Jump to content

December 2018 Reading


williamjm

Recommended Posts

1 minute ago, End of Disc One said:

I read The Scar over the summer, and it definitely took some time to hook me.  It had a long setup phase.  But after that, its almost as amazing as PSS.

I felt similarly about The Scar though I have to say, it took 150 pages or so for PSS to hook me as well.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Really enjoyed Fellside by M.R. Carey.  I liked it quite a bit more than The Girl with All the Gifts which was pretty good.

Just finished chapter 17 of Lies Sleeping by Ben Aaronovitch.  Loving it so far. 

I always enjoy Peter's visits with William Tyburn.  Love how this book is circling back around to what kicked it all off six full books ago.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 11/28/2018 at 6:53 PM, Derfel Cadarn said:

Curious if anyone spotted the two ASoI&F nods in the book.

Hmm, don’t think I noticed any specific references. The whole scene at the farmhouse was very GoT in some ways though. :P

Ok, Early Riser by Jasper Fforde - Good to read one of his books again, having read all of his at close to release ever since I first clocked the Eyre Affair.  This one is similar to Shades of Grey, a more secondary alternate world fantasy, if that makes sense, although with less blatant humour.  It’s about humans who hibernate over cold winters and really mines the ramifications of that in a lot of depth.  Some good action scenes and what not although the characters weren’t as lovable as they often are with Fforde. Sort of spoiled also by a weird final chapter which reads most like a bulletpoint summary of all the plot strands that need to be cleared up, like he needed to cut a few thousand words so wrote that instead of three final chapters.

Also just read Lolita for the first time, don’t know if you heard of this one guys, it’s good.  And Harari’s Sapiens, which was interesting but I did feel like I was reading a more informed version of my own worldview the whole time, didn’t find it as great as others had told me it was.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Alistair Horne's The Fall of Paris: The Siege and the Commune 1870-71. Great narrative history on the Franco-Prussian War and its violent aftermath in Paris. Horne focused primarily on the conflict and less on the revolutionary ad hoc government established for two months. The brutality and violence of both the Communards and their repression by the Versaillais government forces  under Adolphe Thiers is shocking.  This is the first entry in Horne's trilogy covering the three major Franco German conflicts of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Peadar said:

I just read Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. Excellent comic book about the philosophy and craft behind... comic books.

GREAT recommendation for my son.  Thanks. 

His comic book drawing has developed unbelievably over the last year, and he’s ready to explore more the nuance of design and composition.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, Iskaral Pust said:

GREAT recommendation for my son.  Thanks. 

His comic book drawing has developed unbelievably over the last year, and he’s ready to explore more the nuance of design and composition.

I mentioned I was reading it on Facebook and Twitter. A lot of people came out of the woodwork to say what a huge influence it had been on their lives, so yeah, I'd say it's perfect!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On ‎12‎/‎12‎/‎2018 at 12:32 PM, john said:

Hmm, don’t think I noticed any specific references. The whole scene at the farmhouse was very GoT in some ways though. :P

 

The farmhouse scene was likely inspired by GOT to some degree.

But the specific references were:

the mention of Wyman's Pie Shop and the Crowned Stag Tavern.

Joe Abercrombie's works were probably more of an inspiration in some ways. 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I finally finished The Inheritance Trilogy by NK Jemisin's. I know the older boarders will recall the epic thread we had about Jemisin's first book. It was pretty funny. :)

Now that I have finished the entire thing, here are my thoughts:

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms - not actually horrible. In fact, I liked it. As a debut novel, it showed some promise but wasn't quite there yet. The problem is that the main character basically does nothing at all.

Oops, the spoilers didn't format right and I don't know how to fix it, lol.

 

She never solves the problem at the start of the novel. The solution just magically appears because of her becoming a goddess at the end when she dies and is magically resurrected.

It's basically just a deus ex machina in the most literal sense. *shrugs*

 

The Broken Kingdoms - damn, this is much better! Nice improvement from the first book. The characters, the plot, the setting, were much better handled.

The Kingdom of Gods - hmmm kinda a missed opportunity to have a trickster god as the main character and then not letting him do any tricks whatsoever. The other two characters here which seemed to be important barely had any time so it very tepid in the end.

 

So okay, Sieh forms a threesome but we barely got to see anything of the other two. He met the boy three times, right? Each time was short. Then as adults they met... 5 or so times all in all. It's too undeveloped.

In addition, the gods get a "pass" since they are gods and whenever they do something it's always "well, it's their nature to do that!" 

A question:

 

By the way, at the very end of the trilogy did Itempas go back to Oree? I assumed he did but I couldn't find anything that actually said so.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Okay. Gonna put this here, as I suspect it's not worthy of its own thread...

I'm into the second book in Randy Wayne White's Doc Ford series. The tales of a former government spy, NSA I think, it's never truly clear, who's also a marine biologist and yet combo of James Bond, Jack Ryan, and a couple other characters in a similar bent. The first book was written around '89/90. It shows.

The series is mainly set on Sanibel Island, FL. A place I'm very familiar with, as its been my family's summer vacation spot for nearly 40 years. I stumbled onto these books a couple years ago, as White has a couple restaurants on the islands themed arlund his books and his character of Doc Ford.  Despite this knowledge (I mean, there are about a dozen books in the series), I didn't pull the trigger on reading them until about three weeks ago after finding the first book at a swap meet for a couple bucks.  The first book is Sanible Flats, the second, which I'm into now, is The Heat Islands.  

I'm totally hate reading these things. Maybe the writing gets better, but really, if ever there was Gary Stu who could be more poorly written, it'd be this character. It's the type of hate reading that I wish I had the skills of Mad Moose or some of the others who properly reported on Goodkind's awfulness.

