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Thumbman
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 21, 2013 11:40 pm 
 

Is anyone familiar with a fair amount of Cormac McCarthy's work? What should I move on to when I'm finished with the Border Trilogy? I'm only two thirds done the first book, but its been amazing so far.
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RedMisanthrope
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 21, 2013 11:56 pm 
 

dystopia4 wrote:
Is anyone familiar with a fair amount of Cormac McCarthy's work? What should I move on to when I'm finished with the Border Trilogy? I'm only two thirds done the first book, but it's been amazing so far.


You'll be fine with whatever you pick up, but I'll just go ahead and suggest Blood Meridian. It's McCarthy turned up to eleven, the Old Testament meets the unromanticized west. It's also one of the top three books I've ever read. However, it's very dense. If you aren't feeling it in about fifty pages, switch to stuff like Child of God or even The Road. But I suggest you persevere with BM; it's one of those books that makes you wonder how it's possible for a single man to create something so monolithic.
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Metal_Detector
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 22, 2013 12:00 am 
 

All of you people are making me want to read Blood Meridian right this second. Can't wait to pick that up.

Edit: just bought it brand new at the book store. Fifteen dollars for a paperback is brutal, but eh, at least I can support ol' Cormac.
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andersbang
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 23, 2013 4:45 pm 
 

Good call on Blood Meridian, my favorite book (which I've said time and time again in this thread, sorry). RedMisanthrope said it best when he described it as Old Testament + no holds barred brutal Old Western expansion. This is not white settlers/cowboys vs native indians, this is everyone vs everyone, and everyone is brutal as all fuck. If you're not feeling the vibe, or it's too much for you (I have heard several reviewers say that they had to put the book down because of its bleakness and violence, and met several who put it down because they got stuck in a sludge of insanely well written but very dense and heavy language), then I'd suggest Outer Dark or Child of God first for some more obscure and merciless McCarthy, then The Road for some great imagery and language. Suttree is great, but it's more personal and, dare I say, 'normal', than the lives he conjures up in Outer Dark and Child of God. No Country For Old Man is great as a fast paced 'action-introduction' to McCarthy, and I've read it many many times, but against the crushing clarity and vision of his earlier works, it should be longer down your To Read List. For a different kind of window into the mind of McCarthy I recommend everyone to read his play The Sunset Limited, which is an easy accesible and quick read, though I never see it mentioned. Hope it helps.

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Metal_Detector
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 23, 2013 7:19 pm 
 

I'm glad that I just received Outer Dark in the mail then. That and Blood Meridian should keep me busy for a little while.

Before I can continue the McCarthy adventure, however, I must finished Stoker's Dracula. I'm about two thirds of the way through it, and it is a marvelous, enthralling book, far more so than I expected. The fascination over the story and vampires in general (which it and its most famous film adaptation are greatly responsible for) at last makes complete sense to me. The journal/letter format telling of the story is done in a pristine fashion, though if I have any qualm it is that each character is not differentiated enough in his or her use of language and writing style. Overall though, it's a minor complaint, and the book is epic in the true sense of the word.
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Empyreal
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 23, 2013 7:27 pm 
 

So much better than that lame Gary Oldman movie. :p

I've hit a bit of a slump with novels after 2666. I've re-read a few old favorites and been really wowed by Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl...that one was a really scathing, wry look and commentary on marriage, complete with real punchy, visceral thrills and good, good writing. But otherwise I just haven't been challenged or pushed to my limits like 2666. I bought one of Bolano's other books, Savage Detectives, maybe that will do it. Maybe I'll try some McCarthy next. I've read No Country from him in the past, which I hear is one of his most straightforward books.
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andersbang
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 23, 2013 9:14 pm 
 

It is, No Country, together with The Road, I guess. The Savage Detectives is a great read, but nothing near as dickpunchingly awesome and, as you say, visceral as 2666. Go for McCarthy after The Savage Detectives I would say, or maybe Littels The Kindly Ones, if you want something of 2666's magnitude.

