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Whatcha readin now? (book, books, reading, read) (1 Viewer)

Uruk-Hai said:
TheFanatic said:
Uruk-Hai said:
TheFanatic said:
I'm reading Game of Thrones by George R Martin. I;ve got one word to describe it: Epic
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Word of warning: I'm sure you know this but the series isn't finished yet. Only 4 of the (proposed) 7 books have been published, with book #5 looking like a 2010 release. That'll be 5 years since the 4th book was released (and that book was 5 years after #3). I'm not trying to discourage anyone from reading Martin's books, as I think they're wonderful, but you're not gonna get it in finished form for several years. I happen to think the final two books will happen faster than the most recent two since just about all of this "middle" period had to be rewritten - I think he's always know where he wants to go, just had to change how he got there.
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I did not know that. I just started the second book. Maybe 60 pages in. But at close to 1K pages I'm not finishing it, or the series so far, anytime soon. The first one was powerful. So many twists and turns. I hate predictable books and while some things are foreseeable the vast majority of the twists are just amazing. Oh, and HBO is making a series out of it called Winter is Coming I think. The guy that played Baromir (Sean Bean) is playing Eddard and the wife of King Leonaitas in 300 will play Cersai Lassiter. I'm looking forward to seeing her as a blond. I'm actually considering ordering HBO because of this.
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You ain't seen nothin' yet on twists & turns. If your experience is anything like mine, Martin will have you jumping at shadows by about half way through book 3.HBO's casted for the pilot & I believe it starts shooting in a month or so. Other than the two actors you mentioned, I am onl;y familiar with two more - Jennifer Ehle as Catelyn & Peter Dinkelage as Tyrion. Most (all?) of the main roles are filled by Brit actors I've never heard of but the fan boards seem really high on just about everyone.
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I'm actually kinda disappointed in this guy being assigned the role. I have been picturing the midge from Seinfeld the whole time I've been reading the books. Ehle will make a good Catelyn...The twists have been fewer in the second book thus far but still out freakin standing. I'm about halfway through and it's sort of the build up of everything right now. Doing all the background of what is to come. And of course he is leading me in one direction with each substory and I keep trying to tell myself that this is not how it's going to play out. Really amazing...

 
saintfool said:
my pleasure-reading has been tabled in favor of baby preparation books. should be an interesting 5-6 months.
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Congrats bro... Your live will never be the same but it will be for all the right reasons. And all the literature out there on raising kids is over kill. Keep them on a schedule. If they're crying they are hungry, cold, or need their diaper changed. Once you get through that you are good to go...
 
igbomb said:
ConstruxBoy said:
igbomb said:
Next up: Just read the prologue for Where Men Win Glory by Jon Krakauer, a biography of Pat Tillman. So far so good.
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About 75 pages into this. Really like it so far, although I like his stuff and I know some people don't based on the Everest stuff.
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I'd rather he stick to Tillman's story instead of going into the history of Afghanistan so much. Of course, that's probably due more to having just recently read the book he seems to be using as his source material, The Looming Tower (fantastic book by the way). Hasn't really grabbed me yet, maybe closer to Into the Wild (which I thought was just okay) than to Into Thin Air (which I thought was great).
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I am about 140pgs into it now. I am the opposite. I find the stuff about Afghanistan more interesting than the details about specific NFL games, how he performed, how he felt, etc... I know about the football stuff and don't find it interesting.
 
Pooch said:
flysack said:
Trey said:
Just finished The Brothers Karamazov.

Wow.
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:hophead: One of my all time favorite novels.

If you're feeling the Dostoevsky, I recommend The Idiot. The first 200 pages are some of the finest writing Fyodor did. Then it hits a dry spell for a 100 pages or so. Stick with it. The last third is as brilliant as the opening.
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:shrug: for both of these books. Great novels.I finished reading The Caine Mutiny last week and liked it quite a bit. Not as much as Wouk's later books The Winds of War and War and Remembrance but good nonetheless. My wife picked up the DVD for me yesterday. Surprisingly, I'd never seen it even though Humphrey Bogart stars in it.

