Okay so after a 12 year gap I’ve finally decided to start my A Song of Ice and Fire re-read. Only difference between now and 12 years ago is that I have two kids, so I imagine this might take a while.
So, I’m reading A Game of Thrones. I’m only a few chapters in, but I’ve already fallen in love with G.R.R’s writing style. The first few chapters have so much work to do to set the world up, but he handles it so well it’s almost unnoticeable when a character is delivering a lore dump.
What are you reading?
I’m three quarters of the way through the stormlight archive after nearly a year! It’s superb but very very long. The dialogue and characters are actually worse than I expected but the story and world building is incredible. And there was recently finally an emotional moment for me.
I’m also reading the secret barrister which makes the bottom of your stomach fall out with how sick you feel. This Tory government has taken something that was t working well and ground it into the dust so it barely works at all. Everything is to get cases processed faster instead of obtaining justice.
That’s a big undertaking - it must be three or four feet of books!
I’ve been in a bit of a rut reading-wise, stuck on Garth Marenghi’s TerrorTome (just busy and I keep trying to get some reading in when I go to bed and then I wake up with the book on my pillow and the side light still on), so I thought I’d get some comics read - just finished Klaus and started The DC Universe of Mike Mignola. Feel like I am getting my momentum back and will box off the book and bounce on to something tasty in my teetering to-read pile as there are quite a few books in there I am itching to read.
Just started re-reading Peter Hamilton’s “Judas Unchained”, it’s the book that got me into SciFi so I’m quite nostalgic about it.
Really enjoyed that back in the day when I was looking around for other books to scratch my Culture itch.
At the moment, I’m reading through the Red Dwarf novels. The first two books are essentially expanded versions of series 1 and 2 episodes grouped together in one big story.
Even though there is obviously a big similarity to the television show with the same jokes in places, they’re still very funny and the extra bits make it worth reading. For example, the first book has a back story of how Lister ended up on Red Dwarf and met Rimmer.
Books 3 and 4 should be interesting (just started 3) as this is when Rob Grant and Doug Naylor (creators of Red Dwarf) had a massive falling out and went their separate ways.
So each book is written by each creator and does their own thing. I’ve just started Backwards by Grant which directly follows on from book 2.
I’ve just read these as well, I was wondering what your thoughts were after completion? Much more character development I thought in the novels than in the series.
Blimey, it’s been a while. I don’t remember reading Last Human, my memory is awful. But I really enjoyed the other books. It was actually a little bit tedious reading what we had already seen on screen but so much better when the author’s imagination went wild and we had adventures too large and expensive to create for television.
I found them interesting in the sense that they were very simple books, compared to Douglas Adam’s stuff which was also written for a different medium (I believe/could be wrong there), where he writes in quips and ideas rather than simple plot. Compare that again to Jasper Fforde who comes from writing for movies and his books also feel quite different.
Just started The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman and it’s everything I hoped it would be. I’d got tired of grimdark fantasy and, while this doesn’t pull it’s punches, it balances the violence with a tonne of black humour.
I’d been debating getting stuck into non-fiction next but I felt like I needed bumping out of my reading rut first and this looks to have done the trick.
Thoroughly enjoyed that and bounced straight into Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames which has a similarish take on fantasy and was already in my to-read pile.
I’ve just discovered Jasper Fforde and am into book 6 of the Thursday Next series.