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Scorntyrant
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 23, 2013 9:24 pm 
 

So, I finished the 4 "new sun" novels. What a headfuck that was! In some ways I think the writing is beautiful, particularly the stories from the brown book and that characters tell each other, in others I think it's really problematic. He seems to have a habit of throwing in game-changing events in the space of a paragraph with no preamble and little elaboration. Which is hard if you read, as I do, in fits and starts during a commute. Very easy to miss important things that way.
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Under_Starmere
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 23, 2013 10:13 pm 
 

Yeah, when I read it back in 2004/5 (god...it's actually been that long? :ugh: ) I would only read at home, with great patience, and no more than a couple chapters at a time. Even then I felt it took all my concentration to really absorb all he puts in front of you to the degree it deserved. And even then, yeah, it was easy to misconstrue/miss details because so many things on each page lead the mind to wonder and to various musings. Wolfe has a way of slipping revelatory details in under the radar that screws with your head a bit, and lazy reading wouldn't even do the work justice. One of the things I love about his storywriting is how elusive and mercurial it is... you never know when it's going to take some errant side passage that opens up completely unexpected possibilities. Characters will get entirely derailed from their intended goals, seemingly finding their own ways through his fictional worlds by sheer chance and their own desires and mistakes. There's a sense of utter unpredictability that opens up a fairly vast headspace if you let it.

Samuel R Delany also gives me that same sort of feeling in some of his novels. Still have yet to finish the Nevèrÿon series...
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Empyreal
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 23, 2013 10:15 pm 
 

andersbang wrote:
It is, No Country, together with The Road, I guess. The Savage Detectives is a great read, but nothing near as dickpunchingly awesome and, as you say, visceral as 2666. Go for McCarthy after The Savage Detectives I would say, or maybe Littels The Kindly Ones, if you want something of 2666's magnitude.


2666 changed my life, I think I mean that as much as I ever have, with any kind of media. It changed how I look at literature. It was more of an adventure, an ordeal, than just a book for me. At times it was earth-shatteringly brilliant and at other times it was frustrating in how long he was taking to get to the point, but he never lost the sense of epic scope and vision the whole thing had. I can say doubly that I am sure there is a lot of it I didn't "get" on one read...it was very dense and erudite, and a lot of it seemed to really have no purpose. But maybe not everything has to mean something - maybe it's all about the overall arc of feeling and breadth you get. What I got from 2666 was a sense of the futility of human life, the massiveness of time. There were a lot of things - each section had its own little motifs and themes really. Really great either way.

I meant visceral in connection to Gone Girl, actually, but yeah it fits 2666 as well, at times I suppose.
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failsafeman
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 23, 2013 11:07 pm 
 

Scorntyrant wrote:
So, I finished the 4 "new sun" novels. What a headfuck that was! In some ways I think the writing is beautiful, particularly the stories from the brown book and that characters tell each other, in others I think it's really problematic. He seems to have a habit of throwing in game-changing events in the space of a paragraph with no preamble and little elaboration. Which is hard if you read, as I do, in fits and starts during a commute. Very easy to miss important things that way.

It is easy to miss important things that way, but I really think you're not meant to catch every single thing. It's certainly not necessary to the enjoyment of Wolfe's writing, as long as you pick up enough to get the gist of it. Plus, it's so much more rewarding when you DO figure something out.
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Thumbman
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 24, 2013 2:10 am 
 

I think you guys have sold me on Blood Meridian.

Just finished All The Pretty Horses, the first book I've read by Cormac McCarthy, and I have to say it was brilliant. Truly gritty stuff and a refreshing take on the Western. The story was compelling and wonderfully written. He is relatively simplistic but uses all the right words with some wonderful descriptions that build a strong atmosphere. I liked his omission of some punctuation like quotation marks, I find it hard to explain why but it really worked well with the type of story it was. I would absolutely recommend this and I will definitely be reading more by the author.
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Nahsil
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 25, 2013 6:20 pm 
 

My least favorite professor ever is a big McCarthy fan. So is an ex-friend of mine who's a huge douchebag.

I need to read him anyway, though :P
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Tempered_Steel
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 02, 2013 9:30 am 
 

I have been on a serious Pynchon binge as of late, almost finished with Gravity's Rainbow, and Against The Day is next on my list. I feel that almost all books just seem trivial after reading a Pynchon novel, they are ridiculously entertaining while at the same time being exercises of the mind. I suppose the only similar authors I know of are David Foster Wallace and distantly perhaps Umberto Eco. I would recommended any of these fine auteurs to anyone seeking gigantic sprawling adventures that also make your brain hurt. Post-modernism sure has its critics but sure cannot get enough of the stuff.

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Messiah_X
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 02, 2013 10:31 am 
 

Metantoine wrote:
I finished Abercrombie The First Law trilogy this week and after almost 6 months of reading only stuff for school, it felt good to read some fiction again. The style and universe can definitely be compared to A Song of Ice And Fire as it's gritty, there's lots of politics and monarchy related feuds. The pacing of the book is awesome and it's a real page turner, I read Before They Are Hanged in like 2 days! Highly recommended for well written fantasy with memorable characters! Me and Morrigan were talking about a speculative casting and the show is even more adaptable than Game of Thrones imo since there's like 5 or 6 really important characters and a lot of action.


