A break from the classics now - next up is The Fall of Hyperion. I imagine that will take me a bit longer and would take me to 21 for the year.
Per Krieg's recommendation I've been reading Neptune's Inferno, an account of the naval battles near Guadalcanal during WWII. It's really, really good. I've read a lot about that portion of the Pacific War, but nothing that went into such detail about the surface actions there. It's so good I've been forcing myself to read just a little at a time. Otherwise I would've finished the book in just a few hours.
Oh, I'm looking forward to it immensely. What I mean is that it's not a classic in the sense of being in the established literary canon.
The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons I didn't like this as much as the first book in the series. The machinations involving the TechnoCore, Ousters, UI's and so on are entertaining and some of the sequences involving these are wonderful. However there are (ironically given the plot) too many deus ex machina's in the story. There are maddeningly few answers to the questions raised by its predecessor and too many factions within the storyline with poorly developed motivations. Much of what occurs on Hyperion itself seems incoherent, as if Simmons bit off a little more than he could chew. I'm not sure if the later books in the series will resolve these issues. I will probably read them at some point.
I just finished the cat in the hat. It's a cautionary tale about child molesters forcing their way into houses of young children when their parents are away. The part with the kids being forced to play with "thing one and thing two" was disturbing but well illustrated. Fun fact. The book was written by a "doctor" with no children of his own.
I can agree with some of your review Rick, but give the Endymion books a chance. They are sequels, but wholly different to the Hyperion novels. And yes, most of the questions you have will be answered.
Here is my 2013 ratings summary from goodreads.com, for what it's worth. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy 5/5 War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy 4/5 Hyperion by Dan Simmons 4/5 Great Expectations by Charles Dickens 4/5 Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain 4/5 Dubliners by James Joyce 4/5 The Call of the Wild by Jack London 3/5 The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway 3/5 Hard Times by Charles Dickens 3/5 Candide by Voltaire 3/5 Fiasco by Stanislaw Lem 3/5 The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons 3/5 An Ordinary Man by Paul Rusesabagina 3/5 Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak 3/5 The Stand by Stephen King 3/5 Replay by Ken Grimwood 3/5 Cycles of Time by Roger Penrose 3/5 The Secret Footballer by Anon. 3/5 Transcendent by Stephen Baxter 2/5 Badfellas by Paul Williams 2/5 The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman 1/5
Red Dust: A Path through China by Ma Jian This was a change of pace. The author is a Chinese dissident artist writing about his experiences during the 1980s, when China was beginning to open up. He fears arrest so decides to leave Beijing and travels around the country. Some interesting insights but unfortunately these are the exception and I found it a slog, even at just 300 odd pages. He spends a lot of time waffling about things that seem insignificant and the most irritating thing is the names - dozens if not hundreds of them of all of the people he knows and encounters but very hard to follow them all.
Wow. I haven't updated this in a while. After I finished the Destiny Trilogy I went on to: ST:TNG: Cold Equations Trilogy. Book One, Book Two, and Book Three Overall, not bad. Unfortunately, I thought Book Three was the weakest of the bunch. His Destiny Trilogy and this Cold Equations Trilogy are kind of meant to bookend the Typhon Pack eight book mini-series. I enjoyed by break, but since then it's been back to my more normal genre. A Comparative Analysis of the Operational Leadership of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto and Admiral Chester W. Nimitz at the Battle of Midway by Linda K. Shultz 1812: The Navy's War by George C. Daughan Shield and Sword: The United States Navy and the Persian Gulf War by Edward J. Marolda And, I'm about to start: A Sailor's History of the U.S. Navy by LT CMDR Thomas J Cutler (USN-Ret).
The Rocky Road by Eamonn Dunphy Dunphy is a former Irish professional soccer player in his latter years turned to sports and political journalism. He's a controversial figure who has made a career of shit-stirring and this book, positioned somewhere between an autobiography and a memoir (he tells very little of his personal life) is true to form. Well written and entertaining throughout, it is also highly inflammatory and I'm inclined not to take it all on face value. He's scathing in his criticism of the Irish establishment (referred to as Official Ireland), starting off by labeling Eamon DeValera a thief on page 2. Predictably in his sights are also Charlie Haughey, Jack Charlton, Mick McCarthy, the FAI, but most bizarrely John Hume. It ends in 1990 just as he is enduring barely tolerable levels of public abuse due to his work, so I imagine that there will be a second volume.
Some book recommendations for @Ancalagon, Vernor Vinge, A Fire Upon The Deep, and A Deepness In The Sky, both set in the same universe. Also his near future tech novel, Rainbows End. Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon of course. For historical fiction, The Baroque Cycle, starts with Quicksilver, I believe. But his greatest work in my opinion is Anathem.
Recently read The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde, quite a good read, but you can tell it's early in his writing career. Reminds me a great deal of The Colour of Magic in many ways, and we all know how Pratchett flowered. Premise involves an alternate Earth, and a detective who works in LiteraTec, where they pursue crimes against literature (which is this Earths prime form of entertainment, with machines reciting Shakespeare, and the question of if he wrote the works attributed to him practically a fanatical religious pastime.) Time travel and the barrier between the real and fantasy worlds are the core of the story, and involves the antagonist threatening to alter Jane Eyre from within the book itself. It's quite silly and fun, and has given me an incentive to re/discover the classics as well as reading the following books in the series.
