Currently Reading

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Alan
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Re: Currently Reading

Post by Alan » Sun Jan 12, 2020 8:35 am

Too long, dont read :p

Pre 2019 for a good few years I had read next to nothing book length. Really starting with when I went on night shift (or very early morning shift as the boss calls it ](*,) ) - I quite enjoy my job but I feel the weird hours had a proper impact on my ability to concentrate as easily as I used to. So last year around my birthday in June I decided to force myself to read at least a book a month and stop wasting as much time in bloody games, especially games that are just time sinks. So with an aim to ready 7 books I ended up doing 17 once I realised it really is all about routine and breaking bad habits it's second nature. Setting myself a challenge of 35 for this year.... so we'll see how that goes! :-k
Spoiler
Ancillary Justice/Sword/Mercy and Providence by Ann Leckie (all just fine)
Bobiverse trilogy and Singularity Trap by Dennis E Taylor (great fun, really enjoyed them all)
Bob Hodges trilogy, The Outsider, The Gunslinger, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, Doctor Sleep by Stephen King (man its rare to find a King book without some form of child sexual abuse isnt it?)
Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe (dry but very interesting)
Dogs of War by Adrian Tchaikovsky (probably my fav of the years reading)


Also read half of Northern Lights but its not grabbing me. There's nothing bad about it but it's probably something I should have read 20 years ago. Not sure if I'll go back to it

Off to a decent start for 2020....

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/509 ... _the_Three
I read the first chapter or so of this after I finished The Gunslinger and after the daft encounter with the "Lobstrosities" I decided this wasnt for me. Picked it up again at the start of the year (after doing a quick speedskim back through The Gunslinger to refresh my memory) and its not bad. The ideas and the visuals are all great though the inconsistent laws of the doors becomes a bit of a headache. The highlight was when Roland goes shopping in the final section. I dont think it was as good as The Gunslinger but it was better than the first few chapters made it seem.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29751398-the-power
I actually read half of this in December so its a split year one. Plot is women all over the world start gaining the ability to do very close range force lighting. Anywhere from light shocks to brain melting murder. This leads to women starting to flip the tables on the patriarchy and how that changes the landscape of the world and how women decide to use that power. It's actually a really great read. I dont really like the way the event at the end happens, the timeline feels a bit compacted and there is this "voice" one of the characters hears that I could do without but overall I really quite liked it. Its smartly written and it's not just a "women can run this place better than the men" thing. Apparently Margaret Atwood was the authors mentor for what thats worth.



I also started reading The Future Of Another Timeline which was so bloody awful I had to put it in the bin after a few chapters. I didnt even want to inflict it on the charity shop. It seemed to be about a team of time traveling women that try to change the timeline to make things better for women while the bad guys are going back to make things better for men. Maybe it gets better but the start was really poorly written and the women call themselves the "Daughters of Harriet" as in Tubman which made me laugh at the stupidity. I'm up for reading feminist leaning stories but I couldnt find anything worthwhile in here. It does seem to have good reviews so I'm probably wrong.




On the bookshelf already for this coming year so far...
Spoiler
Ive only ever read one Pratchett book (it was a Rincewind book) and it was a long time ago and since Discworld is so plentiful and intimidating by its sheer volume of titles I ended up buying the Long Earth trilogy... and the first Discworld book. Never even heard of The Long Earth before just noticed them in the shop and figured I'd risk it for a biscuit *shruggyemoticon*
The next 3 Dark Tower books.
Imajica & The Great and Secret Show by Clive Barker
The Radium Girls by Kate Moore
Graveyard Book and NOrse Mythology by Gaiman
Children Of Time, Children Of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky
..open to suggestions though! I tend to not get on that well with LotR style fantasy settings. Preference genres would probably be scifi or horror but those are both often done really bad so open to most suggestions!
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Achtung Englander
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Re: Currently Reading

Post by Achtung Englander » Fri Jan 24, 2020 9:33 pm

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Just finished. What a fantastic book 9/10
Games playing : Bioshock (Remastered) / Total War Britannia / Dirt 4

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Snowy
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Re: Currently Reading

Post by Snowy » Sat Jan 25, 2020 7:43 pm

Alan, the Dark Tower has some fantastic books and is well worth reading - thankfully I think you are finding that. There are some fairly large stumbling points within it, but there is enough gold to mine that you can forgive the occasional writing snafu. While I can recall the good and the bad elements (neither of which I will spoiler for you) the good massively outweighs the bad.

