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Just about to start Resolution by Robert B. Parker - the sequel to his Western Appaloosa which I just read yesterday. http://www.amazon.com/Resolution-Robert-B-Parker/dp/039915504X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1240327845&sr=1-1
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Apr 21, 2009 16:32
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Ballsworthy posted:I was about to ask you how Appaloosa was, but since you just bought the sequel I guess I know all I need to know. Didn't actually buy it - just rented both of 'em from the library along with Parker's retelling of the Wyatt Earp story (Gunman's Rhapsody).  Appaloosa was pretty good, though I feel like Parker could have done a little more with it. I liked it well enough to continue on with Resolution, though.
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Apr 21, 2009 18:31
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Bosushi! posted:I've been craving western media recently and I've been planning to read Appaloosa after having seen the movie. I had no idea there was a sequel. Haven't seen the movie yet myself. I learned it was based on the book and I was in the mood for a western so I figured I'd give the book a try before I saw the movie. I just finished Resolution earlier. Yes, I'm a fast reader, but it was a pretty fast-paced read anyway - liked it better than Appaloosa. There's already a third book called Brimstone out, though I guess I'll be waiting on the library to get that one in since I liked the first two books. Going to start London: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd next.
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Apr 22, 2009 04:35
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Nice Sweet Meat posted:I'm reading Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson. Re-reading it for the second time at the moment. I just finished reading London: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd and it got me in the mood to re-read the Baroque Cycle.
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May 1, 2009 19:49
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Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. I read Light In August several weeks ago (my first foray into Faulkner) and really enjoyed it, so I wanted to read more Faulkner, especially given how often Cormac McCarthy's early work has been compared to Faulkner.
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May 29, 2009 22:43
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Zubumafoo posted:Just wondering, have you read the Tawny Man and Liveship Traders trilogies from her also? I liked the the trilogy that Shaman's Crossing was in, I forget the name of it, but I don't think it was as strong as her others. Does Gears have any relation to Thunderer or is it a completely brand-new setting/plot? I read Thunderer a few months back and thought it was pretty good, so I was thinking about reading Gears once the local library got a copy in.
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Jun 1, 2009 18:41
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anathenema posted:Please tell me what you think of this, because it struck me as a unique concept with a really lame plot (obviously innocent prince raises army of the dead to take back his kingdom from his brother, Evil McBabykiller.) I read it a couple years back and it is. I wouldn't bother wasting your time with it unless you really can't get enough of cliched epic fantasy. Even the part that appealed to me (the necromancy stuff) isn't all that interesting.
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Jun 25, 2009 16:08
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King Plum the Nth posted:Also queued up is Lankhmar Book 1: Swords And Deviltry by Fritz Leiber. My wife found it in an "If you like Michael Chabon, you may like..." article, so I'm curious to see how that works out. I read a fair deal of fantasy fiction when I was younger but have been having difficulty dropping back into the genre recently. This is supposed to be some hard core seminal poo poo, though, and I like the premise (sounds like the continued but not necessarily comedic adventures of Fezzik and Inigo). We'll see how it goes. Yeah, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser is classic sword-and-sorcery stuff. Gentlemen of the Road by Chabon is probably the closest thing to that.
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Aug 10, 2009 16:33
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Jonatham Lethem's The Fortress of Solitude. Had mixed thoughts about my first Lethem read (Motherless Brooklyn) but so far "Fortress" is starting out well.
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Aug 23, 2009 04:35
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Grabbed another load of books from the library yesterday and I'm about 150 pages into Dan Simmons' Drood. Pretty good so far - hopefully it's better paced than The Terror.
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Oct 7, 2009 03:23
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Just bought Jeff VanderMeer's latest novel Finch. If I didn't have a huge pile of library books to wade through, I'd definitely be digging into this. The laudatory jacket quotes from Richard K. Morgan and Ken Bruen alone, not to mention the other quotes likening it to Raymond Chandler on acid would have me sold on it even if I wasn't a huge VanderMeer fan already.
