Read a good book?

[angryboy]

Is there a book thread? I couldn`t find one.
Anyways, I just finished reading Stephen King`s 11/22/63.Great bloody read and one of
his best in recent times.Being a big fan I`m a bit biased but I highly recommend it. 10/10

[ShonaiBen]

........back in the day i read just about everything stephen king wrote........someone lent me one of his books and i was hooked.....couldn't put it down and ended up reading the thing all bloody night.........then it was a marathon of king reading.........finally gave it up but still enjoy the movies based on his books...so he's still pumpimg out material.........i may have to check this new book out........maybe a loaner angry?

[angryboy]

Sure thing mate.I`ll warn you though,it is a big thick hardback fucker so a bit hard to lug around.
I`ll give you his latest book of short stories too as I ended up with two.You can have that one but
the other is a boomerang,I always reread them.

[ShonaiBen]

Sure thing mate.I`ll warn you though,it is a big thick hardback fucker so a bit hard to lug around.
I`ll give you his latest book of short stories too as I ended up with two.You can have that one but
the other is a boomerang,I always reread them.

........ok........deal!!.......

[AsahiSupaSpy]

'Into Thin Air' John Krakauer and 'The Climb' Anatoli Boukreev (ghostwritten by a deWalt, if memory serves).
Two books about the 1996 disaster at the very peak of Mount Everest, in which 10 people died. You have to read them one after the other as Krakauer places a big part of the blame at Boukreev's feet, and `The Climb` is the other side of the story and his defense.

I was reading a Stephen King once, thinking it so-so when I took a break and went out for a massive spliff. Came back, read the next chapter and was like, 'Man, this is the best fucking thing I have EVER READ!!!'

God I love weed.

[angryboy]

Before that one I read "Full Dark No Stars" by him as well.
Short stories - not his best but a decent read still. 7/10
Before that,"Under The Dome". 9/10

[katamari]

i will read fucking ANYTHING. from proust to clancy, from dawkins to billy graham. anything. somebody gives me a book, ill read it. just finished kidnapped by rls. before that was edgar allen poe, and before that was a bio of kissinger. i just like reading. only time i can really relax.

[SamhainP8]

Stoked that I bit the bullet and started in the "Game of Thrones" books. Almost finished the third one and while the first series sticks fairly close to the first book, the second series (not surprisingly) glosses over or completely misses a bunch of stuff. Awesome reading and the way the books are written means I've had several 4am enough is enough nights over the past week. Love the TV series but the books kick arse!

[lordCONAN]

I feel like there was a book thread on here, but I couldn't be bothered searching for it.

I'll also sing the praise of the A Song of Fire and Ice books.I'm almost finished the 4th book and I'm looking forward to the 5th.
I, like I guess most others, saw the Game of Thrones show first, then started reading the books. After finishing the first book, I went back and watched the TV show again, and it's really amazing how much attention to detail they put into the show. There's so many things, that unless you're really looking out for them, will go straight past you.

I also enjoyed World War Z, but saddened by what I've heard about Brad Pitt's movie adaptation of it.

[SamhainP8]

After finishing the first book, I went back and watched the TV show again, and it's really amazing how much attention to detail they put into the show. There's so many things, that unless you're really looking out for them, will go straight past you.

I did the same.

There are heaps of things that went unnoticed the first watch through that had a lot more meaning to them after having read all the additional story lines in the books etc.

Personally, I'm looking forward to seeing the dwarf jousting scene in Season 3

[SamhainP8]

Just finished A Storm of Swords
I read it as a 788 page PDF on an iPad but a bit of clickety clicking shows me the paper back is over 1500 pages and the ebook copies are around 1200 pages.....
What the???

[lordCONAN]

Just finished A Storm of Swords
I read it as a 788 page PDF on an iPad but a bit of clickety clicking shows me the paper back is over 1500 pages and the ebook copies are around 1200 pages.....
What the???

I've also been reading them on my iPad, but in the epud format, not pdf. It's probably to do with the font sized used in the pdf as to how many pages there are, so I probably wouldn't worry ... that or you read someone's very in depth fanfiction version ...

[SamhainP8]

Had a brain fart and thought that a PDF is A4 which is about twice the size of a regular paperback (B5?) so that would be about right then...

[MacGyver]

Yeah defo to do with PDF/page size/font size (pretty much as you've already discovered so just adding my 2 cents). At work I take word docs and lay them out in a DTP program called Adobe InDesign and then make PDFs from the InDesign file and the PDFs are always way less than Word docs. There are other reasons for this as well and may not relate totally to what you are talking about but yeah PDFs generally hold more info than other formats.

[Examination_Hell]

Just finished A Storm of Swords
I read it as a 788 page PDF on an iPad but a bit of clickety clicking shows me the paper back is over 1500 pages and the ebook copies are around 1200 pages.....

How did your eyes handle that?

[SamhainP8]

Just finished A Storm of Swords
I read it as a 788 page PDF on an iPad but a bit of clickety clicking shows me the paper back is over 1500 pages and the ebook copies are around 1200 pages.....

How did your eyes handle that?

No problems. I hold it in 'landscape', zoom in to the max width and set it on continuous.

[lordCONAN]

How did your eyes handle that?

I pretty much exclusively read books on my iPad these days. Have yet to have anything like eye strain or sore eyes. Although if you're reading at night, it certainly does help to use the "night mode", which turns the page black and the text white.

[SamhainP8]

Didn't know about that, yeah that seems heaps better

[steki47]

I love my Kindle and it is quiet easy on the eyes.

Recent reading:
The Malay Dilemma by Dr. Mahathir Mohommad
Coming Apart by Charles Murray
The Chosen People by Richard Lynn

[SamhainP8]

Oh man I'm enjoying the "Game of Thrones" books but Jason H Kristen the writer's brutality towards culling his main cast is starting to wear me down. Hours and hours and hours invested into each character and then: he got beheaded, the end; she got eaten, the end; she's blind, the end. Etc etc etc etc etc..... I feel like I'm 10 years old again and keep picking the wrong ending for my "choose your own adventure" books. Daaaaaaaaa

[JD9]

Not exactly on topic but it's the only book thread I could see.

I read the first two Dexter novels and generally found the TV series to be better. The author made some odd and bad choices with the storyline.

I'm about halfway through the first book. Even after a couple of pages it was blazingly clear that TV Dexter and Book Dexter are very different beasts. That whole flirting back with LaGuerta thing and joking about marriage was nothing like TV Dexter at that stage of the game. So far it's been an OK read but yeah the TV show is heaps better. It reads like the writer had a great idea for a story but didn't have the writing skills to match. Parts can be annoying to read at times but I wonder if that's because I'm already very familiar with TV Dexter. Hard not to compare the 2 as you go I would think.

[steki47]

Not exactly on topic but it's the only book thread I could see.

I read the first two Dexter novels and generally found the TV series to be better. The author made some odd and bad choices with the storyline.

I'm about halfway through the first book. Even after a couple of pages it was blazingly clear that TV Dexter and Book Dexter are very different beasts. That whole flirting back with LaGuerta thing and joking about marriage was nothing like TV Dexter at that stage of the game. So far it's been an OK read but yeah the TV show is heaps better. It reads like the writer had a great idea for a story but didn't have the writing skills to match. Parts can be annoying to read at times but I wonder if that's because I'm already very familiar with TV Dexter. Hard not to compare the 2 as you go I would think.

Ok, you see it, too. Weird, you usually expect the book to have more detail and character development. I stopped after the second novel but heard the third was horrible. The Amazon mob hated it.

[Shawn]

'Into Thin Air' John Krakauer

This was a page-turner. Read it on a flight from Vancouver to Tokyo. In the same vein are Perfect Storm (much better than the movie) and Dragonfly, by Bryan Burrough, which is a story of American astronauts on the Mir Space Station. Shakleton, by Roland Huntford, is another good read. Shakleton is regarded as a heroic explorer, but I came away amazed he didn't die sooner during is exploits.

[RiskyMosaic]

Currently reading Elmore Leonard's short Western stories. True Cowboys and Indians (almost wrote Aliens) stuff. They are very, very cool.

[JD9]

Not exactly on topic but it's the only book thread I could see.

I read the first two Dexter novels and generally found the TV series to be better. The author made some odd and bad choices with the storyline.

I'm about halfway through the first book. Even after a couple of pages it was blazingly clear that TV Dexter and Book Dexter are very different beasts. That whole flirting back with LaGuerta thing and joking about marriage was nothing like TV Dexter at that stage of the game. So far it's been an OK read but yeah the TV show is heaps better. It reads like the writer had a great idea for a story but didn't have the writing skills to match. Parts can be annoying to read at times but I wonder if that's because I'm already very familiar with TV Dexter. Hard not to compare the 2 as you go I would think.

Ok, you see it, too. Weird, you usually expect the book to have more detail and character development. I stopped after the second novel but heard the third was horrible. The Amazon mob hated it.

I'm just finishing up the second book at the moment.

Some more negative feedback:

The writer is very repetitive, it's as though he's approached the writing of the second book to be read by people who haven't read the first book. Which would be very rare and certainly not worth making people who have read the first book read the same shit copied and pasted through the second book.

Incredibly compared to the TV series, the books seem very rushed! I've never come across this with any other book-TV-movie combos.

The writer isn't very talented as was noticeable in the first book but it becomes even more noticeable the more you read.

Some positive feedback:

The one thing that is keeping me scrolling through the pages is that compared to the TV series, the books are a lot darker. Obviously there's a limit to what they can show on TV so that's no real surprise. I guess it's a bit of a trade off with the Tv series Dexter being personally a lot darker than he is in the books.

Assuming that the darker side of the story continues to be explored in the subsequent books, I'll keep reading.

[JD9]

Finished the third Dexter book while simulataneously and completely ignoring the existence of TV Dexter.

I read a bunch of the negative comments on Amazon about the book from the TV Dexter loving crowd and I agree that sure the story was a little out there and far fetched but it's fiction so it's kind of the point yeah.

I enjoyed the story, it built up well over 150 odd pages but what let it down for me was the climax / punchline was all wrapped up in about 2 pages..... As I've said before, good story ideas but the writer doesn't have the talent to match.

Just finished the first chapter of the 4th book and it's good so far.

[AsahiSupaSpy]

Reading Stephen Fry's first novel 'Liar' at the moment. Tis a good read but I sometimes struggle with the classical references and high-brow vocab. Also there is a lot of gay stuff in it. I don't have a problem with homosexuality as such, but I tend to skip the parts about public school boys blowing each other and jerking each other off.

[wilde_oscar]

I recently finished "Deer Hunting with Jesus" where a lefty-leaning working-class American writer, Joe Bageant, attempts to expain, amongst other things, why the working-poor are attracted to the Republicans and hostile to the Democrats.

Interesting read, particulary for a non-yank.

[MacGyver]

I recently finished "Deer Hunting with Jesus" where a lefty-leaning working-class American writer, Joe Bageant, attempts to expain, amongst other things, why the working-poor are attracted to the Republicans and hostile to the Democrats.

I've always thought that it was for two basic reasons:
1. Social issues (right to life/anti-abortion, religious beliefs, etc)

2. Economic issues, such as tax breaks, anti-welfare, and the like cause they believe they will one day be rich/well off and want favourable tax breaks, and don't believe that their hard earned tax money should go to others in the form of welfare. "I work hard for mine so should others. Bloody good-for-nothing dole bludgers."

Coming from a working class, conservative, but not religious, family, I certainly heard lots of the latter part of item 2 growing up so while I'm not American, I can see why that would be the case. Although no idea who my parents vote for. I get the feeling they are definitely swing voters, and as a rule, have no time for politics or politicians.

[lordCONAN]

Finally finished the 5th Song of Ice and Fire book. Not as exciting as the others I found, but still a good read. Looking forward to The Winds of Winter now ... but who knows when that'll come out!

Thinking about reading "Wool" next. Go from fantasy to sci-fi.