Next up for me is Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson. First volume of the Baroque Cycle. Looks interesting.
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I read the Caine Mutiny last week as well. I decided to read it after it was referenced in Tim's WWII thread. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

 
KarmaPolice said:
igbomb said:
ConstruxBoy said:
igbomb said:
Next up: Just read the prologue for Where Men Win Glory by Jon Krakauer, a biography of Pat Tillman. So far so good.
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About 75 pages into this. Really like it so far, although I like his stuff and I know some people don't based on the Everest stuff.
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I'd rather he stick to Tillman's story instead of going into the history of Afghanistan so much. Of course, that's probably due more to having just recently read the book he seems to be using as his source material, The Looming Tower (fantastic book by the way). Hasn't really grabbed me yet, maybe closer to Into the Wild (which I thought was just okay) than to Into Thin Air (which I thought was great).
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I am about 140pgs into it now. I am the opposite. I find the stuff about Afghanistan more interesting than the details about specific NFL games, how he performed, how he felt, etc... I know about the football stuff and don't find it interesting.
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I probably would have felt the same way if I hadn't just read The Looming Tower. It's a much better book for Afghan history than Krakauer's book, and is fantastic cover to cover.
 
Cracked open A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel last night. This one's been sitting on my shelf for a while and I figured I should finally give it a go. I just have a hard time with business books these days since I'm so immersed in the stuff year-round in my MBA program.

 
shuke said:
Next up: A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
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:lmao: Yes, Owen is a very memorable character and the themes of fate etc. were interesting, but this pretty much bored the crap out of me, especially the first half of the book.

3/10

While I like science fiction, I'm not really a "fantasy" guy. A friend highly recommended A Game of Thrones.

I just saw that this is book 1 of 6 and since it is about 700 pages I am a little wary about diving in.

 
kupcho1 said:
shuke said:
While I like science fiction, I'm not really a "fantasy" guy. A friend highly recommended A Game of Thrones.
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:goodposting: There are more threads and comments on A Game of Thrones than Otis-initiated psycho ex-boyfriend threads.
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What part do you think I'm fishing about exactly?Also, your link shows me one thread about this particular book and a few about movie rights.

I am guessing this is your endorsement?

 
shuke said:
kupcho1 said:
shuke said:
While I like science fiction, I'm not really a "fantasy" guy. A friend highly recommended A Game of Thrones.
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:thumbup: There are more threads and comments on A Game of Thrones than Otis-initiated psycho ex-boyfriend threads.
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What part do you think I'm fishing about exactly?Also, your link shows me one thread about this particular book and a few about movie rights.

I am guessing this is your endorsement?
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Although there are some stock fantasy elements in Martin's books, he doesn't use them in the way most fantasy writers do. In fact, he turns many of them on their heads. And anyway, the root of the story - the characters & how they act - could take place anytime or anyplace. This is not High Fantasy in the Tolkien sense. No one is noblility-personified (those closest have un-good things happen to them precisely because they're trying to be good). Martin's story is gritty, nasty, and ugly. Some characters you start out thinking are pure villians pass those you originally thought were heroic on the bad-to-good scale as you get further into the story. What makes all of that work is that Martin tells the story from the point-of-view perspective of several characters; nobody we read about knows everything (or even much at all), so there are tons of red herrings, misunderstandings, and unreliable-narrator things going on. If that makes it seem like it's hard to read, it's not. His writing style is easy and, if at first it's hard to keep up with everybody and who is allied with who, in the long run it doesn't matter. I'm about as anal as they come on keeping characters straight as I read but Martin has so many secondary names mentioned that on first read I just gave up on trying to figure out who all of these people were & went with the story. Not that it's not important to know (there's a glossary in the back that helps), but the writing is so good that you finally say "screw it, I'll figure it out later".Anyway, I'd recommend A Game Of Thrones to anyone. By the end of that book, I'd expect that you'll be hooked on the tale.

 
anyone pickup

? I'm backed up in my reading but Ellroy is one of my all time favorites and I'm trying to decide if I should just jump my list and grab this.
 