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Dec 1, 2009 04:37
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Jut about to start Mieville's The City and the City. Bought it off Amazon as an early Christmas present but I had a slew of library books to wade through first. Looking forward to it since I keep hearing it's a shift from his previous stuff and of course I'm a big detective fiction fan, so this should be interesting.
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Dec 28, 2009 23:57
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Just hit the library again today after not going for a while (since before Christmas) and snagged a load of books. Working through The Mexican Tree Duck by James Crumley at the moment. Damned shame he's no longer with us - he really was a great detective fiction writer. Also got The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart by Jesse Bullington on its way in the mail. Keep hearing about it here and there and it sounds like my cuppa tea so I figured I'd snag a copy and give it a shot. schoenfelder posted:Bought Im Westen Nichts Neues (All Quiet On The Western Front) by Erich Maria Remarque Definitely one of the best books I read last year, for what it's worth. I've been meaning to read it again myself.
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Jan 26, 2010 01:49
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Started reading The Aeneid yesterday. I grabbed it from the library on a whim and I'm glad I did - it really is very good so far. I'm not much for poetry generally but I'm really enjoying the grand epic feel and all the mythology behind it since I've been a big Greek mythology buff since I was a kid. I only wish I knew Latin so I could get a feel for how the original text compares to the translation I'm reading.
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Jan 29, 2011 17:50
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hello clarice posted:Gardens of the Moon: Book One of The Malzan Book of the Fallen - Steven Erikson Re-reading Erikson myself - I've only read the first 4 books in the series and I told myself I'd finally get around to reading the whole series in one go now that hopefully the final book is out or will be out soon. You'll hear this from a lot of other people, but Gardens of the Moon can be pretty tough to get into since Erikson intentionally drops you right into the middle of the story and fills in a lot of the blanks as you go along - which is effective, I admit. It's a solid series and Erikson's got a really good hand with creating a massive epic feel while also creating a lot of really good characters. Encryptic fucked around with this message at 07:15 on Mar 6, 2011 |
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Mar 6, 2011 07:13
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juliuspringle posted:I just got a copy of Mr. Shivers today. Does anyone remember if that was written by a goon? Yup. It was written by Spiny Norman (who you may remember posting a number of hilarious and well-written stories in GBS).
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Mar 15, 2011 21:30
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nate fisher posted:I am amazed no one has made White Jazz into a movie. Not for lack of trying. There's been at least a couple of attempts that ended up in development hell. The last one I heard about was apparently going to be directed by Joe Carnahan, which could have potentially been good (Carnahan wrote and directed Narc which is a pretty good gritty cop flick). Encryptic fucked around with this message at 01:06 on Mar 31, 2011 |
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Mar 31, 2011 01:04
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Noricae posted:I'm most of the way through Sarah Monette's Labyrinthine series (book 1, Melusine). These books keep appearing on fantasy lists, but they're very much fantastic horror. In fact, the first book reminds me of Bas Lag, with more sympathetic characters than, say, Perdido Street Station had, and with more magic (explicitly stated as such, and wizards). The book's set in a giant maze of a city, there are monsters, both of the supernatural and human kind, the tone is dark and disturbing and the book's fairly bleak. On the other hand, it's less focused on setting and more so the hosed up lives of the characters. The writing's good, although less full of word soup than China Mieville's works (for good or bad), and there are well done distinctive voices (two main alternating characters) present. I rarely see her work mentioned, and it's surprisingly good (I expected it to be fluff). (I did not expect the comparison above, but her writing's a lot more similar than, say, Vandermeer/other new weird categorized writers are, especially in the same kind of horror I had when reading it, in parts.) Yeah, that really is one of the better if lesser-known series in the genre. The cover art for Melusine is pretty terrible though (at least Felix actually looks similar to how he's described even if he looks like he's trapped in a romance novel).
