Author Topic: What are you reading?  (Read 845535 times)

Russell Nash

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Reply #225 on: November 13, 2007, 08:43:30 PM
When giving the title of a book, please include the author's name.



gelee

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Reply #226 on: November 13, 2007, 11:07:29 PM
I'm working through "Iron Council", by China Mieville, though I appear to be the last person on this forum to do so.  I'm about 1/3 of the way through.  Honestly, I'm a little disapointed, but I'll press on.  It' still an enjoyable read, I'm just kind of confused on the timeline.
Also reading "A History of the Persian Empire" by A. T. Olmstead.  It's almost as dry as it sounds, but if you can get past the tone, the stories are just amazing.  The world is a lot bigger and older than we think sometimes.



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Reply #227 on: November 14, 2007, 12:38:26 AM

Now reading "Wicked" (Gregory Maguire).  Very amusing.

Has anyone seen the play "Wicked".  I hear great things about it but was unable to get tickets when it came to Minneapolis.   I'll have to check out the book.

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.    -  Carl Sagan


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Reply #228 on: November 14, 2007, 04:09:05 AM
bout halfway through "Diary" by Chuck Palahniuk
next i have to read "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintinence" by Robert Pirsig for a school term paper.  cant wait to start it, just gotta finish Diary first, which is GREAT by the way.  i was planning on reading Breakfast of Champions next but school comes first of course! :)

I'd like to hear my options, so I could weigh them, what do you say?
Five pounds?  Six pounds? Seven pounds?


Russell Nash

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Reply #229 on: November 14, 2007, 10:12:44 AM
Modified per Russell Nash's instructions.

Thank you



Listener

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Reply #230 on: November 14, 2007, 03:59:29 PM
I'm working through "Iron Council", by China Mieville, though I appear to be the last person on this forum to do so.  I'm about 1/3 of the way through.  Honestly, I'm a little disapointed, but I'll press on.  It' still an enjoyable read, I'm just kind of confused on the timeline.
Also reading "A History of the Persian Empire" by A. T. Olmstead.  It's almost as dry as it sounds, but if you can get past the tone, the stories are just amazing.  The world is a lot bigger and older than we think sometimes.


What may help is this:  Chapters with numbers are happening now.  Chapters without numbers are happening in the past.  At least, IIRC.

It's worth going all the way through for two reasons:  the battle in New Crobuzon and what Judah does at the end with the golems.

(I don't consider those spoilers, but just in case you might...)

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louhi

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Reply #231 on: November 14, 2007, 07:07:01 PM
bout halfway through "Diary" by Chuck Palahniuk
next i have to read "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintinence" by Robert Pirsig for a school term paper.  cant wait to start it, just gotta finish Diary first, which is GREAT by the way.  i was planning on reading Breakfast of Champions next but school comes first of course! :)

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was really enjoyable when i read it. And Vonnegut is always good (if crazy).

currently....World War Z by Max Brooks, Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, and Cryptonomicon, also Stephenson. Snow Crash is a reread; i really enjoyed it, read Diamond Age and found it too...fluffy; it lacked substance. Cryptonomicon seems to have a lot more going on, though it's not as fast-paced and fun as Snow Crash was.



gelee

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Reply #232 on: November 14, 2007, 08:28:35 PM
I'm working through "Iron Council", by China Mieville, though I appear to be the last person on this forum to do so.  I'm about 1/3 of the way through.  Honestly, I'm a little disapointed, but I'll press on.  It' still an enjoyable read, I'm just kind of confused on the timeline.
What may help is this:  Chapters with numbers are happening now.  Chapters without numbers are happening in the past.  At least, IIRC.
It's worth going all the way through for two reasons:  the battle in New Crobuzon and what Judah does at the end with the golems.
(I don't consider those spoilers, but just in case you might...)

Thanks for the tip!  That's a big help.  It took me a while to figure out that this happened a generation or so after PSS, so that didn't help at all.
Don't worry, nothing spoiled.  I actually kind of see both coming.  I'm enjoying it a bit more now, and I've got it fixed a bit better in my head.  I just finished a big Judah flash-back, so he makes a helluva lot more sense now.
Mieville's style is realy something else, and I love the setting.



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Reply #233 on: November 14, 2007, 08:38:25 PM
The big Judah flashback in the book was the hardest part for me.  Not because it wasn't cool, (it was) it just felt like a completely different book. 


gelee

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Reply #234 on: November 14, 2007, 09:01:07 PM
He definately takes a different tone in that section.  I won't begrudge China his weirdness.  It seems to be working so far.



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Reply #235 on: November 15, 2007, 10:43:13 PM
I am curently reading podcasting for dummies,the slyon brown trilogy and chef ramsies newest

Improvise, Adapt ,Overcome.


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Reply #236 on: November 16, 2007, 10:18:16 PM
Documentation for Quartz Composer.
Looks like it might be fun to play with. It's giving me ideas for a screen saver that looks like a Wilson cloud chamber, if I can figure out how to do (or fake) particle effects.

