Reading in May 2011

Winter said:
I just finished The Narrator by Michael Cisco. Great novel. Cisco has some of the best prose that I have ever read.

Now taking a step away from fantasy with either The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht or Leeches by David Albahari.
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I am curious what you think about either - they both have traces of the fantastic - I liked the style of Tiger's Wife and it kept me turning pages to the end but the book left me a bit cold there and also it had a bit of E European patronizing imho (I am kind of sensitive to this as being from there so I may imagine it but still) despite (or maybe because) the author lived there for her first 7-8 years

I am reading now Leeches and it is superb so far; The Narrator is on my to read list
 
What little I have read of The Tiger's Wife was fantastic, her style hooked me instantly. Leeches, I am looking forward to because the way it is presented (an 300+ page paragraph) has had some interesting affects on my perception of the text when I encountered similar in previous books.
 
PeterWilliam said:
Nice. :)

You're right, though. After all, you have to be practical about these things. :cool:
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As my father always said, it's better to read The First Law trilogy than to live with the fear of it.

Okay okay, I couldn't resist. :D
 
Winter said:
What little I have read of The Tiger's Wife was fantastic, her style hooked me instantly. Leeches, I am looking forward to because the way it is presented (an 300+ page paragraph) has had some interesting affects on my perception of the text when I encountered similar in previous books.
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I agree with the style of The Tiger's wife - i read it in one sitting just keeping turning the pages, one after the other - a bit to my surprise to be honest. I just felt somewhat dissatisfied at the end.

Leeches is indeed a sort of one huge paragraph insofar the story is told in a stream of consciousness mode without breaks, but at least so far about 50 pages into, I do not feel it is a "difficult" book the way I felt something like Europe Central to be since it flows very well and you just go with the flow; of course I think an immediate reread to appreciate the finer points once I know "what happens" will be in order...
 
I finished The Onion Girl by Charles de Lint and i liked it very much. I wasn't bothered much by his preachiness or hippye atitude and if the next volume I will eventually try by him is in the same class, I may have found a new favorite author.

The Way of Kings is a very slow start for me, not necessarily Sanderson's fault since I finished two non-genre since I picked him up ( The Reivers by William Faulkner and The Blue Ice by Hammond Innes). Anyway, I also started the second Thursday Next book by Jasper Fforde and now I'm happily lost in a good book :D.
 
Seak said:
As my father always said, it's better to read The First Law trilogy than to live with the fear of it
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I liked The First Law trilogy but the ending was very disappointing. You have to be realistic about it.
 
Astra_ said:
I liked The First Law trilogy but the ending was very disappointing. You have to be realistic about it.
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Spoiler below - highlight to reveal ...if you give a cr*p what it says ...(!)

I'm sure we'll see Logan again. The Heroes is 4 years on from Best Served Cold and that was a few years after the conclusion of the FL Trilogy if I recall correctly, so Logan, if alive, is getting older ...so not much time to bring him back or give him a cameo at some point.
Joe teased the reader in The Heroes with suggestions that The Blo*dy Nine may still be around but we didn't see him. Maybe I'm wrong but the opening is there. Some may say it would be a bit naff to bring him back but I for one would love it however predictable it may be.
 
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Eddy Gemmell said:
I'm sure we'll see Logan again. The Heroes is 4 years on from Best Served Cold and that was a few years after the conclusion of the FL Trilogy if I recall correctly, so Logan, if alive, it getting older ...so not much time to bring him back or give him a cameo at some point.

Joe teased the reader in The Heroes with suggestions that The Blo*dy Nine may still be around but we didn't see him. Maybe I'm wrong but the opening is there. Some may say it would be a bit naff to bring him back but I for one would love it howewer predictable it may be.
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Ouch! Watch out for the spoilers!!!
 
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Let me see if I can rediscover the spoiler tag:

Test Test Test!!!

You surround the spoiler with "[spoiler ]" and "[/spoiler ]" tags without the white spaces before the closing square bracket.
 