Review: ARE YOU A COW? Read this one with my daughter and she wasn't offended by its title. So that's a plus. The illustrations are stunning. The book is an interrogation of the reader by a chicken who really grabs your attention by yelling HEY! on page one with beak agape. The highlight of the book is when the chicken realizes you are not a hippo because, as the chicken puts it, hippos are big and we are small. The denouement of the book is a bit sudden. It could have been drawn out a bit more by a few pages. All in all A good read with an explosive ending that'll leave you talking (if you know how to).
I've been re-reading some of Kathy Reich's books as well as the Dresden Files and the Flinx and Pip series. Just wish more of A.D. Foster's books were on ebook form - am missing several of the Humanx series which is a real bummer
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller Similar in a lot of ways to Slaughterhouse Five, surreal and absurd in its depictions of bureaucracy and greed. Some affecting moments of amusement and tragedy and one can see the literary innovation and experimentation - primarily with the timeline. But there's no narrative to speak of and I didn't feel that it added up to a compelling whole, so it unfortunately drags at times.
Walden by Henry David Thoreau Mostly a memoir of the time that Thoreau spent living alone in the woods, this is a book of two halves. Primarily the first half, consisting of Thoreau's philosophy is challenging, engaging and has apparently been hugely influential on everyone from Gandhi and Tolstoy to the modern Green and libertarian movements. It's not easy to answer the questions posed as to why we work nine to five jobs and dedicate our lives to collecting lots of stuff in our houses. Sure, there's a whiff of luddism, and even misanthropy but the message is fresh and inspiring, even today. The second half of the book consists more of Thoreau's rote observations of the beans he cultivated. And the pond he lived beside. The squirrels. The birds. It's pretty boring, and the lofty prose so suited to the earlier parts becomes annoying. His famed essay "On Civil Disobedience" is included with the copy I read, and I'm looking forward to it as a short follow-up before I decide which book is next.
I read Walden years ago. Currently have it on my Kindle app on the iPad and am going through it again.
Finished Brin' s Sundiver, followed by Tuckerfan's book du jour, The Martian by Andy Weir. I've had my fill of the nearby Solar System, so I'm already immersed in Winter's Bone, which has been immediately more captivating than either of those.
Currently reading The Cat, The Devil and Lee Fontana by Shirley Rousseau Murphy and Pat J.J. Murphy. Kind of sideways spin-off of the Joe Grey books. A bit out there, but an entertaining read none the less.
I'm reading two series right now: 1. Martin's A Song Of Ice and Fire. Finished book 2, and will probably wait for season 4 of the TV show to read book three. Hard to say which is better, the books or the show. Both have their good and bad (however few) points. The books are of course more detailed, but they do tend to run on and on a bit. The show is more polished. 2. Stirlings's Emberverse. Almost finished book two. One the best fantasy series I've read so far. Solid, well rounded characters, and very interesting plots. I picked up the first three from Amazon, and just ordered the next three. If it wasn't for the show Revolution, I'd say these books would make an excellent TV show.
The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett I'd read one Pratchett book some years ago and always meant to go back, so the first Discwoold novel seemed the right place to start. It's a breeze to fly though, frequently laugh-out-loud funny, and I'll definitely be back for more, particularly since I've been told that it gets better and that Pratchett took a little time to find his feet with the series.
Yeah, The Color of Magic is a little disjointed compared with some of the later books, in plot and voice. Still a favorite of mine out of the series. I picked up a complete collection of Miss Marple short stories from the library. It seems to me that even though Poirot books tend to have the better, more opaque mysteries, Miss Marple stories are more consistently a pleasure for me to read, even when the solution is obvious early on. Anyway, I hadn't read the Tuesday Club Mysteries, so I finally got to read those. Very Christie in a good way, and a nice variety. I also hadn't read "Miss Marple Tells a Story", which . . . I feel like the prose wasn't as good as it could have been.
'Salems Lot by Stephen King. I decided to read this as it was a standalone story and I haven't seen any of the film adaptations. The prose is digestible as ever, easy to read. King is at his best here when describing small town America, capturing something of that culture and the people who inhabit it in a most interesting way. But also similar to The Stand, I actually thought that the weak part was the supernatural element. Vampire stories are really dated these days, and the plot kind of just fizzles out at the end.
Glue by Irvine Welsh This had been on my shelf for a while without my having read it, so decided to get through it. It's similar to Welsh's other work, set mainly in Edinburgh, featuring the precariat of that city. The characters are a bit more sympathetic but also a bit less interesting, so it's not in the same league as Trainspotting which was really a masterpiece. Overall it alternates been sections which drag a bit and others which shock and entertain. The Scottish dialect would be a challenge for an unfamiliar reader, but this is my fourth Welsh book so not a problem for me.
The Pale Horse breaks from Agatha Christie's usual patterns, with a rather high-falutin' narrator and a very different plot structure. I liked it pretty well. I thought I'd read Sad Cypress before, but I didn't recognize anything about the contents. Enjoyed that for the most part, too; although familiarity with her work allowed me to guess out most of the solution pretty rapidly, there were lots of lovely little red herrings and I switched away a couple of times. I like the title, too.
