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"A Hat Full of Sky" finished. I imagine there are people reading Discworld and skipping the YA stuff. Those people are fools. Pratchett is brilliant. And the Hiver is a brilliant creation.
I'm enjoying the Malazan series but 5 and a half books was too long to wait for someone to ask Just what the fuck exactly is a warren?
Does that mean you're on the Bonehunters? That was one of my favourites so far. You're at the point now where the overarching narrative is coming together more after the first few books jump about a bit.
And yeah, wardens, holds, etc. I have no clue. At the bit you reference is it Paran who's gone, "No really though, what?"
No, we haven't seen him for about two books (I'm reading on kindle so I have no idea of the book names), it was the Acquitor when she meets Iron Bars etc. I'm on the next one now which seems to have shifted back to Seven Cities.
I also started the Malazan books recently. I'm only a couple of hundred pages into book one, but they mention warrens all the time and I'm similarly confused by the situation.
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I'm really liking Gardens of the Moon though. It's great. I've binned off The Wheel of Time for a bit in favour of this. No offence to Robert Jordan, but I find the writing style in Malazan to be significantly more interesting. I also really like the huge scope of it and all the intrigue and whatnot.
I read before starting it that it might get a bit confusing because it jumps around a bit, which is fair. But I quite like that feature of it. It makes the world feel really lived in right from the get go. Like you've just been dropped into this one little corner of this big, expansive empire with all this history but you need to sort of work out for yourself what the fuck is going on.
Also, it has a in it bloke who's name is "Whiskeyjack". If that's not good writing then I don't know what is.
Yeah my understanding is that a warren is a little pocket dimension that magic users are born with an affinity to and can both draw power from and actually go to. There is definitely more to it than that but I think a basic grasp is enough to enjoy them.
How far did you get on Wheel of Time?
That's my 'practical' understanding of them but then weird stuff happens (such as spoilery stuff at the end of a particular book). I do like the different styles used for different characters/groups though. The escapades of Tehol & Bugg were like having a discworld book in amongst the other stuff.
WOT is odd, I really enjoyed large bits of it but it's not something I recommend to people. It's such a huge investment of time that I feel bad about the large stretches of tedium that crop up before the author switch.
Yeah Tehol and Bugg are great and as you say Erikson mixes it up quite well.
The problem with WOT before Sanderson came in and fixed it is that Jordan became too lost in the minutiae of the world he'd created and forgotten that the characters people actually cared about were Rand, Mat, Perrin and one or two others and a few key storylines.
No Robert that's fine, don't get back yo telling me if the Asha'man are going to be made to turn the world inside out, Elayne's choice of earrings ahead of some political meeting is much more interesting.
It felt like he would take the remaining story, cut it in half, and then spread it throughout the next book but keep them the same length. Those last couple of books though. :drool:
Oh yeah. very good. The Gathering Storm was good too but there was an awful lot of the start of it where you could tell Sanderson was just getting rid of the crap that wasn't required. But the final scene with Rand in that
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was properly great and set up the next two books brilliantly.
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Only the first couple of books. I was finding it a bit of a slog if I'm honest. I'm sure he grows into it, but I find Rand to be a bit of a drip and his whole reluctant hero angle annoys me a bit. Also, Egwene and Nynaeve are both complete tossers.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ian
I'm not ruling out going back to it, but I need to leave it alone for a bit I think.
Egwene is a total bell-end and that doesn't change so far as I recall.
Someone leaked a code for 3 months of Kindle Unlimited. You can cancel the auto-renew straight away. :thbup:
"The Fox" by Frederick Forsyth was really boring. He's just a bit shit these days.
Onto Thud! by Terry Pratchett so I'm happy now.
Remarkably, I know someone who is a semi-regular drinking partner of Frederick Forsyth, and let's just say it wouldn't be possible to be a fully regular drinking partner of Frederick Forsyth without dying.
Tell him to tell him to sack the booze and write better books again like he used to.
Or up his booze. Whichever.
