The Book Thread

[James Stevenson]

I think we should start a book thread. To the thread machine! wooooooooooooosh!

I think I need to find a book that I will enjoy reading. I recently reread the first three Harry Potter books in a few weeks, and blew through the Scott Pilgrim "books" the other day, but mostly I'm forcing myself to read shit like Moby Dick, which just takes me forever. I miss the old days when I homeschooled and would read Ender's Game in two days because all I would do is sit around and read. I need a book I can do that with, or maybe my brain has been addled by facebook, 4chan, imgur, funnyjunk, draft videos and (gasp) riptidelab and I'll never have that concentration again.

Any suggestions? What have you liked recently?

 

[Jason Waddell]

Have you read Snow Crash yet? It's like, a book people who loved Enders Game as kids should love when they're adults.

 

[Jason Waddell]

Look, I have some super strong opinions on Harry Potter that may be unqualified but I need to take a dump on something.
a) if I were a parent at that school, I'd be like "damn, all these kids seem to get murdered at the end of the school year. maybe I'll just have jimmy stay home after spring break and have the teachers mail over his exams"
b) I never gave like, half of a shit about the plots, I just cared about the stupid "kids running around at school" aspect. I would get all yawny once the part of the book that was referred to in the title appeared. I told someone this once and they were like "so you want a Hogwarts Mean Girls?". Needless to say once I found out that Book 7 didn't really take place at the school I abandoned the series. I wonder how many other people have read 6 of the 7 books.

 

[Jason Waddell]

I read all the books in the Enderverse. When I was little I thought that the Speaker series was super deep and somehow I thought that the robot AI lady was a perfect metaphorical representation of the girl I was in love with, who I would later marry, who I would later divorce.

Then the Shadow series was super fun to read, but was kind of meaningless fluff thriller action that I forgot as soon as I read it. It also felt that as the books progressed Card slowly kind of stopped having Bean be a compelling character.

But one time during a 4v4 SC2 match, after we rushed the Protoss base, I said "the enemy's gate is down", and that moment kind of made reading the whole series worth it.

 

[James Stevenson]

Snow Crash was amazing: It was a fantastic book that was interesting and felt valuable to have read AND I enjoyed reading it very much.

Harry Potter: There are loads of problems with Harry Potter. I supposed I find them very fun mostly for nostalgia's sake. It has some characters that I just like to read about, like Hagrid and Dumbledore. I wish I knew these guys in real life.

 

[Jason Waddell]

Dumbledore be dead yo.

 

[James Stevenson]

One thing I never really got about Ender's Game is that Ender was hella smart and revolutionised The Game (which I just lost), and there wasn't a single other kid at this school for geniuses that could even approach his level. Did they all just suck? Were they all just a bunch of little kids? IS it just a story?

 

[Jason Waddell]

I need to start a book too and my brother has recommended Invisible Monsters by the author of Fight Club, but I'd be open to other suggestions. I finally overbinged on Murakami with Norwegian Wood, so I need to branch out and broaden my horizons.

 

[Jason Waddell]

One thing I never really got about Ender's Game is that Ender was hella smart and revolutionised The Game (which I just lost), and there wasn't a single other kid at this school for geniuses that could even approach his level. Did they all just suck? Were they all just a bunch of little kids? IS it just a story?

To be fair we would see this at MLG a lot. In the upper tail of the skill curve sometimes you just get people / teams that absolutely dump on everyone else. Ken would have won every Smash tournament til the end of time had he kept his motivation. Same thing for Final Boss in Halo.

I felt like the Shadow Books did a lot to try and establish that the other kids were kind of awesome too, and that Ender was just next level.

 

[James Stevenson]

I felt like the Shadow Books did a lot to try and establish that the other kids were kind of awesome too, and that Ender was just next level.

I think that is a very good point.

 

[Jason Waddell]

Kobo is running a site-wide 50% off sale for the weekend. Somebody recommend me books, and quickly!

 

[James Stevenson]

Anything by Ursula K. Le Guin, especially The Dispossessed. I'm assuming you already read Dune. If you've never read any Terry Pratchett and have not yet decided not to, I highly recommend Guards! Guards!, that's my favorite. The Dark Side of the Sun is also an interesting little science fiction book. You've Gone Too Far This Time Sir! is written by a friend of mine, and it's a crazy adventure. Good read. I loved The Death of Bunny Munro, that blew me away.

