Books we've been reading V2.0

[GhostofAnakin]

I was going to pick up Abercrombie's trilogy off of Amazon, but the shipping estimate kind of scared me off. It's currently at 3-6 weeks for me. I'm impatient that way. I prefer my books delivered within a week, otherwise I might as well just go to a local book store to purchase them there.

[entrerix]

haven't read anything in months

 

the wife keeps turning on the tv at night and the infernal box makes too much racket to concentrate on words

[Raithe]

While this might be better in the funny things thread, it is about some books..

 

Cracked - Twilight book Review, the Complete Series/

 

Including such gems as:

Three hundred pages after "Oh, you like me too? No way, I thought you hated me!", the plot arrives late to the party, drunk, in a beat-up '53 Chevy pick-up truck. It drives away about fifty pages later and crashes into a tree, gets sent to the hospital, and is rarely heard from again throughout the course of the series.

 

She finally regains Edward's attention after she deliberately jumps off a cliff and almost dies. Edward, being a thirteen-year-old girl, thinks Bella has died and goes to Italy to commit suicide. He attempts to do this by exposing himself to the sun at noon in an Italian town. Since sunlight doesn't actually harm Twilight vampires, one must assume that Edward is hoping some macho Italians will see him in at full sparkle and beat him to death for being gay.

 

This novel thus teaches two important lessons to young girls everywhere:

 

1) If a guy dumps you and says he doesn't love you anymore, he doesn't mean it. All you have to do is beg and destroy your life to prove that you really love him, and he'll come right back and love you even more!

 

2) It is perfectly cool to string along innocent but decent guys who are crushing on you and then dump them immediately as soon as your ex-boyfriend reappears, and totally normal if said ex-boyfriend forbids you from seeing your old friend. After all, your love for your ex must be far stronger, because he makes you feel 'alive' and 'dangerous' since he's always on the verge of killing you. And stalking you. We can't really mention that enough.

 

The book focuses on the choice Bella must make between Jacob Black and Edward Cullen, two tall, good-looking, devoted men with cool supernatural abilities. This is exactly the kind of problem that normal women face every day.

 

Halfway through, Stephenie Meyer realizes that Jacob Black is far cooler than Edward and performs a quick character assassination by having him mouth-rape her. Bella punches him and runs away, but later discovers she loves him, which teaches us more lessons:

 

1) If a girl says she doesn't love you, just keep sexually assaulting her. Eventually she'll realize she likes it.

 

2) Leading two guys on for years because you 'love them both' is perfectly acceptable, as long as you feel really bad about it at some point.

 

Around this point, the reader is shocked and disturbed to find out that Stephenie Meyer is actually using vampirism to weave quite a skillful metaphor for adolescent fears about love and physical intimacy. Bella loves Edward so much that she is willing to give up her life for him. This desire, which seems unhealthy at first glance, is only possible because of her absolute trust in the fact that he would never willingly hurt her.

 

But we learned a few more things:

 

1) It doesn't matter if he hurts you

 

2) He only did it because he loves you.

 

Excluding all the questionable sex, you might start to think that maybe this book isn't an entirely bad influence on teenage girls, with its 'don't go to bed with anyone unless he has proven that he loves you' message. And then Stephenie Meyer takes that trust, uses it to get your address and credit card numbers, and then breaks into your house and poisons your dog.

 

Then Jacob falls madly in love with the newborn baby girl.

 

No, we don't mean in the sense of 'Oh, I fell in love with that kitten the moment I saw it'. We mean in love love. Really, what we're trying to say--and let us know if you don't understand--is that Jacob the borderline rapist and the tiny baby vampire chest-burster are going to get married and have babies.

 

What Jacob did, Meyer explains, was "imprint" on the baby. Imprinting, in the Twilight universe, is what happens when a werewolf finds his soulmate. It means that the two of them are now destined to be together, no matter what. What if the girl is unwilling at first? Too bad, because she isn't any more! It's the psychic equivalent of GHB.

[melkathi]

Interesting read, Raithe. Thanks!

[Raithe]

Hm, and for general literature news.. (at least to those of a sci-fi/fantasy and electronic reader type).