I finished the first Malazan book recently and thought it was, on the whole, really good. It was hard to follow in places, but I expected that going in to it. Particularly towards the end, a lot of shit started going off that I didn't fully understand, and which I don't expect to get answers to anytime soon. Like you're just getting this little snapshot of a very complex world without much real explanation. But his writing is so compelling I can easily get past it, and I'm certain it will all work itself out in the long run.
I really like the way he works in large areas of grey, in that there aren't really any absolute heroes or any absolute villains. Not as I see it, anyway. The guy who seemed to be the villain at the beginning of the book ends it seeming like a fairly reasonable character, and on the reverse you're left wondering who some of the more ostensibly "good" characters really are and what the fuck they're actually up to.
It being compelling while am not sure if I'm meant to not understand stuff was basically where I was with it. His characters are excellent too, for the most part. I can't think of any off the top of my head that when you realise you're with them for a chapter that you go "Uuuggghhh."
I'm just near the end of the first Warhammer novel I've ever read and it's decent, though it has a premise of basically a Dirty Dozen / Suicide Squad but-Warhammer thing, the only problem being that barely anybody in the group seems that much of a wrong'un and the protagonist is a fairly typical reluctant hero / leader type. Decent enough.
I've got Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Fry's Mythos winging their way toward me and then I'd better get onto the penultimate Malazan book.
Lookin for some book recs in the following categories if anyone has any ideas:
1) An in-depth, technical discussion about health-care policy, from the US perspective if possible (asking a British messageboard for this is suboptimal but whatevz). I read this and it was alright, but it was a lot of anecdotes and claims without much substance. Fundamentally I don't think I'm any better equipped to contribute to a discussion about healthcare policy than I was before reading it.
2) A discussion on international trade - interested in both case studies-type reading as well as attempts to formalize arguments into something broader.
3) Something about the Bolshevik revolution and the split between Trotsky and Lenin.
4) Something about the early days of the EU. Not EEC early, more 90's and 00's stuff. Interested in the political and economic side of things.
5) I re-read Piketty's Capital with more seriousness and I still think it's fantastic stuff. I don't think I've ever read a book that makes something that academic so accessible. I'd love to read something similar; doesn't have to make similar arguments or come to similar conclusions at all, just as long as it dives relentlessly into some topic and argues a thesis.
EDIT: Trotsky not Leo fucking Tolstoy
What has Ireland done to you?
We do love a bit of Trotsky.
I'm onto Dust of Dreams in my Malazanathon (or You Just Thought They Were Dead as I now think of this series) and I've really started to lose interest, the previous book (Toll the Hounds?) was a real struggle to get through.
What split? Do you mean Trotsky and Stalin, or are you referring to events prior to 1917? I can probably recommend all sorts of stuff. Read Trotsky's own History of the Russian Revolution for starters, though obviously bear in mind what it's perspective is. Then maybe read A People's Tragedy by Orlando Figes.Quote:
Originally Posted by mugbull
Any topic or do you mean economics? Try anything by Yanis Varoufaikis for that - there's one about European economic history (this probably satisfies number 4 on your list as well) one about US economic history and another about his failed attempts to negotiate a reverse to EU austerity being forced upon Greece.Quote:
Originally Posted by mugbull
If big histories are what you're after, there are two volumes by Francis Fukuyama worth reading - The Origins of Political Order and then Political Order and Political Decay. Avoid his earlier shite about The End of History. Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs & Steel impressively explains much of human history.
Or on a philosophical tangent, read The Conspiracy Against the Human Race, which passionately argues that we should all kill ourselves. Seriously.
Or Alone in the Universe which more or less convinced me last year that there are no ET's out there.
There's a shitload of pop science stuff I could go through, as well as the history of religion and that kind of thing, but possibly straying too far from your requirement.
Anyway, I've read this lot since my last post in here.
