IGX

Week of July 13th

Alan Campbell's "Scar Night" and "Iron Angel"

-Weird, dark, disjointed. Not unreadable, since I finished them. Maybe if you're bored or a certain type of reader they'll chime more strongly with you. Entertainment. I'll probably keep reading the rest of the series as it comes out. Matter of fact depictions of horrid things.
-Get 'em from your library.

Glen Cook's "Dread Empire" compilation "A Cruel Wind"

-Excellent if a bit of an immature example of Cook's writing. I bought this, since I loaned out my original paperbacks back in 1986 and never got them back. I admit...not as good as I remembered. However, Cook at his worst is better than 95% of the published fantasy authors out there. I still recommend this, but not as much as his "Black Company" series or his "Garrett, P.I." series.

Gray Cook's "Athletic Body In Balance"

-Some good, some iffy. I'm trying to expand my S&C reading a bit, and this is one I've been meaning to pick up. A dumbed down Functional Movement Screen is included, and can be of some benefit, especially if you put the corrective exercises to work. If you are a whore for fitness books, then this is slightly less usable than Mike Boyle's "Functional Training for Sport" and not as over-reaching as the book Gambetta has out right now.

Michael Shea's "The Incompleat Nifft" and "The A'rak"

-I have, no shit, 3 copies of "Nifft the Lean" from DAW in assorted conditions. This is excellent fantasy in the vein of Jack Vance's "The Dying Earth" (which I also recommend whole-heartedly). These are relatively recent publishings. "The Incompleat Nifft" includes "Nifft the Lean" and "The Mines of Behemoth". Very entertaining.

July 21

"Mirrored Heavens" by David J. Williams

-billed as the "new cyberpunk" it falls short despite being a decent story. somewhat disjointed and goofy.

"Havemercy" by Jaida Jones and Danielle Bennet

-Another one of those books written by women with male protagonists who just don't understand men. Men are not women with penises. (see Sarah Monette and her Melusine novels as well) Not a bad story with some cool ideas, just that there is a certain type of female author who delights in writing about male homosexual romance (and, according to gay men, they get that wrong as well). Unless you are into this sort of book, or like mechanical dragons, you might want to stay away. Not bad writing, not a bad story, it's just that the above gets under my skin a bit. I'll probably read the sequels.

"Complex Conditioning" by Istvan Javorek

-This is a second time through. For efficient ideas, this book is pretty dense. If you love routines, you'll like this book. Explanations? HA. For general training information, it falls a bit short. Javorek really puts too many routines in this, as most of the book is charts. For someone who preaches good form, the videos of a student of his online are really terrible.

I just finished Iron Angel. Scar Night really took a while to get into any kind of plot movement. I thought Iron Angel was better in terms of actually telling a story, although you are right in that even mini-plots take two to three rounds of scene switching to come to any sort of resolution.

Have you read Cook's Tyranny of the Night series (if you can call two books with more on the way a series)? I loved the early Black Company stuff, and the early Garrett novels. He had a few misses with Garrett, and I never enjoyed the non-Croaker-centric Black Company in the South novels as much. But JMO.

I read the first "Tyranny of the Night" novel. I liked it, but held up to the Black Company and "The Tower of Fear" it fell a bit short.

I'm a big fan of Steven Erikson's "Malazan Book of the Fallen" series. They are a big, huge chuck of detail, and you have to really like those kind of massive fantasy novels. Details in them are insane, and they are clearly influence by The Black Company.

Scar Night took a bit to get into. Campbell is a goofy fucker.

Interesting selection of books, Shaf. I kind of lost touch with the whole fantasy/sci-fi/horror thing 10 years ago (except for "Snow Crash" and "Cryptonomicon") and wasn't sure how or where to start up again. I friggin' loved Jack Vance, so that the "Nifft" titles sound interesting, and sound like a great place to start.

I've good Athletic Body In Balance and totally agree with your assessment.

