I'd like to know what the fine people of this forum are reading. Perhaps currently, but recently also or maybe in the future...
I would also like to know if they are good books, and why I hope!
I need to read and annotate The Things They Carried for the next school year. According to my brother (who's already read it), it's great for analyzing, but not the most riveting for leisure-reading.
Funny, I just in the last month read tw books (first time I've read in awhile). Pathfinder by Orson Scott Card (Quite trippy!), and just now finished Halo: Cryptum, the first book in the Forerunner Saga (very interesting if you're a fan of Halo).
Much as I liked parts of the Ender series (the Shadow books more than the Speaker books), I find I can't read any Orson Scott Card anymore. Knowing his political beliefs makes it hard to divorce my feelings about his ideas from my opinions of his books.
It's like trying to go back and read the Narnia books now that I'm no longer seven and know they're Christian allegories -- I wouldn't enjoy them the same way because I'd be passively looking for the Christian shit instead of enjoying the fantasy.
By volume, most of my reading these days are law school textbooks.
But for entertainment, I recently picked up a copy of Go Down Moses, and Absolom, Absolom, both by Faulkner.
And I always habitually re-read the Thomas Covenant books every 2 years or so. *Fan mode: ON*
Quote from: Darkmoon on June 16, 2011, 01:14:11 PM
Much as I liked parts of the Ender series (the Shadow books more than the Speaker books), I find I can't read any Orson Scott Card anymore. Knowing his political beliefs makes it hard to divorce my feelings about his ideas from my opinions of his books.
I suppose I'm lucky I have no idea what his political beliefs are? :B (and I'm thinking it would also be best to stay that way...)
Yeah, that can get frustrating sometimes.
Personally I have a lot of books that I really like, but I'm currently tackling Game of Thrones (and the others) by George R. R. Martin because Dance of Dragons just came out. Or will come out soon. I'm actually not sure if it was June or July. Anyway, I like this series because of the way the author weaves so many people's lives and perspectives together with each one being a unique standpoint to create one overall story. The intrigue, plot twists, the details added... I find I'm catching so much more this time around than I did the first time I read them.
I could recommend a few books; but currently I'm going through my mom's collection of things by Dean Koontz (at her insistence xP) And many of them are quite good. He writes beautifully suspenseful psychological thriller stories (you could call them horror, but only in a believably outerworldly sense) that still leave you with satisfaction at the ending when you finish. That's just me of course, one's mileage may vary, but I do like to analyze another author's style of writing whenever I read them too.
The latest one I finished, The Taking, is a very intriguing one. I daresay it should be a movie.
You all seem to like fiction very much! Has anyone read a great non-fiction book recently?
Quote from: TheDXM on June 17, 2011, 08:41:00 PM
You all seem to like fiction very much! Has anyone read a great non-fiction book recently?
My college physics textbook! :D
Quote from: techmaster-glitch on June 17, 2011, 09:40:04 PM
Quote from: TheDXM on June 17, 2011, 08:41:00 PM
You all seem to like fiction very much! Has anyone read a great non-fiction book recently?
My college physics textbook! :D
Seconded.
The Science of Materials.
Hrm. Currently I'm plowing through some Mercedes Lackey - specifically, in the last month or so, I've been going through the Elves On The Road serieses.
That's Bedlam's Bard (Knight of Ghosts and Shadows, Bedlam Boyz, Beyond World's End, Spirits White as Lightning, Mad Maudlin, Music To My Sorrow, and Bedlam's Edge) skipping the Diana Tregard series (because I don't have any), catching the first four of the Serrated Edge series (Born to Run, Chrome Circle, When The Bough Breaks, and Wheels of Fire) but not the latter five, again because I don't have them. Then going through This Scepter'd Isle (This Scepter'd Isle, Ill Met by Moonlight, By Slanderous Tongues, and now on And Less Than Kind)
Other than that, there's an assortment of others I've read as well, although less recently; Tom Godwin's The Cold Equations, five of Travis S Taylor's work (One Day On Mars, The Quantum Connection, The Tau Ceti Agenda, Von Neumann's War, and Warp Speed). And it's always nice to chew through the 20 or so books in the Miles Vorkosigan series by Lois McMaster Bujold.
... but I digress.
Quote from: Corgatha Taldorthar on June 16, 2011, 03:26:54 PM
By volume, most of my reading these days are law school textbooks.
