172 replies to this topic

[Tristan Palmgren]

Just to preempt the smartasses--no, these forums don't count.

I'm balancing Charlie Stross's Singularity Sky against Diana Wynne Jones's The Tough Guide to Fantasyland. I also need to pick up some good history nonfiction about the gunpowder era for a project I'm working on, but haven't decided one to grab.

Strangely, not long after I started reading Singularity Sky, I came across the author badmouthing it in the comments of a LiveJournal blog I read. So that lowered my expectations. Enjoying it so far, though...

[MistressAli]

I've been reading a book that's languished for years on my bookcase, 'Ghosts' by Peter Straub. It's a bunch of short stories about, you guessed it...Ghosts. Though none of them are very good >< I'm going to finish it just to finish it and then get rid of it.
I also want to crack open another languishing book, 'Mythology' by Edith Hamilton. Cuz I'm in a mythological mood

[An7imatt3r]

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown. I read all of books because they are usually good. Haven't made up my mind about this one yet, but it isn't bad, so thats a good sign.

[furrykef]

I haven't actually read Dan Brown's books, but this is probably enough to put me off for good. Anybody with even the slightest idea of how kanji works (whether in either Chinese or Japanese) -- or how language translation works -- is going to laugh his head off at this.

Now, you could argue that Dan Brown knows this stuff better than the book suggests (just as Michael Crichton probably knew more about paleontology and dinosaurs than Jurassic Park suggests), and he just had to "dumb it down" so that the facts don't get in the way of the story, but I don't think this is a case of that. A writer who cared would have been able to make it work. (Phrases like "kanji language" very strongly suggest to me that he simply doesn't even know what he's talking about. No amount of dumbing down would have made the phrase "kanji language" necessary.)

And I've heard that pretty much all his stuff is like this, just that he does it with different fields. His modus operandi seems to be that, as long as he's talking about something you know absolutely nothing about, you won't notice and it'll be OK. Since then your knowledge of the subject would be about on par with his.

- Kef

[Xian Shade]

The Eye of the World, the first book in the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. A friend referred me to the author as 'one of the best fantasy writers since Tolkein'. Book 12 came out a few months ago, so I have a while to go before I'm done, and the books are LONG! Even as a small paperback with smaller print, the first book's well over 800 pages. I'll have my reading covered for quite some time.

[An7imatt3r]

I haven't actually read Dan Brown's books, but this is probably enough to put me off for good. Anybody with even the slightest idea of how kanji works (whether in either Chinese or Japanese) -- or how language translation works -- is going to laugh his head off at this.

Now, you could argue that Dan Brown knows this stuff better than the book suggests (just as Michael Crichton probably knew more about paleontology and dinosaurs than Jurassic Park suggests), and he just had to "dumb it down" so that the facts don't get in the way of the story, but I don't think this is a case of that. A writer who cared would have been able to make it work. (Phrases like "kanji language" very strongly suggest to me that he simply doesn't even know what he's talking about. No amount of dumbing down would have made the phrase "kanji language" necessary.)

And I've heard that pretty much all his stuff is like this, just that he does it with different fields. His modus operandi seems to be that, as long as he's talking about something you know absolutely nothing about, you won't notice and it'll be OK. Since then your knowledge of the subject would be about on par with his.

- Kef

Yeah, he does do that and it is kind of annoying at times. Why he doesn't say Japanese or characters is beyond me. It wouldn't be hard to explain what Kanji is either. However, he really doesn't do things this dumb that often. Admittedly he can over simplify to the point where it makes you wounder if he does know what he is talking about, but generally the depth of the story answers that. If he wasn't so good at writing stories I would probably skip his stuff, but he has a very unique way of making a false story seem true that usually gets my attention. When you can make the not really seem real you have some talent.

[The Man]

Specific Chessbook - Winning the won game. But if the story is good enough I will read Poe, Twain, modern, female authors and many others, ect.,.

[BigWigRah]

well, after reading Watership Down (which has taken over my life), I ended up reading Mark Steyn's America Alone. Now i'm reading Dan Brown's "Deception Point". the book seems to be getting good, lots of conspiracy and politics.

[Xian Shade]

Took a little break from Eye of the World since it also reads like a Tolkein book (see: way too damn descriptive for its own good), and picked up a copy of The Running Man, which apparently was written by Steven King under a different name. Very different from the movie adaptation with the governator, but that's usually a good thing, right?

