Return of the Book Thread

[NowhereMan]

If one wanted to start on the Culture stuff from Iain Banks...what would be the choice books to start with? I'm a bit hesitant to simply buy the 9 books outright.

Player of Games is a decent start if you want to get a feel for the Culture universe and their society in particular. Consider Phlebas is the first novel but I found it a bit confusing and think that it skips around between viewpoints a bit much for getting a good feel for what and who things are. Use of Weapons is also really good though very focused on a single character and also a bit heavy going at first due to the fact that it keeps throwing in seemingly random flashbacks of the protagonist's life. Personally I think those two present the best introductory books.

[Sky]

We always used to have to read aloud in class. I honestly never saw the point in doing it, or what it's supposed to accomplish. We're in english class, not drama class. And there were always awful orators (including myself) that everyone would have to cringe through.

My 11th grade English teacher was also the drama teacher who I'd known for years from the renfaire (a bawdy, busty wench!). I think we did three Shakespeare pieces that year, and we read them all aloud in class. Sucked for about half the class that didn't know a doth from a thither, but was a ton of fun for some of us. She also recruited me into drama club enough to play guitar in the live band for Grease, it's where I learned my Chuck Berry chops. She was a great teacher. She instilled the whole line interpretation thing with those Shakespeare readings, and I still find myself assigning actual voices to characters and figuring out line delivery, speaking them in my imagination. It's one reason I read about one book to my fiancee's ten and books 1-8 of Erikson took me a year.

[murdoc]

Just finished 'The Crippled God' and as much as I hate to say it, I'm not sure I got it all. Going to take me a day or two to digest everything.

It did seem, however, that there was some rather large shifts in behaviours and actions of characters and the last three books felt more like just adding onto the story instead of going the direction he originally intended.

[ghost]

If one wanted to start on the Culture stuff from Iain Banks...what would be the choice books to start with? I'm a bit hesitant to simply buy the 9 books outright.

Player of Games is a decent start if you want to get a feel for the Culture universe and their society in particular. Consider Phlebas is the first novel but I found it a bit confusing and think that it skips around between viewpoints a bit much for getting a good feel for what and who things are. Use of Weapons is also really good though very focused on a single character and also a bit heavy going at first due to the fact that it keeps throwing in seemingly random flashbacks of the protagonist's life. Personally I think those two present the best introductory books.

Player of Games is much more readable than Consider Phlebas, but there are some tense moments in Consider Phlebas that will have you holding your breath.  I consider it the better book for the adrenaline factor (hell, the first scene in Consider Phlebas is just crazy).  They're both damned good though. 

[FatuousTwat]

If one wanted to start on the Culture stuff from Iain Banks...what would be the choice books to start with? I'm a bit hesitant to simply buy the 9 books outright.

Player of Games is a decent start if you want to get a feel for the Culture universe and their society in particular. Consider Phlebas is the first novel but I found it a bit confusing and think that it skips around between viewpoints a bit much for getting a good feel for what and who things are. Use of Weapons is also really good though very focused on a single character and also a bit heavy going at first due to the fact that it keeps throwing in seemingly random flashbacks of the protagonist's life. Personally I think those two present the best introductory books.

Consider Phlebas becomes important later on, there is at least one (possible two?) book later on that deals with that war.

Use Of Weapons is my favourite, but most people seem to not like it.

[Morat20]

Consider Phlebas becomes important later on, there is at least one (possible two?) book later on that deals with that war.

They reference the Idrian War -- and Consider Phlebas is just a tangential part of the War -- enough that you can get the gist of it. The Culture went to full-scale war against another equivilant-tech culture. It was not really the happiest, shiniest moment for a society that's basically a bunch of post-scarcity pacifiest utopians.

Use Of Weapons is my favourite, but most people seem to not like it.

It didn't start out as my favorite, but grew on me. I really like it, and appreciated the call-back to it in the latest novel.

[Hoax]

China Mieville - Perdido Street Station

John Scalzi said on his blog that Perdido Street Station was the best science fiction book of the decade. I'm afraid I can't agree. It's got great visuals, and an interesting world (kind of) but the story itself just sort of... ended. And it ended on a fairly strong down note. I don't read books to be depressed, dammit.

I thought that was a magnificent read myself, just to encourage others to try it. However I had the opposite feelings about his other book, The Scar, he tried too hard to make it not depressing when by all rights it shouldn't have ended up half as well as it did for most people. If you liked the book but just wanted a happier more traditional end to the quest and especially if you like naval stuff I'd check out Scar.

If one wanted to start on the Culture stuff from Iain Banks...what would be the choice books to start with? I'm a bit hesitant to simply buy the 9 books outright.

