Re: What are you reading?

Saniss wrote:

I was told that I'd have to go through 20 pages of describing pipe-weed, and read whole chapters about families with so many names you can't remember a third of them. My guess is that the people who told me that probably never actually opened Tolkien's novels.

The people who told you that most likely read the first chapter, "Concerning Hobbits" -- which is completely that -- looked at the number of pages they had left to go, and gave up. But after the first chapter Tolkien gets down to the business of telling the story and it's a much easier read, although I found that the also became much easier to read after seeing the movies.

Last edited by Dorkman (2013-06-26 00:13:05)

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Re: What are you reading?

Thumbs up for Joyland from me, too.  It was written for a little publishing company called Hard Case Crime that specializes in throwback-style pulp paperbacks.    Part of the conceit is they don't even offer their new releases in digital format right away - you have to read it in paperback, the way it's intended.   The only thing missing is the cheap glue that used to cause the pages to fall out before you'd finished reading. 

It's pretty much King just doing what he did when he was first starting out - trying to spin a yarn that will inspire an eye-catching cover, so somebody will buy it off the drugstore rack.  (Which is exactly how I  bought Carrie when it first came out, back when the name "Stephen King" didn't mean a damn thing to anybody.  smile)

Also just finished Sleepless in Hollywood: Tales from the New Abnormal in the Movie Business by Lynda Obst - which has been discussed a bit in this thread already.  It's pretty uncanny the way she describes - as an insider - pretty much exactly the same issues we outsiders have talked about for years here on our little podcast.   

Bottom line - the movie business is now geared only for making pandering eye-candy crap, and the place to go - both for creators and consumers who seek non-crap - is now television.   Worth a read if you want to know in detail why movies have turned to shit - otherwise, if you've been a regular listener/forumer here, you already know the gist of it.

Seriously tho, it would be a hoot if there was ever some way to have Obst join us for a session.  She seems like one of us.

Re: What are you reading?

Incidentally, the new Under the Dome show isn't half bad. Not great, but far from terrible. And given that they apparently changed the book's AWFUL ending, I'm optimistic.

"The Doctor is Submarining through our brains." --Teague

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Re: What are you reading?

I agree, I enjoyed the first episode. smile

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Read both John Dies at the End and This Book Is Full of Spiders back to back recently, and they're easily the most fun I've had with literature all year. For some reason (maybe the hurricane of bad puns and non sequiturs he spews forth) I pictured John as Teague. Also, The Count of Monte Cristo is freaking amazing; make sure to get the unabridged Robin Buss translation from Penguin, as it's the only unabridged one that really reads like it was written in English and doesn't use archaic syntax for no reason. . Probably the single greatest adventure novel/political thriller ever written, and the Count is one of the downright *coolest* characters I've read.

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Re: What are you reading?

http://www.stevenpressfield.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/war-of-art-gif1-243x387.jpg

Finally read The War of Art after Steven Pressfield (The legend of Bagger Vance). Joe Rogan has been prasing this book for a long time on his podcast and when I saw a copy on a used book market I figured it would be interesting.

Meh, he has a few ideas that are worth discussing, but mostly it's a meh of a book. His religious leanings become more and more obvious as the book progresses. It did not add anything to the content of the book but explained a lot about the allegory and metaphor I found in The Legend of Bagger Vance.  It is a quick read but it's not a book I will add to my collection, I'll give it away first chance I get.

Last edited by AshDigital (2013-09-03 18:40:53)

---------------------------------------------
I would never lie. I willfully participate in a campaign of misinformation.

Re: What are you reading?

I powered through all the Old Man's War books by John Scalzi the other month, and loved them.

Then this month, I got The John Varley Reader, which is a sci-fi short story anthology, and loved that.

Now I'm moving on to some of Varley's novels, starting with Titan. (...loving it.)

Maybe I just like sci-fi.

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: What are you reading?

I tried reading The Name of the Wind, hearing it was a great fantasy book. It had some interesting worldbuilding and alright writing but it suffered from the story being about a character who is awesome at everything, whose awesomeness is world-renowned, telling the story of his life in which he started awesome and leveled up from there. There's very little tension in the story as a result, never a moment where I wonder "oh man, how will he get out of this?" and eventually the humblebragging just gets old. I gave up with about 1/4 left to go. Don't intend to finish and the sequel is right out.

