I'm reading The Black Prism and enjoying it (maybe 1/3 of the way through). I am also reading A Crown of Swords (wot7). Since starting CoS I have finished The Black Echo, The Lincoln Lawyer and The Information. That said, I like CoS. I keep hoping Elayne will get killed but I know that will never happen in this series and I'm supposed to believe red shirt death is meaningful motivation.
“Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.”
― Marcus Aurelius
I am reading the 2nd book of The Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson Death house gates and Im loving it! i have them all on my phone, at 1st i thought it would weird reading it on but its very handy when Im on breaks at work or waiting for friends at places.
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
some crazy series about people who wore armor with creatures growing inside them
What is this series? Was it any good? I want to know more.
EDIT: If you want some easy to find and very good sci-fi you can't go wrong with getting Peter Watts' Blindsight which is available for free download in a while bunch of places. It's really great.
EDIT2: Just read your post better, I missed the action part. Blindsight doesn't have a huge amount of action. But it is wonderful.
some crazy series about people who wore armor with creatures growing inside them
What is this series? Was it any good? I want to know more.
EDIT: If you want some easy to find and very good sci-fi you can't go wrong with getting Peter Watts' Blindsight which is available for free download in a while bunch of places. It's really great.
The book series was "The Sand Wars" by Charles Ingrid. I didn't get too far into the first book as the story went kind of crazy and the writing was all over the place (worst was some things were described in insane detail while other things barely got a one-liner). The basic idea was that soldiers in the history of this universe (weren't sure if they were elite super soldier types, or just general grunts) wore this power armor which made them strong, hard to kill, blah blah blah, and the protagonist got stuck on a ship as an icicle after an accident when pulling off a planet. He gets found years later after everything went to hell and his armor makes him special since it's old tech that was lost long ago or something like that. The extra kicker is that the people they were fighting on that last planet were dropping eggs in the suits of armor secretly which would eventually hatch and tear their way out of the armor (and soldier inside it). His armor was also infected, but the thing didn't hatch before the accident and it ended up somehow merging with the armor making it semi-sentient.
It was working up to be a standard hero solves the problems of the universe kind of thing.
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DynagripBreak me a million heartsHoustonRegistered User, ClubPAregular
I am rereading Iron Dragon's Daughter and will try to re-read a couple of more of Swanwick's stuff and Gene Wolfe's in front of the Gene Wolfe Chicago Literary Hall of Fame gig.
I've slowly been making my way down a top 100 Sci-Fi book list and just finished Robert A Heinlein's Hugo and Locus award-winning novel, Time Enough For Love. It has...a bit more time travel mother-fucking than makes me comfortable, to be honest. And computer fucking. And genetic clone-fucking. The hero ends up having sex with literally every adult female character he encounters.
Classic Heinlein.
good ol' heinlein. don't forget the not so subtle racism. or like the incredibly poorly fleshed out female characters. So glad reading him didn't turn me down the path of libertarianism
I've been on a serious sci-fi action kick lately, but aside from a couple minor exceptions (such as John Hemry or whoever wrote the Starfist series, and some crazy series about people who wore armor with creatures growing inside them) I can't really find much beyond the big Baen publishing names (Weber, Ringo, etc...). Normally that wouldn't be a problem, but I just can't stand most of their work. I'm too sick of the standard "here is your protagonist, and this is their love interest who also becomes a central character, and the rest of the book is various levels of action and cheesy romance scenes". I made the mistake of reading Empire of Man and Oath of Swords, which I enjoyed, and then trying everything else which I've come to hate.
Am I missing some hidden treasure trove, or is that all I can expect out of books with a lot of action in them? I'm certainly not after great writing or deep plots, and I don't even mind the whole "protagonist is a hero who can't do any wrong" side of things, but too much cheesy romance drives me insane.
You could try reading The Praxis Trilogy by Walter Jon Williams. Or any of his books really, The Praxis is a bit more space opera-y than most of his stuff, but they're all pretty good.