My friend who had read all of them had me start in this order:

Player of Games
Use of Weapons
Matter

I was hooked after Use of Weapons but I think Games really introduced the society in a way that enriched everything else I've read. Can't wait for the books that are in the mail from him since I expect another culture novel or two.

***

On to my own question. I read Color of Magic by Pratchett and my feeling afterward is I don't think I care for disc world. Mistake? Is that the weakest book or something? I found the yuckyuck generic heroes + its all actually a game for the gods bits to sort of make the whole thing not worth reading. I did appreciate a lot of the humor -had my laughing out loud on the plane at several points- but the setting was almost too bland or something to get me invested in events.

[Murgos]

I read Color of Magic by Pratchett and my feeling afterward is I don't think I care for disc world. Mistake?

I wouldn't judge the series by Colour of Magic.  Besides being almost 30 years old at this point it's just not indicative of the rest of the series or of Pratchett's writing style.

I think I would recommend people start with Small Gods.  It's kind of a one off story with characters that are introduced for that story rather than the re-occurring cast (and in jokes) that most of the rest of the books share so it's probably easier as an entry point.  It's also far enough along in Pratchett's writing career for him to have fully developed his style and voice.

[Ingmar]

On to my own question. I read Color of Magic by Pratchett and my feeling afterward is I don't think I care for disc world. Mistake? Is that the weakest book or something? I found the yuckyuck generic heroes + its all actually a game for the gods bits to sort of make the whole thing not worth reading. I did appreciate a lot of the humor -had my laughing out loud on the plane at several points- but the setting was almost too bland or something to get me invested in events.

Yeah that is not the best. I wouldn't start with any of the Rincewind books really, they tend to be the most silly/least funny. Small Gods isn't a terrible starting point at all but I would probably say start with Night Watch, if you don't like that one then Pratchett probably isn't for you. If you do, then go back and just read them in the order they were written, maybe skipping Rincewind books if you just can't stand them (they're kind of the equivalent of the Simpsons Go To <Foreign Country> episodes, cheap jokes and kind of mailed in.)

[Samwise]

Yeah, I don't much like the Rincewind books and would recommend skipping them.

My first Discworld was Equal Rites, and I thought it was a really good intro to the series.

[Morat20]

On to my own question. I read Color of Magic by Pratchett and my feeling afterward is I don't think I care for disc world. Mistake? Is that the weakest book or something? I found the yuckyuck generic heroes + its all actually a game for the gods bits to sort of make the whole thing not worth reading. I did appreciate a lot of the humor -had my laughing out loud on the plane at several points- but the setting was almost too bland or something to get me invested in events.

Pratchett, when he wrote that, wrote it almost entirely as parody. Same with The Light Fantastic. Pyramids and Equal Rites were when he decided he didn't want to make fun of fantasy as much, and wanted to make funny fantasy (an important distinction). Somewhere around Small Gods or Reaper Man he decided he really didn't want to make funny fantasy so much as he wanted to write fucking ridiculously good fantasy that also happened to be amazingly funny.

If you want a feel for what he becomes -- try Wee Free Men or Small Gods. It's latter-style discworld, but doesn't really touch on anything before so it can be read independently.

His best Discworld book, IMHO, is Night Watch -- but others disagree. But that's the culmination of the Guards series, and really relies on having read the others.

[Ingmar]

Yeah I got my titles mixed up, don't read Night Watch first. The one I should have recommended was Guards, Guards.

[Quinton]

Yeah I got my titles mixed up, don't read Night Watch first. The one I should have recommended was Guards, Guards.

Guards Guards is a great start for the books focusing on the city watch, which are among my favorite of the disc world subgenres, as it were.

Small Gods is a good stand alone disc world book.

I only read the very early books later and was not terribly impressed.  Terry clearly both improved as a writer and developed disc world into much more of its own place rather than just generic parody fantasy world and that helped a lot.

[Samwise]

A little more than halfway through Storm of Swords now.

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

That is all.

[WayAbvPar]

Hospitality at its finest 

[Samwise]

Fucking hell.  I suspect I'm going to be very unhappy when I finish Feast for Crows and there are no more.  I love the slow buildup on all of these plot threads, but if they never get resolved... yeah, I can see why people are all over the author for not cranking them out faster.

[Chimpy]

So you are just now getting into the beginning stages of realizing that Martin has an exceedingly cynical outlook on humanity and that just as soon as you get to like someone even a little bit they either do something that either appalls you, or they die/are maimed in some horrible fashion?

 

[Rendakor]

Well you only have a few weeks until Dance of Dragons comes out; it's when you finish that one that you get the 5+ year wait.

