Hey!! Let's get some action going! What are we reading?

[phenomshel]

Originally Posted by bert501

I thought I would breeze through "I'm the Vampire, That's Why" for some light reading but had to skip over a BUNCH of it...is it just me or was there way too much, gosh I guess porn, for lack of a better word!

I must be turning into an old fuddy duddy or something but I was really shocked at the amount of hard-core sex that didn't do anything to advance the plot. I'm really hesitant to continue with the series. Too bad because the book had good bones and the characters were interesting. The Irish connection and that part of the backstory was very well done. The grandfather was also a total hoot!

How do the other books in the series compare? I'd like to read some other readers' reviews if you have the time and/or inclination. Thanks!!

Yeah, there's a lot of sex, even in the first one. And normally I don't do sex (or at least a lot of it) in my books, but even with it in there, I enjoyed the first one. However, the first one is all I've read, so I can't comment on the rest of the series....

Originally Posted by Rumpelteazer

I finished a couple of books this week. First Stephen King's The Shining, which was a reread. I still love the book, but it was a slower read than I thought it would be.

To my great surprise my local bookstore had Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey. It's a great story and I can recommend it even for people who are not into Urban Fantasy. I'm hoping the bookstore also has the next in the series.

Last night I finished the second in the Amelia Peabody series, The Curse of the Pharaohs, by Elizabeth Peters. I liked it even better than the first book. The pace is faster and the relationship between Amelia and her husband is very entertaining. My only comment is that the reader isn't told everything and that makes it hard to figure out who the murderer is.

Today I'm going to start with Kate Atkinson's Case Histories. I've been reading mixed reviews about it, people either seem to love it or hate it.

Elizabeth Peters (Barbara Michaels) has three series (the only one still active is Amelia, the woman is in her 80's and I keep expecting each book to be her last). Anyway... I actually prefer the Vicky Bliss series over Amelia, but Amelia is great. I'm one of those who never try to figure out the whodunnit, so not being told everything doesn't bother me.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by Namekuseijin

time certainly is a good garbage collector, but that alone doesn't suffice. I claim that those people, working with far inferior tools were able to produce far brighter works than anything from XX onwards. Our superior tools and remote controls only produced lazy, incompetent, crying babies fashioned as artists.

Compare the multiple recursive ornate architecture from barroque age to simplistic, barren and plain geometric waste of modernist architecture. Compare the staggering works of Bach, Beethoven and Wagner to all the rubbish noise or background to movie scenes our time has produced. Compare exquisite renascentist paintings to the abstract sketches by infants from lucrative modern day art galleries.

We're so terribly lousy our contributions could be erased with no consequence to the history of arts... perhaps that's why we keep trying to create new expression media, like games or movies, and call ourself the greatest of greatest...

I'd have to disagree with this. The capacity for human imagination and longing is endless. It doesn't matter when we are born, there will be geniuses, there will be talent and some of it will last and should last. We may produce more 'things' in this day and age, but there are still many talents and creations that are awe inspiring.

I am probably not the right person to name names, but I'll start with Joshua Bell. That's just one example. I am pretty sure there are other, including in literature (although my idea of genius there, is BOUND to differ from anyone elses for the most part.)

[ATDrake]

Finished Ha'Penny and Half a Crown, which concludes Jo Walton's excellent alternate-universe post-WWII fascist Britain murder mystery/political thriller/upper-class twit-lit crossover trilogy.

2nd book of the lot was the best, although the 3rd did take things to an interesting conclusion, although I'm not so sure that Britain could

Spoiler:

pull itself back from the very edge of the brink they've been happily ambling towards that easily, even with the Queen's dea ex machina-y intervention

. But then, they've had 20 years to get sick of things and perhaps I underestimate my fellow Commonwealthers.

In any case, a chilling and perhaps spot-on set of tales with a certain applicability to the US situation in recent years (probably part of why it's written) and it turns out that Jo Walton, though Welsh, now lives in Canada, so that gives me additional incentive to highly recommend these books and will be purchasing Ha'Penny myself when Kobo comes up with a good coupon, though not Half a Crown since it's ridiculously priced at $16 for the e-book edition of a book that's been out in MMPB for years.

Also finished Elizabeth Ann Scarborough's The Godmother's Apprentice, the not-so-good sequel to her very good urban fantasy The Godmother.

While it was nice to see how the characters were getting on, this basically takes everything that was original and interestingly different about the first novel and makes it more generically fantasy cliché-ish and thus indistinguishable from the host of other ooh-ancient-Celtic-legends-are-coming-to-life-in-Ireland-and-you-a-modern-person-must-save-the-day books which already litter the field.

I also docked it points for rendering practically all the dialogue spoken by Irish people in phonetic spelling. I don't really care if actual Irish people really do speak like they're auditioning to replace the Lucky Charms leprechaun's voiceover actor. Oi jus' don' wan' t'be readin' entoire paragraphs uff wha ye think 's how it soun's 'coz 'tis rilly rilly irritatin'.

I was thinking of tackling the third Godmother book next, but now I think I'll go cleanse my palate with some more Sherlock Holmes mash-ups first.

[DiapDealer]

I also docked it points for rendering practically all the dialogue spoken by Irish people in phonetic spelling. I don't really care if actual Irish people really do speak like they're auditioning to replace the Lucky Charms leprechaun's voiceover actor. Oi jus' don' wan' t'be readin' entoire paragraphs uff wha ye think 's how it soun's 'coz 'tis rilly rilly irritatin'.

I'm with you 100% there! If an author wants to give me a few sentences of it to get the gist, that's fine... but my imagination can do the rest, thank you very much.

It's actually a deal-breaker for me. I can't read that sort of thing for any length of time.

[captkjaneway]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I'm with you 100% there! If an author wants to give me a few sentences of it to get the gist, that's fine... but my imagination can do the rest, thank you very much.

It's actually a deal-breaker for me. I can't read that sort of thing for any length of time.

I found it can work, for example the Roddy Doyle books and Frank McCourt are good examples of this.

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by Latinandgreek

Firefly status

Wow! (I'm a Whedon fan, too. I'm looking at my pile of Whedonverse DVD's, including my Firefly boxset as we speak.) I really, really enjoyed the Hunger Games trilogy as well, and I really didn't go into it expecting much. I'm glad to see that you enjoyed it as much as you have.

I'm confused. Are you referring to the book or the TV series? I am looking on Amazon and I can't tell what is what.

I'm always looking for "WOW" book. Thanks.

[montsnmags]

Originally Posted by captkjaneway

I found it can work, for example the Roddy Doyle books and Frank McCourt are good examples of this.

I read the Barrytown Trilogy (excellent books BTW), and I found if I "spoke" (in my head) the words rather than just read them, it made it easy to get into the swing, while significantly improving the voice of the novel (and letting me hear/make up in my head the voices of the characters). It was very effective, and one of the reasons I love that trilogy. Of course, it might take a special talent like Doyle to make that work.

Cheers,
Marc

[montsnmags]

Originally Posted by bookfiend

I haven't posted in quite some time, so I thought I'd get back into the forums with this thread.

I just finished Hyperion, by Dan Simmons, and have now moved on to its sequel, The Fall of Hyperion (impossible not to read the second book, given how the first one ends!). As a sci-fi geek who is also a lit professor, I love the way Simmons blends meditations on literature into his stories. Hyperion is very much a futuristic Canterbury Tales, with a good dash of Romanticism (Keats, of course) added.

When I first read Hyperion, there was no sequel, and it was never premised that there would be one. Given there is a second (and third, and fourth) book, I totally agree that if you read Hyperion it'd be nigh on impossible not to continue, but I find it interesting that I utterly loved Hyperion and how it ended, even (or especially) while thinking it a self-contained, not to be continued novel.

I am less enamoured of his Ilium/Olympos duology, though I'd have happily read an entire novel based around dialogue between the moravecs Mahnmut and Orphu.

Cheers,
Marc

[kennyc]

That's when I read it as well Marc. And I'll never forgive Simmons for letting them publish it that way, particularly the marketing of it as a "novel" which it clearly was not.

[montsnmags]

Originally Posted by kennyc

That's when I read it as well Marc. And I'll never forgive Simmons for letting them publish it that way, particularly the marketing of it as a "novel" which it clearly was not.

Every time I mention my love of Hyperion, I always feel like adding "(ping kennyc)" to my post. I was going to mention contrary opinion to mine, but sort-of hoped you'd turn up.

