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The "What Are You Reading" Thread
Posts
I think Lovecraft's biggest contribution towards horror fiction was his realisation that you could move away from the old stories and their vampires, werewolves, ghosts, the living dead and deals with Satan and just go absolutely fucking apeshit and make your hideous evil utterly alien and unconnected with humanity. Terrible things from a dimension with skewed geometry and aspects so awful they drive you mad when you look at them. Fine ideas, and able to provide sustenance for far better writers over the years since.
Blacklight, the newest Stephanie Meyer book is about Chloe, a girl with interests in physics who enters a realm of romance with C'laxathaz, a soul-rending nether-beast from beyond space and time. Meyer's most explicit book yet, she even delves into what giving someone a "brown Jenkins" actually entails.
C'laxathaz was so beautiful that his perfect visage drove other girls to rip their eyes out with their bare fingers, lest visions of any lesser man-like entity sully their perfect memory of its many eyes, sparkling like gemstones in the sunlight. But not Chloe. She looked upon C'laxathaz and felt only the warmth of love--and a growing certainty that she could never be good enough for it to love her back.
Indeed. Horror had so far mostly been based on folklore and religious myths. Lovecraft invented this new totally alien threat which lay outside human history and myth, things which existed way before humanity itself even existed, making the "lesser" horrors of superstitious folklore and stuffy religion small and silly by comparison.
It also happily works in every direction. Science is wrong because real knowledge of the universe is either inaccessible to the human mind or toxic to it. Old values like religion or philosophies are wrong because humanity is an insignificant ant in a universe of tentacled giants.
Started with Larry Niven's Ringworld and finished it in 2 sittings. Reading the followup, The Ringworld Engineers now.
I seem to always forget how much I like Niven until I read about 5 pages of one of his books. Then I end up doing stupid things like staying up an extra 5 hours to read, despite having worked a 12 hour shift the night before and coming up on another 12 hour shift that same day.
This was always my complaint. Of the three stories I enjoyed in the half of his collected work I read, The Colour Out of Space was one of them.
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Ringworld and Engineers are two of my favorite books. They got me into hard sci-fi. Niven did a fine job of introducing awe to the reader. You get awe at the technology of the future. Then the people of that future meet with aliens, who have awe-inspiring technology even to them. Then the humans and aliens go exploring to a place that is awe-inspiring to the whole bunch of them. He does it very simply, basically just by introducing bigger and bigger stuff. But then he describes in detail what it looks like to the characters, how the humans are standing on a structure so big they get all dizzy and confused because they can't hold it in their heads. Cool stuff, and filled with interesting ideas.
It was pretty good. Kind of hard to follow given that it jumped about a lot. I'm eyeing the sequel, but decided to take a John Wyndham break for The Midwitch Cuckoos, which I think I read when I was very small, but don't really remember. Good times. Wyndham is the best.
Finished Engineers. Fucking awesome.
Though I will say this: despite the fairly detailed description of how the puppeteers sound, I still found myself imagining them with Dr. Zoidberg's voice. But, y'know, less stupid and incompetent.
I really liked Ringworld, but felt the series kind of declined after that. It was less dealing with the mystery of this giant structure, more wandering around having sex with aliens. I liked the hard scifi, there wasn't enough later on.
Also, I found this which seemed really cool. But then I read the entry for book 2 after I finished it, and it just spoiled out of hand with no warnings or anything that (Spoilers for later books, no idea how far. Don't click unless you're all caught up I guess)
I mean, it said "click here to see spoiler content", but I figured that meant spoilers for book 2, not for the whole goddamn series. Anyway, nobody spoil for me when it gets revealed, I want THAT to be a surprise at least.
Yeah, I'll admit that I was a tad concerned about the amount of random sexy times that were crammed into Engineers.
Thankfully, Niven didn't go to the incredibly pervy/creepy levels that Frank Herbert did in his later years. But it's definitely an aspect of the book that didn't mesh well with the concepts, characters, and tone that had been established in Ringworld.
-Finally caught up with William Gibson's latest and Neal Stephenson's latest, as well as China Mieville's Kraken.
-Glen Cook's Chronicles of the Black Company is the finest fantasy trilogy I've ever read. How did I pass this one up on bookshelves for so long? For me what most sets it apart from other fantasy works is that is has very, very few missteps. Nothing marred it, even as it got stranger and stranger and it lost that sense of the mundane everymen making their mark on a much more arcane world I never once lost faith in what I was reading. I have no idea how more authors haven't succeeded in this kind of character-focused high fantasy. Sure, you can't swing a stick without hitting a wizard or an ancient evil/ancient good or a magical artifact or whatever, but somehow you buy into it. I really can't believe I overlooked it this long.
