October 2010 - What are you reading?

[RedEyedGhost]

Wow it's October 2nd in some parts of the world and no thread yet? It's been awhile since I've given a proper rundown of my recent reads, so here goes.

Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination: This book was fantastic! I cannot believe that it was first published in 1956, while there are a few signs of age most of the tech is ambiguous enough to be plausible. Seeing what corporations Bester thought would survive the centuries was very interesting (some he was way off on :lol:). Gully Foyle is a completely despicable human being and watching his decline, quest for revenge, and redemption... although redemption may be too strong of a word. Great book, and it's very easy to see why it's a classic of the genre.

9/10

S.A. Swann's Wolf's Cross: This is a pseudo-sequel to Wolfbreed, but is more a separate novel in the same world and takes place 110+ years later. This one is set in 1353 Poland, and follows Maria - who was given a silver cross by her father and told to never remove it, and Brother Josef - a trainee member of an branch of the Teutonic Knights that has tracked a murderous werewolf to Maria's village. Just like the first book, this one has a wonderful blend of mythology and history. There was a bit too much romance for my particular tastes, but all-in-all it was a great book and I hope Swann writes more in this setting.

8/10

Conqueror's Shadow by Ari Marmell: The premise is this - a warlord set on conquering his corner of the world leads his army to take one particular city because he's looking for something there, but what he finds isn't all he was expecting and has to call for a retreat. He takes a beautiful young noble woman hostage, while on the run falls in love with her, and decides to give up his quest for world domination to live his life with her. Well seventeen years later a new warlord arises following Corvis's exact plan, but when it puts Corvis and his family in danger he decides to stop the would be conqueror.

Unfortunately, I was not a fan of this book. The prose is not good - to the point that several times I had to stop reading and close the book. The twists and turns are choreographed and not surprising in the least. The first half of the book feels like a travelogue through Marmell's "super cool world!!1!1!" And Corvis is not the evil warlord that we were promised in the book's blurb as we learn more and more about Corvis's past. It reminded me a lot of 80's epic fantasy, so if that's your thing it might be worth checking out.

4/10

City of Thieves by David Benioff: During the siege of Leningrad during WWII the cities commander needs a dozen eggs to have a cake baked for her daughter's marriage, but with the siege a dozen eggs are not easily found. So, he "enlists" Lev and Kolya to acquire the eggs for him, or be executed for their respective crimes. Great prose, fast paced, interesting story, and great detailing of the horrors of war and the wonders of immeasurable friendship. My problem with the book was that the ending was very Hollywood - predictable and with a cherry on top! Not a bad book, but it could have been so much more.

7/10

Gavin Smith's Veteran: Billed as a worthy successor to Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon... yeah not so much. Smith also suffers from the need to show as much of his super cool world as possible, and it really bogs down the flow of the book in multiple places. We're also told in the start of the book that Jakob is the best of the best as an ex-special forces in the war against Them, an alien race that is slowly annihilating humanities colony worlds. An alien craft crashes on Earth, and Jakob is called-up to "take care of it". It turns out that the alien is an ambassador sent to Earth to try and end the war, and Jakob is convinced to help it rather than destroy it. Well, as badass as Jakob is supposed to be I think he spent about a third of the book in med-units or infirmaries, and it just got so boring and repetitive. The prose was okay, but there were a lot of awful sentences that should have been corrected by the editor, and the book dragged on much too long. If you're looking for something similar to Altered Carbon try Warren Hammond's KOP instead.

6/10

Savages by Don Winslow: I was not impressed with this one at all. It's a story of two extremely successful pot dealers in Laguna Beach, their flighty over privileged girlfriend, and The Baha Cartel that is trying to take over their business. The style writing really bothered me: line breaks, sentence fragment forming patterns on the page, lines that were obviously spoken but not in quotes when other parts of the conversation were... All that just felt like trickery to give the story depth that wasn't actually there. I felt zero sympathy for the girlfriend - O - and was actually rooting or her to die throughout most of the book. And the ending was utterly ridiculous.

It sounds like Winslow was experimenting stylistically with this book, so I might try more of his work in the future, but I wouldn't recommend this one.

4/10

The Walking Dead: Book One (issues 1-12) by Robert Kirkman.: This is a wonderful graphic novel that details a group of survivors after an apocalypse that leaves most of the human race as zombies. The story is moving, suspenseful, and just damn fun. The art is fantastic, and my only complaint is that in the first half the dialog can be very clunky but that is corrected as the book progresses. A must read for fans of zombies, and anybody that is interested in the upcoming television series (although you might want to wait until after it has aired depending on which version you don't want spoiled).

