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Whats everyone reading?

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

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Anthony Garnon

Quote from: Colin YNWA on 09 April, 2021, 11:40:06 AM
Quote from: zombemybabynow on 09 April, 2021, 11:20:51 AM
IDW Usagi yojimbo reprints BUT in colour !

so gorgeous, plus if you've read usagi, you know how you learn whilst reading too eg. how sake is made, japanese feudal law etc..

I've used these as my 'in' to Yojimbo and man its wonderful stuff - have a LOAD of digital stuff lined up.

My wife has been bitten by the Usagi bug, too. She's read the first 10 books in less than 3 weeks now.

Not the easiest stories to track down in the UK mind (we don't read digitally) but worth it!

MumboJimbo

Oof! Just read Asimov's Foundation for the first time. I was expecting a lot more, given its reputation.

I'll continue with the other two in the original trilogy, as I bought them in a joblot from Ebay, so hopefully the other two will help me understand its high standing. There's some great big stroke ideas going on, but on a paragraph by paragraph level, my word it's a bit rudimentary. I guess it's due to it being originally four distinct, but interconnected, short stories originally published in Astounding Science, with a new fifth framing story added to the start. The new story is probably the best, but the older quartet all following the same theme of a younger upstart outwitting an older generation of The Establishment, usually in a courtroom showdown by revealing something he's been doing all along behind the scenes that's meant to change everything. And then usually a video of old Harry Seldon validating the action of said upstart.

The broad strokes are good though, in how the foundation evolves from ostensibly an encyclopaedia compiler to ostensibly a religion to ostensibly a trading guild. I don't know quite why Civilsation 2.0 has to be so secretive and Machiavellian. Even though they eventually develop superior technology, they only seem to use coercion, manipulation and balls-out fraud to get neighbours to beat to their tune. Two stories involved the Foundation selling other worlds dodgy tech that's designed to fail a few months after they leave. Hardly a great introduction to the guys who are meant to return the Galaxy to its previous splendour.

Despite all that, I'm still very intrigued by where all this is going, and will read further. It is a very strange book though, even taking into account its age and serialised origins. I've know idea how Apple TV could adapt this - it'd have to be a very loose adaptation.

Tiplodocus

Quote from: TordelBack on 06 April, 2021, 11:28:56 AM
I would have been reading Covenant around 11 or 12, coming off the back of my first go throughs of LotR and Earthsea and in my nascent D&D phase, at around the time the Second Chronicles were coming out. Pivotal rape aside, I loved the first three... However I never stopped loathing Covenant himself, which may be why I've never re-read them

As a teen reading them, i was too stupid to realise the implications of this. That's put me off re-reading them too. And possibly TV execs no matter how eager they are for the next Game Of Thrones...
Be excellent to each other. And party on!

wedgeski

Quote from: Tiplodocus on 12 April, 2021, 02:47:18 PM
Quote from: TordelBack on 06 April, 2021, 11:28:56 AM
I would have been reading Covenant around 11 or 12, coming off the back of my first go throughs of LotR and Earthsea and in my nascent D&D phase, at around the time the Second Chronicles were coming out. Pivotal rape aside, I loved the first three... However I never stopped loathing Covenant himself, which may be why I've never re-read them

As a teen reading them, i was too stupid to realise the implications of this. That's put me off re-reading them too. And possibly TV execs no matter how eager they are for the next Game Of Thrones...
GoT made us root for monsters, I suppose. I see no way to live with Covenant's crime if you're not deeply immersed in his unbelief, and I see no way to do that in a big budget fantasy series. But then, I'm no screenwriter.

The Legendary Shark


I'm just about to start The War with Hannibal by Livy (wish me luck!).

I'm going to sound terribly pompous now and admit that I'm falling in love with classical literature. I love LotR and all that wonderful stuff too but this olden days sh*t is really pushing my buttons lately. Plutarch's Lives is a particular favourite, bursting with stories and anecdotes just crying out to be stolen by inspirational for an amateur scribbler.

And they're not really hard to read. In many ways, they are clearer and better written than a lot of the pap I've read. There's adventure, romance, intrigue, heroism, cowardice, love, hate, greed - the lot. Especially in Plutarch. Plutarch feckin' rocks.

Ahem. Sorry.

TL; DR - Reading good.

[move]~~~^~~~~~~~[/move]




The Enigmatic Dr X

A coda on the Covenant books: I enjoyed the first two trilogies from the 70s/80s, but the more recent ones from the last decade were, quite simply, unreadable gibberish to me. I'm not talking plot or characters - I literally could not understand the words on the page.

The only other book to have that effect was Trainspotting, with its phonetically spelled dialect. (I read about 15 pages before I realised it the opening featured one character, as it kept talking about "us"). And I'm Scottish. A Weegie, true, but that just makes me less posh.
Lock up your spoons!

Jade Falcon

Quote from: The Enigmatic Dr X on 12 April, 2021, 11:08:00 PM
A coda on the Covenant books: I enjoyed the first two trilogies from the 70s/80s, but the more recent ones from the last decade were, quite simply, unreadable gibberish to me. I'm not talking plot or characters - I literally could not understand the words on the page.

The only other book to have that effect was Trainspotting, with its phonetically spelled dialect. (I read about 15 pages before I realised it the opening featured one character, as it kept talking about "us"). And I'm Scottish. A Weegie, true, but that just makes me less posh.

I tried reading the new series and found it VERY hard going.  I know the first ones weren't what could be classed as the easiest reading but they were legible, the new one I couldn't get through.
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

wedgeski

Quote from: Jade Falcon on 13 April, 2021, 12:40:46 AM
Quote from: The Enigmatic Dr X on 12 April, 2021, 11:08:00 PM
A coda on the Covenant books: I enjoyed the first two trilogies from the 70s/80s, but the more recent ones from the last decade were, quite simply, unreadable gibberish to me. I'm not talking plot or characters - I literally could not understand the words on the page.

