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inhumanist
Metal freak

Joined: Fri Jan 14, 2011 5:09 pm
Posts: 5634
PostPosted: Tue Jul 15, 2014 4:48 am 
 

I find that classical is often a good choice while reading. There are usually no vocals to stress your Broca's area, so whether it's distracting or not mostly depends on whether the mood of the piece fits the book. Plus metal actually draws from a fairly limited set of topics and emotions, but just like literature there's classical music about almost anything.
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Rompestromper
Metalhead

Joined: Mon Jun 23, 2014 2:37 pm
Posts: 462
Location: Netherlands
PostPosted: Tue Jul 15, 2014 7:21 am 
 

When I am in the train or another area were people are talking (e.g. work) or there are distracting noises I put on a cd with which I am very familiar and which really puts a wall between me and the noise. I cannot listen to anything with clean vocals though (not that I have any haha!) it is mainly voices that are distracting me most of the time.

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andersbang
Metalhead

Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2009 9:28 am
Posts: 1069
PostPosted: Tue Jul 15, 2014 12:57 pm 
 

I always listen to music while I read, even if it's study material, and I pretty much listen to whatever I normally listen to. New music I'm not familiar with, especially 'demanding' stuff (say experimental death metal or something), is a no go while I read, and sometimes, depending on mood, so is rap, because it distracts my reading. I don't listen to music when I'm reading in bed either.

-

Reading wise I just finished off The Imago Sequence by Barron, which was at times very disturbing, he has a great take on the weird and cosmic horror, though he sometimes try very hard to be 'cryptic' and to have unreliable narrators. Cool anyway, and I love his stuff. I also read through The Least of My Scars in one sitting, very gripping and disturbing, a relatively easy read, it (obviously) reminds me of American Psycho in the way we get an insight into a truly demented and murderous mind. Now I just started a Western, Warlock, by Oakley Hall, which is supposed to be both 'literary' and very much a genre book. Let's see.

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Nahsil
Clerical Sturmgeschütz

Joined: Sun Jan 08, 2006 2:06 pm
Posts: 4577
Location: United States
PostPosted: Tue Jul 15, 2014 1:26 pm 
 

I like listening to psyambient like Carbon Based Lifeforms. Depends on what I'm reading though, that's good for scifi and stuff.
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Azmodes
Ultranaut

Joined: Fri Nov 02, 2007 10:44 am
Posts: 11193
Location: Ob der Enns, Austria
PostPosted: Fri Jul 18, 2014 11:04 am 
 

Has anyone here read Feersum Endjinn by Iain M. Banks? How did you make it through those stupid phonetically spelled chapters?
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Thumbman
Big Cube

Joined: Mon Nov 16, 2009 6:47 pm
Posts: 4473
Location: Canada
PostPosted: Fri Jul 18, 2014 12:21 pm 
 

Just finished Neal Stephenson's Reamde. Coming in at over 1000 pages, this is a sprawling piece of work. It touches on a plethora of topics - technology, geopolitics, crime ect. and more than anything puts on a successful balancing act - it is both a smart effort as well as an action-packed page turner. Although the events of the book are technically plausible although wildly unlikely, a little suspension of disbelief goes a long way. There is a diverse and engaging cast of characters - from a Hungarian hacker to a Russian mercenary and a Welsh-born black jihadist leader. This book barely felt half its length; it's full of cliffhangers and definitely one hard to put down. I only have two minor criticisms of this novel. A big part of the book is about a fictional online RPG in which a virus used to blackmail users into forking over money sets off the main chain of events. The detail put into describing this computer-generated universe is a bit excessive and could have been reeled in a bit without harming the plot in the least. The first and last thirds of the book were impossible to put down, but it does plateau a bit in the middle. This can be mostly forgiven as setting up the last chunk does require a lot of things to happen and it never actually begins to teeter towards tedium. In all, this was a great read and I'll definitely be reading more from the author (especially since my dad owns the majority of his books).
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failsafeman
Digital Dictator

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PostPosted: Fri Jul 18, 2014 3:34 pm 
 

