Books

[Gastogh]

This thread is for people to be interested in what others read at. Reviews and recommendations are welcome but keep the spoilers to a minimum.


I just finished Holdstock's Mythago Wood, the rest of the series is next in queue. Missing details and even generalities is a bitch and I suppose I'll have to do a reread of at least the first volume at some point. To get some exercise I'm reading them at the library. Can't yet guess at what the next books will be about, which is good, for the moment.

After those I've got two volumes of the Legions of Fire (B5) and Stackpole's A Secret Atlas and Cartomancy. I'll get on to those when the other stuff's gone. After these there might be rereads of Timothy Zahn's Thrawn-trilogy (SW). I'll also reread Keyes's Psi Corps-trilogy. For now I've read it twice or thrice, which puts it on par with my earlier obsessive limitation to Tolkien's works.

At some point I'll also be reading Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel, in which I finally got interested enough to order it from Amazon.


Favorites and recommendations:
-anything by Greg Keyes with no reservations.
-the Dragonmaster-trilogy by Chris Bunch. A very entertaining read without heavy focus on the serious elements. The repeating sense of humor might get wearying after this much so I can't speak for any of his works that I haven't read - I read one Eddings book and I can predict the nature of his whole production from that. Got bored of that inside two chapters. Bunch's repetitiveness, such as it was, was more tolerable.
-A Song of Ice and Fire by Martin.
-Robin Hobb and Megan Lindholm for those who like books about people. Not my favorites, any of them, but good books and well liked by many.
-Sword of Shadows-series by J.V. Jones. Jones's books balance somewhat between Martin and Hobb; the overall look of the books is similar to Martin through and through, but it has the elements of human focus that make Hobb's books what they are
A noteworthy credit to Jones is how action scenes are done, something that usually doesn't stand out to my eye: things can be handled with gravity, seriousness and consequence with appropriate speed; Martin's books sometimes annoyed me by how quickly he'd just slip something important in. Pleasant in some places, frustrating in others. From reviews I've read, there are others who caught on to especially one particular scene in the second book that's worth all this gushing.
-Potters. There's no guarantee that anyone will like them, even in part, but I did. That's compounded by the change in style the books undergo as they progress. They tickle the same fan's-inspiration part of the brain as Star Wars (KotOR) and the Zelda games.



If I get bored enough, I might catalogue everything I've read up to date. Shouldn't even be impossible, there's only a couple of books that aren't in the house currently.

This post has been edited by Gastogh on 27 Aug 2008, 18:17

[Thanuir]

Currently or soon reading: D&D 4e PHB, Efemeros, Tieto, totuus ja todellisuus, Tractatus logico-philophicus (again) and few complilations of novels by Robert. E. Howard.


Gastogh, I'd recommend Celtika and so forth by Holdstock. They are about Merlin. And few other famous characters.

[Gastogh]

It will probably take me well over a year to read these all, but I'll see about those then if Holdstock retains my interest.

Oh, might as well edit in a list of some favorites and recommendations into the first post.

[Gastogh]

I'm now 130 pages into the second installment of Holdstock's books and struggling to keep going. Is this book and the ones that follow going to cling to that same pattern of "never mind how much you understand, there will be an ending and adequate resolution, but forget any explanations"?

It helps not that this time the main character's perceptions of the proceedings and the insanity-encroaching "duh, it's real, why can't the rest you see that?"-model of thought has alienated her from all sympathies. That was what kept me sitting for five hours with the first one even when there was little in the plot itself to commend and its lack shows.

[Thanuir]

I have read three books, mostly for the setting and atmosphere. Not story. Kinda incidental, IMO.

[Gastogh]

I'll now be reading Holdstock when I go to the library for whatever reason, or until I run out of other books and online material. No active efforts to get there; good enough to read but not bother about. Loaning is no-no.

Instead, I read Guns, Germs and Steel, and it was good. If you don't know the outline of the theme, it delves into the reasons beyond why certain cultures in certain locations fared differently. It was worth it throughout (with some exceptions, notably pages and pages' worth of tracing the spread of certain languages throughout Indonesia and Africa. Those parts brought out my aversion to factual literature out so much that I didn't even grasp what they were trying to prove. Le sigh.), but one of the most interesting points that stuck with me was that the only standing reason why China didn't become a rather sovereign world power from early on was too much solidarity and certain unfortunate developments that rose from that. They had virtually everything else except competing societies, and so Europe, which up until 1500 was mostly a play- and testing ground for developments made elsewhere, rose up.

As to setting and atmosphere rather than plot, it took me a while to figure it out but then I realized that the main reasons I read ElfQuest are the art, setting and atmosphere. Funny how that goes.

Now I'm going through A Secret Atlas, which feels promising.

[Gastogh]

The two The Age of Discovery books by Stackpole were good. Nothing very special so far, but good to read and sharing in on the gore present in Martin's books. The setting was a "rebuilding after the Cataclysm"-type, where C was of course magic-caused. That wasn't very interesting, all told, since history's ambiguities are crucial to the plot and couldn't be revealed. There was considerable political maneuvering that I felt I mostly missed out on since the motivations and facts behind them were only handed out as they surfaced. Would've been nice to try to predict some moves but oh well... There were some memorable events and phrases that added good spice.

Currently going is the third installment of Sword of Shadows. So far it's good, but nothing stands out as particularly noteworthy.

A large supply of Tad Williams books has been produced, and I'll start on those after I'm done with two Keyes books, which are up next.

[Thanuir]

Soon reading: Random sword and sorcery novel collections, Crichton's Jurassic Park, some short books about Turing and Heidegger, one book on fuzzy logic and Dogs in the Vineyard, a roleplaying/story game, by Vincent Baker. Also, the e-book Against intellectual monopoly by Boldrin and Levine.

Further, lecture notes on differential equations, integral calculus and the history of philosophy. Damn exams.


Are the Tad Williams books about the three swords, which I think are named Memory, Sorrow and Thorn?

[Gastogh]

Dunno yet. The one who read them before me described them as "basic stories about swords, princesses and dragons, but well written" if my memory serves.

[Thanuir]

Notes about Jurassic park, as it contrasts with the movie of same name.

The movie is action/adventure - technology demo (animated realistic dinosaurs).
The book is science fiction - action/adventure - kinda mystery.

By science fiction I mean literature which explores the effects of high technology on human society. In this case, there is also some philosophy (ethics) of science.

By kinda mystery I mean that there is one major (few minor) mysteries that are revealed, piece by piece, in the book. Guessing them is difficult, but seeing them revealed little by little is, at least for me, enjoyable.

I like the book better. This should not be a huge surprise.

I'll be re-reading Lost world, the sequel, sometime later. It may be a disappointment.


On Sumean logiikan oppikirja: I'd recommend the second chapter of this book to anyone who studies mathematics and wants to know what is going on in the background. It summarises many a useful concept, such as relations, naive set theory, mappings (functions), basic logic and mathematical induction (which is a form of deductive thinking).


DitV was as good a read as I assumed. Really getting it would require actual play. Maybe after the renewed Dragongame.