The only other book to have that effect was Trainspotting, with its phonetically spelled dialect. (I read about 15 pages before I realised it the opening featured one character, as it kept talking about "us"). And I'm Scottish. A Weegie, true, but that just makes me less posh.

I tried reading the new series and found it VERY hard going.  I know the first ones weren't what could be classed as the easiest reading but they were legible, the new one I couldn't get through.
I stuck it out. Runes of the Earth was pretty great, but I was exhausted by the end of the sequence.

Barrington Boots

I skipped the last Covenant books as they just seemed a bit uneccessary, and I didn't hear best reviews of them either - not reading much here to change that!
Covenant's arc finishes quite nicely at the end of the first trilogy imo and I never found the second set of books to be needed either, really.
You're a dark horse, Boots.

Rara Avis

I'm reading the Chaos Day Trilogy and just finished the middle part last night. That picture of a utterly defeated Dredd with head bowed by Ben Willsher (I think) was an incredibly powerful image in a series of visuals that pulled no punches. I'm also reading Vol 2 of the Complete Future Shocks and I gotta tell you some of the content was absolutely visonary and other parts wonderfully bonkers (like the alien coat hangers).

I'm also still working through Gaunt's Ghosts - where they have basically [spoiler]had a fight on one planet, then went to another planet and got in a ruckus there and now they are fighting on a spaceship but in between all the fighting there's a decent adventure quest taking place[/spoiler] so I'm enjoying it.

TordelBack

#6925
Like all right-thinking people I'm a fan of you-tuber Lindsay Ellis, but I was a bit nervous about trying her debut novel: I've endured too much of the ghost-written drivel purportedly by social-media personalities via my daughter's habitual consumption of it.  No need for such hestitation,  Axiom's End is an enjoyable First Contact novel set in an alternate 2007, complete with an alt.Assange character and an off-stage bumbling Dubya.

I did experience the expected issue of mapping the protagonist on to a young Lindsay, but that passed. The main attraction is a well-developed suite of aliens, and in particular the main character's complex relationship with a fully-realised Optimus Prime/Aslan/Totoro/ET/Doomlord.

Ellis writes believable emotions, dilemmas of conscience and good action, but sometimes her descriptions of places seem to assume a real-world familiarity that makes them feel underwritten in comparison to vivid depictions of aliens and their tech. The global impacts of First Contact are barely touched on beyond a tickertape of stock market indices, as state secrecy is a key theme, but the level of individual reactions is where the book is pitched and succeeds. Nothing wildly new in a SF sense, but genuinely memorable alien characters, and I found it hard to put down.

milstar

After several months, I managed to finish Future Shock vol1 (I already did vol2 before). And since I myself am planning to send a few submissions to 2000ad when the time is ripe, it was interesting to read the stories by now celebrated writers (and artists) cutting their teeth on short, but highly imaginative stories. Majority of stories here are on the level, let's say, very few I felt a bit letdown and saw the twist incoming before the final panel, few are exceptionally good. I also appreciate sardonic, dark humor that permeates nearly all tales (few however, have sad, but thoughtful endings). Alan Moore's Abelard Snazz is ofcourse top-notch stuff, and his stuff of all writers when added up, is the best in both vols (not always tour de force, however), and The Philodrutian Phrasebook is perhaps the only flat out hilarious story out there. Also, I like Kelvin Gosnell's Joe Black, perhaps even more than Abelard Snazz, but that's just me.
Also, I've seen here perhaps the best example of metafictional storytelling ever and that is Alec Trench. RIP to the guy. Does anyone knows who's behind that pseudonim?

Borag Thungg.

Reyt, you lot. Shut up, belt up, 'n if ye can't see t' bloody exit, ye must be bloody blind.

Link Prime

I thought it had been long out of print / unavailable, but I stumbled across Top Shelf's newish printing of Bodycount last week while looking for reading material to placate my new found TMNT appreciation.

The summary: Kevin Eastman & Biz got wasted on Jack Daniels and Class A drugs in the 90's and decided to do an ultra violent team up with Raphael, Casey Jones and a bigger titted version of Terri from ABC Warriors.

It's quite possible to pinpoint when the hangover kicked in - about a third of the way through.

A difficulty book to recommend - something of a sloppy, cliched story with some grubby but vibrant Biz art.
Casey and Raphael seem like different characters than previously portrayed, and don't feature too prominently. It's very, very 90's.

Anyway - for what it's worth - I enjoyed it.

https://www.topshelfcomix.com/catalog/teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-bodycount/989

Jade Falcon

I'm reading the Mallorean series by David Eddings.  I've been on an Eddings binge lately after reading a LOT of Scots crime by the likes of Stuart McBride, Denzil Meyrick and Peter May.  I breezed through the Elenium and Tamuli.  While I enjoyed both series the Tamuli seemed to drag a little in the second book especially.

I then read the Belgariad and enjoyed it.  Eddings books are easy to read with decent characters though I've noticed his tendency to reuse phrases like in the Belgariad and Mallorean when characters are in a mild argument the phrase "And everything was all right again" keeps springing up.  I'm still on Guardians of the West, the first book of the Mallorean and I've read the series a fair few times before but not for some time.
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

TordelBack

I enjoyed the Belgariad as a kid, it supplied placenames for more than one D&D campaign ("the Polgara Hills" etc), and the almost clockwork way the story proceeded around the world map in order greatly appealed (for a more current example of cartographic determinism see Abercrombie's Half a King series). For some reason I don't think think I ever moved on to the Mallorean - is it worth a throw at this late stage, do you think? It's a prequel, right?