But for entertainment, I recently picked up a copy of Go Down Moses, and Absolom, Absolom, both by Faulkner.
And I always habitually re-read the Thomas Covenant books every 2 years or so. *Fan mode: ON*
I'm reading 'Against All Things Ending' currently.
Read the Gap Sequence?
Quote from: techmaster-glitch on June 17, 2011, 09:40:04 PM
My college physics textbook! :D
A old boyfriend of mine enjoyed physics very much, and math, and numbers... But I did not understand it all!
What was it about, and what made it so fun?
Quote from: rabid_fox on June 18, 2011, 06:20:44 AM
Quote from: Corgatha Taldorthar on June 16, 2011, 03:26:54 PM
By volume, most of my reading these days are law school textbooks.
But for entertainment, I recently picked up a copy of Go Down Moses, and Absolom, Absolom, both by Faulkner.
And I always habitually re-read the Thomas Covenant books every 2 years or so. *Fan mode: ON*
I'm reading 'Against All Things Ending' currently.
Read the Gap Sequence?
I keep meaning to. I have The Gap into Vision and The Gap into Power, but not the others, and whenever I go hunting for the first book, something comes up and distracts me, and I shelve the project :< One of these days.
Quote from: TheDXM on June 18, 2011, 02:05:05 PM
Quote from: techmaster-glitch on June 17, 2011, 09:40:04 PM
My college physics textbook! :D
A old boyfriend of mine enjoyed physics very much, and math, and numbers... But I did not understand it all!
What was it about, and what made it so fun?
You get to literally learn how and why the world works. And once you understand the rules that govern our reality, you can join the exalted ranks of those who can manipulate it, or those who discover more rules:
Engineers and scientists ;)
but seriously, it de-mystifies how a lot of common everyday things work. Why, for example, just the other day I was explaining to a friend how their refrigerator works. Thermodynamics and fluid mechanics, ahoy! And yes, for any physics above the high school level, it is calculus-based and math-intensive. To me, it's actually very facinating to learn exactly how our world is literally defined by math, and how calculus in particular factors into virtually any manmade device today.
Quote from: Corgatha Taldorthar on June 18, 2011, 03:19:41 PM
Quote from: rabid_fox on June 18, 2011, 06:20:44 AM
Quote from: Corgatha Taldorthar on June 16, 2011, 03:26:54 PM
By volume, most of my reading these days are law school textbooks.
But for entertainment, I recently picked up a copy of Go Down Moses, and Absolom, Absolom, both by Faulkner.
And I always habitually re-read the Thomas Covenant books every 2 years or so. *Fan mode: ON*
I'm reading 'Against All Things Ending' currently.
Read the Gap Sequence?
I keep meaning to. I have The Gap into Vision and The Gap into Power, but not the others, and whenever I go hunting for the first book, something comes up and distracts me, and I shelve the project :< One of these days.
Everything you love about the 'Covenant' series but so much more...more...awful. I say that in the best possible way because Donaldson's glory is that he writes awful things happening to awful people in awful situations forever awful so well.
It is probably my favourite set of novels.
Quote from: techmaster-glitch on June 18, 2011, 06:52:55 PM
Quote from: TheDXM on June 18, 2011, 02:05:05 PM
Quote from: techmaster-glitch on June 17, 2011, 09:40:04 PM
My college physics textbook! :D
A old boyfriend of mine enjoyed physics very much, and math, and numbers... But I did not understand it all!
What was it about, and what made it so fun?
You get to literally learn how and why the world works. And once you understand the rules that govern our reality, you can join the exalted ranks of those who can manipulate it, or those who discover more rules:
Engineers and scientists ;)
there's also a lot of goddamn math
Quote from: techmaster-glitch on June 16, 2011, 12:43:51 PM
Funny, I just in the last month read tw books (first time I've read in awhile). Pathfinder by Orson Scott Card (Quite trippy!),
Oh man, Card writes books that are far more than trippy. At least when I read them. He takes logic I once known and crushes it, wait, no, that doesn't describe it.
Actually, I have no idea how to describe it, I don't even have any idea what I'm talking about right now.
But for the book thing, I finished the Hunger Games, and loved every single page of the thing. I couldn't stop flipping the pages.
I just finished rereading Charles Stross's laundry series. and I would recomend them to anyone. The Atrocity archives, Jennifer morgue, and Fuller memorandum, along with assorted short stories. It's a realy interesting series of books about a british secret agent working to keep Lovecraft style deamons from eating peoples minds.
though now I've moved onto the mortal engine series, which starts off with the city of London hunting a small mining village intent on devouring it
Well, I have finished 'Against all things ending' and now I am pushing my eyeballs into Dune.
Just finished Exile's Honor and Exile's Valor, by Mercedes Lackey.
Both part of the Heralds of Valdemar series. The second one picks up about six months after the end of the first one.
Quote from: LionHeart on June 30, 2011, 12:17:16 AM
Just finished Exile's Honor and Exile's Valor, by Mercedes Lackey.
Both part of the Heralds of Valdemar series. The second one picks up about six months after the end of the first one.
Mecerdies Lackey's Valdemar universe is pretty darn cool. I recommend it to most anyone!
Personally, I haven't done that much reading recently, aside from updates to two online epics: the Light on Shattered Water (http://crash.ihug.co.nz/~howellg/stories/stories.html) saga by Greg Howell(now into it's third book), and the Spirit Walker (http://www.weavespinner.net/Worlds_of_Fel.htm) saga by James Galloway A.K.A. Fel, currently halfway through it's second book.
Also, I recommend Fel's other works, listed on that page, especially if you like long stories - His books are frigging *long*, yet incredibly full of content. Think Mecerdies Lackey's level of content/page, but with books at least 5x in length.
After balking at the cost of the Kindle e-books for this year's Anthrocon trip, I raided Project Gutenberg instead, and read through Dracula on the flight to and from Pittsburgh, and have since then been reading some out-of-copyright SF titles that I found there.
On the train to the airport I read 'Operation Terror' by Murray Leinster, sadly the only one of his works which seems to be available ("The Wailing Asteroid" was one of his best, IMHO).
On the way back, I read "The Moon Pool" by A. Merritt (1919), and I'm currently finishing its sequel, "The Metal Monster" (1920), which is kind of cute in that Mr. Merritt cameos himself. It is fair to say that neither of these stories have aged terribly well, though they did the job in terms of keeping me amused.
Worryingly, I first read that as 'kept me aroused' and questioned reality until I rescanned what I'd previously wordknown of the situation beheld in the post gone by.
Quote from: thegayhare on June 28, 2011, 01:34:46 PM
I just finished rereading Charles Stross's laundry series. and I would recomend them to anyone. The Atrocity archives, Jennifer morgue, and Fuller memorandum, along with assorted short stories. It's a realy interesting series of books about a british secret agent working to keep Lovecraft style deamons from eating peoples minds.
though now I've moved onto the mortal engine series, which starts off with the city of London hunting a small mining village intent on devouring it
Heh... am a fan of Laundry as well. A nice thing to point out... the service they work for is also quite bureaucratic and underfunded, leading to some humour.
A big thing, and what essentially got me hooked (Saphroneth got me into these ) (asides from actual correct use of hacker slang) is *extremely* well thought out worldbuilding by the author. Essentially everything that happens makes sense, stuff is well researched, and the invented bits seem believable.
I have read 'Dune' and I enjoyed it. I will continue the series later, for I'm now reading "Terminal Worlds" by Reynolds. So far, it's a B-movie in book form, enjoyable but you know it's crap.
The rest of the series, IMO, is good, but not as good as the first book. It's more......... "artistic", as Herbert tries to deal more directly with themes of free will, and comfort vs strength, etc, but it doesn't quite come off as effectively to me.
Quote from: VAE on July 06, 2011, 12:02:32 AM
Heh... am a fan of Laundry as well. A nice thing to point out... the service they work for is also quite bureaucratic and underfunded, leading to some humour.
A big thing, and what essentially got me hooked (Saphroneth got me into these ) (asides from actual correct use of hacker slang) is *extremely* well thought out worldbuilding by the author. Essentially everything that happens makes sense, stuff is well researched, and the invented bits seem believable.
