Return of the Book Thread

[NowhereMan]

After leaving it down about 40% in I finished off Embassytown in about 3 days, for me at least it started to pick up about half way in. I think I used world-building incorrectly earlier, I'd meant that I hadn't really got a feel for the world itself and so couldn't really understand what was happening or what the character's motivations were. Partly that's Mieville's style, he focuses on the minituae of each character's actions and lives and the world gets built organically around that with much less Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy style world building. Partly it's intentional in this book. It becomes much clearer in retrospect we're getting the first person account of a character who really isn't aware of some of the politics or agendas going on and doesn't want to introduce knowledge gained later so the reader spends a lot of the early book hearing about people doing things that don't make a lot of sense or events that don't seem to mean anything.

The result works well towards the end but my god it makes for a dull first half of a book, I only lasted through it because I do like his writing style and I really enjoyed the other books of his that I'd read. If you enjoy great writing and vague thought experiments about linguistics/philiosophy of language it's seriously worth looking at and reading. It's also interesting in that it's SF that's using the setting to explore themes other than political philosophy. Politics and how people behave towards each other is part of it but really only a sub-theme compared to how language affects our world view (he has a much more radical look at this than how people usually think of it).

Also I'm now starting to run low on my favourite authors. Bakker, Abercrombie, Sanderson and Mieville haven't put out a lot new recently and I think I've nearly exhausted their back catalogues. I might get reduced to ploughing through some WH40K bolter porn.

[lamaros]

Have you read Ted Chiang?

Stories of Your Life and Others is a really good collection.

[Abagadro]

Yes. Third book has some pretty annoying stuff in it.

[K9]

I finally got around to reading 'The Gunslinger'. It's a well written book, and I got through it in no time, but I can't help but feel that I'm not getting it. If there wasn't all this lingering hype around The Dark Tower series I'm not sure I'd have any interest in going further with the story. Even now I'm somewhat ambivalent about getting the next book.

[HaemishM]

If you mean the first book in the series, remember those were short stories that he only loosely fit into a single narrative years after the fact. It got better in the second book.

[Khaldun]

Finished Chris Roberson, Further: Beyond the Threshold. Is the definition of adequate mediocrity. I cannot say anything brutal against it, I cannot say anything particularly for it, either.

[Cyrrex]

I finally got around to reading 'The Gunslinger'. It's a well written book, and I got through it in no time, but I can't help but feel that I'm not getting it. If there wasn't all this lingering hype around The Dark Tower series I'm not sure I'd have any interest in going further with the story. Even now I'm somewhat ambivalent about getting the next book.

Yeah, there isn't much to "get" in the first book (though it makes more sense if you re-read the whole series later).  The second book changes gears and a whole lot more happens.  If you liked Gunslinger for the most part, you will probably like the rest of the series as well. 

[Khaldun]

First Jeff Vandermeer book in his "Southern Reach Trilogy", called Annihilation, is very good. Reminds of Lovecraft in some ways.

Second book, Authority, is plodding.

[Sky]

The Accidental Time Machine by Joe Haldeman was a fun quick read.

Since I was in a time travel mood (and the library doesn't have much more Haldeman) I went for the Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. Good start, good concept, but the middle of the book basically keep repeating the same thing over and over, and not in a time paradox kind of way, more in a beating the thing into the ground with minimal plot (and zero character) development. Hopefully it picks up but right now, bleh.

[murdoc]

Finished reading The Goldfinch and quite enjoyed it, even if it meandered a bit towards the end. Wasn't exactly what I was expecting, but was kind of nice to read the Vegas parts of it while sitting poolside IN Vegas.

I read so much Fantasy/Sci-fi it was nice to step away from that for a bit.

[penfold]

Just finishing Max Hastings: Catastrophe.

Coinciding with the centenary of the start of WW1, Hastings book covers 1914.

I'm a bit of a war buff, but despite this although I'm aware of the technology of WW1, certain battles, Jutland, introductions of tanks etc I've never really read a month by month account like I have with WW2. It's been fairly eye opening, I had no idea of the scale of the slaughter in 1914, or the battles on the Eastern front and Balkans or just how amazingly inept and cruel the pre-war generals were, especially the Austro-Hungarians.

[NowhereMan]

On a related note for anyone interested in WWI (do audio things count as books? They do now!) Dan Carlin's covering WWI in his his latest Hardcore History series. He's releasing a new one roughly every 3 months so it should be finishing up sometime next year but he's up to Part III and the start of trench warfare so far so there's plenty to listen to already.

