Who Wants To Be A Bibliophile discussion
Chat Room
>
Reading Elsewhere
What exactly is it about, Sanasai? I'm in S&L as well, and I've seen all the threads about it, but I don't want to look at them in case I want to read Wool at some point. Is there something you can tell me about the book that isn't spoilery?
I would say...that it is primarily a story about human nature? It's Post-apocalypse, and of course most of those types of stories are ones that explore the nature of humanity and how we react to extremes. The nature of the apocalypse doesn't play a very big role, it's very focused on what's happening with multiple people in their "right now" moments. Hard truths and the difficulty of facing them and choosing paths that will affect large numbers of your fellows is also a general theme running through it. I wouldn't say it delves super deep into any detailed philosophy, but it prompts looking at things and kind of expects the reader to think more about them beyond the scope that the book actually covers. I think that's as specific as I dare get :DIt's a hard book to not spoil! and yeah the S&L topics have open spoiler-y stuff for things up through the very end of each division, I made sure I only read the ones from 2 sections before whatever I was currently on! :)
I just (finally) finished the Second Chronicles Of Amber. I've got to say, the ending was very...meh. It's too bad, because there were parts of that series that I thought were really cool, like Merlin's strangling cord Frakir, which just disappears after book 9. All in all though, not as good as the first five books.
I remember I really liked the Amber books, but now I've had to go and pull them out again, because I can't remember the dividing line :)I do remember that the Courts of Chaos sections didn't feel as compelling as the action in Amber though. Corwin making a new pattern always intrigued me, that was one of the more interesting things to happen later on that I can recall off hand.
Mod
Right now I'm reading The Warrior Prophet, which is the second book in Bakker's Prince Of Nothing trilogy. It's extremely dark, but I like that. It's basically the story of how a villain hijacks a holy crusade from within to use for his own purposes. The first book was also good, but made me feel a little uneasy with respect to its portrayal of women. It was, however, written in a very intelligent manner, which leads me to believe that the author has a point to make on this topic, so I'm sort of waiting to see where he takes it before I pass judgement.
Hadn't heard of that one before. I only know 2 other series that make the main character/spend a lot of time on the point of view of a villain, one of them does it well, although on a recent re-read I felt it suffered from a slow pace, the other I thought was a bit too predictable. We often get to see borderline "bad" people, or miscreants redeemed, or a few bad people mixed in with lots of folks to root for, but it's hard to pull off the main view being on someone we'll despise. Very ambitious.
What books specifically are you refering to, Sanasai?
Mod
Yeah I'm not as fond of Fallen Moon as Cole is ;) but that's ok! They were alright, they just didn't excite me. The Dark Griffin starts that series. The writer is fairly new, she may improve in time. :) The other was The Sovereign Stone from Weis/Hickman Well of Darkness being the first book. I liked them, but I found when I went back to it that parts of it felt like things were moving very slowly. Could have been just my mood though, sometimes I'm just not in the right headspace for how a book feels. They were well done though.
So while I'm waiting on this months pick to be available at my library, I grabbed The Wizard Hunters and it was a fun read. Kinda steam punk/fantasy mix, nothing that'll change the world or how you think about it, but an enjoyable tale. I know Cole will recognize the author, maybe some of the rest of you also! :)
Right now I'm reading Grendel. I've only just started, but it's pretty cool so far. It's written in first-person, which is interesting because Grendel is completely insane. I love Beowulf, so I may be a little biased toward this book.
I just started Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? It's pretty interesting so far, and it still has a lot of relevance (despite being set in the dark and gloomy future of 1992). I really liked the movie Bladerunner, which was based on this book, but of course it seems as if the movie only scratched the surface of the myriad themes of this novel. Ain't that always the way?
Right now I'm reading The Heroes and so far it's great. I'm always a little cautious of things which are quite popular, as I find that those things don't always suit my tastes, and Abercrombie seems very in vogue with the fantasy set right now, so I was hesitant to pick up one of his books. I have to say I'm very impressed, though. Everyone I've heard talk about him says how brutal and violent his books are, and while this one is violent, it's also quite intelligent. There is relevant social commentary in there, for those like me who appreciate that sort of thing.I would warn other Abercrombie first-timers away from this book, though. Although it is a stand-alone, it takes place in the same world as his other books, and there is a chronology to them. Unfortunately for me, this book is the fifth in chronological order. Now I'm going to have to find the other four!
Reading The Black Company. Quite unimpressed. I'm going to push through and finish it, but it feels like a chore.
Just finished New Amsterdam. I didn't realize when I started it that it was a group of short stories. They were enjoyable, but I think I would've gotten more out of them if I'd read full size novels of these characters first. I'm assuming there are some :)The last story out of the set (Lumere) was the best, partly because of the increased familiarity with the characters, but mostly just because it appealed to me more.
Oh, and I just discovered Touch of Power. I'd read the start of Snyder's other series, Poison Study, as part of my VF group, and it was a fun read, but this one was much better. I had to request an ILL for book 2, hopefully they can find it for me, cause I'm very excited to keep going with this one :)
Less impressive, but fun little cheesy pieces of fluff, were The Doomsday Vault and Lady of Devices
Totally predictable and lightweight reads, but done well on levels other than originality. I had already read the book S&L picked (good but too recent), and one of the VF picks(bad trash), so I've been scrambling for books to read lately and these filled a couple hours, which is good enough this month!
Oh, yes also The Hidden Goddess which i didn't realize was a book 2 - I'll have to find the first one now. Fun, not challenging, some of the secondary characters were more interesting than the mains, but it was...good enough.
Mod
Right now I am reading Stormdancer which is quite good so far. If you like Japanese mythology and steampunk, with kick ass heriones then try this one out.
Other than that I have just been reading FIMFiction on the web because it is free and I don't have any money (yes I like MLP). Just got a new job and that means money, which means real books!!!
Anyawy, after this book I am going to read the book of the for this group, is anyone else or did everyone leave the group with it being so enactive. I hope not!?
I'm reading The Lies of Locke Lamora right now, and I'm just about halfway through. Very good so far. A fantasy take on the crime caper novel. It's rather dark, but also really funny. I'd recommend it.
That's an awesome one, and the second one, Red Skies, is fun too. :)
just checked out The Darwin Elevator, it was pretty good, certainly better done than I hoped. I hadn't heard of it anywhere except another author's cross promotion, but I nabbed it from the library anyway, cause, free ya know :D And it was actually really well done, I'm definitely gonna be looking for the next one!
ok, stupid borrowed tablet kept eating my posts and wiping them out completely, so short version *scowls* The Broken Kingdoms (excellent)Blood Music (excellent)
William Shakespeare's Star Wars (silly fun)
more later!
Just Finished The Killing MoonVery good, and very unusual once again, just as the hundred thousand kingdoms books were. The first 6 chapters or so of this one were slow, I had a hard time getting into it until more of the main events started really rolling. With the kingdoms first book I was fascinated from the start, I just found I needed to work at figuring out what was going on. This book, it was more that I had trouble feeling engaged at first. Once I was into chapters 7 or 8 thereabouts, I got excited and involved with them finally and it was all non-stop compelling from there.
End result: Expect to have to be more patient than usual when starting the first book of a series from Jemisin, but rest assured it will pay off in the end. :)
oh and to re-visit Blood Music from a couple posts up, Greg Bear does very very science-y sci-fi, and this was a genetic science story. Lots of talk of DNA and mutagens and scary things happening very fast. I can't remember the other stuff I read by him well enough to rate securely after all these years but I expect that it's also all as good as I remember. Not light reading though, you'll have to work to get through these books unless you're already well versed in the science.
Okay, so I finally finished The Man in the High Castle (I've been really busy lately, so my reading time has been sadly quite limited). I was very impressed, although I haven't yet read a PKD book that sucked. I really liked the "alt-history book within an alt-history book" device. I heard also that Dick actually used the I Ching every time one of his characters in the book did, and he let the readings he got from the oracle direct the story, the same way Abendsen did, which seems like a pretty crazy experiment at first blush, but clearly it worked out for him.
thats neat that he really used the I Ching, i hadn't heard that. i liked the ending too, i had heard there was a twist but i didn't see the hints if there were any. it was well done.