HellToupee said:
anyone pickup

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I plan to power through a couple hundred pages this weekend and will let you know how it develops. I've only ready about 30-40 pages since posting the above, and it's still the same. I think how much you like this will track closely to how much you liked The Cold Six Thousand.
 
Uruk-Hai said:
shuke said:
kupcho1 said:
shuke said:
While I like science fiction, I'm not really a "fantasy" guy. A friend highly recommended A Game of Thrones.
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:fishing: There are more threads and comments on A Game of Thrones than Otis-initiated psycho ex-boyfriend threads.
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What part do you think I'm fishing about exactly?Also, your link shows me one thread about this particular book and a few about movie rights.

I am guessing this is your endorsement?
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Although there are some stock fantasy elements in Martin's books, he doesn't use them in the way most fantasy writers do. In fact, he turns many of them on their heads. And anyway, the root of the story - the characters & how they act - could take place anytime or anyplace. This is not High Fantasy in the Tolkien sense. No one is noblility-personified (those closest have un-good things happen to them precisely because they're trying to be good). Martin's story is gritty, nasty, and ugly. Some characters you start out thinking are pure villians pass those you originally thought were heroic on the bad-to-good scale as you get further into the story. What makes all of that work is that Martin tells the story from the point-of-view perspective of several characters; nobody we read about knows everything (or even much at all), so there are tons of red herrings, misunderstandings, and unreliable-narrator things going on. If that makes it seem like it's hard to read, it's not. His writing style is easy and, if at first it's hard to keep up with everybody and who is allied with who, in the long run it doesn't matter. I'm about as anal as they come on keeping characters straight as I read but Martin has so many secondary names mentioned that on first read I just gave up on trying to figure out who all of these people were & went with the story. Not that it's not important to know (there's a glossary in the back that helps), but the writing is so good that you finally say "screw it, I'll figure it out later".Anyway, I'd recommend A Game Of Thrones to anyone. By the end of that book, I'd expect that you'll be hooked on the tale.
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Excellent writeup. I couldn't come close to summing it up this well. For those that cringe at the over the top magic and mysticism of Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter type stuff don't let that hold you back from reading this book. There is some of that but very little. For the most part it's political thriller set in the middle ages. There's sword play, jousting, sacking of castles, and all that. But the best part of the books, IMO, is there is no hero. Every single character is deeply flawed in some way. And Martin is great, as Uruk-Hai stated, at taking one character you are sure is a bad guy and making him good and vice versa. You start to appreciate the flaws over the typical hero types.

And I can't stress enough how much this book will sink it's teeth in and not let go. Just as you are going to set the book down for the evening after reading a chapter or two Martin punches you in the face with a twist and you turn the page to the next chapter. I read the first book in less than two weeks and it's close to 1K pages...

 
Started reading Lee Child's new book in his Jack Reacher series -- Gone Tomorrow -- and can barely put it down.

I can't recommend this series highly enough. You do not mess with Jack Reacher.

www.leechild.com -- read them in chrono order.

 
Just finished The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown.

It was what I expected. Overhyped, but still a pretty good read unless your a book snob looking for a reason to trash a book because it sold bunch of copies.

Back to the Border Trilogy. Finished "All the Pretty Horses" before Symbol, and starting The Crossing.

 
Up Country by Nelson DeMille, who wrote The General's Daughter, which I thought was just a so-so one-off thriller from a few years ago, not anything based on a book. Anyway, Up Country is really good. It's a very entertaining travelogue of Vietnam about twenty-two years after the fall of Saigon, and has loads of details on battlefields, some of the major engagements of the war, and postwar developments. The dialogue is pretty good and the plot (I haven't finished yet) suitably mysterious. I had most recently read several more serious (i.e., nonfiction) books, so the escape is welcome. Recommended.
 
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Broncoholic said:
Just finished The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown. It was what I expected. Overhyped, but still a pretty good read unless your a book snob looking for a reason to trash a book because it sold bunch of copies.Back to the Border Trilogy. Finished "All the Pretty Horses" before Symbol, and starting The Crossing.
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You think that anyone that didn't like that book is a book snob? It sucked, beginning to end. And this is coming from someone who's read plenty of Dean Koontz, Clive Cussler, and James Patterson.
 
HellToupee said:
anyone pickup

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OK - I can now recommend this book for Ellroy fans. Read up to about page 350 this weekend, and it definitely took off. I still miss Pete Bondurant from the first book, but Wayne Tedrow has become a solid character. Not as good as "Tabloid" - not much is - but definitely better than "Cold 6,000."
 
The_Man said:
anyone pickup

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It's on my list then. I just need to force myself to read the last 30 pages or so of The Road. Not really looking forward to the inevitable.American Tabloid was awesome. I liked the Cold Six Thousand better than you did, so I am pretty excited to read this.

My recent reads are:

The Black Swan -- Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Fooled by Randomness -- Nassim Nicholas Taleb

House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Greed on Wall Street -- William D. Cohan

I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell -- Tucker Max :D

The Road -- Cormac McCarthy

 
whoknew said:
Just finished A Widow for One Year by John Irving. Irving is an amazing writer and this book was absolutely great. I highly recommend it.
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:popcorn: Just finished this one. I've also read Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany (a while ago), and recently read The Hotel New Hampshire and The Cider House Rules.

I think A Widow for One Year is the best of the lot. I haven't yet read The World According to Garp, which is typically cited as his best work. I have that one waiting on my bookshelf. Kind of tempted to start it right away but I think I'll take a break from Irving, if only to spread out the enjoyment.

 
Guests of the Ayatollah by Mark Bowden. Inside the Iran Hostage Crisis. My dad read it and raved, I just started.

Also, A Fine Balance by Rohan Mistry. Set in India in the '70's. Unfortunately became an Oprah book, but should be good anyway.

 
RedmondLonghorn said:
anyone pickup

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The ending of The Road wasn't as sad as I expected. I am really not sure I got the book.

Of course, I was never really good at interpreting novels and stories when I was in school, so that should come as no surprise to me.

It made me want to hug my kids. Beyond that, it seemed pretty Nihilist to me.

My best guess on a theme:

 
RedmondLonghorn said:
The ending of The Road wasn't as sad as I expected.

I am really not sure I got the book.

Of course, I was never really good at interpreting novels and stories when I was in school, so that should come as no surprise to me.

It made me want to hug my kids. Beyond that, it seemed pretty Nihilist to me.

My best guess on a theme:
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No, it seems like you pretty much got it. To put it a little more accurately:mytagid = Math.floor( Math.random() * 100 );document.write("

It is more like: life is full of unspeakable horrors, unending and incurable pain, betrayals of all kinds, landscapes of unbearable bleakness, and cannibals. The only meaningful act is the act of submission to the small, easily extinguished impulse to endure for the sake of endurance. To "carry the fire", as it were. To be human is to persist, to actively insist upon one's humanity.

And I didn't think that the ending was particularly sad, either, especially given McCarthy's talent for heartbreaking.*** SPOILER ALERT! Click this link to display the potential spoiler text in this box. ***");document.close();

 
D_House said:
simsarge said:
Mark Speener said:
Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman.

:thumbup: A decent fantasy story.
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:mellow:

Excellent book. Really a fun read. :yes:
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Finished Anansi Boys recently and agree with both of you. Fun is a perfect way to describe this one, much less dark in tone than American Gods.
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So I decided to pick up Good Omens, the novel produced as a collaboration between Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. It has rave reviews on bookseller websites, and I thought I would enjoy another lighthearted work from Gaiman, but this one didn't work as well for me. I didn't find it as funny as Anansi Boys, and neither the plot nor the characters were engaging enough to fully hold my attention. And it was disjointed at times, perhaps because of the dual authorship. For British sci-fi/fantasy humor, I'd stick with the Hitchhiker's Guide series.

