Return of the Book Thread

[Reg]

It wouldn't hurt to read it.  There's a novella in it that happens just after Changes and just before Ghost Story.

[Morat20]

Is reading Side Jobs generally recommended before picking up Ghost Story? Sorry, if this has already been addressed, but I'm trying to not read what you guys are currently writing as to avoid spoilers.

Nah. It doesn't really add anything you need to know. It's a good collection, although most of it was printed in other (group) compilations.

[Murgos]

Is reading Side Jobs generally recommended before picking up Ghost Story? Sorry, if this has already been addressed, but I'm trying to not read what you guys are currently writing as to avoid spoilers.

There is a story about what Murphy is doing in between that's relevant but not necessary and an introduction to what is evidently going to be the upcoming Big Bad antagonist group that also isn't really necessary.

[Ingmar]

You can never really go wrong reading things in order of publication.

[Evildrider]

Yeah the story from Side Jobs sets up Ghost Story and it's all from Murphy's POV.  I say its worth it, plus the other stories in there aren't too shabby as well.

[WayAbvPar]

Just finished Ghost Story. I was really not sure how things were going to end- not sure how I feel about it. I enjoyed the hell out of the book, however.

[Johny Cee]

I have a problem with the Molly angle, despite the fact pairing her with Harry makes the most sense, because it invalidates her character development over the last few books.  Yeah, she has issues... but she's been dealing with them.  She went from fucked up runaway to (mostly) dealing with her life, and from victim to assistant to believable action girl.

Again, in a different book this may have worked.  Sticking it in the same book that Susan shows up and tries to stir up some action and the Murphy situation was pushed forward again wasn't a good idea. 

But Molly's crush has been a background theme for 4 or 5 books now, ignoring it when 'the other woman' shows up would have been disingenuous.  I don't think Molly and Dresden will ever hook up, your concerns here just seem invalid.

As for Susan, you keep talking like she's relevant for some future intrigue.  Did you not finish Changes yet?

Susan isn't relevant going forward, I was just spitballing hypotheticals that I feel would have worked better for Changes and I've been trying to dodge dropping too many spoilers.

It was a pet peeve, so I'm glad that other people don't have a problem with it.  I might sometimes be too critical.


Just to move to a new topic:

How awesome was the Leanansidhe in the last two books? 

[Morat20]

Just to move to a new topic:

How awesome was the Leanansidhe in the last two books? 

Not as awesome as Mouse. Although, like I said -- haven't read Ghost Story yet.

[Salamok]

Your Picks: Top 100 Science-Fiction, Fantasy Books

Not one Black Company book, no Modesitt either which is a surprise to me considering some of the crap on that list.  A Song of Ice and Fire at #5  ah well lists were made to be broken.

[Rasix]

Codex Alera but no Dreden Files.  That's.. odd.

[WayAbvPar]

Your Picks: Top 100 Science-Fiction, Fantasy Books

Not one Black Company book, no Modesitt either which is a surprise to me considering some of the crap on that list.  A Song of Ice and Fire at #5   ah well lists were made to be broken.

Only read 28 of them. Although most the ones I have read were multi-book series, so I still have wasted a lot of time with the genre.

e- actually more like 30 or 31...there are a few I think I read in school that I blacked out.

GodDAMN there are some shitty authors on there.

[ghost]

I've read about 80% of those, by my count.  There's also a few that I own that I haven't gotten to yet.

Not surprised about the Black Company.  It's good, but not that good.  To me the Black Company's strength lies in the numbers, no single book really stands out, except maybe The White Rose.

If George RR can finish the Song of Ice and Fire series it will probably deserve to be that high.  I'm not sure he can pull it all together though. 

[Salamok]

Oh did not think to count them, 36 for me but I suppose the list did remind me of 5 or 6 books I have been wanting to read but never seem to get around to.  Speaking of which if Ender's Game is so awesome why does the 1st book in the series never seem to be available in the book store.  

