PeeperStorm on 20/2/2010 at 03:15
Yes, very. I can see why he dedicated it to Peake: There are a lot of Gormenghast-like elements, especially in the whole concept of the palace (Winchester Mystery House on steroids) and Quire's similarities to Steerpike.
casalor on 24/2/2010 at 10:26
'The Commodore' by 'Patrick O'Brian'. This is book seventeen of a twenty book series about the exploits of a Royal Navy captain and his ship's surgeon (ok twenty one if you include the final unfinished voyage). What's been refreshing is that each novel has not had a set formula of battles/intrigue/romance/cliffhangers but instead has had a long continuous line of subplots and story arcs. Yes, Bernard Cornwell - and all you other journalistic episodic pulp writers - I'm looking at you. It captures an immense level of detail about early nineteenth century life both on land and at sea. Oh and I can't praise his literary style highly enough. Anybody that can stretch a comprehensible sentence over nearly half a page simply by imaginative use of punctuation has to be a real artist.
For those who've read the whole series I salute you.
'The Dogs of Riga' by Henning Mankell. I only picked this book - and 'Faceless Killers' before it - because I watched the Swedish version of 'Wallander' (thats not to say that Kenneth Branagh's interpretation isn't worth a look) on BBC4 last year and I'm glad I did. On the surface it's a standard police type thriller but there's a strong undertone of personal feelings, motivations and the usual crap that middle age men have to deal with in the character of Kurt Wallander thats far more evident than the tv screen. I feel compelled to read more.
PeeperStorm on 24/2/2010 at 16:49
Smart Dragons, Foolish Elves, a collection of humorous fantasy stories. It's worth mentioning for the sake on one story, written by Harvey Jacobs, called "The Egg of the Glak", which is beautifully written, slightly surreal, and has moments of stream of consciousness. I'm tempted to compare the writing to Peake (again with the Peake!), Bradbury,and Joyce.
The interesting thing about Jacobs himself is that he hasn't written much. The book's editor comments as much in the introduction to the story, and I had to resort to Google to find out any information about him because he doesn't
have a Wikipidia entry.
(
http://www.lookoutnow.com/dtp/soup/harvey.htm) Harvey Jacobs
mxleader on 26/2/2010 at 03:57
The Last Wilderness, by Murray Morgan A humorous look at the history of the logging communities on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State.
Andarthiel on 26/2/2010 at 11:20
Leviathan by Scott Westerfield
A very light novel about alternate history WWI fought between two sides: The Darwinists - Britain, France, Spain, Serbia, Scandinavia and Russia(their forces consist of genetically mutated or evolved animals based on Darwin's theories) and the Clankers - Austria, Germany and Hungary(they use steam technology based machines).
It has some really awesome pencil illustrations of certain moments in the book.
suliman on 26/2/2010 at 20:56
Alternating between The Science Fiction Hall Of Fame Volume Two A, which is great and has stories by some of my favorite authors(Poul Anderson, Theodore Sturgeon, Cordwainer Smith, H. G. Wells[even though I already read The Time Machine, which is his entry, but I wouldn't mind reading it again:D] Kornbluth...), and Peter Siska's University Chemistry, which is surprisingly very, VERY interesting. That is, the whole overview of the development of quantum mechanics. Some real wow moments there. I predict it will get less interesting by the time I get to the whole, well, chemistry thing. Balancing equations and all that. In the meantime, though, it's still awesome.
I've also recently read The Mote In God's Eye and Mockingbird, both of which started out incredibly well and ended up losing their steam about halfway through. I would probably consider Mote to be top-5 material if only it could keep its momentum going instead of ending with 150 pages of meh.
Jokerman on 27/2/2010 at 22:22
Yes, The Mote in God's eye turned into a chore pretty quickly.
But that's true for every project Larry Niven was involved in- even his short stories.
Though, to be fair, after The Mote and two of his short stories, I gave up, so maybe I'm being harsh and unjust.
DaBeast on 16/3/2010 at 18:03
Quote Posted by Matthew
Have you read Eisenhorn or the Ciaphas Cain series, DaBeast? Given that you must like HH, I'd recommend those as well.
Just finished both of them, thanks for the recommendation, got any more?
Also, is it just me or has Prospero Burns been pushed back?
Ulukai on 16/3/2010 at 22:16
(
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0744582733/) Hug
"The big, bright pictures dance off the page with such exuberance that you can't help but feel happy while you are looking at it." - The GuardianWell blow me down if the Guardian isn't right on the money for a change. The most heart-warming book you'll read all year, I promise you :cool:
