Current reading - Page 92

I think because Preacher never got near popular enough to register culturally in that way. And also because it's pretty out there. 

 

Although I imagine, given to a teenager at the exact right age, it would be as good a way to make the kid an atheist as any.

So, I'm terrible at reading fiction.  I can read non-fiction like a champ, and I devour the New Yorker and the Economist every week.  But, for the life of me, I can't finish a book.

 

So, I finished Dune a couple of days ago.  I enjoyed it quite a bit, especially as I wanted something pulpy like Game of Thrones but, since I'm watching the TV show, I decided to skip the books and opt to follow the show.

 

For my next read... Should I bother with any of the Dune sequels, or should I jump into the Aubrey/Maturin series?  I loved Master & Commander and love historical fiction.

The latter, though it'll just make you madder that Master and Commander flopped and it didn't have any sequels.

 

The Dune sequels aren't really worth the effort. You might want to try Iain Banks's Culture books, however.

Edited by Cameron Hughes - 6/25/12 at 4:52pm

 

Definately.  Brilliant sci-fi.

Thanks guys!  I'm starting M&C tonight and I'll check out Culture.

 

Perhaps too far outside that wheelhouse, but for well-researched historical fiction with a comedic, satirical edge, I'd suggest trying George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman series. The books are all pretty well self-contained, and all save the last few are brilliant, but they're fun to read in order, beginning with Flashman. It's a series I re-read roughly once a year.

 

There's also Bernard Cornwell's Richard Sharpe series, which is weirdly bifurcated: the original series (beginning with Sharpe's Eagle in 1981 and ending with Sharpe's Waterloo in 1990) are great action-adventure stories well-grounded in historical fact (more than one critic compared them to a Napoleonic version of James Bond). Then there was an excellent series of TV adaptations, which tailored the characters to the actors (notably Sean Bean as Sharpe), resulting in characterization choices that are somewhat at odds with the books, but worked well onscreen. Unfortunately, Cornwell fell in love with them, so when he decided to start churning out Sharpe books again in the late 90's, he began writing Sean Bean rather than Richard Sharpe, so that the later books just don't work as well, particularly since some of the storylines are supposed to integrate with the original series.

 

Cornwell's kind of a historical-fiction machine, and while his storytelling gets predictable, he spins a good yarn, whether you're talking the Civil War, medieval England, Arthurian times, or the American Revolution.

I read the first Culture novel earlier in the year and was less than impressed.  However I see potential in the universe so am willing to plunge on with the rest of the bibliography...

 

Just finished A Storm of Swords.  So awesome.  Up next is some Pratchett.  Eric, the 9th Discworld novel.  30 more to go after that!

 

Consider Phlebas, the first Culture novel is inconsistent and a little bit too long. The next one, Player of Games, is lean, mean genre perfection. The difference in quality is night and day. Those are the only two I've read, but after finishing Player I immediately bought up a bunch of Culture novels at the nearby Borders as it was going out of business. Looking forward to getting to them, eventually.

 

In keeping with the spirit of the thread, I am about halfway through Storm of Swords for leisure. Also reading Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and Ovid for a grad school admissions writing sample. Recently finished Beyond Good and Evil, and am thinking about starting Genealogy of Morals sometime soon.

Consider Phlebas is also kick in the balls miserable as well.  Personally, I love it.  The Culture novels as a whole are varying in quality quality though, my favourite being Use of Weapons.

 

My favourite, by FAR, of Iain M Banks's  work though is Against A Dark Background.  I re-read that one every year.  I'd love to see that given the proper HBO treatment, 12 episodes of sci-fi greatness.

Just finished "Voices from the Street" , Philip K Dick's first novel written,last published. Amazing, amazing stuff. It's not SF: it's a very grounded "Proletarian Realist" novel set in Oakland California in the 1950's. But it contains all of PKD's preoccupations: Existentialism, how people with charisma can alter other people's perceptions of reality, strange religions, drugs and "bad women", people who may or may not be people (in the sense of not having basic empathy). And it features one of the most brutal climaxes I've ever read anywhere. Highly recommended, but beware, this shit is raw!

