The Book Thread

[Adamski]

Struggling a bit for recommendations, anyone got anything along the same lines as the following authors?

Christopher Brookmyre
Brett Easton Ellis
Chuck Palahniuk
Jay McInerney
John Niven

Not really sure what genre this would fall under which is half the problem I'm having...

[Spoonsky]

Michael Chabon or Donna Tartt, both went to school with Bret Easton Ellis I think. The Secret History is a fantastic book.

[Adamski]

I'm really struggling with the first book. Just too much going on.

[Henry]

So where was I?

Night by Elie Weasal

The sequence is too familiar by now - pogroms, ghettos, deportation, concentration camps, selections, gas chambers, death marches. But this was one of the first widely read accounts of the holocaust, from the perspective of a Hungarian Jew, recounting the events as they happened in particular to himself and his father. It is, as I say, well-known by now, but the details still don't fail to shock. I'm thinking of the authors anger at his father for drawing the anger of the SS as he is beaten to death. The hanging of a child. Words of encouragement from SS guards who also shoot dead stragglers.
It's short and simply written, with Weasal also recounting the effect of these horrors on his Jewish faith. It appears that despite declaring the God of Israel to be dead here, that he did nevertheless retain his belief afterwards. I'm at a loss to know how.


As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

A short novel with a reputation for both merit and difficulty. The story is about a family of rural Missispians travelling across the country in an effort to bury their dead mother. Each chapter is narrated by a different person, with little in the way of context. It's at first a disorienting and opaque approach, with some effort and thought required to figure out what is going on, much less to draw any conclusions from events. But it does begin to pay off, with the story in turn humorous and profound. By the end you begin to understand the characters complexities with earlier events put into some context. And then it ends.
Now this leads me to believe that a second (or even third) read-through would be much more rewarding. And I understand that that gives Faulkners work some value as a literary artifact, much in the sense that Joyce's more difficult output has. And I might return to it at some stage, but as a casual reader with limited spare time, I'm not sure that I can necessarily justify studying the likes of this to the extent that is required to fully appreciate it.


For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

This is Hemingway's novel set during the Spanish Civil War, again based on his own experiences. It's the story of an American fighting for the International brigades, sent behind enemy lines to destroy a bridge in an effort to assist with an offensive that is planned by the Republican side. It's not overtly political, more concerned with the war than the politics behind it. I'd say it's the best I've read by him to date - beautiful and tragic and alive. Certain sequences are harrowing to read, the characters are fascinating and multifaceted - capable of the most extreme cruelty, bravery and cowardice, but kept relatable and sympathetic throughout.
Some of the linguistic choices are strange - the characters speak Spanish and he translates it literally throughout - with 'thou' and 'thee' and other oddities. He also censors the swearing - "I obscenity your mother". But they don't really detract.
Great stuff from a fascinating period of history.


The Strongman: Vladimir Putin and the Struggle for Russia by Angus Roxburgh

This is a history of Russia since the fall of communism, primarily focusing on the rise and rule of Vladimir Putin. It's an interesting overview, with some of the particular stories and insights being revealing in terms of the reasons why Russia has lurched back into authoritarianism - although the general picture of corruption and autocracy that it paints is hardly all that ground-breaking.
The author is a former PR consultant to the Putin government and while one suspects that this might align him with them in some sense, the reality is quite different. My main criticism in particular is that it's quite western-centric, limited in the extent that it portrays the Russian point of view, or the experience of the Russian people, and far too uncritical of the policies of the west.


The Disposessed by Ursula Le Guin

Nominally science fiction, this one is actually a political exploration. The main character Shevek belongs to a planet of peaceful anarchists, and travels to nearby moon where capitalism is the norm. Le Guin constructs a plausible working model of an anarchist society and examines its strengths and weaknesses, and those of its rival in a mature and balanced way. At its best this leads to some quite profound observations about human beings and human society. At its worst its slightly dated, some of the cold war era tropes and allegories no longer relevant.


The Amazing Colossal Apostle by Robert M Price.

Another book by the most prominent proponent of the Christ-myth theory, this one aims to determine what can be said, if anything about the historical Paul. The conclusion, unsurprisingly is that Paul is every bit a literary creation as Jesus is and that if there was a real historical figure at all we can only speculate broadly about him, the Christian Paul being entirely a fabrication.
Largely this is done by deconstructing the Pauline epistles and attempting to demonstrate that they could not have been written by Paul or any other individual. They are instead pseudo-biographical works which have been edited and redacted repeatedly by religious authorities possessing various motivations, starting with gnostics, then Marcionites and finally Catholics. Their current form was arrived at well into the 2nd century. While historians (as opposed to fundamentalists) now take some of this for granted with several of the epistles, Price demands that we see them all in this way.
The real Paul is hypotheticised to have been a gnostic leader, nothing to do with any Jesus movement and potentially having been deified to some extent himself. He survives in Christian tradition only as Simon Magus, an evil sorcerer, with the character of Saul/Paul being the version co-opted and domesticated by the emerging Catholic church in order to heal the divides between Jewish and Marcionite branches of Christianity.
The logic here is impressive, the depth and breadth of Price's learning remarkable. It's difficult not to be convinced by the thrust of his argument, even if there are details that one might quibble with and questions I still have. I'm probably not familiar enough with mainstream scholarship to come down firmly on one side or the other but this is serious stuff that ought to require a massive effort to refute.

[Spammer]

Ursula Le Guin is someone I've been interested in checking out. Might have to get that book as it sounds interesting.

[Kikó]

Thanks for that Henry, last book sounds very good.

I recently read Storm of Steel - a book based on World War I from a German soldier perspective. Not a book for someone who is looking at the historical context of the war but rather someone who is interested in what it was like to be thrown into pure destruction. It's quite incredible to read about some of the great battles (Somme for example) and makes you wonder how anyone could have survived with the shells, grenades, gun fire and mustard gas happening every time you were on the battlefield. It's interlaced with some lovely down times as well, where the serenity of sleepy French villages are resting spots for the soldiers and it makes you forget one of the bloodiest wars in human history is occurring a few miles away. It's a very interesting read.

Currently reading The Idiot and And the poor suffer what they must so will come back to this (if I remember).

[Spammer]

I recently read Storm of Steel - a book based on World War I from a German soldier perspective. Not a book for someone who is looking at the historical context of the war but rather someone who is interested in what it was like to be thrown into pure destruction. It's quite incredible to read about some of the great battles (Somme for example) and makes you wonder how anyone could have survived with the shells, grenades, gun fire and mustard gas happening every time you were on the battlefield. It's interlaced with some lovely down times as well, where the serenity of sleepy French villages are resting spots for the soldiers and it makes you forget one of the bloodiest wars in human history is occurring a few miles away. It's a very interesting read.

Ooh I have that. Dan Carlin mentioned it in one of his podcasts and I got it on his recommendation. Looking forward to checking it out.

[Adamski]

Cool, will persevere although I've been reading it on and off since the start of the year.

Cheers for the recommendations Spoonsky

[Giggles]

Because I'm a sucker for alternative history type things and nobody shows that Castle show on TV here, I was recommended to pick up Making History by Stephen Fry (the same Stephen Fry I presume, I didn't know he wrote). Anyone read it and is it worth it?

[Boydy]

Because I'm a sucker for alternative history type things and nobody shows that Castle show on TV here, I was recommended to pick up Making History by Stephen Fry (the same Stephen Fry I presume, I didn't know he wrote). Anyone read it and is it worth it?

Yeah, I've read that. I really enjoyed it.

Other Nazi-related alternative histories that are worth a look are 'Dominion' by CJ Sansom and Fatherland by Robert Harris.

I saw this one (https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0008124876/ref=pd_sim_14_17?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=JC2XY0HVQHR2113A29W5) in the shop the other day too and thought it looked interesting. Might get it soon.

Is the TV show The Man in the High Castle? That was a book too. By Philip K. Dick.

[Spammer]

Reading a few things at the mo.

The Keeper: Saving Goals and Achieving Them - Tim Howard's autobiography. Standard fare for a footballer's autobiography really. Decent thing to read between calls at work. Probably better than most, actually, but then I tend to the avoid the ones that are clearly shit.

The Bottom Billion - Only just started this but looks promising. I'll probably wait until after my holiday to crack at it properly. It's about how to turn the shit countries into slightly less shit countries, and how to develop the shit out of them or some shit.

Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century I'm only a chapter into this but it is fucking brilliant so far. Can't wait to give it a good go.

[Giggles]

Yeah, I've read that. I really enjoyed it.

Other Nazi-related alternative histories that are worth a look are 'Dominion' by CJ Sansom and Fatherland by Robert Harris.

I saw this one (https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0008124876/ref=pd_sim_14_17?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=JC2XY0HVQHR2113A29W5) in the shop the other day too and thought it looked interesting. Might get it soon.

Is the TV show The Man in the High Castle? That was a book too. By Philip K. Dick.

Yeah that's the show. Does any UK channel show it?

I've heard of Fatherland too and it was a toss-up between this and that one. I also have a copy of Bolloxology I want to read after the Fry one, so I'll grab the other one after.

