What are you reading?

[Rumpelstiltskin]

Dean Koontz: Seize the night/Fear Nothing

Meant to be Koontz's moonlight bay trilogy but he never did get around to doing the third book. As with most Koontz books the series follows a first person narrative and is extremely sci-fi'esk in it's writing.
The main protagonist suffers from xedermapigmentosum which is the medical term for someone who is unable to go into direct sunlight or most UV enviroments as their skin cannot handle it.

Read both of them about a hundred times each and they are brilliant.
If your looking for a good twist and like thrillers I reccomend you read these!

 

[Alessa Gillespie]

in the middle of american gods

with any luck ill finish it before the summer ends

 

[Rumpelstiltskin]

^ V.Good book.

 

[Mantichorus]

Wolfsangel - interesting ideas about werewolves and the Norse pantheon, but the writing is a bit plodding in places.

 

[Hisako]

Oh! I just finished A Game of Thrones.

Pretty entertaining read, although I've already mentioned my beef to some people about Martin's writing style.
Also, the only thing I've learned from it is that only assholes win at life. Which is, I suppose, a valuable life lesson even if downright depressing, . It seems that the story is divided mostly between egotistical pricks and the nice people who have to be pricks as well just to keep up with the pace

And, I suppose, a third group consisting of the Mongol horde Dothraki and others who just rape and pillage as part of their culture lawl

 

[Lumina]

The It Girl (Series): By Cecily Von Ziegesar

Was reading anyway. For some reason (Videogames) I stopped reading them but I will retake them as soon as my brain picks up the reading signal.

 

[Dana Scully]

I randomly stumbled across a book that is turning out to be a fairly fascinating read.

It's called 'The Shallows' - though it's full title also includes 'How The Internet Changed The Way We Think'. I'm about a hundred pages in - it talks about how people have gotten so used to skimming and immediately accessing information that they have trouble with deep reading and concentration, as well as delving into the effects of media and technology on society and cultural development and neuroplasticity/habit forming. It's also been very objective and fair in its discussion of the pros and cons of the Internet and modern technology in general.

Definitely not my regular sort of read, but the title caught by eye and I'm glad I picked it up.

 

[Ite]

I'm about half-way through A Game of Thrones, and I pretty much agree with Satsu. The writing style isn't my cup of tea. Too expository and bland, although he has a great knack for dialogue, and the story is excellent (which I already knew from the show) so I would still recommend it.

 

[Hisako]

My main gripe with the way he's written it is how he focuses on a single perspective for each chapter, and honestly I think it suffers from that. Although I'm fairly open to that narrative structure - a while back I read The Saga of Seven Suns by Kevin J. Anderson and that used a similar perspective-jumping structure to emphasise how multi-faceted the plot and setting was.

So far, however, in Game of Thrones and the other books I'm moving onto, it doesn't quite click as readily for me. I'm struggling to figure out why, but I'm sort of pinning it down to the fact that there isn't quite as much mystery going on as the reader than there is in Seven Suns. In this Song of Ice and Fire series, the reader is quite omniscient about the whole deal, so there are times where the political intrigue about it doesn't quite have the impact.

It's sort of like, say, a procedural detective mystery show where you have a very strong idea who the killer is from the start. That doesn't mean that I don't like the political intrigue itself - the plot itself is a masterpiece. I just wish Martin kept more of it secret - there's a lot of instances where he gives the reader a plot revelation, and relies on the thrill of the other characters' unknowing for a whole bunch of chapters afterward, but by then the thrill has lost its effect. In Seven Suns, a lot of resolved plot mysteries open up a whole bunch of new questions because of the element of discovery in sci-fi - in Game of Thrones, being grounded in politics means that a lot of answers to plot mysteries are fairly linear, and so Martin sort of carries out the plot as a linear sequence of political mysteries waiting to be solved one by one.

On that note, I finished A Clash of Kings this afternoon. Again, great plot progression, and I love the way the paradigm of the conflict has expanded to Baratheon's brothers, the wildkin beyond the Wall, etc. But because of that singular perspective, every political mystery is being addressed one at a time, and it feels a little slow and linear despite being so complex and overarching, if you know what I mean. It sort of stuck out at the point where Catelyn goes to interrogate Jaime, and it occurred to me that at that point Martin was simply using Jaime as an expository crutch - and even then, the majority of it was simply reaffirming what the reader knew since the middle of the first book, with the main entertainment value being gauging Catelyn's reaction to things revealed to her (most of which were entirely human and predictable in some respects).

It's quite strange, to be honest - it's a series which could very well classify as the cloak-and-dagger mystery series, but because of the way it's written, for me the centrepiece isn't so much the politics itself but the characters who initiate the deeds.

 

[Mantichorus]

World War Z

I actually managed to get through this without freaking out! However, as I'd already read the TVTropes article, I pretty much knew it all anyway.

Compared to Brooks' Zombie Survival Guide this is actually fairly tame on the horror side. There's also some fairly large leaps in logic as to how countries would develop after WWZ (such as

Spoiler

Russia becoming a theocracy. Seemingly just because one army chaplin decided that killing infected soldiers was his duty

).

 

[Gabriel_D]

Just finished Roverandom =P just starting Raymond Chandler's "Smart-aleck kill". It's a compilation. hmm.

 

[wander]

franken fran, if manga counts.

 

[Alessa Gillespie]

finished american gods, started coraline

 

[Rumpelstiltskin]

Anansi Boys, I got back into reading American gods and decided this was the best way to follow it up before continuing the Game of thrones books.

 

[Bex]

reading to the lighthouse again
god i love it

 

[Marle]

Been reading manga lately. Pandora hearts and Soul Eater mainly. Pretty good so far. Different. I like different. Was thinking of trying Fairy Tale but I didn't like One Piece so I'm not so sure. :\

 

[Cthulhu]

A Feast for Crows, finished the third book, moving on .

I can't remember at all what happens in the 4th book, but the first chapter (The Prophet) is still very recognisable.

 

[Tifabelle]

Damn. I'm still on the second book. And there was one week where I was just busy with other crap that I couldn't find time to read. And it's definitely not because I've been obsessively playing Uncharted multiplayer the past couple days, nope.

 

[Cthulhu]

I just make myself read a chapter every night before going to sleep, it's doable enough.

 

[Tifabelle]

not when you go to bed at 4am

 

[Cthulhu]

Granted, .

 

[Hisako]

KAY So

I finished A Feast for Crows and I'm about 1/3 the way through Dance with Dragons

I just doan know man, it's a great story and everything and I'm really enjoying how it's all unfolding and everything's going to the shits, but A Dance With Dragons is really suffering from the fact that Martin split it into two books. I know there wasn't much of a choice because of the immense size, but because he's persisting with this narrative structure, he's had to try so hard to place every single chapter in perspective between time and space.
With chapters involving Jon, Martin puts segments in from book 3 verbatim just so the reader gets where it's starting. Other chapters, I have absolutely no fucking idea when they occur relative to the events of A Feast for Crows.

That is to say, I had no problem comprehending A Feast for Crows. It's a great little story focusing on the shits and giggles of Westeros. Mostly the south of Westeros. And towards the end of the book there's a glorious, glorious chapter dedicated to the very concept of comeuppance,
It's just that because of the way Martin's handled it, he's backed himself into a corner with the narrative structure, and so A Dance With Dragons is really difficult to follow. He's specifically said that these things happen parallel to the events of the previous book, but even as he does some times there's no way of knowing exactly when. It doesn't quite matter with chapters involving Danaerys (who, imo, is slightly less awesome compared to books 1-3 because of her being tied down as a dragon queen, ), and tbh most of the book involves shenanigans happening across the Sea, but then there's parts involving the Wall and Winterfell that in all honesty should have been in the previous book.

So tl;dr, love the writing, but really don't like the way it's being handled.

 

[Ⓐaron]

I can see why it's somewhat annoying, but honestly, the events in the North are so far removed from the events in the rest of Westeros that an exact chronology doesn't really affect things that much, mostly because the plot lines are so separate from one another and events in one rarely impact the other. On the off chance a character does move from one plot line to another, you're given a point of reference with the previous book. For instance, Sam's conversation with Jon is present in both books. Additionally, the Dornish plotline actually benefits from being split up; if we'd known about Quentyn's mission in book four (which we would have if the story was presented chronologically), a lot of the suspense that we got from wondering what would happen to Arianne and why Doran was doing all the things he did wouldn't have even been present. I wonder how they're going to handle this in the show when they get to it.

Of course, I haven't read Feast since about five years ago, so I may be forgetting certain crucial details that would make me feel a bit differently if it were more fresh in my head.

 

[Hisako]

Yeah Sam's conversation with Jon was a particular example that stuck in my head. It did feel like Martin was trying a little too hard to give us a chronological point of reference, but that's just me nitpicking.

Honestly, Arianne's little plot arc sailed completely over my head for the first few chapters, and I didn't really pay much attention to it until they started mentioning Myrcella.

 

[Hisako]

Okay so I finished with A Dance With Dragons last night

Being a part 2 shoe-in with A Feast for Crows, it feels like it's been handled quite well in terms of time scale. At least, I'm hoping the chapters were done in sequential order, because one or two chapters referred to events that occurred in previous chapters from completely different settings (such as the "return of the griffin", etc)

Out of all the books, though, this feels the weakest out of the lot. There's comparatively little being resolved at the moment, although there's some neat plot twists such as the one mentioned above, more dragon fuckery in Meereen and Bran finally finds some answers to all this ridiculous greenseer nonsense. Oh, and more of that "A CHARACTER MIGHT NOT BE DEAD AFTER ALL" nonsense. I think Martin thrives off that.

Still, it's a good read. Neat last chapter.

Spoiler

The winner of this book imo is Barristan Selmy. He's such a likeable character and I've always wanted a few chapters of insight of him. Also lol @ him trying to make knights out of Meereen pit fighters.