Literature Superthread

[Necropolis 763]

hmmm probably not. They were all pretty good in their own ways, I can't remember distinctly enjoying some more than others. Tyrion's were good, but they could get tedious too. Theon's were frustrating but good as well. A big lot of nothing seemed to happen through the whole book. But as you said, it was originally meant to be dealt with in flashbacks after a timeskip, rather than talked through detail by detail. 

 

Like how people say that all the most important changes in your brain happen when you're asleep. Nothing major is happening in your life as you lay there in bed for hours, yet all the important changes happen in that time. It's slower and more subtle. It's like books 4 and 5 are that sleep, in between the great wars of Westeros that happen during those waking hours on either side. The quiet as someone draws their fist back before the second punch. The eye of the storm. So book 5 had a lot more interesting stuff happening, on smaller scales than books previous to 4, but it was all good and all seemed necessary.

 

If you can follow my train of thought at all, I don't know.

Oh totally. Very much transitionary. What I liked about Theon chapters was how the title of the chapter reflected where he was mentally. Like first its reek, then the prince of winterfell, then the ghost of Winterfell. And then he gets his name back. The bit with him hearing bran through the tree almost made my eyes watery.

[pheonix561 2080]

[Necropolis 763]

Ahaha ha. ha.

[Teto 2609]

Dance with Dragons pt 2 spoiler

 

How gay is Pheo, seriously? Let's discuss Pheo's latent homosexuality, here where he wont dare to look. Lying just beneath the surface.

Pheon Gayjoy

[Necropolis 763]

Somewhere between Freddy Mercury and Santana. The vampire, not the guitarist

[Teto 2609]

Stiiill reading The Left Hand of Darkness. Couldn't help myself at bookshops when I visited the closest thing I have to a nearest city, which pretty much qualifies as a large town. The kind of place where you still end up running into tons of people you know despite the larger scale. I bought The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula Le Guin; and The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett. So that's three more to my future reads pile, which is actually going to start stretching out to over the length of my pile for books I've finished.

[Ammonsa 308]

Funny you mention the terry pratchett books, I was about to say that I want to get into them. I'm thinking I'm either going to start with the Colour of Magic, or Guards, Guards.

[Teto 2609]

I'm thinking I'll just go in the order they were released. Guards! Guards! is the eighth, so it shouldn't take long to get there anyway, starting from The Colour of Magic.

[Necropolis 763]

Reaper man is really good.

Reaper man is really good.

[ZuZu 10]

Awesome you guys are reading the kind of books i read!

 

read Dune earlier this year, freaking 11/10. 

 

Have been meaning to read both Hyperion & Left hand of darkness.

I read my first terry pratchett book (Guards! Guards!) around 2010 and while i enjoyed it, he is not a favourite author and i haven't bought any books since.

[Teto 2609]

My dad was talking about this book he read recently called The Bowl of Heaven. It's (what I assume is) hard sci-fi, and sounds really interesting. If you're into that kind of thing, you could consider maybe giving it a look. Think it's the first part of a series. I might give it a read at some point, after trawling through my backlog.

[Cascade 741]

SO this thread looked like it needed a bump in activity and I've actually been reading (it's shocking I know) stuff lately on my train journeys (or occasionally on work breaks lol) so yeah! Recommendation time!

 

Two books I started reading on recommendation from my sister and managed to finish them off in about a month or so? The Circle and Fire by Sara B. Elfgren and Mats Strandberg. Or their original Swedish titles, Cirkeln and Eld. Part of the Engelsfors Trilogy. Third book is not going to translated into English and released in the UK until January next year. >: such a long wait. But yeah, they're young adult fiction, contemporary fantasy with a dash of horror elements. Also teenage girl issues. It's a really good mix. +600 pages for the first book, +800 for the second.

 

 

Do not, I repeat, DO NOT, let those covers immediately put you off and think "wow they look like dumb YA novels for girls". The UK editions have really bad covers for some reason. Of course we get those covers. The original covers are so much nicer. Which I think the American editions also have? Might have to check that out. 