[Boydy]

Yeah that's the show. Does any UK channel show it?

I've heard of Fatherland too and it was a toss-up between this and that one. I also have a copy of Bolloxology I want to read after the Fry one, so I'll grab the other one after.

I'm not sure but I think it's only on Amazon Prime. Can't you download it anywhere?

You should give Dominion a go too. It's probably the best of the three of those.

[Giggles]

I'm not sure but I think it's only on Amazon Prime. Can't you download it anywhere?

You should give Dominion a go too. It's probably the best of the three of those.

It's only €5 so I'll get it for after the other two.

Our ISP are threatening to cut people off with no warnings for downloading so I'm going to have to locate a PAYG broadband dongle before I can look for TV stuff.

[Boydy]

Oh, shit. I'd be switching ISP pretty soon.

Can you still stream?

[Spoonsky]

Reading a few things at the mo.

The Keeper: Saving Goals and Achieving Them - Tim Howard's autobiography. Standard fare for a footballer's autobiography really. Decent thing to read between calls at work. Probably better than most, actually, but then I tend to the avoid the ones that are clearly shit

Does it touch on his Tourettes?

[Spammer]

Does it touch on his Tourettes?

Yeah a fair bit. He has OCD too as they both often go together and he talks about a lot of all that. It's clearly written for the general American audience on the back of his heroics against Belgium in 2014 and explains a lot of things about the basic rules of football which wouldn't be there otherwise. It's a decent read though.

[Henry]

The Tudors: The Complete Story of England's Most Notorious Dynasty by G.J. Meyer.

English history is something I have only a partial understanding of, so I've set out to rectify that. This is a fairly heavy tome charting the history of the infamous Tudor Dynasty of the 16th century. After a brief section on Henry VII (who by most measures after an improbable rise to power ruled in a reasonably prudent way) most of the book is dedicated to the tumultuous reign of his son, his well-known marital intrigues, his tyranny and his destruction of the old church. It's then followed by short sections on Edward VII and Mary I (each who only ruled briefly) before finishing with a somewhat longer section on Elizabeth I.

It's interesting and entertaining throughout, pitched at a level that I found appropriate with some knowledge taken for granted, but with intermediate chapters explaining background topics (the reformation, the role of parliament, contemporary lifestyles and so forth). I would perhaps have liked some more attention paid to the underlying social trends - the new landowning class created by Henry's confiscation of church property and the new Protestant merchant class whose ideas were spread by the printing press are mentioned but they would have a huge role to play in future centuries that isn't really appreciable here.

I come away from it all with a profoundly negative view of Tudor England. The Catholic Church is portrayed as being nowhere nearly as decadent as one might have thought and Henry's actions are shown as entirely opportunistic and brutal. Living standards are shown to have declined throughout, the relatively prosperous medieval kingdom degenerating into a heavily-tiered society with a minority living in opulent wealth and a majority in grinding poverty. Even the international standing of England is depicted as suffering, with the Crown lurching from one financial crisis to another. This all holds even during the time of Elizabeth, who to my uninformed mind would have at least have had at least as many positives as negatives. But here she's just another despot, petty and cowardly, who just managed to live a little longer.
And yet it would, in a few short decades, lead to the beginnings of the modern parliamentarian system and thereafter to the industrial revolution. Omelettes and eggs maybe? Fascinating stuff.

[Alex]

I hadn't read any Stephen King at all up to this point in my life but I'm really into his Dark Tower series at the moment. Has anyone else read it? I'm close to finishing up the fourth instalment, Wizard and Glass, and it's potentially my favourite so far. It's between than and the previous one.

It feels little bit disjointed sometimes but generally it's ace. I really like the world and the mythology he's created.

[mugbull]

Stephen King is god tier, even if he should have stopped writing books in 1995. I dont remember reading that series though

[Ian]

The Dark Tower is phenomenal. Dunno which I'd say is my favourite Song of Susannah feels like the one I remember least about.

Can't go into it without spoiling the ending for Alex but I like the way they're setting up the film.

[Magic]

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26233572-i-see-you

Bought that so I could get free delivery on my self-help book. Seems to get pretty good reviews and will give me a break from history/serious bookage.

What a load of shite.

[Spoonsky]

Any book with a cover like that will be.

[Baz]

Have any of you got a Kindle Oasis? Is it worth the extra cash over a Paperwhite/Voyage?

[Alex]

The Dark Tower is phenomenal. Dunno which I'd say is my favourite Song of Susannah feels like the one I remember least about.

Can't go into it without spoiling the ending for Alex but I like the way they're setting up the film.

Yeah, I'm trying to involve anything regarding the film for fear of spoiling the story. I do think Idris Elba will be a good Roland though.

I think what I like most about Wizard and Glass is the that it's nearly all set in the past when Roland is still young, and you get more of a sense of what a Gunslinger's role in the world was, what they were meant to be and meant to do in the grand scheme of things, rather than this lone wanderer that he's turned into.

The world and, particularly, the dialogue is really immersive though. I really wish it was a real-life thing to be able to tell people that they've "forgotten the face of their father" when they make you angry. :D

[Spammer]

I tried reading the Dark Tower and got as far as some bloke chasing after someone else through a desert and stopping at an old man's house.

[Alex]

I think that's quiet early in the first book? The first one is bit weird really, it's not very representative of the rest of it. It just lays some basic groundwork. The second one is where it really picks up.

[Spammer]

It's pretty much the first thing that happens - I only read about 50 pages I think. I've got the audiobooks though so might give them a crack at some point.

[Ian]

I've just finished the fourth Long Earth book. I'm committed now and have to read the fifth but Christ, I wish I'd given up after the second. Every single fucking time it sets up a bunch of stuff, makes you think something lasting might happen and then ends on a wet fart of a finale.

This one has a major event in terms of the series happen and the death of a character who's been in all four and I still couldn't bring myself to give a shit.

[Henry]

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

The three Bronte sisters are famed 19th century writers with a whole list of classics to their names. This one is the only novel by Emily Bronte, who had a short life and poor health but it's reputed by many to be the best of them all. Set in rural northern England, it tells of the doomed romance of Heathcliff and Catherine, and its effects on their families and associates.
I was taken aback at how dark it is - at turns violent, ugly, misanthropic, stark and cruel. The characters lead miserable lives and go out of their way to inflict misery upon others. Heathcliff in particular is vindictive and obsessed with revenge, not only against his enemies but against their families. He destroys his own and their lives pursuing it. A very long way from what one expects from genteel 19th century society.
One imagines that some of it might be drawn from the authors own experiences, her ill health and frustrations. There's just a hint of the supernatural (verging on horror at times). Perhaps an unreliable narrator. Certainly hints of a proto-feminism and class politics. All very far ahead of its time.

[Ian]

I'm on a terrorist thriller thing called First Response by Stephen Leather about an ISIS terror chap coerces a load of non-ISISists into a suicide bomb threat to release ISIS inmates from Belmarsh. I've not got to whatever the twist is going to be yet but while I'm enjoying it it's annoying how much he's forcing across points that only a moron or a cunt would need to be told anyway.

You're telling me not all Muslims want to kill all the white people? Well shiver my timbers, Leather, you so crazy!

After this I need to get back to some series. I've got one more Long Earth book (ugh), the next First Law book, the next Malazan and some more Discworld to be cracking on with.

[ItalAussie]

I've just finished the fourth Long Earth book. I'm committed now and have to read the fifth but Christ, I wish I'd given up after the second. Every single fucking time it sets up a bunch of stuff, makes you think something lasting might happen and then ends on a wet fart of a finale.

This one has a major event in terms of the series happen and the death of a character who's been in all four and I still couldn't bring myself to give a shit.

So I've read the first two, but couldn't bring myself to keep going. Reckon I should just give it a miss? I found the second one a bit uninspiring.

[Ian]

Uninspiring is exactly the word. I would advise you not to bother. I'm going to finish it because I've got this far but it's just a series of teases to things that never happen, appearances of interesting species that don't matter and a load of characters who aren't unpleasant, for the most part, but nor do you actually care about. Too much of it feels like a "What if?" that spends too long talking about the raw facts of the setting they've created and not nearly enough actual story.

I love Discworld so much I'm basically just going to blame Stephen Baxter for it being such a waste of an idea.

[ItalAussie]

Uninspiring is exactly the word. I would advise you not to bother. I'm going to finish it because I've got this far but it's just a series of teases to things that never happen, appearances of interesting species that don't matter and a load of characters who aren't unpleasant, for the most part, but nor do you actually care about. Too much of it feels like a "What if?" that spends too long talking about the raw facts of the setting they've created and not nearly enough actual story.

I love Discworld so much I'm basically just going to blame Stephen Baxter for it being such a waste of an idea.

That's kind of how I found it. It's not that I didn't like it. It's that I really didn't care about the characters after the first book. It's a nice piece of world-building, but the stories were certainly more Baxter than Pratchett.

Pratchett signed my copy of Thief of Time, which is something I will always value.

[ItalAussie]

In terms of fun book series that don't demand too much of you, I really like the Dresden File series.

The story's all gotten a bit heavy in the last bunch of books, but the premise is fun and it never takes itself too seriously.