[Fraeg]

so... Isreal, Gaza...

can someone recommend me a book that gives a well researched objective view of what happened from say pre WWII to were we are today with Israel and the Palestinians.

[Khaldun]

Honestly, there's nothing to be had that is objective in the strict sense. If you write a basically factual history of the way Arabs had land confiscated from them between 1946-1967, you get absolutely assaulted by pro-Zionists. If you write a basically factual account of the history of Zionism and its aspirations for a national home for Jews and the desperate, hopeful migration of Sephardic Jews in particular to the new nation of Israel, you get absolutely assaulted by pro-Palestinians.

There's only a few books that split the difference and try to offer an honest accounting that spares no one's feelings, and even those (especially those) get attacked pretty intensely.

There's a book by Mark Tessler on the conflict that I find 'objective' but dull as hell. Bunton's book on the conflict for the Very Short Introduction series is pretty good and a quick read. (The Very Short Introduction books in general are really great.)

Benny Morris' 1948 is fairly well-respected by historians--Morris is one of several important "new historians" in Israel who have been writing work that's more richly informed by unsparing archival attention to the creation of Israel, no matter how uncomfortable that gets. Ari Shavit's My Promised Land also made some people squirm but generally it's still ultimately seen as pro-Israeli. Gorshenberg's The Accidental Empire is pretty interesting--he's trying to figure out how a bunch of basically socialist, left-leaning Zionists who were in control of the early Israeli state ended up creating a basically colonial system with the settlements in the occupied territories. Harris-Gershon's What Do You Buy the Children of the Terrorist Who Killed Your Wife? is supposed to be, if not objective (obviously), brutally honest in the way it interweaves contemporary events with a struggle to understand the past--I haven't read it yet.

If you look over on the other side, there are a number of books that focus on the Palestinians by Palestinian or Arab authors. Shehadeh's memoir Strangers in the House is really well-liked by some of my friends. Rahshid Khalidi writes stuff about the history of US involvement in the region. Ilan Pappe is an Israeli historian but strongly sympathetic to the Palestinans: his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine is generally conceded to be well-researched, however uncomfortable its analysis is for pro-Israel folks.

Part of what makes it so hard to get an honest appraisal is that tons of really fundamental facts are disputed by partisans on both sides and partisans on both sides don't hesitate for a minute to spend hours on the Internet one-starring everything and anything that doesn't endorse their perspective.

[HaemishM]

Basically, both sides of the issue have blood on their hands and any author that tries to point that out fairly gets curbstomped by either side for being anti-Semitic or anti-Muslim. Most books written are done so with the idea of promoting a particular side's agenda.

[Khaldun]

Part of it is also that it is the history which is so much at stake, particularly what happened between 1935 and 1948 and then again between 1957 and 1973.

[Fraeg]

Thanks folks, the bookstore in the town I am working in right now happened to have one of these:

[Khaldun]

Awesome. I think you'll like it.

[Lucas]

I read "Righteous Victims:  A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001" by Benny Morris, and I liked it a lot; beside the responsibilities on both parts....It's also a long and quite detailed chronicle of missed chances :(

http://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Victims-Zionist-Arab-Conflict-1881-2001/dp/0679744754

[Tmon]

I read "Righteous Victims:  A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001" by Benny Morris, and I liked it a lot; beside the responsibilities on both parts....It's also a long and quite detailed chronicle of missed chances :(

http://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Victims-Zionist-Arab-Conflict-1881-2001/dp/0679744754

Thanks, I thought 1948 was pretty good so I added this one to my wish list.  On missed chances, I think it was Kissinger who said that the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. 

[dd0029]

A couple of things recently.

A very short novel or a novella from Daryl Gregory, We are All Completely Fine. I'm not exactly sure what new weird is, but I'm pretty sure this is it. Some small bits of horror, suspense and urban fantasy swirled together into a discomforting, but very interesting whole. I can only assume the book jacket blurb is some sort of mild art. It's like someone read just the first chapter and stopped. It's a story about a small support group coming together for people who are survivors of the traumatically weird. Harrison who's experiences ended up as the basis for a children's monster book. Stan is the sole survivor of cannibal family. Barbara who was kidnapped by a scrimshaw artist (note getting her story requires understanding what's technically scrimshaw). Martin, who's augmented reality zombie game glasses show him something more than just a game and Greta. Their stories come out chapter by chapter, intersecting and mixing. There might be another some time.

Second is The Thousand Names by Django Wexler. I liked this one in spite of the clumsy, frequent PoV shifts throughout most of the book. This is gunpowder fantasy. The magic is kept in the background until the end. The book jacket covers things well in this case.

