What are we reading?

Started by Martok, March 05, 2012, 01:13:59 PM

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Gusington

^I have that book in my mahogany-lined, to-read library next to the brandy snifters.

A lot of my friends and family have read Rutherford, either London, Paris or some others and many are 'meh' about him, that's why I haven't jumped on the book yet.


слава Україна!

We can't live under the threat of a c*nt because he's threatening nuclear Armageddon.

-JudgeDredd

Staggerwing

Read Sarum. IIRC it spans from just after the ice Age all the way up to modern times, following several family groups as they wax and wane in significance.
Vituð ér enn - eða hvat?  -Voluspa

Nothing really rocks and nothing really rolls and nothing's ever worth the cost...

"Don't you look at me that way..." -the Abyss
 
'When searching for a meaningful embrace, sometimes my self respect took second place' -Iggy Pop, Cry for Love

... this will go down on your permanent record... -the Violent Femmes, 'Kiss Off'-

"I'm not just anyone, I'm not just anyone-
I got my time machine, got my 'electronic dream!"
-Sonic Reducer, -Dead Boys

Windigo

Frederick Pohl died just recently... RIP
My doctor wrote me a prescription for daily sex.

My wife insists that it says dyslexia but what does she know.

Gusington

Sarum eh...got it up on Amazon now.


слава Україна!

We can't live under the threat of a c*nt because he's threatening nuclear Armageddon.

-JudgeDredd

republic

I was looking through popular Amazon science fiction and I stumbled across Empire (In Her Name Redemption Trilogy) by Michael R. Hicks.  The author offers the first book (Empire) for free so I thought I'd give it a whirl.  Wow...I haven't had a book grab my attention that fast in a very long time. 

According to Kindle, I've read 31% of the book in 2 days.. Which for me is amazing since I read so slow plus I have so little time to read.

Airborne Rifles

Quote from: Staggerwing on September 09, 2013, 07:00:51 PM
^Great book! I have been thinking about re-reading Sarum recently. Rutherford also wrote one about London that fits nicely inside the greater narrative as well as a book about the history of Russia which I have yet to read.

EDIT: Just clicked your link. Looks like Rutherford wrote a few more books as well that I might need to check out including a (Gus Alert!) one about New York.

I read Russia by Rutherford a few years ago and was a little unimpressed.  Maybe I need to give him another chance.  He seems to be one of the only people writing in the vein of James Michener, whose books I love.  Russia was ok, just didn't really keep me enthralled.

Gusington

Yeah I've read that Rutherford wants to be the new Michener but so far has fallen short.


слава Україна!

We can't live under the threat of a c*nt because he's threatening nuclear Armageddon.

-JudgeDredd

Martok

Quote from: Gusington on September 09, 2013, 07:15:22 PM
^I have that book in my mahogany-lined, to-read library next to the brandy snifters.

A lot of my friends and family have read Rutherford, either London, Paris or some others and many are 'meh' about him, that's why I haven't jumped on the book yet.
Count me as one of those in the "meh" category.  (See my above comments regarding The Rebels of Ireland.) 

"Like we need an excuse to drink to anything..." - Banzai_Cat
"I like to think of it not as an excuse but more like Pavlovian Response." - Sir Slash

"At our ages, they all look like jailbait." - mirth

"If we had lines here that would have crossed all of them. For the 1,077,986th time." - Gusington

"Government is so expensive that it should at least be entertaining." - airboy

"As long as there's bacon, everything will be all right." - Toonces

Lafayette

I would say that Sarum is definitely his best, and like the other England-based ones (London, The Forest(?)) also.  I think they have declined in quality as he has gone along, and found Paris a real slog (and New York not much better).  But Sarum is excellent- actually, portions of it stayed with me a long time.

MetalDog

I read his Russia book.  Some of it was a slog, some of it was decent, none of it bowled me over enough to remember anything more than the vague outlines of the plot.
And the One Song to Rule Them All is Gimme Shelter - Rolling Stones


"If its a Balrog, I don't think you get an option to not consent......." - bob

Staggerwing

Quote from: republic on September 10, 2013, 06:43:40 AM
I was looking through popular Amazon science fiction and I stumbled across Empire (In Her Name Redemption Trilogy) by Michael R. Hicks.  The author offers the first book (Empire) for free so I thought I'd give it a whirl.  Wow...I haven't had a book grab my attention that fast in a very long time. 

According to Kindle, I've read 31% of the book in 2 days.. Which for me is amazing since I read so slow plus I have so little time to read.

It looks like two of the books are free on kindle right now but what is confusing is the order the books are in. It appears that there are three different trilogies based on the In Her Name plot. This page shows them in recommended order:
http://authormichaelhicks.com/books-by-michael-r-hicks/
Vituð ér enn - eða hvat?  -Voluspa

Nothing really rocks and nothing really rolls and nothing's ever worth the cost...

