Kevin's Watch

danlo wrote:Yeah, I've wanted to read Scalzi for some time now...same book

I can send it to you, unless you've already got a copy. I'm not planning to keep mine.

Orlion wrote:

aliantha wrote:The Android's Dream was entertaining. Not quite as wild as Terry Pratchett, but a lot of fun.

And B&N's saying mid-May for Orb Sceptre Throne for the Nook. Sigh. Yes, I know, I could order it from Amazon.uk and have it sooner than that....

You could have had it all ready

I figured it would either be you or Fist!

I wash my hands of it!!

Avatar wrote:

Absolam wrote: Currently reading Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman.

Hahaha, I love that book.

--A

This is my first time to read Gaiman. I see he has several others out there. I am really enjoying Neverwhere. Is his other material on the same par?

-Absolam

Hard to say about on par or not, I think the thoughts on that seriously depend on the reader.

I find "Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire" and "A Study in Emerald" both wonderful, but I've seen people praise one and berate the other. I can see myself they're very different and love them mostly for different things, though there is something in common, of course, first of all an unusual look on things.

I'm re-reading the books I have in David Weber's Safehold series. I'd recommend 'Off Armageddon's Reef' (the first in the series) but I'm not so sure about the rest. It's as if he wants to combine sci-fi + heroic + romance and it grates a bit. His heroes and heroines just seem a bit too perfect. I'm not looking for 'grimdark' but jeez does it have to be all square-jawed, morally perfect geniuses

He also, annoyingly, raises science and technology to the level of religion and somehow manages to relate this to a God. One hero wades through the blood and severed limbs of a multitude of enemies of progress without a twinge of conscience and yet somehow, at the same time, manages to maintain a totally improbable unquestioning belief in God *shrug*

u.

Absolam wrote:This is my first time to read Gaiman. I see he has several others out there. I am really enjoying Neverwhere. Is his other material on the same par?

As Effaeldm said, it very much depends on you. I know a lot a people who don't like Neverwhere...(most of them here) but who do like American Gods (pretty good) and Anansi Boys (not my favourite).

I definitely recommend his Sandman graphic novels though. And the book he co-wrote with Terry Pratchett, Good Omens.

--A

Avatar wrote:

Absolam wrote:This is my first time to read Gaiman. I see he has several others out there. I am really enjoying Neverwhere. Is his other material on the same par?

As Effaeldm said, it very much depends on you. I know a lot a people who don't like Neverwhere...(most of them here) but who do like American Gods (pretty good) and Anansi Boys (not my favourite).

I definitely recommend his Sandman graphic novels though. And the book he co-wrote with Terry Pratchett, Good Omens.

--A

To me, Gaiman's something of a two-way author: I appear to love his every other book, and have the opposite relationship with the rest. Neverwhere, the Sandman comics, Graveyard Book, Good Omens, and Coraline belong to my favorites. The rest...eeeh.

Thanks to everyone on the feedback RE: Gaiman. I must say I was not nearly as impressed with the second half of Neverwhere (finished it last night) as I was with the first half. After all the build up I felt he took several cheap paths to wrapping the story up. Oh well, still a good read. I was encouraged enough to try another and appreciate the feedback here on possible options.
-Absolam

As usual when I don't have anything to read, I've defaulted to Pratchett. Going Postal.

--A

Mockingjay- the last book in the Hunger Games trilogy. I've been unable to put them down, read the first two in three days.

Just finished the three books myself. I enjoyed them thoroughly.

Just finished a re-read of Wheelers by Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen.

A good standalone sci-fi novel of first-contact (which I have a preference for). It's a bit of a romp, in some ways, and does contain a couple of implausible coincidences (only noticed them on the re-read though). Relatively low-tech with a bit of rough-and-tumble bootstrapping (which is always fun).

u.

Listening to The Prefect By Alistair Reynolds, narrated by John Lee. I'm convinced that many years from now, everyone will be speaking with a slight Irish accent.

I'm sunk, then. Can't do an Irish accent without it sounding like the leprechaun from the Lucky Charms commercial....

Sword Song by Bernard Cornwell.

\


start it in the am.

Hey, tell me what it's like. I read his blog and some columns by him...pretty funny.

--A

Avatar wrote:Hey, tell me what it's like. I read his blog and some columns by him...pretty funny.

--A

i will, i actually found out about the book by tripping over the movie preview on youtube. i have just recently discovered that people are posting whole movies there. I was watching Phantasm when the ad appeared after.

I read it all a long while back when it was still posted free online. Can't remember all that much, other than it being very weird and a bit dark.

Right now, I'm reading an alternative-uniiverse history - "1634: the Galileo Affair."
(not sure quite what you call this style of sci-fi; I think that's it.)


These authors clearly like history and were CLEARLY having waaaay too much fun 'playing' with the world they envisioned... they've come up with some HILARIOUS situations... if anyone wants to know what the basic premise of this series is, ask away.

Cambo wrote:Mockingjay- the last book in the Hunger Games trilogy. I've been unable to put them down, read the first two in three days.

SoulBiter wrote:Just finished the three books myself. I enjoyed them thoroughly.

Very good, very good! Carry on, folks!

Yeahhh... when I got to Mockingjay, I was determined to be "disciplined" and not read it all in one big gulp / ignore my children for about 24 hours straight.
So the habit of putting it down at the ends of chapters... helped me to notice just how consistently the author would put a cliffhanger that I was NOT anticipating at the end of every chapter!

I have a friend who's into that 1634 series, Linna, and I've read a couple of the books. They're not bad.