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[jaydub]

I was worried that link would go to a photograph.

[dejavroom]

Finished "Crime & Punishment". Psychological/spiritual aspects aside, it's a lovely kick in the balls of the revolutionary mindset (responsible for reformers of society in general, but, most damningly, social engineers who don't mind a death or two or 60.000.000). It's the sort of thing that's good to hear & have confirmed once in a while, especially when it's voiced by a secular saint like Dostoyevsky. Had a cry, felt better about the whole mess, the usual thing when it's really Art.

Will start "The Demons", which a friend told me is even more intense in its sociological critique. From the wiki: "Dostoyevsky casts a critical eye on both the left-wing idealists, portraying their ideas and ideological foundation as demonic, and the conservative establishment's ineptitude in dealing with those ideas and their social consequences."

Demonic. Heh. I will like this book.

[Mr Trout]

I'm reading A Dance With Dragons because, you know, dragons.

[Pedro Picasso]

Listening to Jack Welch's Winning. He's the guy that Rip Torn was pretending to be in "30 Rock."

[Pedro Picasso]

I'm suffering through Feast for Crows right now. I'ma power through it but it's my least of them so far. Do Not Like so many of the viewpoint characters.

I pretty much loved every part of every book. To the point where if there are no more books ever, I will still look back and remember the good times.

[Choop]

having read the whole song of ice and fire to date, i cannot in good conscience recommend it to anyone. it's great and compelling and all, unique, fully-fleshed, blah blah, but it's so GODDAMNED INFURIATING and more than once that i wish i'd never picked it up. feast for crows was a weird route to go for book four, exactly where the audience didn't want to go.

kind of like the dark tower, actually. well, not quite. king ruined the dark tower series when he wrote that second batch of four. he lucassed himself, except he can't sell the property to disney.

i can only imagine one way at this point that the song of ice and fire can have a satisfying ending, which of course means i can't be satisfied by the ending, but of course i'll have to read the rest of it whenever it finally comes out, because by now i'm hooked. which pisses me off.

here's a great new trilogy-in-progress: The Kingkiller Chronicle. the author has set out with the express mandate that this is only going to be three books. we'll see. regardless, the first two are pretty effing good, and easy and fast to read.

[pmcd9]

I just finished the first Game of Thrones after having seen the first season of the television series. They talk about not letting the movie spoil the book, but in this case the opposite was true. I probably would have never made it through if I hadn't had the visuals from the show to buoy me along.

On the other hand, I've watched Sherlock, a new series about the great detective. Not Elementary, that schlock on American TV, but a very well made British show. I've seen lots of Sherlock Holmes through the years, but it occurred to me that I've never read any of the original stories. So I'm doing that now and am enjoying it very much. Doyle's descriptions bring the scenes to life.

[AugustWest]

having read the whole song of ice and fire to date, i cannot in good conscience recommend it to anyone. it's great and compelling and all, unique, fully-fleshed, blah blah, but it's so GODDAMNED INFURIATING and more than once that i wish i'd never picked it up.

A friend gave it to me, and I read about a hundred pages or so, then I just put it down.  

I'm not sure I can explain why.  It was well done and was starting to be fairly compelling.  But I could kind of see how if I was going to really enjoy the book I was going to have to be emotionally invested in the characters otherwise why bother?  And I could tell he was going to rip their arms and legs off and then throw them in the fire and I just didn't want the heartburn.

Lately, I just finished Neil Young's autobiography (great, rambling and weird. More about automotive vehicles than I expected) and am working on a Neil Young biography.  

[pmcd9]

My sister gave me a Nook for Christmas and I have been using the Hell out of it.

[Pedro Picasso]

And I could tell he was going to rip their arms and legs off and then throw them in the fire and I just didn't want the heartburn.

When I describe the book to friends, I say this:

If you're reading the books, and a character is having a good day, reread that passage a couple of times. Linger over it, and enjoy it. Things are going to get very bad for that person, and you'll want to have good times to look back on.

[CortJstr]

I've mentioned this before but for anybody who enjoys Ice & Fire there's also the Malazan Book of the Fallen series. Bonus: the whole series is complete. There are a couple supplemental "side-quest" style series that are still ongoing but the main plot is all wrapped up.

[Choop]

see this is why i can't get into the wheel of time. i think that one's never going to end. there was another series i read, the belgariad/the mallorean, that just bored me. i swear i only read all ten books because a buddy gave me eight of them and i was bored.

recently i read 20,000 leagues under the sea because it occurred to me that i'd never read any verne. look, i get that this guy basically invented sci-fi, but christ, with that shit? thirty pages from the end i was still wondering when the fuck*ng story was going to start. so i accepted that it was just a travelogue, okay, fine. but why skip the fuck*ng climax?! seriously, it goes "okay here comes the climax, are you ready? here it comes... ¶ well that was an interesting climax, wasn't it." and i had a red wedding moment, where i damn near threw the book across the room.

[Choop]

naturally, and the only way i managed to make it through was to skip all the lists of creatures encountered, because seriously that was like a third of the text.

still, man, the idea of a structure to a tale has existed since ancient greece, and that was completely lacking in this book. nobody changed, there was no effect on anything, and any sense of mystery or excitement was completely ignored.

i went to burst a balloon once with a straight pin, but it didn't burst, the air just leaked out until the balloon was a floppy nothing. that's how i felt about that book.

[CortJstr]

That reminds me a bit of Neal Stephenson. Paraphrased conversation I had about one of his books:

Him: What are you reading?
Me: Quicksilver
H: What's it about?
M: I'm not sure; I'm only 400 pages in.

Oh, and speaking of creatures encountered I highly recommend The Antler Boy and Other Stories. It's a really beautiful single-author comic anthology. Of the characters is an explorer and when she encounters a creature there will be a labelled cutaway drawing. It's much cooler than I'm making it sound. I gave a copy to my friends' kid for his birthday and they said he read it every day for weeks.

[AugustWest]

That reminds me a bit of Neal Stephenson. Paraphrased conversation I had about one of his books:

Him: What are you reading?
Me: Quicksilver
H: What's it about?
M: I'm not sure; I'm only 400 pages in.

Yeah, but that's really only true about Quicksilver.  Most of the other books are very plot driven to the point where they sometimes seem like "...and then they, ... and then they".  And shit does start happening in Quicksilver once Jack and Eliza show up.