I agree, the world is wonderfully well written and it all makes sense in context, I like all the detail they did going into explaining basilisk and Medusa weaponry. And I love all the nerdy bits they tend to throw in about Bob. hell PIMPF was just a load of fun to read. of and the extream nature of the beaurocracy makes sense if you think about it. I mean in fuller memo random you find out that it you manage yo get a paperclip that was on a very important document then with the right know how you can find that document, or even read it with out ever finding it. so its kinda important to keep track of the office supplies in bob's line of work
I'll also admit I'm a little sad that for the most part the American equivilent of the laundry , "the black chamber" (not there real name no one knows what they call themself) is pretty much unflinchingly evil. granted the laundry does some pretty dodgy stuff, the night watch staff, the scorpion stare network, the library warehouse staff, and the things the auditors is terrible. Plus the fact that they are actually looking into manufacturing more items like moe's violin (though that apparently under duress and moe is against it but nightmare green makes for strange bedfellows.) but the black chamber is just needlessly evil
If a laundry agents carry warrent cards that will basicly turn your brain into vannilla pudding if you try to spill the beans on state secrets and if you die on duty you will be resurected as a brain eating zombie working night time security or in the library. the black chamber instead binds a deamon into your body that monitors your thoughts and if you even think a disloyal thought to hard it will eat your soul, to top it off you also have to feed those deamons (in the book the two deamons mention are a sucubus, and a necrophage) usualy by killing civillians. the black chamber also has a secret supreme court rulling that says only humans can be us citizens. anything else found in the country like say the small village in california partially made up of human deep one hybrids have no civil rights and the black chamber can do anything they want.
sorry to ramble but I just love the luandry world
I've also found an interestign new book Robopocalypse
It's written in a similer format to WWZ, its a telling of the history of a recent war, this one the machine uprising. but rather then having the auther work for the un and travel the world interviewing people to get many differnt perspectives. the teller is a soldier writting out transcripts from a machine library brain. it doesn't work as well as it did in wwz I think, the story advances to fast I think, and it could use some broader perspectives. it's really rather well done in the build up to and the telling of zero hour but after that... suddenly the humans are using lobatomised robot solders as mounts, military exo skeletons are prevelent dispite them not being mentioned untill after the machines took over. even in the stories the humans manage to go from nearly utterly destroyed to winning the war in only about 3 years with no industral infestructure left to them. but all in all It's a fun story and the stories of the precurser virus and zero hour are really good.
and I think a lot more could have been done with Freeborn squad
Hard to find good fantasy nowadays, but I'll see if I can't give Mercedes Lackey a try, it seems popular here.
I'd have to recommend Scar Night by Alan Campbell. Fantasy / Steampunk that manages to take the concept and fly with it, rather than suck with it. The later two books in the series are less awesome, but I did get enjoyment from them. The last book, God of Clocks, was the worst, in my opinion, because the writer tried to expand the scope of the novels far too much, but that's just my opinion.
If you haven't read "The Name of the Wind" or "A Wise Man's Fear", by Pat Rothfuss, just because they are popular does not mean they suck.
Quote from: Cogidubnus on July 17, 2011, 05:35:29 PM
Hard to find good fantasy nowadays, but I'll see if I can't give Mercedes Lackey a try, it seems popular here.
Be aware that there is a lot of "Mercedes Lackey and Joe Bloggs" type stuff out there - the quality varies quite a bit, so if you run across one you don't like, don't tar it all with the same brush. If you want, nudge me at some point and we can discuss some finer points, and come up with some you might like.
Also, Mercedes herself covers a fairly wide stretch of different types of novels, so even if you limit yourself to her and her alone, you may find your tastes differ...
I bought an ton of John Le Carre stuff to read on the beach (the Karla trilogy, Spy Who Came In From The Cold, and The Little Drummer Girl). Anyone else like/have experience?
Regarding Mercedes Lackey, I read her Owl Mage Series and really enjoyed it.
Took me about a week to finish all three books while on holiday.
Raymond E. Fiest, Robert Jordan and David Eddings are probably my favourite authors at the moment but joradn deffinitally tops the list with the Wheel of Time series. Fiest's novels are intriuging in that while 90% of his books all link to the same story the books never follow a set time line and the main character for each book changes while still keeping all characters relavant.
"The Horrific Sufferings of the Mind-Reading Monster Hercules Barefoot, His Wonderful Love and His Terrible Hatred" by Carl-Johan Vallgren
Just finished this one. Read it. It's great.
Currently ploughing Robin Hobb.
speaking of books looks like boarders is going out of busniess so if you want to get some deals all waldenbooks and borders book stores have it 40 percent off
I'm on Book 11 of the Wheel of Time Series... I started back in june 2008... maybe by late next year I'll have the series finished.