It's sort of him doing an stylistic response to Weber, so yeah there's "here is your protagonist, and here's the love interest, and all the rest of it" but... it most definitely goes in a very non-Weber direction.
Supposedly he might write more books in that universe eventually, which would be bitchin'.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
I blew through my reread of Last Call. Guys, seriously, Tim Powers. How is this guy not more of a Big Name?
I don't know but I would advise anyone interested in it to stay away from the amazon page. I started reading one of the official "reviews" for it and it turned out to be a plot synopsis of what looks like the whole damn thing. Wth, amazon?
Finished Gibson's Bridge Trilogy. I liked Idoru and All Tomorrow's Parties a lot, but it's starting to feel like he'll never quite be able to reach Neuromancer's heights, haha. Pattern Recognition is off to a good start though, and I've heard great things about it.
Finished the first volume of Dreamsongs, the first non-ASoIaF stuff by Martin that I've read. The variety and quality of the writing is damn impressive. I also liked the little autobiographical bits he wrote before each section, giving each of the stories a bit of historical context. Started the second volume, and now I already want to pick up Tuf Voyaging.
Yeah, sadly Neuromancer was his best. Everything else has just been either an extension of that book, and all his plots are pretty much the same. He's enjoyable, but you know what you're getting every time.
I've been on a serious sci-fi action kick lately, but aside from a couple minor exceptions (such as John Hemry or whoever wrote the Starfist series, and some crazy series about people who wore armor with creatures growing inside them) I can't really find much beyond the big Baen publishing names (Weber, Ringo, etc...). Normally that wouldn't be a problem, but I just can't stand most of their work. I'm too sick of the standard "here is your protagonist, and this is their love interest who also becomes a central character, and the rest of the book is various levels of action and cheesy romance scenes". I made the mistake of reading Empire of Man and Oath of Swords, which I enjoyed, and then trying everything else which I've come to hate.
Am I missing some hidden treasure trove, or is that all I can expect out of books with a lot of action in them? I'm certainly not after great writing or deep plots, and I don't even mind the whole "protagonist is a hero who can't do any wrong" side of things, but too much cheesy romance drives me insane.
But you can have great writing and deep plots. Get yourself a good quality theasarus and start on Shadow Of The Torturer
If Gene Wolfe aint great enough writing for you, then you're hard to please.
Finished Gibson's Bridge Trilogy. I liked Idoru and All Tomorrow's Parties a lot, but it's starting to feel like he'll never quite be able to reach Neuromancer's heights, haha. Pattern Recognition is off to a good start though, and I've heard great things about it.
Finished the first volume of Dreamsongs, the first non-ASoIaF stuff by Martin that I've read. The variety and quality of the writing is damn impressive. I also liked the little autobiographical bits he wrote before each section, giving each of the stories a bit of historical context. Started the second volume, and now I already want to pick up Tuf Voyaging.
Yeah, sadly Neuromancer was his best. Everything else has just been either an extension of that book, and all his plots are pretty much the same. He's enjoyable, but you know what you're getting every time.
I love Bill Gibson. Having said that, Neuromancer is the best work of his first two trilogies, and frankly the latter two books in Spawl and the the entire Bridge trilogy is pretty forgettable. I think his new trilogy is actually his best work to date, and it's really, really not about plot as it is about characterization.
So I finished reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road. I never read No Country for Old Men but I saw the movie, and The Road ends in pretty much the same way. Really depressing final scene, leaving you somewhat unsettled, then I can imagine Tommy Lee Jones voice-over with some prose about trout (or was it bass?) fishing.
Yeahhhhhh....
McCarthy seems to love using obscure words too, I think just to make us all use Merriam-Webster.com more often. So I looked up "Macadamized" on there and it's an archaic term for asphalt. (The guy who invented tar-based asphalt was named Macadam, apparently...)
