Recently finished: Elantris by Brandon Sanderson. Very enjoyable book, terrific ending. The only negative I found was that the two protagonists were too perfect. I then picked up "In the shadow of Gotham" by Stefanie Pintoff but put it aside after 40 pages because the character and world building was done so clumsily. Both Elantris and In the Shadow of Gotham were debut novels, but even in his first published book Sanderson is leagues beyond Pintoff in his ability to grab a reader in just one single chapter.
About halfway done with this one and it is great so far. You have 2 magicians (actual magic) who make some sort of bet that will be decided by their apprentices. They train them from a young age and place them into positions with a traveling circus so that they can compete. They are then using magic to alter the circus trying to one-up each other.
I just finished Mistborn: The Alloy of Law and it was amazing. I just enjoyed it way more than the regular Mistborn novels. Seriously, Wayne alone makes the book much better. The battles were also very well done.
Finished The Hunger Games two nights ago. Trying to figure out what to read next, my friend suggested Catching Fire, since I liked Hunger Games. Though, I may wait to read Catching Fire until the film adaption of Hunger Games comes out. I will either finish A Feast of Crows or start on Wizard's First Rule.
REALLY enjoyed it - some of the stories are fantastic, some are hit and miss, but most, if not all, of them are all worth a read, with a lot of compelling detail on the cultures Lamb writes about (due to the fact he's a historian, I'd guess) and a great sense of pace and action. Serious thanks to whoever it was here that recommended it, I loved it. Going to hunt down 'Swords from the East' next.
Got a Neil Gaiman book I had yet to read in a Kindle 99p sale and I enjoyed it well enough, probably would have loved it if it'd been about when I was a kid;
Now I'm about to start this on recommendation from a friend;
REALLY enjoyed it - some of the stories are fantastic, some are hit and miss, but most, if not all, of them are all worth a read, with a lot of compelling detail on the cultures Lamb writes about (due to the fact he's a historian, I'd guess) and a great sense of pace and action. Serious thanks to whoever it was here that recommended it, I loved it. Going to hunt down 'Swords from the East' next.
After spending what seems like every waking minute of my childhood watching the ITV Jeeves & Wooster series over and over, this has been a long time coming. My first PG Wodehouse! Two things immediately occurred to me as I started reading: 1) Clive Exton's adaptation of these stories to television is undoubtedly the greatest, truest, most faithful and mind-blowing book-to-screen adaptation ever. I can hear Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry in every sentence! 2) PG Wodehouse is now my favorite fucking author, holy shit, why did I wait so long.
I also got a shit-ton of other books for Christmas, including the first two Flashmans (Flashmen?), can't wait to dive into those.
Same here. I finished #1 in like 2 nights of reading. For some reason when I got to the actual games I couldn't stop reading. This one is starting out slow but I just hit the exciting part.
Finishing Junot Diaz's short story collection, Drown. I thought one or two of the stories were a bit flimsy, but the stories he sets in the Dominican Republic have tremendous impact. Wish this guy wrote more, he has an amazing voice.
I started re-reading Emerald Eyes by Daniel Keys Moran. The 4th volume finally came out after a long break, so I decided to re-read the first three before I started it. Not the greatest prose but some great ideas and he writes his action sequences really well.
I read the first bits of "The Language Instinct," but as I've got a long unpublished manuscript to get through in the next few weeks, I'm not sure when I'll be able to get back to it.
I don't know how I feel about this book. I feel like I should absolutely adore it since I adore superheroes and the history behind how they were made, but at times I think that actually worked against me... Not that there aren't some great moments, but I think it fell apart towards the end.
It's kind of downhill from the joint scenes where Joe learns of his brother's death and the raid on the hotel where Sammy and Tracy were staying. Although it kind of got its footing back during the Antarctic section - the death of Joe's fellow soldiers by monoxide poisoning was brutal.
I think my biggest complaint is that Chabon didn't seem to think much of his talent or his audience: there's a a few pages where he literally spells out the connections between The Escapist, comic books and Escapism, the themes of the novel etc... which were pretty unnecessary. You don't need to state the metaphor for us, Chabon! The book itself is the metaphor.
And just finished this:
Damn, that was kind of intense. I didn't like it as much as The Blind Assassin, but definitely got more into it than The Handmaid's Tale. The characters weren't too likable, and I was sad to see Atwood fall into the trend of making the only notable female character into a prostitute with a heart of gold (and it seems like the sequel, The Year of the Flood continues that) but overall it was a very chilling look at a post-apocalyptic world. Even though more than half of the novel is spent in this post-apocalyptic wasteland, it didn't quite hit me until the last couple of flashbacks when
Crake succeeds in his plan to kill off humanity using a super virus
. It was actually rather uncomfortable to read; Atwood managed to capture the fear and futility of escaping and impossibility of saving yourself rather well. I'll probably pick up the sequel later.
For now, I'll pick up one of the books I got as Christmas presents: The Wind in the Willows, Ursula K. Le Guin's The Lathe of Heaven and World's of Exile and Illusion, Leviathan Wakes, and Watership Down. Haven't decided what to start though: kind of want to read everything at once! Also got some B&N giftcards so I'll probably go through some of the older threads and look for some good picks. If anyone has a recommendation based on what I've listed so far, that'd be cool too.
I don't know how I feel about this book. I feel like I should absolutely adore it since I adore superheroes and the history behind how they were made, but at times I think that actually worked against me... Not that there aren't some great moments, but I think it fell apart towards the end.
It's kind of downhill from the joint scenes where Joe learns of his brother's death and the raid on the hotel where Sammy and Tracy were staying. Although it kind of got its footing back during the Antarctic section - the death of Joe's fellow soldiers by monoxide poisoning was brutal.
I think my biggest complaint is that Chabon didn't seem to think much of his talent or his audience: there's a a few pages where he literally spells out the connections between The Escapist, comic books and Escapism, the themes of the novel etc... which were pretty unnecessary. You don't need to state the metaphor for us, Chabon! The book itself is the metaphor.
Alot of it is rehash and pictures that you already saw from the show but he does actually have a diary with background stuff that you didn't see. I mean its nothing mind blowing but like when he visited the pyramids he writes about how comfortable the skirt things are that they wear that he wore them to bed as pajamas. I didn't really get to read through it yet .. I just skimmed it so far.
Is this thread being used as a general lit-gaf? I'd be interested in hearing people's opinions on certain books that go on sale as part of post-Xmas sales that I've never heard of. Or does anyone think there is enough room for a new thread? What's the consensus here?
Is this thread being used as a general lit-gaf? I'd be interested in hearing people's opinions on certain books that go on sale as part of post-Xmas sales that I've never heard of. Or does anyone think there is enough room for a new thread? What's the consensus here?
Ali Sparkes - Frozen in Time
Barbara Demick - Nothing to Envy
Elizabeth Goudge - Little White Horse
Rosie Alison - The Very Thought of You
Frank Boyce - The Unforgotten Coat
Peter Carey - True History of the Kelly Gang
Lucy Wadham - Secret Life of France
Nikesh Shukla - Coconut Unlimited
Niccolo Ammaniti - The Crossroads
Sebastian Barry - A Long Long Way
Jennifer Egan - Look at Me
Jonathan Trigell - Genus
Gillian Mears - Foal's Bread
Tina Rosenberg - Join the Club
Thomas H. Cook - The Quest for Anna Klein
Celia Rees - This Is Not Forgiveness
All around £1.
Picked up Egan and Barry based on my knowledge of the authors, and I loved the sample chapter of Genus so I snapped that up. I'm a sucker for alt-world futures. I know of the Carey novel, and I know it's a Booker winner, but I just am not interested in the topic in the slightest (which is weird because I generally enjoy those types of novels). And I haven't heard of the others. Wondering if anyone sees something that I should pick up?
I've always been curious if there have been any other authors from the 1920/30ies besides Howard, Lovecraft and Smith who are still worth reading. I know a few names like Frank Belknap Long and Robert Bloch but I've never read anything by them. (Yes, never read Psycho).
This book was written 1973. I read the German version. Pretty weird stuff, especially considering the condition of Japan in early 2011. Komatsu is well-known to Sci-Fi fans worldwide, and after what happened on March 11 he got even more famous - at least to non-Japanese outside Japan. The book describes how Japan literally sinks down into the Pacific ocean due to geological circumstances which I won't describe here in detail.
In this novel the biggest earthquake hits Japan on the 3rd of March! Being just a coincidence (the Tohoku quake happened on the same date) it was nevertheless a quite disturbing read, considering how Komatsu describes the ongoing natural desasters: tsunami waves are constantly hitting the eastern coast of Japan, whole parts of Osaka and the coastal Kansai region are being swept away in an instant while petroleum tanks explode on the shoreline (well, at least not nuclear plants), black petroleum fumes mingling with the smoke and ashes coming out of dozens of active volcanoes etc pp
Interesting read for everyone interested in dystopian novels and the soul of the Japanese people.
Finished up Catching Fire last night and now I'm on to the finale. It's the first book I'm reading on my Kindle and I'm loving it so far. Awesome present.
Never saw the film that came from this book but my friend got it for me for christmas. Read it in two days as I just couldn't put it down.
Got a kindle for xmas but im not really jelling with it, tried a few samples (new steven king and When God was a Rabbit) but everything feels samey.. :/
Picked this up in the Kindle Book sale for 99p. I'm about a quarter of the way through and it's decent so far, the premise is pretty interesting and fresh, but it suffers from some awkward and unsubtle use of literary references. I'm a sucker for dystopian settings though so will stick with it.
Just started on the first novel in the collection, Rocannon's World. It's Le Guin's first novel and falls into some typical fantasy tropes - two of the planet's races are basically fantasy elves and dwarves. But, so far I've really liked what she's doing with the intergalactic travel and how the time skips brought on by light-speed travel allow the main character to slowly become part of the world's mythology.
