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August Reading 2017


RedEyedGhost

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7 hours ago, kafkascoat said:

Ooops!

Well it looks like it'll be AA then, and about time too seeing as I've had this book since I finished ADwD in 2012..!

And the glorious thing is that (depending on how you count), you have 9-16 books of a completed series ahead of you! ;)

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I just started The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu. So far, the story and characters seem interesting, but the prose/narrative style of the author is distracting. I'm not sure what the technical term for it is, but it's very expository. As I read it, I feel like the narrator is telling me the story. I can almost hear the narrator's voice. Right now, I doubt I'll get much further in this book. 

 

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36 minutes ago, Pecan said:

I just started The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu. So far, the story and characters seem interesting, but the prose/narrative style of the author is distracting. I'm not sure what the technical term for it is, but it's very expository. As I read it, I feel like the narrator is telling me the story. I can almost hear the narrator's voice. Right now, I doubt I'll get much further in this book. 

 

It's called bad D&D tie in fiction.

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1 minute ago, Darth Richard II said:

Not the world per se but the prose reminded me of a bad D&D 90s tie in. So and so did this, and had this many exp points, and this many hit dice.

 

It is very divisive, you either love it or hate it.

Not only that but from memory there were segments which started out telling a story then went off at a complete tangent for almost the entire chapter before meandering back to the original point. I really didn't like that book at all. I only read it all because I was stuck on a long train journey.

Speaking of books I didn't like, I am somehow still reading Kushiel's Dart. Seem to be making little to no headway with it. And I don't seem to be taking a lot in of it either, since stuff is happening and I have no idea who most of the characters are and why I should care about them. Might just drop it, i did get it free throughout TOR.com

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On 11/08/2017 at 10:18 PM, Garett Hornwood said:

Yesterday I finished Spy Schools: How the CIA, FBI, and Foreign Intelligence Secretly Exploit America's Universities by Daniel Golden.  Golden is an investigative journalist and has been writing about how both American and foreign intelligence agencies are using higher education in the global spy game.  It was a fascinating read, but already it's "current affairs"-vibe is waning after the election of and reaction to Trump last November, which is interesting because the book will be officially be published in October but I received an ARC via LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program.

Is this about recruiting or something else?

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11 hours ago, Pecan said:

With The Grace of Kings, something I was wondering about is if the narrative style has to do with the style in which Chinese folk tales are told. 

Yes, the narrative style imitates that of the classic Chinese epics. I personally loved the style. It made The Grace of Kings that much more enjoyable. It had shades of the Chinese classics, The Illiad and was reminiscent of Guy Gavriel Kay's work. I really need to read The Wall of Storms.

I'm currently at the mid-point of David Hackett Fischer's Washington's Crossing. It has been excellent so far. I may need to move on from the American Revolution since, in addition to reading Washington's Crossing, I'm also watching AMC's Turn and Joanne B. Freeman's Yale course on The American Revolution.

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Finished Boomerang by Michael Lewis, a non-fiction account of the sovereign debt crisis.  An entertaining read, and basically just long-form journalism.  I enjoyed it but learned absolutely nothing new from it.  I need to make sure that my non-fiction choices are not just echo chambers of what I already know.

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21 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Eh. I thought we were talking about writing style abd prose.

I should have clarified that post. In addition to content, the narrative structure of including the passages with gods reminded me of The Illiad and helped increase the scale of the story. The narrative style specifically is reminiscent of Chinese classics. It was reminiscent of GGK's work due to the purple prose and being historical fantasy.

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