Books

[Darth InSidious]

The Picture of Dorian Gray.

 

There's rather too much reverie for my taste... a tendency, like amorous birds of prey, to fly up, up into the dizzy heights of such Romantic prose as Wordworth might have dreamt... Ah! The exlcamations! (etc.)

 

So far, I think Wilde was a far better playwright than a novelist; the structure and the content are fine, but the style is somewhat irritating. Perhaps I'm simply impatient.

 

I also had no idea how many of his witticisms he recycled in various works.

[Blarghagh]

Reading Stephen King's "On Writing". It actually has some interesting things to say, and interesting methods that I can try out.

 

EDIT: Not that I want to be a writer, but I have written scripts for animated short films. I'm just not very good.

Edited December 22, 2009 by TrueNeutral

[Lare Kikkeli]

Reading Stephen King's "On Writing". It actually has some interesting things to say, and interesting methods that I can try out.

 

EDIT: Not that I want to be a writer, but I have written scripts for animated short films. I'm just not very good.

 

I read this in the summer but skipped most of the technical parts. Even read that way I really enjoyed it

[Blarghagh]

Yeah, the technical parts weren't that interesting to me. Mostly because English is my second language, and I learned it almost exclusively from reading and watching television. I haven't a clue on how it works and do it mostly on what feels right.

[Lare Kikkeli]

I actually read a translated version found from our summercabin, the place is filed with old books, no one knows where most of them are from. It was even less interesting in half-translated finnish.

Edited December 22, 2009 by Lare Kikkeli

[Darth InSidious]

Yeah, the technical parts weren't that interesting to me. Mostly because English is my second language, and I learned it almost exclusively from reading and watching television. I haven't a clue on how it works and do it mostly on what feels right.

So, like most who speak it as a first language.

[Blarghagh]

Possibly, but I think I spell better than the majority of that group.

 

At some point I decided there wasn't a real reason to learn the grammar rules of a language that consists mostly out of exceptions to those rules.

[Guard Dog]

Now reading Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by Dava Sobel

 

and

 

The Lance and the Shield by Robert Utley. It's a biography of Sitting Bull. Very interesting man.

[Enoch]

More Raymond Chandler: a collection of shorter works entitled The Simple Art of Murder, which includes as introduction the essay of the same name famously published in The Atlantic, pointing out how lousy most mystery fiction is while defending those rare bits of well-written, realistic, "hard-boiled" mystery fiction (Dashiell Hammett in particular).

[Blarghagh]

Starting on Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. Then getting back into the Discworld series with Pyramids and Guards! Guards!

[Guard Dog]

Now reading The African Queen by CS Forrester. He is really famous for his Horatio Hornblower novels but this one was he best in my opinion. It never recieved much love even after it was made into an excellent movie by the same name in the '50s.

 

Also reading Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls. There is just something about Papa Hemingways stories that I have always found appealing.

[Walsingham]

Finished Hammer of the Abyss which was so-so and could be avoided, frankly. no major shocks, although it's interesting to hear about some of the latterly traitor legions before they er... trait.

 

Also finished Adeptus Titanicus which is an absolute snorter. Buy it, read it.

 

Nearly done with Nemesis by Max Hastings, which describes the war against Japan with his typical magisterial grace.

[Darth InSidious]

Finished Dorian Gray - an OK plot marred by some rather lazy writing, IMO; in particular the bits where Wilde quite blatantly plagiarised about four museum catalogues just to pad the thing out. Would certainly make a better play/film than it does a novel.

 

Also read Pratchett's Nation - amusing, if fairly insubstantial. Not going to set the world alight, but it was quite fun, clearly discussed questions important to Pratchett, was amusing where it needed to be, serious where that was necessary, and generally good fun, even if it does at time feel as though he's laying the point on a bit thick.

 

Next was Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders by John Mortimer; the quasi-hero recalls his first case, as a 'white wig', alone and without a leader; silly, rather insubstantial, and quite fun.

 

The Man Who Was Thursday was probably the highlight of my Christmas reading - fast-paced, funny, thrilling, bizarre, and utterly stupendous. Although it took me a very long time to work out the ending. Nevertheless, quite excellent.

 

Finally, and somewhat inadvisably, I'm grinding my way through Joyce's Portrait of the Artist, which is, to be quite honest, dire. It's not badly written - quite the opposite, really - but it's constructed in such a way as to actually turn you off reading it with a truly magnificent attention to annoyingness.

 

None of this is helped by the banal, and often rather depressing subject matter - at present, the winter term at Clongowes boarding school in Ireland, for a boy of, judging by the style of narrative, between eight and twelve.

 

Supposedly, this is Joyce at his most readable, and certainly it's a far cry from the gibberish of Finnegans Wake. It's still pretty ghastly stuff, though. I'm not sure what I'll think by the end (assuming I get that far), but at present I really wouldn't recommend it.

[Walsingham]

The Man Who Was Thursday was probably the highlight of my Christmas reading - fast-paced, funny, thrilling, bizarre, and utterly stupendous. Although it took me a very long time to work out the ending. Nevertheless, quite excellent.

 

Finally, and somewhat inadvisably, I'm grinding my way through Joyce's Portrait of the Artist, which is, to be quite honest, dire. It's not badly written - quite the opposite, really - but it's constructed in such a way as to actually turn you off reading it with a truly magnificent attention to annoyingness.

 

I wholeheartedly agree with the first one, and suggest you try The Napoleon of Notting Hill if you haven't already. Neil Gaiman fans might be interested to hear that yesterday he cited Chesterton as one of his favourite childhood authors.