[Shannow]

Just finished the first two books in Brian Sanderson's Stormlight archive. Very enjoyable.
However I have no idea what the fuck is going on, is that by design or am I just stupid? (Hold the facetiousness)

[dd0029]

I believe the big story is whatever was going on in the prologue which hasn't really been addressed. I believe there's a little more opening in the second book that highlights some hints and teasers from the first book, but things are still fairly nebulous about what's "really" going on.

[Tmon]

Just finished up Tommy by Richard Holmes.  It is an exhaustive description of the British army in WW1.  It's long but well written and contains a broad selection of personal accounts and official sources. 

[NowhereMan]

Just finished the first two books in Brian Sanderson's Stormlight archive. Very enjoyable.
However I have no idea what the fuck is going on, is that by design or am I just stupid? (Hold the facetiousness)

Yes it's not that clear yet, the whole series is slated to be 10 books so I think we're only just getting to the point where the 'real' conflict is getting started . On top of that Sanderson tends to throw in a lot of plot twists anyway so I would expect in a series this long he's got a fair number of misdirects and big changes lined up. He seems to really like to keep readers in the dark about stuff until near the end of stories, though he's getting better at the 'Sanderson Avalanche' in his pacing.

[Bungee]

I'll hijack this thread for a quick question:

Going on vacation for 2 weeks with a lot of down time planned which I intend to use to read.
Can you guys help me and name some books that fall in one of these 2 categories:
a) Science-fact/"fiction": Something like "The Elegant Universe" or projections of things to come.
b) Science-fiction: been ages since I read some good sci-fi. Assume I haven't read any at all and maybe get me some "must-reads", classics and new.

I'd basically like to be able to switch back and forth from engaging my brain to just enjoying a good story.

[Cyrrex]

I'll hijack this thread for a quick question:

Going on vacation for 2 weeks with a lot of down time planned which I intend to use to read.
Can you guys help me and name some books that fall in one of these 2 categories:
a) Science-fact/"fiction": Something like "The Elegant Universe" or projections of things to come.
b) Science-fiction: been ages since I read some good sci-fi. Assume I haven't read any at all and maybe get me some "must-reads", classics and new.

I'd basically like to be able to switch back and forth from engaging my brain to just enjoying a good story.

In the vein of "good sci-fi", I am currently reading the whole Silo Saga by Hugh Howey.  I only read part of it a couple of years ago, so I have restarted and am reading the whole thing.  I consider this to be way-better-than-average science fiction.  I've read a few of his other works and generally like them all, but the Silo stuff stands above it all.  You'd want to start with Wool. 

[Lucas]

I'll hijack this thread for a quick question:

Going on vacation for 2 weeks with a lot of down time planned which I intend to use to read.
Can you guys help me and name some books that fall in one of these 2 categories:
a) Science-fact/"fiction": Something like "The Elegant Universe" or projections of things to come.
b) Science-fiction: been ages since I read some good sci-fi. Assume I haven't read any at all and maybe get me some "must-reads", classics and new.

I'd basically like to be able to switch back and forth from engaging my brain to just enjoying a good story.

Regarding "B":

There are countless titles I'm sure other people in here will surely mention; personally, I would advise you to dig a bit deeper and find some short stories collection from the 50s and 60s (russian authors but not only them); they are often very imaginative, fascinating and with a strong "Twilight Zone" vibe.

About sagas, there is one I always like to mention, and it's the "Gateway" one (also known as the "Hechee saga") by Frederik Pohl. Four books; the first one, simply called "Gateway" is a masterpiece (won the Hugo and Locus awards in 1978):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gateway_(novel)

[Chimpy]

You can't go wrong with DUNE if you want a sci-fi book to read, IMHO.

Next by Michael Crichton might fit group A on your list.

[Khaldun]

Gateway is a great read. It's a very good book to hand someone who hasn't read SF much, by the way. Would make a good TV series someday, if you didn't progress the story so quickly towards the Heechee and all that.

[HaemishM]

You could always look in my sig if you want some cyberpunk-y sci-fi. 

[shiznitz]

I don;t know how young some of this group might be, but if you like sci-fi you should try the Foundation series by Asimov.  It used to be a must read when I was young 20 years ago.  It would be a shame if it dropped off the reading lists of those born after 1990.

[Khaldun]

First two books still work very well, I think. Second Foundation the wheels were already starting to come off the bus just a bit.

[Chimpy]

Yeah, the first two are good. The others really not so much.

[Bungee]

Thanks so far! I'll take a look at the novellas and series. As for the sci-fact I'll probably go with Michio Kaku's "Physics of the future".