Speaking of Scalzi, I picked up Redshirts. The writing style/humor thinks it's much funnier than it is but I didn't want to abandon two books in a row, and it's short, so I stuck with it. Has fun with the tropes, but kept feeling the need to turn to me and go "DID YOU SEE THE FUN I HAD WITH THAT TROPE JUST THEN?"

Anyway, I've got Old Man's War already so I'll give Scalzi another shot. Might just have been the self-referential nature of Redshirts that bothered me.

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Re: What are you reading?

I strongly disliked Redshirts.

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: What are you reading?

Dorkman wrote:

Speaking of Scalzi, I picked up Redshirts. The writing style/humor thinks it's much funnier than it is

This is exactly how I felt about Old Man's War.

Also, the premise is way better than the actual execution of it.

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Re: What are you reading?

For the record, I was talking about the Old Man's War series writ large, not just the titular first book. But I enjoyed the first one enough to keep goin,' so, there ya go.

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: What are you reading?

I think I might re-read House of Leaves. It's been a while, but I was totally engrossed last time.

"The Doctor is Submarining through our brains." --Teague

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Re: What are you reading?

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/817Dh74fLtL._SL400_.jpg

The fake blogs of a 15 year old Chinese-American girl from Los Angeles, as written by a guy with a beard from Cleveland.

Also happens to be the most charming, delightful thing I've read in years. YEARS.

And it's free with Prime, so get on it. It's so so so so much fun. And sweet. And sometimes crazy dark like getting hit in the head with an axe handle. But then sweet again.

http://www.amazon.com/I-Ching-ebook/dp/B00CLH1D4W


And it's telling me I can lend it to someone, so if you're a cheapskate or don't have prime or aren't convinced by the sample or whatever, say so.

Last edited by paulou (2013-09-04 06:14:32)

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Re: What are you reading?

Read the first book of The Zombie Bible as recommended by Dorkman. I'll have to check out the second one before I can render a verdict; this first one had a curiously seldom-present undead threat, and was far too short for the cover price, but I see that the second and third volumes are much longer.

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Re: What are you reading?

Reading Double Down the story of the 2012 US Presidential Election.  Also, Reza Aslan's Zealot a summation of the historical Jesus through the lens of a Zion revolutionary.  Both are interesting.

Eddie Doty

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Re: What are you reading?

That's funny, I started on Game Change week or two ago. It's a little slow to start, but I like the idea of telling the story the way they do.

I dropped it to re-read the Potter series, though.

"The Doctor is Submarining through our brains." --Teague

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Re: What are you reading?

Aside from Potter, since my last check in I've read:

Old Man's War -- eh. It didn't aggravate me like Redshirts did, but it stopped just as things were getting interesting and I was more annoyed by the cocktease than I was titillated into moving on. Not planning to continue.

The Great Hunt -- Book 2 of the Wheel of Time series. I know a lot of people who love this series, and while The Eye of the World didn't light my fire it laid some interesting groundwork and I was ready to see this series take off. Which it didn't. It kind of kept the same "laying groundwork" pace of the first novel. I tried to move on to The Dragon Reborn after this but I got a third of the way through and could not imagine reading eleven more books like this, especially when even the fans say they get steadily worse.

House of Secrets -- Chris Columbus' debut novel is so hilariously inept I tried to continue reading ironically. But I don't get back time I spend on shit even if I spend it ironically, so I bailed after what was probably no more than 20 pages (audiobook so I dunno).

You're Only as Good as Your Next One: 100 Great Films, 100 Good Films, and 100 for Which I Should Be Shot -- enjoyed this one, memoirs of a film producer recalling how some films got made (and how some others didn't).

Doctor Sleep -- I guess this is a sequel to The Shining in the most literal sense, but it could have been totally unrelated and worked just as well, arguably better. Had to close my eyes and think of England a few times when things got a little too schtick-y, but I made it through to the end and it was enjoyable enough once the story really got rolling.

