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Maklershed · Mar 1, 2016

Maklershed · Mar 1, 2016

Currently reading Angel's Flight (Harry Bosch #6)

Angels Flight by Michael Connelly

Atraveller · Mar 1, 2016

Reading Neil Gaiman's Trigger Warning, thank you kind gaffer who posted it when it went on sale.

hardcastlemccormick · Mar 1, 2016

I've been reading The Zen Experience by Thomas Hoover, a surprisingly enlightening history of Zen Buddhism that's available for free on all of the major eBook sites.

I'm really enjoying it. It's just the right amount of detail, plus with small bits of Chinese history thrown in when needed.

Jintor · Mar 1, 2016

Atraveller said:
Reading Neil Gaiman's Trigger Warning, thank you kind gaffer who posted it when it went on sale.

Me too! Feels like Gaiman's usual hit and miss rate with short story collections - perhaps trending more towards miss than I'm used to. I've really enjoyed a few of the stories so far though.

Up to the one partially set in China.

Blackie · Mar 1, 2016

Reading a couple of superhero novels. 2016 is off to a strong start for me

FUBAR McDangles · Mar 1, 2016

Blackie said:
Reading a couple of superhero novels. 2016 is off to a strong start for me

Anything good? I'd definitely be interested in hearing some more.

Anno · Mar 1, 2016

I'm about to finish The Lies of Locke Lamora. Yea or Nay on the sequels if I love this one? And are there going to be more?

Alternatively, any other series out there with similar...dialogue, I guess? I really enjoy the snarky banter and just feeling of friendship between these characters.

Plasticine · Mar 1, 2016

Haven't read anything in a while. Thought I'd get back into it with a short story collection by one of my favorite authors.

kswiston · Mar 1, 2016

I am almost finished the Three Body Problem (around 30 pages to go). It's an interesting hard(ish) sci fi book if you haven't read it and enjoy that genre.

sunshine and gasoline · Mar 1, 2016

Just started reading 1Q84 by Murakami. Been meaning to read it for years but I never had the chance until recently.

BorkBork · Mar 1, 2016

Everyone I Love Is a Stranger to Someone by Annelyse Gelman

Went to a reading she was a part of, had to get the book after. Funny awesome smart poems.

MultiJhonny · Mar 1, 2016

I am rereading the first two books of the Chronicles of the Unhewn Throne in preparation for the third and final book out this month!

wild wild rice · Mar 1, 2016

Still chipping away at Against the Day. 400 pages deep.

Mumei · Mar 1, 2016

Peru said:
I've finally started using goodreads this year. I've friended a few people from the neogaf group, but there are so many I don't know where to start (also usernames differ from neogaf - I'm guilty of that as well).

It's been pretty good though, in my limited time. Like others I just see what people are reading and maybe compare libraries. Beats reading random goodreader users' terrible reviews of your favorite books.

Yeah, I like knowing who I'm adding, personally. I use the NeoGAF group's identification thread some for that, or just ask people who send me a friend request.

Also, I bought Emma because of that post you made last month. I'm looking forward to reading it sometime this month.

lightus · Mar 1, 2016

I finished up City of Blades by Robert Jackson Bennett. I liked it a lot but didn't enjoy it quite as much as the first. It feels "smaller" to me. City of Stairs had more interesting characters and a more unique blend of genres. It took me awhile to lower my expectations when reading this book, but once I did I started to enjoy it much more. It started off slow but definitely heated up about halfway in. There were some really cool moments and I still love the world Bennett built in this series. I give it 4/5.

Next up is:

The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson

Tragicomedy · Mar 1, 2016

I like books.

Mumei · Mar 1, 2016

Tragicomedy said:
I like books.

Me, too!

Chuck · Mar 1, 2016

Hitchhiker the Second!

I want some tea.

wild wild rice · Mar 1, 2016

Tragicomedy said:
I like books.

Wrong topic?

Inquisitive_Ghost · Mar 1, 2016

Anno said:
I'm about to finish The Lies of Locke Lamora. Yea or Nay on the sequels if I love this one? And are there going to be more?

Alternatively, any other series out there with similar...dialogue, I guess? I really enjoy the snarky banter and just feeling of friendship between these characters.

Depends on what you like about it. Books 2 and 3 keep the dialogue and camaraderie and the shenanigans, but the stories are considerably weaker. I'm a big fan of Lynch's style, so personally, I felt they were worth reading simply for that (I still laughed a bunch of times), despite them feeling like... they had less purpose? Were less coherent? Like I said, they just don't come together as well as the first.

