Author Topic: What are you reading?  (Read 845530 times)

DKT

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Reply #675 on: October 24, 2008, 04:20:53 AM
Just Finied "A Fire Upon The Deep" by Vernor Vinge.  It had it's strong points, but I was not impressed.  I should have researched it a bit more before buying.  Stories that largley revolve around child protagonists don't normally do much for me.  I really didn't care for the depiction of the villian.  He was absurdly one-dimensional, would have twisted his moustache if he'd had one.  I liked the ending, but the most fascinating character in the novel was just under-developed.  He apparently got his own treatment in "A Deepness In The Sky," a prequal.  I liked him enough that I might pick it up, despite the weeknesses of the first novel.
Now working on "Anathem," buy Neal Stephenson, and listening to "Altered Carbon," by Richard K. Morgan via my subscription to www.audible.com .  I also scored a free copy of "Reality Dysfunction" by Peter F. Hamilton.  I'd be reading it now, but I'd already started on Anathem when I found out I had it, courtesy of Orbit Books --> www.orbitbooks.net.
Anathem looks to be very interesting so far.  Neat ideas, but I'm only about 100 pages in.
Altered Carbon is amazing.  Very noir.

Excellent choice in Altered carbon! The sequels are amazing also, as is his other recent sci fi novel 'Thirteen'.

I haven't read Thirteen yet, but I loved his Kovacs books.  That said, stay away from Market Forces. 


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Reply #676 on: October 24, 2008, 08:37:07 AM
After the break for Installing Linux, it's back to some serious stuff with A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam   by Karen Armstrong

If you go up thread to my first or second post, you will find that book.  I still haven't finished it.  I run into the problem that I want to remember everything she writes.  If I read to much, I forget too much.



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Reply #677 on: October 24, 2008, 11:56:04 AM
Just Finied "A Fire Upon The Deep" by Vernor Vinge.  It had it's strong points, but I was not impressed.  I should have researched it a bit more before buying.  Stories that largley revolve around child protagonists don't normally do much for me.  I really didn't care for the depiction of the villian.  He was absurdly one-dimensional, would have twisted his moustache if he'd had one.  I liked the ending, but the most fascinating character in the novel was just under-developed.  He apparently got his own treatment in "A Deepness In The Sky," a prequal.  I liked him enough that I might pick it up, despite the weeknesses of the first novel.
Now working on "Anathem," buy Neal Stephenson, and listening to "Altered Carbon," by Richard K. Morgan via my subscription to www.audible.com .  I also scored a free copy of "Reality Dysfunction" by Peter F. Hamilton.  I'd be reading it now, but I'd already started on Anathem when I found out I had it, courtesy of Orbit Books --> www.orbitbooks.net.
Anathem looks to be very interesting so far.  Neat ideas, but I'm only about 100 pages in.
Altered Carbon is amazing.  Very noir.

Excellent choice in Altered carbon! The sequels are amazing also, as is his other recent sci fi novel 'Thirteen'.
Oh yes.  I'm totally hooked.  I'll probably buy this in print as well.



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Reply #678 on: October 24, 2008, 12:05:19 PM
Just Finied "A Fire Upon The Deep" by Vernor Vinge.  It had it's strong points, but I was not impressed.  I should have researched it a bit more before buying.  Stories that largley revolve around child protagonists don't normally do much for me.  I really didn't care for the depiction of the villian.  He was absurdly one-dimensional, would have twisted his moustache if he'd had one.  I liked the ending, but the most fascinating character in the novel was just under-developed.  He apparently got his own treatment in "A Deepness In The Sky," a prequal.  I liked him enough that I might pick it up, despite the weeknesses of the first novel.

I really enjoyed "A Deepness in the Sky".  Pham Nuwen is quite the omni-competent ass-kicking interstellar hero.  But be forewarned that the two chief villains are just as one-dimensionally evil as Lord Steel was in "A Fire upon the Deep".

"The meteor formed a crater, vampires crawling out of the crater." -  The Lyttle Lytton contest


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Reply #679 on: October 24, 2008, 12:56:03 PM
After the break for Installing Linux, it's back to some serious stuff with A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam   by Karen Armstrong

If you go up thread to my first or second post, you will find that book.  I still haven't finished it.  I run into the problem that I want to remember everything she writes.  If I read to much, I forget too much.


