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Whats everyone reading?

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

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PsychoGoatee

Just rocked the Button Man: The Killing Game TPB, classic classic stuff.

radiator

Over my holiday I read:

All You Need is Kill (prose novel) by Hiroshi Sakurazaka
I got this because I heard a movie adaptation is being fast-tracked into production so I wanted to be ahead of the curve! Also the premise grabbed me (Groundhog Day meets Starship Troopers, essentially). It was OK, a quick, action-packed read but at times it reads a little like fan-fiction thanks to some ripe dialogue and overuse of swearing - I think a lot of that may be down to the translation from the original Japanese. It also sort of feels like it is an adaptation of a manga or anime series - it has that vibe. Some neat sci-fi ideas, though and I look forward to seeing the movie. 6/10

Batman and Robin Volume 1: Batman Reborn by Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely and Philip Tan
Posted my thoughts on this elsewhere. First half = hugely enjoyable, second half lost me a little. 7/10

Pride of Baghdad by Brian K Vaughn and Niko Henrichon
I borrowed this from the local library and having read it, am glad I didn't pay any money for it. It was OK/poor, and did little to change my mind about Vaughn, who I've long thought to be a wildly overrated writer. It started well, but the heavy handed story and dialogue just started irritating me by the end - it just kept reminding me of the similarly themed, but infinitely superior We3. The art was accomplished, but too overtly digital-looking for my tastes, and a little too Lion King-esque also. 3/10

SMOKESCREEN:ED:9

At the moment, for all who care :-[

I'm tucking into Wolverine no.900 just got it the other day, and I'm actually pleasantly surprised at the quality. I normally don't go beyond the Inferno/1990's mark (roughly thereabouts) when it comes to X-men and marvel stuffs, but hey Can't fault it.

And alongside that I'm getting my teeth stuck into a collection of Kafka short stories. Can't get enough.

TordelBack

#1293
Just finished Douglas Coupland's Generation A, which as far as I can make out turns out to be straight-up science fiction.  I like Coupland a lot, and look forward to each new book, but this...  I really don't know what to make of it.  More of a companion piece to Girlfriend in a Coma than Generation X.  A strange direction to take after The Gum Thief and the excellent J-Pod, although it contains elements of both.

Is it a meditation on the effects of Web 2.0 on society?  I honestly don't know.  Answers on a postcard, wiser heads.

I, Cosh

Quote from: TordelBack on 13 July, 2010, 11:35:42 PMIs it a meditation on the effects of Web 2.0 on society?  I honestly don't know.  Answers on a postcard, wiser heads.
Sorry, I haven't read any Coupland since Girlfriend in a Coma.

Finished The Ringworld Engineers last weekend, which was silly, improbable fun. Started reading Inconstant Moon - a collection of Larry Niven's short stories - immediately after and so far it isn't. Most of the stories have a good central idea, but he doesn't seem able to deal with them either in enough depth or with sufficient storytelling verve to satisfy. Still, they are short so they're ideal for the bus.

Disheartened, I turned to In Search of Robert Millar, a biography of Britain's best ever cyclist. Despite the total lack of input from the subject, the details of his career are interesting. Assuming you're interested in that sort of thing. Unfortunately, the godawful, saucer-eyed naivety displayed by the author in fallling hook, line & sinker for the mythical Big Man/razor gangs/Britain's hardest pub view of Glasgow has me questioning everything else he writes. 
We never really die.

O Lucky Stevie!

#1295
Quote from: TordelBack on 13 July, 2010, 11:35:42 PM
Is it a meditation on the effects of Web 2.0 on society?  I honestly don't know.  Answers on a postcard, wiser heads.

There's a copy in the Mesozoic layer of Stevie's reading pile, so he let you know when he gets too it.

Quote from: The Cosh on 14 July, 2010, 12:08:24 AM
Finished The Ringworld Engineers last weekend, 

Don't feel shy on skipping the appositely-entitled Ringworld Throne & heading straight to Ringworld's Children -- more plot than the previous three volumes combined in half the page count count of each. Easily the best thing that Niven's written in decades.
"We'll send all these nasty words to Aunt Jane. Don't you think that would be fun?"

Spaceghost

Quote from: radiator on 13 July, 2010, 03:12:55 PM
Over my holiday I read:

All You Need is Kill (prose novel) by Hiroshi Sakurazaka
I got this because I heard a movie adaptation is being fast-tracked into production so I wanted to be ahead of the curve! Also the premise grabbed me (Groundhog Day meets Starship Troopers, essentially). It was OK, a quick, action-packed read but at times it reads a little like fan-fiction thanks to some ripe dialogue and overuse of swearing - I think a lot of that may be down to the translation from the original Japanese. It also sort of feels like it is an adaptation of a manga or anime series - it has that vibe. Some neat sci-fi ideas, though and I look forward to seeing the movie. 6/10

I read this too and drew similar conclusions. Poor translation from Japanese not hitting the right tone with the dialogue. I think it could potentially make a good film though.

