Book thread, redux

[Johny Cee]

Haven't seen one of these in while,  so thought I'd get the ball rolling on a new one.  Been burned by purchases lately,  so some good new books would be nice.  (And damn you to hell John Marco.......)

Anne Bishop, Dark Jewels Trilogy -- Supposed to be dark fantasy.  I enjoyed it.  GREAT characters,  semi-unique world (more 17th century, less Medieval).  The characters and character interaction is unreal, I think.  You enjoy reading about them doing not so much.  This is a good thing, because the plot is actually fairly weak.  There's a wierd sex/sexual dominance angle that I kind of ignored, and doesn't detract too much from it.

Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel series -- Very much like the first, but better plot.  Actually an interesting religion system that everyone follows,  with real world counterpoints.  Again, I kind of skimmed some of the wierd sex angles.

Patrik O'brian, Jack Aubrey books --  Managed to work my way through all twenty a month or two ago.  Overall, pretty good though some plot points keep getting beaten like the pvp/pve debate... or horse... whichever.  Kind of got tired of the "I'm rich! I'm poor! I'm rich again!" aspect.  Kind of smacks of the author milking his prize series for all the bucks he can.... 

Micheal Stackpole, A Secret Atlas --  Enjoyable.  This author is realllll up and down.  Fantasy,  in a wierd melding of Western Europe/Asian traditions.  His nicest innovation is a system where, if you are good enough at something,  you acquire bizarre supernatural powers, including extreme longetivety.  Stackpole introduces a swordsman and a prostitute who are both so good at what they do,  they're working on 2 or 3 centuries.  He's hinting that one of the mapmakers has hit the same point.  Alot of politics/political mechanations.  Without the idiocies that plagued his When Dragons Rage and whatever the last book in that series was called (Grand Crusade?).

Northworld,  David Drake -- Kind of wierd sci-fi on the cusp of becoming magic.  Essentially,  facist government controls universe,  they lose exploratory party in wierd phenomenon, send in investigator.  This shoots the investigator into an odd technomagical set of worlds where the exploratory party has become gods......  Scheming commences.

Glen Cook --  He has 2 books due out next month.  Generally, he writes good stuff.  I've plugged him enough.

Steven Brust -- He seems to be dragging his feet on getting his next Vlad Taltos novel done.  From his web log, he bounces around between naming it Tiassa or Dzur.  That DOES mean something if you've read the rest of the novels.  Will dig up a link to his web log later.

The Necronomicon Files --  A book on the urban myths and Lovecraft influences behind his fictional creation,  the Necronomicon.  DO NOT BUY THIS.  There's about 100 pages of interesting reading on Lovecraft and modern Necronomicon hoaxes/popular belief in it as an acutal book.  Then there's a shitload of filler and kind of odd occult crap.  My bullshit filter gave out after a bit.

Interesting tidbit, though:  the Mad Arab Abdul Alhazred is adapted from when Lovecraft was 6 or 7 and had finished reading the Arabian Nights.  He took Abdul Alhazred as his Muslim name and insisted his family play along with him.  Alhazred is supposed to be a bad pun on All has read......

<Compulsory Plug for George RR Martin>

There, that's out of the way....

[Strazos]

I'll say the same thing I said last time someone made a long book thread: I don't read enough literature. 

The only thing I have read lately is a bunch of scholarly historical theory nonsense.

Also read "Son of the Revolution" by Liang Heng and Judith Shapiro. Obscenely interesting autobiographical account of growing up in communist China during the Cultural Revolution.

[Margalis]

I recently read Moneyball and the Jose Canseco book.

Moneyball: I knew almost everything in it already, and the book took a very uncritical view of things. I can see why people thought Billy Beane wrote it. For example the author buys right into the notion that winning or losing in the post-season is pure luck, without any sort of second thought. He also never approaches the rather obvious point that Oakland has done well due in large part to the fact that none of their 3 main starters had significant injuries. (Until last year anyway) Nor does he mention any of the bad signings that Oakland has made, even as an aside. (Jermaine Dye, Billy Koch, I'm looking at you!) It's really fanboyish. The book is also incredibly disjointed, with one chapter following another in basically random order.

