What book did you just read and how was it?

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#807709 29-Apr-2013 21:33

ubergeeknz: Thought I'd resurrect this thread :)

Just finished the Commonwealth Saga (Peter F. Hamilton) on my Kindle - hard work at times, but the gripping fight scenes and epic finale made it totally worthwhile.

Now reading "Inversions" (Iain Banks) - love me a good Culture novel, and the way Banks uses various points of view, often widely separated, to humanize the story arc (if humanize is the right word for an alien, or sometimes computer mind, perspective...)

Love the culture series, am reading the hydrogen sonata now.

Does anyone have any other sci fi authors, not interested in fantasy?

Jon

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#807715 29-Apr-2013 21:53

I like William Gibson too - bit more "traditional" earth bound sci-fi, but with good depth to the characters and generally quite short in contrast to PH's multi-thousand-page-sagas

floydbloke

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#811747 5-May-2013 20:31

Read "I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell" by Tucker Max a month or so back.

I'd describe it as puerile, sexist and often just plain vulgar.
(and I'm male, mid 40s and by no means prudish.)
Still trying to figure out what compelled me to finish it, I guess it's:
* so I can voice my opinion on having read the whole book
* because I was hoping I might eventually come across a funny bit

Did Eric Clapton really think she looked wonderful...or was it after the 15th outfit she tried on and he just wanted to get to the party and get a drink?

pageweon

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#811776 5-May-2013 21:47

I recently read pretty much everything by brandon sanderson... just went on a kindle rampage. . Fantastic auther

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mandrazhoid

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#811817 6-May-2013 00:20

Django unchained - this movie is definetlty too overrated. Good, interesting movie, but not as good as classic spaghetti westerns

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#811872 6-May-2013 09:15

mandrazhoid: Django unchained - this movie is definetlty too overrated. Good, interesting movie, but not as good as classic spaghetti westerns

I enjoyed that book... oh wait

BlueShift

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#811902 6-May-2013 10:14

I read John Dies At The End. Its not really SF, its not really Fantasy, its not really Horror, but its a bit of all of them, plus funny and gross and surreal. I'm still trying to work out if I enjoyed it, but I know I didn't not enjoy it...
They're making a movie of it, which, unless its directed by Cronenberg, will have a good chance of sucking.

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ubergeeknz

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#811911 6-May-2013 10:16

BlueShift: I read John Dies At The End. Its not really SF, its not really Fantasy, its not really Horror, but its a bit of all of them, plus funny and gross and surreal. I'm still trying to work out if I enjoyed it, but I know I didn't not enjoy it...
They're making a movie of it, which, unless its directed by Cronenberg, will have a good chance of sucking.

They already made a movie of it: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1783732/

When you say you didn't not enjoy it... is it worth a read or not really? In your opinion?

BlueShift

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#811917 6-May-2013 10:30

ubergeeknz:
BlueShift: I read John Dies At The End. Its not really SF, its not really Fantasy, its not really Horror, but its a bit of all of them, plus funny and gross and surreal. I'm still trying to work out if I enjoyed it, but I know I didn't not enjoy it...
They're making a movie of it, which, unless its directed by Cronenberg, will have a good chance of sucking.

They already made a movie of it: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1783732/

When you say you didn't not enjoy it... is it worth a read or not really? In your opinion?

It isn't not worth a read ;-)
If you liked Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, and Kafka's Metamorphosis, and Burrough's Naked Lunch and Dav Pilkey's Captain Underpants, then definitely read it.
Its funny, trippy, weird, gross, and stuff.

timmmay

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#811967 6-May-2013 12:46

Sarum, by Edward Rutherfurd. It's enormous and heavy, I delayed reading it until I got a kindle. It follows families through the ages from prehistoric to modern times. It started out well, but now i'm 66% of the way through it's getting a bit same old same old. It's getting too much into history of kings and such. I'm still reading it, and may finish, but I'm skipping over the boring bits.

Since I finished re-reading all of the Reacher books in order I haven't found anything that's really caught my attention. I like series and sags, which is why I gave Sarum a try.

John2010

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#812056 6-May-2013 14:13

timmmay: Sarum, by Edward Rutherfurd. It's enormous and heavy, I delayed reading it until I got a kindle. It follows families through the ages from prehistoric to modern times. It started out well, but now i'm 66% of the way through it's getting a bit same old same old. It's getting too much into history of kings and such. I'm still reading it, and may finish, but I'm skipping over the boring bits.

Since I finished re-reading all of the Reacher books in order I haven't found anything that's really caught my attention. I like series and sags, which is why I gave Sarum a try.

Rutherfurd will be at the Auckland Book Festival next week introducing his new book Paris. But you have to pay to see him-so I won't be bothering

.

I have the ebook but never got around to reading it yet, maybe you have prompted me to give it a go sometime soon.

Have just finished The Rise and Fall of Communism by Archie Brown. A good neutral easily read history of it, and anyone who was not around or old enough to understand what it was all about during and pre the fall of the Berlin Wall and interested in the sad history of socialism might like to give it a go.

