Great Books- what are you reading now?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Melf, Jul 7, 2009.

  1. dndgeek

    dndgeek Troubadour

    Am now reading, A Game of Thrones. How did I miss this series? If you haven't read it, get it.
     
  2. MAJ Bill

    MAJ Bill Level 0 Character

    I think that "A Game of Thrones" is quite possibly one of the best fantasy series I have ever read. The depth of the characters is amazing. I have never seen an author kill of so many protagonists either. Don't get too attached to any of the characters. I can't wait for the next book!
     
  3. geekpreacher

    geekpreacher Spellbinder

    Does the newest issue of Knights of the Dinner Table count? Just got it in the mail today and, as usual, it's pretty funny. Lots of photos from GenCon plus some nice strips about the "GaryCon" they were attending.
     
  4. dndgeek

    dndgeek Troubadour

    KODT most certainly applies!
     
  5. JasonZavoda

    JasonZavoda Level 0 Character

    Bleck...

    Different tastes. I read two or three books in the series and I'm not getting that reading time back. Luckily I checked these out of the library so all I lost were several hours of my life.

    Dismal is the best word I can find to describe A Game of Thrones, dismal characters, dismal storyline, and dismal waste of paper. Pretentious comes to mind as well, the author is striving for some kind of grand machiavellian fantasy that he has neither the skill as a crafter of words or designer of plots to accomplish.

    But of course one man's swill is anothers fine dining.

    For some light, if brutal reading, I can recommend the warhammer 40K novels from the Black Library. I just discovered the Ciaphas Cain series by Sandy Mitchell, which are humorous WH40K stories set around a protagonist greatly reminiscent of Bruce Campbell. Familiartiy with the more serious and grim WH40K stories makes these hilariouis. I honestly wouldn't have thought it possible but British writers have a way of finding humor in the most gruesome settings (Red Dwarf, which sounds depressing as hell if you look at the concept, Allo' Allo' which is a farciacal version of the Nazi occupation of Belgium and a spoof of the great dramatic series Secret Army, Hitchhiker's Guide which begins with the earth being utterly annihilated, etc. etc...) and the Ciaphas Cain series is one of the best examples.
     
  6. dndgeek

    dndgeek Troubadour

    Wow; dismal, waste of paper, pretentious, swill, etc. 1,577 Amazon reviewers would disagree with you, giving it 4 1/2 stars out of 5, about the same as a Ciaphas Cain book. I've never found anything Warhammer particularly engaging, as I always thought orks and elves in space was pretty unimaginative. I'm now going to give one a go, though, just for comparison. I don't believe their authors are the leaps and bounds above Martin that you claim, but I'll be sure to post my findings.
     
  7. ghul

    ghul Chevalier

    Jack Vance, Servants of the Wankh (Book 2 of Planet of Adventure).
     
  8. Melf

    Melf Administrator Staff Member


    This is a great series. Probably my favorite Vance of all. My brother Ernie read the books to me when I was about 6-7 years old. I will have to break them out again for another read!


    I am still working on Pratt and De Camp's Harold Shea series and I picked up Land of Unreason too.
     
  9. chgowiz

    chgowiz Footpad

    I'm reading the Foundation trilogy by Asimov. I read them as a teen, and now I remember why I skipped through a chunk of Foundation & Empire ... both from just wanting to know who the Mule was and partly because it was tedious! I'm sure the final book will be more of the same.

    I've also been using paperbackswap.com to (re)build my collection of Joel Rosenberg's Guardians of the Flame series. The first one came out right when D&D-mania was peaking and the insight into a brutal slave-driven society where healing potions were as common as first aid kits - for the rich - was really inspiring to my own games. I enjoy the first 3 to 4 books, then the series petered, IMO.

    I'm also waiting to get to the library to start researching Mesopotamian culture for my work on my Tombs module.
     
  10. MAJ Bill

    MAJ Bill Level 0 Character

    Wow! I have to throw down the BS flag there! While "A Game of Thrones" may not be to everyone's tastes, it is well written. The majority of merchandise/franchise tie-in books, 40K included, are not really that well written. I think we will have to, "agree to disagree" on this one.
     
  11. Melf

    Melf Administrator Staff Member

    Well now my curiosity is peaked. Have to pick up A Game of Thrones to see if it is masterpiece or garbage :lol:
     
  12. MAJ Bill

    MAJ Bill Level 0 Character

    While I realize everyone has different literary tastes, don't be disrespecting my GoT!!! :lol: Speaking of literary tastes, I am really enjoying EGG's "Infernal Sorceress". There is no mistaking who wrote that book. The man had a vocabulary, and wasn't afraid to use it! :lol:
     
  13. geekpreacher

    geekpreacher Spellbinder

    I really enjoyed The Guardians of the Flame series and agree with you that it eventually seemed to slowly fade out. In reading it, I thought they'd find some way to eventually bring back one of the main characters and much of the first books made it seem that way. However, it seems that this type of foreshadowing was just forgotten in the later books.

