Reply With QuoteYeah. And I stopped after the first book.Originally Posted by Dia
I'm rooting for the cold things.
I'm reading the Song of Fire and Ice series by George R. R. Martin; watched Game of Thrones' first season on HBO & was hooked. Currently I'm on the third book, A Storm of Swords, and find myself becoming more and more depressed with each chapter. Mr. Martin is such an excellent storyteller with the ability to totally immerse the reader in splendid (and sometimes gory) detail, to the point that he's able to elicit strong feelings from the reader (moi included). One of my only two complaints is the fact that most of his characters are despicable (or frustratingly self-absorbed) and I'm rapidly running out of characters to root for. I kind of get the feeling that there aren't going to be any real heroes in this saga; as I read I feel I'm watching that shining armor tarnish right before my eyes. I could also do without some of the graphic details that sometimes cross the border of being gratuitous.
The realism of his narrative is astounding, though at times I feel like I'm on an emotional roller coaster. Just when you think, 'Oh .... well, if that happens it's definitely going to change things for the better!', Mr. Martin throws a curve ball of a plot twist and suddenly you're left scratching your head wondering where that one came from and thinking, 'Omg! Can things get any worse now?'. However, I do enjoy the fact that Mr. Martin's writing is anything but predictable and/or formulaic.
I have a nasty feeling things are going to get considerably worse before they get better for my favorite characters in this story.
Yeah. And I stopped after the first book.
I'm rooting for the cold things.
Currently on the 5th book of A Song Of Ice And Fire. Loving it, but I do have also my two or three complaints, the biggest one probably being the fact that Martin's introducing new characters left and right and sometimes I feel it takes space and loses focus of the, what I would consider, main characters.
Still, I'm hooked and hope he doesn't take years and years to finish the last two books.
I agree, Duckeh: I've had to start checking the cast of characters listing in the back of the book to keep up.
Last night after I read the end of Catelyn's chapter (in Storm of Swords) where Robb and Catelyn are murdered in Freys' great hall after her brother Edmure's marriage I threw the book across the room while swearing like a truck driver. I mean, wtf??!!!
At this point I'm rooting for the wildlings and Dany.
I hate George R. R. Martin.
Last edited by Dia; 28th Jul 2011 at 10:58.
Ghost Story, the most recent release in the Dresden Files series.
Retro Gamer Magazine issue 74. Very in depth articles with Retro Gamer. Usually takes me a fair while to get through each issue.
Only magazine worth buying these days and excellent if you want a insight into the development of the games of yesteryear, when fitting games within a finite amount of memory was paramount. Also excellent in covering computer/console systems you may never have heard of or never played.
The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien. The man drank himself to death because it wasn't published and then after he died they published it and it received a lot of acclaim. The surreal logic in it is so gloriously mind fuck.
The Well at the Worlds End. First real Fantasy novel written 1896 by William Morris. Some 228,000 words. Until Lord of the rings the longest fantasy novel written.
Hans Kelsen, The Pure Theory of Law, muthafukas
The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini CC 1927
This summer I finally started reading the great Finnish classic, Under the North Star by Väinö Linna. I still have about half of the 3rd volume to go, but I can easily say by now it's amazing - great storytelling, colorful yet credible characters, immersive depiction of life in those days and heartwrenching horrors of the Finnish Civil War and it's aftershocks like Lapua Movement.
The sad part is to know all that has really happened
I don't know if this deserves its own thread, but I just read an article that has to win some award for the title alone.
Killer plant 'eats' blue tit at Somerset nursery
Just finished Koontz. "Lost Souls" 4th in the Frankenstein series. I'm getting ready to start "At the Gates of Darkness" book 2 in The Demonwar Saga by Raymond Feist.
I finished A Tale of Two Cities. It's a powerful book with some really powerful lines, although it's also a tad contrived. The characters of Defarge and her crew, bloodthirsty unofficial leaders of the revolution who knit while people are beheaded, were as chilling as I remember, and the stout servant Pross is still my favorite character. I was struck by Dickens' occasional wandering diversions about humanity, because such flights of fancy seem to be quite rare in writing of the last century.
I read that a few years back but Dickens white washes so much of his prose that it's not as good as it probably seemed way back when he first published the story. It is interesting though.
I'm currently reading the Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst.
