The What Are You Reading thread (now with a simpler name)

[Gfted1]

New D&D Movie Novel Prequel Sets the Stage for Chris Pine's Bard (gizmodo.com)

[Malcador]

Finished Centers of Gravity by Kloos. Disappointment, but was to be expected. Seems Kloos just wanted this series over with, the ending with the cavalry coming to save the day and happy endings all around, hah. 

Series started well, weird jingoism and blatant references aside, really dipped around book 3 or 4.

[Bartimaeus]

Mr. Lovecraft sure had a way with words: The Festival, my discovery courtesy of the game Signalis.

[xzar_monty]

On 1/16/2023 at 9:36 PM, Bartimaeus said:

Mr. Lovecraft sure had a way with words

And an absolute tin ear when it comes to dialogue. But to be fair, I think he recognized it himself. (The reason may have been autobiographical: too much of a loner.)

Currently reading God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens. It's ok, but not one of his best. Some of his trademarks sometimes look like mannerisms; for instance, he likes to front nouns (persons, books, events, etc.) by two (not one, not three) adjectives, as in "the deplorable and untrustworthy Bill Clinton", and so on. It gets tiresome after a while. I also disagree with him at least in the sense that one thing religion does not poison is church architecture. It wouldn't exist without religion, and it is often quite exquisite.

[uuuhhii]

the grim company

author are trying too hard with some character

cole get a pretty good story arc

[Bartimaeus]

Peter Pan and the Starcatchers (2004). I recently read and enjoyed the original Peter Pan (or Peter and Wendy, its proper title), so I thought I would try the next one in the series. I did not know or notice that this was not the same author or made even remotely in the same time period as the original. It's effectively a competent but quite lame direct-to-DVD prequel in classic early 2000s Disney fashion, except it's a book instead of a movie. It's also literally authored by Disney - apparently, they let a bunch of people write what was essentially a pilot chapter, picked what they liked best and rejected the rest, then let their choice of author write five milquetoast Peter Pan books. I do not recommend.

[xzar_monty]

Currently reading El hombre que amaba a los perros (that would be The Man Who Loved Dogs in English), by the Cuban author Leonardo Padura. Looks excellent so far, and I highly recommend it to anyone who can find it in a suitable language. Also pertinent to these times, as the book deals with Trotsky's exile, his murderer, the Spanish Civil War, the Communist Cuba, and so on.

[uuuhhii]

Chronicles of the Black Gate

extremely boring stereotypical setup of orc vs human

iskra the most disgusting insufferable delusional hypocritical and idiotic main character get everything they wanted at the end

asho is only slightly less disgusting

most character are authoritarian bootlicker no matter how many times they  prove they are wrong

it maybe intentionally writen to show the limit of their environment but author are too incompetent to make it work

or maybe author want to write some kind of bitter tragedy

it is all so disappointing

not a trilogy that worth waste any time on

Edited June 16, 2023 by uuuhhii

[xzar_monty]

Brief Candle in the Dark by Richard Dawkins; the second part of his memoirs. The name refers both to Shakespeare (obviously) and Carl Sagan's rather wonderful book on science.

Dawkins is a good writer, although I agree with Neil deGrasse Tyson in that his confrontational style is not optimal for delivering the message he intends. Interestingly, Dawkins acknowledges the problem in this very book, but I don't think he really gets it, because I haven't noticed anything changing.

For someone who's read Dawkins's earlier, more scientific works, the memoir is likely to appear a bit repetitive, because in going through what he has done in his life he will obviously talk about some of the content of what he has written. I didn't mind. What I did mind, a bit, was his all-too-frequent use of hyperbole to describe various people in his life. I don't deny that they are surely intelligent and capable, being famous scientists, Nobel prize winners and so on, but the superlatives do get a bit heavy no matter how justified they ostensibly are.

Anyway, a good book, and I would recommend it. Dawkins clearly has a great love for poetry, and his taste appears quite refined, too.

