This is basically how I feel.
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What are you reading? (March 2012)
- Thread starter Maklershed
- Start date
This is basically how I feel.
I would say no, but the sequel probably counts.
Chick-lit is a marketing category which has only really established itself in the last 10-odd years. Should every book ever written in the past which is now considered to focus on themes primarily the concern of women, be now considered chick-lit? What happens when the current fad of chick-lit passes? Will Jane Eyre go back to best being categorised as a classic?
From a marketing perspective, would Jane Eyre sell best on the 'chick-lit' shelf with a chick-lit cover, or on the classics shelf with a suitably austere cover? If my sister bought Jane Eyre expecting something like Bridget Jones I think she'd be pretty hacked off. I can't say you're exactly wrong however, cos all of Austen's books were re-marketed as chick-lit with chick-lit covers a while back. I've no idea how well that went over though.
The main problem I have with it though is that I think these categories ultimately restrict, rather than expand, the type of book people pick up to read. I don't think it's very helpful.
Winnie the Pimp
Member
The Plague by Camus
I am a huge, and I mean HUGE Wheel of Time fan and Sanderson has come in and saved that series since the passing of Robert Jordan. His two books in the series have breathed new life and excitement to the books and with the final book coming soon I am just giddy. His writing style is easy to read while a the same time being very descriptive. Just like the early work of Jordan. I am really looking forward to reading The Way of Kings and seeing his own vision of epic fantasy.
rocksteady1983
Member
Just started book 3 of The Hunger Games last night.
Maklershed
Member
Purchased. Thanks for the info.
I just finished Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. It was a quick read and engrossing, but I couldn't shake a feeling that it was too pristine. It feels exactly like an Apple product. It's complete and well crafted, but cold and closed.
I'm wrapping up 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. It's my first Murakami novel, and I want to read some of his earlier work now. This book has a great feeling of piercing in to the unknown, and then folding it back on to your understanding of the known.
I read these pair of comic travelogues yesterday:
I'm looking forward to reading more of Delisle's work. It feels like No Reservation's evil little brother.
I'm also pecking away at a story from What the Dog Saw by Malcom Gladwell when I have a need for something brief.
I'm wrapping up 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. It's my first Murakami novel, and I want to read some of his earlier work now. This book has a great feeling of piercing in to the unknown, and then folding it back on to your understanding of the known.
I read these pair of comic travelogues yesterday:
I'm looking forward to reading more of Delisle's work. It feels like No Reservation's evil little brother.
I'm also pecking away at a story from What the Dog Saw by Malcom Gladwell when I have a need for something brief.
Maklershed
Member
Finished The Purple Cloud and started The Door into Summer
The Door into Summer by Robert A. Heinlein
The Door into Summer by Robert A. Heinlein
Snowman Prophet of Doom
Member
I just think that you all should know that I've read 12 Shakespeare plays since Saturday and am not stopping until I finish the entire complete works (though since I'm skipping some of the ones that I'm overly familiar with, I'm really 15 in, having skipped Two Gents, Taming of the Shrew, and The Merchant of Venice). Wanna know what I thought of them?
Comedy of Errors: Having not been a big fan of Shakespeare comedy, I was expecting to hate this, as I usually would. But, it's actually pretty funny! The premise is absurd, the verse rather green, and the characters sketched only on the surface, so in a certain sense it's still not particularly a good play, but considering how short it is and how many good laughs there actually are in it, it's actually better than some of his more lauded plays.
Love's Labours Lost: FUCK this one. Jesus Christ, is this play boring. It's so concerned with a lot of heady, dated-to-the-point-of-becoming-totally-opaque references that it forgets to have, like, some good lines, or good characters, or, like, jokes. Maybe the worst Shakespeare play that I've read.
