I tink I read them in order written. The Book of Ender's Game I have has the first chapter of Ender's Shadow at the end. But I don't want to read it, until I got that book. I hate it when I can't read on right away.
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I tink I read them in order written. The Book of Ender's Game I have has the first chapter of Ender's Shadow at the end. But I don't want to read it, until I got that book. I hate it when I can't read on right away.
BTW, if anyone like Nordic books, I can highly recomment Yrsa Sigurdardóttir and Johan Theorin.
I'd strongly recommend you read them in the order written - there's a pretty big gap between some of the novels, and it shows. OSC has different things to say with different books, and reading them as he wrote them is (IMO) a superior way to follow the author's intentions. None of the short stories are necessary to understand the novels, and some have spoilers - I'd hold off on those until completing the novels.Quote:
Originally Posted by earthJoker
One other warning: if you're expecting other Ender/Bean novels to be just like Ender's Game, you will be disappointed. The writing style is unmistakable Card, but he doesn't set out to write carbon copy books. Some of the books in the series are quite polarizing because of this, so be forewarned. They're all good in their own way, but they are by no means consistent in either theme or setting.
Good, as I said, I prefer order written. The only reason I wasn't sure, was because of the added chapter of Ender's Shadow at the end of Ender's Game.
I will buy the books one after another, so I don't have to read more than I want. Cards writing style is nice for me, his way of describing things. And his English is not overly complicated. :)
My Kindle has been restocked :o
Beginning the year with Superforecasting, The Soul of an Octopus, Life on the Edge, The Sense of Style and Misbehaving: the Making of Behavioral Economics
Canticle for Leibowitz.
Finished The Shadow Rising for The Wheel of Time. Most enjoyable book so far. For once the ending didn't feel rushed or half assed. Amazing what an author can do when he doesn't use the all powerful bad guy as a crutch. Although I do worry about the story turning into a tit for tat now that Rand is more accepting of his powers and role.
Fires of Heaven was one of the first 'meh' books IMO. I like Lord of Chaos (book 6) but others felt it wasn't great. I'm curious as to what your reaction will be when the city really hits its low points (like book 8). TSR was a fantastic book, it had a very 'scouring of the shire' feel to it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer
Got around to reading The Martian finally. Hmm. I enjoyed it but had some beefs. Minor spoilers to follow?
First, some technical/plotting issues. The situation that got him in the predicament in the first place was pretty far-fetched: First, that the MAV would not have been built to withstand those winds, given the amount of time it was expected to be on the surface, and second, that he'd in any way survive the accident. Then, some of the details wrt his luck in having certain crucial items ready/undamaged at critical time periods - e.g. his life support system surviving all sorts of punishment, him magically having sproutable vegetables on hand, his good luck in having different gases stored with identical valve fittings (which flies in the face of standard lab procedure), etc. It's a little bit too much 'just so' - the author tries hard to make everything believable to at least a first approximation, but some of these coincidences were stretching things. Finally, I highly doubt he could get workable soil in the manner in which he described - we don't know all that much about Martian dirt, but it's almost certainly very challenging to turn into soil, even with some 'starter' soil.
More broadly, I think the writing was, well, clearly written by a first time novelist with little to no editorial help. It shows (I have a similar gripe about 'Wool'). Other than the protagonist, the rest of the characters are just sketches, with one or two identifying features thrown in to make them distinguishable. There's a short love story shoehorned into the plot, and it clearly looks like an afterthought. Etc. It looks like his main story was nicely fleshed out but everything else was filler for plotting purposes. Furthermore, there are a few points that showcase some pretty terrible writing - not in the monologue sections, which are punchy and entertaining, but nearly everywhere else. Definitely could have used some editing.
Overall? 3.5/5. I enjoyed the emphasis on MacGyvering solutions in a hostile environment and the attempt to use some quantitative rigor to support the thought experiment (especially re: orbital mechanics and the like). Even so, a flawed effort. I'll have to see how the movie looks.
Haven't read it, but the gas fittings being the same might be done so exactly to allow emergency repairs and mcgyvering, you are on another planet after all.
I finished The Yiddish policemen's union, which was a pretty good noir ish detective story set in an alternate timeline where Jews were allowed to settle in Alaska (apparently a real plan - the guy who blocked it in real life was killed in a car crash in this story). Pretty good book, though some of the conspiracy stuff is pretty far fetched but it fits in the story.
I thought about that - and in fact the author makes precisely such a claim - but there is a reason for the CGA fitting system. Different gases have distinctly different compatibilities with eg metals and plastics, requiring careful choice of regulators and hoses for simple safety. I'm pretty sure NASA wouldn't mess with that, but I could always be wrong.
Disappointed in the ending of book 5 for The Wheel of Time. A 5 paragraph middle school NCLBA writing exam telegraphs less than Robert Jordan did in The Fires of Heaven. He did a better job at Moiraine's possible demise, only hinting at it once I think several hundred pages before hand, but after that point it felt like he was writing to fill a quota. Asmodean's ending felt like it was thrown in as an afterthought as a hook for the next book.
Exactly what happened here. Jordan is constantly keeping the scales balanced.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer
Yeah but what you don't find out until later is the identity of his killer and that revelation is as shocking as it is satisfying
Spoiler:
will...not...click...
I hope its revealed as masterfully as Nynaeve figuring out who Moghedien was. Nothing like laying everything out like that and still making the reader feel like an idiot cause there wasn't a pause to reflect on it all.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Aimless
Spoiler:
Jumped right into Lord of Chaos. Totally forgot how bad emo Perrin was, or that he was completely left out of the last book.
But whats up with the Jordan's love for the prologue? It takes up 10% of this book. Was he making up for not including one in the last book?
Prologues were released early as teasers for loyal fans, so he tried to make them meaty.
You are complaining about emo Perrin in book six. /giggleQuote:
Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer
I read Leviathan Wakes the other day. For a Hugo nominee I was expecting more. It was pretty standard fare with a moderately telegraphed resolution. I thought the gimmick with different character voices was interesting, but wasn't all that compelling at the end of the day. Some of the secondary characters was mere sketches or seemed to act uncharacteristically at times. The writing quality overall was just okay - there were a few scenes that could have been awesome if they'd written them right (e.g.Spoiler:
There were some bits I liked. The world building was adequate, though I would have liked some more details on just how everything worked (especially the politics and economics). At times it seemed like they were making it up as they went along rather than having a good handle on how their world worked. The technology was broadly believable, albeit with some magic thrown in ('Epstein drive' to solve all of our problems). I thought the weapons/battle technology was actually pretty well thought out - I especially liked their sensitivity to the fact that extraterrestrial habitats are highly vulnerable, and only saved from rapid destruction in a conflict by common sense of the combatants - most other similar stories I've read rely on magic (energy shields or the like).
I will probably try reading the next book in the series just because it was mindless fun to read, but I'm not too invested. I quick watched the free pilot of the TV series and while I enjoyed the reasonable level of fidelity to the book and some of the 'feel' of the imagined world, I doubt I'm exercised enough to pay to watch the rest. Anyone seen/read more and want to tell me if I'm missing out?
I watched the TV series, and felt the setting had a great deal of promise, but that the plot itself was utterly by the numbers: 'corporation doing something farcically dangerous because corporations are eeeevvvvvill'. If they were a real evil corporation, they'd be using a loophole in employment law to get out of paying workers for mandatory overtime or something, not digging up alien space gunk.
Will still watch the second series though.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...4,203,200_.jpg
This will make you not want to have kids. Or raise them as the one kid in class who doesn't get a phone.
Finally got around to reading Anathem. Hmm. Part of me wants to hate this book, and part of me wants to love it. I'm not sure what to make of it. First, the bad: Stephenson decides to needlessly invent a bunch of words (albeit cleverly constructed - I found myself using praxis instead of technology today) and it makes the book a bit of heavy going. He does the same with basic philosophical debates. He takes, for example, Platonic ideals and nominalism and makes up a bunch of pointless terminology and turns it into an academic holy war. The basic idea seems to be based strongly on themes from Canticle for Leibowitz though he definitely takes things in a very different direction. I am also not convinced that he did a good job of reconciling his ideas on quantum mechanics/multiverses with Platonic realism in a very satisfying manner.