"Don't you look at me that way..." -the Abyss
 
'When searching for a meaningful embrace, sometimes my self respect took second place' -Iggy Pop, Cry for Love

... this will go down on your permanent record... -the Violent Femmes, 'Kiss Off'-

"I'm not just anyone, I'm not just anyone-
I got my time machine, got my 'electronic dream!"
-Sonic Reducer, -Dead Boys

JasonPratt

#1061
Finished The Gathering Storm on schedule last night, Book 12 of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, the first of the final trilogy (sort of) and the first book co-authored by Sanderson after RJ's death. (Whew!)

Yep, quite happy with it, although it lacked a bit of polish. I'm not complaining about a lack of detail, which was sufficient and didn't overwhelm the book the way it threatened even in RJ's last pre-mortem book Knife of Dreams (although that was a vast improvement over the previous six declining in quality). But there were times when apparently Sanderson lost track of where characters were in their scenes and so they teleported around a bit; or times when he would repeat terms nearby in close proximity for no artistic reason.

Plotwise dramatic things happen with a good leavening of action on occasion, even though I think overall there might have been less action in this book than in KoD. The final few chapters threatened a lot of tragic action for dramatic effect, since Rand gets so depressed and insane that he nearly [does something spoilery I guess?] before more-or-less randomly fixing himself and going sane. So I don't begrudge a lack of a final action scene since important plot things happen instead (unlike in CoT), and anyway Egwene's side of the plot had been resolved with a nicely flashy climactic action sequence several chapters earlier. The only thing I grudge about the ending was the inclusion of a short chapter where one character learns something we already learned (and had been recently reminded of multiple times), which someone else in the scene already knows about, and which I can't figure out what use that particular character (Min) could even possibly make of it. Probably the scene was set up so someone else in the scene (Nynaeve) will learn it as a side-effect, but why did it have to be there at the end of the novel when nothing happens from it? It isn't like Nyn goes LIGHT YES THAT IS THE SOLUTION I SHALL CERTAINLY DO SOMETHING ABOUT THAT NEXT BOOK SINCE WE'RE AT THE END OF THIS ONE. ;) Possibly the chapter was set up so that Min could feel like she was accomplishing something with her philosophic study, but she gets the answer (which we already knew and had been far more effectively reminded of recently) from someone else anyway. Well, it was a short chapter. And by the way the chapters in TGS (and KoD for that matter) tend to be a lot shorter than in previous books, so the pacing moves along a lot better. I just didn't want this chapter interrupting the final plot dramatics for the book.

I'm spending a lot of effort on that minor complaint because I don't have much else to complain about in this book. :) Well, I did complain a minute ago about the resolution to Rand's ongoing mental difficulties, and while that's very nicely set up, and probably was drawn directly from notes left by RJ, I think it could have been handled a bit better.

THIS COULD COUNT AS A SPOILER I GUESS SO SKIP DOWNWARD

It comes down to LIFE SUCKS AND WE KEEP REPEATING SUCKY LIFES OVER AND OVER SO ANNIHILATE EVERYTHING SCREW YOU GOD and then suddenly bi-polar flipping to OH WAIT NICE THINGS HAPPEN TO AND IF WE CEASE TO EXIST THERE WON'T BE THOSE EITHER OKAY I'LL KEEP AT IT YAY FOR HAPPINESS.

Maybe that seemed weak to RJ and/or Sanderson because there's an extra bit where Rand decides that being reborn gives someone the ability to fix what they did wrong the first time, for which he's verrrry vaguely grateful to the Creator -- which seems even weaker and outright self-contradictory because earlier his whole complaint was that the Pattern keeps forcing people to live their lives over and over again into infinity and nothing gets finally accomplished (for which he was hot to blame God) in a situation where they have to keep winning to get that unsatisfactory result but one loss means the end of everything or maybe worse if the Dark One gets control but doesn't annihilate the world. My point being that the "second chance" rationale makes literally no sense as an answer to that problem. Also, the second chance rationale only really applies to him out of everyone else in the world because he's the only person who remembers doing it wrong the first time.

Well, RJ's metaphysics for his story are kind of half-assed and screwed up anyway, mainly there to provide drama and coloring, so trying to work through them to some satisfying reason to keep on living and save people instead of destroy them would naturally lead to screwy results anyway, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised. But it was clearly supposed to be meaningful as a scene (and superficially was, it's set up great), and wasn't supposed to come off as a bipolar mood swing of a crazy person but as a crazy person being healed back to sanity so he can effectively finish out the story.

Now that I think of it, I have a suspicion that Min was originally intended to be in the scene, since talking Rand out of total annihilation would have given her a clear plot arc in the book: she does serve one much earlier to set Rand off into stone-cold killer mode, and by logic of dramatic balance and her studying of philosophy and metaphysics since back around Book 7 (!!) she should be part of the solution. Moreover, the chapter title itself was "Veins of Gold", which for the last few books has always been a reference to the love Rand feels coming from Elayne, Min and Avi (...it's complicated). She's the one he's keeping near; it was her screw-up that led to this crisis (insisting on being around him all the time when she's a liability in a fight); having her nearby during his philosophical climax would have more directly reminded him of the importance of love and protecting love and DANGIT HE'S NOT DOING HER ANY FAVORS BY ANNIHILATING HER! With her divorced (in a manner of speaking) from the proceedings, his resolution about love becomes much weaker and less personal: at most he vaguely wonders if Ilyena reincarnated, too, somewhere -- but even then he never thinks LIGHT IF I WIPE OUT EVERYTHING I'M KILLING ILYENA AGAIN WHEREVER SHE IS LIKE LAST TIME ONLY WORSE! Which would have tied in much better with the reason he spends much of the book in an emotional shutdown to begin with. (I'm trying to be vague about details for non-spoiler purposes.)

Maybe when the time came, Sanderson just couldn't figure out how to get Rand and Min together in the same room again in some plausible way so they could both go to the top of the mountain and have a stronger climactic scene. But even without her there, it could have been handled better.


END MORE DETAILED SPOILER COMPLAINT

Oh, and that hugely important plot point which Kod's original cover showed finally kicking into gear? It doesn't actually get done in this book either, after increasing teases about it for the past three books at least. I understand why from a plot strategy perspective, since Mat had to be free first to follow that plot point and he wasn't until the very tail end of TGS, but it's still kind of frustrating. (Mat does get to do a few nifty things, so I'm not unhappy about his side of the plot otherwise.) Egwene's side of the plot works up and resolves in a very satisfactory fashion, and that helps strengthen the book. Perrin's more-or-less marking time, along with Elayne elsewhere, since resolving their big plot points in KoD, but Sanderson doesn't spend silly amounts of time and effort describing them and everyone else around them marking time in detail, so yay!  ;D

Altogether, I'd rank TGS slightly higher than KoD, mainly because KoD still had some annoying leftover over-descriptions. Otherwise they're about equally good, but equally good in somewhat different ways. Had the resolution of Rand's madness plot been handled better, and it could have been handled better even without Min being there, I'd regard it as being substantially better than TGS despite having somewhat less action in it.

Ten days from now, I'll report on Towers of Midnight. I have no reason to believe I won't enjoy it, although I happen to know from other readers that The Last Battle doesn't really start until the final book (despite this book heavily indicating it's going to start pretty much any time now). Maybe Book 13 will have more to do with the surviving Forses, since the Forsaken only make a couple of token appearances in TGS.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

Martok

<Skip's Jason's post, going "la-la-la-la, I can't hear you...">




I finished The Book of the Dun Cow this morning.  Truly a terrific read; I'm thinking I need to pick up a copy of it for myself. 

Next up:  Harry Turtledove's Ruled Britannia, a what-if look at England under Spanish rule after the Armada smashed Elizabeth's fleet.  It's been sitting on my bookshelf for quite some time since I last picked it up, and I was suddenly moved to read it again. 

"Like we need an excuse to drink to anything..." - Banzai_Cat
"I like to think of it not as an excuse but more like Pavlovian Response." - Sir Slash

"At our ages, they all look like jailbait." - mirth

"If we had lines here that would have crossed all of them. For the 1,077,986th time." - Gusington

"Government is so expensive that it should at least be entertaining." - airboy

"As long as there's bacon, everything will be all right." - Toonces

eyebiter

.
#1063
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JasonPratt

Quote from: Martok on September 11, 2013, 01:23:12 PM
<Skip's Jason's post, going "la-la-la-la, I can't hear you...">

Oh, yeah, I guess that large middle portion might count as a spoiler even though I left out details of specifically what happens. I've added spoiler warnings now (and tried to reduce the font of that portion to make it easier to skip past.)

On the other hand, had you read the post you could have mocked me for repeatedly referring to The Gathering Storm as TGD.  :o

I am 100% sure the explanation for this is that, as a Christian universalist who is also the student of a famous apologist, C. S. Lewis, who wasn't a universalist but who was himself the student of a famous Christian universalist, George MacDonald, whose views Lewis somewhat reverses to look more like his own in The Great Divorce... {inhalllle!} ...I'm often asked to comment about what happens in TGD, so I have a habit of using that acronym.

Which admittedly counts as being at least slightly insane.




QuoteI finished The Book of the Dun Cow this morning.  Truly a terrific read; I'm thinking I need to pick up a copy of it for myself.

If you get an opportunity to read the sequel, let me know what you think DON'T!  ;D

QuoteNext up:  Harry Turtledove's Ruled Britannia, a what-if look at England under Spanish rule after the Armada smashed Elizabeth's fleet.  It's been sitting on my bookshelf for quite some time since I last picked it up, and I was suddenly moved to read it again.

Huh. That sounds like one of his less... colorful books. The Spanish don't use alien fairies or something like that eventually?
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!