The Book Thread

[Matt79]

i bought it, lent it to my boss, and have never seen it since - a great book borrower is she!

[Langeveldt]

Hansie - sy Lewensverhaal (his life story)

the Hansie story from start to finish, interesting read..

Gazza - Gary Kirsten

A very good autobiography, because most of it is other cricketers talking about him.. And when you are such a decent bloke, you don't have to worry about other people talking about you..

I have a varied and exciting reading life as you can see

[Slow Love™]

Originally Posted by Samuel_Vimes

Read a fair bit recently: Heralds of Valdemar trilogy by Mercedes Lackey, Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny (which was very weird), Web by Tor Åge Bringsværd (similarly weird but at least understandable). If I can go three months back, Doll's House by Neil Gaiman was frighteningly good (although that's comics )

Great novel, one of my favorite books from my childhood. Although on the Zelazny scale, it's around "middling" in the sense of it's weirdness.

I've been trying to read (without much success - not 'cause of the book, but 'cause of the difficulty in finding the time) Michael Connelly's The Narrows - which is a sequel to a very cool crime novel, The Poet.

The last good thing I read recently was Ben Elton's Dead Famous, which was a reasonably clever light-hearted look at "Big Brother" like reality-TV, looking at both the type of people that run it and the types that participate in it, and all packaged up as a murder-mystery. Not bad at all, and a nice easy read, too.

[Samuel_Vimes]

Originally Posted by Slow Love™

Great novel, one of my favorite books from my childhood. Although on the Zelazny scale, it's around "middling" in the sense of it's weirdness.

From your childhood? (I s'pose there's a bit of a funny story to get at in there, but it's hard to prise out...)

[Slow Love™]

Originally Posted by Samuel_Vimes

From your childhood? (I s'pose there's a bit of a funny story to get at in there, but it's hard to prise out...)

Haha, I don't really mean early childhood so much as being early-to-mid teens. I wasn't clutching it with my teddies, if that's how it sounded...

[TT Boy]

A book about Eugenics (War Against the Weak), very good read. I’m inclined to agree with Churchill, Bernard Shaw et cetera regarding selective breeding shame Ernst Rüdin his mates and the US government *******ised it.

[Matt79]

I just finished reading "hunters of dune" - the continuation of the Dune saga by Frank Herbert's son Brian and Kevin Anderson. Really quite disappointed. Their prequel novels were simply not comparable to the original 6 novels by Frank Herbert, but I was willing to give this finale of the original series a go as it was supposedly based on an extensive outline left by Frank.

What a disappointment - the prequels were only slightly annoying because they butchered characters, were lacking in subtlety and depth, and had laboured prose. It felt a bit insulated from Dune proper because they didn't purport to be rewriting the main saga. For some reason its much much worse now that they're writing as part of the original series.

SPOILER
I swear when the mysterious ENEMY turns out to be a return to the stupid Omnius and Eramus characters from their prequels, I nearly threw the book, although it was so obviously telegraphed through the book that it wasn't much of a shock - i just kept on hoping they wouldn't do that. It really annoys me because this finale to Herbert's original series now makes no sense if you aren't prepared to wade through the quite average prequel triologies, which was obviously NOT part of any of Herbert's outline.

2/5.

[David]

Loved Dune
Tolerated Dune Messiah
Disliked Children of Dune
Couldn't finish Heretics of Dune
Never bothered with any others.

As for GRR Martin, be glad you didn't have to wait the 5 years from A storm of Swords to A Feast of Crows.

Recently started reading Matthew Reilly, really enjoyable, fast reading, also catching up with some Ludlum.

[Beleg]

Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami

Although I have read some truly great novels recently, this one is easily the best.

For some reason or the other, I really disliked Lord of Light, even though I am a big Zelazny fan.

Edit: Dune was a powerful book; IIRC, I started a thread about it here. The sequels were a bad bad idea.

[Matt79]

The high points of the Dune series were definitely the original and God-Emperor of Dune. God-Emperor is one of my favourite books - its just an awesome exercise in imagination, compared to the normal cops and robbers in spaceships dross that is regularly churned out. Heretics of Dune was hard work, but Chapterhouse was a bit of a return to form setting up a great finale, which has now been pissed upon from a great height.

[Matt79]

I started a thread on Thomas Pynchon and only got one sarcastic reply.

[Mr Casson]

Originally Posted by Matt79

I started a thread on Thomas Pynchon and only got one sarcastic reply.

And what a reply!

[Beleg]

Originally Posted by Matt79

I started a thread on Thomas Pynchon and only got one sarcastic reply.

Ehm, what were you expecting, seventy page dissertations on the postmodernistic symbolism inherent in V-2 rockets?

[Kweek]

has to be playboy




oohw ****.

[Matt79]

Originally Posted by Beleg

Ehm, what were you expecting, seventy page dissertations on the postmodernistic symbolism inherent in V-2 rockets?

All I asked for was "which book of his would you recommend to read first, and are they any good?"