Liam Posted January 5, 2019 Share Posted January 5, 2019 38 minutes ago, Kuetsar said: Good luck with that. Isn't Gravity's rainbow supposed to be a really hard read? Yep. I meant to try and read it a few years back, but didn't get around to it. I also own two copies of it weirdly enough - one physical, one digital. 26 minutes ago, Contentious C said: Bone Clocks is pretty good, if clearly short of the quality of Cloud Atlas. I have a bunch of these sitting on my Kindle...which I will probably never read, given the rate I'm going. I never fancied Cloud Atlas, but ended up picking up Bone Clocks for cheap. It fits within my remit so will check it out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
odessasteps Posted January 5, 2019 Share Posted January 5, 2019 These days, I would much prefer the audio book to physically reading, for non-work reading, when I have the choice. I think the only recreational reading I do generally now are comics and the Observer. That said, still going through Hornbaker's latest book, for a future podcast. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OSJ Posted January 6, 2019 Share Posted January 6, 2019 21 hours ago, Liam said: Book 1 done - 'Wilt' by Tom Sharpe https://scalingthetbrpile.home.blog/2019/01/05/book-1-wilt-by-tom-sharpe/ TL;DR - unlikeable characters, likeable story, sex toy as main plot point. Tom Sharpe is one of the funniest mofos who ever lived. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OSJ Posted January 6, 2019 Share Posted January 6, 2019 21 hours ago, Liam said: Book 1 done - 'Wilt' by Tom Sharpe https://scalingthetbrpile.home.blog/2019/01/05/book-1-wilt-by-tom-sharpe/ TL;DR - unlikeable characters, likeable story, sex toy as main plot point. You've never read Mervyn Fucking Peake? You must be kidding me... With your love of language and fine writing, you are in for a treat, Titus Groan and Gormenghast are two of the great books of fantasy in the English language, comparable with the best of James Branch Cabell. Titus Alone would have made it a brilliant trilogy had Peake lived to finish it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ace Posted January 6, 2019 Share Posted January 6, 2019 For some reason, I've waited until 6 months after the death of Anthony Bourdain to finally read his work. Burned through "Kitchen Confidential" in a couple days. Going through "Medium Raw" just as quickly. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liam Posted January 6, 2019 Share Posted January 6, 2019 1 hour ago, OSJ said: You've never read Mervyn Fucking Peake? You must be kidding me... With your love of language and fine writing, you are in for a treat, Titus Groan and Gormenghast are two of the great books of fantasy in the English language, comparable with the best of James Branch Cabell. Titus Alone would have made it a brilliant trilogy had Peake lived to finish it. I tried to read it several years ago, probably bought five books and got distracted. It happens a lot. Most of those 75 have at least had a page or two read of them before my head has been turned. I do look forward to it though. Think it will be right up my alley. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.T. Posted January 7, 2019 Share Posted January 7, 2019 I got a boxed set of the three most recent novels in N.K Jemisin's Broken Earth series (The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate. The Stone Sky) for Christmas, but I will not allow myself to start them until I crank out this review for OSJ's horror compendium, Darkness, My Old Friend, that I keep yammering on about. My goal is to have this thing done and posted here by the end of February or March by the latest. Personal shit keeps torpedoing my free time. If I'm not rushing to the assisted living center because my crazy father has picked a fight with a nurse or having my sleep schedule destroyed by the army of the Republic of South Korea because they want to drill when Pyongyang is pissing them off, it's something else. Pray for a brotha. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liam Posted January 13, 2019 Share Posted January 13, 2019 http://scalingthetbrpile.home.blog/2019/01/13/book-2-snow-crash-by-neal-stephenson Book 2: 'Snow Crash' by Neal Stephenson TL;DR good world building and exciting finish, but a lot of exposition that left me cold in the middle. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
odessasteps Posted January 13, 2019 Share Posted January 13, 2019 Snow Crash is one of my favorite books of all time. I once taught it in a grad school Sci Fi class. But I don’t know how well it may have aged from the mid 90s. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liam Posted January 13, 2019 Share Posted January 13, 2019 2 hours ago, odessasteps said: Snow Crash is one of my favorite books of all time. I once taught it in a grad school Sci Fi class. But I don’t know how well it may have aged from the mid 90s. It was a little confusing, plus I found the Hiro/Librarian section just a big old expositional dump of information that, whilst important, was really boring as well. I feel a younger me would have enjoyed it more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