Abercrombie's work is awesome, and don't forget the "stand alone" novels (I consider them a loose trilogy in their own right, all sequels to the series). Best Served Cold was probably my favorite of the bunch, a kind of fantasy amalgamation of Kill Bill, Oceans 11, and the Dirty Dozen.

I'd be interested to see the speculative casting. I always thought Hugh Laurie, Steve Buscemi, or Michael Emerson for Glokta. Sure, they are all a bit old for a 35 year old character, but I always imagined him with a look aged beyond his years.

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waiguoren
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 05, 2013 2:11 pm 
 

Recent reads have been The Gentlemen Bastards series by Scott Lynch, a couple of Ramsey Campbell 'classics' and now a re-read of Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed.

I quite liked The Lies Of Locke Lamora, maybe because I had low expectations after reading the premise. For a first novel it is definitely a fun, well-written read, however talk about a botched up ending, everything was going great and then a climax is reached, after which everything fizzles out before the book was done. There were definitely parts though where I couldn't stop reading because I wanted to see what happened next, why is that feeling with books so rare these days?

The second book was not as good as the first, the pacing was really weird, some parts felt very rushed as if the author was not sure how next to proceed and then just jumped ahead. A lot of the characters were just plain silly, or too alike. I guess if you like cheesy pirate movies you might enjoy it slightly more than I did. I think the third book in the series is coming out this October, I'll read it but I do not have high hopes if it is anything like the second book. I'm hoping for some Bondsmagi action in it at least.

As for the Ramsey Campbell books, I read a few of his while in high school, then another one in 2004, so it's been a while, but basically if you've read one novel of his (as far as I can tell), you'll be familiar with his style as he's pretty consistent with it. He's good at creating atmosphere in his books, but a lot of times his characters just fall flat, or seem unrealistic. I struggle to find his books here in SA these days as so many second-hand bookstores have closed down, so I downloaded two of his I have never seen anywhere before, The Face That Must Die and The Doll Who Ate Its Mother.

I quite liked The Face, actually found some of the 'main' character's inner monologues quite funny at times. If you're interested in reading about a killer who spends a lot of time on buses getting pissed off about things, this is the book for you.
The Doll was more sloppy, not too surprising really as it was his first novel, but there were quite a few disjointed ends, questions that never got answered - the usual crap like that. Biggest issue again for me was the characters, my god what a boring lot. Actually had another Campbell book lined up but after this one I was all Campbelled out.
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Nahsil
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 05, 2013 6:29 pm 
 

Finished "The Gift of Therapy" by Irvin Yalom. Dude is the shit as far as existential and humanistic psychotherapy goes.
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failsafeman
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 05, 2013 8:18 pm 
 

I hope you realize you sound like a giant, giant dork sometimes.
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talvikki77
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 06, 2013 11:37 am 
 

Azmodes wrote:
Currently reading: James S. A. Corey - Leviathan Wakes
Well damn, what a vicious page turner. Awesome space opera so far. This has some very cool descriptions of a solar-system-spanning humanity divided. Only 150 pages in and already ordered the next novel in this trilogy.

Azmodes wrote:
Finished it today and the remaining 400 pages lived up to what the first 150 had promised, a damn fine book. Hopefully the trilogy as a whole holds up to this standard. Anything in particular you wanted to compare? I'm not the best comprehensive analyst when it comes to these things, apart from some very broad assessments... excellent pacing, likeable, well-crafted characters, very compelling setting (though Earth and Mars still need fleshing-out, I hope that gets dealt with a bit in the next two novels), awesome action and a good story.

Up next: Michael Moorcock - The Ice Schooner; finishing the third book in Hamilton's Void trilogy; and of course the next Expanse novel once it arrives (probably tomorrow)

Sorry it took me so long to get back to you! I wanted to know what you thought about the protomolecule. I was kind of thrown off when they discovered the girl and when the "vomit zombies" started happening (being vague in case anyone else plans on reading it). I guess because everything up till then had been so gritty, realistic and plausible, and besides for inventing weapons and methods of space travel, that was the first time they swerved hard into space fantasy territory. I know hardly anything about life sciences, but the whole thing seemed much more farfetched than the rest of the book. But still a great book for the characters, action and worldbuilding.

