What are you reading ?

[Musopticon?]

The green one has spoken you know. Let's try to be more civil this time. Same thread, same discussion, no fruitless, albeit fun, filter roulette. So, what are you reading; books, comics, manuals, magazines? And to make the thread more interesting; why?

[Kaftan Barlast]

The third volume of Dreamwave's Transformers G1 comics :D

 

 

 

Its the best Transformers media there is, everything is just top notch. The art is about the best non-artsy style Ive ever seen in a comic. The first volume was sadly inflicted by the jap disease and had some dubiously drawn characters(the 50 yearold general who looked like he was 17 f.ex)

[Darth Launch]

I'm currently re-reading Empire magazine because their latest issue isnt out yet and I'm sick of re-reading all the books in the house... I need to get to a book store, methinks...

 

DL

[metadigital]

I'm currently re-reading Empire magazine because their latest issue isnt out yet and I'm sick of re-reading all the books in the house... I need to get to a book store, methinks...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The book stores have coffee, so you can browse (read: read!) books whilst supping on an appropriate beverage (hot or cold, as whimsey dictates), all for the cost of said beverage ... I guess you may even get away with a free glass or two of tap water, depending on the magnificence of your cajones ...

 

 

I read for enlightenment and the consequential enjoyment I receive from learning another piece of information, another thought that has been passed from some other being to me, via the abstracted medium of written words ... what a concept: an idea -- a meme -- is created in another mind, represented via a clumsy process (because as flexible as a language is, it will never match the mind for freedom of expression) and interpreted -- hopefully with some degree of precision -- by another mind.

 

It is a beautiful thing. A pity it is all-too-often wasted on the trivial and the banal ...

[WITHTEETH]

actaully Philip K. ****'s book

A Man In A High castle is quite good. its about what if the nazi's won WW2.

[><FISH'>]

profanity filter needs updating.

[Darth Flatus]

Fatherland by robert harris is like that - its OK

[metadigital]

While I agree that Philip K. Diсk (aka PKD) is arguably one of the top three most important SF writers in the golden age of last century, I don't share your admiration of that particular novel.

 

I much prefer his short stories; I think his ideas were breathtaking and his -- very competent -- writing style was perhaps not on the same level as that genius.

 

[Arkendale]

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

 

Angels and Demons

 

The Rule of Four (super-boring, horrifically long-winded book )

 

 

Meta are you a genius or something? Sometimes i can barely understand what you're saying

[Kaftan Barlast]

Regarding Sci-Fi, dont you think there's far too much of the writers trying to force in their neat & brilliant ideas into a story that doesnt really need a detailed explanation?

 

Both techie ideas like "..the shipped was propelled by a magnacoil engine of a late 21st century contruct where the technology of.." and world ideas "..Cygnus station had been built two hundred years earlier during the F

[11XHooah]

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Is this better than the movie? I was contemplating reading it, but I just wanted to know if it was any better than its film counterpart before I buy it.

[Darth Flatus]

no. save yourself the time and money.

 

 

 

EDIT: .. oh unless you have read other SW novels and like them - in which case you may enjoy it.

[11XHooah]

no. save yourself the time and money.

 

 

 

EDIT: .. oh unless you have read other SW novels and like them - in which case you may enjoy it.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I'm into the New Jedi Order series. I also really like the Jedi Apprentice series, although they were completely made for kids :"> But they revealed how Obi-Wan and Quigon became master and apprentice, and what kinds of missions they had to conduct before Episode I. But seeing as how I've already seen the movie, I think I may pass on Episode III the book.

[metadigital]

Meta are you a genius or something? Sometimes i can barely understand what you're saying 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I'm just an old reader. :D

You, too, can speak like you've swallowed a thesaurus; just keep reading!

While I agree that Philip K. Diсk (aka PKD) is arguably one of the top three most important SF writers in the golden age of last century, I don't share your admiration of that particular novel.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Might I ask who the other two writers are?

 

I too share an admiration for PKD's writing...

 

I have never been able to find his short stories in Romania...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Well, I was trying not to rank order them, because all comparisons are odious. There are a lot of writers that have contributed just one novel, for example, but that contribution is critical and super enjoyable.

