What are you reading?
- Thread starter Hunter
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I'm currently two books away from completing re-reading Jim Butcher's phenomenal series The Dresden Files.
Very well crafted and developed urban fantasy crossed with hard-boiled detective fiction, in a world where the supernatural exists alongside our own, with everyone rationalising away the terrifying stuff they might catch glimpses of. Professional Wizard (he's in the Yellow Pages), Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden does know what lurks out there, and isn't for one second going to let them prey on the people of his city, Chicago. A little bit of humour thrown in for good measure every so often, it's a must for those who like their heroes to take a savage beating on a (very) regular basis.
It's one of those series that genuinely does get better with each book. Butcher's first novel was Storm Front, the first book in the series, and it shows to an extent, although it's still a fantastically entertaining book. The subsequent books get very much better very quickly, with the individual stories linking into a larger arc plot (or rather plots), with the wider supernatural world becoming gradually more and more filled out, with brilliant tie-ins to real world mythology and folklore. There be monsters...
Waiting for the next one is painful.
Very well crafted and developed urban fantasy crossed with hard-boiled detective fiction, in a world where the supernatural exists alongside our own, with everyone rationalising away the terrifying stuff they might catch glimpses of. Professional Wizard (he's in the Yellow Pages), Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden does know what lurks out there, and isn't for one second going to let them prey on the people of his city, Chicago. A little bit of humour thrown in for good measure every so often, it's a must for those who like their heroes to take a savage beating on a (very) regular basis.
It's one of those series that genuinely does get better with each book. Butcher's first novel was Storm Front, the first book in the series, and it shows to an extent, although it's still a fantastically entertaining book. The subsequent books get very much better very quickly, with the individual stories linking into a larger arc plot (or rather plots), with the wider supernatural world becoming gradually more and more filled out, with brilliant tie-ins to real world mythology and folklore. There be monsters...
Waiting for the next one is painful.
Finished Aurora and it's a very different story to what I expected. While it's a good read I still think it's hard to go past the Mars trilogy for a KSR masterwork.
Just started reading this and it's a lot more involved so far that the movie but really entertaining:
Just finished this:
It's nothing like the movie. It's more a history of Psyops in the US Army Special Forces, CIA and FBI (mainly). SUre the movie may have some sections taken from the book but the book is far deeper into this stuff. Not only that it's hard to believe that all this is true. There are some sections that are so bizarre it's hard to believe but the overall effect of all this truth is actually quite disturbing.
Just started reading this:
I read this many, many years ago and have been meaning to reread it.
It's nothing like the movie. It's more a history of Psyops in the US Army Special Forces, CIA and FBI (mainly). SUre the movie may have some sections taken from the book but the book is far deeper into this stuff. Not only that it's hard to believe that all this is true. There are some sections that are so bizarre it's hard to believe but the overall effect of all this truth is actually quite disturbing.
Just started reading this:
I read this many, many years ago and have been meaning to reread it.
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So I did a little research (ten minutes on Google in other words) to see how much fact and fiction this book is about. Works out it's all pretty much true:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Earth_Battalion
http://www.neweartharmy.com/Welcome.html
http://www.frankolsonproject.org/
All of which makes the last fifty pages or so of this book even more disturbing and downright scary.
Just finished this:
Stand On Zanzibar is quite an amazing book. Not only a narrative thread but also a series of vignettes describing global culture as Brunner imagined it.
Written in 1968 it is based in our present time (early 21st century). Brunner got a lot right about the 21st century, amazingly so:
There are a few cultural hangovers from the 1960's he got totally wrong:
Just started reading this:
I read this many, many years ago and have been meaning to reread it.
Stand On Zanzibar is quite an amazing book. Not only a narrative thread but also a series of vignettes describing global culture as Brunner imagined it.
Written in 1968 it is based in our present time (early 21st century). Brunner got a lot right about the 21st century, amazingly so:
Basically he got global geopolitics and capitalist corporate meddling in the affairs of other countries (and third world countries) spot on.
There are a few cultural hangovers from the 1960's he got totally wrong:
He basically got the whole skin colour thing wrong and some of this book may be seen as downright racist and sexist.
Just started reading this:
Since starting this thread, I've failed to actually finish any books so I'm planning to make a point of it over Christmas and in to 2018
If you are a fan of the genre and like quirky books this one is worth your weekend. If it interests you don't read any reviews or it ruins the thing. It's one of those "best done not knowing anything" books. By the end you'll wonder if the definition of meta even covers this. If you have read it, please be careful and don't discuss too much. We don't get books like this often so let it be enjoyable by everyone if they choose.
i just started reading historical lovecraft, its a compilation of various lovecraftian stories set in the past
If you feel like it Manti PM me and we can swap addresses. I'll send you a copy for Christmas, you send me a few postcards from wherever you call home. Damn, we haven't done the Christmas card swap in some years have we? I'll make a post.
Started to re-read Ready Player One so when it comes out in the Cinema I can point out all the bits it missed or didn't do correctly.
Finished Ready Player One and moved on to Origin by Dan Brown.
Have other books lined up for the start of this year too!
Have other books lined up for the start of this year too!
Just finished this:
A really interesting novel by Gibson. Great characters and a bit of a page-turner.........
Just started reading this:
A really interesting novel by Gibson. Great characters and a bit of a page-turner.........
Just started reading this:
I've finished American Rust a week ago(still have to finish Rushdies' Satanic Verses but its so boring, just for measurement). I didn't want to read anything but my course material. Two days into the new year I got hit by the flu bad so I had to take it easy and I remembered that book my gran had given to me months ago praising it and comparing it to The Road( which I had given to her
). Long and boring story made short: I was hooked one chapter into it. Let me shamelessly lift a short synopsis from somewhere:
Just finished this:
Don't get me wrong; Armstrong was a great man.
As a member of a huge team of people from Mercury, and then (with him) through Gemini and Apollo, they undertook what became probably the greatest and most dangerous endeavour ever in human history. The result was that they put Armstrong on the moon as the first human to do so and he never big-noted himself but always related it to the greater need of space exploration, science and discovery and the other people involved in these great undertakings.
I do find this book, in the most part that tells things in his words but written by a very close friend (and NBC space correspondent), to get a bit out of describing the heroism of flight and space travel and getting a bit into hero worship in its tone.
The biggest sore point for me is the use of a lot of archival photos just printed in black and white on the paperback stock when there is every reason to print these great images in full colour on proper stock. (I have seen some of the images in colour before).
Armstrong said that he was disappointed, not that we haven't been back to the moon, but that we never stayed after Apollo in the first place.
RIP Neil Armstrong........ one of history's greatest test pilots. May your name live on.
Just started reading this:
Don't get me wrong; Armstrong was a great man.
As a member of a huge team of people from Mercury, and then (with him) through Gemini and Apollo, they undertook what became probably the greatest and most dangerous endeavour ever in human history. The result was that they put Armstrong on the moon as the first human to do so and he never big-noted himself but always related it to the greater need of space exploration, science and discovery and the other people involved in these great undertakings.
I do find this book, in the most part that tells things in his words but written by a very close friend (and NBC space correspondent), to get a bit out of describing the heroism of flight and space travel and getting a bit into hero worship in its tone.
The biggest sore point for me is the use of a lot of archival photos just printed in black and white on the paperback stock when there is every reason to print these great images in full colour on proper stock. (I have seen some of the images in colour before).
Armstrong said that he was disappointed, not that we haven't been back to the moon, but that we never stayed after Apollo in the first place.
RIP Neil Armstrong........ one of history's greatest test pilots. May your name live on.
Just started reading this: