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    • CommentAuthorStefanJ
    • CommentTimeJun 21st 2011
     (9362.401)
    Started A Wise Man's Fears while continuing The Death Machine.

    Also started a big thick collection of war comics. It is not what I expected. Lots of excerpts rather than full stories.

    Also catching up on back issues of Make magazine.
  2.  (9362.402)
    @FauxHammer oh no, I have so much to read that I'm waiting on my boyfriend, who wants to collect the whole series, to buy the next one before I get started on it. He's broke and still hasn't paid me back for the last lot of books he bought, so I expect I will actually have just finished book four when five comes out! :D

    Also, The City & The City is indeed amazing.
    • CommentAuthorJECole
    • CommentTimeJun 22nd 2011
     (9362.403)
    Just finished George Martin's A Feast Of Crows. I plan to read Heinlein's stranger in a strange place, then Mieville's The Scar whiles I wait for A Dance Of Dragons to turn up.

    Then I plan to pick up Leviathan Wakes. I'm in the mood for some space opera.
    Anyone picked it up yet? Worth a punt?
  4.  (9362.404)
    So far in my Aylett binge I've read Atom, Toxicology and am nearly finished The Crime Studio. The highlight so far has been Atom, which is completely insane and hilarious. Toxicology fell a little flat in parts, but also had some great stories that made the whole thing worthwhile. Crime Studio is also a bit of a mixed bag, but I think the lows aren't as low and the highs aren't as high. Hoping that Slaughtermatic and Novahead are a single story, because I think that's why Atom was better (IMO) - more room for the characters and ideas to develop and draw you in.
    •  
      CommentAuthornigredo
    • CommentTimeJun 22nd 2011
     (9362.405)
    Finished THE DOOR TO LOST PAGES, which was great and will start JOHN DIES AT THE END, by David Wong, aka Jason Pargin.
    • CommentAuthorharchangel
    • CommentTimeJun 22nd 2011
     (9362.406)
    Got my hands on an advance reader copy of Ready Player One by Ernest Cline due out in August. A fantastic Sci-fi, especially for those geeks out there that grew up in the 80's
    •  
      CommentAuthorinfomancer
    • CommentTimeJun 22nd 2011
     (9362.407)
    Working on Jacques Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence. I felt that my pants weren't quite smarty enough, so I decided to try to absorb 500 years of Western culture. It reads exactly like what it is, a charming 95 year old French historian telling you everything he knows.

    Also liking Everything that Rises, by Lawrence Weschler. Various essays and interviews on the way that seemingly disparate images take on new meaning in relation to each other. Better than a lot of art writing out there.
  8.  (9362.408)
    And the last few stories in The Crime Studio show up to prove me wrong. Every story after the final Blince story is fantastic. The Blince stories themselves, though, I find boring and formulaic.
    •  
      CommentAuthornigredo
    • CommentTimeJun 24th 2011
     (9362.409)
    JOHN DIES AT THE END is fucking awesome. Grotesque, surreal, hilarious, very well written. Loving it.
    •  
      CommentAuthorinfomancer
    • CommentTimeJun 24th 2011
     (9362.410)
    @nigredo I really enjoyed it too. It strikes a weird balance between humor and horror that works better than a lot of things that attempt something similar.
    • CommentAuthor256
    • CommentTimeJun 28th 2011
     (9362.411)
    Picked up Demi-Monde: Winter by Rod Rees at the library. Managed about 60 pages, gave up.

    I guess the kindest thing you can say is that at lot of the writing choices are very first-novel stuff. But the endless use of really shitty plays-on-words, regardless of appropriateness, really wound me up (ex: within a decade, the US Army has started calling its new recruits "neoFights" - for neophytes, geddit? Everything is like this).

    Also: Stuck inside a computer game where when you die, you die for real? This idea has been played out for at least 15 years.
  12.  (9362.412)
    John Berger's Hold Everything Dear: Dispatches on Survival and Resistance

    He just has such a fucking beautiful mind.
  13.  (9362.413)
    Currently reading Gravity's Rainbow. It makes 2666 look like a straight forward novel. Also, this thing takes every single detour it possibly can. That said, Pynchon knows how to write an evocative sentence.
  14.  (9362.414)
    Got tempted by a bargain basement bookstore (as I always do - it's conveniently placed right at the train station entrance) and picked up:

    How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu
    The 2010 Nebula Awards Showcase
    After The Myths Went Home (another anthology)
    and The Demon's Covenant by Sarah Rees Brennan, which is a sequel to a book I read a few years ago.