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Reply #237 on: November 28, 2007, 03:58:29 AM
I just finished Stephen King's The Mist and I'm currently reading Greg Rutka's adaptation of the comic book epic Batman: No Man's Land. Yes, I'm also a comic book geek, so sue me. >:(



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Reply #238 on: November 28, 2007, 04:55:41 PM
I'm reading Tim Pratt's Blood Engines.  Er, sorry.  TA Pratt's Blood Engines.


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Reply #239 on: November 28, 2007, 08:05:17 PM
Just finished up Sun of Suns by Karl Schroeder, thanks to whoever it was that recommended it in this thread (too busy to try to track back in this long thread!) Anyway, loved it! It was just plain fun and had a bit of Steam-punkery about it.

Currently reading Dark River by John Twelve Hawks and Gregory Maguire's Wicked which I left on an airplane year ago while in the middle of the book, ahh! Finally sucked it up and bought a used copy...



gelee

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Reply #240 on: November 28, 2007, 11:31:29 PM
Picked up Dune again.  All the new material coming out got me thinking about the series.  I read it about a million years ago, way back in high school.  I can barely remember the story, and something that complicated, I had to miss some important bits.  I'm starting over.
Still reading Iron Council, almost finished.



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Reply #241 on: November 29, 2007, 05:47:03 PM
Finished Gregory Maguire's "Wicked".  It was good, though I think the last part was a little too fast.

Now reading the duology "Steel City Magic" by Wen Spencer, featuring the novels "Tinker" and "Wolf Who Rules".  If you look past Spencer's annoying Laurell-K-Hamilton-isms (which isn't difficult) and the "all elves are beautiful and studly" thing, the story is pretty good.  Kind of SF, kind of fantasy, and a halfway-decent twist at the end of "Tinker".  "WWR" is a little more from Windwolf's perspective (the head of the Elves in the Westernlands), but there's lots of nice little "living as an elf" things.

If I have one problem with the books, it's that they stretch and compress time too much... the first six or seven chapters of Tinker are two or three days... then the next one is three months... then a couple of days... then three weeks compressed into a few pages... it was a little jarring.

Still, a good read so far if you can get it on discount.  (I paid $1 at a library book sale.)

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Reply #242 on: December 03, 2007, 04:22:59 PM
Finished "Steel City Magic" (Wen Spencer).  I was pleased, though the writing, the style, and the story arcs remind me vaguely of Laurell K. Hamilton in her earlier years.

Also read "Resistance" (Star Trek novel by JM Dillard).  Let me just say, if the character of Sara Nave isn't some sort of Mary Sue for Dillard, I don't know what is.  Some of Dillard's older Trek novels are really quite good, and she has a whole continuum of characters she uses in them and calls back upon, but this particular book was... eh... for a book with the Enterprise-E and revenge-crazed Borg, it didn't really blow my skirt up.

Last night, I blazed through Peter David's "Before Dishonor".  Better than "Resistance", although for David I consider it a little weak.  Contained obligatory humor, Q action, and at least one familiar character ends up naked (it's Dr. Crusher, if you're interested).  He does, however, write Worf very very well (as does Dillard in "Resistance").  David has a real affinity for the TNG characters and it shows.  He also manages to work in his favorite security guards (Meyer and Boyajian... and how the hell are they just security grunts after 15 years?) as well as Captain Calhoun -- always enjoyable -- and the moment between Picard and Calhoun at the end is good and also amusing.

If "Before Dishonor" was a fanfic, I would put "WARNING: Major Character Death".

Also, "BD" calls back to "Vendetta", David's TNG novel about the Borg.

I liked "BD", for the most part.  You don't even have to read "Resistance"... just meet Admiral Exposition (I mean Janeway) in the first couple of chapters and you're set.

Next up, "Titan: Sword of Damocles" by Geoffrey Thorne.

(I got a Borders discount coupon.  That explains all the Trek.)

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Reply #243 on: December 03, 2007, 09:06:06 PM
"The Tin Drum" (Gunter Grass) dragging on, still not finished, but I swear I will push through the last pages before Christmas.

Started "The Line of Beauty" (Alan Hollinghurst) just to read something else and I'm maybe a third through it and enjoying it fairly well.

Also have several books out of the library that I'm kind of/not really reading, such as "Teaching Sex: The Shaping of Adolescence in the 20th Century" (Jeffrey P. Moran), "The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature" (Matt Ridley), and "I'm Only Bleeding: Education as the Practice of Violence Against Children" (Alan Block). I find them randomly while shelving books and can't help it.

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gelee

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Reply #244 on: December 12, 2007, 06:45:53 PM
I just finished "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy.  Anyone else read it?



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Reply #245 on: December 12, 2007, 06:52:29 PM
That's next on my to read pile, gelee.  Did you like it?