 

But you don't want to hear me equivocating, do you?

 

For sheer volume of important contributions, Isaac Asimov must rank up there. I would put Arthur C Clarke in the top few, as well, although he is nowhere near as prolific in his profound scientific concepts (he openly cites his inspirations, e.g. for . a large diamond at the centre of Jupiter in 2010, his second Odyssey novel), but he did "invent" the radio satellite! Also his Profiles of the Future contains some very sober concepts for all SF writers to consider when delving into fiction based on our laws of physics.

 

I have read a lot of SF writers, though -- probably forgotten more than most people have read :D

 

Political novels that dress up as SF to avoid the censors (e.g. Man in the High Castle) are always interesting too: why invoke the wrath of the totalitarian forces in society talking about equal rights for all races, when you can use a green-skinned monster to the same effect, to put the same message across but encoded to avoid conflict with the entrenched opinions, even in an unsuspecting readership ...

 

The Man Who Rule the Universe is a particular favourite, one of a few Alan Dean Foster original novels (he tends to write film novelisations).

 

William Gibson ("Neuromancer" -- which was an okay game, too), of course, and Vernor Vinge wrote a couple of interesting novels on a plausible time travel device. (Only forwards: the Peace War and Marooned in Real Time.) Very interesting readng, I highly recommend it.

 

Ray Bradbury ("Fahrenheit 451"), Robert Heilein ("Job", named after the Biblical character, is terrific), boy, the list is almost endless. I still try to swing by a bookshop and pick up a SF anthology for the latest year: I find some very interesting short stories in those, too.

 

But then, I haven't read SF seriously for a few years now. I mainly read NF, things like Oliver Sacks' The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat

[metadigital]

Regarding Sci-Fi, dont you think there's far too much of the writers trying to force in their neat & brilliant ideas into a story that doesnt really need a detailed explanation?

 

Both techie ideas like "..the shipped was propelled by a magnacoil engine of a late 21st century contruct where the technology of.." and world ideas "..Cygnus station had been built two hundred years earlier during the F

[Cantousent]

I'm reading Xenocide by Andrew Scott Card. I hope none of his names is in the language filter.

 

Anyhow, I'm reading this one because I've enjoyed his earlier works in the Ender's series. however, as usual, I'm losing interest in the books progressively as I get away from the original book in the series.

 

If I had read Speaker for the Dead first, I suspect it might have been my favorite. The rest, though, no chance.

 

Don't get me wrong, the books are still fun, but there's not much chance I would have rushed out to buy the other books in the series had I not read Ender's Game or Speaker for the Dead first.

 

So far, I'm on the third book of the Ender storyline and the fourth book of the Bean storyline.

[Nameless One]

dead authors books...mostly because I would be swamped by trying to figure out what's new but not crap

 

with books which are older then, say, fifty (more likely hundred) years it's easy...if they are still around (or at least the names of there authors) they have to be kind of good...but I still have to make it past the 300 years...I have very little idea what happend on the book market around (?) 1000ad (+-700y)...is there some knowledge around here?

 

 

and, at the moment, I prefer books from europeans...the big old russians, some frenchman, and german authors (thomas mann...he is my favorite writer)...most of what I read is naturalism or realism (or the borderline-mixture-stuff)

 

currently reading:

dostoevsky - The Idiot

some tolstoy novellas

 

 

but I constantly try broadening my horizon and read something further away from the canon

 

on the shelf:

a yoram yovell book for which I don't know the english title

banana yoshimoto - amrita

Griboedov - grief of mind

the hole new world canon

african/south american literature

...

[metadigital]

Not much in English back then. The first major English works are:

Beowolf (not in English but Anglo Saxon)

The Cantebury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer (last decade of the fourteenth century)

There wasn't a lot of reading because there weren't a lot fo books!

 

Johann Gutenberg only developed his movable type printing press in the mid fifteenth century, and the first book to really take off in England was the King James Bible (transliterated into English from Hebrew mainly (estimated 80%) by the poetic genius of William Tyndale (who was of course burned at the stake for this heresy by King Henry the VIII about half a centurry before this English Bible was published in the first years of the seventeenth century).