I read Snow Crash earlier this year and really enjoyed it. It's Stephenson's best-known book, and the book which essentially launched his career, so it's probably a good place to go from there. If you haven't read much cyberpunk, like Neuromancer or various Bruce Sterling stuff, you might not get as much out of it as I did, though. It's basically every cyberpunk trope exaggerated to an absurd degree, and even though it's a bit shallow and very much style over substance, the style is fucking awesome enough that I was OK with that.
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Azmodes
Ultranaut

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PostPosted: Fri Jul 18, 2014 3:50 pm 
 

The only thing I've read by Neal Stephenson was Anathem and it's stellar. Really smart, exciting and very cool worldbuilding.
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Grave_Wyrm
Metal Sloth

Joined: Sun Mar 04, 2012 5:55 pm
Posts: 3928
PostPosted: Fri Jul 18, 2014 9:56 pm 
 

This reminds me I borrowed Snow Crash years ago and haven't read it yet. I shall rectify.

Recently experienced the mega-dope Powell's books in Portland for the first time. That was something to behold. I'm very down with bookstores that need maps. Committed to my historical non-fiction fixation, I picked up and launched into Tom Holland's Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic along with A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century (Barbara W. Tuchman). Love that title.

Rubicon is off to a good start. It's been a significant re-boot as far as my imagination of Rome, since Rome the Empire was significantly different than Rome the Republic. Turns out I didn't know shit about the Republic. Like .. essentially nothing. History obsessors turn up some pretty interesting things. Those who write well make it all the more interesting and entertaining. Holland waxes a bit overwrought now and again, but nothing I can't ignore, since the substance is more important than the narrative. As it is, the book's pretty hard to put down.
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Thumbman
Big Cube

Joined: Mon Nov 16, 2009 6:47 pm
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Location: Canada
PostPosted: Sat Jul 19, 2014 12:56 am 
 

failsafeman wrote:
I read Snow Crash earlier this year and really enjoyed it. It's Stephenson's best-known book, and the book which essentially launched his career, so it's probably a good place to go from there.

I'll check this one out. My brother's reading it right now and he said I can borrow it when he's done.
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TheStormIRide
Certified Poser

Joined: Fri Jan 20, 2006 6:45 pm
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Location: Brazildonesia
PostPosted: Sat Jul 19, 2014 1:01 am 
 

I'm a huge Stephenson fan. I started with Snow Crash as well. So far I've read Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, Anathem, Zodiac and I'm just about done with his System of the World trilogy.

Snow Crash is by far the best starting point. His character and world building skills are out of control. Hiro Protagonist remains one of my favorite characters of all time.
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theposega
Mezla

Joined: Tue Mar 11, 2008 9:42 pm
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Location: Neo-Allegheny City
PostPosted: Wed Jul 23, 2014 12:30 am 
 

Anybody here read anything by David Brin? I'm in the middle of Kiln People right now and it's pretty great.
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inhumanist
Metal freak

Joined: Fri Jan 14, 2011 5:09 pm
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 27, 2014 7:44 pm 
 

Been reading Alan Moore's "From Hell" for the last five hours or so which has left me rather traumatized and with severe headaches. Very recommendable indeed.
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Rasc
Metal newbie

Joined: Thu Dec 16, 2010 9:19 am
Posts: 205
Location: Brazil
PostPosted: Sun Jul 27, 2014 8:22 pm 
 

I've been re-reading Baudelaire. Some of his poems aren't great, some could easily be one of the best things you'll ever read.

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TheAntagonist
Metalhead

Joined: Fri Dec 10, 2004 9:55 am
Posts: 728
Location: United States
PostPosted: Tue Jul 29, 2014 8:36 am 
 

Rasc wrote:
I've been re-reading Baudelaire. Some of his poems aren't great, some could easily be one of the best things you'll ever read.


Love Baudelaire. If you like his stuff you may want to check out Arthur Rimbaud assuming you have not yet. He was influenced by Baudelaire and has an almost similar style complete with the dark imagery. Great stuff.

Quote:
I'm a huge Stephenson fan. I started with Snow Crash as well. So far I've read Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, Anathem, Zodiac and I'm just about done with his System of the World trilogy.


