What am I Reading?
Just finished Robopocalypse. My short review is that it's a very mainstream action-packed Chriton-esque take on what happens when the robots decide we are expendable. The guy who wrote it has serious chops with a PHD in robotics - but it's very dumbed down, with very little geeky meat in it. He must be doing something right because Spielberg has signed on to make the movie.
I just started Ready Player One which is a SF novel steeped in videogames and 80s culture. Any book that mentions Warren Robinett in the first few pages is going to be awesome. I was led to this book by a glowing review in BoingBoing.
Next I'm going to tackle Neal Stephenson's new book Reamde. I loved Neal in the 90s with his fantastic visions in Snow Crash and Diamond Age. I dropped off after Cryptonomicon - as it seemed that Neal was slowly deciding not to write about the future anymore - or even Science Fiction at all. The new book is supposed to be a return to the old style - so I'm really looking forward to it.
With the kids, I'm reading the The Hunger Games trilogy. They've already read them on their own, but they want me to read them with them to get my opinion. They claim the books are "better than Harry Potter" - high praise, almost blasphemy, but we'll see. The first book is starting out great and it too is slated to come out as a movie next year.
So what are you reading?
I just started Ready Player One which is a SF novel steeped in videogames and 80s culture. Any book that mentions Warren Robinett in the first few pages is going to be awesome. I was led to this book by a glowing review in BoingBoing.
Next I'm going to tackle Neal Stephenson's new book Reamde. I loved Neal in the 90s with his fantastic visions in Snow Crash and Diamond Age. I dropped off after Cryptonomicon - as it seemed that Neal was slowly deciding not to write about the future anymore - or even Science Fiction at all. The new book is supposed to be a return to the old style - so I'm really looking forward to it.
With the kids, I'm reading the The Hunger Games trilogy. They've already read them on their own, but they want me to read them with them to get my opinion. They claim the books are "better than Harry Potter" - high praise, almost blasphemy, but we'll see. The first book is starting out great and it too is slated to come out as a movie next year.
So what are you reading?
24 Comments
direpickleStephenson's Anathem was absolutely science fiction. Cryptonomicon is one of my favorite books, though it's not particularly sci-fi-ish except for a couple of things.
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I wasn't a huge fan of Cryptonomicon - I got bogged down in the book, and it seemed to not be going anywhere, lost its way over multiple chapters. After reading the inside flap of Anathem, it sounded like more of the same and decided to give it a pass. I know people love these books though - so I guess it's a very subjective thing. >> ^direpickle:
Stephenson's Anathem was absolutely science fiction. Cryptonomicon is one of my favorite books, though it's not particularly sci-fi-ish except for a couple of things.
direpickle@dag: Yeah, I realize Cryptonomicon in particular is a divisive book. I've met a fair number of people that couldn't make it 1/10 of the book or whatever. Still, one of my favorites.
Anathem is an entirely different book (but also still very different from Snow Crash and Diamond Age), and I don't like it nearly as much. Still, It grabbed hold of me after a slow couple hundred pages and I tore through the rest of it.
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Well maybe I'll give Anathem a go then. Especially if I wind up liking his new one. Snow Crash and Diamond Age had a huge impact on me.>> ^direpickle:
@dag: Yeah, I realize Cryptonomicon in particular is a divisive book. I've met a fair number of people that couldn't make it 1/10 of the book or whatever. Still, one of my favorites.
Anathem is an entirely different book (but also still very different from Snow Crash and Diamond Age), and I don't like it nearly as much. Still, It grabbed hold of me after a slow couple hundred pages and I tore through the rest of it.
direpickle@dag: I can't promise that you'll like Anathem any better than Cryptonomicon, and it is very slow to get moving, but it goes somewhere that I definitely didn't expect. There's also a bunch of philoso-math-sturbation from Stephenson, which can be good or bad depending on your own preference.
blankfistAAAH, the CSS is too much! Back button! Back button!
dagComment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)
Use this then to view the standard format:
http/videosift.com/talk/What-am-I-Reading
>> ^blankfist:
AAAH, the CSS is too much! Back button! Back button!
gorillamanEnvious of all the SF - still slogging my way through War and Peace. Before that, Life of Pi re-read, Dune and Man Plus. Next up, The Last Ringbearer, Ringworld, Squares of the City, Consider Phlebas and Birds Without Wings. Just the top of the ever growing to-be-read pile. Anathem and Diamond Age are on my BookMooch wishlist, but no luck yet.
dystopianfuturetodayI'm on book three of the Song of Ice and Fire series. It's good stuff, even if you aren't a big fantasy fan.
I cleaned out a Borders that was going out of business, so Carthy McCormic (Blood Meridian and others), Dan Ariely (whatever his newest book is) and Chris Hedges (Death of the Liberal Class) are in the queue.
Other notealble read this year were Naomi Klein's brilliant 'Shock Doctrine' and Dan Ariely's fun 'Predictably Irrational'. 'Jonathan Livingston Seagull' was a quick but cool vintage read too.
On the TV front, I also finally got around to watching Eastbound and Down, Tim and Eric's Awesome Show (behind the times, yes, I know) and the Walking Dead. All cool shows.
