TSF Book Club
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[quote name='Cactus Jack']I have read Empire Of Silver . I thought it was the last of the Conqueror series , I had not heard about a fifth book but I will certainly be going out to find it at lunchtime today . Cheers Bones .[/QUOTE]<br />
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Have procured me a copy of the Wolf of the Plains (appears to be book 1 of the Conquerer series) so looking forward to getting stuck into this once I finish Game of Thrones. -
[quote name='taniwharugby']Have procured me a copy of the Wolf of the Plains (appears to be book 1 of the Conquerer series) so looking forward to getting stuck into this once I finish Game of Thrones.[/QUOTE]<br />
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You will want to get Book 2 lined up fairly quickly. Top series. -
of which one? <br />
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A song of Ice and Fire or Conquerer, given both I mentioned were book 1 <img src='http://www.daimenhutchison.com/invision/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':lol:' /> -
Can we change the thread title to the TSF Fantasy Nerd book club please? <img src='http://www.daimenhutchison.com/invision/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':lol:' /><br />
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I keep coming back for recommendations and it's all fantasy, fantasy, and fantasy. Grrrr.<br />
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Just finished reading Michael J Fox's semi biography (the 2nd one) mostly about Parkinsons disease, it's a good quick read and you learn some interesting stuff about the disease and how it effects the sufferers. It also has an insight into US politics around research. -
[quote name='Tim']Nepia, read [I]Eleven Kinds of Loneliness[/I] by Richard Yates, and [I]The Moviegoer[/I] by Walker Percy. Both were excellent and were influences on Matthew Weiner.[/QUOTE]<br />
Cheers - I'm off to get Eleven Kinds of Loneliness from the library now - the library doesn't have The Moviegoer. -
[quote name='Nepia']Can we change the thread title to the TSF Fantasy Nerd book club please? <img src='http://www.daimenhutchison.com/invision/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':lol:' /><br />
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I keep coming back for recommendations and it's all fantasy, fantasy, and fantasy. Grrrr.<br />
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Just finished reading Michael J Fox's semi biography (the 2nd one) mostly about Parkinsons disease, it's a good quick read and you learn some interesting stuff about the disease and how it effects the sufferers[B]. It also has an insight into US politics around research[/B].[/QUOTE]<br />
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isnt every book that is not fact based essentially fantasy?<br />
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Now you sound like the nerd!! -
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I realise that, nerd!<br />
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there are others mentioned not in the fantasy genre though <img src='http://www.daimenhutchison.com/invision/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':lol:' /> -
Grrr! I didn't say all were - just that there seems to be lots! Stop picking on me <img src='http://www.daimenhutchison.com/invision/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':lol:' />.
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[quote name='Kehua o Jury']I don't know if this would be everyone's cup of tea, but Mrs Jury bought a book called Wulf Hall. I saw the title, picked it off the book shelf and started reading it. I thought she must have got some fantasy fiction that I hadn't heard of. Anyways, it's about Cromwell's rise to power under the Tudors. It's written from Cromwell's point of view and when Henry first meets Anne Boleyn. I really enjoyed it and I thought the writer did well because ... well, we all know how it turns out, but I give her props for writing events as they unfolded from Cromwell's point of view without letting future events cloud the work.<br />
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There's going to be a sequel and I'll grab it. If you like historical fiction, this might interest you.[/QUOTE]<br />
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I havent read that, but someone else recommended it so I must get onto it. Felt that way reading Alison Weir's Innocent Traitor (about Lady Jane Grey) even though you know she gets her head lopped off, utterly gripping. Love Tudor books, completely fascinating time period.<br />
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Used to read heaps of Regency-era, but not so much now that I write it. Like others, find the military history stuff quite interesting, so in my first book have the hero go to France to rescue a soldier who went missing after the Battle of Bayonne in April 1814.<br />
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Talking about military stuff, has anyone read Colin Peel? Written about 25 military thrillers. Met him last weekend at a writers retreat. He's similar to Bob Mayer (met him at a conference in August) in that a lot of his stuff is written from first hand knowledge. Both interesting guys. -
colindpeel.com <br />
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Here's his bio:<br />
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Following a career designing weapon systems in the aerospace industries of Europe and North America, and after living in four countries in twelve years, Colin Peel settled in the South Pacific where his reputation was established as a writer of high-concept thrillers for a truly international market.<br />
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He is the author of more than twenty books. His work has been translated into six languages and published in ten different countries including Russia. Nearly all his books have been republished, either as paperbacks, large print editions, ebooks or as unabridged audio recordings.<br />
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Although many of Peel’s books reflect his experience of working on classified defence projects, his stories range from terrorism and nuclear-testing to gun-running, the heroin business, diamond smuggling and the illegal market for plutonium.<br />
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With his wife Julie, he lives on a remote peninsula in the North Island of New Zealand. -
[quote name='Nepia']I tried reading The Great Gatsby and found it tedious ...[/QUOTE]<br />
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Gatsby is an easy read. I've read it 5 or 6 times, like Catcher in the Rye, and it gets better with each reading. I don't look at either as anything more than pulp, and from that perspective, both are artistically fabulous. -