    I also liked the way that the Magic-Users Guild tried to invent guns similar to the ones the heroes were using. It was a really kewl concept and I've thought of using that in one of my games.

    One series that I think others would also recommend is the original Thieves World series though it also seemed to fade away close to the end.
     
  14. chgowiz

    chgowiz Footpad

    I agree! When Karl died, I think the series took a lurch. I haven't read the last two, but given what other people are saying, I'd probably not spend money on them. One of them was about Walter and it just seemed, from the jacket description, that the "flame" isn't in Joel's belly anymore.

    I was really happy to be able to trade my 3rd edition D&D rulebooks for GoF #1-5. I think I got the better end of the deal!

    I like the concept of guns requiring magic to work - I've stolen that idea a time or two. I also thought a lot about how healing potions seemed to be an acceptable part of the economy, albiet a luxury item. I think Joel did an awesome job of working that in. It makes you wonder how we (for real) would act in the face of a wonder drug that could cure someone of all wounds.

    I tried picking up a Thieve's World novel that wasn't the short story format - it was some confusing mish-mash of gods and witches and factions and just wasn't enjoyable.
     
  15. ghul

    ghul Chevalier

    Melf -- Wow, all my brothers ever did was tell me to scram! But my oldest brother Bob (who works for the same company your brother Ernie does, BTW) had one of those basement pads because he was too cool to room with his brothers. Well, he kept his bookshelf outside his door, so I used to pillage it, and that was when, as a young man, I first discovered RE Howard (through the eyes of DeCamp and Carter), Asimov, Heinlein, Tolkien and some weird stuff like Kon-Tiki and even some WWII books, like Battle of the Bulge. He never read to me, but he did play chess with me, and he never let me win. Not once. Builds character, I say!

    Re: Asimov -- In Prelude to the Foundation all the Foundation and Robots books are listed in their chronological order (i.e. in the order Asimove wrote them). Upon my second reading of them about 12 years ago, I read them in that order and enjoyed them immensely.In fact, Elijah Bailey from the Robots novels was probably my favorite character.
     
  16. JasonZavoda

    JasonZavoda Level 0 Character

    Part of the appeal of The Game of Thrones series is that it is a series. Large books, lotsa words, that goes on and on and on. It is partly the soap opera phenomenon.

    The Warhammer books are pretty much soap opera too, but they don't pretend to be much of anything else. The Cain books are the best of the lot (but they too are a series and a sense of repetition is noticable around the 3rd novel).

    I don't like rap music either or country and western but I'm sure that amazon has tons of positive reviews of rap and country and western albums.

    George R.R. Martin is a passable writer, but with the Game of Thrones he reaches beyond his skills and presents a sickly graphic, over reaching attempt at machiavellian drama, with a fragmented structure and disappointing character development.

    I will say that the writers of the Warhammer 40K stories are generally better writers than I expect from my previous experience with game-based fiction. (in general)/
     
  17. JasonZavoda

    JasonZavoda Level 0 Character

    Well, we could go through A Game of Thrones together and take it a part piece by piece. There are a lot of good books out there, A Game of Thrones isn't one of them.

    The best way to tell is to start reading it. A great book is one you don't want to put down, a book like a game of Thrones is one where you keep reading it to get to the part where it gets good, but with Martin the promise is never realized.

    The only thing that I can see myself agreeing to is that I don't like your taste in books in this instance. A Game of Thrones presumes to be a great novel and it isn't even a good one, while the 40K books promise to be space opera (brutal and bloody space opera) and the easily meet that expectation. (The Cain books go beyond that by actually being humorous, but part of the humor is the comparison with the darkly serious soap opera of most 40k novels).
     
  18. JasonZavoda

    JasonZavoda Level 0 Character

    That's is always the way to tell. Have to taste the food yourself to see if you like it.

    Reviews and opinions are only helpful after getting a large enough sampling of a particular person's tastes and seeing how it compares with your own.
     
  19. Doctor Terminus

    Doctor Terminus Level 0 Character

    Please, the 40K novels (and I am using the term novel in its broadest sense here) are for kids with small vocabularies.
     
  20. mordrin

    mordrin Spellbinder Staff Member

    I've got an order out for L Sprague's Reluctant King trilogy.
     

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