Return of the Book Thread

[Samwise]

Also, he's working on new Black Company

Set after the books we already have, or is he going prequel?

[Johny Cee]

Also, he's working on new Black Company

Set after the books we already have, or is he going prequel?

One set between books 1 and 2 following events with the Company out East before they get force marched back to face the Black Castle, one new book picking up with survivors from Soldiers Live.

Edit:

Really, the brilliant thing about Black Company books is that the Company is the main character, and the people the Company recruits are the same batch of hard cases, criminals and lost souls.  I've pretty much enjoyed every Company book, no matter who the narrator is, with Water Sleeps being up there as one of my favorites.

[Abagadro]

Anyone read Umberto Eco's The Prague Cemetery?  I'm half way through, but it is kicking my ass.  The combo of unreliable narrator structure and in depth setting in the Italian unification without a lot of explanation is making it hard for me to get through it. Wondering if anyone else has read it and what they thought.

[Johny Cee]

Anyone read Umberto Eco's The Prague Cemetery?  I'm half way through, but it is kicking my ass.  The combo of unreliable narrator structure and in depth setting in the Italian unification without a lot of explanation is making it hard for me to get through it. Wondering if anyone else has read it and what they thought.

I've always had a problem getting into Eco...  I have the Name of the Rose and another of his books sitting around that I start every now and then and wander away from. 

[Ingmar]

Name of the Rose is about as readable as they get, too. I enjoyed Foucault's Pendulum but that is definitely a minority opinion amongst people I knew that have read it.

[Johny Cee]

Name of the Rose is about as readable as they get, too. I enjoyed Foucault's Pendulum but that is definitely a minority opinion amongst people I knew that have read it.

My reading style for things I don't enjoy from page one is to force my way through till I "get" the style and narrative voice, and then I'm good...  From reading out loud alot of accounting/auditing boilerplate, I figured out that I only look at the first couple letters of a word, fill in the word from context and knowledge of the style, and jump to the next word.  I have to force myself to work while reading if I actually have to look at all the words.

[Ingmar]

Eco is just really dense, complicated writing, too, so it definitely requires a higher level of concentration than most of the stuff we talk about here.

[lamaros]

Eco is awesome. I'm in a minority in that I enjoy nearly all of his books. I don't know if I would call him dense, though he is very cerebral it is very often in a background way, or through humor. The secret to getting through those bits, if you don't have a background as a university professor of semiotics/chemistry/history/etc, is to just take the the humor side of things. Trying to get your head fully around every single thing in one reading is just going to make the writing less fun.

On the plus side, often you get a bit of an education with your read. If you can work out what is true and what is a joke...

Didn't know there was a new one out by him. I'll have to wait for the paperback though :(.

My order with him is probably:

Foucault's Pendulum
Baudolino
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana (Mostly interesting to me because of the Italian stuff. I'm half Italian but have no real connection with the country as I wasn't born there. For other I expect it would be lower on their list)
Name of the Rose
The Mysterious Island of the Day Before* (*Never finished this. Dunno why, I've started a few times but just been distracted to a few other things).

[Abagadro]

Name of the Rose is about as readable as they get, too. I enjoyed Foucault's Pendulum but that is definitely a minority opinion amongst people I knew that have read it.

I really liked Foucault's Pendulum, but I read it 20 years ago when my mind was probably more nimble and I was a bit more familiar with that source material compared to this stuff.

[naum]

Anyone read Umberto Eco's The Prague Cemetery?  I'm half way through, but it is kicking my ass.  The combo of unreliable narrator structure and in depth setting in the Italian unification without a lot of explanation is making it hard for me to get through it. Wondering if anyone else has read it and what they thought.

On my wish list, the only other Eco (besides his non-fiction essays) I have read was Name of the Rose which I enjoyed.

And funny, it got there (as I had been unaware of its existence) via completing  1Q84 (by Haruki Murakami) and was one of the "related/recommended" titles at the end of the Kindle read.

[BoatApe]

Baudolino took a couple of tries to get through - but once I did it's become a favorite.

Island of the Day Before is a bit denser and the main character is hard to like.

A lot of Eco's writing seems to require re-setting your brain until you're comfortable. YMMV.

[RhyssaFireheart]

Just started reading The Forever War by Joe Haldeman.  It's one I've seen over the years but just never picked up for whatever reason.  Got some cash to spend on ebooks and this was a good deal, so now I have it (along with 9 other books and 3 apps).

[Sky]

Just started The Last Command, the third of the Thrawn trilogy by Zahn. Really, really enjoying this. He did a great job capturing the spirit of the films while also making a great action-adventure series of his own.

I will probably devour the rest of his stuff this year.

[Ironwood]

You've read his best.

No, seriously.  You have.

[Thrawn]

You've read his best.

No, seriously.  You have.

Seconding this, once you've read the three main Thrawn trilogy books you've peaked for Star Wars books.

[Bzalthek]

Which is kind of depressing.  The idea behind the latter star war books are pretty compelling.  But then you start reading the shit that's wrapped around it and you want to kill small children and furry animals.

[Bann]

I liked the Stackpole X-Wing books back when I read them. I was also about 14 at the time and have not ever revisited, so take with a large grain of salt.

[Johny Cee]

Which is kind of depressing.  The idea behind the latter star war books are pretty compelling.  But then you start reading the shit that's wrapped around it and you want to kill small children and furry animals.

I don't think I've ever read a Star Wars book, but I give them credit for throwing paying work to mid-list authors who aren't selling, like Matthew Stover.  It's really kind of sad how many authors have to make ends meet by churning out tie-in fiction (Jeff Vandermeer had to write a Predator tie-in book....  fuck.)

