The "Books I recently read" thread

[DaveTheFishGuy]

Originally Posted by Mercutio

Finished Light Fantastic last night. Loved it.

Now Equal Rites.

[Mercutio]

It's on my shelf.

[Torkoal Stu]

Originally Posted by Concept

So I feel like I'm going to be alone in this opinion, but my god Life of Pi was awful.

I agree, I really had to struggle through it with everyone saying 'it gets better!' but then it really didn't.

I finished reading The Fault In Our Stars like two days ago, and I loved it. I couldn't put it down and read it in about 3 days, it's only about 300 pages longer so it''s really not very hefty anyway. I found it's very humorous and emotional, but it manages to balance them well.

[Charzonsos]

Recently started rereading the Song of the Lioness Quartet. I'm on the third book. Its amazing how differently I'll remember somethings and completely forget others.

[Mogar]

Recently finished reading Penpal again, have to admit it's a really fantastic book. Although it might be written by an independent author, it's certainly worth the read.

I also finally got my hands on an English copy of Felidae (Shout out to my best friend Charles for helping me out with that.) And so far I'm really digging it.

[Concept]

So I recently started reading some Phillip K. Dick, starting with Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (of which the film Blade Runner is an adaptation) and A Scanner Darkly. Do Androids Dream was kind of a weird experience; the film is one of my favourites, and the book is so very different. I had a hard time not instinctively comparing it to the film. It is a very compelling book in its own right though, and does an excellent job exploring its primary theme; the question of what distinguishes humanity. Definitely recommend it.

A Scanner Darkly I went into having not watched the film adaptation. Dick wrote it after what amounted to a three or four year drug binge following his fourth? wife leaving him. The plot is about an undercover policeman embedded in drug culture, and to quote the afterword "This has been a novel about people who were punished entirely too much for what they did". It's about people who wanted to have a good time and destroyed themselves doing it. Made particularly poignant knowing that Dick himself found out sometime either shortly before or during the writing (certainly before it was punished) that he was dying of pancreatic damage bought on by his own drug abuse. Freaking excellent. I'll see if my opinion holds once I've got more distance from it, but I suspect it has entered my top reads alongside Mark Haddon's The Red House and Neil Gaiman's American Gods. Can't recommend it enough.

And now I'm off on another leg of my tour of 20th century classics with Cat's Cradle (Kurt Vonnegut).

[McSweeney]

Originally Posted by Concept

Made particularly poignant knowing that Dick himself found out sometime either shortly before or during the writing (certainly before it was punished) that he was dying of pancreatic damage bought on by his own drug abuse.

That reminds me of the Canadian World War 1 poem "In Flanders Fields". It's spoken by a slain soldier, urging the others to carry on and to continue taking up the fight. The author John McCrae actually did die during the war, so it's like he really is speaking to you from beyond the grave.

[Torkoal Stu]

So I finished reading JK Rowling's 'The Cuckoo's Calling' today and here is what I thought.

GENERAL SPOILER WARNING

Spoiler: show

I'll start with the big thing about this book, the fact it was written by JK. Honestly even though I love Harry Potter I found while reading those books I was so drawn in by the whole world I didn't even really take any notice of the way she actually wrote. But here her writing is literally on full display, as the book (obviously) doesn't take you on some amazing Harry Potter-esque fantasy world journey. To be honest I found JK's writing style largely inaccessible, like she really overwrites a lot of her scenes or has too many run on sentences stuffed with complex vocabulary which detracts from the meaning of the sentence. I mean it's not often I have to look up words I read in books, but so many of the sentences just felt unnecessarily complicated. And her depictions of accents in her dialogue I found really annoying by halfway through the book. That said some of the scenes were perfectly captured, particularly in the opening sequence.

