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I've put Rite of Passage on pause for now after not getting very far in it. I've turned to Jules Verne's Paris in the 20th Century. I'm really enjoying it, and it reads quickly despite my needing to page through the endnotes when he name-drops now-obscure 19th c. industrialists.
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'Against The Giants' by Ru Emerson, a novelisation of the module of the same name.
I'm sure there are finer works of littrachur out there, but I thought it was alright.
Also reading 'Bring Up The Bodies' by Hilary Mantel.
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"Volo's Guide to Monsters"
It's pretty good so far, but man do I miss the art of Tony DiTerlizzi!
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"Foucault's Pendulum" by Umberto Eco
I'm a bout a third in and still can't quite suss out the main plot. But a few paragraphs blew my mind. So I keep reading.
A lot of the book is like that. If you can push past the Knights Templars chapters the ending is just amazing. It's my favorite Umberto Eco novel.
Currently reading The Very Best of Tad Williams a short fiction collection by, of course, Tad Williams. I'm enjoying it; it's nice to see that Mr. Williams does not excel only at epic-length epic fiction.
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Death Masks, Ed Greenwood's reintroduction to Waterdeep for fifth edition Realms. A few chapters in so far, doing okay. Ed is a very variable writer. Sometimes he is pretty good (Cloak of Shadows), other times utterly awful (the unreadable Elminster in Hell comes to mind). We will see what this is.
I started with Hawthorne, moved on to Poe and finished with Lovecraft. (Reminds me, I've got to go back and finish those Hawthorne and Poe volumes.)
Am happy to report that I was able to read three chapters of A Clash of Kings at Sugar Candy Mountain yesterday. Huzzah! Paid to read, I love it.
Last night/this morning, I read the first bunch of chapters about Jules Michelet in Edmund Wilson's To the Finland Station: A Study in the Writing and Acting of History and it kind of made me want to put down the latter and pick up the former's History of the French Revolution.
Finally, recent current events seem to have knocked our Capital reader's circle off course. Still stuck halfway through Chapter 15.
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Ed is a very variable writer. Sometimes he is pretty good (Cloak of Shadows), other times utterly awful (the unreadable Elminster in Hell comes to mind).
Agreed and seconded. Sometimes his style suits the story. Sometimes not so much. The Cormyr trilogy. Specifically the last book comes to mind. Starts well and like El in Hell ends up being a mixed bag so to speak.
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Currently reading the Dragonlance Chronicles Collectors edition. The white trade paperback. Their something about the white background with minal art that I prefer. More than the more recent cover art. Not the best fantasy imo. Still a enjoyable read after all these years. On the way to work reading the Shannara series from Terry Brooks. I'm enjoying them as well. Even though as one reads more and more books he does reuse similar plot elements. Which to be honest I don't mind. I rather get a repetive style fo writing that actually moves the story along.
Scored used copies of Joe Lansdale's Cold in July and A Fine Dark Line, and Elmore Leonard's Pronto.
I'll start with the latter, because I've been watching Justified and recently re-read Riding the Rap (the other Raylan Givens book), and I love the character. (I read Pronto years ago, but have forgotten everything that happens.)
I loved the Cold in July movie, and am also eager to read that.
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I was expecting the tedious misogyny in Paris in the 20th Century, because I skimmed through before reading, but it is inadvertently funny when a character says, "There have been no true women since our grandmothers' time..." and he's supposed to be a guy in his 30s. Hold on there, Jules, you're getting way ahead of yourself. The GMILF won't be a "thing" until at least the 1970s*!
*e.g. "Harold and Maude" et al.
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It's my favorite Umberto Eco novel.
Seconded. One of my favorite novels ever and I can read it again and again just for all the little digressions and side-tracks. As for "what's it about", you almost get to the point of "what isn't it about"?
I've started reading "Leviathan Wakes" by James Corey because I watched the Expanse TV show on Syfy and was blown away. I now so want to run an Eclipse Phase campaign modified for elements of this setting.
The Expanse book series pretty great. They also have a pretty good Han Solo and Chewbacca buddy comedy book out too.