[Ian]

That's kind of how I found it. It's not that I didn't like it. It's that I really didn't care about the characters after the first book. It's a nice piece of world-building, but the stories were certainly more Baxter than Pratchett.

I think the world-building and that they're very easy reading are what's kept sucking me back in. And probably the same hope that kept me going with the Walking Dead as long as it did, that it'd turn into something as good as it could be. I've only one Long Earth book to go now though and I don't see it changing.

[Spammer]

Reading The Autobiography of Martin Luther King at the mo. It's a laborious in terms of very specific things he does and people he visits at specific times, but that's more do with the book being selections of his writings at different times being thrown together. It's strange for him to be talking about high-end philosophical ideas and then chat for 30 pages about the precise order in which he went to visit different people about a particular issue. The erratic pace would be fine in a normal book but in the Kindle edition there's not much indication beforehand of what you're going to get in the next chapter. It's a cracking read though, and really fascinating to see how his faith influenced him throughout and pushed him towards trying to make a difference. The stuff about his faith and his opinions on the role of the church are the most interesting parts so far for me, actually.

[Henry]

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

The scope here is considerable - the entire history of our species. It starts well, and the first few chapters covering human evolution followed by the cognitive revolution and then the agricultural revolution are intriguing and offer an interesting perspective. Unfortunately as it moves on, the author appears to lose track of his task, and the narrative degenerates into a series of dubious opinion pieces about politics and philosophy. (Political philosophies are equated with religious creeds for example.) It's still reasonably well written with some thought-provoking ideas, but as it staggers towards its conclusion, it begins to dawn that perhaps Harari wished he had written a different book. His last chapter about cybernetics and AI anticipates the follow-up Homo Deus which is about the future of our species. That might be worth a follow-up some time if he can restrain himself a little better.

[Henry]

Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague de Camp

Alternative history this time - I found the premise intriguing, concerning a 20th century man who travels back to 6th century Rome and attempts to prevent the Dark Ages from happening. It's quite short and reads almost like a fable (or a thought experiment) rather than realistic history. The protagonist, Padway, displays an uncommon resourcefulness, having little trouble adjusting to the wildly different society and it's language and in short order inventing the printing press, telegraph and various other improvements. Still, it's an entertaining flight of fancy that lays proper credit at the feet of the engineers who built both the classical and modern worlds.

[Ian]

I'm onto Before They Are Hanged, Abercrombie's second in the First Law trilogy. He's so readable.

With him and Erikson to catch up on I'm genuinely a bit gutted I made so much effort to get up to speed on ASOIAF

[Spammer]

Perv: The Sexual Deviant in all of us, by Jesse Berring. Very interesting book. He reckons that a large proportion of people have some kind of idiosyncratic, 'out of the norm' type of sexual inclination/fantasy that they keep under wraps due to the stigmas still existing in society about sexuality. He argues that whether or not is harmful is the indicator of whether or not you should judge someone, because people can't really decide on their sexual interests. All good stuff. He applies the argument to paedophiles one of the last chapters, where it gets a bit more dicey. Lots of studies apparently suggest that giving paedophiles access to child porn does often satisfy their sexual needs enough to prevent them from doing any harm to real children, so he weighs up whether or not you should just let them have it, or that maybe one day they could make CGI child porn. It's a bit weird but seems to make sense really. The prevailing theme though is that while people are more open about their sexuality than they've ever been, there's still a lot of stigma and there's a long way to go when it comes to accepting all the different variants of it. Especially considering how many people do have stuff hidden in their locker.

Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth, by James Lovelock. I'm about half-way through this. A lot of the science is over my head but I'm learning a lot and I'm getting the gist of it, which is that the Earth itself has a self-righting mechanism in the same way the human body does (eg shivering/sweating etc), although with the Earth it can take centuries to kick in properly. A lot of the evidence he provides seems circumstantial to me but it's interesting all the same, and I'm learning a fair amount about science and shit even if I don't buy the idea that 'Gaia' is a conscious force, even if it might be homeostatic. I mean, a lot of the homeostatic elements of the human body aren't conscious and are just done automatically, so I don't see why he has to think that Gaia is conscious. It's a bit irritating that he chooses to personify the planet like he does, but it doesn't bother me enough to stop reading.

[Dark Soldier]

Lewis wrote a book? The fuck.

[Baz]

:D

It's on the missus' Christmas Kindle.

[Dark Soldier]

I'm pirating fuck outta that shit.

[Ian]

The last 15% of Reaper's Gale (7th Malazan book) really was ridiculously good. Probably one of the most exciting climaxes to a book I've read. My love for this series is getting to silly levels now.

I'll be starting #5 soon. Have you read Joe Abercrombie's First Law trilogy? Same sort of stuff as ASOIAF and Malazan. I'm halfway through the second and loving it.

[John Arne]

:D

It's on the missus' Christmas Kindle.

A war history related book, I presume?

[Baz]

A war history related book, I presume?A Dummy's Guide To Mooching About Hull

[John Arne]

Ah, read it.

[Adamski]

I still can't get through this first Malazan book. Getting to the stage now where I feel I need to go back and read it again from the start.

[Mazuuurk]

Oh yeah I forgot I meant to read those.

What's the trouble you're having, Adamski?

[Ian]

Afraid I haven't. Will be looking for a new series after Malazan so will make a note of that series. A trilogy may be a good idea after reading a 10-book behemoth of a series.

Which Malazan book has been your favourite so far?

Tough question. Memories of Ice, maybe?

Not a duffer among them though. Or certainly not in the four I've read.

[Spoonsky]

You've fucked up the spoiler there, AD, and you're probably ruining lives in the process.

[Ian]

Get that spoilered AD.

But yeah, Itkovian is ace. The bit with Anaster was awesome.

[Spikey M]

Well, I guess that's one series I don't have to bother with.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

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.

[Ian]

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.

[Adamski]

Oh yeah I forgot I meant to read those.

What's the trouble you're having, Adamski?

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.

[Mazuuurk]

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).

[Ian]

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.

[Mazuuurk]

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.

[Adamski]

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.

[Ian]

Well I mean... how the fuck can a series take a couple of books to get into!? .

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.

[Mazuuurk]

Hmm well, maybe next summer :thbup:

[Baz]

Does anyone know if there is an audiobook of any of the D&D rulebooks?

[bruhnaldo]

LONDON (AP) - The world's nerdiest sentence was discovered on an internet forum based in the UK today.

[niko_cee]

:D

A late contender for post of the year.

[Ian]

Played, bruh.

[Bernanke]

Having finished The Crown, what from Churchill is worth reading on its own merits?

[Lewis]

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

[Bernanke]

Cheers.

[GS]

There's also "My Early Life", which is very good.

His account of his escape from the POW camp is great.

[Henry]

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.

[Ian]

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.

[Magic]

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.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

http://i.imgur.com/ZTPIN5W.jpg

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.

I fucking loved it when Elayne walked up to Egwene and slapped her, a proper :drool: moment as she's been a right sulky cunt in this book especially since they left Tar Valon.

[Boydy]

Cut your nails.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

The one on show is actually one of my shortest.

[Disco]

I'm not sure what I find worse, the talons on that claw or you enjoying Jordans female characters. Still, early days.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

I'm not sure what I find worse, the talons on that claw or you enjoying Jordans female characters. Still, early days.

I enjoyed the action that was performed, Egwene needed to be slapped down.

I do enjoy Nynaeve though.

[Adamski]

The one on show is actually one of my shortest.

Why?

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

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.

[Alex]

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:

It's all getting a bit meta and weird though. I think one of the reasons I found Wolves such hard going in the middle was they introduce and then dedicate a lot of time to the Father Callahan character, who I knew fuck all about but obviously came to realise is a main character in Salem's Lot, which I've neither read nor seen the film adaptation of.

Anyway, in the story the character of Callahan has now discovered an actual copy of Salem's Lot, by Stephen King, that got brought through from alternate-world New York and is wondering why some man from another dimension appears to have written a fictional work that seems to dictate the events of his actual life.

They've now all gone back to said alternate world and, in short, I've got a strong hunch that Stephen King is about to write himself into his own novel before this whole thing wraps up.

[Ian]

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.

[Spikey M]

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:

It's all getting a bit meta and weird though. I think one of the reasons I found Wolves such hard going in the middle was they introduce and then dedicate a lot of time to the Father Callahan character, who I knew fuck all about but obviously came to realise is a main character in Salem's Lot, which I've neither read nor seen the film adaptation of.

Anyway, in the story the character of Callahan has now discovered an actual copy of Salem's Lot, by Stephen King, that got brought through from alternate-world New York and is wondering why some man from another dimension appears to have written a fictional work that seems to dictate the events of his actual life.

They've now all gone back to said alternate world and, in short, I've got a strong hunch that Stephen King is about to write himself into his own novel before this whole thing wraps up.

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.

[Spammer]

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.

[Alex]

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 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.

[Henry]

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?

[Ian]

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.

Tehol and Bugg are very funny, the Udinaas/ Feather Witch stuff is bubbling up nicely, Trull I'm enjoying way more than I remember from the other one he was in and the Rhulad story is just excellent.