Titus Andronicus: Wow. This is really, really terrible. Granted, T.S. Eliot could be a dense, nit-picky critic, but it's not hard to see why he called this one of the least interesting plays ever written. When they ran out of heads and the raped, tongueless, handless Lavinia had to carry her father's severed hand away in her mouth, I almost lost it with laughter. Shakespeare had to have written this on a dare, or something. There's no other explanation for the really bad verse, the ludicrous plotting, the unbelievable characterizations, the lack of any real satisfaction at any point, etc. All this play really has is the violence, so in that sense, it's almost like the Elizabethan equivalent of an exploitation film, which makes it somewhat easy to understand why it was popular in its time.
Henry VI (All three parts): Between the three plays, there's probably one very good to great play, particularly the Third Part, which introduces us to Richard III, who's a really awesome character, probably one of the best ever. Unfortunately, the plays suffer from what I was soon to realize is a constant ill in Shakespeare's history plays: a lot of dullness and padding surrounding the good stuff. For every good character, there are a bunch of ciphers, there to move along the plot. For every moment of insight, there are moments of pandering (especially the French cowering in the First Part) that are basically the Elizabethan equivalent of gratuitous shots of the American flog in a Michael Bay film. for every exciting battle scene, there's an overly long scene of what is essentially Shakespearean C-SPAN. Etc.
Richard III: A great, great titular character surrounded by a so-so show. Whenever Richard III is soliloquizing, the show is like electricity, filled with interesting verse, insight, personality, wit, etc. Whenever he shares the stage with other people, the energy goes down immensely, as the plotting turns to the predictable sorts of Shakespeare history stuff that you might expect. whenever Richard III isn't on the stage at all, it's practically snoozeville. It's rather a shame that a character as great as Richard III, with so many great lines and moments ("A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!") didn't get a better play to cap off his storyline. I actually might contend that Henry VI Part 3 is the better show to feature Richard III as a character, even if he doesn't have as much to do; the moment when he kills Henry VI toward the end of that show, and his following soliloquy, kicks ass. Also, Richard III (the play) has a rather poor ending; the scene where the ghosts of all the slain characters come back to the dreams of Richard and Richmond A) goes on too long, B) feels kind of like pandering, with the knowledge in mind that Elizabethan audiences loved ghosts and superstitious things like that, C) is rather a trite motif to begin with, even back then, and D) doesn't really do anything.
A Midsummer Night's Dream: I enjoyed it more than, say, Love's Labours Lost, but I'd still probably put it on the bottom tier of Shakespeare. The verse is rather simple and filled with lines that were banalities even in its time (without the benefit of many of those memorable "Shakespeare lines" that sort of ring a bell to a modern audience), the characters are extremely one-dimensional, making the shifted relationships feel more like simple plot contrivance than anything else, the motif of dreaming is not particularly well-explored and comes to a somewhat anticlimactic end (it's not a plot where anything really builds), etc. I'd put it over LLL because the fantastical setting, the workaday characters putting on the play, and Puck render it a more interesting and memorable story in the mind.
Romeo and Juliet: this is a tough one to judge because it has a number of iconic, oft-quoted lines. And indeed, those lines are excellent. But the show itself is actually kind of mediocre, even for its time. The verse is FILLED with cliche love imagery (with stuff that can be spied in Old and Middle English, Latin, Greek, etc.), the plotting is completely unbelievable (the two title characters are completely devoted to one another after TWO SCENES, and even if you hold that the play is a satire of teen romantic angst and melodrama, that doesn't really justify the length of the play), not to mention predictable in terms of the style that Shakespeare had established in his canon up to this point, and the ultimate resolution after the two lovers kill themselves is rather on-the-nose and trite. The play is saved by the memorable lines it contains and by the life of the Mercutio character, who is tragically underused here. Really, this seems to be the motif early on in Shakespeare's career, here - mostly average plays but with a great character or speech every so often to whet the appetite for what's to come.
King John: The above theory holds here. The play is mostly typical Shakespeare history stuff, but the character of Philip the Bastard is excellent and has several memorable speeches. Also, he does some interesting things with the form (Acts I and II both being single, long scenes, for example, and the whole thing being in verse), and there are enough battle scenes that one can imagine it remaining interesting when rendered on the stage.
