April's Astonishing, Astounding (and Sometimes Overpowering) Adventures in Reading

[annabelle]

Re: April's Astonishing, Astounding (and Sometimes Overpowering) Adventures in Readin

Just started "Deadhouse Gates" by Erikson. A nice, fat paperback. Quite a bloody beginning, I must say!

I would be interested of what you think about DHG Clansman. I'm 350 pages through it and , as much as I hated GOTM, I must say I'm quite enjoying the ride this time !

 

[Clansman]

Re: April's Astonishing, Astounding (and Sometimes Overpowering) Adventures in Readin

I liked GOTM much better by the end than I did in the middle. In the middle, I was bored or confused a bit, but I recognized that Erikson was trying something very different from the farmboy epic. The last half of the book really captured me, as the buildup in the first half of the book really was worth it.

I actually find Erikson and Janny Wurts very similar in this regard. They seem to spend the first half of the book building, and then POW! the reader gets paid in full for their patience. The resolution of the book's crisis is complete (if not necessarily satisfying), and occurs before the end of the book, but then a deeper threat is exposed that pulls the reader along to the next novel. However, Erikson doesn't appear to tie his novels as closely together as Wurts does, which is fine with me.

If one does not expect this kind of structure, frustration can set in, and you wonder what goose trail the author is leading you on. Now that I know this is what Erikson does, and that it is what Wurts does, as a reader I know that I am NOT being led down a goose trail, and it makes the book much more enjoyable. I will re-read GOTM sometime and see if the experience is different now that I know Erikson does things this way. I also think that this kind of structure is the reason why a lot of readers got frustrated with The Wars of Light and Shadow, back in the 1990's.

If a reader persists with either of these writers, the rewards are really handsome. Martin, by contrast, does not structure things this way. Stuff gets resolved all the way along (often in a way the reader doesn't want), which is quite a different structure altogether.

I am into chapter two of DHG, and so far, I am pleased. I just wish I could stay awake longer at night in order to read the darn thing. By the time the kids are in bed, I'm pretty much a zombie!

 

[Marky Lazer]

Re: April's Astonishing, Astounding (and Sometimes Overpowering) Adventures in Readin

The Beasts of Upton Puddle - Simon West Bulford.

 

[UltraCulture]

Re: April's Astonishing, Astounding (and Sometimes Overpowering) Adventures in Readin

Finished Splinter by Adam Roberts, what I hoped would be a nice adventure turned out rather flat indeed, you know that feeling when you buy a firework and what you want is WHOOOOOOOOOOSH...KABOOM! but all that happens is fffft... pop!

Next up The Dancers at the End of Time by Moorcock.

 

[Talysia]

Re: April's Astonishing, Astounding (and Sometimes Overpowering) Adventures in Readin

Cadmian's Choice, by L.E. Modesitt Jr.

 

[murphy]

Re: April's Astonishing, Astounding (and Sometimes Overpowering) Adventures in Readin

Cadmian's Choice, by L.E. Modesitt Jr.

How are you liking that series?

 

[Talysia]

Re: April's Astonishing, Astounding (and Sometimes Overpowering) Adventures in Readin

Actually, this will be the first one in this series that I've read. I found this in a discount bookshop for very little and got it, wondering what it was like as I've read and enjoyed Modesitt's work before. The premise looks interesting, so I'll likely be looking for the earlier books soon.

 

[j d worthington]

Re: April's Astonishing, Astounding (and Sometimes Overpowering) Adventures in Readin

Next up The Dancers at the End of Time by Moorcock.

Oh, now, that one's a hoot! Some very serious points to make along the way, but what a lunatic little saga....

Having finished off The Wind from Nowhere, I've gone on to Ballard's The Drowned World at this point. Been a while since I read much of his work....

 

[UltraCulture]

Re: April's Astonishing, Astounding (and Sometimes Overpowering) Adventures in Readin

I'm quite looking forward to it JD, i've had a quick look over at the Moorcock page just to check i'm not jumping in too deep as it'll be my first time reading his work.

Also got The Drowned World to read myself, when I recieved it i must admit I was expecting a larger looking book, it's quite a wee thing.

 

[Connavar]

Re: April's Astonishing, Astounding (and Sometimes Overpowering) Adventures in Readin

Edgar Allan Poe's short story collection Tales of Mystery and Imagination.

Im reading right now these short stories : The Pit and the Pendulum ,The Fall of the House of Usher,The Premature Burial,The Tell-Tale Heart.

Since its a library book i would feel guilty to read his more famous stories in the collection.


Unlike some other classic authors from the 19th century i read in school, Poe deserves his great reputation.

I enjoy his writing so much it takes 40 mins -1 hour to read one short story of his that is longer than 10 pages. Not because the old langauge takes time to read but i like ingest his words slowly to enjoy them fully.

 

[Ian Whates]

Re: April's Astonishing, Astounding (and Sometimes Overpowering) Adventures in Readin

Just finishing off Joe Abercrombie's Before They Are Hanged, which is fully as enjoyable as the first book.

Once that's over, I'm going to do something I rarely allow myself the luxury of doing: re-read a book I last read years ago. In the post this morning was a much-anticipated copy of the PS Publishing hardback, 50th Anniversary reissue of Arthur C. Clarke's Tales from the White Hart, complete with a new tale co-written with Stephen Baxter.