Gods help me, I'll probably go at least three deep into this series..

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Darth Richard II said:

But she had SFF SEX FROM A FEMALE POV! ICKY YUCKY COOTIES! Let’s all reread the wise mans fear again instead!

LOL. This board has welcomed series like Jacqueline Carey's Terre D'Ange series. No one cares if there's sex or not, as long as it's not clumsy and amateurish.

"I wish this book had been titled The Sky-God's Lover, as the author wished to do. I opened this up expecting it to be about the protagonist picking her way through complex palace politics, always negotiating between the two cultures of her mixed background...and then there was very little politics." - source

The reviews and summaries made it sound like something very political and cerebral. It's not. It's more like "a family whose half-breed granddaughter gets to know her racist family."

Also, several boarders mentioned Twilight. This was a thing back then.

"We've had Edward the glittering vampire and now we have Nahadoth the glittering God." <-- people were just too sick of that thing (but not me, bring on the sexy glittery god sex, please).

6 hours ago, End of Disc One said:

Interesting that some people predicted that Jemisin's reputation would devolve to the level of Goodkind's.

When there is a debut that has flaws, there are two ways the writer might develop - become better and better with time (presumably with the help of some very good editors) or... become worse and worse.

I was reading a manhwa (Korean webcomic) where in the last chapter the artist+author wrote his thoughts about the work and he was like "when I first started this, my editor warned me that once you start inserting violence in a serial work, it tends to become more and more violent until it takes over the plot completely. Of course, I told her that I would keep it under control. Then..." Note: the last 20+ chapters was basically a gore-fest.

Boarders were just speculating that Jemisin could potentially lose control of all the spicy elements until it devolved into pure smut, kinda like Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series. If you aren't familiar with it, the Anita Blake series used to be about a zombie raiser, vampire executioner and supernatural consultant for the police but now it's just 90% gangbangs (not a joke).

Thankfully, Jemisin seems to have gotten better.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Eh, that's a longer rant then I want to get into, and I don't want to derail the thread, but I do remember there were a few posters whose entire issues seemed to be that it was a book written by a woman, In fact there was a topic at the same time along the lines of "Are there ANY good female SFF writers?" or something equally ridiculous

Don't get me wrong most of the level headed people had rational responses and I know some peopel who hate those books for non sexist reasons, but there was definitely this weird sub section that was super offended with the super sex god stuff. Which isn't even in the book as much as they claim and see, now I'm ranting. :P

Anyway, yeah Jesmin herself did not like the way those books were marketed, so that's a valid complaint.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Eh, that's a longer rant then I want to get into, and I don't want to derail the thread, but I do remember there were a few posters whose entire issues seemed to be that it was a book written by a woman, In fact there was a topic at the same time along the lines of "Are there ANY good female SFF writers?" or something equally ridiculous

 Don't get me wrong most of the level headed people had rational responses and I know some peopel who hate those books for non sexist reasons, but there was definitely this weird sub section that was super offended with the super sex god stuff. Which isn't even in the book as much as they claim and see, now I'm ranting. :P

Anyway, yeah Jesmin herself did not like the way those books were marketed, so that's a valid complaint.

Yes, there was something like that but I thought that was a separate thread, right? Not the same as the one I linked. I remember someone made a thread something like "this is why women can't write good sf" or something like that. I didn't pay attention to it since I hate to feed trolls, lol, but I definitely remember something like that being on the board at that time. I hope those trolls don't appear again.

See, this exactly why I defended the board. Just because a few trolls appear doesn't mean the other people who actually did write some very good criticism should be dismissed as being some sort of misogynist.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, Gigei said:

Yes, there was something like that but I thought that was a separate thread, right? Not the same as the one I linked. I remember someone made a thread something like "this is why women can't write good sf" or something like that. I didn't pay attention to it since I hate to feed trolls, lol, but I definitely remember something like that being on the board at that time. I hope those trolls don't appear again.

See, this exactly why I defended the board. Just because a few trolls appear doesn't mean the other people who actually did write some very good criticism should be dismissed as being some sort of misogynist.

Oh yeah those trolls get pwned.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Oh yeah those trolls get pwned.

There is a small but vocal minority in sf who hate that kind of thing. Like, the whole "Sad Puppies" debacle. Sometimes I feel mad that everyone who posts on this board is considered the same as those trolls.

Anyway, so as not to derail this thread. My other reads:

The Sword of Summer (Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard) by Rick Riordan - enjoyable but I didn't want to read the rest of the trilogy. I might be getting a bit too old for this. I do love Norse mythology so much. I suspect I will still read the rest later. Thor's goats were awesome in a sick way.

Age of Myth(The Legends of the First Empire #1) by Michael J. Sullivan - I tried but somehow I couldn't even finish this book. I have set it aside for now but I will be reading it soon. I think.

All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries) by Martha Wells - whoa, a murderbot! *shocked* I enjoyed it immensely. I tried to start the second book in the series but I stopped. I'm not sure why. Perhaps I'm all murdered out? I'm in a holiday type of mood so I'll try something lighter.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Finished Snobs by Julian Fellowes, the writer of Gosford Park and creator of Downton Abbey.  An out-of-character pick for me but it was recommended by a friend and proved to be a decent read.  It is thankfully not a soap opera that fawns over the aristocracy, but it is a novel that observes and reflects upon the aristocracy as a gold-digging social climber marries into a title but finds it to be less glamorous than expected.  The aristocrats are portrayed as being dim, dull, prejudiced and cripplingly cloistered but quite happy to be like that.  And they remain a unique source of noble constancy with longer horizons than the grubby lower classes, almost like Tolkien's elves.  It's well written and thoughtful in its reflections upon people as well as social classes.  A worthwhile read if looking for a change-up from the usual.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...