Richard II: What I said about King John, but with less good to write about, really. About the only thing in the show that TRULY sticks out is Richard II's awesome, awesome speech after he is imprisoned, which kinda comes out of nowhere and so is diminished somewhat in context but is a great enough poem/soliloquy/character piece that I don't particularly think it matters all that much. This really feels like a set-up for the tetralogy more than anything else.
Henry IV, Part 1: Probably the first play that I've read so far without an obvious weakness to it. It's not great in the same way that, say, Hamlet is great, or Othello, and in a sense, it suffers somewhat from the same symptom as Richard III: a few great core characters (namely Falstaff, but Prince Hal and Hotspur both have their moments) with somewhat less interesting action to sustain them. The difference here, though, is that the dip in quality between the great parts and the rest is not so stark, and there's nothing completely alienating like the ghosts in Richard III. Were I an Elizabethan, I think that this'd be the point where I'd see that Shakespeare was not just a commercial writer with a few good ideas, that he really had the potential to become something more. I've seen it said that had he died at the same time as Marlowe, we'd look to Marlowe and/or Jonson as the premiere Elizabethan dramatist(s); Henry IV is, I think, the start of Shakespeare's bridge into the sort of timeless greatness that we know of him today, at least if the chronology that I'm following is of any reliability.
20-ish plays to go!
Comedy of Errors: Having not been a big fan of Shakespeare comedy, I was expecting to hate this, as I usually would. But, it's actually pretty funny! The premise is absurd, the verse rather green, and the characters sketched only on the surface, so in a certain sense it's still not particularly a good play, but considering how short it is and how many good laughs there actually are in it, it's actually better than some of his more lauded plays.
Love's Labours Lost: FUCK this one. Jesus Christ, is this play boring. It's so concerned with a lot of heady, dated-to-the-point-of-becoming-totally-opaque references that it forgets to have, like, some good lines, or good characters, or, like, jokes. Maybe the worst Shakespeare play that I've read.
Titus Andronicus: Wow. This is really, really terrible. Granted, T.S. Eliot could be a dense, nit-picky critic, but it's not hard to see why he called this one of the least interesting plays ever written. When they ran out of heads and the raped, tongueless, handless Lavinia had to carry her father's severed hand away in her mouth, I almost lost it with laughter. Shakespeare had to have written this on a dare, or something. There's no other explanation for the really bad verse, the ludicrous plotting, the unbelievable characterizations, the lack of any real satisfaction at any point, etc. All this play really has is the violence, so in that sense, it's almost like the Elizabethan equivalent of an exploitation film, which makes it somewhat easy to understand why it was popular in its time.
Henry VI (All three parts): Between the three plays, there's probably one very good to great play, particularly the Third Part, which introduces us to Richard III, who's a really awesome character, probably one of the best ever. Unfortunately, the plays suffer from what I was soon to realize is a constant ill in Shakespeare's history plays: a lot of dullness and padding surrounding the good stuff. For every good character, there are a bunch of ciphers, there to move along the plot. For every moment of insight, there are moments of pandering (especially the French cowering in the First Part) that are basically the Elizabethan equivalent of gratuitous shots of the American flog in a Michael Bay film. for every exciting battle scene, there's an overly long scene of what is essentially Shakespearean C-SPAN. Etc.
Richard III: A great, great titular character surrounded by a so-so show. Whenever Richard III is soliloquizing, the show is like electricity, filled with interesting verse, insight, personality, wit, etc. Whenever he shares the stage with other people, the energy goes down immensely, as the plotting turns to the predictable sorts of Shakespeare history stuff that you might expect. whenever Richard III isn't on the stage at all, it's practically snoozeville. It's rather a shame that a character as great as Richard III, with so many great lines and moments ("A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!") didn't get a better play to cap off his storyline. I actually might contend that Henry VI Part 3 is the better show to feature Richard III as a character, even if he doesn't have as much to do; the moment when he kills Henry VI toward the end of that show, and his following soliloquy, kicks ass. Also, Richard III (the play) has a rather poor ending; the scene where the ghosts of all the slain characters come back to the dreams of Richard and Richmond A) goes on too long, B) feels kind of like pandering, with the knowledge in mind that Elizabethan audiences loved ghosts and superstitious things like that, C) is rather a trite motif to begin with, even back then, and D) doesn't really do anything.