[Morat20]

So you are just now getting into the beginning stages of realizing that Martin has an exceedingly cynical outlook on humanity and that just as soon as you get to like someone even a little bit they either do something that either appalls you, or they die/are maimed in some horrible fashion?

 

There's only one character with author immortality, and that's only because his wife made him promise. I note that she didn't make him promise not to leave him a vegetable or a tortured, insane wreck.

[dd0029]

Just finished a really good one, Among Theives by Douglas Hulick. It reminds me of a cross between Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos and Scott Lynch's Locke Lamora, though Hulick is not quite as impressed with himself his own cleverness as either Brust or Lynch. I will say that the main character has a terribly dumb name.

[ghost]

A little more than halfway through Storm of Swords now.

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

That is all.

Is that a good FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU or a bad FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU?   

[Samwise]

That was a bad FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU.

There is some good stuff in there too but that's more like 

[Xuri]

I only read the very early books later and was not terribly impressed.  Terry clearly both improved as a writer and developed disc world into much more of its own place rather than just generic parody fantasy world and that helped a lot.

I started at the very beginning, and I think I'm better off for doing so. Why would one want to start with the best books first, and then be terribly disappointed when reading the weaker earlier books later (which one will almost be guaranteed to want to read when starved for more of his writing)? Better to get them out of the way first and as a bonus also get to experience Pratchett's progress as a writer as you work your way through the series - that's my take on it, anyway.

[Rendakor]

So you are just now getting into the beginning stages of realizing that Martin has an exceedingly cynical outlook on humanity and that just as soon as you get to like someone even a little bit they either do something that either appalls you, or they die/are maimed in some horrible fashion?

 

There's only one character with author immortality, and that's only because his wife made him promise. I note that she didn't make him promise not to leave him a vegetable or a tortured, insane wreck.

Who's that? You can spoiler it if you like.

[Quinton]

I only read the very early books later and was not terribly impressed.  Terry clearly both improved as a writer and developed disc world into much more of its own place rather than just generic parody fantasy world and that helped a lot.

I started at the very beginning, and I think I'm better off for doing so. Why would one want to start with the best books first, and then be terribly disappointed when reading the weaker earlier books later (which one will almost be guaranteed to want to read when starved for more of his writing)? Better to get them out of the way first and as a bonus also get to experience Pratchett's progress as a writer as you work your way through the series - that's my take on it, anyway.

I've actually read pretty much everything he's written and really only found the very first couple / the rincewind-focused books to be rather disappointing compared to everything else.

I certainly can understand "start at the beginning." but my advice would definitely be "if Color of Magic doesn't work for you, don't give up on Pratchett entirely".

Guards Guards! is the 8th discworld book, so it's certainly a bit later in the series, but it's not that much later, and just the evolution of the world building and story telling from there through Night Watch is pretty impressive by itself

Though one other piece of Pratchett advice might be "realize that discworld books tend to focus on different groups of characters (though there's some overlap in places) and some of these groups of characters may be more appealing to you than others.   

[Ozzu]

I am two books into Bernard Cornwell's Saxon Chronicles series.

Wow. This is great stuff. The battles are intense and the descriptions of fighting behind the shield walls? Damn. 

[shiznitz]

Finished Blindsight and highly recommend it.  Humans think they have experienced an alien "fly by" so they send a ship to investigate.  The twist is that humans have learned to modify themselves somewhat for specialization.  There is a bunch of scientific concepts dealt with in a clear and understandable way.

Also about halfway through Old Man's War.  Seventy-five year old Americans can choose to leave Earth behind forever to join the Colonial Defense Forces protecting human colonies throughout the galaxy.  The promise? The CDF has the technology to make old fogies young and fit again.   Has a bit of a Starship Troopers (book, not movie) and Full Metal Jacket vibe to it.

[Arthur_Parker]

Just finished Into Thin Air, about the 1996 Everest events.  

Found it really well written, I don't normally like depressing true life stories, but it reads more like a novel.

But it's well worth reading this blog, plus the comments to shed further light on the events, it seems far too easy for people to assign blame, even people who were present and write a very interesting book about it.

[bhodi]

If you read all of the Revelation Space books it builds a pretty interesting universe. I like Reynolds' stuff quite a bit though so take my opinion with a grain of whatever.

So I went and listened to the second book, and now I remember what I had such problems with - the narrator. He's shit. I quit about 30 minutes in. I'll read them for real for the second try. It's possible the lousy reading impacted the book negatively.



Finished the first book in the J.W. Wells & Co series by Tom Holt, The Portable Door. It's very.. Pratchett.

[WayAbvPar]

Just finished Into Thin Air, about the 1996 Everest events.  