 

I've been meaning to read Finnegan's Wake ever since I went to see the Reduced Shakespeare Company and they made me get up on stage and discuss it while wearing a wig.

[Hurlshort]

It's been a decade, but I remember reading The Dubliners by James Joyce and enjoying it. But short stories can often be easier to handle than a full novel.

[Musopticon?]

Okay, I bought and was gifted with some books over Christmas:

 

Best Served Cold by Joe Abercombie

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters by Jane Au...Ben H. Winters

Gotrek and Felix Omnibus #1 by William King(it was 5 euros, gimme a break)

Guns of Navarone

Children of Hurin by the Tolkiens

Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco

Sword Song by Robert Cornwell

The Bonehunters by Steven Erikson

Macbeth and Twelth Night by a certain playwright

Blood - A Southern Fantasy by Michael Moorc0ck

Guns of Navarone by Alistair McLean

Diamond Dogs and Turquoise Days by Alistair Reynolds

 

As to the question of when I have the time to read any of this, besides the Malazan book I already finished, well...time will tell.

[Shryke]

what's peoples opinion on Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series

 

i read the first book years ago but don't really remember anything about it at all

and recently at a friends place read through the first 60 or so pages of it

 

it seems kinda mediocre, and in no way caught my attention. i was just curious to see if the series got any better and whether it's worth a shot

[Hurlshort]

I started "The Summoner" by Gail Z. Martin. I was looking for a light fantasy series to enjoy and so far it has fit the bill very well.

[Raithe]

The Sword of Truth gets better.. then gets .. worse. It starts diverting into some reallly obvious anvil over the head philosophy "lectures". While after hm, book 5 I think it is there are some good points and some nice character development, the story itself seems to go off-track. And the ending is just.. way too much of the deus ex machinae type of hand waving in the last chapter.

[Shryke]

ugh really doesn't sound worth it then

[Raithe]

ugh really doesn't sound worth it then

 

Having said that, I do mostly enjoy the first 5 books. The characters grow on you and there are plenty of good ideas. It's just the author turned into one of those guys who just.. jumped the shark. He suddenly stopped being a "fantasy author" and became a "philosophical novelist".

 

If you want a good idea of how it all goes have a look at it's listing on TvTropes

[Purkake]

I'm reading the Honor Harrington series by David Weber. It started off okay, but there is a serious lack of interesting characters and more importantly, space battles in the later books. And I will never get over the horrible spaceship design.

[Raithe]

I'm reading the Honor Harrington series by David Weber. It started off okay, but there is a serious lack of interesting characters and more importantly, space battles in the later books. And I will never get over the horrible spaceship design.

 

The key point to that.. is that the spaceships are designed that way for a reason.. First of all, so the author can simulate "space battles" with navies very reminiscent of ye olde Napoleonic War style wet navies and re-using their tactics just "in space" and with "sci-fi versions of cannon fire" . Second, so that in the middle of the series they can suddenly start changing the technology and breaking the "static" tactics they were using for the x decades/centuries before the series start.

 

Personally I quite enjoy most David Weber writing. But the Harrington stuff is very much a.. "hornblower in space" for the early books. As the series develops the characters get more experienced, the wars start, and they really add in the politics beyond just being a ship's captain. Also minor elements of economics of it all. And a fair few point-of-view changes from character to character when you have big interstellar set ups.

[Purkake]

I'm reading the Honor Harrington series by David Weber. It started off okay, but there is a serious lack of interesting characters and more importantly, space battles in the later books. And I will never get over the horrible spaceship design.

 

The key point to that.. is that the spaceships are designed that way for a reason.. First of all, so the author can simulate "space battles" with navies very reminiscent of ye olde Napoleonic War style wet navies and re-using their tactics just "in space" and with "sci-fi versions of cannon fire" . Second, so that in the middle of the series they can suddenly start changing the technology and breaking the "static" tactics they were using for the x decades/centuries before the series start.

 

Personally I quite enjoy most David Weber writing. But the Harrington stuff is very much a.. "hornblower in space" for the early books. As the series develops the characters get more experienced, the wars start, and they really add in the politics beyond just being a ship's captain. Also minor elements of economics of it all. And a fair few point-of-view changes from character to character when you have big interstellar set ups.

I got why he made the ships like that, it's just really uninspiring to have a bunch of spindles firing missiles at another bunch of spindles in space. The tactical combat parts are great, but the politics get pretty boring after a while. Also, Honor is such a do-it-all larger-than-life character by the later books that I couldn't care less about her. Not that this is a unique problem in long series'. So far the politics seem to come down to stupid liberals who don't want war because it's bad for business and awesome people who reluctantly have wars because it is the right thing to do(at least for the Manticore side).

 

I'll stay with it to the most recent book.

Edited January 11, 2010 by Purkake

[Raithe]

I got why he made the ships like that, it's just really uninspiring to have a bunch of spindles firing missiles at another bunch of spindles in space. The tactical combat parts are great, but the politics get pretty boring after a while. Also, Honor is such a do-it-all larger-than-life character by the later books that I couldn't care less about her. Not that this is a unique problem in long series'. So far the politics seem to come down to stupid liberals who don't want war because it's bad for business and awesome people who reluctantly have wars because it is the right thing to do(at least for the Manticore side).

 

I'll stay with it to the most recent book.

 

He does actually start introducing liberals who are smart and aren't incompetent/evil/jerkasses.

Although the word of warning, the last book in the series ends on a major cliffhanger so I'd take my time getting to it.