[Henry]

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.

[Adamski]

Have you read any Peter Hamilton Henry?

[Boydy]

Or have you read Children of Time?

[Henry]

That's a no to both, though I've heard Hamilton mentioned as being similar.

[Adamski]

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.

[Boydy]

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.

[Adamski]

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.

[Ian]

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.

[Boydy]

Oh I thought you were recommending it. I'll hang off for a bit then.

I've read a decent bit more since that post. It's getting good.

Is that the only thing you read, Ian?

[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.

[Boydy]

That series.

[Ian]

Nah. (http://www.thethirdhalf.co.uk/search.php?searchid=55074) 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.

[Adamski]

I've just bought Neuromancer, anyone read that?

[Spammer]

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.

[Adamski]

Fuck sake. Ditched Malazan for the same reason.

[Spammer]

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.

[ItalAussie]

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.

[Adamski]

I'm really enjoying Neuromancer, maybe about 50 pages in. Will add Snow Crash to the list.

[Spammer]

Reading Beyond Belief (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Beyond-Belief-Catholic-Church-Scandal/dp/1849016364/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1488150051&sr=8-6&keywords=beyond+belief) at the moment, which I bought after watching Spotlight.

It's a good read but it's making me really fucking angry.

[Ian]

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.

[Browning]

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.

[Alex]

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 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.

[Ian]

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.

[Spikey M]

Val Mcdermid - The Distant Echo.

Pretty good.

Take that, Hennerz.

[Henry]

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.

[Alex]

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.

:D

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.

[Henry]

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.

[Henry]

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.

[Alex]

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.

[Ian]

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.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/wheel-of-time-tv-series-sony-1202390897/

Wheel of Time TV series will be coming.

Sony had better not fuck it up.

[Ian]

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.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

I still haven't gotten round to them but they can just cut those out.

[Ian]

Just get Brandon Sanderson to tell them broadly how he'd have trimmed all the shit out of books 5ish to 11.

[Dark Soldier]

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.

[Alex]

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.

Yeah, I think so anyway.

Apparently he has the Horn of Gilead in the film, which would essentially make it a sequel to the book series and the start of a "new loop" for Roland, so to speak? I think that's quite clever. It would also give them free reign to change a few things without book readers getting too annoyed by it.

Obviously there is some significance to him now having the horn. It's an important part of his past, and obviously ties in with his ultimate destiny somehow. So by now having it he must be getting closer to achieving whatever the ultimate outcome is right? I sort of see him as being stuck on this permanent loop (albeit unwittingly) until he manages to do everything "right".

I suppose my three main issues with the way things turned out were all to do with Roland's three main adversaries. The fact that he never got a proper showdown with Walter annoyed me. Mordred just rocks up and kills him on a whim and that's the end of that.

You then have Mordred set up as this huge threat, but Roland makes incredibly light work of him. Although he did get Oy, was was probably the hardest death to take out of any of the Ka-Tet members for me. :(

And then the Crimson King was quite underwhelming I thought. He was just this crazy, shrieking old man lobbing grenades off a balcony. Who gets drawn and then erased out of existence by some kid we just met about 100 pages shy of the end of the whole series.

But then at the same time I don't think showdowns with big bad guys are actually the point of the series at all. If you think about it Roland never actually comes up against anyone, or anything, in the whole story that really causes him to break sweat in a fight. Not even close really. He regularly takes on entire mobs (the Wolves) and wipes out entire settlements of people ( Tull in the first book, or when he attacks the place where all the Breakers live) with relative ease.

I think what he struggles with is meant to be more of a personal nature. Like, he needs to go the opposite way a bit and not be as much of a cold, hard methodical killer, as he is. His downfall is the people around him getting hurt of killed because of his decisions.

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.

[Ian]

Yeah, I think so anyway.

Apparently he has the Horn of Gilead in the film, which would essentially make it a sequel to the book series and the start of a "new loop" for Roland, so to speak? I think that's quite clever. It would also give them free reign to change a few things without book readers getting too annoyed by it.

Obviously there is some significance to him now having the horn. It's an important part of his past, and obviously ties in with his ultimate destiny somehow. So by now having it he must be getting closer to achieving whatever the ultimate outcome is right? I sort of see him as being stuck on this permanent loop (albeit unwittingly) until he manages to do everything "right".

I suppose my three main issues with the way things turned out were all to do with Roland's three main adversaries. The fact that he never got a proper showdown with Walter annoyed me. Mordred just rocks up and kills him on a whim and that's the end of that.

You then have Mordred set up as this huge threat, but Roland makes incredibly light work of him. Although he did get Oy, was was probably the hardest death to take out of any of the Ka-Tet members for me. :(

And then the Crimson King was quite underwhelming I thought. He was just this crazy, shrieking old man lobbing grenades off a balcony. Who gets drawn and then erased out of existence by some kid we just met about 100 pages shy of the end of the whole series.

But then at the same time I don't think showdowns with big bad guys are actually the point of the series at all. If you think about it Roland never actually comes up against anyone, or anything, in the whole story that really causes him to break sweat in a fight. Not even close really. He regularly takes on entire mobs (the Wolves) and wipes out entire settlements of people ( Tull in the first book, or when he attacks the place where all the Breakers live) with relative ease.

I think what he struggles with is meant to be more of a personal nature. Like, he needs to go the opposite way a bit and not be as much of a cold, hard methodical killer, as he is. His downfall is the people around him getting hurt of killed because of his decisions.

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.

Oy's death broke my heart.

[Dark Soldier]

Holy shit House of Leaves is a masterpiece.

[Mike]

Bought two books. I'm currently reading The Forever War.

[Spammer]

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.

[Mike]

I'm not too far in but it seems good. Bit funny that it's set in the future of 1991

[ItalAussie]

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.

[Ian]

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'.

[Jimmy Floyd]

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.

[Henry]

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.

[Ian]

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.

[Henry]

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.

[niko_cee]

Aye, even though you know how it is going to end all along it's still a powerful kick in the balls.

[-james-]

I've realised over the last few weeks that I don't know very much about Ireland. Any recommended reads?

GS, Boydy, Henry etc.

[Boydy]

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.

[Henry]

I've realised over the last few weeks that I don't know very much about Ireland. Any recommended reads?


It's a very broad question. Are you interested in history or what?

[-james-]

Yeah modern history I guess, non fiction preferred

[Henry]

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.

[Ian]

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.

[Alex]

http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/wheel-of-time-tv-series-sony-1202390897/

Wheel of Time TV series will be coming.

Sony had better not fuck it up.

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.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

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.

[Alex]

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. :D

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.

[Haystacks Horace]

Wait till you get further into the series all he bangs on about is skirts and petticoats.

[Alex]

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. :D

[Haystacks Horace]

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.

[Ian]

Wait till you get further into the series all he bangs on about is skirts and petticoats.

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.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

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.

[Haystacks Horace]

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.

A man knows.

[Alex]

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.

She's horrible. I don't think there's been a single instance in which she's spoken yet where she wasn't having a go at someone, usually in reference to how juvenile and/or stupid the male characters are, or something along those lines.

I'm not really sure why she's decided to go along with them at this point, given that she doesn't know Moiraine, would presumably be wary of Lan (because he's just a big, scary bastard who doesn't like anyone) and appears to actively despise everyone else involved in the journey.

[Ian]

Lan is an absolute boss. :cool:

I reckon you could easily cut the WoT books to either make it look like Jordan loves women more than anything in the world or fears and despises them. The Aes Sedai and their general refusal to listen to any sort of reason they haven't thought of themselves, for example. Egwene is particularly unpleasant though. I'm sure she has legions of fans of her for being such a strong, independent woman but she's just awful..

[AyDee]

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.

Erikson writes comedy surprisingly well, as evidenced by Bugg and Tehol being one of my favourite relationships in the series. It brings a nice lightness to the book sometimes, where it can get a bit grim, and helps us give a shit about the characters. Rarely seems out of place too, which is probably due to his believable characters.

I finished Dust of Dreams last week (9th Erikson instalment) and it was really. As usual, slow build up during the book with a few plotlines which I found a bit boring, but some absolutely terrific scenes and a strong ending:

Hetan's hobbling, the deck of dragons reading, ublala and draconus meeting and becoming travel partners, Gesler and Stormy, the finale battle

Onto Orb, Sceptre, Throne now, which is Esslemont's 4th instalment. It's okay so far but I'm not sure if I'd recommend people reading Malazan to read Esslemont's books too. 10 big books in the main series is already a lot of reading and Erikson's books are far superior to Esslemont's. The redeeming factor for Esslemont is that he gets to explore some cool stories and races, such as the Stormwall; Dancer and Kellanved's night of ascension; the Crimson Guard; and, in the one I'm reading now, the Seguleh. So probably only worth reading if you don't mind another 6/8 books on top of Erikson's 10.

[Henry]

LOL at Haystacks Harold pretending to read.

[Ian]

Erikson writes comedy surprisingly well, as evidenced by Bugg and Tehol being one of my favourite relationships in the series. It brings a nice lightness to the book sometimes, where it can get a bit grim, and helps us give a shit about the characters. Rarely seems out of place too, which is probably due to his believable characters.