"Simple, real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time." -Mustrum Ridcully in Terry Pratchett's Hogfather p. 142 (HarperPrism 1996)
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Mike Danger"Diane..."a place both wonderful and strangeRegistered Userregular
Started in on the omnibus I found of the first two Brother Cadfael mysteries, as well as The Mythical Man-Month for class.
I am on Book Four too, but have been for awhile. After tearing through the first three books, I found myself reading other books and not getting back into this one. I really want to finish this series someday, but it's looking like it might not happen.
So I finished reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road. I never read No Country for Old Men but I saw the movie, and The Road ends in pretty much the same way. Really depressing final scene, leaving you somewhat unsettled, then I can imagine Tommy Lee Jones voice-over with some prose about trout (or was it bass?) fishing.
Yeahhhhhh....
McCarthy seems to love using obscure words too, I think just to make us all use Merriam-Webster.com more often. So I looked up "Macadamized" on there and it's an archaic term for asphalt. (The guy who invented tar-based asphalt was named Macadam, apparently...)
And neither of those books have anything on Blood Meridian. Great novel, but it feels like it was written by someone who learned his English out of an 18th century thesaurus.
So I finished reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road. I never read No Country for Old Men but I saw the movie, and The Road ends in pretty much the same way. Really depressing final scene, leaving you somewhat unsettled, then I can imagine Tommy Lee Jones voice-over with some prose about trout (or was it bass?) fishing.
Yeahhhhhh....
McCarthy seems to love using obscure words too, I think just to make us all use Merriam-Webster.com more often. So I looked up "Macadamized" on there and it's an archaic term for asphalt. (The guy who invented tar-based asphalt was named Macadam, apparently...)
And neither of those books have anything on Blood Meridian. Great novel, but it feels like it was written by someone who learned his English out of an 18th century thesaurus.
I've never tried to read McCarthy, but I tried to listen to The Road as an audiobook whilst jogging. I think I got 2 hours or so in and just couldn't take it anymore. Maybe his writing works better on paper, but read aloud it sounds so horribly stilted. Of course, I have admittedly poor taste, so.
Speaking of poor taste, I picked Aloha From Hell for my next read. It's decent so far. More angsty than I expected out of the series, considering that the previous volumes were primarily about a guy killing or hate-fucking anyone and everything he met in progressively more violent and inventive ways. He still does that, but he's kind of whiny about it. Luckily it's a self-aware sort of moping that gives me hope that it will turn around at some point. The unremitting bastardry of the main character is refreshing. Even though I know he's going to end up taking the plot hook on offer, it's fun to see an anti-hero willing to look at photos of a kid in need of help and say, "Fuck you, I don't like being emotionally blackmailed" before walking away.
I've got the 3rd volume of Locke & Key coming via UPS today, so will likely take a break from Kadrey to read that. I'm not a big comic/graphic-novel reading guy, but it's one of the best series I've read lately. Joe Hill continues to be his father's son and reads, most of the time, like Stephen King did back when he was writing stuff like The Stand, It, The Shining, etc.
Edit: And since we're talking about Wheel of Time ITT, I'm listening to... possibly The Shadow Rising? while jogging (I started re-'reading' the series right after giving up on listening to The Road, in fact). It's the one where Perrin goes back to the Two Rivers, anyway. I read all of the books way back when, mostly as they were released, so despite having read it before it's all sort of new to me. So far I feel like the books have been improving as I go, and, at the moment, Perrin's my favorite character. Which makes me sad because I know that eventually the books' quality turns south and I start to hate Perrin's chapters. Oh well.
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Mojo_JojoWe are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourseRegistered Userregular
The Road is incredible. One of my favourite books. That said, I was left pretty depressed after I finished it (my housemate, who read it afterwards, actually cried).
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
Yeah, I cried too. Any movie or book with strong male lead (usually a father figure) who has something tragic happen to him always makes me cry. Although come to think of it, sometimes it also if something nostalgic happens to the father figure, such as in the movie Big Fish where the movie is a retelling of the father's life in a painful/sweet sort of way.
also, thesaurus.com failed me. What's a word for painful/sweet? I my mind is blank.