The book is signed by both Sir Arthur and Stephen, so it's a volume I'll really treasure.

 

[Highlander II]

Re: April's Astonishing, Astounding (and Sometimes Overpowering) Adventures in Readin

I'm on my 2nd read of Small Favor by Jim Butcher.

I read ALL of the Dresden Files twice when they first come out. It's a thing.

 

[Pyan]

Re: April's Astonishing, Astounding (and Sometimes Overpowering) Adventures in Readin

Continuing with A Dark Sacrifice, interspersed with re-reading Christopher Tolkien's The History of Middle-earth

 

[kaneda]

Re: April's Astonishing, Astounding (and Sometimes Overpowering) Adventures in Readin

Now I've got Erikson's Deadhouse Gates lined up, but it's quite thick and imposing, so I might find something a little lighter to tackle beforehand...

Woooo, Culhwich finished GOTM - well done!

Just started "Deadhouse Gates" by Erikson. A nice, fat paperback. Quite a bloody beginning, I must say!

It gets better!

I would be interested of what you think about DHG Clansman. I'm 350 pages through it and , as much as I hated GOTM, I must say I'm quite enjoying the ride this time !

Deadhouse gates is SUCH an improvement over GOTM, with such incredible scenes through the book (the ending had one of the best scenes I've read in a book in a long long time, which has recently been beaten by a scene in Memories of ice, which is book 3 in the series!). Honestly, Erikson just seems to get better and better!!!

I'm now on memories of ice, in case it wasn't clear!

 

[j d worthington]

Re: April's Astonishing, Astounding (and Sometimes Overpowering) Adventures in Readin

I'm quite looking forward to it JD, i've had a quick look over at the Moorcock page just to check i'm not jumping in too deep as it'll be my first time reading his work.

One of the things I like about Moorcock's work is the fact that, even though darned near everything is interrelated, you can pick up just about anywhere and read from there. You may not get all the layers of references, but neither are they going to interfere with your enjoyment of the current tale itself. As for the Dancers... this is a somewhat different sort of book for Moorcock, in that it is sheer comedy in approach, with some of the most delightfully zany characters he's ever created. As I said, it has some serious points to make along the way, but it is very "light" in tone, nonetheless. (According to Moorcock, M. John Harrison once remarked that "the people who inhabit [Moorcock's] End of Time stories might, from Elric's perspective, seem to be the very Lords of Chaos themselves". Oh, he was soooo right....)

Also got The Drowned World to read myself, when I recieved it i must admit I was expecting a larger looking book, it's quite a wee thing.

Ballard is definitely one of those cases of "less is more". His books are nearly all slender materially speaking, but few writers put as much complexity into their work as he does. His stuff is very much something to be savored, pondered, and chewed over again and again....

 

[Perpetual Man]

Re: April's Astonishing, Astounding (and Sometimes Overpowering) Adventures in Readin

At last!!! Just finished THE BONEHUNTERS and it has taken ages (5 months), strange because it was excellent, with a few truly awesome sequences. Perhaps I've just been off my reading for a bit. Am now about to start THE NAME OF THE WIND by PATRICK ROTHFUSS, but might squeeze the graphic novel MAUS in before hand

 

[Mark Robson]

Re: April's Astonishing, Astounding (and Sometimes Overpowering) Adventures in Readin

Recently finished Darren Shan's Cirque du Freak, which I surprised myself by liking. His writing style is very readable and delightfully creepy. I don't normally read much in the horror genre. Next is Tim: Defender of the Earth by Sam Enthoven. I enjoyed his book The Black Tattoo, so thought I'd read his latest, which is a tribute to all the big monster movies: King Kong, Godzilla etc.

 

[dwndrgn]

Re: April's Astonishing, Astounding (and Sometimes Overpowering) Adventures in Readin

I'm re-reading Knife of Dreams by Robert Jordan. It took me a while to round up all the books in the series for this re-read but alas not long enough. I was foolishly hoping that by the time I finished all 11 (plus New Spring) #12 would have been competed by Mrs. Jordan and Mr. Sanderson. Oh well. Maybe I'll re-read them all again in a year...

 

[Nesacat]

Re: April's Astonishing, Astounding (and Sometimes Overpowering) Adventures in Readin

Am reading If All Else Fails... by Craig Strete. It's a very odd collection of short stories with an introduction by Jorge Luis Borges.

... I would like to introduce you to a collection of small nightmares of great consequence. In "Saturday Night at the White Woman Watching Hole" you will find the quintessential Manhattanite, a socialite concealing a hidden truth behind her mascaraed eyes. And you can wander through a hidden valley, a purgatory of evil, where those who love to hate are forced to indulge their every desire. The title? "With the Pain It Loves and Hates." Or perhaps you will stumble upon "The Bleeding Man" standing naked in your laboratory - a biological impossibility - waiting for a cure to his disease.

These are just three excursions into the mysterious and grotesque world of Craig Strete. Within these pages are sixteen more visions of alien power in an undiscovered cosmos, written by an author whose prismatic eye refracts reality into its more bizarre components. For with this book, we risk the dangerous power of genus of one who can construct a universe within the skull, to rival the real. -- Jorge Luis Borges.

 

[Pyan]

Re: April's Astonishing, Astounding (and Sometimes Overpowering) Adventures in Readin

Just dipping into Cinema Macabre, ed. Mark Morris, which I put somewhere safe last September and have only just found..