Finished the Long Earth. It definitely sets itself up to be a trilogy. It went in some interesting directions, and had some unique elements such as an artificial intelligence that didn't turn out to be evil, and a borg like world eating armageddon monster which was essentially good at heart and had nothing against the main characters. This makes it sound very similar to Star Trek in some respects, but is isn't.

I'll be interested to see where the trilogy goes when the next book comes out.

If I were to rank it amongst the adventure/exploratory sci-fi I've read it would go something like this:

Rendezvous With Rama
Gateway
Ringworld
The Long Earth

Don't take it as a slight that I put it last, because all the books I've mentioned are classics in this genre. Really for me it came pretty close to Ringworld, It just didn't seem to elicit quite as much joy in the discovery aspect.
Edited by Tim K - 7/1/12 at 11:48pm

Just about done with Robopocalypse. Stupid, badly written, and even though it's a fairly brisk 350, I've considered bagging it. It's about as flagrant a World War Z rip off as you could imagine. However, it is interesting in the context of the upcoming Spielberg movie. There's actually quite a few setpieces I can totally imagine him nailing, a la the T Rex attack or the Tripod emerging from the street. The story and the characters need an overhaul, but I think I understand the logic. Hope he's got plans for the spine of it though, as otherwise it's going to be the most warmed over ID4 bullshit you ever did see.

Been buying a lot but not getting round to reading them.  I did manage to polish off a few from the pile, though...

 

THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE (George Higgins) - The movie's pretty faithful to the source.  Good stuff.

WHEN THE WOMEN COME OUT TO DANCE (Elmore Leonard) - Nice short story collection, including ones with old friends Karen Sisco & Raylan Givens.

LABRAVA (Elmore Leonard) - Lots of fun.  Great characters, a narrative that references classic film noir all over the place.  High recommendation.

THE ALIEN QUARTET (David Thomspon) - A middling look at the first four ALIEN films.  Some nice info, but far too derivative for my tastes.

RONIN (Frank Miller) - The renowned graphic novel of samurai sci-fi.  Excellent, if a little more out there than I was expecting.

HOLY TERROR (Frank Miller) - Less successful but still full of visceral, heavy duty action violence.  Didn't hate it, didn't love it. 

BRUTAL: THE UNTOLD STORY OF MY LIFE INSIDE WHITEY BULGER'S IRISH MOB (Kevin Weeks) - Good true crime.  Heavy, real, from Bulger's right-hand man.

Edited by Engineer - 7/9/12 at 6:25pm

 

I pretty much had the same opinion as you towards the book, but for the life of me, I can't see what Spielberg sees in this.  How is anything here going to seem fresh after WAR OF THE WORLDS or his involvement in the TRANSFORMERS films?   It's totally the same ballpark.  

My hope is that he's going to make it kind of like Traffic or something. I think Lincoln is going to answer a lot of my questions about what Spielberg is all about steely.

So, my summer reading extravaganza is in a mid hiatus, so I thought I would report in.

 

I read Peter and Max: A Fables Novel. I have always enjoyed Fables graphic novels. I am not an emo kid and I am too mainstream with my bowties and khaki chinos for Hot Topic, but I like taking things we know and subverting them to see what falls out. It is an interesting take of the Pied Piper of Hamlin, and his brother Max. The ending confrontation with the villian works exactly the way you think it will, unfortunately. So much so, I was never sure why it never came to the hero before the final scene. But the world building is just what Bill Willingham does well.

 

I also read The Imperial Cruise by James Bradley, who wrote Flags of our Fathers and Flyboys, was a mixed bag of historical non-fiction. It is filled with details and the author keeps trying to stick them all under a single umbrella but has no focus. The actual Imperial Cruise, which Vice President Taft and Roosevelt's daughter took, is only a launching point for the history of Teddy Roosevelt's empire building and the selling of eastern Asia to Japan. It keeps trying to tie in the Afghan and Iraqi wars to that. It is poorly organized and while I love anything about Roosevelt, even bad press, it was a bear to finish.

 

Next was Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer. I was on a non-fiction kick. It is really interesting bit of popular science. It read like an episode of This American Life. It took some detailed scientific texts and showed the average non-neurologist the current models in brain science. The real-life examples range from 3M and masking tape to Bob Dylan. It was an entertaining meta-read about problem solving skills. 

