Return of the Book Thread

[Triforcer]

- more expensive if you accidentally drop it while reading in the bath

Er, buying a new Kindle expensive, or funeral expensive? 

[Ironwood]

Not that much charge on 'em.

No pun intended...

[Sky]

Libraries are a publicly-funded resource that primarily serves the less well-off. Yeah, they're going to be under massive attack in the coming years and defending them is going to be really important. Don't apologise for it :)

My fiancee and I were talking about the topic last night and I came up with a new catchphrase: "The biggest danger to public libraries is not technology. It's politicians."

Do you think a large percentage of people are going to prefer paper books?

And how does your library loan e-books? Do they just not work after a certain amount of time, or something similar? At my library we can extend the time we have something checked out indefinitely, well at least until someone else puts the item on hold.

Yes, I know most people prefer paper books. I'm hoping with the green movement people can begin to understand paper is environmentally friendly when harvested from a tree farm, as a byproduct of other wood products, or made from recycled paper. We offer recycling services for books here.

We can only loan ebooks by owning and lending the devices they are tied to. Therefor, we don't do that anymore. We've got three old Sony readers that someone convinced our last director were going to be all the rage, against my protests (and I'm the tech guy, heh). And they were popular...for about three months. For the cost of the readers and books, we would have books that would still be circing on the shelves now.

It's become something of a laugh here, the tech guy almost always speaks out against using technology. I'm very conservative and hate buggy stuff and things that obsolete quickly. And most tech is very buggy and physically flaky. Laptops...great until your battery dies. We were going to put in a self-checkout station and the hurdles involved were (imo) hilarious. We had to work with our catalog server software vendor to upgrade their product to use with the stupid thing, then when we got it, the company 'forgot' to mention several add-ons we needed (to circ videos and cds?). It got fucking silly and luckily we were able to legally back out of the deal. And the service contracts, holy fuck.

Technology when it makes sense, works properly, and is truly useful, is a great thing. Problem is, the culture is skewing to gadgetry (both soft and hard) and a few people who are in love with gadgets can make life hell. An online catalog beats the hell out of the card catalog, inter-loaning is better than it's ever been. You can reserve and renew books over our website, that's good tech. Some gadget with a shelf life of a couple years at best with titles that are tied to it? Not good tech, from a library standpoint.

Then again, I'm buying a washing machine right now, and my rules are: capacity, top-load with agitator, and NO CIRCUIT BOARDS. One fucking Samsung I was looking at had some full-color display screen with a boot screen. On a washer! You know how quickly that will break? Meanwhile our mother's washers are both like 25 years old. Give me mechanical any day, I can fix mechanical. Ok, maybe now I'm just ranting about it, but I do (ironically) have a bias against technology :)

[HaemishM]

I'm probably 10-15 pages from finishing the 2nd Gap book. Yeah, I think I'm completely done with Donaldson. The Amnion weren't enough to make me give a shit about the series, and I just hate every fucking one of the characters and want to stab them repeatedly in the eye sockets with my rigid cock. Constant physical and mental rape, characters angsting over angstiness for pages and pages and pages, no clear protagonist I could give a shit about and everyone in the universe is a shitbag of the highest order. It's not depressing, it's irritating as fuck.

I think I'm going to delve into some J.G. Ballard next. Never read him and since he passed recently, I figure I ought to.

[Endie]

I think I'm going to delve into some J.G. Ballard next. Never read him and since he passed recently, I figure I ought to.

Ballard is great, and I really envy you getting to read his stuff for the first time.

The Drowned World is a great book, and almost eerily prescient about our current concerns.

[bhodi]

Listening to Hamilton's trilogy on Sky's recommendation and I thought I'd throw out a pretty good standalone book of his that you should check out - Fallen Dragon.

It seems to be very similar, in both writing style and composition - several story threads that don't seem to make any sense until they gradually come together at the end. DON'T READ A PLOT SYNOPSIS. I enjoyed the book a great deal, and it was well voiced as well, if you pick it up in audiobook format.

I think I may have mentioned it a few pages back, I don't remember. I also went through the entire Honor Harrington series on audiobook - want next book in series, please.

