What books are you reading?

[zero_the_masked_knight]

Recently finished reading the Hunger Games trilogy. Twice. The second read was as good as the first one.

Currently Rereading the new Neil Gaiman book - The Ocean at the end of the lane. Gaiman's as great as ever.

For Non fiction The Years of Extermination by Saul Friedlander.

[Antares]

Recapped a classic, Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End and started with a new series by K.J. Parker over the holidays. I'm done with The Color of Steel, heading to The Belly of the Bow. Parker's style of fantasy writing couples magical realism and humor quite nicely. It's not Pratchett, but still good stuff.

[Vent Noir]

Finished Perfect Scoundrels, and especially appreciated the Heist Society/Gallagher Girls crossover novella "Double Cross" that was included as a bonus. Now onto a compilation of the first three books of CJ Cherryh's Morgaine Saga.

[Vent Noir]

The Morgaine Saga compilation was a slog to get through, but ultimately worth it. Next up, The Girl Who Would Be King by Kelly Thompson.

[RX-92]

Neuromancer by William Gibson it is rather interesting

[Vent Noir]

Finished The Girl Who Would Be King, which was pretty good. Now onto Kinslayer, the second book in Jay Kristoff's Lotus War series. If it's anywhere near as good as Stormdancer was, it'll be well worthwhile.

[Vent Noir]

Finished Kinslayer, and enjoyed it as much as I did the first in the series. Now on to Hellfire the third book in Jeah Johnson's Theirs Not to Reason Why.

[mcred23]

After much delay due to work, video games, and other crap, I finished the Phillip K. Dick collection... sorta...

The Man in the High Castle was probably the one of the four I enjoyed the most. It was very good, but the flaw is that it just sorta ends without any real sense of conclusion. Lots of plot lines and other things are set up, but never really resolved. IIRC, I read that he planned on doing a sequel or something to expand on it, but never got around to it, which is a shame. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch... hoo boy. It was extremely interesting, but it got to a point late in the book where I had no idea whether events were real or drug induced or what. Reading the last third or so of it at 3 AM while listening to deep album cuts of Rush made me feel like my brain was broken. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was very good, and unsurprisingly had some fairly significant differences from the movie, but I enjoyed it none the less (Although the visuals and soundtrack of the movie kept going through my head as I read it, even though they often didn't fit the text). Ubik, however, I just couldn't finish. I got about a hundred pages in, which was enough to realize it was going to be a similar kind of reality mind-messing-with that I got from Palmer Eldritch, and I just couldn't take more of that right now. Plus, I haven't had much time to read it, and it's just not the sort of thing I want to read in very short bursts. I want to go back and read that again at some point down the line, but likely not any time soon.

Anyway, I'm now reading a book I intended to read earlier this year but forgot about, The Battle of Mogadishu. It's a collection of first hand accounts from the battle that were used as the basis for Black Hawk Down, which I've always been interested in, so I'm liking it so far (About 40 pages in).

[mcred23]

Well, I knocked out The Battle of Mogadishu pretty quickly. It's really a must read for anyone who also liked Black Hawk Down and I enjoyed it.

Now, I'm going to reread William Gibson's Neuromancer. I first read it two years ago and loved it, and I recently picked up the two sequels (Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive), which I've never read, so I figured I might as well go through the whole trilogy.

Also, RIP Tom Clancy.

[Vent Noir]

Finished Hellfire. Not as good as the first two books in the series, but I still enjoyed it.

Next up, Crown of Midnight by Sarah J. Maas, the sequel to Throne of Glass.

[Vent Noir]

Okay, finished Crown of Midnight, and liked it. Also read Battle Magic by Tamora Pierce, which was decent, although I'm more of a fan of her Tortall books than her Emelan stuff. Now onto Treecat Wars by David Weber and Jane Lindskold.

[Vent Noir]

In the nonfiction department, I've started on Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks by Ethan Gilsdorf.

[Zeonista]

With the movie coming out and all, I read the Ender's Game novel, which up to now I had never done so. I was a big fan of the novella, so the novel went over well. I also read a compilation of some of S.M. Stirling's short stories.

[Vent Noir]

Finished Treecat Wars, which kept me reading, although I was a bit disappointed that Stephanie's side of the story didn't seem to really go anywhere. Now onto First Rider's Call by Kirstin Britain.

[Zeonista]

I also finished recently 1493, a follow-up to the previous 1491, which had described the situation of the New World when Columbus arrived, and its transformation into the world of 1620 when the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. It was very illuminating, and a sweeping revision of just about everything I learned in school. The aim of 1493 is to show how various elements of the New World (mainly foodstuffs, textiles, and precious metals) were taken to Asia, Africa, and Europe to form the first global economy. Yes, we had a global economy in AD 1510. Nobody in Europe and China cared about globalization, or new world orders, or trade imbalances yet. They wanted to trade, make money, and die rich. Again, my schoolboy education got tossed in favor of a fuller, livelier, and altogether more interesting past.

