I think I'm the only rpg player who has never read a modern fantasy novel. I read the first book of the Lord of the Rings, CS Lewis and Narnia, and that was it. Every other fantasy novel I've tried to read strikes me as poorly written. That said I do read a great deal of folklore and myth. Last book I read was Confucius' Analects in English Translation.
I believe, there are some good ones out there but it can be like panning for gold. Terry Pratchett, George RR Martin, and Stephen King's Dark Tower top my "really try them" list followed closely by Steven Brust's Taltos books, Gaiman, and Susan Cooper.
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FInished Dragons of the Hourglass Mage, and I'm very pleased to report it was worth the time invested. If you're a diehard DL fan, you have to read all three, but if you're a casual fan or really just a best moments fan, skip the first two Lost Chronicles books and jump right into the last one. It's missing the pathos of the original books, but it's still quite fun.
Next up, Ghouls of the Miskatonic.
Personally, I enjoyed Dragons of the Dwarven Depths a heck of a lot more than Dragons of the Hourglass Mage. I couldn't even finish the latter. I just got disgusted with Raistlin not knowing what he was doing, and bumbling through the book, while looking like he was some mastermind manipulating everything. It was like watching Inspector Gadget!
Currently working through Harry Turtledove's The Big Switch, a novel in a series about what would have happened had English PM Chamberlain had more of a backbone and started warring with Germany when it invaded Czechoslovakia.
I have to say, HT is getting a bit predictable and stolid in his old age. His characterization has always been a bit weak, but his ideas fascinating. I'm not really digging this new story like I did his Timeline 191 series.
I think I'm the only rpg player who has never read a modern fantasy novel. I read the first book of the Lord of the Rings, CS Lewis and Narnia, and that was it. Every other fantasy novel I've tried to read strikes me as poorly written. That said I do read a great deal of folklore and myth. Last book I read was Confucius' Analects in English Translation.I believe, there are some good ones out there but it can be like panning for gold. Terry Pratchett, George RR Martin, and Stephen King's Dark Tower top my "really try them" list followed closely by Steven Brust's Taltos books, Gaiman, and Susan Cooper.
I got through maybe 20 pages of Good Omens, and the obvious and overused (already by that point!) joke structure of x, y, something funny (which weren't that funny) made me give up on the book.
It's up there for me as one of the worst things I've ever read, and only one of maybe two books that I've started and not finished.
I've never read anything else by Pratchett though (but based on that one book I truly don't understand why he's considered a good writer, let alone a great writer).
Happy Labor Day! I finished There Is Power in a Union.
The last bunch of chapters make it quite clear that Washington has backpedalled step-by-step and in bipartisan fashion on the idea of "industrial democracy" put forward by the Wagner Act during the New Deal over the last 70 or so years.
It turns out that John Lewis, legendary leader of the United Mine Workers and founder of the Congress of Industrial Organization, was correct in 1940 when he warned about the alliance between labor and the Democratic Party being a crutch that would undermine the unions' self-reliance and power to defend their members. How true!
Ah, I yearn for the more heroic days of Eugene V. Debs, Big Bill Haywood and Mother Jones...
On my mother's suggestion, I have started Ira Levin's Boys from Brazil.
Stupid Nazi scientists.
Finished The Difference Engine; it's awesome,
I'm a big fan of LXG-style character appropriation, so I was delighted to discover:
Walter and Sybil Gerard are characters from Benjamin Disraeli's novel Sybil!
Anyway, the wikipedia page says that book reflected Disraeli's interest in the Chartist movement and mentions Friedreich Engels's Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 in the first sentence, so I should probably check it out.
Just started Herland, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and it's unexpectedly humorous!
Finished The Boys from Brazil.
It's a little bit silly in its Nazi science plot, but an enjoyable little thriller nonetheless. Not many action books star old Jewish men with a JDF squad for back up...
All the sexy talk about Shakespeare over in the "Orson Scott Card is a bigot thread" spurred me to read The Comedy of Errors today.
Pretty flimsy, inconsequential yet enjoyable stuff about identical twins getting into all kinds of convoluted hijinks with creditors and whores with a lot of servant-beating.
Hee hee!
Reminds me of a couple of womanizing twins that I used to know who would routinely get slapped by their brother's conquests.
Anyway, it probably made quite a night out in London, 1592.
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Just finished Turtledove's Golden Shrine (finishing the trilogy of Beyond the Gap, The Breath of God and the one I just finished). Good tale, but Turltedove's tendency to repeat aspects of the story multiple times drove me a little nuts in this series.
Also, starting another read through of Crytonomicon.
My local public library has undergone some budget cuts recently and held a book sale this morning, and I, like the rest of the vultures, lined up to get some deals.
I'll get to the books in a minute, but, first, the sex:
I ran into a girl from school that I had a chance to score with and, in later life, ruefully regretted missing it. Yay!