Really dug Snow Crash and Zodiac. Anathem was just too long and bloated. It seemed to drag forever.

Just finished Anubis Gates by Tim Powers. It had its moments but it was just so jumbled and all over the place at times. Kind of difficult to follow at times and became distracting.
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Rasc
Metal newbie

Joined: Thu Dec 16, 2010 9:19 am
Posts: 205
Location: Brazil
PostPosted: Wed Jul 30, 2014 5:47 pm 
 

TheAntagonist wrote:
Rasc wrote:
I've been re-reading Baudelaire. Some of his poems aren't great, some could easily be one of the best things you'll ever read.


Love Baudelaire. If you like his stuff you may want to check out Arthur Rimbaud assuming you have not yet. He was influenced by Baudelaire and has an almost similar style complete with the dark imagery. Great stuff.


I never went deeply into him, but he's indeed great. I'll take a better look.

By far, the writer that has resembled me the strongest of Baudelaire is a Brazilian freed slave called Cruz e Sousa, the main differences being his obsession with dreams and his more introverted sense of suffering. I recommend everyone who knows the language to take a look.

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iamntbatman
Chaos Breed

Joined: Sat Feb 21, 2009 5:55 am
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 31, 2014 9:52 am 
 

Finished The Silmarillion, which I hadn't read in ten years or so. Review copied over from my Goodreads page (I gave it 4/5 stars):

Spoiler: show
This would easily have been five stars if it weren't for the later stories in this collection having a definite feeling of being rushed or incomplete (in other words, more futzed-with by Christopher than the fleshier earlier bits of the book).

With that out of the way, let's get down to brass tacks. This tome is often slandered by even those who would call them fans of Tolkien's as being too heady or dense to be approachable, or too dry and biblical to strike the same emotional chords as Tolkien's more famous works. Having reread this book for the first time in quite a long time, I can say with certainty that, despite its somewhat cobbled-together origins, The Silmarillion is far from being simply some sort of drawn-out footnote or bloated appendix to The Lord of the Rings and rather stands on its own as a unique and very enjoyable set of tales.

Sure, there isn't really a central narrative at work here and thus the book doesn't follow a single cast of characters; it's a set of stories that together tell of the origins and early histories of Arda, Middle Earth and its peoples. Here, for the most part, you'll find fully fleshed out tales that were only teases and glimpses of a grand and magnificent past in Tolkien's more traditional novels, and being the writer that he was, the sheer scale of the awe that these stories inspire is exactly what you'd expect having already read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

In The Lord of the Rings, you see the magnificence and splendor of Lothlorien and Rivendell but come to understand that these Elven strongholds, while beautiful beyond belief, are mere shadows of the glory of the Eldar of the First Age. In the Silmarillion, Tolkien capitalizes on these sorts of tantalizing promises from his more famous works and delivers the high fantasy goods. The Silmarillion contains romances that set the paradigm for all romances, epic battles that utterly dwarf anything of the Third Age and magic used by forces both good and evil that is but a distant memory of unimaginable power for the characters that take part in the Lord of the Rings.

If the language used in the Lord of the Rings is headier and more formal than the quite conversational tone used in The Hobbit, the prose here is removed one step further but is still miles from incomprehensibility and contains large quantities of that colorful description that Tolkien is rightly famous for. The closest point of comparison is probably E.R. Edddison's The Worm Ouroboros, which uses similarly archaic language but lack's Tolkien's flair for completely organic-sounding invented languages and names. In short, The Silmarillion is a pleasure to read even on a basic, mechanical level and is not at all the imposing slab of weighty prose it's often made out to be.

