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On 2016-01-20 at 10:49 AM, cwoy2j said:

 

What did you think of Wind Through The Keyhole? I thought that felt more like a Dark Tower book than 5-7.

I found Wind Through The Keyhole and it was a solid story within a story. My only beef was that it's told as Roland narrating and Eddie doesn't interrupt at least fifteen times? ;)

Thanks for telling me about it!

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7 hours ago, Marty Sugar said:

I found Wind Through The Keyhole and it was a solid story within a story. My only beef was that it's told as Roland narrating and Eddie doesn't interrupt at least fifteen times? ;)

Thanks for telling me about it!

No prob! I hope King writes more standalone stories set within The Dark Tower world. Those are always interesting. Roland wandered around for years before the events of The Gunslinger so there's tons of material to draw on.

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I've started "Colorless Tsuruku Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage" by Haruki Murakami.  It is really good; I can't put it down.

it's about a group of 5 close high school friends from Nagoya, Japan.  1 of them goes away to Tokyo for college and when he returns home for summer break, he is told by 1 of the other 4 not to contact any of them again and he isn't given a reason why.

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On 05/04/2016 at 7:08 PM, Randy said:

I've started "Colorless Tsuruku Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage" by Haruki Murakami.  It is really good; I can't put it down.

it's about a group of 5 close high school friends from Nagoya, Japan.  1 of them goes away to Tokyo for college and when he returns home for summer break, he is told by 1 of the other 4 not to contact any of them again and he isn't given a reason why.

I really loved that book. Hope you enjoy it.

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15 hours ago, Liam said:

I really loved that book. Hope you enjoy it.

I finished the book today.  I loved it too; one of my favorite books that I've read in a while.  For me, it was a deeply affecting experience:  how the people closest to Tsuruku saw characteristics in him, that he had never seen in himself.

My only negative is the ending.  I normally don't mind an ambiguous ending, but I would have liked to have known Sara's answer here.  Although, that probably speaks to how invested, I was, in the characters.

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Just started The Stainless Steel Rat returns by Harry Harrison. Just finished Changeless by Gail Carriger, which was like the first one but different. I think the Victoriana that is the series USP to differentiate it from a million other 'Vampires and Werewolves' stories is kind of getting in the way, for me (dress the stories up all polite and bourgeois and I resent reading it; I like stories with a little grit and dirt to them, not stories about grasping posh wankers. It's why I love Sharpe books so much. The Posh people are always useless liabilities, like in real life). I can see how other people might like that difference, but at the same time I don't think anyone who really loves Austen and Wodehouse and nothing outside of that, would ever read them or like these books.

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8 hours ago, Randy said:

I finished the book today.  I loved it too; one of my favorite books that I've read in a while.  For me, it was a deeply affecting experience:  how the people closest to Tsuruku saw characteristics in him, that he had never seen in himself.

My only negative is the ending.  I normally don't mind an ambiguous ending, but I would have liked to have known Sara's answer here.  Although, that probably speaks to how invested, I was, in the characters.

IIRC I liked the ending because of the ambiguity. I didn't feel like you needed to know what happened next, as it felt like you'd seen a snapshot of their existence as much as anything else.

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I've been pretty busy, so I haven't read nearly as much as I would like, but I did manage to finish Stone City by Mitchell Smith. The best way to describe it is, 'murder mystery in the Oz prison' with all the graphic violence that comes with it -- and this book was published several years before the Oz series too. It could have done with at least 100 fewer pages, but it was still a good read -- although the obligatory twist at the end was silly. The very end, though, fit the overall mood of the book very well: dark, bleak, depressing. Recommended if you enjoyed, of course, the Oz TV series.

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There is a new collection out by my late friend, Joel Lane. The title is Scar City and if you trust my recs at all, y'all need a copy of this. 

