Books Part V, featuring Benny Profane and the Whole Sick Crew

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I prefer The Stand and It to everything else he has written. Though I loved the first few Dark Tower books a lot as well. I find his short stories hit and miss, but, to be fair, short stories rarely do it for me for some reason......unless that short story is the Deadliest Game.
 
The Stand is pretty easily my favorite thing Stephen King as written. I just re-read It last summer, and I thought it was alright. Not one of my favorite. I think my second favorite by him might be the novella The Langoliers out of Four Past Midnight, ridiculous as it is.
 
NSW, you read the new Gaiman yet?

Has anyone read The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen? The Shearwater song of the same title has been one of my favorites (if not #1 favorite) of theirs for quite a while, and I only recently realized it was influenced by a book of the same name. Seems people either absolutely love or hate the author's style / focus, not entirely sure which side of the fence I'll fall on based on descriptions.
 
I read it, yes. I liked it, did not love it or anything. Reading Cormac McCarthy's Suttree right now. A few new books arrived for me yesterday, excited about them. I will list off some recent reads with 3-10 word reviews soon. Hold on to your hats.
 
Maybe I'll wait for the price to drop a little then. In the midst of some other books at the moment anyways.
 
I'm sure I've mentioned my rather disdainful feelings towards the stand. Its not that I didn't like it, but I feel that it was abridged for a reason. I wish that I had read that version and not the unabridged version, because I think maybe king really does need to be censored sometimes. And I also could really tell what was from the original and what he added in later the timelines didn't mix well. All that being said it's a good story I don't dislike it but it's not my favorite book of his. That's definitely the shining closely followed by it and then probably the green Mile
 
When She Woke by Hillary Jordan

This book takes a look at what the U.S. would be like if fundamentalist Christians took over and made abortion illegal. Because of a terrible economy, and hint of a massive world war, the cheapest way to punish criminals is to "chrome" their skin. Murderers have their skin colored red for their sentence, and this includes women who've had abortions.

What interested this book to me was that it is inspired by The Scarlet Letter and The Handmaid's Tale. Plus, with abortion being such a huge debate in this country, I felt it was important to read this book, even though it is dystopia fiction. However, I noticed the book has mixed reviews, so I wasn't so sure if I would like it.

It was good, for the most part. Not great, despite it's promise. It really became bland and slowed down during the last third of the story, and I found myself skimming to the last pages to see how it ended. I'm glad there was some closure between the main character (Hannah Payne) and the man who's baby she aborted. But the ending was kind of...blah.

I'd give this 3.5 on Goodreads if it allowed it, so I'll go with 4 stars.
 
Here is a list of the next ten books I'll be reading, in no particular order:

Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny
Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
Undaunted Courage by Stephen A Ambrose
Lexicon by Max Barry
The Blood of Heaven by Kent Wascom
The Son by Philipp Meyer
The Beautiful and the Damned by Fitzgerald
Claudius the God by Robert Graves
The Fortune of War by Patrick O'Brian

Currently reading Suttree by Cormac McCarthy

Recently finished:

The Ocean at the end of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
Taiko by Eiji Yoshikawa
The 39 Steps by John Buchan
The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi
The Dog Stars by Peter Heller
Wool by Hugh Howey
A Delicate Truth by John le Carre
Matter by Iain M. Banks
The World at Night by Alan Furst
Istanbul Passage by Joseph Kanon
Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon
Great North Road by Peter F Hamilton

The Dog Stars was probably my favorite of the bunch. Wool my least favorite.
 
Do you mean Gillian Flynn for Gone Girl? I liked it a lot, but it wasn't as good as all the build-up led me to hope.

Kate Atkinson is pretty great. Loved Case Histories.

Dog Stars and Telegraph Avenue are on my list.
 
Just started Paul S Kemp's new book, a Discourse in Steel. It's the follow up to the novel that came out about a year and a half ago that he didn't write in a shared world (since all his other novels are either Dungeons & Dragons or Star Wars). With the exception of one of the Star Wars novels*, I've loved all of Kemp's stuff, and the other one centered around these very gray mouser-inspired characters, Egil & Nix, was pretty great..


Got a little bit of this left, and while I've enjoyed it, I didn't quite love it. If the ending becomes anything like the last one, I'm sure that will change. Otherwise, it's just a decent and quick read. I've read fantasy novels of the same length (350 pages) where far less has happened, essentially there are three major acts, and I've read slower-paced novels that were centered around the equivalent of one of major events. And the pace didnt feel like it came at the expense of plot/scene-setting/character development as I was reading it, which is a good thing.
 
I'm reading the Crying of Lot 49. It's a strange read, to say the least, but I'm flying through it.

