For black liberation in a worker's America!
I'll make a Marxist out of you yet, Sam.
Finished The Reavers of Skaith yesterday and it was OSSUM!!!!
And then I realized that Paizo has published all of the Eric John Stark books!! With much cooler covers, just look!
I wish I had known, but it probably wouldn't have made any difference because I found them for a buck each, but I will be spending hard earned Paizo bucks on The Sword of Rhiannon and that other one.
You should, too!
The Rook by Daniel O'Malley, about a secret paranormal agency defending Britain against a variety of fantastic threats. The main character, a high-ranking agent, has lost her memory so she is trying to understand the organization and figure out who wants her dead while dealing with outside threats as well. Very interesting with lots of (throwaway?) mentions of strange and quirky talents. Sort of like X-Files meets X-Men.
For black liberation in a worker's America!
I'll make a Marxist out of you yet, Sam.
I think you'll find the pacifism a pretty serious obstacle to getting me on board for the Revolution. Anti-authoritarianism is another one, but not quite as high.
Unfortunately, both of my library books are fat and I can't smuggle them as easily into work, so now I am reading An Introduction to Marxist Economics by Ernest Mandel.
The irony of reading about the bourgeoisie's extraction of surplus-value while I am shirking my occupational duties is pretty awesome, methinks.
Ryk Spoor - Phoenix Rising
Finished Cold Days and am back on Vorkosigan. Doubled back to read the Cordelia books before jumping into Labyrinth.
Finished Cold Days in about 4 hours. 'Twas awesome. He better publish the next one in less than a year! It's not like he's writing Alera anymore, he's got plenty of time to focus!
Rereading an old favorite, Sunshine, by Robin McKinley. Who has finally said she won't write a sequel.
Sad 'Zilla.
Took a two day break from The Road to Disunion for Apostles of Disunion. Great read, but very repetitive for such a short book. The Secession Commissioners spoke from an extremely tight script, despite being appointed by different states and sent to appeal to different audiences. It comes across as the same story in each chapter but with slightly different locations.
Finished Cold Days in about 4 hours. 'Twas awesome. He better publish the next one in less than a year! It's not like he's writing Alera anymore, he's got plenty of time to focus!
Rereading an old favorite, Sunshine, by Robin McKinley. Who has finally said she won't write a sequel.
Sad 'Zilla.
No offense, but what is the appeal to Sunshine? I read it thinking it was going to be "scoundrelish" (it was a recommended reading from The Complete Scoundrel), but the main character was extremely passive.
It almost seemed like the author was trying to write a non-genre novel about a bakery and family and stuff, but felt trapped being a genre author, so she just tacked on some vampire bits to make it more genre-y.
What am I missing?
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I finished reading Guy Gavriel Kay's A Song For Arbonne. Great reading.
Finished reading Howard's The Hour of the Dragon which I mostly read at work last week. This week, I hope to read Conan the Avenger.
Also started reading Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself by Harriet Jacobs and, inspired by events in another thread, It Doesn't Have To Be Like This: Women and the Struggle for Socialism by Christine Thomas.
Vive le Crom and Galt!
Also listened to my lecture on tape about Washington Irving.
On the one hand, I was a little disappointed because all the lecture dealt with was "Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip van Winkle," but on the other...
So there was a long part where the lecturer went on about all of the different interpretations of "RVW" and ended up with some Freudian talk about the sex-play of the gods and how RVW could be seen as an American archetype. If the self-made man, as first put forward in Ben Franklin's Autobiography is one American story, then the "man-child who never grows up," he argues is another.
The lecturer goes on to say that Rip points the way forward to Huckleberry Finn, Jake Barnes and Quentin Compson. This reminded me of an American literature course that I dropped out of where we read Philip Roth's Goodbye Columbus, Saul Bellows's Seize the Day and John Updike's Run, Rabbit, Run (which is where I dropped out) and the prof stressed the similarities between all three--the American man-child.
All I can say is that I am happy to see that my lifestyle has antecedents that stretch back to the beginnings of American letters and that, as an infantile man-child myself, I am in good literary company.
Rereading an old favorite, Sunshine, by Robin McKinley. Who has finally said she won't write a sequel.
Sad 'Zilla.
No offense, but what is the appeal to Sunshine? I read it thinking it was going to be "scoundrelish" (it was a recommended reading from The Complete Scoundrel), but the main character was extremely passive.
It almost seemed like the author was trying to write a non-genre novel about a bakery and family and stuff, but felt trapped being a genre author, so she just tacked on some vampire bits to make it more genre-y.
What am I missing?
I really enjoyed the world-building McKinley did for Sunshine—she created a fascinating blend of the familiar and the nightmarishly broken (what's everyday life like 10 years after the world nearly fell to the Dark Others?). But I also loved that the main character is a hero despite herself. She doesn't suddenly and magically become brave and fearless and wise when she comes into her power, and she's not a lone sword off to save the world for some abstract common good. Instead, she wrestles with denial and her fear throughout, and depends on her friends and family as a source of motivation and strength (even if they're not always on speaking terms). For me, that all made her seem far more real and appealing.
Also! Just wrapped up Jasper Fforde's The Last Dragonslayer (frivolous) and am now working on Nicola Griffith and Stephen Pagel's anthology Bending the Landscape: Fantasy (more urban fantasy than I'd expected, but I'm enjoying it for the most part).
I'm finishing up The Desert Spear by Peter V. Brett.
About to start Railsea by China Mieville.
Rereading an old favorite, Sunshine, by Robin McKinley. Who has finally said she won't write a sequel.
Sad 'Zilla.
No offense, but what is the appeal to Sunshine? I read it thinking it was going to be "scoundrelish" (it was a recommended reading from The Complete Scoundrel), but the main character was extremely passive.
It almost seemed like the author was trying to write a non-genre novel about a bakery and family and stuff, but felt trapped being a genre author, so she just tacked on some vampire bits to make it more genre-y.
What am I missing?
I really enjoyed the world-building McKinley did for Sunshine—she created a fascinating blend of the familiar and the nightmarishly broken (what's everyday life like 10 years after the world nearly fell to the Dark Others?). But I also loved that the main character is a hero despite herself. She doesn't suddenly and magically become brave and fearless and wise when she comes into her power, and she's not a lone sword off to save the world for some abstract common good. Instead, she wrestles with denial and her fear throughout, and depends on her friends and family as a source of motivation and strength (even if they're not always on speaking terms). For me, that all made her seem far more real and appealing.
Also! Just wrapped up Jasper Fforde's The Last Dragonslayer (frivolous) and am now working on Nicola Griffith and Stephen Pagel's anthology Bending the Landscape: Fantasy (more urban fantasy than I'd expected, but I'm enjoying it for the most part).
Yeah, the world-building was really top notch. But the narrator/heroine was extremely passive. She didn't seem to possess any agency of her own. She just kind of waited for stuff to happen and didn't do anything interesting on her own. I recently read a similar book, Dark Currents by Jacqueline Carey, and the narrator/heroine was a lot more interesting and pro-active. She had ideas and talked to people and did stuff.
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I just finished plowing through Cold Days, which I thought was a good read. Butcher did a good job of plotting everything this time around, though I could have done with one or two less action sequences.
I'm just starting Consider the Lobster, a collection of essays by David Foster Wallace. I'm only a few pages in, but it's already hilarious.
Second tome of Neal Stevenson's Quicksilver.
Finished Conan the Avenger. About halfway through Jacobs. She's just been living in a crawlspace for five years.
Finished The Road to Disunion. Confession: It was a little too advanced for me. It's largely a study of internal Southern politics leading toward the Civil War. (I read volume one, which ends with Kansas-Nebraska. Volume two is out but I don't have it yet.)
I think there's an intended audience gap at fault. Freehling's writing a bit more for the academy than I expected. The names and changing positions become so entangled at times that I lost most of the plot for a few pages. I would have done better to read a different dedicated survey of the subject and then read his. It's still good stuff but I would have gotten more out of it with a stronger background.
Also there are a few points where Freehling's dry wit comes off a bit more as cantankerous old man than he probably intended, but that's a taste thing.
I almost said that my difficulties with the prose could be generational. (Freehling turned 45 the year I was born.) But then I thought to check and James McPherson, who I have no trouble at all following, is only a year younger and has a very different style. So it's clearly less that I'm young and he's old and more he's educated and I'm some random guy on the internet. :)
Going to take a break and read a novel or two before, probably, starting a book I ought to have read before Freehling to get more out of him. (Thinking David Potter's The Impending Crisis.)
Finished Quicksilver second tome. Starting Dan Abnett's Horus Raising.
Finished Quicksilver second tome. Starting Dan Abnett's Horus Raising.
If you finished Quicksilver and didn't start The Confusion immediately afterwards, you're doing it wrong!:P
But seriously, when you you talk about the first and second tomes of Quicksilver, are those the paperback editions, where they split the book into 2 or 3 volumes?
Almost done with Railsea by China Mieville (socialist fantasist and member of the Engineer race from Prometheus).
What should I read next?
Blameless by Gail Carriger
The Iron Dragon's Daughter by Michael Swanwick
or
The Half-made World by Felix Gilman
Finished Quicksilver second tome. Starting Dan Abnett's Horus Raising.If you finished Quicksilver and didn't start The Confusion immediately afterwards, you're doing it wrong!:P
Library is the limit.
But seriously, when you you talk about the first and second tomes of Quicksilver, are those the paperback editions, where they split the book into 2 or 3 volumes?
I think so.
Went with Blameless by Gail Carriger.
The rest will be next. :-P
Can anyone recommend a good fantasy book featuring an alchemists? Weird craving I know.
Starting Dan Abnett's Horus Raising.
Finished. I can't wait when Necrons anihillate Imperials, Chaos, Orks and Tyranids, burn out and then Tau rebuild civilization in the Galaxy in sensible and efficient way undreamed by post-30K mankind.
Oh, wait, it won't happen. What a shame... :(
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Can anyone recommend a good fantasy book featuring an alchemists? Weird craving I know.
Ah! A chance to recommend my all-time favorite book!
In Master of the Five Magics by Lyndon Hardy, there are - as you've no doubt guessed from the title - five mystic arts: Thaumaturgy, Alchemy, Magic, Sorcery, and Wizardry. Part 1 of the book, titled "The Thaumaturge", focuses on Thaumaturgy. Part 2, titled "The Alchemist", focuses on Alchemy. And so on.
Part 1 of the book got me hooked. Part 2 got me doubly hooked. In part 2, the main character works with an alchemist to make what they hope will be a valuable alchemical salve. Unable to afford the expensive ingredients, they borrow money from the bad guy, who will enslave them if they can't pay him back in time. And with any alchemical formula, there's a chance that it won't work...
Also in part 2, the main character learns alchemical doctrines and formulas, and he uses that knowledge over the course of the rest of the book.
Thanks Aaron I will check that out
The Age of Unreason tetrology by Gregory Keyes features alchemist versions of Ben Franklin and Newton.
The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch has an alchemy feel to it, but is mostly master thief-like capers.
Spent the last three days burning through This Book is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch it, sequel to John Dies at the End. Like the first it was hilarious and like the first it ended a bit weak. It did step up a bit from the previous in that it felt more like a unified narrative than a pair of novellas stuck together.
Third volume of Stephenson's Quicksilver.
I almost said that my difficulties with the prose could be generational. (Freehling turned 45 the year I was born.) :)
Pfft.
Among other things, I tried to force myself through a bunch of essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson. I couldn't bring myself to do it, although the lectures that I listened to were fascinating.
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds"? F%@%in' anti-goblin racist!
Being a Warhammer 40K fan and curious about GW's audiobooks, I borrowed a friend's Butcher's Nails.
The story wasn't bad but some of the sound effects (chain-axe) and Angron's urgghhh-ing and argg-ing jarred me out of the narrative every time. It may actually be better had they stuck with just the narration instead of trying to make an audio movie.
Still curious if there are any good audiobooks out there - anyone has recommendations?
I got done with a star trek series (all on my iPad2) and I am starting on the 4th book in a Mercedes Lackey series: Redoubt Book Four of the Collegium Chronicles (A Valdemar Novel). After this I'm not sure. Maybe some more Valdamar books or maybe some more Trek books. I might even go after some of my old favorite authors like MAR Barker or someone else. There have been a bunch of good books I have missed over the years.
I almost said that my difficulties with the prose could be generational. (Freehling turned 45 the year I was born.) :)Pfft.
Among other things, I tried to force myself through a bunch of essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson. I couldn't bring myself to do it, although the lectures that I listened to were fascinating.
