What BOOK(s) are you reading?

Duke- The Lankmar books are overrated. I tried them as well and they don't stand up well as an adult reading them. I think that alot of the pro- Lankmar sentiment is nostalgia.

Michael Moorcock is better and writes in a similar vein though though larger scale. Burroughs is better too.

Currently finished Scalped (comics) which I very much enjoyed and pick up Chronicles of the Black Company as it is in my head lumped into similar genre as Lieber but a series of classic books I never read. I'm enjoying it.

Looking for good histories or biographies if anyone has any suggestions.

For reasons I can't remember I recently decided to start reading Warhammer 40K novels. I read the first three Horus Heresy books; Horus Rising (Dan Abnett) was very good, False Gods (Graham McNeill) was terrible, and Galaxy in Flames (Ben Counter) was better, but not as good as Horus Rising.

After that I swore off reading anything else by McNeill (ever) and searched out more Abnett books. I ended up reading Double Eagle, which was excellent. The book is almost entirely about the air force on a strategically important world and it's mostly a series of air battles to stall a Chaos advance. Abnett does a great job with the dogfights and I wouldn't have cared if the book was 100 pages longer.

Right now I'm on book 3 of Abnett's Eisenhorn trilogy. Eisenhorn is an Imperial Inquisitor, which makes him a combination of secret police, spy, and wizard (due to his psionic abilities). One of my favorite things about the Eisenhorn books (in addition to the "hard-boiled detective" atmosphere of the books' plots) is how Abnett consistently comes up with novel and credible ways to challenge what could be an over-powered character in less-capable hands.

craniac wrote: I'm trying to read "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom" but Lawrence's writing style is driving me nuts.

i attempted to read that no less than 5 times. just could not get through it.

Read Paolo Bacigalupi's Pump Six, a collection of his short stories.

Man, there is some grim shit in that book. I wasn't unprepared. having read The Wind-Up Girl already, but somehow the eco-collapse, genetic tinkering, and chemical soup stuff that pervades a lot of the stories just hits harder in short form. More focused or something.

Not a mood-lifter, that's for sure.

I can't tell if I should try a run at the second half of Mason & Dixon that I'm currently stalled on, or read something a little quicker and lighter.

Me and the massive modern novel may be parting ways a bit, which is not something I thought would ever happen.

SebastianBludd wrote: After that I swore off reading anything else by McNeill (ever) and searched out more Abnett books. I ended up reading Double Eagle, which was excellent. The book is almost entirely about the air force on a strategically important world and it's mostly a series of air battles to stall a Chaos advance. Abnett does a great job with the dogfights and I wouldn't have cared if the book was 100 pages longer.

Double Eagle's set in the Sabbat Worlds campaign, the Phantine were first introduced in book 5 of the Gaunt's Ghosts series, IIRC (Guns of Tanith?).

If you want Abnett's take on a huge Titan clash to claim a planet (also in the Sabbat Worlds and with some familiar faces from the Ghosts series), try his Titanicus. It's a fast read.

Of course you can't really go wrong with most of Abnett's Black Library output, and the Gaunt's Ghosts series is great military SF. Once you're done Eisenhorn, check out the sequel trilogy, Ravenor. I haven't picked up Pariah yet.

DukeofChutney wrote:

Columbob wrote:
Whoa man, that's blasphemous! I think Leiber's a better author than Howard for sure, and the Lankhmar books are pretty awesome, some really great stuff there. Which stories have you read?

I read all 7 "books", but the latter two (Ice Magic and Knight & Knave) are really weak though, Leiber was writing some weird sexual fantasies shit with those two, guess he was feeling his death looming, especially in book 7.

I might have another go. I read the Snow Women, and Ill Met in Lankhmar so far. I will probably give the 2nd and 3rd book at least a try.

Are there any stories you recommend. Its not that i think they are bad, but they don't do much for me. I really need the development of some mystery or sinister threat to get me into a book.

