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Re: What Are You Reading?

Posted: Tue May 17, 2022 6:49 pm
by HVB
Talanall wrote:
Tue May 17, 2022 3:55 pm
Autobiography from North Korean defector/survivors sounds like something that might be of interest to my wife. Do you have any recommendations in particular, along those lines?
"Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea" is definitely worth checking out. It is written by an American journalist (Barbara Dernick) who focuses on the stories of 6 North Korean defectors. I think it was published around 2009, so you get a good feel for much of the country's history and major events as experienced by these people.

It is not the easiest read and there are facts and figures to get through which some might consider a little dry, But it's definitely a great foundation if there is an interest for exploring more of North Korea.

Re: What Are You Reading?

Posted: Tue May 17, 2022 10:20 pm
by Talanall
Thank you for the recommendation.

Re: What Are You Reading?

Posted: Mon Jun 13, 2022 1:43 pm
by catalyst
I'm halfway through Cloud Atlas, and I can't understand what anyone saw in this book.

Re: What Are You Reading?

Posted: Sat Sep 03, 2022 10:08 pm
by Fixxxer
I just finished the Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb. The first two books were remarkably good. The last was good, but rambled a bit and could have been a wee bit shorter. I really liked that they were fantasy novels told from a first-person perspective, which is pretty rare.

Now I'm reading Traditions & Encounters: A Brief Global History, vols 1 & 2.

Re: What Are You Reading?

Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2022 1:29 am
by deaddmwalking
I've been absent for several months, and I'm sorry I didn't have anything to contribute.

A few years ago when I was traveling I picked up The Archer's Tale by Bernard Cornwell. It's historical fiction set during the 100 Years War, and I liked it well enough that I read everything else by Cornwell outside of his series on Sharp's War. That's partly because I'm slightly less interested in the 19th century than the 1st-12th but mostly because there are a lot of Sharpe's novels and I didn't want to tackle a series that size. They've since made his Saxon Tales into a Netflix series; I've seen a few episodes and they're pretty good, but I definitely recommend the books.

Outside of Thieves World, Robert Asprin is probably best known for the Myth series. Although they're definitely LIGHT READING, the dimensional travel aspects actually make it one of the most true-to-life D&D series in some ways. I also enjoyed his Phule's series (similarly light sci-fi with a character that is probably most similar to the anime series The Irresponsible Captain Tyler. His Bug Wars is also really good (and short) and tells the story of a race of intelligent lizards getting involved in a war against giant intelligent insects. It's been a long time since I read it, but I also liked Cold Cash Wars, which was depressing for him to write, but is basically a short story about what happens when companies start funding private armies and take over power from national governments. It's one of those things that you probably read when you you were quite a bit younger, but if you missed them, they're worth checking out again.

I just picked up Conquest of the Normans which is a history of the Normans that tries to explain how they, in one form or another, became the dominant power in Germany and Sicily (as well as Northern France) and while that premise seemed interesting, I'm not sure that it really follows that any of those people that settled outside of Normans stayed 'Norman' for any length of time. It'd seem like the same argument could be made for how the Vikings dominate Europe today because they set up kingdoms in Normandy, greatly influenced England, set up a kingdom in Kievan Rus and apparently settled in Sicily and took over the throne of the Holy Roman Empire. That is to say - it's basically true, but they weren't really VIKINGS by that point.

In that vein, I had read Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, and I felt that did a better job of proving its premise - that many of the foundational attitudes among modern national governments are reflected (and possibly inspired) by Mongol policies - well, maybe I'll let the publisher say it:
The Mongol army led by Genghis Khan subjugated more lands and people in twenty-five years than the Romans did in four hundred. In nearly every country the Mongols conquered, they brought an unprecedented rise in cultural communication, expanded trade, and a blossoming of civilization. Vastly more progressive than his European or Asian counterparts, Genghis Khan abolished torture, granted universal religious freedom, and smashed feudal systems of aristocratic privilege. From the story of his rise through the tribal culture to the explosion of civilization that the Mongol Empire unleashed, this brilliant work of revisionist history is nothing less than the epic story of how the modern world was made. “Reads like the Iliad…Part travelogue, part epic narrative.” — Washington Post “It’s hard to think of anyone else who rose from such inauspicious beginnings to something so awesome, except maybe Jesus.”
For me reading also tends to come in spurts. I probably have more time for reading than I've had in a while, but I've also been working on my Duolingo, so it can be easy to justify working on a foreign language rather than reading books, especially when I'm reading news in Le Monde or Spanish-language articles in the NY Times.