 

Baen inks deal with Amazon - makes major changes to webscriptions and free library/

 

Toni Weisskopf has posted a series of messages to the Baen Bar indicating major changes in the offing for the Baen Ebooks (nee Webscriptions) store. Baen is finally on the verge of getting its titles placed directly into Amazon (and is negotiating with others such as Barnes & Noble, etc.) The problem is, that comes with pesky contractual obligations.

 

The changes amount to the following:

 

“Old” bundles containing books that have already been published will no longer be available for bundle-priced purchase. (Already-purchased ones should still be available for download, though it is possible some books may need to be removed. Some books may need to be removed from the Baen Free Library as well; Toni hopes to get advance notice when such removals are necessary, but recommends backing them up while you can.)

 

Future Webscription-style e-book bundles will be still be available for purchase as serialized pre-publications only until the official publication date, after which they become single-purchase-only titles (in order not to run afoul of that pesky contractual price-matching). Prices for backlist e-books will be going up, too; instead of $6, e-books of books whose print edition is currently hardcover will be $9.99, trade paperback $8.99, and mass market paperback $6.99.

 

E-ARCs—the $15 advance-peek advance reader copy e-books Baen offers—will be unaffected; since they will always be sold only through Baen itself and are no longer sold after the book’s official publication, there will be no need to change them.

 

Toni also writes it is unlikely there will be further Baen CD releases bound into hardcover books. “The CDs were in part to train people up to use ebooks. Mission accomplished, there.” Furthermore, the Fifth Imperium Baen CD archive has removed the directly-browseable versions of the Baen CD files it used to offer, breaking many inbound links (including those from my Honor Harrington reviews here), though it continues (at the moment) to make the contents available as zipped and ISO files (though may remove those at some future time as well).

 

From Baen’s and the authors’ point of view, I can see how this is a desirable change. After all, many (arguably most) e-book buyers have Kindles or Nooks now, and the average consumer isn’t going to want to go to any extra trouble to buy an e-book he wants. Even going to Baen’s website to buy and email them to the Kindle might be too high of a barrier to entry compared to clicking “buy” on the Kindle.

 

(Yes, I know you’re probably an early e-book adopter and are puzzled by this assertion, given how easy you’ve always found it. Well, I spend five days a week helping ordinary people hook up their TVs and DVD players over the phone, and consequently I no longer harbor any illusions about how much ability the average person has to do something unfamiliar that is even the teensiest bit complicated.)

 

One other positive benefit of the change is that Baen authors are getting an e-book royalty bump:

 

 

You should also know we are increasing across the board by 25% the ebook royalty rates to the authors, so not only should they get the benefit of what we will really hope will be a significantly larger market, but a larger cut, too.

 

Thus, this could let Baen sell more e-books, at prices Kindle owners are accustomed to paying, and thus (especially with the addition of the 25% royalty bump) lead to additional royalties and more money for the authors.

 

On the bright side, Baen still doesn’t have any intention of switching to DRM, and the individual books will still be available DRM-free and multiformat through Baen’s own store for purchase even after they go up on Amazon. And the individual price for backlist titles that are in paperback won’t be going up by that much. It’ll be annoying for newer releases, though—especially ones you don’t find out about until they’re already published.

 

Some posters to the Baen forums are complaining the publisher has essentially done a deal with the devil and jumped the shark. However, others note that given inflation it was reasonable to expect e-book prices would have to go up sooner or later anyway. (Bundle prices have already risen from $10 to $15 to $18 since the program’s original inception over a decade ago.) And if they have to go up, they might as well do so in a way that will help the authors sell more copies and earn more royalties.

 

And let’s be honest: we always knew that Baen’s Webscription system couldn’t last forever the way it was. The books were sold so cheaply (or given away) for so long precisely because, prior to the Kindle, e-books were basically a non-starter except to the early adopter crowd. They served mostly to drive more sales of printed copies. Now that people want to buy e-books as their own things, it’s naïve to expect Baen to keep leaving money on the table that could go into the pockets of itself and its authors. As disappointed as we always are when prices of stuff go up, we should probably count our blessings for the extras Baen still is providing.

