GRcade

Partridge Iciclebubbles wrote:

Squinty wrote:Been going through Consider Phlebas by Iain M Banks again. I love this bloke's writing and ideas.

Before that, finished Foundation book 2 (by Isaac Asimov). Really surprised by it. The character writing was much better than the first book, and it was really nice to read a book where nothing is really resolved positively at the end.

Loved both the Culture and the Foundation series.

So strawberry floating good

Read 11/22/63 recently. Really loved it.

Squinty wrote:

Partridge Iciclebubbles wrote:

Squinty wrote:Been going through Consider Phlebas by Iain M Banks again. I love this bloke's writing and ideas.

Before that, finished Foundation book 2 (by Isaac Asimov). Really surprised by it. The character writing was much better than the first book, and it was really nice to read a book where nothing is really resolved positively at the end.

Loved both the Culture and the Foundation series.

So strawberry floating good

I'm currently STILL slogging through Surface Detail. I don't read my novel of choice every day but I'm 400 pages in and still really struggling to get into it. The other Culture novels had me well hooked by now.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade wrote:Is anyone taking part in national novel writing month? http://www.nanowrimo.org
I'm almsot 7000 words deep into a novel I'm writing about Steven Segal Its mostly about quanitity, not quality. The point is just to write, no matter how bad it is. So you don't have to feel bad about churning out gooseberry fool, which is what I'm doing, seeing as how I'm not a writer. But its definitely fun tho. I doubt ill hit 50K words by the end of the month but ive done 7k this week which is decent.
I present to you, "Birthday Snatcher: The Steven Seagal Chronicles"

How far did you get in the end? Sounds ridiculous! I'll give it a read later, can't remember my password and can't be arsed to sort it out on my phone!

Scheiss dem Fenster wrote:Read 11/22/63 recently. Really loved it.

Read that a few months back, was very good. TV show of it is pretty good too.

Loved Ian McEwan's The Children Act.

Also Jonathan Coe's The Rotter's Club.

Now For Whom The Bell Tolls.

Love some Hemingway but could never get in to For Whom The Bell Tolls.

Plug: t:gr-book-club?f=7

Has anyone got one of the more expensive Kindles (the Voyage or the Oasis)? There's only £50 between the Paperwhite and the Voyager so I was wondering if there's any real benefit in stretching a little more. The pressure-sensing bezel seems like a decent new addition but is that all it does over the Paperwhite?

Rex Kramer wrote:

St Nick wrote:Picked up the new illustrated version of Neverwhere recently for my first time reading the story.

Finished it this evening, it gave me the feels. I was so pleased when he managed to return to London Below..

De Carabas

I love this book quite a bit (though not quite as much as Stardust whose film is definitely a guilty pleasure). Just noticed there's a Marquis related short story on Amazon for £1.99/£0.99 kindle (How the Marquis got his coat back), tempted.....

To the utter joy of just about everyone (well me anyway), Neil Gaiman's next book is going to be a sequel to Neverwhere.

twitter.com/guardian/status/832575934603608066

Memento Mori wrote:IT

Just to pick up the chat from the Dark Tower thread, I'm currently on Black House and I'm finding the themes a tough read - I'm going through that 'new-dad-can't-abide-the-thought-of-harm-to-children' phase.

Incredibly, I had read this book years ago, as a pick-up at an airport one holiday, but hadn't read Talisman and had no idea it was a sequel (and was unaware of the DT generally). Reading it now, I have no clue how I managed to get through it - it's so heavily reliant on that stuff.

I've read the Talisman a couple of times and wasn't aware of it's connection to the DT stuff. It's possibly my favourite King novel. I also never realised (until now after reading Wikipedia) that my favourite Ash song - Jack names the planets is based on the Talisman. Worlds within worlds.

Rex Kramer wrote:I've read the Talisman a couple of times and wasn't aware of it's connection to the DT stuff. It's possibly my favourite King novel. I also never realised (until now after reading Wikipedia) that my favourite Ash song - Jack names the planets is based on the Talisman. Worlds within worlds.

