Favorite books / What are you reading?

Been enjoying the comic and the series Walking Dead.
Right now I am mostly reading for school.
On my desk
Walter Opello and Stephen Rosow- The Nation State adn the Global Order
Nick Reding- Methlad- Death and life of an American Small Town
Michael Sodaro- Comparative Politics - a Global Introduction.

For fun, Cherie Priest, Boneshaker. Someone said it was the ideal Steampunk book. I figured I would try it.
Just finished The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo. Was ok, but not worth the hype.
 
^ They will need to approach it a fair bit different to Lotr if it's going to turn out well...I mean in terms of hack-and-slash-Aragon-ownage scenes, the Hobbit's fairly lacking minus the battle of five armies.
 
Not a big fan of LoTR or the Hobbit, really. But then I grew up on the original Conan. Its a completely different esthetic.
 
Hobbit's a lot more light-hearted than LoTR. I actually liked it more than the trilogy. But agreed, they'll need to take a completely different approach to making the movie if they want it to be any good. The story is in a completely different mood from LoTR.

-------------------------------

Anyway, I'm starting to re-read Zelazny's Lord of Light. One of his hardest to read books, let's see if I can puzzle out more this time compared to 5 or so years ago.
 
Yoshi525 said:
Dragon Reborn from Robert Jordan. Nice book.
Click to expand...

The next one's better, five and six are good to. Then comes Crown of Swords, which is where the series starts declining into an endless sea of melodramatic shite. Though if you can stomach about 3000 pages of said shite, it gets good again at book eleven, the last two are better still (the last is the best in the series IMO, Sanderson is a better writer than Jordan basically).

That said, I kind of regret ever reading any of the tripe, I mean it's a good read but I could get a LOT more from 10,000 pages of material...
Click to expand...

So far it's good, and it's getting better. I'm about the middle of the book, and I really like it, it's definitely better than Great Hunt or Eye of the World.
But I had a feeling that Jordan would drain most of the "good stuff" overtime, and it really seems so, as this book is really fast-paced.
 
welsh said:
Not a big fan of LoTR or the Hobbit, really. But then I grew up on the original Conan. Its a completely different esthetic.
Click to expand...

I haven't yet read the Conan books, now I'm interested though. I did read the comics and saw the films.

Now eyeing a book called Hiroshima by John Hersey. A landmark book about the subject, somehow I've missed this until now.
 
But I had a feeling that Jordan would drain most of the "good stuff" overtime, and it really seems so, as this book is really fast-paced
Click to expand...

If you're finding it to be fast paced and you consider this a bad thing, just wait till you get to book seven...the pace seems to suffer an exponential slackening each chapter. Said slackening continues throughout the subsequent three books. Jordan is the only author I've ever seen pull of the feat, of creating a book where nothing happens. I kid you not, by the time you finish book ten you will be amazed (yet bored) that you have just read 700 pages of...nothing. It's hard to explain how he achieves this, I guess the level of irrelevant, encyclopedic description of incredibly minor characters and plot lines gets turned up a notch (or thirty).
 
Yoshi525 said:
But I had a feeling that Jordan would drain most of the "good stuff" overtime, and it really seems so, as this book is really fast-paced
Click to expand...

If you're finding it to be fast paced and you consider this a bad thing, just wait till you get to book seven...the pace seems to suffer an exponential slackening each chapter. Said slackening continues throughout the subsequent three books. Jordan is the only author I've ever seen pull of the feat, of creating a book where nothing happens. I kid you not, by the time you finish book ten you will be amazed (yet bored) that you have just read 700 pages of...nothing. It's hard to explain how he achieves this, I guess the level of irrelevant, encyclopedic description of incredibly minor characters and plot lines gets turned up a notch (or thirty).
Click to expand...

No, no, I don't find "fast-pacing" a bad thing. I say it's good, but it can lead to bad things e.g. slackening,, as you said, because when "fast-paced" he drains the "good stuff".

Never used so many quotes in two sentences...
 
Just finished reading 'Unseen Academicals' of Pratchett. The german version though because i still think i might not be able to understand enough when reading it in english - quite strange that i don't dare to try because i recently read Bram Stookers 'Dracula' and Kevin Mitnicks 'The Art of Deception' in english and had no problems reading them...

I enjoyed the book even though they used some new translator who has some bad habits and dropped some style the earlier translators used.
The idea of female dwarfs developing the need to distinguish themselves from male ones is quite entertaining for me. Than again i think the whole Discworld lost a bit of momentum after that many books.
 
Read a Lovecraft short story called The Shunned House. It's a vampire story and a nice antidote to all the pop culture stuff where vampires are good looking angst-ridden teens. No one would want to be a vampire like the one in this story.
 
UniversalWolf said:
Read a Lovecraft short story called The Shunned House. It's a vampire story and a nice antidote to all the pop culture stuff where vampires are good looking angst-ridden teens. No one would want to be a vampire like the one in this story.
Click to expand...

Apparently, if you want stuff to make sense today, you have to read Lovecraft stories.
 
Too many... But, is it good, or bad?

Anyway, read Dragon Reborn from Robert Jordan, great book.
Now I have to buy next book online, argh, such a pain in the ass...
 
Guiltyofbeingtrite said:
Reading Red Mars right now, so far so good.
Click to expand...
Is it? I had Green Mars lying around here, but I never read it through because frankly, it's boring as hell.
Red Mars focuses more on the technological parts, right? Sounds much more interesting to me :D I really should get hold of it sometime...
 
Hassknecht said:
Guiltyofbeingtrite said:
Reading Red Mars right now, so far so good.
Click to expand...
Is it? I had Green Mars lying around here, but I never read it through because frankly, it's boring as hell.
Red Mars focuses more on the technological parts, right? Sounds much more interesting to me :D I really should get hold of it sometime...
Click to expand...

I'm only about 75 pages in, but it focuses on the voyage and colonization of Mars. Really, really good characters so far and the writing is extremely vivid. It's widely considered the best of the series and there is a good amount of believable science, tech, and engineering. The author clearly did his homework.
 
Atomkilla said:
Too many... But, is it good, or bad?
Click to expand...
Pretty harmless, I'd say. Better than seeing Anne Rice or Twilight references everywhere, am I right?

I saw a South Park episode the other night where the goth kids help Cartman summon Cthulhu. Pretty funny.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top