Unofficial What are you Reading Thread?

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

Just finished cryptonomicon.  I love stephenson, but his endings are always so unsatisfying.

Have you noticed that every sex scene he writes involves premature ejaculation? I feel like there's a deep metaphysical connection there.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

Done with the 3 in-between-trilogies Mistborn novels starring Wax and Wayne. Some people were disappointed, I thought they were were good, if a little smaller in scope (didn't even involve the end of the world, pfffft). Anyway I'm taking a break from Brandon Sanderson for now.

On to The White Tree/Cycle of Arawn book 1. So far I like the writing style, even if it jumps around in time a little too much.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

Ok, done with all the Cycle of Arawn and Cycle of Galand books. The last one drove me all the way up the wall and back down again 6 times. Robertson insists on spending 3 chapters in a row saying "the party is having a hard time advancing to the next level of skill". To his credit, he manages to do so without repeating the same words in the same order too often, but it's still annoying. Also, he has a tendency to traipse off on rabbit trails in the middle of battle sequences to reiterate recent events or explore the inner philosophical meandering of characters who are about to be sliced into bits by magic or swords. I get the feeling he does it on purpose to force the reader into a sense of impatience and suspense, but that feels like cheating.

ETA: There are parts where it's clearly evident what the protagonists need to do in order to solve some puzzle or problem in order to advance the story, but a third of the book is spent waiting for them to figure it out. That seems to happen more frequently the farther in the series you go, and it's intensely frustrating. Hopefully, Robertson fixes this bug in his program.

Anyway, next is Oathbringer, which looks like it's about 900 pages long so maybe it'll wash enough of the taste of this one out of my brain to let me read the next one when it arrives next spring.

[Cain]

I liked Oathbringer, but I think the whole reveal about the Recreance was way too...neat for my liking.  But Dalinar's backstory more than made up for that, so I'll let it pass...for now.

Also the Szeth-Nightblood team seems to be working out surprisingly well, even though that sword is a goddamn menace.  You. Do. Not. Make. Sentient. Magic. Swords. That. Kill. On. Every. Plane. Of. Existence. And. Tell. Them. To. "Destroy Evil." Without. Specifying. What. Evil. Is.  Goddamnit Vasher.  Still, I reckon Nightblood might be able to kill a Shard, so having it around might be useful.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

Oathbringer should have been titled "Things could be worse -- wait, nevermind." But it was alright. Now to wait 4 years for #4. Maybe I'll do the Riyria books next.

I tried to switch gears and take on The American War, about the 2nd American Civil War, but I couldn't cope with the author's cloyingly purple prose and torturously avoiding ending any phrase with a preposition. Shame on me, I know, but I can't help it. Plus, I don't need the overly optimistic assumption that America will stave off collapse until 2074.

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk

[Hoopla!]

I’m working my way through the Black Company series. I didn’t care for the first book too much at the start, but I’m halfway through the second book now and quite enjoying it all.

[Cain]

Well, at least Sorweel should come out of things OK.  Unless he literally runs into the No-God or goes on to kill Kelhus, that boy's unstoppable.

Well that was fucking prophetic.

[Cainad (dec.)]

Well, at least Sorweel should come out of things OK.  Unless he literally runs into the No-God or goes on to kill Kelhus, that boy's unstoppable.

Well that was fucking prophetic.

  Fucking hell.

[Fin]

Read "Empty Space....a haunting" by M. John Harrison. Third in a trilogy, along with "Light" and "Nova Swing". Funny, surreal, and ultimately very disturbing. Highly recommended.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

The Demon Cycle series is good.

I also tried a string of Ray Kurzweil books, but that guy is a hopeless optimist and I couldn't take it.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

Finally reading The Unholy Consult after almost a year of putting it off, and after the other series I've read in the intervening time I've decided this guy is garbage who thinks everything should be phrased in poem form because he spent too much time in grad school.

[LuciferX]

Something about how the law of small numbers is not that of the bigger ones

[Cainad (dec.)]

Finally reading The Unholy Consult after almost a year of putting it off, and after the other series I've read in the intervening time I've decided this guy is garbage who thinks everything should be phrased in poem form because he spent too much time in grad school.

  Maybe. I think TUC goes really far in that direction, I don't recall the writing style being like that in the previous books. Ultimately I think it suits the themes and events of the book, but YMMV.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

Finally reading The Unholy Consult after almost a year of putting it off, and after the other series I've read in the intervening time I've decided this guy is garbage who thinks everything should be phrased in poem form because he spent too much time in grad school.

  Maybe. I think TUC goes really far in that direction, I don't recall the writing style being like that in the previous books. Ultimately I think it suits the themes and events of the book, but YMMV.

I'm going to finish it, but it feels like a chore. The most annoying thing is the constant shifting between scenes with no warning and using flowery purple prose to say even the most simple things. It's a great story, though, and his use of abstract language and building every statement out of metaphors is effective in some ways. I'm mostly just complaining about how much attention it demands.

[Cainad (dec.)]

Yeah even for me I think the prose gets too purple in some spots (and I’m shamelessly into the style of the earlier books, which influenced my writing for several years and gawd I can’t stand to read some of my old shit for that reason).

I think the intent is to generate a dreamlike sense, where nothing is literal. It works best when he’s setting scenes with lurid descriptions of things like smells and textures, but gets kinda hard to follow when it’s supposed to be a character’s inner thoughts.