what are you reading?

[PFVA]

The Column of Fire by Ken Follett. I'm liking the environment, the historical portion of the religious wars, etc but somehow i find the characters not so well developped as in the Pillars of Earth or World Without End.

https://amzn.to/2wiKqpk

[NorthWay]

Had a delivery at my door today for my last 4 unread Jack Reacher books (and #22 is coming in November).

Ah yes, it arrived a few weeks ago now and was ploughed through the weekend one week ago. Slightly different tone I thought, very well flowing, and recommended. Crying out for appearing on the big screen as usual, but I don't think Mr Cruise will have it as his first choice. (Nope, not giving spoilers.)

[merman]

Some excellent Black Friday deals on the PDF copies from Retro Fusion Books.

As much as I would love the physical copies, I just don't have the space or money for more physical books at the moment.

https://fusionretrobooks.com/collection ... iday/black

Have ordered this along with all the other ones for Amiga and spectrum too.
PDF - The story of the Commodore 64 in pixels

I helped write large parts of the C64 and Amiga books

[Deckard]

Never finished the series so currently reading Dune from the start. Three books in so far and its so much better than I remember from last reading it about 10 years ago.

[everklear]

Never finished the series so currently reading Dune from the start. Three books in so far and its so much better than I remember from last reading it about 10 years ago.

Much the same experience I had when reading them as an adult vs reading them as a teen. I found something to like about all of the original Frank Herbert books.

[noodles]

Got into Raymond Chandler recently. Reading The Big Sleep after finishing Farewell My Lovely.
Great style, a treat to read, and far better than the movies that were made from them.
Noticed that there was a lot of censorship back then when making movie adaptations, especially if there was any mention of weed in the story.

https://amzn.to/2wiKJR0

[zip accident]

Got into Raymond Chandler recently. Reading The Big Sleep after finishing Farewell My Lovely.
Great style, a treat to read, and far better than the movies that were made from them.
Noticed that there was a lot of censorship back then when making movie adaptations, especially if there was any mention of weed in the story.

If you're interested in how Chandler wrote The Big Sleep, there is a book of his short stories called Killer in the Rain, which he re-used extensively. Chandler wanted Killer in the Rain deleted from his back catalog, but the publishers weren't having that. If you are into seeing how he worked, it's a fascinating read, the stories are okay, but several pages of text at a time were lifted wholesale. Comparing the two books would be a wonderful thing for a literary appreciation/criticism class.

[Deckard]

I dont read many books where at the end I think "well what was that all about then ? " but with Jeff Vandermeer's Annihilation book which I finished yesterday (pretty short novel) I did. It was clever and interesting but thank god there are two more to take it further and perhaps explain a little more. Oh and on this "our world but strange" take I must really recommend "I am behind you" by John Ajvide Lindqvist which absolutely gripped me from the off when several people on a caravan park wake up to find they aren't in Kansas anymore....

https://amzn.to/2LjzblT

Oh and Vandermeers Borne is fantastic too

At the center is the titular hero, a nondescript object when first introduced by the narrator and aspiring mother Rachel, who plucks him off the fur of the gigantic flying bear Mord.

https://amzn.to/2w5evJT

[noodles]

Halfway into The Amiga Years and it's a treat.

The latest little fact that left me in awe was that Robert Mical, the guy who wrote the GUI part of the OS, did so in seven months,
all by himself (100 hour weeks of course), and made it far better than the Mac equivalent. Just stunning beasts of tech in that company.

[PFVA]

Snjór by Ragnar Jónasson, a quite good Icelandic crime novel, "who has done it?" type, set in Siglufjordur, the northern town in the country, with lovely descriptions of snow, ice, winter seas. Very enjoyable to read.

https://amzn.to/2BBaLET

[WiteWulf]

I dont read many books where at the end I think "well what was that all about then ? " but with Jeff Vandermeer's Annihilation book which I finished yesterday (pretty short novel) I did. It was clever and interesting but thank god there are two more to take it further and perhaps explain a little more.

Hehe....the further books explain it a little, and are less trippy, but more non-linear. The headfuckery gets worse, in a really nice way. I thoroughly enjoyed the series and can recommend his later book, Borne. It's a lot less trippy but still a pretty smart novel.

[WiteWulf]

I'm currently plowing through Jeff Noon's first Nyquist book, A Man Of Shadows. I loved his Vurt series but this is very different, his take on detective noir in a typically bizarre Noon world, and I'm really not getting on with it.

https://amzn.to/2MMhWP5

Got Charlie Stross's next Dark State on the pile next, though, and really looking forward to that.

https://amzn.to/2P2MZUv

[Mat]

I think Noon's been struggling a bit recently.

While I enjoyed A Man of Shadows, and the concepts have stuck with me for a while after finishing, none of his last three books have had the pace or rhythm of his previous novels.

Falling Out of Cars I found particularly forgettable, Channel Skin was interesting, but again, lacked his earlier beat, and A Man of Shadows, while set in a strange reality, has almost none of his trademark linguistic experimentation.

I think Vurt and Needle in the Groove are his best novels, and the ones those titles bookend are very compelling.

I seem to recall reading that he's been struggling with alcoholism, traces of which are present in A Man of Shadows. I hope he's doing okay now; he's definitely one of my favourite authors when he's on form.

Myself, I'm on the third book of the Takeshi Kovacs trilogy that started with Altered Carbon, Woken Furies.
It's been a very good trilogy, although the many obsessively detailed sex scenes seem a bit incongruous. As I finished the first book before the Netflix series aired, I was a little miffed with how it diverged from the book, and a lot of the stuff the series does invalidates major swathes of the next two novels. I'm guessing that they're going to be sticking with the same actor for the second series, which completely breaks the core concept of the trilogy.

[WiteWulf]

Interesting, I've not read Needle In The Groove, I'll check that out.

I'm thoroughly enjoying the TV series of Altered Carbon and was considering reading the books; sounds like I may be better off sticking with the TV version of the reality as I don't want the same mess in my head as I had a few years ago trying to reconcile the Game of Thrones TV show with the books.

[Mat]

So, fair warning, as this could get a little spoilery for those who haven't read the books or watched the series, or both...

***

They changed quite a lot to make the series more accessible, but at the same time, added some needless tropes. The one that particularly annoyed me was how they damselled Ortega.

I also heard a rumour that the guy playing Kovacs will return in the second series, which breaks a lot of the allure of the fiction.
It could be for furthering the career of an actor. I think it's more likely that it could also be that they don't want to risk alienating the audience by having the same character in a different body. Whatever, it's quite a cack-handed balls-up. And it could really piss off the reading public who could rightly accuse Netflix of whitewashing the story, as Kovacs' sleeve in the second novel is meant to be black.
Whatever, part of the allure of the books is knowing that Kovacs as an ex-Envoy will be transferring from body to body with regularity. It's what Envoys were made to do.

And don't get me started on Virginia Vidaura / Quellcrist Falconer and what the Envoys are (not were).

But I'm also fully aware that if I hadn't read the books, these things probably wouldn't annoy me as much as they have done.