What are you reading now?

[HiWire]

Patrick Rothfuss – The Wise Man's Fear

I was excited to start this book but it turned out to be an epic fail.

 

Started this one immediately afterwards to get the bad taste out:

Guy Gavriel Kay – A Song for Arbonne

Edited May 24, 2017 by HiWire

[TMoney]

Fun read.

I was born in 85 and I think I'm about 5-10 years too young for most of the references.

I think RP1 might be better as a movie than it was as a book. I'll be looking forward to it next year.

[Sechtdamon]

Pierre Joseph Proudhon - Love And Marriage
It's published in April this year but I just realised it's existence.

[Dusty Chalk]

What's good about it is that even if you weren't a gamer, it's still a fun read.

I was kind of surprised it would be made into a movie, there are a lot of very specific game references that are bound to the plot, I'll be curious which ones they kept and which ones they substituted.  There are a lot of legal logistics to be lll...can't think of an el word....wrangled.  

Did you see the RP1 episode of Community?  It's called Digital Estate Planning, I thought it was the closest we were going to get to a movie version.

Me:  ripped through more M.R. Forbes.  The man knows how to pace a book, and I really like his approaches to common tropes -- he tries not to do the same thing twice, and it's like Ghost in the Shell -- sometimes it's a buddy cop story, sometimes it's an intergalaxial thriller with politics, sometimes it's fantasy, sometimes it's science fiction, but invariably it's always a fun read.  I think I'm all caught up with everything he's written at this point.

He'll never be confused for Ernest Hemingway or any other super-literate authors, but I'm not reading it to build my vocabulary, unless you want to count the fictitious species "Plixian"...

[grawk]

Bastiat's The Law

 

https://mises.org/library/law

[Dusty Chalk]

Just finished Written in Red, now on to Vision in Silver (I accidentally read the 2nd book 1st).  Very enjoyable escapist urban fantasy.  I really like the depictions of the werewolves' preoccupation with smell and cookies and playing.  They refer to the main character as a 'squeaky toy'.

[Dusty Chalk]

Just finished Words of Radiance -- epic!  Can't wait for book 3 (of the Stormlight Archive, Oathbringer), and can't wait for book 5 of the Demon Cycle.  I'll probably read Norse Mythology now.

[Sechtdamon]

Max Stirner - The Unique And Its Property

[TMoney]

^ Busy working on your Ph.D in philosophy?

[Sechtdamon]

17 minutes ago, TMoney said:

^ Busy working on your Ph.D in philosophy?

Nah, TMoney, just for curiousity.

But maybe one day, why not

[TMoney]

58 minutes ago, Sechtdamon said:

Nah, TMoney, just for curiousity.

But maybe one day, why not

If you haven't read it yet, and are in to philosophy, Ozgur, I HIGHLY recommend Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance when you are ready to read something fictional.

As a fellow philosophy fan, It is one of the handful of books I can honestly say changed my life. It is also a good one to read if you are ever feeling depressed.

[Sechtdamon]

Found it in Turkish, I'm going to buy it after muslim festival of sacrifice. Thanks TMoney, it looks interesting. And reading something fictional time to time can be quite good.

Also may I ask your name (you can pm me if you don't want to post here)

[morphsci]

Just making sure I am doing it right.

Edited September 7, 2017 by morphsci

[HiWire]

 

This is a real oddball in the James Bond canon. The story is told from a woman's point of view... the plot of the book is completely unrelated to the movie screenplay with the same name.

Edited September 7, 2017 by HiWire

[Dusty Chalk]

Yeah, that was the weird one.  Put me off from reading any more James Bond, although it was a bit of a delayed reaction -- I think I still read the entire ouevre up until that point.  Kind of brilliant premise in hindsight, but I don't think I'll revisit it.  Ian Fleming was a twisted fuck.

Me:  just finished The Genome by Sergei Lukyanenkov -- fucking brilliant take on love of different varieties, sex, violence, space flight, virtual reality, and a murder mystery (complete with a clone with Sherlock Holmes spliced on to him).  A little dry in the delivery, but I blame it being translated from the Russian.  If you can get past the dry delivery and you enjoy science fiction, it's highly recommended.  It's the first book I've read by him that's outside of the Watch series.  The last time I looked, none of his other books had been translated.  Now there's two.  I look forward to more.

Now reading the next space war book from M.R. Forbes, and then on to the new Seanan McGuire.