Reading Seeds of Earth by Michael Cobley now. Just the sort of widescreen space epic I'm into at the moment.

By the way, don't bother with The Noise Within by Ian Whates. It's poorly written, predictable, boring tripe.
Raised in the wild by sarcastic wolves.

Previously known as L*e B*tes. Sshhh, going undercover...

Proudhuff

Quote from: The Cosh on 28 March, 2010, 06:52:51 PM

Also reading Warrior which, being an anthology, ranges from the great to the mediocre, with almost nothing actively bad. It even has a range of articles on aspects of comics which verge on the interesting and a letter from one T Proudfoot decrying T'n'A covers.

Haha! Top that Buttonman!
DDT did a job on me

mogzilla

technically not started reading it yet but just got "alan quatermain" from a book sale at school for the bargain price of 30p

4junk2pop

Quote from: puggdogg on 13 July, 2010, 01:01:26 PM
Last night I finished reading the final TPB of the Goon. I read through all ten volumes. Now I'm having withdrawals. Damn Eric Powell has created a masterpiece series. I think tonight I'll start on Dredd Case Files Vol 04.

The Goon is great,  I've only read a few of the early TPB's so far. Not got around to getting anymore yet.

I'm abroad and only thing I have with me is Tank Girl TPB volume 2. I'm not great at summing it up as a whole but it was just
Absurd, random, beautiful and outdated :P
I enjoyed volume 1 more. I have volume 3 at home, I'll give that a whirl when back in blighty.

mogzilla

i'm off for the summer soon so a trip to manc is in order to stock up on reading material for when it rains and mini mog is watching the same programmes on playhouse disney for the fourth time that day ... grandville looks interesting ...

SmallBlueThing

Bookwise, 'Day By Day Armageddon: Beyond Exile'- the sequel to DBDA, by JL Bourne. Post-apoc zombie brilliance by a serving US naval officer (it says here...) The Permuted Press delivers another absolute blinder, and is fast becoming my favourite publishing house.

Comicwise, 'Scalped', 'Northlanders' and 'Resurrected' currently float my boat- along with the sublime 'Walking Dead' obviously. 'Crossed' by Mr Ennis knocked at the door of my middle-aged sense of reactionary wrongness, but I've decided to like it, so as to appear cool to kids.

SBT
.

HOO-HAA

Quote from: SmallBlueThing on 18 July, 2010, 09:24:21 PM
Bookwise, 'Day By Day Armageddon: Beyond Exile'- the sequel to DBDA, by JL Bourne. Post-apoc zombie brilliance by a serving US naval officer (it says here...) The Permuted Press delivers another absolute blinder, and is fast becoming my favourite publishing house.

Comicwise, 'Scalped', 'Northlanders' and 'Resurrected' currently float my boat- along with the sublime 'Walking Dead' obviously. 'Crossed' by Mr Ennis knocked at the door of my middle-aged sense of reactionary wrongness, but I've decided to like it, so as to appear cool to kids.

SBT

A good list right there. I haven't read DBDA but Mr Bourne sure can pull a crowd amongst the zombie fans. He's an old labelmate of mine from when my debut novel, Drop Dead Gorgeous was on Permuted (due for re-release in the UK through Snowbooks in 2011). DBDA2 is being paired with FLU by Amazon UK, I notice.

Crossed is an outrageously good series. Especially the Ennis run. To be honest, for character-driven z-horror, I think it rocks the socks of even Kirkman's The Walking Dead. Brilliant stuff without compromise!

Mike Carroll

Currently reading Filth, by Irvine Welsh. It's like ploughing through Ulysses as reinterpreted by Quentin Tarantino, via Rab C. Nesbit. I'm about a quarter of the way in and slowly getting used to the dialect. But I will never - ever - get used to the lack of quotation marks. I mean, the book's hard enough to understand as it is, but when you can't tell whether the narrator is speaking aloud or just pondering, it's a whole different kettle of ballgames.

That said, it's all rather enjoyable so far.

-- Mike

mogzilla

Quote from: Mike Carroll on 19 July, 2010, 03:09:11 AM
Currently reading Filth, by Irvine Welsh. It's like ploughing through Ulysses as reinterpreted by Quentin Tarantino, via Rab C. Nesbit. I'm about a quarter of the way in and slowly getting used to the dialect. But I will never - ever - get used to the lack of quotation marks. I mean, the book's hard enough to understand as it is, but when you can't tell whether the narrator is speaking aloud or just pondering, it's a whole different kettle of ballgames.

That said, it's all rather enjoyable so far.

-- Mike


had that trouble with cormac macarthy's stuff and his penchant for suddenly having characters launch into spanish (all the pretty horses) we only did o level french at school!!!!