odessasteps Posted January 13, 2019 Share Posted January 13, 2019 Its not like anyone would ever accuse Stephenson of brevity. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OSJ Posted January 19, 2019 Share Posted January 19, 2019 While Curt and I may be the only two people on this board who care, Bentley Little's new collection, Walking Alone is out from Cemetery Dance for a quite reasonable $25.00 and makes a fine companion volume to the cleverly-titled The Collection. I know, it's a Bentley Little thing, you wouldn't understand... Holy shit! Please don't take this as a recommendation, I read the whole thing a few stories per night so as not to OD if Bentley was in a mood to hammer on a particular theme. I needn't have bothered wasting that courtesy, not only does he give us the same theme, he gives us the same story five times and it's a stupid one at that. Everything that was good about The Collection has been turned on its ear and the result is a mess. I have the feeling that my buddy, publisher Rich Chizmar made the standard sort of deal that mass-market publishers make all the time... You have a novelist who writes some short stories, said novelist has a high opinion of said short stories, which is quite different from the short story writer like myself, who can occasionally be tempted to collaborating on a novel. Short stories is what I do, so I'd best be good at it... The novelist makes deal of you get my next three novels, but it's a four-book package, you get my story collection too! The publisher is not enthused by this, but just hopes that it won't be too bad and that they make enough money off the three novels. Anyway, this book is utter shite. Little can and HAS written some damn fine stories, they all appeared in The Collection. This is self-indulgent crap and when I think that I could have purchased like two or three Cherie Priest or Lewis Nordan books instead, my blood boils. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liam Posted January 20, 2019 Share Posted January 20, 2019 https://scalingthetbrpile.home.blog/2019/01/20/book-3-fates-and-furies-by-lauren-groff/ Book 3: 'Fates and Furies' by Lauren Groff. TL;DR interesting story about a marriage told from two competing POVs. The second half does give way to some implausible stuff, but a worthwhile read otherwise. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.T. Posted January 22, 2019 Share Posted January 22, 2019 My from the gut review of OSJ's horror anthology, Darkness, My Old Friend, is now up in the shill thread named after his book. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
odessasteps Posted January 26, 2019 Share Posted January 26, 2019 Also got today issue 2 of Heroes Inc (the 70s zine with Wood and Ditko stuff in it) and issue 2 of the old SFCA Golden Age Collector zine. (This might only interest Matt and John.) 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sabremike Posted January 27, 2019 Share Posted January 27, 2019 We Want Fish Sticks, a marvelous account of one of the most disastrous moves in American sports history: the ill fated mid 90's rebranding of the Islanders. The book could have also been subtitled "Mike Milbury is a gigantic asshole and a waste of human flesh" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liam Posted January 28, 2019 Share Posted January 28, 2019 Book 4 was 'The Shadow of the Wind' by Carlos Ruiz Zafon https://scalingthetbrpile.home.blog/2019/01/28/book-4-the-shadow-of-the-wind-by-carlos-ruiz-zafon/ TL;DR a brilliant book that works as effectively as any crime thriller in its portrayal of a teenager seeking the author of 'The Shadow of the Wind' Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Campbell Posted January 31, 2019 Share Posted January 31, 2019 I checked out a book called "Manslaughter" by Parnell Hall out of the library. After about seven chapters, and not having the first clue who the first person narrator was, I did some googling. It was the actually the fifteenth book in a series. I finished it, and the downloaded the first book "Detective" (Mr. Hall seems to fancy one-word titles). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AxB Posted January 31, 2019 Share Posted January 31, 2019 On 1/2/2019 at 7:47 PM, Liam said: 74. ‘Midnight's Children’ by Salman Rushdie Go to 4:04 to get a review. For context, this came out right after Rushdie did an interview where he said Game of Thrones was 'well produced trash' and 'very addictive garbage'. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Curt McGirt Posted January 31, 2019 Share Posted January 31, 2019 On 1/26/2019 at 4:33 PM, odessasteps said: Also got today issue 2 of Heroes Inc (the 70s zine with Wood and Ditko stuff in it) and issue 2 of the old SFCA Golden Age Collector zine. (This might only interest Matt and John.) Whoa, how much did that go for? I grew up on Cinefantastique back issues that I bought for pennies at local bookstores. They were snobs, but the mag was incredible. And I'll be damned, there's an Internet Archive of them. I really want to read the Alien issue but I don't want to have nightmares tonight. https://archive.org/search.php?query=Cinefantastique Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
odessasteps Posted January 31, 2019 Share Posted January 31, 2019 It was $5 or so. I think I checked Ebay last week and there were copies for $15, which made me doubly happy 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Curt McGirt Posted January 31, 2019 Share Posted January 31, 2019 Cool! BTW when I say "they were snobs" I meant the staff of CFQ themselves. The reviews of a lot of those movies, shoo. John Carpenter's The Thing got like 2 1/2 stars! But you didn't read it for the reviews, you read it for the awesome art and super in-depth details on all the shows and movies... which is another reason I don't want to read that Alien issue because of all the Giger I'm sure it has in it... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
odessasteps Posted January 31, 2019 Share Posted January 31, 2019 Some of my favorite issues were the episode guides for things like BTAS and TNG and the Ren and Stimpy issue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Curt McGirt Posted January 31, 2019 Share Posted January 31, 2019 Oh man, I woulda flipped for a Ren and Stimpy issue, never even saw that. They were good at left-field stuff like that when it counted. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
odessasteps Posted February 1, 2019 Share Posted February 1, 2019 1 hour ago, Curt McGirt said: Oh man, I woulda flipped for a Ren and Stimpy issue, never even saw that. They were good at left-field stuff like that when it counted. IIRC,it was full of John K content. http://cin01.blogspot.com/2006/12/spumcos-ren-stimpy-revolution.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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