Anybody read a good book lately?

[Gene]

   

[Phanatic]

HA!


Just finished The Mauritius Command. Based on real early 19th century Royal and French Naval battles. I like this series though hard to get through sometimes with the authentic language and English Navy slang. This one was a great read.

Next up I'm going to read some short stories by Anton Chekhov. He's thought to be one of the greatest short story writers of his time.

[PoopyfaceMcGee]

The wife just finished "A Thousand Splendid Suns".  She recommended it, but instead I read "I Am America, and So Can You!"

I feel I made the right choice.

[General_Failure]

Read the first two books in Neal Stephenson's The Baroque Cycle, Quicksilver and The Confusion. More historical alternate universe stuff, nothing you neanderthals would would be interested in. Wars, French nobility having gay and lesbo sex, pirates, Isaac Newton inventing sciences and having gay sex, and a guy with no wang getting into all kinds of trouble.

[Diomedes]

The Mauritius Command

I love this series...the Aubrey/Maturin characters and stories are among my alltime favorites.  O'Brian is awesome.  I've read all but the last one (#21 I think) because I am relishing the idea that there is still one more to go that I haven't read.  I will read them all again.  Great work.

GF After 250 pages or so of Quicksilver, I was real tired of Stephenson.  He name drops every important thinker/scientist/doctor in the most annoying manner...his references to Spinoza particularly annoyed me....and I just couldn't get a hold of the plot...had no idea where any of it was going.   But they are very popular and I've been mistaken before.  Some day I will probably try it again but for now I've had enough of him.

I read William Gibson's All Tomorrow's Parties recently.  It was like a book version of a decent-but-not-great hollywood sci-fi flick.  I'm not really sure what happened at the end...the Idoru cloned herself??...and I don't much care.  Certainly not enough to re-read the last 20 pages or anything like that.  Gibson really infuriates me with his addiction to the word "some" as an adjective, presumably to convey a general atmosphere of vast variety and choice.  A typical sentence he might write (but which I have made up myself:) "Laney had the Suit get the stuff from some Guatamalan-rastafarian dealer who's sources had connects with some city state agency."   A high school English teacher would know better and so should Gibson.

Reading Tim Johnson's Tree of Smoke right now...just started it.

[Phanatic]

Yeah O'Bian is my go to author for the rare times I travel. I've only read 3 thus far so I've got plenty more to read and I always enjoy them though sometimes it seems like too much time is spent on land and I can't wait till they get to sea again.

I finished 'The Road' on my trip late last year and it was real depressing. Excellent book but what a downer.

[Diomedes]

Denis Johnson, not Tim.

Read O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series in order if you can.

[Phanatic]

Yeah got the first three in order so far. I'll probably get the next one from the library at some point in the near future.

[Diomedes]

Man what great characters.  Maturin and Killick are my favorites, but there are so many great ones..

[General_Failure]

I know Gibosn is very fond of a few words (polychrome, for example), but I hadn't noticed the addiction to "some". I'll have to add it to my Gibson drinking game.

Quicksilver doesn't really lead anywhere specific, at least not the with scientists. Until Eliza and Half-cocked Jack show up, there isn't much of a plot at all. I had a hard time getting into it too, but since I started reading it while stuck in a Hawaiian bus terminal all day I didn't have a hell of a lot else to do.

[Diomedes]

I didn't get to Ezra and Half-cocked Jack...this sounds like the part where things get better...

[General_Failure]

That would be book 2 of Quicksilver. Which is also how long it takes that damned boat to leave the harbor in Massachusetts.

[Diomedes]

I was tuning out with the plague and the live dog dissections...but I'm an admittedly stupid man so who knows...

[General_Failure]

Oh, you're not even into the kidney stones yet. Just wait.

[Phanatic]

Man what great characters.  Maturin and Killick are my favorites, but there are so many great ones..

I'm a Lucky Jack fan myself. Especially at sea. I love the image of the fine tuning of the ship when he gets a new command. Working the guns and making her into something special. Even better with the The Mauritius Command was that all the action at sea was based on real historical events. Plus he really nailed the personalties of some of the captians under Jack with their flaws and how those flaws were projected on their crews and ships. It's hard to get into the flow of the books at first because the language is 17th century English Navy talk when the charecters are conversing but he uses Maturin well as a novice to help get the reader through those bits. The little scientific interludes are sometimes a really cool way to break things up and sometimes I'm eager to get on with it. Overall though the best series I've read in a very long time though I don't read like I used to.


Anybody used to be a fantasy head from back in the day? I was thinking of revisiting some of those fantasy novels I read as a teen. Dragon Lance, Rift War, Thomas Covenant the unbeliever and shtein like that. Piers Anthony too. Or maybe there are some good current fantasy novels but I wouldn't know what to pick. Robert Jordon was good at first but I lost interest after the 4th 700 pager or so.