Unofficial What are you Reading Thread?

[LMNO]

What Cain said. I don't really like the Rincewind arc, except for "Interesting Times".

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

It's a bit unfair to judge Pratchett on The Colour of Magic - it was his first Discworld novel, and lots of things in the setting were not really thought out except as cheap gags or to progress the plot, such that it is.

I would judge him more from Wyrd Sisters onwards, and in particular on the Ankh-Morpork Watch series of books (Guards Guards, Men at Arms, Feet of Clay, Jingo, The Fifth Elephant, Night Watch, Thud!, Snuff).  He tends to save his more polished writing and more serious themes for those particular novels.

The ones I've read are: The Color of Magic, Equal Rites, Thief of TIme, Sourcery, The Light Fantastic, and Thud!. It's not that I think they're bad or anything; I just don't think I'm going to pay ten dollars a volume for them anymore. They're good airport reading, so long as the layover isn't too long.

[Doktor Howl]

It's a bit unfair to judge Pratchett on The Colour of Magic - it was his first Discworld novel, and lots of things in the setting were not really thought out except as cheap gags or to progress the plot, such that it is.

I would judge him more from Wyrd Sisters onwards, and in particular on the Ankh-Morpork Watch series of books (Guards Guards, Men at Arms, Feet of Clay, Jingo, The Fifth Elephant, Night Watch, Thud!, Snuff).  He tends to save his more polished writing and more serious themes for those particular novels.

The ones I've read are: The Color of Magic, Equal Rites, Thief of TIme, Sourcery, The Light Fantastic, and Thud!. It's not that I think they're bad or anything; I just don't think I'm going to pay ten dollars a volume for them anymore. They're good airport reading, so long as the layover isn't too long.

Well, sorry he doesn't live up to your exacting standards.  Did he, too, tell jokes that sucked because they weren't 169% canon?

[Doktor Howl]

Long layovers require books concerning French experimental music.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

It's a bit unfair to judge Pratchett on The Colour of Magic - it was his first Discworld novel, and lots of things in the setting were not really thought out except as cheap gags or to progress the plot, such that it is.

I would judge him more from Wyrd Sisters onwards, and in particular on the Ankh-Morpork Watch series of books (Guards Guards, Men at Arms, Feet of Clay, Jingo, The Fifth Elephant, Night Watch, Thud!, Snuff).  He tends to save his more polished writing and more serious themes for those particular novels.

The ones I've read are: The Color of Magic, Equal Rites, Thief of TIme, Sourcery, The Light Fantastic, and Thud!. It's not that I think they're bad or anything; I just don't think I'm going to pay ten dollars a volume for them anymore. They're good airport reading, so long as the layover isn't too long.

Well, sorry he doesn't live up to your exacting standards.  Did he, too, tell jokes that sucked because they weren't 169% canon?

They weren't funny because they were illogical. Beep beep boop.

[Cainad (dec.)]

Pratchett has also written something like 2,732 freaking books. It would be a miracle if they were all golden.

Incidentally, I liked the Rincewind books I've read quite a lot, but I suppose it was just new to me back in high school.

[Freeky]

Rincewind is my favorite character, and the arc in general is my favorite.  In terms of the stories themselves, I think some of the Rincewind stuff and some of the Vimes stuff are his best.

[Cainad (dec.)]

Just picked up the first book of the Malazan series. This should tide me over until R.S. Bakker finally cranks out The Unholy Consult and finishes his series.

[Cain]

Just picked up the first book of the Malazan series. This should tide me over until R.S. Bakker finally cranks out The Unholy Consult and finishes his series.

Let me know what you think.

IMO, the series doesn't really pick up until Memories of Ice.  I do like the first two novels, but the third and fourth ones put it into proper context, and illustrate just how conniving and cunning the gods, ascendants, generals, mages and rulers of the series really are.

[Cainad (dec.)]

Just picked up the first book of the Malazan series. This should tide me over until R.S. Bakker finally cranks out The Unholy Consult and finishes his series.

