Thread: What are you reading?

Sorry to double post, but another series that just recently came on my radar is Steven Erikson's The Malazan Book of the Fallen. People tend to love it or hate it, and you hear over and over again that the first half of the first book can be hard to get through, but it sounds intriguing. Some people say the latter books turn into a bit of an existentialist screed, but there are more damning things you could say about a book, IMO There's a lot of non-spoilery discussion of it over here.

Originally Posted by Taosaur

Sorry to double post, but another series that just recently came on my radar is Steven Erikson's The Malazan Book of the Fallen. People tend to love it or hate it, and you hear over and over again that the first half of the first book can be hard to get through, but it sounds intriguing. Some people say the latter books turn into a bit of an existentialist screed, but there are more damning things you could say about a book, IMO There's a lot of non-spoilery discussion of it over here.

Gardens of the Moon, the first book of that series, I put down a bit less than halfway through. But I still intend to pick it back up someday. I think it is a good book if you can pay a lot of attention to it, something I've been working on since my mind wanders too much while reading. I had the same problem with Lord of Light, but I still thought that book was amazing and I did finish it. When I got to the end, it was only then that I realized everything after the first chapter had been a flashback xD

After finishing "Off to Be the Wiazrd," I am nearly done "Defending Jacob." I am trying to hit about 20 books this year. I tend to read a lot, but I read slowly to absorb books, and imagine them, so, I am trying to really boost that number. Sadly, thta's more than a lot people read their entire life.

Stardust by Neil Gaiman. Good, but a bit short and light for my tastes.

Did everyone stop reading suddenly?

I finished Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson, started Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe, have been reading A Briefer History of Time by Stephen Hawking on the side

Cerebus the Aardvark. I'm fascinated by the ideas it represents, and by the story of Dave Sim as a pioneer in self-published comics, the story he and Gerhard labored on for 26 years, all the innovations and etc.. and yet when I actually sit down with one of the phonebooks as they're called, the story is about politics, financing, religion, and other things that I find aggressively boring, all detailed in excruciating moment-to-moment minutiae. I still somehow find it fascinating though - it's a sort of love/hate thing I guess.

The art is frequently astonishing.

Originally Posted by Whatsnext

Did everyone stop reading suddenly?

started Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe, have been reading A Briefer History of Time by Stephen Hawking on the side

Gene Wolfe = genius!
I read all four books of The Book of the New Sun - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
And I read the brief, not briefer (?) Hawkins book but with illustrations - very recommendable - much easier to digest.

At the moment and with delight: Jim Morrison's Adventures in the Afterlife by Mick Farren

Gene Wolfe is incredible, isn't he? Anybody who liked the New Sun series should most definitely also read The 5 Heads of Cerberus (funny how this ties in with my last post… )

Plowing through N. Stephenson's Reamde right now (great book, BTW), but I just finished a sci-fi piece recommended to me by Shadowofwind called Blindsight, by Peter Watts, which I feel is a must-read for any advanced LD'er or philosopher seeking some insight into identity.

Ok Sage, I'm hooked. Blindsight sounds excellent, and I discovered the author has posted it online for free under a CC license: Blindsight. Grabbed the PDF to put on my Kindle for later.

I don't think you'll be disappointed... forgot to mention that it was also a fun read...

I've been reading A Short Story of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. one hell of a good read! i recommend it for everyone.

Originally Posted by Whatsnext

Did everyone stop reading suddenly?

Ha, I've read a lot, but DV Off Topic is a bit of a graveyard these days. Most of my book discussion happens over at MobileRead or on io9. Words of Radiance was indeed fucking brilliant and I was sorry to put it down. Another book I enjoyed more than expected was The Magic of Recluce by L.E. Modesitt. In some ways it's the standard coming of age sword and sorcery story, but it may well be the best iteration of that trope I've yet encountered. What sells it is the prevalence of the mundane, a bit like the constant money woes in Rothfuss' Kingkiller Chronicles. There's a moralism in there, too, but it's undercut in a way that makes it palatable.

I read the second Recluce book, too, which got better toward the end, and I'll probably continue with the series at wide intervals, but the first book is probably strongest as a standalone. The other books jump around in time to tell the story of the whole world, which I'm told takes a sci-fi bent not even hinted at in the first book.