I just read the introduction last night.  I'll let you know how it goes...

"My whole job is in the space between 'should be' and 'is.' It's a big space."


gelee

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Reply #680 on: October 24, 2008, 09:57:45 PM
Just Finied "A Fire Upon The Deep" by Vernor Vinge.  It had it's strong points, but I was not impressed.  I should have researched it a bit more before buying.  Stories that largley revolve around child protagonists don't normally do much for me.  I really didn't care for the depiction of the villian.  He was absurdly one-dimensional, would have twisted his moustache if he'd had one.  I liked the ending, but the most fascinating character in the novel was just under-developed.  He apparently got his own treatment in "A Deepness In The Sky," a prequal.  I liked him enough that I might pick it up, despite the weeknesses of the first novel.

I really enjoyed "A Deepness in the Sky".  Pham Nuwen is quite the omni-competent ass-kicking interstellar hero.  But be forewarned that the two chief villains are just as one-dimensionally evil as Lord Steel was in "A Fire upon the Deep".
I see you had no trouble figuring out which villain I was talking about :)
That's a shame about the villains, though.  At times, Vinge's prose is just beutiful, and some of his characters have amazing depth and roundness.  Others just seem to fall flat.



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Reply #681 on: October 25, 2008, 12:41:36 AM
Just Finied "A Fire Upon The Deep" by Vernor Vinge.  It had it's strong points, but I was not impressed.  I should have researched it a bit more before buying.  Stories that largley revolve around child protagonists don't normally do much for me.  I really didn't care for the depiction of the villian.  He was absurdly one-dimensional, would have twisted his moustache if he'd had one.  I liked the ending, but the most fascinating character in the novel was just under-developed.  He apparently got his own treatment in "A Deepness In The Sky," a prequal.  I liked him enough that I might pick it up, despite the weeknesses of the first novel.
I really enjoyed "A Deepness in the Sky".  Pham Nuwen is quite the omni-competent ass-kicking interstellar hero.  But be forewarned that the two chief villains are just as one-dimensionally evil as Lord Steel was in "A Fire upon the Deep".
I see you had no trouble figuring out which villain I was talking about :)
That's a shame about the villains, though.  At times, Vinge's prose is just beutiful, and some of his characters have amazing depth and roundness.  Others just seem to fall flat.

I'll go so far as to say that, reading "A Fire upon the Deep", I had some trouble at first figuring out the motivation and background of the different Tine groups simply because I expected there to be a lot more moral ambiguity than there actually was.  I really didn't think Vinge would make it as simple as "These aliens = Good.  Those aliens = Evil".  But he did.  I still enjoyed the book, though.

"The meteor formed a crater, vampires crawling out of the crater." -  The Lyttle Lytton contest


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Reply #682 on: October 25, 2008, 02:45:35 AM
Got the last four volumes of Battle Angel Alita from the library today, and started "Angel of Death".

Also still reading DFW's Consider the Lobster -- got as far as the Kafka essay last night.

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Reply #683 on: October 25, 2008, 04:37:03 AM
After the break for Installing Linux, it's back to some serious stuff with A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam   by Karen Armstrong

If you go up thread to my first or second post, you will find that book.  I still haven't finished it.  I run into the problem that I want to remember everything she writes.  If I read to much, I forget too much.


Wow, that was last January.  I'm hoping to move a bit faster than that. I have some rather urgent thinking to do on the subject.

"My whole job is in the space between 'should be' and 'is.' It's a big space."


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Reply #684 on: October 25, 2008, 10:02:17 PM
My todo list of books is sixty three books deep and consists entirely of hwa.org bramstoker award winners and nominees that I haven't managed to read yet..
http://allthingshorrible.blogspot.com/2008/10/my-todo-book-list.html 
The complete list:
http://www.horror.org/stokerwinnom.htm
Not on the list, but currently on my nightstand is:
Kill Whitey, by Brian Keene
http://www.cemeterydance.com/sh/keene01.html



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Reply #685 on: October 26, 2008, 01:43:47 AM
I'm reading Asimov's "The Naked Sun" and "The Gods Themselves", somehow at the same time...