    I know what to expect from the sequel (awesomeness) but the rest are unknown quantities!
    • CommentAuthorMercer Finn
    • CommentTimeJun 30th 2011 edited
     (9362.415)
    Shit's hitting the fan in A Game of Thrones. Bout time. A book this long is going to have some problems plot and pace wise, but once it gets down to it, it's riveting. And I do admire the thought behind the world-building. I've studied a little bit of medieval history in my time, and Martin has certainly done his homework. If anything (I'll say this of Mieville as well) you'd want MORE of that on show. Why is the monarchy so influential if each house has their own army? How does Drogo distribute tribute and ensure loyalty in his khalasar? I've got my own answers, and perhaps there are answers down the line. But if the project is to make fantasy "realistic" (go from exploring myth / symbol to the kind of social commentary you find in SF) then my medieval-geek glands need just a little bit... more.

    Characterisation IS kinda thin, tho. My friend who's watching the series described Prince Joffrey as Draco Malfoy without the depth, and he's right (so far...). Personally, I get the feeling Stark wouldn't last a week faced with real Anglo-Saxon / Carolingian warlords. What is this code of honour he sticks to really ABOUT? I cheered Littlefinger on every time he skewered it. Wouldn't Stark have been more interesting and convincing as a conflicted anti-hero doing beastly things in office whilst trying to protect and care for his family? Maybe that's down the line as well...

    Anyway. Haven't enjoyed a fantasy book this much in years. I feel a binge coming on.
  16.  (9362.416)
    @JECole: I loved Leviathan Wakes, really looking forward to what else is in store. Great space-opera with vomit-zombies, what more could you want?
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      CommentAuthornigredo
    • CommentTimeJul 1st 2011
     (9362.417)
    @ infomancer

    Word.
  18.  (9362.418)
    Just finished Ex Machina. Holding out for the deluxe editions was so worth it, but the ending was a real downer and a bit too rushed I thought, still, lovely art, and overall great story.

    Also picked up The Dervish House and The Heroes. Ian McDonald and Joe Abercrombie? Fuck Yeah.

    The library has also been good, since I got (and have started reading!) Kraken by China Mieville, and picked up Spook Country. Whoever it was who mentioned William Gibson (way) earlier in the thread, thank you. Just discovered his stuff with the Bigend series, wonderful stuff, hope Spook Country is as good as Pattern Recognition.
  19.  (9362.419)
    Welp, The Demon's Covenant was excellent as expected - Rees Brannan suffers a little from Joss Whedon Syndrome and loses characterisation to the general aura of Witty Dialogue Ho! but makes up for it in th characters' actual actions. Once I got past the slightly clunky Previously, On first chapter I was quickly engrossed and genuinely failed to call the majority of the plot twists.

    Now halfway through After The Myths Went Home - ed. Stefan Rudnicki, incidentally. Mixed bag so far- the John Crowley story, Novelty, was amazing and hit all of my meta buttons, and I also enjoyed Robert silverberg and Sam M. Steward, but Oskar Kokoschka isn't really my thing, and the Algernon Blackwood story I'm reading now is deeply, deeply weird. This is one of those old-school anthologies that spans an entire century or more in terms of when the stories were written, but it does fit together very well under the theme.
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      CommentAuthorinfomancer
    • CommentTimeJul 3rd 2011 edited
     (9362.420)
    Currently reading Zazen by Vanessa Veselka, and liking it so far. It's a very accurate portrayal of what it feels like to live assuming that everything about the contemporary world is nearing its breaking point. To be just certain that the whole system is rotting from inside and cataclysm is just about to happen. Very well-written postmodern paranoia. I'm interested to see where she goes with it.

    Chipping away at bits of Adorno's Minima Moralia as well. I've not read too much from the Frankfurt School, but whether or not I agree with what he's broadcasting, there seem to be some interesting ideas to chew on in there.

    Also, I'm thinking about picking up a copy of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. It'll end up being one of those tomes that you take in a chapter here and there over a year or two, and I'd rather have a single volume edition rather than the big three volume beast that's out there, unless there's too much left out. The Modern Library single volume edition looks good, does anyone have an opinion either way?

    ETA: Finished Zazen. I really liked the funny/sad portrayal of ineffective contemporary counterculture.

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