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"Simple, real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time." -Mustrum Ridcully in Terry Pratchett's Hogfather p. 142 (HarperPrism 1996)
I recently had Walter Benjamin's The Arcades Project delivered to me from amazon. It's a lot larger(physically) than I thought it would be. Kind of odd that a book in the realm of the flaneur has somewhat of an inconvenient presence in terms of carrying it around. Looks great though, nice paper and print.
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VanguardBut now the dream is over. And the insect is awake.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
I am tempted to read the second book of ASoIAF despite hating the first book. I feel obligated to read these for some reason, like I can't own 20-sided dice without doing this.
Yeah, I cried too. Any movie or book with strong male lead (usually a father figure) who has something tragic happen to him always makes me cry. Although come to think of it, sometimes it also if something nostalgic happens to the father figure, such as in the movie Big Fish where the movie is a retelling of the father's life in a painful/sweet sort of way.
also, thesaurus.com failed me. What's a word for painful/sweet? I my mind is blank.
Yeah, I cried too. Any movie or book with strong male lead (usually a father figure) who has something tragic happen to him always makes me cry. Although come to think of it, sometimes it also if something nostalgic happens to the father figure, such as in the movie Big Fish where the movie is a retelling of the father's life in a painful/sweet sort of way.
also, thesaurus.com failed me. What's a word for painful/sweet? I my mind is blank.
Bittersweet?
*facepalm*
I need more sleep.
"Simple, real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time." -Mustrum Ridcully in Terry Pratchett's Hogfather p. 142 (HarperPrism 1996)
I am tempted to read the second book of ASoIAF despite hating the first book. I feel obligated to read these for some reason, like I can't own 20-sided dice without doing this.
I read the first 3 of them and basically enjoyed them, though I felt like large sections dragged. I wasn't terribly excited about the 4th one but read it anyway since I'd already invested the time to read the first 3. I have no desire at this point to read the 5th one. But I will say that his writing has improved technically, if not in terms of pacing. I tried to re-read the first book before I read the 4th one and absolutely could not stand his writing. So if you hated the 1st book because of the writing style rather than because of the pacing, plot, and/or characters, things do get better. If you didn't find any of the characters sympathetic, didn't care for his pacing, or couldn't get invested in the plot: quit now and save yourself the thousands of pages.
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VanguardBut now the dream is over. And the insect is awake.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
I think he writes brilliant dialogue. He does things that annoy me, like use ellipses for commas. He sometimes gets long winded. I enjoy the TV show, so even if I don't end up reading these books, I will not be out of the loop entirely.
I think he writes brilliant dialogue. He does things that annoy me, like use ellipses for commas. He sometimes gets long winded. I enjoy the TV show, so even if I don't end up reading these books, I will not be out of the loop entirely.
His dialog is good. And the TV show is great. My wife hadn't read any of the books prior to watching the show, watched the first season, then read the first book. She said that it was horribly boring because the show captured every important thing anyone said or did in the novel. So presumably you'll barely be out of the loop at all.
I'm reading Fifth Business, by a guy named Robertson Davis. Really good stuff so far, his tone is great, with wit all over the place.
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DynagripBreak me a million heartsHoustonRegistered User, ClubPAregular
so i guess imma try to reread the new sun books prior to the Gene Wolfe chicago litery hall of fame thing. I'm kind of more in the mood to reread Dan Simmon's Hyperion at the moment due to a short story that I just read Orphans of the Helix. I reread the original Latro books a couple of months ago so I'm good in that respect (those are my favorite Gene Wolfe books).
Right now I'm finishing up a reread of Iron Dragon's Daughter. I think this is hte first time that I've reread it. I'm not enjoying at as much, largely due to the sex stuff I think. I must be getting more prudish in my old age. I dunno. I'm thinking about rereading Stations of the Tide yet again but I'll be super bummed out if I don't like it as much. Although I've read it like 3 to 4 times already so that's unlikely.
