume that libraries vary greatly from county to county and state to state over here. The one near us charges $1.50 + tax to borrow a single book for one week. When considering pulp fiction, you'd be as well to just buy used paperbacks.

That's how I've been reading a lot of the nonfiction stuff I read lately, my local library. It's cheaper than buying them all, and most of them aren't books I want to keep since they get out of date quickly.

Are you shitting me? A fee just to borrow a book, or do you mean interloan from other libraries? Can you provide a url to their site? The librarian types will be all over this! We don't charge for anything but DVDs, and that's still wicked cheap. We do charge for some things from academic libraries, but that's just passing on the cost we pay. Even our fines are minimal, because we just want the books back, not be punitive.

+Tax? What the heck kind of...a private library? Do you have a public library in the area? They shouldn't be charging for circ and definitely not be charging tax. We're tax exempt, non-profit. I don't think you can be ALA-accredited and get away with that.

Anyway, I just mentioned this and they all want to know where this library is, so please check on that url for me :)

Yeah, I don't really do the library thing anymore.  I cruise our local used bookstore, which is actually more of a publisher's excess stock resaler.  I get a lot of good deals there.  A massive coffee table book (and I mean massive, this thing must weigh around 20 pounds and is hardcover) of the collected works of Shakespeare; plays, sonnets, you name it for $16 brand new.  I picked up Suetonius' The Twelve Caesars brand new for $2.

Beyond that I also hit Amazon quite a bit for "buy it used" option since you can get so many cheap books that way.  Bought a bunch of stuff on language history, folktales, mythology, and horror in film and literature.  It helps that I don't really read any fiction very often so I don't have to keep track of some author's series.

That just isn't right.

College libraries are pretty awesome for periodicals.  I occasionally stop in to read the back issues of the Economist ($5 at the newstand?  No.) and browse through a few others.

@ Sky:

For kicks, check out the Amazon reviews for the Black Company.  The Forest of Cloud scene that sets people off is sacking Whisper's training camp,  with the amoral reaction to some of the Company brothers engaging in antisocial behaviour.  Lots of 0 star reviews from that.

I'd recommend publication order to read the Taltos books.  Brust does some funny things with the chronology that you really don't appreciate unless you read in publication order.

The Dresden Files gets better as the series goes on.  The last two, Dead Beat and Proven Guilty, are excellent.  The whole thing is very entertaining.  Stay away from Butcher's fantasy series.  This series is being produced as a TV series on Scifi starting in January.

The Taltos books are great.  Brust writes very much like Zelazny.

The Malazan books are also excellent.  Deadhouse Gates (2nd book in series) is an amazing read,  and a good starting place.  Then work back through Gardens of the Moon (first book in series) and Memories of Ice (book three), and then go forward in the series.  High bodycount,  and it is emotionally rending.  The Chain of Dogs plot line in Deadhouse Gates is heartrending.

Grimwood's Arabesque books are also very good,  though more speculative fiction.  Alternate history with cyberpunk trappings set in North Africa,  but kind of tough to find.  Pashazade is the first book.

Check out Gemmel's Drenai novels for more light, entertaining reading.  Most are standalone set in different timeperiods,  starting with Legend.


In a different vein,  I just read Mike Lewis' The Blind Side about football and the growth in the importance of the offensive lineman and especially the left tackle in response to the defensive move towards the large, vicious, fast blind side pass rusher (Lawrence Taylor!).  The bulk of the story is about Michael Oher,  a young black kid from the Memphis ghettos discovered by a well off white family who end up adopting him.  Really interesting.

Did some major book shopping this last week (Gardens of the Moon is holding up my order ><).  So, you recommend reading Deadhouse Gates first?  I saw on wikipedia that you can start off with the first, second or fifth book, but they recommended starting in the publication order.

I hate that I'm seeing a lot of recommendations already out of regular print. But nothing so far, save the Kurosawa/Mifune book schild recommended, has been impossible to find.

I read Gardens of the Moon first.  It's very good,  but alot to keep track of.  You get bombarded with backstory and history for the world.  I'm sort of odd that I often enjoy starting a series in the middle and infering what came before from what's happening now.  It's similar to Cook's Tyranny of the Night in that your trying to follow a wide-flung story while picking up info about the world.  Erikson also hasn't completely found his own voice yet,  and it shows.  The Bridgeburners bits especially feel very Cook,  who Erikson recognizes as a major influence.

Deadhouse Gates is almost completely standalone, with very little backstory you need to keep track of.  This or Memories of Ice has the best all around story.  Alot of pure badass moments,  some great characters.

Do NOT read Memories of Ice before you read Gardens of the Moon.  Midnight Tides,  the fifth book,  is completely standalone.  Don't worry about "epic fantasy cash-cow milking" that's seem to struck alot of other series...  Lots of overall plot movement,  and even main characters regularly get killed off.

I believe Murgos seconded the idea of reading Deadhouse Gates first,  but I originally saw the recommendation on the Malazan forums.

Kind of interesting to hear that Gardens of the Moon wasn't in the bookstore.  Especially considering the HUGE number of recommendations on the book,  from both magazines and fantasy authors.  Cook gives it a thumbs up,  and Stephen Donaldson is massively effusive about the series.

Erikson seems to be far more popular in the UK and Europe then N.A. though.

Precisely why I signed up for Amazon.uk...just to order his books from there.

Me too, Xer.  I had my copy of The Bonehunters rush delivered.  From everything I've seen,  Erikson is still on schedule to deliver Reapers Gale (Book 7 of 10) next spring.

It's funny because Erikson is a Canadian (from Winnipeg?) who shopped his book around here,  had no bites, and had to go to England to get published.

Has anyone picked up the Esselmont novella yet?  I've been procrastinating on ordering it.

Just started re-reading this series again.  This time through I'm really digging the politics and anthropological angles.

Yeah, there's quite a lot of stuff going on. One thing that I still haven't figured out though [sorta-spoiler] Who (or what) is Dougal?

I definately need to re-read the Pliocene Exile again. I read it in high-school where I completely missed a lot of the celtic myth and politics angles. I do have the galactic mileu trilogy (jack the bodiless, diamond mask, magnificat) on my bookshelf though.

It's a shame Julian May didn't continue writing books in that setting, there seemed like so much more you could do.

I read the first Dresden Book, I can see the appeal but it doesn't seem to be my style I may give it another shot though.  I also read American Gods because somehow I hadn't already.  Fantastic as expected, far better then Anansi Boys -which I had already read- imo.

I'm currently reading through Variable Star, and I'm enjoying it quite a bit.  It's a book written by Spider Robinson based off of notes and such that Heinlein left behind, with the book having them listed as co-authors.  It's obviously not new Heinlein, but I've found it just as engrossing as any of his stuff that I've read.  And, to me at least, the influence is pretty obvious.  I've never read Robinson before, but after this, I plan on giving another of his books a try.

I've also been reading through a biography of Talleyrand by Duff Cooper, also a good read, though I've not gotten too far into it yet. 

Been reading the first Brust compilation, Jhereg. Great stuff, like a detective noir in a fantasy setting. Thanks for the recommendation!

Just got in The God Delusion by Dawkins, one of my favorite authors. Great read, but I'm already sold as I'm firmly agnostic (and even my agnosticism would lean to deism at best, not theism). I think he pushes it a bit far with straight-up atheism because I think it's still a bit early in the game to be making declarations, but in any case I think the best we can do is a big shrug. No way to know, but I do know that no world religion is correct. Good for community building, good for some moral codes for people who need them dictated to them.

Unfortunately, Dawkins' tone is definitely biased against religion, so people who should be reading the book would be turned off very quick. Definitely worth a read.

I just finished The God Delusion last week. A really good read and he, as usual, makes devastatingly good points. His concept of the zeitgeist is really good and has me fired up.  I used some of his conceptions of an evolved rational morality in my theory class the other night in fact.  I thought the structure of the book meandered a bit and was structured sorta weird. The first part of the book is so devastating that it kinda petered out at the end. Probably should have reversed the chapter order a bit.

I'm still in Chapter 2 where he's defining his terminology. I fall in his 'defacto atheist' category. Interesting.

Ya, I was going to talk about how the topics you raised in your post will be directly addressed in the book but figured you'd see that soon enough.

About to finish God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Vonnegut (who I love as an author) as usual his stuff is fantastic.  Also picked up the third book of the Horus Heresy trilogy looking forward to it but haven't decided if I should re-read the first two or just get right to it.  I still haven't read Timequake or Slaughterhouse Five though.  The Sirens of Titan is by far the book that had the most profound impact on my during/after reading it.

Also I happened across a copy of a Neal Stephenson book in one of those outside discount racks from a series called the Baroque cycle, anyone read any of that?  I loved Snow Crash but found The Diamond Age to be sort of heavy on technical details but still interesting.  So I was tempted but figured I would ask here first since it was book two.

I've read all three (which is shit-ton of reading, all three books are over 1000 pages in hardback). I liked them quite a bit although I liked some story-lines more than others (the characters diverge into essentially separate stories and then come back together off and on). It's historical fiction taking place in the late 17th century.  Much of it is about the development of commerce and science in Europe with some wild adventurism thrown in. It's really hard to describe.  It's a tad bloated but Stephenson is such a good writer that you can overlook some of that to get to the pearls (i.e. almost all the Jack Shaftoe stuff and most of the Daniel stuff). The history is also really interesting and seems well-researched.

If you want a taste of Stephenson doing this sort of thing on a (relatively) smaller scale I would suggest picking up Cryptonomicon which takes place during WWII and is only one book.

I'm about 2/3rds of the way through the second book of the Baroque Cycle myself.  Jack is the man.  The bit with the Cabal and the musketeers was so good I went back and reread it before moving on to the next chapter.

I'd recommend reading book 1 first, though.  Book 2 dives right in without much in the way of recap.

Yeah I've enjoyed his stuff but you never know I'll pick up book 2 and 1 asap, thanks guys.  8-)

I finished Variable Star a few days ago.  It was a decent, quick read, only bogged down by what I found to be a rather heavy-handed reference to September 11/Iraq and how it ushered in The Dark Ages.  The ending seemed rather abrupt though. 

I also read through 'Three Days to Never' by Tim Powers this weekend.  While nothing spectacular, it was an entertaining read that kept me interested enough to finish it in a day.  An occult society and the Mossad are after a guy and his daughter because of a tape of Peewee's Big Adventure.  Einstein and Charlie Chaplin are also involved.  Sounds pretty screwy, which is pretty much the only reason I ended up picking the book up.  I am glad I did though. 

I'm half way through the second The Prince of Nothing (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1585676772/104-7266417-1515119) book.. I really enjoy his writing. I believe that was recommended by someone on this thread - thanks, whoever that was.

I really like Neal Stephenson but I haven't been able to get into his Baroque Cycle books. I have the second one but haven't started reading it yet.

Having seen it recommended over and over, I finally picked up American Gods. Very interesting so far...I like it.

Recent reads

The Great Turning by David Korten
The culture battle of Empire (domination) vs. Earth Community (partnership), by the author of When Corporations Rule The World... ...best book I've read this year...

Licensed to Kill by Robert Young Pelton
The author of Dangerous Places with a firsthand look at PMC outfits, from Blackwater to even shadier types. Non-partisan, you can tell that the author bonded with PMC pals, but it's an engrossing look into this phenomenon that's so pervasive now... ...you won't be able to put it down and most of you here would really enjoy it...

The Prince of Marshes  by Rory Stewart
30 year old Brit dude shows up in Iraq and nabs a provincial governor slot. Non-partisan read, just a log of Rory's personal dealings and brokering between the Iraqi tribes and coalition masters -- but very indicting of the post-occupation fiasco nevertheless.

Talking Right by Geoffrey Nunberg
Been a rash of books by linguists on past decades right wing dominance of media persuasiveness and right wing media bias including "framing" poster boy George Lakoff ("Whose Freedom"), but Nunberg's book is the supeirior offering, and he lays out the truth. 

The Politics of Jesus by Obery Hendricks
A leftist framing of the gospel message, and a scathing indictment of Republican politics and conservative indifference to economic injustice and political deceit. A call for social justice.

