Kevin's Watch

Wildling wrote:The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams

I love Dirk Gently.
I kinda wish he'd get married to Thursday Next.
[[though I don't want them to honeymoon on "Starship Titanic." Book much less funny than expected.

I just found out [like, really, just] that there was a BBC series of Dirk.
I'm a gonna have to try and hunt that puppy down.

Titus Groan...is gonna take a while...it has density.

I've seen the Dirk series. It's not bad taken on it's own. Don't go into it expecting a completely faithful adaptation though.

Linah Heartlistener wrote:

aliantha wrote:

Vraith wrote:
Really? that is a book that is so good even a shitty movie of it is still ok. [other atwood is highly debatable]

I don't love all of her books. But The Handmaid's Tale is a classic. I have friends my age who are adamant that it ought to be required reading for every young woman today. What made you put it down, Linah?

I'm thinking there are many kinds of pain and many dark things in the way the world's systems are set up...
But somehow, the evil and the abuse of authority and the apparent helplessness of the women in that story.. just horrified me.
(Maybe that's exactly where I was "supposed" to be.)

I was like, "The situation these women are in is so completely unacceptable... *turns page* ...wait, what? It's even worse than I'd imagined?!"

Yup, that's exactly where you were supposed to be.

Vraith wrote:I love Dirk Gently.
I kinda wish he'd get married to Thursday Next.

That would be amazing!

Vraith wrote:

Titus Groan...is gonna take a while...it has density.

Us snobbish readers like to call that "substance and aesthetics" *guffaw* Indeed.

Orlion wrote:

Vraith wrote:

Titus Groan...is gonna take a while...it has density.

Us snobbish readers like to call that "substance and aesthetics" *guffaw* Indeed.

That wintery feeling you feel is a little piece of your soul dying.

The first book was the best, and that's not saying much.

Anyway, I've started The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood.

--A

aliantha wrote:

Linah wrote:

aliantha wrote:What made you put it [A Handmaid's Tale] down, Linah?

I'm thinking there are many kinds of pain and many dark things in the way the world's systems are set up...
But somehow, the evil and the abuse of authority and the apparent helplessness of the women in that story.. just horrified me.
(Maybe that's exactly where I was "supposed" to be.)

I was like, "The situation these women are in is so completely unacceptable... *turns page* ...wait, what? It's even worse than I'd imagined?!"

Yup, that's exactly where you were supposed to be.

okay.
I wonder I was irritated about not knowing the context of the fictional world...
If I remember correctly, the reader is just kind of thrown into her third-prison... ermm, third-person account and that was disorienting.

OTOH, extreme inter-generational pain like in "The Joy Luck Club" I could not peel myself away from reading about, and that was around the same time...

Maybe it just offended me that anyone could set up such an apparently hopeless situation as in "A Handmaid's Tale."

Recent reading of mine may have upped my tolerance of certain types of pain in fiction.

Linah Heartlistener wrote:If I remember correctly, the reader is just kind of thrown into her third-prison... ermm, third-person account and that was disorienting.

I could see that happening, especially if you weren't used to having an author dump you into that kind of world with no explanation upfront. Although Atwood's not nearly as bad at is as Erikson.

I like that method of storytelling. Also the 'throw you into the middle of a disaster and circle back around to show how it started'. I also like that she doesn't hand you all the explanations on a silver platter - I like to think that authors like that credit their readers with enough intelligence to come to their own conclusions.

And I do like dystopian fiction. I'm fascinated by alternate history and 'what-if' scenarios.

Finished The Crown Tower by Michael J. Sullivan this afternoon. It got better once Hadrian and Royce started talking to one another.

Started reading MaddAddam tonight. This is all your fault, Av.

Haha, and it turns out I don't have the ready acvcess to it that I was led to believe. Looks like I have to try and find it this weekend.

--A

So although I thought Year of The Flood didn't start out well, it was actually very cleverly intertwined with the first book. (No need to read them out of published order IMO.)

I enjoyed it. Now have to see if I can find the next quickly.

In the meanwhile, I went back to Gemmell and read the Second Chronicles of Druss, The Legend of DeathWalker. Now I'm reading White Wolf again.

--A

The Swords of Night and Day by Gemmell. (No luck on finding the next Margaret Atwood yet. )

--A

The Bromeliad, Terry Pratchett.

(MaddAddam arrives today, and some other books I ordered will arrive tomorrow. )

--A

The Rediscovery of Man by Cordwainer Smith

I don't know if anybody here has read any of this stuff, but I'm about 4 stories in and it's very odd. Not in a bad way, just very different and strange.

I finally did start The Girl with All the Gifts by M R Carey. It's interesting so far, and seems like it'll be a quick read.

I ended up liking The Year of the Flood a lot, Av. And I finished MaddAddam the other day, and enjoyed that, too. There's a "what has gone before" in the front of this last book that says the events in the first two books are more or less concurrent -- so yeah, I guess it doesn't matter which order you read them in. The third book ties the two story lines together. Some truly funny stuff in there. It also includes backstory for a couple of characters who play a bigger role in this book, which I thought was kind of out of place, but it's critical to knowing what's going on, and there's not enough of it to justify another book.

Anyway. I've moved on. Currently reading an ARC for an indie author named M. Terry Green. This one is called Iced and it's due out next month, I think. I enjoyed her first series, so I volunteered for the ARC. It's good so far.

I am slogging may way through Deadhouse Gates by Erickson. This is my second run at it and I'm on p.325 (I'd got up to about p.180 before). There are nearly 1000 pages in this mother, but I might just have enough momentum now.

What can I say, except what I've said before, 'Too much magic. Too many gods. Not enough human characters I care about (not one actually, so far )'. Everyone seems to be being shunted here, pushed there, destined for this, fated for that; for me it leaves almost no room for a story. It's as if it's all mapped out already and no one can change a thing. I'm not sure why anyone bothers to do anything. And everyone is a million years old, or possessed by a god or a demon or an artichoke (okay, that'd be funny, and boy is there little humour in this book ).

It may simply be that Malazan is not for me.

u.

I was fairly amazed by the number of people in the fb Malazan group who didn't care for DG. I've read books 1-4 three times. Each time I read DG, I think there couldn't be a better book in the world. Then I read Memories of Ice, and have to revise that. Still, I am stunned by the glory of DG every time.

I am taking a break and reading The Island of Dr Moreau by a Mr Wells. I have just finished Perdido Street Station and The Myth of Sisyphus....hence the break.

I imagine I'll start The Naked God by a Mr Hamilton next week. Then, I'll be free too start a new series!