So, at the library I got:
--a cd of Isaac Hayes's greatest hits for Stax that I will play when next I have a chance to score with hot little Miss Library Sale
--Red by Kim Stanley Robinson that I only learned about recently on these boards (I haven't read much sci-fi)
--The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, which I see touted everywhere as awesome and whose author was hot
--The World At the End of Time by Frederik Pohl which I bought because I recognized the author
--The Female Quixote by Charlotte Lennox which I remember sparked my interest when I was reading Cervantes
--The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest By Stieg Larrson for my mother, who's been insisting that I read these books
--The Nick Adams Stories by Ernest Hemingway; I've been trying to track down all his short stories and have ended up getting duplicates of many--grrr!
--The Dreamthief's Daughter and The White Wolf's Son by Michael Moorcock which were hardcovers for a buck apiece, but I'm kind of hestiant to read them because I'd like to walk away from Elric with my estimation high
--Under the Influence: The Unauthorized Story of the Anheuser-Busch Dynasty by Peter Hernon and Terry Ganey because I like Bud
Before I received this embarassment of riches, I was going to read Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age next. Anyone have any votes?
Oops! Forgote one--Cannery Row by John Steinbeck, commie agitprop to fuel my hatred and resentment
Unless Steinbeck wrote two books called Cannery Row you're going to get disappointed if you're looking for commie agitprop in it. (Nonetheless, it's one of my favourites.)
I was afraid of that. Anyway, that's one vote for Steinbeck.
library sale
Yeah, I stopped at the local library again as they were wrapping up a massive sale. They were down to a $1 per book, and I was surprised there were a few I actually wanted.
- The Dreaming Void by Peter F. Hamilton
- The Temporal Void by Peter F. Hamilton
- Seasons on Harris by David Yeardon
- A Taste of Magic by Andre Norton and Jean Rabe
I've liked Hamilton's stuff in the past, and Andre Norton and Jean Rabe seemed an interesting collaboration. I expect a few yoinkable bits if nothing else. The Harris one got me interested because my ancestors were from the Outer Hebredies, and I wanted to see if the book had some good info on the islands. Plus, travelogues are great for expanding your descriptive lexicon.
The Moorcock ones are pretty good, DA. Not top shelf, but worth reading if you enjoy Elric.
To all my fellow bibliophiles. I know this site has been around for a while (I found someone mentioning it in 2007 on this very thread) but I just stumbled upon it recently: >Goodreads<. It is a good way to virtually catalog your library, either if you own one or just want to keep straight what you've already read. They have a smartphone app that lets you scan in ISBN numbers as well to catalog books, and several nice widgets like a price comparison link.
"Blameless" by Gail Carriger. A VERY hilarious comedy of manners set in a steampunk universe of werewolf and vampire agents of Queen Victoria.
Well, since Steinbeck seemed incapable of providing me with the agitprop I crave, I re-read Comrade Curtin's favorite book today.
V.I. Lenin's The State and Revolution
Will start Cannery Row tomorrow.
taking a break from dreamsongs to go through the short stories of the 3rd edition era of dragon magazine. unfortunately, most of it isn't very good. in the 80's, we had "catacomb," "fortunes of a fool," and "at moonset blackcat comes." most of the stuff from the last hundred issues doesn't seem nearly as good.
Just started "A Princess of Mars" by Edgar Rice Burroughs. After I go through this series I'm either going to start the complete Tarzan collection or Dracula (again).
From Cannery Row by John Steinbeck:
Someone should write an erudite essay on the moral, physical, and esthetic effect of the Model T Ford on the American nation. Two generations of Americans knew more about the Ford coil than the clitoris, about the planetary system of gears than the solar system of stars.
Hee hee!
Still true 60 years later!
Went on my honeymoon, and had a decent amount of time to read on the flights and when not busy with... other things... Finished:
Towers of Midnight by Brandon Sanderson. I love Brandon's work on WOT. Maybe I'm being unfair to the dead, but after re-reading 7 books of Jordan, skipping a few more and picking up ToM, Sanderson was life. I care about the characters again, the plot is positively humming with activity and purpose, and even relations between men and women have improved (by which I don't mean they are having more sex, which they might be, but that they can be in the same room without verbally sandblasting each other.) Waiting for the final installment eagerly.
Old Man's War by SCALZI!!!! Sorry. I picked this up after listening to a Writing Excuses podcast where it was mentioned. Fun.
Ghost Brigades by SCALZI!!!!!!!!!!! Some people thought this was a rehash of Old Man's War, but I enjoyed it more than the first book. To me, this is far more of a thinker, and the questions it asks are more interesting to me. Not as clear cut as OMW, and the messiness is good.
The Help - Better than the movie. I enjoyed the girl from Sugarditch (I want to be from there) beating the crap out of the naked white guy. And the pie. Of course the pie. Bwahahaaaa.
