May Reads

[RedEyedGhost]

1 hour ago, Starkess said:

I am reading Assassin's Fate (yay!). I never read Rain Wilds and so far I don't really feel like it has adversely affected my comprehension or enjoyment of the books.

The further I read (20%), the happier I am that I did read tRWC  

[red snow]

Finished "brief history of seven killings" - amazing book even if I got lost in the general narrative. About to give Mark Lawrence's "Red Sister" a go. Hope it's a return to form as a repeat of "wheel of Osheim" will have me dropping him for a while. It sounds different so that's a start.

[Darth Richard II]

1 hour ago, red snow said:

Finished "brief history of seven killings" - amazing book even if I got lost in the general narrative. About to give Mark Lawrence's "Red Sister" a go. Hope it's a return to form as a repeat of "wheel of Osheim" will have me dropping him for a while. It sounds different so that's a start.

Well, if you didn't like Wheel of Osheim you are obviously some sort of monster, but its not like that at all.

[Theda Baratheon]

im reading the gormenghast trilogy for the first time 

im loving titus groan so far, i haven't been able to read properly for months due to depression, and reading stuff for uni (doesnt count) and i'm so excited to be getting back into it and i'm so so glad i started with this. 

[Astromech]

Wallace Stegner's Pulitzer Prize-winning, Angle of Repose. Fine novel. The last 100 or so pages were damn emotional. I have a few of his other works on my TBR list.

Just started James D. Hornfischer's The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors

[Darth Richard II]

Ahhhhhhh gaaaaah cannot explain Dark Tower without spoiling Dark Tower.

 

[red snow]

13 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Well, if you didn't like Wheel of Osheim you are obviously some sort of monster, but its not like that at all.

I love his writing but it's tricky when you don't really connect/like the sole POV in a series. I also felt like Wheel was the book that made it clear that Lawrence wings it on the plotting whereas earlier books it wasn't an issue.

5 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Ahhhhhhh gaaaaah cannot explain Dark Tower without spoiling Dark Tower.

 

I feel your pain but will try

6 hours ago, Triskan said:

I'm a ways into King's The Gunslinger and finding it interesting so far.  Could anyone who knows share what the plan is for this forthcoming film with Elba and McCaughnehy with respect to the books?  Like, if one wants to read the books first is the first film supposed to just cover volume 1?  

The first film is adapting elements from the first three books (and possibly elements from the last two in terms of characters). So I'd say read the first three although the cliffhanger in book 3 will make you want to at least read the beginning of book 4. Given the absence of two key characters I'd say it's impossible for them to faithfully adapt anything beyond book 1 though. The trailer does suggest scenes will be lifted from book 3 in terms of one character though

The tricky element is that the film may highlight something which may make you want to read the whole series or worse potentially spoil the whole series on a meta level (rather than give away what happens).

I recently read all the books and discovered the "spoiler" when a poster came out and bloggers picked up on it. I was on the last book at that point anyhow and there were enough markers at that stage for it not to spoil the ending. It did make me a lot more interested in the film though.

[Darth Richard II]

They are I believe incorporating a lot of the flashbacks from book 4 directly in the story as non flashbacks.

[Maia]

On 9.5.2017 at 0:37 PM, unJon said:

I've read the first two Fitz trilogies plus Live Ships. I did not read Rain Wilds. Can I jump into the third trilogy or do I need to read Rain Wilds first?

No, you don't. Everything that you need to know about the characters from it appearing in AF is sufficiently and concisely explained in the book itself. And Rain Wilds is very much lesser Hobb, the weakest in her Elderling cycle, so it would be a shame if it put you off the Fitz and Fool trilogy, which is great, IMHO, YMMV.

[Darth Richard II]

Slowly making my way through Assassin's Fate and having my soul crushed.

[C.T. Phipps]

Just finished The Collapsing Empire.

Which reads like an Anti-Dune and I loved it.

It's even better with Will Wheaton's voice.

[unJon]

15 hours ago, Maia said:

No, you don't. Everything that you need to know about the characters from it appearing in AF is sufficiently and concisely explained in the book itself. And Rain Wilds is very much lesser Hobb, the weakest in her Elderling cycle, so it would be a shame if it put you off the Fitz and Fool trilogy, which is great, IMHO, YMMV.

Thanks for the this.  I skipped RW at the time because it didn't sound like I would enjoy it (eg, Hobb as her most Hobbsian). I may give the new Fitz trilogy a shot without it. 