The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil
GNR (Genetics, Nanotech, Robotics) revolution will bring immortality to humans, ability to upload/download ourselves and Kurzweil believes it may come sooner than even many of the rosy eyed of optimists can conceive, 20-30 years, and he's doing everything in his power to stay allive until then. A lengthy intro chapter charts our current tech progress and how it's not linear, but exponential, whether we're talking about chip speed, memory, cell phone proliferation, etc... Kurzweil is a utopian but all should read this and ponder cultural and political waves that will be wrought as we wrestle with implications of hyper advancing tech.

News I thought may interest people,  from http://en.glencook.org/index.php/GCW_Interview :


Passage at Arms is my favorite standalone Cook novel.  It's Das Boot, in space.  Lots of paranoia and mental breakdown in the face of assault by a superior (both technologically and morally) alien civilazation.

This also confirms new Garrett in the pipeline.  The Garrett books pretty much single-handedly invented supernatural detective/fantasy noir that's so popular now (the Anita Blake books and the Dresden books are examples.)

It also confirms that new Black Company will be in the works in the next couple years,  which should be very interesting considering where the series was left after Soldiers Live.

Tower of Fear should be reprinted soon,  according to Amazon.  A story about evil and rebellion in a Middle Easternish city, chock full of moral compromise and shifting alliances.

I second the recommendation on Passage of Arms. Excellent. The Starfishers trilogy is set in the same universe and is also quite good.

Others I’ve read recently.

Fast Food Nation – Pretty engrossing. Not quite sure how it’s going to work out as a movie and fear that attaching a fictional film to the same title will negate some of the points he makes. Still a good read.

Nothing Like it in the World – Stephen Ambrose. If you like Stephen Ambrose you’ll like this book – if not you should probably give it a pass. Not his best effort but still an interesting read about the building of the Transcontinental Railroad.

109 East Palace – Jennet Conant. A different take on Los Alamos and the building of the bomb concentrating on what it was like to live there during the war. No details on the bomb making, lot of details on that living conditions were like and such. Definitely different, might not appeal to many.

Rising Tide – John M. Barry. An account of the Mississippi flood of 1927 which was really a very good read. Think Katrina was bad? Read this book – at the time giving federal assistance to victims of natural disasters was discouraged. I recommend this book highly.

Two Vernor Vinge books – A Deepness in the Sky. Very good. As usual he creates an alien race that is very believable and who you start rooting for over the humans. Or at least most of the humans.

Rainbows End – an interesting look at the near future using extrapolation of current trends. I think it shares some interesting speculation with a book mentioned previously, The Singularity is Near. This is a book I’ve been meaning to read for some time and I’m glad it was brought up as it reminded me to order.

Other lighter reading. Read the first two S.M. Stirling books in the Dies the Fire trilogy and although they were kind of an interesting read I found the whole premise so far fetched that I’ve pretty much concluded I’ll read the final book only if I find it in a bargain bin. Shame usually he’s one of my favorite authors.

Reread the first five books in the Hornblower saga. Good stuff. Found out that there’s several I’ve never read so now I’m on the hunt for them.

Like that's tough?

I root for the shark when I hear about shark attacks. We get millions of them every year, they get maybe a dozen of us on a good year. Go sharks!

It was a while ago, but when I read Deepness, I remember thinking that it was bollocks.

Fixed that for ya.

Too much goodness. Just got in Book of Taltos by Brust, still chipping away at The God Delusion by Dawkins, was given The United States of Arugula (a history of the refinement of american cuisine), we just got World War Z which I snatched off the shelf, I've got a couple Ubuntu Linux books in (now to find a machine that'll run it, the USFF dells don't like the installer), plus two more fic books I can't remember that are sitting at home. And I'm rereading Lovecraft for my bedtime stories, I've got a nice Library of America compilation.

I just picked up jPod. Liking it! Also got that short story collection from Chuck Palahniuk. Picked up the 2nd and 3rd volume of Ex Machina (still amazing stuff). Oh, and an illustrated Tale of the Genji from Amano (the guy who did the art for Vampire Hunter D), one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.

Has anyone else read jPod? Does it stay awesome?

I've also read the first two, and while I've got a host of problems with various factors in them the chief one is nothing fucking happens in book two.  At all. 

He could have wrapped it up in a one-page prologue for the third book.  Which I won't read; we have it laying around here but the wife foolishly read it first, so I just got her to spoil it for me--and there were no surprises that I didn't already predict.

The one where he is telling or at least retelling stories he's heard from other people or has happened to him personally?  That one was pretty good.

Just finished World War Z.  It was very good.

I just finished JPod in about 6 hours. Fucking thing went by quick.

Good stuff. In the vein of Lucky Wander Boy but the writer was about twice as arrogant. He very obviously used the book to vent his own frustrations with society and such. Oh, and he wrote himself into it. And he eventually became a main character.

What a dick.

So I gave Butcher a second and third chance with the whole Dresden thing.  That's enough for me.  I've got enough main character angst in my anime thank you very much.  Also the whole remind me every book how he is chivalrous to a fault blahblah and try to pretend he is some kind of flawed hero without making it believable is annoying to.  They have their moments and did get me through flights to and from Ohio but I'm going to drop the series.

I started Stephenson's first Baroque Cycle book, very interesting 50 pages in.  But I found I needed a goddamn computer handy to reference some of the historical/mathematical terms.  Its a bitch having attended very little college and not been in school for 5 years to remember a lot of that stuff.

I also in desperation picked up Gaiman's Stardust at a Border's in Ohio (couldn't find anything I had been looking for) it was a fun light read but similar to Neverwhere I wish he did more with it really.

Oh I also read the latest Battletech book, which even though it dealt with Clan Wolf (or whats left of them) was fun.  It sure seems like the outcome of the story arc is waaay to obvious for Battletech so I hope there are some surprises somewhere.  But it introduced a pretty entertaining and varied cast, which should make for interesting stories in the future.

So are there any books you actually like?

Interesting. (http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117945332.html?categoryid=13&cs=1)


I always thought this would make a really good movie, done properly.

LibraryThing has a reverse book suggesting thing (http://www.librarything.com/unsuggester/). You put in a book you like and it gives you books that are polar opposites of it based on what people read. If you put in Hyperion or Ender's Game it gives you religious books. If you put in religious books it gives you scifi and fantasy.


Reading Fitzpatrick's War at the moment. It's a post-apoc cross between John Carter of Mars and Robin Hobb's Farseer Trilogy.

So, if you were to put in say, a Wheel of Time book would it give you a concise, well written and finished work?  Because that would be useful...

It's a style thing.  Generally,  Gaiman writes short breezy fiction that reads like a modern fable.  You either enjoy the minimalism,  or you find it underwritten.

Gaiman has done a couple more in depth books.  American Gods maintains the breezy style,  but its got alot of meat.  Same for the Sandman series,  which is really the only graphic novel I thought was superb.  Those two are probably tied for Gaiman's best work to date.

The storytelling in graphic novels just isn't my cup of tea, it seems.

Read a bunch of stuff,  most of the nonfiction not particularly gripping.  The only thing of note is John C. Wright's Fugitives of Chaos.  Second book in a trilogy,  started with Orphans of Chaos.

It's speculative fiction,  set in the modern world.  Follows five late teens kids who are the only students in a boarding school in an English manor.  All the kids are orphans,  none had names or could remember much about life before the school,  and they all start exhibiting strange abilities and perceptions of how the world works.  Don't want to say too much, because getting answers is alot of the fun.

Lots of takes on ancient myth, viewing the world through different lens of perception, mixed with literary and pop culture allusions.  And fun characters and dialogue,  very cleverly written.  Reminds me alot of a cross between Zelazny and Wolfe.

Some great lines, but my favorite:

"You're a big strong Irishman,  and she's English, so she gets to oppress you.  Okay?"

Got my grubby paws on one of the hardcover copies of Cook's Sung in Blood, too.  Mediocre book,  but I did cackle in glee when I found it stuffed in the Borders shelf.

On my radar:

Cook's brand new sequal to The Tyranny of the Night due in February
Reprint in hardcover of Cook's Passage at Arms,  military scifi that's Das Boot with a shitload of paranoia and Cook amoralism.  Due in March.
The sequal to The Lies of Locke Lamora,  which is basically pseudo-Renaissance heist/grifter fiction
Reapers Gale, from Erikson, due out some time next year.  It's supposedly finished and with the advance readers for them to check out now.

I'm sure there's a bunch of other stuff,  but cold medication is interfering with my memory.

Um.  If you think Ender's Game wasn't a religious book, you didn't read it right.  Fuck, everything OSC does is a religious book.  The man's a nutjob.

I'm just wrapping up The Tyranny of the Night. Really liked it and probably the most careful I've read a book in a long time. There's so many factions and religions that I found it easy to get confused about who was fighting who over what.

Good stuff though, can't wait for the next one.

I'm almost finished with John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley which I think is absolutely fantastic.  Somehow I have never read much Steinbeck so this has been a welcome surprise.  I picked up the book for free in a huge warehouse in Berkeley selling used office furniture.   

Just about to finish up the first Corean book. Good stuff, Modesitt always seems to keep me interested in his writing. Looking forward to finishing up those.

Santa brought me the Cruel Wind compilation by Cook, so lots of good reading into the new year.

Got a copy of America: The Last Best Hope (Volume I): From the Age of Discovery to a World at War (http://www.amazon.com/America-Last-Best-Discovery-World/dp/1595550550/sr=8-1/qid=1167324181/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-2083943-6172006?ie=UTF8&s=books) for Christmas (wasn't on my Amazon wish list, but oh well...). If you can get past the spin that Bennett uses occasionally, as well as the fact that he pulls most of his stuff from a very few sources (the first chapter has 60+ footnote citings, and all but a few are from 3 books), it is not a bad read. Makes me want to go read his source books though  :-D

Is that William "Be Virtuous But High Limit Slots are Okay" Bennett?

Aye. He is also Bill Bennett of radio fame (and also a Reagan/Bush I cabinet member).

The world is pretty tightly based on Crusade-era Europe and Middle East,  with a pretty heavy eye to detail.  Such as,  the Cathar sect made it in as the Maysalens, etc.  Pretty fucking gutsy,  considering the way the direct analogues to Christians, Muslims, and Jews get going on slaughtering each other.

Charlie Huston's sequal to Already Dead, called No Dominion, is out now. 

Green's latest "Nightside" book is also out.  It's funny,  I find the Nightside books to be alot of fun and can't really stand the rest of his body of work.  Haven't even bothered to track down the Deathstalker books.

If you have more then a passing interest in American Football esp. at the NCAA level you should check out Michael Lewis' The Blindside I'm just getting into it but really its a hell of a story.

That is an interesting book.  Mixes some football evolution/strategy talk with a pretty amazing human interest story.  Read it a couple months ago because I kept seeing the author pop up talking about it (Daily Show, NPR, etc.).

Finished the (Not Even Close to) Concise book on Buddhism and picked up Joseph Campbell's Hero of a Thousand Faces. I recommend the book to any writers, and any religious fucknuts who think the Bible is a literal, completely original and unaltered document handed down from God himself.

Campbell is cool and all, but if that was your goal, there is better fuel for a better fire. He was a generalist, influenced by modern literature, western history, and Jungian psychology more than actual religious studies (let alone Semetic relgious studies). I might be wrong, but he didn't have any more than a MA in English Literature. There's an entire world of works dealing with mythology, comparative religion, and anthropology that are superior to anything he wrote. You might as well use Frank Herbert as a means to debate religion.

Just introducing them to Source theory and the various Document hypotheses would do a better job at making them realize the literary nature of the Bible. Or better yet, just put an Oxford Annotated Bible in their hands. It softens the blow a bit.

Just finished the Black Company series. Last book definately redeemed the series quite a bit. The first 4 or 5 books were decent then it went a bit south.

He who would pun would pick a pocket.