 

Meanwhile, better go ahead and buy up and download any bundles that have anything you might want while you still can, grab those Fifth Imperium ISOs, and back up everything.

[Malcador]

Plodding along in Seeds of Earth. Meh, alien race appearing to be friends with humanity but have sinister goals, etc. etc. I guess it's ok for a space opera novel.

[LadyCrimson]

Nitpickers Guide to Classic Trek

 

...just proving what a nerd I am. Yes, I re-read them semi-often, they're funny. I have the others, too.

[AGX-17]

A Storm of Swords, Simon Schama's Power of Art

[Raithe]

[Raithe]

For the Wheel of Time fans out there, this might be of some interest:

 

http://youtu.be/XrfUoR4Z9Ig

[AGX-17]

 

You should probably seek the aid of a mental health professional.

[Darth InSidious]

Haven't finished a book in a while, but the last thing I got through was Borges' short story, Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius. Currently also reading the Rule of St Benedict and Bleak House.

[Reventine]

I am currently re reading frank Herbert's Dune, the book just seems to get better and better as I get older. Also I need to get into Mistborn. I've had it sat on my desk for months now without really picking it up.

[Guard Dog]

Now reading The Man Who Saved The Union by HW Brands. It's about Ulysses Grant. Also re-reading Towers of Midnight. The new book comes out in two weeks!

[Drowsy Emperor]

Dying Inside by Robert Silverberg. I don't know what to make of it yet.

[Starwars]

Been re-reading a compilation book of HP Lovecraft stories. It's funny with Lovecraft, there are so many passages in his stories where I just sort of roll my eyes at times at how... not subtle it is. Still, there is something there that just makes me like his stuff.

 

The Shadow Out of Time is probably my favorite.

[Lexx]

The Colour out of Space is my favorite. I like to read it again every once in a while.

[AGX-17]

A Feast for Crows. UGHHHH. No wonder the cover is red, it's all Lannister crap. If you ever needed proof of how terrible a person Cersei is, this book is it.

[JFSOCC]

Someone on this forum recommended me Hyperion by Dan Simmons, so I bought it and I am reading it. I'm liking it so far, but it's fairly early in.

['GM']

Started reading the Thomas Covenant series. Anyone else read those yet, or even heard of them? I'm into the 2nd book. There's 9 in all afaik.

[Gorth]

Started reading the Thomas Covenant series. Anyone else read those yet, or even heard of them? I'm into the 2nd book. There's 9 in all afaik.

 

Read some of the first books. Interesting enough, but too 'slow' paced and too much, not sure what, but the stuff that makes you want to put the protagonist over your knee, spank him and tell him to man himself up a bit. Wielder of the White Gold my butt. Whiny ass emo is what he is

['GM']

Started reading the Thomas Covenant series. Anyone else read those yet, or even heard of them? I'm into the 2nd book. There's 9 in all afaik.

 

Read some of the first books. Interesting enough, but too 'slow' paced and too much, not sure what, but the stuff that makes you want to put the protagonist over your knee, spank him and tell him to man himself up a bit. Wielder of the White Gold my butt. Whiny ass emo is what he is

 

I'm getting a similar impression of him. I keep waiting for some revelation to 'wake' him up. I don't know, if this second book doesn't get any better by the end of it I may ditch reading the rest of the series.

[Tigranes]

Peter Sloterdijk's Critique of Cynical Reason. I love how Germans get the license to write freely, but that means he takes 60 pages to say what should take 10, and regularly devolves into his own navel for some witticisms that are only clever to, well... to people like me, except more charitably minded.

 

Next: Julian Jaynes' The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (whose thesis was used splendidly in Sebastien Faulks' novel on mental illness, Human Traces - i.e. the only one where he's not harping on about WW1/2.)

[Hurlshort]

Started the first of these Jack Reacher novels, and so far it's a pretty easy read.

[Raithe]

Started the first of these Jack Reacher novels, and so far it's a pretty easy read.

 

Yeah, I ran through the first dozen of them over the start of the week. Fairly easy going, although just how he manages to keep interacting with all these major people without the next VIP having heard something is a bit strange.

 

Although it was quite interesting to see how the original story of One Shot was changed to fit a film.