What are you reading?

[Obsidian Fire]

Does he touch upon 'no u'? I'd hate for that one to lose its power,

He doesn't, but here's the Table of Contents (as well as those cliches/words touched on in the Introduction). Enjoy.

--Introduction
----One Man's Terrorist is nother Man's Freedom Fighter
----The Center (as in "the political center")
----Hindsight is 20/20
--Ideology
--Pragmatism
--No Labels
--Dogma
--Sparation of Church and State
--Power Corrupts
--Diversity
--Social Darwinism
--Slippery Slope
--Dissent
--Social Justice
--Community
--Ten Guilty Men (as in "better that ten guilty men get set free then one innocent man be punished")
--Living Constitution
--Let Them Eat Cake
--Violence Never Solves Anything
--Middle Class
--Science
--Youth
--Ounce of Prevention
--The Catholic Church (also covers the Inquisitions and the Crusades)
--Spiritual but Not Religious
--Understanding
--Democracy and Unity

It was published earlier this year and has a nice long bibliography in the back.

 

[FLo]

Just finished "The Husband" by Dean Koontz. Thriller, I have to say "awesome" but I' m an incurable romanticfag so my opinion' s a little blurred.

Talks about a gardener and his beloved wife being kidnapped, by asking 1 or 2 millions of ransom. wtf

 

[Ghost X]

I'm reading an autobiography of Australian "rock legend" Billy Thorpe, which seems to be one of many. This one is called "Most people I know". Interesting in some places, incredibly boring in others. Seems like truth and bullshit is mixed up too. This book was written in 1996 or something (he has since died), and he is recounting conversations that took place in the 1960s and 1970s. Yeah, I don't think so.

 

[Mantichorus]

A Tyranny of Cliches by Jonah Goldberg

It's pretty much a deconstruction of various words and phrases people use to make points and end arguments; most of which don't make sense when you really think about them. His main beef is with people who use ideological arguments, but say the arguments they use are not ideological in nature.

Most of you guys would disagree with every point he makes.

Is one of them, Hitler Ate Sugar?

Reading Orion: Vaults of Winter. Beginning to get interesting.

 

[HylianMogget]

I recently finished A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay after what seemed like forever. It's not that it's that long of a book, it just totally wasn't my thing. It's much more focused on philosophical ideas than on plot and characters, it's not particularly well-written, and the dialogue's pretty awkward. It's got some really trippy scenery going for it, though, and it's definitely different, especially given when it was written. I can understand it having a strong appeal for some (especially if you're super into Gnosticism ), but it just wasn't for me.

Currently reading stories in The Machineries of Joy by Ray Bradbury and also Tom Sawyer (or rather re-reading it, but I haven't read it since middle school so I only remember bits and pieces).

 

[anothercid]

Pretty far into Raymond E. Feist's Magician - which is long-winded, as are most high fantasy epics, but nonetheless quite good - but I'm temporarily abandoning it in order to get Cloud Atlas read before the movie comes out.

 

[Glaurung]

"Emotional Vampires", as mentioned in another thread. Pretty interesting reading, especially when you are interested on human behavior.

"Shin Megami Tensei". A fan translation of the novelas that originated the videogames.

Spoiler

I lol'd when they described Loki both in looks and behavior more like a demon from Christian tradition than like the trickster Norse God he was

. Aside from that, I liked the first book and I'm now into the second.

 

[Cthulhu]

Pretty far into Raymond E. Feist's Magician - which is long-winded, as are most high fantasy epics, but nonetheless quite good - but I'm temporarily abandoning it in order to get Cloud Atlas read before the movie comes out.

I read that one, it's pretty good actually and didn't feel as long(-winded) as other books in the genre. It's the bland generic high fantasy thing at first (teenage boi meets wizzzard and evil things and whatnot), but breaks off of that later on.

@thread, just finished "The Perks of being a wallflower" because of reasons. It's a bit of a chick flick ([/offend]), but at the same time, an interesting and, to a degree, disturbing read. The main thing about it is that it's written from a first-person perspective in the form of letters to 'a friend', a random stranger the main character/narrator doesn't actually know, and then in a rather introverted, ranty and somewhat random / train-of-thought kinda way; rather disturbing / troubling events are relayed in a matter-of-factly / descriptive way. It hits a chord with me because I can almost read myself thinking to myself or talking to the internets there, .

 

[Tennyo]

Currently reading J.K. Rowling's new novel The Casual Vacancy. It's definitely a lot different from Harry Potter, that's for sure. But pretty interesting so far.

 

[Ⓐaron]

Coraline.

This may be the best thing Gaiman has ever written, which is saying a lot, but it's got tough competition.

I'll write up more after I've finished it. Probably won't take more than a couple of days.

 

[Mantichorus]

Coraline.

This may be the best thing Gaiman has ever written, which is saying a lot, but it's got tough competition.

I'll write up more after I've finished it. Probably won't take more than a couple of days.

If you've ever seen the Neverwhere mini-series, imagine the Marquis' voice coming from the cat.

