Author Topic: Books  (Read 173268 times)

Lady Door

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Re: Books
« Reply #925 on: November 09, 2011, 05:21:39 PM »
You should not feel good about corrupting other people into reading Twilight. :(

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Alloy of Law get! It is not Sanderson's finest work, but he seems to be having fun with it. Wax and Wayne speak as if they're channeling Scalzi (witty banter! oh ho aren't we having so much fun being witty and sarcastic!) but I don't mind. Entertaining read, and I'm halfway through mainly because Tor released the first six chapters prior to release and, well, it is a small book. Should be done by tomorrow afternoon at the latest.
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Lady Door

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Re: Books
« Reply #926 on: November 10, 2011, 05:47:21 PM »
And Alloy of Law is as short as expected.

It continued to read like the book a successful author writes when he's too bogged down in other projects to keep going without letting off some steam. It's fun, and in some ways it's experimental (the banter was pretty intense), but it's pretty much a Sanderson story set in what I can only call "Wild Wild West" meets Mistborn. And holy god is there a Sanderson avalanche. Also, set up for a sequel or three!

Quick, someone tell a fantasy author it's okay to write a story without making it into an epic trilogy!
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Cmdr_King

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Re: Books
« Reply #927 on: December 04, 2011, 11:08:37 PM »
Alloy of Law- <3

Okay.  So I have to think that this book started with Sanderson sitting down and thinking "hm.  Y'know, if a turn of the century revolver had a coinshot using it, it'd be mind-bogglingly accurate."  And it kinda went from there.  I could certainly read another book about Wax et al, but hopefully it's along the lines of this one; slimmed down, focused, a little mystery, a lot of snark, and etc.

For some reason I really like Steris.  I think it's because you never see that sort of character taken so seriously.  And of course you need her for contrast to everyone else.
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Veryslightlymad

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Re: Books
« Reply #928 on: December 07, 2011, 10:47:21 AM »
How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu:  It is a book for people who enjoy physics, regret, and nonexistant dogs named Ed.

THANK YOU. I saw this in the bookstore once and said "I'm gonna buy and read that some day"

And then I totally forgot what it was called and what the author's name was, other than "I think he was Asian".

AndrewRogue

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Re: Books
« Reply #929 on: December 07, 2011, 10:45:10 PM »
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline: Fun idea that gets too bogged down in 80's pop culture. Still, a strong showing and I'd be curious to see more from him.

The Magicians by Lev Grossman: Deconstruction of Harry Potter and Narnia. Fun, in a hideously depressing way.

The Magician Kings by Lev Grossman: See above (it is the sequel), but add in the most ridiculously low blow ending I've seen in a while.

Snuff by Terry Pratchett: A Vimes book. That more or less says it all.

Captain K.

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Re: Books
« Reply #930 on: December 14, 2011, 04:24:19 AM »
The movie trailer for the Hunger Games looked interesting, so I thought I'd check out the book.  Wow.  Absolutely riveting.  Loved it.

Cmdr_King

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Re: Books
« Reply #931 on: December 16, 2011, 02:50:34 AM »
Snuff- quite good.  It's a game to spot where inspiration for the various degradations visited upon the oppressed race comes from.

I have to say though, I thought the Vetinari scenes were some of the weaker in the book, which really threw me off.  Alas.
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TranceHime

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Re: Books
« Reply #932 on: December 16, 2011, 09:17:36 AM »
i have to get around to finish re-reading that one Nasu novel Kara no Kyoukai because it is loving long and very windy and confusing. It was a Chinese translation in the hopes I could understand it better than the original but no such amazing luck, a lot of it is still pretty arcane to me. :[
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superaielman

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Re: Books
« Reply #933 on: December 21, 2011, 02:21:05 PM »
A memory of light is due out in fall of next year. Damn you, waiting! :(
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Shale

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Re: Books
« Reply #934 on: December 25, 2011, 05:23:04 PM »
So I've been a big fan of Hellboy for a while, but I've held off on reading the other series set in that world, BPRD, if only because collecting Hellboy is expensive enough on its own. Well, Things From Another World had a Black Friday sale, and the books were two bucks each, and to make a long story short I own 14 of them now.

And holy crap, they're amazing. Mike Mignola makes great comics, this is no surprise, but The Universal Machine is seriously one of the best things he's done and it barely features the main cast except in flashbacks. Which is not to say that what Mignola and John Arcudi (the co-writer) are doing with Abe Sapien and the other supernatural types isn't fantastic, because it is. And unlike Hellboy for the last...what, 10 years? 15? There's a real sense of forward momentum to the overarching story. They're building a world, but they're also telling a relatively focused narrative. Great, great stuff.
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Hunter Sopko

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Re: Books
« Reply #935 on: December 29, 2011, 07:03:49 AM »
The movie trailer for the Hunger Games looked interesting, so I thought I'd check out the book.  Wow.  Absolutely riveting.  Loved it.

I finally looked into those books. Turns out I really liked Hunger Games... when it was called Battle Royale.

AndrewRogue

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Re: Books
« Reply #936 on: December 29, 2011, 03:09:39 PM »
I finally looked into those books. Turns out I really liked Hunger Games... when it was called Battle Royale.



Edit: New image, same concept, since the old one failed, apparently.
« Last Edit: December 30, 2011, 03:00:06 PM by AndrewRogue »

Captain K.

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Re: Books
« Reply #937 on: December 29, 2011, 05:03:43 PM »
Your picture isn't showing up Andrew.

Yeah, I figured it was similar to Battle Royale as well (although I haven't seen BR).  But I liked the description of just surviving in the district rather than the games themselves.

Idun

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Re: Books
« Reply #938 on: January 06, 2012, 03:31:38 AM »
I've received all my books for one of my seminars (well, I'm sure she's going to add some extras along the way). I've started reading two, just to get a smidge ahead since my semester starts the 17th.

Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction - Eric Foner
On Alexander Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of the Civil War - Lee/Young
The Horrible Gift of Freedom: Atlantic Slavery and the Representation of Emancipation - Marcus Wood
Slaves Waiting for Sale - Maurie McInnis
Scenes of Subjection - Hartman
Perfectly American - et. al, including my professor.
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Also exploring Stuart Hall's Critical Dialogues in  Cultural Studies for my own methodological interests. Joined a reading group with a PhD candidate prepping for orals, and will be re-reading Invisible Man (yes!), and finally reading Frantz Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks (which hordes of contemporary black cultural studies scholars cite in many cases of the formulation of a black psyche and self). Reading some more things, but I want to actually mention something about the books. I normally just mention what I read, and lay everything important out in class.

superaielman

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Re: Books
« Reply #939 on: January 06, 2012, 10:23:14 AM »
Tommyknockers: Finished! One of the few pre accident king novels I hadn't read. It was decent enough.  Strong ending, weak middle. Gard was pretty cool,  not a lot else was worth caring about in the cast.

Reread new spring as well, it is awesome.
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superaielman

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Re: Books
« Reply #940 on: January 07, 2012, 11:24:20 PM »
Alloy of law- Very good, typical of Sanderson. LD was right to an extent that this book was Sanderson blowing off steam, but it felt more than that. It was a very, very good look at the Mistborn world and it set up sequels. I love the potential that the sociological and economic changes of the time period (1900 or so) provide for a fantasy setting. Sanderson presents a very well researched look into it. one of the villains is a pretty classic conflict theorist put into action. That said!

I do have a bone to pick! For the most part the theories and philosophies of the world are very accurate.  The Broken windows theory that is thrown out? That is not. It's a very modern concept, and even coming to the conclusions drawn from there require modern commuincations and an established professional police force. The police force in Alloy of law is very much one fumbling towards the start of a professional police force. In fact, the main antagonist is a reflection of the problems of the pre professionalism era.

Scandrel is in fact behind the curve on commuications (which fits considering the world) but it just makes the theory being thrown in there make less sense. This is an extremely small issue, but it just jumped out to me due to my major. <_<
"Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself"- Count Aral Vorkosigan, A Civil Campaign
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Idun

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Re: Books
« Reply #941 on: January 08, 2012, 06:58:14 PM »
Finished first half of On Alexander Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of the Civil War. The authors organize the book around juxtaposing an art historian's interpretation v. a literary scholar's interpretation as to the volume's significance. Tackled Anthony Lee (AH) first and it read like butter. About to read Elizabeth Young.

For an antiheroic and antinarrative reading of Lee's argument, I have several issues with his argument, especially with his conclusion that Gardner's relatively scant inclusion of AFAMs in the Civil War function towards re-presenting a broader "stereoview." Considering Gardner's supplied dialogue necessary to convince publishers of the importance of such image (rigid photos, little to no action limited by cameras in the 19thc, landscape views), several of the quotes he offers undermines his nonpartisan position (re: black egg like head swelling with learning things about the world, how the locals can't even bury their own dead, the volume's price at $150 in the friggin' 19th c and his consumer base).