To be fair to JK though the plot and the characters were captivating and intriguing enough to make up for all of it's pitfalls. I really enjoyed the character of Robin but felt she was underused on the whole by the end of the book. This is obviously the first book of at least two (if not 3 or more) so hopefully she gets more as we go. Strike's character is obviously the star of the show, and he had enough in him to feel like a real person. He was flawed, yet loveable. And I found the book really came into it's own around the mid-point onwards, and I was so gripped by the time I got to the endgame I was floored with the scene where Strike confronts the murderer in his office. Gripping stuff. And even all of the side characters are enjoyable or feel like they are well crafted enough to justify their existence, I felt really attached to the characters of Ciara and Evan for some reason. Although she does run dangerously close to hitting the issue of overcrowding at some points, because there were a few chapters where I forgot connections between characters. Though you must give her credit for working hard to weave such an impressive web between her characters.

Though I feel the twist ending wasn't as much of a twist as JK thought it would be, because it's presented as some amazing twist like 'this is the person who murdered Lula Landry' and there are some clever elements in the big reveal, but then it just kinda makes sense. Like I came away thinking, 'actually there isn't anyone else it could have been.' But it was still perfectly satisfying and enjoyable ending.

Ok I know I didn't really put any major spoilers in this post, but I totally didn't want to type out the ending in case anyone recklessly read this and then found out the ending but then wanted to read it and regretted it D:

[Kryptos]

The Harry Potter series.

[Princess Ana]

Micro by Michael Crichton and Richard Preston (also didn't realize this was published after Michael Crichton's death, didn't even realize he died O.O)

I dunno, spoiler tag it to be safe

Spoiler: show

It was a pretty good book. If I had to rate it with other works of Crichton's its between Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park. It was a good length, unlike the Andromeda Strain which was too short and hence didn't deliver a full impact to me, but it wasn't as strong as a book as Jurassic Park or the Lost World was. This might have been because it was finished by a different author, who knows.

What stands out in this book for me is the brilliance of the micro-world. While I doubt some of the things suggested (such as gravity having less of an effect hence making micro-humans capable of feats greater than they normally could, such as running at 50 mph), the detail it goes into many of the potential hazards of the Hawaiian rainforest is marvelous. I feel I came out of it a little smarter which is always good for a science fiction book (at least in my opinion).

Kept up reading and not goofing off doing other computer related things so that must be a plus in its favor. I'd recommend it but not heavily.

[PikaGod]

Okay so I've been doing some heavy reading over the past *glances at watch* long while. And I'm going to recommend some of them that I really ended up liking:

Horror:

The Troop by Nick Cutter:

This book was so good. The basic premise is that a boy scout troop goes to an island for a wilderness camp sort of thing when bad things happen. It's not often that I feel that horror authors, hell authors as a whole, manage to really nail writing kids but I feel that Cutter manages to do that. The characters are all pretty well done, and I was legitimately surprised when certain characters managed to survive throughout the entire book and others didn't. I would wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone who wants a good horror read.

Dead Sea by Tim Curran

This wasn't as good as The Troop, but Dead Sea was still a good read. Throughout the entire book there is a tension that permeates the air, there's always an uncomfortable feeling that the book consistently manages to get across. There's more moments in this book where it feels like Curran wants to write for the sake of writing, without it really moving the book along and it did get on my nerves a couple of times.

The book itself is almost broken up into segments of a tv series, with the groups of people coming across different weird and alien animals and people within the Dead Sea, where overall its connected by the setting but at times there's is very little connections between the little 'segments'. He also has a really bad habit of killing off characters way too much, especially characters that have been set up to be focal viewpoint characters, which really bugged me. Still, I would recommend people read it.

The Boy Who Drew Monsters by Kieth Donohue:

This was an interesting book, to say the least. I didn't like it as much as the previous two books I'd read, but I still found it compelling enough to read through it. I found the main character, the aforementioned boy who drew monsters, to be incredibly annoying at times and I had to just wade through his parts. Honestly, I'm still not entirely sure if I actually like this book or not. There were definitely good parts to it, the ending was incredibly good and there's no way that I would have been able to guess what it would be, but the rest of the book dragged itself down for me. This would be a hesitant recommendation.