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds"? F&&$in' anti-goblin racist!
I think Emerson's style is better suited to performance than reading. He went out of his way to try to make every sentence into some kind of aphorism, which gets really tedious to read.
One of my teachers really dug the Transcendentalists so we spent quite a bit more time on them than was strictly necessary. He insisted that they were great American thinkers and proponents of America's first homegrown philosophy. The latter might be true and certainly Thoreau deserves some credit for Civil Disobedience, but they're pretty underwhelming to me. I think he was far more invested in the idea of their being an essential Americanness than I am. The whole idea reeks of provincialism.
Hmm. Well, for me, the essays were beautifully written but difficult and I got the feeling that I probably didn't have to read them because their essential Americanism had been absorbed by almost 2 centuries of bohemian American writing. I read the Beats during puberty, I don't feel the need to do much reflecting on the Oversoul, or nonconformity, or being true to my essential blahblahblah.
But I don't mean to slight Ralph. The lecturer makes the point that he and his were the American analogues to Britain's Romantic poets, and that seems fair to me. And, you're right, listening to the lecturer reads excerpts from his writings was more enjoyable than reading them. Also, any guy who wrote that John Brown made the gallows as glorious as the cross can't be all bad.
Picked up a series of books (including Emerson) and put them down again for a variety of reasons.
Read the filmed 7 chapters of The Hobbit, the first half of The Hunger Games, the first half of Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism the first two chapters of The Revenge for Love by Wyndham Lewis and the first couple of chapters from The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State.
I'm not sure what to read next.
Hmm. Well, for me, the essays were beautifully written but difficult and I got the feeling that I probably didn't have to read them because their essential Americanism had been absorbed by almost 2 centuries of bohemian American writing. I read the Beats during puberty, I don't feel the need to do much reflecting on the Oversoul, or nonconformity, or being true to my essential blahblahblah.
But I don't mean to slight Ralph. The lecturer makes the point that he and his were the American analogues to Britain's Romantic poets, and that seems fair to me. And, you're right, listening to the lecturer reads excerpts from his writings was more enjoyable than reading them. Also, any guy who wrote that John Brown made the gallows as glorious as the cross can't be all bad.
That's fair. I like the British romantics as an idea and they're certainly interesting figures, but their actual work is a bit heavy going for me.
Also: burned through Cold Days in two of them. I have David Potter's The Impending Crisis coming this week but not sure what to read between then and now.
Have you read much William Blake, Samnell?
On a completely different note, I'm starting on The Wonder That Was India - two volumes of about 800 pages each, which should keep me out of mischief for a while...
Have you read much William Blake, Samnell?
Just a little. It was enough.
Read Cold Days the night it was up for sale. heh. Updated the Dresden Wikipedia the next day! (Most of the Harry Dresden character info was contributed or edited by me.)
Currently reading The Religion, historical fiction set around the Siege of Malta in the 1500's. Very gory, very realistic.
Also reading the Torch of the Burning Sky compiled adventures. Only $20-something, lots to read there. If you like reading AP's, it's cheap and a treat...and a lot cheaper then my Rise of the Runelords AP special, albeit not quite so sweet looking.
==Aelryinth
Tyger Tyger burning bright!
Samnell is a sunflower, alright!
--Homage to William Blake by Doodlebug Anklebiter, Poet Laureate of Galt
H. G. Wells Men Like Gods.
Tyger Tyger burning bright!
Samnell is a sunflower, alright!--Homage to William Blake by Doodlebug Anklebiter, Poet Laureate of Galt
I wrote an essay on that poem for a test. Quite a bit of fun, actually. Short version: WTF, Yahweh? WTF?
But yeah, what I've read of Blake mostly runs from pretty gibberish (the mystical stuff) to tedious.
I liked Rime of the Ancient Mariner, though. So I suppose I don't hate all the Romantics. I might appreciate Coleridge in general a bit more except that I know he ran around telling people poems just magically came to him. Dude, you didn't burn your notes. We're in your drafts, killing your marketing hype.
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A shout-out to Lord Byron for finally telling my side of the story.
Also,
Romantic Poets: The Musical Interlude
William Wordsworth
William Blake
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
I can't think of one for poor Keats. :(