Stick with it, or you have forgotten the face of your father ;) Book 3 in particular is brilliant.
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Alan
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Re: Currently Reading

Post by Alan » Mon Jan 27, 2020 4:52 pm

Snowy wrote:
Sat Jan 25, 2020 7:43 pm
Stick with it, or you have forgotten the face of your father ;) Book 3 in particular is brilliant.
Book 3 was good up till the silly riddle stuff ;) Blaine is a pain!

Book 4. An 800 page flashback telling a story we already know the conclusion to. What a stupid idea that is........ and yet it’s brilliant! I thought it would have took weeks for me to slog through that but I couldn’t put it down. That’s by far the best so far for me. - overlooking the wizard of oz bit at the start :lol: This should have been made into the movie.

Charyou tree :(

Keyhole one now....
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Alan
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Re: Currently Reading

Post by Alan » Thu Feb 27, 2020 12:40 pm

I continue to serve the beam.

4.5 - Didnt really like that much. The stories were fine but how one of the stories was just dropped in the middle of the other one breaking the flow kind of stuck in my craw. Nothing really wrong with the book as a whole but I feel its the weakest of them all so far.

5 - Pretty great. Really wasnt a fan of the whole 'doom' thing and the sneetches trademark but the rest was fun. This whole series has so much great stuff in it but also loads of heavy handed rubbish! I feel if he had left some of the references much more subtle it would work better. I get that especially where it goes in book 6 it makes sense and fits the world building but it doesnt feel good reading it.

6 - This one was ups and downs for me. It was a case of a great idea, a dumb idea and then a great execution that brought the dumb ideas back round to being kind of great ideas. I really liked how it ended and was quite surprised how it affected me.


For arbitrary reasons of internet necessity Id say 4>1>6>3>5>2>4.5. I feel like 6 would be 2 places lower if it wasnt for the last 20 pages.


Onto 7 and I cant say I wont miss the ka-tet when its done. I even bought the Dark Tower compendium but I was a bit disappointed when it turned out to be basically a dictionary of terms. Hay ho!
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Re: Currently Reading

Post by Snowy » Thu Feb 27, 2020 6:50 pm

Yeah it is an amazingly imaginative epic - I am due a re-read at some point.
RCHD wrote:Snowy is my favourite. He's a metal God.
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Alan
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Re: Currently Reading

Post by Alan » Sun Mar 08, 2020 9:08 am

DT7: The Dark Tower
Annnd done! Finished it instead of sleeping ¬_¬
That was great. It's kind of fascinating how Kings seems to have used this as a kind of therapy after his accident. I also find it incredible that something written over 30+ years has such a consistent tone and feel and I would be very interested to know how much of it was designed and planned and from which point. Sure I would have liked if an edit removed all pop culture references and made then into subtle nods but overall for a 6000(?) page tale its pretty damn fantastic.

I'm not sure I'm 100% on board with the end but I also dont see any better way to end it so I guess I am on board with it. I liked Kings "subtle" dig at all the people that say he cant write an ending "You are the unfortunate ones who still get the lovemaking all confused with the paltry squirt that comes to end the lovemaking" :lol:

This could make a fantastic GoT HBO style TV show though I see one was in the worlds and Amazon passed on it and its currently being shopped around. I wont hold much hope because it needs budget and a commitment to see it though.

