Author Topic: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?  (Read 189682 times)

Offline Nathan

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #855 on: April 24, 2010, 07:14 PM »
Well, it's the first two books of basically a four-book arc, and Isard comes into play a lot more directly as they go on. Can't give you much more than that since it's been like ten years since I've read them.
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Offline Nicklab

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #856 on: April 25, 2010, 04:42 PM »
Right now I'm reading Michael Crichton's Eaters Of The Dead.  It's the movie that the film The 13th Warrior was based upon.  Conceptually the way it's written is interesting, but I'm only a few chapters into it at this point.
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Offline JediJman

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #857 on: April 25, 2010, 06:03 PM »
Well, it's the first two books of basically a four-book arc, and Isard comes into play a lot more directly as they go on. Can't give you much more than that since it's been like ten years since I've read them.

Well, that's good to know.  Wedge's Gamble is getting a little more interesting (about half way through).  Feels like they spent a lot of time working through getting the Rogues into Coruscant - time that could have been better spent character building.
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Offline Keonobi

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #858 on: April 26, 2010, 12:27 PM »
Right now I'm reading Michael Crichton's Eaters Of The Dead.  It's the movie that the film The 13th Warrior was based upon.  Conceptually the way it's written is interesting, but I'm only a few chapters into it at this point.

IIRC isn't Eaters of the Dead based on the Beowulf epic poem?  Obviously Crichton is a lot easier to read than middle english...
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Offline Scott

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #859 on: April 26, 2010, 01:38 PM »
Right now I'm reading Michael Crichton's Eaters Of The Dead.  It's the movie that the film The 13th Warrior was based upon.  Conceptually the way it's written is interesting, but I'm only a few chapters into it at this point.

IIRC isn't Eaters of the Dead based on the Beowulf epic poem?  Obviously Crichton is a lot easier to read than middle english...
Yes...loosely

I tore through everything Crichton in 1991 after I read and fell in love with Jurrasic Park...this was my least favorite of all of his books

Offline Nicklab

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #860 on: April 27, 2010, 02:54 AM »
Right now I'm reading Michael Crichton's Eaters Of The Dead.  It's the movie that the film The 13th Warrior was based upon.  Conceptually the way it's written is interesting, but I'm only a few chapters into it at this point.

IIRC isn't Eaters of the Dead based on the Beowulf epic poem?  Obviously Crichton is a lot easier to read than middle english...
Yes...loosely

I tore through everything Crichton in 1991 after I read and fell in love with Jurrasic Park...this was my least favorite of all of his books

Very loosely.  

I find it a little bit interesting that he tried to establish some backstory in terms of how this whole story was reported.  Notably with scholars having studied the scattered writings of Ahmed ibn Fahdlan, plus the footnotes along the way.  It makes the book read more like history, which seems to be Crichton's point with this book.

But the core idea is actually pretty interesting.  Crichton puts forth the notion that the Wendloe are the last remaining Neanderthal tribe in Europe, and they're in conflict with the Norsemen.  You have to figure that this kind of conflict did actually occur between Neanderthals and Cro Magnon.  But to have that happen as late as the 10th century?  The possibility is certainly there.  Especially since so little of Norse history was recorded in written form.  Rather, most of what we do know of the Vikings was relayed through the oral tradition of the sagas and epic poems.  Like Beowulf.
« Last Edit: April 27, 2010, 02:56 AM by Nicklab »
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Offline Phrubruh

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #861 on: April 27, 2010, 07:27 PM »
Finished Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Definitely a spoon full of zombie helps the Jane Austen  go down. It made the book more tollarable to read. Too bad the zombies weren't better integrated into the plot.

Now to get away from some British-lit and onto something American for a while. Now starting "The Thin Man" by Dashiell Hammett.



The Thin Man, Dashiell Hammett's classic tale of murder in Manhattan, became the popular movie series with William Powell and Myrna Loy, and both the movies and the novel continue to captivate new generations of fans.
Nick and Nora Charles, accompanied by their schnauzer, Asta, are lounging in their suite at the Normandie in New York City for the Christmas holiday, enjoying the prerogatives of wealth: meals delivered at any hour, theater openings, taxi rides at dawn, rubbing elbows with the gangster element in speakeasies. They should be annoyingly affected, but they charm. Mad about each other, sardonic, observant, kind to those in need, and cool in a fight, Nick and Nora are graceful together, and their home life provides a sanctuary from the rough world of gangsters, hoodlums, and police investigations into which Nick is immediately plunged.

A lawyer-friend asks Nick to help find a killer and reintroduces him to the family of Richard Wynant, a more-than-eccentric inventor who disappeared from society 10 years before. His former wife, the lush and manipulative Mimi, has remarried a European fortune hunter who turns out to be a vindictive former associate of her first husband and is bent on the ruin of Wynant's family fortune. Wynant's children, Dorothy and Gilbert, seem to have inherited the family aversion to straight talk. Dorothy, who has matured into a beautiful young woman, has a crush on Nick, and so, in a hero-worshipping way, does mama's boy Gilbert. Nick and Nora respond kindly to their neediness as Nick tries to make sense of misinformation, false identities, far-fetched alibis, and, at the center of the confusion, the mystery of The Thin Man, Richard Wynant. Is he mad? Is he a killer? Or is he really an eccentric inventor protecting his discovery from intellectual theft?