I did find I had to keep reminding myself that the way the characters were speaking often was reflecting the effect of foreign speech patterns influencing English, rather than just being half-formed thoughts. It was very interesting the way he had people expressing themselves in conversation, especially with the businessman and his Japanese customers.
Yeah, that was interesting. At first I was like "Man, who edited this?," and then I noticed that when following the characters not dealing with the Japanese, the narrator didn't have the shortened sentences or missing words. Really interesting device. There was a lot going on in this book for how short it is.
Alright, finally finished The Dragon's Path, and I enjoyed it. Very reminiscent of ASOIAF in the way the narrative switched back and forth between characters in different parts of the world, and also in naming the chapters after the characters followed instead of numbering them or naming them after plot points. However, it felt like the scope of the story was more micro- than ASOIAF, probably because Abraham decided to follow fewer characters than Martin did. This could be either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your point of view. Interesting world too, although I felt the different races should have been described in more detail.
Yeah makes sense that he sounds a bit like Martin, I think he started off writing for the Wild Cards series that martin developed and ...edits? I believe? And he lives in the same area, I kinda got the impression that Martin's been a huge huge influence on him. I think I heard that there'll be more about the other races in book 2, hopefully that's right, I wanted to know more about them too. Gonna spoiler my more specific comments in case anyone else in the group decides to pick it up later, I hope they do, it was a lot of fun.
I read the prologue at night and finished the rest of the book next day, but I wish I'd gone back and re-read the prologue first, because it was fuzzy in my head since I was pretty tired. It took me til pg 250 when (view spoiler)
Also, some people I automatically started feeling sympathetic to became a lot less nice as we got to know them better. (view spoiler) and (view spoiler)
I thought Cithrin's strength's and weaknesses were very well balanced out and made her a very interesting character. (view spoiler)
I've been reading some of his other work while I wait for book 2 to make into my local library system, and the other series he did before this is also really good.
Yeah, I thought his characterizations were excellent, it's just that I think this sort of story benefits from a broader perspective (like in ASOIAF), so a few more characters followed would have been nice, in my opinion. I liked how he brought Clara into the story in the last 100 pages, but she's an interesting enough character that I wouldn't have minded more about her.I think the name you're trying to remember is Opal.
Also, I love how the climax of the story was a bank audit. And it was interesting!
I see you caught up with Red Seas, gonna look for book 3 soon? I'm on the waiting list at the library for it, and I can't wait!
Yeah, I really enjoyed Red Seas. I'd heard that it was worse than Lies, but I didn't really find that to be the case. I tend to love naval adventure stories, though, so I really enjoyed that aspect of it.I actually already picked up The Republic of Thieves, but I generally don't read books from the same series back-to-back (it's over too quickly if I do!). I'll read a couple of other books before I go back to Locke and Jean.
Right now I'm reading Fevre Dream in honour of Halloween. Really good so far, and an interesting take on vampires.
I recently read Shadow and Claw. It's the first half of Gene Wolfe's SFF epic series Book Of The New Sun, collecting the first two books (The Shadow Of The Torturer and The Claw Of The Conciliator) into one volume. It was pretty intense. I can see why people have said that this series benefits from a re-read. Wolfe is really into unreliable narrators, and in this series the main character's unreliability is frequently due to dishonesty. It's told from first-person perspective and Severian (the main character) has a photographic memory, so anytime he says "I couldn't recall" or "I had forgotten" it's a clue that he's hiding something, but it's sort of left up to the reader to figure out what he's hiding and why. It really makes you have to pay attention as a reader.
Sounds interesting, I may have to check that out once crazy-work-time is done. I wouldn't be able to concentrate on that kind of book right now, Nov/Dec needs light and fluffy for me.I've been moving! and with working retail, Black Friday week has not been a prime time to be doing this, but the cards just fell so we couldn't pass up the opportunity. So I haven't gotten around to reading *anything* for a while, but now everything's in the new place, we just have a lot of organizing to do! Might be able to squeeze a book or two in there ;)
Okay Sanasai, I've started Republic Of Thieves now...and it's pretty awesome so far. I'll comment more when I finish it.