-The Scar is the most engaging of China Mieville's books I've read, though perhaps not the best-written. But I'm way more drawn into it than Perdido Street Station (I hated almost everyone in that book), way more impressed by the world than The City & The City (as intriguing as it was it was too intentionally abstract, too deliberately close to reality to really break from it), and it's miles more compelling than Kraken (which was fun but felt like brain junk food).
-William Gibson's anthology of his nonfiction (Distrust That Particular Flavor) is mildly interesting. I don't usually buy anthologies (of fiction or non) and then fail to read through them cover to cover without picking up another book, but this one I keep reading or or two entries then looking for something else. It doesn't seem boring, but it fails to capture my undivided attention.
-Somewhere around here I have two Chuck Palahniuk books that need to get read. He's best in small doses with a hefty accompaniment of salt, but damn if the man can't grab your attention by the short and curlies.
I have a bunch more gift cards to blow; after picking up Iron Council I feel a sci-fi itch coming on, and may finally commit to a true space opera by picking up the Culture novels. I also should really check out the Hyperion books, Simmons is a fantastic author but I've somehow avoided his best-known works. After that who knows?
when the indigo children come
As a massive fan of Glen Cook's, I don't know how to tell you this, but The Black Company isn't a trilogy. its a quartet (ish) of semi-trilogies.
Chronicles is the first omnibus edition, with the first three books. There's also:
The Books of the South
The Return of the Black Company
The Many Deaths of the Black Company
Cook is also startlingly prolific; his other work is just as good, though possibly not quite as accessible. You might want to try Sweet Silver Blues, his take on a fantasy world crossed with The Big Sleep...
About halfway through Hammered by Elizabeth Bear. So far I have a lot of questions and not a lot of answers, but hopefully over the other half of the book the disparate plot threads and characters start to come together.
Guild Wars 2: Entriech.3507 | Scythe Gearsnap, Phlork, Irenic
I just finished Alloy of Law this morning. It's fun but you're right, it feels very much like a diversion. Unless there are sequels that significantly expand on the wild west & wizards theme, it just seems a little light. The Mistborn trilogy was so good at setting up a real world that it's dissappointing that Alloy really didn't explore any of it. It's also extremely short (I read it in about a week of half hour lunch breaks), which can be good or bad, depending on your perspective.
All that said, the characters are really fun; I just wish we had more time with them.
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It was quite good! It was interesting throughout. The pacing seemed a bit slow, and I kept on thinking I would lose interest, but it never happened. The characters aren't especially good, but its the sort of sci-fi book where I wouldn't expect that. The aliens were interesting, but I found that they were given too many human characteristics. This stopped bothering me when characters in the book made similar comments and started to doubt their translations of the alien language because they seemed too "cute", which I thought was a neat touch. This book is apparently a prequel to A Fire Upon the Deep which I've heard many good things about. I'll have to read it, but I've got to say I have absolutely no idea what to expect, despite the prequel giving me all sorts of back story.
I enjoy the hell out of Sanderson's works. It's a lot of fun trying to visualize his action scenes with the different magic systems he devises. My father enjoys him, too, but describes him like a little kid showing each one of his cool new toys.
You have to fight through some bad days, to earn the best days of your life.
You have made me very, very happy
when the indigo children come
It's probably best to just think of it as a trilogy. The Black Company books go steadily downhill as they go on and on and on.
Although, I'll first read The Left Hand of God, because it had one of those little recommendation tags on it and it tickled my fancy.
(Midwich Cuckoos was obviously very good. A slightly more abrupt ending than I remember though. )
Spare Scrolls for trade
Tina Fey's book was ok in an ok way, but Jenny Lawson's Let's Pretend This Never Happened is amazing so far.
I mean, I'm sure "moldywarpe" (which from what I can tell is an archaic term for a mole) is in the book, but it's not like China Mieville typed up that description.
To be fair, it's very much the kind of noun (or possibly verb) that he uses in his New Crobuzon books. The super alien Nemesis in The Scar are called
I'm a huge sucker for most of what Robin Hobb writes, though. I may have to purchase City of Dragons even before the e-book drops to a reasonable price.
I love that name. It has a really nice, old world fairy tale sound to it.
Also this comic reminds me that I read The City and the City and it is easily my favorite book from Mieville. Though to cut down on confusion early on I'd strongly recommend reading a quick description of the book's setting.
The phrase "limb farm" in the description of their city still weirds me out.
Spare Scrolls for trade
And reading the description I now love it more.
Mace Windu.
Or an early atrocity committed by someone you wouldn't expect to make such a howler in the shape of an elf named Tinfang Warble.
Spare Scrolls for trade
We should make a Fanclub or something. Call it the Gray Bunch of Nerds.