What did you just read?

me personally, i didn't want to start jabbering about A Storm of Swords and possibly have this cool idea for a thread turn into another Game of Thrones thread. so in my case, i was merely trying to be polite.

i'm in the first few chapters of ASOS (roughly around page 150). when i have stuff to elaborate, i will. for right now though, i don't have anything to say.

edit: regarding Kurt Vonnegut, here's a list of his books in order of release & graded by vonnegut himself. someone interested but doesn;t know where to start might find it helpful

Player Piano: B
The Sirens of Titan: A
Mother Night: A
Cat's Cradle: A-plus
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater: A
Slaughterhouse-Five: A-plus
Welcome to the Monkey House: B-minus
Happy Birthday, Wanda June: D
Breakfast of Champions: C
Slapstick: D
Jailbird: A
Palm Sunday: C

Feanor_sl said:

me personally, i didn't want to start jabbering about A Storm of Swords and possibly have this cool idea for a thread turn into another Game of Thrones thread. so in my case, i was merely trying to be polite.

Click to expand...

Yeah there's a whole thread for Ice and Fire=) Mostly wanna catch stuff here that either doesn't warrant a new thread or doesn't fit in to an established thread.

American Psycho. I loved the movie back in the day and thought I'd read the book. I'm not quite sure which I liked more. The movie is a dark comedy with horror elements. The violence, although horrific, is welcome in it's moderation and execution. The movie has a few scenes not in the book, such as hey Paul, that were a welcome addition. By contrast, the book offers exquisite detail in richly developed interactions and descriptions that dwarf the movie. This attention to detail always makes it way into the vivid descriptions of torture/vulgarity, which are frequent and hard to get through. The comedy elements, while present, are much fewer and far between. Knowing what I know now, I would read it again. There are a lot of gems in there.

Read "Necropolis" by Michael Dempsey, nothing amazing but I liked it. In the near future there's a virus bringing dead people back to life, not zombie-fied, but just healing their body to the point where they died at and then they begin youthing (a la Benjamin Button) back to the point of birth. So the US government declared quarantine and locks them all up in New York, along with all the normal people that got stuck in with them. Our hero, NYPD detective, gets rezzed and starts looking into his own murder. Sinister corporations, conspiracy, prejudice, how human are AIs, eternal life, all that Sci-Fi stuff.

Just finished The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch. Sanderson gave it high praise in his podcast and Martin has commentary on the cover. The book engrossed me in certain parts, but for large swaths of the book my eyes just kept glazing over by the minutia. (Renaissance time period, little bit of magic, and a lot of thieving.)

I probably won't read any of the upcoming sequels unless there is a spinoff for a side character in the book that I enjoyed.

Binkles_sl said:

American Psycho. I loved the movie back in the day and thought I'd read the book. I'm not quite sure which I liked more. The movie is a dark comedy with horror elements. The violence, although horrific, is welcome in it's moderation and execution. The movie has a few scenes not in the book, such as hey Paul, that were a welcome addition. By contrast, the book offers exquisite detail in richly developed interactions and descriptions that dwarf the movie. This attention to detail always makes it way into the vivid descriptions of torture/vulgarity, which are frequent and hard to get through. The comedy elements, while present, are much fewer and far between. Knowing what I know now, I would read it again. There are a lot of gems in there.

Click to expand...

that was a good read. if there is a 'hookers & coke' genre, that book has got to be in there.

Perhaps hookers, coke, and brie + habitrail + vagina.

FinishedCaliban's War, sequel toLeviathan Wakes. I don't read a ton of SciFi, I don't avoid it but Fantasy/Urban Fantasy is where I'm at most of the time.

So, enjoyed the first book. Good mix of traditional science fiction and a sort of detective story. Second book has less of the detective story and instead throws in more military things. There's still a big central mystery, but it's more focused on political and military shenanigans. We lost in the first book, but they are replaced by a couple new characters who are pretty great in their own right in a high ranking earth politician and a Martian armored infantry marine type.

It's the second book in the series so I don't want to spoil too much. So I'll keep it basic. Earth and Mars are still on the verge of war and it's up to a few people to keep that from happening. And...uh...that's about all I can say about the plot without spoiling the first book.

I enjoyed this one more than the first, the characters are more fleshed out and the new characters were instantly engaging. I cared more what happened to them than in the previous book. There's some great action pieces from small to humongous scale. If you are like me and not a hardcore science fiction reader these two books are a pretty great way to try out the genre a bit more.

bixxby_sl said:

Just finished a comic series called The Boys. Really fantastic stuff, about a CIA black ops group that monitors superheroes. Kindle is so damn handy.

Click to expand...

where did you get your the boys? is it sold on kindle? I've been wanting to get it but haven't seen a convenient place to buy it. I basicly just had the pirated first 20 or so issues.

The pirate bay has a torrent with the whole series/mini serieses.

Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs Novels)Great Scifi story. Just purchased the other two books in the series as well.

Grumpy_sl said:

Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs Novels)Great Scifi story. Just purchased the other two books in the series as well.

Click to expand...

See, this one I enjoyed. Unlike that festering cockpile that was Snow Crash. Still haven't read the other 2 Kovacs ones.

Only mention the textual diarrhea that is Snow Crash because I often see them mentioned together as big deals in the cyberpunk genre, along with Neuromancer.

Just finished 11/22/63. Thought it was a very good book, although I've seen some put it on the level of some of King's best books (Shining, Salem's Lot, etc) and I wouldn't go that far. I didn't like the ending as much but that's more because it wasn't the way I hoped it would end. When you think about it he ended the book probably in the most logical way you could, considering all that happened. I read somewhere that Abrams was looking to pick up the rights for a TV mini series.

I'm trying to figure out what to read next. A little burnt out on sci-fi/fantasy though.

This may be the "What did you just read" thread, but fuck it, I'm gonna post what I'm reading now. I just bought The Black Company (the edition that has the first 3 books in it) and the first edition of the Joe Abercrombie First Law series.

I've decided to read The Black Company before the First law series since its much shorter and self contained. May as well knock it out before delving into another series.

Only ~100 pages into TBC, but Im really digging it so far.

Grimmlokk_sl said:

Here's a recent one.

In Hero Years... I'm Deadby Michael A. Stackpole

Click to expand...

Sounds interesting, thanks for the recommendation, G.

If you like Stackpole, Talion: Revenant is a great book. A Hero Born is also decent, if not quite as good. Really wish he would have done more books involving the Talions.

http://www.amazon.com/Talion-Revenan.../dp/0553576569

I've started reading: a storm of swords; steel and snow.
witch a friend of mine gave to me (he thought it was the first book of the series instead of the first part of the third book)
anyhow i was kinda interested in what it would be like 'cause there's been a lot of fuzz about game of thrones lately.
so i picked it up, but it turns out to be a bad idea to start reading in the middle of the series.

i struggled my way through to page 105 and now i've put it aside. there's just no way to get through this without reading/watching the books that come before.
but after watching the pilot of the series i was kinda dissapointed by the fact that there is (imho) to much nudity in the series.
so i'm thinking of reading the first books, but if theres also that much sex/nudity in the books i would rather not.
so does anyone know if thats the fact?

this maybe isn't the best thread to put this on, but it's the last book i read, and this thread caught my eye and i'm charmed by it

Not nearly as much sex in the books, and there's no pictures so no nudity. Don't worry, your parents won't take it away for being porn.