OT: Books and such

[AgentZero]

Well, it's gotten to that time of year where people start pestering me with requests for gift ideas, and as usual, I haven't much to offer them. I've noticed that my library isn't terribly well stocked though, so I figured on asking everyone for some books. This of course raises the minor issue that I don't really know what I want in the way of books. So, if anyone has any recommendations, I'd be happy to hear them. It doesn't necessarily have to be sci-fi either, just a good book that you enjoyed. Or good movies out on DVD... Yeah, that'd do too.

[RCCCL]

Honestly, I'm not really all that much into suspense\espionage type books, but I really enjoyed the Bourne books by Robert Ludlum. There are three books, The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, and The Bourne Ultimatum. In fact I'm actually reading through them again right now, currently in the middle of The Bourne Supremacy. There is a fourth Bourne book, but it is not written by Robert Ludlum. It is called The Bourne Legacy, written by Eric Van Lustbader. It is still a good book. You may have seen the movies with the titles from the first two books. As usual they don't compare to the Books, and in this case have almost nothing in common with the books story wise. Basicaly only sharing Titles, character names, and basic subject matter.

As for scifi, have you read the World War series by Harry Turteldove?

[Randallw]

Well first off I like Turtledove books, usually. I just finished the Hawaii duo, they were good. I started years back with World War but it fell foul of the thing that puts me off Turtledove. It goes for too long. 3 books in the original series, then 2 or 3 books in the continuing one after that then the final book. I get bored with them if they go on too long, but I did get Homeward bound, the last one, which I was dissapointed with as nothing really happened.

Timeline-119 (CSA series) I read but again got bored with and quit, that and analogous stories don't thrill me, though I am playing a mod of it in a WW2 game.

I do like Turtledove though, but only when he limits it to 1 book or 2. "Guns of the South" is one of my favourite books. Afrikaaner white supremacists go back to civil war and give Confederates Ak-47s. Sounds cheesy but Turtledove can pull it off well. SM Stirling is similar to Turtledove, but I have avoided his counterpart to the "Sea of Time" where electricity stops working.

Other authors I generally buy anything they write are Terry Pratchett, Peter L Hamilton (not his one offs but the series) and the late David Gemmell (pity I'll bever get a new book from him )

I usually go for large books if I can get them. I am a speed reader of sorts (not learnt, just the way I read) so I want books that will last longer than 3 hours.

I split my reading time between fiction and essays. Currently I am reading a sci-fi, Watch on the Rhine, a Star Trek novel with the Mirror Universe, and 2 texts, Counetrfactual thought experiments in world politics, and Unmaking the west- essays in world counterfactuals, both by the same editor. Those 2 might be a bit dry though as they are published by Princeton university. I actually have quite a few books that are peoples doctoral thesis.

[dogscoff]

Best book I've read this year has to be "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell" by Susanna Clarke.

Kind of a "what-if magic was real?" alternate history set in and around the Napoleonic wars, written in the style of the era.

Very good story, great characters, really funny in places; a brilliant read.

[Hugh Manatee]

One I like and usually recommend, the Titus Groan/Gormenghast books by Mervyn Peake. It's a little mellodramatic(I think thats the term for it), the characters are all very "big" they tend to play to extremes of their personality traits,and the scenarios are a bit far out, but somehow realistic in ways that fantasy novels tend to not be. For example no elves, dwarves, magicks, or fantasy creatures like dragons. However what is there is pretty far out enough not to need stuff like that, for example there is the castle Gormenghast, roughly the size of downtown new york with sky scraping towers(as the book says something to the effect of "thrusting upwards like blasphemous fingers at the gods"), the denizens of which adhere to a set of dogmatic rituals, some comedically absurd, which dictate exactly what everyone should be doing, from the 76th Earl of the castle, the depressed Lord Sepulchrave Groan, all the way down to Steerpike, an ambitious guy who's destiny(and all the generations of his children's) to scrub the floor of the kitchens untill one fateful chance encounter one morning where he get's his opportunity to escape and plot his future rise to power in the castle. Born into this chaos and ritual is Titus groan, Earl #77. There's lots of fun subplots and stories which interweave, some funny, some scary, some tragic, but it's all good.

If you're not sure what you want in a book, take a shot at the Gormenghast/titus groan searies, they're 3 books, Titus Groan, Gormenghast and Titus Alone(third book leaves the castle setting behind, I haven't gotten to it yet, but I'm almost there, and is supposed to set up his further life of adventures, but Peake died after writing it, and the series stops there, it's kinda like the Firefly of literature....) . You can get them in 1 volume with some interesting articles and essays in the back.