I finished reading Caliban's War a couple weeks ago and made some notes for a review, but haven't typed it up yet, oops. It's slower in spots than Leviathan, but the characters are still great, as is the action once it gets going. You will find out more about Earth, if you haven't already :)

Oh, and currently reading: The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi. What a weird book. I think there is a genre for these but I don't know what it's called - a futuristic setting with all sorts of made up things that I'm not even sure the writer fully understands. It was pretty irritating at first, not really being able to understand what was going on. It actually felt kind of like when I read in one of my foreign languages - I don't understand every single word, but enough to guess most of the new words and get the gist of the story. It was uncomfortable to feel that way when reading in English, though. But now I'm starting to get the hang of the universe, and it's kind of fun, not just waiting to find out what happens next, but figuring out how this weird universe works.

And, all right, to be fair, since I mentioned foreign languages, I'm also plugging my way through Mo Yan's Life and Death are Wearing Me Out (《生死疲劳》) in Chinese and just started a crappy martial arts novel called 《九阙梦华》. Mo Yan is deceptively simple - straightforward writing, yet an absurd story. (I mean that in the literary way, not insulting his story. It's about reincarnation, which promises to be fascinating. The glimpse of hell at the start of the novel really piqued my interest.) The crappy martial arts novel is..well, crappy, but I can't seem to resist them XD
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Nahsil
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 06, 2013 8:23 pm 
 

failsafeman wrote:
I hope you realize you sound like a giant, giant dork sometimes.


I'm just gonna quote Aristotle here. :P

"There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing."
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~Guest 282118
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PostPosted: Sat Aug 10, 2013 8:03 pm 
 

Bought myself a copy of Neil Gaiman's American Gods. It's intriguing so far, even tough I'm just going through the second chapter. I expect cool stuff, because Neil Gaiman.

Spoiler: show
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Nahsil
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 11, 2013 2:59 am 
 

I never got into American Gods, enjoyed Neverwhere more. I was kind of young when I read it though.
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waiguoren
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 11, 2013 3:20 am 
 

American Gods is pretty crappy, would choose Stardust over that one for sure, but then, I don't like Gaiman's stuff in general. Maybe he had some okay ideas with Sandman, he just doesn't execute them very well. Seems like he gets worse with age, because as far as his comic book stuff goes, Violent Cases was not bad. He's one of those Brit writers who seem to try and appeal to an American audience by glorifying many things in America, same as with Garth Ennis and Preacher. Hard to tell really, that's just the impression I picked up.
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Nahsil
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 11, 2013 3:30 am 
 

I loved the Stardust movie, it appealed to my lonely 17 year old self pretty strongly. Been meaning to read it for a while.

But yeah, he's obviously overrated.
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Empyreal
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 11, 2013 3:48 am 
 

I had a lot of fun with American Gods; pretty cool book even if it's not a classic or anything. I tried to read Anansi, or whatever it was called, and couldn't get into it much. AG was cool just for how big and pulpy everything was - I always have a soft spot for that kind of American mythos and goofy metaphors and such. It was enjoyable. Not sure I'd read it over and over, but still.
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 11, 2013 12:16 pm 
 

So, mixed reception, eh?

I decided to buy it mostly because I liked the premise and, so far, I've enjoyed a good deal of Gaiman's stuff, even if he's sometimes too "out there" for my taste. I really don't mind the whole thing about romanticizing America, mostly because the country truly has a very rich folklore, so it's not hard to see why a fantasy writer would be fascinated by it.

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Nahsil
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 11, 2013 2:50 pm 
 

I do want to read Good Omens, being a big Pratchett fan.
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Under_Starmere
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 11, 2013 3:47 pm 
 

American Gods kinda sucks. You'd probably be better off picking up something else instead. I don't think it really romanticizes America, either...that's not really a very recognizable theme of the book. Plenty of more interesting fantasy out there, to be sure.
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RainbowPrius19
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 12, 2013 12:43 am 
 

I was reading the Malazan Book of the Fallen and I finally finished Midnight Tides. But it took me almost a year to finish it because it was just so boring. So now I am on the Bonehunters and I find myself going on Wikipedia or some other site to review things that happened in the first books; so I am thinking of starting over. Do you guys have experiences like this and if so what did you do. I might just read some detailed summaries of what happened in the other books and keep reading the Bonehunters. Besides that has anyone else read it and if so what did you think? Also does anyone know of any books that are like MBOTF?
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failsafeman
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 12, 2013 1:15 am 
 

I just don't understand why people love such absurdly long, multi-volume fantasy series so much.
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Nahsil
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 12, 2013 2:02 am 
 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escapism

:P
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failsafeman
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 12, 2013 2:52 am 
 

Well sure, but I'd rather read that same ridiculous pagecount made up of different books, or at least shorter series. None of these giant series ever seem to be good through to the end. I understand why authors do it, of course; if you manage to establish a series people like, you can basically churn out volume after volume to guaranteed high sales. I just have a hard time understanding why people keep buying them, after so many have petered out toward the end.
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MARSDUDE
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 12, 2013 3:00 am 
 

Because, for them, the world the author has created is something more than just a series of books. It doesn't get boring for them. Getting lost in that type of world is comforting.