[quote name='red terror']Gatsby is an easy read. I've read it 5 or 6 times, like Catcher in the Rye, and it gets better with each reading. I don't look at either as anything more than pulp, and from that perspective, both are artistically fabulous.[/QUOTE]<br />
My scorn for The Great Gatsby is more than doubled for Catcher in the Rye. When it first came out I can see how it may have been a good read for the youth of that time but FFS, it's awful (in my opinion), if I ever meet someone named Holden my first inclination will be to punch them square in the face.<br />
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I like my pulp as much as the next man. I love Hemingway and find all his stuff easy reads.<br />
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Bart: <br />
Catcher in the Rye: Teenager whining like a bitch for 200 odd pages. <br />
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The Great Gatsby I can't help you with as it was too tedious. -
[quote name='BartMan']someone a quick synopsis of the Great Gatsby please, and catcher in the rye - two books you always hear about, but are never inclined to read now that you have finished school!![/QUOTE]<br />
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Bart -<br />
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Catcher in the Rye is about a juvenile delinquent who tells lies to himself. It seems to be found in the hip pockets of psychopaths like David Hinkley and Mark David Chapman, who being foolish psychopaths worship Holden Caulfield but fail to recognize the irony of a protagonist who supposedly hates phonies but is in-fact a phony himself, i.e. he hates himself. The whole book is told from Holden's self-absorbed first-person perspective, so you have to be prepared to get inside the head of a whiny dick.<br />
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The Great Gatsby is about "new money" vs. old, the Jazz Age, prohibition, love, murder, morality, the American Dream, and a dozen-or-so other themes. The plot is too convoluted to repeat here, but it's a skinny book and easy read. I read it in high school. It was okay, but, I thought, what's the big deal? I re-read it in university, and appreciated it more. I've since re-read it about every 5 years and enjoy it for it's simplicity, even if the plot doesn't do much for me, the ideas in the subtext and the eyewitness to the era (New York, 1920s) make it a classic, and he can occasionally string together some beautiful sentences that you'll remember for a long time. <br />
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From wikipedia:<br />
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[QUOTE][COLOR=#000000][FONT=sans-serif][I][B]The Great Gatsby[/B][/I] ... is today widely regarded as a paragon of the [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_Novel"]Great American Novel[/URL], and a literary classic. [SIZE=2][COLOR=#ff0000]The [/COLOR][URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Library"][COLOR=#ff0000]Modern Library[/COLOR][/URL][COLOR=#ff0000] named it the second best novel of the 20th Century[/COLOR][/SIZE].[SUP][URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Gatsby#cite_note-0"][1][/URL][/SUP]<br />
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[SIZE=4][B]Reception[/B][/SIZE]<br />
[I]The Great Gatsby[/I] received mostly positive reviews,[SUP][URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Gatsby#cite_note-13"][14][/URL][/SUP] but not the commercial success of Fitzgerald's previous novels [I][URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Side_of_Paradise"]This Side of Paradise[/URL][/I] and [I][URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beautiful_and_Damned"]The Beautiful and Damned[/URL][/I]. The book went through two printings. Years later, some of these copies were still unsold.[SUP][URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Gatsby#cite_note-14"][15][/URL][/SUP]Many of Fitzgerald's literary friends, however, wrote him letters praising the novel.<br />
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[COLOR=#000000][FONT=sans-serif][SIZE=2][COLOR=#ff0000][B]When Fitzgerald died in 1940, he had been largely forgotten.[/B][/COLOR] [/SIZE]His obituary in [I][URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times"]The New York Times[/URL][/I] mentioned [I]Gatsby[/I] as evidence that he had great potential that he never reached.[SUP][URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Gatsby#cite_note-15"][16][/URL][/SUP] But people began to read his book again, aided in part by the [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armed_Services_Editions"]Armed Services Editions[/URL] giving away around 150,000 copies of [I]Gatsby[/I] to the American military in [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II"]World War II[/URL].[SUP][URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Gatsby#cite_note-16"][17][/URL][/SUP][/FONT][/COLOR]<br />
[COLOR=#000000][FONT=sans-serif]<br />
In 1951 Arthur Mizener published [I][URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Far_Side_of_Paradise"]The Far Side of Paradise[/URL][/I], a biography of Fitzgerald. By the 1960s, [I]Gatsby[/I]'s reputation was established, and it is frequently mentioned as one of the great American novels.<br />
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[COLOR=#000000][FONT=sans-serif][SIZE=2][COLOR=#ff0000]Critics have viewed it differently in each decade[/COLOR][/SIZE], and in recent years [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertolt_Brecht"]Brechtian[/URL], [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmund_Freud"]Freudian[/URL], [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern"]postmodernist[/URL] and [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist"]feminist[/URL] perspectives have joined the more traditional interpretations.[SUP][URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Gatsby#cite_note-17"][18][/URL][/SUP][/FONT][/COLOR]<br />
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[SIZE=4][B]Film[/B][/SIZE]<br />
[COLOR=#000000][FONT=sans-serif][I]The Great Gatsby[/I] has been filmed six times and is being filmed for a seventh time.[/FONT][/COLOR]<br />
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[URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Gatsby"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Gatsby<br />
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[/URL]It does seem pretty damn cool that the novel got a new life and critical reappraisal after getting shipped to G.I.'s at war.<br />
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Also, being Modern Library's #2 book of the century, it's a much, much, much easier read than their #1 choice, James Joyce' Ulysses, which is undoubtedly a work of genius but it's an incredibly difficult read; whereas Gatsby is a quality pulp soap opera novel for the masses.