Also, the alumni book club i go to is only going to read stuff written in 1912 in honor of our school's centennial. That Thomas Mann shit was too much for me. I think the next offering is free on Gutenberg but yeah, I don't know. The name of it is Manalive, which I've never heard of. Guess I'll check out its description on Amazon.
I think he writes brilliant dialogue. He does things that annoy me, like use ellipses for commas. He sometimes gets long winded. I enjoy the TV show, so even if I don't end up reading these books, I will not be out of the loop entirely.
Well what was it you disliked about the first book? I've read just about everything he's written, but I'm sure I and others here can tell you if things will improve from your point of view.
The Road is incredible. One of my favourite books. That said, I was left pretty depressed after I finished it (my housemate, who read it afterwards, actually cried).
I loved it too, and is up there with the movie Grave of the Fireflies as something I can't reread or rewatch. And it's one of the few books I like that I recommend reservedly.
I figure I could take a bear.
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Mojo_JojoWe are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourseRegistered Userregular
I finished Kraken by China Miéville. It was okay, as I said before, it felt like an homage to Robert Rankin. I kind of wish that he'd venture outside of London though. The world has other cities, it doesn't have to be London or some fictional place that is also a great deal like London.
I'm not sure what is on the cards next, I've had some things sitting on my bookshelf for a good while. Maybe I'll try one of those.
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
Storm Front by Jim Butcher. No, I never got around to checking out the Dresden Files.
About as pulpy as I'm willing to go without putting a book down, but for all that, an easy and entertaining read. I don't see myself making my way through the entire series unless later books improve drastically, but I might read another book or three.
My zombie survival life simulator They Don't Sleep is out now on Steam if you want to check it out.
It starts as a monster of the week series and goes into Babylon 5 storymode around book 4. The writing doesn't improve dramatically.
We also had a Dresden Files thread here in D&D, iirc...
Any recommendations for non-fiction? Read A Brief History of Time, God Is Not Great and Lost City of Z recently but need some more. Have got Carl Sagin's Cosmos if that is recommended?
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
Any recommendations for non-fiction? Read A Brief History of Time, God Is Not Great and Lost City of Z recently but need some more. Have got Carl Sagin's Cosmos if that is recommended?
Oh most defiantly yes, a strident, defiant yes.
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VanguardBut now the dream is over. And the insect is awake.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
I think he writes brilliant dialogue. He does things that annoy me, like use ellipses for commas. He sometimes gets long winded. I enjoy the TV show, so even if I don't end up reading these books, I will not be out of the loop entirely.
Well what was it you disliked about the first book? I've read just about everything he's written, but I'm sure I and others here can tell you if things will improve from your point of view.
Let me preface this by saying I'm a lit snob. I don't, for the most part, do genre fiction.
Let's start with what I like. The characters. George R.R. Martin knows how to craft interesting characters and put them in interesting scenes. The more they talk, the better.
Now, what I dislike: the way he uses language outside of dialogue. There's nothing interesting about how he uses sentences, or manipulates words. Bran's chapters, for example, tended to bore me the most because it was all very insular. Here are Bran's thoughts. Here are Bran's dreams. Here is what Bran wishes he could do. Here is what he can't.
I get the sense that he spends very little time editing his books, and it shows. There are sections which are just plain sloppy, or, worse, completely ridiculous (the ending in particular comes to mind).
However, there's something comic bookish to the momentum of his stories, where you get addicted to the movement of the narrative, the rhythm of the plot. I often find, after something ends and I'm disappointed, that I enjoy that momentum more than anything else.
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― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
What is this series? Was it any good? I want to know more.
EDIT: If you want some easy to find and very good sci-fi you can't go wrong with getting Peter Watts' Blindsight which is available for free download in a while bunch of places. It's really great.
