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Just finished "Summer of Night" by Dan Simmons.
Loved it.
Imagine "It" meets Cthulhu.

 Hanskrampf wrote:


Thanks for the answers, I think I'm just reading through it because there ARE pieces that I actually like. And I just realized that it's a very short book (I have a omnibus with all 5 (?) novels), so I'm already halfway through as of today. Maybe the second one is better?

I found that I enjoyed H2G2 most in its original radio format.

 ProtoClone wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 ProtoClone wrote:
Reading a sci-fi novel recommended by my coworker, it's called Pennsylvania. By, Michael Bunker

Or, as I had to explain it to my wife...AMISH IN SPACE!

I just started it but the idea of what the Amish would have to deal with in order to settle on a new world entertains me. So I am interested in seeing where the author takes this.

There'll be a thrilling final section complete with horse drawn carriage travel and a barn-raising

Don't know if you're trolling or spoiling.

OK, I gave up on AMISH IN SPAAAAACE or known as Pennsylvania. The writing was bad. At one point a rebel soldier told his fellow soldiers to "Get your booger hooks off the bang buttons".

There was also several hand waving that I thought was too much to overlook just so he could put the main character in the middle of a civil war.

Next thing I will read will be Star Trek Seekers #4. I loved the other Seekers novels, and the book series that they follow directly, Star Trek: Vanguard.

Just re-read Starship Troopers. A classic.

Almost finished reading Thinner by Stephen King. I gotta admit, for the one dollar I spent on this thing at a thrift store, it's quite a good story. Might tackle IT later, since I'm starting to get into Stephen King books.

 SkavenLord wrote:
Almost finished reading Thinner by Stephen King. I gotta admit, for the one dollar I spent on this thing at a thrift store, it's quite a good story. Might tackle IT later, since I'm starting to get into Stephen King books.

Just read his earlier stuff. After he sobered up, his writing went downhill. Still one of my favorite authors, though, and perhaps the best short story writer I've ever read.

Reading the Halo trilogy by Greg Bear.
Starting with Cryptum.
I don't play the computer games (I've played the first one, and it was ok, but nothing to write home about) but the setting is fine.

 chromedog wrote:
Reading the Halo trilogy by Greg Bear.
Starting with Cryptum.
I don't play the computer games (I've played the first one, and it was ok, but nothing to write home about) but the setting is fine.

Sounds like you've got the Forerunner Saga trilogy there. I've read the first one, and I have the others, waiting to be read soon.

Look Who's Back by Timus Vermes, translated from German by Jamie Bullock.

In this satirical novel, written from a first person perspective, Adolf Hitler wakes up in a park in Berlin in late April, 1945, with a headache and a uniform smelling of petrol, but there are no enemy bombers or tanks around, only some kids playing skateboard.

When Hitler ventures into this strange world, he finds a news kiosk whose owner kindly shelters hims while he gets over his shock at finding it is now 2011.

The news vendor takes him for a good Hitler impersonator, and gets him an interview with some customers who work at a TV station. At interview, Hitler's refusal to break out of character, together with the fact he is 'dead', convince them he is a great comic impersonator, and they give him a one-off slot on a fading comedy programme. Hitler grabs this as the first step in his propaganda campaign to return to power. His film goes viral on YouTube, amassing huge numbers, and the TV company eagerly signs him to a freelance contract.

As things go on, Hitler has many amusing encounters with modern technology and thinking, but his fanatical will to victory sustains him as he plans his come-back. Even though he only tells the truth about his ambitions and past actions, all his Nazi speechmaking is interpreted as edgy comedy, and he goes from strength to strength as a media star.

This novel is currently on Kindle and on the UK site has got a high rating though not surprisingly, there are also many negative comments.

In my view it is very well written and translated, and you can get a lot out of it without knowing specifics about modern German media personalities. Surprisingly, at times I found Hitler a sympathetic character, which I think comes from his personal honesty contrasting with the vapid superficiality of the modern media world.

I just read Impulse, by Dave Bara. Very good space story, and apparently the first in a new series of stories entitled "The Lightship Chronicles". I can hardly wait for more! I am now reading the third Halo: Forerunner Saga book, Silentium.

Just got done with this one:



http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=dp_byline_sr_book_1?ie=UTF8&text=Maximilian+Uriarte&search-alias=books&field-author=Maximilian+Uriarte&sort=relevancerank

I'm not really a graphic novel type, but this is a powerful read. Some worthy humor throughout (the porta-potty scene had me dead) but it isn't a humor book. It tells the story of a Marine deploying to Iraq. Every vet here will identify with the story and will feel they 'knew' some of the characters. For families (and even friends) of vets it will give you a tiny little bit of a glimpse into what some vets deal with.