[Gromnir]

am not a stephen king fan, but after not liking a couple o' his novels, we discovered we enjoyed more than one o' his short stories.

in any event, we won't be reading the new king novel, but we thought the rolling stone article were interesting. 

HA! Good Fun!

[Hurlshort]

15 hours ago, Gromnir said:

am not a stephen king fan, but after not liking a couple o' his novels, we discovered we enjoyed more than one o' his short stories.

in any event, we won't be reading the new king novel, but we thought the rolling stone article were interesting. 

HA! Good Fun!

Stephen King is amazingly prolific, though. I mean, his writing discipline is basically unmatched in this generation. It may not all be Shakespeare, (which is a misnomer, since Shakespeare actually did write quite a bit of average crowd pleasers in between the classics) but I definitely admire the work ethic.

[xzar_monty]

On 9/6/2023 at 7:06 PM, Hurlshort said:

Stephen King is amazingly prolific, though. I mean, his writing discipline is basically unmatched in this generation. It may not all be Shakespeare, (which is a misnomer, since Shakespeare actually did write quite a bit of average crowd pleasers in between the classics) but I definitely admire the work ethic.

What about Joyce Carol Oates, Barbara Cartland, R. L. Stine, Lauran Paine or Ryoki Inoue, for starters, when it comes to being prolific? There is no question that King is prolific, but calling him unmatched is not really justified. (James Patterson doesn't count because he doesn't write his own books.)

Which Shakespeare works would you regard as average crowd pleasers? I mean, The Two Gentlemen of Verona is not very good, but as it was his first, it wasn't written between the classics. For me, The Taming of the Shrew would definitely qualify, but as you said "quite a bit", I wonder if you could specify at least some of them.

[xzar_monty]

On 9/6/2023 at 3:56 AM, Gromnir said:

in any event, we won't be reading the new king novel, but we thought the rolling stone article were interesting.

Thanks for the link! It was interesting, you're quite right.

I have to say that towards the end, he was unintentionally being extremely funny, in my view. I mean this: "It’s like the difference between Budweiser and some generic beer. So both of them get you a little bit tingly, but it ain’t the same." If you asked me to name the most generic beer imaginable, my immediate response would be Budweiser, so King sounds hilarious here.

[majestic]

It happens every now and then that posts repeat on the forum after a while, but it seldom does within the same thread.

7 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

What about Joyce Carol Oates, Barbara Cartland, R. L. Stine, Lauran Paine or Ryoki Inoue, for starters, when it comes to being prolific? There is no question that King is prolific, but calling him unmatched is not really justified. (James Patterson doesn't count because he doesn't write his own books.)

 

Although, well, this particular thread is a little long in the tooth, so that explains it, I guess. 

[xzar_monty]

6 minutes ago, majestic said:

It happens every now and then that posts repeat on the forum after a while, but it seldom does within the same thread.

Ha! Well remembered indeed.

(I certainly didn't remember.)

[Hurlshort]

Hah, and I never responded originally, so I guess I can do it now.

@xzar_montyI don't mean to take anything away from those other authors. I'd still argue that King has the edge, since his work has had the most exposure of the group, but it is definitely worthy of debate. 

As for the Shakespeare comment, it was made a bit flippantly, but I was pulling from what I remember from college, and that was 25 years ago, so forgive me. Looking at the list of plays, I'd say his shift to darker tragicomedies after Queen Elizabeth was what I meant as trying to please the crowd. Honestly I'm not familiar enough with his 37 (38?) plays to really speak on them all. I only know the hits.

[Gromnir]

4 hours ago, majestic said:

It happens every now and then that posts repeat on the forum after a while, but it seldom does within the same thread.

