What books are you reading?

Discussion in 'Entertainment' started by bfun, Jan 29, 2011.

  1. The Tower of Swallows

    Depending on how you count, this is the 4th, 6th or 7th Witcher book. It's a full novel but Andrzej Sapkowski’s still writes it like a bunch of connected short stories. I recommend it for fans of the series but it wouldn't make sense to anyone else.
     
  2. I preferred the 5 books that told one story to the books of short stories. They did tell an overall story but I found the jumping around annoying.

    The first Witcher series followed this formula which was a downfall for me, hoping things move on to the actual big story when the next finally releases.
     
  3. The Wild Hunt will be in season 2 but their role in the books seems pretty small. It's part of Ciri's story but it was mostly flushed out in the games.


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  4. The Way of Shadows

    I really enjoyed this book, especially towards the end. Brent Weeks impressed me with the light bringer series which is why I decided to pick up the Night Angel Trilogy and I wasn't disappointed with the first book.

    It does suffer a little with unexplained ideas popping up out of nowhere but not to the extent something like the Black Prism did. For example, in the Black Prism the book opens up talking about drafters and luxin right away and you don't really know what's going on. This book does it a little with Meister's and Vir just appearing but they aren't the central focus of the book so that helps.

    All of the characters are well developed and the 'bad' guys are suitably nasty to make them believable. I'll now move on to the second book and hope it does more of the same. I have been burned before, the demon cycle for example where the first book was good but then it got really bad, but hopefully Weeks keeps up the good work. Apparently he is going back to this world for his next book now that Loghtbringer is concluded.

    On another note, still seems like Patrick Rothfuss isn't going to complete the last Kingkiller book 3 any time soon. More than 10 years since the last book and he keeps promising it, kind of takes the piss really as you've had people invest in your story and then just don't bother to get it done. If/when it does come out, I'll get it second hand or something as I don't feel I should reward failure.
     
  5. I'm perfectly fine waiting for the third Kingkiller book. The first was good and all, but towards the end I realized it's just a book about a guy struggling to pay for school.

    The Innocent: A Novel

    Just your run of the mill story about a hitman who meets a kid and suddenly isn't a hitman anymore. It's actually pretty good.

    The Gamesmaster: My Life in the '80s Geek Culture Trenches with G.I. Joe, Dungeons & Dragons, and the Transformers

    It's a sort of memoir from a guy who worked on a whole bunch of 80s cartoons and video games. It's a decent read if you want to know why Optimus Prime had to die, or why Duke and Flint were never in the same episodes of GI:Joe, or why Mr. T couldn't say " I pity the fool" in a cartoon. He's had his fingers in many things but was never famous.
     
  6. The second Kingkiller book ventured out a lot more, he spent a lot less time at school and you learnt more about the things he had done.

    Started book 2 in the Night Angel trilogy, its a continuation of the first and seems to take place directly after the events of the first but not far enough yet to judge it either way.
     
  7. Finally finished Words of Radiance from the Storm Light Archive and started on the next book, Oathbringer. Also finished Artemis Fowl and the Arctic Incident. I think Disney plans to make another crap movie from that book.
     
  8. Finished the last Witcher book, The Lady of the Lake. I thought it was the weakest in the series. So many tangents and spin offs and an ending that just kind of sucked.
     
  9. I didn't like how all of the companions were almost discarded and just killed off on a whim at the end, after so many books just to kill them off with a line or two of text.
     
  10. Yeah very "TV" Game of Thrones-ish. Lets kill everyone off and try to wrap things up in a few pages. Cahir's death was particularly wasteful considering how much of a build up it had. Tell me again why Ciri had nightmares about him for 3 books only to know him for 2 minutes? Again, very much like Brandon Stark. Brandon didn't die but his story was completely wasted at the end of the show. Dijkstra was one of my favorite characters and it wasn't even clear what happened to him or why. Regis may still be alive based on what we know about higher vampires. I know the author considers the games to be canon, but I think they tell a better story than the last book. I'm hoping the show will follow the game more closely than the books.
     
  11. Finished Going Postal by Terry Pratchett. That makes two books of his I liked to one I didn't.
     
  12. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

    Like most self help books, there is a lot of rehashed material delivered in a new way. The book starts like the Dali Lama is speaking through The Dude from The Big Lebowski. It then goes into endless personal anecdotes. It's not a bad book but not everyone will get something out of it. It did end on a quote that I liked.

    “We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.”

    ― Charles Bukowski
     
  13. The Shadow Rising: Book Four of The Wheel of Time

    1007 pages. Took awhile.
     
  14. MARVEL's Avengers: Infinity War: Thanos: Titan Consumed

    It covers Thanos life from birth to him collecting his first Infinity stone. It's a good read but I think the author could have gone into more depth as to why Thanos became a genocidal sociopath.
     
  15. The Sandman: Act 2

    It was about as good as the first. It's mostly short stories. Some were really good and others were alright.

    The Ocean At The End Of The Lane

    IMO one of Neil Gaiman's best.
     
  16. Finished American Gods by Neil Gaiman. Great book. There were times where it felt like I was reading The Sandman Act 3. This is probably my second favorite Gaiman book.