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Whats everyone reading?

Started by Paul faplad Finch, 30 March, 2009, 10:04:36 PM

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pictsy

Quote from: von Boom on 07 January, 2021, 12:18:33 AM
I've only just finished Foundation and am on to Foundation and Empire.

So far, Foundation is easily my favourite of the whole lot.  I liked the Elijah Bailey stuff and The Currents of Space was a surprisingly good read, but Foundation is still the most enjoyable... so far.  I've got 2 and a half books to finish.

Are you going to be reading the prequels as well?

TordelBack

Quote from: von Boom on 06 January, 2021, 09:13:34 PM
Quote from: Andrew_J on 06 January, 2021, 06:01:49 PM
Just finished reading Neuromancer. I'm late to the party I know but if one good thing has come from all the Cyberpunk 2077 hype before Christmas, it's the fact that I finally made the point of picking it up and reading it.
Hard to believe it was written 36 years ago. The scenes in "the matrix" are amazingly visual and graphical as described by Gibson. I was visualising them as drawn by INJ Culbard, with the exaggerated perspective model style he is so good at.
You're making me feel very old. I read it in 1984 and several times since. Always a treat.

I don't think I  read it until 1985, but it's hard to overstate how important a book it was "back then". I'd say my mate's single copy was read by at least ten of us over the course of a fortnight: it was all we talked about. The  excitement with which Count Zero was anticipated was insane.

SmallBlueThing(Reborn)

Re Foundation: snap. Although my copy of Foundation and Empire has only just arrived, so I'm most of the way through a Ben Bova I started in the meantime.

Foundation was wonderful.

SBT

CalHab

Quote from: TordelBack on 07 January, 2021, 09:11:36 AM
Quote from: von Boom on 06 January, 2021, 09:13:34 PM
Quote from: Andrew_J on 06 January, 2021, 06:01:49 PM
Just finished reading Neuromancer. I'm late to the party I know but if one good thing has come from all the Cyberpunk 2077 hype before Christmas, it's the fact that I finally made the point of picking it up and reading it.
Hard to believe it was written 36 years ago. The scenes in "the matrix" are amazingly visual and graphical as described by Gibson. I was visualising them as drawn by INJ Culbard, with the exaggerated perspective model style he is so good at.
You're making me feel very old. I read it in 1984 and several times since. Always a treat.

I don't think I  read it until 1985, but it's hard to overstate how important a book it was "back then". I'd say my mate's single copy was read by at least ten of us over the course of a fortnight: it was all we talked about. The  excitement with which Count Zero was anticipated was insane.

I would have read Neuromancer about 1989, when the clunky Interplay RPG adaptation came out. Funny that a more recent computer game adaptation is reviving interest in it!

I reread it every few years, along with the Burning Chrome collection. I still love it.

Professor Bear

Wayne Vansant's KATUSHA: GIRL SOLDIER OF GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR, which despite its wide-eyed anime girl cover is not a manga, and I'm not sure why I mention it but I often found myself humming the TETRIS theme while reading it.  It takes its cue from Charley's War, being the story of a state-educated Ukranian peasant girl's contribution to the Soviet's defence - and later offence - against the invading Nazis, first as an unaffiliated partisan guerrilla and then as a crewman and commander of a T-34, with the book taking great pains to dispel the popularly-held notions that the Nazis were evil and that the Soviets were not.  You can probably guess the main problem with the book already.
Before we get into that, though, I'd just like to say if you're big fan of UK war comics, you'll really like this, as it's very much in the sensibility of something like Battle Picture Weekly or Warlord, with lots of possibly-unnecessary detail about front lines, mechanical details about tanks and heavy artillery, commentary on the military strategies employed, and all told from the POV of a peasant so you have an everyman angle from the off.  It might seem a bit pricey for a softcover - 22-30 quid depending where you buy it - but for that you get nearly 600 glossy full-colour pages and you will need several sittings to read the whole thing - that is one good chunk of reading right there.

Anyway, as I mentioned above, Wayne Vansant lays the anti-communist rhetoric on really thick to the point it often calls the Nazis "preferable" to the communists, which is at first presented as a viewpoint held by oppressed peasants (who resent the communists) which will reap a bitter harvest later, but then we're past that harvest and the book is still pushing this angle.
There's a pretty baffling relationship with ethno-nationalism, too, as the antisemitic Ukranian nationalist movement is portrayed pretty well, as is - for some reason - Israel, which did not exist until three years after the war ended.  You'd think a book about fighting Nazis would have some pretty firm opinions about ethno-nationalism being bad, but uhhhhhh... not so much.
All told, though, I would still recommend it, especially to fans of UK comics - it often has dense pages, and the lettering isn't the greatest.  I believe it started out as a webcomic before Vansant took it down to sell as a trade collection, so I don't think it's available to read online anymore - at least, not legitimately.