BlueShift

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#812997 7-May-2013 16:29

jonherries:
ubergeeknz: Thought I'd resurrect this thread :)

Just finished the Commonwealth Saga (Peter F. Hamilton) on my Kindle - hard work at times, but the gripping fight scenes and epic finale made it totally worthwhile.

Now reading "Inversions" (Iain Banks) - love me a good Culture novel, and the way Banks uses various points of view, often widely separated, to humanize the story arc (if humanize is the right word for an alien, or sometimes computer mind, perspective...)

Love the culture series, am reading the hydrogen sonata now.

Does anyone have any other sci fi authors, not interested in fantasy?

Jon

Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon is an awesome Sci Fi/Noir with 2 equally awesome sequels. His other novels are excellent too - Market Forces if you like Death Race 2000.
They've been talking about filming Altered Carbon, but I believe they're hitting a slight snag in that the lead character keeps switching bodies - tricky to have one lead actor.

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#813630 8-May-2013 12:36

I got a bunch of Ian Fleming's Bond novels for Christmas, in the re-released covers and format. I'd read many of them a while back, but it was nice to re-read the re-releases.

Casino Royale - first time reading this book since the Daniel Craig film. Was fun to see how much was similar, and how much was different. I find it's pretty easy to read Bond in a 50s setting, while imagining Daniel Craig as that Bond. The story is great, and establishes a lot of the baseline from which future Bond stories (both novels and movies) develop.

Moonraker - this was one of the dumber films from the Eon series (designed to cash in on the Star Wars bug), but the book shares only the title and vague conceptual relation to the film. It's set entirely in England, and revolves around Sir Hugo Drax's plan for a rocket that will protect the UK from Soviet attack. The story has nothing to do with space or Shuttles or plans for world domination by eliminating the population and re-colonising the world from space. Which is a good thing.

Diamonds are Forever. Another story which was turned into a film, but with much of the storyline replaced to fit the trend for 70s Bond films to focus on megalomaniacal figures with grandiose and absurd world domination plans. The novel is focussed tightly on diamond smuggling, gambling fixing, and a detective-style story, whereas the film was focussed on Blofeld's plans to build a laser satellite using diamonds, from which the world can be held to ransom (mwhahahahaa). Again, the book is more "sensible" (if that word can be applied to a Bond novel), and serves to highlight the difference between the literary and the cinematic Bond universes.

Game of Thrones (book 1 of Song of Ice and Fire) by George R R Martin - having been totally absorbed by the TV series, I felt it was only fair to read the source material. It's a cracking good read, and the show seems to be pretty faithful to the main story arcs. There are differences, but nothing particularly fatal. It's pretty large, over 700 pages, and its amazing how much they have captured in 10 hours of TV. I've already started on book 2 (Clash of Kings), and hope to finish books 3 and 4 before they air season 4.

Dodger by Terry Pratchett. I'm a long-time Pratchett fan, and I've read pretty much everything he's written. Dodger isn't a Discworld novel - it's an Earth-based fiction for young adults, set in Dickensian London. The story revolves around Dodger, a street kid of sorts who makes a living sieving through muck in the sewers for lost coins, jewellery, etc. He's painted as the gentle ruffian with a heart of gold, living on the edge of legality but with street-based moral code. he gets drawn into an alien world of gentlemen, upper-class villains, and politicians when he intervenes to save a young girl being beaten up on the street, who turns out to be an important foreign dignatory of sorts. It's pretty easy-going reading, and probably not one of Pratchett's greatest, but there's nothing really wrong here. Worth a read for Pratchett fans.

BlueShift

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#813815 8-May-2013 16:53

Lizard1977:
Game of Thrones (book 1 of Song of Ice and Fire) by George R R Martin - having been totally absorbed by the TV series, I felt it was only fair to read the source material. It's a cracking good read, and the show seems to be pretty faithful to the main story arcs. There are differences, but nothing particularly fatal. It's pretty large, over 700 pages, and its amazing how much they have captured in 10 hours of TV. I've already started on book 2 (Clash of Kings), and hope to finish books 3 and 4 before they air season 4.

Once you've worked through the Ice & Fire series, consider Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen. I'm up to book seven, and the tapestry keeps getting broader, the back-story more complex and the characters more varied (and dead). Its starting to make Westeros look like Narnia...

Lizard1977

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#814362 9-May-2013 10:50

BlueShift:
Lizard1977:
Game of Thrones (book 1 of Song of Ice and Fire) by George R R Martin - having been totally absorbed by the TV series, I felt it was only fair to read the source material. It's a cracking good read, and the show seems to be pretty faithful to the main story arcs. There are differences, but nothing particularly fatal. It's pretty large, over 700 pages, and its amazing how much they have captured in 10 hours of TV. I've already started on book 2 (Clash of Kings), and hope to finish books 3 and 4 before they air season 4.

Once you've worked through the Ice & Fire series, consider Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen. I'm up to book seven, and the tapestry keeps getting broader, the back-story more complex and the characters more varied (and dead). Its starting to make Westeros look like Narnia...

Sounds like a good idea. Westeros=Narnia! Lol!

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