I just finished a compilation of 007 stories and "Space", by James A Michener. The 007 stories were great; I found them much better than the movies. Connory was definitely the best Bond. On the other hand, I found "Space" a little boring and lacking... Something.

I got that feeling that there was something missing from the book, but I'm not quite sure what it was.

I wonder what it would be like to feel my brain...


stePH

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Reply #686 on: October 26, 2008, 05:58:05 AM
I'm reading Asimov's "The Naked Sun" and "The Gods Themselves", somehow at the same time...
... "Space", by James A Michener. ..., I found "Space" a little boring and lacking... Something.

I got that feeling that there was something missing from the book, but I'm not quite sure what it was.

Compelling characters?  An interesting plot?  Something to make the book even marginally worth reading?  All of the above?

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Reply #687 on: October 26, 2008, 01:59:10 PM
I found "Space" a little boring and lacking... Something.

I got that feeling that there was something missing from the book, but I'm not quite sure what it was.

It's been about ten years since I read it but if I remember the politics bogged down the narrative, and 200 pages of a heretic preacher didn't add to it.  Maybe it wasn't what was lacking but what was not edited out.

Generally I like Mitchner's books though they are usually long for no reason except that people  demanded long form books from him.  The Eagle and the Raven and Journey were two that books that were edits from larger works.  Texas and Alaska respectively.    Each of those books were nice alone, but 200 to 300 pages of added length would have made it more unwieldly.



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Reply #688 on: October 26, 2008, 03:21:23 PM
Generally I like Mitchner's books though they are usually long for no reason except that people  demanded long form books from him.  The Eagle and the Raven and Journey were two that books that were edits from larger works.  Texas and Alaska respectively.    Each of those books were nice alone, but 200 to 300 pages of added length would have made it more unwieldly.

So his works would actually be improved in Readers Digest Condensed Versions?

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Reply #689 on: October 26, 2008, 06:40:07 PM

It's been about ten years since I read it but if I remember the politics bogged down the narrative, and 200 pages of a heretic preacher didn't add to it.  Maybe it wasn't what was lacking but what was not edited out.

I'd have to say that that was probably it. I suppose that I've been spoiled by short stories, into wanting something that's quick and strait to the point. Also, it wasn't really my generation, so yah. Most of the politics involved are lost on me. Maybe I'll re-read it in a few years.

I wonder what it would be like to feel my brain...


thomasowenm

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Reply #690 on: October 26, 2008, 07:03:11 PM

So his works would actually be improved in Readers Digest Condensed Versions?

Some of my best book reports in high school came from Readers Digest condensed books. ;D 
I do think they could be easily sliced down from 800 to 350 page novels without any loss of content, but then it would not be a michner novel.



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Reply #691 on: October 27, 2008, 02:48:16 PM

So his works would actually be improved in Readers Digest Condensed Versions?

Some of my best book reports in high school came from Readers Digest condensed books. ;D 
I do think they could be easily sliced down from 800 to 350 page novels without any loss of content, but then it would not be a michner novel.

More to the point ... could a Readers Digest Condensed book be reconstituted by adding a can of milk or water?

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Reply #692 on: October 31, 2008, 06:49:38 PM
Finished reading Incandescence. It was better than Diaspora, but it still didn't make me want to rush out and buy more of Egan's work. Early on, it suffers from using too many made-up words in too short a space of time, but I'm not sure you could describe a non-euclidian coordinate system in normal words. The science was a little dense, but I found it entirely grokable, which is quite an achievement.

There are two parallel plotlines, one of post-humans investigating the only true mystery to have cropped up in millions of years, and one of aliens trying to figure out the basic rules of physics (and incidentally save their world from being destroyed). The obvious expectation is that the two groups will meet at the end, and the two plots will merge into one, but this never happens. Instead, we're given a strong hint about how the two are related, but I'm not convinced that it makes sense unless the Splinter managed to move from a neutron star to a supermassive black hole without requiring any major physical (or biological) changes...

Anyway, decent book. It'll keep all the relativity-nerds out there happy. And now I'm back to the fourth of Turtledove's Worldwar series.
« Last Edit: November 03, 2008, 02:09:05 PM by Russell Nash »

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Reply #693 on: November 01, 2008, 03:55:44 AM
Just finished Mindscan by Robert J Sawyer. I am reading The Graveyard book by Neil Gaiman now and I intend to read An Evil Guest by Gene Wolfe next.

In the midst of the word he was trying to say,
  In the midst of his laughter and glee,
He had softly and suddenly vanished away—
  For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.


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Reply #694 on: November 13, 2008, 06:36:11 PM
Reading "He, She, and It" by Marge Piercy. SF set in the mid-21st century but written in 1990, so it's a very different view than I remembered from the last time I read it. Jewish SF, no less.

Also reading Sandman I: Preludes and Nocturnes.

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Reply #695 on: November 14, 2008, 07:07:03 PM
I'm *still* reading Anathem, by Neal Stephenson.  I'd better get course credit for this damn thing.

I now know how to read orbital coordinates.  DO NOT WANT.  I was almost 300 pages in before Mr. Stephenson decided to let us in on the whole bloody point of the book.  It's a credit to the quality of his prose that I'm still reading it.  If he didn't write so well, I would have given up already.

Also, just started Peter F. Hamilton's "Reality Dysfunction."  I'm 15 pages in and there has already been epic ship to ship space combat and a planet bombarded into extinction from orbit.  Utterly loving it.  I could just squee with delight.  Seriously.  Not surprising.  I could gush about Pandora's Star/Judas Unchained for days.
You see, Hamilton writes really well AND tells a good story.



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Reply #696 on: November 14, 2008, 07:23:31 PM
Also, just started Peter F. Hamilton's "Reality Dysfunction."

I love the Night's Dawn Trilogy. My only issue with it is that the last 90 pages or so of the final volume covers about as much territory as any of the 1000 page volumes. I suspect that his agent / publisher point-blank refused to let him stretch it out into a fourth volume, so an amout of plot about equal to The Lord of the Rings got squeezed into a couple of chapters.

Check out his Mindstar trilogy, for post-apocalyptic psychic detective goodness.
Mindstar Rising
A Quantum Murder
The Nano Flower

I'm a huge fan of Hamilton, even after Misspent Youth ;)
« Last Edit: November 15, 2008, 02:00:43 PM by Russell Nash »

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Reply #697 on: November 14, 2008, 07:25:52 PM
Also, just started Peter F. Hamilton's "Reality Dysfunction."

I love the Night's Dawn Trilogy. My only issue with it is that the last 90 pages or so of the final volume covers about as much territory as any of the 1000 page volumes. I suspect that his agent / publisher point-blank refused to let him stretch it out into a fourth volume, so an amout of plot about equal to The Lord of the Rings got squeezed into a couple of chapters.

Yes, I agree - it's a great series, but the ending is really, really rushed. And kinda Deus-Ex-Machina-ish, which is especially noticable given how fast it goes - after 1000 pages of set up, something happens that just solves everything at once in a few pages.

Hamilton's Pandora Star doublet is also excellent. Better than Night's Dawn trilogy, in my opinion, in many respects. He also has a new trilogy set up in the same universe as Pandora's Star, but I haven't picked it up yet (the second book just came out, I forget it's name).
« Last Edit: November 14, 2008, 07:28:22 PM by eytanz »



gelee

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Reply #698 on: November 14, 2008, 07:36:03 PM
Hamilton's Pandora Star doublet is also excellent. Better than Night's Dawn trilogy, in my opinion, in many respects. He also has a new trilogy set up in the same universe as Pandora's Star, but I haven't picked it up yet (the second book just came out, I forget it's name).
Yeah, about that new trilogy:  I read the "sample" chapter, and it just totaly left me flat.  Apparently, it moves a century or three into the future of the PS/JU setting.  I read the timeline he has posted on his site, and it helped me understand what I was reading, but I just couldn't get interested, and his fiction usually grabs me a lot faster.
At any rate, I'm looking forward to reading the rest of "Nights Dawn."

Has anybody else read "Anathem"?  Am I beating my head against a wall, or should I stick with it?



DKT

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Reply #699 on: November 14, 2008, 07:56:56 PM
Has anybody else read "Anathem"?  Am I beating my head against a wall, or should I stick with it?

Do you feel like you're beating your head against a wall?  If so, then you probably are :)

I'm not nuts about Stephenson like some people, but I've heard even die-hard fans struggle with that one.  (Though I heard the same thing about the Baroque Cycle.)