This week, I are mostly reading....

Night_Rocker wrote:

Please pay no attention to the name. I have no idea what i was thinking.

You will get far better quality of criticism in the Arts -> Creative Writing forum to be honest.

Vangelis

Night_Rocker wrote:

Please pay no attention to the name. I have no idea what i was thinking.

Who wrote this?

Night_Rocker

Please pay no attention to the name. I have no idea what i was thinking.

Night_Rocker

Would it be cool if i posted an unfinished story i'm writing and get general criticism from you guys? Just to let me think what you think and if it's goin alright.

Jim

Player Of Games - Iain M. Banks.

Crytsal Rain by Tobias Buckell and Summer Isle by Ian R. Macleod

dudara

Just finished "Wicked" by Gregory Maguire. Didn't think much of it to be honest, it really didn't live up to the expectations I'd had.

Just started "The Oxford Murders" by Guillermo Martínez. So far, it's really good.

Andy-Pandy

The human Stain by philip roth

arbeitsscheuer

"Libra" by L.J. Doyle

tSubh Dearg

supersheep wrote:

Just finished A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving - thanks to my girlfriend for lending it to me. Pretty damn amazing. I actually felt a sense of loss on completion...

I know exactly what you mean. I think that A Prayer for Owen Meany is the best of his novels.

In other news, I'm currently reading Villa Incognito by Tom Robbins. It's very good, I'm really enjoying it.

Vangelis

Reading Virginia Wolfe's "The Voyage Out".
Next will be Jean Paul Sartre's "The Imaginary".
I simply can't wait!!

Nimrod's Son

Ring was a decent enough yarn. I started Grapes Of Wrath by John Steinbeck yesterday.

supersheep

Just finished A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving - thanks to my girlfriend for lending it to me. Pretty damn amazing. I actually felt a sense of loss on completion...

Finished R. Scott Bakker's TheThousandfold Thought - powerful, the best completed epic sequences in at least 25 years IMHO.

gaf1983

Love all the people - Bill Hicks.

As it's really a collection of his stand-up gigs with a few essays thrown in for good measure, can become very repetitive at times.

Undergod wrote:

Robert Ludlum's Bourne Trilogy- nearing the end of 'Identity'

Might as well be considered an entirely different story to the movie. He's not a great author.

Considering the book was written a decade or two before the movie its not surprising its different. IMO the 3 bourne novels are easily his best works.

Setun

Just finished Lord of the Flies. Excellent. And now for On the Road...

Putting other books down as I just got The Thousandfold Thought by R. Scott Bakker today.

Dagnir Glaurung

August 1914 by Solzhenitsyn. I don't know if I spelled that right

Undergod

Robert Ludlum's Bourne Trilogy- nearing the end of 'Identity'

Might as well be considered an entirely different story to the movie. He's not a great author.

dudara

Just finished Stephen Baxter's "Coalescent"

Don't know what to read next!

Recently finished Umbero Eco's The Mysteriosu Flame of Queen Loana, now reading Paul Auster's Leviathan, and Jeffrey Ford's Cosmology of the Wider World.

Right I'm taking a break from these oft-mentioned Tolkien books and getting in the Christmas mood with some more Poe and some HP Lovecraft. Yes Christmas is weird in my house

John2 wrote:

Just a faint hint. But it's like b-side and unreleased song compilations, won't appeal to the general reader but it's gold to the hardcore fan.

Excellent way of putting it.:)

secret_squirrel wrote:

Personally I found them turgid pieces of crap. They offer an insight into his obsessive World building - but very little readable prose.

Dont expect them to be anything like the LOTR trilogy.

One for Tolkien completists, uber nerds or budding obsessive authors only tbh.

Is it me or is there the faint hint of cash-in about them?

Just a faint hint. But it's like b-side and unreleased song compilations, won't appeal to the general reader but it's gold to the hardcore fan.

Personally I found them turgid pieces of crap. They offer an insight into his obsessive World building - but very little readable prose.

Dont expect them to be anything like the LOTR trilogy.

One for Tolkien completists, uber nerds or budding obsessive authors only tbh.

Is it me or is there the faint hint of cash-in about them?

It's all his various drafts for all the books he did and then a commentary by his son (who seems to be just as obsessed as his father). There's some nice things like correspondence from CS Lewis about the Silmarillion and alternative and unfinished stories. I say give one a go and then see how you go from there.

Closing Doors

John2 wrote:

Exactly. And a lot of the notes are just the relationships between the languages and previous versions of the languages or old English.

Hmmm....doesn't sound overly interesting. And they managed to milk, what, 10/11 volumes out of it? Is it literally just his notes slapped in a book or there a commentary etc. ? Sorry to be asking so many questions....