OT:
The Greater Good - AKA Ciaphas Cain and Chekov's Armoury. Entertaining romp featuring Ciaphas Cain as always, but like the trio of books that made up the Defender of the Imperium anthology, this is part of a micro-trilogy with the previous two books. One of the twists is like the twist in Usual Suspects: you'll guess it early on, but the narrative will make you double guess yourself.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - almost finished the first volume of the book. Despite my usual distaste for stories that are set in pre-twentieth century Britain (that aren't Blackadder, Horrible Histories or straight up folklore), I'm really quite enjoying this book, although the "authentic" irregular spellings here and there do throw me off a bit.

 

[Tetsujin]

Fray

I'm in a Buffyverse mood again.

 

[Mantichorus]

Fray

I'm in a Buffyverse mood again.

Melaka is my favourite Slayer ever.

 

[Ⓐaron]

Philip K. Dick - Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

still haven't finished Coraline; I get distracted. I'm about halfway through. I do this with books all the time. I'll probably finish both of these about the same time.

 

[Ⓐaron]

Robert Jordan - The Eye of the World

My third readthrough of this book. (I think I've read the first five twice and the next six once). I figures since the final volume is finally out I might as well reread the series now. There are some serious problems with this series but I forgot how gripping the early volumes are.

 

[Cthulhu]

oh hai thread.

I occasionally read shit in the train to work. I've played Galaxy on Fire 2, which is good but kinda meh compared to PC/console games from back when, but one of the best gaemz you can get for the 'mobile' platform, and reading stuff. Now reading that Steve Jobs' biography; never really known the guy, but judging by the bio, he's a hippy and not a very nice person.

 

[FFRevolution]

My friends have been asking me to read The Host, by the author who wrote the twilight series, for a long time now. I'm now almost done with it and I gotta say, it's actually not bad.
NO JUDGING!!!

 

[Obsidian Fire]

^^Yeah, that book's on a different level then the Twillight series is. It's way more realistic both setting-wise and character development-wise. If that was the only book she'd written I'd take her work more seriously.

 

[JayM]

y helo thar book thread

I'm about to finish the last volume of Robin Hobb's Liveship Trader trilogy, Ship of Destiny. I was enjoying it tremendously until

Spoiler

one of the mains got raped

and now I'm...gonna have to see how she ends it before I can really judge. I think I get, from a meta-perspective, why she wrote that part, but these things are easier to judge in retrospect.

And I'm probably gonna be reading her Tawny Man trilogy for the next few weeks. Or the next few days. I get really stupid about sleep when I'm into a book, and I'm anticipating a lot of feelings over these.

 

[Theozilla]

http://www.mangapark.com/manga/koe-no-katachi/c0/1

I thought this thread would be the most appropriate place to recommend this one shot manga. It is a comic about bullying that actually made me get teary.

Summary:

A one-shot about a grade school class that accepts a girl with impaired hearing. Everything is not as happy as it seems. Although this one-shot won the 80th Weekly Shounen Magazine Newbie Best Mangaka Award, the vector of the content made it difficult for publication on any manga magazine, until it was picked up, after months of legal dispute, by the February edition of Bessatsu Shounen Magazine, where it got first place despite its being a one-shot. This one-shot was recently publicized again on the 12th edition of the 2013 Weekly Shounen Magazine.

 

[Mantichorus]

Deliverance Lost

A Horus Heresy title, featuring the Raven Guard. To talk about it too much would spoil one of the earlier HH titles. However, it deals with Corax and his legion recovering from the Istvann Drop Site Massacre, with some info on the creation of the primarchs (apparently, the Sixth Legion's Primarch, Leman Russ, might have some canine genetic traits. Really? The Space Wolves' leader??).

 

[Ⓐaron]

Robin Hobb is a great author but sometimes I get the impression she makes as much horrible shit as possible happen to her characters just for the sake of having horrible shit happen to them. So in other words she's from the Whedon/Moffat/Vonnegut school of writing (i.e. "make your characters suffer so you can find out what they're made of"), but I honestly felt she took it beyond what any of those creators do and it was almost unbearably depressing. I was in a relationship that was in the process of disintegrating when I read the Farseer trilogy and it didn't help my mental state at all.

Still rereading WoT mostly; up to The Shadow Rising. So that's three books in three weeks? Not bad. At this rate I'll be done with the series before June ends.

 

[JayM]

I'm quite fond of the end of the Farseer trilogy, but when recommending them to friends I always, always warn them that Royal Assassin can basically be summarized by "and then it got worse," and basically is the worst book for anyone's emotional state ever. It really says something when

Spoiler

the main character being beaten to death

happens in the middle of the story.

I think, though, that her willingness to be harsh makes the moments of triumph that much more intense - at least that's how it is with the Liveship books. I can totally understand your reaction, though. I have another friend that is struggling with finishing Farseer for pretty much the same reason.