A Midsummer Night's Dream: I enjoyed it more than, say, Love's Labours Lost, but I'd still probably put it on the bottom tier of Shakespeare. The verse is rather simple and filled with lines that were banalities even in its time (without the benefit of many of those memorable "Shakespeare lines" that sort of ring a bell to a modern audience), the characters are extremely one-dimensional, making the shifted relationships feel more like simple plot contrivance than anything else, the motif of dreaming is not particularly well-explored and comes to a somewhat anticlimactic end (it's not a plot where anything really builds), etc. I'd put it over LLL because the fantastical setting, the workaday characters putting on the play, and Puck render it a more interesting and memorable story in the mind.
Romeo and Juliet: this is a tough one to judge because it has a number of iconic, oft-quoted lines. And indeed, those lines are excellent. But the show itself is actually kind of mediocre, even for its time. The verse is FILLED with cliche love imagery (with stuff that can be spied in Old and Middle English, Latin, Greek, etc.), the plotting is completely unbelievable (the two title characters are completely devoted to one another after TWO SCENES, and even if you hold that the play is a satire of teen romantic angst and melodrama, that doesn't really justify the length of the play), not to mention predictable in terms of the style that Shakespeare had established in his canon up to this point, and the ultimate resolution after the two lovers kill themselves is rather on-the-nose and trite. The play is saved by the memorable lines it contains and by the life of the Mercutio character, who is tragically underused here. Really, this seems to be the motif early on in Shakespeare's career, here - mostly average plays but with a great character or speech every so often to whet the appetite for what's to come.
King John: The above theory holds here. The play is mostly typical Shakespeare history stuff, but the character of Philip the Bastard is excellent and has several memorable speeches. Also, he does some interesting things with the form (Acts I and II both being single, long scenes, for example, and the whole thing being in verse), and there are enough battle scenes that one can imagine it remaining interesting when rendered on the stage.
Richard II: What I said about King John, but with less good to write about, really. About the only thing in the show that TRULY sticks out is Richard II's awesome, awesome speech after he is imprisoned, which kinda comes out of nowhere and so is diminished somewhat in context but is a great enough poem/soliloquy/character piece that I don't particularly think it matters all that much. This really feels like a set-up for the tetralogy more than anything else.
Henry IV, Part 1: Probably the first play that I've read so far without an obvious weakness to it. It's not great in the same way that, say, Hamlet is great, or Othello, and in a sense, it suffers somewhat from the same symptom as Richard III: a few great core characters (namely Falstaff, but Prince Hal and Hotspur both have their moments) with somewhat less interesting action to sustain them. The difference here, though, is that the dip in quality between the great parts and the rest is not so stark, and there's nothing completely alienating like the ghosts in Richard III. Were I an Elizabethan, I think that this'd be the point where I'd see that Shakespeare was not just a commercial writer with a few good ideas, that he really had the potential to become something more. I've seen it said that had he died at the same time as Marlowe, we'd look to Marlowe and/or Jonson as the premiere Elizabethan dramatist(s); Henry IV is, I think, the start of Shakespeare's bridge into the sort of timeless greatness that we know of him today, at least if the chronology that I'm following is of any reliability.
20-ish plays to go!
Yeah, no.
I don't know when it clicked for me, exactly, but at some point the language became interesting enough to me that what seems like overly dramatic language stopped being a hindrance for my enjoyment and started being a part of what made it enjoyable.
I haven't experienced that since senior year of high school, and it's one I'm looking forward to watching again / reading.
I love A Midsummer Night's Dream. It's been a few years since I've read it, so I can't really get into specifics, but there's a reason why it's one of the best-known Shakespeare plays.
To each his own though. Snowman and I have agreed to disagree on Saving Private Ryan, so I guess we'll have to do the same thing here.
naturalism is shit
I am overly fond of The Tempest, but I can't quite express why I like it so much more than the rest of his plays.
