Ser Barry Posted February 1, 2007 Share Posted February 1, 2007 Feersum Endjinn by Iain M. Banks Easily the toughest of Bank's sci-fi books to read that I have tackled do far. Thrown straight into the middle of the action from four different view points (with one written entirely in pseudo-txtspk :mad: ) and introduced to new ideas and concepts at a breakneck pace it took me until 2/3 of the way through until I could read in comfort. The story involves the remnants of the human race who stayed behind when most people left for the stars. The civilisation faces an impending disaster and they are sent the means of their survival but those in power appear to be blocking this process. It seems like IMB knew what he was talking about and how everything knitted together but was not quite getting his ideas on to the page. He did tie it all together in the end though and I very nearly knew what was going on before I finished. He still deserves a kick in the balls for the txtspk though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MinDonner Posted February 1, 2007 Share Posted February 1, 2007 It ain't txtspk, it's fonetik, which is probably a problem if you normally think in a different accent from the one it's written in! Takes a bit of getting used to, yes, but no more so than, say, Molesworth. Currently in the middle of Bess of Hardwick (Tudor history) and Speaks the Nightbird by Robert McCammon (he seems to have dropped the middle R) - damn book was released in two halves which means I had to wait for book 2 to turn up, but it's here now and it's fine historical gothic horror about witch-trials and swamps and pirate gold and things. Still haven't replaced my dodgy copy of The Blade Itself - the other half works near Forbidden Planet and keeps promising to take it back for me but so far no joy. Gah. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nobodymN Posted February 1, 2007 Share Posted February 1, 2007 Recently finished both China Mieville's Un Lun Dun and Hal Duncan's Ink - well I finished Ink a week or so ago, but I'm rereading it each page in different folds of the Vellum. Un Lun Dun pays off after a lackluster beginning for me, and Ink is - I think - dazzling, and positively baffling. I'm scheduled to do a phone interview with China in the near future - so look out for that. I also finished Darth Bane: Path of Destruction by Drew Karpyshyn which was pretty mediocre to say the least. Right now I'm reading a really enjoyable little novel entitled The Steam Magnate written by Dana Copithorne. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedEyedGhost Posted February 1, 2007 Share Posted February 1, 2007 Finished Marvel 1602 by Neil Gaiman, and it was... well, underwhelming. It picked up in the second half, but not enough. One of my problems was that they just tried to use too many characters - cutting the number in half would have been about the right number. Cutting the number of character would have made the story much tighter, and more enjoyable I think. 6/10 I'm about 1/2 way through The Praxis by Walter Jon Williams. I'm enjoying it so far. Nothing groundbreaking, but it is a page turner. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RaceBannon42 Posted February 1, 2007 Share Posted February 1, 2007 I finished up The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K LeGuin the other day. I must say I was rather disapointed. For a book that won the Hugo and Nebula awards I was completely underwhelmed. It just didnt hold my interest. Conceptually it was pretty good. But the plot was nothing special, and the characters were by and large pretty blah. Full review on my Blog Started in on Infoquake by David Louis Edelman. Got about 4 chapters read last night, and its pretty interesting so far. Has a definte cyberpunk flavor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Barry Posted February 1, 2007 Author Share Posted February 1, 2007 It ain't txtspk, it's fonetik, which is probably a problem if you normally think in a different accent from the one it's written in! Takes a bit of getting used to, yes, but no more so than, say, Molesworth. Only it wasn't consistently phonetic. No-one outside an Ealing comedy says Vehikul, it would be veercul. Xtreme is txtspk. Time is not phonetic. It is inconsistent and that is what made it so hard for me to read. I read him as having a London accent, not sure what anyone else thought. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Astra Posted February 1, 2007 Share Posted February 1, 2007 3/4 into The Song of Susannah, Dark Tower Book 6, by Stephen King. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry. Posted February 1, 2007 Share Posted February 1, 2007 I am almost finished (less than 30 pages to go) with reading Jorge Luis Borges' Historia de la eternidad - This is non-fiction, but Borges' comments on perceptions of eternity and of translation of texts such as The Arabian/1001 Nights is very illuminating and thought-provoking. Then I'll finish the last 100 pages or so of Ian McDonald's River of Gods. And after that will depend upon my mood as to which will be read next. These are the contenders, each of which have had some pages read/re-read already: Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez, Cien años de soledad (re-read) Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day Edward Whittemore, Jerusalem Poker Han Shaogong, Dictionary of Maquio (sadly interrupted a few weeks ago due to returning to school, so Jay I'll try to finish it soon) Jean D'Ormesson, At God's Pleasure (reading on recommendation of niamh) Or maybe the just-arrived Abril Rojo by Santiago Roncagliago, winner of the 2006 Alfaguara Prize Still waiting on the arrival of used editions of A Princess of Roumania by Paul Park and the hard-to-find-but-I-found-it-used-online Cuentos de H. Bustos Domecq, co-written under that pseudonym by Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares. Maybe Ink, Un Lun Dun, or The New Moon's Arms by Nalo Hopkinson when they ship later in the month. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oneeye Posted February 1, 2007 Share Posted February 1, 2007 I'm almost done with priviledge of the sword by ellen kushner. God it's good somehow. Delicious characters, even the smallest ones. And injecting a swordswoman in that awful patriarchal society was brilliant. I think it would be hard to follow without first reading swordspoint though. Seems like the best writers take longest between works somehow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xray the Enforcer Posted February 1, 2007 Share Posted February 1, 2007 Banewreaker by Jacqueline Carey. It has a good premise, but I'm still struggling with really getting into it (the introductory chapter is deathly boring). I have hopes, though. Next up: Infoquake. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beniowa Posted February 1, 2007 Share Posted February 1, 2007 Ghosts of Glevum , Enemies of the Empire, A Roman Ransom by Rosemary Rowe. Blindsight by Peter Watts. As good as everyone said it was. Winterbirth by Brian Ruckley. Pretty good. Big on world-building and action, but only decent characters. Still looking forward to the next book. The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie. I loved this book. Dark and hilarious by turns. I just loved all the smartass remarks Glotka never said. Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay. Starts a little slow, but I really got into it. Perhaps his best work in years. Damn. I read seven books last month. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stubby Posted February 2, 2007 Share Posted February 2, 2007 I have just finished reading an omnibus edition of the Orcs trilogy by Stan Nichols. It was clearly lowbrow stuff, and at times it felt like a D&D adventure, but well, I don't care. It was a shit load of fun. Now I must run off and add Captain Stryke to the "Badass" thread. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedSock in Westeros Posted February 2, 2007 Share Posted February 2, 2007 Just finished American Gods. It had been hyped to me quite a bit, I found it kind of bizarre at first and didn't really like it for the first 50 pages or so, but I kept reading and I really ended up enjoying it. I'm finally starting Discworld, and I love it. It's hilarious. I'm about halfway through with The Colour of Magic, I adore it. Yes, I am way behind the curve with these books, but better late than never, right? (The reason I even picked up Discworld this soon is that while it was on my very long list, a friend of mine made a deal with me that he would read A Song of Ice and Fire if I'd read Discworld. We are both very happy with this deal. ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. X Posted February 2, 2007 Share Posted February 2, 2007 Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez, Cien años de soledad (re-read) Are you reading this in Spanish? I'm envious. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry. Posted February 2, 2007 Share Posted February 2, 2007 Yep, I read Spanish on almost exactly the same level that I read English. I did read the English translation by Rabossa and while it is good, there is a magic in the Spanish original that just cannot be captured in English. I'm currently about 220 pages into the 548 page annotated paperback edition that I have. Reading about Arcadio, with his nalgas de mujer (I guess those "feminine hips" don't lie ) meeting Santa Sofia de la Piedad and sleeping with her. Getting nearer to the "good stuff" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yrael Posted February 2, 2007 Share Posted February 2, 2007 Are you reading this in Spanish? I'm envious. Me too. I thought my Spanish was if not perfect at least good...but when I tried to read that book, I realized I knew nothing. Kinda depressing. Reading Empires of Sand by David Ball. So far so good. Can't wait for the facedown between the two cousins. :fence: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry. Posted February 2, 2007 Share Posted February 2, 2007 It took a variety of measures for my Spanish to get the level where it is in regards to reading novels. I do have a natural facility for learning languages and their rhythms quickly, but I needed to be around native speakers when I was teaching in Florida (ESOL Social Studies, actually), then a painstaking devotion to reading passages and looking up the words I didn't know and then committing them to memory. Finally, I took a High Intermediate and an Advanced level Spanish sequence at a local university a year and a half ago and have kept working at it, reading about 40-50 books in Spanish a year the past couple of years. Gets easier every time, as certain slang expressions stick and the tone and rhythm of the passages becomes almost as second-hand as English is. I would suggest that you return to the book and just plug through it in the original. No shame in looking up unfamiliar words. Besides, after a few pages, it goes much, much faster. The first time I read Cien años, it was 3 years ago and I was writing down about 20-30 words per page as I slogged my way through it. But when I finished, it was more than worth it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lyanna Stark Posted February 2, 2007 Share Posted February 2, 2007 Finished "The Warrior-Prophet" by Bakker yesterday and have quite a few opinions about that one. Bakker really writes a fascinating tale, but some parts of it are hard to swallow. I'd say the story is captivating despite unsympathetic characters. By the end of the book, I's say all, or nearly all the characters are unsympathetic. The story is still interestint though, which in itself is amazing. My other beef with Bakker is his treatment of female characters, or more the extreme abscence of them. The very few we see are mad and powerhungry or prostitutes. While I understand the reasoning behind it, I still think the abscence of women within the Schools and the religious institutions are a bit unessecary. That said, there are parts where a more modern view of women certainly shines through, maybe as the author's "real" views, but it's still a bit irksome that the role of woman is 100% limited to wife, concubine, prostitute or slave. I've continuted with Grahama Greene's "The Third Man" and I am liking it so far. His anti-sue/stu characters really appeal to me. The people writing about romantisised otherwordly vampires and inhumanly beautiful maidens should read some Greene and study his fantastic portraits of The Average Man and Woman. He definitely shows that it's not how extremely l33t someone is that makes the story and the character captivating, but what you do with them and how you tell the story. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cynon Posted February 2, 2007 Share Posted February 2, 2007 Soon finished with Darknesses. Second book in the Corean chronicles by Modesitt. It's pretty mediocre (if that), but I guess I'm going continue the series. Just hope the fourth book is the last. Also I plan on buying The Blade Itself any day now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MinDonner Posted February 2, 2007 Share Posted February 2, 2007 *dances around and sings with glee* Ink's out to-daay, it's out to-daay, hoorah hooray... Haven't got it yet, but I think I'll sneak out of work early so I can get to the bookshop before it closes... *dances around some more* Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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