That being said, I love that he wrote this book. It's ambitious, it tries to weave a lot of complex ideas together into a coherent whole, and he manages to frequently keep things interesting even in the midst of fairly abstruse debates. The 'mathic world' he conjured up is at once deeply alien but also quite familiar to anyone who has spent time in an academic setting, and it's entertaining to imagine. I particularly enjoyed the mixture of academic inquiry with a form of religious ritual - the trappings of religion stripped of supernatural significance. It's an interesting combination that I found fascinating. And the final act with the rocket launches was very well conceived from a hard SF standpoint.
At times Stephenson has some trouble shifting between his standard fictional narrative and the big, heavy issues he is talking about - it seems somewhat ridiculous to get a detailed description of the local geography during a road trip when two pages later the characters are hip deep in a discussion about alien WMDs or whatever. And what soured things most for me was the ending - it was deeply unsatisfying and did little to answer questions I still had. Perhaps another read through would help settle some things in my mind, but as it is I feel like we just had a 'there but for the grace of God' moment and moved on. Perhaps Stephenson has written some about this - I'll have to go have a look.
I got something new out of each subsequent reading but endings are definitely not Stephenson's strong suite. The Baroque Cycle probably had the strongest ending, but it took eight books to get there.Quote:
Originally Posted by wiggin
I dunno, I loved the endings in his early stuff (e.g. Snow Crash, Diamond Age, even The Big U). Anathem felt to me like he wasn't really sure how to end things and so just slapped together a chapter or two and called it 'done'. It was very promising up until they reach the icosahedron; after that it starts wandering.Quote:
Originally Posted by Enoch the Red
Some of his other tome-like novels also suffer from some ending issues, but I didn't feel that e.g. Cryptonomicon was as bad in this regard.
As a rule of thumb I find that generally the weightier the subject matter, themes, and ideas that Stephenson explores the worse the ending. His smaller, zippier books like Zodiac, The Big U, and Snow Crash all had endings that I could consider satisfying, (though part of me still thinks even there that he is as loath to write the endings as I am to get to them) but Anathem, Cryptonomicon and even the Baroque Cycle - when read individually and not in volume form - all end in ways that left me wanting. Reamde did not on the whole do much for me, but it probably had one of the more traditional endings of any of his works.Quote:
Originally Posted by wiggin
I haven't had a chance to reread Seveneves yet, but at first blush it has been the most uneven writing of his I have had the pleasure to read yet.
Neal Stephenson's an odd author in the sense that there's this massive gap between the aspects of the writers craft he's good at and those he's not so good at. Where Stephenson excels is in taking real world science, philosophy and ideas and turning them into endlessly fascinating stories and SF settings. With a Stephenson story, you get that sense of awe and wonder you get from any good SF story but more so because his work is so much more grounded in real stuff, not just some shit he made up. He's also very good at conveying this ideas and making them relatable and understandable without burying you in technical jargon or requiring you to do a quick undergrad course in the subject. He writes very good prose too, most of the time.
However, the man cannot do characterisation for toffee and seems to have a total disregard for structure. For example, the last 1/3 ofSeveneves is just straight up the prologue for another novel which may never even be written for all we know, because Neal Stephenson.
With his earlier work, there was one factor that mitigated these two weaknesses: they were funny. Cryptonomicon in particular was absolutely hilarious in places, and fully of clever little asides and observations. The characters might have been flat, but their dialogue was good so they were enjoyable to spend time with and the rambling digressions were a pleasure. It's a shame this aspect of his work has been largely absent since the Baroque cycle, and although I enjoyed Anathem and it's YA shenanigans a lot and found a lot to admire about Seveneves I don't think his later work is nearly as good as Cryptonomicon, Snow Crash et al.
Not tried Neal Stephenson, but am looking to try someone new.
What of his would you guys recommend I start with?
Snow Crash, then The Diamond Age. No question. Then come back to us and we can discuss the rest of his work - a lot of it is either a bit less polished (i.e. his early work like The Big U or Zodiac) or is very lengthy and more turgid (The Baroque Cycle, Cryptonomicon, the aforementioned Anathem). They're all good in different ways, but by far his best and most accessible novels are the two I suggest.
