Right, Pillars of Earth keeps coming up in my feed, I'll have to take a look. Have you ever read Iain M. Banks?
I'm a... pretty serious fan. If you'd care to hear my opinions on where to start, PM me. Also, be aware that while Iain M. Banks and Iain (no M.) Banks are/were the same person, the ones with the "M" are SF, and the ones without it are literary (and there are some regional/publisher disputes as to which books fall into which category. Feel free to ask or not )
I rather enjoyed Pillars of the Earth even though it's not the type of book I usually read. For the most part it was well written and well executed. World Without End, the second book in the series, was less good. That's not to say it was bad, but it wasn't nearly as tightly put together as the first. I picked up Thrawn by Timothy Zahn from the library earlier today. I needed something a little pulpier and less heavy that what I've been working on lately. Hopefully it's as good as everyone keeps telling me it is.
As a huge Sci-Fi fan myself, I gave him a try this month with Consider Phlebas. I was a little ambivalent on the book until the Damage game, and for some reason that was the hook for me. By the end of the book I was with all the characters and really into the Culture universe and its origins. I have Matter, Surface Detail, and The Hydrogen Sonata all sitting up on the shelf, but was wondering if for continuity's sake, I should buy the next one in the series instead. I made a promise not to buy any new books but the new Expanse novel this year, but I might have to if the Culture novels need to be read in order. I could always PM if you'd prefer. As for what I'm on right now, just started On Writing by Stephen King. Hoping to pick up some tips, and some of that work ethic if possible.
Don't read them too far out of order. I don't recall the exact order they're in, I read Use of Weapons first,but Hydrogen Sonata is the final book, and Surface Detail relies on other books to be truly appreciated.
I've been meaning to post this for two weeks, but I get distracted. Not-so-humble brag: Counting only published works, novella length or longer, I finished 90 books in 2018! Yeah, a majority of them were audiobooks, but so what? I only finished 49 books my first decade out of high school. Take that, shitty attention span! Final count: 65 Novels, 10 Novellas, 132 short stories and novelettes, 2 plays and 2 books of poetry (There may have been a spreadsheet involved in keeping track.) Favorites: MaddAddam Trilogy, The Bell Jar, A Scanner Darkly, The Bobiverse Trilogy, Ready Player One, The BFG, Untouched by Human Hands, Chocky, It and Fight Club Least favorites: Catch 22, The Moth and Other Stories and Notes from Underground Best audio performance by a mile: Maggie Gyllenhaal (The Bell Jar)
I'm reading Robert Sapolsky's A Primate's Memoir, plus a number of other class related readings. Sapolsky is a really good writer. He's humorous, reflective, honest, and he explains scientific information in a very comprehensible way.
It's been a while, I got distracted, but I just finished Helmet for My Pillow today and it's excellent. A bit of a slow start, he uses nicknames for everyone which makes it seem a bit prim and dated, but once you get into the swing of it, it's quite good, and by the ending, he's really hit his stride as an author. Recommended.
Finished Dimension of Miracles, my favorite Robert Sheckley so far. If you're a fan of Douglass Adams, I highly recommend it. It's basically the Hitchhiker's Guide book that was published ten years before Hitchhiker's guide. Adams said he never read it until friends made the comparison, and that reading it was like reading something he'd forgotten writing. They really are that similar. I also loved MASH. I watched reruns of the show as a teen and the movie in my twenties. Now I've read the book in my thirties. It's all backwards. As much as I loved the show, I always thought it was a super bizarre concept for a sitcom. The lack of a laugh track alone causes the book to make so much more sense conceptually. Definitely recommended. Right now, I'm two stories into Everything's Eventual by Stephen King. So far, It's a hundred times better than the much earlier collection I read twenty-something years ago. I didn't get far in that one before picking up another book. I think this one's about as good as his novels (minus the intimate detail and character development you get with a 250-450k word novel, of course).
Reading 'The Outsider' by Stephen King. Was brought up on him but have found him hit and miss this last year or ten. However, half way through and I'm loving this one. Please deliver on the early promise, Mr King!
read my first "real" romance. I've read "avon teen romances" when I was in middle school, but those were WAY watered down compared to the graphic nature of the one I read this weekend I can't figure out if I like it or now (it was WAY cheesy with multiple deus ex machinas). One of the things I liked about it was that it was a historical romance and the author included an author's note/essay on the time period complete with a works cited page. I don't know if thats typical of all historical romances, but I really thought that bit was cool
Song of Ice and Fire, "Clash of Kings" in English. I read it in Polish several years ago, but the English version is even better! In script, the author expressed emotions that can not be translated into another language. In fact, to my surprise it is easier to read it in the original version.
The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie. I was initially looking for his First Law series, but my local bookstore only had that one. So far I'm enjoying it.
I have just begun Consider Phlebas, by Iain M. Banks. I'm only a few pages in, but Phlebas has not yet appeared, so I have not yet had the opportunity to consider him/her/it. Them, whatever. Is there only one Phlebas, or is Phlebas the plural of Phleba? Perhaps there are dozens of Phlebas to consider. Maybe a whole race of phlebas. It seems there's a huge space war going on involving something called the Culture. Is it the Culture versus the Phlebas? Are the two attempting to out-consider each other? It occurs to me that if Banks really wanted me to consider Phlebas, he could have put a picture of them right on the cover of the book. It would have saved me some time.