The problem with the first book is it's the introductory stuff, and Snow Women was written later on to show where Fafhrd comes from before he met the Grey Mouser. I liked Ill Met well enough, but there's better stuff to come in books 2-3. I think the second one (Swords Against Death) has some of the best stories of the bunch. Check out The Howling Tower, The Price of Pain-Ease, The Bazaar of the Bizarre. Cloud of Hate et Lean Times in Lankhmar in book 3 are also worth a look.

Thanks Column, I'll have a crack at it, now that i've finished the first two volumes of the New Sun.


@ Not Sure

I also have read the first part of Mason and Dixon. I ran out of steam on St Helena though. I aspire to like the modern/postmodern novel, but often struggle to stay engaged. The Book of the New Sun being the exception though.

repoman wrote:

craniac wrote: I'm trying to read "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom" but Lawrence's writing style is driving me nuts.

i attempted to read that no less than 5 times. just could not get through it.

I have a hard copy of this somewhere. I will read it just to show you tossers who's the man around here.

Reading THE OFFICE OF MERCY, though I probably shouldn't. It's not as shitty as DIVERGENT, which was colossally shitty, but it's same fucking story. What is with the teenage post-apocalyptic American girls these days? Has this formula been improved upon since TANK GIRL? I don't get this obsession. At least this one is sliiiiiightly less obnoxiously chaste than DIVERGENT. But man, with BRAVE NEW WORLD still a thing, authors have become so gutless.

I have RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA and THE HAMMER OF GOD waiting in the wings.

I also read THE PERFECT THEORY, which is about general relativity and a pretty good read.

DukeofChutney wrote: Thanks Column, I'll have a crack at it, now that i've finished the first two volumes of the New Sun.


@ Not Sure

I also have read the first part of Mason and Dixon. I ran out of steam on St Helena though. I aspire to like the modern/postmodern novel, but often struggle to stay engaged. The Book of the New Sun being the exception though.

I got through that and have made it all the way to America! I think when I put it down they were doing latitude calculations for the so-named line.

I used to love this stuff, but the last few big-ass modern novels I've read have felt so much more like work than fun. Maybe I should read Lawrence with Thirsty, I don't want to be a tosser.

Stan Leer wrote: Duke- The Lankmar books are overrated. I tried them as well and they don't stand up well as an adult reading them. I think that alot of the pro- Lankmar sentiment is nostalgia.

Michael Moorcock is better and writes in a similar vein though though larger scale. Burroughs is better too.

Currently finished Scalped (comics) which I very much enjoyed and pick up Chronicles of the Black Company as it is in my head lumped into similar genre as Lieber but a series of classic books I never read. I'm enjoying it.

Looking for good histories or biographies if anyone has any suggestions.

Some of Moorcock's Eternal Champion material is excellent, as good as anything written by the best fantasy writers. However, he wrote the Hawkmoon books very quickly for cash, and he has publicly acknowledged that they are bad. And I found most of the Jerry Cornelius stories to be garbage. Sometime around Gloriana, his style of writing changed. The explosive creativity dimmed, the pacing slowed down, and the plots tended to meander. With the exception of a short Elric story published by White Wolf, I haven't enjoyed anything written by Moorcock in the last 20 years.

Compared to Moorcock, Lieber's output has a more reliable quality. Not as good as Elric or some of the other Eternal Champion stories, but better than most of the rest of Moorcock's writing.

I loved Scalped, except towards the end, when it seemed that Jason couldn't decide how to end the story and then decided to use all of the potential endings.

I recently re-read (most) of the Black Company series. The first four books are great, but proceed with caution after that. The first book of the South is still good, but then Cook writes himself into a quagmire named Dejagore, and the story gets stuck for about three books. To make matters worse, Cook bounces all around a complex timeline with an unreliable narrator, and the results aren't pretty. The series moves to a much more interesting setup towards the end, but then it seems like Cook doesn't quite know what to do with it.

History or biography? I recommend The Poisoner's Handbook, by Deborah Blum for a fascinating look at forensic science in New York City in the early 20th century. Medical examiner Dr. Charles Norris did some amazing work that advanced the entire field. Blum does a great job of making the science accessible to the reader. For a sample of her style, check out the Amazon listing for the book, where she has posted her top ten list of poisons.