Another, much pulpier book that I enjoyed a lot was Rally Cry, the first Lost Regiment book. It's a book about a Civil War regiment stumbling through basically a Stargate into a world populated by a pastiche of ancient human cultures living under the thumb of flesh-eating sasquatches masquerading as the Mongol horde. The historical scholarship seems reasonably sound, and while it is to a great extent competence porn (them Yankees can accomplish anything), the detail paid to re-establishing Civil War era technology from scratch will be gratifying to fans of historical strategy PC games like Civ, Age of Empires, Anno, or the recent Banished.

Most recently I've caught up on the latest installments of two favorite series, The Dresden Files and C.J. Cherryh's Foreigner. I've seen some high praise for the most recent Dresden book, Skin Game, but for me it felt like more of a placeholder in the series, with an entertaining enough plotline but a lot of elements that just didn't flow together as well as they might have. There are some rather outstanding Dresden books, and for me this was not one of them, though there are contrary opinions. The Foreigner books are so highly serialized that it's hard to assess them individually. The latest, Peacemaker, is separated from the previous book by a matter of hours. I'm a sucker for the notion of the diplomat hero (think LeGuin's Hainish Cycle, not least of all The Left Hand of Darkness), so will probably never tire of this series. There's definitely a strain of competence porn here, as well, but I'm kind of a sucker for that, too. Hell, I'm watching the new episodes of 24

Much of the above has been listening more than reading, but I've also been diving into the Campbell Awards anthology on my Kindle, with all positive results so far.

Ok, I've finished Blindsight, and it was pretty freakin' amazing. Also a little annoying though. The way it's written got on my nerves.. it tried to be too hardass all the way through, every sentence filled to the brim with scientific terminology and all of it presented in a sort of minimalist way. Not sure thats the best way to describe it, but what I mean is, sentences are short and punchy with a lot of elisions to make it sound like dialogue (even when it's exposition) and it all sounds like it's being relayed by a punch-drunk street fighter badass who uses a hardbitten jargon (which actually is appropriate considering the narrator). Is that a cyberpunk thing? I haven't read any before - it reminded me of a couple of movies that try to be super hardass, like Riddick or Predators. You know, all toughass dudes and badass bitches standing around staring each other down trying to out badass each other and dripping testosterone all over.

Another thing that brought Riddick to mind - is flashed eyes also a cyberpunk thing, or was that taken straight from the Riddick movies? The vampire pilot was almost a Riddick ripoff, except for the whole being 7 feet tall thing. And it completely ripped off another movie…

Spoiler for Spoiler alert!!!:

It began exactly like Alien and much of the plot and ideas borrowed more than heavily from it, to the extent that pretty early on I predicted exactly how it would end.

But the thing is - none of that matters really, because it's not the plot that makes it a great book, it's the ideas. And in spite of the minor annoyances I enjoyed it immensely. At the end it made me want to go back and re-read from a different perspective of understanding. Like Fight Club.

I felt the same - not exactly the style I prefer - my husband looves badass - I would like it better without. But good he put it on my kindle a long time back!! It is indeed one of the real gems concerning the actual ideas and concepts woven into it.

Originally Posted by Darkmatters

Not sure thats the best way to describe it, but what I mean is, sentences are short and punchy with a lot of elisions to make it sound like dialogue (even when it's exposition) and it all sounds like it's being relayed by a punch-drunk street fighter badass who uses a hardbitten jargon (which actually is appropriate considering the narrator). Is that a cyberpunk thing?

I snagged the free ebook and have Blindsight tentatively on my TBR, but I had to put down Altered Carbon after a couple chapters due to excess badassery, so I don't know if it will be my cup of tea. Cyberpunk mostly comes off as shallow and annoying for me. It works okay in comics like Transmetropolitan or The Incal, but the cyberpunk novels and short stories I've read take themselves way too seriously. Neuromancer was okay and I'd read more Gibson, though his short story Johnny Mnemonic is the eipitome of everything I find distasteful about the genre. Smack addicted goddamn cyber-dolphin commandos

Cerebus update: I was working on High Society at the time of my last Cerebus update. Since then I've finished that one (skipped big chunks of it because I found much of it exceedingly boring) and moved on to Church and State vol 1. It's a lot better - I've only skipped maybe 20% of this one (compared to probably 60% of High Society) and decided to buy C&S vol 2. Apparently I'm now into the part most people consider the high point of the series. Still kind of a love/hate thing, but the love is nominally overtaking the hate now.

I'm reading Bamso The Art of Dreams by Asanaro. Interesting so far maybe I'll actually finish it.

The Plague by Albert Camus.

God Is Not Great by the late Christopher Hitchens. What a writer!! I'm a huge fan of his when it comes to youtube videos, always sad to know, there won't ever be any new ones.
But finally I did the clever thing, and now enjoy the man in writing - without him having to react to somebody, going by an external script of any way.