Let me know what you think.

IMO, the series doesn't really pick up until Memories of Ice.  I do like the first two novels, but the third and fourth ones put it into proper context, and illustrate just how conniving and cunning the gods, ascendants, generals, mages and rulers of the series really are.

Thanks for the tip. I'll try to stick it out until then if the first two don't really grab me.

[Cain]

They may do anyway, if you read the intro from Steven Erikson, which I do recommend, he says:

In writing Gardens, I quickly discovered that 'back story' was going to be a problem no matter how far back I went. And I realized that, unless I spoon-fed my potential readers (something I refused to do, having railed often enough at writers of fantasy epics treating us readers as if we were idiots), unless I 'simplified', unless I slipped down into the well-worn tracks of what's gone before, I was going to leave readers floundering. And not just readers, but editors, publishers, agents...

But, you know, as a reader, as a fan, I never minded floundering – at least for a little while, and sometimes for a long while. So long as other stuff carried me along, I was fine. Don't forget, I worshipped Dennis Potter. I was a fan of DeLillo's The Names and Eco's Foucault's Pendulum. The reader I had in mind was one who could and would carry the extra weight – the questions not yet answered, the mysteries, the uncertain alliances.

History has proved this out, I think. Readers either bail on the series somewhere in the first third of Gardens of the Moon, or they're still sharing the ride to this day, seven going on eight books later.

I have been asked, would I have done it any differently in hindsight? And I honestly don't have an answer to that. Oh, there are elements of style that I'd change here and there, but ... fundamentally, I'm just not sure what else I could have done. I am not and never will be a writer happy to deliver exposition that serves no other function than telling the reader about back story, history, or whatever. If my exposition doesn't have multiple functions – and I do mean multiple – then I'm not satisfied. Turns out, the more functions in it, the more complicated it gets, the more likely it will quietly shift into misdirection, into sleight of hand, and all the back story elements, while possibly there, end up buried and buried deep.

This was fast-paced writing, but it was also, bizarrely and in ways I still can't quite figure, dense writing. So, Gardens invites you to read rip-roaringly fast. But the author advises: you'd best not succumb to the temptation.

Here we are, years later now. Should I apologize for that bipolar invitation? To what extent did I shoot myself in the foot with the kind of introduction to the Malazan world as delivered in Gardens of the Moon?. And has this novel left me dancing on one foot ever since? Maybe. And sometimes, on midnight afternoons, I ask myself: what if I'd picked up that fat wooden ladle, and slopped the whole mess down the reader's throat, as some (highly successful) Fantasy writers do and have done? Would I now see my sales ranking in the bestseller's lists? Now hold on – am I suggesting that those ultra popular Fantasy writers have found their success in writing down to their readers? Hardly. Well, not all of them. But then, consider it from my point of view. It took eight years and a move to the UK for Gardens of the Moon to find a publisher. It took four more years before a US deal was finalized. The complaint? 'Too complicated, too many characters. Too ... ambitious.'

I could take the fish-eyed retrospective angle here and say how Gardens marked a departure from the usual tropes of the genre, and any departure is likely to meet resistance; but my ego's not that big. It never felt like a departure. Glen Cook's Dread Empire and Black Company novels had already broken the new ground, but I'd read all those and, wanting more, I pretty much had to write them myself (and Cam felt the same). And while my style of writing did not permit imitation (he's a terse one, is Cook), I could certainly strive for the same tone of dispirited, wry cynicism, the same ambivalence and a similar sense of atmosphere. Maybe I was aware of the swing away from Good versus Evil, but that just seemed a by-product of growing up – the real world's not like that, why persist in making Fantasy worlds so fundamentally disconnected with reality?

Well, I don't know. It's exhausting just thinking about it.

Gardens is what it is. I have no plans on revision. I don't even know where I'd start.

