The Book Thread

[Konrad]

I recently read The City & The City by China Mieville. I'm not actually such a huge fan of Mieville - "urban fantasy" doesn't do much for me, and I found the Bas-Lag books more than a tad overwrought. The thing about The City & The City, though, is that Mieville having written it is sort of a red herring. In the end, it's not really a fantasy novel at all, and everything is explicable without relying on magic (well, aside from the magic of psychology and social conditioning, I guess). Rather than urban fantasy, it's instead a really good post-Soviet Eastern European police procedural with a neat psycho-political twist. Good stuff!

Never read any Mieville....no wait, the "Moby Dick hunting giant moles from trains" one? Did I finish it? Can't remember. Noticed there was a Mieville book in the school library of all places. Japanese of course, probably a bit over my head.

[YellowStreak]

I've been reading stuff that may not float the boats of most board members, but are up my alley...

Worm - the first digital war - the story of the Conficker virus (I'm sure we all remember that one! What? Just me? OK.... )
Brute Force: Cracking the Data Encryption Standard - the story of how DES was cracked. Good cryo-history read.

[Primarch]

This evening I read:
Harry Potter and the Potrait of what Looked Like a Large Pile of Ash.
It's a short excerpt written by a predictive text program that was fed the Harry Potter series. It is absolute genius!
http://botnik.org/content/harry-potter.html

[me_in_japan]

jeezus H jiminy jumpluf, but that was godDAMN surreal.

[Primarch]

jeezus H jiminy jumpluf, but that was godDAMN surreal.

Yep, but funny as hell. I guess AI has a ways to go before it can replace real writers.

[me_in_japan]

Sooooo....

Has anybody else tried The Southern Reach trilogy, by Jeff Vandermeer? Book 1 was made into that netflix film Annihilation (which was very good, btw)

I've recently finished the trilogy, and they're...well, certainly good books. Well written, and very thought provoking. A bit too thought provoking, in fact. In fact, what da hell are they actually about? Anybody? Answers on a postcard, or later in this thread, please, cos I'm stumped. And I tried looking up other folks' ideas online. Ended up researching semiotics...


Anyway, they're definitely worth a read. My best description would be...

1. not like the movie. At all.
2. Lovecraftian. Kinda.
3. Make a very good attempt to show what might happen if humanity encountered a species that was totally unlike us. Like. Totally.
4. Creepy.
5. A bit too open to interpretation for my liking. I likes me a neat bow around my storylines, thank you very much.

[The Other Dave]

Sooooo....

Has anybody else tried The Southern Reach trilogy, by Jeff Vandermeer? Book 1 was made into that netflix film Annihilation (which was very good, btw)

They've been on my radar for a while but I haven't picked them up yet - that sounds right up my alley, though, sort of Danielewski-esque (if you haven't read House of Leaves, you should, although its own Lovecraftian (kinda), creepy, and open to interpretation vibes are dialed all the way up to 11).

[Konrad]

Got to say I'm piqued too. I don't think I've read any sci-fi since, I think it was TOD who pointed me at "Blindsight", a great, great, first contact story. Come to think of it, I don't think I've read anything since....... the complete works of H.P Lovecraft followed by some P.G Wodehouse last year I think......

[me_in_japan]

I may have a look at that Blindsight some time. As for SR, you can get all three for 1000en on the kindle, if you’re so inclined.

[Karantu]

I suppose this is the most recent book thread so even though it seems to have been quite a while since the last post I can't find anywhere better to post about Black Library novels so I'm posting here.

I just finished reading Alpharious: Head of the Hydra and even though it seemed a bit short I enjoyed reading it. No spoilers but as you could probably guess from the title it goes into Alpharious' backstory and I would recommend reading it if you're interested in either the Alpha Legion or pre-heresy events.

Also I love the limited edition version that I got, and it is probably the coolest collector's edition book I own, even compared to the Siege of Terra series.


The first picture is the "case" which contains the actual novel. For some reason the cover just reminds me of Lex Luthor.



Another book I read fairly recently was Brutal Kunnin. It's one of the rare books that includes the Ork perspective and every single line of Ork banter and shenanigans was great fun. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys the Ork way of life as it contains plenty of awesome moments of Orkish ingenuity. I didn't bother counting pages but at least half of the book is from non-Ork perspectives so just keep that in mind.