The thread of book recommendations

Sagrilarus wrote:

I'm listening to Before the Dawn right now by Wade...

Intriguing Sag. It sounds like the subject matter would be a great companion piece to Sierra Madre's game "Origins", which I'm dying to try. It maybe a bit much for a summer read for me, but I'll look for it in the fall. Thanks

metalface13 wrote:

I've been reading the Harry Dresden books. I'm about to finish book 3, Grave Peril. They aren't exceptionally well written, but for a dumb, supernatural detective book, it's enjoyable enough.

Hmmm, I'll look into that thanks metalface.


Columbob wrote:

I'll probably pick up Stephenson's Snow Crash after this.

I'm familiar with Stephenson's name (I worked in a bookstore for a couple of years) but not his work. What do you like about it and what would be a great book of his to read?

I haven't actually read any of his stuff yet, but have heard some very good recommendations. I have Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon on the to read pile, with SC edging the other out because it's shorter. Snow Crash is apparently one of the quintessential cyberpunk novels.

I'm sure some of the FATties have read his stuff and have deeper insights.

Snow Crash is a fast, fun, imaginative romp through a cyberpunk setting, with a mixture of cliches, creativity and flashes of intelligent insight.

Everything else by Neal Stephenson that I've read has been slower-paced and densely packed with obscure knowledge, detailed trivia and thoughtful speculation. Diamond Age was okay and Cryptonomicon was tolerable, but the rest bored me.

Shellhead wrote:

Snow Crash is a fast, fun, imaginative romp through a cyberpunk setting, with a mixture of cliches, creativity and flashes of intelligent insight.

With a big fat wad of exposition stuffed in the middle for a huge derailment. Lots of people like this book, but I'm not one of them.

However, the first chapter is sheer brilliance.

Everything else by Neal Stephenson that I've read has been slower-paced and densely packed with obscure knowledge, detailed trivia and thoughtful speculation. Diamond Age was okay and Cryptonomicon was tolerable, but the rest bored me.

Diamond Age was my favorite Stephenson book. I recently re-read Cryptonomicon, and that book really didn't age well. It's half a great book set in WWII, interspersed with slobbery dot-com-era bullshit.

Stephenson is a frustrating writer for me, since he can write so well, but he often plots so poorly. I don't mind the off-track trivia and occasional geeking out, but when so many pages are spent on stuff like that and characters are reduced to "Of course you've forgotten, since I'm much smarter than you are, that..." it seems like the effort's gone to the wrong place. Also, there's often some massive flaw in his book requiring an insurmountable additional new level of disbelief.

Cryptonomicon:


Anathem:


The man really needs an editor, but I don't think he's ever going to get one with the balls to really help him.

On the reading front, classes really trashed my time for the last few months, but summer reading season is on. I'm currently working through Pynchon's "Against the Day".

I am currently reading Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell and so far am loving it. It sort of intertwines six wildly disparate stories/lives into one narrative. The premise was inspired by If on a winter's night a traveller if that helps.

I personally really like Stephenson, though you have to take him wiht a grain of salt I think. It definitely helps if you can suspend disbelief during the books; I don't think that they are really intended to be accurate reflections of reality. My favourite books by him are The Diamond Age and the Baroque Cycle.

I used to think of myself as a Stephenson fan, but after being progressively more bored and frustrated with his stuff, I think I'm just a Snow Crash fan.

Oh, I also recently read Good Omens by Terry Pratchet and Neil Gaiman. I've read one Terry Pratchet book before, but didn't think much of it. Neil Gaiman can be a hit or miss for me too. But Good Omens was pretty good. I'm always up for a funny good vs. evil apocalypse tale. Kind of reminds me of Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming by Roger Zelazny and Robert Sheckley.

metalface13 wrote:

Oh, I also recently read Good Omens by Terry Pratchet and Neil Gaiman. I've read one Terry Pratchet book before, but didn't think much of it. Neil Gaiman can be a hit or miss for me too. But Good Omens was pretty good. I'm always up for a funny good vs. evil apocalypse tale. Kind of reminds me of Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming by Roger Zelazny and Robert Sheckley.