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Mar 31, 2011 13:46
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About 90 pages into The Half-Made World by Felix Gilman - I read Gilman's debut a few years ago and picked this one up because the central idea was interesting (a world still in the process of creation on the far western frontier, with the East long-settled and a war between two rival factions still raging in the wild West). So far, very good - I dig the fusion of the Western with some fantasy elements, and the Line/Gun rivalry is interesting - sort of Blood Meridian meets Once Upon A Time In The West. Gilman's writing has definitely gotten better from what I remember as well.Hondo82 posted:I'm about 15% into the Kindle ebook version of Shelby Foote's The Civil War: A Narrative, Volume One: Fort Sumter to Perryville. I've been interested in reading this series for a long time, knowing little of the Civil War, and I am enjoying it. The narrative form flows really well, though lacking footnotes can be a little confusing when you don't remember exactly what things like the Missouri Compromise entailed and he doesn't explain it. Yeah, that was really good when I read it last year. There's probably a more exhaustive and scholarly history out there but Foote's style really makes this one.
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Sep 3, 2011 01:08
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meanolmrcloud posted:So, I just finished James Ellroys american tabloid and its sequel The Cold Six Thousand and really enjoyed them both. I can't remember if there ever was an ellroy thread but I really dig his style. I'm sure the third book Bloods a Rover is just as good but I wanted to see if anyone else has read it, or could suggest something else by him besides the black dahlia. Blood's A Rover was good, but not as good as the first two books. Too convoluted even for Ellroy but it's still got that punchy Ellroy style - bad men doing bad things. I think it also suffers a bit from not having much of a frame of reference in major historic events - there's no big build-up to an assassination like the first two books. The Big Nowhere is a must-read however, as are LA Confidential and White Jazz - I'd read them in that order since they're loosely connected with recurring characters and references to past events. Big Nowhere starts in 1950 and White Jazz ends around 1958, to give you a point of reference. They're loosely connected to Black Dahlia (a few characters from Black Dahlia show up). Edit: Just nabbed a handful of stuff from B&N: Killing Pablo by Mark Bowden - A non-fiction account of the manhunt for Pablo Escobar. Well into it now and it's excellent so far. The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson - Saw the recent adaptation with Casey Affleck and wanted to read the book since I've read some other stuff by Thompson that was really good (Roughneck, The Getaway) The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell - Been a Mitchell fan for a while and I keep hearing good things about this. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz - Keep hearing good things about this as well. Encryptic fucked around with this message at 15:14 on Sep 17, 2011 |
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Sep 16, 2011 19:29
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barkingclam posted:I've been on a real noir kick the past few months, reading a lot of Chandler, Hammett and Jim Thompson, so I decided to splurge a bit and ordered a copy of the Library of America's collection of crime novels. What've you read by Thompson that's good? I've only read The Getaway (which was good) and Roughneck (also good) and I just picked up The Killer Inside Me but haven't started it yet.
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Sep 23, 2011 10:51
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barkingclam posted:Recently? I just finished Thompson's Savage Night the other day. It's a short, violent and disturbing story which was pretty cool. I saw The Killing, a movie he wrote the screenplay for, a while back and liked it a lot, too. Just found out Kubrick wrote The Killing with Thompson and directed, so naturally I had to add it to my Netflix queue... Thanks.
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Sep 23, 2011 15:28
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Just got some stuff in the mail: Writing Movies For Something Wicked This Way Comes - I've been meaning to buy it anyway so it winning BOTM was a good excuse to re-read it too. Dandelion Wine- Another "meant to buy because I loved it so much when I read it a couple years ago" Madness of Flowers by Jay Lake - A followup to his rather good Trial of Flowers (set in a VanderMeer/Mieville-ish city populated by weird characters and strange happenings). Need to re-read the first book since it's been quite a while and I had been waiting for the sequel to come out.
