The Library/Bookshelf! (COBbie Literature Thread)

What, really? From who? 'cos I wouldn't say so.

edited 16th Mar '11 10:13:31 PM by Tzetze

Probably his least mind-screwy work, in fact.

From the reviews on it and one of my friends.

I should probably read House Of Leaves. That seems weird and mind screwy.

I dunno if I want to read Ice and Fire or wait till Game Of Thrones.

I never got around to reading book 4 of SoIaF.

edited 16th Mar '11 11:28:59 PM by Funnyguts

A Feast For Crows is widely considered to be the weakest of the series, so perhaps you're not missing out on much.

@Lolipod: Cryptonomicon is occasionally odd, but not particularly mind screwy. House of Leaves is much stranger. Read it at night, when you're alone in the house.

A nice old copy of The Divine Pymander of Hermes Trismegistus dropped through my letterbox today, along with the collected drawings Lenny the Wink.

edited 17th Mar '11 1:37:24 PM by InverurieJones

So I heard about a book called The Centaur today. It looks interesting.

Anyone know if I should pick it up?

What's it about?

A character who is simultaneously a science teacher at a local high school and a Centaur of Greek Mythology. Other characters include Zeus/A Principal.

I read an excerpt and it's bizarre how well the transitions work.

@Inverurie: Is that a primary source? On hermeticism, I mean? Cool.

It is, indeed. And it has Old Book Smell(tm). Doesn't come much cooler.

I saw The Centaur at a library once, but I didn't pick it up.

I'm reading The Stone Key by Isabelle Carmody now. Anyone else read it?

I can't believe these books are still going. I read them in my childhood.

Reading Pandoras Star at the moment. I kinda feel like a hypocrite really. I always rag on Tolkein for his obscene level of detail, but I don't mind it in the sci-fi work. Then again, lots of little details all the time about tech that doesn't exist or aliens or magic are there to help the story move along. Details about terrain and tangents to shoehorn in worldbuilding? Not so much.

One more thing, does anybody else find purple prose a lot more tolerable when it is delivered in first person narration?

Moll Flanders is just getting ridiculous with all the Defiled Forever angsting.

18th/19th century, what can you do?

In other news, I just started Kafka On The Shore.

...Ya know, I think so.

Yeah, that's why I think Lovecraft's stories work the most when he's going first-person. Poe is the same way, although The Mask Of The Red Death still sounds fine to me.

@Loni Jay: I've read it, along with the other Obernewtyn Cronicles. Carmody writes very slowly, but I still have hopes of finishing the series.

Just got A Tale Of A Tub and 120 Days In Sodom on my Kindle.

Apparently I'm in the mood for controversial proto-trolls from bygone centuries who probably had a list of psycho-sexual issues a mile long.

I just finished Joe Abercrombie's Best Served Cold, a stand-alone novel set in the same world as his The F Irst Law series. It's good. Really good. Better than the trilogy, I think. The discipline of sticking to a single volume I think helps. It's also better in that it spends less effort trying to subvert every fantasy cliché under the sun — The First Law's storytelling and characterization, I think, suffered from Abercrombie's relish to upend stereotype at every turn.

Also, while the overall theme of The First Law is largely one of hopelessness and cynicism, and most characters don't get any growth — in fact, the inability to do so defines so many of them — here, the characters do get to change and in some cases grow, and the story is not quite as hopeless.

edited 21st Mar '11 12:00:05 AM by Morven

Just finished "Up Against It" by M.J. Locke. If you're into brass-tacks SF, look it up. Pre-Singularity tale, a bit like what you would expect from Vernor Vinge if he decided to do a Heinlein pastiche.

Hmm, might be interesting; I haven't read much SF of late, except for a few Iain Banks.