EDIT2: Just read your post better, I missed the action part. Blindsight doesn't have a huge amount of action. But it is wonderful.
The book series was "The Sand Wars" by Charles Ingrid. I didn't get too far into the first book as the story went kind of crazy and the writing was all over the place (worst was some things were described in insane detail while other things barely got a one-liner). The basic idea was that soldiers in the history of this universe (weren't sure if they were elite super soldier types, or just general grunts) wore this power armor which made them strong, hard to kill, blah blah blah, and the protagonist got stuck on a ship as an icicle after an accident when pulling off a planet. He gets found years later after everything went to hell and his armor makes him special since it's old tech that was lost long ago or something like that. The extra kicker is that the people they were fighting on that last planet were dropping eggs in the suits of armor secretly which would eventually hatch and tear their way out of the armor (and soldier inside it). His armor was also infected, but the thing didn't hatch before the accident and it ended up somehow merging with the armor making it semi-sentient.
It was working up to be a standard hero solves the problems of the universe kind of thing.
http://chicagoliteraryhof.wordpress.com/
You could try reading The Praxis Trilogy by Walter Jon Williams. Or any of his books really, The Praxis is a bit more space opera-y than most of his stuff, but they're all pretty good.
It's sort of him doing an stylistic response to Weber, so yeah there's "here is your protagonist, and here's the love interest, and all the rest of it" but... it most definitely goes in a very non-Weber direction.
Supposedly he might write more books in that universe eventually, which would be bitchin'.
I don't know but I would advise anyone interested in it to stay away from the amazon page. I started reading one of the official "reviews" for it and it turned out to be a plot synopsis of what looks like the whole damn thing. Wth, amazon?
Yeah, sadly Neuromancer was his best. Everything else has just been either an extension of that book, and all his plots are pretty much the same. He's enjoyable, but you know what you're getting every time.
But you can have great writing and deep plots. Get yourself a good quality theasarus and start on Shadow Of The Torturer
If Gene Wolfe aint great enough writing for you, then you're hard to please.
I love Bill Gibson. Having said that, Neuromancer is the best work of his first two trilogies, and frankly the latter two books in Spawl and the the entire Bridge trilogy is pretty forgettable. I think his new trilogy is actually his best work to date, and it's really, really not about plot as it is about characterization.
That kills half the fun!
Yeahhhhhh....
McCarthy seems to love using obscure words too, I think just to make us all use Merriam-Webster.com more often. So I looked up "Macadamized" on there and it's an archaic term for asphalt. (The guy who invented tar-based asphalt was named Macadam, apparently...)
I am on Book Four too, but have been for awhile. After tearing through the first three books, I found myself reading other books and not getting back into this one. I really want to finish this series someday, but it's looking like it might not happen.
And neither of those books have anything on Blood Meridian. Great novel, but it feels like it was written by someone who learned his English out of an 18th century thesaurus.
I've never tried to read McCarthy, but I tried to listen to The Road as an audiobook whilst jogging. I think I got 2 hours or so in and just couldn't take it anymore. Maybe his writing works better on paper, but read aloud it sounds so horribly stilted. Of course, I have admittedly poor taste, so.
Speaking of poor taste, I picked Aloha From Hell for my next read. It's decent so far. More angsty than I expected out of the series, considering that the previous volumes were primarily about a guy killing or hate-fucking anyone and everything he met in progressively more violent and inventive ways. He still does that, but he's kind of whiny about it. Luckily it's a self-aware sort of moping that gives me hope that it will turn around at some point. The unremitting bastardry of the main character is refreshing. Even though I know he's going to end up taking the plot hook on offer, it's fun to see an anti-hero willing to look at photos of a kid in need of help and say, "Fuck you, I don't like being emotionally blackmailed" before walking away.
