What are you reading?

Grail said:
What a funny coincidence, I was just recommended this book by a coworker! I tried the first couple of hours on audiobook, but the reader for it was kind of driving me crazy. :ganishka:

Nice ^_^. It's a fun book to discuss with other other people as I recently experienced at a dinner I was at.

Haven't had an audio-book experience. Are there different voices for different characters/ the narrator? Anyone on the board prefer em over reading?

I wrapped up Dance Dance Dance last night. The main character is a middle-aged freelance copywriter with no real drive to be the best in the business, just casual work that'll get him by. He's met with a memory of a place he and his then girlfriend lived. It was called the Dolphin Hotel and the hotel/ someone was now, many years later, calling to him in a dream. Curious to find his old girlfriend, he goes back to check out the hotel. When he gets there, it isn't the same shady hotel and is now replaced with a new luxurious hotel. A chain of events unfold due to his presence. You follow the fellow's life from then on ... he's the kind of guy who goes with the flow or dances his way through. The title is a metaphor to how he lives. Under 400 pages and a quick read. Enjoyed it.

I was reading his books randomly, hopped online to see if there was an order to read them. Dance is a follow up to his other work - In A Wild Sheep Chase. Not having read the latter, I didn't feel a jarring disconnect and I ought to read it. I'll order the book soon.
 

Rhombaad

Video Game Time Traveler
I finished reading The Walking Dead Compendium Two last week, and am in the middle of Vagabond Vol. 37. Once I'm done with that, I plan on reading Count Zero. I really enjoyed Neuromancer, so I'm hoping Count Zero is just as good.
 

Walter

Administrator
Staff member
Rhombaad said:
I finished reading The Walking Dead Compendium Two last week,

Nice. I haven't followed the series very closely in the past year, but that's a great section of it (the best so far).

I plan on reading Count Zero. I really enjoyed Neuromancer, so I'm hoping Count Zero is just as good.

I loved Neuromancer, but never finished the "trilogy." I did finish Gibson's Peripheral a few months ago though. Was solid until the veeerrryyy end. I saw him do a reading of it in D.C. back in Feb. I wish I'd finished it at that point, because I'd have a few questions for him (like wtf he was thinking). :void:

It was fascinating to discover the obvious disdain he has for Neuromancer. He visibly winced when people asked him questions about it. Of course, it's most influential work, but it sort of haunted his career. Like any other writer (or musician) who has experienced massive success, their subsequent works are often discarded or at the least, cast in a different light because of prior success.

I took a strange U-turn in my traditional books (scifi and fantasy) to read one I'm sure everyone but me read in school: To Kill a Mockingbird. Even though I was raised in the South, this was never required reading for my classes. And precisely because it was required reading for others, I never bothered to read it myself. Funny how that works. But surprise, surprise! It's really fucking well done. And I'm somewhat grateful that I waited until now to read it, because I doubt I'd have appreciated it had it been force-fed to me in school. Same with Orwell's 1984, which is a personal favorite.

I also recently finished Stephen King's 11/22/1963, which has a great premise (I think I mentioned it in this thread a few years ago), but shitty execution on the concept. What amazed me moving from that book to Mockingbird was the quality of the dialogue. King's written probably 200+ books, and yet his dialogue is just abysmal, unbelievable crap. No one talks like that in real life... Bothered the hell out of me. But I've never liked King's stuff, apart from Gunslinger. His books often just piss me off, because he goes about everything so lazily.
 
Walter, did you read the rest of the Dark Tower series or just the Gunslinger? I thought "The Eyes Of The Dragon" was a great read, but I understand exactly what you mean about King.
 

Walter

Administrator
Staff member
Salem said:
Walter, did you read the rest of the Dark Tower series or just the Gunslinger?

Of course, and I thought the rest of the series was garbage. 2-4 were products of their times, incorporating whatever elements King was interested in peripherally at the time, making the whole thing lack cohesion. But the biggest insult was that he shat out those last books like he had eaten something that turned his stomach.

He ruined the series he'd had churning in his head for his entire career because he clearly just wanted to be done with it. I can scarcely think of a worse way for a series to go. Would have been better not to end it.
 
I think Howard could potentially make it a fun set of movies and if that were to happen I'm sure he could make the ending better. Obviously the series doesn't really end at all. King always left me with this whole "get to the point" feeling when reading his books.
 
Of course, and I thought the rest of the series was garbage. 2-4 were products of their times, incorporating whatever elements King was interested in peripherally at the time, making the whole thing lack cohesion. But the biggest insult was that he shat out those last books like he had eaten something that turned his stomach.

He ruined the series he'd had churning in his head for his entire career because he clearly just wanted to be done with it. I can scarcely think of a worse way for a series to go. Would have been better not to end it.

Damn this series was on my list but after hearing that, i don't know if i want to read it anymore lol
 
Salem said:
I disagree entirely with Walter on this. Actually the Gunslinger was my least favorite of the series. Read all of them in a month back on 2008.

