Aaron’s Comments (group member since Jul 29, 2013)

Aaron’s comments from the Literally Geeky group.

Welcome! Good to have you on board.

Don't worry about being a slow reader. We only have one book a month and we always keep our selections at a reasonable length. We won't make you read War & Peace in a week ;-)

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

Nearly finished with The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss and, sad to say, I'm completely underwhelmed.

It started out well, and the author definitely has a gift for the written word, but once Kvothe made it to the university, it got booooooring - with stock characters and slow pacing. Things have finally gotten interesting again, 300 pages later. I just hope it isn't too little, too late.

With the amount of praise this book has received from both friends and critics, I was expecting to be blown away. Instead, I just want to find the guy who said it earns a place on your shelf next to Tolkien and hit him with a copy of The Silmarillion.

This is one of my favorite 80's tunes. It's from the soundtrack of the video-game-centered film The Wizard, which I reminisce about in my latest geekocracy.net blog.*

http://youtu.be/jCHE0Tjw6MA

*shameless self promotion

Being a book club, it's kind of a given that we're not all going to see eye to eye, and that's fine. I really enjoy hearing what others took from a story that I myself recently read. Don't apologize for having a different opinion.

That being said, if you do like you said and go look at the overall ratings to find books we as a group didn't like, you won't find this one on it.

As I recall, The Necromancer received three 3-star ratings and earned the book club seal of approval. Granted, none of us fell head over heels in love with it, but we didn't exactly bury it alive either.

I actually thought we were pretty generous considering the flaws we discussed and agreed on. Your 'alternate universe' theory about the timeline is a good one and more than likely correct, but it doesn't discredit our general opinion of the plot's aspects being done many times both before and better.

Like I said in the hangout, I liked The Necromancer and I intend to give the next book in the series a go. Now that I've warmed up to the character of Johannes, I'm curious to learn more about him.

Thanks for joining our club and participating! Hope you stick around :-)

Something to say about the winner of our July anniversary poll? This is the place to do it.

I'm really looking forward to this one. It's been on my 'to read' list for a while. I was prepared to rig the votes if it didn't get picked. Did I type that out loud?

Ez wrote: "I'd be curious to know if Johannes is any less of a tool once he has his soul."

Read the next book in the series and see :-P

Sure, The Necromancer had its share of flaws, but I thought it was harmless and enjoyable. Certain things frustrated me, like the vagueness of the time period in which the story took place, but they were all forgivable.

Time's almost up for our one year anniversary book poll! You've given us some great suggestions so far, with Ernest Cline's 'Ready Player One' currently in the lead. Thanks to everyone for participating! If you haven't yet, there's still time!

We're still taking votes both here and on twitter (@LiterallyGeeky) right up to the end of next live hangout on Monday the 30th where we'll announce the winner.

Who will it be? Tune in and see!

But Ez, isn't there an initiative this September that encourages people to read banned books?

Tell us more about it, please.

Ready Player One was going to be my pick back in December, but I went for a holiday-themed book instead.

I came close to choosing it in April too, but we had just read Fahrenheit 451 and I didn't want to do sci-fi two months in a row.

So yeah, I've been wanting to read it for a while, you could say.

Red wrote: "I could suggest Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver, but at 940+ pages, I think it ..."

I think I just heard Lara faint....

Does Tim Curry in Legend count?

I can't think of any fantasy books I've read that would qualify as 'hipster'. Although I have read Stephen King's Eyes of the Dragon, which might fall under that category since he's known more for horror.

As far as 'hipster horror' goes, I was on a Poppy Z Brite kick back in my dark and brooding days. For a more modern book, I think House of Leaves falls under this category.

Our one year anniversary is in July! We've got something special planned for the occasion. Look for the announcement during our next hangout on May 26th!

We've created an @LiterallyGeeky twitter account!

Hopefully, it will make it easier to keep track of comments during the hangout. Also, it's a place for casual book discussion, 140 characters at a time. Give it a follow!

Something to say about Lud-in-the-Mist? Here's the place to say it, or type it, whatever.

Personally, I hadn't heard of this book before Donovan brought it up. Fantasy is my favorite genre, so I'm looking forward to reading it! It predates Tolkien.

Not going to finish because of time constraints, or because the book is too weird?

If it's the latter, I can say it's worth it to keep reading. The second half of the book is where it really hits its stride.

There are a few second hand English book shops here in Berlin, but the selection isn't the greatest. I use amazon. A couple clicks and it's in my mailbox the next day.

Just a heads up! We're two weeks away from our John Dies at the End discussion.

I'm looking forward to hearing your opinions about this one, and not just because it was my pick.

Tune in on the 28th!

I loved the prologue, so I'm anxiously reading through the flashbacks to find out how they got to that point.

I'm also about a third of the way through and am curious to see how the film version handled certain elements of the story.

Either way, it should make for an interesting discussion come the 28th!

Sorry, but in this dystopian future, bacon is everywhere. There's only one copy of The Hobbit. Mine.