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What are you reading (April 2011)

Zinga

Banned
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http://www.amazon.com/Star-Wars-Old-Republic-Deceived/dp/0345511387/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1302302325&sr=8-1

Just finished reading it, a bit short but really enjoyable! if you are interesting in playing ToR when it comes out, definitely recommended reading.
 

Karakand

Member
Fanboydestroyer said:
lol I guess my only fear is the fact that people say GR is unreadable. a part of me feels as if that is a challenge, but it is also very intimidating.
It's just a book. It can't shake you down or threaten your family. :p

Get the book of his you want to read from the library / ILL if you're really that skittish about it, then all you have to lose is your time. Though I would say starting with 49 before Rainbow isn't the end of the world as long as you don't have a problem with metafiction.
 
Ok after giving it some thought, I've decided to tackle Pynchon after I complete the "Solar Cycle" And I'll probably read the books in order of publication. So first up "V"
 
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Love, like everything in the universe, cannot be destroyed. But over time it can change.

The hot Texas nights were lonely for Ben before his heart began beating to the rhythm of two words; Tim Wyman. By all appearances, Tim had the perfect body and ideal life, but when a not-so-accidental collision brings them together, Ben discovers that the truth is rarely so simple. If winning Tim’s heart was an impossible quest, keeping it would prove even harder as family, society, and emotion threaten to tear them apart.

Something Like Summer is a love story spanning a decade and beyond as two boys discover what it means to be friends, lovers, and sometimes even enemies

I've got 40% of the book left to read.

EDIT:

Finished this just now.

I enjoyed the book.
 
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This book had a very interesting blurb. However, after finishing the book, I'm not sure he pulls it off very well and I think it's average at best.
 
More school reading this month. Reading two books right now:

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I am liking it so far. Digging the double plot: Comedy and Tragic suits this play. Gotta read the whole thing during the weekend.

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I am 2/3rd of the way through. It's all right, at times, I dose off. Other times, I am really into the novel. Going to finish it off later tonight.
 

Atruvius

Member
I'm now reading Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle. Someone from the alternate WWII thread history talked about it so I loaned the book from library

I'm on page 227 so I'm near the end. My favorit character is Frank Fink. He seems like a nice guy. He's this relatable everyman. At first I liked Childan most but now he seems to be a bit of an asshole.

I like the book and I would recommend for everyone.
 

Verendus

Banned
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A Game of Thrones


It begins! Finally, I've started reading this series. I'm only one chapter in. I like the atmosphere so far. I understand there's a TV series so I want to take my time and finish this over the next few weeks. I'll have a few episodes to catch up on then too.
 

Goody

Member
Along with something I read about Barry Hannah giving one his students a nine shot revolver to bring more joy to their writing, reading a lot of his short stories (along with those of Raymond Carver, Thom Jones, Flannery O'Connor, etc.) has really made me feel like my own writing is too serious to the point of being pretentious and boring.

Speaking of which, there's an active creative writing group here on NeoGAF, yeah? I need to start looking into those threads.
 

The Dragon's Path by Daniel Abraham
I was worried that Abraham's original, unconventional voice would be lost amidst this transition from the Eastern-influenced, personal and considerably time-spanning Long Prince Quartet. That its lack of attained readership caused him to lose contract with his previous publisher, and that this helped spark a more conventional approach with The Dragon's Path, was certainly on my mind as I cracked open this novel. All I can say is that I am ashamed of my weakly-drawn suspicions.

The Dragon's Path retains much of what I've enjoyed about Abraham's storytelling: smooth elegance, consequential action, and deeply-honed characterization: ultimately, cause for, and reward for, emotional investment. Highly recommended.


Black Lung Captain by Chris Wooding
An improvement on its predecessor, Black Lung Captain does not stray from the straight-up action-enthused fun of Retribution Falls, but also mixes in enormous threads of personal growth.


Iorich by Steven Brust
A tad disappointing, but Vlad's journeys are as readable and walk-heavy as ever.


FnordChan said:
If you want to read a good novel about Idi Amin's rule in Uganda, check out Kahawa by Donald Westlake. It's a caper novel about a group of mercenaries, Ugandan refugees, and unwitting adventurers who plan to steal an entire coffee train from Idi Amin and smuggle the coffee out of the country. It's one hell of a read. Used copies are readily available for the cost of shipping and there's also a Kindle edition available. Check it out!

FnordChan

Certainly an excellent premise. Gotta get back into his Parker stuff one day, too.
 
I tore through The Alchemist a few days ago. Excellent, though I was disappointed in some of the character threads it left hanging without explanation. I'll definitely be reading more from Coelho in the future. I don't think I'll have any interest in the upcoming film version.