Bryan wrote: "I recently read Shadow and Claw. It's the first half of Gene Wolfe's SFF epic series Book Of The New Sun, collecting the first two books (The Shadow Of The Torturer and The Claw Of Th..."That sounds really neat. Are the clues things the reader has observed too and maybe just not noticed the importance? Foreshadowing (if done well) is one of the most impressive features of a novel too me. When you say dishonesty though what exactly do you mean?
The reader mostly has to figure stuff out by inference, and it's do-able, but there are also a few straight-up mysteries (keep in mind also that I've only read the first two books of the four book series). For instance, without being too spoilery, I can say that there is an incident which is about to happen at the end of book 1, but then the book suddenly ends before the incident occurs. Book 2 starts up a few days (or possibly weeks) later, and the main character makes only vague references in passing as to what the incident actually was. Now, maybe this gets explained in later books, but the reader is sort of left to wonder what the hell happened there, and why Severian never wants to discuss it.A number of the instances of dishonesty aren't quite as mysterious, but they are rather subtle, although the reader can definitely pick up on them if they're attentive. Most of them have to do with the main character glossing over details which would portray him in a negative light (and there are quite a few of those). I'm not going to say much more about it now, partially because I don't want to spoil anything for anyone who wishes to read it themselves, but also because I myself haven't finished the series yet, and I feel like there's a lot more to come. I'd definitely recommend it, though, if you like fantasy with a more literary bent to it.
Sounds really intriguing and even possibly dark. Definitely has piqued my interest so I'll try to get around to it once my mountain of to-reads dies down. I hope the rest of the series is just as fun to read for you!
Back in full swing again! I grabbed Nexus while it was only $2 on the daily deal, it was pretty interesting, especially since in the authors note after, he says he stayed as close as possible to things that actually exist or are being attempted. I also finally grabbed a couple of Seanan McGuire's Incryptid series, which I've been looking at for a couple years now, and I'm glad I picked them up. They're on the lighter side, but I find I like her touch with the humor, and while it gets a little silly or improbable sometimes, it's clearly being deliberately that way so I don't mind.
I've also been fascinated by the Habitat series by Kenya Wright. Including Chameleon It's... strange, I'm not always comfortable with it, but it's been very interesting.
Oh, and in case you pop back in someday Cole, I finally got around to reading Geist, and I did enjoy it. :)
So this year's reading has been off to a great start so far for me, how's everyone else doing?
I just read Hyperion by Dan Simmons. Amazingly vivid writing that jumped off the pages for me. I really enjoyed it and look forward to the next in the series. I just got George RR Martin's Game of Thrones. I'm a little concerned as I like to steer away from 500+ page books but there's enough buzz I figure I'll give it a go.
I've tried Hyperion a couple times, and while I like the story of Saul & Rachel and somewhat the priest's story, most of the rest just doesn't do much for me. But then, I always hated the Canterbury Tales too. I absolutely loved GoT, but I read super fast, so a thousand pages isn't as big of a commitment for me as it is for most people. :) I've heard people say they feel there's too lengthy descriptions of too many things, so if you decide you just absolutely can't make it through the book because of that, or because it's too big a time-hog, then I recommend the show. It's not as awesome as the books, but it's still pretty darn good!
Sanasai wrote: "I've tried Hyperion a couple times, and while I like the story of Saul & Rachel and somewhat the priest's story, most of the rest just doesn't do much for me. But then, I always hated the Canterbu..."Interesting. I found Hyperion very easy to read. Did you make it to the Detective's tale (Brawne Lamia)? I felt like the main plot didn't materialize until that story and its basically at the end. While I really loved reading it, I do realize that the structure in which Hyperion is written lets Simmons hold on to all the cards so to speak. What I mean is by having the characters recount their 'stories' the reader has no way to guess what could have happened or what will happen next because he can simply change course from whatever your thinking and make it fit. In other words he intentionally uses dislinear plotting to forever keep the reader in the dark until close to the end... BUT I also loved Canterbury Tales so that probably explains our drastically different takes on it.