Finished reading Cell, by Stephen King tonight.  Decent book although its got it share of flaws like most of King's work.  I mostly just read his short story collections since the guy has a thousand great ideas for stories but can rarely give any of them a satisfying payoff at the end (so at least with short stories I don't have to invest a lot of time in them for nothing).  Enjoyable book, and I don't regret reading it, but I might have felt ripped off if I had paid the $10 price listed on the back cover (for a fucking paperback no less, and they wonder why people would rather watch TV than read a book) instead of borrowing the book from a co-worker.

Count yourself lucky.  In Australia a new release paperback is going to run you about $A22 to $A25.  Fuck that.  With a ribbon.  Currently $A1 buys about $US0.80.

Why buy new books when you can get so many near new and old ones from op shops and second hand book stores.

I bought 13 books for $1.80 the other week.

I'm reading the Decameron atm, finally getting around to it, and it's hilarious and fun.

I'm into the fourth book of the Corean line by Modesitt. Good stuff, similar in a high-level way to the Recluse line, but that's a good thing imo. Fun fantasy that doesn't get too heavy.

Did you really just say that Modesitt's Recluse didn't get too heavy?  By book 75 or whatever reading it was like trudging up hill though mud.

The local library has been my salvation and it's free :)  Op shops don't typically have anything except for old westerns and grishams.  Second-hand shops are riding the wave and are charging around $10-15 for a used paperback.

I've only started with the first book, but I figured some of you guys would be more interested in this:

Song of Ice and Fire + HBO (http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117957532.html?categoryid=1236&cs=1&p=0)



If someone makes a whole new thread devoted to this, then just merge my post. Wasn't sure where else to put it...

Is each season going to be three years long?

Holy FUCK! I guess I won't be canceling HBO any time soon. God I hope they don't fuck this up.

More news to make you geeks happy:

Clooney and Sci Fi Channel making a Stephenson mini-series (http://www.boingboing.net/2007/01/16/clooney_and_scifi_ma.html)


Never read it.

Damn, you are unlucky. I find books everywhere. And there is a GREAT second hand book shop in my area that only charges AU$4-6 for quality books (non fiction, poetry, childrens; heaps!).

They should really do Snow Crash, not Diamond Age. DA is a lot more brainy than Snow Crash and less visual.

Then again, Clooney is the type of guy who can make films about Edward Murrow and Chuck Barris work.

Snow Crash was more generic cyberpunk; DA had more character development and emotions and such. It is a much deeper story. That being said, I think they would both be interesting to see translated onto the screen. Cryptonomicon would be even better, but it would have to be 5 hours long or chopped into a couple of movies.

Snow Crash would work as a Johnny Mneumonic-like action flick (I know it was terrible, but it is one of my guilty pleasure flicks that I can't turn off when it see it). DA works as an actor's vehicle, since the story is more about the development of the main character and not as much about the technology/dystopian society. 

I like Stephenson -- don't get me wrong -- but Snow Crash highlights his flaws as a writer. The first thirty fucking pages were brilliant. After that, it steadily declined into a crap ending. But there were enough great flashes throughout the book to make it worth it.

He's the most uneven writer I've ever read, but virtually every damn book has several really great -- worth reading the book just for itself -- moments buried in it. And his endings are universally crap. And also, the old chick from the Victorian Phyle was the skateboarding chick from Snow Crash.

I don't see how you could say that about Snow Crash. It was gold from start to finish.

Change the ending, and remove the first thirty pages and I'd agree with you. But after that intro? It just couldn't live up to that. I find his endings pretty weak -- I suspect he finds that the least interesting part of the book. (His characters, their backstories, those little random asides, and the complex worlds he builds -- I'd bet money that's why he writes. Plot is very secondary).

I do think The Diamond Age would make better television than Snow Crash. I think Cryptonomicon would bore the fuck out of everyone on TV. The Baroque Cycle, if you edited it heavily, might make a good movie. Fuck, it's all pirates and ninjas these days and it has both.

Interface would be a good one. It's written by Stepehenson and his uncle under the name Stephen Bury.

I liked Diamond Age but I think it kind of wrapped up pretty quickly at the end.  I was expecting more a collapse of the world as we know it ending.  Not sure how the whole "sex as a computer" thing is going to transfer over but I can't wait to see :D

I'm getting toward the end of Alector's Choice, the fourth Corean cycle book by Modesitt. Last night I was reflecting how much I thought the Vlad Taltos stuff sucked in comparison, the characterizations in that book were just so completely unbelievable and shallow, the situations never seemed realistic. The gritty detective pulp fiction style pulled me in, but by book three or four I had to bail. Modesitt, otoh, can entertain me ad nauseum, I read all the Recluse except maybe the last one.

I like Modesitt -- I've got the bulk of his books kicking around. He's got a really strong and particular writing style that he has absolutely no desire or interest in modifying, and his work is frequently self-derivative. His has a specific plot in his Recluce novels that he follows -- I can't tell whether it's an artistic choice (the whole notion of Recluce sort of rests on a balancing of forces, so you end up with variations of the same conflict anyways), whether he likes exploring subtle variations of the same idea, or whether he's got one decent fantasy story in him and he's told it 20 times.

His science fiction is similar -- strong repeating themes. He seems rather interested in the ethical problems caused by increasing technology, and it shows up over and over again.

Fuck if I know what I think of his work. They're an easy read and enjoyable, and I like his later stuff more than his earlier stuff.

I've only read the first three Corean novels. I found the ending of the third one more than a bit rushed.

Yeah, I agree. There was almost another novel needed to wrap that up and he left a lot dangling. He's picked up some of the threads in the next book, but the second trilogy is set 1000yrs before the first trilogy. Again, a Modesitt plot device from Recluse. But hey, if it ain't broke...

I think the Recluse novels I liked best were the pair that dealt with Cerryl and the pair that dealt with Lorn. Nice to see a different side to it.

I haven't read his fantasy (don't read fantasy) but I do like his Sci-Fi. I agree that he recycles themes quite a lot but I like the themes he uses in his futuristic stuff so I'm cool with it. I picked up Parafaith War cold without knowing anything about it or him years ago and while I was reading it I said to myself that this guy had to have a lot of experience with Mormons. Only later did I find out he lives here in Utah.

The Parafaith War was the first book of his I read. I started on his fantasy books after that. He did a sequel of the Parafaith War called The Ethos Effect that was interesting, but not nearly as good. I enjoyed Gravity Dreams and I'm still trying to decide what I thought of his newest one.

Finished books one and two of Erickson's "Malazan Books of the Fallen". Whomever said start with two, I'd really not advise that to anyone.  Parts of 2 just come across as big buckets of "WTF?" if you haven't the background you get from 1.  The Fiddler, Khalam, Crokus, Apsalar stuff loses a lot of meaning without this. From 1 you'll walk away with a greater understanding the warrens, the Jahgut and Imass, the Azath, and the political and geographical aspects of the empire.

1 just felt like a great setup, although I'll agree that both books are self contained.  Just so much of 1 bleeds over into 2.

Anyhow, time to get the rest of the books.

The whole Chain of Dogs storyline has alot more draw then anything in Book 1, though,  which is why alot of people say start with book 2.  The Felisin storyline is kind of interesting, too, though I got really tired of the character.

Memories of Ice,  book 3, is HUGE.  It's also one of the best of the series.  If you don't tear up a bit at the end,  you have no human emotions.

For everyone else that follows the series:

Amazon UK is listing the next book,  book 7 Reapers Gale, as being released on May 7th.  Word is that Erikson is well along on book 8 now, too.  Yes,  I will be preordering...  heh.

The series is slated for 10 books,  with provisional plans for a release a year,  which Erikson has come close to keeping up with unlike other authors reference on this thread.

Esselmont (Erikson's best friend, and the guy that helped build the lore/world) is doing a series of standalone books in the same world that flesh out important events that are referenced in the Malazan series but not shown.  Night of Knives, his first Malazan book about the night the emperor is assassinated, will be out in wide release later this year.  You can still usually find the limited editions being sold used for a good chunk of change.

Going through a mostly fluff period of reading:

Finished Battle Royale in two days, need to see the movie now.

Currently I'm finishing up the Brother's War which is supposedly the best MtG book every written.  I'm inclined to agree, while the editing isn't great and sometimes I feel like I'm being treated like an 8yr old because the author really drives home certain character motivations without leaving anything to imagination.  Overall I've found it quite enjoyable.  Similar to how the Horus Heresy trilogy was so good in the inescapable tragedy sort of way.  But while this story means less to me, its also one whose details I had never seen before. 

Finished reading the Joseph Campbell and have started on Worse than Watergate. Through the first chapter or so, this book is really good, well-written, the kind of thing that keeps you reading. It's not dry in tone at all, like you might expect a polemic to be.

I'm reading the second book in Mtg's Artifacts Cycle Planeswalker and its really quite good.  For a beer and pretzel fantasy/scifi writer I like this Lynn Abbey's characterization of the cast.  The whole plot of this second book is really really interesting but I'll skip the spoilers.

I'm also working on The Road by Cormac McCarthy but really its hard reading something so bleak.  Quite well done (about halfway through it) but the tale of seemingly the last two sane people alive in America after some kind of apocalyptic war is some pretty depressing stuff.

Hmm...  The Road is supposed to be McCarthy's comeback novel after the poor reception of No Country for Old Men.  Have that one on my "to read" pile,  right after I finish the new bio of Octavian/Augustus Ceaser (title Augustus).  Almost picked up Cicero, too.

The MtG Urza/Planeswalker trilogy is supposed to be the high point of the adaption books.  I sometimes read the first book in one of the new trilogies (come out to match sets) just to get some flavor for the cards.  Mostly, it's not great stuff written by Wizards stable of authors left over from the novelization of DnD.

I soooo need the new Glen Cook novel.....

About Snowcrash - the start was awesome. A lot of the characters were neat as was the atmosphere and world. However the plot was a mess. Especially the data-dump parts where the main character was talking to the librarian. It failed the old "show don't tell" rather dismally, as the plot was almost entirely laid out in a boring block of exposition.

It probably would have been better without any real plot at all.

Accelerando is feeling like exactly what you describe. "Here's the fucked up chaos of the future world. And it gets worse by the day." I'm liking it, more than Spin (which I liked).

I'm really having a hard time with the McCarthy book because I started it like two weeks late.  It is finally sunny again and I really dont feel like reading anything depressing.  I may put it aside for now, but that wasn't to say I didn't think well of the story or the storytelling.

As for the Urza/Planeswalker story, really this second book may be the best adaption book ever.  Which is tough to say because there were tons of Battletech books I really loved.  The dynamic between Urza who is now a crazed planeswalker with the mightstone and weakstone for eyes and a thing grown in a vat on Phyrexia were a great read.  Really other then some areas where logic in the plot is skimmed to keep the pacing going it really was quite a read imho.  Its nothing amazing except when you compare to all the other D&D, Mtg, Battletech, etc books out there.  I tried to look up the author but it doesn't seem like she's ever written anything that might showcase talent.  Just some long fantasy series called Thieves World which sounds like crap, stealth classes are ghey.

Plowing through Asimov's Foundation novel.  Damn, that's a fantastic book.  Old school sci-fi, playing on determinism and with a very clever plot.  Definitely worthy of its place in any sci-fi top ten list.

Heh.  Which one?

I read the original novel(s) last year around this time.  The original Foundation stuff is decent,  but I felt it had a real dated feel to the dialogue/themes.  The plots got progressively worse for each story as well,  and I lost all interest after reading a couple of the '70's additions to the series.

Compare and contrast to Heinlein (or Wolfe or Leiber).  Most of his works still feel very relevant/contemporary and he was writing through the same time period.

McCarthy has been set aside and my reading pace has slowed.  I've been overjoyed with the purchase of a $7 copy of Bradbury Speaks the first section "About Writing" is total tripe, skip it.  I have found the second section about Science Fiction to contain several very interesting essays and have added some of his stuff I haven't read onto my list of books to obtain.

Well let's see I have mowed down quite a few books recently because of my new living conditions.


I read The Tyranny of Night too.  Same feeling, I liked it but I found it pretty congested at times with all the factions.  Remembered to pick up Cartomancy by Michael Stackpole.  He isn't the greatest technical writer but I like his books anyway.  The book is part of 2 of however many, and I think it was better than book 1, A Secret Atlas.  My favorite Stackpole books are the DragonCrown War books, with my fav being The Dark Glory War (http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Glory-Prelude-DragonCrown-Cycle/dp/0553578073/ref=pd_sim_b_3/002-3988363-7544057). 