Tehol and Bugg were absolutely superb. Iskaral Pust has been good throughout (especially when talking to Mogara) and in this one Telorast and Curdle.

And many of the Bridgeburners were funny enough throughout anyway.

[Haystacks Horace]

LOL at Haystacks Harold pretending to read.

Actually I read lots of books. It upset me a bit that you took the piss as you seem a good guy as opposed to GS who seems a cunt.

[Townsend]

Anyone tried to write a book?

I'm thinking of giving it a bash as I have some ideas but I don't really know where to start. I suppose just practicing and doing it for fun would help.

[Reg]

Never a novel. Short stories, personally. I'd do a plot outline otherwise it'll be difficult to not fuck up somewhere along the way.

[Jimmy Floyd]

I've tried, it's bloody difficult. Practising and doing it for fun is a good start but there's also a lot of technique and discipline that needs to be learned before you can do it well.

Short stories are a good place to start, too.

[Spoonsky]

When I was 14 I wrote a 33,000 word 'novel'. Since then I've tried to write other ones but usually never got past 10,000 words. It's really hard.

What happened to the one you were writing Jimmy? No, not 'I, Cristiano'.

[Spikey M]

It went the way of Fry's game, I imagine.

I used to enjoy writing stories at school, but I have the same issue most people have. Good ideas, fuck all by way of execution.

DS and GS could both knock out a decent book. Aimed at very different audiences, obvs.

[Jimmy Floyd]

When I was 14 I wrote a 33,000 word 'novel'. Since then I've tried to write other ones but usually never got past 10,000 words. It's really hard.

What happened to the one you were writing Jimmy? No, not 'I, Cristiano'.

I've got it sitting there 'finished' in the dark recesses of my hard drive but it's a complete mess, devoid of a proper structure or anything resembling a plot. I'll probably never click on it again. Still, it was fun to smash out the 100,000 words or whatever it was.

I might have another go this winter at something different, having had a very steep learning curve with that one 18 months ago.

The most difficult thing is that typically at about 25,000-40,000 words you will realise that everything is shit and wrong and you need to rework the entire thing from scratch, which needs time and willpower which I don't have.

[Henry]

The Romanovs: 1613-1918 by Simon Sebag-Montefiore

The epic quality of Russian history continues to fascinate me - the sheer vastness of the place and the staggering numbers associated with its many tumults. And while I'd read quite a lot about the 20th century and to a lesser extent the 19th, I was only very vaguely aware of the period preceding that. So a history of the dynasty that ruled the place seemed a good idea to get up to speed and having read this authors biography of Stalin previously I decided to go with it.
I certainly learned a lot. The barbarism stands out. Peter the Great may have made great strides towards modernisation and been a military genius, but his appetite for torture - he tortured and (probably personally) murdered his own son - casts his status as a national icon in a fairly sinister light.
The brideshows. The palace coups. The dashing Potemkin. The burning of Moscow. The freeing of the serfs. The stuttering attempts to modernise while refusing to budge on the principle of autocracy. The revolutions of the 20th century. Rasputin. The incompetence of Nicholas II. The grisly murder of the royal family by Bolshveik thugs. It's all suitably dramatic and puts modern-day Russia in a more rounded context. The character of the Russian people is different in many ways to that of western peoples. A man like Putin must know this stuff inside out.
My major criticism is that there's a lot of focus on the personal lives of the Romanovs. Lengthy sections describe their love letters to each other, their sexual daliences and other salacious details. While some of this is probably necessary, there's too much and it probably detracts from the social and political programs that were going on. That said, this is the history of one family rather than of the state. The narrow understanding that this work gives me of the latter whets my appetite for more.

[Ian]

Malazan 6 (the Bonehunters) might be the best in the series so far (it'd be this or Memories of Ice.) About 100 pages to go and I think I'll sit and get them read today. It hasn't hit a duff note yet.

[Bernanke]

Really enjoying Homo Deus right now. I guess it's the point of it, but it really feels like a very succinct description of where we are right now as a species.

[Baz]

Anyone read House Of Leaves? Managed to buy it for £2.81, after waiting a long time for it to be under £15.

[Henry]

Brave New World by Audlous Huxley

In the future, the nanny state has gone into overdrive and abolished all pain and discomfort through the use of eugenics, drugs, brainwashing and consumerism. Unfortunately this has also meant the abolition of family, love, art and much else of value. Bernard Marx (upon whom some mistakes have been made) begins to question the state of things.
It's frequently mentioned as a classic of dystopian fiction alongside the likes of Nineteen Eighty Four. I didn't find it to be quite as good as all that. It's a little heavy-handed at times with several anachronisms (Henry Ford is an object of worship for some reason) and is as much a satire of the kind of utopian fiction doing the rounds in the early 20th century as anything else. But the writing is frequently gorgeous, helped by the allusions to Shakespeare and there is a lot that is thought provoking about the nature of suffering and struggle.

[Spammer]

I couldn't get on with how it was written, in general. I thought the explanation of the society at large and especially the Shakespearean stuff was bloody great though.

[Henry]

Adults in the Room by Yanis Varoufakis

Varoufakis was the Greek finance minister for 6 months in 2015 following the election of the left-wing Syriza party to office with a pledge to escape from the disgraceful austerity programs and "debt bondage" imposed on his country by the EU and IMF. Observers will know that after fraught negotiations Syriza capitulated and Varoufakis resigned. This is his memoir of the period.
And it's terrifying. The troika of institutions refused to negotiate, wrapped the Greeks up in bureaucracy, threatened, blackmailed, u-turned and lied. At various points they even admitted that the programs that they were imposing were unworkable but that they were unable to lose face by changing course.
Wolfgang Schable (the German finance minister) is identified as the chief villain. His endgame is to effectively control the budgets of all Eurozone countries from Berlin - he wants to "take the troika to Paris". To do this Greece must be made an example of. His boss Angela Merkel restrains him somewhat and wants Greece kept in the Eurozone but has little care for their well-being.
Others, particularly the odious Jeroem Dijsselbloem (president of the extra-legal Eurogroup) serve as lackeys for Schauble. The French are spineless and say one thing in private, another in public (though Emmanuel Macron is one of few cast in a good light so his subsequent tenure should be interesting).

Syriza themselves are unable to hold together in the face of the onslaught, with leader Alexis Tsipras gradually resiling from his promise to leave the Euro should he be backed into a corner. His actions following an eventual referendum on the proposed offer - which he wins despite hoping that he will lose - cannot be seen as other than a cowardly betrayal.
The Greeks are also hamstrung by their own central bank being against them, and by factionalism within their government.

Varoufakis has many scores to settle both with his own colleagues and the Europeans. His accounts of meetings are of course open to challenge by them.
It has also been suggested that Varoufakis has an outsized ego and that comes across here at various points, but I'd argue that a milder character could not have endured the intense pressure he was subjected to.

It's never less than immensely readable, which is impressive given the plethora of economic statistics. All in all, this is a devastating exposure of the rotten state of the European Union. The personalities portrayed in it are likely to be furious at how candid Varoufakis has been.

[Dark Soldier]

Grabbed Ready Player One for the Kindle. Deleted Ready Player One roughly 15% in.

Quite possible the worst piece of writing/art/anything to ever fucking exist.

[Henry]

Nomad by Alan Partridge

A follow-up of sorts to the fictional autobiography of the fictional radio DJ released a few years back, this is ostensibly an account of a walking tour of Britain that Partridge has undertaken to honour his late father. In reality it's a desperate attempt to restart his stalled career and to get back on TV and takes many tangents into Alan's various preoccupations. Partridge is a frustrated, conceited narcisicst with closeted homosexual urges. He harbours delusions of celebrity and good taste but is in reality a regional nobody viewed with contempt by his colleagues.
It's probably one that is suited best to existing fans of Partridge, filled as it is with in-jokes and references to his previous appearances across various media. As a fan myself I found it frequently hilarious, at its best moments illuminating something of the soullessness of modern society - Partridge's Britain is one of corporate chain stores, industrial parks and crippling alienation.

[Ian]

I'm in the last third or quarter of the second Kingkiller book and the protagonist is still a bit of an annoying twat. Given the structure of it it's entirely possible that this will either be justified or that he'll have had some sort of comeuppance for it to make me feel better but blimey, what a tool.

[Alex]

He is a very unlikeable character, proper smug little bastard.

Have you read past the whole Felurian bit yet Ian? I can't remember how far into the book that occurs, but I think you probably will have done. What a load of shite that was.

[Ian]

Yes, I've just got past that bit.

One of the few weaknesses he has is his shitness with women... and lo! He's taught to be the perfect lover by a fucking pixie. Fuck off.

The only cool bit of that was the evil tree. I liked that.

[Alex]

Yes, I've just got past that bit.

One of the few weaknesses he has is his shitness with women... and lo! He's taught to be the perfect lover by a fucking pixie. Fuck off.

The only cool bit of that was the evil tree. I liked that.

That was my exact issue with it too! :D

At least he's shit with women.....oh no, wait, here comes a hundred pages worth of "Fifty Shades of Fairy Sex" to turn him into the worlds undisputed greatest in the sack. Christ.