Cheers, Gilgamesh. I have done my best with it but can't seem to work out how to follow your suggestion ...it seems to work anyway.

Cheers.
 
I am looking forward to meet Logan again.
I love this chap :)
 
algernoninc said:
I finished The Onion Girl by Charles de Lint and i liked it very much. I wasn't bothered much by his preachiness or hippye atitude and if the next volume I will eventually try by him is in the same class, I may have found a new favorite author.
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This was the book I gave up on with him. I'd read some five or six novels by him (including a darker one he published under a different name, Samuel M. Key) and enjoyed them thoroughly, but when I got to this one I was bombarded with such the same themes and vignettes and characters that I really lost interest. His books, to me, while having some gorgeous prose, are one note. The Onion Girl was the novel that really brought that to the fore for me.
 
NickeeCoco said:
This was the book I gave up on with him. I'd read some five or six novels by him (including a darker one he published under a different name, Samuel M. Key) and enjoyed them thoroughly, but when I got to this one I was bombarded with such the same themes and vignettes and characters that I really lost interest. His books, to me, while having some gorgeous prose, are one note. The Onion Girl was the novel that really brought that to the fore for me.
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I tried some De Lint recently on audio. Widdershins.

I got bored after a while and switched to soimething else.
 
thanks for the input. different strokes, and all that jazz - I'm still giving him another chance. Probably because I haven't read enough of his books to get bored and because I have a gipsy bent in my bones.
 
I'm going to have to mark myself down as disappointed with Locke Lamora. Too much clumsy exposition -- especially the sequence where Locke is being briefed on what Jean did while Locke was unconscious for two days, which gets interrupted by two multi-page infodumps to establish things that could have been done through dialog and kept the story moving -- and a protagonist who is far too proactive and not nearly as charming and clever as the author seems to think he is. The villains also don't behave very intelligently -- why merely drug Jean to incapacitate him when they could have simply killed him with some other poison? Oh, because then he won't be around when the story calls for him later.

Really wanted to like this, but it just didn't do it for me.
 
I just finished the Legend of Huma. It was "ok", but I mostly wanted to finish because I'd read the graphic novel adaptation that was unfinished and I wanted to know the rest of the story.

I'd picked up a copy of Terry Brooks' Magic Kingdom for Sale. Brooks work, as w/ anyone who's put out as much stuff as he, can be hit or miss w/ my favorite series from him being the Word and Void. However, 2 chapters into MK4S and I've found he has been able to suck me into it quite effectively. Here's to hoping it continues!

wf
 
Trying to pick away at Geist by Philippa Ballantine. It's looking to be a fairly quick read, but it's not exactly something I'm particularly enjoying.

I'm not sure what it is, but it's not clicking with me. Sure, Sorcha Faris is a fairly good protagonist (And she's a redhead, so that's another good thing), and her sidekick is also fairly good, but I'm just not... Enthralled. It flicks between confusing prose with short paragraphs to passable sections where you plod along contently at a reasonable pace. It's also a little confusing as to the setting. Some moments it seems a medieval-level world, perhaps a slightly more advanced one, but then it has hiccups of gunpowder-level technology that seem a little out of place.

Oh, and I can't tell if it's trying to be a sexy novel at the same time. It just so happens that... Well... Ugh. I won't say as it'll spoil the book to some degree, but it seems shoe-horned in for the sake of it.
 
Never new another by J. M McDermott.
Overall was a good read. Pity, it could have been great.
It's a kind of Kafkian dark fantasy. Semi-indifferent holy werewolves hunting pathetic excuse for demon-offsprings. Writing stile and characterization are excellent, mood is appropriate, dark and gloomy.
There are some shortcomings:
-.First book in trilogy: end right in the middle of narration, without any story delimitation.
-The world is sketchy to put it mildly.It fleshed out a little to the end of the book, but not nearly enough.Guess that's other side of excellent characterization
-Too much emphasis on romance for all the dark and gloom.
 
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