Whats everyone reading?

[Mardroid]

Re: Let The Right One In- yes, i loved the novel. So much so that watching the movie afterwards was a huge disappointment and i actively disliked it.

I don't think that will be the case for me when I rewatch the film, but then my situation is different having seen it first. I think my reaction would be the same though.

In many ways, the book is certainly better. There's so much more stuff for one thing (although some of it feels a bit like padding, albeit highly readable padding, and I don't mind that in a novel) and there is one thing that has happened that makes me realise there's a possible dangling plot thread in the film.

On the other hand I find the film very magical.

Interesting to see Oskar was meant to be chubby. That makes the bullying all the more believable, although I think the kid who played him in the film did an excellent job.

[von Boom]

I'm in the middle of the Honor Harrington series by David Weber. Also I'm reading Market Forces by Richard Morgan. I have a TBR pile that seems to grow daily. Sigh.

[Spaceghost]

Just finished Clash of Kings, book 2 of A Song of Ice and Fire.

It's just as engrossing and thrilling as Game of Thrones with loads of plot and character development, skullduggery, backstabbing, plotting, murder and epic battles.

There are a couple of great twists which I won't go into but suffice to say, I couldn't put this book down.

I can't wait to see [spoiler]the climactic battle of Blackwater[/spoiler] when it appears in the TV series. Apparently, the script for that episode has been written by George RR Martin himself, and will be directed by Neil Marshall who directed Dog Soldiers, Doomsday, Centurion and The Descent. Should be amazing.

I'm now well into Surface Detail by Iain M Banks and loving it. I'm an unashamed drooling Banks fanboy and this new novel is certainly doing the business so far. I really want to live in The Culture...

[Robert Frazer]

"The Culture" is basically Heaven, except with nauseatingly, toe-curlingly and humiliatingly bad sex.

Which illustrates the problem with the whole society, I think. The Culture may be presented as a post-scarcity paradise where the rivers literally flow with milk and honey and there are orgasms on tap, but when I was reading I saw it as a harrowing dystopia. The place is enervating, stupefying, a gilded cage; with the omniscient and omnipresent Minds having analysed and interpreted all of your potential actions and gauged appropriate responses to exact the desired reaction from you in the time it takes for you to inhale, and even if you deny them it's only part of a matroyshka of shell games they're playing, it's a deranged and confounding Kafkaesque prison of illusory mirrors.

Seriously, if I was invited to become the Culture's strongman like Cheradenine Zakalwe in Use of Weapons (which to be fair to it did have an intriguing structure with a great twist), I'd probably top myself right then and there. Not as if it'd make any difference - they'd already have used their technomagic to scan my brain and be able to grow a clone with a couple of helpful tweaks to make the new me compliant, so what's the point of my being there in the first place? it's at that point you're slammed against the wall of the awful enormity of your own irrelevance, left to scratch in the chicken-run by some gently bemused keeper. What makes it even more awful and dangerously forbidding is that Banks actually admires his monstrosity and considers it a model for future human development...

And those sex scenes are really bad. 

[radiator]

Is it sacrilege that I thought that the TV series of Game of Thrones was actually better than the novel?

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the novel - and having read it I now have a far greater understanding of the history, geography and culture of Westeros which is great and it was fascinating to learn little things like the fact it was [spoiler]Ned Stark's own sword that was used to kill him[/spoiler] etc. But for me the TV show made several big improvements, especially the dialogue (much punchier in the show) and fleshing out characters who are little more than sketches in the book (Robert, Cersei).

Great book, but an excellent TV show.

I'm still holding out for series two before I read Clash... It's pretty painful as I have a holiday coming up and would love to take it with me.... but nah, I'll wait.

[Spaceghost]

"The Culture" is basically Heaven, except with nauseatingly, toe-curlingly and humiliatingly bad sex.

Which illustrates the problem with the whole society, I think. The Culture may be presented as a post-scarcity paradise where the rivers literally flow with milk and honey and there are orgasms on tap, but when I was reading I saw it as a harrowing dystopia. The place is enervating, stupefying, a gilded cage; with the omniscient and omnipresent Minds having analysed and interpreted all of your potential actions and gauged appropriate responses to exact the desired reaction from you in the time it takes for you to inhale, and even if you deny them it's only part of a matroyshka of shell games they're playing, it's a deranged and confounding Kafkaesque prison of illusory mirrors.

Seriously, if I was invited to become the Culture's strongman like Cheradenine Zakalwe in Use of Weapons (which to be fair to it did have an intriguing structure with a great twist), I'd probably top myself right then and there. Not as if it'd make any difference - they'd already have used their technomagic to scan my brain and be able to grow a clone with a couple of helpful tweaks to make the new me compliant, so what's the point of my being there in the first place? it's at that point you're slammed against the wall of the awful enormity of your own irrelevance, left to scratch in the chicken-run by some gently bemused keeper. What makes it even more awful and dangerously forbidding is that Banks actually admires his monstrosity and considers it a model for future human development...

And those sex scenes are really bad. 

It's certainly true to say that humans have defered to the AI Minds in The Culture, allowing them to enjoy a life of leisure devoted to...whatever they want to devote their lives to.

Not forgetting the perks, including endless freetime, effortless body or mind modification, limitless possibilities for exploration, learning and development, almost limitless life extension, built in neural net which provides instant downloads of virtually any database, built in drug glands so you can get off your tits whenever you feel like it. I could go on.

What's bad about that? It sounds, to me, like an ideal way of life but then, I am a lazy bastard.