Finished Blindnesshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindness_(novel) a few minutes ago. Very good (I ordered the sequel immediately from Amazon), but I wouldn't call it great. I'm not a huge fan of Saramago's writing style, but it fits the premise of the novel well. The narrator's constant digressions became obnoxious at times. I also felt the end of the novel was a bit of a cop-out, but I can see why he finished it the way he did. I'm not going near the film.

coldvein said:
extremely late to the haruki murakami party, just started hard-boiled wonderland and the end of the world today. loving it so far.

I love that book. I consider it the equal to The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which is widely considered to be his best (and was also my first Murakami book).

The only other Murakami novel I've read is Kafka on the Shore, which I thought was pretty good, if not stellar. (It does, however, contain some amazing scenes and also my favorite Murakami character so far, which I doubt will change.) I wonder which of his books I should grab next...
 

Guileless

Temp Banned for Remedial Purposes
Esnel Pla said:
Along with something I read about Barry Hannah giving one his students a nine shot revolver to bring more joy to their writing, reading a lot of his short stories (along with those of Raymond Carver, Thom Jones, Flannery O'Connor, etc.) has really made me feel like my own writing is too serious to the point of being pretentious and boring.

Speaking of which, there's an active creative writing group here on NeoGAF, yeah? I need to start looking into those threads.

I talked to a guy once who took one of his creative writing classes at Ole Miss. But we were in a bar and he looked drunk so I figured he made up half of what he said.
 

Salazar

Member
Bernard O'Donoghue's Selected Poems.
Trevor Royle's The Civil War.
Christopher Ricks' The Force of Poetry. Also his book on Hecht, Hill, and Lowell.
Philip Larkin's Collected Letters.
George Ewart Evans' Ask The Fellows who Cut the Hay.

Saw Brian Aldiss speak today. What an amazing dude.
 
D

Deleted member 1235

Unconfirmed Member
almost done with well 80% or so

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and I love it. I like it better than the scott lynch books not by a lot, but it's definitely better and I think I might prefer it to joe abercrombies books as well, also not by much. they all sit very close together.

it's a bit like harry potter, but not shit. Really like the university/learning aspect of it.
 
Soakedjunk said:
I got a nasty bout of tonsillitis and ended reading this in one sitting

*A Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss*

I loved it from beginning to end. I enjoyed how Rothfuss ended the book and cannot wait for the third one.
Woah, that must of been one long read. I started a few days ago and I'm barely a quarter of the way through, although admittedly I have had plenty else to do. Why are fantasy books so uniformly colossal? :p

On the plus side, it reads super smoothly and is probably one the best books I've ever read. If I knew more about the world and overarching plot, I might say I liked it more than ASOIAF (which, on another note, it seem literally EVERYONE on neogaf has now read or is in the process of reading).

Zinga said:
http://www.amazon.com/Star-Wars-Old-Republic-Deceived/dp/0345511387/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1302302325&sr=8-1

Just finished reading it, a bit short but really enjoyable! if you are interesting in playing ToR when it comes out, definitely recommended reading.
Have you read Crosscurrent by any chance, and would you say the writing and story are as good?

That was the last Star Wars book I really liked and by the same author, so I might just have to pick it up. The TOR connection is just a bonus.
 

Kraftwerk

Member
Finished :)

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What a journey. Great reading experience. Loved every single character. Dan Simmons is fucking great writer. Love him.

I wished it went on forever :(

--------------------------------------------

RECOMMENDATION TIME D:<

I am looking for a long sci-fi series., 3 books+ (already read foundation series, robot series etc)

I'm thinking about DUNE , but if anyone has something similar to HYPERION let me know :)
 

thomaser

Member
Just finished a book for school - Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn. Very enjoyable! Now to read all the critical essays.

I've no idea what to read next outside the required reading for school. Perhaps Ibsen's poems, just to finish getting through his complete works. Other than that, I have 50-60 books laying around unread. I should probably read one of the big ones next. Which one would you people recommend to read first out of these? Leaning towards Mann or Pynchon myself, since I've had those longer than the others:

Bolano: 2666
DeLillo: Underworld
Grass: The Tin Drum
Gray: Lanark - A Life in Four Books
Hesse: The Glass Bead Game
Mann: Buddenbrooks
Mitchell: Cloud Atlas
Morrison: Jazz
Pynchon: Against the Day
 
Reading Catching Fire (got it in paperback through an Amazon seller). I enjoyed Hunger Games, but I'm fifty pages into this one and really not digging it so far. The way it's attempting to work in recaps of the first is obnoxious.

Also working through Song of Ice and Fire summaries online to refresh myself before jumping back into A Feast for Crows, which I never finished (got 100 pages in and it just didn't grab me at all, which was a bummer since the last few hundred pages of Storm of Swords was my favorite section of the series).

Unless I pick up something else I'm probably going to read Neverwhere for the thousandth time after these two.
 

Mumei

Member
About 270 pages into A Feast for Crows. It's not as interesting as the previous three books, but that's mostly because a lot of my favorite POV characters aren't in this one, and I haven't warmed up too much to most of the new perspectives.

I'm still really enjoying it, though, more than I did the first time I read it.
 

demon

I don't mean to alarm you but you have dogs on your face
beelzebozo said:
CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES

what a brilliant book this is. it reminds me tonally of CATCH-22 quite a bit. what i really like is how completely erudite and delusional ignatius is, particularly his obsession with the philosopher boethius. ignatius pretty much despises everyone, but when he thinks perhaps there might be something valuable in someone, he says, "why thank you, citizen. are you well learned in the teachings of boethius?"

i'm sure plenty of you read this. it's very good. very very good. and i also read a great short story by jan de beard called "the fourth state of matter" that my girlfrand recommended, which i'd be glad to share with anyone. it's creative nonfiction.

oh, and i read THE SONG OF LAUGHTER AND FORGETTING a few weeks ago, by milan kundera. he is the man.

I finished this almost a year ago and it may be my favorite book I've read since then. Absolutely loved it. Just a couple days ago I was reading about John Kennedy Toole and his life, and it's really sad how he went completely unappreciated until years after his death after having taken his own life at 31 or 32. Seemed like he was a really nice guy too. He was the literary Nick Drake.
 
Kraftwerk said:
Finished :)

wporw.jpg


What a journey. Great reading experience. Loved every single character. Dan Simmons is fucking great writer. Love him.

I wished it went on forever :(

--------------------------------------------

RECOMMENDATION TIME D:<

I am looking for a long sci-fi series., 3 books+ (already read foundation series, robot series etc)

I'm thinking about DUNE , but if anyone has something similar to HYPERION let me know :)

I freaking loved the Hyperion books. what was your opinion on Endymion? I enjoyed it, but not to the extent of the other three.

As a recent convert, I have to suggest Gene Wolfe's "Book of the New Sun" its a 5 volume book series that is simply breathtaking. The first 4 books are divded up into omnibus editions. They include "Shadow and Claw" and "Sword and Citadel" the 5th book is called "The Urth of the New Sun" I am reading that one right now. all and all this is just one amazing series, and when you read it and fall in love with it, you just want to climb a mountain and proclaim to the world your love for Gene Wolfe. or maybe that was just me.
 

dangrib

Member
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just finished this. so much fun to read. would love tarantino to make use of the movie rights that he owns.

can anyone recommend a really nice noir detective novel?
 
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I love it, a very difficult to follow at times narrative, but engrossing. I read it at every opportunity, im about 3/4 through. Its kind of like The Road meets a more serious World War Z.
 

Burger

Member
pseudocaesar said:
I love it, a very difficult to follow at times narrative, but engrossing. I read it at every opportunity, im about 3/4 through. Its kind of like The Road meets a more serious World War Z.

I really loved The Passage, although I thought the start was stronger than the end. But fuck yeah, great book. Gets way too much hate.
 

demon

I don't mean to alarm you but you have dogs on your face
Just started this (still reading Unequal Protection):

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My friend just read it and loved it, and wanting me to read it because the character reminds her of herself...
 

mugen812

Member
Just finished reading Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. The book is very well written and hard to put down. It's pretty amazing to hear what this guy went through. The scope of the book is pretty wide, so it'll be interesting on what the movie focuses on.
 

bengraven

Member
LocoMrPollock said:
Great books. Wish they would have made more movies.

sparky2112 said:
They get even better, too. So, so good...

These replies make me glad to know O'Brian keeps the quality high throughout the series.


pseudocaesar said:
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I love it, a very difficult to follow at times narrative, but engrossing. I read it at every opportunity, im about 3/4 through. Its kind of like The Road meets a more serious World War Z.

I've tried reading this twice. Third time may be the charm when I need a break from the Aubrey-Maturin books.

I really think this book is right up my alley, being someone who loves vampires, zombies, and post-apocalyptic novels.
 

Gorgon

Member
Kraftwerk said:
Finished :)

wporw.jpg


What a journey. Great reading experience. Loved every single character. Dan Simmons is fucking great writer. Love him.

I wished it went on forever :(

--------------------------------------------

RECOMMENDATION TIME D:<

I am looking for a long sci-fi series., 3 books+ (already read foundation series, robot series etc)

I'm thinking about DUNE , but if anyone has something similar to HYPERION let me know :)

Fanboydestroyer said:
I freaking loved the Hyperion books. what was your opinion on Endymion? I enjoyed it, but not to the extent of the other three.

As a recent convert, I have to suggest Gene Wolfe's "Book of the New Sun" its a 5 volume book series that is simply breathtaking. The first 4 books are divded up into omnibus editions. They include "Shadow and Claw" and "Sword and Citadel" the 5th book is called "The Urth of the New Sun" I am reading that one right now. all and all this is just one amazing series, and when you read it and fall in love with it, you just want to climb a mountain and proclaim to the world your love for Gene Wolfe. or maybe that was just me.


I found the Endymion books to be a let down compared to the Hyperion ones. Where Hyperion were magnificently writen books the Endymion ones felt like juvenile action romps. It felt like Dan was just trying to capitalize on the success of the first two books. They weren't bad per se, but nothing on the same level as the first ones. Personaly I think he should have stoped after Fall of Hyperion.

The Solar Cycle by Gene Wolfe is far beyond anything else in speculative fiction. However, they are not for everyone, unfortunately. Plus, they demand the so called "second-level reading". Much of what is in the books is not what it looks at first sight. I'm in the Urth List, a mailing list for fans of Wolfe, and after all these years I'm still amazed at the amount of stuff I "didn't get" when reading the books. No wonder there have been entire academic/study books writen about them. On the bright side, even if you just read them at face value, ignorant of the deep layers Wolfe wooves into them, they are still amazingly writen stories. We are lucky Wolfe was born.

As for Dune, I love the first one, but I didn't like the sequels that much. I actually prefer the Prelude to Dune trilogy writen by his son (sacriledge!) However I dispense all the other stuff writen by his son too except for the Prelude trilogy books. Personaly, I'd stick with the first book and the Prelude trilogy and forget about the rest. Of course, you'll probably want to read at least the original sequels anyway, no matter what anyone tells you.
 
FlyinJ said:
If you liked this, you'll love Pale Fire by Nabokov, which is basically the inspiration for Confederacy (some say he just did a shoddy rip-off).

It's also much, much better.

That is much appreciated information. A confederacy is one of my favorite books.
 

tmarques

Member
demon said:
Just started this (still reading Unequal Protection):

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My friend just read it and loved it, and wanting me to read it because the character reminds her of herself...

Brilliant novel. It's like Of Human Bondage set in Japan. In the 1920s. And funnier. Win-win-win.
 
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Pat Nolan, an American man, is summoned to Paris to claim the body of his estranged daughter Megan, who has committed suicide. The body, however, is not Megan's and it becomes instantly clear to Pat that Megan staged this, that she is in serious trouble, and that she is calling to him for help.This sends Pat on an odyssey that stretches across France and into the Czech Republic and that makes him the target of both the French police and a band of international terrorists. Joining Pat on his search is Catherine Laurence, a beautiful but tormented Paris detective who sees in Pat something she never thought she'd find--genuine passion and desperate need. As they look for Megan, they come closer to each other's souls and discover love when both had long given up on it.Juxtaposed against this story is Megan's story. A freelance journalist, Megan is in Morocco to do research when she meets Abdel Lahani, a Saudi businessman. They begin a torrid affair, a game Megan has played often and well in her adult life. But what she discovers about Lahani puts her in the center of a different kind of game, one with rules she can barely comprehend. Because of her relationship with Lahani, Megan has made some considerable enemies. And she has put the lives of many--maybe even millions--at risk.A World I Never Made is an atmospheric novel of suspense with brilliantly drawn characters and back-stories as compelling as the plot itself. It is the kind of novel that resonates deeply and leaves its traces long after you turn the final page.


I can't afford books so I've started with free ones ;D haven't started this yet and it was a bit out of random pick.
 

SolKane

Member
FlyinJ said:
If you liked this, you'll love Pale Fire by Nabokov, which is basically the inspiration for Confederacy (some say he just did a shoddy rip-off).

It's also much, much better.

What? Who says this? I've never read Pale Fire, but based on what I know about it, they don't seem very similar. The relationship to Flannery O'Connor's work is much more immediate, however.
 
Thanks to this thread, I discovered and finished reading this:


What the Buddha Taught: Revised and Expanded Edition with Texts from Suttas and Dhammapada by Walpola Rahula

Everyone should read this at least once if they're even remotely interested in Buddhism. The first few chapters contain a straightforward introduction to Buddhism that's neither preachy nor touchy-feely. While it's not exactly straight from the horse's mouth because Buddha's teachings are still coming through a translator, I felt the principles of the book were as raw as one could get it without personally sitting under a bodhi tree with Buddha himself.
 
I'm currently split between reading Toni Morrison's "The Bluest Eye" for a class that I'm in (big 'meh' from me, at least at the halfway point) and the first volume of Dan Schneider's unpublished, four-volume "True Life" memoirs, which is absolutely fantastic. Shame that he tends to alienate people (and therefore potential publishers as well) with his style of argumentation, as he's an absolutely incredible writer.
 
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