NOW READING

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Night Prowler said:
Max Brooks - The Zombie Survival Guide
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maidenhead1996 said:
Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451
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Hi guys. This is not the madness forum's "Now Playing" thread where merely listing selections is acceptable. Here we like to share our thoughts on the books we have read, the authors, any other work of theirs and give as well as ask for suggestions on other works. Don't be shy and feel free to expand a bit.
 
Sorry, you're right :) I only read like 40 pages or so, but it's good so far. It's literally a guide, so there are no characters or a plot. World War Z is, of course, much more interesting.
 
Oh, really sorry. I just started reading it, but the main idea of the book is fantastic and I know it's a classic of American Literature. I will write about my thoughts after I finish it. I've read some works of Ray Bradbury, he is one of my favourite science-fiction authors. Something Wicked This Way Comes is great. (yes I've heard it first on Book of Thel :D)

"give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn iowa grew last year. cram them full of noncombustible data,chock them so damned full of facts they feel stuffed, but absolutely brilliant with information"

What a quote !
 
Bradbury is great. My favorite work of his is the short story, The Pedestrian, in which a man that goes out for a walk observes how the utopia he lives in really works and eventually gets arrested... for "regression syndrome" or something around those lines lol.
 
I've only read Ender's Game which is what gave him mainstream attention. I'd say it is a good start as his Ender books are his most famous.

I finally finished reading El Ladron de Calices "The Thief of Chalices". It is about a professional robber of sacred art in Mexico and his rather odd marriage to a Spanish woman who is escaping her mundane life in Spain. The book is classic latin american literature in that the story is about a theif, the detective chasing him as well as the climax of the book centered around the Massacre of Tlatelolco, yet the author spends 90% of time talking about the characters, their lives and their thoughts. So instead of a high speed thriller you get a slow intricate love triangle.... nothing special.
 
Onhell said:
I've only read Ender's Game which is what gave him mainstream attention. I'd say it is a good start as his Ender books are his most famous.

I finally finished reading El Ladron de Calices "The Thief of Chalices". It is about a professional robber of sacred art in Mexico and his rather odd marriage to a Spanish woman who is escaping her mundane life in Spain. The book is classic latin american literature in that the story is about a theif, the detective chasing him as well as the climax of the book centered around the Massacre of Tlatelolco, yet the author spends 90% of time talking about the characters, their lives and their thoughts. So instead of a high speed thriller you get a slow intricate love triangle.... nothing special.
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Speaking of Latin American literature, I wonder if you've read Roberto Bolano's 2666. I've head that it's a huge, very complex and layered book, and I wanted to try that one too.
 
I'm not a big fantasy reader.  Prior to this spring, I had read The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and...that's pretty much it.  But on a colleague's recommendation, and shortly before the HBO series began, I started reading A Game of Thrones, the first book in George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" serial.  I'm now about to finish the fourth book, and look forward to beginning the fifth, which was just published this week.  These books are terrific.  The third book in particular (A Storm of Swords) is a masterpiece.  While the cast of characters has gotten pretty damn bloated, and even though the fourth book (A Feast for Crows) seems to lose its way at times, I can't remember the last time I've been so continuously surprised and satisfied about a work of fiction.  To call these books "page-turners" is an understatement.  They read more like popular fiction than highfalutin literature, but they are quite well written and some of the dialogue is very witty.  And while the story is rip-roaring, what makes it great is the complex and believable characters, in whom you really do become invested -- yet are totally unable to predict.  Highly recommended.   
 
Cornfed, I am so with you.
I am logging on minutes after putting down the last page of Storm of Swords.
Pair of co-workers had been raving about the TV show, so I decided to tackle the series as my summer reading project.
I have spent just about every spare moment I've had in the past few weeks hammering my way through.
It is everything you describe — completely engaging and unexpected.
Absolutely highly recommended, whether you are fantasy fan or not.
 
I, too, picked up Game of Thrones upon the recent rush surrounding the HBO series.

And I think I'm the only person in the world who finds it sub-standard.
 
The writing style hurts me, greatly. He writes with awkward metaphor, and his naming conventions bother the hell out of me. Consistency seems lacking from time to time, though I didn't delve enough into the first book (I made it halfway through) to really judge, but it didn't feel right. I don't feel like he took the time to give me enough information to really understand what was going on as the book went, which is a critique I have of many modern novels. I wasn't introduced to the world, I was immersed in it.

Straight up, though? I was forcing myself to read it, page by page, because I was supremely disinterested, so I simply stopped. It didn't click. I recognize a lot of people like it, but...I do not.
 
I get what you're saying about the lack of explanation, but I kinda liked the fact there wasn't a lot exposition going on. You had to infer things and figure them out for yourself and sometimes you were wrong.
I loved the fact there were no purely evil villains, or purely good heroes.
 
When I read fantasy, I'm primarily reading for the ideas. I don't find so much interesting in his world ideas, and he hides a lot of it from me. That turns me off. The characters are fine, other than being fairly stockish. There's no knight in shining armour; no black-robed evil baddie, and that's good. It's what he does with them that I found uninteresting.

There is another aspect of the book that turned me off and that was the way he chose to have his universe mirror certain real-world aspects, especially regarding women.
 
LooseCannon said:
There is another aspect of the book that turned me off and that was the way he chose to have his universe mirror certain real-world aspects, especially regarding women.
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Well, his treatment of women changes as the story progresses.  Daenarys, Arya Stark and Brienne Tarth (who doesn't appear until the second or third book) are pretty complex, nonconventional female characters.  I think the female characters are more interesting than the male characters. 
Daenarys starts as a pretty meek character at the beginning and then becomes arguably the biggest badass in the whole story.  And Arya, the tomboyish and sympathetic little girl in book one, starts training to become a professional assassin -- she just murdered a guy.
 
That said, I think you are right -- and it is intentional -- that Martin's world is a lot like our own, in that it is morally ambiguous, deeply flawed, and totally unpredictable. 
 
Last night I finished reading Chuck Hogan's The Town, previously published as Prince of Thieves. I picked it up because there was a big deal made over the movie based on the novel starring Ben Affleck. It got really good reviews and when I realized it was a book first I knew I had to read it before watching it.

Anyway, it did not disappoint. I've grown VERY weary of pop lit choosing non-fiction and research books over fiction lately, because a lot of Author's now a days are hack writers. Hogan though is a very good writer and his pacing is well executed.

In The Town We follow Doug MacRay, once a promising Boston Bruin prospect, now a recovering alcoholic and notorious bank robber. He is sick of his life and he wants out. We also meet the other members of his crew, the girl he falls for, who happens to be the bank manager of his last job, and the FBI agent on his tail. This is a book that keep you on your edge of your seat from page one. Essentially MacRay wants to escape his old friends, focus on his sobriety and walk away from robbing banks. But certain ties are hard to let go of, and the past weighs on him like an anchor. Will he be able to walk away? Or will he succumb to his surroundings and his "friends"?

REALLY good book and highly recommended. 
 
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