Again, some sections of the book would have benefited from some extra detail. The account told here of the Fall of Gondolin is somewhat brief and simply not as exciting as the version from The Book of Lost Tales, which goes into more details of the battle and escape. The final section, which tells of events of the Third Age, is also woefully short and feels more like an outline than a final draft, unlike the earlier parts of the story. That fifth star would have been a no-brainer had these two sections in particular been up to par with the earlier bits, but even so this is a fantastic book and an absolute must-read for Tolkien fans and all lovers of high fantasy.
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OneSizeFitzpatrick
Metalhead

Joined: Thu Nov 03, 2011 4:56 pm
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Location: Bog of eternal stench
PostPosted: Fri Aug 01, 2014 9:35 pm 
 

Finished reading Three Kingdoms which is considered a classic Chinese historical novel, based in the late Han Dynasty(168-220AD) it chronicles the last emperor of the dynasty and the ensuing division of the empire into three separate kingdoms vying for power and control. To be honest, there's a lot of things that anyone without a pretty intimate knowledge of Chinese history (meaning me) won't get, but aside from that the story is pretty straightforward and entertaining through most of the book, LOTS of battles and sieges and clan-wide extermination for a book that's arguably over 600 years old. Chinese history is brütal.
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Nahsil
Clerical Sturmgeschütz

Joined: Sun Jan 08, 2006 2:06 pm
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 01, 2014 10:26 pm 
 

Started reading book #2, The Wizard. I tried to get into Zelazny's Lord of Light, wasn't bad, but wasn't really doing it for me. Kind of. I'm picky lately.
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iamntbatman
Chaos Breed

Joined: Sat Feb 21, 2009 5:55 am
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 01, 2014 11:34 pm 
 

How are you liking those books? I'll probably read them soon but first I'm gonna finish ASoIaF #5 then probably read some sci-fi (probably more Vance) as a palate cleanser before jumping into more fantasy.
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Nahsil
Clerical Sturmgeschütz

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PostPosted: Sat Aug 02, 2014 2:25 am 
 

I love Wolfe, but I never know how to talk about him or whatever. He's endlessly interesting, and sometimes that doesn't even mean pleasurable to me. I just never know what's going to happen next...sometimes it's really kickass and vivid, sometimes it leaves me scratching my head a little bit trying to figure out what the narrative is doing.

The language is less ornate/obscure than BotNS, the narrator's an adolescent, although Wolfe doesn't always stick to that when doing some of his awesome descriptions of things. I like it enough to read 500 pages per book without ever feeling like it's a chore...

On a personal note I think I'd enjoy it more if I was in a better place in my life - past year or two I've had my thumbs up my ass waiting around to get to grad school (which I'm starting this month!). Been a little listless at times so that's probably impacted my ability to fully enter his world here. That plus the sometimes non-sequitur narrative sequence...lol.
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Jasper92
Metalhead

Joined: Fri Mar 30, 2012 10:39 am
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Location: Netherlands
PostPosted: Mon Aug 04, 2014 4:51 pm 
 

I'm reading Goodkinds The Sword Of Truth series. Awesome so far. Just finished book #6. It takes me a while to get into the book but I always read the second half in a few days. I have this with a lot of books but with these books I know it's worth getting through it.
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Morrigan
Crone of War

Joined: Sat Aug 10, 2002 7:27 am
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 05, 2014 11:09 pm 
 

.....
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Messiah_X
Metalhead

Joined: Thu Jul 24, 2003 12:38 am
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Location: United States of America
PostPosted: Wed Aug 06, 2014 3:33 pm 
 

Just started Erikson's "The Crippled God," final book in his Malazan Book of the Fallen series. The series has it's ups and downs, but it's been a great ride. I've been reading the Esslemont novels on the side, to complement the BOTF timeline, but I'm waiting to read his last two until after The Crippled God. It's taken me about two years to get through these, and I'll probably keep an eye out for the new series these writers will be coming out with (the Kharkanas and Toblakai trilogies from Erikson, and Esslemont's upcoming novels about the early days of the Malazan Empire), but in the meantime, I'll be on the lookout for some new stuff in a similar vein, since I can probably expect to polish off another massive series before Winds of Winter comes out. Any recommendations? I've been thinking about Bakker, Donaldson, or Glen Cook next.

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failsafeman
Digital Dictator

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PostPosted: Wed Aug 06, 2014 6:30 pm 
 

Morrigan wrote:
.....

:lol:
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Azmodes
Ultranaut

Joined: Fri Nov 02, 2007 10:44 am
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Location: Ob der Enns, Austria
PostPosted: Wed Aug 06, 2014 6:54 pm 
 

Messiah_X wrote:
Any recommendations? I've been thinking about Bakker, Donaldson, or Glen Cook next.