In other news, I think I have a problem.
My experiment with contemporary chick lit has morphed into some sort of strange addiction. Turns out I apparently really like these books. I am not proud of it, but I have gone down this rabbit hole pretty deep. Over the last few days I have knocked out the following books:
Can You Keep A Secret
To Marry A Prince
Unsticky
Enchanted Inc.
Once Upon Stilettos
Damsel in Stress
Don't Hex With Texas
The Frog Prince
The Little Lady Agency
I am on my second stack of these books I have borrowed and will probably be back for more. My friend is slightly giddy about it though and has yet to resort to a bit of friendly mocking. I fear she will want me to join her book club soon.
The highlight so far was probably Unsticky which was pretty much Pretty Woman only with a struggling fashion magazine assistant instead of a prostitute (well, at least she was not a prostitute at the beginning). It had some seriously fiendish undertones to the whole thing as well that were more pronounced than other stories or movies with a similar premise I am familiar with.
So yeah...
In other news, I think I have a problem.
My experiment with contemporary chick lit has morphed into some sort of strange addiction. Turns out I apparently really like these books. I am not proud of it, but I have gone down this rabbit hole pretty deep. Over the last few days I have knocked out the following books:
Can You Keep A Secret
To Marry A Prince
Unsticky
Enchanted Inc.
Once Upon Stilettos
Damsel in Stress
Don't Hex With Texas
The Frog Prince
The Little Lady Agency
I am on my second stack of these books I have borrowed and will probably be back for more. My friend is slightly giddy about it though and has yet to resort to a bit of friendly mocking. I fear she will want me to join her book club soon.
The highlight so far was probably Unsticky which was pretty much Pretty Woman only with a struggling fashion magazine assistant instead of a prostitute (well, at least she was not a prostitute at the beginning). It had some seriously fiendish undertones to the whole thing as well that were more pronounced than other stories or movies with a similar premise I am familiar with.
So yeah...
Maybe when Sacre Bleu comes out in two weeks it can knock me out of this phase and into another silly comedy phase.
finowns
Member
I read the first two books very mediocre.
Check out Blood of Ambrose by James Enge if you have not already; I just read his 3rd Morlock book. Enge is better than Sullivan
pretty great.
A Guile of Dragons comes out this year.
w00pdiw00p
Banned
Going to start with
today. Loved the first two (and Murakami in general) and I need to know how this is going to end.
today. Loved the first two (and Murakami in general) and I need to know how this is going to end.
Man, Mockingjay is terrible.
The first book wasn't a classic or anything, but I enjoyed it enough to read the second. And I kinda powered through that, even though it wasn't nearly on the same level. But the third book is really bad.
There is a pretty decent world in this series that would have been amazing in the hands of a better writer. But Collins can't write compelling fiction that doesn't involve the actual Hunger Games. Everything that takes place outside the arena is mediocre to shit, with a real emphasis on shit by the time you get to the third book.
The first book wasn't a classic or anything, but I enjoyed it enough to read the second. And I kinda powered through that, even though it wasn't nearly on the same level. But the third book is really bad.
There is a pretty decent world in this series that would have been amazing in the hands of a better writer. But Collins can't write compelling fiction that doesn't involve the actual Hunger Games. Everything that takes place outside the arena is mediocre to shit, with a real emphasis on shit by the time you get to the third book.
D
Deleted member 1235
Unconfirmed Member
Just now finished the hunger games. Immediately loaded the next book, started reading and on the 2nd page she mentions everything that has happened. I soon realise that I was reading the third book instead of the second.
I did that. But I did that with A song of ice and fire. In euroland the storm of swords book was split in to 2 books. I was not aware of this and was surprised when the book I thought was the next one, was off-handedly mentioning QUITE A LOT of important MASSIVE events.
Kitchen Confidential is one of my favorite non-fiction books.
Interveiwer: What do you know about me? Bourdain: Nothing! (Wait did he say what do you know about meat? Shit!)
Going to start with
today. Loved the first two (and Murakami in general) and I need to know how this is going to end.
