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Derek Cavin
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Joined: 03 June 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 2403
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| Posted: 01 December 2012 at 9:06am | IP Logged | 1
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Sojourn- (Book Three of the Dark Elf Trilogy) - R.A. Salvatore
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Steven Myers
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Joined: 10 June 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 5699
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| Posted: 01 December 2012 at 9:19am | IP Logged | 2
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I'm almost done with Carl Sagan's Contact. I always wanted to read this, and finally got around to it! It's dated, but that's part of the charm!
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Ed Love
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 05 October 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 2712
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| Posted: 01 December 2012 at 11:55am | IP Logged | 3
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Re: WIND IN THE WILLOWS: One of my favorite books, I've worn out my paperback copy, and it's always in the back of my mind to read it once again. However, much of it really is a pastoral novel and aimed for younger readers, so I can see where one would see it as being dull. It has been animated, but never saw it. I imagine to make it more palpable for modern audiences and the screen, much of the emphasis and focus is probably altered and losing the real sense of the book.
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Re: Joe Abercrombie: I read his first trilogy. He's a talented writer and found the books in many ways compelling reading as I was reading them. However, I got frustrated with the books over the course of the trilogy. One, each book commits the error that has been pointed out with many sequels, books two and three start off by undoing the majority of the character growth from the previous book. The plots advanced, but the characters themselves just repeated the same beats as before. Two, he's not really interested in delivering the story he's telling. It's structured and developed as being about characters redeeming themselves and becoming better people than they were, but that isn't the message that he wants to deliver and in the end you're left with people that are more broken than they were before except for those that were unrepentant bastards to begin with (which was why he kept having to regress the characters after moving them forward). The journey was interesting, but the destination not worth the trip.
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Robbie Parry
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 June 2007
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 12186
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| Posted: 01 December 2012 at 12:47pm | IP Logged | 4
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QUOTE:
| One of my favorite books, I've worn out my paperback copy, and it's always in the back of my mind to read it once again. However, much of it really is a pastoral novel and aimed for younger readers, so I can see where one would see it as being dull. It has been animated, but never saw it. I imagine to make it more palpable for modern audiences and the screen, much of the emphasis and focus is probably altered and losing the real sense of the book. |
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I can understand that. Had I read it thirty years ago, I might feel the same way. It does seem incoherent now - and I am finding certain passages tedious - but there is enough there to interest me. I quite like the carefree nature of Toad, for example.
Edited by Robbie Parry on 01 December 2012 at 12:48pm
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Matthew Chartrand
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 June 2007
Location: United States
Posts: 1358
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| Posted: 02 December 2012 at 12:36pm | IP Logged | 5
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Mercury by Lesley-Ann Jones. A biography of Queen's Freddie Mercury. An interesting read, but I could use a British slang dictionary.
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Brian Burnham
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Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 571
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| Posted: 02 December 2012 at 12:54pm | IP Logged | 6
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A SPY BY NATURE by Charles Cumming. I've read a couple other books by him and they were enjoyable.
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Andrew Hess
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 9846
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| Posted: 02 December 2012 at 3:20pm | IP Logged | 7
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63) "Christmas in Oz" by Robin Hess
A young girl is whisked to the land of Oz, where she not only meets a new Wicked Witch but Santa Claus, too!
(Full Disclosure: this was not only written by my dad, but I did the illustrations for it, back in the day. He just got the copyright back for it, from when it was published back in the 90s, so I had to re-lay it out and do some proof-reading on it so he could sell it thru Amazon's self-publishing venture. But since I have read thru it a couple of times this past week, I'm counting it as one of my 100 books anyway!)
Fun book in the continuing ouvre of the Oz books (biased, yeah, I know). I honestly think my dad has captured the whimsy of the original series without adding too much of his own voice, and ties in some of the mythos Baum created surrounding Santa too. (Baum wrote an extremely successful book on Santa Claus; the first Oz book was his follow up to that.) He also can't help taking a moment to explain some of the inconsistencies of the books, but he can't help himself.
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Peter Martin
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Joined: 17 March 2008
Location: Canada
Posts: 15991
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| Posted: 02 December 2012 at 8:05pm | IP Logged | 8
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"The man walks through his thousand year ever in the house of the dead…" *** That is probably my favorite novel. I think I was 22 or so when I first read it. It's one of those books that seems a little bit different each time I read it. ----------------------------------- Zelazny certainly had a unique way of depicting his worlds (and universes). His narratives never spoon feed. He knew how to give you just enough information to let you in on the way things are in the scenes he depicts and he always took you deep into the story, so that there are whole histories of fascinating backstory of which he allows only fleeting glimpses.
Edited by Peter Martin on 02 December 2012 at 8:05pm
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Thomas Moudry
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Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 5060
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| Posted: 02 December 2012 at 8:09pm | IP Logged | 9
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Just finished BRUCE by Peter Ames Carlin. Great bio!
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Andrew Hess
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Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 9846
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| Posted: 02 December 2012 at 9:11pm | IP Logged | 10
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I've never tried Zelazny. I'm thinking I should.
What is a good single book of his? Don't necessarily want to wade into a trilogy or some such.
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Aaron Smith
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Joined: 06 September 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 10461
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| Posted: 02 December 2012 at 9:23pm | IP Logged | 11
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CREATURES OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS is a great standalone novel, Andrew, though it's quite strange! For one of his books with a similar theme but a little more "normal," I'd recommend LORD OF LIGHT.
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Andrew Hess
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Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 9846
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| Posted: 02 December 2012 at 9:49pm | IP Logged | 12
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I've put the more normal LORD OF LIGHT on order.
Thanks, Aaron!
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