Better, I think, to offer the readers a quick decision on this series – right there in the first third of the first novel, than to tease them on for five or six books before they turn away in disgust, disinterest or whatever. Maybe, from a marketing position, the latter is preferred – at least in the short term. But, thank God, my publishers know a false economy when they see one.

Gardens of the Moon is an invitation, then. Stay with it, and come along for the ride. I can only promise that I have done my best to entertain. Curses and cheers, laughter and tears, it's all in here.

[Cainad (dec.)]

Nice, sounds like my kind of read. Drawing inspiration from The Black Company is a good sign.

[Cain]

Personally, I'm waiting for the final novel by the co-creator of the series, Ian C. Esselmont.

http://www.booklounge.ca/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780593064481

Tens of thousands of years of ice is melting, and the land of Assail, long a byword for menace and inaccessibility, is at last yielding its secrets. Tales of gold discovered in the region's north circulate in every waterfront dive and sailor's tavern and now countless adventurers and fortune-seekers have set sail in search of riches. All these adveturers have to guide them are legends and garbled tales of the dangers that lie in wait -- hostile coasts, fields of ice, impassable barriers and strange, terrifying creatures. But all accounts concur that the people of the north meet all trespassers with the sword. And beyond are rumoured to lurk Elder monsters out of history's very beginnings. Into this turmoil ventures the mercenary company, the Crimson Guard. Not drawn by contract, but by the promise of answers: answers to mysteries that Shimmer, second in command, wonders should even be sought. Arriving also, part of an uneasy alliance of Malazan fortune-hunters and Letherii soldiery, comes the bard Fisher kel Tath. And with him is a Tiste Andii who was found washed ashore and who cannot remember his past life, yet who commands far more power than he really should. Also venturing north is said to be a mighty champion, a man who once fought for the Malazans, the bearer of a sword that slays gods: Whiteblade.

And lastly, far to the south, a woman guards the shore awaiting both her allies and her enemies. Silverfox, newly incarnated Summoner of the undying army of the T'lan Imass, will do anything to stop the renewal of an ages-old crusade that could lay waste to the entire continent and beyond. Casting light on mysteries spanning the Malazan empire, and offering a glimpse of the storied and epic history that shaped it, Assail is the final chapter in the epic story of the Empire of Malaz.

IOW, it's gonna be a clusterfuck.  An epic clusteruck.  Assail's the final great mystery of the series...there are still many lesser ones, but Assail is the big one, that has been built up to over the course of 16 different books.  All we know about it is that it's so bad the Crimson Guard and T'lan Imass got absolutely slaughtered there, and neither group are known for being easy to kill.  And that there are Tyrants there, but the Tyrants are apparently human, not Jaghut.  Beyond that...nothing.

[McGrupp]

Finally got around to reading Machiavelli's 'The Prince' (been on my reading list for a while) Also someone stole my first copy of it off my porch one night. At the time I thought it was hilarious and ironic that it got stolen but now that I've read the thing I see it really wasn't.

I have to say that for all its reputation as an 'evil scheming' book, I don't really see it that way. It certainly lends itself to that but it seems more of a 'this is how the world really is and works, ugly though it may be, and this is what you can do to manipulate things to your benefit.'  To be sure it's full of amoral stuff but I view it more as a look at politics once preconcieved notions of morality are removed, which reveals a very familiar landscape.

I'm still mulling it over and may reread it (it's actually a pretty fast read) but I can't help thinking that there are ideas and concepts in here that can be harnessed for other purposes. After all if 'The Prince' is considered an 'instruction manual' for the machine, there should be some good information on where to put the monkey wrench. If my thoughts congeal I'll try to make a post about it.

Also reading The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives by Leonard Mlodinow. It's about randomness, probability and how our misconceptions of them can skew our way of thinking. Pretty interesting so far.

[Cramulus]

Finally got around to reading VALIS, by Phillip K Dick. That's the book from whence the term "Black Iron Prison" originated.

Really fantastic read. Enjoyed every word of it. It's one of those books that will make you a little bit crazy if you let it get into your head.