A few days ago I ordered the following from Amazon based on the comments here: -Escape from Camp 14 -The Shadow of the Wind Looking forward to reading them, but I'm really searching for a good series to get sucked into. I'm starting to think The Republic of Thieves is never going to come out. I've read Game of Thrones, and watched season 2 of the show. While I love what I've read/seen so far, I'm a little hesitant to continue reading the series since it seems most people agree the last 2 books have been pretty blah.
Any of you get your e-books from a library? It is awesome! Saving me $$$ I am reading whatever my library has available and they have a good selection. I buy the book I want if they do not have it available. Any of you on the Good Reads website?? Right now, I'm reading The Gold Coast by Nelson DeMillie.
I think you'll enjoy The Shadow of the Wind. Such a great novel. You should check out Joe Abercrombie. He has a very dark sense of humor and likes over the top gore, but his characters are not your typical fantasy tropes. He has a true talent for seemingly pulling vivid secondary characters out of a hat. His First Law trilogy was quite good, but he's followed it up with three stand alones: a revenge story, a war story, and a spaghetti western. All of those in a fantasy setting. I wasn't keen on the war story beforehand, but he turned it into a rollicking fun read by focusing on the overall story through the eyes of nearly a dozen very well done characters. He's set to follow this with another trilogy set in the same world. He puts out novels every 12-15 months like clockwork, and these books also feature one of the great characters I've read the past 10 years in The Bloody Nine. I'd highly recommend. If you haven't read Guy Gavriel Kay, his writing can definitely pull you in and take you on an incredible journey. I'd recommend Under Heaven, The Lions of al-Rassan, Sailing to Sarantium, Lord of Emperors, Tigana. I'm with you on Scott Lynch. I know he's had a ton of issues with his mom dying, getting divorced, and getting clinically depressed. Still, I've kind of checked out of this series. I'll definitely pick it up when it comes out, but all the momentum from the incredible Lies of Locke Lamora is kind of petered out.
I've signed up, but the books I want are never available when I want them. Seattle has one of the top library systems in the world, but they make it too easy to reserve a book. People here definitely take advantage. There are queues hundreds long for a lot of the books I want. A few times a book has become available when I'm hip deep in a series or going through an author's catalog and am not in the mood for a reading detour. I think it's great that so many people are interested in books, but it doesn't fit capricious way I read from novel to novel. Still it's an awesome service if you have an ereader and can definitely stretch your reading budget a lot further.
I thought the Oprah Book Club was a little silly, in terms of how that one recommendation would get women everywhere to buy said book. But I understood it for the most part. This 50 Shades of Grey stuff blows my mind. It seems like every woman in the world is reading this book. I mean, a little p*rn is of interest to most people, but I guess this one basically was let through that magical 'acceptable' barrier and now women everywhere have been given the green light and are running with it.
I'm not familiar w/ that series. I just googled it, looks cool I might check that out next to take a break.
I repeat my recommendation before on Joe Abercrombie. He's a darker fantasy writer, and his books are unlike anything else I've read in the genre. arno_ed and I have debated this before, but I absolutely detested the Malazan series and thought it was one of the biggest wastes of my reading time ever. You can check out some of my posts in the 2011 What are you Reading thread for my reviews of the books. I enjoy squad based and darker fantasy, but Erikson's writing was sloppy and ego-stroking with no sense of pace. A solid editor would have lopped off 30-50% of the pages and made it a much more cohesive story. I wish I could have back the 4-5 months I spent slogging through that series in 2010-2011. This is not light reading to take a break. I do need to read The Black Company. I have the first few novels and they've been way down on the Need to Read list for over 20 years now.
I read the first 1 1/2 black company novels and stopped. To me it seemed like someone taking a Sgt. Rock comic book and putting it in a fantasy setting and turning it into a novel. Half way through the second one, I had no desire to read anymore of them. I do like novels where the heroes are a group of people, but Black Company soured me to squad based fantasy. I would rather it be a group of heroes like in the Drangon Lance novels. (not that they are necessarily good reading, but I appreciate a team of protagonists) The Steven Brust series did a nice job of it, even though that one was taking the the Three Musketeers series and putting it into a fantasy setting.
Another author from high school I really need to read. Hell, I played in a D&D campaign set in the Brust world for over a year and still haven't read them. I kind of soured on fantasy from that era a while back. I like the way the current generation of fantasy authors isn't beholden to the same basic concepts that permeated the genre for so long. Still, I know there are some gems from the 80's and 90's that I need to read. Especially when I own the books and they've somehow survived anywhere from 2-10 moves.