Canseco: It certainly isn't a dense book, but it's fairly interesting. Canseco makes a lot of good points about how he is/was viewed vs. guys like Big Mac. (Who recently finally started taking some heat after years of getting a free ride) There is no doubt that Big Mac had a sort of all-American boy persona that helped him avoid criticism. Canseco also points out that steroids don't just make you big, they can also make you fast, make you recover from injury faster, etc. That may seem obvious but that's been a common misconception about steroids - a lot of people believed for example that very few pitchers took steroids because it would ruin their arm speed.

I also enjoyed the tidbits about various players. It's an interesting contrast, because Moneyball will spend chapters on a guy like Chad Bradford and he'll still end up coming off as a robot or some example out of a textbook or movie, but Canseco will write 2 paragraphs on Clemens that makes him seem like a real person.

[Samwise]

At the moment I'm hopelessly addicted to the Saga of Recluce.  I'm on book 13 or so (Wellspring of Chaos) and still waiting for the next one to come out in paperback.

Other than that, the only book I remember acquiring in recent history was First Meetings, a book of short stories by Orson Scott Card set in the Ender universe.  The primary characters are Ender's parents in their youth, and Ender immediately after the Xenocide.  Fans of the Ender series will like this one, others probably won't care.

[Gorky]

Speaking of the Northworld series made me remember this site: http://baen.com/library/

The first book of the series is there for free, but the best part is it also has a load of other fantasy/sci-fi books and series. All completely legal and all completely free!

Many good authors, some meh, but defenitely worth the admission fee, I cant plug that site enough!

Some of my fav authors are David Drake, Weber and Eric Flint.

[Murgos]

Patrik O'brian, Jack Aubrey books --  Managed to work my way through all twenty a month or two ago.  Overall, pretty good though some plot points keep getting beaten like the pvp/pve debate... or horse... whichever.  Kind of got tired of the "I'm rich! I'm poor! I'm rich again!" aspect.  Kind of smacks of the author milking his prize series for all the bucks he can....

I just want to point out that Aubrey is based loosely on Admiral Lord Cochrane who actually did go through the whole I'm rich!  I'm poor! I'm Famous!  I'm Disgraced!  I'm a Peer! thing while taking something like 300 prizes.  It's too bad that O'brian died before he could wind up the end of Cochranes/Auberys career because the last 10 or so years of service after becoming an admiral were nearly as interesting as the first 15 leading up to it.

edit: Too many zeros.

[Bunk]

Just finished "Ilium" by Dan Simmons. Great Book. Its a blend of Homer's Illiad, Shakespear's the Tempest, and Heinlein's Number of the Beast - all blended in to one story. Its a modern sci-fi story set during the Trojan War. Very entertaining read, and if you get it now, the sequal is due out in a few months I believe. My favorite Simmons book since Hyperion.

[WayAbvPar]

Read the first Aubrey/Maturin book, then went out and bought the companion book to read before reading the rest of the series. I started the 2nd book recently, and things are easier to understand. I think it is a combination of having read the first book, the source book, and watching Deadwood- the archaic structure of the language is easier to comprehend now.

As for Stephen Brust, I wait with bated breath for the next Vlad Taltos novel. I really dislike the prequels- the style seemed so forced and over the top that I had a hard time getting into the plot at all. I think I gave up after the 2nd one. Pity, since I have liked all of Brust's other stuff, and I really think his world is interesting.

[Sky]

I've been working through On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, a book I find totally fascinating (I was a biochem major for a year). I'm also working through an old book called Firefox (iirc, it's at home), a collection of old-timer knowledge and folklore. It ranges from the incredibly useful (how to hand-build a cabin, cabin joinery, etc) to the laughably dumb (how to tell the weather by various zany folklore methods). A bunch of guitar books, as well.

Haven't been much for fiction in around two years now, too many interests going on.