 

I read Best American Travel Writing 2012.  I swear by the Best American series. It compiles the most interesting stories from magazines I just don't have the time to read throughout the year. Between this, BA Essays, BA Non-required Reading, BA Nature and Science, I read great non-fiction pieces about everything. There is a story about crossing Russia, from West to East, that is remarkable. If you have never tried one of the Best American series, I cannot praise it enough.

 

In between, I pounded out a couple of Star Trek novels for palette cleansing and cheap Trekkie thrills. A great stand alone series, if you are a fan of Trek Novels or The Original Series, is Vanguard. It just wrapped up after 7 years.

 

I just finished  American Gods. I loved Anansi Boys. So much, I managed to get my school to adopt it for class room use a couple of years ago. I have had American Gods on my shelf for ages to read, but just got around to it. It is good. It is Neil Gaiman at his grittier, darker bits. His exploration of America is awesome and just dinged the same bone that Peter and Max did: taking something I know, mythology, and turning it inside out. I particularly loved the way the 'new gods' came to America. I thought the ending was a bit too on the nose. I expected it would turn out that way. But it is Gaiman, so I loved it.

 

On my horizon: My annual Hobbit/Lord of the Rings reading and A Bad Idea I Am About To Do,  by Chris Gethard. 

I've heard Napeleon's Pyramids by William Deitrich is a good time, anyone here read it? Thinking of picking it up after finishing Reamde.
 

I think half the appeal of the book is the title, the second the premise and as a distant third, the actual story is the writing.

 

I was about 2/3 through Robopocalypse when I quit forcing myself and let my e-library copy expire: just a terrible piece of writing. I ackowledge that it's possible that reading till the end might justify its stultifyingly stupid epistolary style, but that wouldn't repair its fundamental tedium.

 

There's definitely potential for some cool action setpieces, and this would certainly be a case where no one could complain about the film version compressing/changing characters because there basically aren't any. Honestly, Spielberg's almost the only guy I could see making this watchable, largely because he won't give a fuck about "respecting" the book's plot points or character arcs, and will go straight for the cool visuals.

 

Hopefully, he'll go THE LOST WORLD route and just cherry-pick a couple of sequences and shitcan the rest.  

I can't imagine he doesn't. Although it does make Lost World look like a well written book, so they've got their work cut out for them.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is pretty good so far.

Finished China Mieville's Railsea last night.  I see the term "world building" around here a lot and this book had that in spades.  I've seen a lot of Moby Dick comparisons in the reviews I read, and that's apt, but only as a launching point.  The book is equally funny and exciting and I couldn't recommend it more.  

I started reading Don Delillo's White Noise. Then, because I have a habit of reading multiple books at once, I got sidetracked, and I forgot everything that had happened in White Noise leading into the start of part 2. So I re-read all that stuff and I'm now 70 pages away from finishing. For real this time.

 

Admission: I really really really had a hard time getting into it. I think it's partly because our narrator is a professor; professors make for frustrating POV characters. I had a similar problem with the protagonist of Wonderboys. It's the scholarly habit of mining meaning from everything around them that makes narratives dictated by professors feel, well, inaccessible and dense. That said, starting White Noise over again proved to be incredibly refreshing, and while little of importance happens in part one, I just got sucked right into it. I probably need to curb my ADD and stop reading multiple books at once, but in this case I'm kind of glad I wound up starting the book from scratch. It helped immensely.

 

Short version: White Noise is incredible.

 

I'm also reading Daniel Kimmel's Jar Jar Binks Must Die, which is a bit of required reading for any sci-fi film lovers. But I can get away with reading it and White Noise at the same time because JJBMD is just a collection of essays. Makes stop and starting much easier.

 

When I finish White Noise, I intend on getting through China Mieville's Kraken and Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles.

Now, Snow Crash. Ten pages in and I wonder what took me so long.

Going through the new book by Bill James, baseball professor emeritus, on crime, aptly titled 'Popular Crime'.
 

It's crap.

interesting thats the exact reason why I enjoyed the book and didn't like the movie. They dropped great action set pieces from the book but added new ones like the terrible T-Rex in the city sequence.

 

Whoops I was responding to Ratty's Lost World comment. It didn't qoute him for some reason.

