Tough question. Memories of Ice, maybe?Originally Posted by AD
Not a duffer among them though. Or certainly not in the four I've read.
Tough question. Memories of Ice, maybe?
Not a duffer among them though. Or certainly not in the four I've read.
You've fucked up the spoiler there, AD, and you're probably ruining lives in the process.
Get that spoilered @AD.
But yeah, Itkovian is ace. The bit with Anaster was awesome.
Well, I guess that's one series I don't have to bother with.
Finished The Great Hunt last night and I enjoyed it a lot more than The Eye of the World, although it's also made me appreciate the first a lot more as it did a good job of starting the series off.
Other than the last few and the very first one I can remember bugger-all about the individual books. I also can't remember when it's first peak was. Somewhere from 3-5 I would say.
Pretty much what AD says below. There's no structure to it, no indication of time they're in, who is who, what's relevant and what isn't and a whole lot of magic speak going unexplained. It's basically like trying to read a half Spanish half English book and understand what the fuck is going on.
I know I'll love it so I'll try and power through but motivation is through the floor.
That sounds absolutely fucking dire, actually. Sounds like it's all the things that would infuriate me with a book (or a film, as it were, for that matter).
I'm normally the first person carefully trying to check previous entries for a fantasy series on Wikipedia to remind me who the fuck people are and the first Malazan book didn't bother me at all. When you need to know stuff you'll know.
I get why it'd be off-putting though.
Well I mean... how the fuck can a series take a couple of books to get into!? If you said a couple of chapters or even half a book then yeah.
I found Game of Thrones quite hard to keep up with actually, I kept having to backtrack who's who and did what when, specially since I can be a bit of a sporadic reader. So if this is even more difficult, then I dunno if I should even attempt it. Though I'm dying for a new good Fantasy series to read.
I'm sporadic like Maz although when I get going I hammer through quite quickly. Hoping for a bit of non baby downtime throughout the holidays to get the first book done.
For me, despite the structure, it didn't. I was there well before the first book finished. He is, for me, comfortably a better writer than big George.
Hmm well, maybe next summer
Does anyone know if there is an audiobook of any of the D&D rulebooks?
I'm a twit
LONDON (AP) - The world's nerdiest sentence was discovered on an internet forum based in the UK today.
A late contender for post of the year.
Played, bruh.
Having finished The Crown, what from Churchill is worth reading on its own merits?
The River War
The World Crisis (you can get away with the condensed one volume version)
Marlborough: His Life and Times
Great Contemporaries
The Second World War
A History of the English-Speaking Peoples
Cheers.
There's also "My Early Life", which is very good.
His account of his escape from the POW camp is great.
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
It's Christmas, so why not? I may have read it as a child, but can't remember.It has had an enormous effect on culture and I'm certainly familiar with all of the story beats - Scrooge, Marley, Tiny Tim and the various ghosts. So while it's hard to come to it new, one as usual appreciates Dickens' prose, his usual outrage against poverty and injustice and the elements of the story that aren't so ubiquitous.
The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos by Brian Greene
Brian Greene is a leading proponent of string theory and this is his third popular science book. This one focuses on the various parallel universes that have been implied by modern physics. I found it a welcome refresher for a lot of that material, although I would suggest that the substance of the book is highly speculative to say the least, and probably treated with unwarranted regard. Greene himself makes the distinction between scientific realists like himself who suggest that their theories actually represent reality and scientific instumentalists, who regard them only as tools useful only insofar as they yield accurate predictions. I lean to the latter camp, and with the likes of string theory itself being untested (and perhaps untestable) I find speculations upon its possible further-reaching implications which are also untestable to be a step too far.
Finished the second The First Law book, and it was excellent. Battered through The Girl on the Train since yesterday afternoon. It's good and I can see why it's so popular but it's pretty lightweight and even I, who doesn't normally suss these things, saw the big reveal coming from about half or two-thirds of the way through the book.
Got the fifth Malazan book next, Midnight Tides.
Couldn't be arsed with another serious book so I'm reading 'All Families Are Psychotic' which I'm unsure of. Had a couple of lols so far though.
Toggle Spoiler
This may or may not have happened because I stepped on it when going for a piss in the middle of the night (I have no idea how it got where it was). On the plus side, you get my little finger from my 'gammy hand'.
Really shit as I was really getting into the third Wheel of Time book.
Toggle Spoiler
Cut your nails.
The one on show is actually one of my shortest.
I'm not sure what I find worse, the talons on that claw or you enjoying Jordans female characters. Still, early days.
Toggle Spoiler
Why?
I guess I'm liable to go to extremes.
I used to bite them down really short and since I stopped I always let them grow out quite a bit.
The end is in sight on the Dark Tower series now.
Wolves of the Calla, in the middle section, was harder going than the previous instalments but ultimately was still a pretty good read. I've moved straight on to Song of Susannah, which is a much shorter piece of work in comparison, so I'm aiming to whizz through that and then on to the grand finale.
If anyone has read it:
Toggle Spoiler
By the time the whole thing was done there were some aspects of the "our world" stuff in the Dark Tower that I liked and some that I really, really didn't but he does at least sow the seeds for it really early.
I'm on the fifth Malazan book. It was harder going early doors because, like the fourth, you're suddenly thrust into something separated from what you've read previously. It's picking up now though, and Tehol/Bugg are a very entertaining double-act.