[Sky]

Yeah, I like his style. A lot of sequences conjure some pretty good movie-like sequences in my mind. I skipped Fallen Dragon because it sounded more straight military and went to Pandora's Star for some more scifi. Starting off good, have to get used to the change in tech stuff he did, I liked the more spacecrafty first trilogy over teleporting trains, but he makes kinda silly stuff cool with his writing imo. The scene I'm on right now, with the police (several of whom are mysterious) are chasing a mysterious terrorist (or not) through a city and the cutting back and forth with the command center is giving a real Jason Bourne/Live Free or Die Hard kind of vibe.

[FatuousTwat]

It's become something of a laugh here, the tech guy almost always speaks out against using technology. I'm very conservative and hate buggy stuff and things that obsolete quickly. And most tech is very buggy and physically flaky. Laptops...great until your battery dies. We were going to put in a self-checkout station and the hurdles involved were (imo) hilarious. We had to work with our catalog server software vendor to upgrade their product to use with the stupid thing, then when we got it, the company 'forgot' to mention several add-ons we needed (to circ videos and cds?). It got fucking silly and luckily we were able to legally back out of the deal. And the service contracts, holy fuck.

Technology when it makes sense, works properly, and is truly useful, is a great thing. Problem is, the culture is skewing to gadgetry (both soft and hard) and a few people who are in love with gadgets can make life hell. An online catalog beats the hell out of the card catalog, inter-loaning is better than it's ever been. You can reserve and renew books over our website, that's good tech. Some gadget with a shelf life of a couple years at best with titles that are tied to it? Not good tech, from a library standpoint.

Ah, what I meant about the paper book question was, do you think people are going to prefer them even in the next 10 years. I'm guessing that the number of people using ebooks will increase as the reader technology comes out of infancy, but paper book users will still be the majority.

The library here has self checkout, but I don't know how they acquired it or if it was a big hassle or cost a lot. I think our library catalog has been online since the mid 90's because I can remember ordered books from online from at least since then.

[Khaldun]

Almost finished the First Law books by Abercrombie.

Strangely compelling stuff.  The humour and characters puts it a little above most fantasy guff imo.

Yeah, I can't quite figure why I liked it as much as I did. Especially since it has a rather complicatedly downer conclusion of a rather cynical kind.

[lamaros]

Yeah, I like his style. A lot of sequences conjure some pretty good movie-like sequences in my mind. I skipped Fallen Dragon because it sounded more straight military and went to Pandora's Star for some more scifi. Starting off good, have to get used to the change in tech stuff he did, I liked the more spacecrafty first trilogy over teleporting trains, but he makes kinda silly stuff cool with his writing imo. The scene I'm on right now, with the police (several of whom are mysterious) are chasing a mysterious terrorist (or not) through a city and the cutting back and forth with the command center is giving a real Jason Bourne/Live Free or Die Hard kind of vibe.

Fallen Dragon is worth reading, I'd suggest it before you got to the Void series at least.

If you can find it I also suggest A Quantum Murder. I have not read it in a while (10 years or so) but have good memories of it. Though it's the second book in the Mindstar Trilogy you can read it by itself, indeed I never actually bothered to read the first or third books. It's also a lot shorter.

And though I know I've said it before I'll repeat it: Never read Misspent Youth. Ever.

I was trying to read something to relax the other night and I found a copy of Brisingr by Christopher Paolini in the house. I'd heard that the series was terribly terribly poor but I have a reasonably high level of tolerance when it comes to certain genre fiction (SF, Fantasy and Mystery, mostly) and thought I'd give it a look. The book was the third in the series but comes with the synopsis of the first two. I managed to read the synopsis in full, but only because it so incredibly bad. I have no idea how such utter shit ever managed to get published. It's like it was written by a 11 year old who has swallowed a collection of the worst fantasy novels ever, then tried to concentrate that failure down into a single book.

[Endie]

I think I may have mentioned it a few pages back, I don't remember. I also went through the entire Honor Harrington series on audiobook - want next book in series, please.

I really, really wanted to like the Honor Harrington books but it just wasn't happening.  I loved Hornblower and Aubrey/Maturin, and since Harrington is an attempt to just change the nouns and replay the Hornblower series in space I thought the odds were good.  But it was just too Mary Sue for words: an idealized central character who simply doesn't develop and is apparently incapable of making any decisions that wouldn't have met the agreement of a moderately progressive centre-rightist in the late 20th century.  It reminded me of S.M. Stirling's work, whose Emberverse series in particular is, if anything, even more packed with Mary Sues, anti-Sues and self-insertions than Weber's work.  But Stirling managed to keep me reading many books into that and the parallel Nantucket series, even if I cringed a lot (though nowehere near as much as with the straight lift which was the horrible 1632 series by Eric Flint).  With Weber, I was so certain of what would happen (often from the Hornblower series) that I really had no incentive to continue.