Recently finished John Lancaster's Capital, a slice of life novel set in a Posh London (UK) neighborhood circa 2007-2008. Really interesting cross section of modern Brits, from a manager at one of the notorious London Banks to a family of Muslims running and living in a small grocery. The "plot" is that someone starts sending post cards that have pictures of the target residence and the words "We Want What You Have" typed on them. I put plot in quotes because this is the least interesting part of the novel. Oh and there is a character named Petunia.

Finished White Noise. I was going to pick up another Delillo book, but I stumbled into China Mieville's Kraken and loved it endlessly. So now I'm reading Perdido Street Station.

Reading The Magicians, by Lev Grossman. If it wasn't for a book club, I'd have tossed it long ago. Awful.

Gravity's Rainbow.

 

God help me.

 

That's on my shelf gathering dust, and I keep trying to work up the courage.  Let us know how you do.

 

I just finished Jurassic Park the other day.  Debating if I wanted to read this one again or not.  I don't remember much of it except I think a bit on a raft through some tunnles that I thought was in JP, but apparently not.  Maybe I'm remembering it wrong.  Anyways I didn't pick it up.  Just started Horns by Joe Hill that I picked up at a library sale for a quarter.

Finally on the last Darkness that Comes Before book: A Thousandfold Thought after taking a break and reading mostly light hearted books. Prince of Nothing was a bit of a slow, the second book was a vast improvement and I hear this one at least equals, if not betters it so we'll see. I'm still annoyed with Kellhus but that's more because of the fact that he's perfect which I can't stand in any medium.

Finally got my hands on Blood's A Rover. It should have happened sooner. If only I wasn't fixated on only buying books from brick and mortar stores. Anyway, back to the juicy bits. I kind of worship Ellroy. The crazy bastard. He's even challenging on a technical level. Apart from plots too complex to be called labyrinthine. He shares something with another of my favorite creators of fiction of the last generation, David Simon. They both just dump you somewhere and expect you to just deal with the strangeness. I have to go to Poe and previous writers to have the same kind of struggle to digest their writing.  

 

I love Blood's A Rover, I never connected with the first two, but I think it was a fantastic conclusion to the series.  I'm probably in the minority though. 

Finished off Carolla's book (which ends on a surprisingly somewhat poignant note), and now am halfway through "Live and Let Drood".  Don't know what I'm reading next.

I wish I could love later Ellroy as much as everyone else here.

 

I remember back when I was young ( early high school I think) I randomly found an old paperback copy of The Big Nowhere and started reading it. Mainly becuase the cover was awesome. The book blew my mind and remains my favorite Ellroy. There are certian sequences of that book still imprinted in my mind. I immeditaely devoured the rest of the quartet and loved them.

 

I recently tried America Tabloid, Cold Six Thousand, and Blood The Rover and I just can't get past his aggressive stylistic tenedencies. They just take me out of the book.

First Horns is great loved that book. Also maybe I'm in the minority but I loved the book Lost World. Its extremely different than the movie so it doesn't matter if you've seent the movie.

 

Once you can get past the bullet hard style they are amazing.  I didn't find American Tabloid too bad, but I recoiled almost in horror from the Cold Six Thousand, it was just so terse.  Took me about 50 pages to get into it, but wow it's worth it.

And Blood's a Rover is a great capper to the trilogy.

One of these days Ill be able to plow through. I had the same issue when I tried reading White Noise. I just don't have a lot of patience for heavily stylized books.

I just finished reading Freedom- Jonathan Franzen. This is really amazing book, I do recommended  Freedom -Jonathan Franzen
book to everyone.

 

 

private label supplements

Does it come in English?

is 11/22/63 by Stephen King any good?  I love a good time traveler book so I'm thinking about picking this up.

 

yup - well worth a read.  Kind of unnecessarily ties into IT, but I won't lie by saying it wasn't a joy to revisit that :)

 

 

Yes.  Loved it.  True, it did briefly tie in to It, but it didn't bother me as much as it seemed to a bunch of people when it came out.  But seeing as how one of the biggest complaints of the book I saw was that brief fraction of the book that tied into It, even if it did bother you like it did others there is still a whole lot to like.  Like I said, it was just a sliver.

Does the time traveler witness the preteen sewer gangbang?

ha! I wondered that before I was going to read it!

 

 

Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show)

I've never read IT, so I doubt that's going to bother me.

 

you should rectify that.  IT is great.