 

[Jason Waddell]

I actually have never read Dune, every time I mean to something else gets in the way.

 

[Jason Waddell]

Can the Discworld stuff readable out of context? It looks like Guards! Guards! is number 8 in a series. Will I be out of place?

 

[anotak]

i recommend dune and dune messiah and then the series kind of gets worse over time after that. those 2 are some of my favorite books. please dont ever ever ever touch anything written by someone else other than frank herbert with dune in the title

if you like science fiction off the top of my head books i enjoyed a lot:
damn much anything alastair reynolds wrote, though perhaps not the doctor who novel he did if you dont like doctor who. his other stuff is very un who like
existence - david brin
nova - samuel r delany
use of weapons - iain m banks
anathem - neal stephenson
rainbows end - vernor vinge

i dont read much else other than science fiction though

 

[James Stevenson]

Put everything aside and read Dune. I have to disagree about Dune Messiah, I didn't find it worth reading at all, sadly. Dune itself was fantastic. An excellent sci-fi universe and story, but what really impressed me was it kept surprising me. Once you've read a bunch of sci-fi and fantasy you kind of get to expect what happens, but Dune kept taking turns I didn't see coming and kept being fresh and interesting. 10/10.
Guards! Guards! was the first I read of the series, so Pratchett's humor was totally fresh to me. It was fantastic, I laughed aloud many times. It's a fine place to start.

 

[Jason Waddell]

I'm a little apprehensive about Pratchett. I was into Gaiman for a while, and tried to read "Good Omens", a collaborative thing between Gaiman and Pratchett. And I found the whole thing to be not funny and obtuse and I don't know if I even made it through a chapter.

 

[James Stevenson]

Fair enough! You probably wouldn't like his stuff then. I loved Good Omens.

 

[Changling Bob]

Can the Discworld stuff readable out of context? It looks like Guards! Guards! is number 8 in a series. Will I be out of place?

They are (were?) mostly stand-alone, but there's a couple of sub-series; I think Guards! Guards! is the first of the Watch books, so you're fine there. Of course they're not bad out of those sub-sequences, but you lose some of the context.

I'd recommend not starting with the earlier books, as they're actually completely different from the later books. Guards! Guards! is good for following the Watch, Witches Abroad is the first of the book with the witches. Mort is the first of the books following Death (the character). They're all older books who's characters have been rounded out a bit over time (except Witches Abroad, which may be the first 'modern' Discworld book, whatever that means). Going Postal is also a good consideration as being the first in a sub-series, and also being modern. I started with Pyramids, which is off on its own, which is handy, and it didn't put me off.

 

[Lucre]

I burnt through all the discworld books on audio working one summer. I enjoyed myself at some times more than others, but I'd say most of them are fun if you can enjoy dorky slapstick, lame references, tainted optimism and are down for a tropey good time.

Many don't enjoy the witches cycles of his books but I always thought they got a couple hits in per book and it was one of the better examples of women in fantasy you'd run up against (one of those contentious subjects you see a lot of con panels about). Me and Chris T also discussed something along these lines about how many people these days confuse strong female characters for women all have to be badass.

I'm excited about the SF recommendations. I've had a real jones on.

I'll recommend this to anyone who will tolerate being read to:
https://archive.org/details/Mindwebs_230
Mind Webs is a fantastic piece of 70's old time radio that covers a truly diverse collection of recognized short science fiction. The atmosphere and cast are incredible and I have to recommend it to anyone who enjoys speculative fiction, pulp, noir or camp. Remember many of these were classics in the 70s so some of it is really juicy, dated golden age scifi / horror.

 

[Jason Waddell]

But I'd say most of them are fun if you can enjoy dorky slapstick, lame references, tainted optimism and are down for a tropey good time.

Okay, well, this description just sold me on not liking Pratchett. I suspected I didn't from Good Omens but now I know it's not for me.

 

[Lucre]

Yeah it's got a bit of the dryness of british comedy and a little of the absurd critique but it also has all the zaniness.

 

[James Stevenson]

Did any of you read Neuromancer?

 

[anotak]

yeah, i enjoyed it quite a bit. i sort of feel that its more known for being a genre trend setter than being an actually good book though, slightly overrated because of that. its got a lot of questionable wording. definitely would recommend it though.

 

[Jason Waddell]

I ignored all your suggestions and started reading Paprika, a surreal Japanese book. I'll make my way to your suggestions soon enough though.