I don't know the song, but will give it a listen. I first pulled the first girl I ever shagged while Girl From Mars was playing, so I'll always have a soft spot for Ash


Edit: Wait a strawberry floating minute, it's on 1977?! Never knew that. I now need to see if it's hidden on the copy I have. Will investigate this evening.

Poser wrote:

Memento Mori wrote:IT

Just to pick up the chat from the Dark Tower thread, I'm currently on Black House and I'm finding the themes a tough read - I'm going through that 'new-dad-can't-abide-the-thought-of-harm-to-children' phase.

Incredibly, I had read this book years ago, as a pick-up at an airport one holiday, but hadn't read Talisman and had no idea it was a sequel (and was unaware of the DT generally). Reading it now, I have no clue how I managed to get through it - it's so heavily reliant on that stuff.

I did a similar thing. I had read most of the Dark Tower related stuff but had never heard of the Talisman and read Black House before it. It was a good book but for a long time I was reading thinking “is this a sequel to something or have I missed a few chapters?”.

I can't imagine reading it again at the moment though for similar new dad reasons to you.

Poser wrote:

Rex Kramer wrote:I've read the Talisman a couple of times and wasn't aware of it's connection to the DT stuff. It's possibly my favourite King novel. I also never realised (until now after reading Wikipedia) that my favourite Ash song - Jack names the planets is based on the Talisman. Worlds within worlds.

I don't know the song, but will give it a listen. I first pulled the first girl I ever shagged while Girl From Mars was playing, so I'll always have a soft spot for Ash


Edit: Wait a strawberry floating minute, it's on 1977?! Never knew that. I now need to see if it's hidden on the copy I have. Will investigate this evening.

If I was going to name a planet, I would call it Nieuw-Vennep. That's a good name for a planet.

Moggy wrote:
I can't imagine reading it again at the moment though for similar new dad reasons to you.

It's horrible.

I'm only about 15% in and it covers parental panic and grief with devastating effect.

Poser wrote:

Moggy wrote:
I can't imagine reading it again at the moment though for similar new dad reasons to you.

It's horrible.

I'm only about 15% in and it covers parental panic and grief with devastating effect.

So much of King's stuff does. I am avoiding reading his work until my son has left home for university.

Moggy wrote:

Poser wrote:

Rex Kramer wrote:I've read the Talisman a couple of times and wasn't aware of it's connection to the DT stuff. It's possibly my favourite King novel. I also never realised (until now after reading Wikipedia) that my favourite Ash song - Jack names the planets is based on the Talisman. Worlds within worlds.

I don't know the song, but will give it a listen. I first pulled the first girl I ever shagged while Girl From Mars was playing, so I'll always have a soft spot for Ash


Edit: Wait a strawberry floating minute, it's on 1977?! Never knew that. I now need to see if it's hidden on the copy I have. Will investigate this evening.

If I was going to name a planet, I would call it Nieuw-Vennep. That's a good name for a planet.

Ash

Last couple of months:

The Expanse series, books 1-6: Very, very GoT in space. Has a huge dip in quality between books 3 and 4 but picks up for 5 and 6. It's all purely surface level though.

Blindsight: Hard sci-fi novel. Confusing as strawberry float, but an interesting rumination on consciousness

Slaughterhouse 5: One of my all-time favs, read for about the 20th time. Still as good.

Don Quixote: Still going with this, but (obviously) loving it.

Blindsight was a slog honestly; it had a great Event Horizon vibe but i got lost towards the end of it

I am reading through George Orwell’s Burmese Days at the moment. I don’t know a great deal about colonial Burma, but am finding it an interesting read.

For a book published in 1934, it is surprisingly sexual in places (talk of prostitutes, rape, threesomes etc) and it is amazing how the language used by some of the characters has echoes of how people are talking today, things like how the natives have it easy, the laws are not tough enough, patriotism, blah blah blah.