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Doktor Kosmos

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If only the guy would finish the damn series...he's as bad as Robert Jordan.

I also highly recommend the entire James Clavell series of books...started with the novel Shogun. They're all pretty good...hardest one to find is Whirlwind which I had to find in a used book store. It occurs during the oil crisis of the 1970's and his style of writing really leads you to a view of the culture in the middle east while entwining historical figures into the story lines...just great, great storylines. If you like the epic style of writing by guys like Martin and Jordan then let Clavell show you how it's done properly...without becoming a giant roving storyline that's all about their next best-seller and pissing off fans who just want to get closure to their series.

I'm pretty sure I've seen Shogun lying around my house somewhere. I agree that Martin seriously needs to start getting his shit together. If he takes 5 years per book and keeps extending the series, I'll have forgotten who he is before he wraps A Song of Ice and Fire up.

I've actually just started reading Wheel of Time. I should finish the first book in my bed tonight. So far what I like best is how much it reminds me of LotR and what I like least is how big a rip off of LotR it is. Given the fact that it's 12 books, it's going to open up and change that but... given the fact that it's 12 damn books long, it'll definitely get too big and too slow to follow.

A lot of people really like Terry Goodkind, no dragons or knights but still in the genre...I found his theme became a little too preachy but their decent books still.

Everything I've heard about Goodkind is that he's the absolute worst of the worst. Non-stop preaching for objectivism combined with mediocre writing. I was reading a thread on an ASoIaF board about Twilight and it was being compared to Eragon and Goodkind writing. And then people said that Goodkind was even worse than Twilight. All I needed to know. He does seem to have a large fan club though so once I go through all the more popular series, I'll have to read his.

Except that was the fear of many fans of the series...he dragged out the story for dollars for years and it was obvious. It should have finished around book 9 as a max. Instead he was on, what, book 11 with the end barely in sight? Truly sorry to hear about his fate but I do believe it became about how much dough he could drag out of the series. It likely wouldn't be the same but there are a lot of decent authors who would probably love the chance to try and finish the series...look at all the Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms books that are authored, co-authored and have multiple writers in every series? Sure, some are garbage but some a pretty solid...

lol

I was telling Colin the other day about all the heavy criticism that The Wheel of Time takes. He said he was loving Book 9 which surprised me since everyone seems to think 9-11 were all crap. Anyway, the quality of the writing is good and the tale seems pretty cool after one book. I don't know how it's going to live for TWELVE of them though... :puke:

Yeah but all of Orwell's works should be compulsory reading for the lefty political crowd around here...lol

Anyone ever read Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky? One of the hardest books to get through that I've ever read...I can read a 500 page novel in about 3-4 days and that book, which is not long, took me weeks. The classic russian authors seem so heavy on describing every small detail in their story that they drag out for eternity.

I recently read Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov and that was the toughest book I've ever read (loved it though). My sister told me that Crime & Punishment is a lot more fast-paced and easier to read and it's probably the nest book I want to take out from the library - or at least, the next non-fantasy book.

&&&&&&

It turns out I have both the pilots of R. Scott Bakker's The Prince of Nothing Trilogy, The Darkness That Comes Before... (cool name), and The Malazan series, The Gardens of the Moon (lame name, although it did just get me to rhyme).

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I've actually just started reading Wheel of Time. I should finish the first book in my bed tonight. So far what I like best is how much it reminds me of LotR and what I like least is how big a rip off of LotR it is. Given the fact that it's 12 books, it's going to open up and change that but... given the fact that it's 12 damn books long, it'll definitely get too big and too slow to follow.

lol

I was telling Colin the other day about all the heavy criticism that The Wheel of Time takes. He said he was loving Book 9 which surprised me since everyone seems to think 9-11 were all crap. Anyway, the quality of the writing is good and the tale seems pretty cool after one book. I don't know how it's going to live for TWELVE of them though... :puke:

Well per an earlier post Jordan isn't able to finish the series thanks to his no longer being alive and all...if I was you I'm not sure it's worth starting the series.

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The Road by Cormac McCarthy is one of the best books I have ever read. Also, Friends of the Earth or Drop City by TC Boyle are excellent.

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  • 1 month later...
  • Tay John - Howard O'Hagan... Canadian myth and Modernist work
  • Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics - Spotts... Humanizing Hitler and showing a very different reasoning for the war
  • The Wall Jumper - Peter Schneider... vignettes from divided Germany of people jumping the wall told through the eyes of one person
  • Child of All Nations - Irmgard Keun... Wonderful look at what a German family had to go through after they fled the Nazis
  • The God Delusion - Richard Dawking... Mentioned above, if you have an open mind, this is an interesting read
  • Hellboy: Seed of Destruction - Mike Mignola... The first chapter in the Hellboy series; great mythology, moody art
  • Hellboy: Wake the Devil - Mike Mignola... Second chapter; Plot not as tight, but still a very good read; more smoothly written
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Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

The Twisted Root by Anne Perry

The Darkness That Comes Before (Book One of The Prince of Nothing Trilogy) by R. Scott Bakker

Gardens of the Moon (Malazan Book of the Fallen Series) by Steven Erikson

I'm now halfway through The Idiot, also by Dostoevsky.