I'm one of the women that have not read 50 shades of grey yet...from what I hear, it is poorly written. My friend is going to lend me the books so I will see what the hype is about!
Scribo, what other books are your top favorites? I loved shadow so I trust your opinion completely. I will finish my reread of hobbit in a couple of days and will need something else to read. I'm gonna read the other zafon books next month. I have game of thrones just sitting on my shelf. Should I start the series?
Just finished Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story and am jumping right into You Suck: A Love Story. Bloodsucking Fiends was quite funny, a bit of a different take on the human loves vampire storyline.
Have you read Middlesex? I read it a few years back but it's one of my favorites that I usually recommend.
I have not. I have been looking through previous "what are you reading" threads and saw that almost everyone who has read this recommended it. What is it about? I'm either going to read Middlesex, the gargoyle, or guernsey literary and potato peel pie society (or whatever it is called) since I have that one at home. I might start a song of ice and fire but there is a low chance of that happening.
Ive been going old school...reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I havent seen the movie yet, so I wanted to read the book first. Im going to get back to The Shadow of the Wind soon...I started reading it during my 4th year of dental school...I was about 75% of the way complete and my final exams, board exams, licensing exams, etc... all hit at the same time, so I put the book on hold. By the time I came around to reading it again, my brain had lost a lot of the details of the book, and Im anal when it comes to details, so I decided that I would have to start over again. Still havent gotten around to it, even though its definitely near the top of my to do list. Possibilities for my next book: 1984, The Book Thief, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, or And Then There Were None. I have about 80 books on my "list"...fml.
I'll chime in with the rest of the universe as far as Game of Thrones go. Martin built an amazing, detailed world with realistic characters that do not play to typical fantasy tropes. The first three books were epic in scope and enjoyable reads. Books 4 and 5 kind of ground things to a halt and definitely tested my patience. Seeing the wait between 4 and 5, I'm expecting it to be at least a decade before Martin finishes the series if he doesn't die first. My three favorite books are Shadow of the Wind, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, and The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein. The Book Thief is about a girl and her foster parents outside of Munich during WWII. It's classified as young adult, and Zusak has an odd (and at time young adult) writing style. But don't be fooled. This is an amazing story populated with some very memorable characters and powerful scenes that will make you laugh and cry. The Art of Racing in the Rain is a fun tale told through the eyes of Enzo, a dog who watched a documentary on Mongolia that said dogs are reincarnated as humans. So throughout the story, he's obsessed with dying and moving on. His owner Denny is a race car driver and leaves the TV on when he's gone for the dog, so Enzo picks up all kinds of crackpot theories from cable TV. Forget just dogs, Enzo is one of my favorite characters in literature. Other favorites in no particular order (and not an exhaustive list, just off the top of my head): Pillars of the Earth; World without End by Ken Follett The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norell by Susanna Clarke The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova Mirror of Her Dreams; A Man Rides Through by Stephen R. Donaldson City of Thieves by David Benioff Speaks the Nightbird; Queen of the Damned; Mister Slaughter; The Providence Rider by Robert McCammon Under Heaven; The Lions of al-Rassan; Sailing to Sarantium; Lord of Emperors; Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay I will say that The Historian suffers from an underwhelming ending. That seems to be a pattern for Kostova, which I hope she breaks with her third novel. However, the story was so lushly written, and the plot turns were addictive. The Gargoyle is almost identical to what I said about The Historian. It was richly written, but the ending was weak. It also went into a number of lengthy dream sequences that I thought were excessive. There's also the depressing nature of half the book taking place in a burn ward, and the main character being a severely burnt man (including losing his genitals). Middlesex is about a hermaphrodite. It was a good book overall, but it delved into some weird subjects like incest and hermaphoditism. The opening third dragged on too long, and I hated the ending. I liked Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society a lot. It reminded me of a quaint ensemble British film. If you like those types of movies, which I do, you'll enjoy this novel. The 100% correspondence narrative takes a bit to get used to, but once you do, it's a really quick read.
ScriboErgoSum, sorry for recomending them. I loved them. But I do see your point. But lets not get into that discussion again.:grin: I like to read darker fantasy, which series would you recommend me?
I can't wait to read The Book Thief and The Art of Racing! Still on the library's waiting list. Ugh, there are so many good books but so little time to read.
