Book mini-reviews

[Wifeyberk]

if you're into ghostly kinds of stories The Secrets Of Crickley Hall by James Herbert is amazing.

Also, for those who like a giggle at fantasy and yet want something more adult, Once Upon a Time by him is amazing, slightly erotic Fae people who breed with humans.. it's kind of funny, kind of thriller, kind of attempt at mythology. But did have me so engrossed I couldn't put it down, or sleep until i had finished reading it. If you want to try it out I can dig out my copy to pass about, it is worth the read.

[Dog Pants]

Over the holidays I read Zombies: An Anthology of the Undead. In fact, I read it in two days, no mean feat for quite a hefty volume. It is, as its name may suggest, a collection of short stories about zombies. It makes great effort, though, to explore unusual and interesting ideas about the walking dead. For the most part that works, with aspects ranging from a grim tale about domesticated servant zombies to a tale of gangs of undead looters reminiscent of Lost Boys. Occasionally it misses the mark too - one story is perfectly fine but the link to zombies is tenuous in the extreme, another seems to be chasing the Return of the Living Dead schlock slapstick which doesn't work for me at all. But it was compelling, not least because I knew that if I wasn't enjoying a particular part it would be over in a dozen pages. Definitely worth a read for the variations on the theme, which pretty much every story in here does to one extent or another, but could have benefited from one or two of the stories being swapped out.

[FatherJack]

We have a couple of booky threads knocking around, the Recommended Reading announcement and its proto-thread, but I'll post here. Perhaps Lat can have a clean-up/consolidate of them.

Anyway, I've just finished reading Snow Crash by one of our long-time favourites Neal Stephenson. First mentioned six years (!) ago in that proto-thread and again in 08, I should really try and keep up. It was very good.

It describes in equal measure what happened "after the internet" (the Metaverse) and a post-hyperinflation America where everything including housing, security, religion and information are just rubber-stamped store-chain franchises (including Mafia-co Pizzas) along a massive strip mall covering the entirety of civilisation - the "Metaverse" mirroring/lampooning this in virtuality.

The Metaverse has a lot of similarities to what we would recognise in an MMO, or at least something like Second Shite, and I was quite surprised that since it was written in 1992, just how accurately it described things, given it was ten years old.

You perhaps have already noticed my glaring error there, but I had gotten my maths a bit wrong, and it was only when I finished it that I realised that 1992 was infact twenty years ago! While not everything is exactly prophetic, a very large amount of its content resonates with current technology - such that I wish I had read it twenty years ago and been able to jump on those bandwagons.
A main character is a sword-wielding geeky guy who calls himself Hiro Protagonist, which sounds like a ludicrous literary crutch until you remember he pre-dates Heroes' Hiro Nakamura by fourteen years...and you feel a bit stupid for not knowing/having read it before now.

It's a bit like how I got lambasted by my Year 12 English teacher for having the temerity to claim that the graveyard scene in Dickens Great Expectations where Pip first encounters Abel Magwitch seemed to me trite and obvious, since "spooky graveyards" had been done to death by numerous horror movies. Oops.

It's also a cracking story, with wonderfully lucid, attitude-heavy characters whose story is expertly intertwined to the plot and while I suppose it does end a little abruptly (perhaps a little rushed), even this is pretty much in-keeping with the characters we've gotten to know.

[Wifeyberk]

Reading some light stuff lately, can't be bothered with heavy literature, but I found this sweet kinda ghosty vampire set called The Morganville Vampires.

I ain't so sure i'd recommend it for adult reading, or stuff like that, but if you have a teen/tween who likes Twilight, then this is wayyyyyy better. Give it a bash.

[Dog Pants]

Mrs Pants started to watch Twilight the other night out of curiosity. From that I would extrapolate that wringing my testicles is wayyyyyy better than Twilight.

[fabyak]

Have a this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2L253VLw ... p_play_all

Guy reads Twilight, reviews as he's going along. Contains lols

[buzzmong]

Have a this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2L253VLw ... p_play_all
Guy reads Twilight, reviews as he's going along. Contains lols

That's rather good.