9/10

And currently I'm half way through John Ajvide Lindqvist's Let Me In (translated by Ebba Segerberg); I've had it on my shelf for three years and with the US movie coming out I thought is was time to finally pull it down and read it. It's supposed to be a different type of vampire novel, but so far it's not striking me as anything special.

[TheEvilKing]

I'm currently reading Wizard and Glass by Stephen King and Shadow and Betrayal by Daniel Abraham.

[Wras]

Decided to break the trend of fantasy and got The Sun Also Rises. Gotta say it hasn't completely blown me away but it's a very quick, very easy read. Finding the good parts is like sifting through a (very nice) sandbox and picking out little gems.

Once I finish that I'm going to give The Road a try.

[Gormenghast]

Copying over:

First priority goes to one of the most extraordinary books I've ever read, and it's the recently released Disciple of the Dog by Scott Bakker, the Prince of Nothing guy. Subversive to the core and makes every line one wonderfully crafted quote. Supposed to be some kind of thriller about a missing girl who belonged to a cult of weirdos who think the world was just a fake stage where everyone plays a role after having been hypnotized and forget reality (something like The Matrix). Only that this conceit is actually used to describe how the world actually IS. What we live every day. We have these two contrasting sides, one pitted against the other, that morph into scary mirrors.

The protagonist is built with the idea that he can't forget anything, the perfect memory. One interesting consequence is about his perception of "people". We, "normal people", perceive expressions and attitudes of others like something transitory, while the people themselves are real and come first. But for him, his perfect memory makes him recognize the same expressions and attitudes across different people, to the point that it's those expressions that he recognizes and categorizes, while the people themselves become transitory. People that become collections of deja-vus and known patterns. Oblivious actors.

Now down the priority list I continue to read Bakker's fantasy The Darkness that Comes Before, which is excellent but obviously much more scattered and divergent compared to the book above. And then The Way of Kings which works well if I read it after Disciple so that I can actually go to sleep more relaxed ;)

I'm also reading Proust Swann's Way. I'm italian, Proust writes in French, and I'm reading him in English. It doesn't make sense but Penguin made this edition that seems to have a very good translation and is indeed a pleasure to read. Everyone should read some Proust, it's maybe one of the most accessible among the literary writers. Very much evocative. It's not one of those things that make reading feel like work and that one usually associates with the Big Names.

Besides, there's this nice interplay between Proust and Bakker's book. Perfect memory from a side and involuntary memory from the other. One who hopes to get away from his memories for once, and the other desperately trying to seize them while they elude him. Incidentally Bakker's character is the biggest cynic ever, while Proust is the exact opposite: one who cares and is desperately searching.

[palin99999]

It sounds like Winslow was experimenting stylistically with this book, so I might try more of his work in the future, but I wouldn't recommend this one.

He was definitely experimenting with his style and unfortunately I agree that it was a disappointment. The rest if his books that I have read have been excellent - so hopefully this is an aberration.

I'm currently reading So Cold the River by Michael Koryta for BwB book club.

[Stego]

Recent Reads:

-City of Thieves by David Benioff. I saw folks were reading it on here, so I finally got around to it. Fun book, despite the setting. I loved the characters. This book made me even more excited about the HBO show.

-The Black Prism by Brent Weeks: Starts out good.... He should spend more time on these books instead of just churning them out. Sigh.

-The Passage by Justin Cronin: Reads like an 80's Stephen King novel. That's ok if you're 15, but I'm through with that, dig? No thanks on the sequels.

-Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes: Book of the year. Fucking fantastic. And I never want to read it again.

-Ragtime by EL Doctorow: I'm still reeling from this. I feel as if I stumbled on genius that everyone else knew about except me. I read this on recommendation by Howard Waldrop... and having read it just makes me want to give him a hug.

-Carter Beats The Devil by Glen David Gold: Overrated garbage. Blah. (Reading this after Doctorow version of Houdini may have been criminally unfair, I'll admit.)

-Heinlein Biography by William Patterson -- Good stuff. I'm still digesting it.

[aschwiig]

I just finished The Best of Gene Wolfe. Well over half of the stories were new to me, and it was an absolute delight throughout.

Currently reading The Russia House by John Le Carré. I've read most of his stuff, but have overlooked this one, probably because of the film. I have a soft spot for the slowness of pace, the vividness of the characters, and the humour.

[sparky]

-Carter Beats The Devil by Glen David Gold: Overrated garbage. Blah. (Reading this after Doctorow version of Houdini may have been criminally unfair, I'll admit.)

Yeah, it was. Criminally unfair, I mean. CBtD is really, really good. It's a first novel, too ffs!!! :)

[Sheep the Evicted]

Yeah, it was. Criminally unfair, I mean. CBtD is really, really good. It's a first novel, too ffs!!! :)

Its obviously a blue moon because i agree with Stego. I thought it was horribly overrated. Decent prose, ok characters but what exactly is so clever about the plot? Why all the rave reviews?

I just finished You Don't Have to be Evil to Work Here, But it Helps by Tom Holt. Good fun. I read it to see whether there were any similarities between his writing style and KJ Parker (of which i have only read the engineer trillogy). There definitely is - and the theme of destructive all conquering love is extremely prevalent here - but frankly Holt is better. Better characterization, better pacing and better gags. However i didn't like Connies many and overt displays of righteous indignation which were pretty obviously author inserts. Like Parker he seemed to sacrifice a perfectly enjoyable story to further hammer in his point. Still, overall i'd give it an 8/10

Its gonna be a good month. Im currently deciding whether to start reading Something Wicked This Way Comes by Bradbury or Lyonesse by Vance. I also have the Quantum Thief coming in the post.

[Peadar]

Recent Reads:

-Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes: Book of the year. Fucking fantastic. And I never want to read it again.

Reminds me of a review I once saw of The Wasp Factory. "This is one of the best books I've ever read. Not recommended."

As for me, I'm reading Steven Pressfield's Tides of War.

[Alpha13]

Just Finished The Name of the Wind. Really liked it. Disappointed by the ending though. I wanted more resolution. I knew I should have waited until at least the next one was out to start this.

[Cantabile]

Thanks for the review of Disciple of the Dog, Gorg. I definitely plan on picking it up once it's released in the States.

Reading Bakker's blog musings on neuroscience and such has actually got me reinterested in psychology and such, so I'm kicking off the first week of October by reading The Island of the Colorblind by the neurologist and author Oliver Sacks. The first half details a syndrome known as achromatopsia that occurs on the Micronesian atoll of Pingelap. As the title suggests, the inhabitants are nearly entirely color blind, seeing life entirely in greyscale. Those with more severe forms of the syndrome have extremely diminished vision in light, with most objects being entirely blurred if even visible (just as a normal human cannot see in the dark, many of them cannot see in light!) as well as photophobia.

[Guinevere Seaworth]

I'm 200 pages into King's Dragon by Kate Elliott. So far I'm enjoying it. The rest of the month will be devoted to the Crown of Stars series with the occassional non-fiction and historical fiction in between to keep things fresh for me.

[Edda van Heefmstra Ruston]

So Cold the River. Pretty good so far, though I expected to be farther along page-wise, given the story landmarks I've hit. (I also started the book thinking I'd picked up Matterhorn, which I'd bought at the same time, and was very confused where the first few pages were taking me.)

I also started The Quantum Thief, and put it aside for SCtR. I'll go back to it as soon as I've finished, though, because it had, to me, a more interesting and more unusual start than SCtR's.

[Raskolnikov]

In the final hundred pages of Christopher Priest's The Separation. Will start So Cold the River right after.

[BookWyrm]

I finished the Watchmen and loved it! I've been so wrong about graphic novels/comics. For the longest time I've held some bad biases against them...

I've also started reading Haruki Murakami's After the Quake

[Morcant]

Just finished 'Blue Highways' by William Least Heat-Moon. Very enjoyable nonfiction indeed. I picked up Mickey Zucker Reichert's 'The Last of the Reshai' and couldn't make it past the prologue. Really Really Bad. I am now rereading DM Cornish's 'Lamplighter' in preparation for the final book in the trilogy being released this winter. I am enjoying it even more than the first time. Cornish is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors.

[Cuchulain]

Finished Adam Roberts's Yellow Blue Tibia. Loved it. Roberts manages to mix deep themes and dark humour to great effect. Recommended if you're looking for a book that's thought-provoking and very entertaining at the same time.

I also finished William Gibson's Neuromancer. Again, I loved it. If you read the novel, it's easy to see why it proved to be so influential.

[The Evil Hat]

I finished the Watchmen and loved it! I've been so wrong about graphic novels/comics. For the longest time I've held some bad biases against them...

I felt the exact same way until only just recently. Now I'm reading Y, Fables, and other Alan Moore works and loving it.

[Eyelesbarrow]

Reading War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges, who used to be a foreign/war correspondent. His experience on the ground and the fact that he was a former divinity student/son of a minister make for a very interesting read: It's meditative, philosophical, and hard-nosed at the same time.

Theft, a collection of short stories by NS Koenings. I've read one story so far.