[Ironwood]

Yeah, I can't quite figure why I liked it as much as I did. Especially since it has a rather complicatedly downer conclusion of a rather cynical kind.

Yeah, no idea why that would appeal to me.

[Johny Cee]

I think I may have mentioned it a few pages back, I don't remember. I also went through the entire Honor Harrington series on audiobook - want next book in series, please.

I really, really wanted to like the Honor Harrington books but it just wasn't happening.  I loved Hornblower and Aubrey/Maturin, and since Harrington is an attempt to just change the nouns and replay the Hornblower series in space I thought the odds were good.  But it was just too Mary Sue for words: an idealized central character who simply doesn't develop and is apparently incapable of making any decisions that wouldn't have met the agreement of a moderately progressive centre-rightist in the late 20th century.  It reminded me of S.M. Stirling's work, whose Emberverse series in particular is, if anything, even more packed with Mary Sues, anti-Sues and self-insertions than Weber's work.  But Stirling managed to keep me reading many books into that and the parallel Nantucket series, even if I cringed a lot (though nowehere near as much as with the straight lift which was the horrible 1632 series by Eric Flint).  With Weber, I was so certain of what would happen (often from the Hornblower series) that I really had no incentive to continue.

What authors forget when they try to riff on Hornblower or Aubrey/Maturin is that, at those series hearts, are massively flawed characters.  Hornblower is a self-hating perfectionist with marginal personal social skills.  Aubrey is a fucking idiot with anything not related to naval warfare, and he tends to have a bunch of perfectly appalling prejudices.  Maturin tends to keep Aubrey from completely fucking up,  but then he's also an addict with an obession with a woman who fucks him over repeatedly.

Hornblower especially is pushed to greatness by his borderline personality and self-hatred.

[Johny Cee]

Yeah, I can't quite figure why I liked it as much as I did. Especially since it has a rather complicatedly downer conclusion of a rather cynical kind.

Yeah, no idea why that would appeal to me.

I just don't get the massive Abercrombie love espoused pretty much everywhere on the internet.

The Blade Itself was cliched and mediocre, but that's okay since it's a setup novel (and the author's first novel).
Before They Are Hanged was quite good, with a great subversion of the "quest" story common in fantasy.
All I could think about when reading Last Argument of Kings was "What a twist!"  The plot and characters went off the rails so that Abercrombie could throw ever more unlikely plot twists at you.


For the entire series,  the obvious Ren-faire stereotype of a fantasy world that was the Union was pretty uninteresting.  Quite liked the Northmen, though.

[MahrinSkel]

I was trying to read something to relax the other night and I found a copy of Brisingr by Christopher Paolini in the house. I'd heard that the series was terribly terribly poor but I have a reasonably high level of tolerance when it comes to certain genre fiction (SF, Fantasy and Mystery, mostly) and thought I'd give it a look. The book was the third in the series but comes with the synopsis of the first two. I managed to read the synopsis in full, but only because it so incredibly bad. I have no idea how such utter shit ever managed to get published. It's like it was written by a 11 year old who has swallowed a collection of the worst fantasy novels ever, then tried to concentrate that failure down into a single book.

My daughter likes the series, but I've gotten tired not only of the fact that it is repackaged cliches without any novelty or humor in their presentation, but with the way the author uses the Sam Spade method of dealing with dead-ends in the plot (have someone knock out the protagonist, and when he comes to the plot has moved forward without him).

--Dave

[ghost]

Book of Lost Things by John Connolly is a decent read.  It is aimed for a younger audience, but I liked it.  It has a fairly predictable plot but this doesn't impact it in a negative way.

[Ironwood]

I just don't get the massive Abercrombie love espoused pretty much everywhere on the internet.

It doesn't hold up on analysis.  The trick of me liking it was that I never felt the need to.

That's usually hard to do with me.  I like to break things down till everything's shite.

You may have noticed.

[RhyssaFireheart]

So I finished the Riftwar Legacy trilogy books that I'd bought (not bad, I'll probably eventually get the other ones, if only because I want to know what the overarching evil storyline plot is, and they're worth my pleasure time to read) in order to start Gardens of the Moon.  Damn, why'd I wait so long to start reading these?  I'm enjoying this so much, the characters are interesting and what I've seenof the world and it's workings so far is pretty awesome.  I'm liking Tattersail a lot, along with however the hell her magic works.  Plus the way new groups/races/people are introduced is good as well.  It's not in the "Oh look, we have a new player on the field, let's introduce you to them!" way so many authors use.  It's in a "they are just there, maybe I'll tell you more if a character thinks about it" method.  I like that.

[Arrrgh]

So I finished the Riftwar Legacy trilogy books that I'd bought (not bad, I'll probably eventually get the other ones, if only because I want to know what the overarching evil storyline plot is, and they're worth my pleasure time to read) in order to start Gardens of the Moon.  Damn, why'd I wait so long to start reading these?  I'm enjoying this so much, the characters are interesting and what I've seenof the world and it's workings so far is pretty awesome.  I'm liking Tattersail a lot, along with however the hell her magic works.  Plus the way new groups/races/people are introduced is good as well.  It's not in the "Oh look, we have a new player on the field, let's introduce you to them!" way so many authors use.  It's in a "they are just there, maybe I'll tell you more if a character thinks about it" method.  I like that.

Books 2 and 3 are even better. They get a bit uneven after that but none are losers.

[Engels]

I'm getting a bit ticked off at Amazon's Kindle selection. About 2/3rds of what's been posted here in the last few pages isn't available.

[Oban]

I am trying to find a copy of The Strain by Guillermo Del Toro at the moment.  Having a hard time justifying paying 25-17 dollars for the dead tree edition when the Kindle version is only 9.99.

Supposedly a very good book based on the reviews I read.

[Mosesandstick]

Read "We need to talk about Kevin" by Lionel Shriver. Caused a bit of a stir a few years back and was fairly popular amongst women. It's a fantastic book, dealing with childhood and child-rearing has few things I've seen or read ever have.

[Arrrgh]

I'm getting a bit ticked off at Amazon's Kindle selection. About 2/3rds of what's been posted here in the last few pages isn't available.

This is ugly....

http://www.geardiary.com/2009/06/19/kindles-drm-rears-its-ugly-head-and-it-is-ugly/

[Engels]

I'm getting a bit ticked off at Amazon's Kindle selection. About 2/3rds of what's been posted here in the last few pages isn't available.

This is ugly....

http://www.geardiary.com/2009/06/19/kindles-drm-rears-its-ugly-head-and-it-is-ugly/

Yeah, but I suspect that's going to be sorted out eventually. Authentication via MAC address or some such.

[FatuousTwat]

It's like it was written by a 11 year old who has swallowed a collection of the worst fantasy novels ever, then tried to concentrate that failure down into a single book.

Is that supposed to be green? Cause that is pretty much exactly what happened.

[Johny Cee]

So I finished the Riftwar Legacy trilogy books that I'd bought (not bad, I'll probably eventually get the other ones, if only because I want to know what the overarching evil storyline plot is, and they're worth my pleasure time to read) in order to start Gardens of the Moon.  Damn, why'd I wait so long to start reading these?  I'm enjoying this so much, the characters are interesting and what I've seenof the world and it's workings so far is pretty awesome.  I'm liking Tattersail a lot, along with however the hell her magic works.  Plus the way new groups/races/people are introduced is good as well.  It's not in the "Oh look, we have a new player on the field, let's introduce you to them!" way so many authors use.  It's in a "they are just there, maybe I'll tell you more if a character thinks about it" method.  I like that.

Just a word of warning, and maybe a recommendation:

One of Erikson's (acknowledged) big influences is Glen Cook.  Try not to get too attached to any one character because they die.  Alot.  They also come back to life.  Alot.  But plenty stay dead.


I've been reading quite a bit,  but not much that has really stuck with me:
- Picked up some of Karl Edward Wagner's "Kane" books.  Way out of print.  Sword and sorcery with a sympathetic villain as the protagonist. Meh.
- Some Warhammer stuff as fun reading.
- Tried the first book of Daniel Abraham's quartet, which has a decent amount of critical buzz.  Meh.
- Crapped out on Emma Bull's Territory, which is basically contemporary fantasy set in Tombstone. 

Some of the better stuff:
- Matthew Stover's Heroes Die, the first "Caine" book.  Good read.  Dystopian future earth, that sends actors into an alternate magicy/D&Dish universe and records and sells their adventures.  I'd really like to read The Blade of Tyshalle, the next book, but hell if you can find it for less than $30 online.
- Sarah Monette's The Bone Key.  Collection of short stories following a stuttering, socially inept museum curator.  Basically ghost stories, with a slight touch of Lovecraft.
- Peter Brett's The Warded Man.  Epic fantasy, enjoyable read.  Some fairly big flaws, but pretty good for a first novel.

I have Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses to get to eventually, and a couple reprints of older Cook books on the way from Nightshade Books.

[FatuousTwat]

Went to the used bookstore today, got around ten books... Alas, Babylon, The Eternal Champion, Stand On Zanzibar and a Gene Wolfe anthology among others.

[RhyssaFireheart]

Just a word of warning, and maybe a recommendation:

One of Erikson's (acknowledged) big influences is Glen Cook.  Try not to get too attached to any one character because they die.  Alot.  They also come back to life.  Alot.  But plenty stay dead.

I've heard that said a few times in this thread, so I'll make a note of it. :)  Reminds me though, I haven't read an Glen Cook in ages.  I need to hit up the used book store again now that I'm already on the 4th of the new books I bought a month ago.

Funny anecdote - my mom is big on reading trashy romance novels.  I don't complain; whenever I visit I look forward to going through her books and just indulging in the totally mindless stupidity that is the modern day romance novel.  I can devour those books in a few hours, tops.  She usually goes to the used book store in her area and they sell plastic shopping bags full of romance books for about $2/bag.  Not a bad deal, really, when it comes to about 20-25 books.

Well, recently, she went to an estate sale with my s-in-law and there were a few boxes of these books for sale.  Talked to the person in charge and asked what they wanted for all the boxes, was told "how about $2 per box?"  Sold!  So now my mom has like 6 boxes of trashy romance novels to play with, each box with about - get this - 70-80 books each!  I'm sure there will be duplicates or repeats, but I just started laughing when she told me.  She'll eventually end up recycling the books back through the used bookstore herself, but that'll take a good long while.

And she is the reason I ended up as the reader I am today.  Sure, I started off with trashy romance novels and silly scifi stuff, but my mom never had a problem buying me books to read growing up, or sharing hers with me.  

[Rasix]

One of Erikson's (acknowledged) big influences is Glen Cook.  Try not to get too attached to any one character because they die.  Alot.  They also come back to life.  Alot.  But plenty stay dead.

They also die like bitches. A lot.  I'm still haven't gotten over Reaper's Gale enough to pick up Toll the Hounds.

[Sheepherder]

So do people here not read classics, or do you just take it for granted that they will get read?

All Quiet on the Western Front.  Now.

[Rendakor]

Went to the used bookstore today, got around ten books... Alas, Babylon, The Eternal Champion, Stand On Zanzibar and a Gene Wolfe anthology among others.

I read Alas, Babylon when I was on my post-apoc kick. Decent read.

[apocrypha]

All Quiet on the Western Front.  Now.

Excellent book. Have you read A Farewell To Arms?

[Xuri]

So do people here not read classics, or do you just take it for granted that they will get read?

One late night I, for some inexplicable reason or other, ordered the following books (haven't received them yet):

The Catcher in the Rye
Candide, ou l'Optimisme (or rather, an english translation of it)
Great Expectations
Siddhartha

[Endie]

All Quiet on the Western Front.  Now.

Excellent book. Have you read A Farewell To Arms?

One of the best visual puns in cinema is when Bruce Campbell, having fought his own hand in Evil Dead II, traps the detached member under a bucket, he weighs it down witha  copy of "A Farewell to Arms".

[Murgos]

If you want to explore a classic in more depth than is usual read the entire 3 Musketeers set.

There are actually 5 or 6 (depending on editing) books.

The Three Musketeers
10 Years Later
20 Years After
Louise de la Valliere
The Man in the Iron Mask

The middle portions may be called The Vicomte de Bragellone or some variation on 10 Years later Parts I & II.  The full story follows the adventurers through youth and into old age and dealing with their children and the hopes and disappointments of life.  It's actually a really amazing and touching story arc.