Salem coming in with the save, when i finally get to reading the series, ill go in with a positive mindset, i like Stephen King alot, hopefully it doesn't disappoint!
 
I can't speak for everyone, but the older I get the easier it is to shit on books, movies, and music. What I mean by that is I have seen or heard it all. Story elements are hardly original and music can be the same way. Its very easy to get in a mindset where almost everything is lacking. Truth is you may love it or you make hate the series, but being positive through it is all you can do. I can only imagine the old grump I'll be in a retirement home if my mental state continues to be "that's unoriginal garbage."
 

Walter

Administrator
Staff member
Salem said:
Actually the Gunslinger was my least favorite of the series. Read all of them in a month back on 2008.

Wow, really? You're the first person I've head from that had that opinion. I started reading around the time the fourth book came out. At the time, it was a well-regarded series. As King thinks of it himself, it was meant to be his "Lord of the Rings." But after those last books came out (in the span of 2 years versus the 15 of the first four), it was pretty hard to remain a Dark Tower fan, and that goes for everyone I know who's read it -- Griff and Aaz included.

Salem said:
I'll be in a retirement home if my mental state continues to be "that's unoriginal garbage."

Lack of originality wasn't what dragged Dark Tower down into the mud for me. It just wasn't very good in my opinion, and certainly didn't match the epic tone he'd set out for.
 
Walter said:
Wow, really? You're the first person I've head from that had that opinion. I started reading around the time the fourth book came out. At the time, it was a well-regarded series. As King thinks of it himself, it was meant to be his "Lord of the Rings." But after those last books came out (in the span of 2 years versus the 15 of the first four), it was pretty hard to remain a Dark Tower fan, and that goes for everyone I know who's read it -- Griff and Aaz included.

Lack of originality wasn't what dragged Dark Tower down into the mud for me. It just wasn't very good in my opinion, and certainly didn't match the epic tone he'd set out for.

I was trying to paint a broad stroke there with that "retirement home" comment, lol. The trend I see in many people my age is discarding others works for various reasons. I think it's very easy to become bored or disappointed with many aspects of entertainment, even life at this stage.

Sharing a different opinion with you three might get a harsher response than what I'm use to. :) I don't mean that as an insult but I'm pretty sure you guys are a lot more picky than I am when it comes to books and movies.
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
Ken said:
Salem coming in with the save, when i finally get to reading the series, ill go in with a positive mindset, i like Stephen King alot, hopefully it doesn't disappoint!

I've read of a lot of what he's written, so I can say with confidence that King isn't a very good author. Most of all his endings are bad, and The Dark Tower is no exception. A very long time ago I used to think of The Dark Tower as a series that had the potential to be something that would go down in history, like The Lord of the Rings has. So believe me when I tell you: don't waste your time. The Gunslinger is the best thing King's ever written as far as I'm concerned, but it's also rather unlike any of his other works. And the Dark Tower series goes down the sewer right in the opening of the second book.
 

Kompozinaut

Sylph Sword
Salem said:
I disagree entirely with Walter on this. Actually the Gunslinger was my least favorite of the series. Read all of them in a month back on 2008.
What!? I absolutely love The Gunslinger. I've read it the most out of all of the Dark Tower books (the last 4 book have only gotten one pass though). It's self-contained enough that I don't need to continue reading beyond it to enjoy its story, and I just think it's absolutely fantastic. If they only made a decent movie version of that book then I'd be completely happy.
 

Grail

Feel the funk blast
Walter said:
I also recently finished Stephen King's 11/22/1963, which has a great premise (I think I mentioned it in this thread a few years ago), but shitty execution on the concept.

I haven't personally read 11/22/1963, but I can tell you that after having listened to a neat stack of Stephen King audiobooks, I know exactly what you're talking about. I feel similarly about the Stand (shhh don't tell anybody :slan: ). I think the problem tends to crop up most when he's working on any sort of novel or novel series (also in the case of the Dark Tower books), where his stories have room to bloat. His short stories and novellas seem to be a lot more palatable in terms of content, since he needs to police himself a lot more.

Walter said:
What amazed me moving from that book to Mockingbird was the quality of the dialogue. King's written probably 200+ books, and yet his dialogue is just abysmal, unbelievable crap. No one talks like that in real life... Bothered the hell out of me.

I think part of King's problem is that he thinks most everybody talks like an elderly white man from Maine. :ganishka:

Walter said:
But I've never liked King's stuff, apart from Gunslinger. His books often just piss me off, because he goes about everything so lazily.

I once read his book "On Writing" when I was in college, before I started getting into his work, and it was actually a really interesting exploration of (and an explanation for) this problem. He talked a bit about his schedule, and how he aims to write 10,000 words a day, among other things. One of his more interesting pieces of advice for readers was that characters and stories should sort of "create themselves" with less emphasis on editing. I'm sure that King genuinely believes that this method works for him personally, but the fact that he would give this out as a sort of "best practice" will tell you a lot about how some of his books end up the way that they do. :magni:

That said, I think you make a good point, Salem. I want to be fair and say that for every lazy or boring book King has written, there's another story of his that I would recommend, even if he's a bit cheesy or predictable sometimes. Though I think that as we get older, it just gets easier to criticize media because we have less and less time to consume it!
Maybe as crazed retirees, we'll find that we can identify with the Crimson King a lot more.
:void:
 
Haha, Grail. Maybe that's the difference, time. I have so much of it. I didn't mean I hated the Gunslinger. It took me the longest to read of the 7. I didn't feel it took off until the second book and wasn't excited to read it until the last few pages.
 