A few days ago, I finished reading The Zenith Angle, by Bruce Sterling. It was okay. It was written in 2004, and takes place during the first twelve months after 9/11, focusing on a talented computer programmer who was a casualty of the dotcom bust and then gets involved with the Department of Homeland Security.

However, there is one suddenly relevant and interesting aspect of the story. One particular counter-terrorism measure developed in the story is the ability to remotely hack the controls of a plane, such that somebody who isn't even on board the plane can control the movement of the plane. In the story, it only worked under very specific and limited conditions. But now this idea becomes chilling in light of the latest update about Flight MH370:

"Update: MH370's Flight Path Was Altered By Computer Command, Not Manual Controls"

www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2014/03/..._communications.html

So my wife bought me a kindle. It has completely transformed my reading. I haven't read this much (for fun, my job is concentrated on reading) since I was in high school.

I read Krakauer's book on Pat Tillman and his death by friendly fire in Afghanistan. It was just ok, not as good as "Under the Banner of Heaven" about Mormonism and Mormon fundamentalism, nor his early books. But it is the most ironic, terrible book insofar as Tillman fucking hated what the US government had made the War on Terror into, and yet they went ahead and covered up his death to the best of their ability to make him look like he had died a "patriotic" death by enemy fire---in accordance with his direst suspicions about the US government. I don't consider his death by friendly fire any less patriotic, but Tillman must have been literally rolling in his grave based on the journal entries that Krakauer includes in his book.

Right now I am reading the Rick Atkinson books on WWII, Army at Dawn is the first book. Preface this by saying I have read a shit ton of WWII books. I love the book (I'm in the first one). Niggling in the back of my mind, throughout the many books I've read on war and WWII, is the fact that it never made sense. Every description I read about the American Civil War, WWI, Korean War, certainly Afghanistan and Iraq, has made it perfectly clear how terrible and arbitrary war is. US troops are constantly doing stupid things, being commanded to do stupid things, and the whole thing just barely blunders along under staggering incompetence. AND YET, this "greatest generation" bullshit has embedded so deep into popular consciousness that you rarely read something that treats WWII the same way. This book does that. Suddenly, WWII is exactly like all the other wars---horrible incompetence, near mutinous normal soldiers, cowardice equal to any valor. It's like the biggest breath of fresh air to my WWII corpus of reading. STRONGLY recommended.

The Kindle app on my phone really changed a lot about my habits, too. I still buy regular books occasionally, but I read the vast majority on my phone these days, especially because it's so easy to get new ones. I'm standing in line at the grocery store and thinking: "Hey, I finished X book. Time to get something new?" 10 seconds later I'm starting a new book and am halfway through the first chapter by the time I get up to the front.

I'm currently reading Dangerous Women; the anthology edited by GRRM and Gardner Dozois. I'm about halfway through it and really enjoying it. The highlights have been Joe Abercrombie (I appreciate his very dirty and bleak style here the same way I did with the First Law trilogy), Jim Butcher (Urban wizardry usually catches my eye and he has an ear for clever dialogue), and Carrie Vaughn (the matter-of-fact depiction of the Soviet female pilots during WW2 was excellent.)

Gary Sax wrote:
Right now I am reading the Rick Atkinson books on WWII, Army at Dawn is the first book. Preface this by saying I have read a shit ton of WWII books. I love the book (I'm in the first one). Niggling in the back of my mind, throughout the many books I've read on war and WWII, is the fact that it never made sense. Every description I read about the American Civil War, WWI, Korean War, certainly Afghanistan and Iraq, has made it perfectly clear how terrible and arbitrary war is. US troops are constantly doing stupid things, being commanded to do stupid things, and the whole thing just barely blunders along under staggering incompetence. AND YET, this "greatest generation" bullshit has embedded so deep into popular consciousness that you rarely read something that treats WWII the same way. This book does that. Suddenly, WWII is exactly like all the other wars---horrible incompetence, near mutinous normal soldiers, cowardice equal to any valor. It's like the biggest *breath of fresh air to my WWII corpus of reading. STRONGLY recommended.

I second that 100%. His intro to Army at Dawn sums up why I think he's great.