I've just bought Neuromancer, anyone read that?
I've just bought Neuromancer, anyone read that?
I read about 30 pages but couldn't get into it. It was one of them where I was counting the pages to the end of the chapter. Let me know how you find it.Originally Posted by Adamski
Fuck sake. Ditched Malazan for the same reason.
It's probably well-regarded for a reason though, I guess. There's quite a lot of books I just don't click with, especially novels, so it's probably worth a bash.
If you like the idea of Neuromancer but find it hard to get into, maybe it's worth trying Snow Crash.
It's another founding member of the cyberpunk genre, but a lot easier to read, I reckon.
I'm really enjoying Neuromancer, maybe about 50 pages in. Will add Snow Crash to the list.
Reading Beyond Belief at the moment, which I bought after watching Spotlight.
It's a good read but it's making me really fucking angry.
Reading "The Name of the Wind." Yet another fantasy thing. My mate was banging on about it so borrowed it off him. Seems alright so far.
I needed something to replace ASOIAF so I started the Hannibel Lecter series. Red Dragon and SOTL were decent enough but I'm really hooked on Hannibal and it's vastly superior to the first 2 (so far, at least), probably because he's in it more.
I read that and the sequel last year after seeing somebody on here singing it's praises, Maz I think. I thought they were both really good. The world he's created seems really well developed. The way he explains the workings of the various schools of magic that exist, for example. I thought that was really cool.
I'm onto the last book of The Dark Tower series now. I'm still very much enjoying it but it's never quite managed to hit the heights of The Wastelands and, in particular, Wizard and Glass again. I've just been picking at it for the last week or so, I need to knuckle down and power through to the end.
I'm still enjoying The Name of the Wind but the main character is so absurdly good at pretty much everything that it's beginning to grate on me a bit.
Val Mcdermid - The Distant Echo.
Pretty good.
Take that, Hennerz.
1177BC: The Year Civilisation Collapsed by Eric H. Cline
The Bronze Age Collapse is an interesting subject, referring to the period at the end of the second millennium BC where the old palace-based kingdoms in the Mediterranean and Near East stopped functioning, precipitating a dark age and subsequently the onset of the less centralised Iron Age. The year 1177 BC is somewhat arbitrary (as are all such dates) but I'm okay with that. This is ostensibly an effort to give an account of the history leading up to this collapse and examine the reasons for it.
Unfortunately it's a fairly poor book. There's little effort to provide the kind of narrative structure that usually exists in popular history books. Instead it takes the form of a what is essentially a series of archaeological notes, with dozens of names of various kings and rulers strewn around the text. Some of the vignettes are interesting but together they don't add up to much other than to tell the reader that there was quite a lot of trade going on between the various powers of the time, as well as some warfare. The conclusion then examines the various theories concerning the collapse - including climate change, famine, rebellion and invasion (of the mysterious sea peoples) but ends up taking no position other than that perhaps it was a mixture of these things.
I think perhaps Cline's effort falls between the two stools of popular history and academic history, but is unlikely to appeal to readers of either.
It's good to know it wasn't just me who thought this. He quite often comes across as an arrogant little bastard, in my opinion. I actively disliked him at certain points in both books. I suppose he is recounting his own story for posterity though, so maybe that's his intention as a narrator, to embellish his own legend.
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
This is one of Dostoevsky's less celebrated works, telling the tale of a gentle and kind young man who returns home after recieving treatment abroad for his epilepsy. This Prince Mishkin is intended to represent a Christ-like character and to illustrate what happens to such a person in todays world (or in 19th century Russia as it were). Coming in to some money, he's quickly caught in all manner of intrigue including a love triangle and some attempts at extortion. It's not giving much away to say that it doesn't end well.
It is as one would expect, fairly long-winded. But that's less forgiveable here because there's such a preponderous of melodrama, and less of the weighty contemplation that marks out Crime and Punishment or The Brothers Karamazov. When he does get going, Dostoevsky is even more reactionary than usual, espousing what seems to be a brand of slavophile theocracy.
It still has its moments of insight and pathos but not one for the casual reader.
Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer by Philip Carlo
This is a "true crime" book about the career of Richard Kuklinski, telling of his life as a serial killer and mafia hitman. Kuklinski had an abusive father and apparently began murdering people as a teenager, claiming dozens of lives and eventually working for the Mafia as a contract killer even though as a Pole he could never become a member. He also dabbles in pornography and money laundering.
It is diverting in the morbid kind of way that these usual are. Unfortunately it's poorly written, in quite a banal style and with the author prone to repitition of certain points.
It's also based mostly on interviews with Kuklinski which magnifies another problem. With crime stories one always tends to doubt the veracity of some of what one is being told, but here the claims made stretch credibility so much that one comes away with the impression that whoever he may have killed, Kuklinski was a fantasist who became carried away with promoting the role that pop culture had assigned him. His various claims include being involved in the assasinations of two Mafia bosses - although it appears from other sources that this is disputed by those who were convicted of the crimes.
A more skeptical author might have framed this better, but of course the less sensational story doesn't sell as well.
I finally finished The Dark Tower this morning. I stalled a few times with the last book, mainly due to King's slightly annoying habit of introducing new characters and spending a lot of time detailing their backstory when it really felt like he should just be moving the existing story on. The last couple of hundred pages were pretty brutal, story-wise, too. It made for quite a demoralising read in places.
Ultimately I really enjoyed the series though. I've got a few gripes with what I thought were some pretty underwhelming resolutions to certain threads of the story, but overall it was great. I was sort of vaguely aware, without spoiling anything, that the ending wasn't to everyones liking, but I liked it and thought it was quite appropriate.
I hope the film is good. Although the fact that it's meant to be out in three or four months and there's a distinct lack of press surrounding it (they haven't even released a trailer yet) doesn't particularly fill me with confidence. It seems to me pretty obvious that television would be a far superior medium for it anyway. It would work brilliantly as a HBO series, a la Game of Thrones.
I loved the ending. Have you heard how it and the film tie together?
As a whole I think the series was at its peak in books 3 and 4 but I was pretty much hooked throughout.
http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/whee...ny-1202390897/
Wheel of Time TV series will be coming.
Sony had better not fuck it up.
Yeah, imagine the disappointment if the middle series ended up being a snore and all the female characters* being tedious caricatures. Oh, wait....
* bar the Aiel, maybe.
I still haven't gotten round to them but they can just cut those out.
Just get Brandon Sanderson to tell them broadly how he'd have trimmed all the shit out of books 5ish to 11.
Made a start on House of Leaves today after having to abandon the Kindle version years ago due to footnotes and stuff.
Danielewski knows how to write horror.
Yeah, I think so anyway.
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I agree with you on the peak of the series too, The Wastelands and Wizard and Glass were the two best books for me, with the latter probably just pipping the former as the absolute high-point.
Yeah, I think so anyway.
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I agree with you on the peak of the series too, The Wastelands and Wizard and Glass were the two best books for me, with the latter probably just pipping the former as the absolute high-point.Toggle Spoiler
Holy shit House of Leaves is a masterpiece.
Bought two books. I'm currently reading The Forever War.
I've got that but not read it yet. Any good?
I'm reading Pele's autobiography.
I'm not too far in but it seems good. Bit funny that it's set in the future of 1991
I find it vaguely satisfying that G. R. R. Martin is very obviously and publicly annoyed that the Game of Thrones TV series has overtaken the books.
He has absolutely nobody else to blame but himself.
It's laughable. Useless twat. I've mentioned before that Erikson got 10 Malazan books written in 12 years, and Brandon Sanderson got through three Wheel of Time books in relatively short order. Martin needs to sort himself out.
Speaking of fantasy thingies, I'm reading the third of Abercrombie's "The First Law" trilogy. It's bangin'.
Doesn't he usually justify it with 'oh come on guys I can't just do that I have to write other stuff?!!?!'
Not least TV episodes for that.
The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver
Nate Silver is best known for his website, Five Thirty Eight, which aggregates political polls in order to predict the outcome of elections. His wider interest is in Big Data and prediction generally and this book is his summary of the field, "the signal" being the relevant data pointing to the correct outcome and "the noise" being the remainder.
He spends a chapter each on some of the areas where such prediction techniques are used - among them politics, economics, the stock market, various sports and natural phenomenon. It's generally quite absorbing, and he writes about these topics in a way that attempts to be as free from bias as possible. I found that my interest in the book varied throughout in line with how much prior interest I had in a given subject - the parts about baseball were a real slog since I don't care for it, whereas those about chess were fascinating.
Finished the First Law trilogy yesterday. Great stuff. If you like the like of Game of Thrones, Malazan, whatever you really need to be getting in about it. It has some unanswered questions and what feels like a sequel-bait ending but obviously isn't because it was written nearly ten years ago. There are some standalone novels that I'll read at some point where it seems the main characters from the main trilogy get some mentions and bit part appearances but up next is the sixth Malazan book.
The Trial by Franz Kafka
This is a short and possibly unfinished work by the famous absurdist Czech writer whose name has slipped into the dictionary under the term "Kafkaeque".
It relates the story of bank worker K. who on his 30th birthday is arrested and put on trial. He isn't told what the charges are, and his attempts to engage with the court are maddedingly unsuccessful.
On the surface it's a satire on bureaucracy gone mad, and perhaps a prescient warning about totalitarianism (it was written in 1913). And for perhaps the first half of the book, it's hard to get to grips with. But as it nears the climax it aquires some degree of profundity. Does the court represent society, the universe, God, fate, or all of these things? K. has hints of all of these things, and what tantalising hints of actual meaning he can glimpse are out of reach, each path he pursues leading to further absurdity.
The ending is like a gut punch. Certainly one of the most extraordinarily pessimistic things I have ever read.
Aye, even though you know how it is going to end all along it's still a powerful kick in the balls.
Roy Foster's Modern Ireland.
Or if you want something shorter and easier, The Very Short Introductions to Northern Ireland and Modern Ireland by Marc Mulholland and Senia Paseta respectively are good.
It's a very broad question. Are you interested in history or what?
Yeah modern history I guess, non fiction preferred
The Blade Artist by Irvine Welsh
Welsh has focused his new book on one of his most notorious characters, the violent alcoholic Francis Begbie. The central thrust is that Begbie has reformed, and is now living a comfortable existence as an artist in California only to be drawn back into his old world by the death of his son in Scotland. I didn't like it much. While I can buy into the idea of Begbie addressing his anger management issues somewhat, his development into an urbane intellectual type who has read Elliot and can quote Nietzsche is a step too far. And when his old self resurfaces as you know it will, Welsh draws him as a methodical master criminal rather than the loser that I'd always assumed him to be, giving him a street reputation that he probably didn't deserve. It's all a tremendous disservice to the character and an unwelcome retcon to the Trainspotting universe.
The plot and indeed the other characters are serviceable, a vehicle to explore Begbie's personality. But overall, I fear that Irvine Welsh has simply become too bourgeois and needs a fresh start in his writing of some sort.
I've noticed over the last couple of Malazan books that Erikson isbgrtting funnier without it compromising the overall tone. He's so good. Piss off, GRRRRR.
Have you read all of these Mahow? I've started on The Eye of the World recently, it seemed like a decent solution to the "epic fantasy series" shaped hole in my life that The Dark Tower has left behind.
I've got to be honest, I found it to be a bit of a slog early on, but I'm a couple of hundred pages in now and it's starting to pick up. The idea of reading all fifteen volumes (or however many there are) is quite daunting though.
I've done the first three and took a bit of a break.
First took me a while to get into but I really liked the second and third.
Yeah, I think this is it. There's a lot of exposition. He fucking loves a nice, long descriptive passage.
Not that there's anything wrong with that, I like his prose for the most part. It's just a bit sluggish at times. It wasn't something I could sit and read a hundred, or even fifty, pages of in one sitting, for example. But now they've properly set off on the journey it's picked up a lot. I'll stick with it and report back.
Wait till you get further into the series all he bangs on about is skirts and petticoats.
When I was trying to decide whether to get started on it or not I stumbled across some giant reddit thread where they were all banging on about something similar to this and I was wondering what the fuck it was all about.
The last few before Sanderson took over and finished the series with a bang are a real slog. But it's a testament to how good the first bunch are that I kept reading.
And the importance of various minutiae of different political systems throughout the unnecessarily complicated world he builds up.
Actually the biggest issue isn't even that, it's that there is about a three-book slog in there (9-11 or something?) where he genuinely seems to forget that the characters we care most about are Rand, Perrin and Mat and insists on pissing about with his oedipal obsession with matriarchal figures that he's about a thousand times more interested in than most of his reason.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, but Sanderson's final three books of the trilogy were the best it had been since somewhere in Jordan's first five, I'd say.
EDIT: And per the above, it's definitely worth powering through if you enjoy the series enough to get to the weaker ones. The final (I think it is) scene of the Gathering Storm is just wonderful.
All the female characters have proper cuntish tendencies too.
Egwene needs to die in a fire.
I do love a bit of Nynaeve though which isn't surprising.
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