Just finished "Defending the Damned: Inside Chicago's Cook County Public Defender's Office" by Kevin Davis. It's not a new book, but if you like reading legal stuff, read it. Way better than John Grisham's so-called legal fiction.
question: since the author of the dragon tattoo has passed away, does the trilogy end with an absolute conclusion? or was there supposed to be a fourth book?
It ends pretty conclusively. He originally had planned on 10 novels. He wrote part of the fourth book and had pretty full outlines for the fifth and sixth. His father is executor of his estate and has ruled out releasing any of the material since it's incomplete. I'm fine with that. I thought the trilogy ended pretty well without any dangling plotlines. There are always questions of what some of the characters might have done down the road, but it reads like it was intended as a trilogy.
I had to read Slaughterhouse Five for a contemporary/modern Lit class. I hate reading, but I actually read this book (which I rarely do, I usually just get by on sparknotes/summaries). It's very rare that I enjoy a book, but I liked this one
TRUTH. Holy **** that was ridiculously good. And yes, Vin is a badass. "I'm not a good person or a bad person, I just kill things."
i just finished love is a mix tape: life and loss one song at a time by rob sheffield, a rolling stone writer. i was on the verge of tears the entire time. excellent memoir about how he dealt with the sudden loss of his wife when she was only 31. i can't imagine that happening to me.
Finished Best Served Cold on Monday. I can't gush enough about Abercrombe. Just read the Amazon reviews. I was able to understand what was going on and what these guys are talking about, but apparently the trilogy is better and a good primer. I would jump right in to the First Law series, but I'm hammered with school reading right now- a good 200+ pages a week, and that's some dry stuff.
Damn you, Sir! I'm about to finish reading The Hunger Games trilogy and now I can't decide between Joe Abercrombie, Daniel Suarez, and Guy Gavirel Kay for my next reading project.
Just finished The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. Better than Fire, but unfortunately not as good as Dragon Tattoo. I guess to me, parts 2 and 3 just didn't live up to the expectations after reading Dragon Tattoo. They just left me utterly unsatisfied, cause I expected sooo much more.
I finished The Hunger Games Trilogy last night. It's about a post-apocalyptic society in the future ruled by a dominant, decadent Capitol. The other 12 districts are kept under brutal, military control. As a tribute to a 13th colony that rebelled before being annihilated in the past, the Capitol stages The Hunger Games each year. A boy and a girl are chosen by random (or by volunteering) to enter the tournament, which is a landscape filled with deadly traps where they fight to the death. The main character is a girl named Katniss who volunteers to take her sister's place. The first book follows her adventure in the 74th annual Hunger Games. That book was awesome and a book I did not want to set down. The second book follows Katniss after her victory in the first book as tensions seethe towards the Capitol. Somewhat predictably, she has to compete in the 75th Hunger Games after pissing off the Capitol powers-that-be. This was a good book. Maybe not quite as good as the first, but still a pretty gripping read. It's the third act where the series goes off the cliff. There's total rebellion in the third act, and this would be the time for Katniss to step up and be the hero. Instead she becomes a mopey teenager, and the story itself was pretty lame. At times I felt I was reading Twilight. The first book would be great as a stand-alone read, but the series as a whole I have to give a thumbs down to. The third book just completely ruins the characters and storylines that have been built up in the first two books. It's pretty disappointing to see such a promising series get derailed at the end. I'm going to read Guy Gavriel Kay's The Finovar Tapestry Trilogy next. Thanks Cowboy_Bebop and rhadamanthus for the recommendation.
Technical Analysis of Stock Trends, 9th Edition by Robert D. Edwards and John Magee The technical analysis Bible, so they say.
I'm going back and forth between two right now, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Shock Doctrine. 150 or so pages into both, so basically still in the backstory for both. Waiting to find out the real plot TGWPWF, but have still found it interesting to point and easy to read. The Shock Doctrine has been a little slower for me, though I am not really sure why. So far it's concentrated mainly on the history of brainwashing and the remaking politically and economically of the Southern Cone in the 70s - focusing specifically on Chile. While interesting, hoping it gets to something a little more recent pretty quick. That said, it is pretty eye opening if you were under the impression that, short of maybe Nicaragua and Panama, the US had left Latin/South America relatively alone in the past.
Somewhat of a spoiler for those that haven't finished the series: Spoiler I have to think that he intended to include more about Lisbeth's sister in the later books. I was expecting that Hornet's Nest would end with some type of reunion between them, and was surprised that it didn't. I always felt like there was more to that story that would eventually be revealed.
I agree. Spoiler The trilogy ended pretty definitively but there were a lot of characters I would have liked to learn more about. Lisbeth's sister being one of them, but that also includes the detectives, Blomqvist's sister, and Blomqvist's crazy love life. It seems the biggest complaint about the second and third books were not enough Blomqvist and Salander and too many secondary characters. I feel those characters had a great deal of importance for the remainder of the planned books. I also wanted to see the relationship between Blomqvist and Salander and how they would have worked as a team of bad ass investigators. I'm also curious what Lisbeth would have done with all that money. Still, I was content with the ending of the third book. All the major bad guys got their just rewards, and All The Evil got wrapped up. It read like a complete trilogy. Maybe one that you expected more books, but there weren't any major plotlines that got left dangling.
I finished Guy Gavriel Kay's The Finovar Tapestry Trilogy. I could tell this guy worked with Tolkein's son because it reminded me a lot of LOTR. Overall it was a good story with dark subplots I wasn't expecting. I mostly enjoyed his writing style although at times it got dry, and there were a number of cool payoff moments in the trilogy. Still at times, I felt like I would have enjoyed this story more if I had taken a few college classes on the detailed history. Kay clearly had thousands of pages of notes on this world and he threw out details so casually. Far too many times, I had no idea what nations, race of people, god, or talisman he was talking about without referencing the guide at the front of the book. There also was the big bad guy and his evil minions. It's nice to have some intricacy to the antagonist and not just pure evil. I also didn't care of the over prophecisizing. It seemed like a seer was leading them from place-to-place and event-to-event. Everything just seemed pre-ordained, although there were some surprises along the way. I also didn't care for the Arthur-Lancelot-Guinevere plotline, which was laid on really thick. Still I enjoyed the series enough and am curious to read more of Kay's work. I don't know if I'd recommend reading it. I'm hoping his later works aren't as cluttered with so much minutia. I would say if you liked this trilogy, you might like Roger Zelazney's Amber series. I'm in the mood for some fast fiction, so I'm reading Daemon by Daniel Suarez next. So far, this book is like crack. I though I would read for an hour or so last night and wound up blowing through 300 pages. I'm going to have to finish this tonight because I want to see how it all ends.
That's what you think. Once you finish Daemon you are going to be itching to start Freedom TM right away. Great books, I flew threw them as well. Didn't want it to end.
I figured that would be the case, and I've got Freedom queued up and ready to go. Does Freedom end this story or is there more to come?
Don't get too excited about seeing how it ends. Freedom is part two of the series (I think it is scheduled as a trilogy). EDIT: Guess I ought to read the following posts prior to responding.