[voodoolily]

I've been working through On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, a book I find totally fascinating (I was a biochem major for a year). I'm also working through an old book called Firefox (iirc, it's at home), a collection of old-timer knowledge and folklore. It ranges from the incredibly useful (how to hand-build a cabin, cabin joinery, etc) to the laughably dumb (how to tell the weather by various zany folklore methods). A bunch of guitar books, as well.

Haven't been much for fiction in around two years now, too many interests going on.

No shit? I just picked up the (original, not re-released)) On Food and Cooking again. I've had it for a coupla years, read a few chapters, put it down then pick it up again. I was originally gonna go into food science, but then just regular-ol' botany sounded more fun.

A lighter version of that book is What Einstein Told His Cook, which breaks it down nicely for the layperson in the first chapter, then assumes you've been paying attention (so as not to dumb it down for the rest of the book). I really want to check out the new Jared Diamond book. I loved Guns, Germs and Steel.

I don't really read much fiction. I'm kinda an info-junkie.

[Viin]

My girlfriend just finished reading The Time Traveler's Wife, so I started reading it whenever I stay at her house. It's a pretty good book, well written and funny. It's about a guy who has this "disease" where he randomly travels throughout time, often being pulled to major events that happened in his past (ie: watching his mom die in a car wreck when he was 6). He also travels back in time and teachs his own self how to pick pockets and generally survive these random travels, and other interesting paradoxs, such as: giving his to-be wife at age 6 a list of all the dates he is going to travel back to see her, which he got from her when they first meet in "real time".

Fun light read, could probably finish it in a week if you read it regularly.

[schild]

Just finished the book version of "The Ring" by Koji Suzuki. It was great. I'm shortly going to move on to the next in the series - "Spiral."

I continue to read Thompson's Gonzo Papers series whenever I had free moments with them.

I'm about to order Agitator: The Cinema of Takashi Miike.

[Sky]

I'm also working through an old book called Firefox

Woops. Dexlyxia ftw. It's called Foxfire (I have the original versions, 3 volumes...later on they have cool stuff like how to make mandolins with hand tools, etc).

I don't really read much fiction. I'm kinda an info-junkie.

Same here, too much to learn to "waste" time reading fiction. I've been meaning to read Guns, Germs and Steel for some time now. I also read about the history of the music business and some artists, as well. Been delving into Delta Blues most recently.

Just finished the book version of "The Ring" by Koji Suzuki.

Hey, good idea. How is the translation (assuming it's not english-native)?

Oh, and this doesn't count my work-related reading. On the desk right now:

Mac OSX for Unix Geeks
Unix System Administration Handbook
Kerberos, The Definitive Guide
LDAP System Administration
Berkeley Unix: A Simple and Comprehensive Guide

Just some light reading for fun :p

[schild]

Just finished the book version of "The Ring" by Koji Suzuki.

Hey, good idea. How is the translation (assuming it's not english-native)?

Surprisingly good. Good enough to get me interested in the rest of it.  :-D

[kaid]

The baen free library is a pretty good place to check out some decent books cheep. David webber is probably the best out of the baen writers but David Drake has some pretty good stuff too. John ringo is up and down some of his stuff is pretty good others start good and kinda fall flat.

If you like military Sci Fi at all well you really should check it out because almost all the major military Sci Fi folks work for baen. Quite a bit of fantasy stuff as well.

David Webber is one of the few authors whom I buy all his books as soon as they come out. He does mainly military Sci Fi but he also has one fantasy series all of the books are quite good. Maybe not high art but they are all good reads with well made plots and they flow and don't bog down.

Kaid

[Johny Cee]

A lighter version of that book is What Einstein Told His Cook, which breaks it down nicely for the layperson in the first chapter, then assumes you've been paying attention (so as not to dumb it down for the rest of the book). I really want to check out the new Jared Diamond book. I loved Guns, Germs and Steel.

I don't really read much fiction. I'm kinda an info-junkie.

Read Guns, Germs and Steel and the economist in me cried.  I think Diamond overemphasizes geography/natural resource distribution in his development theories.  Honestly,  most of his book is (very interesting) anecdotes.  Try The Wealth and Poverty of Nations.... different view, emphasizing social structure over resource distribution.

To Rule the Waves (I think that's the title...), non-fiction, history of the British Navy from 14th century on.  Pretty interesting read.

Again I'll also pimp Hearts of Darkness,  which is basically a collected history of all the 19th century African explorers.  Real interesting,  delves somewhat into all the dangers involved.  The European mortality rate in Africa was approaching 70 or 80%, before they came up with preventatives for malaria, yellow fever, etc etc

The History of Engineering (not 100% on title).  Honestly,  despite the name,  its a great book.  Covers from pre-Rome to fairly contemporary,  hits on more the signifigance of engineering advances, and how they affected society and technological advancement.  Honest, it's interesting.  Serious.

Steven Brust --  This link takes you to an outdated site that does link to a couple of Brust short story fragments,  which may have possible spoilers to where he's heading the Vlad Taltos series.

http://www.math.ttu.edu/~kesinger/brust/adop.html

Edit:  linked directly to the short story

[MaceVanHoffen]

I also liked Jacqueline Carrey's Kushiel books.  They're a little extreme at times.  But she puts much more meaning and depth into a story that had the potential to become an Anne Rice BDSM extravaganza.

I've been reading a lot of China Mieville.  Perdido Street Station is pretty good.  I really like Mieville.  He mixes horror and fantasy much like Lovecraft did.

I read Fallen Dragon by Peter F. Hamilton this past weekend.  Dreamy book, very good if you like military sci fi with a somewhat ambiguous moral message.  Hamilton kicks ass in ways mankind has only begun to discover it is possible to kick ass.

Also, I recently reread Timothy Zahn's 5 Star Wars books, and wept for the Star Wars license.  Dammit, why couldn't Lucas have made his next 3 movies with Zahn as the writer?  Anyway, if you haven't read them, do so.  They are what Star Wars could/should have been.

I'm into volume 3 of Transmetropolitan.  I don't care that this is a book thread, I'm recommending a graphic novel series anyway.  If you haven't read it, fishslap yourself and go read it.  This series is as good as most sci fi novels I've read.  It's the height of post-cyberpunk literature.  Snow Crash meets 1984.

Other than a barbarian horde of O'Reilly books, I've not been reading much nonfiction lately.

[ahoythematey]

The Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov.  Was as enjoyable a read as Caves of Steel.  My next target is the third book in the series, Robots of Dawn.

[DarkDryad]

I'm also working through an old book called Firefox
Woops. Dexlyxia ftw. It's called Foxfire (I have the original versions, 3 volumes...later on they have cool stuff like how to make mandolins with hand tools, etc).

Holy hell I thought I was the only one who had these books anymore! Good stuff in there if you spend a lot of time outdoors.

I just finished book seven of Stphen King's The Dark Tower series and holy hell it was a good set of books. Im about to start on the new Thomas Covenant set of books by Stephen Donaldson.

[Morfiend]

Right now im reading book 3 of the Dark Tower, since I never got in to his stuff before. Pretty good. Im also waiting for book 4 of "A song of ice and fire" (Arnt we all?) that was supposed to be out last x-mas.

I am also reading Harry Potter, since I was kind of broke after buying two PSPs, and I found the complete set of harry potter books in my girlfriends bookshelf. Very easy reading, but I am now on book three, and the writing has gone from downright childish to avarage. Maybe by the end of the series it will be some thing worth talking about.

I am a huge Neal Stephenson fan, Cryptonomicon being one of my favorite books ever, but I tried to read quicksilver, and it just didnt do it for me. Ill try again in a few months.

I recently found a new author, I cant remember his name but his first book is called "The Darkness That Came Before" Book 1 of The Prince of Nothing Saga. I just finished book 2, and while you can tell he is a new author, his story is very good. I enjoyed it alot.

Another Author I found that I liked a lot was China Mieville, his books such as "King Rat" and "Perdido Street Station" are good.

I also have to give props to Maxx Berry and "Jennifer Government". Great Semi-cyberpunk.

[DarkDryad]

I tried to read Cryptonomicon but about 1/4 of the way into it he started getting all Tom Clancyish on me. Mean who needs a 5-6 page explination of algorythims? Really. It made me wanna hurt myself.

[Paelos]

I read the first three Black Company novels. Great stuff. A lot of who-is-the-lesser-evil characters play prominent roles in those stories. I tend to like that as they are more complete to me. I'm on the Silver Spike now. I'm not as taken in by it in the early stuff, but it doesn't suck. I'm thinking they probably follow the same pattern of declining quality over time. Can anybody who has read all of Glen Cook's stuff speak to this?

[Reg]

I've read all of the Black Company stuff and enjoyed the later books as much as I did the first three. I haven't read the first trilogy in years though. It's
possible that the later ones are better if his writing style has improved. It's hard to get hold of all of Cook's books though because he had fights with
publishers a couple of times so his earilier stuff is out of print a lot.

If you want to take a break from Black Company try out his Garrett books. They're a lot of fun. Garrett is kind of a '40 style private detective set on
a world where magic works. The first is called Sweet Silver Blues.

[Murgos]

Silver spike isn't actually Black Company even though it's the same world with some of the same characters it takes place concurrantly as the actual Book 4 (Shadow Games: The First Book of the South).  What you are probably noticing is that this story is told by Case, who is not very polished, essentially a country bumpkin who was taught to read and write by Raven.  Glen Cook modifies his technique based on who is telling the story, some narrators are more abrupt or use more a more rythmic style than others, some offer insights while others just tell it like it is, most are sarcastic and all have a very good sense of humor.  Seriously, some of the annalists are so sarcastic that it may take two or three reads before you realize that a description of an event was facetious.

Croaker is probably his natural narrative style so some of the other 'speakers' can seem a little less poslished.  The Silver spike has grown on me over the years though and I like it as much as any of the others.

Book 5 (Dreams of Steel) of the actual BC series can be jarring because it's told with Lady as the narrator and she is very self-focused, as you would expect, so when you get to it dont think that Glen has lost his touch and devolved into writing just to make a buck.  It actually explains a lot about how the Lady sees the world and why she does what she does knowing how she sees herself and how she thinks about a problem.

Books 6 and 7 have another annalist as narrator (my second favorite after Croaker, really a very close second) and then 8,9 and 10 have yet another annalist before coming back to Croaker in 11.

So, stick with it and I think you will find that the later books are every bit as enjoyable as the first few.

[Johny Cee]

I read the first three Black Company novels. Great stuff. A lot of who-is-the-lesser-evil characters play prominent roles in those stories. I tend to like that as they are more complete to me. I'm on the Silver Spike now. I'm not as taken in by it in the early stuff, but it doesn't suck. I'm thinking they probably follow the same pattern of declining quality over time. Can anybody who has read all of Glen Cook's stuff speak to this?

Murgos pretty much hits the nail on the head.  The narative voices shift around a bit,  and Croaker is a bit of a closet romantic to balance out his faults,  so some of the other annalists come off a little poorly.  Heh, can't even go into too much detail on the later annalists for fear of spoilers.

The first trilogy is the most coherent, and the most connected story,  and the books that cleave closest to standard fantasy storytelling.  The later books can be tough for people since there is a nebulous and undefined goal,  and there's ALOT of jumping around in time.

I personally enjoyed this,  but I can see where it would lose people's interest.

So Paelos...  any big "oh shit" moments?  I imagine the end of The White Rose might have been interesting....

[murdoc]

I finally picked up the first Black Company book and thoroughly enjoyed it. I'll have to order the next few online as none of the bookstores around here seem to have them.

Just finished Game of Thrones and am currently reading A Clash of Kings in the hopes that when I finish Martin will have some new news about A Feast for Crows.