Fulfilling my all consuming desire for more zombie material: Monster Nation (http://www.amazon.com/Monster-Nation-Zombie-David-Wellington/dp/1560258667/sr=1-1/qid=1170117055/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-3988363-7544057?ie=UTF8&s=books) which is the sequel yet prequel of Monster Island (http://www.amazon.com/Monster-Island-Zombie-David-Wellington/dp/1560258500/sr=1-2/qid=1170117055/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2/002-3988363-7544057?ie=UTF8&s=books).  Both are good reads, but the first book is the better of the two.  Mainly because I'm more into the "biological" area of zombie genesis than the whole mystical side.

Right behind zombies I've been on a huge Warhammer riff.  I much prefer the 40k stuff to the elder lore, but I love all the stuff out of the Black Library.  To wit in the last month or so I went through Let the Galaxy Burn (http://www.amazon.com/Let-Galaxy-Burn-Warhammer-Novels/dp/1844163423/sr=1-1/qid=1170117698/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-3988363-7544057?ie=UTF8&s=books), The Ultramarines Omnibus (http://www.amazon.com/Ultramarines-Omnibus-Warhammer-40-000/dp/1844164039/sr=1-3/qid=1170117698/ref=pd_bbs_3/002-3988363-7544057?ie=UTF8&s=books), The Soul Drinkers Omnibus (http://www.amazon.com/Soul-Drinkers-Omnibus-Warhammer-Novels/dp/1844164160/sr=1-1/qid=1170118219/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-3988363-7544057?ie=UTF8&s=books) and all 3 of The Horus Heresy (http://www.amazon.com/False-Gods-Heresy-Takes-Horus/dp/1844163709/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b/002-3988363-7544057) cycle.  I could go on but let's jut say I have read every single 40k book available right now...I think (Grey Knights 1-2, Dawn of War 1-3, Ravenor 1-3, Space Wolf, Grey Hunter, etc.)  Waiting on the upcoming Space Wolf Omnibus.

Whew, after all that I'm actually currently reading The Riders of the Dead (http://www.amazon.com/Riders-Dead-Warhammer-Novels-Paperback/dp/184416019X/sr=8-1/qid=1170118441/ref=sr_1_1/002-3988363-7544057?ie=UTF8&s=books), which is a regular Warhammer novel, but it's really a great book with all sorts of cavalry action in it so far.





 

Just read Simmons' The Terror, his first new book since Olympos.  Talk about a book that fell apart in the last act...

I loved loved loved the first 2/3.  Two ships of a British Artic exploring party, frozen in pack ice for years?  Strange creature hunting and killing the men?  Bizarre native Inuit showing up?  Great build up,  for not much.

It feels like someone took any of the better books on the polar explorers (check out the Shackleton books, if you get a chance), mixed with some O'Brian/Forester British Navy drama,  and snuck in large doses of Poe and Lovecraft (Ae!)

And the last act was horrid.

Edit:  The mad, drunken Irish captain got huge points for his Book of the Leviathan stuff. 

Some spoiler:








Honestly,  I expected the direction of the finale to head into completely fucked up Lovecraftian "everyone dies or goes mad!" territory.  Instead,  our main character is miraculously saved and we quickly get force fed some noble/mystical savage tripe with a side dose of how bad the Europeans are into a completely anti-climatic ending.

Man, that's what Simmons does. He puts together this great concept, this great world -- and then fucks it up by explaining it and resolving it. Hyperion? Great book. Fall of Hyperion? Not so much. Ilium? Awesome. Olympus? Falls apart.

Also, the last line of Ilium?. Saying that to the Gods was just fucking awesome.

I liked Illium enough to pick up Olympus.

Meh, I can't get through the first quarter of the book.  I end up putting it down and forgetting about it.  I think I've read two or three other books since I started it.

This makes me cry (http://www.humorwriters.org/startlingstats.html)... may or may not be accurate, jenkins group survey.

God that is sad. Not only in a 'doomed to ignorance' way, but in a 'never get to experience the wonder of reading' way as well.

I dunno, that's questionable.

Firstly, what defines 'book'? Lots of people read Chilton's manuals but won't touch fiction. Lots of people read how-to books, Dummies books (which I love!), self-help books, cookbooks, financial books, etc.

Secondly, I only started going to bookstores again when I started dating a librarian who likes to go linger there. But I read a ton of library books and buy a lot of books online every year.

Amazon.com and bn.com alone make me question that 80% figure. Can 20% keep them profitable to the levels they are?

Finally, more than 57% of new books don't deserve to be read to completion.

I find those results very hard to believe. 80% of entire families did not buy or read a book?

That doesn't pass a common sense test. Surely more than 20% of families have kids of school age who must read books.

Walmart has books. In fact, Walmart is the only 'bookstore' in my town  :|

For those who enjoyed Startship Troopers and the like, may want to check out Old Man's War (http://www.amazon.com/Old-Mans-War-John-Scalzi/dp/0765315246/sr=1-1/qid=1170714717/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-1965530-6871916?ie=UTF8&s=books) by John Scalzi.  Just came out in paperback so this may be old news to some, but it's a quick fun read in the same genre as ST and some Deitz's books.  Not nearly as deep as ST but still I liked it.

Better or worse then Steakley's Armor?

Amazon keeps recommending that to me.  Thanks for the heads up.

Read Guy Gavarial Kay's latest Ysabel.  Great writing,  only a moderately interesting story.

Reread Brust's Dzur,  which is much better the second time around.  If anything,  Brust puts too much of the deeper character interactions in the subtext so that you have to really work to get to the meat of the story. 

About halfway through Scar Night,  which is mediocre.  Another author who's aping alot of what Mieville does, while completely missing why Mieville is so well thought of.

Some good releases coming up.  Couple weeks for new Cook,  and March sees the rerelease of Cook's Passage to Arms.  Erikson's latest in May.  A new Scott Lynch book in June.

Oh...  and Harry Potter preorder season has started.

I know there are a few folks that read Bujold (reread Shards of Honor the other day...) and blundered across some interesting info on her latest The Sharing Knife:

I kind of caught the idea from a cursory read of the jacket that it was more angled towards romance then her usual...  Had that confirmed the other day.  It's almost a straight-up romance novel in fantasy dressing.  I really enjoy most of her books,  great subtle commentary in some of them,  but I'm going to give the romance novel a pass.

Ehh just different writing styles.  Less gritty, more sci-fi-y.  I'd say not as good as Armor - but just a shade under, but that's just my personal opinion based on the whole "feel" of a book after you've read them.  It's still a must read though if you're looking for ST genre books.

Finished Jhereg, the first Taltos book.  Didn't think much of it. Don't know what it is, but it failed to grab me at all. Vlad just seems so generic.  Reading it was like rooting for paper to beat rock.  I just didn't care.

Maybe I'll try it the other 2 books in the omnibus sometime.  Afterall, it took me 300-400 pages to get hooked on Martin.

Back to Erikson.

The plot isn't really important at all in Vlad books.  It's actually about the subtle character interactions,  and Vlad's character development.  If Brust has a problem,  he takes too much after Wolfe and Zelazny in understatement.

New Glen Cook is available now, bout half way through it.

I think it's great, but....  lots of detail, without any hand holding.  New levels of amorality,  especially considering how thinly veiled the religious/ethnic sects are (Deves = Jews, Chaldeans = Christians, Brothen Church = Roman Catholocism, Pramans = Muslims),  not to mention the setting is the Mediterrean. 

I just started Ultimate X-Men Vol 2 which is (another) re-write of X-Men history meets my pulp reading and childhood flashback needs.

I'm also reading "The Plot Against America" by Philip Roth.  This is a truly fantastic book and I'm loving every page.  I'm only up to page 100 or so, but it's really hard to put it down.

On the shelf I've got the Mallorean books by Eddings (more pulp), an Alistair Reynolds (Ice something), Punk: The whole story (which is chock-a-block full of UK and US punk history and awesome photos), and lastly 1001 Movies to See Before You Die (to use as a shopping list for DVDs :))

I didn't get into Vlad after 3 books. It was decent, but very vanilla and a lot of things seemed very unrealistic. Character motivations especially, I never really believed anyone was acting realistically, it felt very contrived.

"American Gods" by Neil Gaiman. About 1/3 of the way through this book and am absolutely loving it.  I'll be trying to get my hands on everything Gaiman after this book, including the Sandman stuff.

American Gods was good, but I liked the sequel (Anansi Boys) better.  And "Neverwhere" is just flat out awesomeSPLENDID.  (Better than the original miniseries was IMO.)

And yes, Sandman is superb, as is the Books of Magic (Gaiman wrote the original graphic novel, not the comic series that came after it.)

Just finished reading Off Armageddon Reef (http://www.amazon.com/Off-Armageddon-Reef-David-Weber/dp/0765315009/sr=1-1/qid=1172632156/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-6664043-0758315?ie=UTF8&s=books) by David Weber and enjoyed it.  The premise is smashup of several idea, but basically, humanity used to be a star faring race that got wiped out by an aggressive alien species save for one last ditch colony effort.  Basically, to ensure that colony's survival, they decided to got low tech to prevent the sorts of emissions that the aliens had been detecting, so, they established the colony with a memory implanted colonists and found a preindustrial society based around a church that forbade technological advance as the work or the devil.  Some of the original leaders disagreed with the overall plan to keep humanity permanently in the dark ages, so some 400+ years after its' founding, an android carrying the imprinted mind of a space naval officer become active with the goal to breaking the Church's control of the world.  basically, she has to play the role of Satan, introducing the evils of technological progress., and she adopts the name Merlin...
Story focuses a lot of wet navy action and political scheming; I enjoyed it.

Some interesting news I got surprised by today:

It appears Roc/Penguin are reissuing the older "Garrett, PI" books by Glen Cook.  The first,  Sweet Silver Blues, should be in bookstores now.

It's pulp noir, set in a fantasy city.  Very, very good. 

Why should you read it?  It's really the progeniture of all modern supernatural detective fiction that's pretty popular now.  Butcher's Dresden Files is most directly influenced by it,  but most other authors in the genre owe some debt to Cook's Garrett.

Other than that,  been reading Feist's Riftwar stuff and a heap of post-moderny scifi/fantasy.  Vandemeer's City of Saints and Madmen, Duncan's Ink, Dhalgren, etc.

Rereading some of Stackpole's Dragoncrown stuff.

If you've been following Jim Butcher's "Dresden Files" series,  here's an interesting link.  Previews of the first 3 chapters of his new book, White Night:  http://www.jim-butcher.com/books/dresden/9/fullpreview.php

As I said above, I bought the Mallorean series by David Eddings.  I have to say that this is *the* worst writing I've ever read.  The characters are differentiated by each other purely by minor quirks or interests (fishing, knives, trading, poison, drinking, cooking, grubby, etc) and the story basically consists of a series of snap-shot encounters where one character's presence solves the problem and the rest make smart-arse quips and the plot is tied together with a series of deus ex machina.

At least the Belgariad has some childish charm and some interesting turns.  The Mallorean is just a sequence of 30 second character victories.

DO NOT BUY THESE BOOKS.

I read them all and liked them.  However, I was 15 at the time...

In between Gaiman novels, I grabbed the first couple of Feist books and have started reading them. They've been on my 'to read' list for a few years and I'm finally starting them. So far, fantasy light, but good to read on the train to and from work.

I was a bit older than that, but I enjoyed them anyway. The story wasn't anything earthshattering, but the characters and conversations between them were amusing.

Early Feist was good. Later Feist is weak. It's been so long since I read them that I don't recall the exact point they go south though.

I've bought 4 copies of Magician in my life.  Three have been lent out never to return.  The fourth copy will never leave my sight (and is actually unread even by me).

I'm reading the Bartimaeus Trilogy by Johnathon Stroud, but I can't recall if anyone mentioned it yet.