[HiWire]

I gather it was an unsuccessful experiment... James Bond doesn't show up for a long time and the action was perfunctory. Fleming wasn't a particularly nuanced writer – nobody thought he was a literary genius at the time, but his books were huge bestsellers nonetheless. The writing style seems antique at this point and I think it was already old-fashioned in his day, but my most recent epiphany about Fleming's James Bond books is that many of them were written like romance novels for men. It seems strange in retrospect that it took me so long to figure this out, but that is probably because the films put so much emphasis on action and special effects while the novels get inside James Bond's head. There are lots of funny/eccentric things in the Bond novels like Bond admitting how much he enjoys breakfast or arguing about why he preferred to carry a "lady's gun" (according to Major Boothroyd, aka Q).

Ian Fleming and James Bond love eggs: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2724480/007-s-greatest-weakness-Not-girls-martinis-boiled-egg-On-50th-anniversary-Ian-Fleming-s-death-one-thing-never-knew-James-Bond.html

Edited September 8, 2017 by HiWire

[Dusty Chalk]

I don't know.  It's kind of like hearing Spirit of Eden for the first time -- it's so much a departure from the kind of music we hear every day, that it's shocking, but...

I think the intention was to tell a story from the perspective outside of the normal sphere of influence of one of his usual stories, and how he (Bond) would be perceived by those people.  Kind of like how Cloverfield is a monster movie told from the perspective of the people outside the normal scope of one of those stories.

I'm not sure I've ever figured out the romance novels for men aspect, and again -- don't really feel like revisiting his novels, so will take your word for it.  Are you reading them in order?  I vaguely remember Bond getting really beat up in several of them -- Casino Royale (which made the second movie of that name, but still watered down), Moonraker, Live & Let Die?

[robm321]

Ian Flemming had a lot of real world content to share at a time when there wasn't a lot available about intelligence. He had an amazing life and was involved in and influenced much of what's still going on today. I don't think people were attracted to his books for his writing style which is nothing special to say the least. 

 

 

Edited September 8, 2017 by robm321

[HiWire]

Yes, I'm reading them in order. Bond's struggles are more human in the books – he deals with physical injuries, exhaustion, fear and depression (particularly in You Only Live Twice, after his wife is murdered by Blofeld).

According to the Wikipedia entry, The Spy Who Loved Me was badly received by most critics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spy_Who_Loved_Me_(novel)

I've always enjoyed the Bond novels as escapist fantasy and they'll probably remain in print for a long time.

[robm321]

I think you nailed it. The movies completely ommited any human struggle other than him taking 2 seconds to get over the latest woman he was screwing before shooting another dozen bad guys while making a joke. 

I definitely enjoyed the books more. I never read, The Spy Who Loved Me. 

[Dusty Chalk]

Reading Labyrinth of Reflections (Sergei Lukyanenkov) on my phone, Good Intentions (M.R. Forbes) on my iPad, and just checked out The Brightest Fell (Seanan McGuire) from the library (hardback).  Labyrinth of Reflections in particular, is recommended to those of you who enjoyed Ready Player One as there's a lot of Doom and first person shooter type games and Microsoft and Windows references -- like it was written 20 years ago (which it was), so there's lots of talk of modems and human engineering and the internet, but not some of the more recent developments.  It still feels ahead of its time.  I haven't finished it yet, so if the ending sucks...soz.

[Dusty Chalk]

Brightest Fell was excellent, might be my favourite Toby Daye yet.

Labyrinth of Reflections is apparently the first book in a series...of which the rest has not been translated, which sucks, because my reading comprehension in Russian is next to nil.

Started Scrappy Little Nobody by Anna Kendrick...which is just as entertaining (so far) as she is on Twitter, so...very good, highly recommended.  Apparently she reads the audible version herself, so I may actually have to get that...although I'm hearing it in her voice reading it, so it may not be necessary.

Reading The Core (Peter V. Brett) from the library -- goddamn, this is good.  Honest word.  Will be checking out Oathbringer from the library next.

Started reading Into the Drowning Deep which I won on Facebook (did I mention I won an ARC of a Mira Grant novel?  I did.).

Also finished Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman, which was just as entertaining as everything else he's written.

[seaexplorer25]

Rereading Inferno by Dan Brown.

[Voltron]

Nobody cares what you are reading or eating. Read your welcome PM before posting more. Best of luck. 

[dsavitsk]