If there's anything else, I don't remember it.

C&P's awesome obviously but not my favourite book by that author. One scene especially will always be remembered by me.

The Maltese Falcon's a classic in the genre, good stuff.

The Twisted Root's mediocre, but it isn't bad reading if you're having some sort of existential crisis and don't know what to do with yourself.

The Darkness...Before is a great fantasy book with a real bad-ass character. I intend to finish this series someday.

I stopped reading Gardens of the Moon in middle. Highly-touted fantasy series. Crap.

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I really loved The Old Man and the Sea. But perhaps I was in a different stage in life when I read it.

Crime and Punishment is probably one of my top-three favorites of all time.

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Crime and Punishment is probably one of my top-three favorites of all time.

The scene where Dunya's trying to shoot Svidrigailov.... :wub:

I also liked Raskolnikov's theory.

But - check out The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky's final book. That book is dominant. But I'm finding Dostoevsy builds up his books for 400 pages and only develops the story right at the end. (In C&P the murder happens right near the beginning, but he pushes it to the back of our minds for most of the book.) I'm halfway through The Idiot now and I still don't know what exactly the story is and what it's going to turn into.

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I once started on The Brothers Karamazov but my heart wasn't in it so I never got very far. Dostojevskij isn't an easy read.

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The scene where Dunya's trying to shoot Svidrigailov.... :wub:

I also liked Raskolnikov's theory.

But - check out The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky's final book. That book is dominant. But I'm finding Dostoevsy builds up his books for 400 pages and only develops the story right at the end. (In C&P the murder happens right near the beginning, but he pushes it to the back of our minds for most of the book.) I'm halfway through The Idiot now and I still don't know what exactly the story is and what it's going to turn into.

You should read Notes from Underground it is a short work, esp. by FD's standards, but hillarious in a black, grim way. Since you seem to like Russian Lit try Solzenitsyns A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch. Magnificent, but also very grim as it depicts life in a gulag.

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I really loved The Old Man and the Sea. But perhaps I was in a different stage in life when I read it.

Dunno man. I mean, I had to read it in College. I think my teacher wanted us to learn that we'll be working hard in life for nothing... :(

I was depressed after reading this.

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I once started on The Brothers Karamazov but my heart wasn't in it so I never got very far. Dostojevskij isn't an easy read.

When I first started that book I wondered whether I was in over my head but by the second half I was loving it and the final 200 pages are phenomenal.

You should read Notes from Underground it is a short work, esp. by FD's standards, but hillarious in a black, grim way. Since you seem to like Russian Lit try Solzenitsyns A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch. Magnificent, but also very grim as it depicts life in a gulag.

My library has Notes from the Underground so I'm going to get to it eventually. I don't know about Solzenitsyn. I do have Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina in my house though and the school library has a collection of six plays by Mikhail Bulgakov which I started. I really haven't read much Russian literature but that's what I'm trying to get into ever since I read The Brothers Karamazov.

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[*]Hellboy: Seed of Destruction - Mike Mignola... The first chapter in the Hellboy series; great mythology, moody art

[*]Hellboy: Wake the Devil - Mike Mignola... Second chapter; Plot not as tight, but still a very good read; more smoothly written

Colin, have you ever read Codename: Wolverine? I haven't really read a lot of novelized comic book character stuff but that one was pretty good. I read it when I was 13 and it's always just kind of stuck with me.

I really loved The Old Man and the Sea. But perhaps I was in a different stage in life when I read it.

Crime and Punishment is probably one of my top-three favorites of all time.

I love Hemingway's quote about The Old Man and the Sea

There isn't any symbolism. The sea is the sea. The old man is the old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The sharks are sharks, no better, no worse. All the symbolism people say is s**t. What goes beyond is what you see beyond when you know
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I love Hemingway's quote about The Old Man and the Sea

QUOTE

There isn't any symbolism. The sea is the sea. The old man is the old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The sharks are sharks, no better, no worse. All the symbolism people say is s**t. What goes beyond is what you see beyond when you know

Well... another good reason to say that this is one heck of a bad story...

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Colin, have you ever read Codename: Wolverine? I haven't really read a lot of novelized comic book character stuff but that one was pretty good. I read it when I was 13 and it's always just kind of stuck with me.

I've never read any of the novelized comics - at least not yet. I was considering picking up a couple, but I'm concerned they won't live up to what I hope they'd be. It seems to me you can really expand in book form, but I always got the feeling from reading other novelized things that they jkust didn't turn out as well.

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