I read the first book and thought it was utter, utter shit. Weird gor the sake of being weird and NOTHING FUCKING HAPPENS.
I like King, but that was poor.
I've tried the first book and gave up for the same reasons. Apparently it picks up after the first book though....but then, I really can't be arsed to read an entire book 'in preparation' for the rest. I've got better things to do.
I didn't think it was shit, but I know what you mean. The first one is a bit strange. It's only a couple of hundred pages though, and it ends acting as more of a sort of prologue to the rest of it to be honest.
How Jesus Became God by Bart Ehrman
Having read some of the more prominent books from the "Christ myth" point of view, I decided to have a look at the ideas of the most prominent mainstream scholar who holds to a historical Jesus, who happens to be Bart Ehrman. I had in fact previously read some other historical Jesus stuff, notably Reza Aslan but he doesn't seem to be as widely respected, nor is his work as thorough as this in its interepretation of the New Testament.
Ehrman plausibly outlines how Jesus the man originally would have claimed to be the Messiah, a Jewish king who would overthrow Roman rule and clear the way for the new age, representing the Kingdom of Heaven. Upon his execution and failure in this task some of his followers claimed to experience visions of him. In light of this he was re-interpreted as a human being who had been exalted after death by God to become the Son of Man, a supernatural figure who was to lead the armies of heaven in the coming apocalypse.
This "exaltation Christology" began by placing the exaltation after Jesus's death, but it was then moved backwards by his followers to having taken placed during his life, at his birth and eventually "before all ages".
Along the way the title "son of God" became appended, originally referring to a lesser divinity much in the same way that angels are in the Old Testament, but eventually acquiring the much grander implications that we're familiar with today. These "higher" Christologies are known as incarnation Christologies.
Am I sold? Well, not quite. It is as I said, plausible. But most of the above is based on interpretation of the gospel accounts. The letters of Paul seem to indicate that higher Christologies existed much earlier rather than being late developments. Ehrman tries to explain this away but I suspect that there's something else going on - perhaps the fusion of two seperate belief systems, one stemming from a historical figure and the other from a mythical one.
It is unlikely that we'll ever have closure on any of this but I find it fascinating to weight the different viewpoints.
Misquoting Jesus by Bart Ehrman
This one elaborates on the history of textual transmission of the New Testament, outlining how and why what we read today is very different from what was originally written.
The subject is a little more dry, but Ehrman keeps it interesting. Starting from the oral transmission of the material, through the theological debates of the first three Christian centuries, subsequent translations from Greek to Latin and the other languages, he explains how the diverse and very human books of the NT have become homogenised and corrupted by those of faith essentially attempting to impose their doctrines on them. Often this was "accidental" but sometimes also deliberate.
I have never been a believer in biblical inerrancy of course but even from my perspective this was eye-opening. These aren't minor textual variants. For centuries the works were copied by hand by barely literate scribes. The oldest extant documents originate after this, and our English-language copies often derive from the more unreliable versions, translated from a translation. The question is begged of believers - what exactly are you saying is inerrant?
Still going through the fifth Malazan book. Really, really enjoying it now. But for the slow, uncertain start it would be pushing for my favourite of the ones I've read.
Toggle Spoiler
Revelation Space by Alistair Reynolds
Back to some hard sci-fi. Reynolds has the credentials to write this stuff, with a a PhD in astrophysics and so forth.
He tells of a highly advanced human civilisation in the 26th century, on various colony worlds and split into various factions as a consequence of genetic and biomechanical engineering. The story centres around the obsession of a scientist with a long-dead culture and the manner of their extinction. It's all highly dystopian, verging on horror at times.
There are some problems. It's probably a little too long. None of the characters are at all likeable. Some of the writing is a bit contrived - cutting away from the action at times to create artificial cliff-hangers, and having characters withhold information thus making their motiviations difficult to understand.
But as world building it's really good, setting up a universe full of danger and full of mystery that is ripe for exploration. I might not have gone any further but the sequel is apparently better, so I'll get to it soon.
Have you read any Peter Hamilton @Henry?
Or have you read Children of Time?
That's a no to both, though I've heard Hamilton mentioned as being similar.
I got recommended the first Peter Hamilton a while back, been meaning to get on it. Apparently they're quite similar but Hamilton paints a less bleak picture of the future.
Children of time looks better @Boydy, so might go with that.
I picked it up because it won the Arthur C Clarke award so I assumed it'd be good. Finding it a bit hard to get into though.
Oh I thought you were recommending it. I'll hang off for a bit then.
Nearly at the end of this Malazan book and it's built up to a tremendous climax. Might just settle down with it and a beer to get a finish. It's interesting to have a war in this sort of book where neither side are really the baddies or the goodies.
I've read a decent bit more since that post. It's getting good.
Is that the only thing you read, @Ian?
What, that one book or the Malazan series in particular? This individual book has taken me ages, I realised this the other day. I think it's partly because it got off to a slow start.
That series.
Nah. Probably a lot of my posts in here are Malazan because of a discussion or two there has been in here about them and because they're fucking massive so I'll probably post about a given one a few times as I read it.
I currently have First Law trilogy, Malazan, Long Earth and Discworld on the go as far as series are concerned, and usually when I buy my next load of books I'll buy some extra things as well.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
moment as she's been a right sulky cunt in this book especially since they left Tar Valon.