The second book is really good though. I'm not sure when the third one is due. Soon, I hope. It's meant to be the last I think. Although unless it's about five thousand pages long I find that hard to believe. There seems to be so much more still to cover.

I'm still on with The Eye of the World myself, and still finding it a bit of a slog if I'm totally honest. When it picks up it's great, but it just seems to drag for long periods of time between shit happening.

[Ian]

I was going to ask where you're up to in it but I think it's about fifteen years since I read the first one so I probably remember naff all about it. It's definitely a peaks-and-troughs sort of a series though, even on a chapter-by-chapter basis. That Felurian bit aside the Kingkiller ones, for example, are at last consistently entertaining.

Have you read anything by Joe Abercrombie?

[Alex]

It's a bit confusing to explain exactly where I'm at because it splinters of into various different stories, but:

They all get split up when a shit load of Trollocs chase them into river and then:

- Rand and Mat have just made it to the big city (Caemlyn?) after passing through innumerable small villages and being chased all over the shop by Trollocs and Fades and generally evil shit. Thom Merrilin appears to be dead but I don't think he will be.

- Perin and Egwene were on their own for a bit, met a man who somehow appears to have taught Perrin to talk to wolves (which is actually quite cool) and then got captured by the religious nutters in the white cloaks. The Children of the Light, or something.

- Morraine, Lan and a very reluctant Nynaeve (who can also use "the power" apparently, all the women can use the fucking power it seems) were just sort of trundling along at their own pace but have just found and rescued Perin and Egwene from the above situation.

So I'm guessing they will all reunite at some point for a bit of a final act. No, I haven't read anything by that bloke. I've not heard of him before to be honest. Good?

[Ian]

I read his stuff on the recommendation of Lofty and Townsend. He's really good.

The ones I've read are the Shattered Sea trilogy which are aimed at young adults and while they're easy reading they're good and you'd probably breeze through them. Then I read The First Law trilogy, which are excellent. The main characters in it are superb and if you're into your fantasy stuff you should definitely give them a bash.

[Alex]

Thanks, I'll have a look into it. I do plan to move on the the second book with The Wheel of Time, but something else in-between might not be a bad shout.

[nsd]

I started a re-read of the Wheel of Time not long ago, but I've not made much progress yet. Things are definitely sinking in much better the second time round, but just knowing the sheer amount of material I have left makes it a bit of a slog already.

I finished The Exorcist last night. It's really made me feel a little bit off. Not sick or anything, just...off. Great book though.

[Spammer]

Dangerous, by Milo Yiannapopodopoulos

I agreed with his stance on the victimising self-pity politics that we see so much nowadays and the danger behind the tendency for people to shut down a dialogue rather than engage. I disagreed with almost everything else though. Which is fair enough, but he generally comes across as a bit of a twat.

[Henry]

Pavement by Richard Butchins

This was a fairly short one - set somewhere in the near future, a disabled and impoverished Londoner who has become alienated by society to the extent that he wonders if he's invisible to those around him recounts in the first person the process of his becoming a serial killer. Drawing heavily from the likes of Crime and Punishment and from American Psycho, it nonetheless gives its own twist by connecting the activities of the anti-hero to the growing inequality and atomisation of our culture. His angry rationalisations and varying mental stability lend things a realistic tone - even if it isn't as disturbing as it would like as often as it would like. If it weren't for a series of cryptic dream sequences breaking the flow between the chapters, this would have been an impressive debut from the writer.

[phonics]

Anyone heard anything about the new His Dark Materials book from Pullman?

I really enjoyed the series as a teen but not sure how it'll play 15 years later. I also can't be arsed to re-read all 3 books and have forgot about 90% of what happened. There was a knife that cut between dimensions, there was a polar bear with a helmet that fought things and the stand-in for the Catholic Church was evil, that's about all I've got. Oh, everyone had a pet animal that they were trying to seperate from the person for some reason? Something to do with the soul and putting it into creating clean energy?

Any reviews about?

[Magic]

Currently ripping my way through Sleepwalkers. What a tremendous book, it really is mental trying to decipher all the shit that led up to WWI, especially when you have direct contradictions between private memoirs/letters and public facing opinions in the big players (and even the little players). It is very impossible to do such a thing without years passing and things being revealed, so I guess when WWIII happens nobody will see it coming. The only people who see these things coming are the lunatics that are hell bent on war anyway.

[Spammer]

Awkward: The Science of Why We're Socially Awkward and Why That's Awesome

It's alright. The science is really interesting but there are parts of it that are like a self-help book for awkward people, which is a cool idea not an interesting read for anyone else.

[Ian]

I'm on Stiletto, the follow up to The Rook. It's good but it feels very middle-book-y and just doesn't have quite the same feel as the first, with Myfanwy not being the primary character.


I started a re-read of the Wheel of Time not long ago, but I've not made much progress yet. Things are definitely sinking in much better the second time round, but just knowing the sheer amount of material I have left makes it a bit of a slog .

I found all my WOT books while doing a clearout and was trying to muster up the enthusiasm for a re-read but I don't think I can. My problem is that if I start i suspect I'll end up trudging through the massive slog in the middle.

Might just do the Sanderson ones again.

[Alex]

I've started the second WOT book (The Great Hunt) recently, it's alright. Quite a bit of weird shit got thrown in towards the end of the first one. It felt almost like a different book for the last hundred pages or so.

I think this might have been mentioned in this thread before, but the author has a somewhat grating habit of repeating certain little actions over and over again in his writing. For example, Rand, Mat and Perrin are constantly licking their lips before they speak. All the fucking time. I honestly feel like it might have already happened a hundred times.

[Mazuuurk]

Alex & Ian - if I thoroughly enjoyed the Kingkiller books partly because of the reasons you don't seem to (I really like the main character because he seems generally quite Badass, and because he's the focal point of the whole story*), - will I then enjoy the Malazan books?

I'm looking for some (concluded!) fantasy epic series to read, but I'm a little sceptical to the Malazan books because from what I read about them they are fairly complex and there isn't much of an overarching story going across the books, and no real main characters?







*though I'll partly agree to the Felurian bit in that that was a bit stupid and kind of felt like a reflection of the authors wishes of how his way with women would be IRL for himself... Did you ever read "The Magician King"? It has a similar "geek who wrote a book" vibe about it but much much worse.

[Ian]

Alex & Ian - if I thoroughly enjoyed the Kingkiller books partly because of the reasons you don't seem to (I really like the main character because he seems generally quite Badass, and because he's the focal point of the whole story*), - will I then enjoy the Malazan books?

I'm looking for some (concluded!) fantasy epic series to read, but I'm a little sceptical to the Malazan books because from what I read about them they are fairly complex and there isn't much of an overarching story going across the books, and no real main characters?







*though I'll partly agree to the Felurian bit in that that was a bit stupid and kind of felt like a reflection of the authors wishes of how his way with women would be IRL for himself... Did you ever read "The Magician King"? It has a similar "geek who wrote a book" vibe about it but much much worse.

There are a lot of subplots but an overall arc for the series does become apparent as you go on, and after the first few a lot of the characters are recurring.

They're probably the best fantasy books I've read so I would absolutely recommend at least trying the first and taking it from there.

[nsd]

I've started the second WOT book (The Great Hunt) recently, it's alright. Quite a bit of weird shit got thrown in towards the end of the first one. It felt almost like a different book for the last hundred pages or so.

I think the first book was originally just going to be a standalone thing but obviously it transformed into a whole saga, so it can feel kind of disjointed.


I think this might have been mentioned in this thread before, but the author has a somewhat grating habit of repeating certain little actions over and over again in his writing. For example, Rand, Mat and Perrin are constantly licking their lips before they speak. All the fucking time. I honestly feel like it might have already happened a hundred times.

So much sniffing and tugging of braids and folding arms under breasts. And I feel like I've never known so much about cuts and materials of dresses.

[AyDee]

I've finally got round to starting the final book in the main Malazan series. Some of the foreshadowing is making me :drool:

[Ian]

Once I'm done with The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents I'll be getting onto Malazan 7.

Some of these fights with Rhulad should be tasty.

Edit: Finished The Amazing Maurice in a few hours. Excellent stuff. Got The Last Hero to be cracking on with and then my next Diacworld after that will be another City Watch one. :drool:

[AyDee]

Once I'm done with The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents I'll be getting onto Malazan 7.

Some of these fights with Rhulad should be tasty.

Edit: Finished The Amazing Maurice in a few hours. Excellent stuff. Got The Last Hero to be cracking on with and then my next Diacworld after that will be another City Watch one. :drool:

There are some pretty awesome battles in addition to that too. It's a good book actually, quite a lot of cool stuff/moments/characters.

[Ian]

There are some pretty awesome battles in addition to that too. It's a good book actually, quite a lot of cool stuff/moments/characters.

Fuuuuck. My memory of Midnight Tides was that.... I dunno whether Tehol Beddict was implied to be dead but I'm sure I thought he was caught up in something I was meant to assume he wouldn't survive.

And yet there he is. With Bugg. In the dramatis personae at the start of Reaper's Gale. Him and Bugg were amazing. I'm very happy if I get more of that pairing.