Just started a classic based on recommendations here - The Picture of Dorian Gray.

 
I finished Up Country. Excellent stuff, especially for someone (like me) who knows very little about Vietnam. Good conclusion as well.

Looking for something nonserious to read next. I guess I could go buy The Lost Symbol for a quick, hopefully entertaining read. :shrug: Was thinking about Game of Thrones too.

 
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facook said:
Guests of the Ayatollah by Mark Bowden. Inside the Iran Hostage Crisis. My dad read it and raved, I just started.Also, A Fine Balance by Rohan Mistry. Set in India in the '70's. Unfortunately became an Oprah book, but should be good anyway.
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Interested to hear what you thing of Guests. I'm a Bowden fan, but it didn't get rave reviews.
 
Aerial Assault said:
Up Country by Nelson DeMille, who wrote The General's Daughter, which I thought was just a so-so one-off thriller from a few years ago, not anything based on a book. Anyway, Up Country is really good. It's a very entertaining travelogue of Vietnam about twenty-two years after the fall of Saigon, and has loads of details on battlefields, some of the major engagements of the war, and postwar developments. The dialogue is pretty good and the plot (I haven't finished yet) suitably mysterious. I had most recently read several more serious (i.e., nonfiction) books, so the escape is welcome. Recommended.
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I've read a bunch of DeMille and am pretty sure Up Country is his best book. I'd also recommend it.I'm currently re-reading "Knife of Dreams" by Robert Jordan in preparation for the new World of Time book coming out next week.

 
I am reading The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.

My 12 year old daughter was reading it . I wanted to see what it was about and I got hooked. I am about half way through. Pretty good story. Reminds me of S King's Running man combined with The Long Walk.

 
commisholio said:
Aerial Assault said:
Up Country by Nelson DeMille, who wrote The General's Daughter, which I thought was just a so-so one-off thriller from a few years ago, not anything based on a book. Anyway, Up Country is really good. It's a very entertaining travelogue of Vietnam about twenty-two years after the fall of Saigon, and has loads of details on battlefields, some of the major engagements of the war, and postwar developments. The dialogue is pretty good and the plot (I haven't finished yet) suitably mysterious. I had most recently read several more serious (i.e., nonfiction) books, so the escape is welcome. Recommended.
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I've read a bunch of DeMille and am pretty sure Up Country is his best book. I'd also recommend it.
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:goodposting: The only bad news there is that I was thinking about picking up another one of his to read. Any that came close to UC in terms of quality?
I'm currently re-reading "Knife of Dreams" by Robert Jordan in preparation for the new World of Time book coming out next week.
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Nice. A friend is doing the same. I haven't read any Jordan either. I need to stop reading military history/modern geopolitics books, which are satisfying but take me forever to finish.
 
Aerial Assault said:
commisholio said:
Aerial Assault said:
Up Country by Nelson DeMille, who wrote The General's Daughter, which I thought was just a so-so one-off thriller from a few years ago, not anything based on a book. Anyway, Up Country is really good. It's a very entertaining travelogue of Vietnam about twenty-two years after the fall of Saigon, and has loads of details on battlefields, some of the major engagements of the war, and postwar developments. The dialogue is pretty good and the plot (I haven't finished yet) suitably mysterious. I had most recently read several more serious (i.e., nonfiction) books, so the escape is welcome. Recommended.
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I've read a bunch of DeMille and am pretty sure Up Country is his best book. I'd also recommend it.
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:blackdot: The only bad news there is that I was thinking about picking up another one of his to read. Any that came close to UC in terms of quality?
I'm currently re-reading "Knife of Dreams" by Robert Jordan in preparation for the new World of Time book coming out next week.
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Nice. A friend is doing the same. I haven't read any Jordan either. I need to stop reading military history/modern geopolitics books, which are satisfying but take me forever to finish.
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It's not part of the series that Up Country is, but I thought Word of Honor was his best book. Also deals w/ some Vietnam War issues IIRC.
 
shuke said:
While I like science fiction, I'm not really a "fantasy" guy. A friend highly recommended A Game of Thrones.