The Disaster Artist -- Greg Sestero's memoir of his ?friendship? (even he seems unsure) with Tommy Wiseau and the making of THE ROOM. Sestero (with undoubtedly more than a little help from co-writer Tom Bissell) is sharp, funny, self-deprecating and manages to tell the bizarre story with a sense of sympathy and even affection for the strange man at the heart of the madness. My only gripe is that the story ends when THE ROOM premieres -- leaving out almost entirely the story of its cult success. Still, if you love THE ROOM in its gonzo glory, it's well worth a read.

The Cuckoo's Calling -- Like everyone else, I read this after I found out J.K. Rowling wrote it under a pseudonym. I'm glad she did. Unlike The Casual Vacancy, in which she clearly felt the pressure of proving that she wasn't just a children's fantasy writer, so every page was covered in fuck and cunt and graphic descriptions of sex and masturbation, in her anonymity she felt free to just tell a story, the kind of story HP fans will know she most enjoys -- a whodunit. A dispensible but enjoyable mystery, she says she plans to write more stories with the central characters, and I'll keep my eye out for them.

Hyperion -- a sort of sci-fi Canterbury Tales, an anthology of characters telling their personal histories with a strange alien deity known as "the Shrike," which is based on the planet Hyperion, and which has drawn them for a final pilgrimage. The stories are fascinating, but it's frustrating that the novel ends as they finally set off in earnest to meet the Shrike. I guess Fall of Hyperion, the "sequel," is the second half of the story, which I'll get to eventually.

The Devil You Know -- urban fantasy, a ghost story/mystery. I was on an urban fantasy kick a while back so I bought this one and then didn't read it because I got off the kick when Sandman Slim was underwhelming, but I think I'll seek out any sequels there may be.

A Universe From Nothing -- I'm gonna have to read this one a few more times before I really get it, but a cool primer on the latest views regarding the origins (and future) of the universe.

Star Wars: The Dark Lord Trilogy -- Darth Praxus recommended the Episode 3 novelization as being better and giving more justification to the story and events of the film. When I sought it out I discovered that it was bundled, on Kindle, with a novel bridging Eps 2 and 3, and a follow-up to ROTS about "the rise of Darth Vader." It's taken me six months to read, chipping away in between other books. He's right -- ROTS is much improved by the novel being able to explain what in the blue Yoda the characters are thinking. Anakin's turn is much better handled, although his leap from loyal Jedi to murdering children is still a little too fast and can't really be made to work, though Stover tries his darndest. In the end it winds up feeling like the novel came first and just got an incompetent adaptation, which I guess is praise? The lead-in and lead-out novels are fluff, though, don't bother with those.

Permanent Midnight -- I mentioned on Twitter that I'd heard a lot about the making of the show ALF being a nightmare for everyone involved, and Eddie mentioned it was documented in this memoir by one of the writers. This... is not a book about ALF. He mentions ALF in passing a few times just to establish a general timeline, but this is a book about Jerry Stahl's life as a drug addict who happens to have written some TV shows somewhere in the haze. I'm "liking" it in the same way one "likes" the extremely similar REQUIEM FOR A DREAM -- it's raw and intense and I'm glad that it exists and I'm going to finish it (about 1/3 in currently), and then I will probably cry and never go near it again because Jesus Christ.

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Re: What are you reading?

Dorkman wrote:

Permanent Midnight -- I mentioned on Twitter that I'd heard a lot about the making of the show ALF being a nightmare for everyone involved, and Eddie mentioned it was documented in this memoir by one of the writers. This... is not a book about ALF. He mentions ALF in passing a few times just to establish a general timeline, but this is a book about Jerry Stahl's life as a drug addict who happens to have written some TV shows somewhere in the haze. I'm "liking" it in the same way one "likes" the extremely similar REQUIEM FOR A DREAM -- it's raw and intense and I'm glad that it exists and I'm going to finish it (about 1/3 in currently), and then I will probably cry and never go near it again because Jesus Christ.

I think I mentioned on Twitter that it is in no way a story about Alf, but Jerry touches on his time on that and Moonlighting in the context of his addictions.  Not sure if you're aware, but Ben Stiller starred in the movie version which was one of my favorites of that year (98 I think).

Not sure if you've gotten there in the book yet, but the scene where he fucks a Nazi after she shoots up into her clit is strikingly captured.

Last edited by Eddie (2014-01-03 20:33:55)

Eddie Doty

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Re: What are you reading?

