The Literature Thread

[Ironhide]

My god, this book is strawberry floating incredible, just nearing the end and *spoilers*what the hell has the alien protomolecule done with the place, it's like the Thing

there's another 5 books of this to go.

[Frank]

Now I've got a kindle I'm thinking about trying to slim my bookshelf out a little. Anyone know the best places for selling books? Ebay seems like it's too congested with shops selling new versions of books for insane money to really be worth listing secondhand stuff on, and webuybooks doesn't seem to accept a lot of the books I've got...

[Ironhide]

Charity shop.



Started this yesterday, very good start, gooseberry fool getting real.

[Frank]

Do charity shops buy books off you or have you just gotta donate them?

[Wedgie]

Donate only I'm afraid.

Even Amazon sellers has to resort to selling their books for 1p. Fook that.

[Drumstick]

I want to buy a kindle later this year. Already decided that I'm keeping my hardbacks and donating the paperbacks.

Do charity shops buy books off you or have you just gotta donate them?

They rely on your donations to keep running.

[Frank]

Letdown. Why is the secondhand book market so lame when the RRPs are usually so high? No consistency.

[Hypes]

The RRP is hardly ever charged and books are omnipresent everywhere. No one wants your heavily thumbed copy of Fifty Shades of Grey.

[Errkal]

I hate books I really don't like the feel of paper, the smell or being able to see a physical amount of left to read.

I kndle however is awesome!

[Moggy]

I have loads of paper books that I know I'll never read again. At some point I will either take them to the dump or leave them outside a charity shop.

[Drumstick]

No one wants your heavily thumbed copy of Fifty Shades of Grey.

[Wedgie]

No one wants your heavily thumbed copy of Fifty Shades of Grey.

Now my monitor is dripping wet with tea.

[Ironhide]

About 2/3 into the third Expanse book (Abaddon's Gate) and can't stop reading, I keep thinking "just one more chapter" then realise I've read a huge chunk of the book in an hour.

[King Chaz]

Has anyone read "The Broken Empire" Trilogy by Mark Lawrence or the "Raven's Shadow" Trilogy by Anthony Ryan, and could you please let me know what you thought about them?

[OnlyShallow]

I got so many books at Christmas, I don't know where to start. Mark Danielewski's The Familiar Vol 1. looks beautiful, I'm just hoping it isn't style over substance. Haruki Murakami's Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki, Umberto Eco's Prague Cemetery, Alisdair Gray's Lanark and I bought myself Glaswegians by Stuart Murray.

It doesn't help that I'm currently reading Venice by Jan Morris and that her writing makes me fall asleep after 4 paragraphs.

[Moggy]

After somebody was talking about them in here, I have started reading the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. I am not very far into the first book, but it seems interesting so far.

[Rhubarb]

Has anyone read "The Broken Empire" Trilogy by Mark Lawrence or the "Raven's Shadow" Trilogy by Anthony Ryan, and could you please let me know what you thought about them?

The Broken Empire gets better as it goes on. The first book, Prince of Thorns, is really really sloppy - you can tell that it is his first novel. However the story is pretty good and his writing definitely improves in the second two books.

Raven's Shadow is excellent from the off. I haven't read the third one yet, but Blood Song and Tower Lord are both highly enjoyable.

If you're choosing between the two, I'd definitely opt for Raven's Shadow.

[Irene Demova]

I read Prince of Thorns ages ago and it was absolute crap, the only thing it has going for it is the setting but that's also been done way better by other writers

[King Chaz]

Cheers Rhubarb, I went with The Broken Empire, simply because the 3rd book in the Raven's Shadow series is only in Hardback, so I'd rather be cheap and wait for the paperback to come out next month. You and Irene are both right, it is very sloppy so far, I'm only 100 pages in. Yet at he same time its interesting. I have heard it gets much better in the 2nd and 3rd books. Which I have heard is the opposite to Raven's Shadow series. Blood Song is meant to be amazing, Tower Lord good, but the 3rd book is supposedly such a letdown and I should go in with low expectations.

I do have to suggest to anyone who enjoys fantasy book to read The Kingkiller Chronicle by Patrick Rothfuss, I could not put it down. The only bad thing is that there is no news on the 3rd book just yet.

Also everyone should read Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive series. Only 2 books in the series so far, but it promises to be an epic story on The Wheel of Time levels.

[Rhubarb]

I enjoyed the two Kingkiller Chronicle books that are out so far. However Patrick Rothfuss is a complete bellend of the highest order - I suspect he's going to go the same way as G.R.R Martin, end up believing his own hype, get delusions of grandeur, start pumping out absolute trash later in the series, and ultimately never finish the 7 books he set out to write.

Brandon Sanderson is at the complete other end of the scale, so prolific and the quality is just amazing. Couldn't recommend the Stormlight Archive books enough. You should also check out his Mistborn ones if you've not had a chance yet.

It sounds like we've got pretty similar tastes, not sure if you've read any of Scott Lynch's Gentleman Bastard series. It's really good. Anything by Joe Abercrombie is worth checking out also!