[Henry]

A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid MacCulloch

This is an ambitious undertaking, charting the entire history of Christianity from its dual origins in Jewish and Greek culture through to the present day. The author has a background in Anglicanism, and while one can always find quibbles (I had some with his assessment of the Enlightenment) on the whole it was remarkably balanced, maintaining a respect for Christianity while not shying away from its controversies. He keeps it engaging despite the subject matter necessarily veering into the obscure at times, and manages for the most part to avoid the danger of rushing past important events (the aforementioned origins are a bit of an exception). I certainly learned a lot - the towering influence of Augustine, the importance of the Chalcedonian settlement, the evolution of the papacy (and how late it achieved its eminent status), the recent conflicts within Catholicism and so forth. A really good overview for the non-specialist.

[AyDee]

Fuuuuck. My memory of Midnight Tides was that.... I dunno whether Tehol Beddict was implied to be dead but I'm sure I thought he was caught up in something I was meant to assume he wouldn't survive.

And yet there he is. With Bugg. In the dramatis personae at the start of Reaper's Gale. Him and Bugg were amazing. I'm very happy if I get more of that pairing.

Not only is that probably my favourite relationship, but they're also two of my favourite characters in and of themselves. The concept behind Bugg's character is great.

I'm just over halfway through the final book now and it's gripping, quite a lot of shite going down and loads of explanations for why stuff is/has happened. Verging on a bit too much exposition at times but everything is coming together very nicely. :cool:

[Jimmy Floyd]

Following getting into baseball I'm actually reading 'Moneyball' (previously impenetrable as I didn't understand the jargon).

It's a great read as far as the insular world of baseball is concerned, but as if some charlatans are trying to apply this shit to football, and as if Billy Beane himself is now poncing around as some kind of demigod.

[Spammer]

The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

Really interesting shit. People join mass movements to smother the feelings of personal inadequacy. I think it's not particularly new, although this bloke seems to be the dude that first talked about it. It's a great read.

“Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all the unifying agents. Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without a belief in a devil.”

“The permanent misfits can find salvation only in a complete separation from the self; and they usually find it by losing themselves in the compact collectivity of a mass movement.”

(I've recently got into Goodreads which has a 'common quotes' facility, which is quite cool)

[Henry]

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein

Widely regarded as one of the most prominent writers of science fiction in the 20th century, it's always been an oversight that I hadn't read Heinlein. Of his works I had been told that variously that this is the best and most accessible.
It depicts a future uprising on the moon against its colonial earth-based authorities. Our main characters, with the aid of a sentient computer (the most interesting personality in the book) begin a conspiracy to overthrow these authorities and establish their own state.
I didn't agree with the politics, which are a little idiosyncratic, based mostly on libertarian capitalism but which also seem to legitimise such things as rigging elections, terrorism, summary execution and so forth.
That said, the prose is quirky and interesting, and the unfolding revolution is quite thrilling to observe. Heinlein's quality is such that one finds oneself rooting for the participants despite the above, and also despite a couple of plot contrivances that are used along the way.

[Henry]

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein

Widely regarded as one of the most prominent writers of science fiction in the 20th century, it's always been an oversight that I hadn't read Heinlein. Of his works I had been told that variously that this is the best and most accessible.
It depicts a future uprising on the moon against its colonial earth-based authorities. Our main characters, with the aid of a sentient computer (the most interesting personality in the book) begin a conspiracy to overthrow these authorities and establish their own state.
I didn't agree with the politics, which are a little idiosyncratic, based mostly on libertarian capitalism but which also seem to legitimise such things as rigging elections, terrorism, summary execution and so forth.
That said, the prose is quirky and interesting, and the unfolding revolution is quite thrilling to observe. Heinlein's quality is such that one finds oneself rooting for the participants despite the above, and also despite a couple of plot contrivances that are used along the way.

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

https://www.amazon.co.uk/British-Military-Camouflage-Culture-Society/dp/1474222609/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1511127605&sr=8-1&keywords=Second+World+War+British+Military+Camoufl age

Anyone want a free PDF copy?

I have to do a History book review (ugh) and this was one of the options. Downloaded a digital copy from the Uni Library and stripped it of the DRM so I could use it on any device.

[Spammer]

I'm alright, actually.

[Ian]

There are some pretty awesome battles in addition to that too. It's a good book actually, quite a lot of cool stuff/moments/characters.

A few hundred pages in, nearly, and this is simmering away nicely.

Karsa Orlong has landed in Lether, but more importantly so has Icarium and they're seemingly building towards some big shit with him. Mael / Bugg is shitting himself and there was literally a fucking Earth tremor when he set foot off the boat. This is gonna be sweet.

[Mike]

With Baz having a baby I get to buy all the best children’s books I know from work. She’s getting some right belters for Christmas. The Day the Crayons Quit being my favourite of the bunch.

[Henry]

Until Victory Always by Jim McGuinness

Jim McGuinness is a former player and manager of Donegal Gaelic Football team. As manager, he led them to great success in the 2010's, taking them from relative obscurity to win three Ulster titles and one All-Ireland title in a four year spell. This chronicles that period and parts of his previous life. The latter parts are extremely personal, focusing much on the deaths of two of his brothers by way of illness and a road crash.
His tenure as manager was an astonishing achievement yet there have been many criticisms of his methods (some of which I share) including the effect his negative tactics have had on the game as a spectacle.
So perhaps inevitably there is quite a lot of controversy - some biting back at the media criticism of his team, some criticism of the county administrators for their approach (which notably scuttled the teams prospects in 2013), and accounts of how he parted company with a player for providing inside information to a journalist and with his assistant, both of which have been the subject of high profile disputes.
I found some of his focus on the psychological approach to the game to be a bit overbearing - defeats are always chalked up to this being lacking. But the account is frequently exhilarating, engendering a lot of respect for both McGuinness and his players.

[AyDee]

Finished the main Malazan series at the start of last week. Feels weird to finally finish it. 3,325,000 words apparently in the main series, which is even more than Wheel of Time. Was definitely worth the time and is comfortably my favourite fantasy series that I've read, not that I've read all that many.

On to Sanderson's Mistborn series now. About 40% of the way through the first one and it couldn't be any more different from Malazan in terms of pacing. Has started well and both the plot and magic system are intriguing, so I imagine I'll blitz through the series.

[Ian]

I think I'll genuinely be sad when I finish Malazan. So much left. :drool:

[AyDee]

I think I'll genuinely be sad when I finish Malazan. So much left. :drool:

You've still got a lot of great moments to come. Enjoy.

Finished 'The Final Empire' (Mistborn Book One) this morning. Really, really good. Some interesting twists on some fantasy tropes, lots of character development (albeit mainly limited to a few characters) and a pretty interesting magic system. It had quite a few twists which were nicely done too. Looking forward to reading the second instalment.

[AyDee]

Finished 'Well of Ascension' (Mistborn Book Two). Again, a great book. I thought the first third or so was a bit slow but the rest was exciting and full of twists. Not as good as the first book imo but still enjoyable.

[Giggles]

Bought Philly McMahon's yesterday, got rave reviews everywhere.

[Henry]

Our Mathematical Universe by Max Tegmark

I had reacted with much skepticism when previously physicists raised the notion of parallel universes. If this is anything to go by, the idea is gaining at least some traction in the scientific world.
After the usual primer on both relativity and quantum physics, Tegmark launches into the core of his book - that our current theories imply several levels of parallel universes - those that are beyond our cosmic horizon, those that are in separate inflationary universes and those arising from the quantum wavefunction (the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics is increasingly being disregarded). Finally and most speculatively he asserts that these nested universes (and thus reality itself) rather than just being described by mathematics are in fact a mathematical structure, and that other such structures could also exist. In effect this means that everything that can be conceived does in fact exist.
Exploring the implications, Tegmark also runs into what's known as the "measure problem", concerning the calculation of probability when dealing with infinite universes - leading him to suspect that spacetime may not be a continuum (and thus may be granular at some level).
It remains very speculative but I was willing to give it more of a hearing this time. Tegmark writes well and leaves the reader with the suggestion that progress is being made on this stuff - which is probably why it's worth reading books like this every year or so even if a lot of the material is the same.

[Henry]

Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the new Millennium by Bart Ehrman

I'd missed this one when reading a couple of Ehrman's books at the start of the year. Whereas the ground covered in those concerned how Jesus became to be regarded as God and how the Bible has been changed as it has been passed down to us, this explores who Jesus actually was in a historical context.
Though there is a lot of debate about this stuff, Ehrman propounds pretty much the mainstream historical view. This amounts to his being an apocalyptic preacher, expecting the imminent end of the world. After limited local success in Galilee, his message that their rule is coming to an end runs afoul of the authorities in Jerusalem and they have him executed.
Having explored this subject in moderate detail now, I'm still not sure what to think of it. The various criteria used to examine historical sources are applied differently by Ehrman than the "Jesus mythicists". Chiefly in dispute is the criteria of dissimilarity. While he quickly eliminates obvious embellishment such as the nativity stories and the resurrection (despite repeated tiresome reassurances to believers who might be reading that historical investigations shouldn't affect their faith) Ehrman seems to grant most gospel traditions historical status to some extent - the faith healing, the twelve, the betrayal by Judas and so forth. All of this can be disputed - and Ehrman fails to much consider the writings of Paul (probably the earliest) in his reconstructions. To me it sticks out a mile that Paul's ideas are very different to that in other writings, so there's a piece of the puzzle missing somewhere.
This probably sounds critical - it's an enjoyable read but probably pitched too low for me at this stage - I don't need a paragraph explaining to me what a pagan is. My mind isn't made up on the historicity question. I suspect that the answer may lie somewhere in between the various approaches but given the difficulties it is probably best to keep an open mind.