I like the books so far, mostly because I'm a big fan of any novel where magicians are real assholes that deserve a kick in the butt. Plus the jokes that the demons makes are freaking hysterical at times. I found myself actually chuckling at a book, which is rare.

I liked the two Magician books,  but I'm sort of meh about Silverthorn.  It's very much "generic fantasy world" in setting,  made up by the interesting story and good characters in the Magician books.  Any ideas about which of the other books are standouts?

Have to motivate and order a few things online:  Passage to Arms, Reaper's Gale, some stuff by Grimwood,  and maybe Huston.

Vandermeer's City of Saints and Madmen is fairly brillant,  but not easy reading (like alot of post-modern stuff).  It's like Victorian horror,  in a steampunk world, that's very familar.  Some good Lovecraft influences.  About 3/4 of the way, since it's broken up into long stories/novellas.

Found my copy of Ian Steele's Warpaths and almost got sucked into reading it again.  It's a history, studying the Eastern American Indian tribes through the Colonial period.  The Iroquois were badasses.  Have a copy of Steele's book on the "massacre" at Fort William Henry,  which is the Indian attack on the retreating British column when they surrendered the fort.  That's the scene from Last of the Mohicans.

Personally, I have always loved Feist's Empire trilogy with Janny Wurts.  (Daughter of the Empire, Servant of the Empire, Mistress of the Empire).  It's enjoyably magic-lite with some cool political maneuverings.

Finished Pat Buchanan's Where the Right Went Wrong and reviewed it over on my blog, and started reading Jack Chalker's Exiles at the Well of Souls. I've never read Chalker, and I know Exiles is the 2nd in a 5-part series, but I have 3 of the 5 books free and wasn't about to buy the first in case I didn't like his writing.

About 200 pages in (300-something page book) I'm struggling to finish it. Chalker is a goddamn furry before anyone knew what furries were. You know, in the good old days when people who wanted to fuck centuars as gigantic bulls hid in their closets like they should have. Maybe I'm being harsh, but when your characters start out as hermaphrodites and then switch to differing humanimals, and everyone of the characters who changes has to mention the size, shape and color of their new members, you get me quite queasy. It isn't quite Piers Anthony nausea, as there haven't been actual sex scenes along the way, but halfway through the book, one character has sex with a 13-year old girl because they are both dying of addiction withdrawal symptoms and she doesn't want to die a virgin. Yes, the guy she does it with is an intelligent adult.

I'm only finishing the book because I'm this far into it. Otherwise, an interesting premise is being strangled by the icky.

All of Chalker's books are exactly like that. If you insist on punishing yourself by finishing Well of Souls there's no need to even consider any of the rest of his stuff.

He had some new and interesting ideas back when the books first came out but I tried some of his later books and it's all just more of the same.

I enjoy Feist, I think the only weak stuff he did was the Krondor: Whatever stuff (assassins, betrayal, whatever the second parts were, like three of em). The Janny Wurts stuff was good, Serpentwar was good, the newer stuff with Talon is nice.

In fact, one of my favorite fiction moments of in recent years was the beginning of Exile's Return when they pick up the storyline from the end of the previous book...but from the point of view of the "villian" (who was teleported away in exile at the end of the previous book). That was a kickass plot device, and a good way of handling a character with many shades of grey. Good stuff.

Didn't realize he had done another trilogy (Flight of the Nighthawks, etc), gotta load up the old catalog and see if we have them...

Right now I'm reading The Gospel of Food. Not real informative, but an interesting read for the most part. Also a nice manual on brickwork, laying out arches and whatnot.

I've read the Belgariad several times.  I guess it's because I read it the first time when I was 12 or 13 but I can easily overlook it's flaws and enjoy it.  Much like The Hobbit it's comfort food for my mind.  The Mallorean I didn't try to read until much later in life and although I don't hate it I have never felt the need to revisit it.

I wouldn't call him a furry though. Read his work long enough and you see what really gets him going is gender-swapping. Fuck, his Flux and Anchor books were goddamn explicit about it.

I'm still a little shocked by the "Woman who was turned into total fucking sex kitten, complete with nympho sex drive and breasts so large they required body reengineering to support them and THEN had her pussy replaced with a cock of truly equine proportions. Oh, and later on, like someone totally made her tongue into another dick, and she had lots of totally kinky sex and then went on to become super powerful and shit". And that was fairly normal for his books.

I generally found enough to like around that sort of thing to read his stuff, but I'm such a fast reader that it's not like I'm wasting much time by flipping through even the worst crap. At least I can say "I know how it ends, and jesus christ can I bitch authoritatively about how much this sucks".

Good lord, that sounds deranged.

It wasn't quite as bad as it sounds in that set, at least -- that was meant to be fucked up. The whole thing was basically "Okay, in a world where willpower can alter reality -- what sort of deviant shit will people do to their enemies"? Apparently, fucked up sex shit -- which fits into my personal viewpoint of people anyways.

A lot of the total sex perversion was the result of misogynists getting ahold of a lot of power, and doing shit to women with it.

He's just really obsessed with gender swapping. I'd be hard pressed to think of a single book that didn't have at least some gender swapping in it -- often as punishment.

Read the first book in Larry McMurtry's Berrybender narratives (Sin Killer). It was very strange, but I enjoyed it, and will likely read the rest of the series. Am about a quarter of the way through Gates of Fire thanks to a recommendation in the 300 thread. So far, it is interesting and worthy of my time.

Next up- Fiasco by Thomas Ricks.

Huh, I suppose I should also mention books I'm reading -- just finished Summer Knight by Jim Butcher (figured what the hell, I'd try them). Am now trapped in "re-release hell" in which I can find every Dresden book Butcher ever wrote BUT the next two in the series, because they're re-releasing them in paperback and thus no one has anymore of the old version and they haven't shipped the new one. And I'm too lazy to shop Amazon or used bookstores, since they've so far just been impulse buys.

I'm midway through Ghosts of Columbia by Modesitt. Not liking it as much as I've liked his other stuff. The concept's just not working for me.

I put Chalker on hold to read the US Soccer Federation's book on soccer. I figure since I've been watching it so much, I should try to learn about the game, and maybe in a year or two try to coach some youth soccer.

And that series of things you described, Morat?

That's a furry.

Good on you, as a soccer captain of my high school team, college club player, and volunteer kids coach, I can tell you it's a great game for everyone. If you have 4 people and a ball, you've got a game.

Chalker is one of the old school of sci fi writers that treated thier fiction like literary trolling.  Use advanced tech to make possible things that go against conventional social mores,  in an effort to examine the reasonableness/rationality of present society.

Heinlein does alot of the same stuff.  Heinlein takes passes at incest, sexual orientation, use of force, transgender issues, gender roles, etc.  There's alot of subtle critiques in Heinlein of systems of government, as well.

Is the whole reason you object to something is because it's "icky"?  Does that put you in the same boat as someone who objects to homosexuality because it's icky?  If the most basic/universal societal constraints like consent and "doing no harm" are covered,  do we really have any rational basis to object?

The point is to push the readers buttons,  to get them thinking about how and why they believe something.  Not to lay out a lesson in "you should believe this!"

Most modern scifi authors are pretty much pussies in comparison.  They come into a work with an agenda, shape technology and society to prove their agenda right, and call it a lesson.  They don't want to make a reader think,  they want a reader to feel smug self-righteousness because they believe the right things.  Or they want to proseltyze their own world-views.

Market Forces, for instance.  Morgan sets up a society where obviously free-market captialism is a Bad Thing, then guides his protagonist along until he realizes this.  The action is good,  and the story is decent, but it's a constructed straw man world whose only purpose is to push an ideological agenda.

I'm going to segue here into recommending Carey's "Kushiel" books.  Good plotting, great characters,  but hard to read because the protagonist has a huge fetish for exceedingly kinky sex.  Submission/domination,  severe pain, and gross physical injury stuff.  She's compelled to these acts,  and much of the tension between her and the love interest is because he simply doesn't have the same compulsions and finds it difficult to reconcile the romantic relationship in this situation.

No, my objection to furries, as I've explained before, is all but one of them I've ever talked with about anything seems all too interested in flying his furry freak flag high, and then expressing open hostility that anyone would think furriness is a wee bit deviant. Their whole identities have been wrapped up in furriness, to the point where even the mention of furries draws all discussion to all things furry.

I don't like furries not because they are icky, but because they can't keep their furiness to themselves. I don't want to hear about it, just like I don't spread information about my sexual preferences other than being a straight man. Personal sexual preferences are best kept in the goddamn bedroom and shouldn't be anybody's business but the consenting adults involved. That's not saying "HIDE IT AWAY!!!!" but just don't flaunt it.

I never got the subtext about Heinlen that you mention. Authors like Chalker and Piers Anthony bother me not only because they seem to reveal in really fucked up subject matter, but they write with ham-fisted inelegance and a severe lack of character. Chalker's villains are one-dimensional, Anthony's characters all have the same annoying nerd voice. I've read and enjoyed William Burroughs, so fucked up subject matter isn't stopping me from reading things, it's the uninteresting and annoying handling of said subject matter.

I like titties.

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1a/Udder_closeup.jpg/200px-Udder_closeup.jpg)

Just for you... Does nothing for me...

The difference is Heinlein explored all kinds of different themes.  Chalker revisits the same couple of themes over and over again in every single one of his books.  Chalker had a long career; off the top of my head I believe he had at least 6 series of 5 or more books, plus some single shot novels.  When the same couple of themes show up in all of them, it seems to go beyond an exploration of transformation and misogyny and heads into obsession.

I just think he got to crazy-town faster than Heinlein. By the end, Heinlein was all about the mom and daughter fucking. Chalker just loved him some chicks-with-dicks.

You rang? (http://us-p.vclart.net/vcl/Artists/Doug-Winger/Meeting.jpg)

NSFW obviously.

And yes, I just had to do it.  I'll take my ban like a good girl if that's the result.

That's pretty much Jack Chalker there. Ya can't ban someone for summing up a man's entire career in a single image. :)

Winger dude, winger. /sigh

Can't Get Enuff...oh wait....Totally wrong Winger.

She's only 17... inches of horse cock.

That Winger.

Also, library book sales are teh awesome. I got 3 hardbacks and 9 paperbacks (including the entire original Dune trilogy and 2 RA Salvatore books*) for $2.40. Support your local library, bitches.

* The Salvatore books were .10 cents a piece, and I've never read them. I want to finally understand the shitstain that is Drizzt.

You overpaid.

I got a compilation book of a trilogy of those stories for free and I couldn't make it more than a couple of chapters.  Good luck, hope you get your monies worth.

Like most of the old TSR stuff,  it's aimed firmly at the juvenile market.  I enjoyed them....  in junior high/high school.

The Drizz't books aren't works of art like the Dragonlance books.  /trolling Schild

Can anyone recap this thread? I mean I'm actually looking for things to buy and it's 13 pages long at this point.

Assume the following facts:

- I've read the fantasy classics (Once and Future King, Tolkien, etc.)
- I've read all George Martin's books.
- I've read all the Black Company.
- I hate elves.
- Anything where sexual deviancy is rampant isn't my bag.
- Jordan can suck my ass.


Suggestions?

Can you set up a live streaming video of you reading them? I want to see the look on your face. Might want to look up a good eye surgeon before you start to have on standby; he can help you after you eyes permanently roll up into your head.

Read Erickson's Malazan Books of the Fallen.  I'll be starting book 4 after I knock off another Dresden book.  Book 3 just had to be the best in the series. The ending to it was quite remarkable.  Only gripe I have is that he plays a lot of his cards close to his chest.  Lot of stuff either goes unexplained (until much later), the explanation makes no sense, or (C) I'm just not as sharp as I used to be :) .

Years ago, a girl I was dating gave me what I recall as being a Piers Anthony book.  It was about some guy who accidentally murdered the grim reaper, and had to take his place.  It was mildly amusing and contained no horsecock that I can remember.  I take it this is not typical?

All the Salvatore hate makes me want to jump right into them instead of the Dune books once I finish the soccer book. You know I love to savage good drek.