Started on Rinzler's Making of Return of the Jedi. Wow, this is an amazing work (just like that done for the other two films) with some absolutely fascinating insights into the behind the scenes.

There are some excerpts from the transcripts of meetings with Lucas, Kasdan, Marquand and Kazanjian, where they're all just going back and forth with ideas. Seeing who comes up with what is itself interesting, but reading Lucas' thoughts especially are eye-opening - stuff like how Yoda can't fight and that anyone can use the Force. Positions he would completely do a 180 over years later.

Highly recommend!

To my recollection, no such meetings were held during the PT.

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere. - Carl Sagan

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Re: What are you reading?

I haven't had the chance to read the making of for Empire or Jedi but I need too. The Star Wars one is one of my favorite books about film making and the process, so I can imagine that the others are great too. Just no retailer seems to have them nearby sad

Quick edit: I looked up the books on Amazon and did the whole "Look inside" bit. One piece of concept art is of a Y Wing pilot thinking, "Die, you gravy sucking kong." Man, why were lines like that cut?

Last edited by fireproof78 (2014-01-04 18:33:01)

God loves you!

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Re: What are you reading?

I've started reading Rinzler's book too. I'm not that far in to it, but I am enjoying it so far. I only read the paperback edition of The Making of Star Wars, so I missed out on all the cool concept art and behind-the-scenes photos.

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Re: What are you reading?

fireproof78 wrote:

Quick edit: I looked up the books on Amazon and did the whole "Look inside" bit. One piece of concept art is of a Y Wing pilot thinking, "Die, you gravy sucking kong." Man, why were lines like that cut?

It's a concept picture showing a pilot playing a handheld game (Donkey Kong)  big_smile

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere. - Carl Sagan

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Re: What are you reading?

redxavier wrote:
fireproof78 wrote:

Quick edit: I looked up the books on Amazon and did the whole "Look inside" bit. One piece of concept art is of a Y Wing pilot thinking, "Die, you gravy sucking kong." Man, why were lines like that cut?

It's a concept picture showing a pilot playing a handheld game (Donkey Kong)  big_smile

Oh, I get that. I just thought the line worked wink

God loves you!

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Re: What are you reading?

Do graphic novels count? Cuz I'm currently reading "The Long Halloween", which as it turns out is much of the basis for The Dark Knight. Lots of very familiar scenes and imagery.

Along with that, I'm doing an unusual thing for me and sort of jumping back and forth between four novels as the mood strikes/when I have time, which is rare. I'm the furthest along in Gaiman's "American Gods" (which is just begging to have that HBO series made), "Catching Fire" (because I can read and think about JLaw at the same time) and my random book find of the month is "Stormdancer", by one Jay Kristoff. I noticed it for the front cover, bought it because of the back.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51sT1gF5PTL._SY344_PJlook-inside-v2,TopRight,1,0_SH20_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg
Several months ago I also randomly picked up "Leviathan Wakes", which is quite interesting as space operas go (it's kinda Alien/2010/Total Recall) and came with a recommendation from George R.R. Martin.

I hope to finish them all soon, they're all really good so far, but omg life.

Last edited by Vapes (2014-01-05 08:33:44)

"Defending bad movies is VaporTrail's religion."
-DorkmanScott

Re: What are you reading?

Vapes wrote:

Do graphic novels count? Cuz I'm currently reading "The Long Halloween", which as it turns out is much of the basis for The Dark Knight. Lots of very familiar scenes and imagery.

Along with that, I'm doing an unusual thing for me and sort of jumping back and forth between four novels as the mood strikes/when I have time, which is rare. I'm the furthest along in Gaiman's "American Gods" (which is just begging to have that HBO series made), "Catching Fire" (because I can read and think about JLaw at the same time) and my random book find of the month is "Stormdancer", by one Jay Kristoff. I noticed it for the front cover, bought it because of the back.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51sT1gF5PTL._SY344_PJlook-inside-v2,TopRight,1,0_SH20_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg
Several months ago I also randomly picked up "Leviathan Wakes", which is quite interesting as space operas go (it's kinda Alien/2010/Total Recall) and came with a recommendation from George R.R. Martin.

I hope to finish them all soon, they're all really good so far, but omg life.

How is Stormdancer? It sounds really interesting and I might have to pick it up, as part of my resolution to read more.

God loves you!

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