[AyDee]

Finished the final book of the original Mistborn trilogy. Very satisfying read. Lots of twists once again, some I foresaw but others either happened differently to how I expected or were a complete surprise. I'd probably say that some of the book dragged a little bit but the character development was good once again. Sanderson's magic system is really interesting though and he fleshed it out appropriately in connection with the plot, as opposed to any info dumps.

Would highly recommend it. Not sure what I'll read next. The girlfriend has got me Elantris (another Sanderson book) for Christmas but won't be able to start reading that for a week or so After a year of basically just reading fantasy (damn Malazan), I may have to resort to non-fantasy for a little bit.

[Henry]

Silas Marner by George Eliot

As a prominent 19th century English writer, George Eliot is often compared to Dickens and so seems like someone whose work is worth the time. This is a short novel and seems like an easy way in, before hopefully tackling something like Middlemarch at a later point.
The story concerns the eponymous Silas Marner, an ageing miser expelled from a religious order and his new life in an unfamiliar village. It's a pleasurable read, and has a fable-like quality, perhaps deceptively so since it touches on themes ranging from religion to industrialisation to social class. The characters are arguably more rounded and realistic than in Dickens, their backgrounds and experiences determining their characters to a larger extent. I was impressed in particular as to how it convincingly portrays another place and time, a pre-industrial England that was rapidly disappearing.

[Spammer]

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Yeah, it's alright. He's still in his early twenties and there's too much info about him faffing about in Harlem for my liking, but I'm sure it'll get good as soon as he starts doing shit.

[Giggles]

I got this for Christmas, perfect type book for me.

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51I3ADMFIFL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

[Jimmy Floyd]

I'd love to be the guy who writes books like that. 32 NFL ones to churn out and put in different coloured covers. 92 football league clubs, 30 baseball teams, however many basketball teams, four golf and tennis majors, all the rugby playing nations, all the cricket playing nations. You'd never be out of work.

[phonics]

While the centralized nature of American sports does create this stuff, you also get the best sports documentaries because you only need permission from one source.

The NBA ones are fantastic.

[Giggles]

Yeah wouldn't work for soccer as they're all too separate as entities.

[Jimmy Floyd]

While the centralized nature of American sports does create this stuff, you also get the best sports documentaries because you only need permission from one source.

The NBA ones are fantastic.

There is that, but then on the flip side you have to take the 'Hall of Fame' deadly fucking seriously, so it's not all moonlight lambadas.

[Henry]

The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien

Flann O'Brien is a renowned Irish novelist, albeit someone I didn't know much about. I went into this expecting some gritty realism about 20th century Ireland in the vein of Joyce or Kavanagh. I was wrong.
The story concerns a young man who has committed murder for money with a colleague. Upon attempting to retrieve the loot, he begins a surreal journey - meeting characters including three policemen who (besides planning to hang him) show him all manner of miraculous things including a lift to eternity, a series of infinitely small boxes and bicycles that merge with their owners. Throughout our protagonist also holds forth on the works of de Selby, a philosopher/scientist with similarly bizarre beliefs. It ends with a twist of sorts, demanding a re-interpretation of some of what has gone on.
I didn't enjoy it. It's obviously aiming at absurdism, something like Kafka. But while the latter seems to have satirised life and the human condition, O'Brien seems to be making (among others) a special point about the uselessness of scientific enquiry. Or perhaps I'm not getting it fully. It is a complex and challenging work which others may have taken more from.

[Spammer]

Malcolm X has grown up a bit and now is mooching around with some nutter from the Nation of Islam, out to scourge the world of the 'white devil'. It's a fair bit more interesting than hearing about the minutiae of his hustling days, but I reckon it'll kick off good and proper when we get to the 1960's.

[Kikó]

I'm reading Freakonomics at the moment. It's really bloody good.

[Boydy]

Henry did you read that because of the rubberbandits?

[Henry]

Henry did you read that because of the rubberbandits?

No, did he mention it on the podcast or what?

[Boydy]

Not sure if he mentioned it on it but he goes on about Flann O'Brien a lot.

[Ian]

Reaper's Gale done and Erikson's consistency in the Malazan books doesn't let up. Brilliant stuff.

Dunno what I'm reading next. Shadow of War put me in a Lord of the Rings mood but come payday I'll probably get something else. And I might well just power on with more Malazan.

[Henry]

I think I'll give the first of those Malazan books a go.

[AyDee]

Reaper's Gale done and Erikson's consistency in the Malazan books doesn't let up. Brilliant stuff.

Dunno what I'm reading next. Shadow of War put me in a Lord of the Rings mood but come payday I'll probably get something else. And I might well just power on with more Malazan.

Some great stuff in RG.

Beak's death is probably one of my favourite moments of the series. Erikson has such a great way of making the deaths actually feel tragic and that one hit me right in the feels. Trull's a legend in RG too.

[AyDee]

I finished reading Elantris (Brandon Sanderson) yesterday. Fair few similarities in the types of characters and plot mechanisms that he uses in the Mistborn series, but some pretty cool characters and an interesting magic system again. It was an enjoyable read but his Mistborn series is better for me, probably unsurprising considering Elantris was his first book.

Next up will probably be The Name of The Wind (Patrick Rothfuss).

[Jimmy Floyd]

The Road - Cormac McCarthy

Long and repetitive. Has its moments but I'm not sure I 'get' it. There's a lot of American literature I don't 'get'.

[Boydy]

I thought it was pretty dull too.

If you're end a post-apocalyptic mood try Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandell. It's way better than The Road.

[igor_balis]

I'm reading Freakonomics at the moment. It's really bloody good.

Yeah I really enjoyed it as well.

[Henry]

I think The Road is one of the best I've ever read. McCarthy rules.
Obviously not everyone will agree - but the post-apocalyptic setting is at least partially beside the point.

[Jimmy Floyd]

Why is it one of the best you've ever read? Was there a high allegory that I missed?

'A man loves his son', whilst nice, is hardly original. I just got complete fatigue from being told hundreds of times that things were black and burned and that they were carrying the fire.

[Ian]

I thought The Road was decent.

Blood Meridian might be the most pain-in-the-arse thing I've ever read.

Other than Rasselas, perhaps.

[Baz]

I thought it was pretty dull too.

If you're end a post-apocalyptic mood try Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandell. It's way better than The Road.I’m all about The Passage. :eyemouth:

[Ian]

I really enjoyed The Passage. Need to move onto whatever the sequel is called.

[Henry]

Why is it one of the best you've ever read? Was there a high allegory that I missed?

'A man loves his son', whilst nice, is hardly original. I just got complete fatigue from being told hundreds of times that things were black and burned and that they were carrying the fire.

Well, it's all in the execution, innit? I thought it was quite profound and evoked Melville and Hemingway. It's also the most powerful environmental message I've seen conveyed in a novel.

[CJay]

I have Audible versions of Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer (great read / listen about the Everest disaster in 1996), Alan Partridge: Nomad, and Klopp: Bring The Noise by Honigstein. Anyone want one? If you haven’t been sent an Audible book before you get your first one for free.

[Kikó]

I've listened to Nomad as well - it's great in 20 minutes doses.

I'll get Thin Air as my credit renewed today.

[CJay]

Audible really is terrific value - £7.99 for an audiobook every month. Just looking on iBooks the same ones go for at least £10 or more.

[Jimmy Floyd]

Audible and Spotify between them are the best value purchases I make every month. Quality of life + a lot.

[Spoonsky]

I thought The Road was decent.

Blood Meridian might be the most pain-in-the-arse thing I've ever read.

Other than Rasselas, perhaps.

By Samuel Johnson?

[Kikó]

Audible and Spotify between them are the best value purchases I make every month. Quality of life + a lot.

Replace Spotify with google music and I agree (for me).

I subscribe to the economist which is hands down the best mag out there for current affairs.

[Ian]

By Samuel Johnson?

That's the one. It's diabolical and an utter waste of time.

[Spikey M]

I quickly got bored of Spotify, but Audible is great. I have rinsed Stephen Kings back catalogue in it’s entirety (I think). Any recommendations for similar, lesser known authors?

[Spoonsky]

That's the one. It's diabolical and an utter waste of time.

What did you go and read that for?

We read an excerpt in my literature class last semester, it was interesting but not exactly the sort of thing you'd pick up for fun.

[Ian]

Read the whole thing (it's not very long) in English literature at school. He ends up going back to the fucking valley he spent 25 years wanting out of because he's a fanny.