That was book 1 of the Incarnations of Immortality. I only made it through 50 pages or so before tossing it in disgust. No, there was no horsecock that I'm aware of, but I just cannot stand his writing "voice." All the characters talk like the Comic Book Guy off the Simpsons. The nasty sex book I'm referring to is Firefly, wherein a giant insect fucks people to death. I made about 160 pages of sheer pain before ending it. I think there's a lot of incest and such in his Xanth books, as well.

But really, I can't stand him because of his writing voice more than freaky sex. The pedo stuff is just more fun to mock.

I like Modesitt. Definitely follows the same formula, but I like the formula. Try The Magic of Recluse for starters. If you like that, there's about a gabillion more in the Recluse series, and the Corean Chronicles are good, too. Modesitt is generally lighter than Martin/Cook, though.

Have you read the Rosenberg stuff? Starts out really strong, gets weaker as it goes. Check out The Sleeping Dragon for starters. Basically a group of p&p gamers that get sent into the gameworld. One of my favorites when I was a kid.

I read some Piers Anthony when I was a kid, I guess I never picked up on any pedo stuff. Read the Blue Adept stuff, the Xanth stuff to book six or so, a couple of the Incarnations. I really enjoyed the Death book, though maybe it was the concept as much as the writing.

Modsesitt's Sci-fi is a little more varied than his Recluce stuff, but not much. I tend to agree with you on him, though. I like the formula, which is why I keep reading him. If you want to start with his sci-fi, I'd suggest Gravity Dreams or The Parafaith War. ArchForm: Beauty isn't bad.

Iain Banks has some good stuff in sci-fi-- The Player of Games, Consider Phlebas, Against a Dark Background, Use of Weapons -- and his straight-up fiction is dark as shit (The Crow Road, Complicity, The Bridge). Feersum Enjinn I haven't read, but want to.

And I triple suggest Vernor Vinge -- A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky are good (read Fire first), but I haven't read his latest one.

Steven Erikson's "Malazan" books.  Erikson is pretty heavily influence by Cook and Martin,  before going his own way in later books.  It's a series,  but the plot and story have been moving along at a pretty good clip.

Gardens of the Moon should be available in your local bookstore.

Finished:
Vengeance by George Jonas, which is the book Munich is based of.  Never watched Munich but the book was interesting, the author's extreme favoritism of Israel and hatred of the USSR was annoying at times though.  All in all if your curious about the historic details it was a nifty read.  He basically had a chance to interview the leader of the Israeli assassination team and share his story.

The Origin of the World by Pierre Michon.  I dunno how I got my hands on this, its very odd but quite good.  A French author writes about a school teacher in the stix who has a very unhealthy mind in various ways.  The writing was pretty fantastic I felt, he does a great job of creating vivid imagery of simple subjects.

I also read the first two Black Company books, unlike the Dresden stuff (which did not impress me at all) you all were right on the money with Cook.  Awesome awesome stuff, looking forward to picking up the third one soon.

Lots of Cook stuff seeing reprint now. The entire Black Company series is worth reading,  but the narrators change a couple times.  This throws some people off the books.  I especially recommend Passage to Arms (das Boot in space!)

The Dresden stuff starts out as entertainment reading, and it becomes something else down the line.  The last two books have been solid, solid books.  (new book out in May??  Soon anyway, and I don't feel like looking it up.)


@ Paelos:

The Erikson book is especially interesting if you are writing, or trying to write.  The first book you can really feel how much Cook, Martin, and Tolkien were influences.  Later books he finds his own voice,  even the soldiers have stopped sounding so much like they were ripped out of a Black Company novel.

Most of these have been mentioned pages ago, paelos, but I do need to give another shout out to these in case you've missed them. They're on my bookshelf right now, so I of course give them thumbs up (I don't keep what I won't read again)

C.S. Friedman's Coldfire Trilogy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coldfire_Trilogy)
Greg Bear's Songs of Earth and Power (two books re-released as one)
S.R. Donaldson's The Gap Cycle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gap_Cycle)
L. E. Modesitt, Jr's The Parafaith War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Parafaith_War) (mentioned above.. also, the ethos effect, the sequel)

and the "classics":
Foundation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Foundation_Series)
Dune (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_%28novel%29)
Ringworld (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringworld) (or anything in known space (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Known_Space))
The mote in god's eye (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mote_In_God%27s_Eye) (and the sequel, the gripping hand)

Random nonsense, all sci-fi related even though you seem to be leaning to fantasy (which I don't read so can't help you there):

I reread the entire Dune series at least once every 4 years or so. Don't let the haters put you off the latter ones of the 6 in the series (I love Miles Teg). Avoid the Brian Herbert/Kevin Anderson stuff like it is ebola.

Speaking of fucked up shit, I've been rereading the Gap Cycle. Excellent books but jeez, what is up with Steven R. Donaldson?

I second the Banks stuff but it is inexplicably hard to find in many instances here in the states.

I like Modesitt's sci-fi as well and his recent one The Eternity Artifact was pretty good. Parafaith War is a good intro to his style.

If you like big sprawling space-opera/tech/military stuff (think Foundation meets Snow Crash meets Legion of the Damned), I dig Peter F. Hamilton although he can't write an ending to save his fucking life. The Night Dawn Trilogy is real good and his latest two-parter was good too.

I don't know anything about the Gap Cycle but SRD has been fucked up since The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever if not before.

Another sci-fi author I'd recommend is Alisdair Reynold - Chasm City and Pushing Ice are fantastic - kind of like 2001 meets Tom Clancy.

A great fiction book I read recently was Philip Roth's The Plot Against America.

Donaldson is absolutely fine as a writer and a fine example to literature everywhere.

However.

He hates women.  With a passion.  Hates them.  HATE.

There's not a single thing of his I've ever read where that doesn't boil over into every sentence.  Bear in mind, of course, that the Gap Cycle is about RAPE.  There's not a character in it that's not Raped in some way at some point.  Hell, even the extras that wander between pages manage to take a good stiffing.

Similarly, Covenant also contains strong Rape themes.  Then, when you want something lighter, you read Mordants Need to read a little more about Rape.

Finally, you settle for his Detective thrillers, at which point you get to enjoy some more rape.

It's awesome.

I wish I had known that before I read it recently. Fuck, that was a shitty book. I don't know why people like to read depressing things, to each their own but....I should've known, though. I remember reading the first Covenant trilogy as a kid and being totally depressed by it, I really disliked Covenant and wanted him to die. Then I read the second trilogy (looking back, I have no idea WHY) and it took the few things that were nice about the original trilogy and made THEM depressing. Ye gods.

Goths could take lessons from that asshole.

I read the Lord Foul's Bane and that was as far as I got in that series. I hated Thomas Covenant and had no interest in reading any further in that series. I usually love the whole 'anti-hero' thing, but Covenant had no redeeming qualities at all.

Pick up the first two Malazan books last night and hope to start them this afternoon. So far you guys have been solid on the recommendations, so I have high hopes.

After reading the Vlad books, I grabbed the first couple books in The Khaavren Romances (The Phoenix Guards and Five Hundred Years After. I don't know who Brust was trying to channel in those books, but I got half way through the first one and then donated them both to the local library. I can't remember EVER not finishing a book I started to read, no matter how bad, until I came across those.

Please, make no mistake :  I love Donaldson.  I think he's a brilliant writer.  (Apart from the 3rd Chronicles.  It's SHITE so far - a definite paying the mortgage book).


But I don't fool myself as to the man's obvious hatred of women. 

No, he didn't.  That was the point.  Covenant was a paradox.  He was the hero to the land.  The same guy that sacrificed his own daughter due to his moral cowardice.

You can't beat Covenant for getting your head around really, really complicated themes.  I'm not entirely sure I get Mhoram, even now.  I've read them all countless times.

Alexandre Dumas, basically.  Especially the first few are The Three Musketeers through a Draegaran lens.  And it was a struggle to get through alot of them for me, but I wanted to know about the history of the setting.  Unfortunately, there are contradictions between the prequel books and events as related via the Vlad books.  While it's apparently deliberate, it's also frustrating. 

I think Donaldson just really, really hates his characters. People in his book definitely do NOT have a good day, and if you're the main character, you're fucked. Although the characters go through the ringer, most of them turn out better than they were by the end, and the gap cycle is a good example of that. The first few books are tear-down (Woohoo, rape!), and the others are build-up.

As for why he does it, he probably writes parts of himself that he hates and puts them in as some sort of self-catharsis.

Anyway if you can stand the rape, read it; they're great. Think of the first book as an intro.

Speaking of rape, what the fuck is up with Terry Goodkind's? It's the same deal in the wizards first rule series, only it's thinly veiled and doesn't have that 'literary masterpiece' part to offset.

Wait, What ?

Who turns out better at the End of the Gap Cycle ?  They're either dead, running or totally mentally unbalanced.

Trauma is the order of the day.

Gap Cycle Spoilers:
Angus Thermopyle gets revenge on Holt, all his cyborg implant control codes, and gets holt's state-of-the-art ship to tool around in. Maybe gets a little bit of humanity too, from the ordeal.
Morn gets to keep her her son, her job, gets a complete pardon, and a standing ovation from the UMCP council. Comes through OK, based on last few paragraphs of the book.
Warden Dios's plan succeeds, Holt is fucked (killed by Angus) and he is victorious in the big power struggle which started the whole thing.
Humanity gets an antigen, acknowledged as temporary but a good research starting point.

The last paragraph of This day all gods die:

"Eventually she discovered that she could look herself in the eyes. Once her hair was dry, she put on a fresh shipsuit. The she unlocked her doors and went out to meet the future." <-- not mentally unbalanced anymore

]
The Gap Cycle was Donaldson's take on a  melodrama. Everyone is -- at one time or another -- either the villian, the victim, or the hero. Everyone gets raped, one way or another, by everyone else.

Thomas Covenant, on the other hand, was a bastard-coated bastard with a bastard filling. You're not supposed to like him. He's not likeable, and he's a paradox -- his attempts to do good result in evil (each time he saved the Land, each time he tried to make a deal to make things right, it ended up biting him and the Land on the ass).

Mhoram, on the other hand -- is something else entirely. He's the only one that really understands Thomas, the Land, and even Lord Foul. Everyone else is operating on faith, which fucks them one way or another (Ehlena in particular). Mhoram is operating, by the end, on understanding. He sees Thomas for what he is, understands the Land, The Creator, and Lord Foul for what they are, and how it all goes together.

Mhoram embraces the paradox of White Gold from the beginning. Everyone else just fixates on one half or another (save the Land or Doom it) and hopes to fucking hell Thomas saves the Land. Mhoram gets it. He knows it's always both.

You're far more optimistic than I.  I could debate the points.  Would you like me to ?


Edited for Morat:  Um, yeah, I know.  However, Mhoram is a prophet; the very fact of his understanding, coupled with his farsight should have drove him totally batshit.  And then there's the two enigmas when his parents die and he loses his farsight later.  Mhoram was, I think, meant to be the good mirror image to Covenant.  Indeed, he was so powerful he was completely powerless against Foul.  He was the one, after all, that came to the Ritual of Desecration on his own.

Not really ;) They did all come out alive... the ones that deserved it anyway.

Not the only one -- it was implied that Lena's father had basically begun it.

Mhoram was the mirror-image of Covenant. He was a paradox -- having the power to save and destroy -- but he accepted the paradox from the beginning. In a lot of ways, I think the whole series was Covenent seeking to find the acceptance and peace that Mhoram had from the beginning.

Frankly, I think had Mhoram been around instead of Kevin, the whole bloody mess would have been averted. Which was, I think, also part of the point. You had all this power -- in Mhoram's hands (after he understood Earthpower properly), in Covenant's hands, in Kevin's hands -- and the fundamental question was "Who did you want with that power?" (The answer being: No one willing to use it. Someone terrified of power.)

I love Donaldson.


Shame it's all about the Rape.

This thread is all about the rape.

PS - Thanks for the suggestions, I'll try the Erikson stuff.

(http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y222/Abagadro/don_megowan.jpg)

He likes rape.

 :lol:
 :-D

 :heart:

On topic, I just finished Quicksilver by Stephenson.  God, it's Huuuuuuuuuge, but I found a lot of it quite satisfying.  Less so the Waterhouse chapters, but Eliza and Shaftoe are real fun.