Walter

Administrator
Staff member
Guts and Roland have a lot in common, and The Gunslinger is his Black Swordsman period.
 
Walter said:
Guts and Roland have a lot in common, and The Gunslinger is his Black Swordsman period.

In my best Dwight Schrute "Fact." My original idea for a back piece was Roland, Guts, and Wolvey. Never happened but came close. I confess I've only read the series once and didn't actually get into reading books for fun until around that time.
 
So believe me when I tell you: don't waste your time.

And the Dark Tower series goes down the sewer right in the opening of the second book

damn, well I'm in no hurry to read this series but after hearing you guys, ill push it down my reading list, it can wait. ill at least check out the gunslinger one day though.
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
Ken said:
damn, well I'm in no hurry to read this series but after hearing you guys, ill push it down my reading list, it can wait. ill at least check out the gunslinger one day though.

If you like King's work in general then I recommend you do at least read The Gunslinger. It's the rest of the series that's just, well, disappointing.
 

Rhombaad

Video Game Time Traveler
Walter said:
Nice. I haven't followed the series very closely in the past year, but that's a great section of it (the best so far).

Yeah, it ends at a really rough place, too. I'm glad the third compendium is coming out in October, but it's going to be a long three-year wait after that for the fourth.

Walter said:
It was fascinating to discover the obvious disdain he has for Neuromancer. He visibly winced when people asked him questions about it. Of course, it's most influential work, but it sort of haunted his career. Like any other writer (or musician) who has experienced massive success, their subsequent works are often discarded or at the least, cast in a different light because of prior success.

That's understandable.

Walter said:
I took a strange U-turn in my traditional books (scifi and fantasy) to read one I'm sure everyone but me read in school: To Kill a Mockingbird. Even though I was raised in the South, this was never required reading for my classes. And precisely because it was required reading for others, I never bothered to read it myself. Funny how that works. But surprise, surprise! It's really fucking well done. And I'm somewhat grateful that I waited until now to read it, because I doubt I'd have appreciated it had it been force-fed to me in school. Same with Orwell's 1984, which is a personal favorite.

I loved To Kill A Mockingbird. I plan on reading it again after I finish the Sprawl trilogy. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I agree with you about not really appreciating these books until later in life. I'm going to give The Great Gatsby another try, as well. I enjoyed reading it in high school, but I think I'll like it even more now that I'm older.

Walter said:
I also recently finished Stephen King's 11/22/1963, which has a great premise (I think I mentioned it in this thread a few years ago), but shitty execution on the concept. What amazed me moving from that book to Mockingbird was the quality of the dialogue. King's written probably 200+ books, and yet his dialogue is just abysmal, unbelievable crap. No one talks like that in real life... Bothered the hell out of me. But I've never liked King's stuff, apart from Gunslinger. His books often just piss me off, because he goes about everything so lazily.

King might be my least favorite author. He creates interesting premises, but fails to execute or conclude them properly. I've been disappointed by the endings to his books so many times that I have no desire to read any more of his work, including The Gunslinger.
 
I've been meaning to read The Great Gatsby (since it's reference in Norwegian Wood that I read recently and in general) and To Kill A Mockingbird. I was having this conversation just yesterday with a pal about how I wish the education board was different when I was in school. There was no room for book reads like the way it's part of the syllabus in the US, for instance - giving students a list of books to read over summer and write a paper about it, having discussions on it, etc. Our structure was more academically inclined, general text books with questions and answers, no multi-choice, actual answers where you'd come off a Geometry or Math paper not knowing if you got the end result correct or not. Sometimes we'd be off by a few degrees or decimals and we'd lose marks! Anyway, point being, I missed out on reading at a young age and have a slight idea of classic books or must-reads. So if you guys can recommend books, I'll pick them up and get on them. From Aaz's and Walter's posts in the TV Show thread, I recently picked up Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke. Hope to get to it in August.
 

Rhombaad

Video Game Time Traveler
I finished Count Zero yesterday and started reading Mona Lisa Overdrive. Walter, I highly recommend you check out Count Zero. I thought it was awesome.
 

Walter

Administrator
Staff member
Rhombaad said:
I finished Count Zero yesterday and started reading Mona Lisa Overdrive. Walter, I highly recommend you check out Count Zero. I thought it was awesome.

How fortuitous! I'm actually between books right now. I just finished Childhood's End, which I mostly read because aspects of Infinite Space were supposedly based on it. But I uh... really didn't see much of that. This book really hasn't aged very well.
 
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