So, as always, I acknowledge that my opinion on Hyperion as a self-contained novel may not be shared by the majority.

Cheers,
Marc

[BearMountainBooks]

I finished Munce Milrose and the Den of Professional Help by Douglas Anthony Cooper. It had a very good plot/storyline, but egads, it went on and on in spots. It's YA, but has some rather pretentious characters, so I'm not sure if some of the word choices would just make a young adult rather bored. Overall, a very good story; I wish it could have been tighter. I know the purpose was to drop subtle humor, puns and whatnot , but I did have to skim parts. I haven't the patience for all the subtle jokes/sarcasm; thus some paragraphs (while I'm sure they were quite clever) got skipped.

This book was highly recommended on several Amazon forum threads. It's a decent read and cute, and I think those who enjoy layers of jokes, and sort of a dense poking at status quo or authority would get even more out of it than I did.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by montsnmags

Every time I mention my love of Hyperion, I always feel like adding "(ping kennyc)" to my post. I was going to mention contrary opinion to mine, but sort-of hoped you'd turn up.

So, as always, I acknowledge that my opinion on Hyperion as a self-contained novel may not be shared by the majority.

Cheers,
Marc

Thanks Marc. I think the reason I was (and still am) upset is because it is so beautifully written, but then I felt as if I were dropped into free fall at the end.

[caleb72]

Originally Posted by montsnmags

Every time I mention my love of Hyperion, I always feel like adding "(ping kennyc)" to my post. I was going to mention contrary opinion to mine, but sort-of hoped you'd turn up.

So, as always, I acknowledge that my opinion on Hyperion as a self-contained novel may not be shared by the majority.

Cheers,
Marc

I have all 4 books in paperback in the form of 2 giant omnibus editions. I haven't read them yet - but it's always been on my "To Do" list, with Song of Kali and Drood.

Regards
Caleb

[bookfiend]

Originally Posted by montsnmags

When I first read Hyperion, there was no sequel, and it was never premised that there would be one. Given there is a second (and third, and fourth) book, I totally agree that if you read Hyperion it'd be nigh on impossible not to continue, but I find it interesting that I utterly loved Hyperion and how it ended, even (or especially) while thinking it a self-contained, not to be continued novel.

I am less enamoured of his Ilium/Olympos duology, though I'd have happily read an entire novel based around dialogue between the moravecs Mahnmut and Orphu.

Cheers,
Marc

Oh, I absolutely loved the ending to Hyperion. Even without a definite resolution, I think it feels very right, as if it was really meant to end that way. Did Simmons write a sequel out of reader/publisher pressure, or was it always part of the plan? I'd be curious to know.

If there hadn't been a sequel, I would have been happy with just that one book. But yes, having one available made me want to keep reading.

[montsnmags]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Thanks Marc. I think the reason I was (and still am) upset is because it is so beautifully written, but then I felt as if I were dropped into free fall at the end.

Just curious...have you read David Zindell's Neverness? Oddly (to me), it is not considered a part of the sequel trilogy A Requiem For Homo Sapiens, and to me it has a large amount of free-fall at the end too. Again though, I do like that book, and I've never got around to completing the Requiem trilogy. Actually, Hyperion and Neverness would have to be in my top 5 SF books.

Originally Posted by caleb72

I have all 4 books in paperback in the form of 2 giant omnibus editions. I haven't read them yet - but it's always been on my "To Do" list, with Song of Kali and Drood.

Regards
Caleb

Song of Kali is sometimes cited as Simmons' best book, I believe, though I have not read it myself. I loved the entire Hyperion Cantos though, and think/hope you'll get as much pleasure out of them. They're not necessarily a simple read, with much allusion (or outright use of figures from history), and what I am now informed is called "intertextuality", but don't let that put you off at all. If you get one thing out of it, it might just be a desperate desire to see the perfect movie made that shows the Shrike in all its glory.

I have the large tome that is Simmons' Carrion Comfort. I actually bought it before Hyperion, attracted by the title (a poem I like), but managed to put it aside. It's still there, waiting to be opened. I've no idea what general opinion is of it.

Oh, and in a large swing back to direct topicality, I am currently reading A Room With A View, by E.M. Forster, and the current Book Club February selection. I'm really enjoying it, and somewhat obliged to read it seeing as I helped nominate it for voting (and then voted for it).

Cheers,
Marc