I'm finishing up Nobody Gets the Girl by James Maxey right now.  If you like superhero stuff or Union Dues, I highly recommend you check out Nobody Gets the Girl.  It's a lot of fun and a rollercoaster of a story. 


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Reply #246 on: December 12, 2007, 07:05:24 PM
Recently:

"Star Trek Titan: Sword of Damocles" by Geoffrey Thorne -- another excellent entry in the Titan universe; I think the best stories really are going to that series.  Plus, it was told mostly from the POV of everyone EXCEPT Riker and Troi, who we already know and... well... know.  If the science was a little too confusing at times and the second-to-last chapter required a little too much thought, oh well.  Still a great book.  The "secret" Riker and Troi are hiding is blitheringly obvious, and that was an annoying aspect, but it's made up for by a great ribald moment in the second-to-last chapter.  And if you liked Jaza (the science officer), this book has a lot of him in it.

Then:

"Moist" by Mark Haskell Smith -- not SF.  It's in the mold of "Big Trouble" and some of the Elmore Leonard novels -- it's about a guy who works at a pathology lab and is swept into the web of the mob by a severed arm that shows up at his office.  A very entertaining read.  Enough sex, violence, and humor (a masturbation coach???) to keep you going.  I enjoyed it thoroughly, and read it in about 2.5 hours.

Now:

"The Autograph Man" by Zadie Smith -- also not SF, but lots of really cool Jewish stuff.  It's about four Jews -- a black guy, a half-chinese guy, a rabbi, and a briton.  (They're actually all British, but only one of them is a plain ol' British Jewish dude.)  I'm not 100% sure where the book is going, but it's got some really funny bits in it and, as a Jew, I appreciate a lot of the references and stuff.  I'll let you know how it goes.

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gelee

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Reply #247 on: December 12, 2007, 07:44:26 PM
That's next on my to read pile, gelee.  Did you like it?

I'm finishing up Nobody Gets the Girl by James Maxey right now.  If you like superhero stuff or Union Dues, I highly recommend you check out Nobody Gets the Girl.  It's a lot of fun and a rollercoaster of a story. 
The Road: Great, but flawed.  Allow me to elaborate:
The story is great.  It's more about the relationship between a father and his son than anything else.  Those of us who are either fathers, sons, or both will be touched most by it.  Some women will find the story objectionable.  On that point, I'm surprised it won the pullitzer.
The writing itself is spare and clean, in the tradition of Hemmingway, who could have ghost-written this (pun definately intended).  I kept having flashbacks to "In The Garden of Eden".  I count that as a good thing, on the whole.  When he does wax poetic, he can really turn a beutiful phrase.
I do have a gripe, and I don't have the vocabulary to name it.  I'll call it the "editing" style.  No apostrophes, no quotation marks, few periods.  It's not stream-of-consciousness, like Kerouac or Joyce, he just drops punctuation.  To my eye, it comes off as ridiculously pretentious.  I'm sure there's some sort of symbolism involved about the decay of societal norms, but I just found it cheap.  I've never read anything from McCarthy before, so I don't know if this is his "thing" or if he cooked it up special for the occaision.
I hope that wasn't too long-winded.
I'm a HUGE UD fan, so I'll be sure to have a look at James Maxey.  Jeff Derego says he's already sold another UD story to EP, so I guess it's just waiting in line.



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Reply #248 on: December 12, 2007, 07:52:25 PM
That's next on my to read pile, gelee.  Did you like it?

I'm finishing up Nobody Gets the Girl by James Maxey right now.  If you like superhero stuff or Union Dues, I highly recommend you check out Nobody Gets the Girl.  It's a lot of fun and a rollercoaster of a story. 
The Road: Great, but flawed.  Allow me to elaborate:

Thanks for the review.  This book is on my short list.  I was originally leery of this book because it was on Oprah's book list.  I'll give it a shot.   

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.    -  Carl Sagan


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Reply #249 on: December 12, 2007, 10:55:55 PM
I do have a gripe, and I don't have the vocabulary to name it.  I'll call it the "editing" style.  No apostrophes, no quotation marks, few periods.  It's not stream-of-consciousness, like Kerouac or Joyce, he just drops punctuation.  To my eye, it comes off as ridiculously pretentious.  I'm sure there's some sort of symbolism involved about the decay of societal norms, but I just found it cheap.  I've never read anything from McCarthy before, so I don't know if this is his "thing" or if he cooked it up special for the occaision.
I hope that wasn't too long-winded.

Not at all.  For what it's worth, I've read 4 other books by McCarthy and they all have little to no punctuation in them.  I think all he uses are periods and the very occasional comma.  It takes a little while to get used to, but once you do, yeah, he paints some beautiful pictures. 


I'm a HUGE UD fan, so I'll be sure to have a look at James Maxey.  Jeff Derego says he's already sold another UD story to EP, so I guess it's just waiting in line.


Let me know what you think of Nobody Gets the Girl.  It's less superhero populated and structured (no unions or anything) than UDs, but still very much fun.