[Tristan Palmgren]

Singularity Sky was a disappointing book from an otherwise great author. It had a few neat ideas but no plot, annoying lecturing characters with half-baked politics, and it even pulled a goddamn this-long-scene-was-really-just-a-holodeck-fantasy-and-the-little-we-learned-from-it-turns-out-to-be-inconsequential-anyway trick. Fuck.

I just started a rather intimidating "The Complete Sherlock Holmes" hardcover. The thing weighs a ton and the print is tiny. I have a long train trip coming up in a few days, but this one's still going to take me a while.

[Chaosmaster8753]

The text on the screen.

[Ratty Randnums]

Singularity Sky was a disappointing book from an otherwise great author. It had a few neat ideas but no plot, annoying lecturing characters with half-baked politics, and it even pulled a goddamn this-long-scene-was-really-just-a-holodeck-fantasy-and-the-little-we-learned-from-it-turns-out-to-be-inconsequential-anyway trick. Fuck.

I just started a rather intimidating "The Complete Sherlock Holmes" hardcover. The thing weighs a ton and the print is tiny. I have a long train trip coming up in a few days, but this one's still going to take me a while.

I read the complete collection in my teens though mine was a (probably slightly-larger print) 2 volume edition.

My ideal advice is to not read more than two of them in unbroken succession. Particularly of the short story collections. Doyle's writing later on gets so "let's get it over with" at times (mostly in the later stories, when he was writing just for the money) that they can run together.

If you've not brought anything else to do I'd advise reading mostly the novellas on the trip. A few plots are a lot easier to keep straight than a dozen or so a book. And don't believe you'll have anything spoiled from the shorts by reading them if I recall correctly. One or two of them (due to willy nilly timeline placement) actually give more backstory.


PS- I'm not reading anything. I've been to busy working or trying to relax to get into a book. Though I'd like to finally finish rereading "Dune" alas I left it at the dorm.

[fishtheimpaler]

The Savage Detectives, with a borrowed copy of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies waiting in the weeds. Before that, Buda's Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb (not particularly deep, but an interesting survey for someone who hasn't read deeply on 20th Century urban guerrilla warfare like myself. You'd be surprised at the number of organizations that operated with the strategy (1) kill as many civilians as possible, (2) start race war, (3) profit).

Concur on mixing stuff in a huge short story collection with other stuff. I got the complete Robert Howard Conan the Barbarian stories and although they are the most fun stuff ever I could only do a little more than a third before loaning it to a friend. I ought to call that back in one of these days.

[Tristan Palmgren]

I've also set down the collection (for a while) after going through about a third of it. My breaking point was "The Gloria Scott," a mystery in which Sherlock Holmes did no detecting. He had everything handed to him instead.

I've moved onto a book about early gunpowder artillery as research for a story project.

(Spoiler!) Lots of things in tubes go boom. People point them at each other. Unfriendliness ensues.

[salamander]

I got The Crying of Lot 49 for Christmas (as well as Gravity's Rainbow, but I haven't started that yet), and just started making my way through it. So far it's pretty.. weird, and disorienting. It's got some good humor though, and I like the surreal imagery.

[The Man]

The World's Greatest Chess Games.

I hear the book is better than the movie.

*Spoiler*

I didn't like how The Two Towers didn't feature the Shelob fight. Woulda made for a better cliffhangar.

[Ratty Randnums]

The World's Greatest Chess Games.

I hear the book is better than the movie.

*Spoiler*

I didn't like how The Two Towers didn't feature the Shelob fight. Woulda made for a better cliffhangar.

THANK YOU. Yes I'm not a nitpicky fan of tolkien but that was the -second biggest- huge, glaring, blindingly bad and easily fixed flaw in the movies.

[BigWigRah]

40 pages into "The Plague Dogs." I hope this book picks up, because Richard Adams is being awfully wordy. The whole first chapter was about all the random experiments being done to animals in the facility as the dogs are trying to escape.

Also, some of the descriptions are weird. As Rowlf is moving through the incinerator tunnel ahead of Snitter, he is described as moving "like a turd through a healthy anus." huh?

I'm gonna try and finish this. I feel honor bound to do so considering how much I loved his first book. I could see the novel picking up steam.

[Tristan Palmgren]

Lots of things got blowed up good in the book on early artillery. Learned a few useful things for my project. Next, a more generalized book about the history of gunpowder.

[wildfire]

I've been reading The Voyage of the Jerele Shanarra series by Terry Brooks. I've let them sit on my bookshelf for years and decided to pick them up after so long I had to start from the beginning again. Currently on the third and final book in the set, but I have several more to go afterwards that I may wind up buying.