I'm reading the Myth Adventures series right now, by Robert Lynn Asprin. It seems like something you would enjoy, a light fun tone like Good Omens or Bring Me the Head.

Shellhead wrote:

metalface13 wrote:

Oh, I also recently read Good Omens by Terry Pratchet and Neil Gaiman. I've read one Terry Pratchet book before, but didn't think much of it. Neil Gaiman can be a hit or miss for me too. But Good Omens was pretty good. I'm always up for a funny good vs. evil apocalypse tale. Kind of reminds me of Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming by Roger Zelazny and Robert Sheckley.

I'm reading the Myth Adventures series right now, by Robert Lynn Asprin. It seems like something you would enjoy, a light fun tone like Good Omens or Bring Me the Head.

I'll have to check that out.

This may be somewhat of a pedestrian recommendation, but I'm finishing 2001: A Space Odyssey right now. I re-watched the movie back when there was all that Star Trek talk on this site, and realized I'd never actually read more than the first few chapters of the book. It's a really entertaining read.

It lacks a lot of the ambiguity and near somnambulant pacing of the film, and still has the same lame explanation for HAL 9000's behavoir, so it's not quite the achievement the movie was. On the other hand, it's really interesting to read it now because it really gives you an idea of what we lost when we gave up on things like the Apollo program.

A lot of people are quick to point out that the book didn't have to be science fiction. We could have had much of what's depicted in 2001 by 2001. Maybe not manned missions to Jupiter or Saturn, and obviouly not a computer like HAL, but we could have had commercial space flight, large permanent space stations, and probably a moon base of some kind as well.

It's cool to read a good yarn that was written when we thought we really would be doing all these things.

Currently/recently reading:
A bunch of books about education that I picked up from the library. I'm going to have to pick a school for my son soon so...
Disney War: I'm only a little way into it, but it seems to be the rise and fall of Eisner. I'm interested in Disney (used to work at WDW) and I'm not a big fan of Eisner so I'm enjoying learning more.

Favorites:
Ender's Game: The best thing about this is the underlying premise that children are real people.
The House of the Seven Gables: Nathanial Hawthorne is my other go-to guy for complex language, along with Lovecraft.
J Pod: This story is so weird some of it must be true.

What do folks around here think of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Lila? Makes perfect sense to me. They're terrible stories though.

Sagrilarus wrote:

I'm listening to Before the Dawn right now by Wade. It's subtitle is Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors and it's an investigation into the current state of knowledge of pre-history, based upon archaeological, anthropological and genetic indicators.

I got to listen to the part on cannibalism this morning. Never considered it a very interesting subject before, but that was pretty cool.

Sag.

crumbb wrote:

Currently/recently reading:

snipped
Disney War: I'm only a little way into it, but it seems to be the rise and fall of Eisner. I'm interested in Disney (used to work at WDW) and I'm not a big fan of Eisner so I'm enjoying learning more.

Great book, though a little heavy going at times. Explains a lot about Disney's strategies and releases at the time and it provides an interesting context for the High School Musical phenomenon (which appeared to be exactly what Eisner was striving for but emerged after he left.)

Here are a few titles I've enjoyed in the past few weeks:

The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston

Neo-noir/dark comedy that reads like an old-school Coen brothers film. Huston has yet to write a bad book.


Infected and Contagious, both by Scott Sigler

Horror/action/techno-thrillers about aliens invading via nano-organisms. Sigler writes like young Stephen King.


Turn Coat by Jim Butcher

This is the latest installment of The Dresden Files, and lives up to the high standards set by the previous books. Harry Dresden is a Chicago P.I. who also happens to be a wizard. His character reads like an amalgamation of Peter Parker and Indiana Jones.