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waiguoren
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 12, 2013 4:40 am 
 

The Malazan world is interesting???

I made it through the first six books of that series, probably one of my greatest accomplishments seeing as how I can count on hand the amount of characters I actually found interesting. Maybe the Tiste Edur too, I liked them, but I think that was mainly because they had gray skin and favored the use of spears. I swear that in the fifth or sixth book a character popped up and I still don't know who the hell she was, where she came from, what her backstory was (I refused to look at the wiki while reading it). Someone told me though that in order to really appreciate the series you have to read the ten books, then re-read them as more things will make sense that way. I can think of better ways to spend a year's worth of free time though, like trying to build a canoe out of toothpicks.
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daimajin
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 12, 2013 5:02 am 
 

I've really been trying to read more fiction lately. Just finished H.P. Lovecraft: Great Tales of Horror. First time really digging into Lovecraft. I now see what all the fuss is about. Before that it was Dirty Work by Larry Brown. Next up, something a bit lighter. Picked up this book called The Green Man: Tales from the Mythic Forest from a local second hand shop. Looks like a fun read.

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MARSDUDE
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 12, 2013 10:36 am 
 

waiguoren wrote:
The Malazan world is interesting???

I made it through the first six books of that series, probably one of my greatest accomplishments seeing as how I can count on hand the amount of characters I actually found interesting. Maybe the Tiste Edur too, I liked them, but I think that was mainly because they had gray skin and favored the use of spears. I swear that in the fifth or sixth book a character popped up and I still don't know who the hell she was, where she came from, what her backstory was (I refused to look at the wiki while reading it). Someone told me though that in order to really appreciate the series you have to read the ten books, then re-read them as more things will make sense that way. I can think of better ways to spend a year's worth of free time though, like trying to build a canoe out of toothpicks.


Obviously if you don't like the world or the characters, then you won't find it interesting, would you? Different tastes and all that jazz.

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waiguoren
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 12, 2013 12:47 pm 
 

True. I guess I'll read the rest of them someday, I am quite concerned about what Quick Ben's fate will be.
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failsafeman
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 12, 2013 3:39 pm 
 

MARSDUDE wrote:
Because, for them, the world the author has created is something more than just a series of books. It doesn't get boring for them. Getting lost in that type of world is comforting.

See, I can relate to getting "lost" in that type of world, but not when the books get shitty. Worldbuilding just isn't enough. I enjoyed the First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, and the world that Stephen R Donaldson creates is very interesting and clearly well thought-out, but that still didn't stop me from feeling very dissatisfied with the Second Chronicles and essentially writing off the Last Chronicles. Luckily Donaldson wrote each trilogy to have its own satisfying conclusion, so if I ever feel like re-reading the first trilogy, I'm not going to be bothered by loose ends that only get resolved by the hit-and-miss second trilogy, or the crappy third trilogy.
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PhilosophicalFrog
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 12, 2013 4:01 pm 
 

I'd make fun of those people too - but I basically found myself reading the entire Horus Heresy because they were excellent pallet cleansers from academic works, and also because I just ended up getting sucked into the 40k universe. So, now I'm essentially 20 books deep. Ehh...might as well finish that shit out, whenever it ends...
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failsafeman
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 12, 2013 5:26 pm 
 

Well, I love the 40K universe myself, but after finishing Dan Abnett's Eisenhorn trilogy I'm not really sure I care to read more Black Library stuff. Basically the only things going for it were cool action and a cool setting; there was very little real character development, and the writing was also pretty clumsy at times. The first book was really exciting, the second book was pretty exciting, and the third book was a slog. Once the novelty wore off, there really wasn't much lasting worth to take up the slack.

Abnett has the really annoying tendency to make Eisenhorn figure out some mystery, and say he figured it out, but then not tell the reader what the solution was until like halfway through the next chapter. It's as corny as when on Scooby-Doo they set up a plan to catch the bad guy, but whisper amongst themselves so the audience can't hear (or as TVTropes calls it, the Unspoken Plan). Just a really ham-handed device to artificially increase suspense.
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