TSF Book Club
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Just finished A Feast For Crows . A lot more bloodthirsty , still just as good as the first three books , unfortunately have to wait for our library to get in A Dance With Dragons . However long it takes to get here is sure to be too long .
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Finished The Fall and now reading the final part of the Strain trilogy - The Night Eternal. The books are playing out like a Guillermo del Toro movie which is not surprising since he co-wrote it.<br />
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The Fall - 7/10 - Didn't like the ending that much but to be fair it was simply just building up for The Night Eternal. -
about 3/4 the way through Storm of Swords, and wow! Keep being surprised!<br />
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[spoiler]As Tyrion said, Kings are falling like the autumn leaves...Just past the bit where Joffrey dies, I am still unsure if Tyrion had anything to do with it, or it was just good luck...and although I have the impression Arya has died, I think she is too much of a vital character to kill off just yet. Glad I started these books rather than just wait for the TV series, although it has made me even more keen to see it on screen, not long now[/spoiler] -
Can't remember if I've already mentioned the series earlier in the thread but have just finished the latest (3rd book) in Stephen Leather's 'Jack Nightingale' series. The books are 'Nightfall', 'Midnight' and 'Nightmare'.<br />
I only started these because I enjoy Leather's Spider Murphy series about an undercover cop. Well written pulp crime fiction, well paced and easy to read.<br />
The Nightingale books seem a bit weird in their description and I wouldn't normally have picked them up but I really enjoyed them. The premise is basically an ex-cop turned PI that discovers that his real father (who he knew nothing about) was into the occult and basically sold Nightingales soul to a demon in return for favours. He has only a few days until the birthday in which his soul is taken. The clever part is that all of the 'weird occult stuff' is written as if it is just matter of fact and it doesn't get in the way of what is basically a good story with plenty of action.<br />
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The other one recently finished is the latest from Stuart MacBride. Again this is a very gritty Scottish serial killer type story but is a stand alone and not part of the Logan McRae series. Gory, brutal and with very flawed heroes. A good dash of dark humour as well. -
Just finished reading "The oarsome adventures of a fatboy rower" by Kevin Bigger.Bought it yesterday and annoyed the shit out of my girlfriend by reading it all weekend because I couldn't put it down.One of the best books I've read in ages, he's a great writer I hope this isn't his only book.
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[quote name='Gary' timestamp='1311504652' post='215001']<br />
I 've done the auidobook thing - the first three were okay - pretty good narrator but in the fourth book they changed the narrator. It would be like watching two of the lord of the rings movies and then they change all all of the actors. Added to the fact that the fourth book seems to deal mostly with the minor character development it's a hard slog. The thing I found annoying was that the Game of Thrones books were twice as expensive as other audio books that I downloaded.<br />
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I've just started Feast of Crows on Audio and was gutted not to hear Roy Dotrice's voice! He was very good, so much so when you heard him speak you knew which character was speaking** (according to the wonderful Wikipedia, he voiced 500 characters in the books he narrated - and I can say most were brilliant and easy to tell one from another)<br />
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Wiki also says Dotrice does 5 volumes of ASOIAF, which means he must return for another??<br />
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The new narrator certainly doesnt put in the eoffort with characters and just doesnt cut it<br />
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But yeah the first couple of chapters have been a little harder with only references to names you know.<br />
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**[spoiler]Like when Sansa flees Kings Landing in the wake of Joffrey's death, and she is on the boat, the voice is instantly recognised as Little Finger.[/spoiler] -
I have just finished A Dance With Dragons . These books are really starting to piss me off in that as soon as you think you know who the main characters are the writer kills the bastards off . Still a bloody good book though .<br />
I was just looking on the internet to see if there was any word on the next book and came across the bad news that there were six years between the fourth book and the fifth that I have just finished . George Martin has also said that it will be a seven book series , so it may take a while before we see any sort of ending . -
For all the Game of Thrones Fans that are looking for another series to keep them occupied until the next instalment (whenever that may occur) try Glen Cook's 'The Black Company' series<br />
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[url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Company"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Company[/url] -
[b]Moby Dick[/b]. It's a story about a big white whale, and an obsessive sea captain who wants to kill him. Better than the movie, which was also pretty good.<br />
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I'm near the end of [b]In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Waleship Essex[/b], by Thomas Nickerson, a distant relative of a friend of mine. The account is a true story that became Melville's inspiration for Moby Dick. Nickerson was a 14-year-old cabin-boy who was on a small boat that drifted in the Pacific for months after the whale destroyed the ship Essex, and the last remaining went insane and resorted to cannibalism to survive. It's a harrowing tale - the book is based on Nickerson's notebook, which was believed lost for over a century, and after discovered was originally published in 2000. Some of you old sea dogs who enjoy a stirring adventure tale will enjoy it - they should make a movie of this!!!<br />
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Pretty soon I will write up a short review of Bob Mould's autobiography [b]See A Little Light[/b], which is actually kinda distasteful, and I'm still thinking it through... (has anybody else ever read Klaus Kinski's autobiography (All I Need Is Love, aka Kinski Uncut)...? This mines similar terrain, and is often unflattering and vicious.). -
Reading the March Upcountry series (Empire of Man) by David Weber and John Ringo. Really digging my military sci-fi at the moment. I'm a big Iain Banks, Peter Hamilton, Greg Bear fan but I enjoy military themed writers.<br />
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Weber writes the Honor Harrington space opera series and Ringo also wrote the Posleen war series (among others). If you like space opera I'd recommend the Harrington books. Posleen war is more high-tech trench warfare (and enjoyable). -
The Night Eternal - the final installment of the Strain books. Enjoy a violent vampire series and doesn't involve sparkling in the fucken daylight. All up it was a great series to read and the ending was not what I was expecting (I was expecting the obvious).