It's been a while, but Bakker's Prince of Nothing trilogy is really something. Exceptionally cool world and story, if -in hindsight- somewhat pretentious execution. It's chock-full with philosophical musings and if you get over the protagonist basically being a superhero/Mary Sue (admittedly an interesting one, it sorta makes sense in-universe too), it's a very rich experience.

Are you familiar with Scott Lynch's Gentleman Bastard novels?
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Nahsil
Clerical Sturmgeschütz

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PostPosted: Wed Aug 06, 2014 7:03 pm 
 

Bakker writes on philosophy, cognitive science etc. Very very smart guy. Haven't read his fiction though.
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Messiah_X
Metalhead

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PostPosted: Wed Aug 06, 2014 7:29 pm 
 

Azmodes wrote:
Messiah_X wrote:
Any recommendations? I've been thinking about Bakker, Donaldson, or Glen Cook next.

It's been a while, but Bakker's Prince of Nothing trilogy is really something. Exceptionally cool world and story, if -in hindsight- somewhat pretentious execution. It's chock-full with philosophical musings and if you get over the protagonist basically being a superhero/Mary Sue (admittedly an interesting one, it sorta makes sense in-universe too), it's a very rich experience.

Are you familiar with Scott Lynch's Gentleman Bastard novels?


I'll probably check out Bakker next then. I've heard a lot of comparison between Erikson and Bakker in terms of philosophy. I haven't read any Bakker yet, but Erikson's characters will sometimes spend paragraphs mulling over topics of philosophy, politics, religion, sociology, etc. Sometimes that can be irritating, especially when it comes from the point of view of some minor soldier, peasant, or slave who just happens to be contemplating the meaning of life in the middle of some cataclysmic event, but if the plot and characters are good, I can get behind it.

I thought about checking out Lynch's novels at some point, but Mr. Martin has made me skeptical about unfinished series. I did enjoy Joe Abercrombie's novels and hear that Lynch's approach is pretty similar in terms of combining ultraviolent pulp fantasy with witty humor. I'll probably check him out after a few more novels are released.

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Jasper92
Metalhead

Joined: Fri Mar 30, 2012 10:39 am
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PostPosted: Thu Aug 07, 2014 5:12 pm 
 

Morrigan wrote:
.....


??
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Metantoine
Slave to Santa

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PostPosted: Thu Aug 07, 2014 5:14 pm 
 

She meant that Goodkind is terrible. I would tell my 16 years old self not to read the first 10 books of Sword of Truth if I could.
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waiguoren
Veteran

Joined: Tue Jan 27, 2009 8:23 am
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Location: Umeå, Sweden
PostPosted: Thu Aug 07, 2014 7:05 pm 
 

Metantoine wrote:
She meant that Goodkind is terrible. I would tell my 16 years old self not to read the first 10 books of Sword of Truth if I could.


It's subjective y'know? Have you read the Goodkind books? Abercrombie gets a lot of love here, his fourth book made me want to kill myself. I don't know, a silly little Dutch guy is enjoying a silly fantasy series, should we really judge him for that? I say:

YES.

Fuck the Dutch, they're silly.
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iamntbatman
Chaos Breed

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PostPosted: Thu Aug 07, 2014 8:08 pm 
 

waiguoren wrote:
It's subjective y'know? Have you read the Goodkind books? Abercrombie gets a lot of love here, his fourth book made me want to kill myself. I don't know, a silly little Dutch guy is enjoying a silly fantasy series, should we really judge him for that? I say:

YES.

Fuck the Dutch, they're silly.


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Jasper92
Metalhead

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PostPosted: Fri Aug 08, 2014 8:18 am 
 

Hahaha
I don't care, I enjoy it. At least we made some great death metal and invented the awesome wooden shoes.
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failsafeman
Digital Dictator

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PostPosted: Fri Aug 08, 2014 12:59 pm 
 

waiguoren wrote:
It's subjective y'know? Have you read the Goodkind books? Abercrombie gets a lot of love here, his fourth book made me want to kill myself.