In the Queueueueue:
Zoo City
The Last Colony
Currently reading Down to the Bone by Justina Robison, which is the fifth and final book in what is hands-down the strangest fantasy/sci-fi book series I've ever ready. It's a little emo at times, the writing style is weird and frankly if you don't read the books in order you won't know what is going on, as there is little-to-no context provision or recapping, but I'm still enjoying it quite a bit. The fact that it is so very different from the norm is very appealing to someone who has read a good lot of both fantasy and sci-fi and is kind of tired of the cliches, and the characterization is very strong.
Before that I read Rocket Men by Craig Nelson, an indulgence to my continuing obsession with the history of spaceflight. The book was written from a perspective I hadn't encountered before and included a lot of more obscure interviews and details, and was obviously thoroughly researched, though I got a sense the author had a political angle in writing the thing. It was still enjoyable.
My mother-in-law foisted Game of Thrones on me so I may finally have to read it when I'm done with my current book. I've been sort of avoiding it for years because it very much doesn't sound like my thing, and very much like something that's just going to irritate the heck out of me, but meh. We'll see.
Went on my honeymoon, and had a decent amount of time to read on the flights and when not busy with... other things... Finished:
Mazeltov!
Although that seems to be a disturbing amount of reading to do during a honeymoon...
Mazeltov!
Although that seems to be a disturbing amount of reading to do during a honeymoon...
Ha! We had significant delays because of Hurricane Irene and other drama and ended up sitting in airports for far longer than expected. Funny thing: there is very little in the way of privacy in, say, the Albany Airport... So instead, I read 100% of The Help there :)
I am happy to report that Kajehase has excellent taste: Cannery Row was a great read, alternately hilarious and heartbreaking. Highly recommended.
Started reading The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson. Only 40 pp. into it, so too early to say anything.
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After completing the Nantucket trilogy by S.M.Stirling (Very good books) I took on and loved Terry Pratchett's "Wintersmith". The pages just flew by.
Now I am delving into the Darkwar Saga by Feist. Conclave of Shadows was okay, nearly good. These books are better. First book "Flight of the Nighthawks" was solid fare, entertaining and exciting, though i was not very enthused by the sudden inclusion of Bek in the middle of the book. Some more introductory chapters would have helped to bring him more to the front. I am now about 100 pages into the middle book and up 'til now it was cleanup for book 1 and setup for further adventures (and I hope the action really starts again before this book ends).
Started reading The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson. Only 40 pp. into it, so too early to say anything.
One of my faves. Interesting the way society morphs after being freed of the industial age axis of factories and transport.
Feed vs. Seed!
I just finished reading Charles Stross' collection of short stories, Toast and I am amazed how above the curve he was a decade ago. Of course, he is also the original creator of the Githyanki, Githzerai and Slaad (at 16!!) so it shouldn't surprise me..
Just finished Sam Harris' Lying.
"Quantum Thief" by Hannu Rajaniemi. A hard scifi posthuman heist tale.
I do love me my capers!!!
I just finished two very excellent books: The Warded Man, and it's sequel, The Desert Spear. Both by Peter Brett, and they are awesome! In fact, the second book is even better than the first, and apparently he is working on a third in the series, which I can't wait for!
I am finally getting around to reading the Chronicles of Prydain.
Please let us know what you think. I read them recently (in the last five years or so) and although I enjoyed them, I wish I had first read them when I was much younger. Imho, they're good kids books but they're not books that transcend being for kids--if that makes sense.
I never followed up with the Westmark books like I had originally intended, though.
Just finished Sam Harris' Lying.
Stop lyin', Kirth!
I know that I enjoyed the "Prydain" chronicles more as a child than as an adult.
Stop lyin', Kirth!
I almost never do anyway, so Harris' book didn't really have too big an impact. I mean, yeah, I agree with most of his points, but so what? It's like he wasn't really trying too hard to convince anyone of anything.
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The Jar Jar Biggs of Wales?
Man, Disney sure turned out a lot of crap in the Seventies and Eighties, amirite? Not even John Hurt's villain could save that piece of tripe.
Back on topic, slightly, I haven't reread the Prydain books since high school or so. I also have my doubts they'd hold up well, especially after I read Evangeline Walton's novelizations of the Mabinogion (which were also pretty good).
I'm knee-deep in Rothfuss' second book The Wise Man's Fear. I am particularly enjoying Kvothe's burgeoning relationship with the Adem mercenary Tempi, though I miss the characters from the University, who grew on me a great deal during the 1st half of WMF.
Stop lyin', Kirth!I almost never do anyway, so Harris' book didn't really have too big an impact. I mean, yeah, I agree with most of his points, but so what? It's like he wasn't really trying too hard to convince anyone of anything.
More lies!
Man, Disney sure turned out a lot of crap in the Seventies and Eighties, amirite? Not even John Hurt's villain could save that piece of tripe.
Actually, I have a soft spot for The Black Cauldron, but that might just be nostalgia talking.
@Dal Sepher--
@Dal Sepher--** spoiler omitted **
Though, I can easily see how the first half of WMF could be overly redundant if there wasn't as much down time between books.