Whats everyone reading?

[richerthanyou]

The Lost World

Why oh why didn't they follow the story from the book in the movie? The book is a million times better than the film. A lot darker too. With lots of sciencey mumbo jumbo thrown in for all you nerds out there. I finished the book over 3 days (which is really good for me) I really could not put it down and every spare moment I got I was reading some more.

10/10 because dinosaurs.

[spoiler]Fuck you Hollywood. [/spoiler]

[ThryllSeekyr]

The Lost World

Why oh why didn't they follow the story from the book in the movie? The book is a million times better than the film. A lot darker too. With lots of sciencey mumbo jumbo thrown in for all you nerds out there. I finished the book over 3 days (which is really good for me) I really could not put it down and every spare moment I got I was reading some more.

10/10 because dinosaurs.

[spoiler]Fuck you Hollywood. [/spoiler]

Three days to read a novel. You must have had some time off and no sleep or not much in the least. Not as impressive as few hours to rad novel, but better than me. Right now, my head would just burn from just thinking about it.

[von Boom]

The Lost World

[spoiler]Fuck you Hollywood. [/spoiler]

Amen brother.

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

Just finished the last Culture novel. Bit of a bummer to think there'll be no new Iain Banks stuff ever, but it's great that he wrote as much as he did.

Huge bummer.

I still have the last novel on my shelf unread. Soon, though, soon.

Yeah. I've his last three books (across all genres) unread; got them for Christmas and I kinda-do, kinda-don't want to read them. See also: Terry Pratchett's last two

[ThryllSeekyr]

Forgot to mention, I quite enjoyed the film, just he first three. I think one of the later ones, other than the last one was really bad.

[ThryllSeekyr]

Just finished the last Culture novel. Bit of a bummer to think there'll be no new Iain Banks stuff ever, but it's great that he wrote as much as he did.

Huge bummer.

I still have the last novel on my shelf unread. Soon, though, soon.

Yeah. I've his last three books (across all genres) unread; got them for Christmas and I kinda-do, kinda-don't want to read them. See also: Terry Pratchett's last two

Discworld??

[TordelBack]

Just finished the last Culture novel. Bit of a bummer to think there'll be no new Iain Banks stuff ever, but it's great that he wrote as much as he did.

Huge bummer.

I still have the last novel on my shelf unread. Soon, though, soon.

Yeah. I've his last three books (across all genres) unread; got them for Christmas and I kinda-do, kinda-don't want to read them. See also: Terry Pratchett's last two

It's a weird one, isn't it? I gritted my teeth and finished the Culture last year (makes me feel teary just typing that, not that it isn't a high note on which to finish, even from a thematic PoV), but now I'm down to The Quarry, I just can't bring myself to read it. No more Banks to read, ever? Can't.

At least there's so much Pratchett out there that I'm bound to have missed something..!

[ThryllSeekyr]

I have plenty to read, but won't be doing much of that until my bookcases & the rest of huge furniture to arrive.

Until then & while on the subject of Prachett. I have stock piles of his old Discworld novels. some of them literally lying around until I can find better place for them. I have latest work. The complete Ankh-Morpork-City-Guide & the Disc-World-Atlas. Not really novels, but real book with pages filled with advice & advertisements like old newspaper. The books themselves are held shut by elastic cord & there is a large fold out map kept within inside dust cover that's design in such way as to not encourage you to ever remove it. These books are best read occasionally and not nessesarily from beginning and only only in small parts. I so far have only had quick look through them both even after buying the city guide last year and the atlas weeks ago. Complimentary to the original supplements, all of these, the same size as regular novels. Streets of Ankh-Morpork, Disc-world Atlas, A-Tourist-Guide-to-Lancre, Death's-Domain. Regrettably, I had already removed the city map from the first of those and had it laminated and it's very hard to put up on the wall because it's keeps rolling up and will keep sliding off the wall during the hotter months. Then heard that there was supposed to a faint tracery of the city's sewer system on the other side and it doesn't look like this was true when I felt compelled to look. 


 

[Hawkmumbler]

I'm as game as anyone for a good mystery fauna, but all too often cryptids just turn out to be a load of superstitious nonsense. Hunting Monsters by Darren Naish is a scientificall sceptical write up on cryptid culture, and it's rather patch work study history. Particularly entertaining thus far is the debunking of a famour Nessie photo as a swan, half submerged in shallow water. And another as an upturned kayake with a bag over a stick for the neck and head! Wry and cynicle, but always somewhat stary eyed for some of the genuinly more realistic reports (British Big Cats are a legit thing after all, but no breeding colony exists naturally). A good read.

[The Adventurer]

Finished Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny for a reading review podcast a friend of mine is putting together. Thought it was okay for fantasy, though I could care less for the main character and his goals. Can't relate to magic immortal royals fighting over thrones. Probably won't follow up on its sequels.

[I, Cosh]

Finished Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny for a reading review podcast a friend of mine is putting together. Thought it was okay for fantasy, though I could care less for the main character and his goals. Can't relate to magic immortal royals fighting over thrones. Probably won't follow up on its sequels.

Fair enough. I haven't read the whole lot but I enjoyed the first few. From memory, Corwin is a fairly typical Zelazny protagonist: a mixture of cynical con-man and idealism.

[TordelBack]

In an attempt to keep my soggy depressed brain alive and distracted I've been on a big non-fiction binge since Christmas (Etruscans, Hellenistic Greece and mid/late Republican Rome... It was great fun, honest ) with just a few small Douglas Couplands I'd somehow missed slotted in.  Now I'm trying the first Joe Abercrombie, since I'm woefully out of touch with modern fantasy, having tried and failed to get to grips with various series (Erikson's Malazan,  Elliott's Crown of Stars, William's Shadowmarch etc) - and it's good brisk stuff so far.

[Colin YNWA]

Interested to hear what mid/late Roman Republic stuff you read and what you thought of it... unless you mean the historians themselves?

[TordelBack]

'Twas mainly stuff I picked up in a secondhand shop, all from the library of a man called Philip Howard*, according to a lovely hand-drawn personalised bookplate in each.  There was much, much more, but I was too slow and too poor - it must have been a very fine collection, and I'm indebted to its owner.

The only primary sources I read were a superbly annotated Conquest of Gaul (translated and annotated by Wiseman and Cunliffe) and chunks of Cicero's collected speeches (the Loeb edition). Admittedly both very late Republic.

Secondary stuff was all pretty archaic stuff, with the exception of Tom Holland's rollicking pop-history Rubicon (2003) which goes a bit far in trying to create a streamlined story, but is an excellent way of getting the broad shape of the late Republican period straight in your head. I have no real background in the period, so old or popular stuff is all good to me. I intend to follow up with some recent more serious stuff when the opportunity presents.

The older stuff was:
A H McDonald's Republican Rome (1966; Thames and Hudson), which was really good at putting the various wars of the Republic in an economic context.
J P Balsdon's Romans and Aliens (1979), which I found a bit heavy.

The Hellenistic Greece and Etruscan stuff obviously feeds into all this too. Oh, and fiction wise I finished Robert Harris' excellent Cicero novels, which was probably what kick-started my feeding frenzy on Mr Howard's former library.



*I'm not convinced it wasn't the journalist, author and Times literary editor/PL , who died in 2014 . The subject matter certainly fits.

[The Legendary Shark]

Romans and Aliens? Hmmm...

In Thrace, no-one can hear you scream...