The dialogue is spare, the locales lively, and Nick, the narrator, shows us the players as they are, while giving away little of his own thoughts. No one is telling the whole truth, but Nick remains mostly patient as he doggedly tries to backtrack the lies. Hammett's New York is a cross between Damon Runyon and Scott Fitzgerald--more glamorous than real, but compelling when visited in the company of these two charmers. The lives of the rich and famous don't get any better than this!
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Offline Phrubruh

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #862 on: April 29, 2010, 12:21 AM »
Also starting today is "City of Time" Book 2 of the Navigator Trilogy by Eoin McNamee.



In this sequel to The Navigator (Random, 2007), earthquakes, tidal waves, and general environmental turmoil are on the rise, and Owen is called into action again. The moon's orbit has altered, and the very fabric of time is running out. Owen teams up with his friends from the first book and embarks on a quest to Hadima, the City of Time, to seek out a tempod and try to reestablish stability of time. Faced with deceptions, double-crossings, and the icy power of the Harsh, Owen and his friends are challenged physically and mentally at every step of their adventure. Pacing and story details are excellent with just the right amount of suspense and withheld information to keep readers wanting more. Characters are unique and suitably delineated with an appropriate balance of protagonist and antagonist attention. City of Time reads like a stand-alone novel; all pertinent details are explained. However, it would help more astute readers to be familiar with the first book. Naturally, situations are set up for the final book in the trilogy. City of Time will certainly enjoy as much reader attention as the first book.
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Offline Rob

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #863 on: May 4, 2010, 10:19 AM »

Offline Phrubruh

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #864 on: May 4, 2010, 12:12 PM »
Rob your reading a little red X. How is that one going?
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Offline iFett

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #865 on: May 4, 2010, 12:22 PM »
I can see it.  World War Z - An Oral History of the Zombie War
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Offline Phrubruh

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #866 on: May 4, 2010, 07:08 PM »
Now I can see it.

Finished the Thin Man. I really need to see the movie again. Maybe TCM will have it on soon.

Now reading "Along came a spider" by James Patterson.



This second big winter thriller by a writer named Patterson (see Fiction Forecasts, Oct. 19) features a villain (a multiple-personality serial killer/kidnapper) whom the publisher hopes will remind readers of Thomas Harris's Hannibal Lecter, and a hero who is compared to those of Jonathan Kellerman. Unfortunately, the novel has few merits of its own to set against those authors' works. Hero Alex Cross is in fact a black senior detective in Washington, D.C., who is also a psychiatrist and has a facile but not entirely convincing line of sentimental-cynical patter. The villain is Gary Soneji/Murphy (read Hyde/Jekyll), who kills for recognition, and finally kidnaps the kids of prominent parents. Alex is soon on the case, more enraged by Gary's killing of poor ghetto blacks than by the Lindbergh-inspired kidnapping, and becomes involved with a gorgeous, motorcycle-riding Secret Service supervisor who is not what she seems. Soneji/Murphy is eventually captured--but can the bad part of him be proven guilty? There is even a hint at the end that he may survive for a sequel, though the reader has virtually forgotten him by then. Spider reads fluently enough, but its action and characters seem to have come out of some movie-inspired never-never land. If a contemporary would-be nail-biter is to thrill as it should, it urgently needs stronger connections to reality than this book has. Come back, Thomas Harris!
« Last Edit: May 4, 2010, 07:13 PM by Master_Phruby »
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Offline Phrubruh

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #867 on: May 9, 2010, 05:56 PM »
Now reading "Relentless" by Dean Koontz.



Bestselling author Cullen Cubby Greenwich is mortified when Shearman Waxx, the nation's premier literary critic, savages his work. Cubby manages to find the syphilitic swine at Roxie's Bistro in Newport Beach, Calif., where the author's six-year-old prodigy son nearly pees by accident on Waxx in the restaurant's men's room. In retaliation, Waxx threatens Cubby with doom and gets things started nicely by blowing up his house. With almost superhuman ease, the book critic keeps track of Cubby and his family as they flee for their lives. While some may take this as satire, the over-the-top villain's underdeveloped motivation and a jokey narrative tone that jars when juxtaposed with terrifying scenes of violence will leave others scratching their heads. By the time Koontz introduces a science fiction element, a lot of readers may have already checked out.
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Offline Phrubruh

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #868 on: May 12, 2010, 12:19 AM »
Now reading "Treasure Island" by Robert Louis Stevenson.



Climb aboard for the swashbuckling adventure of a lifetime. Treasure Islandhas enthralled (and caused slight seasickness) for decades. The names Long John Silver and Jim Hawkins are destined to remain pieces of folklore for as long as children want to read Robert Louis Stevenson's most famous book. With it's dastardly plot and motley crew of rogues and villains, it seems unlikely that children will ever say no to this timeless classic.
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Offline Chris M

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #869 on: May 12, 2010, 09:39 AM »
I've got about three more weeks before I start my next Masters class so I'm cramming in this book and maybe one more if I can get the time.  Working on my masters sucks because I've lost a ton of my reading time.

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