Spoiler
Oy, the brave, he of Mid-World :( :( :(

:( :cry:

Take the f'kin car Roland! :x
Now I'm going to self harm by watching the movie again. As hard as I try I can remember absolutely nothing about it other than not caring for it. At 90mins long though, thats plenty of run time to do justice to the Dark Tower!


edit: 4316 pages, I was a bit off ;)
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Re: Currently Reading

Post by Snowy » Fri Mar 13, 2020 5:19 pm

Regarding your spoiler, I have no shame in admitting I wept real tears.
RCHD wrote:Snowy is my favourite. He's a metal God.
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Alan
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Re: Currently Reading

Post by Alan » Fri Mar 20, 2020 12:24 pm

Snowy wrote:
Fri Mar 13, 2020 5:19 pm
Regarding your spoiler, I have no shame in admitting I wept real tears.
I was walking through Asda the day after and started thinking about it and I was on the verge doing that 'blink faster and think about something else' thing. :(





Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman
Cute, inventive and kitch but not great beyond the germ of the idea. I spent most of the time thinking this was just a retelling of every beat and plot point from Stardust replacing fairyland with London puns only to later find that this was actually written first - oops! #-o
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Re: Currently Reading

Post by Sly Boots » Fri Apr 24, 2020 7:48 am

Finally finished my epic read through of all the Witcher books, starting with the short story collections and moving through the novels, finishing with the most recent, Season of Storms, which actually in terms of timeline falls somewhere between the two. Mostly excellent, it must be said, and actually SoS was probably my favourite, it really was everything that makes the Witcher stories great but benefits from focusing solely on Geralt - during the novels I'd often find my interest waning a bit during the Ciri sections, and at times Geralt almost feels like a secondary character.

I've now moved onto a series called Raven's Mark by Ed McDonald, starting with Blackwing. I was hooked within the first few pages, and am eagerly devouring it swathes at a time. I'd already happily sit him alongside modern great fantasy writers like Joe Abercrombie and Mark Lawrence I'm enjoying it that much. Have you tried it, Snowy?

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Re: Currently Reading

Post by Snowy » Wed Apr 29, 2020 1:30 pm

Been bouncing around books a bit of late. Read some that I can't really recommend as they were 3/5 at best. Currently reading the latest by Chris Wooding (who wrote the fucking fantastic Ketty Jay books, a series you really should read if you haven't) following friends waxing lyrical about it, but not feeling it myself. It is decent but hasn't grabbed me.

In the pile I have a thriller series of three titles as well as the new book by Rob J Hayes, whose Ties That Bind series of grimdark nasties was suberb.
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Re: Currently Reading

Post by Rusty » Thu Apr 30, 2020 6:37 am

1984
Bought this in a charity shop (BL - before lockdown) and have only just started reading it. What a clever book.
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Re: Currently Reading

Post by Sly Boots » Thu Apr 30, 2020 7:30 am

Rusty wrote:
Thu Apr 30, 2020 6:37 am
1984
Bought this in a charity shop (BL - before lockdown) and have only just started reading it. What a clever book.
One of my favourites.

Finished Blackwing the other night, stayed up until the early hours to finish reading the last quarter of the book as I couldn't put it down.

Snowy, if you haven't read this series yet, highly recommended, think you'd be into it.

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Re: Currently Reading

Post by Hatredsheart » Thu Apr 30, 2020 9:07 am

Sly Boots wrote:
Thu Apr 30, 2020 7:30 am
Finished Blackwing the other night, stayed up until the early hours to finish reading the last quarter of the book as I couldn't put it down.

Snowy, if you haven't read this series yet, highly recommended, think you'd be into it.
If you've got a kindle Snowy the trilogy are currently 99p each on Amazon, just snapped them up myself.
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Re: Currently Reading

Post by Sly Boots » Thu Apr 30, 2020 9:16 am

Hatredsheart wrote:
Thu Apr 30, 2020 9:07 am
Sly Boots wrote:
Thu Apr 30, 2020 7:30 am
Finished Blackwing the other night, stayed up until the early hours to finish reading the last quarter of the book as I couldn't put it down.

Snowy, if you haven't read this series yet, highly recommended, think you'd be into it.
If you've got a kindle Snowy the trilogy are currently 99p each on Amazon, just snapped them up myself.
Yeah, that's the price I grabbed them at as well, great value.

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