I need to get on the kindle wagon, I seem to be hopelessly waiting for amazon or someone to get on board with a trade in your paperback and get the digital version for a buck program.  We are getting closer but $3-$10 to convert each book ($1 per 100 pages) seems a tad steep, not to mention a wasteful charade considering the digital version already exists somewhere.  I almost feel justified in going full pirate on books that I already own a print copy of.  

[Reg]

There's a lot of junk on that list that is probably just there because they were recent best-sellers.  Most of my picks that I felt strongly about are there though so I'm not too annoyed.

[HaemishM]

Wait, I like Neal Stephenson as much as the next guy, but he gets 4 books on the list and Bruce Sterling gets none? Not even Islands in the Net? Ender's Game at #3? WTF? I'm reading Ender's Game right now, and I'm not that impressed yet almost halfway in. It sure as shit isn't better than Dune.

[Khaldun]

I don't agree with the list, but...I've read 83 out of 100.
 

[Rasix]

Not surprised about the Black Company.  It's good, but not that good.  To me the Black Company's strength lies in the numbers, no single book really stands out, except maybe The White Rose.

Even if you don't like Black Company, there's plenty of Cook that I think qualifies. 

[Reg]

When I saw none of Cook's stuff was on the list I thought that maybe it was just too "dark" to be that popular - but then I saw that The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant made it so there went that theory.

[WayAbvPar]

Not surprised about the Black Company.  It's good, but not that good.  To me the Black Company's strength lies in the numbers, no single book really stands out, except maybe The White Rose.

Even if you don't like Black Company, there's plenty of Cook that I think qualifies. 

And if shit like RA Salvatore and Terry Goodkind are on there...how the hell is Cook not?

[Chimpy]

And if shit like RA Salvatore and Terry Goodkind are on there...how the hell is Cook not?

This was based off of a readers' poll. Cook's stuff may be considerably better than anything published by TSR, but it is definitely not something that is super-well known. Though Malazan being on there while Cook isn't is stranger to me because the style is so similar.

Farenheit 451 and 1984 being in the top 10 on a readers' poll surprises me some too. Great as they are, they suffer from the "Books I read in High School and don't remember because I blacked that time out" phenomenon.

EDIT: I also love on the linked blog post they say that Young Adult books were kept off the list but The Belgariad is on there.

[lamaros]

I've read 26 of them, if you count books/series that I started and gave up on because I felt they were shit (about half of that 26).

No Hamilton is the big gap in that list for me. Very skewed reader base.

[lamaros]

I've read 26 of them, if you count books/series that I started and gave up on because I felt they were shit (about half of that 26). Not that surprising given the multiple books on the list from author that I don't enjoy.

No Hamilton is the big gap in that list for me.

[Ingmar]

45ish for me, but I find it a little goofy the way it is broken down. A more useful list would probably be top 100 authors, and then just talk about which stuff they've written is good. Harder to compile/write up, though, I suppose.

[Rendakor]

I've read 37 of them. Lots of books on that list aren't really Sci-Fi or Fantasy; King's stuff is horror (as is Matheson) and there were a couple romance novels on there as well. Orwell's a stretch too.

[tgr]

I'm not going to count how many of those I've read (likely more than half), but how the FUCK could he unironically put Terry Goodkind there? He's the only author whose books I've actually thrown out into the trash in disgust before finishing them. Not because of the stories themselves (that was okay), but because I got annoyed with how 2D the characters were, and the final straw was when the woman managed to go from completely super depressed to super happy within 2 pages.

[stu]

I was thinking the same thing. Because of the homicidal chicken. That shit only works in Far Side cartoons. The fifth of sixth book also has a possessed goat acting like the Eye of Sauron or something like that. There are some cool scenes and characters in the first few books, but the cringe factor is the equivalent of Rush Limbaugh doing stand-up.

[tgr]

Homicidal chicken?

"The bird let out a slow chicken cackle. It sounded like a chicken, but in her heart she knew it wasn't. In that instant, she completely understood the concept of a chicken that was not a chicken. This looked like a chicken, like most of the Mud People's chickens. But this was no chicken. This was evil manifest"

This?

I've actually completely forgotten everything about his books except the final scene which made me go "oh god, fuck this book, this is getting too awful", and even then all I remember is she went from either full-on depression to full-on ecstatic, or vice versa.

[ghost]

There's a lot of junk on that list that is probably just there because they were recent best-sellers.

Yeah, there's a lot of recent best sellers:
1.  Frankesntein
2.  1984
3.  Farenheit 451
4.  Brave New World
5.  Dune
6.  Foundation Trilogy
7.  Ender's Game
8.  Hitchhiker's Guide
9.  Lord of the Rings
10.  Wheel of Time
11.  Neuromancer
12.  Animal Farm
13.  I Robot
14.  Watchmen
15.  Stranger in a Strange Land
16.  Slaughterhouse 5
17.  Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep?

That's just in the top 20, and it is clear that the list is heavily weighted towards recent best sellers.

As for Cook, I could see him being in the top 100, but then again not.  I'm listening to the Books of the South right now, and it's just nothing special.  I like the overall story, but he gets bogged down in writing about formations and strategy.  So I don't have a beef either way.  I like his books, but I don't try and mislead myself and think that they're better than A Canticle for Liebowitz or 1984.  

I'm reading Ender's Game right now, and I'm not that impressed yet almost halfway in. It sure as shit isn't better than Dune.

I agree with you (that it's not better than Dune), but wait until you finish it to formulate an opinion.  I was in the same boat you are when I first read it and changed my opinion after I was done.  I think it is a top 10 book, in my opinion.

[Morat20]

There's a difference between "popular" and "important" (and "acclaimed" for that matter) and lists like this always throw them all together.

Important books include some that, today, are trash -- like Brook's Shannara fantasy -- derivative, maybe one or two semi-decent books of the whole lot, and the first one was basically a thinly veiled LoTR ripoff. But before he wrote it, modern fantasy was just Conan and Lord of the Rings.

That said, I'd put Canticle for Leibowitz a lot higher on that list.

[ghost]

I find the list to be one of the best of its kind.  You can always quibble about certain titles, but it doesn't disregard past important titles. 

[Reg]

There's a lot of junk on that list that is probably just there because they were recent best-sellers.

Yeah, there's a lot of recent best sellers:

<List of 17 old books presented that I suppose is somehow supposed to disprove what I said>

That's just in the top 20, and it is clear that the list is heavily weighted towards recent best sellers.

I didn't say "heavily weighted." I simply said "a lot."  It's how I explain crap like Terry Goodkind's appearing on the list at all.

[Threash]

Stephen King and World War Z really don't belong in a sci-fi/fantasy list.

[Ingmar]

I don't see a good argument for excluding King, frankly.

As for how Goodkind ends up on the list, he's fucking popular for some unknown reason, and the list was generated by a poll.

There's a difference between "popular" and "important" (and "acclaimed" for that matter) and lists like this always throw them all together.

Important books include some that, today, are trash -- like Brook's Shannara fantasy -- derivative, maybe one or two semi-decent books of the whole lot, and the first one was basically a thinly veiled LoTR ripoff. But before he wrote it, modern fantasy was just Conan and Lord of the Rings.

That said, I'd put Canticle for Leibowitz a lot higher on that list.

Wow I missed this somehow. You are giving him way too much credit, and way too little to Moorcock, Leiber, LeGuin, Vance, McCaffery, Anderson, and DOZENS of other better writers who preceded Brooks to bookshelves.

[stu]

I blame the countless number of rape scenes.

"The bird let out a slow chicken cackle. It sounded like a chicken, but in her heart she knew it wasn't. In that instant, she completely understood the concept of a chicken that was not a chicken. This looked like a chicken, like most of the Mud People's chickens. But this was no chicken. This was evil manifest"

This?

Oh, Lordy. It's so awful.

[Abagadro]

Wait. Was that quote from an actual book? That was published?