Currently, he plans seven books in the series, and another series of seven after that. What's interesting is that books 1-3 are actually prequels; the next book is where the series was supposed to start proper. This might explain the story/plotting weirdness in books 2 and 3.

Ovid · Mar 1, 2016

Finished be Between the World and Me this morning and absolutely loved it. I think I might buy a physical copy for my collection.

This evening I started reading this:

It's a complete 180 from Ta-Nehisi's book because it deals with the world of upper class blacks in America.

Mumei · Mar 1, 2016

tarius1210 said:
Finished be Between the World and Me this morning and absolutely loved it. I think I might buy a physical copy for my collection.

This evening I started reading this:

It's a complete 180 from Ta-Nehisi's book because it deals with the world of upper class blacks in America.

There was an interesting essay about both of those books in an issue of Bookforum last year. Send me a PM if you're interested in reading it; I liked it though I haven't read Negroland yet.

big ander · Mar 1, 2016

Still burning through I Hate the Internet by Jarret Kobek. this great blurb by rock critic Greil Marcus is what pointed me towards it, maybe others'll find him equally convincing:

Forget the knee-jerk title. This book has nothing in common with Sunday think pieces about how personal technology may be eroding our ability to communicate in a meaningful way, or the dystopia of Dave Eggers The Circle, where every Invasion of the Body Snatchers horror is telegraphed in the first 10 pages. This is a relentless, cruel, hilariously inflamed satire of a loop of economic mystification and the reemergence of the credibility of the notion of Original Sin in the technological utopia of the present-day Bay Area and the world being remade in its image. The book is an adventure of the translation of the given into a reality almost too blunt to credit: governance, an organizing principle used by societies to determine which individuals were granted homes on high ground and which individuals were forcibly executed. Commonplace takedowns are shot into the sky with eruptions of fury: The many forms and shapes of The One True Godalready defined in terms of In God We Trust appearing on each piece of paper of American moneydid not come close to describing the actual God. The actual God was wonderful and useless. The actual God was nothing more and nothing less than the sound of Etta James singing Id Rather Go Blind. Jarett is most lucid deconstructing the meaning of fame as a symbolic acting out of political economics in the relationship between Beyoncé, Rihanna, and their fans, and most painful, in a manner you might find yourself impossible to dig out from under your skin, in a few brief pages on the transmission of supposedly deleted sex photos to everyone in the town of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico: Ellen was twenty-two years old and her life was over.

My favorite moment may be on the parable of racism in a story concerning how and why the first side of Son Houses 1930 78 My Black Mama, about sex, was, in generations to come, ignored, while the second side, about death, was, in small part due to people like me, celebrated all over the world, but almost anyone reading this book will be telling everyone they know about something else.

Anno · Mar 1, 2016

Inquisitive_Ghost said:
Depends on what you like about it. Books 2 and 3 keep the dialogue and camaraderie and the shenanigans, but the stories are considerably weaker. I'm a big fan of Lynch's style, so personally, I felt they were worth reading simply for that (I still laughed a bunch of times), despite them feeling like... they had less purpose? Were less coherent? Like I said, they just don't come together as well as the first.

Currently, he plans seven books in the series, and another series of seven after that. What's interesting is that books 1-3 are actually prequels; the next book is where the series was supposed to start proper. This might explain the story/plotting weirdness in books 2 and 3.

Awesome! Thanks. Best news I've heard all night. I too like it for the friendships and comraderie so I'm glad that carries over.

obin_gam · Mar 1, 2016

Finished Sandersons Way of Kings this weekend. It was fine.

I now wanted something like the priests tale from Hyperion, or Area X trilogy... Antropological thrillers sotospeak.

I found The People In The Trees by Hanya Yanagihara. Am about a third into it now, it's really good!

Jintor · Mar 1, 2016

Does anyone have any good movie scripts they'd like to recommend? I'm re-reading the script for Aliens again because I really like it, but some recommendations wouldn't go awry.

Peru · Mar 1, 2016

Mumei said:
Yeah, I like knowing who I'm adding, personally. I use the NeoGAF group's identification thread some for that, or just ask people who send me a friend request.

Also, I bought Emma because of that post you made last month. I'm looking forward to reading it sometime this month.

Great! Did you listen to the talk or save yourself from spoilers?

I've added a few random people who hopefully won't be too angry about it.

tarius1210 said:
This evening I started reading this:
http://i.imgur.com/3n4MN5j.jpg

It's a complete 180 from Ta-Nehisi's book because it deals with the world of upper class blacks in America.

Oh I mentally noted this book as a to-read among a few others recently but forgot.