Joel died way, way too young (50), but his collections starting with "The Earth Wire" in 1994 are among the best the dark fantasy genre has ever seen. We only collaborated on one story, "City of Night", which got picked up for Wilde Stories 2008: Best Gay Speculative Fiction. You can read the story on Google Books, probably the piece that I'm the proudest of as it was the first time that I wrote from the POV of a gay protagonist (I'm boringly straight) and according to Joel (who was gay) I pulled it off without him needing to "fix anything".

For two guys that never met face to face and lived thousands of miles apart, we really clicked as a team and there were supposed to be more stories... I almost started one and then realized that without Joel it just wouldn't work, it would be professionally competent and I wouldn't have any trouble selling it, but the piece would be missing a big part of its soul and I just couldn't do it... Maybe someday I'll feel differently. 

Anyway, for you Brits on here, Joel was to to Birmingham what Ramsey Campbell is to Liverpool, higher praise than that just doesn't exist.

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2 hours ago, Roman said:

I've been pretty busy, so I haven't read nearly as much as I would like, but I did manage to finish Stone City by Mitchell Smith. The best way to describe it is, 'murder mystery in the Oz prison' with all the graphic violence that comes with it -- and this book was published several years before the Oz series too. It could have done with at least 100 fewer pages, but it was still a good read -- although the obligatory twist at the end was silly. The very end, though, fit the overall mood of the book very well: dark, bleak, depressing. Recommended if you enjoyed, of course, the Oz TV series.

Just picked this up on Kindle. Looking forward to reading it.

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Was on a bit of a Stephen King jaunt, and finished up The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, which is a collection of short stories he published last year. Really good for a guy who is more than a little verbose. There's one poem in it that I thought was atrociouis, but I'm sure at this point King could send in shopping lists and publishers would print them in a second.

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On 4/10/2016 at 7:30 AM, Roman said:

I've been pretty busy, so I haven't read nearly as much as I would like, but I did manage to finish Stone City by Mitchell Smith. The best way to describe it is, 'murder mystery in the Oz prison' with all the graphic violence that comes with it -- and this book was published several years before the Oz series too. It could have done with at least 100 fewer pages, but it was still a good read -- although the obligatory twist at the end was silly. The very end, though, fit the overall mood of the book very well: dark, bleak, depressing. Recommended if you enjoyed, of course, the Oz TV series.

I'm about 50% through it. I like the premise but that guy really needed an editor. There are a lot of superfluous scenes. The book isn't written very smoothly in my opinion. Also, and I don't know if he's doing this on purpose or not, but the protagonist isn't really all that likeable. He's actually kind of a dick at times.

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Yeah, like I said in my post: it could have done with at least 100 fewer pages -- perhaps even 200. Lots of unnecessary drivel in there, and I had the feeling that the author got off on showing his reader just how smart he thinks he is. As for the main character, I think it's interesting that he's not very likeable. Between all the murderers and rapists and heavens know who else, it's the arrogant professor that irritates you most.

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On 4/13/2016 at 0:03 PM, Roman said:

Yeah, like I said in my post: it could have done with at least 100 fewer pages -- perhaps even 200. Lots of unnecessary drivel in there, and I had the feeling that the author got off on showing his reader just how smart he thinks he is. As for the main character, I think it's interesting that he's not very likeable. Between all the murderers and rapists and heavens know who else, it's the arrogant professor that irritates you most.

I just finished it yesterday. I liked the premise and the actual story but the superfluous stuff made it a real chore to get through. The reveal of the killer was pretty cool but I could’ve done without what happened to Bauman at the end. Just seemed kind of tacked on. I get what the author was going for but I thought it was needless.

In the hands of a better author or at least some better editing, that would’ve been one hell of a book. It reminded me a lot of the Dexter series where I enjoyed the story enough to finish a couple of them but the terrible writing was hard to overlook and took me out of the story at times.

 

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Finished reading Infinite Jest. It was... an experience.