Got to sleep now, driving home from MT tomorrow morning with isserkitter.
radx*quality
Hah, what do you know. Just last month, we had a few words in the lounge about how it has been more than two years since the last discussion about this subject. I brought it up simply because I was looking for some book recommendations.
For simplicity's sake, I went with a few books that were turned into somewhat interesting movies. Namely Robert Ludlum's "The Bourne Identity/Ultimatum", Stephen Hunter's "Point of Impact" and "Time to Hunt", Tom Cain's "Accident Man" and "The Survivor".
Only lasted a month though, so on Thursday, despite my dislike of fantasy novels, I picked up Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire". "Game of Thrones" is the only one I have almost finished so far (page 728), and it's already much more to my liking than the tv show.
siftbotAwarding dag with one star point for this contribution to VideoSift - declared quality by radx.
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George RR Martin must have gotten a *huge* bump in book sales. So many fellow nerds are reading this series. I might have to pick it up myself - though I generally share your aversion to fantasy novels @radx.
berticusi liked anathem... but i also liked cryptonomicon, and the baroque cycle.
can't wait to read his new book.
nothing has been as good as the diamond age though.
whatever happened to the tv series they were making out of it?
wasn't george clooney producing it or something?
can i please recommend the child garden by geoff ryman?
i'd love to know what other people think of it.
i reckon it's wildly underrated sci-fi.. actually sci-fi doesn't cover it.
"speculative fiction" maybe.
one of my favourite books ever -- along with contact by carl sagan.
i just finished reading brave new world.
can't believe i'd never read it before.
now i'm dividing my (extremely limited) reading time between:
his dark materials
a song of ice and fire
and, somewhat ironically, a book called "getting things done"
Boise_Lib>> ^dag:
Use this then to view the standard format:
http/videosift.com/talk/What-am-I-Reading
>> ^blankfist:
AAAH, the CSS is too much! Back button! Back button!
Dick!
berticus>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:
... Carthy McCormic (Blood Meridian and others) ...
Boise_LibI'm re-reading Frederik Pohl's Gateway series right now because it's so hard to find good, new science fiction.
But I do recommend Robert Sawyer's new series, WWW (Wake, Watch, and Wonder are the three book titles). The heroine is a 15 year old blind girl who is the only person in the world who communicates with the newly conscious internet. (The plot doesn't sound as good as he writes it.)
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Oh man I love the Gateway books. The Heechee ships were awesome. I may have to reread them again too. As a teenager I liked all the sex on the ships that were out of human control. I also read Wake and thought it was a pretty good take on an emergent AI rising from the Web.
>> ^Boise_Lib:
I'm re-reading Frederik Pohl's Gateway series right now because it's so hard to find good, new science fiction.
But I do recommend Robert Sawyer's new series, WWW (Wake, Watch, and Wonder are the three book titles). The heroine is a 15 year old blind girl who is the only person in the world who communicates with the newly conscious internet. (The plot doesn't sound as good as he writes it.)
dagComment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)
I will put child garden on my Kindle list.
>> ^berticus:
i liked anathem... but i also liked cryptonomicon, and the baroque cycle.
can't wait to read his new book.
nothing has been as good as the diamond age though.
whatever happened to the tv series they were making out of it?
wasn't george clooney producing it or something?
can i please recommend the child garden by geoff ryman?
i'd love to know what other people think of it.
i reckon it's wildly underrated sci-fi.. actually sci-fi doesn't cover it.
"speculative fiction" maybe.
one of my favourite books ever -- along with contact by carl sagan.
i just finished reading brave new world.
can't believe i'd never read it before.
now i'm dividing my (extremely limited) reading time between:
his dark materials
a song of ice and fire
and, somewhat ironically, a book called "getting things done"
longdeI recently finished, Psychohistorical Crisis by Donald Kingsbury, an unauthorized sequel to the Asimov Foundation Series, basically picking up where Second Foundation ended. The author is a mathematician, so he is able to make some bridges between probability, math theory, and Asimov's psychohistory, which is cool.
Kingsbury sets his novel 1600 years after the establishment of the second empire. His protagonists explore a highly detailed galaxy, while unveiling a fatal flaw in Seldon's Plan.
blankfistI read a lot of webpages. Does that count?
spoco2Currently reading the final of 'The Night's Dawn' trilogy, The Naked God.
Great books, but my god are they heavy!
Ornthoron>> ^dag:
George RR Martin must have gotten a huge bump in book sales. So many fellow nerds are reading this series. I might have to pick it up myself - though I generally share your aversion to fantasy novels @radx.
I'm re-reading the first four books now to be up to date before I start on book 5, and I'm having just as much fun as when I read them the first time. I too was kind of fed up on the formulaic fantasy genre, but this is something different. It is, as they say, fantasy for people who don't like fantasy.
dagComment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)
I'm about 1/4 of the way through Ready Player One and I already never want it to end. So damn good. Very reminiscent of Snow Crash.
Opus_Moderandi says...>> ^blankfist:
I read a lot of webpages. Does that count?
No, porn does not count.
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