Books what you is reading: Page 8 - The Arsenal discussion community: One More in the Tolly

Books what you is reading

Burnwinter

Well, American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand are the absolute fucking shit. The latter is insane genius. Brilliant prose etc. etc.

LA Confidential's the only other Ellroy I've read, and it's also great. Good movie too.

Biggus

Burnwinter wrote:
I've been reading fantasy lately.

Me too, several people here suggested A game of Thrones but I love my historical accuracy even in fiction and when my wife said that there were zombies and dragons in it I was initially put off.

Meh it's not great-

It's brilliant! I'm halfway through the second book now.

Burnwinter

Glad you're enjoying it Biggsy. 😃

First three books are definitely the best so far, but it's all good.

Obviously he's not accurate, but it is inspired by real history and pays a great deal of attention to concordance / verisimilitude, so perhaps that's what floats your boat.

Biggus

Yep, after he plunders the wars of the Roses the hundred years war and reigns of the Caesar's, I can see how he'd struggle after a few books.

Ah sure it's all good fun.

DKGooner

The guy took too long to write for me. Was into all that fantasy stuff about a decade ago and read all the Game of Thrones books written to that date. However there was then no sign of the next book in the series forthcoming in reasonable time. After a year or so, I had given up with the genre and so put the series to rest. It was enjoyable, though but not "great" IMO. Anyway, I can't be bothered to get back into the series and re-read the initial books which I had given away.

As for James Elroy, I have 3 or the "Dudley Smith" books and the Black Dahlia. LA Confidential is a really good read with only a few bits in common with the film. The Big Nowhere is pretty decent too, but haven't got round to White Jazz yet. His style is pretty unique and has a sense of urgency and energy that supposedly reflects his actual personality - His mother was killed by a serial killer when young and the Black Dahlia is a combination of the original high-profile murder and the murder of his mother.

banduan

I was intent on re-reading Song of Whatever after reading it the first time round when I was far too young to understand most things in it. But the series has gone and spoilt it now, probably won't bother reading it.

flobaba

Just got done with The Hunger Games. Took me about 4hrs. Good stuff. Well written.

RocktheCasbah

I've started The Big Nowhere. Don't know if it's because I'm used to the slightly terse prose of the "American" trilogy, but I'm finding this one a bit of a grind. I tell you what though, having just finished watching The Shield, it struck me how thematically similar The Shield and a lot of Elroy's writing can be.

Klaus

Stone by Osip Mandelstam. I read the masterful books his widow, Nadezhda Mandelstam, wrote about the liberal resistance during the great purge (Hope against Hope) and the final depressing years of Osip's life (Hope Abandoned) and got interested in the whole acmeist poetry movement. It's a stunning book. Beautiful, heavy and poignant writing.

Claudius

Finished the Hunger Games. I enjoyed it, but as the book progressed I became less and less impressed. There were two things that put me off. The eagerness of the author to develop the love triangle which very much reminded me of the horrendous Twilight movie I tortured myself with. Second, the author chose to wrote the book in the 1st person. This meant that it was difficult to really develop characters around Katniss. It also meant that we were limited to what we knew and the whole world that she inhabited seemed so unexplained and unexplored. As for the positives, you can really feel the main character's suffering in the arena and the book moves briskly. Enjoyable, but not good enough to motivate me to read the two sequels sitting on my iPad.

Reading Day of the Jackal now. 2nd chapter. Looks hopeful.

Burnwinter

Currently reading: Alex Ross, The Rest is Noise.

Started reading a sophomore novel from Patrick Rothfuss, called The Wise Man's Fear (epic fantasy) but it was so awful I had to stop. Mind-blowingly bad, avoid at all costs. Lethal plummet relative to his mediocre, but generally bearable first novel.

This rant is worth a read: "Hull 0, Scunthorpe 3". Veteran genre author Christopher Priest (writer of The Prestige among others) takes a big stick to the contenders for (and judges of) the Arthur C Clarke Award.

Timbob

Hull 0, Scunthorpe 3? is that some sort of retort to the Housemartins, or totally unrelated?

Burnwinter

Think it's a slightly inscrutable reference to the recent Greg Bear novel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hull_Zero_Three

which is one of the books that gets insulted in the screed. Might well be a London 0, Hull 4 thing too.

Claudius

Just finished Day of the Jackal. One of the best thrillers I have ever read. The author did a great job of varying the pace, providing detail that developed the context and the characters as necessary, or throwing thrilling, fast-paced action at you. A much more satisfying read than Hunger Games which seems amateurish in comparison.

Biggus

Yeah I've read a lot of his stuff, EON and ETERNITY is probably the best of it.

flobaba

Claudius wrote:
Just finished Day of the Jackal. One of the best thrillers I have ever read. The author did a great job of varying the pace, providing detail that developed the context and the characters as necessary, or throwing thrilling, fast-paced action at you. A much more satisfying read than Hunger Games which seems amateurish in comparison.

That was Forsyth if I'm not mistaken? Read the book about a decade ago, I was 17 or 18 at the time I think. I should track it down and reread it one of these days. Great pacing, wonderful plot and details. Comparing it to Hunger Games is simply unfair. Different book genres, different writing styles, one a make believe world, the other an espionage classic with many of the events/ characters/ locational settings in actual existence.

The Odessa File was also a nice read.

Claudius

Flobsy, I think it's fair to compare it to Hunger games. They're both fiction with lots of action. The problem with Hunger, as I said, is that because it is written from the first person perspective of a child, it really fails to immerse you in the world. I have the other two books which I am sure start to fill in the gaps, but can't be bothered to read them now that I've moved onto Christie's "Murder on The Orient Express" and Obama's "Audacity of Hope". In fact, Hunger games has an advantage in that the author has a completely blank canvas that she can fill with detail in terms of the world the story takes place in. I never really felt like I was there, and after a while it was just like reading a description of the TV show 'Survivor' with some murder and genetically engineered wasps.

I love it when an author really immerses you. An example of a fiction in a fantastical context that manages this is one of my favorite books "Winter's Tale" by Mark Helprin. Read it. You'll be mesmerized.

Captain

Next wednesday, there is a special bookslam at the Scala for the release of 'Skagboys' (prequel to trainspotting) if anybody is interested. Think it's general admission, £10 per ticket.

edit: yeah, £10. http://www.bookslam.com/shop/

RonBurgundy

Ordered a Kindle today 😃

Recommend me some books!

y va marquer

The ones that came first to my mind:
Saturday - Ian McEwan
The Cellist of Sarajevo - Steven Galloway
Birdsong - Sebatian Faulks
What I Loved - Siri Hustvedt
The Beautiful and the Damned - F Scott Fitzgerald

« Previous Page Next Page »