Furthermore, Gardner exaggerates the physiognomy of the black "posers," whereas the openness of simple landscapes are rote details recounting events passed. Of course the images provided abolitionists with visual aids, but it is worthy to entertain how Gardner's inclusions of blacks was simply opportunistic in the sense that they're readily available to capture as the war's ended, to clean up and bury both Southern and Northern dead (who would pose 30 minutes for one photo near rotting flesh?).

It's clear Lee approaches this visually-based interpretation preemptively, especially with some of his glaring attachments of primary sources not necessarily derivative of Garnder's work, but Brady's. He's not proving anything particularly unknown about the deficiencies of said interpretations. Printed in 2007, he's about a decade late stressing how art history should balance visual interpretations with other interdisciplinary methods.

AndrewRogue

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Re: Books
« Reply #942 on: January 09, 2012, 03:21:12 PM »
The Truth: Definitely proto-Moist book, but largely enjoyable. The fact that William so badly wants to be just another nice guy is entertaining enough and the view of the newspaper and reporting are fairly spot on and entertaining. Mr. Tulip and Mr. Pin are utterly fantastic villains.

Monstrous Regiment: Entertaining. Not much else to say. Characters are a bit weaker than normal (Polly and Jackram are both good, though), but they all serve decently in their roles.

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Re: Books
« Reply #943 on: January 12, 2012, 11:12:27 PM »
Snuff: Excellent. Probably my second or third favorite Watch novel now.

The Big U: Very early Neal Stephenson work, supposedly a satire about college life. Which is does really, really well for the first half of the book! ("Yes, you were exempted from Freshman English due to your high test scores, but we've retroactively waived this exemption for your convenience!")  Then it whiplashes into a batshit crazy semi-fantasy apocalypse. It's... barely coherant as far as narrative structure, but the first half is simple enough to follow. Good fucking luck with the second, plus a lot of non-resolution to some plot threads. Oh well. At least there wasn't a whole lot of his usual intellectual diatribes, and what little there were actually WORKED due to the fact they were coming from characters who were, well, grad students and professors who were supposed to be completely full of themselves.

AndrewRogue

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Re: Books
« Reply #944 on: January 14, 2012, 07:37:55 PM »
Eric: Short and sweet. Rincewind is always great fun.

Bobbin Cranbud

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Re: Books
« Reply #945 on: January 16, 2012, 03:39:41 AM »
Codex Alera: Furies of Calderon (Jim Butcher)
I've tried again and again to read this past the first few pages. I'm not even sure why it was such a slog to begin with. Maybe the loss of everything I consider Butcher's signature style.
Anyway, once I got past the beginning I ended up liking it. Still prefer his Dresden stuff, but I'll probably pick up the next of these.

Alloy of Law (Brandon Sanderson)
Not Sanderson's best work novel, but quite possibly my favorite. I'm a complete sucker for fantasy westerns, for fantasy worlds in non-medieval settings, for badass banter, for badassitude in general from the heroes and villains (a Sanderson staple), and for brainy but out-of-their depth heroines.
... Even if I can't unsee that damn broken window theory now that it's been pointed out. >_<
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superaielman

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Re: Books
« Reply #946 on: January 17, 2012, 08:01:19 PM »
Storm front: Pulpy fun, about what I was expecting. It's a hardboiled detective story crossed with a heavy dose of magic.
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Grefter

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Re: Books
« Reply #947 on: January 18, 2012, 06:36:14 AM »
The Boys if you haven't already.  Great story and probably the best entry in "realistic" super heroes settings we have got lately.  Only a touch more so than Iredeemable/Incorruptible but not really as light a touch.  That is just Garth Ennis vs Mark Waid though and both are fantastic.
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Clear Tranquil

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Re: Books
« Reply #948 on: January 18, 2012, 02:43:18 PM »
The Farseer Trilogy- A gift for Christmas =) Been eating these up. Nearly finished. I'm near the end of book three. Lots of Fitz and the Fool stuff going on here.

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Screw Starling, get back to the Fool stuff =)
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Shale

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Re: Books
« Reply #949 on: January 18, 2012, 09:01:26 PM »
"Look at me! I don't look at all well... I'm DEAD!"

Almost verbatim from a fantastic noir spoof by Firesign Theater, if you've heard of them. (and if you haven't, bug me on IRC; Nick Danger is 20 minutes well spent.)
« Last Edit: January 18, 2012, 09:14:11 PM by Shale »
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