I've been reading The Count of Monte Cristo. It's apparent why it was a pop sensation for its time and since. It's also pretty contrived. I guess in that sense Dumas is in similar company as Dickens and Hugo. I'm absorbed by it like I am for a Crichton novel. I was somehow thinking it might be more of a literary classic like Moby Dick, War & Peace, or Tess of the d'Urbervilles, but it's more ... whatever the 19th Century word for pop would be, but I really like it all the same.
I just started reading The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick. I've previously read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and wanted to read more PKD books. Other than that another older sci-fi novel I started a while back but haven't got around to finishing yet was Hyperion by Dan Simmons which I thoroughly enjoy so far.
Burned out on The Shards by Bret Easton Ellis. It's just pointless and tedious vapid nihilism and hedonism. Didn't appeal to me.
A book I did like was Identitti by Mithu Sanyal (original is in German, I read a Dutch translation). It's both a novel and a contribution to the identity politics debate but it's not a humorless political pamphlet but instead it's written in a vivid, intelligent, often funny style while still making me think and broaden my knowledge about serious issues.
Here are the books i will probably read this year : Why We Get Sick by Benjamin Bikman, Godel Escher Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, The Joy Of Music by Leonard Bernstein and The Design Of Everyday Things by Don Norman. The one that excites me most is Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet. I like seeing internet development in restrospect. What tech companies , people and organization involved in internet development and why certain design decision should be made...
Masters of Death - The SS-Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust by Richard Rhodes, focusing mostly on the atrocities in Ukraine in WWII. Yes, it's as grim as it sounds and I may give up soon but at least it does have some not entirely unhumouous moments, like the bitchiness in some of the upper echelons of the Nazi Party. A fellow Nazi Official once said of Himmler in 1940, practically to his face, "If I looked like Himmler - slack butt, pigeon chest, receding chin, almost Mongolian eyes and small, feminine hands - I would not talk about race!"
I picked up another book by Edward Abbey (Author of The Monkey Wrench Gang) called Down the River. It's a short book of personal essays he wrote over the years. I'm in a river rafting mood again these days so I'm gravitating towards those kinds of books whether fiction or non-fiction.
I finished been reading blood meridian by Cormac Mccarthy last week. I haven't been able sleep since. would definitely recommend!!
Just finished re-reading the Greywalker series (up to book 7) by Kat Richardson for the 6th time, I think. Still got the bookmark 'Blue sent me years ago somewhere.
Also re-read the Honor Harrington series by David Weber. Think Hornblower in space (complete with crossing the T & broadsides aplenty). He writes really interesting & complicated characters who have their own particular motivations & reactions to the various events that unfold over the series. Been a favourite of mine ever since I randomly found the first book, On Basilisk Station, in a clearance book shop at some bleak discount retail outlet shopping complex years ago.
Other than that I've recently read The Modern Antiquarian & The Megalithic European by Julian Cope, The Boat Of A Million Years by Poul Anderson, Cities in Flight by James Blish & strangely A Companion To The Vietnam War edited by Marilyn B. Young & Robert Buzzanco (don't remember where I bought this or why but hey it's on my shelf so why not). And quite a lot of random japanese light novels as well.
I saw yesterday that they're going to make a tv show out of the book I've been reading, The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nhuyen. It's about a Vietnamese refugee coming to the US after the Vietnam war working as an agent for the communist north in the US. It's been a trip so far.
It's coming after Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon, which cuts to the heart of the cognitive dissonances, moral blindness, and overall assholery to which a person has to constantly subject themselves to stay motivated to do the work of an OG communist apparachik. But it's playing differently here from the perspective of someone from Vietnam, which had been in constant war for four decades at the time. I don't think the comrades on the ground in The Sympathizer had the same space that the OG apparachiks had to get deeply disillusioned by the whole performance yet, or maybe it's still to come. Our protagonist is in the US now in the prefab '60s. So we'll see.
After bouncing off the vapid, pointless nihilism and hedonism of Bret Easton Ellis' The Shards I read Anéantir (To Destroy) by Michel Houellebecq in a Dutch translation, I can't speak French well enough to read it in French. It's pretty bleak but hope still glimmers through in places, it's my first Houellebecq but it's supposed to be his most hopeful novel yet. Just be prepared if you're expecting a a political thriller that the political intrigue ultimately takes a backseat to the personal life of the protagonist and musings on philosophy, society, relationships, theology, politics in general etc., but all those elements of the novel are interesting.
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