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Oct 4, 2011 04:01
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Phlegmish posted:I'm reading Sean Russell's World Without End. I had this lying around for some reason even though I don't normally read fantasy. It's an okay book, though not much has happened so far and I'm almost 400 pages in. Yeah, that is a very slow-moving book, I gotta admit, and the second book (Sea Without A Shore) is pretty good but rather slow as well from what I remember. I love Russell's stuff so if I were you, I'd read the two-part prequel series The River Into Darkness (comprised of Beneath The Vaulted Hills and The Compass of the Soul), which is much more engaging from the get-go - it's pretty light on fantasy and focuses more on the characters. Reading World Without End/Sea Without A Shore isn't necessary to enjoy the prequels. Encryptic fucked around with this message at 16:39 on Oct 8, 2011 |
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Oct 8, 2011 02:36
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Phlegmish posted:I finished it a few days ago. Still not entirely sure about it. The dialogue is good - the pseudo-archaic English works -, I like the protagonist, and the duchess of Morland is a great (if overly perfect) character, but not enough happened plotwise. Also, I could have done without the naval battle at the end. I bet even plenty of native English speakers had trouble figuring out just what the hell was going on, given his propensity for using obscure nautical terms. Yeah, that's the problem - those two are certainly well-written - just not particularly gripping. I think book 2 picks up a bit towards the second half but if you really want to know what the whole deal is about : HUGE SPOILER BELOW The King's Man wants to activate Tristam's latent magic ability in order to use Tristam as a weapon in the constant arms race against Entonne. The regis is normally used to awaken magical ability and it also grants unnatural long life, though I don't remember why it caused the throat nodules that altered the King's voice. The reason it's failing to bear seed because magic itself is fading away from the world. I'm up for a Russell re-read so I may have to haul all 4 of the books out and read them back-to-back to refresh my memory about some of this stuff after I finish my current book. Encryptic fucked around with this message at 23:11 on Oct 15, 2011 |
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Oct 15, 2011 14:32
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Phlegmish posted:Read this as well. It's a good book, really taught me a lot about the American Civil War. Been a long time since I read the book but he's likely referring to sea creatures by their scientific names in Latin. For instance, I Googled for pavonari and it turns up a passage from the book that implies he's talking about a nautilus - "I saw there (but not dried up, as our specimens of the Nautilus are) pavonari spread like a fan as if to catch the breeze".
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Oct 27, 2011 14:05
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Kekekela posted:I'm just finishing up book three of Abercrombie's First Law trilogy, and have already read Heroes. I've heard the fourth book (Best Served Cold, I think) is pretty weak compared to the others, is it even worth reading? I thought it was a pretty good revenge story and it's in the same dark gritty style. I'm probably alone in not being completely blown away by Abercrombie, but he's a competent-enough writer and I found this to be a bit more engaging than The First Law trilogy. Phlegmish posted:I actually googled for pavonari as well and all I found were links that had to do with the book itself. That's the thing, a lot of the species names seem now-defunct, and even the legitimate Latin ones I don't always recognize. I don't really mind though, I just sort of zone out when I get to those passages. Yeah, I'm sure a lot of those names are probably outdated by now but it's an interesting relic of the time period Verne was writing in.
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Oct 28, 2011 13:25
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Chamberk posted:In the last few days I've started Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun. It has been hyped here there and everywhere. So far it's pretty good - I finished Shadow of the Torturer today and I'm about to start Claw of the Conciliator. There's the mailing list at urth.net but it sucks for actually trying to find anything. I've been meaning for ages to pick up Solar Labyrinth: Exploring Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, though. But yeah, BotNS is dense with allusions - it helps a little to be up on your Greek mythology, of course. Edit: Started The Gathering Storm day before yesterday. I figured I followed the drat series for so long that I might as well see it out. Sanderson's definitely a lot faster-paced than Jordan - as evinced by the fact that I'm 2/3 of the way through it already. It goes a lot faster when there's not so much of Jordan's much-maligned braid-tugging and describing clothes. It's a shame he died so early and wasn't able to finish it himself (as craptastic as that might have been), but at least he left plenty for Sanderson to work with. Encryptic fucked around with this message at 05:08 on Mar 2, 2012 |
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Mar 2, 2012 05:03
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