[Thrawn]

Which is kind of depressing.  The idea behind the latter star war books are pretty compelling.  But then you start reading the shit that's wrapped around it and you want to kill small children and furry animals.

What really sucked for me is that I think the Thrawn trilogy was the first set of Star Wars books I read.  So then I get this naive thought that "Hey, maybe the Star Wars novels aren't that bad."  Then of course that quickly gets crushed as I find out that the vast majority of the Star Wars novels are terrible. 

[Abagadro]

Some of Zahn's non-Star Wars stuff is pretty good IMO. 

As to the broader point, it's nice that writers get the work, but the IP-fiction is eating the entire industry. Seems like so little original SF is coming out. Been bummed Eric Nylund got sucked into that instead of pursuing what I thought was a lot of potential.

[Hammond]

I just read The Forever War by Joe Haldeman in one sitting.  Interesting book some of it is kind of rough and disjointed but overall a pretty enjoyable read.  That makes roughly 80 books I have seen recommended here that I have gone out and read. So looking forward to whatever else you all dredge up 

[Ironwood]

Some of Zahn's non-Star Wars stuff is pretty good IMO. 

I would like to hear more.

Honestly haven't read any - What would you point me at ?

[Sky]

What would you point me at ?

http://www.scotlandsinformation.com/slir/

 

[Ironwood]

Well, yeah, I regularly go to the Pivot for books for me and Elena.

I was kinda hinting at, you know, titles of books....

 

[dd0029]

I would like to hear more.

Honestly haven't read any - What would you point me at ?

I have enjoyed three of his non Star Wars series. Two are currently ongoing series, the Quadrail series which is a PI detective series set on alien wormhole trains in space, and the Cobra series which all sorts of things and is tough to categorize though I'd call it broadly space opera. He started it in the mid 80s and recently picked it back up so there is a fairly strong shift in tone.

The other is a YA series called the Dragonback Adventures.

He tells good stories, but the prose is decidedly workmanlike.

[shiznitz]

I just looked up the Thrawn books given the mentions above - and well - they are the only three SW books I ever read.  I did like them but must have gotten distracted (to my benefit apparently) by another series since I tend to read a a new author to death once I find one I like.

[Abagadro]

I liked Zahn's Conquerors series and a couple of his stand alones: The Icarus Hunt and Angelmass.

[Khaldun]

I think he's pretty hacky though in most of his stuff.

[lamaros]

My dad has a bunch of Michael Lewis' books so I read Moneyball recently.

Much more interesting than the movie, though still a bit lighter than I would have liked. I'll probably take a look at a couple of his other books though.

[Margalis]

In retrospect Moneyball is mostly bullshit. (I thought so at the time, but now I don't see how anyone can argue otherwise)

The success of the Oakland A's was due 95% to having three young pitchers pan out and stay healthy at the same time, 5% due to the stuff the book focused on like Chad Bradford and Scott Hatteberg.

[Ingmar]

The argument for it not being bullshit is that other teams (notably the Red Sox) took the idea and ran with it to great success, since they could do the same thing but with more money. It stops working so well for the small market teams when the big market teams catch on and do the same thing.

MLB thread would be a better place to argue about it though.

[Margalis]

I resent when telling a rousing tale gets in the way of what is supposed to be a thoughtful, factual analysis. The tone of the book is almost worshipful. Clearly Billy Beane is so much smarter than all these yokels, look at him scooping them at every turn! There was some talk at the time that the book may have been written or collaborated on by Beane himself, and it's not hard to see why people might have thought that.

But if you go back and read it...ffs the first chapter dedicated to a specific player is dedicated to Jeremy Brown and what a genius move it was to pick up Brown and similar guys. Heard of Jeremy Brown? Yeah, me neither. 10 ABs in the majors. (The book also ends with Brown triumphantly hitting a home run - lol) Now Scott Kazmir didn't turn out to be amazing but reading the crowing in that chapter about how smart the A's were to ignore him in favor of Brown is in retrospect just hilarious - Brown was a complete bust and a wasted pick.

It's more of a good story based loosely in fact than anything else. Which would be fine except that it is pitched as some sort of serious examination. I feel sorry for people who don't know much about baseball, read the book, and think they have gotten a fairly truthful account of how a plucky underdog used stats and logic to triumph over set-in-their-ways old-timey guys.

[lamaros]

I felt like there were some decent points made in there, and to write it off based on what some players did and didn't do is a bit silly.

However there are huge gaps and many areas and questions that weren't addressed. It drew far too many conclusions from a very narrow focus.

Some of the fundamental points are clearly correct too.

[Khaldun]

Lewis is a good writer, for sure. I agree on the lightness--his books are entertaining when I'm reading them but none of them particularly stick with me, it's hard to detach useable information from the schtick he weaves around it. It's a little like Malcolm Gladwell: I'm mostly just left with the hook or high concept that I could have gotten from the blurb on the back.

[naum]

It's more of a good story based loosely in fact than anything else. Which would be fine except that it is pitched as some sort of serious examination. I feel sorry for people who don't know much about baseball, read the book, and think they have gotten a fairly truthful account of how a plucky underdog used stats and logic to triumph over set-in-their-ways old-timey guys.

This is the crux of all the books of Lewis. I grant that he is such a gifted writer and weaves a story so deftly, you think you have attained some realistic appraisal of affairs, but he's just simply blown up one facet of the story and puffed it up to fill an engaging story while omitting a lot of context and other significant details. The Blind Side, The Big Short, etc. are all the same book in that sense.

He does it better than Gladwell -- that in Gladwell's case, you swallow the story while you're reading it, but after you're done and can add perspective you figure out what Gladwell has done.