Abandoned by Wolves wrote:Interesting selection of books, Shaf. I kind of lost touch with the whole fantasy/sci-fi/horror thing 10 years ago (except for "Snow Crash" and "Cryptonomicon") and wasn't sure how or where to start up again. I friggin' loved Jack Vance, so that the "Nifft" titles sound interesting, and sound like a great place to start.

I've good Athletic Body In Balance and totally agree with your assessment.

Did you ever try Stephenson's Baroque Cycle? The first installment was fantastic. I think his publishers put some pressure on him to "dumb" down the second two. The picaroon structure of the second installment was a nice homage.

Yeah, I read all of those. I liked them tremendously. Very big and not for everyone, though. Tied in nicely with the Cryptonomicon.

I've been bogged down with reading.

Last weekend and the this week:

The Wanderer by Cherry Wilder/Katya Reimann

-Celtic style heroic fantasy in a very detailed world. I found this very entertaining of occasionally fragmented. Was supposed to be a start of a new trilogy set in this world but Wilder passed in 2004. Reimann finished it. For some reason this book took me over a week to read. It's not hard reading, nor particularly long.

Pirate Freedom by Gene Wolfe

-Excellent. If you like Gene Wolfe, or quasi-historical novels, this is very good. It's about pirates.

I am starting the latest in the Jhereg series by Steven Brust. One of my favorites.

ABW: The Nifft books are really some of my long time favorites. The writing's very much like Rhialto the Marvellous by Vance.

I like historical books and westerns.
To be true in westerns i read only one author - Louis Lamur. But him i read on english and russian.

Loren D. Estleman writes some damn fine westerns, too.

Wild Bill wrote:I like historical books and westerns.
To be true in westerns i read only one author - Louis Lamur. But him i read on english and russian.

Larry McMurtry: Lonesome Dove. A western extraordinaire.

That Dr.DL is one of the finest books I've ever read and for what it's worth the tv mini-series is some of the best television I've ever seen. I have the dvd and watch it every few years. It is truly fucking awesome.

Shaf, have you ever read the Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee?

No, but it looks interesting.

In what would appear to be a similar vein, Barry Hughart's novels of a China that wasn't, "The Bridge of Birds", "The Story of the Stone" and "Eight Skilled Gentlemen" are beautiful stories.

onealjn wrote: Did you ever try Stephenson's Baroque Cycle? The first installment was fantastic. I think his publishers put some pressure on him to "dumb" down the second two. The picaroon structure of the second installment was a nice homage.

I did read "The Diamond Age", was a little let down. I understood that Stephenson didn't want to just write variations of "Snow Crash" over and over again, but apparently at the time I wanted to READ variations of "Snow Crash" over and over again. Then I sort of lost track of the whole genre, so I never even knew about the 2nd and 3rd volumes.

I'll have to go back and pick them up.

Abandoned by Wolves wrote:

onealjn wrote: Did you ever try Stephenson's Baroque Cycle? The first installment was fantastic. I think his publishers put some pressure on him to "dumb" down the second two. The picaroon structure of the second installment was a nice homage.

I did read "The Diamond Age", was a little let down. I understood that Stephenson didn't want to just write variations of "Snow Crash" over and over again, but apparently at the time I wanted to READ variations of "Snow Crash" over and over again. Then I sort of lost track of the whole genre, so I never even knew about the 2nd and 3rd volumes.

I'll have to go back and pick them up.

The Diamond Age is not part of the Baroque Cycle. The first installment is Quicksilver and is quite excellent in my opinion.

They are related to Crytonomican in an interesting way.

Shapecharge wrote:That Dr.DL is one of the finest books I've ever read and for what it's worth the tv mini-series is some of the best television I've ever seen. I have the dvd and watch it every few years. It is truly fucking awesome.

It may be the best thing that was ever on television. At the very least a strong contender. Even the second and third tier characters were spectacular.

DrDonkeyLove wrote:

Wild Bill wrote:I like historical books and westerns.
To be true in westerns i read only one author - Louis Lamur. But him i read on english and russian.

Larry McMurtry: Lonesome Dove. A western extraordinaire.

Word. Shane, The Searchers and True Grit are also excellent