Book Thread Continued

[Vanguard]

I'm reading 20,000 Leagues under the sea and honestly, I fucking hate it. Yeah it's super old but that fact alone is really killing it for me. The CONSTANT lists of fucking sea creatures and facts that are old hat to contemporary society is really boring to me. I get why it's a classic but it's just not my cup of tea. Too bad cuz I was really jazzed to read it initially.

It could be the translation. The content of the book will not change, but I'm sure there's a translation that is less painful to read while staying accurate to the original content.

[Logick]

I just finished Blackout, now reading its sequel, All Clear.  These books won the 2011 Hugo for best sci fi novel.  Its about historians traveling back to WW2 to observe it, until something goes wrong.

[Vanguard]

I've been playing a lot of roleplaying games these days and feel compelled to read fantasy. I have started the second book in ASOIAF. Hating much less than I expected to, but find I still kind of drone out in certain character's chapters (Sansa).

[Dincrest]

I'm reading Lunara: Seth and Chloe.  Not a bad sci-fi read, but not OMG AWESOME! either.  A little light reading, though my idea of light reading is different than the average person's. 

Regarding the suspension of disbelief in Game of Thrones, I had to suspend my disbelief at

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how the hell Robert didn't even suspect till Ned's snooping that Joffrey, Myrcella, and Tommen weren't his progeny?  It just seems so freakin' obvious.  How could almost everyone else be oblivious too?  Granted, Robert just didn't care about much of anything, really.  Of course, reading further books makes me believe that people knew, but just played the fool to play the "game."

[Hathen]

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I thought it was pretty funny that Martin made a bit of a smokescreen by emphasizing how much most of Eddard's children look like their mother. Makes me wonder why he made it blatant from one of the very first chapters that Jaime was jousting his sister pretty much every chance he could get.

[Dincrest]

Appropriate vid for the Game of Thrones discussion:

http://www.collegehumor.com/video/6579356/game-of-thrones-rpg

Anyway, I finished reading Lunara: Seth and Chloe.  I will not be continuing this series.  The book isn't bad, but it just didn't tickle my mojo.  Too bad since it's been getting rave reviews.  Sure, the average reader would probably consider it a deep epic start to a saga (it's 400 pages, part of a trilogy) but to me it was light reading... perhaps too light.  I guess I'm just not really into "light" reading unless its comics or manga.  Even then, Battle Angel Alita is my idea of light reading.   

I'm interested in getting to classics I haven't read like Three Musketeers, The Great Gatsby, and Ivanhoe. I also have Ashok Banker's version of Ramayana to read.  I'll figure out what I'm going to read next.

[GrimReality]

Finished the second book in the Black Jewels trilogy. It was nowhere near as good as the first one. There is just way too much melodrama. This thing reads like a cheap fantasy soap opera with everyone bawling their eyes out about every little thing. It's become hilarious, and would make for a great drinking game.
There are just so many contrived sequences that don't play by the rules of the world. Then the brilliant author goes and "removes" the best character for 3/4 of the book! Genius! Despite all this, I'm curious enough to read the last in the trilogy.
My wife was offended when I told her I wasn't liking it anymore. It's amazing how we take our interests so personally, isn't it?

[Dincrest]

So Grim- it sounds like if that book had a song-and-dance number and a scene where a boy and girl run around a tree, it would be a Bollywood melodrama.  Still, it's disheartening when a first novel has so much promise then the second one hits the dreaded sophomore slump.  

And I made my decision.  Out of Great Gatsby, Three Musketeers, Ramayana and Ivanhoe, I have decided to start reading Ivanhoe.  I don't think I could really go wrong with any of these books, but something in my soul is saying "Ivanhoe."

[MeshGearFox]

About 93 pages into Dune. It's basically been a huge info dump so far and I don't even care because it's so damn interesting.

This is kind of like Foundation only unlike Asimov, Herbert actually knew English.

[Dincrest]

I finished Ivanhoe last night.  Good book, though the language at the time made the reading quite dense.  I need an illiteracy breather now.

You know how when you ask people what Moby Dick's about, they say, "a whale."  That's false because the whale only appears 2/3's into the book.  In much the same way, Ivanhoe is not necessarily about "a knight" because Ivanhoe himself only appears spottily within the book. 

[beLIEve?]

About 93 pages into Dune. It's basically been a huge info dump so far and I don't even care because it's so damn interesting.

This is kind of like Foundation only unlike Asimov, Herbert actually knew English.

i finished the first book of game of thrones about a week ago and i felt it was like dune in that everything takes a long time to play out. in dune it sorta does it to it's own benefit in that it has sociopolitical and philosophy ties to the real world that kept me engaged. game of thrones i felt the pacing was a bit off i kinda feel like it was the ramp up to the story arc rather than an arc within an arc. i'm starting the second book soon. so far the only characters i care about are john snow, arya, bran, catelyn and daenerys. the rest i feel are generally dipshits.

i read the whole dune series aside from the stuff brian herbert wrote i'm kinda curious about those books. i felt the first four dune books were really good, 5&6 sorta felt like a long epilogue. 

[Tooker]

So... I now understand something. I didn't really like Dune, and I didn't really like Game of Thrones.  This despite the fact that they are objectively recognized far and wide as being mighty good.  Seeing you all say they feel similar makes me understand better why I don't like them both.

[Yoda]

Dune is one of my all-time favorites and one of a few books I've read more than once. What a great and interesting world with awesome history. The 2nd book is fantastic as well. However I started the 3rd one and couldn't get into it.

[MeshGearFox]

I'm out on if I want to read the Dune sequels or not. People GENERALLY seem to like the first two of those,  God Emperor is about 50/50, and the last two were part of another trilogy that never got finished. The sort of 'rocks fall, everybody dies' approach the later books take sounds kind of... offputting to me.

[Yoda]

The thing about the 2nd one compared to the others is that it's relatively short. It's not as rife w/ deep ass history as well, and seems a bit more tight as a story. That's all from memory though. I'd read book 1 and if it sat well read book 2 and stop there.