This Wikipedia article is not overly good - at least it doesn't give you an idea about how beautifully the man used to write, how incredibly adept he was in using language, and how serious and well informed and ethical and lots of things he is - I have him up there now with my all-time favourite pen-swingers.
Highly recommended!!
Especially to the religious - if you want to be sure, your faith is strong and true - see if it survives this book - please read it!
And it's not a hate-tirade - try it - it's full of information, full of philosophical and moral thought and love and compassion for humanity - besides his ranting, surely that is there as well, but where he rants, he has good reasons to do so in my opinion. Lots of it was new to me, even while I'm quite versed in the topic, for example about very recent history and political, social etc. backgrounds of international conflicts. And I'm not even through yet. I'm pretty sure, I'll want the next one of his right afterwards!


@Sageous - if you liked 'Reamde' from Neal Stephenson, you should really check the others - this is his weakest novel in my eyes - besides the 'Mongoliad', which is a product of many different writers - good stuff - but what I love about him isn't present enough. I was a bit disappointed, actually, by both these.
Again: 'Anathem' and 'The Diamond Age' is way to go for science fiction of his - and the 'Quicksilver' etc. trilogy for historical novels about 17th/18th century rise of the natural philosophers and modern science besides the global historical background, which is phantastic, too.

Oh - and Anathem has "magic" in a way, wise men and women secretly going about "such things", yes, I love this, too!! Set on a parallel and fictional world,
it's science-fiction in the end, not fantasy, and affairs will come to be "explained" with an enormous scope, very much about consciousness.
One could say, it's my variant of this beautiful motive of a wizardry school...

And - there is now a sequel to 'Blindsight' - 'Echopraxia' - that term means echoing what another person does, movement-wise. So it is to be expected, that he keeps exploring neuroscience and consciousness.
It's not officially out yet, but my husband managed in some way to get an "advanced review copy" of it! Can't imagine him writing one, though...
I look forward to it - but as said before - tad too badass for me to really love it. But what I do love is the being so tightly packed with real and fascinating scientific details and the depth of thought, which went into extrapolating these concepts further...

@raffifish: Read that ages back, and I was very impressed!

After finally finishing to read my first book in German, I'm on the second one!! It's another Dean Koontz's novel, it's entitled "Morgengrauen", the original title is "Ticktock". I hope it won't last to read as much as the first one

Originally Posted by StephL

@Sageous - if you liked 'Reamde' from Neal Stephenson, you should really check the others - this is his weakest novel in my eyes - besides the 'Mongoliad', which is a product of many different writers - good stuff - but what I love about him isn't present enough. I was a bit disappointed, actually, by both these.
Again: 'Anathem' and 'The Diamond Age' is way to go for science fiction of his - and the 'Quicksilver' etc. trilogy for historical novels about 17th/18th century rise of the natural philosophers and modern science besides the global historical background, which is phantastic, too.

Oh - and Anathem has "magic" in a way, wise men and women secretly going about "such things", yes, I love this, too!! Set on a parallel and fictional world,
it's science-fiction in the end, not fantasy, and affairs will come to be "explained" with an enormous scope, very much about consciousness.
One could say, it's my variant of this beautiful motive of a wizardry school...

Actually, I think I've read all of Stephenson's books, all the way back to Zodiac. It's hard to pick a favorite -- they're all so different, but I do think Anathem, Diamond Age, and Snow Crash rise above the rest (though I read Diamond Age and Snow Crash in the '90's, and my memory of them might have become glossy). Cryptonomcon and The Baroque Cycle were both great for their take on history, but fairly long and occasionally tedious reads.

And - there is now a sequel to 'Blindsight' - 'Echopraxia' - that term means echoing what another person does, movement-wise. So it is to be expected, that he keeps exploring neuroscience and consciousness.
It's not officially out yet, but my husband managed in some way to get an "advanced review copy" of it! Can't imagine him writing one, though...
I look forward to it - but as said before - tad too badass for me to really love it. But what I do love is the being so tightly packed with real and fascinating scientific details and the depth of thought, which went into extrapolating these concepts further...

Huh. That seemed like a stand-alone to me. But I guess everything gets a sequel thee days. Thanks for sharing, though; I'll definitely keep an eye out for it.

Oh, and just to stay on topic: right now I'm reading a bio of Tesla by W. Bernard Carlson; only a few dozen pages in, but so far it is excellent.

Reading through some Kurt Vonnegut here, his Look at the Birdie.