Re: What Are You Reading?

Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2022 8:43 pm
by catalyst
In the last few months, I finished Cloud Atlas, which thankfully ends much better than it starts. Still didn't love it, but much less bad than I had feared. More recently, I just finished reading A Stranger in Olondria, a very solid fantasy novel about a character who travels from their homeland to a big trading city and gets swept up in a politics between two religious sects. Before that, I read The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie, which was fantastic. I love Abercrombie's writing, and this one might have been my favorite. I have to space reading his books out, because I have a real temptation to binge them, and I'd never get anything done if I did. Before that, Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel, which I enjoyed quite a bit. It's a post-apocalyptic story which focuses on a few characters right before a massive disaster, and then 20 years afterwards. Also read Riot Baby by Tochi Onyabushi, which didn't really impress me. I loved the characters, but I felt like the plot was missing something overall. The Just City by Jo Walton, is "what if atlantis was actually an experiment by the Greek gods to try creating Plato's Republic" - I thought it fell somewhat short. Somewhere in there I also read On Fragile Waves, which is an immigrant story that also has a ghost story in it, and A Memory of Empire, which was a very solid scifi story about a diplomat to the capitol planet of a stellar empire and ends up finding herself at the center of a political plot.

In nonfiction, I'm reading Humanocracy. The authors make the point that most large corporations are basically inefficient bureaucracies and that to move forward, we should be driving towards smaller operating groups that are capable of independent decision making to shift with their markets. It's a in interesting concept, but not sure exactly how feasible it is.

Re: What Are You Reading?

Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2022 8:35 pm
by HVB
I just tore through the three most recent Joe Abercrombie books in the First Law series (Age of Madness). It took maybe under two weeks, I agree those are easy to binge and if anyone knows of books similar to his I'd be interested in recommendations. The closest I've found are the Malazan book of the fallen and the Game of Thrones books...

Now I'm reading the Legends of the first Empire series of books (Michael Sullivan) it was the first thing I got my hands on after reading the Abercrombie books. I think after this I might take a break from fantasy for a minute and read some history /biographies...

Re: What Are You Reading?

Posted: Mon Sep 12, 2022 8:14 pm
by Fixxxer
I found the recent Age of Madness series to be a wee bit lacking when compared to his First Law trilogy and the three standalone novels between them. I just didn't care nearly as much about the main characters as I did in the other books. That said, I agree completely about his writing style. That gritty tone and setting, where nobody is really the good guy and bad shit happens to people whether they deserve it or not? I really like that.

My pleasure reading has been put on hold for the next month because I have a metric fuckton of textbook reading I need to do for classes, but if anyone's looking for a fantasy recommendation, I can't say enough good stuff about Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel's Legacy trilogy.

Re: What Are You Reading?

Posted: Tue Sep 13, 2022 8:23 pm
by HVB
Fixxxer wrote:
Mon Sep 12, 2022 8:14 pm
I found the recent Age of Madness series to be a wee bit lacking when compared to his First Law trilogy and the three standalone novels between them. I just didn't care nearly as much about the main characters as I did in the other books. That said, I agree completely about his writing style. That gritty tone and setting, where nobody is really the good guy and bad shit happens to people whether they deserve it or not? I really like that.
100% agree with all of this
I can't say enough good stuff about Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel's Legacy trilogy.
I read Kushiel's Dart (?) a few years ago. I liked it but I can't recall why I never picked up the rest of the series. Might have been around the time when i was getting back into reading and trying a little of everything... I might revisit it...

Re: What Are You Reading?

Posted: Tue Sep 13, 2022 8:35 pm
by Fixxxer
The second trilogy was my favorite, but it's possible that's because it's told from a male perspective. I didn't think I was going to like the third trilogy, but I absolutely loved it.