Moving on to the next one.

Waterhouse gets more interesting, particularly in the 3rd one.  Eliza gets progressively more useless as a focus.

After the first one, the others are quicker reads. Although the end of Quicksilver was a bit cringe-worthy. Thank fucking god for modern anesthetics, eh?

I read through the newest Dresden book the other day, White Night.  My only two complaints are that I wish it had been longer, and that a fresh dose of the books is pretty much going to kill enjoyment of the TV show for me.  It's not the best he's done, (I personally think Dead Beat is the best so far), but it was still very very good.  A somewhat major plot point gets resolved by the end of the book, and while I did enjoy the resolution, I wish it had been fleshed out more in the book.  Anyway, definitely worth a read, but anyone who's read enough of the books to be ready to start in on it is likely already going to pick it up. 

Yeah, by the end of the first one I was thinking I would rather have just had a whole book of Shaftoe/Eliza by the end of the third one I was like, "Quit interrupting my Waterhouse!"

OK, you have convinced me. I have had a copy of Quicksilver laying around for the better part of a year now (was waiting for the rest to come out in paperback IIRC). I will dig it out and start in on it ASAP. After I finish Fiasco.

Fiasco's sitting on the shelf, I haven't read it yet.. I guess I should pick it up, huh.

You mean the idea of someone slicing through your taint to get to what modern sonics can deal with right now ?

Fucking A.

That would be it. Calling it a 'pearl of great price' is a fucking understatement.

I decided to start reading the Dune trilogy instead of inflicting Salvatore on myself.

After reading Chalker, I'd forgotten what good sci-fi writing is. Damn, 50 pages in and I'm hooked.

(http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/economy/pictures/chicken.jpg)

I think that was a character in the Chalker book.

No, after reading Chalker, and most of my previous reading not being fiction, I needed some good goddamn fiction to massage my mind again.

I just read Cormac McCarthy's The Road yesterday. The sense of dread and fear of what would happen next was intense, it was literally painful at times to continue reading. But McCarthy's prose is amazing as always and you have a compulsion to keep on towards whatever horrible fate awaits the man and his boy. The book is terrible and beautiful and amazingly powerful (especially if you are a parent).

I haven't been keeping up with this thread in awhile, so I apologize if this has been brought up already.

I just finished Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko (http://www.amazon.com/Night-Watch-Novel-Sergei-Lukyanenko/dp/1401359795/ref=ed_oe_p/102-0744220-1578555?ie=UTF8&qid=1176393297&sr=8-3). Easy to read but an awesome book; he's very good at making the good guys look like bad guys and the bad guys look like the good guys - lots of gray in this book about Good vs Evil.

If you haven't seen the movie (http://www.netflix.com/Movie/Night_Watch/70028896) I recommend that too (make sure you watch it in Russian with subtitles, not English without subtitles). The book has another 2 stories in it that the movie doesn't cover.

The movie kicked 17 different kinds of Russian ass.

I need some recommendations for some juvenile fiction. My nephew is 12 and a pretty advanced reader. Most of the stuff for his age group is too "kid" for him, but he is also somewhat sensitive so a lot of adult material isn't suitable.  He doesn't like lots of people dying, etc. So I open it up to the wizened among you for some titles.

12? Well I donno .. when I was 12 I was reading Tom Clancy, Dale Brown, and Stephen Coonts.

If he's sensitive to some things he's probably safe reading Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys - anything beyond that has the potential to be uncomfortable for him.

Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising series. Lloyd Alexander's Pyrdain Chronicles. Garth Nix's Abhorsen trilogy (although that has a lot of death -- it's about necromancers, so scratch that). Nix's Mister Monday might work -- I've heard good things, but not read it.

Anything by John Bellairs.

Ursula K. LeGuin -- First 3 Earthsea
Lloyd Alexander -- Prydain Chronicles

I'd skip Prydain Chronicles and go to Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow and Thorn trilogy.  It seems to be the same story based on my reading the beginning of Prydain, but it takes up three books (one (http://www.amazon.com/Dragonbone-Chair-Memory-Sorrow-Thorn/dp/0756402697/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-5039120-7540707?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1176410637&sr=1-1), two (http://www.amazon.com/Stone-Farewell-Memory-Sorrow-Thorn/dp/B000F9UEQG/ref=sr_1_4/104-5039120-7540707?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1176410637&sr=1-4), three (http://www.amazon.com/Green-Angel-Tower-Book-Three/dp/0756402980/ref=sr_1_8/104-5039120-7540707?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1176410637&sr=1-8)) instead of one and I just liked it better... again, based on just the beginning of Prydain.  But when I was 12 I think I read Battlefield Earth and the Mission Earth set, so you may not want to listen to me.

Recently started reading this (http://www.amazon.com/You-Mean-Lazy-Stupid-Crazy/dp/0743264487/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-5039120-7540707?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1176410448&sr=8-1), and I think I have finally discovered what is wrong with me.

I have to admit that even though I never made it through the whole series of Mission Earth I liked the premise that the bad guy was so inept he was likable and that the good guy was so over the top perfect and wholesome that you couldn't help but want to see him fail.

I also think it's beautiful irony and really shows that John Travolta doesn't even understand his own prophet that he named his son Jet.

Battlefield Earth still rocks though regardless of the stupidity that later spewed from L Ron.

Since this is the (mainly) sci-fi and fantasy thread, I suggest The Hobbit or Magician.  Those books are pure magic and have relatively young or naive central characters which he might associate well with.

Or go with the "lite" version of Tolkein - Terry Brooks' Shanara stuff.

I read Piers Anthony when I was that age!  *ducks*

Its hard to come up with not too adult stuff, that isn't too kiddy. Some of Jack Vance's lighter stuff might work, some of Heinlein's stuff of course. I know I tried reading Asimov and Herbert at that age, but most of it went over my head til I reread it five years later.

Thanks for the tips guys. I know that is a difficult request. He's burned through Harry Potter and I know he likes the LOTR movies, but I don't know if he has read them. Hobbit would probably be a good start.

Alot of the classics can be great reads.

Three Musketeers, Mutiny on the Bounty. CS Lewis' Narnia,  maybe even the scifi trilogy.  Verne and Wells.

Some Heinlein would be good,  other Heinlein would be poor.

Some of the Bujold Miles series?  Some of it would not be a great choice.

Card's Enders Game?

It's easier if you can give a couple books he liked.

On the edit:

Pick him up a collection of Sherlock Holmes short stories. 

I liked Night Watch.

I took the break down between Good and Evil to be less about Good vs. Evil then communitarian/socialist viewpoints versus individualism.  Good tries to control and guide the way humanity takes shape,  and in the process causes great crises.  It's also all about the group over the individual and goal over means.  Evil is focused around the individual and selfish instincts,  which can cause the greedy/motivated to exercise dominance over others.

I think there's a sequal out now?

Day Watch trailer. (http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox_searchlight/daywatch/hd/)

I think I'll see if I can find the books somewhere and read them.  Borders here I come!  I could use something new to read and I'm on vacation all next week, with no plans at all besides seeing how late I can sleep and how little work I can do around the house.  Go me!

How about the Belgariad by David Eddings? Garion was about the right age when the series started and there's not a lot of killing outside of the big battles at the end.

I think I graduated to grown-up stories with the Hobbit.  I'm pretty sure I was around 12 or 13 at the time.  I seem to recall reading some of the earlier Heinlein stuff around then, "Have Space Suit Will Travel" is an awesome story for a tweener.  It's all imagination and wonder and exemplifies things like being active and being good at science and math.

I used to read all kinds of garbage when I was a kid. I read the Donaldson Covenant series (hexology?) when I was an early teen, 14 maybe. I was messed up as a kid, but a good reader.

I read The Grapes of Wrath when I was 8, at my mother's behest.

I read lots of other books, all of which I liked more than that one, but that one example serves best to illustrate why I should not pick out books for sensitive children.

I was reading Fellowship and Two Towers at age 12, and Shakespeare as well. I'm hardly a good judge of what to tell him, and if he's done Harry Potter, Hobbit probably is the best place to start.

I can remember being about 9 or 10 and reading "The World According to Garp" and going and asking my mother if there really were Ellen Jamison's.

That was around the age I was piling through fantasy and sci-fi books as fast as I could read them so there *a lot* of choices if he likes those genres, though a lot of the stuff I was reading, like Lord Foul's Bane discussed earlier, might be a little too adult for his tastes.

Dragonsong and Dragonsinger by Anne McCaffrey are great books at that age if he doesn't mind reading books where a girl is the main character. Dragondrums is the third book in that trilogy and has a boy as the main character but I didn't like it as much as the first two. Her other Dragonriders of Pern books are more "adult" but nothing too gruesome or explicit.

I loved Lord Valentine's Castle by Robert Silverberg though not a lot actually happens (it's all about world-building) so if he likes things with a lot of action he might be bored with it.

The Riftwar Saga by Raymond E. Feist might be good for him as well. It's a little bit dark since the backdrop for the stories about the main characters is a war but in that sense it's like the LotR.

For some lighter and humorous reading there's the Spellsinger series by Alan Dean Foster and of course The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy "trilogy".

Dune is another great book if he's not totally bored by politics.

Neuromancer by William Gibson is great.

The Foundation trilogy by Isaac Asimov is a classic.

Other classics include the Riverworld Saga by Philip Jose Farmer, Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke and Ringworld by Larry Niven.

Edit: oops, how could I leave out Lankhmar Book 1: Swords And Deviltry (Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser) by Fritz Leiber.

Thinking on it -- I second bubblegum fantasy like Edding's The Belgariad. Sure it's simplistic, repetitive, and light-hearted. But it's perfect for someone who wants a more adult book with fewer dark themes.

Feist's Magician wouldn't be bad, either. THere's a war on, but the death isn't described particularly vividly.

Barbara Hambly's Darwath Trilogy wouldn't be bad,

Best of all -- just give him Pratchett's Tiffany Aching books -- Wee Free Men, followed by A Hat Full of Sky and then Wintersmith. Excellent writing, designed for early to mid teens, and a good introduction to more adult books. And hell, they're damn good books to boot.

Day Watch (http://www.amazon.com/Day-Watch-Sergei-Lukyanenko/dp/1401360203) is out, and Dusk Watch (http://www.amazon.com/Dusk-Watch-Sergei-Lukyanenko/dp/1401360211) is coming out.

Yes the Edding's books are definitely light fluffy fantasy reading. I read both series though I thought The Belgariad was better. And now that I think about it some more its theme is a lot like the Harry Potter books -- a seemingly ordinary boy whose parents are killed by one in service of the ultimate bad guy who trains to be a magician under the tutelage of some elder magicians and who goes on a series of adventures while trying to save the world.

For those reading the Malazan books,  a pretty much non-spoiler review of the forthcoming release.  There is a plot summary, to give you an idea what's happening,  so if you want no idea avoid it.

http://fantasyhotlist.blogspot.com/2007/03/reapers-gale-non-spoiler-review.html

This confirms that the setting is the Lether continent.  Karsa, Icarium, all the Lether characters, and Tavore's 14th Army (with the remaining Bridgeburners) are involved.  The reviewer warns that there will be serious, serious casualties and puts the book at slightly below Deadhouse Gates/Memories of Ice in quality.

Amazon US is listing a May 2007 release date for Reaper's Gale,  which may mean we're finally caught up to England with the series.  I haven't poker around to confirm this,  though I did see the Tradepaperback of Midnight Tides (book five) in the local Borders.


Other than looking forward to this....  been doing some light historical reading on Rome combined with playing Rome: Total War.  There's a serious of books going over the history of some of the more famous legions I've been working through.  Fun light reading if you like the time period.

Read a biography of Milton Friedman,  still plugging along on the Augustus bio.  Working through a history of the Peloponesian War (too lazy to check spelling right now).

Read The Name of the Wind.  New release, giant hardcover.  Very good.  A legendary thief/hero/regicide/sorceror type recounting his life to a biographer while pretending to own an inn in a backwater.  Very good world-building,  good characters, interesting story the way the protagonist uses guile/cunning to solve problems and play up events to build his own legend and work his way out of poverty.