Fantasy:

Tamora Pierce's books:

She is a national treasure and all of her books should be read by everyone everywhere. There's no way in hell that I could even remotely write an unbiased review of anything of hers, so this is what you are all getting instead :P

The Paper Magician by Charlie N Holmberg:

I loved this book. The character's were a bit flat, they had defining characteristics but only Ceony, the main character, and Emery Thanus, the aforementioned Paper Magician, had any form of fleshing out. Though considering that the majority of the book takes place with Ceony trapped in Emery's heart, this isn't that bad. It just felt like a really fresh type of setting, and I loved the magic. People form bonds with a specific type of magic, fire, metal and in Ceony's forced case, she bonds with Paper and they spent a good chunk of the book explaining how origami can make all sorts of magic happen. I would wholeheartedly recommend that people go out and read this.

and now for the sequel

The Glass Magician by Charlie N Holmberg:

A massive stepdown from the Paper Magician. It essentially deals with Ceony dealing with the consequences from the end of the last book. That stuff was pretty good, and I liked her around Delilah. But the romance stuff in this dragged on for way way way too long and I was completely sick of it in every way. There's a huge twist sort of thing that happens at the end of the book that makes me want to read the last book of the trilogy, but omg I don't want to have to deal with badly written romance schlock.

Young Adult:

Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead

My friends absolutely love this series so I borrowed the first book to see what the fuss is about. It's not the best book, but I genuinely enjoyed it and I really enjoyed Rose, the character who narrates the book. Some things felt a little rushed, but I think that Mead was successful in bringing a world to life, and the characters that lived within it were enjoyable even if most of the side characters were pretty cliched and Lissa grated on my nerves a little bit. It has romance stuff in it, its YA it's going to have romance in it, and it's sort of a 'forbidden' romance but its cool cause for once there's nothing really that icky about the potential romance, thank god. All in all it was a fun little book that I would recommend for anyone looking for a book that featured a strong female protagonist.

Once I get through the VA series, I'll probably go and reread the Percy Jackson books.

[Mercutio]

Just finished The Long Mars, third in the Long Earth series. Definitely better than the second instalment but not quite on par with the first. A little anti climactic as all of their books seem to end up despite ending with world altering events, which is fairly impressive I must say, but definitely worth looking at.

I own the next instalment but am now two chapters through The Day Of The Triffids, which was the result of a recent bookshop date I went on.

[PikaGod]

Frostbite by Richelle Mead

The second book in the Vampire Academy series. This was not a good book, this was a bad book. It was a boring book. Nothing happened, it felt like Mead just decided to introduce a couple of plotlines and then do absolutely nothing to develop them within the book, leaving them for later stuff. There is like no action until the last fifty pages of the book, which is over 300 pages long. If I had been reading these books as they were published, I probably would have quit the series with this one.

[Heather]

The Ridiculous Race-Steve Haly/Vali (Insert last name I cannot hope to spell here)

Two guys. One globe. One east. One west. No airplanes. It's a race around the world for a bottle of the best scotch the two could find in LA, and that's all that need be said before summing up the rest by invoking the trope Hilarity Ensues.

Spoiler: show

Steve takes west, crossing the Pacific on a shipping boat, then getting driven through China to make it into Mongolia, after which he goes through Siberia and Russia to meet Vali in Moscow. Vali went east. He dips South into Mexico only to find that his jet pack plan was not adequate at all. After this, he decides to be a cheating bastard to mess with Steve. Once he's back in New Orleans, he books a flight to stop out of Atlanta, giving him a personal race agai to the clock (which he wins). In Rio he meets a graffiti gang and explores the favelas before flying (again) to London, and traveling through Europe (even taking a Segway tour of Paris) before Meeting Steve. It's a bit much for my ADD-addled brain to compile it all right now, so yes, Moscow was like a halfway point, and I'll finish this later.

Would recommend the book to anyone with a taste for humorous circumnavigation narratives or to just anyone. It's a wonderful read.

[PikaGod]

Okay, so I've read a couple more books:

Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

This was a quick and fun read. The mythology follows the collected mythology of the Greek Gods pretty closely, and there really isn't anything that is too whitewashed or anything. It's not the best book, I felt that at times that it was a little hard to get myself to read through, but it was still a fun read.

