What are we reading?

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

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Staggerwing

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...">




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.

If that's the book I'm thinking of then you will see Shakespeare in a new light.
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

Martok

Quote from: JasonPratt on September 11, 2013, 08:33:04 PM
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.)
Oh, no worries.  As soon as I saw you mention The Gathering Storm, I knew to just skip your post.  (Not all of us need to be told "look away"; I am, on occasion, able to use the brains I was born with.)  :) 



Quote from: JasonPratt on September 11, 2013, 08:33:04 PM
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
Rest assured, I have no intention of reading the sequel.  I've heard it has a downer ending, which -- realistic though it may be -- is enough to turn me off to it. 



Quote from: JasonPratt on September 11, 2013, 08:33:04 PM
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?
Ha, no.  The premise is presented in a reasonably plausible way, as is the course of events during the book itself.  It's actually a very good read, and was the book that turned me onto Turtledove in the first place. 




Quote from: Staggerwing on September 11, 2013, 09:34:31 PM
Quote from: Martok on September 11, 2013, 01:23:12 PM
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.

If that's the book I'm thinking of then you will see Shakespeare in a new light.
Well I've already read it twice before (I've owned the book for 7-8 years now), but yes, it did cause me to look at old Billy-boy from a different perspective.  I think Turtledove does a good job of portraying the world in which Shakespeare lived, and how the man himself lived as well --  something I'd always had trouble imagining. 

"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

republic

Quote from: Staggerwing on September 11, 2013, 05:38:14 AM
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/

I usually prefer to read books in the order the author wrote them.  I have to say "In Her Name: Empire" is so far one of my favorite Science fiction books.  I've started volunteering for night feedings just so I can read for a few minutes. lol

JasonPratt

#1068
I did in fact finish The Towers of Midnight, book 13 of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, on schedule back on Friday, but being lazy busy I didn't get around to posting.

Don't worry, Martok, no spoilers this time. ;)

As expected, the story kept up a good pace with plenty of action sprinkled through it and lots of plot points being resolved preparatory to the Last Battle (tm). Which doesn't really start until somewhere in the final book, but that's okay. (Trivia note: when I opened my Kindle edition of Book 14, I saw a huge gap in the chapter bar at the bottom, and wondered if there was a formatting error. Nope, that's the chapter actually called "The Last Battle", and by itself not counting the other Last Battley stuff around it, it runs 22% of the 850ish pages of narrative text.)

Once again the title really has nothing at all to do with the story -- the reference to Towers of Midnight should have been something to do with the Seanchan Empire, but the story is never going there (RJ planned to run an epilogue series afterward which BS has said he probably won't do), so a brief prophetic viewing shows the Towers maybe representing the last remaining Forsaken who don't do a whole lot in the plot. Whatever.

I seriously wondered whether they would spend this next to last book with Mat still having not yet accomplished that Thing He Has Been Prophesied To Do Since Literally Book One And Which RJ and BS Have Been Teasing Us Could Happen Each Book Since Back Around Book Ten -- but BS saves it for the grand finale at the 90% mark. (Readers will know what I'm talking about. It was shown on the cover of Book 11, for no good reason at all.)

One thing I didn't like about the structure of the story was how Perrin and a major minor hero character (who had only been introduced in the past few books although we've heard about him since at least as far back as Book 2) spend literally the first half of the book catching up to the climactic incident of The Gathering Storm; which wouldn't be so bad in itself but everyone else in the plot (including Rand) clearly has moved along to doing other things! This would have bothered me more if it had been more obvious they were plot lagging substantially behind other chapters, but it was still annoying to discover I had been made to jump through temporal plot hoops. I guess those portions of plot had originally been slated for the previous book and then moved forward to keep from overstuffing that one while padding out this one. Fortunately, those chapters are still pretty good. I liked reading them, I just didn't like how they were presented once I realized what was going on. If they absolutely had to be saved for this book, then heck go the distance and just flip back and forth between those two parallel plot threads until they catch up with everyone else, and then start letting us know what Rand and the others are doing.