GK86 · Mar 1, 2016

Spent half a day reading through Frontlines book 3 (Angles of Attack). I have two chapters left to go. I loved the first two books, but this one was a big letdown. Just feels like absolutely nothing has happened. Even worse, two books and we don't know anything else about the

Lankies.

. I would have thought that by now we would have a better understanding of it and the world building would have expanded a bit.

Hop · Mar 1, 2016

2/3 through it. Not the purplest of prose, but the guy clearly knows big words and likes to go on with imagery. Still, not bad.

Also: I finally finished and published my book! Somehow the paperback got up faster than the ebook. I don't get that either.

Jintor · Mar 1, 2016

Hop said:
Also: I finally finished and published my book! Somehow the paperback got up faster than the ebook. I don't get that either.

Grats!

TTG · Mar 1, 2016

Just finished this. It's not midnight yet, this being an extra day and all, maybe I can pretend not to have read it? No, that's not fair. Thanks goes out to someone who mentioned it here, I searched through last month's thread, but couldn't find you to mention by name.

It started off just okay. Essentially, at no point was it bad enough for me to jettison it off the kindle, which was a tangible step up from some of the stuff I've been trying to read previously, so I kept at it. Then Part Two hit and there was about 30 pages of just brilliant stuff. I had no idea where it came from, maybe the author had trouble writing about kids and now that time jumped ahead this was going to be up there with the best? But no, it faded back to somewhere above average again.

I should mention at this point that I don't like the retelling of a life books. Don't like the Cat's in The Cradle song either. Not to mention the Disneyland nature they tend to take on when skipping through time. This didn't do any of that or was otherwise rote, so I settled in to finish what was more than half over by that point, waiting for the invariable deep, reflective sigh that's suppose to accompany the ending. And then it snuck up and hurt me. Not any one thing, I suppose it was just piling up the weight without me even noticing.

I see people mentioning Dostoevsky and Camus for Existentialism in literature. You're not really going to get it out of the former, certainly not from his well known novels. Notes From Underground is too abstract to drive it home. Sure, you can make the case for it, but "Existentialism" being the somewhat vague and nebulous collection of stuff that it is is easily attributed. Camus, sure, but I don't know if it's the translation or not, it didn't evoke much acute emotion from me.

So, the point I'm trying to get across is that for conveying loneliness, purposelessness(is that a word?), and just sheer heatlesness, this book hits really hard and true. And, unlike The Stranger, there's a lot of stuff happening, like all the time, our main character gets into all kinds of shit. Dan Carpenter is detached, but it's not numb, not wandering, or wallowing. I think if it was melodramatic, I could shrug it off, but he's too good for that. I'm gonna have to think about this some more. You probably shouldn't read it.

Nymerio · Mar 1, 2016

75% through The Brothers Karamazov

ClayKavalier · Mar 1, 2016

I'm in a rut. I started H is for Hawk and thought it was pretty boring. The chapter about T.S. Elliot also using a hawk as therapy just seemed kind of pointless, I didn't need that much detail into her inspiration for getting the hawk. Maybe I'll get back into it later but it definitely didn't grab me.

I also started L.A. Confidential which I got for cheap when the movie came out and never read. That one grabbed me more, but I'm not really into pulp stories. The writing seems great, but if I'm reading something solely because the setting/ dialogue/ mood is interesting I'd usually rather it be a short story than a novel. I'll probably keep reading but I just get the feeling the plot isn't going to be anything great and the aspects of it I like aren't going to stay entertaining the whole way through. Also, the dialogue is ridiculous. I think I like it, but it's distracting to read something that's so clearly removed from how people talk. Unless people did babble half-sentences back in the 60s.

I'm not giving either book a fair chance, mostly because I've been spending a lot of time playing video games. I already haven't finished a book in about a month and I'm planning on getting like five or six games in the next two months. Need to pay someone to do my job for me.

Necrovex · Mar 1, 2016

Tragicomedy said:
I like books.

Books are ok. They have nothing on video game writing. Fire Emblem Fates is the The Tale of Two Cities of our times. :-D

Arenesus · Mar 1, 2016

Finished Alastair Reynolds Revelation Space and now moving straight onto book 2, Redemption Ark. Really enjoying this series so far but

I miss Sylveste, I really liked his character.

(Book 1 spoilers)

Imp the Dimp · Mar 1, 2016

Way of Kings, Words of Radiance and Mistborn: The Final Empire were absolutely mind-blowing. Can't wait to read on the Mistborn series. Finished the first one yesterday. Sanders is the most enjoyable author I have read so far.

Danielsan · Mar 1, 2016

Currently halfway through Cormac McCarthy's The Road. It's good. Will probably finish it this week.

aravuus · Mar 1, 2016

Imp the Dimp said:
Way of Kings, Words of Radiance and Mistborn: The Final Empire were absolutely mind-blowing. Can't wait to read on the Mistborn series. Finished the first one yesterday. Sanders is the most enjoyable author I have read so far.