Crucible of Faith: The Ancient Revolution That Made Our Modern Religious World by Philip Jenkins
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter
Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre
A Few Bloody Noses: The Realities and Mythologies of the American Revolution by Robert Harvey
Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
A Marxist History of the World: From Neanderthals to Neoliberals by Neil Faulkner
Ubik by Philip K. Dick
And the Weak Suffer What They Must? Europe's Crisis and America's Economic Future by Yanis Varoufaikis
When Google met Wikileaks by Julian Assange
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
The Global Minotaur: America, the True Origins of the Financial Crisis and the Future of the World Economy by Yanis Varoufaikis
Amongst Women by John McGahern
The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds and the Laws of Physics by Roger Penrose
Currently I'm on Middlemarch.
Ah Varoufakis.
"Here's how the EU raped Greece"
"Here is why we should most definitely keep the EU about and make it even more powerful"
One of the best scenes of the series is in that book but it was also one of my least favourite books iirc. As usual tho it gets better the further you get in.Quote:
Originally Posted by Disco
As always Toll the Hounds has some really good stuff but it did feel a little like a deep breath before settling into finishing the series.
Which scene, @AyDee? I'm gonna guess something in Darujhistan at the end?
Was referring to Dust of Dreams.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ian
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Thanks for the Russian recommendations. I'll take a look at Varoufaikis, I've always liked his positions without really knowing too much about him.Quote:
Originally Posted by Henry
I've kind of gotten tired of the 'big histories' tbh - I've read all of the ones you suggested and they were cool at first but the more of them I read the more wishy-washy they seem. A lot of them seem to say the same things, too, and I feel like i've already internalized everything Fukuyama or Diamond would say.
Tried to give that The Secret Footballer book a go but the font was so large I felt like I was reading something for someone in Year 5. I carried on but then I realised they were just his articles that I'd already read a few years ago anyway so I gave up.
I read one of his last year, although there were lots of lol anecdotes about obviously Tony Pulis, the rest of it was rambling bollocks.
He milked it too much. Should have revealed who he was many years ago when people actually gave a solitary fuck.
Ive started reading 48 Laws of Power. It is amazing.
I'm listening to "The coddling of the American Mind" and it's BRILLIANT. Really recommend it.
This is for books mate.
But yeah, it's good
His butler reads it to him.
This sounded like an absurd book just judging by the title, but then I looked it up on wikipedia:Quote:
Originally Posted by SincereTheRebel
LmaoQuote:
The book is a bestseller,[2][3] selling over 1.2 million copies in the United States,[4] and is popular with prison inmates and celebrities.[4][5][6][7][8][9]
Fits my needs then. Im a minor celebrity around here.
She's great.Quote:
Originally Posted by Disco
So 2019.
Read Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology. It was decent but Stephen Fry's Greek one was a better go at the same sort of thing.
Malazan Dust of Dreams up next. Nearly at the end now. (Well, about 2000 pages away but whatever.)
I'm still on with book two of Malazan. I'm probably about half way through. Felasin doesn't have much luck in life, does she?
I just read the Karla trilogy, and I have to say that Le Carre is an absolute master.
The second one is a little bit odd, comparatively, but I think it might actually hold up well on re-reads. I wasn't quite sure where it was going or how it fit into anything until I had the real big picture in front of me. The final stanza of Book 3 is very nice as well. However, they all pale in comparison to Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, which must be the best spy novel ever written.
Have you read any Eric Ambler?Quote:
Originally Posted by ItalAussie
Nope, but if it's of a similar vein, I'm definitely up for it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Boydy
Similar-ish, yeah. Not usually proper professional spies working for security services, more regular joes who end up embroiled in shady intrigue. The Mask of Dimitrios is brilliant.
Just finished the second part of The Way of Kings and it was very, very good. The last third of the book was excellent tbh, Sanderson does his reveals well and it becomes a real page turner when you're getting lots of twists and turns.
Some great characters arcs too, altho not totally convinced by Sadeas's character arc.
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Compelling fight scenes too. Before this, I was reading some fantasy that my dad gave me (The Faithful and The Fallen series) but that really does pale in comparison to better writing so think I'll stick with the good stuff.
I need to give some of Sanderson's stuff a try at some point. Once I've got Malazan and Discworld done and dusted I'll need a new series to get stuck into so maybe one of his will be the way to go. I've heard a lot of good things and I've discussed me thoughts on his trilogy to cap of The Wheel of Time before.