Smith

Collapse of complex societies. I would say we could learn some lessons,but its probably too late for that.

Jade Falcon

I just finished the Stuart McBride's book Now We Are Dead which has DS Roberta Steel as the main POV character rather than Logan MacRae. Set in the Aberdeen area, Steel has been demoted two grades for planting evidence on a suspect who is almost certainly guilty but was just too slippery. She gets warned to stay away from him or else but he is out for revenge and Steel doesn't give up that easily.
When the truth offends, we lie and lie until we can no longer remember it is even there, but it is still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid. That is how an RBMK reactor core explodes. Lies. - Valery Legasov

CalHab

I'm not a big fan of crime fiction, but I feel like I should read Stuart Macbride as an Aberdonian. Is he worth it for someone who doesn't usually read the genre?

BTW, the last crime novel I read was by Ann Cleeves. It was okay, but I found the murderous sprees of Shetland villagers more implausible than the science-fiction that I usually read.

Jade Falcon

Quote from: CalHab on 12 January, 2021, 10:02:28 AM
I'm not a big fan of crime fiction, but I feel like I should read Stuart Macbride as an Aberdonian. Is he worth it for someone who doesn't usually read the genre?

BTW, the last crime novel I read was by Ann Cleeves. It was okay, but I found the murderous sprees of Shetland villagers more implausible than the science-fiction that I usually read.

I used to read James Patterson but he's churning them out like a factory, and he has so many co-writers I don't think he does any substantial writing any more.  I've moved onto McBride because of the Scots setting, also Denzil Meyrick with his setting in the Mull of Kintyre.

McBride's books have a black humour, at times very poltically incorrect.  I'd recommend trying the Logan McCrae books, the first is called Cold Granite.  He has another character called Ash Henderson that I've heard isn't as popular.

https://www.goodreads.com/series/55946-logan-mcrae
When the truth offends, we lie and lie until we can no longer remember it is even there, but it is still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid. That is how an RBMK reactor core explodes. Lies. - Valery Legasov

Bolt-01

Following on from goodness knows how long ago the first volume of GIANT DAYS has just reached the top of my reading pile.

I've had to ration myself as it is so good. I had no idea.

Thanks Jim.

Rara Avis

Went through a German phase recently and read

The Tin Drum
All Quiet on the Western Front
The Reader
Look Who's Back

The latter may be the funniest book I have ever read.

Also read A Gentleman in Moscow (meah) and The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver (WOW- SO GOOD!).

Finished Where the crawdad's sing last week - would not recommend, it's an easy quick read but if I had to describe it in one word it would be trite.

Comic wise - finished Vol. 1 of The Boys.

Next up : Gaunts Ghosts Omnibus...

Smith

You should check out Storm of steel.

Ah Gaunts Ghosts...starts out great then Abnett starts losing the plot after book 8.

Rara Avis

I got the first three books in an omnibus so let's see how I feel after that. I've only just started so let's see how I get on.

milstar

I just finished with Stoker's Dracula. Not the first novel about vampires, but one of the best nevertheless. It wasn't an easy read. Epistolary style sometimes made me to quit the book. Yet, I have to say, it's pretty good, although a bit dated. At moments, it's pretty predictable, but maintained to be quite spooky and chilling altogether. Narrative also can be a little mind-boggling (also, the book is crammed with loads of information) as same events are both described, but from different point of views, hence, it possess a slight nonlinear structure. One thing made me worth to mention, and they are the characters. Why men and women of today can't be like men and women of 1800s. But probably I am a romantic fool. Now, back to Future Shocks.
Reyt, you lot. Shut up, belt up, 'n if ye can't see t' bloody exit, ye must be bloody blind.

JayzusB.Christ

I finished Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian a couple of weeks ago, and it's still refusing to budge from my brain.  The Wild West as a Dante-esque vision of hell - I've been constantly mulling over the images of the crucified Apache, the burning Judas effigy (which I hadn't realised was a real Easter tradition), and the image of a horse and its rider falling onto rocks in an explosion of mercury and blood which is somehow written in slow motion. 
"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest"