The Republic of Heaven

PostPosted: **Mon Jul 25, 2011 9:56 am**

I finished Bone #3: Eyes of the Storm a few days ago and I've been reading Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper.

PostPosted: **Mon Jul 25, 2011 8:48 pm**

Dragon_Eyes wrote:Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper.

Mmmmm, I LOVE that series. I haven't read it in years and now you're making me want to go dig it up at the library. I always felt Over Sea, Under Stone is probably the worst (okay, I don't want to use the word worst to describe anything about that series)... the least best of the series.

The series also made me attempt to teach myself Welsh. MASSIVE FAIL.

PostPosted: **Sun Aug 07, 2011 6:27 pm**

Recently - Sir pTerry - Nation. Whatever else Alzheimer's is doing to him

it's not spoiling his storytelling. I absolutely loved it.

Now - Paolo Bacigalupi's biopunk epic The Windup Girl. I'm about halfway through and reserving judgement. I will say this - it's clearly a first novel.

PostPosted: **Thu Aug 11, 2011 3:24 am**

Peter wrote:Recently - Sir pTerry - Nation. Whatever else Alzheimer's is doing to him it's not spoiling his storytelling. I absolutely loved it.

Agreed. Having to see the slow end of one of my favourite authors is very difficult but his passion to finish everything he has going on top of having to deal with one of the most challenging diseases from a creative POV is inspiring. I don't consider myself a well read person but what Pratchett has left us is priceless.

PostPosted: **Wed Aug 17, 2011 8:49 am**

Just finished The Remembrance of Things Past, Volume I, by Marcel Proust. It's a common story that reading Proust nearly silenced Virginia Woolf...I'm glad it was only nearly because she always put my thoughts better than I ever could: "My greatest adventure was undoubtedly Proust. What is there left to write[read!] after that?"

O, and I recommend the new Lydia Davis translation heartily. My boyfriend and I read her translation and his Scott Moncrieff together for a bit and I believe (and am told) the Davis is clearer and closer to Proust's original writing.

PostPosted: **Thu Aug 18, 2011 10:29 pm**

Just finished reading the good soldier, by ford madox ford. I don't usually read books like that but I got it free with a newspaper a while ago, and a blogger said it was her favorite book...so I read it. It was okay.

Today I bought Neil gaiman's neverwhere, which I have heard many good things about.

PostPosted: **Wed Sep 28, 2011 6:33 pm**

being all excited about the new tinker tailor soldier spy remake with gary oldman -- though our local cinema isn't showing it, grrr, so i haven't had a chance to see the film yet -- i've collected all the george smiley books by john le carré.

i've just finished reading call for the dead, the first smiley book, and the first novel le carré wrote. it's a great book, and more of a whodunnit rather than the espionage novel i was expecting. the character of smiley is a little different from the alec guinness version i love from the BBC adaptation, but i don't suppose i can really fault the book for that...

and despite that, i still love how this version of smiley is portrayed, short and fat, slimy and toadlike, blinking like a mole in the sunlight.

Jaya wrote:Today I bought Neil gaiman's neverwhere, which I have heard many good things about.

yay for neil gaiman! i love neil gaiman! woo! (his non-sandman comics are poo, though.) have you started neverwhere yet?

-- darren

PostPosted: **Tue Oct 25, 2011 6:42 pm**

currently reading neuromancer for troh book club *shameless promotion* pick it up, be prepared to take at least twice as long as a normal book this size, and please join in!

i don't even think i could read anything else right now if i *had* another book.

PostPosted: **Wed Oct 26, 2011 9:56 am**

I've been sticking with 'Mark Reads' since he did HDM, so I've just finished American Gods (by Neil Gaiman) and have just started The Hobbit; I read it when I was 10 (this is a depressingly long time ago), so I'm quite looking forward to reading it again. 3 chapters in and it's quite light and fun. I can see why I liked it at such a young age.

I won't lie, I was a little disappointed in American Gods. I know some people love the strange pacing of it, but to me it was just a little boring for the first two thirds. Also I really didn't care about the main characters, and those that I did find interesting were casually dropped in and out. I'm guessing that the fact that...

A. I know very little about mythology
B. I'm not American, and have very little knowledge of thier cultural geography (if that makes sense?)

... meant that I didn't take as much from it as others will.

I'm also reading The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, which I'm about 6/7 chapters into and really enjoying so far. I've had all three Millenium books since last Christmas, but I'm pretty lazy. Plus I still need to get the second book back from my sister. I started it while reading American Gods, and I think I'm just glad to be reading something that isn't fantasy-based. And yes, I know that I've just started reading The Hobbit...

PostPosted: **Wed Oct 26, 2011 11:46 am**

cjp wrote:I won't lie, I was a little disappointed in American Gods. I know some people love the strange pacing of it, but to me it was just a little boring for the first two thirds. Also I really didn't care about the main characters, and those that I did find interesting were casually dropped in and out.

Where, oh where, are the decent literary editors? Editors with the clout to stand up to a well-known and profitable author and say, 'Take this home and work on it. It's not ready yet. It needs trimming and some of it really doesn't hang together very well.'

I'm seeing so much stuff that seems to have gone straight from the writer's word processor to hardcover. Me, I blame that Douglas Adams. (Who famously did just that, although with better results.)

PostPosted: **Thu Dec 22, 2011 4:41 am**

Bl-le-le-leak House. The thing about Dickens is, whether you like it or not, once you have him in your bones, you have him in your bones forever.

PostPosted: **Thu Dec 22, 2011 9:54 am**

Haruki Murakami - Sputnik Sweetheart.

I came to this completely cold, but it kept me with it. A mysterious story, in which no statement can be taken at face value and may well be untrue. I rather liked it.

The translation by Philip Gabriel, whether or not it's accurate (and I can't tell), is very readable.

PostPosted: **Sun Jan 15, 2012 1:59 pm**

Katherine Paterson - Bridge to Terebithia.

Interesting if flawed book which will especially appeal to bright 10 y-os. I'm surprised I'd not heard of it before.

The flaw lies in the episodic structure which, while building up a picture of Jess and Leslie's friendship is not best integrated into the overall fabric of the book. It reminded me of similar structures in E Nesbit and CS Lewis. It's well-suited to an adult reading to a child at bedtime as each chapter (until the last few) is self-sustaining - but I think this is a book to read to oneself.

As for the end - it justifies all that has gone before and, in its way, is not dissimilar to the conclusion of The Amber Spyglass. I've always appreciated children's books where the danger is real and the most awful things can (and do) happen; especially when the characters are shown to be capable of carrying on with life afterwards. It's a useful lesson - that however bad things may be now there will eventually come a time when sadness or setbacks can take their proper place in the past.

PostPosted: **Sun Jan 15, 2012 3:02 pm**

Peter wrote:Katherine Paterson - Bridge to Terebithia.

We read this in 5th grade. I no longer remember the story at all, but I remember being traumatized.

PostPosted: **Sun Feb 05, 2012 10:38 pm**

just finished maskerade, about to start guards! guards! (again, i think, but it's always good to reread vimes stories). currently reading jon stewart's earth, the book ...or is it (the book)? meh. funny and sad at the same time.

PostPosted: **Sat Feb 11, 2012 4:42 pm**

Now: Iain Banks - Transitions. Not an M Banks, but its tale of world-hopping agents is certainly a kind of SF. So far, rather better than a lot of his recent work.

Next: Simon Armitage - The Death of King Arthur. Armitage's translation of Gawain and the Green Knight was very well received, this less so. We shall see.

I like the cover very much:

: simon.jpg (42.3 KiB) Viewed 13157 times

PostPosted: **Sun Feb 12, 2012 9:35 pm**

Read

plan to read

PostPosted: **Sun Mar 25, 2012 6:08 pm**

Richard Morgan - Woken Furies. Having polished off the first two Takeshi Kovacs books, Altered Carbon and Broken Angels, Peter's really looking forward to another fix of hard-boiled ultraviolence

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