I finished this last night. It was a very satisfying conclusion. I won't say any more, but I think it's a great ending.
Finished The Warrior Prophet by Scott Bakker. I fucking hate Kellhus now. Prick, plays everyone and doesn't give a shit about friendship and stuff. Serwe was annoying as hell, Esmenet and Achamian great, and there wasn't enough of Cainur. And whatever happended to Maithanet? Guess I'll find out in the next book. The only gripe I have with this book is that the battles were not detailed enough and way too short. Things like that and the crossing of the desert should have been written in a more dramatic way. I love the introspective parts, I think they're what make this series great, but sometimes I think they come at the expense of the plot.
Anyway, starting with the last part of this trilogy:
Anyway, starting with the last part of this trilogy:
Decent books. I feel like there's a lot of lost potential here though.
Also, the author shamelessly copied and pasted about 5 pages worth of text from the first book into the third and just changed the names of the characters involved. I said "What the fuck?" out loud when I read it. Not sure why, but it offended me deeply.
Going to start with
today. Loved the first two (and Murakami in general) and I need to know how this is going to end.
Book 3 is the best in my opinion. The novel dragged a bit with book 2, book 3 more than makes up for it.
I really grew to like Ushikawa from his chapters; both the Ushikawa in 1Q84, and the one Wind-Up Bird Chronicle as well. I consider them the same character in parallel universes.
Ushikawa and Tamaru are my favorite characters in the book. Ushikawa has a lot in common with the second moon. He's conspicious and obvserving the primary characters from a distance, helping them come together in the end. I didn't feel completely happy that Aomame and Tengo were reunited, since the happy ending came at the cost of Ushikawa's life. Poor guy : /
nakedsushi
Member
Still making my way through
The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson
I'm getting tired of Sazed being emo. I hope there's not going to be any more of this. And Elend's "want to be everyone's friend" version of being an Emperor. I'm glad that at least Vin still kicks ass.
The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson
I'm getting tired of Sazed being emo. I hope there's not going to be any more of this. And Elend's "want to be everyone's friend" version of being an Emperor. I'm glad that at least Vin still kicks ass.
That's great to hear, since endings have been a particular weakness in Murakami's eariler novels.
Started it like a few weeks ago but lost interest. Also have the Bolano book sitting around somewhere. I don't think I'll ever finish them.
Tried reading:
Got about 1/2 into it, it was about as good as the cover. Glad I borrowed it from the li-berry.
Also went through:
It was a lot less stuffy than the translation I read in school, ended up enjoying them much more than I expected. I think I'm going to hunt down some of the more 'modern' translations of the novels now.
the_painted_bird
Member
Interesting how you feel about it. Most people I talk to think Ushikawa didn't have to die. I think it definitely would have gotten in the way of Tengo and Aomame if Tamaru hadn't killed him. Anyway, I loved 1Q84. Such a pleasure to read Murakami at my own leisure. I highly anticipate his next book.
Edit: I'm reading The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño. Past the first third of the book and I'm like WTF at these oral biographies they aren't nearly as satisfying as his prose.
foomfoom415
Member
I've read the following books in March thus far:
Greg Egan - Schild's Ladder
I read this mostly after stumbling across the book's plot summary on Wikipedia (I'd only recommend reading the first paragraph of the plot summary) and being intensely curious on what kind of book would result in a plot summary like that. The book earned it. It was as hard-scifi as it gets. The characters are little more than side effects of the author needing some vehicle to explore his what-if scenario. It was a fascinating read regardless, and would have gone by much faster if I didn't spend so much time on Wikipedia reading quantum mechanics and differential geometry articles.
China Mieville- Perdido Street Station
I loved The City and the City and really liked most of (the first half of) Embassytown, so I figured it was time for more Mieville. I fell in love with the Bas Lag world and Mieville's wonderful descriptions of it's inhabitants almost immediately. The book is a large one though (something easy to miss when buying an ebook) and I felt like the pacing towards the last 1/3 wasn't great. Fortunately I feel it finished strong and even though I think I need a (short) break from Bas Lag, I'll definitely be going back for the last 2 books soon, just not immediately after finishing Perdido Street Station as I'd originally planned.
Suzanne Collins- The Hunger Games
With the moving coming up next week I figure I should get the book out of the way before too many of my friends demand we see the movie. So far it's a super fast read compared to the last two books I read and although it hasn't grabbed my like Bas Lag or got my brain sweating like Egan, it's enjoyable enough so far.
Greg Egan - Schild's Ladder
I read this mostly after stumbling across the book's plot summary on Wikipedia (I'd only recommend reading the first paragraph of the plot summary) and being intensely curious on what kind of book would result in a plot summary like that. The book earned it. It was as hard-scifi as it gets. The characters are little more than side effects of the author needing some vehicle to explore his what-if scenario. It was a fascinating read regardless, and would have gone by much faster if I didn't spend so much time on Wikipedia reading quantum mechanics and differential geometry articles.
China Mieville- Perdido Street Station
I loved The City and the City and really liked most of (the first half of) Embassytown, so I figured it was time for more Mieville. I fell in love with the Bas Lag world and Mieville's wonderful descriptions of it's inhabitants almost immediately. The book is a large one though (something easy to miss when buying an ebook) and I felt like the pacing towards the last 1/3 wasn't great. Fortunately I feel it finished strong and even though I think I need a (short) break from Bas Lag, I'll definitely be going back for the last 2 books soon, just not immediately after finishing Perdido Street Station as I'd originally planned.
Suzanne Collins- The Hunger Games
With the moving coming up next week I figure I should get the book out of the way before too many of my friends demand we see the movie. So far it's a super fast read compared to the last two books I read and although it hasn't grabbed my like Bas Lag or got my brain sweating like Egan, it's enjoyable enough so far.
Finished the first Lost Fleet book:
It was alright. It is pretty clear that it was written as a series and not as an individual book. This first one has a really poor dramatic arc and feels super short. Combat between big space navies is quite fun of course.
Now I'm going to give Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson a shot. I haven't disliked anything by him so far, so I expect it'll be enjoyable.
It was alright. It is pretty clear that it was written as a series and not as an individual book. This first one has a really poor dramatic arc and feels super short. Combat between big space navies is quite fun of course.
Now I'm going to give Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson a shot. I haven't disliked anything by him so far, so I expect it'll be enjoyable.
Personally I think the AFFC hate is way overblown. I found it to be enjoyable.
Maklershed
Member
Just finished:
I really enjoyed this book. The writing and dialogue is quite simple and straightforward, which is almost to its detriment at times, but it does a fantastic job of conveying the depths of emotion. The sense of melancholy is almost palpable throughout.
Up next:
Not sure what to expect - has anyone read it?
I really enjoyed this book. The writing and dialogue is quite simple and straightforward, which is almost to its detriment at times, but it does a fantastic job of conveying the depths of emotion. The sense of melancholy is almost palpable throughout.
Up next:
Not sure what to expect - has anyone read it?
Like the hat?
Banned
I finally finished up The Postman, and all in all I think it was pretty good, but not great.
Moving on to finally reading Andromeda Klein by Frank Portman.
Moving on to finally reading Andromeda Klein by Frank Portman.
Just finished:
Not sure what to expect - has anyone read it?
The thinking man's da vinci code. Or so they say.
After Voltaire, I fancy a bit of Goethe. I said I will, I might as well. *shrugs*
Neffarias_Bredd
Member
Actually finished the first Malazan book, Gardens of the Moon. Took me a few years to get past the first 100 or so pages, but something finally clicked and I ended up really enjoying it (for the most part). On to the second one
I'm really fucking enjoying this. Stumbled a little in the beginning due to the rather petulant way the hero's world-weary outlook comes across as but bam, things get moving and it's been a real pleasureable ride. I hope the second half of the book can keep the ass-kicking going.
The second one has some epic shit going down. Loved it.
Not sure what to expect - has anyone read it?
I tried reading it. Really didnt like it
Though, I mostly read for characters, and that is the one thing that that book really seems to lack.