But these are minor complaints overall. I'm nostalgically excited to see this long-running story finally coming to a close in a suitably epic fashion, and I'll comment later about the final book when I finish it (probably on Sept 29 at this rate).

Meanwhile, because I am insane, my little side project of trimming down the middle sloggy books 6-10 is slowly humming along: I've nicked around 28 thousand words out of the first eight chapters (and prologue) of Lord of Chaos already. Not that anyone other than maybe my Dad and myself will ever be able to (legally) read it, but it's nice to think that ten years from now if I feel like spending another five months plugging through the books I won't have to spend so much time on those five. (Maybe by then I'll even have finished my reduction project!  ;D )
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!

BanzaiCat

I'm about halfway through Ender's Game, and having never read it before, it's pretty awesome.

GDS_Starfury

Toonces - Don't ask me, I just close my eyes and take it.

Gus - I use sweatpants with flannel shorts to soak up my crotch sweat.

Banzai Cat - There is no "partial credit" in grammar. Like anal sex. It's either in, or it's not.

Mirth - We learned long ago that they key isn't to outrun Star, it's to outrun Gus.

Martok - I don't know if it's possible to have an "anti-boner"...but I now have one.

Gus - Celery is vile and has no reason to exist. Like underwear on Star.


MetalDog

Quote from: Banzai_Cat on September 23, 2013, 08:31:11 PM
I'm about halfway through Ender's Game, and having never read it before, it's pretty awesome.

Envy isn't quite the word, but, I wish it was me who was only half through Ender's Game for the first time.  *heavy sigh*
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

JasonPratt

On schedule, tonight I finished A Memory of the Light, the 14th (not counting the goofy prologue novel) and final book of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time.

No, I'm not overly sure what the title was supposed to refer to, but at least there are more plausible candidates than for ToM or KoD or CoT.

A more accurate title for the book would be A Battle of All The Asskicking. Easily 80% of the book amounts to fighting of some sort, which is appropriate -- any Grog who gets this far will appreciate it, although even for my taste it got kind of numbing after a while. But hey, it's The Final Battle (and the Last Hunt, among other things), so all the stops had to be pulled out.

I'll have more comments tomorrow I expect. My short comment is that I'm happy with the book, happy I read the series, sad and nostalgic that the series is over (and for other personal reasons not directly related to the series which I'm not going to talk about), and Martok can proceed with reading the final trilogy secure in another vote for it Being Worth The Effort. :)

Now I'm off to go nostalgially weep or something. ;)
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

Being in a Star Trek mood, I've begun the first book (Day of the Vipers) in the Terok Nor trilogy, which covers the Cardassian occupation of Bajor.  I've not read the other novels covering Star Trek's "Lost Era" (the period roughly defined as dating from Kirk's death aboard the Enterprise-B until the events in The Next Generation), but I enjoy these. 

Given the significant influence "The Occupation" (as it's generally referred to in-universe) has on two of Trek's most prominent races, I was glad to see it finally get the expanded-universe treatment.  I only wish the series might have been longer. 




Quote from: JasonPratt on September 30, 2013, 08:39:21 PM
and Martok can proceed with reading the final trilogy secure in another vote for it Being Worth The Effort. :)
Thank you, Jason, for that reassurance.  :) 

"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

BanzaiCat

Quote from: Martok on September 11, 2013, 01:23:12 PM
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.

I can't ever read Harry Turtledove again; he bores the beejeezus out of me. I read his little space-lizard-invading-Earth-during-WWII series, and was constantly expecting something big or interesting to happen. Read all three of the conflict books, and nothing. I started reading the 'Colonization' trilogy, thought 'what the hell am I doing,' and stopped immediately. The best way I can summarize his space lizard operetta is thinking Harry is saying the whole time, "Isn't this COOL? SPACE LIZARDS!"

I've tried - TRIED - to read so many of his series, but they're all the same thing - virtually no interesting characters and a story that's pretty much weaved with the assumption "wouldn't it be cool IF..."