 

Shakespeare's plays and stuff

Tom Jones (regarded as the first English "novel"), written by Henry Fielding. It's definitley worth reading; the sentence structure is beautiful (and quite reminiscent of high German), although it is possible to have too much of a good thing: I was getting a little bored by the 1200th page ...

 

Then you've got a lot of good stuff, like Charles Dickens.

[Cantousent]

I recently read Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov. It's a masterpiece, no doubt. Still, for raw emotional impact, Crime and Punishment is better. I considered trying to learn the language after I read my first Russian author. That wasn't feasible at the time, so I just kept reading translations. At the time, I was reading the Aeneid in Latin, Herodotus in Greek, and a whole slew of Russian titles in translation, including Tolstoy's "Death of Ivan Ilych" and Dostoevsky's "Double" and Crime and Punishment. Great fun.

 

...But I was literally starting to go out of my mind. I needed to do a little light reading before I continued with the heavier themes. A friend warned me that my outlook was starting to be a bit warped by my reading selection and suggested that I try Enger's Game and Eragon. I loved Ender's Game. I thought Eragon was an excellent effort for so young a writer. I'm not a big fan of the book, but it was a quick read. So, while I have the time, I'm set to finish the Ender's series. After that, I just don't know. This is the first bit of light reading I've done in some time and I have to say, I enjoy it.

[metadigital]

I can empathise completely with you Eldar. A few years ago I stopped reading altogether. As I have always been a voracious reader this eventually struck me as odd. I eventually concluded (after reading some SF) that I had just become tired of a diet of strict NF.

 

I'll never forget the feeling of reading a SF novel; it was like the breaking monsoon rain quenching the baked Earth of my mind ... delightful!

 

Afterwards I picked up my reading again. (Now it's just a matter of time management ...)

[Nameless One]

thanks for the info metadigital...I'm still curious what happend between the greek-dramatist/philosopher thing and and the itineraries/stuff you talked about/and later shakespeare (just the amateurish categories I think in)...in the western world, I mean...what was the "must read" of the 8th century...what led the nytimes bestsellerlist in 650ad?

[Calax]

personally i think that Glenn Cook is a very good writer. His books (black Company) became the basis for Bungies (while they still worked on macs) Myth Trilogy. His first three books are the best and his last is one of the better ones. He always has a theme of "darkness is in all of us" and "shades of darkness" because usually his good guy's are either working for the bad guy's to kill even worse ones or they are trying to kill sombody with serious power and that requires some serious power of their own. The main protaganist's are a bunch of angry little guy's who work as mercanaraies (i know i spelled that wrong) and he makes no attempt to change the fact's that merc's are a very ugly bunch.

[EnderAndrew]

Gilgamesh rip-offs?

[Kaftan Barlast]

I just peeked at something horrible "Vampirella vs. Shi". Apparently some japhead decided that it would be a great idea to take these western comics and just draw manga big-eye heads on them(!) while keeping everything else normal. It looks insane and more than a little pedophilistic to have childrens heads on very volutpous and scantily clad female bodies.

[metadigital]

thanks for the info metadigital...I'm still curious what happend between the greek-dramatist/philosopher thing and and the itineraries/stuff you talked about/and later shakespeare (just the amateurish categories I think in)...in the western world, I mean...what was the "must read" of the 8th century...what led the nytimes bestsellerlist in 650ad?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Very few people (in Europe, anyway) could read at those times. Most of the scholarship was taking place in the arabic lands, so they took over the literary traditions of the classics (after the Roman Empire was extinguished finally at Constantinople by the Ottomans); that's why the Arabic words for algebra and alcohol are still used in English today.

 

There was a rich Venetian with a library before Guttenberg; his extensive collection ranged to SIX books.

 

Mostly the Roman Catholic Church was the centre of learning (and science), and therefore most -- but not all -- readers were senior clergy. Even the monks were pretty illiterate, copying letter for letter passages from the Bible (and making mistakes!); the nobility would have a better literacy rate, if they cared.

 

So your bestseller in 650ACE would be something written in Persian or Arabic, if not the Bible.