OMG BOOKS! ... for people who read books

[Aaron]

Ya, it just seamed odd to me to have magic just kinda show up. GRANTED there is other stuff [spoiler]Dany sleeping in the fire and not burning up... As long as it stays to a minimum, as that is something I really like about the books. I also want The Others to be a lot more of a focus as they are hella bad ass. The start of book three when the dudes are gona kill people and leave, and the horn blows three times for The Others, and the dude pisses him self. I like that they are monsters, but you don't really know much about them...  [/spoiler] 


I am hooked on these books. And he better finish them off fast. I don't want to have to wait for the next books. Kinda like how SK did with the Dark Tower books at the end. He did them all in a short amount of time. Or at lest there wasn't waits of 5 years...

[luna]

finished the girl with the dragon tattoo
it was excellent,  can't wait to see the movie now

next up the girl who played with fire

Ok I finished the entire trilogy and it was fantastic! Also feeling sad to leave all those great characters behind

Next is murakami's 1Q84

[Goose]

Finished A Crown of Swords: Book VII of The Wheel of Time last night.  Despite the fact that the book covers are relatively short span of time (about 12 days in this book compared to 3-6 months for the previous volumes), sweet jeebus did this book drag.  The thing is, a lot of things happened that are going to shape future events, I'm certain, but there'd be one slightly interesting plot point hidden amongst multiple chapters of drawn out, useless, and relatively idle conversation.  It just wasn't as fun as the major game changing stuff that went on in book 6.

And, from what I've heard, books 8 and 9 aren't that much better, but 10 apparently gets things seriously moving again.

Next up, Isaac Asimov's Foundation.  Looks short, might only take me 10 days to plow through it at the pace I go.  There's rumours someone's trying to make a movie out of this.  Something tells me that by the time I'm done this book, I'm going to hope those rumours are very, very false.

[Goose]

Finished Isaac Asimov's Foundation at lunch.  Don't think I've ever read a book that fast before, only took a week (admittedly, its also only 250 pages in print).  I'll admit it was good, but it didn't quite live up to what the prequel books were hinting at, in my mind.  Of course, the prequels came almost 40 years after this was published, and there's two more in the original trilogy, so this itself is probably just a stepping stone for bigger things to come.  Still, its a really interesting take on the shaping of a sub-society while its parent Empire crumbles around it.

Of course, reading old science-fiction can sometimes be hilarious, given what was known of scientific achievements at the time and how things could progress.  The thought of coal-powered interstellar travel made me seriously laugh.

And anyone who thinks they can make a legible feature film out of this book is seriously deluded.  Any attempts at such an endeavor are doomed to a failure of I, Robot-esque proportions.

[chimera]

With older sci-fi (i.e. stuff from 30 years ago or older), I tend to focus more on the writing than the technical elements or whatever, although in the case of those works which are prescient (like Vernon Vinge's True Names or Sterling and Gibson's stuff, for example) I still enjoy those details.  But I read the Foundation trilogy in the 70s (I think, maybe early 80s) so it wasn't as jarring, I imagine.  But recently I read Alfred Bester's The Stars, My Destination and it still holds up for being over 40 years old.

[Goose]

Oh, I'm totally with you.  The actual technical elements are just plot-devices (or at least, they should be) that could easily be replaced with a similar device that doesn't sound silly given advances in science and still make the story work.  The story, the characters, and the issues being dealt with, that stuff is where the real magic in good science fiction is.  I still have a good chuckle at every control interface on the original Star Trek series too.  Really, in a couple hundred years we're still on blinky-light hard switches to control the most advanced means of propulsion humanity has devised?  Ha!  And, I'm sure, in a couple decades, the touch-screens on the rest of the Star Treks will seem equally hokey.  Its all a matter of it being an artifact of its time.  Still fun to laugh at it though.

[r00]

although in the case of those works which are prescient (like Vernon Vinge's True Names or Sterling and Gibson's stuff, for example)

That's a good point.  Vernor Vinge's older stuff really holds up even today because it is built more around concepts then specific advances in technology. 

[sin]

I was just having a conversation with someone about this; about how, since in the late '80s and early '90s the internet was this weird thing that only some scientists understood, sci-fi authors from that era kind of had a license to do whatever they wanted with it, which resulted in a lot of stories that sound absolutely ridiculous now.

[rokken like dokken]

I'm gonna say that really, a good storyteller/author wouldn't/shouldn't write for an audience that obsesses over the accuracy of minutiae in a story, but that's really just an opinion. 

[rynne]

Books I got for Christmas. Chim's post earlier in this thread was obviously influential.

Douglas Brinkley – The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America
Michael Cisco – The Narrator
Brendan Connell – The Life of Polycrates and Other Stories for Antiquated Children
Mark Samuels – The Man Who Collected Machen and Other Weird Tales
Laurence Sterne – The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

[chimera]

Oooh that reminds me: you should get the New Cthulu: The Recent Weird anthology because there's a good selection of "New Weird" authors in there including Wilem Pugmire who is, in my estimation, one of HPL's spiritual/stylistic heirs.

[chimera]

And I am a Bad fangirl, no cookie! because I had no idea TBM had followed Adam into the comics biz this past year with Orchid.  Don't really know what it's about save that it's political, of course.

[doom]

Just about to finish re-reading the gunslinger. The foreshadowing is ridiculous.

[luna]

I'm reading the new king book, so far really good!

[luna]

Just about to finish re-reading the gunslinger. The foreshadowing is ridiculous.

I'm guessing you're reading the revised version? I've only ever read the original, I picked it up at a used book store ages ago. I'll probably pick up the revised next time I'm ready to take the journey again