Moot's Book Club
 

Do you guys read much? If so, what do you read?

I've been reading George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, I'm about to finish A Dance with Dragons, and its been real good so far.

The last few books I read were The Night Angel Trilogy, and the Inheritance Cycle (Eragon), but I've yet to start Inheritance unfortunately. Both were/are awesome.

I don't read much, but I did read Eragon and the Eldest. The first one was very promising, the second one got so cliche that I lost my interest in the series.

Eragon was my favorite, specially towards the end. It felt gritty and more real with fantasy mixed in. Specially when they were traveling hard to try to make it to the mountains after escaping that city (can't remember a lot of the fine details). I just remember Eragon think about how many leagues they had to travel, and how sore and tired he was.

If you like gritty fantasy, I highly suggest A Song of Ice and Fire. It's amazingly written, and has a lot of subtle storytelling like Dark Souls, if it's your cup of tea!

I read essays.

I read about 100 books a year. I haven't gotten round to A Song of Ice and Fire. I'm waiting for the series to finish before I delve into it, so I'll probably get there in about ten years or so.

Eragon was one of the worst reading experience I have ever had, and that includes the middle volumes of The Wheel of Time. I wrote an excessive review on GoodReads, so ya'll can go hunt that down if you're interested.

I'm currently re-reading Dune for the third time, easily the best science-fiction story ever conceived; The Martian; A Hobbit, a Wardrobe and a Great Wara brilliant biography of Tolkien and Lewis' turmoils during WWI; and Bruce Campbell's autobiography, a funny and witty insight into the life of a b-list actor.

One book for like 4 days? Do you consider yourself an addict yet?

I am, but I need more data to find it. Like, the username, or anything.

Addict? Not really. It's technically part of my job. I read for about 3 hours every day and write for 3 hours. It's really the only way to become an adept author—a lot of amateur writers try to skip the reading and delve straight into the writing, expecting to produce something of quality.

It's here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/sho...w_action=false

I envy you, I can't even read fast enought to read a, let's say, 300-pages-long book in 3 hours a day for 4 days, in a comfortable way without any skipping

It took a lot of practice! Haha . I read my first book at 12, and my second at 16—and at the time it was incredibly hard to maintain concentration—but I wanted to do something creative with my life, so I persevered; taught myself how to enjoy reading a story essentially.

Plus, I have a dedicated antique chair in my library, which settles me comfortably into "reading mode".

I definitely don't regret it. :) There's a lot of great literary gems that haven't made a smooth transition into a popular medium.

Well, I read the first one when I was 8, and it was Harry Potter and The Stoned Philosophers, and it was still booming back then (around 2001, back when the first movie was being released). I loved the first 3-4 books (especially the second one), but the latter ones were gradually less interesting to the point I gave up on reading the last one completely. It's really weird, when I think about it.

Lotr and Hobbit books were obviously amazing.

If you've never read the Witcher toms, you should definitely do so. It's the best (...the only?) thing Polish fantasy books have to offer. Books were far better than the games (at least the first two games, as I haven't played W3 yet). However, I don't know if the translation might affect your read.

Back to Eragon: As I was reading this, and it was not many years after the premiere, so I'm guessing 2004-06, and I was around 12, I got the same impression as you - it really did feel like it was written by a teenager. I don't know how ratings at goodreads.com work, but still, I don't think it deserves the lowest possible rating. It's hard to defend the book I barely remember (I'm really, really bad at remembering books), but in my memory it was more of a pleasant read than not.

What I do remember is that I actually very liked the way the books handles magic and spellcasting (with the emotional and physical impact), it's unlike anything I have seen at the time... which could basically mean nothing, because I haven't read that many books in my life, but it's one of best things about this book in my opinion.

I have a nigh-impossible time reading unless there's pictures everywhere

Almost every book I read and have read proper is some sort of encyclopedia or a comic book

I'm currently keeping up with Nova, Starfire, Kelos, and Invader Zim. I was intent on reading Pisces but the author cancelled that after like the third issue or something. Sad days.

I actually bought "Blood of Elves" back in 2012 without knowing it had been turned into a video game, but it went to the bottom of the reading pile and hasn't resurfaced yet. I will get to it at some point, haha.

The rating system at GoodReads is really whatever the reviewer wishes it to be, so there's always a little inconsistency. I sometimes rate a book one-star, but have a few positive things to say; at other times I rate it five stars, and have a lot of negative things to say.

The reason is I always use a five-point scale, with one star awarded for Characters, Worldbuilding, Story, Style and Execution (what I believe to be the five core elements of any good story). Personally, I don't feel as if Paolini handled any of these well enough, though if I read it again, I'd probably be a bit more lenient. I was expecting to be blown away by all of the positive suggestions I'd been given, and was sorely disappointed.

I was equally upset with Harry Potter when I finally read it two year back.

The magic was handled well, actually, but the implementation of the magic was where I encountered a huge problem. It seems that instead of the characters uncovering genuine solutions to their problems, they could always "magick" their way out of it. For example, when crossing the desert, they briefly fret about a lack of water, only to brush their fears away by summoning it out of the Earth. Not a bad solution if you can do that, but it makes for an incredibly stale story.

I'm a little biased, however, because I'm not a huge fan of magic. I like fantasy, but more often than not I find authors having designed far too convoluted (or convenient) magic systems.

One year before the release of Blod of Elves there's been a collection of shorter witcher stories released, named The Last Wish, and I think it's a much better place to start reading if you ask me

Well that's a reason I rarely follow/believe the hype. I read Eragon and Harry Potter knowing basically nothing about it before ;)

Well, true, magic is alawys a convenient plot device. That's one of its main purposes, I'd say

I have this uncanny ability to put off reading the last two or three chapters of a book for weeks and, thus, get a bit lost when I finally come around to it. Did that with the last two books I was reading: Inherent Vice and The Man in the High Castle.

Right now when I have my breaks at work I re-read passages from the Art of War. Really I'd like to carry on with Claudius the God, the first book was incredible but I'm strapped for time and energy to do much reading right now, as much as I love it.

I finished Wool fairly recently and that is a fantastic book.

I need to read more books as well. I've been reading the One Punch Man manga, but that's manga and doesn't totally count as a "novel". It's paper cartoons, for the most part. Good stuff, though.

Also read short stories online from time to time. I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream is awesome.My novel-length favourite book is probably 1984, though.

Thought about checking out Dune before. Sci-fi is fun.

i have a habit of starting a book but never finishing it. i've been halfway through Guilty Robots, Happy Dogs for years. it's a book on the philosophy of alien minds and really interesting, right up my alley. i've just never finished it.

i fucking love that story, i've reread it quite a few times and advised other people to read it. it's really sad and twisted. AM is the original psychopathic computer. one of my favourite quotes:

HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT FOR YOU. HATE. HATE.

me too. the movie was great.

Try the game.

I've just read Robert Bloch's "The man who cried wolf" an now I read "Alraune" by Hanns Evers and "der Hexenhammer". I don't read much fiction though. Another book I read for general interest is the original edition of "The general problem of the stability of motion" (more of a history reading, albeit specialized). Apart from that, I mostly read special literature.

The movie wasn't too bad until that dumb as fuck ending with Muad'dib making it rain. I've never been so irritated by an adaption before or since ...

Also, they cast Patrick Stewart as Gurney Halleck, one of the ugliest men in the story save Baron Harkonnen. Kind of a weird choice. I also don't know why Baron Harkonnen's suspensor fields made him levitate—they're just supposed to counter the gravity's pull on his weight. There were a lot of dumb choices in the movie to say the least.

Read the book, though it really is one of those books that require at least two complete sessions. I also feel that to truly appreciate the story, Dune Messiah needs to be read as well immediately afterwards, as Dune kind of leaves the universe hanging in the balance, and Herbert's message isn't fully realised until Paul becomes emperor and sparks a fire that spreads through the universe.

I should do more reading, particularly during my breaks from university work, but most of the time, I just don't get to it.

A few books I've recently read are Bram Stoker's Dracula, Closing Time (Catch 22's lesser known sequel), a Danish book translated into German called 33 Cent um ein Leben zu Retten, part of Im Westen Nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front) which I never got further than and The Count of Monte Cristo. I quite liked all of these, Count of Monte Cristo and Dracula especially. Closing Time was a bit hard to get into and not quite as funny as Catch 22 could be, but still enjoyable. The Danish book was written in such a lighthearted and innocent way that I couldn't help but like it.

Besides that, I've read a couple of physics textbooks or at least large parts of them, but that doesn't really count.

I read an absolute fuck load. At the moment I am in between parts of The Divine Comedy (Just finished Purgatorio so it will be on to Paradisio) so I decided to start something new: The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell.

It is fucking incredible. I am a huge fan of Mitchell's, Cloud Atlas and Thousand Autumns of Jason De Zoet are sublime, and this continues the hot streak. The characters are interesting and each feels like a totally different character. And if you add on to this weird psychic/telekinetic illuminati cult thing that ties all the characters together and hasn't even been explained yet, I am in for one hell of a ride.

I don't read novels but I've become a fan of comics ever since the Marvel Star Wars and the Oni Press Rick and Morty ones came out. So I hope that counts?

Both series are great. The Star Wars comics are considered canon so I'm all over that. And the Rick and Morty one captures the humor of the show very well. I find it impossible not to read the characters in their voices.

I read only Dante trilogy.
Nowadays I read only programming or scientifical books.