I've got the 3rd volume of Locke & Key coming via UPS today, so will likely take a break from Kadrey to read that. I'm not a big comic/graphic-novel reading guy, but it's one of the best series I've read lately. Joe Hill continues to be his father's son and reads, most of the time, like Stephen King did back when he was writing stuff like The Stand, It, The Shining, etc.
Edit: And since we're talking about Wheel of Time ITT, I'm listening to... possibly The Shadow Rising? while jogging (I started re-'reading' the series right after giving up on listening to The Road, in fact). It's the one where Perrin goes back to the Two Rivers, anyway. I read all of the books way back when, mostly as they were released, so despite having read it before it's all sort of new to me. So far I feel like the books have been improving as I go, and, at the moment, Perrin's my favorite character. Which makes me sad because I know that eventually the books' quality turns south and I start to hate Perrin's chapters. Oh well.
also, thesaurus.com failed me. What's a word for painful/sweet? I my mind is blank.
Bittersweet?
*facepalm*
I need more sleep.
I read the first 3 of them and basically enjoyed them, though I felt like large sections dragged. I wasn't terribly excited about the 4th one but read it anyway since I'd already invested the time to read the first 3. I have no desire at this point to read the 5th one. But I will say that his writing has improved technically, if not in terms of pacing. I tried to re-read the first book before I read the 4th one and absolutely could not stand his writing. So if you hated the 1st book because of the writing style rather than because of the pacing, plot, and/or characters, things do get better. If you didn't find any of the characters sympathetic, didn't care for his pacing, or couldn't get invested in the plot: quit now and save yourself the thousands of pages.
His dialog is good. And the TV show is great. My wife hadn't read any of the books prior to watching the show, watched the first season, then read the first book. She said that it was horribly boring because the show captured every important thing anyone said or did in the novel. So presumably you'll barely be out of the loop at all.
Right now I'm finishing up a reread of Iron Dragon's Daughter. I think this is hte first time that I've reread it. I'm not enjoying at as much, largely due to the sex stuff I think. I must be getting more prudish in my old age. I dunno. I'm thinking about rereading Stations of the Tide yet again but I'll be super bummed out if I don't like it as much. Although I've read it like 3 to 4 times already so that's unlikely.
Also, the alumni book club i go to is only going to read stuff written in 1912 in honor of our school's centennial. That Thomas Mann shit was too much for me. I think the next offering is free on Gutenberg but yeah, I don't know. The name of it is Manalive, which I've never heard of. Guess I'll check out its description on Amazon.
Well what was it you disliked about the first book? I've read just about everything he's written, but I'm sure I and others here can tell you if things will improve from your point of view.
I loved it too, and is up there with the movie Grave of the Fireflies as something I can't reread or rewatch. And it's one of the few books I like that I recommend reservedly.
I'm not sure what is on the cards next, I've had some things sitting on my bookshelf for a good while. Maybe I'll try one of those.
About as pulpy as I'm willing to go without putting a book down, but for all that, an easy and entertaining read. I don't see myself making my way through the entire series unless later books improve drastically, but I might read another book or three.
We also had a Dresden Files thread here in D&D, iirc...
Oh most defiantly yes, a strident, defiant yes.
Let me preface this by saying I'm a lit snob. I don't, for the most part, do genre fiction.
Let's start with what I like. The characters. George R.R. Martin knows how to craft interesting characters and put them in interesting scenes. The more they talk, the better.
Now, what I dislike: the way he uses language outside of dialogue. There's nothing interesting about how he uses sentences, or manipulates words. Bran's chapters, for example, tended to bore me the most because it was all very insular. Here are Bran's thoughts. Here are Bran's dreams. Here is what Bran wishes he could do. Here is what he can't.
I get the sense that he spends very little time editing his books, and it shows. There are sections which are just plain sloppy, or, worse, completely ridiculous (the ending in particular comes to mind).
However, there's something comic bookish to the momentum of his stories, where you get addicted to the movement of the narrative, the rhythm of the plot. I often find, after something ends and I'm disappointed, that I enjoy that momentum more than anything else.