[Vent Noir]

Finished First Rider's Call, which I really enjoyed and plan on reading the sequels to at sometime (hopefully soon), as well as United We Spy, the final Gallagher Girls book. Now onto Perdition by Ann Agguirre, and also reading L. M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables (in part because references to it appear in a fair number of anime, so I thought I may as well know what they're talking about)

[mcred23]

So Neuromancer was as good as it was the first time, perhaps better now that I understood some of the technobabble parts ahead of time. Count Zero, from what I read of it, was pretty good, but the usual combination of football season and life (Namely working in a toy store during the lead up to the holidays ) meant I couldn't read it consistently and only got through 90 pages in like two months. At that point, although I had enjoyed it, I kept forgetting things and was kinda disinterested, and just wanted to read something else, so I put the Sprawl Trilogy on hold for something a bit easier: the novelizations of the Star Wars prequels. Episode I (By Terry Brooks) was fairly straightforward, with a few additions that weren't in the film that were nice, although there was something about his writing style (Or rather, use of words) that seemed a little repetitious at times. There was also a short story about Darth Maul included in the book, End Game by James Luceno, which I really enjoyed.

Which brings me up to date, currently around 100 pages into Episode II (By R.A. Salvatore), which like the first one adds in a lot of stuff that wasn't in the film, but I'm liking Salvatore's writing quite a bit more.

[ShadowCell]

The King of Sports by Gregg Easterbrook, about the outsized sociological, economic, political, educational, etc effect of football on the United States, for good and for ill (mostly for ill, now that i think about it).

[Amion]

After years of isolation within my not-so imaginary fortress prison surrounded by a very possessive gestabo-style tutorer, I have treaded into the Eye of the World for the first time. What to say? I go for fantasy but this one was not the masterpiece I had hoped. It really gives me little to look forward to in all the remaining books of the series.

First off, is this where the trope for farmboys being the key to humanity's salvation sprang from? Because there's technically three of them. It reminds me of another book, Theft of Swords, where one character notes he expected to find the Chosen One "in a place like this, actually". I couldn't get over the cheesiness of the farmboy thing, especially since all three are not particularly endearing as characters. Worse, most characters aren't endearing. I found myself more and more rooting for Baal'zamon to break that wheel of time before it spins itself into another cliche.

Despite this, as was promised by some reviewer somewhere, the later stages of the book start to feel a whole lot less like a very bad rendition of the Fellowship of the Ring and more like it's own story, with Rand becoming slightly less annoying. I am still not too sure what to make of Moriane either, though she, Nynaeve and Lan are still the only characters I found myself caring for.

And now it is on to the Great Hunt, which seems to be yet another desperate search for a world-changing magical item. It does promise more than the first does I think. Perhaps I shall be impressed with it....

[Soma Taozi]

Stephen King's, The Long Walk (I love me some King...even though I only like his books 50% of the time).

And I just finished Divergent...and wow, it was terrible. I understand the books have a massive following, but that means nothing to me. It was pretty awful. Not the worst thing I have ever read, but there were so many instances where the character dialogue and interaction seemed forced, awkward, and at times I felt like the author was just guessing what kids in their teens SOUND like.

Overall a disappointing read, BUT as bad as it was, it was entertainingly bad and you fly through the material fast. I hope the sequel books will be better, but right now, I see it as nothing more then something pushed due to the Hunger Game's popularity.

Spoiler

Rant time to get it out of my system: The main character Tris is terrible...and regardless of what she does in the later books, she is a terrible role model for young women. She makes ONE hard decision in the novel and the rest is influenced by her stronger MALE boyfriend (who she pines over for 200 pages for SOME reason, even though their chemistry on paper is...well...like paper). And she is useful at ONE thing, destroying simulations...okay...so women can't do anything but kick ass in VIRTUAL reality Veronica Roth?!

This is like Sucker Punch all over again...

Maybe I am too old for these books now, yet I don't think that is the issue. I honestly think this book was terribly written. I can reread Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, Inkheart (only the first one), Redwall, The Chronicles of Narnia, ect...again and again and not cringe at the writing. Although those series I mentioned aren't the best, they at least were smartly written. Divergent deals with a fairy interesting concept and dumbs it down....with dumb characters, a dumb villian, dumb plot, and a dumb main character.

Side notes:
Does anyone actually care about Al, Will, and Christina? Will at least had a personality and characterization...but Al was annoying and Christina? Bitchy and selfish are NOT a good combo. Take it from a bitch herself.

And the final EVIL plan is so random and shoed in...it...it.. makes no fucking sense! Seriously, can some explain to me WHY Tris and company left Dauntless at the end? Wouldn't it make more sense to stay and try to explain matters instead of running? Maybe I missed something...but it seemed like Roth wanted to break the status quo by forcing a poorly explained reason about WHY they had to go on the run. Maybe because she wanted to write a Insurgent novel? Either way...blah!

Rant over. Sorry I needed to vent.

I have to wonder if the first draft of Divergent was directed for adults. But a publishing company tuned it down for young adults? If that was true I could at least excuse some of the over-simplified stupidity that was the plot. It wouldn't fix all the problems in Divergent, but if the story had more teeth...it would have been more enjoyable. But this is just conjecture from me.

If you want to discuss this and suffer...read it...if not, save yourself.