Highly recommended.

Just finsihed Kushiels Mercy - 3rd book of the 2nd "Kushiel" Trilogy

Intriguing and interesting characters story set in a extremely well crafted and believable version of our world - in particular the religions.

Lots of exctiing adventure and dering do - but equally quite thoughtful - the sexual elements may not be to everyones taste.........

I've recently started reading Heretics of Dune. It's good so far, but none of the sequels that I have read were as good as the first one.

Just finished reading all of "The Saxon Tales" by Bernard Cornwell, and they were great, if maybe a touch formulaic in places.

Currently reading "The Red Knight" by Miles Cameron - and I'm loving it!

I'm about to finish "The Eye of the World" probably tonight, then it'll be on to book 2.

Finished The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss recently, good read, but nowhere near the praise it gets.
Started Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erikson, seems better than Gardens of the Moon so far.

 ZergSmasher wrote:
I've recently started reading Heretics of Dune. It's good so far, but none of the sequels that I have read were as good as the first one.

Having recently finished the whole series, I would agree that the quality declines towards the end.

Nothing really matches the first book, which has such an epic scope, but the next three are good, including God-Emperor, which I enjoyed more than I had expected.

The next two -- 5 and 6 -- start to suffer from dei ex machinae being frequently required to support the plot. I think they were written after Herbert's wife, who was an important partner in life and his work, had died, and this affected his writing.

The last two, written by Herbert's son and Kevin Anderson after Frank Herbert's death, are noticeably poorer in all respects, though at least they do bring the whole saga to a finish. I have not been minded to read the Dune prequels.

To get back to current reading, I have just finished The Rise of Endymion, by Dan Simmons, which is the fourth and last of the Hyperion-Endymion space opera. These are very definitely literary SF. They are more about the philosophy and poetry of life than the nitty-gritty of SF hardware. I found the resolution of the final book somewhat unsatisfying, as it was again rather a deus ex machina. They are definitely worth reading though, and I will go through them again at some time.

My latest project is War and Peace. I started to read it years ago, and like most people ran out of steam after the battle of Borodino. Inspired by the BBC series, I have started again. It is true what is said about the book; all human life is there.

 ZergSmasher wrote:

 chromedog wrote:
Reading the Halo trilogy by Greg Bear.
Starting with Cryptum.
I don't play the computer games (I've played the first one, and it was ok, but nothing to write home about) but the setting is fine.

Sounds like you've got the Forerunner Saga trilogy there. I've read the first one, and I have the others, waiting to be read soon.

Yeah. Having not played the last few games, but vaguely being aware of the place of the forerunners, it puts the first game and some details into perspective.

Oh and guilty-spark 343 being a hobbit was amusing, too.

Humanity: This has all happened before, again.

Interim report on reading War and Peace.

My copy is the translation by Louise and Aylmer Maude, which has the disadvantage of giving American spellings and westernised names to some of the characters. The Kindle version also seemingly has a number of errors in the text. That said, it was only 99p and you can't expect perfection for that kind of money. If you want a more up-to-date edition, several new versions have been released in the UK off the back of the BBC TV series. They are a lot more expensive, though.

Authenticity is a topic to cover, since I want to review the book in combination with the TV series and that has been criticised for deviating from the original text. Comnplete authenticity to the original text is probably impossible, because it is in Russian and Tolstoy made a number of revisions, and in some ways seems to have considered the book never truly finished. Then there is the length of it...

Of course it's inevitable that a six hour TV adaptation will have to take a certain amount of liberties with the book. For example, about 10% of the book -- that's like 100 pages -- is taken up with a fairly detailed exposition of the Austerlitz campaign of 1805, involving at least two major and three minor characters, plus various named extras and non-speaking parts. The TV had to reduce this to five minutes of campaign and battle scenes.

Tolstoy was a soldier and fought in the Crimean War, so I regard his military scenes are written from great knowledge not vastly removed from Napolenic times. His social scenes and the inner life of his characters also ring true according to my understanding of human nature, including my own feelings and failings. I can't speak for the court protocol of early 19th century Russia, but I'm prepared to believe that Tolstoy can.

In a similar way to condensing the war campaigns, the TV series also condenses a lot of the social scenes. However, the key point is that all the essential scenes are presented and nothing important is left out. Obviously the TV cannot present the inner thoughts of the characters, unless it uses voice over or narration -- generally regarded as a failure of technique -- but it does very well by the skill of the actors and director.