Yeah, the 4th one is basically "squatters vs. late state landowners" in an alien ecology, and the 5th one focuses on the pasts of the crew of the Rocinante, but without relying too much on flashbacks.
First section of To the Finland Station deals with Frenchmen that I know very little about and have never read:
Jules Michelet
Ernest Renan
Hippolyte Taine
Anatole France
Oh, and an Italian:
Yeah, the 4th one is basically "squatters vs. late state landowners" in an alien ecology, and the 5th one focuses on the pasts of the crew of the Rocinante, but without relying too much on flashbacks.Thanks. I asked because sometimes the quality of writing can vary between books.
The writing is pretty much the same high koala-tea, but the stories are really different from each other. Lots of character growth, too. I'm a fan, even if I haven't watched the TV show yet....
His/their Han Solo novel is worth checking out, too. I like how they don't translate Chewbacca, which makes Han's responses to him even more hilarious. It kind of reminds me of the Chinese on Firefly.
I just finished The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross. It was about a hacker working for a secret branch of British Intelligence that deals with occult mathematics summoning eldritch horrors from other universes. But mostly it's about the bureaucracy and paperwork the agent has to deal with.
And there's a really great afterword comparing Cold War spy thrillers with Cthuluesque horror tales. Both types of stories are about seeking out knowledge about a huge, alien, and hostile Other. Both types of Other present existential threats: Cold War era nuclear obliteration and Elder Great One world-rending madness. The main difference is that literary spies often succeed at saving the world, and heroes of horror seldom succeed, and when they do, it's at great personal cost.
I'm about to start Prudence by Gail Carriger. More steampunk comedy of manners! :-D
The next Laundry book, The Jennifer Morgue, is the best of the lot, though the others are very enjoyable as well.
I'll definitely check it out. :-)
I don't think Prudence (and successors) match the liveliness of Soulless (etc.) The Laundry books get a lot more polished after the first one though.
Burned through Pronto, then downloaded Lee Child's new thriller, Night School, and read that in a day, then started on Lansdale's Cold in July. I'm about 3/4 of the way through CiJ and it's even better than the movie -- the insane genre shifts are rendered more believable (and even plausible).
I don't think Prudence (and successors) match the liveliness of Soulless (etc.) The Laundry books get a lot more polished after the first one though.
I'm less than halfway through Prudence and it seems a lot like Soulless: The Next Generation. The characters are more tepid than the original series. Again, I'm only half-way through, but it seems like she gave the main character a special power, then immediately put her in an environment where she couldn't use it. It's like putting Aquaman in the middle of the Sahara or Magneto in a Stone Age society.
I like all the characters, but I'm not over the moon about any of them. I'm LOLing a lot less than during the Parasol Protectorate or the Finishing School series. None of the characters seem to be pumped up to 11.
So far, it's really good, but not perfect.
I don't think Prudence (and successors) match the liveliness of Soulless (etc.) The Laundry books get a lot more polished after the first one though.I'm less than halfway through Prudence and it seems a lot like Soulless: The Next Generation. The characters are more tepid than the original series. Again, I'm only half-way through, but it seems like she gave the main character a special power, then immediately put her in an environment where she couldn't use it. It's like putting Aquaman in the middle of the Sahara or Magneto in a Stone Age society.
I like all the characters, but I'm not over the moon about any of them. I'm LOLing a lot less than during the Parasol Protectorate or the Finishing School series. None of the characters seem to be pumped up to 11.
So far, it's really good, but not perfect.
I think I read both those comics. ;)
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'Dead Fingers Talk', by William Burroughs.
Took a break from Bede's Ecclesiastical History (and Bede's hammering on the wicked perversity of celebrating Easter on the wrong day) to read Mastodonia]Mastodonia, which I found on a library's free shelf while visiting relatives in the Midwest. Highly recommended for people curious about how to structure tax shelters for time-travel-based businesses. I'm now extending my break from Bede to race through The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women, and quickly increasing my list of authors to read more of.
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I'm now extending my break from Bede to race through The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women, and quickly increasing my list of authors to read more of.
Thanks for pointing this out; I love short fiction and am always looking for more good stories. A quick question, if I may: the description the link leads to seems to imply that James Tiptree Jr. is a woman. Is it a pen name, and if it is, am I the last SF fan to know? :)
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Currently reading The Very Best of Tad Williams a short fiction collection by, of course, Tad Williams. I'm enjoying it; it's nice to see that Mr. Williams does not excel only at epic-length epic fiction.
I might try that since I like Williams' writing style but his doorstop novels are just too long to keep my interest.
I too recommend the Parasdol Protecterate. Though at one point the author has the character act in such a way to either want to make you keep reading or give up on the series. It's sort of out of character imo.
The Parasol Protectorate is one of my all time favorite series. Definitely my favorite series from this decade. It's really fun, it's flippin' hilarious at times, but it's (usually) not too silly. There are also stakes and consequences. I really like the main characters.
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Found 'Krautrocksampler' by Julian Cope, which is something I'm quite pleased about, even if he does seem to hate any sort of jazz that isn't just frenzied heathen shrieking from start to finish.
Also got hold of Fritz Leiber's 'The Knight and Knave of Swords'. I have never read this before. Naughty boy.
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I'm reading this thread.
I've been reading Louisa May Alcott's gripping sword-and-sorcery saga Little Women...It's posts like this that make me wish these forums had a "Like" button, the way Facebook does.
Post #2441, for posterity.
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I don't care what you guys say, Winnie-the-Pooh is f%+!ing awesome.
My daughter is currently obsessed. I now know it to be the result of your curse.
All right.
Death Masks, by Ed Greenwood, is sadly not a very good book. The characterizations are flat, the writing formulaic, the action entirely predictable, and (perhaps worst) it is about three times as long as it needs to be. Given that I have read a number of novels by Ed before, none of this comes as a big surprise. His strength lies in world building, and that is typically decent. The most cosmopolitan city of the Forgotten Realms has changed since last I read about it, it is now a darker, more conflict-strewn place, which follows nicely. However... while the story is complete, the reasons for the story are not, and there is no description of the new status quo, a bad thing in a book tied to a RPG setting. Several threads, major and minor, are simply dropped and never revisited. The most egregious nail in the coffin is a character that was obviously conceived as female - but then changed in all but one place into male - with a romantic character arc. Is this guy disguised? We never learn. It looks weird and sloppy.
That is not to say it is entirely without its points. Ed gives a good rundown of how to make a setting seem alive through rumours and local events, and the weight of such things, and at times this shines through. Laeral, arguably the main character, is pretty fleshed out, and had good scenes.
I can't recommend this book, and while it is not absolute drek, I would give it a solid **. It should come as no surprise, perhaps. Ed's publishing is not like every other author's, IIRC. If he writes one book a year, Hasbro has to publish it, or lose the rights to the Forgotten Realms. Let's say it shows in his writing. He is able do much better than this.
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I didn't think "The Annihilation Score" was bad. Yes, there are some major shake-ups and certain things happen that I wish didn't, but the whole point of the Laundry-verse is that things are going to hell, and the people who have to try to keep the world together don't always manage to keep themselves together.
TAS is probably the weakest of the Laundry books so far but I still enjoyed it.
It's not the worst be he can write a hell of lot better imo. Hearing from a freind whose opinion I really trust. He makes one of the characters completely unlikeable imo. Cheating on another character because "girl power".
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It's not the worst be he can write a hell of lot better imo. Hearing from a freind whose opinion I really trust. He makes one of the characters completely unlikeable imo. Cheating on another character because "girl power".I didn't think "The Annihilation Score" was bad. Yes, there are some major shake-ups and certain things happen that I wish didn't, but the whole point of the Laundry-verse is that things are going to hell, and the people who have to try to keep the world together don't always manage to keep themselves together.
TAS is probably the weakest of the Laundry books so far but I still enjoyed it.
That wasn't how I saw it, and it's worth keeping in mind that the character in question had something working at their head. Actually, both of them did.