Moved on to 'Armada' by Ernest Cline. I expect it to be crap, but thought I'd give it a go as a slightly lighter read following IJ. Reading a few other books on the side, but that is the main one.

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Finished Burt Reynolds autobiography recently some fun stories in there about his career in Hollywood, especially the stuff about Bette Davis & Joan Crawford. I'd recommend it. Now finishing reading John Lydon's book. It's a bit over the place as it's interspersed with John's thoughts about things after each chapter but in general it's a good read, although it skews a bit more heavily towards PiL than the Sex Pistols.  

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  • 2 weeks later...

 

 

Recently finished Republic of Dirt, by Susan Juby. It's about a farm run by four misfits; each chapter alternates from the view of one of the four characters, and it is played for laughs...at first. Then the youngest character, an 11-year-old girl named Sara, gets taken back to live with her separated parents and is treated rather poorly by both of them...and it ceases to be funny and gets rather heart-wrenching. There's also a sizeable chunk devoted to training a very stubborn mule.

I was drawn to the book at first because it is based in and around where I grew up on Vancouver Island. It progresses well, and while the finish is kind of expected...it's really quite enjoyable.

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On 26/04/2016 at 10:42 PM, Charro! said:

 Now finishing reading John Lydon's book. It's a bit over the place as it's interspersed with John's thoughts about things after each chapter but in general it's a good read, although it skews a bit more heavily towards PiL than the Sex Pistols.  

The new one, or the one from the 90s?

Reading The Mad Scientists Guide to World Domination, edited by John Joseph Adams. It's a short story collection. And it's bloody awesome so far.

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14 hours ago, AxB said:

The new one, or the one from the 90s?

Reading The Mad Scientists Guide to World Domination, edited by John Joseph Adams. It's a short story collection. And it's bloody awesome so far.

Great anthology. I bought it a while back and thoroughly enjoyed it. John Joseph Adams is a great editor. You should also read Brave New Worlds, the Way of the Wizard, The Living Dead and The Living Dead 2. Some other awesome anthologies he's edited.

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I'm reading We Are Not Ourselves by Matthew Thomas.  It's the story of a 1st generation Irish-American living in Queens.  She was born in 1941 and the story is focused on the social changes that NYC goes through in the 2nd half of the 20th century through the prism of her eyes.  It's a good book; well written and it draws you in, but I think that the main character plays into too much of the stereotypes of someone of her background.  Both of her parents were alcoholics and she exhibits a strong dislike of foreigners (first Latin-Americans, followed by Asians) moving into her neighborhood, even though her parents were immigrants.

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On 2016-03-10 at 11:35 AM, Michael Sweetser said:

Finished up Capitol Revolution and it was fantastic from start to finish.  I intend to read through it a second time soon to pick up any details I missed the first time.  It ends at the perfect point - Hogan over the Iron Sheik in 1984.

 

What I like is that the book didn't spend a lot of time trying to paint certain people in a better light than ours - to me, it seemed to be a pretty fair chronicle of what happened in those days. 

Just finished it tonight: really fun read. It's interesting to see how on a whim, a few other heels might've been interim WWWF Champions: for example, Crusher Verdu drew some solid houses when they decided to transition to Koloff, and Larry Hennig was doing going business when they went with Stasiak. The amount of backstabbing that went on back then was astounding, too.

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Just finished Robert Caro's MASSIVE biography of Robert Moses, the Power Broker. I'm not from New York, so I had never heard of him, but he built just about every highway and bridge, from 1930-1968 in New york city, and most of New York's state park system, among other things.  He was also one of the biggest assholes ever to go into public service, and a virtual dictator for decades. Yes he got things done, but he also gave no shits about public opinion(which can be good), but would not alter his plans in the slightest after he made them. Think VInce Mcmahon if he was in public service.  Its very good, incredibly thorough, and if your like me you will spend about 500-600 pages just seething, waiting for the bastard to get his. Highly recommended

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