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Post by fantasiawht on Jun 17, 2019 22:34:31 GMT -5
I was on vacation at a cabin up north on a lake for a week. Downloaded Jack Whyte's The Black Company books. Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally disliked the first one. I found it really hard to follow; the author has this habit of writing really incomplete thoughts down, where you read a paragraph and none of it seems to fit together, or something important is just completely left out and you have no explanation for what it was. If I hadn't downloaded the rest of the books already, I probably would've have kept reading. The second book did improve a lot though.
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Post by WickedCrustacean on Jun 24, 2019 22:01:32 GMT -5
Finally finished Shogun today, took me over a month I think. Afterwards, I read up on that period of Japanese history (the end of Sengoku Jidai from Total War). The book is fiction, but many of the characters are modeled on their actual real life counterparts. John Blackthorne in the book was actually modeled on a British sailor named Adams who did come to Japan circa 1600. Toranaga in the book was modeled on Tokugawa Iyeyasu who created the Edo Shogunate and period, Dictaror Goroda on Oda Nobunaga, and the Taiko on an actual peasant who became a warlord who not only conquered Japan, but almost managed to conquer Korea and China as well.
The book is incredibly long, almost too much so, but at the same time, it's very beautiful in its accurate depiction of life: people spinning their little plots while themselves dancing in the webs of others.
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Post by WickedCrustacean on Jun 28, 2019 22:06:12 GMT -5
After finishing Shogun, I went back to read Clan of the Cave Bear, which I initially started reading at home, but lately, haven't been able to get any reading done there, so I just read the rest of it on the train during my commute.
Really good book, and I instantly purchased the next one in the series on Amazon: Valley of the Horses. Whereas the first book focused on a clan of Neanderthals (aside from the modern human heroine), the second book introduces other modern humans living north of Crimea circa 35-25 thousand years ago.
To me, it's just so mind blowing to read about and think about these people living maybe 25 thousand years before the agricultural revolution, 30 thousand years before the Egyptian pyramids were built, so long ago that everything that we think of as antiquity was distant future to them. What those people lived like, what they believed. Obviously there is a lot that we don't know, but Jean Auel makes some really decent and entertaining conjectures.
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Post by Mako on Jun 29, 2019 15:09:44 GMT -5
Just went to the bookstore with my brother yesterday and I picked up Shogun as well as the second Ian Douglas Star Corpsman book. Looks like Shogun will keep me busy for quite awhile once I start that. That's one thick book!
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Post by WickedCrustacean on Jun 30, 2019 13:45:38 GMT -5
Yeah, definitely let me know what you think after you get into it.
We need to expand this thread into a full-on book club! Kinda like that one in the movie, with all those women, except we won't be talking about our love affairs, and I bet none of you bastards will bring scones.
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Post by Tig on Jun 30, 2019 18:10:01 GMT -5
Holy @#$% that's hilarious.
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Post by Taibi on Jul 1, 2019 3:08:25 GMT -5
I don't do scones, but I do make some mean bread, except now I don't eat bread anymore, so that is out too.
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Post by WickedCrustacean on Aug 7, 2019 19:24:26 GMT -5
Finished The Valley of the Horses, the second book in Earth's Children series by Jean Auel. Immediately bought the third, The Mammoth Hunters. Loving it.
The second book went a little bit overboard with the sexual scenes, I mean I was kinda looking over my shoulder to make sure no one else was looking at my screen on the train, haha, that shit was hardcore. But other than that, really good writing, and as fascinating as ever to read about our distant ancestors's lives (as best as we can imagine with limited evidence).
The author also condenses many of human inventions throughout prehistory into a short period of time that the books take place, and gives unproportional credit for them to the main heroes, but I guess it's understandable, and can be written off under artistic license.
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Post by Mako on Aug 8, 2019 1:10:34 GMT -5
Just finished reading Shogun. An excellent read! Kudos for the recommendation!
What a long book, though! Really enjoyed it from start to finish, though was a little bummed towards the end. Also felt kind of like a game that they just stopped and pushed to publish. Would have been even better if it had been written as a series of books possibly?
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Post by WickedCrustacean on Aug 9, 2019 18:06:32 GMT -5
*** spoilers ***
Were you bummed because of how Toranaga manipulated all of them? Or because it kind of sped through the resolution?
If the latter, I get that, I felt the same way at the end, but I also feel like the book wasn't so much about telling a historical tale, as about exploring medieval Japanese culture and its contrast with the European one at the time. The historical story is there, but it was written by history itself, not Clavell (he slightly renamed the major characters), and I went to read up on it after finishing the book. So for Clavell, it wouldn't have achieved much to go into deep details of how Toranaga/Tokugawa Iyeasu finished his conquest of Japan. I think he just wanted to dig into the psyche of these samurai and daimyo, as well as the European's, and the book does that excellently.
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Post by Mako on Aug 9, 2019 21:25:10 GMT -5
Yeah, well mostly the rushed ending. Was very long and drawn out leading to what seemed to be a final climax ending where there'd be a big battle and everything would be finalized, only to end quickly after revealing he'd manipulated everyone to achieve his goals without showing the results fully and leaving a lot unsaid right before the big battle. Which the manipulation I kind of was picking up throughout the book, so wasn't a huge shocker. Guess that's from my political studies. Was more of a confirmation to me. And for such a long book when you get to an ending like that it just kind of leaves you thinking "Wait. It's over?" Just felt almost like you were left hanging (at least if you didn't look up the historical context.) Almost like a written version of the ending to The Sopranos. (If you understand that reference lol)
But it also was a bit from a certain character's death. Wasn't expecting it to end as a tragedy, really. I really should have expected it, but I guess didn't want to. Really thought that part would end differently, but at the same time it did fit what was being presented about the Japanese culture and all the struggles, too. So I guess it does make sense. I kept thinking maybe it was another deception up until the funeral, and then just kind of felt "Wow. It really did happen." Wanting all the hardship suffered by so many to have a positive ending, but instead just a glimpse of how it continued on. Was a bit depressing.
Agree with what you say, though, about the story being about the psyche and culture and comparisons between Japan and Europe. That was absolutely perfect! It was definitely a great book, and my complaints are more being picky because things didn't quite turn out how I was expecting them to.
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Post by Tig on Aug 20, 2019 20:42:35 GMT -5
I finally finished Neverwhere. Slow start but the story was good with a great climax. I love Neil Gaiman's writing but an "adult fairy tale" is not my thing overall.
I just purchased Boneshaker by Cherie Priest. Might dive right into it or Stephen King's Under the Dome.
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Post by Tig on Sept 13, 2019 0:52:24 GMT -5
I finished Boneshaker and for 415 pages it was a slog. Poor descriptions, minimal character progression, confusing dialogue patterns. I really wanted to like this book but it was hard to get attached to anything. I gave it 3☆ at Amazon because the story did wrap with a nice ending and the plot was a fun idea but I truly can't recommend it. Next up: Under the Dome by Stephen King.
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Post by WickedCrustacean on Sept 13, 2019 9:57:24 GMT -5
Boneshaker was a really crappy spell in Pathfinder: Kingmaker, but that's a whole other story.
Stephen King was the favorite author of my best friend in high school, but I never got into him. I remember reading The Stand on this friend's recommendation, and never getting past the beginning, just didn't seem like my type of book.
Still reading the Earth's Children series. Finished the third book, Mammoth Hunters, and now reading the fourth, Plains of Passage. The main heroine and her dude are traveling from prehistoric Black Sea area to his home in pre-France. One of the things that's really fascinating is how our distant ancestors had to live similar to animals, always looking for food/water, because you were always only a few days away from starvation if you weren't careful. This is hard to understand now, in the age of stores and supermarkets, and huge farms everywhere, but back then, a single missed hunt could be the difference between life and death. I also find it enjoyable how these books cover early human religions and spiritual outlooks, based on found artifacts, like the Venus statues.
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Post by Mako on Sept 13, 2019 10:22:46 GMT -5
I just finished reading Hammer's Slammers by David Drake. It's a sci fi book about a mercenary company in the future. First in a series of books. Wasn't planning on reading it but my brother had read it and brought it over to be added to the pile of books to take to the used book store. He didn't really care for it, but while it wasn't one of my favorites I found it to be pretty good fit for the military sci fi I've been focusing on lately. I'll have to keep an eye out for more of his.
Took the pile to the used bookstore the other day and picked up The Voices of Heaven by Frederik Pohl. Really starting to run out of books there, sadly, and this was the only thing I could find so I could come away with something new. Have only read the first couple of chapters, but is a very different style. Told in first person of the main character talking to 'somebody'. Very slow to get into.
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