Shadow Kiss by Richelle Mead

This book was leaps and bounds better than Frostbite. Stuff actually happened! There wasn't just plotlines introduced with no development! Words do not describe how happy I was to see that my friends were right and that the book is better. It very nicely followed along from the ending of the previous book and the book itself flowed better. It actually felt like the characters were developing. And the ending, omg the ending was so good. It was initially set up so that you would think the obvious thing would happen, but threw in a twist that threw me for a loop.

[Stealthy]

The Kingkiller Chronicles: Name of the Wind and Wise Man's Fear By Patrick Rothfuss

Man, these were some solid fucking books. It follows the story of Kvothe, or rather, is set as Kvothe telling his story to a scribe after he's retired. Kvothe was a legend and one of the world's great heroes of his own lifetime, and apparently killed some king and breaks the world in his pursuit to hunt down some immortal demigods or some nonsense like that. He's an accomplished musician, magician, lover, and swordsman. All skills that he earns rather painfully. Kvothe is a really great character, and there's just something fun about watching a guy be all theatrical and trying to make bits of his life like scenes out of an epic, and then actually fucking do it even when he's not trying. It has a bit of a slow methodical pace to it, so be ready for a long hall, but I really find it rather satisfying. That said, the beginning of Name of the Wind is slow and boring as balls. Took a good 200 pages for me to get into the story. Took forever, but I'm glad I wound up slugging through it.

Gentleman Bastards Sequence: The Lies of Locke Lamora, Red Seas Under Red Skies, and The Republic of Thieves By Scott Lynch

The Lies of Locke Lamora is like one of my favorite books full stop. Like, there's not much groundbreaking about it. It's just really good. It follows the story of Locke Lamora, master con artist and thief, and is also the cockiest son of a bitch ever. Seriously, ever. And man, are these books hilarious. Honestly, Scott Lynch has a great wit that he wrote in here, as displayed by like all the dialogue. Also features very colorful expletives. Good characters, a well built setting (Camorr, which is set up like a fantasy renaissance Venice), and a rather thrilling plot. Again, nothing groundbreaking, it's just all done very well. Would read again. And again. And again. Just so I can memorize all the great quotes.

Red Seas Under Red Skies, however, has some issues. Starts off with a run at a casino heist, but then surprise! Pirates. Sounds like a promising set up, and it is, and it plays fairly well. Has a lot of the same strengths in its fun characters and great wit and relationships between the characters), but Red Seas has major pacing issues. The Pirate plot just completely runs away from the casino plot, which has far too much set up to be abandoned like it is, so when we finally come back and try to wrap everything up, it feels rushed and underwhelming, even if the end result is rather fun. Also Ezri <3

And then there's Republic of Thieves... which was just really underwhelming. Here, we meet Locke's old flame Sabetha while he engages in the thrills of electoral politics. Here, there's just not much thrill to the plot. Instead of being heisty, it focuses a lot on Locke and Sabetha. And that could work, if only Sabetha was as fun as all the other Gentleman Bastards. Or at least a decent amount of fun. She was a bit infuriating. Oh, and Locke's an orphan and shit and doesn't really remember much of his parents, so here he was told a backstory of himself that was totally shitty and better not actually be true because it kinda sucks. I mean, the door was left open for it to be a lie, but honestly it was kinda shitty. At least the epilogue was cool, and as always the banter between Locke and his best friend Jean can basically fix anything.

Despite the fact that the last two books needed work, Jean Tannen is so fucking boss that I just have to pick up the next book.

The Magicians By Lev Grossman

Narnia meets Harry Potter meets urban fantasy. It was okay. Like, the concept was solid and it touched on some nice things... it just was very meh. The pacing was kinda shitty. Like, Quentin (the main character) was just whizzing through entire years in the course of a chapter without much time devoting to showing his relationships with other characters in much detail, or really doing much of a job developing any of the characters besides himself. And that's an issue, because Quentin was just not a likable dude. Seriously, not a likable protagonist, which on one hand is kinda the point, but on the other... well it just gets annoying to read about a guy who just refuses to ever be happy with anything. You're a fucking magician. Stop being miserable you dumb slut. Like would it kill you to ever be happy? It's a shame, because there was real potential here, but I have no plans to pick up the rest of the series.

[sweetbbydoll]

Just wanted to ask, if anyone has read The Maze Runner series and if it's worth the read?