[Starkess]

Well, I finished Assassin's Fate. It was...good? I'm having a hard time capturing my feelings about it. I cried a lot at the end (as I have with all her other final books), so that makes me inclined to say it was very good and the ending was indeed. But the rest of it was a little flat. So much traveling--something that people complained about in the first trilogy but didn't bother me, whereas here it did grate. And much of the big climax was just meh to me. I didn't really care. I guess for me, what I love about the Fitz books is a combination of Fitz and the Six Duchies. Here, Fitz is diluted with Bee (who is just okay, really), and the setting and main story didn't really feel like it tied back to the rest.

Which is a lot of complaining about a book that I rushed through and could barely put down! And of course it's hard to say good-bye to a series I love which makes it bittersweet. I would probably rank the series: Fitz I > Liveships > Fitz II > Fitz III. The middle two subject to switching depending on my mood.

Feeling a bit drained now so will probably hold off on starting something new for a day or two.

[Maia]

I have been traveling a lot in late April - early May and got to read a lot in the process:

"A Natural History of Dragons" by Marie Brennan - a lovely novel about a lady naturalist living in Victorian-like era in a secondary world that contains dragons and her struggles to be allowed to study them. Thoroughly enjoyed it and am going to pick up the rest of the series.

"Alliance of Equals" by Steven Miller and Sharon Lee - yet another installment of their Liaden saga and very much "more of the same".  I guess that it has become a comfort read for me, because I keep picking the series installments eventually.

"1968" by Joe Haldeman - was pretty educational for me re: this era in the USA and decently written, but maybe too much WTFness packed in it?

"Slaughterhouse 5" by Kurt Vonnegut - good and in some ways still sadly very to the point. Would have been great if women had been actual people in it.

and, of course

"Assassin's Fate" by Robin Hobb, which I loved and which is a worthy conclusion to the "Fitz and Fool" trilogy, IMHO. I, for one, loved Bee's PoV and it is worth taking into account that her PoV actually also provides important  insights into the older core characters, as well as sets up a crucial and

Spoiler

IMHO great  plot twist.

But then, for me it always has been Assassin trilogy = Liveship Traders trilogy* > Tawny Man trilogy >> Rainwild Chronicles. And now "Fitz and Fool" is definitely an noticeable improvement on Tawny Man for me. There is a lot of traveling in all of them!

* Liveship Traders could have been my favorite if it had a stronger ending. As it was, the ending was too tidy and too contrived - not necessarily in _what_ happened, but in how it happened.

 

 

 

[Peadar]

Quote

 

I've decided to read Tana French's Into the Woods. I really need a change of scenery.

[Astromech]

3 hours ago, Peadar said:

I've decided to read Tana French's Into the Woods. I really need a change of scenery.

Seeing your location, I got a chuckle out of your post  

[Plessiez]

I read Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair over the weekend and didn't really care for it, though it was amusing in places.

For the rest of the month, I'm aiming to read Dave Hutchinson's Europe in Autumn, Foz Meadows' A Tyranny Of Queens and Adrian Tchaikovsky's The Scarab Path.  

I'm also working through Max Gladstone's Craft sequence.  I bought the collected omnibus ebook a while ago (since it was so much cheaper than the individual books), but I don't really like reading fiction on a screen so I'm making slow progress.  So far I'm a few chapters into Full Fathom Five.  I enjoyed Three Parts Dead but didn't like Two Serpents Rise quite as much.  (I'm torn on whether this was because the ebook thing was getting to me or because I thought Caleb was an idiot.  A bit of both, probably.)

[Paxter]

I finished Hannah Kent's excellent Burial Rites. I strongly recommend this one for historical fiction fans - many hours of meticulous research clearly went into it. And it's a beautiful (if bleak) story that makes the most of its rich Icelandic setting. Now continuing a rare run of Australian authors with Winton's classic Cloudstreet.

On ‎11‎/‎05‎/‎2017 at 6:54 AM, First of My Name said:

Currently reading The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King. This part of the Dark Tower series is much more enjoyable than the first one, probably because the characters are way more interesting and relatable than in The Gunslinger. I'm starting to see why people love these books (or at least, this half of the series).

Yeah this is easily my favourite instalment. Unfortunately I think the series loses its way after book two (others don't mind some of the later volumes). I'll be interested to see what you make of books three and four.

[Starkess]

Think I'm going to read one of the paper books I got for Christmas next--Truly Madly Deeply by Liane Moriarty. Not my usual fare but it's good to break out of my reading comfort zones.

[Darth Richard II]

I always felt the first Dark Tower book was just OK. Most people seem to agree it doesn't kick into high gear til book two.