Also the BBC did a miniseries production of the books, it's pretty good, covers the first 2 books and focuses more on steerpike and the castle. You can get the R1 DVD of it, comes with all kinds of neat special features and documenteries.

[Randallw]

I generally give a new book a chapter to draw me in. Fail at that and I throw it aside in boredom. I tried the Titus Groan books once. Doubt it even lasted that long.

[dogscoff]

I tend to give books much longer than that, I HATE giving up on a book half way through. It rarely happens, but when it does it pisses me off no end, and I end up with a half-read book on my bedside table for months, which I refuse to pick up, while at the same time refusing to put it back on the shelf and select another one.

It's happening right now with Catch-22. I can't believe quite how bad it is. This is supposed to be a classic? It's drivel! There's no plot, nothing of any consequence whatsoever taking place and not even a clear idea of time or sequence. Just a bunch of pointless charactersr, introduced recursively so that the next one is brought in half-way through the flashback or anecdote that was introducing the previous one, who you've already forgotten because he's so bloody inconsequential, who then goes on make his oh-so-hilarious bid for the title of wackiest eccentric trait or most zany set of farcical non-sequiturs, all of this presented in nigh-unintelligible run-on sentences that seem to go on and on and on, much like this rant. Basically, it's like being stuck for eternity in a room full of local radio breakfast show DJs.

It leads me to wonder how the title of such a dire waste of ink ever made it into the English language. It's ther in the dictionary, lok it up. The fact that the phrase is used as an allusion to a mutually dependant set of conditions, when that isn't even the meaning ascribed to the phrase in the book only adds weight to my theory that no-one could possibly read that book all the way through. Everyone's just pretending they have because it's supposed to be such a fantastic book, all the while pretending to know what it's about, and no-one ever gets caught out because they're all pretending. Now THAT's Catch-22.

[/rant]

OK, I feel much better for that. I'll be flushi^H^H^H^H^H^Hputting the book back on the shelf tonight and picking up another one, and I refuse to feel bad about it.

AZ: Have you read any Chuck Palahniuk (AKA Fight Club Bloke)? I've read most of his novels and they've all been very good. Invisible Monsters is probably my favourite, or maybe Lullaby. Lullaby is probably the best introduction to his work, his style takes a little getting used to.

Another strange but good recommendation is "Great Apes" by Will Self. It's about a man who wakes up one day (after decades of heavy narcotic abuse) to discover he's somehow swapped brains with his counterpart from a version of the Earth where it's chimps that wear clothes, drive cars, go to art galleries etc, and humans that live in zoos and fling faeces. It's extremely enjoyable and raises some interesting questions about how much our culture and society is simply an fancified expression of our primate impulses. From reading HifH, I can imagine you enjoying this one.

Oh, and the Johnathan Strange book I recommended the other day? I forgot to mention it has brilliant footnotes. Lots of them, really long ones that you will treasure.

My final recommendation (for now) is to ask for book vouchers rather than books. Then go down Borders on Boxing Day and see how much great stuff has been hacked down to half price.

Wow, that turned out to be a very long post. Sorry peeps.

[PvK]

I've had gamers recommend David Weber's Honor Harrington series for years, and finally went and started reading the series and got hooked. Very nice space combat episodes, revolving around a righteous tactical genius character who gets into various underappreciated situations and eventually gets her comeuppance by kicking arse in episode after episode. Mainly the space battles are really well done, and worth getting through the descriptions of Honor fodling her cat, getting over hard feelings, politics, etc.

Edit: Oh, the series also "gets points in my book" for including many other characters and having them come and go through military rotation, occasionally having them reappear, etc., but no matter who they are and how heroic or virtuous or story-relevant, anyone might get suddenly violently killed or maimed, generally in an interestingly-described/explained way. One never knows who's going to die when or how, but the cause and effects makes sense, making the situation more tense and interesting.

PvK

[Baron Munchausen]

The HH series is pretty good. Even though the stories are actually formulaic. You'll realize that as you read more of them. He's got a basic toolkit of plot devices and he re-uses things often. But the space battles are so excellent that it's a forgivable fault.

[PvK]

Yes, you're right. So far I've been quite willing to forgive and drift through to the tactical parts. Another criticism I have is with some of the political/cultural/economic attitudes and seeming principles of the author, which seem to me on the simplistic side and more applicable to pre-21st-Century Earth than to the far future. But again, I'm not bothered much because I'm in it for the combat! I'm only up to book #5, though.