Misplaced the name now,  but there's a new tradepaperback that looks like it takes up the fallen mantle of the Shadowrun world:  cyberpunk + magic + alternate realities.  Was thinking of picking it up,  but the cover was atrocious.

I'm reading China Melville's Perdido Street Station currently. Very interesting setting, and it almost reminds me of a alternate-future analogue of The Baroque Cycle books in terms of content. The main character is a rogue scientist who strongly resembles the Natural Philosopher in manner of thought, although the book's theme seems to be the oppression of rigid thought versus freedom of expression. It's going to take me a while to finish though, I think.

Reread Eon by Greg Bear - pretty decent sci-fi mystery, although the whole US/Russia conflict is a bit dated now.

Reading "Punk: The Whole Story" which is a combination of archival articles from mags at the time (including Sounds, Punk, and Sniffin' Glue) and various photos of the era.  Started with the Pistols, Ramones, and now up to the Clash.  Loads of other bands to go.

Also just started rereading Hyperion since I couldn't really remember anything about it.

I'm reading The Early Guitar, A History and Handbook by James Tyler. Some great info on the development of the stringed instrument that eventually became the guitar. Illustrated with photocopies of old manuscripts and instruments as well as tunings and transcriptions. Great read.

Also working through Bleak Wind by Cook. I seem to have a tough time starting his early books, took me several starts to get into the first book and I've started twice on the second without getting far. Just isn't pulling me in like his later stuff for some reason, though it's a decent read.

Heh.  Never finished Perdido.  Was just really not into it at all.  I loved The Scar (same world,  Perdido events referenced),  and even enjoyed Iron Council (which is generally considered the worst of the books set in that world...)  I really need to have either a good story or good character interaction to stay with something.

There's some hefty Marxist undertones to the world, which are interesting.

So.....

Anyone else here preorder the latest Erikson book from Amazon UK?  I'm hoping to have my copy in my grubby hands by Monday or Tuesday.

Edit:

As to what else I've been reading, still on my Roman Empire kick.  Finished the Augustus bio,  reading a book on the Vesuvius eruption,  and a few generalist Roman history books.  Flip through Gibbon every now and then. 

Lots of fun to read Roman history,  then play Rome: Total War.  "Varus, give me back my legions!" indeed.

Also read Death's Head by David Gunn.  Military scifi supposedly,  but reads more like a Richard K Morgan "Takeshi Kovacs" novel,  with a mix of Warhammer 40,000 to make things even less rosey.  Very entertaining.  Pretty dark,  but some funny bits....  the protagonist's intelligent talking gun is usually good for at least a smile.

I don't have much time to read these days but I am trying to do that more. (Less website perusing would help...)

I have a couple of Clive Barker books on the way - Hellbound Heart and Books of Blood.

Ab, I say you just give your nephew all kinds of shit and fuck him up. When I was young I read whatever my dad got out of the library and whatever he owned. He recently died and I am taking all his books, once I get them all set up I should post some pictures - all the original Howard Conan books, basically every Science Fiction and Fantasy from 1960-1980, every Analog and Ellery Queen from that same period, every older Elmore Leonard book, tons and tons of stuff. It's basically a treasure trove of science fiction, fantasy and crime from 1950-1980.

I don't think you are ever really too young to read adult stuff. Well, that isn't quite true but 12 is old enough.

Thanks for the reminder on Ericksons latest.  Just ordered through Amazon UK.

So far, he's the only reason why I have an account with Amazon UK. lol

I'm just wrapping up the first Erickson book, great recommendation. Unlike the new Cook series (Instumentalities of the Night) I never got lost with the cast of characters. Looking forward to the rest of the series.

12 is what, grade 6-7?

Around that age I think I was reading Tolkien, Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, Shannara and the Prydain books.  Prydain for sure.

You can get free shipping from the UK at...

http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/ (http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/)

Master of the Five Magics by Lyndon Hardy


----


Just finished Tolkien's Children of Hurin. I didn't know he wrote comedy! Reminded me of Tom Jones.

You're in for a treat.  The second and third books by Erikson (Steven EriCkson is a different author altogether, which is confusing...  the only thing I've read by Erickson is an introduction he wrote for the Sandman graphic novels) are the strongest in the series.  They're all good,  but those two are amazing. 

My copy of Book 7 has been shipped,  but hasn't left the UK yet.  Stupid order tracking is making me obsessive.

I love order tracking.

"We haven't received your RMA yet."
"Sure you have, go ask Dave on the dock."
"..."

On a semi-related rail, why is modern horror complete and utter shit?  Only two other types of horror exist:

1)  Hack writers who describe eyes being splattered out or dark rituals taking place ever second page;
2) Erotic horror/humor vampire books where a vampire has to live in the modern day world as a Valley Girl/accountant/toll booth operator/whatever! Also, they have sex with each other in leather pants.

It just hits home for me why King is THE NAME in the genre.  He knows how to weave suspense for a whole book, with maybe 1 or 2 or 3 very violent episodes.  Writers in category #1 just keep throwing buckets of blood at you.  And his one vampire book did not involve leather pants!

Vampire accountant?

A big problem with the horror genre is the rise of the supernatural romance/erotic story subgenre.  Ugh.  Anne Rice and Laurell Hamilton should be shot. 

Part of it is probably cyclical.  I don't keep up on horror that much,  but alot of the smaller genres are incredibly cyclical.  For instance,  fantasy has been on the upswing since the mid 90s and almost totally supplanted scifi in bookstores.  The "hard" scifi genre is almost dead.  The holdout is military scifi,  where a few authors churn out book after book (Drake, Webber).

Horror will likely remain fairly dead until there's a hot new author,  that'll kick start publishers interest in like fiction.

The other hot subgenre is speculative fiction,  which tends to verge more towards fantasy than anything. 


The only thing I'd say as a recommendation...  There's an annual compiliation called "The Best Fantasy and Horror" or something like that.  In the front,  there's a small section on what's happened in each genre in the period covered.  Might be a good place to do a quick scan for something interesting.

I find it hard to call Stephen King "modern horror" when all his best stuff is decades old. Also his short stories are much better than his novels, which tend to suffer from "oh shit, I'm at the end and I have no resolution in mind" syndrome followed by some lame Deus ex Machina. (Sometimes a *literal* Deus ex Machina)

Honestly I find it hard to even name modern horror authors. Clive Barker? (Again not all that modern these days)

Although to be fair horror has always been a small genre.

There's enough hard scifi to keep me going for quite a while, though the relative inactivity in the genre does make me sad. I finished Perdido Street Station pretty quickly after school ended, and although the plot was quite amazing and the setting is really deep, I don't think the end of the book was all that well done; it seemed rather anticlimactic. After that I read The Drawing of the Three which was interesting in the manner that Gunslinger books are (no clear idea of an end, and the beginning only slowly revealed). I'm probably going to read The Scar by Mieville next, or maybe Iain Banks' The Algebraist.

King fucking sucks since he stopped doing teh drugz.

I read Cell and wanted to gouge my eyes out with a fucking Spork.  What an awful piece of shit that was.  It was almost as bad as the fucking Christian Revelations SHITE that Koontz is spewing these days.

Oh, it's horror, oh it's aliens, oh it's the FUCKING RAPTURE.

Wank.

King lost his horror chops after IT. The only good thing he's written since has been the Dark Tower stuff, and it's nothing like horror. Koontz had some decent books, but I haven't read him in years. His main characters started feeling too similar after about 4 books.

Only Horror I'll read is Robert R. McCammon. Love his shit. Oh, and Dan Simmons has had a couple of good ventures in the horror genre as well.

So,  Erikson's Reaper's Gale just arrived from merry old England.  Cracked it open,  it's dedicated to Glen Cook.  I'm very scared that every one of the characters I like is dead by the end,  now.

Brian Lumley (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Lumley).  His best stuff dates back to the seventies and eighties, but what the hell.  Not nearly enough people have heard of him.  He's primarily known as a horror author, but he freely mixes in elements of sci-fi, Cold War espionage, and whatever else he likes.  He's also written some quality Lovecraft stuff, and some outright fantasy in the pulpy 1930's "low fantasy" mold.  He's very aware of guys like Lovecraft and Howard, and it shows in his work.  By and large he succeeds very well.

No, he doesn't. I couldn't finish 40 pages of Necronomican or however the fuck you say it. It was just bad, Piers Anthony pulp-style writing. AWFUL. SHITE.

You hate everything good, don't you?

No, you just happen to like all things bad.

I've been reading the Black Company series based on seeing so many folks recommending it.  I don't have the love for it some of you seem to have, but it's a good enough read I don't feel I'm wasting my time.  There's been a few times I felt it was weak/ forced, and some of the 'surprises' were fairly transparent to me. Maybe Croaker's just not that bright.

Up to The White Rose so far, and I'm going to have to order the rest from Amazon. The local Barnes & Nobel didn't have anything between it and the second books of the south. (Which I made the mistake of reading the back cover of.  :-( ) 

For you Star Wars fans, I recommend picking-up the "Tales" graphic novels.  They're mainly fun out-of-continuity short stories but I've enjoyed the 6 there were.

As for actual books, I think everything I've read is listed here in some way or another.  I don't take many risks picking up books 'just because it (90% of the time meaning the cover)  looked interesting', though.  I go based of recommendations.

Read everything Croaker says/reports with an eye to sarcasm and cynicism.  Like as if someone on this board were writing all his text in green.  Sometimes the sarcasm is very subtle and looks on the surface like he's missing the obvious.  Still, I think some of the later books are much stronger (Murgen's annals) than the early middle stuff.

By the way I highly reccomend Books of Blood by Barker. I have only read some of his novels and honestly they didn't do that much for me, but I do like his short stories a lot. They are very imaginitive and screwed up. They also aren't nearly as dark as I had been lead to believe. (Or maybe I've just grown immune to that sort of stuff)

I'd say that compared to Stephen King short stories they are more imaginitive, better paced, but with less robust characterization.

I was jonesing for some Modesitt and couldn't get the scifi stuff I wanted quickly, so I grabbed the Sorceress one. It's growing on me, I wish he knew more about music, since it's the central theme of the book. But the whole liberated female with power placed in a medeival society is kind of interesting, though even that's getting a little tired. Man tries to do bad things, woman turns him into charcoal. Repeat in every new town.

What Murgos said.  Remember that Croaker is a closet romantic/idealist, and that he has a ton of cynicism and dry humor.  He also tries hard to make his brothers not look like the monsters they are,  and tries to present their humanity.  Most of what happens with him as the narrator is said between the lines.

The Black Company is a pretty important work in regards to modern fantasy.  It really pioneered the shades of gray/amoral fantasy that then spawned stuff like Martin and Erikson.  Pragmatism over epic/mythic storytelling.

I find that I really liked the book from Sleepy's point of view, though I also liked the Murgen books.

Seeing all the tidbits about the new Malazan book makes me salivate.  Now if ol' GRRM will get his ass in gear.

Anyway I finally ordered Dies the Fire by S.M. Stirling (http://www.amazon.com/Dies-Fire-Roc-Science-Fiction/dp/0451460413/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-3240099-2624933?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1179242410&sr=8-1) because Borders loves to keep books 2-3-4 of a series in stock but not 1.  Really good read.  Caveat I like "post-apocalyptic" type stuff - but the series is an interesting blend of end of the world and ancient combat techniques. (Combustion no longer works.  No guns or gasoline etc.)  There's 3 books in the series so I've moved on to The Protector's War (http://www.amazon.com/Protectors-War-S-M-Stirling/dp/0451460774/ref=pd_bbs_3/102-3240099-2624933?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1179242410&sr=8-3) and then there's a final book, A Meeting in Corvallis.

After that I've got The Fall of Rome: A Novel of a World Lost (http://www.amazon.com/Fall-Rome-Novel-World-Lost/dp/0312333625/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-3240099-2624933?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1179242853&sr=1-1) on hold for me.  I loooooves me some historical fiction, probably even more than zombies.  MCF is only one upped by Pressfield in my opinion, and The Ten Thousand is a fantastic book.