The Books/Reading Thread

[no country for old wainds]

yeah, you kind of have to start with gardens of the moon. it isn’t as good as its successors but it’s still good.

 

[Somethingface]

I guess I should also get around to Donaldson as well since he is a major influence. Would it make sense to read the Thomas Convenant stuff first?

 

[no country for old wainds]

not really, they’re admirers of one another’s work and there’s definitely some overlap in themes and general unpleasantness, but they’re very different series, i’d say read erikson first but i’m biased. actually, as far as erikson mutual admirers go, i’d recommend scott bakker’s prince of nothing series over thomas covenant as well. cook’s black company is good as well (the erikson i’ve just started is dedicated to him, and cook has all but orgasmed over erikson in the past) and the easiest read of the four.

 

[Einherjar86]

Bakker's series is excellent, but a slog. It's also very self-congratulatory at times. He's a philosophy PhD (or nearly, can't recall if he finished), so... yeah.

I still need to finish The Black Company. Read the first book ages ago and liked it, never read the next two (I have the Chronicles omnibus edition).

 

[Vegard Pompey]

The first three Black Company books form a pretty amazing, self-contained trilogy with a satisfying ending. I highly recommend reading at least those three.

 

[no country for old wainds]

Bakker's series is excellent, but a slog. It's also very self-congratulatory at times. He's a philosophy PhD (or nearly, can't recall if he finished), so... yeah.

yeah, it's an incredibly original series conceptually and tonally though, i suppose a bit of pretentiousness comes with the territory. erikson also philosophises pretty hard particularly from midnight tides onwards, but his worldview really speaks to me, whereas bakker is rather perverse and alienating by comparison, which i don't mean as an insult at all but it can be more difficult to read at times. that said, so much of it is absolutely seared into my head in a similar way to something like blood meridian, and some of those characters are absolutely singular.

i'm sure i've asked this before but where did you get up to with erikson in the end ein?

 

[Einherjar86]

yeah, it's an incredibly original series conceptually and tonally though, i suppose a bit of pretentiousness comes with the territory. erikson also philosophises pretty hard particularly from midnight tides onwards, but his worldview really speaks to me, whereas bakker is rather perverse and alienating by comparison, which i don't mean as an insult at all but it can be more difficult to read at times. that said, so much of it is absolutely seared into my head in a similar way to something like blood meridian, and some of those characters are absolutely singular.

Agreed. Not sure if you’ve read the second series, but the Unholy Consult was pretty epic I thought, despite poor reviews. You finally make it inside Golgotterath...

i'm sure i've asked this before but where did you get up to with erikson in the end ein?

Yeah we’ve talked about this, I need to revisit it. I’ve read the first two books. The ending of Deadhouse kinda lost me, but I might have a totally different reaction now.

 

[TageRyche]

I finished reading an advance copy of the Kyle Mills thriller Total Power.

 

[Bloopy]

I started reading The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks. It's so fucked already, some of the funniest moments I've ever read in a novel.

 

[CiG]

Damn this one has allusions to stuff like Scanners and Altered States, really loving the way it describes dreamscapes and dream manipulation.

 

[Sirjack]

I started reading The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks. It's so fucked already, some of the funniest moments I've ever read in a novel.

great debut novel. wait til the end

 

[TageRyche]

I finished reading the Sherry Harris mystery novel From Beer To Eternity

 

[TageRyche]

I finished reading the Lorna Barrett mystery Handbook for Homicide.

 

[Einherjar86]

Excited to dig into this. Probably assign some of it for my course this fall.

 

[CiG]

The Outcast Dead was fucking amazing. Onto the next one...

 

[Einherjar86]

Just finished Paul Tremblay's The Cabin at the End of the World--gut-wrenching home invasion thriller that borders on horror but doesn't quite get there (or maybe it does...?).

Didn't enjoy this one as much as Head Full of Ghosts, but it was still a page-turner. Thinking about getting either Tremblay's most recent, Survivor Song, next, or his 2016 book Disappearance at Devil's Rock. Really like his writing style, he makes something mildly fun out of sheer horror (although Cabin was pretty heart-breaking).

 

[dwellerINTHEdark]

Just finished Paul Tremblay's The Cabin at the End of the World--gut-wrenching home invasion thriller that borders on horror but doesn't quite get there (or maybe it does...?).

Didn't enjoy this one as much as Head Full of Ghosts, but it was still a page-turner. Thinking about getting either Tremblay's most recent, Survivor Song, next, or his 2016 book Disappearance at Devil's Rock. Really like his writing style, he makes something mildly fun out of sheer horror (although Cabin was pretty heart-breaking).

Head Full of Ghosts looks interesting. Adding it to my list.

Currently reading Needful Things by Stephen King.

 

[Einherjar86]

Head Full of Ghosts is one of the coolest riffs on the possession narrative I've ever read/watched. It's also very self-conscious of its form, which lets Tremblay toy with his audience's suspicions and expectations. And on top of that, it has a sense of humor. Great book, I thought.

 

[rms]

Just can't with Grant anymore. Chernow's own bias in writing his narrative the drunkard/failure President and General is just too much. I guess I don't see how this book is at all persuasive, let alone some must-read non fiction. My first of his, probably not going back.

 

[Oblivious Maximus]

I really want to read Djinn at some point, haven't gotten my hands on a copy yet.

So I finished the collection of Djinn and La Maison de rendez-vous last week. La Maison is what anyone familiar with his style should come to expect and serves as a pretty fascinating precursor to his film The Blue Villa (1995) which really needs to be rescued from obscurity. Djinn was shockingly accessible. I figured it'd be one of his most dense and difficult given the whole textbook trickery but it's honestly where I'd tell newcomers to start with ARG. The sense of dislocation and narrative shifts are still there but it feels like he's holding your hand a bit along the way (there's a pun in that sentence you'll pick upon after reading). The actual grammar exercises he intended to teach with it don't become all that noticeable until later in the book in the form of repeated words and phrases and even that he does regularly in other novels.