I'm impressed by your tolerance for the WoT books; I read up to Lord of Chaos when I was in high school and finally admitted to myself I didn't care about any of the characters. I have heard that Sanderson did a really good job wrapping things up, though, so I'm curious to hear your thoughts on the end once you get there.

 

[Ⓐaron]

The characters can be pretty gigantic jerks at times, but I get the impression that's deliberate in a lot of cases. The series is definitely a World Half Full setting and the characters come out pretty damn bitter and jaded as a result of it. One of Jordan's major tropes seems to be Good Is Not Nice (as well as Light Is Not Good - a lot of the series' secondary antagonists are Knights Templar who are utterly convinced that what they are doing is the only way to save the world) and it's not surprising that a lot of the characters aren't always entirely likeable. I wouldn't say Jordan uses Black and Grey Morality to the extent that, say, George R. R. Martin uses it, but I do think the flaws many people perceive in his characters were probably intentional. (The series' morality could still be considered Black and White overall, since the good guys despite their flaws are generally pretty unambiguously the good guys, but the series could also be considered to take something of a Morality Kitchen Sink approach due to the somewhat more nuanced portrayals of the secondary villains and the less repulsive Forsaken like Lanfear and Asmodean). The fact that a number of characters undergo character development making them substantially different (and, in most senses, better) people towards the end underscores this point. (If my memory doesn't fail me, Faile in particular says towards the end of the series that she does not like the person she was at the start of the series, and consciously made an effort to change herself).

I have to admit I don't read WoT for the characterisations, though; I read it for the world-building and the politics. Some aspects of the politics are much better than others; the series' gender politics are pretty bad to start out (and get worse later), but then Jordan's meditations on the nature of power and what is done with it are never less than intriguing to me. What keeps me engrossed in these novels even ten years after I started reading them is the fact that he's created a world that manages, despite some questionable individual characterisations, to feel like a real setting with thousands of years of history behind it and a large number of diverse cultures. As far as immersive fantasy settings go, I'd probably place Jordan's achievement alongside Westeros and Middle-Earth (although he is substantially below Martin and Tolkien in other areas of writing).

That said, the real challenge will be later. The first six books are really plot-heavy and the characters do a lot of awesome stuff. The series really starts to sag later - massive amounts of padding set in (although I have seen arguments that most of the details in the series have symbolic significance, and as I am not fully familiar with all the sources of symbolism used in the series this might be plausible), to the point where the tenth book basically consists of describing the same events from every major cast member's perspective. If I still have my endurance by the time I get to that point of the series, that will be the true test. Luckily, the eleventh book is a lot better (up to the standard of the first six again) and I've been told Sanderson managed to finish the series off in strong form. Which isn't a surprise since everything I've read by Sanderson has been great.

(I've read books one through eleven before, as well as the series prologue - everything Sanderson co-wrote will be new to me).

I never did read Hobb's later trilogies; I was so depressed by the last book of Farseer that I couldn't bear to continue at the time, despite enjoying the writing and worldbuilding. I do understand, though, that things get better for FitzChivalry by the end of the Tawny Man, which - well, thank Gods. That kid deserved a much happier ending than the one Farseer gave him.

 

[JayM]

I don't think it was the characters being jerks that turned me off - I was reading Feintuch's The Still around the same time, and the viewpoint in that is one of the most spoiled, selfish assholes I've ever read, and I loved that book to pieces. It was just that I cared about fewer and fewer of the characters as the books went on, until finally there wasn't a single POV I looked forward to. I couldn't say what it was, exactly; I don't remember it well enough, and haven't given it a ton of thought in the intervening years.

I will say the gender politics is one of the main reasons I've avoided going back. There are things I have a lot of tolerance for in fantasy, but (as you might have gleaned from that Aeris rant in the LTD thread) I really cannot stand...whatever you'd call that. I don't like stories that treat women the way Jordan treats women, and while I don't think it's from any maliciousness on his part, and I don't judge the politics of anyone who enjoys the books, I personally cannot get past it. It's a hot-button thing for me.

That's actually one aspect I'm really interested to see Sanderson's take on, is the characterization and utilization of the female characters in the story. I haven't read much of him (I thought Elantris was terrible, but enjoyed the spinoff novella The Emperor's Soul, and I have Warbreaker sitting on my Nook for after I finish Hobb), but I've heard he writes women better than Jordan does. So, if you do manage to slog through to that point, I'd love to hear your take on it.

Based on what you've said, also, you might enjoy the Liveship books. The first one, Ship of Magic, is a little slow to start but IMO well worth it; unlike the Farseer books, the Liveship ones are third person restricted from multiple points of view, and she's very good at using this to build up tension, and to paint a detailed picture of the world and the politics. It's in the same world as the Farseer books, but much further south, and the events of the first trilogy are referenced a bit.

Also (without spoilers) I did just finish the last one this morning, and I can say that the ending's much more satisfying than the end of Assassin's Quest. However, the books are still pretty emotionally wrenching. I don't think you'd find them as depressing as Fitz, but I had tears in my eyes at a few scenes, and I'm mostly a heartless bitch when I read, so.