Banks does explore the idea that humans are basically pets, kept around to amuse the Minds, and has approached the subject from many different perspectives throughout the Culture novels. Not all Culture citizens are happy with the way things are and are free to leave, or rejoin whenever they wish.

Also, it's been long established that the Minds would certainly not clone someone, revent them after death or tinker with them genetically without their consent so the situation you describe with Zakalwe couldn't happen.

And I don't remember any bad sex scenes to be honest.

[Mardroid]

I finished Let the Right One in last night/this morning. A great read overall. My only complaint would be the [spoiler]literal deus ex machina moment in the conflict between Hakan and Tommy. Tommy prays for help while he is blind in the dark , and there's a flash of blue/white light so he can see! I understand that this is a story with vampires and I'm not opposed to a higher power being a factor in these kinds of story, but that seemed rather out of nowhere. I know we have glowy crosses, etc, in Stephen King's Salem's Lot, but that is shown to be a major part of the rules for that world quite early on, while here it isn't.[/spoiler]

I can see how a person reading the book would be disappointed by the film as it cuts a LOT out, including entire sub-plots. I think the tighter story focussing just on Oskar and Elli works though. They're both good, just in different ways. I think I might enjoy the film a bit more, but I was grateful for the extra material in the book.

[SmallBlueThing]

Dead Island, by Mark Morris.

Yes, it's the tie-in novel to the badly-received and probable flop videogame. But while im not interested in playing it, the book is a riot. Morris is a skilled wordsmith, whose books ive enjoyed over the years going right back to Toady, so the combination of him and zombies cant fail to tickle my biffin's bridge.

The requisite nasty stuff, sufficiently likeable characters, survival horror- yep, worth £2.99 from game (price if bought with any other purchase- yes, even a 49p football game for the ps2- the one with michael berryman on the front blowing a whistle for some reason.) Game went in the bin as soon as i was outside, book was started that night.

SBT

[Professor Bear]

I'm also reading a videogame tie-in at the moment, Homefront: The Voice of Freedom, and it's dreadful so far.  The only bits that work are the first-person journal entries of the jaded reporter main character as he makes a journal of a ground invasion of America by North Korea, but these are few and far between and the rest is some pretty poor prose that I would almost think I could have written myself if I was still in school and my balls hadn't dropped.  Not good.
If Alex Garland did a novel of his videogame story for Odyssey to the West I'd be all over it, mind, so I don't think the tie-in water has been sufficiently pissed into for me just yet.

I Shall Wear Midnight is an odd Pratchett joint - a book for younger readers, apparently, but it seems really distracted by the twin themes of growing old and death despite being about a sixteen year old girl.  Between this and starring in a show called Terry Pratchett: Choosing To Die, I worry where Discworld may be going in the future, but that's small beer compared to Pterry's health issues, obviously.  A good read, all the same, and I may be wrong in thinking the tone lends weight to a slight story, but it works as one of the better Discworlds for me.  But then I liked Pyramids and Reaper Man, too.

[MikeONeill]

Finished reading Mandroid yesterday. Really enjoyed it, and I can see why people would recommend that as a novice introduction to Dredd. I finished reading Tour of Duty: Backlash, so I'm going to get my own copy as soon as finances allow. At the same time I'm looking to get Tour of Duty: Mega-City Justice, so that'll probably be my next read.

All the above has made me realise I have enough background knowledge of the Dreddverse to be getting on with - so any suggestions of slightly deeper TPB's I should read would be greatly appreciated! 

[radiator]

That's good to hear, mike. I would highly recommend America and The Pit.

[Tombo]

Finished reading Mandroid yesterday. Really enjoyed it, and I can see why people would recommend that as a novice introduction to Dredd.

When Mandroid first ran in the Progs my opinion was "Meh, seen better", don't know why but it just didn't appeal to me at all.  Last year though I had a bit of a prog slog whilst sorting out my library and when I re-read it I thought "Wow, this is a cracking read why did I dis it first time round".   Have to get round to buying the trade at some point.

I bought volume 26 of Fullmetal Alchemist the other day and realised I'd forgotten the plot of the series so I've started from the beginning again.  Up to volume 16 so far and I'd also forgot how complex the actual plot is and how many characters there are in it.  Still it's a cracking read and very funny at times.

[Hawkmumbler]

Edward Elric!!!!!!! FMA is probably the greatest manga of modern times. Probably what Adtro Boy was to the Japanese of 1940's.

[Robert Frazer]

a book for younger readers, apparently, but it seems really distracted by the twin themes of growing old and death despite being about a sixteen year old girl.

I don't know about that, I think that it's quite healthy for younger readers to have an opportunity to consider death. Life has a 100% fatality rate, let's not forget, and the recent trend of trying to sanitise death and hide it away in hospitals and crematoria leaves our comprehension of people's passing underdeveloped and doesn't really improve society.

I've not been keen on the recent Discworld novels (Unseen Academicals was a chore) but I might give this one a look.

[SmallBlueThing]

Recently read Sean Manchester's 'The Highgate Vampire' book. Heh. What makes this great is that he maintains it happened as he claimed.What he's done is he's simply taken the plot of Dracula, transplanted it to north london and written a mid-eighties version of the blair witch project (in the sense of being a 'mockumentary'). It's appallingly written- the opening two sentences alone contain 160 words. Lavishly illustrated, and very funny, i'm not sure if it's a work of genius or of spiralling madness, but i very much enjoyed it. It spawned a cottage industry in highgate vampire books by both manchester and his nemesis, david farrant (here described as 'a pathetic individual living in a coal cellar') that continues to this day. Fascinating, and mad.

SBT