Just started GoT but I will definitely read it especially since you say its better than the show... probably will never see it
and that should read 'change course from whatever *you're* thinking' my former English teacher would shoot me right now
Yeah I'm sure I made it all the way to the end the first time I read it, I don't think I finished it the second time. Being kept in suspense is OK by me, as long as I feel invested in the outcome. It was certainly well done on a technical level of writing, he does the craft well, it just didn't appeal on a more primal level for me. My 11th grade teacher was an emergency replacement, a drama teacher, and she didn't seem to know what to do with us so she just dragged Canterbury Tales out for the whole year. At age 16 or so, that's just way too long to spend on it, I think we all hated it by the time we were done. So while using the structure of it for Hyperion was clever, it definitely influenced how I felt. :)
And that brings up an interesting topic.... what books did we all discover in our classes that we really loved but would never have found otherwise? And what ones do we each think actually suffered more for our exposure to them through school, that we might have liked if we found them later on our own?One of the better books I remember being introduced to was Irving Stone's The Agony and the Ecstasy about Michelangelo. I absolutely loved it. It really made the time and area come alive for me, and it felt like getting to know this long ago sculptor at such a personal level - he was suddenly very real and accessible. It also had incredible details of the sculpting and painting methods of the day, which really caught my mind, and gave me a greater interest in learning about art.
Others I remember liking include Brave New World, and Thomas More: A Man For All Seasons, although they didn't get as dramatic a reaction from me.
My biggest example for the second part is obvious I think ;) but for honorary mention I must say that while I love love love Stephen Crane, I could go the rest of my life without ever having to discuss Red Badge of Courage again. It's not a bad story, but it's the only thing of his that ever gets talked about. After 3 different grade levels of talking about it, I was thoroughly done. The Open Boat and The Monster were excellent stories that could have stood in for one of those repetitions. Or even his poetry - the man was an absolute genius at poetry, but it gets completely ignored in most discussions of him.
I definitely would not have discovered Al Quiet on the Western Front. It was stark and so different from what I was used to reading at that age ~14. I had never encountered a book that pinched humanity as it is and not in the fantasy that the author wishes it to be. The way he portrays the troops' leader (I believe their former mailman) and how power corrupted him just felt so real.Books I wish I hadn't been forced on me were To Kill a Mockingbird and The Great Gatsby. At some time I would love to go back through those with a fresh mind, but I feel like they've been hacked and dissected across so many term papers that its impossible to enjoy them without looking for the symbolism and whatever other jazz some teacher wants.
I think it was Tom Sawyer who convinces his friend to paint a fence. As long as his friend thinks its a game he enjoys it but if he saw it as work then yuck! Its amazing how context and mood drastically alter the way we appreciate or dislike certain things... And yeah a year of Canterbury Tales would take me over the edge to. We read six of the best stories in two weeks from it and then watched A Knight's Tale so maybe that's why I have fonder memories :)
Hey guys, sorry I haven't been posting lately, I've just been super busy. Interesting question, Sanasai. I actually don't think I read anything in high school that I hated, surprisingly enough. I read 1984, Brave New World, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Animal Farm and Of Mice and Men, and really enjoyed all of them. Mind you, we never spent a whole year on any of them.
Who Wants To Be A Bibliophile
Books mentioned in this topic
Stories of the Raksura, Volume 1: The Falling World & The Tale of Indigo and Cloud (other topics)Radiant (other topics)
A Cast of Stones (other topics)
Saga: A Novel of Medieval Iceland (other topics)
Chasing the Star Garden (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
James Alan Gardner (other topics)Rachel Swirsky (other topics)
Kenya Wright (other topics)
I just finished Wool Wool Omnibus from Sword & Laser's monthly pick. It was very different from anything else I've picked up lately and and a nice change. It offers up a lot to think about, and it manages both a grim feeling and a hopeful one at the same time.