 

gonna disagree. happens often. am personal extreme consistent and have used the simpsons clip for king more than once.

how many times in the wotr thread(s) did we make functional identical posts, particular when responding to complaints about poe and deadfire o' all things. were same complaints, so same response. if there is a a crpg romance discussion and Gromnir makes the bad choice to respond, you will once again get our views on bg2 romances and ravel from ps:t. same bat time...

hans blix, crt, free speech in europe, etc. y'know how often we invoke groundhog day on this board? sure, once we used a clip to show the curious physical and behavioral similarities 'tween ned ryerson and gordon sondland but that were an exception to our typical invocation o' the film.

am having observed, more than once, most o' our posts qualify as spam. the terrible reality is, if you got a good enough memory, you will not be shocked by how often the exact same conversations occur, sometimes only months apart.

recommendation: roll with it.

HA! Good Fun!

[xzar_monty]

7 hours ago, Hurlshort said:

@xzar_montyI don't mean to take anything away from those other authors. I'd still argue that King has the edge, since his work has had the most exposure of the group, but it is definitely worthy of debate. 

As for the Shakespeare comment, it was made a bit flippantly, but I was pulling from what I remember from college, and that was 25 years ago, so forgive me. Looking at the list of plays, I'd say his shift to darker tragicomedies after Queen Elizabeth was what I meant as trying to please the crowd. Honestly I'm not familiar enough with his 37 (38?) plays to really speak on them all. I only know the hits.

Well, surely King's exposure has little to do with how prolific he is, right? I mean, J. D. Salinger has huge exposure and it's all based on just the one book. Your original point was that King's writing discipline is unmatched in this generation. But it's not. He sure is prolific, no question, but he is not unmatched. As for exposure, let us just keep in mind that Barbara Cartland, for instance, has sold more than twice the amount of books that King has.

We know very, very little about the life of Shakespeare -- that's why there is, for instance, no definite biography available, or even much of a biography at all. We have no grounds to say just about anything about the reasons Shakespeare wrote any of his stuff; whether there was an attempt to please the crowd or whatever. This stuff surely cannot be deduced from the texts alone.

[Malcador]

Got the novelizations of Ep 1 to 3, good to read during meetings at work.  Decent enough books, the novelizations of AOTC is a bit better than the film, RoTS' novelization is much better - Anakin turning makes a smidge more sense.

 

[xzar_monty]

Reading the Lord of the Rings in Spanish, just to improve my skills. Every reference to Anduin as "El Río Grande" feels so wrong, even though the translation from English ("The Great River") is accurate. The translator should surely have used an adjective other than "Grande".

[melkathi]

Her name is Rio and she dances on the sand
Just like that river twisting through a dusty land
And when she shines, she really shows you all she can
Oh Rio, Rio dance across the Rio Grande

 

I guess that is a bad translation back to English from Spanish and the original song lyrics were

 

Her name is An and she dances on the sand
Just like that river twisting through a dusty land
And when she shines, she really shows you all she can
Oh An, An dance across the Anduin

 

?

[xzar_monty]

Mary V. Dearborn's newish biography of Ernest Hemingway. An endlessly fascinating, horribly troubled charcter whose family tree is a sorry picture of bipolar disorder, depression, tormented sexuality and suicide. I agree with Dearborn that the work most likely to survive are the short stories and The Sun Also Rises, with some minor additions to that.

Dearborn's focus is on how such a talented person started to have his life go so wrong so early and why he died so young. Good stuff with wonderful photos I hadn't seen before; the one with Marlene Dietrich is particularly charming.

[ShadySands]

All the WoT talk in the TV thread reminded me that I have like 2 books in Sanderson's Stormlight Archive series to read still. 

[Azdeus]

@Bartimaeus@Sarex

Did either of you two read either the Deverry or Paksenarrion series?

[InsaneCommander]

18 hours ago, ShadySands said:

All the WoT talk in the TV thread reminded me that I have like 2 books in Sanderson's Stormlight Archive series to read still. 

I still have to read The Last Metal and the secret novels.