No, Mr. Turtledove. It might be cool IF, but if your characters are cardboard cut-outs, it is NOT cool.

As frosting on the lets-throw-history-at-the-wall-until-something-sticks series, his literary agents are assholes.

Wow, that was therapeutic.

Martok

#1075
Uff-da!  Sounds like you feel about Turtledove the same way I feel about George RR Martin and Robin Hobb (which is saying a lot). 


A pity his other stuff ruined him for you, as I suspect you might have actually enjoyed Ruled Britannia (which is a standalone novel, and not part of a series).  As it is, though, it's indeed probably best you stay away.  :-\ 

"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

JasonPratt

#1076
Okay, more thoughts on A Memory of Light now that I've slept on it a bit.

The primary question I guess is whether it was worth the increasing slog of Books 6 through 10. On more sober reflection this morning, I can honestly answer, "No, for me it isn't," and I have trouble believing even another fan will think so either. My main evidence for this is that I'm actually tinkering (pun half-intended) with the insanely huge task of trimming down 6,7,8 and 9,10,11 into two books rather than six (with new book 7 being mostly book 11). I wouldn't do that if I was satisfied with leaving those books in place for a prospective future readthrough some decade.

What good does that do someone who caved early? Well, it depends on when they caved. If you didn't even like the first three books, never mind, the final three books aren't going to be worth it for you (despite the groggy spectacle of a final 900ish page book largely dedicated to militant butt-kicking.) I will say that I thought the final three books bumped the plot along faster than the first three books did, if that helps other readers.

If you swore off after having read Book 10, then you can safely proceed with Book 11 and then the final trilogy: 11 is still a little laggy, but much better than any of the five books before it. If you absolutely need a recap, I'll recommend a resource in a minute.

If like me you swore off after having heard about Book 10, I can't say I recommend the doldrum of reading 10 before moving on. But the resource will help with that.

It comes down to whether you were reasonably entertained up to/through book 5, or sometime later in the slog. If so, the best advice I can give (until TOR recognizes my genius and throws money at printing the two-book compilation of books 6-11 ;) ) is to read Leigh Butler's WOT recap posts.


Leigh's whole series can be found here for free at TOR's site; TOR has also compiled her entries together (minus the comments from other readers no doubt) into a set of ebooks (or print books?) if you absolutely must pay someone a little more money for the convenience of having them all together in one place. (She hasn't actually finished AMOL yet, and doesn't seem likely to do so before the end of the year at the rate she's going, but that's irrelevant for our purposes.) I'm thinking of getting Vols 2,3 and 4 for my Dad so he can burn along better on his own readthrough with minimal bother.

She does however tend to spoil the plot a bit up through when she herself quit (after reading Knife of Dreams), so reader beware: she not only summarizes each chapter but provides (often snarky) commentary on them. And I don't know whether she and/or TOR has edited the ebook versions of her summary/commentaries to remove spoilers about books she previously read but hasn't gotten to yet in the re-read. For example, what's up with Verin? A big plot mystery dating back at least as far as Book 2, maybe Book 1, and Leigh accidentally spoils it early in her commentaries.


More actual thoughts on the final book later, as I have some other things to be doing this morning. But I thought I ought to give people some advice on a viable option (fully supported by TOR themselves) to get through to the final "good parts" in a reasonably short and entertaining fashion. :)
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!

W8taminute



This is the 13th book in the Horus Heresy series.   I'm about halfway through.  This one started a bit slow but events are starting to unfold rapidly.   I am determined to finish the series.
"You and I are of a kind. In a different reality, I could have called you friend."

Romulan Commander to Kirk

Martok

Thanks for your additional comments, Jason

Sounds like the last three books are definitely must-reads for me.  Not that I had much doubt -- they'd already been generally well-received by the fan-base, plus I already knew Sanderson to be a capable writer -- but I always find feedback from people I know to be invaluable (especially when it comes to books). 

"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

Gusington

Banzai Cat is so obtuse sometimes.


слава Україна!

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

-JudgeDredd