Found it really well written, I don't normally like depressing true life stories, but it reads more like a novel.

But it's well worth reading this blog, plus the comments to shed further light on the events, it seems far too easy for people to assign blame, even people who were present and write a very interesting book about it.

It really is an amazing story. IIRC, Boukreev (sp?) wrote a book about his side just before he got avalanched to death on Annapurna in 1997 or so. Still haven't gotten around to that one yet.

[Johny Cee]

Just finished Into Thin Air, about the 1996 Everest events.  

Found it really well written, I don't normally like depressing true life stories, but it reads more like a novel.

But it's well worth reading this blog, plus the comments to shed further light on the events, it seems far too easy for people to assign blame, even people who were present and write a very interesting book about it.

Bah.  I had a nice long post on Into Thin Air....

An interesting and entertaining book, and the whole background and fallout with the '96 Everest disaster makes fascinating reading.  Take anything Krakauer writes with a giant grain of salt, though.  You generally can see him push people into narrative slots, and there have been some of the same things said about his book on Pat Tillman.

With Everest:
- Hall and Fisher (leaders of the two expeditions) were really, really pushing their luck with the physical condition of their climbers.  Beck for instance had tried and failed Everest a number of times, and the middle-aged Japanese woman was being short-roped by a Sherpa going up the mountain.  That number of (slow) bodies caused bottlenecks on the trail, and the turn back times were thrown out.
- The freak weather turned a bad situation into a nightmare.
- Boukreev got shit for rushing up and down, and no one can corroberate that he got the okay to head down early.  
- After the shit hit the fan, though, Boukreev went out solo (the Sherpas refused to go out) a number of times and guided returning climbers back to camp.


Personally, I think Krakauer pushed Boukreev into the villain slot of his narrative since Hall and Fisher both died redemptive deaths.  Krakauer also used some pretty poor fact-checking for items that did not support his narrative, or outright contradicted it.

[Arthur_Parker]

and the middle-aged Japanese woman was being short-roped by a Sherpa going up the mountain
...
- Boukreev got shit for rushing up and down, and no one can corroberate that he got the okay to head down early.  

My understanding is that it was Sandy Pittman who was short roped to Lopsang Jangbu Sherpa and the fuss was pretty much created by Krakauer who criticised Boukreev in public for going up and down fast and not using O2.

Take anything Krakauer writes with a giant grain of salt, though.  You generally can see him push people into narrative slots, and there have been some of the same things said about his book on Pat Tillman.
...
Personally, I think Krakauer pushed Boukreev into the villain slot of his narrative since Hall and Fisher both died redemptive deaths.  Krakauer also used some pretty poor fact-checking for items that did not support his narrative, or outright contradicted it.

100% agree with all this, I really don't trust a word Krakauer says, which is odd because I'd still recommend his book. 

His criticism was aimed at - the two remaining strongest climbers who survived, neither of whom was in his expedition, neither spoke English that well, both had performed an unusual climbing act that day (Lopsang dragging someone up Everest, Boukreev summiting and then rescuing people from near camp 4 in a blizzard, neither Lopsang or Boukreev used O2).

Given what happened I can understand why people fell out.

[dd0029]

Just finished up Invasion: Book One of the Secret World Chronicle by Mercedes Lackey, Steve Libbey, Cody Martin and Dennis Lee. It is awesomely terrible. Its a collection of novellas and short stories set in a world with "metahumans" ie superheroes. The opening novella is fairly good with several not quite origin stories and then the titular invasion. The second half of the book is a set of short stories that read a bit like Mass Effect in a gathering up of the team sort of way. The nararative thread of the invasion kind of disappears here. The whole thing was catapulted to a whole new level of  when I read the Author's Note at the end. Turns out this is this grew out of Mercedes Lackey's RP guild in City of Heroes.

[lamaros]

Reading a lot of Chandler for the first time in my life. Pretty good. He does a shitty depressing world pretty well at times.

[Arrrgh]

Reading a lot of Chandler for the first time in my life. Pretty good. He does a shitty depressing world pretty well at times.

"In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.

The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor -- by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. I do not care much about his private life; he is neither a eunuch nor a satyr; I think he might seduce a duchess and I am quite sure he would not spoil a virgin; if he is a man of honor in one thing, he is that in all things.

He is a relatively poor man, or he would not be a detective at all. He is a common man or he could not go among common people. He has a sense of character, or he would not know his job. He will take no man's money dishonestly and no man's insolence without due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. He talks as the man of his age talks -- that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness.

The story is the man's adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. He has a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to him by right, because it belongs to the world he lives in. If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in. "
— Raymond Chandler (The Simple Art of Murder)