Books you're currently reading???

[glatt]

Originally Posted by jimhelm

reamde was decent, not great. I liked the characters mostly... but.... The plot relied on far too many coincidences for it to be believable. the 1st 3rd was more geeky with how the game worked and stuff,.... and i was liking it... but then it turned into a spy thriller james bond type of thing. not a stand out book.

Yeah, it's when it took a turn for the more James Bondy kind of thing that I started losing interest. The last I read, they had just arrived in Asia to find the guy.

I like it when he geeks out on details. Like the road going through North Dakota that follows the longitude lines, and jogs at 90 degrees to the left suddenly for a few hundred yards to account for the curvature of the earth, and one of the characters drives off the road there. That kind of thing is cool.

[jimhelm]

Originally Posted by wolf

I actually loved that and want to read it again. John Steakley, right? It's in a box here, somewhere.

SF fan who wanted to be able to be a con guest rather than an attendee, wrote himself a book. It sold. Wrote himself a second book. It got made into a movie by John Carpenter. WIN.

I did too. Felix was a bad ass. 1984. Was there a sequel?

[wolf]

Not that I'm aware. I heard that Steakley died. Sometime in the last two years, maybe? (yes, November 2010)

[Griff]

Originally Posted by glatt

I just read Hunger Games too. It was good, but I didn't love it. My wife read number 2 and says it's actually better than 1. I'll get around to reading it in the next few weeks.

All the girls in my house loved it. Unfortunately the movie director, who was apparently faithful to the book, chose to to film it in the vomit inducing style which has become so common place.

[wolf]

I enjoyed The Hunger Games. Knew it wasn't going to be great, didn't expect it to be great, but it didn't suck like the last book that sold in crazy numbers to teens.

Catching Fire (#2) was okay, but very clearly only existed as a bridge between 1 and 3.

Mockingjay was tedious. Predictable. Not interesting in any significant way.

[Gravdigr]

"Preacher's Fury" - William Johnstone

[Trilby]

"The witch of Exmoor" Margaret Drabble

I liked it. Read it in two days. Did not know she is the sister of
A. S. Byatt.-

[wolf]

Only book that's moved vaguely forward are the Doctor Whos ... now on Carnival of Monsters.

Still reading The Lion, the Lamb, and the Hunted.

[jimhelm]

The Complete Unabridged Stories of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle.


If I ever write a book, I'm going to use all 3 of my names.

[wolf]

Originally Posted by jimhelm

If I ever write a book, I'm going to use all 3 of my names.

You could only get away with that in the 19th Century. Now it means you're either a serial killer or presidential assassin.

Or maybe there's something we don't know about Mr. Doyle.

[DanaC]

If I ever write a book, I shall refrain from using all four of my names. I may use a couple of initials though :P

[maineiac04631]

I am on page 70, so far an interesting read.

[wolf]

Finished The Lion, The Lamb and the Hunted - Andrew E. Kaufman
Billed as a "psychological thriller," which it is, but the key plot device was so incredibly predictable, that all I did was wait for the big reveal, which when it did come, was pretty ho-hum and got overshadowed by an action scene that would make even Bruce Willis cringe from the confluence of coincidences.

Also finished Dr. Who and the Carnival of Monsters.

Started Gates of Fire - Stephen Pressfield. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman recommends it highly ... it's about the Battle of Thermopylae.

[Blueflare]

Currently reading Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy.
There are some passages of truly epic writing in here and it has inspired me to improve the stuff that I am currently writing.
I'm only about a third of the way into the story so far.

[Sundae]

I have a pile of books to review for you.
So this is just a teaser.
Don't hold your breath - they're teen fiction or gay non-fiction, so perhaps of limited interest.

Battle Royale is one of them though. Having read The Hunger Games trilogy.
Crikey me, the author liked similar names!
You know when people say "I'm terrible with names but I never forget a face!"
Well it turns out if the names are foreign*, I'm terrible with names as well as faces (I already knew about faces, foreign or not).

* NOT a xenophobic or racist statement, but I know no-one called Yukie, Yuko or Yoka so when they all turn up in the same scene I forgive myself for being a little confused as to character and motivation. Not to mention Yukiko, Yumiko and Yoshimi. And yes, I did just look those up