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Just finished Conqueror , the last in the Conqueror series by Conn Igguldon . Every bit as good as the rest of the series . This guy is rapidly becomming my favourite writer .
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[i]Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin [/i]by Frank Bailey<br />
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Written by a disaffected insider. Thought it was a fascinating - if obviously biased - insight. Became campaign director in her run for Governor of Alaska, and was often assumed to be her Chief of Staff when she made Gov.<br />
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Bailey was at the centre of Troopergate where Palin and her family (particularly hubby Todd) went after an ex-brother-in-law. He was caught on tape trying to pressure somebody to fire said Trooper (Tropper Wooten). It all blew up when Palin fire the director of the Department of Public Safety (i.e., the head of police and emergency services Departments) for no other apparent reason. Palin pretty much hung him (Baily) out to dry when the shit hit the fan giving it the "I didn't know about it. It was my staff without my knowledge" line.<br />
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Basically he seems to have fallen head-over-heels with, if not Pailin herself, her ideals, and the ideals of her early campaign, but over the years found himself falling into a pattern of petty vendettas and unethical manipulations of the media, and was constantly covering for her. Apparently he eventually lost faith in Palin as she got sucked into the cult of celebrity that surround her post-VP campaign.<br />
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Painted a picture of her being very petty and concentrating on attacking perceived slights rather than actual governing.<br />
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Seemed quite happy to expose (at least some) of his own failings during that time.<br />
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Coindicentally when I was reading it the movie-doco [i]Sarah Palin: You Betcha[/i] was shown on tele - which painted pretty much the same picture of Palin while only mentioned Bailey in passing (mentioning that they couldn't get an interview with him because he was about to publish his own book), and making him look like quite the villain in the Troopergate saga. Interesting therefore that they shoul come ot the same conclusions.<br />
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I find it fascinating that someone with the obvious failings of Palin could make it to be firstly the mayor of Wasilla (pop 10K), let alone Governor of a state, let alone be anywhere near being selected to run for VP. (Apparently the whole selection/vetting process by the McCain team took about two and a half days - so they missed a bit ...).<br />
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The Sarkozy phone call was brilliant. -
finally finished A Feast for Crows (had an exam to study for in there somewhere)<br />
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Was good in some ways, but not in others given it just introduced a raft of new characters, I will be suprised if the TV Series makes it this far.<br />
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I have A Dance with Dragons locked and loaded (along with Emperor; The Gates of Rome) and plenty of spare time coming up (a long haul return flight to the UK) to get stuck in.<br />
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Was good to see one character appear like they are getting their well deserved come uppance at the end though! -
Re-reading "The Murder of Captain Cook" by Richard Hough, it's the book Hunter S. Thompson used as his inspiration and resource for "The Curse of Lono." A good fast read. It continues to remind me a lot of "The Man Who Would Be King." Lots of good stuff about William Bligh. One of these days I'm going to tackle the journals from the individual officers. I've read probably over 40 books about the Captain, and I've never really gotten a sense of how brutal the retaliation against the native Hawaiians was. Hough doesn't have a lot of kind things to say about the Maoris, but then nearly every volume written about Cook mentions how the Poms were a lot more scared of them than other Polynesians and American native peoples & tribes.
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started A Dance with Dragons on the weekend...<br />
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[spoiler]was quite a surprise to see it basically runs concurrent to A Feast for Crows as opposed to consecutive like most books, and from what I've read so far, doesnt seem alot will be going on.[/spoiler] -
A lot does happen TR .
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Just finished The Guns Of Navarone . Great book , quite a bit different to and way better than the movie.
