The Book Thread - June 2012

[Alan Dunkin]

Been kind of neglecting books last month though I did pretty much finish Young Men and Fire, started The Dark Defile (Diana Preston's new book on the British intervention and subsequent disastrous expulsion from Afghanistan in 1842), and got the Byliner Kindle short, After Friday Night Lights which is the Bissinger update to the original classic.

--- Alan

[malkav11]

Today I finished Scott Fitzgerald Gray's We Can Be Heroes, a book I picked up on a whim because it was temporarily free for Kindle. I must say, that decision was well rewarded. We Can Be Heroes is a lightly science-fictional thriller about a group of high school gaming friends who wind up stealing an experimental former Soviet tank from a private paramilitary group in the wilds of British Columbia. It's a little slow to pick up, but it's both exciting and emotionally involving once it does, with characters that feel very true to life (at least in the gaming group) and secondary themes of romance, social alienation, growing up, and, y'know, all those other things that are key to one's senior year in high school. My only real complaint is that the author decided to self-censor with cutesy bracketed substitutions for all the profanity in the book (of which there is quite a bit). This isn't network TV, man. People hear this shit every day, and it's not aimed at kids. There's no need to protect our virgin eyes.

[Murbella]

RANT:

I've been reading Troy Rising by John Ringo. I am somewhat of a fan of his and really enjoyed (what i read of) his Posleen War series.

Troy Rising, so far has been interesting, with one, glaring exception.

I talked about liking his Posleen War series in the past, and people brought up about how John Ringo was somewhat... eccentric with his crazed insanity. At the time i did not know, i could not know. As soon as I started reading Troy Rising, i knew.

Troy Rising and Posleen War are both somewhat similar in subject matter, except where as Posleen War stays mostly non political, Troy Rising is so blatantly anti liberal that it is cringe worthy at times.

MANY times the main character goes on about how the main stream media hates him, even fox isn't a fan, because he is a self made wealthy man. This is after he saves the world like three times. So this man nearly single handedly saves the world multiple times and all of the liberals do everything in their power to stop him and hate him because they hate rich people.

Then there is the biological attack by communist aliens that targets... I KID YOU NOT... "people with preexisting conditions."

A great alien race is even brought low by liberals who want a welfare state.

Then there is the huge theme of small businessmen making huge profits and trying to spend the money to save their race while the useless government tries to tax them in order to waste the money on nothing.

And it just wouldn't be complete without anti war liberals protesting humanity's war for survival and the main character likening it to liberals having Stockholm syndrome when it comes to (modern day Islamic) terrorists.

[Alan Dunkin]

Yeah he's... pretty much a nut. I refuse to give him the satisfaction of even bothering to look at his books. I don't care if the Posleen War series was good or not. He's not worth supporting.

--- Alan

[Lloyd Heilbrunn]

Just finished Elantris. Sanderson is becoming a favorite.....

[HRose]

I finished a brand new debut: Lord Foul's Bane by Stephen Donaldson :)

Comments/review here: http://loopingworld.com/2012/06/03/l...hen-donaldson/

Drawing parallels with Infinite Jest (!), “Gödel, Escher, Bach”, Malazan and some recent TV series (Awake, Life on Mars) and movies (Another Earth). Yes, I really do believe my own bullshit (in ways that Thomas Covenant could not).

[Lloyd Heilbrunn]

Finished Elantris and Night of Thunder.

Started Theft of Swords,which Amazon kept recommending, so I figured what the heck. Not bad to start, has kind of a Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser vibe.

But my suspension disbelief was shattered by a scene where a mare was then referred to by a character as he. Editing is a lost art....

[Houngan]

Finished Hide Me Among The Graves, Tim Powers' sequel to The Stress of Her Regard, his vampire/Nephilim universe. It's as-good-as, but damn if it isn't a difficult fiction to grasp. I was hoping he would do some sort of bridge into Anubis Gates but it didn't happen, and I'm noticing that his characters are completely reactive, they have no real internal monologue.

[Gratzby]

I finish my degree on Tuesday, and plan to spend all my suddenly free time in June/July/August reading and hopefully re-reading Infinite Jest at long last. Love DFW's short stories and essays, and feel like IJ is an appropriate bridge between a philosophy degree and 'real life'.

[HRose]

an appropriate bridge between a philosophy degree and 'real life'.

You should try reading Scott Bakker "Light, Time and Gravity" that he seems to have decided to put on his blog: http://rsbakker.wordpress.com/

[ineffablebob]

Taking a break from my usual sci-fi and fantasy fare to read Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet. This isn't a technical book, but rather a documentary of a non-technical writer going around and talking to all the folks that built up the Internet over the last 50 years or so. He visits a lot of the data centers and such where stuff happens which most Internet people don't realize is driving their cat videos and facebook status updates. I'm about halfway through and enjoying the perspective of an "outsider" viewpoint on the IT world that I take for granted.

[Gordon Cameron]

I'm reading 'How To Live,' a rather eccentric but very enjoyable biography of Michel de Montaigne, and 'And The Show Went On,' about cultural life in France during the Nazi occupation.

Desperately jonesing for more Civil War books, though. Gonna have to go on a spree soon, I fear. At the moment I'm getting by with the NY Times Disunion blog.

[Miramon]

Finished Hide Me Among The Graves, Tim Powers' sequel to The Stress of Her Regard, his vampire/Nephilim universe. It's as-good-as, but damn if it isn't a difficult fiction to grasp. I was hoping he would do some sort of bridge into Anubis Gates but it didn't happen, and I'm noticing that his characters are completely reactive, they have no real internal monologue.

Yeah, I thought it was OK, but not great. I preferred his modern-day stuff because it had more traction. These characters seem just to be going through the paces, despite the weirdness and extreme danger they're in.

[Houngan]

Yeah, I thought it was OK, but not great. I preferred his modern-day stuff because it had more traction. These characters seem just to be going through the paces, despite the weirdness and extreme danger they're in.

I'm not sure what's wrong with him, he certainly gave Shelley, Byron and the rest personalities in the first book. Thinking all the way back to Dinner at Deviant's Palace, I recall Rivas being a much more interesting character than the Rossetti siblings in this one, only Trelawney had any sort of personality.

[mystery]

After seeing him on The Daily Show, I picked up Rather Outspoken, by Dan Rather. Whoa, Nelly, is this a tell-all. He gives the highest of praises to even those people who are so obviously lying, but then shows exactly how they were lying.

[Miramon]

After seeing him on The Daily Show, I picked up Rather Outspoken, by Dan Rather. Whoa, Nelly, is this a tell-all. He gives the highest of praises to even those people who are so obviously lying, but then shows exactly how they were lying.

Rather used to have a great radio editorial back in the day, that pulled no punches and was brutally honest -- better than his TV role, really. I was always surprised that the CBS radio network, otherwise a rather lame news service, carried it, but I suppose they had to given his status on television at the time. But after what appeared to be weak petulant sauce at the end of his TV career, I lost some respect. Still, he's obviously superior to the vast majority of imbeciles reading the news these days, and who knows what the real story of those days was.

[mystery]

Still, he's obviously superior to the vast majority of imbeciles reading the news these days, and who knows what the real story of those days was.

Yep, and that's where the book's focus lies: Starting from Abu-Graib all the way through his dismissal.

[Gratzby]

You should try reading Scott Bakker "Light, Time and Gravity" that he seems to have decided to put on his blog: http://rsbakker.wordpress.com/

The first few paragraphs on that page look great, but I notice it starts with an '18' heading. Is that an intentional device thing, or is there an earlier part I can read first?

[HRose]

Yes, scroll ;)

They are like blog posts, that one is "Light, Time, and Gravity (VI)", so scroll till you find the first.

[Kemper Boyd]

Currently reading Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Heavy duty stream of conciousness prose with a wide selection of unreliable narrators - I personally think that everyone in the book (with the possible exception of the mother) is at least mildly insane. It is horribly beautiful and I dig it a lot, but I would say that this is a serious case of YMMV. I like the multimedia aspects of the narrative and Oskar's journey is fascinating.

[demagogue]

I just finished reading Steven Erikson's ten book series, the malazan book of the fallen. It started really promising but I was left with the sense that if I were to recommend it to anyone, I would recommend they just read the first book and pretend the rest do not exist. The first was the only one that felt solid and by the last, it felt like the author was afraid to kill his characters and it all got a bit airy-fairy.

On one hand, I imagine that a large part of this is because I read the novels one after the other without the years of delay that readers at the time of publication would have experienced. This exacerbated the feeling that too much of the 1000 page novels were padding in the form of long journeys that took forever to reach their destination and meaningless obstacles along the way. And that many of the storylines that were hinted at in earlier novels were redirected in later ones, as the author's intent changed.

[BleedTheFreak]

I actually just came to post that I picked up Gardens of the Moon and was really excited about digging into a new series. Then I read demagogue's post and now I guess that's a huge bummer. Great.

[malkav11]

Demagogue is not representative of the general take on the Malazan books, though they are polarizing to a degree. Myself, I read the entire series...last year, I think, over the course of about three months of reading essentially nothing else and thought it was well worth the time invested. A staggering achievement.

[mystery]

I'd suggest at least walking 4 books into that series. Most folks who've read the series come away considering the first book to be something of a prologue.

[HRose]

Really, that's quite the original opinion about Malazan. Usually people like the first book the least (me included).

I can't comment on what happens past book five. But in the first half of the series there isn't one single "padded journey". Erikson is a writer whose writing is inversely proportional to the typical padding style of the genre. It's DENSE. To a flaw: too dense can be confusing and too quick to care about.

[ineffablebob]

I loved the Malazan series, but I must say that I agree that the last couple of books seemed flat. Maybe I was just overloaded by that point, it's a *lot* to read. Regardless, if you've made it through one book, I think you'll find the effort to get through the whole series to be worthwhile.

[MadGav]

For what it's worth, I loved the series and found book 1 one of the weakest...

[RDansky]

Just finished Rio Youers' Westlake Soul, which is about a supergenius superhero, who also happens to be a 23 year old surfer in a coma. (Trust me, it's way better than it sounds.) It's funny, it's fast, and in places, it's quite touching.

[Reemul]

Just finished Rio Youers' Westlake Soul, which is about a supergenius superhero, who also happens to be a 23 year old surfer in a coma. (Trust me, it's way better than it sounds.) It's funny, it's fast, and in places, it's quite touching.

Just added this to my wish list. Full price on kindle atthe moment but looks good.

[Vesper]

Ernest Cline just announced a hidden contest in all print editions of Ready Player One. Hidden in the text, including the hardcover, is instructions on how to get started. This leads to a series of 3 progressively harder video game challenges. The prize is a fully restored DeLorean, with flux capacitor added. Pretty awesome contest that directly parallels the plot of the book.

http://www.ernestcline.com/blog/2012...-secret-gates/