[Dog Pants]

Have a this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2L253VLw ... p_play_all

Guy reads Twilight, reviews as he's going along. Contains lols

That did raise a few chuckles. I can't remember if I mentioned it here, but Mrs Pants sat down to watch Twilight when it was on TV, just out of curiosity. I was sat with her playing on the iPad, but couldn't help but keep half an eye on it. It was soul destroyingly bad, and I had all of the reactions of the guy in those videos. Even Mrs Pants hated it, as proven by my failure to piss her off with my constant stream of piss taking about them being unicorn fairies rather than vampires. I really fear for the future of cinema when this is the lowest common denominator.

[fabyak]

If it helps your future viewing choices, the first one is the best of the first 3 (not seen the forth so can't say about that, not holding out much hope though (not that I'm planning on seeing it mind))

[Roman Totale]

The Morganville Vampires.

Started reading the wiki entry for it, saw this:

Morganville is also home to an unusually large number of second-hand thrift stores

Tells me everything I need to know.

[FatherJack]

In other, non-vampire slash news, I recently finshed reading The Diamond Age by..you guessed it - Neal Stephenson.

Another splendid read of similar vintage to Snow Crash, this one written in 1995, is techinically in the same timeline but with only a hint of a reference to the earlier book.

The science in this one is based around widespread nanotechnology, such that the name of the book refers to how diamond is so easy to create using nanotechnology it's often used instead of glass.

While the start of the book explores this technology, it quickly becomes a Pygmalion-like tale of a young girl in a desperate, hopeless situation who is taken out of her lower class environment and educated - effectively by a magic book.

It is a ripping yarn, set in a bonkers future China with Neo-Victorians surrounded by various future versions of east-asian power blocks, and while some of the great characters introduced early on seem to disappear completely, the main character is someone you want to just keep reading about.

You can see a bit of the author's later works, particularly Cryptonomicon, in this. It's classed as post-cyberpunk, whatever that means - but my reading of it is that it dispenses with the technology aspect rather quickly and then focusses on adventure and fantasy. Certainly not as prophetic as Snow Crash, but that's no reason to miss out on this, probably the better book.

[Wifeyberk]

I did also say I wouldn't necessarily recommend it but it is light reading for us females, with lots of inuendo's, romance and sexeh luscious men to drool over.

But, in all honesty, True Blood books are wayyyyyy better, and so much better than the series, in which they portrayed Eric as some erm... well, whatever he was, he wasn't Eric from the novels.

Berk has made me start reading "Dirk Gently's holistic detective agency." All i can say is, does he take lots of drugs??

[Wifeyberk]

Ok, so, you absolutely have to get you're women to read the Fifty Shades Trilogy (fifty shades of grey, darker and freed), by E L James.

Highly recommend it. But i'm so not giving a synopsis on here. If you wanna have fun, read the book. It gets pretty intense.

[Roman Totale]

Is that the one that's caused menopausal women to get all excited and rush out to buy their husbands grey ties? The kindle does appear to be responsible for the rise of nouveau-Mills and Boon

[Mr. Johnson]

this, apparently. Reading that article makes me sad.

[FatherJack]

Fifty Shades of Grey is a New York Times bestselling erotic fiction originally developed from a Twilight fanfiction entitled Master of the Universe under the penname "Snowqueens Icedragon". The fanfiction then focused on Stephenie Meyer's characters of Edward Cullen and Bella Swan. James removed the piece after receiving comments due to the sexual nature of the books, but later decided to rewrite Master of the Universe as an original piece with her own characters.

Erotic Fanfiction. Truly where all great works are born.

That doesn't encourage me to read it, but fair play to the author for making a success out of it.

[HereComesPete]

What a heap of steaming turds. And on top of that they're making films.

[Dog Pants]

Is He-Man in it? There's generally only one type of erotic fan-fiction with He-Man in it.

[Wifeyberk]

I didn't say it was for men! It's for the ladies in you're life!
No it's not about Grey ties, it's about a man called Christian Grey. And full of naughtiness. It's an intriguing series of books and might well get u laid.

Therefore, i mentioned it on here.

He-man and she-ra were awesome. I have those books in my collection from my childhood. oddly alongside a spectrum setup manual and a walkthrough for ocarina of time.

[Roman Totale]

The erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey has made grey ties a fashion must for men hoping to emulate the sexy entrepreneur who wears them in the book.

Getting laid by reading a book? I tried that when I read some Vladimir Nabokov, but that didn't work out as I expected.