 

 

So yeah, the story is basically: a group of teenage girls who all live in this really boring, hick town in rural Sweden who are completely different from one another and ain't friends all find out one night that they're witches, specifically a group spoken of in prophecy that will stop the apocalypse. No pressure, right? Unfortunately there were supposed to be seven of them, and the seventh one died before all this was found out. And there is a meddling council of witches who try to control their actions. Also there might be a murderer out there who is after them? BUT WHY???? Read the novels, duh.

 

putting the rest of my post into spoiler tags because jeez I ramble too much:

 

It really does sound like a typical YA novel I know. I know most of you are guys who might not be interested in that kind of thing. I honestly wasn't expecting much either when I started it. But it really quickly hooked me in and I really enjoyed it! It takes a while to set up, but the story is actually really interesting? You read and read and you actively want to know what happens next? Lots of plot twists, some were shocking, others I did see coming. The chapters are all POV chapters told from the perspective of four of the six main girls (the other two get POV chapters in the second book), which helps you understand their thoughts and actions and really get into their heads. Plus they're all completely different characters, so it's basically like four/six stories, I guess? And I actively cared for all of them ;-; it's really well written. Even the side characters managed to be interesting, arseholes or not arseholes. It's a good read.

 

Plus, there isn't a bad, overbearing romance-that-takes-over-the-whole-book element like in most YA fiction aimed at girls. Nope, just the main characters dealing with their issues and interacting with each other here. Well-written female characters! My favourite. Good times were had. And it isn't sugarcoated and all happy and shit. There are many scenes that could easily be from a horror film in here. And every character has horrible shit to deal with at some point in both books. It's also an upsetting read at times.

 

But yeah I can't really add anymore to that without spoiling the books so! at least take the first book for a spin. even if it doesn't sound like something you would normally read. expand your horizons! continue on to the second book if you enjoyed it. It's literally £2.50 or so on Amazon UK and I imagine it's the equivalent price in dollars on Amazon US.

 

(and most importantly message me if you do read it and discuss it with me I need non-swedish/not-sister fans to discuss this series with.... ;-; )

 

And finally, ignore the one review where it's like "This book is like a mix between Twilight and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo!" Like I cannot even begin to explain how wrong that is. It's NOTHING like those two books! I'm pretty sure the reviewer just pulled the first two books he could think of with female main characters aimed at the YA crowd and was like "yup, that'll work". ugh.

 

Oh hey, more in line with you guys' interests, I did read and finish Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings ages agoooooo. It was pretty great. Really interesting to see the similarities and differences between the TV show and books. But god, they were huge. Took me forever because I am a slow reader, haha. Is the third book split into two parts? Jeez, not sure if I have the energy to read all of that...

[Teto 2609]

And finally, ignore the one review where it's like "This book is like a mix between Twilight and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo!" Like I cannot even begin to explain how wrong that is. It's NOTHING like those two books! I'm pretty sure the reviewer just pulled the first two books he could think of with female main characters aimed at the YA crowd and was like "yup, that'll work". ugh.

 

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is a Swedish crime novel. Maybe the fact that they're both Swedish means they share some kind of atmosphere of the country? I know my dad reads a lot of stuff like that. 'Nordic noir' is what you would call shows like The Bridge and The Killing, which are both Swedish or Norwegian or something. They all have a saturated and very distinct atmosphere, in the books and TV shows, which stays constant no matter which book or show my dad has read or watched. So maybe it's in those books you're reading too. Or maybe the reviewer just thought "It's Swedish!! Sweden is a genre!! Not a diverse country!!"

 

And then Twilight simply because "Young Adult supernatural stuff whatever".

[Cascade 741]

Hmm, well I guess Girl With The Dragon Tattoo can be an apt comparison in that way, then. Twilight though still doesn't really make sense. It's not even remotely the same kind of supernatural element lol. Or being bogged down by dumb, creepy love triangles. silly reviewer :x

[Teto 2609]

Hmm, well I guess Girl With The Dragon Tattoo can be an apt comparison in that way, then. Twilight though still doesn't really make sense. It's not even remotely the same kind of supernatural element lol. Or being bogged down by dumb, creepy love triangles. silly reviewer :x

 

They probs just wanted to say something concise, conclusive and clever.

 

 

Also, I finally finished The Left Hand of Darkness. It was a good book, just quite difficult to read through because there was a lot to digest. Lots of study into the alien world's people, and their culture, and how they relate to one another. On top of that there was political considerations to sort out in my head, as well as lots of descriptions of people and places. The fact that the aliens were all genderless potentials made it a bit more challenging to conceptualise images of the characters, since I had to imagine them as they are described, but androgynous enough to be neither sex but also both at the same time.

 

It was a good book for seeing my own prejudices and the way I think about things. For one, there wasn't a single white male, and the book would sometimes throw things at me which made me realise how easily I'll set 'white male' as the default character setting. The main character, Genly Ai, is an envoy from another planet, trying to get this world of Winter to join a big government thingy, basically. He isn't described until at one point an alien (approximately) says that Genly is the darkest man he's ever seen. I admit that I fitted him into my polite intelligent man preset image which happened to be white. Later on, a chapter on gethenian (gethenians being the aliens) sexual biology goes through it and I imagined the reporter as being 'typical scientist white man' and then at the end of the chapter in the last couple sentences the narrator is like "I am a woman from world [whatever] and [stuff, etc.]" and I was like, 'why did I just assume man on that one?'

 

So I felt ashamed to realise that my mind immediately assumed white man in both instances, but it's brought it to the front of my mind, and I'm hoping to break down a lot of my prejudices and habits over time, through more thought.

 

You can see why it's called an example of 'feminist science fiction', considering the way it explores gender like that.

 

 

Here are some quotes.

 

"When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep."

 

"A man wants his virility regarded. A woman wants her femininity appreciated, however indirect and subtle the indications of regard and appreciation. [On this planet] one is respected and judged only as a human being. It is an appalling experience."

 

"The Gethenians do not see one another as men or women. This is almost impossible for our imaginations to accept. After all, what is the first question we ask about a newborn baby? ....there is no division of humanity into strong and weak halves, protected/ protective. One is respected and judged only as a human being. You cannot cast a Gethnian in the role of Man or Woman, while adopting towards 'him' a corresponding role dependant on your expetations of the interactions between persons of the same or oppositve sex. It is an appalling experience for a Terran"

 

 

Part of me feels like the way this book has guided my thought might turn me into something similar to people who read Ayn Rand and it changes their life. I just hope that some of the things I read in this book aren't a load of utter bollocks. I'm taking it with a pinch of salt for my own safety.

 

But it's a good book, and I've taken some things away from it that I hope will help me become a better rounded individual.

It's like I'm a rusted suit of armor, and ideas are sand in a barrel. Put me in the barrel and roll it around, so the sand can grind away all the rust. Something like that. I like feeling like I learned something at the end of all that.

 

 

Read this and you'll see why it might end up being a tiring read though. So much philosophy.

 

“The unknown," said Faxe's soft voice in the forest, "the unforetold, the unproven, that is what life is based on. Ignorance is the ground of thought. Unproof is the ground of action. If it were proven that there is no God there would be no religion. No Handdara, no Yomesh, no hearthgods, nothing. But also if it were proven that there is a God, there would be no religion. ... Tell me, Genry, what is known? What is sure, unpredictable, inevitable -- the one certain thing you know concerning your future, and mine?"

 

"That we shall die."

 

"Yes, There's really only one question that can be answered, Genry, and we already know the answer. ... The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.”

 

Snore.

 

 

I'm now reading The Colour of Magic by Terry Prattchett, which is much more easygoing.