Cryptonomicon is peak Stephenson. It retains the wit and sparkle of Snow Crash and the Diamond Age but the learning of the later novels.
Anyone else read the two novels he wrote as Stephen Bury, with his uncle or something - Interface and Cobweb?
I disagree, mostly for thematic reasons. I have a huge soft spot for cyberpunk, which Stephenson absolutely nailed in Snow Crash and (differently) in Diamond Age. Also, I think he does better when he talks about themes in the future rather than in the present - Cryptonomicon probably read as a pretty interesting novel back in '99, but its underlying themes of cryptography and data havens and the like seem a bit overhashed now - pretty much any thinking person is well versed in these topics nowadays. I feel similarly about Reamde (which, contrary to some here, I actually found to still contain some substantial humor) - writing 'present day' thrillers might be entertaining, but it means your themes can get dated very quickly - go back and try reading older Michael Crichton - it doesn't age well.Quote:
Originally Posted by Steely Glint
Also, Cryptonomicon is unnecessarily long for its plot. Then again, it has probably the best Stephenson passage I've ever read - even better than the one about The Deliverator (I'm talking about the bit discussing the ideal way to eat Cap'n Crunch). Anyways, I'd give it honorary third place.
Nah. It's been on my list, but not very high up. If I ever see them on sale at the local used bookstore I'll pick them up but it's not a high priority. What did you think?Quote:
Anyone else read the two novels he wrote as Stephen Bury, with his uncle or something - Interface and Cobweb?
In other news, I've also been reading the first Mistborn books. They're written better and with more ingenuity than your typical fantasy series - and certainly move plots along better - but so far they are falling on the side of 'entertaining one shots' rather than 'obsessively re-read masterpieces'. Ditto for Elantris, which also suffered from some plot holes and first-novel issues. I will give Sanderson this - he wrote a novel that I felt comfortable recommending to my wife. She has far less patience than I do for most SF/fantasy so I only recommend books to her that I know she'll enjoy. The combination of non-stupid female protagonist with a reasonable fast and entertaining pace were enough to make it to my recommendation list, and she really loved them. So kudos to him for that.
Thanks chaps.
Ordered Snow Crash and The Diamond Age
Interface is quite good. Pretty decent take on US election politics, albeit in a rather 90s kind of way. But every now and again one of the characters will say something like "and the problem with America is that people these don't don't have Values: hard work and self-reliance", as if looking directly at the camera and delivering a Very Special Message.Quote:
Originally Posted by wiggin
It's bizarre and jarring in a novel which has an otherwise pretty nuanced take on politics.
I can't remember much about Cobweb, it has some espionage stuff going on I think. Maybe I should reread it.
So, has anyone read Max Gladstone's Craft novels? They mentioned it on Monkey Cage and the series seems fun and original:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...d-in-politics/
I just finished reading China Mieville's Iron Council, his last Bas-Lag novel to date. Hmm.
Look, I love the steampunk(ish)/New Weird/whatever genre. I think it's fresh and interesting and twists conventions (especially in fantasy) on their heads. And I have generally enjoyed the quality of Mieville's prose - I though Perdido Street Station was a real breakout novel. Yet the more I read - The Scar, Iron Council, some of his other fiction - the more I get bored. I'm not bored because his stories are poorly told or based on a poor premise - for heaven's sake, Iron Council was about taking a Western to the nth degree and throwing in magic. I'm bored because Mieville can't resist telling a deeply political story as central to his motivation. I get that he's a Marxist, and I fully expect that to bleed through into his books. But there's only so much I can take of long sections detailing the politics between different leftist factions, or the caricature of awful depredations by governments and plutocrats that lead to popular insurrections. Even the self-critique he includes in his books is a little too inward-looking to be of value.
There are other deeply leftist authors who I enjoy - Steven Brust comes to mind in particular. He is a self-proclaimed Trotskyist (I think? Don't quote me on this; I vaguely recall his answer to this question being much more nuanced that I can reproduce) and you can see it in some of his novels. But the politics takes a back seat to storytelling, and Brust isn't shy about writing contrasting views - the sympathetic portrayal of many agents of the Dragaeran Empire, Vlad Taltos' ambivalence towards his wife's political activism, his open acknowledgement that the world is sometimes far more complex than can be summed up simply by a theoretical ideology. His political discussions are plot devices, not ends in themselves.