I'm finidng that I enjoy the books even more reading through for the second time. Knowing what's going to happen and being able to read all the signs and the minor characters that become more important as the story progresses is great. I love these books.

[Paelos]

Yes, the Black Company starting trilogy through me for a loop a couple of times, mostly because of the masked identities and naming names stuff. That was wild. Also, does anybody ever really die in this world? I mean damn!

[Johny Cee]

Yes, the Black Company starting trilogy through me for a loop a couple of times, mostly because of the masked identities and naming names stuff. That was wild. Also, does anybody ever really die in this world? I mean damn!

Yes.  The good guys.

Pretty much, the big time sorceror types are pretty tough to kill and make stick.  By the later books, they're taking serious precautions every time they drop a character like that.

It's kind of assumed that you had a bunch of different factions working behind the scenes in The Black Company and independents who were trying to get out of the way.  Once the characters realize this,  they aren't too surprised when someone pops up again.

Cook has the greatest names for big, bad ass evil types ever, though.  "The Limper", "The Hanged Man".....

[Johny Cee]

Cook's Whispering Nickel Idols is out now.  Some minor spoilers.....

Very good,  and a big jump up from Angry Lead Skies.  It's tinted by the melancholy that seems to have affect Cook's later works, though.  All the old favorites are back,  but are starting to show their age.  The Garret/Tinny relationship seems to be building to a big conclusion.  And the Dead Man seems to be going a little more ruthless now....

One thing you have to love (and find depressing) about Cook:  His serial novels show a definite progression.  The characters age, die, change their roles.   I'm predicting another book or two max in this series.  Garret keeps making motions about heading into management and settling down.  The secret police are really starting to crack down on the crime and basic anarchy in everyday life that makes the bread and butter of his novels.

Of course,  for a finale it seems like he's seting up a nasty confrontation between Garret and the emerging Secret Police.


Cook's Tyranny of the Night is due out on 6/30, as well. (Want to make sure Murgos marks his calendar)

[Murgos]

Cook's Tyranny of the Night is due out on 6/30, as well. (Want to make sure Murgos marks his calendar)

Hmm, I wonder if I'd get geek cred for camping Borders...

[Samwise]

Recently finished The Sparrow and Children of God (Mary Doria Russell).   The story is an unusual mix of sci-fi and theology, a bit like Canticle for Leibowitz, but not.

[HaemishM]

Just finished Moby Dick and am glad I did. It's funny, had it been written today, or had I written it, it would have been about half as long. I'd have never bothered with all the science stuff he wrote, because a lot of the book was really biological stuff on whales and the science of whale hunting. Modern-day editors would never have allowed it. But it's a really rewarding book, with some great adventure sequences.

Started reading Kim Newman's sequel to Anno Dracula called Bloody Red Baron. If you haven't read them, they are sort of "alternate history" fantasy novels. The first one imagines that Count Dracula not only survived the fight with Van Helsing and Harker, but turned Mina. From Mina he ended up as the Prince Consort to Queen Victoria, and vampirism became somewhat common. The sequel takes that further and moves the timeline to 1918, with Dracula heading up the Kaiser's armies in WWII. The main character is a very Victorian-era secret service agent named Beauregard. Good reads.

[Toast]

I recommend "Treasure Island".

It's a really cool classic.

[voodoolily]

One of my favorite series is Little House on the Prairie. It blows Little Women out of the water. I reread them a year or so ago, and I still always cry at the first Christmas story when the girls get the penny, the peppermint stick and the shiny tin cup and they are SO happy and it is the best xmas evar.

[WayAbvPar]

One of my favorite series is Little House on the Prairie. It blows Little Women out of the water. I reread them a year or so ago, and I still always cry at the first Christmas story when the girls get the penny, the peppermint stick and the shiny tin cup and they are SO happy and it is the best xmas evar.

And they make candy out of snow and syrup!

Wow, I can't believe I remember that. I read those 30 years ago. When I was a woman, apparently.