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Bookclub
This would be the thread to chatter about various novels you've read lately.
We already have a thread for video games, anime, and comics, so we all knew this was coming.
Anyway, a book I've been reading lately is Fire Logic. It's... a weird book. It has a tendency to ignore everything unless one of the characters is involved, and does not make events spin around the character to give you a glimpse of the world like most books do.
This creates a weird effect, where you know the characters without really knowing them, as you only see them in some situations.
Another book I'm going to be reading in the near future is American Gods.
(also fuck you i need no spaces)
Comments
American Gods is considered a Neil Gaiman masterpiece and it's extremely difficult to disagree. While I felt the final act had a couple of hiccups, everything leading up to that (and most of the final act, truth be told) was extremely clever and well-woven into the fabric of the overall story. The epilogue is especially good.
I've read a bit of it so far, but only up to the point that Shadow has accepted Mister Wednesday's deal. It's kinda weird, but it's flowing well, so I'll deal.
Read a YA book called Pegasus yesterday, I wanted the main character to be real so I could smack her in the face and tell her to stop doing stupid things and blaming them on her mother being dead.
I've been nostalgia tripping through the Saga of Darren Shan (Also known as Cirque Du Freak in America) series as of late.
I've been reading Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell as of late.
It's just a tad bit hard toCHEERIO, GUVNAH, HOW 'BOUT A SPOT OF TEA THIS FINE DAY GOOD SIR
^^ Oh, man, I read that series too. Well, back in middle school where it was seemingly the most interesting thing offered at the library. I wonder how it holds up.
^ I tried that one a while back. Got through all of Act One, but stopped there for . . . some reason. So I guess it wouldn't be too difficult to jump back in when I feel like it.
Me, I've been reading Best Served Cold. Very grim, starting with the very vulgar main character getting the ever-loving shit beaten out of her and her brother/best friend/implied lover brutally murdered and all, yet it's still very much Abercrombie's writing. Once I feel that I have more time to read it beyond page 46, I think I'll be pleased, though I have no idea where it's going yet.
American Gods is awesome.
I...I was kind of disappointed in American Gods.
Bin binging on Star Wars EU stuff lately. Shatterpoint, Death Star and Allegiance are all pretty cool.
should we murder the contrarian
American Gods had a cipher for a main character, but other than that I liked it well enough
Just finished Spice & Wolf volume 6 last night. It wasn't as good as previous volumes, kind of low on conflict and economics. Mostly just a set-up for another novel.
Continuing reading Foucault's Pendulum slowly because it's dense and I get distracted easily.
Probably going to reread volume five of Elric soon.
^ The biggest thing that's annoyed me about Spice and Wolf so far is that, if I recall correctly, the climaxes of both story arcs so far has been Holo turning into her wolf form and strong-arming the bad guys into letting up, rather than something less godly.
That changes up later on. Three has no godliness at all and four... well it has godliness but it's not just Holo tearing shit up.
Oh, are you talking about the novels? I read the manga (and I wouldn't give it up for the novels; the art is beautiful and I have a much harder time getting through plaintext).
Feel free to disregard my above stuff, then.
The first Spice & Wolf novel was good, but not so good that I actually feel like buying the rest (and of course the library system doesn't have them).
yes
^^^My only problem with the manga is the pains it goes to be fanservice-y.
Also.
For your weeaboo reading pleasure.
I don't really read fan-translations of LNs, feels weirder and much more piratey than fansubbed anime (Which I buy anyway if it gets licensed). Though I might check out the Hyouka translation...
Speaking of LNs, finished re-reading The Dissapearance Of Haruhi Suzumiya and now I remember why the series is named after her and not Yuki, who really annoyed me both as psycho power hijacking robot who was forgiven way too easily and cute moe cliche. On the other hand, anything with psycho Ryoko in it is good enough.
The site specifically doesn't translate licensed stuff. There's no Haruhi or S&W for awhile but I don't see anything wrong with reading fanlation of an unlicensed product.
I read the Haruhi translation before it got licensed, then picked up the licensed version...and it was a good deal worse -_-
I don't really have a comparison. The only reason I even used Baka-tsuki is because I managed to get it on my kindle fire.
I like the licensed version.. well, at least everything after Melancholy, which is sort of odd.
And of course half the thread has been about light novels.
But, new IJBM: I keep losing momentum on good, or at least entertaining books (Mistborn: The Final Empire, Paradise Lost (technically a poem, but at around three-hundred pages), Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Best Served Cold, The Once and Future King, The Shadow of the Torturer, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Blood Meridian, ) but used to go through lots of books, including bad, if not terrible ones (Hitchhiker's Guide, The Deerslayer, Gardens of the Moon, Dracula, Clan of the Cave Bear, American Psycho, The Fellowship of the Ring, A Game of Thrones). I'm a little ashamed that I can't think of a ninth book for either the good or the bad category.
Good news, though: I just found a sort-of-old book that has the first two books in the Book of the New Sun series. And I realize that I never got around to finishing The Shadow of the Torturer, so that's something else I can bring to college (in the event that I have time to read anything besides what the school assigns). Just need to wipe it off a bit.
So I'm currently reading Pirates: The Complete History from 1300 BC to Present Day and it's pretty fucking metal. The stuff about Captain Vale and Calico Jack is particularly interesting and really riveting stuff. Blowing up one of your ships right off the coast of New Providence so the navy has to give up chase or risk being set aflame? Awesome.
The thing is I feel the book is a bit too insistent on the whole 'pirates totally weren't cool' then describing all the awesome things that belong in an Errol Flynn movie they did.
I think the issue with "x totally weren't cool" or "x were totally cool" is the broad strokes aspects. Some pirates did horrible things; others were former navy conscripts who were captured and offered a better deal by freelance sea bandits. For another example, take the Vikings (who are pretty much the definition of medieval pirates), whose society is a great example of, well, greyness. Their "Thing" (actual name) was an early form of democracy unrelated to Greece or Rome, and homosexuality was considered alright (with some details attached) as long as you also did your part and produced children (which seems fair enough in a survivalist society in a place that could be an icy wasteland for half of the year). They were also exceedingly advanced shipwrights, steelsmiths and had a reasonably free society in context of their time period and placement.
On the other hand, they were totally on board with the whole "rape your enemies" thing which is a little more than questionable, although it's possible that the English authors contemporary with them were exaggerating; it's pretty common for authors of all time periods to exaggerate the wrongdoings of their enemies, which is why it was taken as true that the Germanic and Celtic tribes contemporary with the Romans were cultureless brutes before we got wise and found that it was a lot more complex than that. Anyway, the point is that any large group of people or any society is going to have some combination of "totally cool" and "not cool", and it pays to recognise both.
And now I'm thinking about pirate (17th century-19th centuryish) sword styles. Probably wonky versions of Silver, Page and other authors of the British Isles.
Reading Something Awful's "Books you couldn't get through" thread today has been a blast. And eye-opening; it's probably a good thing I read through Storm Front and A Game of Thrones as early as I did, because I feel like I would have been turned off by them and not gone on to great enjoyment and less enjoyment for a shorter period of time, respectively, if I tried them now. And apparently, Kvothe of The Name of the Wind is only tolerable when read with Zapp Brannigan's voice. @ClockworkUniverse, @Nova, was he really that bad? I've gotten the impression that he's this unbelievably Sue-ish author-insert character.
Oh, and I guess Steven Erikson of The Malazan Book of the Fallen is a massive troll to his readers.