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The "What Are You Reading" Thread
Posts
I have only seen the first (only? not sure) Battle Royale movie, and that was years ago. Is there in fact a point beyond horrific violence and maybe some teen rebellion?
-edit- extraneous apostrophe and bad spelling, whoops
There are more than one? Or do you mean language wise? I see now there is a manga as well. I don't think I need to see this stuff happening. The Walking Dead is gross enough for me sometimes.
You should keep going!
It gets better! Seriously! so much better!
You have to fight through some bad days, to earn the best days of your life.
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The important thing to keep in mind re:Battle Royale vs. Hunger Games is that the two works were spawned by entirely different cultural values, and need to be examined as such, ie in broad strokes, Battle Royale is more a critique of the Japanese educational system whereas Hunger Games was written as a response to the similarities between reality shows and media coverage of war.
Actually, it really does. I'm halfway through Book 11 and it's much, much better. I'm not sure if I ever made it this far into the series before.
It's, uh, okay. The story isn't actually all that interesting, but the 'world building' and uh, I don't know, 'rules' of the universe are supremely interesting.
The Nightside series kept me entertained, but it's not exactly domineering. It's like cotton candy for the brain.
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Yes, okay, that's how I wanted to describe it. I read it before bed and it's good enough.
I really, really like the whole idea of Powers and Dominations being as powerful as people's belief in them (similar to Dresden, I guess?). And the other dimensions and time travel stuff is well done.
On the other hand, that dude repeats himself a lot just like Butcher does in the Dresden files.
Every 10 or so pages is a description of the Nightside, that at some point will explain that some person 'controls the Nightside inasmuch as anyone can.' That dude loves the word 'inasmuch'.
Oh and the introduction of Suzie Shooter every time. Jesus, give that up.
It's the same way how I can skip entire pages of the Dresden files cause it's the same description of his car, or his apartment I read in the last five books.
Ash is a very good book, and I'm always delighted to see it on someone else's reading list, but I'm not convinced it will make you feel better! Mind you, Mary Gentle does strong female protagonists very well, in both Ash and some of her other work, as well as solid plotting and rather a lot of swearing but it's...not exactly cheery throughout. That said, the medieval world seldom was. So hopefully you'll enjoy it.
By the by, it has interstitital chapters which aren't necessary to the central narrative, but do provide a structure around it. I thought they were enjoyable and brought somethnig to the story, but I've talked it over with other people who actively hated the interstitials, and skipped them entirely. It didn't seem to cut into their enjoyment of the central text at all, so if you find the interstitials aren't for you, you've still got a (fairly huge) book to go through.
He's a genius. He's a fucking genius. The entire book is written in the present tense, and against all odds it actually works. The immediacy of everything is brilliant.
My favourite authors are George R.R. Martin, Phillip Pullman and Abnett, and of the three Abnett writes the best action by far. If you like military sci-fi, you need to read something of his.
The Eisenhorn trilogy is a good start.
Actual Play: Mage: the Awakening - At the Edge of All Things
Onwards to Storm of Swords, which will be entirely new content!
I was drunk and enthusiastic when I posted this, ahem.
I'm looking at you, Charlie Stross.
What's that one with the MMO? Halting State? That was good.
I get Charles Stross, Vernor Vinge, and Cory Doctorow mixed up, so I'm not sure which other ones of his I've read.
I know I don't like Cory Doctorow and I can't remember much about the other two.
The Meaning of Liff is hilarious observational comedy pretending to be a dictionary. But I think you have to be older, British, and educated to get a lot of the jokes.
Thankfully...
Moving on to Hyperion now.
I'm finally starting "The Family" by Jeff Sharlett. The book about the Christian fundamentalism that is running our nation.
Fun!
You have to fight through some bad days, to earn the best days of your life.
On the non-literature side, I finished Bad Samaritans By Ha-Joon Chang. I liked how it was written so that the average Economics noob like myself could understand it without making the reader feel like he/she is being treated like a 6 year old child.
I'm about to get started on Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep too. I love me some Film Noir. It's high time I started reading literature that influenced it.
