Welcome!

By registering with us, you'll be able to discuss, share and private message with other members of our community.

SignUp Now!

Books

deepdarkblue said:
surfpenguin said:
deepdarkblue said:
It took close to 500 hours, but I've managed to complete all 14 books in the Wheel of Time series. It's been quite a journey.

The first few books were a painful slog filled with central characters who I didn't like and wished death upon. Over time, they mostly managed to become not-shitty and I started to care about their plights, but it was still a slog.
The final book made it all worthwhile. May the Light bless Robert Jordan's widow for reaching out to Brandon Sanderson and asking him to complete the series, and bless Sanderson for saying yes. A healthy chunk of the final tome (it's about 900 pages) is dedicated to the final battle, and Brandon Sanderson can write the fuck out of an epic fantasy battle. Definitely worth the time.
Click to expand...

I have mixed feelings on the Wheel of Time series. I agree with you on pretty much everything, it's excessively long, a lot of the characters suck, and Robert Jordan wasn't a great writer. Sanderson spun it around and turned the finale into something great. It's weird that Sanderson is replicating all of Jordan's missteps in the Stormlight Archives. Hopefully he can turn it around and make it great.

If you're still in the mood for some epic fantasy, check out The Malazan Book of the Fallen. I think it's the best fantasy series of all time.
Click to expand...

I've read all of the main Malazan books and most of the side stories. It's far and away my favorite fantasy epic and I hope nobody ever decides to make a TV series out of it.

A funny thing about the last WoT book - I thought the epilogue was weak and out of step with the novel. Later, I learned that Robert Jordan had already written that prior to his death and they included it as he'd written it.
Click to expand...

Have you read the Kharkanas Trilogy? I started it when the first book was published but decided not to read the second one until everything was finished. Looking forward to the Karsa Orlong series, but I think I want to wait until it's wrapped up to start it.
 
surfpenguin said:
deepdarkblue said:
surfpenguin said:
deepdarkblue said:
It took close to 500 hours, but I've managed to complete all 14 books in the Wheel of Time series. It's been quite a journey.

The first few books were a painful slog filled with central characters who I didn't like and wished death upon. Over time, they mostly managed to become not-shitty and I started to care about their plights, but it was still a slog.
The final book made it all worthwhile. May the Light bless Robert Jordan's widow for reaching out to Brandon Sanderson and asking him to complete the series, and bless Sanderson for saying yes. A healthy chunk of the final tome (it's about 900 pages) is dedicated to the final battle, and Brandon Sanderson can write the fuck out of an epic fantasy battle. Definitely worth the time.
Click to expand...

I have mixed feelings on the Wheel of Time series. I agree with you on pretty much everything, it's excessively long, a lot of the characters suck, and Robert Jordan wasn't a great writer. Sanderson spun it around and turned the finale into something great. It's weird that Sanderson is replicating all of Jordan's missteps in the Stormlight Archives. Hopefully he can turn it around and make it great.

If you're still in the mood for some epic fantasy, check out The Malazan Book of the Fallen. I think it's the best fantasy series of all time.
Click to expand...

I've read all of the main Malazan books and most of the side stories. It's far and away my favorite fantasy epic and I hope nobody ever decides to make a TV series out of it.

A funny thing about the last WoT book - I thought the epilogue was weak and out of step with the novel. Later, I learned that Robert Jordan had already written that prior to his death and they included it as he'd written it.
Click to expand...

Have you read the Kharkanas Trilogy? I started it when the first book was published but decided not to read the second one until everything was finished. Looking forward to the Karsa Orlong series, but I think I want to wait until it's wrapped up to start it.
Click to expand...

Same, basically. I read the first one, haven't read the others. I think Esslemont (sp) wrote the third one? I don't think he's as good as Erickson.
 
Not related to toronto's post, but my wife got me Dave Grohl's book "Storyteller" for my birthday, and I finally got around to reading it this week. It's such a good read, too. Given the pro-Grohl/pro-Foo Fighters posts elswhere on the board, I think a number of y'all would dig it.
 
childress22 said:
Not related to toronto's post, but my wife got me Dave Grohl's book "Storyteller" for my birthday, and I finally got around to reading it this week. It's such a good read, too. Given the pro-Grohl/pro-Foo Fighters posts elswhere on the board, I think a number of y'all would dig it.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I really want to read it. After watching him Hot Ones and a few other places, I definitely feel he has the ability to bring an anecdote to life.
 
Just finishing up Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel about Henry VIII divorcing Katherine of Aragorn and marrying Anne Boleyn. By far the best historical fiction I've ever read and one of the best books period. Apparently the two sequels are also excellent.
 
deeyoukayeee said:
Just finished Blood Meridian. What an overwhelming read. I'm fascinated by the way gratuitous violence was elevated to such an extent.

Judge Holden may be the best character ever created (or embellished as there seems there was a thin historical basis).
Click to expand...
This reminds me that I have it in my Audible list. I read it a few years ago but got it - and a few other Cormac’s - cheap in an Audible sale a few months back.

Suttree is probably my favorite of his.
 
Those are my two favorite McCarthy books. I think they have the best sentence-by-sentence writing in American literature.

He definitely simplified and stripped back his style in recent years. It led to him getting more mainstream success, but I don't enjoy those books quite as much. Don't get me wrong. They're still good. But the Blood Meridian-Suttree era was his high water mark.
 
Outer Dark was pretty good.

Of his later-era books (i.e. - from All the Pretty Horses onward) my favorite I've read was actually The Crossing. It was actually the first McCarthy I read. Technically it's the middle of a trilogy, but for all intents and purposes it's standalone.
 
The only other book I had read - and liked - of his was The Road, but it's almost as if it was written by a different author than Blood Meridian. Both are obviously dark, but one is dark a desolate, numbing way and the other injects its darkness intravenously right into your limbic system.

I loved the movie No Country, but I'll skip for the time being if the earlier work is more Blood Meridian than The Road. The Crossing is also free on Audible. So much bonus today between this and Proctor.
 
I liked The Road when I first read it, but a second read after I had a child was both incredible and gut-wrenching.

I also thought No Country was a very good novel except for the part when the sheriff visits his older uncle. I always get lost and can’t figure out who the fuck is speaking in the dialogue because of the author’s lack of punctuation.
 
deeyoukayeee said:
The only other book I had read - and liked - of his was The Road, but it's almost as if it was written by a different author than Blood Meridian. Both are obviously dark, but one is dark a desolate, numbing way and the other injects its darkness intravenously right into your limbic system.

I loved the movie No Country, but I'll skip for the time being if the earlier work is more Blood Meridian than The Road. The Crossing is also free on Audible. So much bonus today between this and Proctor.
Click to expand...
Yeah, if you enjoyed Blood Meridian more than the Road, I would say to stick to his work pre-1998.

The Crossing is definitely less dark than the other books mentioned.
 
I found The Road quite compelling as well. I actually read it in one sitting, I couldn't put it down. While I feel the same way about several other of his novels, they are pretty exhausting to read.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Chat users

  • No one is chatting at the moment.

Chat rooms

  • General chit-chat 0

Forum statistics

Threads
1,065
Messages
423,848
Members
624
Latest member
Bluegrass Blue Devil
Back
Top Bottom