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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

Amph What book are you reading right now?

Discussion in 'Community' started by droideka27, Aug 31, 2005.

  1. VadersLaMent

    VadersLaMent Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Apr 3, 2002
    All You Need Is Kill was part of a Japanese scifi invasion of sorts. Among them was Rocket Girls, The Ouroboros Wave, and Usurper Of The Sun. All very good.
     
  2. Sarge

    Sarge Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Oct 4, 1998
    Seaflower, the third book of Julian Stockwin's series about Tom Kydd, sailor in Nelson's navy. This is shaping up to be the best series in the genre since Aubrey & Maturin.
     
  3. King_of_Red_Lions

    King_of_Red_Lions Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Mar 28, 2003
    Fathers And Sons by Ivan Turgenev

    and

    Pére Goriot by Honoré De Balzac



     
  4. LAJ_FETT

    LAJ_FETT Tech Admin (2007-2023) - She Held Us Together star 10 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    May 25, 2002
    Probably going to start Richard Kadrey's Kill City Blues later this evening. It's #5 in his Sandman Slim series.
     
  5. Rogue_Ten

    Rogue_Ten Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Aug 18, 2002

    excellent book. my fave of the russian novels ive read thus far, actually

    balzac's supposed to be a badass too, so enjoy that
     
  6. PCCViking

    PCCViking Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Jun 12, 2014
    Vision of the Future.
     
  7. Sarge

    Sarge Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Oct 4, 1998
    Swine Not? by Jimmy Buffett. Not your usual Buffett fare; no islands, no boats or planes, no outlaws or pirates or cowboys. A family moves from Tennessee to NYC and keeps their pet pot-belly pig hidden in their apartment. Somehow, he makes it into a better story than it ought to be.
     
  8. Havac

    Havac Former Moderator star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Sep 29, 2005
    20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Despite the tendency to play up the squid attack front-and-center in adaptations, and the cover on my version featuring divers digging up a treasure chest overflowing with gold in front of a giant octopus, this isn't really an adventure story of the action-and-incident sort. Rather, Verne conjures a sort of fantastic maritime travelogue, a journey through the wonders of the seas, aided by some dashes of imagination. The real star of the story is just the ocean, the awe of the natural world and the wonder of man's growing ability to experience and understand and master it through science. The Nautilus is a brilliant creation, and Verne justifiably shows it off at every opportunity, but it's also a tool to take our characters on a journey of underwater wonder where the attraction is just all the cool things they see, all the things Nemo's technology allows them to do that lets them see cool things. I loved that sense of Victorian joy in mankind's ever-expanding capability, of confidence and amazement and possibility. It functions better as travelogue than Around the World, too, because it takes the time to stop and see the sights where it's going (Phileas Fogg's lack of interest in local sights made for good parody, but constrained travelogue). And then there's Captain Nemo. It's easy to see why he's Verne's most famous character. Verne tends to work in types, which often tend toward caricatures of virtue, or of a supposed national character, or of a profession. Nemo, however, feels fully three-dimensional and fascinating. He's kept a mystery, an inscrutable force, even as he reveals a lot. He's wise and capable, considerate and humanitarian and gentle, but also consumed by rage and a desire for vengeance, capable of great callousness and hatred. He's neither hero nor villain, an awe-inspiring figure but not entirely admirable. He's the sort of figure you long to learn more about, and is really a great character. He does a lot to help elevate the book. I loved the book and was so glad I reread it.
     
    Sarge likes this.
  9. SWpants

    SWpants Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Oct 28, 2004
    Blind Faith by CJ Lyons
     
  10. Juke Skywalker

    Juke Skywalker Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Mar 27, 2004
    "Green Lantern: Blackest Night" by Geoff Johns

    I'm so unfamiliar with the DC universe outside of the biggies that this reads a lot like coming into the middle of movie that happens to be in a foreign language with no subtitles. But once you get your footing it's compelling stuff; at least so far.
     
  11. Ramza

    Ramza Administrator Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jul 13, 2008
    Yeah, that's probably aggravated by Blackest Night being a culmination of a lot of things Geoff Johns had been doing up to that point, particularly in Green Lantern, Hawkman, and Flash, to say nothing of all the stuff that had been going on in Green Lantern Corps.
     
  12. Juke Skywalker

    Juke Skywalker Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Mar 27, 2004
    There are probably a lot of payoffs that I'm missing, but thankfully there's enough there that even the uninitiated can still navigate their way through it and not feel too lost.
     
  13. Force Smuggler

    Force Smuggler Force Ghost star 7

    Registered:
    Sep 2, 2012
    The Krytos Trap.
     
  14. DAR

    DAR Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jul 8, 2004
    Ready Player One
     
  15. VadersLaMent

    VadersLaMent Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Apr 3, 2002
    The Dragon Delasangre was decent enough. It had one litttle problem in that essentially dragons take the place of vampires and they do fee on humans. But secrecy was their goal as well and I thought, "Why not all that fish in the sea?" Especially since it takes place in Biscayne Bay just south of Miami. Not even a mention such as not liking fish or being alergic to it or anything. Otherwise it's a quick and interesting read but nothing ground breaking.

    Moving on.

    [​IMG]

    Son of Avonar, Carol Berg. This is one of those times when Amazon would have made things easier as I was getting a tad frustrated trying to find this. But after one 5 book store Saturday runaround, there it was. The only other book iread by her was Song Of The Beast which was incredible so I am looking forward to this.
     
  16. Skywalker8921

    Skywalker8921 Jedi Knight star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 9, 2011
    I read Jack London's "Call of the Wild" through from beginning to end this afternoon in only 2 1/2 hours.
     
  17. Sarge

    Sarge Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Oct 4, 1998
    A Watery Grave by Joan Druett. It's a murder mystery (not really my thing) set in 1838 aboard an American sailing expedition to the South Seas (totally my thing). The nautical stuff is very good, and I guess the mystery is well constructed.
     
  18. King_of_Red_Lions

    King_of_Red_Lions Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Mar 28, 2003
    The Nonexistent Knight and The Cloven Viscount by Italo Calvino

    I'm a fan of Calvino and plan to read all his work. These are two novellas presented in one volume.
     
    Rogue_Ten likes this.
  19. Rogue_Ten

    Rogue_Ten Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Aug 18, 2002
    which is probably for the best because contrary to those adaptations and michael crichton, there's no way a giant squid is going to attack something like a giant submarine. its far too big for them to recognize as food, (they eat much smaller fishes and cephalopods, they dont try to tangle with things that even approach their own size) and if they thought it was a sperm whale they'd get the **** out of there, as, again, contrary to popular culture, the sperm whale/giant squid relationship is a very clear predator-prey relationship and not some sort of equal-ground "clash of titans"


    unlike crichton, verne probably has the excuse of teuthology (the study of squids and cephalopods more generally) not being advanced enough in his day to say for sure that giant squids weren't rowdy brawlers of the abyssal depths
     
  20. Sarge

    Sarge Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Oct 4, 1998
    Quarterdeck Another fine volume in Stockwin's Tom Kydd series. The newly promoted Lieutenant Kydd leaves the homey mates in the forecastle for the polite society of the wardroom, with entertaining results.
     
  21. VadersLaMent

    VadersLaMent Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Apr 3, 2002
    [​IMG]

    Guardians of the Keep, Carol Berg.
     
  22. Jabbadabbado

    Jabbadabbado Manager Emeritus star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Mar 19, 1999
    What Is This Thing Called Science - Ramza Book Club
     
  23. soitscometothis

    soitscometothis Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Jul 11, 2003
    The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson
     
  24. SWpants

    SWpants Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Oct 28, 2004
    Children of Fire by Drew Karpyshyn
     
  25. V-2

    V-2 Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Dec 10, 2012
    Vector Prime.

    I found it for for £0.30 at a library sale. I've noticed it divides opinion a lot, I'm about 10% of the way through and though it's very badly written, it's pretty clever for a Star Wars book in certain ways. It's bad fanfic standard prose, it feels hammered out, lazy and snivelling... It stinks of delusions of adequacy, but there are a few elements of the plot that I'm enjoying, and the meta-textual layers of it are quite interesting in a car crash kind of way. Maybe I'm just projecting, but the duplicitous and masochistic Vong seem to be a metaphorical representation of fandom itself, and the narrative voice seems aware of how ridiculous the plot is.

    I am enjoying the scenes at the astronomical research station - science being done in Star Wars! It's got the feel of a Doctor Who story. I'm not enjoying the standard Han/Chewie banter, the grief-****ing over Mara, the lack of Leia's personality, the impolite audacity of C3PO, the Jedi children (they seem like total ****s and well on the way to the dark side, why has nobody noticed or said anything?) nor the way the author either has people in conflict or total agreement in order to make a very obvious statement. I end up reading in Garth Marenghi's voice a lot of the time.

    It seems to be passing the time anyway. So far it's a fun bad book, I suspect the cleverness and humour is all unintentional.
     
    Saintheart and Sarge like this.
  26. WriterMan

    WriterMan Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 26, 2012
    Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin

    Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

    I always try to tackle one easy book and pair it with a much more difficult one. Moby-Dick has at times been very interesting, however at times it does bore. Rosemary's Baby is a joyride so far, though.