I've only read the initial trilogy, but I liked it well enough. Good old-fashioned page-turner type stuff, not too much depth to it, but he did create some pretty memorable characters and could write funny and violent parts pretty well, and the worldbuilding was cool, so I thought it was worth the money, at least. It certainly had flaws and some of the plotting was a bit shaky; could probably have used some liberal trimming here and there, but even the unimportant parts weren't boring exactly, and the style of the times is to write fucking giant turtle-crusher volumes, so it's probably more the fault of the editor than of Joe Abercrombie.
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oneyoudontknow
Cum insantientibus furere necesse est.

Joined: Sun May 21, 2006 6:25 pm
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Location: Germany
PostPosted: Sun Aug 10, 2014 11:07 am 
 

I am currently reading Laughter in Ancient Rome: On Joking, Tickling, and Cracking Up. Interesting how difficult it is to nail down the core aspects of what laughter actually is and how it has been misrepresented throughout the history. What had been written by Aristotle is generally mystified over excess, while Freud's writings are a mess and chaos when it comes to laughter and humans.

What the Romans laught about is actually a bit difficult to understand, because the centuries and the amount as well as handling of the copies -- what had been done by the monks or ... -- has lead to errors and misinterpretations. So, those scriptures that we have today are not necessarily those texts that had been written two thousands years before.
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failsafeman
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 15, 2014 12:43 pm 
 

So, for the Jack Vance fans in the audience (you know who you are), I started reading the Alastor trilogy last week. Each of the three books takes place on a different planet in the Alastor Cluster, a loosely-governed grouping of a few thousand planets that share a military and a general set of interplanetary laws but otherwise are left mostly to their own devices. I'm mostly through the first one, and it's classic Jack Vance; there's a vividly-depicted planetary culture, a clash of ideologies, and a ridiculous local sport involving trapezes, tanks of water, and the denuding of virgins.

I also tried to read Something Wicked This Way Comes, but stalled out about halfway through. I guess it's a classic, but Jesus H Christ is it overwritten to the extreme. Bradbury writes basically every single sentence in this highly poetic, absurdly purple prose. For some situations it would be fine, but it's EVERYTHING, and the story is just about two small-town boys meeting a sinister supernatural carnival. The events themselves are interesting enough, and the elaborate style works for the more exciting sections, but the style is just as elaborate when the kids are climbing trees as when they're encountering the fucking devil himself, which makes it an incredible slog to get through. The chapters are short but I end up "checking my watch" when I've barely ready a couple of pages. I'm not sure I've ever been more disappointed by a "classic" speculative fiction novel.
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Jonpo
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 15, 2014 12:47 pm 
 

Hussade!!! I fucking loved that one. I enjoyed all three of the Alastor books but they didn't really stick to the ribs very much for me. I don't mind that though, I can't wait to re-read them.

I've currently got my nose in The Stars My Destination courtesy of our buddy Germy/Count_V. It grabbed me right from the very beginning. The opening scenes with Foyle trying to survive in a decimated space ship is some of the most tense story telling I've read in a long long time. And it seems to be getting better from there, although I'm not very deep into it yet. The idea of "jaunting" and the way it changes the face of EVERYTHING we know is a very interesting angle to frame up the story.
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failsafeman
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 15, 2014 2:10 pm 
 

Oh, I've been meaning to read some Alfred Bester for ages. In particular that one and The Demolished Man, which actually won the first-ever Hugo. There are quite a few sci-fi authors from around that time who enjoyed a fair bit of critical/commercial success in their day, but are fading from public recollection, John Brunner being another of those.
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 15, 2014 2:21 pm 
 

Damn! I was hoping you'd read it. I probably shouldn't recommend a book "whole-heartedly" that I'm less than 70 pages into but so far I think you would love it. The opening that I was talking about...well I don't want to give away too much. Get your hands on it if you can. I'll probably have to look for more by Bester and see what this Brunner character is all about. I've been so entrenched in Vance/Leiber/Kornbluth/Howard for so long it's kind of refreshing to finally read a new voice.
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 01, 2014 12:10 am 
 

Finished A Feast for Crows earlier today. And let's just say I sure hope A Dance with Dragons is better. Cause damn.
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