Fuck, I really need to get back into Mistborn. Dropped the second book like halfway through, it was just... Boring.

Think I'm gonna try and speed through it with the use of chapter summaries.

pa22word · Mar 1, 2016

Very interesting bio of the man, thus far.

Imp the Dimp · Mar 1, 2016

Muntu said:
Fuck, I really need to get back into Mistborn. Dropped the second book like halfway through, it was just... Boring.

Think I'm gonna try and speed through it with the use of chapter summaries.

I heard that book 2 is not as good as the 1st and 3rd. Will start it tomorrow so I hope it's not too bad. Then again, it's not that big a deal. Coming from reading both Stormlight Archives books back to back (2100+ pages) the Mistborn progress percentage on my Kindle moves incredibly fast in comparison.

thomaser · Mar 1, 2016

Hilary Mantel's "Wolf Hall". Pretty damn good so far (only about a tenth into it).

Ratrat · Mar 1, 2016

Anno said:
I'm about to finish The Lies of Locke Lamora. Yea or Nay on the sequels if I love this one? And are there going to be more?

Alternatively, any other series out there with similar...dialogue, I guess? I really enjoy the snarky banter and just feeling of friendship between these characters.

I thought they were awful.
The Oceans 11 in fantasy Venice is gone. No Gentlemen Bastards or elaborate cons. Locke becomes progressively more annoying and the few newcomers are forgettable. There is a lot of buildup towards a certain appearance thats a huge letdown.

Peru · Mar 1, 2016

thomaser said:
Hilary Mantel's "Wolf Hall". Pretty damn good so far (only about a tenth into it).

That one's fairly high on my to-read list (holding off watching the tv adaptation).

So are the Journey to the West books Mumei's been reading. Been meaning to read more Asian literature for so long. Always look at the nice covers on the classics shelves in book stores but can't decide where to start.

Servbot #42 · Mar 1, 2016

I finished this baby, it was pretty good however the ending was abrupt. Honestly i just wanted to read Roadside Picnic to figure out from where the Stalker movie and the S.T.A.L.K.E.R games got it's inspiration.

John Rabbit · Mar 1, 2016

currently working my way through:

i've read Lovecraft off and on in the past, but I've not really read his longer works either in a very long time, or ever. it's amazing how effective these stories are nearly a century later.

i don't think i'd ever actually read "The Call of Cthulhu" until last night, i never would have guessed that Lovecraft would've described the creature so distinctly; most of his other works are extremely vague at the actual physical appearance of monsters/creatures.

Osahi · Mar 1, 2016

I just finished The High Mountains of Portugal of Yann Martel yesterday. Never read Life of Pi, and didn't like the film, but as a Portugal-lover I was drawn to the title, so I impulse bought.

I generally liked it. It has great prose at times and some neat imaginative ideas that truly bring the story to life. The book consists of three parts that are loosely connected, and it is a shame they aren't better intertwined. Sometimes it feels like three independent short novels. On the otherhand the book gets better with every part, starting of pretty slow and ending very intrigingly. It didn't really grip me though, as I didn't feel anything for the religious themes Martel explores (again), which in the middle story leads to a overlong exposé about the meaning of Jesus' miracles. I loved the way he described Portugal in the last part though, and as someone who is just learning Portuguese it was a nice touch to read some Portuguese (untranslated) dialogue and being able to understand it.

Now I just started in the dutch translation of Night Train to Lisbon (see a patern?). Loved the first 40 pages so far. It drips of saudade...

And I just discovered Murakami's new short story bundle is translated in dutch. So I'll pick that one up as next to read after Night Train.

Arkeband · Mar 1, 2016

I'm reading The Brothers Karamazov, but it's really slow going because it's written in the most dense yet meandering, so to speak, way of narration. And that's on top of every character having like five different pet names because Russia.

There have been some really good sections though, where Fyodor (the father) is behaving so clownishly and pissing off everyone present that I can definitely understand how the book became so entertaining when released in a serialized format.

Shadax the wizard · Mar 1, 2016

It's been ages since I've read fiction or any books in general for that matter. But I've gained interest in books again since I'm taking a hard look on my thought patterns and trying to improve upon them. I borrowed this from a friend yesterday and I'm just about to delve into it:

Maklershed · Mar 1, 2016

thomaser said:
Hilary Mantel's "Wolf Hall". Pretty damn good so far (only about a tenth into it).

Yet another book that I want to read but can't because the show is so good.

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