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The "What Are You Reading" Thread
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Yeah, exactly...the only reason that I went through the chapters involving him was that he's, y'know, the main character. Though I'll go back on my earlier statement and say that the first time through, I did actually read each book cover to cover. It's only in going back and re-reading that I cherry pick the chapters that aren't boring. Because holy shiat, there are so, so many chapters that just should have been edited out, or condensed to 1 or 2 pages.
It's fantastic. I love Atwood.
It doesn't really make much sense.
Hyperion builds up great atmosphere and is a good book, but Fall of Hyperion drops the ball and the other 2 sequels are ... ugh.
If you are skimming/skipping chapters, it's only gonna get more boring because you are missing 90% of the details of what's going on.
Most things seem meaningless when you skip the context.
I'm near the end of Hyperion. 96% on my Kindle. I started losing interest halfway through the Consul story. Pushing through to finish it. I guess can put the rest of the series further down my list.
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@Raekreu I've spent a few months going through his catalogue minus is young adult works. While his story in Mystborn felt very shallow, the action is amazing. His stand alone works, Elantris and Warbreaker, were both a nice mix of the same problem.
Then he goes and writes The Way of Kings. I feel for each character while he still delivers amazing action set pieces. Although it does get a bit predictable around the 2/3 mark.
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The Fall of Hyperion is an excellent novel and well worth reading. It ties off all the plotlines started by the first book and is obviously a natural continuation rather than tacked on sequels like the Endymion books.
As a rule, I don't skip chapters the first time I read something, but with the later WoT books...it was really hard to slog through them, even though I was still in 'fuck yeah, new book' mode when I was reading them. Jordan just kept on adding more and more plot lines, characters, and McGuffins rather than advancing, explaining, or ending the arcs that he'd already established.
I knew things were amiss when the foreword for each book started averaging 150 pages.
One or more of the following is true:
There are two version of the Shrike. One sent back by the UI to destroy humanity, Terminator 1 style; the other reprogrammed and sent back by God to save humanity, Terminator 2 style. Both the T1 and T2 Shrike exist simultaneously, because the future's quantum waveform has not yet collapsed, and it is still uncertain whether the UI or God will win.
Rachel's main job is to go fetch Kassad to fight the war in the future. To do that she needs to stowaway on the Time Tombs with the Shrike.
Yeah, I would read Fall of Hyperion just to get the actual ending.
But I wouldn't say it's a great book or that it ties up the loose ends of the first book very well. It reminded me of Lost in alot of ways.
No, I am not really communist. Yes, it is weird that I use this name.
What kind of book are you looking for?
The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch.
Granted, I haven't read Name of the Wind. But Locke Lamora was great.
Guild Wars 2: Entriech.3507 | Scythe Gearsnap, Phlork, Irenic
I'm now very interested in Philip K. Dick's work. I always wanted to read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep due to my love for Blade Runner. Can anybody recommend any different books of his?
Locke Lamora is indeed pretty awesome. Personally, I'd recommend Abercrombie's First Law trilogy. Despite their many differences, I have yet to meet a person who liked Rothfuss who failed to love Abercrombie.
(Having said that, this thread will now explode with precisely those people.)
Regarding Reamde, I read it, and then started Ready Player One shortly thereafter, and spent an afternoon researching how many MMO billionaires there are. (At least three.) Just seemed awfully weird that two books would come out so close together where the major theme is "MMO dev makes fuck-you money, hijinks ensure."
The most popular books (other than the ones you listed) are Valis, Ubik, Man in a High Castle and Flow My Tears, so that is a good place to start, but basically all of them are worth reading.
VALIS
Dr Bloodmoney
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?
The Man In The High Castle
Ubik
Martian Time-Slip
Time Out Of Joint
And then you have his many, many short stories to read as well
Other pretty fine novels by him include (he wrote a lot, a lot, of novels):
Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said
The Simulacra
Now Wait For Last Year
I'm glad I just went ahead and started Fall of Hyperion. Consumed half the book yesterday.
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After a re-reading, I'm going to dig into PKD's novels. Man, that's a huge amount of books. I'm gonna start with 'Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?' first and see how it goes. I've been meaning to read that for a long time anyhow.
Your point is actually one of the reasons I tend to shy away from novels that deal with very current events/items. MMO is sort of a natural extension of cyberpunk, and allows for authors to write about something that more people can relate to without adding additional abstraction a la Neuromancer or Snow Crash. But yeah, your point rings true -- authors inevitably change how these things are used in real life in order to create a more effective plot.
I mean, a real MMO that people actually play is basically just a group of friends playing an RPG together against, like you say, instanced events. People play to level up, acquire loot, and advance a part of the overall story. But no one plays PvP because for it to work in an RPG, there should be some consequences. Yet the only PvP games that people actually enjoy are those where there are no consequences -- you respawn or just start fresh with no repercussions, other than perhaps a hit to some leaderboard.
Translating that to an MMO environment really doesn't work, and also doesn't work for a novel, because if you're writing a novel about MMOs you want that to have some impact on the character, and not only positive impact. In the real world, anything with "real world" impact ends up with griefers, farmers, and not many actual players -- because it sucks to be griefed and deal with cyber bullies.
But yeah, it does seem like the authors who really understand how an MMO could work technically end up writing about fictional ones that would be realistically unpopular, and those who understand more of the social element of MMOs write about ones that wouldn't work technically. It's an odd mix.
Got Charles Stross' The Atrocity Archives on a whim, and am enjoying it quite a lot. Quirky fun with plenty of nice little references here and there (I'm sure I'm probably missing most of them though). Nice and short too, only 350 pages, as opposed to the almost 1K page brick above.
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I'm probably going to start on our current group read, The Fifth Head of Cerberus, very shortly, but my attention has been turned in another direction at the moment, and I have a question. I'm looking at reading Don Quixote, but I see several different versions available for free on the Kindle through Amazon (I think they're all translated by John Ormsby). Which is best/most complete? I'm guessing it would be the two volumes of The History of Don Quixote, but I can't find any definitive answers, and I don't think I've ever heard it referred to as "The History" of Don Quixote before.
A little time travel since I don't check this thread that often. I might go back and finish it, but not until it is completely done, because I like what I've read from Sanderson (mostly the Mistborn books).
I really enjoyed aspects of Fall of Hyperion, especially the Ouster stuff. I agree it dropped the ball though. I finished that book knowing even less than what I knew after finishing the first one, and far less satisfied. The sequels I have stayed away from.
Fuck, man. You should be terrified. I got all of 5 pages into that book.
completely fails to deliver in the second book
and then the next two show you why he failed to deliver
I'm also reading a collection of T.S. Eliot's poetry from 1909 to 1935. Irritatingly, there's a good bit of foreign-language material that the publisher provided no translation for, including a number of poems written entirely in French. Also, the last poem I read in it was a comparison of the hippopotamus to, I guess, the Unitarian Church. So yeah.
Before I read That Hideous Strength, I may stop to re-read Johnny Tremain; mostly because I watched the '57 movie a few days ago and feel the urge to confirm my feeling that it shat all over the novel.
Although the shitfest that was Olympos, after the really fun Ilium is yet another example that Simmons has no goddamn idea how to end a story.
I read a translation by Edith Grossman that was good. I'd imagine The History of Don Quixote is is non-fiction book about the book as Don Quixote is usually called Don Quixote or The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha.
Not sure if you're saying Simmons is a bad writer here.
I had no trouble finishing any of the books. At worst it took me a few weeks to finish book nine.
I feel so out of place.
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