Ash is one of the weirder books that I've ever read - a resurgent group of Visigoths who took the name Carthage under a "permanent darkness", golems, "wild machines", eugenics, psychic powers and "living" pyramids amid an alternate version of Medieval Europe. Wtf. I haven't read it in years, a decade perhaps since it began it's first run on paperback, and though I enjoyed it I couldn't really wrap my head around it.
Currently reading through the Hornblower series for the first time, and enjoying it (especially as a fan of Ioan Gruffudd in the shows). I know that Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series has mostly surpassed it now, but I'll read Hornblower first then move onto them.
Other books read recently include -
Commodork - Sordid Tales From a BBS Junkie by Rob O'Hara (good)
Spying on Ireland: British Intelligence and Irish Neutrality during the Second World War by Eunan O'Halpin (good if a little dry)
Catherine The Great by Robert K. Massie (very interesting account of a fascinating woman)
Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of The Sun King by Antonia Fraser (absolutely love Fraser's writing, another very good book).
Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
It's the pseudo-historical-lingual stuff that puts me off of really enjoying Stephenson, though. He seems to do these kinds of info-dumps in all of his books, and the part that distracts me is that he incorporates them into works of fiction, and often with the implication that he's altering it somewhat to support his plot. If you change history or facts in order to make your plot work, that's fine (and usually to be expected). However, when you veer off into using 30% of your book to explain history and facts with one slight change, I can't tell if I'm learning something or if the author is just opening Wikipedia and doing some selective editing, and that doesn't really interest me.
I've read a fair number of novels that successfully reference past events and do so factually, and leave some open-ended elements in place that can support the plot in an entertaining way. But when the author intentionally blurs the line between facts of a past event, I feel cheated -- and I say that as a geek who enjoys learning about that kind of minutiae. I guess what bugs me about Stephenson is that it feels like he betrays my trust, which is bad form as an author in my book.
And I agree with you on the spoilered bit, since it's a little more than creepy, especially with its odd lack of resolution.
More book stuff tomorrow.
I know the culture are big on changing their genetics, but I think Gurgeh went a bit overboard on his stomach there.
I can't remember if Rule 34 did this or not.
It's the sorta-sequel to Halting State, so it wouldn't surprise me. Haven't read it yet.
Popped over to the library and came away with The handmaid's tale by Margaret Attwood. Folks say it is a classic.
Guild Wars 2: Entriech.3507 | Scythe Gearsnap, Phlork, Irenic
I've seen that book mentioned a lot in political threads, and I've been contemplating reading it. I think I'll finish Nuklear Age first because it's silly and fun (mostly), and maybe at some point I'll get back to slogging through Atlas Shrugged because I hate not finishing books (though this one may deserve to be left unfinished).
Yeah. My current choice was between "the Family" or "Handmaid's Tale".
I'm sure both will be equally upsetting to me.
You have to fight through some bad days, to earn the best days of your life.
Alright, so the machine UI sent back a Shrike to find the human UI.
In the future, Kassad and Rachel stopped the Shrike army from sending back more than one Shrike?
Keats rescued baby Rachel from the Shrike. Future Rachel came back in time with the tombs, took baby Rachel from Keats and then gave it to her father. Sol then took baby Rachel to the future where she would grow up, lead an army, then go back in time to take baby Rachel from Keats to give to her father so that her father could go into the future and TIME LOOP WIBBLY WOBBLY!
But obviously adult Rachel had another mission past that point. What was it? To find and prepare Kassad for that final battle? But why was she accompanying the Shrike? Why be its mistress and then turn on it? I feel like I"m missing something.
A friend told me that some Shrikes are under human control, which just confuses me more trying to figure out how that fits with what I read.
After book...6, I want to say, I basically read them just to say that I had. And by 'read' I mean 'I thumbed through the chapters and if the characters involved weren't Rand or Mat I skipped to the next chapter and repeated the process'.
@Raekreu Have you made it to the books written by Sanderson?
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Yessir, I've actually read all of the books and have to admit that I didn't have high hopes for the conclusion when I heard that Robert Jordan had died. I haven't read any of Sanderson's non-WoT work, but I have to say that if he'd worked with Robert Jordan as co-author at an earlier point in the series, the dozens of meaningless characters, long-winded and largely pointless chapters, and creeping emo-ness of the main characters would have been mitigated tremendously.
Almost done with Book 13. Going to spoiler this:
Rand is a much better character now.