I can't say I won't read more Mieville; he is indeed an excellent writer. But my patience is waning.
Just finished the Silo Trilogy by Hugh Howey. I had heard good things about Wool, so I read it and thought it was all right; I saw Shift and Dust for cheap at a bookstore recently and finished off the series.
I thought the whole series was okay. It clearly starts off as an early work by the author, but the characters and setting are engaging enough. Even in the third book, Howey develops a bunch of plot lines just to needlessly end a bunch of them without resolution. I understand that 'just so' endings are also annoying, but sometimes it seems like he doesn't know what to do with certain characters or developments, so he just cuts them off through one device or another. Sometimes the bad guys are just comically bad while the good guys are always great (even when some of the good guys are clearly stupid and responsible - directly or indirectly - for heinous results). Howey tries to convey moral complexity but it just comes off as whiny to me without really addressing the moral quandry head-on.
What really bothers me, though, is the technical details. I tried hard to suspend my disbelief, but he gives more and more details of how his world works in the second and third books, and there are just fundamental problems that my engineer's brain couldn't ignore. I realize that Howey added most of the details (especially in the third book) to address some of these concerns, but he was clearly making things up along the way, and the inconsistencies start to strain credulity. I don't want to spoil anything, but suffice it to say he posits a closed system existing based on more-or-less familiar technology for centuries. Recycling and stockpiling addresses a lot of the problems, but I think by far the biggest real issue has to do with oil, used for both power and raw materials; there's no way there would be enough to provide for the needs of 50 silos for this period of time, not to mention the 'mines' that supposedly provide for some raw materials. The other issue has to do with the nanotechnology and the defenses/uses of it; I can't give more details without giving away lots of spoilers, but suffice to say I was unimpressed with his treatment of the subject.
I love post-apocalyptic fiction, and I love ship-in-a-bottle kind of stories, so I was predisposed to enjoy this. I had fun, yes, but wouldn't say it blew me away. Decent light reading if you're not feeling to picky.
Recently finished up some old books on my list:
Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch. Won a Pulitzer and has been on my pile since I read a glowing review in the Economist. Solidly written story with a bit of a coming of age feel to it. Parts of the middle were hard to read - I absolutely can't stand reading about people making excruciatingly poor life choices, especially the descent into substance abuse. But she manages to pull out a really good narrative with some beautifully realized characters. It's obviously a flight of fancy with far too many 'just so' occurrences to be believable, but that's forgivable for the richness of the story.
The thing that was a bit of a turn-off was the soliloquy at the end - she portrays a deeply nihilistic worldview that, while somehow still hopeful, is anathema and alien to me. I'm not sure it really qualifies as nihilist - it's even veering a bit into existentialist territory - but I tend to view my life and the world through a lens of purpose, which was very much at odds with her message. I think I was supposed to find it a bit uplifting, but instead I just found it sad... I can appreciate the world of 'things' that she explores, but at the end of the day I'm really only concerned with people.
Benjamin Black's Christine Falls. This was a recommendation from a colleague of mine - written by the genre fiction pseudonym of John Banville. The book is, vaguely, a crime novel. But it's wildly different from any crime novel I've read. There's little suspense or mystery - the basic outline of the crime and its perpetrators are revealed early on. The book follows a shambling wreck of a man who blunders into the midst of this conspiracy, but it's far from plot-driven.
What really set this book apart was the sheer beauty of the language. Black/Banville uses imagery that's incredibly vivid, with unexpected metaphors for the most banal of settings. It's hard to describe without reading some excerpts, but I definitely appreciated it. Apparently this is the first of a series of books following the main character - I might pick up some more, but I'm more interested in seeing more of Banville's prose in a non-genre setting. Worth a read.
Has anyone read The Three-Body Problem?
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Chinese sci-fi translated to English. Winner of the Hugo award.
I've read the Three Body Problem. It was good.
The squeal... less so.
...and the third one is worse.
Hum. Well will try the first at least. :)