Looking again at the text, there are two main difficulties of reading the novel. One is the number of characters and their unfamiliar Russian names; Count Bezhukov, Prince Vasili, Natya Rostova and all the others. The other is the great length of the story and the number of scenes it contains.

What I have found is that watching the TV series has been a great help to reading the novel. The TV series has firstly given me mental pictures of all the important and the secondary characters, that I can associate with their names, and this has helped greatly with keeping track of all these people. The second benefit is that in presenting all the important scenes, the TV series has established a mental framework or skeleton of the whole multiple plot arc novel, which now I can fill in by reading the scenes in the full text.

At any rate I am enoying the book much better than when I attempted it years ago, and I find it quite gripping. There are two aspects to this, War, and Peace.

Being interested in wargames and military history, it is very interesting for me to read Tolstoy's pen sketches of the various incidents that happen in the campaigns. They ring very true, and I strongly believe if you wanted to get an idea of what Napoelonic campaigning was like, these passages would provide that.

The Peace part of course deals with human life, love, sadness, despair and death. Here too, Tolstoy's characters and prose beautifully describes the kind of emotions and social interactions that if I have not always experienced myself, I feel to be a true part of human experience. They are marvellously complex and real breathing characters, with the flaws and strengths you can observe in your friends and family.

War and Peace has been claimed as the best novel ever written. It certainly is a major classic of literature and probably ought to be read by everyone as part of one of those 100 books to read before you die lists.

Just finished book two of the Dresden Chronicles. Reading Volume 1 of the Dragonlance Chronicles, then going to pick up book 3 of the Dresden Chronicles and reread IT by Stephen King.

Reading "The Great Hunt" which is book 2 of the Wheel of Time series.

We were talking about the WoT a couple weeks ago at the shop I game at, and my buddy basically convinced me (without actually saying, "you should try reading them again") to give them another shot... I first read them in the 6th-8th grades, and as a younger adult, I've bought up to book 11, but never read beyond book 9 (and that was as a kid). I just never could get myself to drag my way through them again. But now, it's been so long that it's almost as if I'd never read them before and it's not so bad, especially compared to the more dry history text books I've had

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
Reading "The Great Hunt" which is book 2 of the Wheel of Time series.

We were talking about the WoT a couple weeks ago at the shop I game at, and my buddy basically convinced me (without actually saying, "you should try reading them again") to give them another shot... I first read them in the 6th-8th grades, and as a younger adult, I've bought up to book 11, but never read beyond book 9 (and that was as a kid). I just never could get myself to drag my way through them again. But now, it's been so long that it's almost as if I'd never read them before and it's not so bad, especially compared to the more dry history text books I've had

WoT is one of the most well-rounded series I've ever read.

I "game of thrones" like Cable show would work really well imo.

 whembly wrote:

WoT is one of the most well-rounded series I've ever read.

I "game of thrones" like Cable show would work really well imo.

Part of what put me off for so long, was the Tom Clancy level of description for every. little. thing. that ever happens in the books. I was also hesitant to keep it up, being that the last few books were written by that other guy, based on Robert Jordan's notes; but my friend who convinced me was saying that those books are actually the best of the whole series because they read so much better. Apparently the new guy took the approach that by book 12, you certainly know what the feth is going on, and he doesn't need to waste 100 pages of 700 redescribing Rand and Perrin and the 33 other main characters in book 1 levels of detail. This allowed for him to write a better, more rounded story... So, I guess I'll be finding out in the coming months.

The Wheel of Time really suffers around...Book...4 or 5 maybe?

And nothing seems to really happen for a long, long time.

I gave up on it around Book....7 or 8 maybe?

East of Eden, by Steinbeck

 Alpharius wrote:
The Wheel of Time really suffers around...Book...4 or 5 maybe?

And nothing seems to really happen for a long, long time.

I gave up on it around Book....7 or 8 maybe?

Book five I believe when the original group broke off and spawned independent story arcs...

But the last two books was glorious.

Might as well read Sanderson's original stuff, then. Mistborn is great, and the writing is much more economical than you'll find in most modern high fantasy series.

"Mercenaries and Their Masters" by Michael Mallet

A bit light on detail, but a decent birds eye view of the evolution of mercenary warfare in Renaissance Italy.

Also a great source of names for my book.

 Alpharius wrote:
Currently reading "The Red Knight" by Miles Cameron - and I'm loving it!

I recently finished the second book in the series, The Fell Sword. It's good, but not as good as the first and is clearly a set up for the next book in the series.