On the shelf, but I'll get to them: 1984, Under the Volcano, House of Leaves

I'm back to tackling some post-modern classics. About a third into Pynchon's V (after a quick detour of plowing through Inherent Vice), and a long literature conversation with a friend has led me to pick up William Gaddis' The Recognitions again. At over 900 pages, it's a mammoth undertaking, and doesn't move nearly as fast as Infinite Jest, which it apparently was a big influence on.
 
Here is a list of the next ten books I'll be reading, in no particular order:

Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny

Does this have anything to do with THE LADY MELISANDRE?

Or GENDRY OF THE HOUSE BARATHEON???

God I hope so.

Is this your first Zelazny, NSW? He's been one of my favorites since junior high, but that one isn't what I would call entry-level. It's quite dense and hard to get a foothold in compared to other works. It's an amazing, acclaimed book but he has many others that are better.

Funny you should mention Game Of Thrones, because Zelazny has a similar series of fantasy books that from what I've read blows George R.R. Martin's writing out of the water.
 
It is my first, believe it or not...been thinking about reading his stuff for ages but just have not pulled the trigger. Which series blows GoT out of the water?
 
The Amber Chronicles. It has the same kind of vacant throne political intrigue, but stylistically closer to Raymond Chandler with a sardonic first person narrative. It's also not pure fantasy in that part of it takes place on present-day Earth.

Really unique stuff and I can't recommend it enough. The first book is called Nine Princes In Amber. It's less than 200 pages and is a breeze to read.
 
Finished Joyland. For those curious, my write-up on Goodreads:

Certainly not bad, but not great either. I wish King had been able to just hang up the super important stuff that he thinks he's writing for one little pulpy mystery/horror. Instead, we don't get into the meat of the mystery until ~150 pages in, and then, the mystery isn't even that mysterious. I had two guesses on whodunit by that point, and by 50 pages later, I was positive I knew who it was...and I was right. And I'm not a mystery buff, it just really didn't have a great mystery set-up. And the thrills weren't there either. One of the main plot points is resolved in a matter of paragraphs, to no fanfare, and the conclusion of the mystery is half-baked, and rushed as well.

I don't know, this review comes off more negative than I would like. I enjoyed reading the book, but some more conflict at the end would have been nice.
I don't know, I thought we could have had a BIT more of a struggle with Dev coming to terms with the fact that Lane was the guy. He seemed to almost worship Lane, but then he turns on him in seconds. And I don't buy Lane suddenly snapping and going crazy. There could certainly have been more tension, I feel like. The Carolina Spin was a nice touch, but, again, I never really felt like Dev was in danger. Probably because he's writing this story from old age. Perhaps him at least getting injured in some way would have helped. I don't know

But the ending, the very last couple pages, I did enjoy a great deal. He's done this before,
The psychic child who is the key to the puzzle bs
, but I liked Mike, so I didn't mind the rehash.
 
Greetings fellow book readers.

I've just finished Martin Amis' Money and this could be the funniest novel I've ever read. Highly recommended.

I'm waiting for my copy of Infinite Jest to come (that'll be my first 1000+ page novel), but before that, I'm thinking whether I should get back to Cloud Atlas. It's certainly intriguing (I haven't seen the movie yet), but I got to the chapter with the musician and his tutor and I just found it so plodding. But then again, the genre-switching might fix that. Opinions about the book are most welcome.

*And now I've used the search function and it seems laz and NSW will rip me a new one if I don't continue reading it.
 
Oh man, I forgot, I never finished Cloud Atlas. I was on the last chapter when the movie came out, and I'd already had plans to go to the midnight showing, so I went anyways. Completely slipped my mind to finish the book :doh:.

~ 200 pages into Dance with Dragons. I haven't quite got into it yet, but I'm enjoying it. Love the characters and coming back to them after the few years it's been since I read Feast For Crows.
 
Yes, you should finish Cloud Atlas!!

Each section is only like 30 pages so it's not too long of a wait 'til the next storyline.

The Zedelghem part is over (for now) and now I'm on the Luisa Rey storyline, which is stylistically almost the complete opposite - quick-paced and dialogue-heavy. Not to mention it's a thousand times easier to read as a non-native.

So I'm pretty sure now I'll finish it.

Oh, and out of curiosity, how fast do you guys read? Like measured in pages per hour or something.
 
My hands are shaking out of fear so badly that I cannot turn the pages anymore.
 
Oh, and out of curiosity, how fast do you guys read? Like measured in pages per hour or something.


About twice as fast as my housemate if i'm reading something over his shoulder. According to Staples that's how fast high-level executives read. But based on posts in this thread, I'd say something like 147 times slower than cori or martha is much more accurate.
 
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