I just saw that this is book 1 of 6 and since it is about 700 pages I am a little wary about diving in.
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At first I was a little intimidated by all the different names referenced, but I'm hooked.
 
prosopis said:
I am reading The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.My 12 year old daughter was reading it . I wanted to see what it was about and I got hooked. I am about half way through. Pretty good story. Reminds me of S King's Running man combined with The Long Walk.
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This was a very good book -- definitely had a Running Man vibe to it. The sequel is not nearly as good, hopefully part 3 will be better. Hard not to imagine this book as a movie even while you're reading it.
 
prosopis said:
I am reading The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.My 12 year old daughter was reading it . I wanted to see what it was about and I got hooked. I am about half way through. Pretty good story. Reminds me of S King's Running man combined with The Long Walk.
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Sounds right up my alley, but is this "young adult" fiction?
 
shuke said:
prosopis said:
I am reading The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.My 12 year old daughter was reading it . I wanted to see what it was about and I got hooked. I am about half way through. Pretty good story. Reminds me of S King's Running man combined with The Long Walk.
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Sounds right up my alley, but is this "young adult" fiction?
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It is, but I wouldn't let that stop you. When Nick Hornby was writing a book column in "The Believer" he convinced me to read a few young adult books he recommended, making the argument that a lot of contemporary young adult ficition is as good as "adult" fiction. I think he's right -- there's none of the secks in this book, but plenty of violence, though it's done in a PG-13 fashion. Other than that, there's no difference between the sophistication level of this book and your basic mass market paperback.
 
Nearly finished The Rest Is Noise by Alex Ross, which my wife and I have somehow purchased twice. Its a terrifically written, equimenical overview of 20th Century composition, that tries mightily--and actually succeeds--in burying the old High Culture/Pop Culture debate that matters to absolutely no one who doesn't wear a monacle, smoke a meerschaum pipe, or own a claret decanter.

Ross quite steadfastly refuses to attach greater cultural significance or superiority to the complex tonal and atonal compositions of Glass, Schoenberg, etc and, at times, actually compares them quite lovingly to Duke Ellington, The Velvet Underground, and the Beatles. While it may seem absurd to some to compare Strauss' Salome to "A Day In The Life", Ross quite eloquently describes their spiritual and sonic kinship.

As a beer-swilling troglodyte whose top five records include Rocket to Russia AND Back in Black, I found it helpful and inspiring.

Have also just started reading a book of narrative prose-poems by James Tate called, Return to the City of White Donkeys, which, so far, is absolutely fantastic. I am actually restraining myself from typing and posting one of these poems here, as evidence of its awesomeness. I haven't read any aloud yet, but I will once my cat wakes up. I'm pretty sure she's gonna love these poems.

 
shuke said:
prosopis said:
I am reading The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.My 12 year old daughter was reading it . I wanted to see what it was about and I got hooked. I am about half way through. Pretty good story. Reminds me of S King's Running man combined with The Long Walk.
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Sounds right up my alley, but is this "young adult" fiction?
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I think it could be classified as that. It is a simple read but I like the story.
 
The_Man said:
prosopis said:
I am reading The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.

My 12 year old daughter was reading it . I wanted to see what it was about and I got hooked. I am about half way through. Pretty good story. Reminds me of S King's Running man combined with The Long Walk.
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This was a very good book -- definitely had a Running Man vibe to it. The sequel is not nearly as good, hopefully part 3 will be better. Hard not to imagine this book as a movie even while you're reading it.
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Looks like it is being worked on.http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1392170/

 
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