I have a feeling I might like it but want some opinions...

[PikaGod]

So I've been reading. Yaaaaay!

The Mortal Instruments:

I read through City of Bones, Ashes, Glass and Fallen Angels. The first three make up the initial trilogy and Fallen Angels is the start of the next trilogy. The books start out rough as fuck, and honestly if I had started reading this series when I was 22 instead of like 14, I wouldn't be able to read them now.

But, I have the nostalgia for them, so I can get past the rough writing (so many adverbs and outfit descriptions!). I liked the books well enough, so they were fun junk reads. I especially enjoyed how after the first book, Cassandra Clare started focusing on the side characters cause holy shit Jace and Clary eventually get super annoying, and Isabelle, Simon, Magnus, Alec and Maia are better than they are.

I felt that Fallen Angels was a significant step up from the initial trilogy, it just felt better written, maybe her editor stepped up her game? I dunno, but I definitely preferred it. The plot was a little shakier in FA, but it did rehash some stuff from the first books, but the book was still a much more enjoyable read.

[mespritchaser]

...Is anyone else reading Chicken Soup for the Soul besides me?

[gmoyes]

So I brought up my favourite author in the debate thread, so I might a well talk about him here. Robert Sawyer is an award winning Canadian Sci-fi writer. His website, http://sfwriter.com/, is one of the oldest author websites on the internet and not only talks about his books, but his own thoughts on science, other work he's done and even has tips for upcoming writers. His latest book, Quantum Night, I finished a little while ago talks about human consciousness on a philosophical, psychological, as well as quantum level. It also delves into the mind of psychopaths and has it moments of humour. It is a distinctly Canadian novel and Sawyer has pretty much admitted that if the deadline for the book wasn't so early, he would have made Donald Trump the villain.

His other books include the WWW trilogy (Wake, Watch and Wonder) whose central characters are a blind girl and a consciousness that has developed out of the internet, the Neanderthal Parallax trilogy (Hominids, Humans and Hybrids) where a Neanderthal from a parallel world where they rose to be the dominant species instead of humans is accidentally sent to our world and examines two similar, yet vastly different worlds, the book Flashforward, which inspired a TV series of the same name which Sawyer wrote and episode for, as well as many other stories that cover a whole range of topics. I highly recommend Robert Sawyer to anyone who like Sci-Fi and even to those who don't.

[Mercutio]

Preordered The Long Cosmos and read it in a day and a half over the weekend (instead of doing laundry or timesheets woops). Terry Prattchett and Stephen Baxter, finale in The Long Earth series.

It's good! Very little claim to being a Prattchett book but I prefered it to the previous entry The Long Utopia. It feels like the story could have been split over two or elongated but the problem with this series has always been that they cram too much in.

Anyway fans of sci fi and hypotheticals about societal change should look in to the series.

[DaveTheFishGuy]

Oh yeah I need to get The Long Utopia don't I.

Good to know the series stays good all the way through, though.

[Mercutio]

It does, but it realllllly crams that plot in there. There are so many characters that just are not that interesting.

[tau]

Blood Meridian. Read it. Feel like I never really understood who or what I was before I read this.

Spoiler: show

“All other trades are contained in that of war."

"Is that why war endures?"

"No. It endures because young men love it and old men love it in them. Those that fought, those that did not."

"That's your notion."

The judge smiled. "Men are born for games. Nothing else. Every child knows that play is nobler than work. He knows too that the worth or merit of a game is not inherent in the game itself but rather in the value of that which is put at hazard. Games of chance require a wager to have meaning at all. Games of sport involve the skill and strength of the opponents and the humiliation of defeat and the pride of victory are in themselves sufficient stake because they inhere in the worth of the principals and define them. But trial of chance or trial of worth all games aspire to the condition of war for here that which is wagered swallows up game, player, all.”

[Shuckle]

The Book Club actually has a few members now!

I figured I'd post it here for some visibility.

We are starting with To Kill a Mockingbird, but next week (or month, I'm not quite sure how often is good enough) we will choose a different book by voting!

Come discuss the books you read with other people who also read that book!!!