Just finished The First Law series by Joe Abercrombie.

I thought it was a fantastic read (thanks for whomever suggested it). I'm not sure I really enjoyed the ending. I'm going to go back and read the last couple hundred pages later in the week.

Started "The Black Swan" by Taleb today.

Just got Food Rules, An Eater's Manual, by Michael Pollan. Only 140 pages. Looks like an interesting quick skim. It was only something like 5 or 6 bucks at Amazon, so I figured what the hell.

Is that the same guy that wrote The Omnivore's Dilemma? I have skimmed through that book several times. It is a very interesting read.

Yep same guy.

Really enjoyed this nonfiction, one of those you can hammer out in a day without getting tired of it:

The Unlikely Disciple
By Kevin Roose

Cliffs: Roose is an undergrad English major at Brown wanting to get into journalism. Decides to spend one semester at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University undercover. An interesting, perceptive, and honest look at the similarities and differences between his two worlds.

website: http://www.kevinroose.com/

Heh, undercover at Liberty U, rich concept. Thank God he wasn't exposed and burned at the stake.

heh, what did you think of this book? I liked it. Doc Sportello was quite the character. A very different book, but enjoyable, not so much for the storyline, but more so the conversations and situations.

Recently finished Son of Hamas, it was decent. Look it up if Israel/Palestine stuff interests you. The son of a founder of Hamas, crosses the line to spy for Israel and converts to Christianity.

Now reading Underworld by Don Delillo (pg 260something of nearly 900). Cranked out Point Omega in a day, liked it.

has anyone read this?
does it get better? his character development just seems so forced and redundant im tempted to put it down.

Fantasy writer+first name Terry=kiss of death

thats so weird...everyone was telling me this was on par with game of thrones/wheel of time...

this is a cool story i guess but theres so many holes and just so many things he wants me to just assume and not question that its hard to focus on it without roadbumps.

like we have some boy whos dad was supposed to have just died...you wouldnt be able to tell that outside of him saying "Richard's father died" over and over. Hes not distraught, sad....hes in the middle of the woods for some reason and somehow he just "knows" that this girl he sees is going to be killed because the men have "that look on their face" pff..

Now im about halfway through and ths kid whips out his sword at every opportunity and somehow has become a rage-filled psycho in the last 100 pages. imo it kinda takes a bit more than a quarter of a book to completely change a characters entire personality...even if theres a couple monsters on his heels.

imo it just wasnt thought out well... they needed a someone to read this with no knowledge of the character before editing. Hes taking WAY too many liberties and making me work far too hard to keep up.

is fantasy really THAT hard of a genre? i mean christ you get to make up everything...the least you can do is help me relate to your characters and not think of them like afterthought video game characters.

One of the great things about being a popular author is that the editor has little say in what you publish. One of the terrible things is that that can lead to things like the above.

But that is precisely what makes fantasy so hard.

I'd just put the book down. I read the first 8 books in that series and they get worse and worse. I mean you have a guy named Arthur.... i mean Luke Skywalker... err. I mean Richard with some daddy issues. He has this elderly grandfather type wizardish guy named Merlin i mean Obiwan.. ARGH I mean Zed. This old man gives him Excalibur/a Light Saber/the Sword of Truth which operates by different rules than a regular sword.

The thing that drove me nuts is it seemed every situation Richard gets into has to be the worst thing Goodkind can imagine. Then you have these ridiculous parts where Richard is all like "I am going to attack that castle" and Kahlan is all like "I think that's a bad idea" and Richard is like "No it's not" and Kahlan is like "Yes it is" and 3 pages later Richard is like "No it's not" and Kahlan is like...

ok im done.... if you cant come up with a better name for an indigenous race of people other than "the mud men" then you have no place writing fantasy. why do people pimp this series so much? Its like i'll get into a dozen pages or so then WHAM! something stupid... ok, ok, ok, ok. WHAM! over and over.

...and yeah this feels like someone just thought of a bunch of parts of existing books, put them all together and rewrote them.

D+ (At least some of it was readable.)

Is that a knock at Terry Pratchett?
I kind of got bored of diskworld eventually but did enjoy the first five or so I read.

lol cant stand any of the terry pratchett ive given a shot.

Books completed so far this year:
Notes from Underground by Dostoyevsky
The Trial by Kafka
Invitation to a Beheading by Nabokov
The Plague by Camus

And I'm currently reading Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison.

underworld makes me feel like i'm getting no where, both by page count and whats actually happening in it, not that i don't like it, so...

i picked up

finkel's

the good soldiers

today

It gets worse, after the first book it basically turns into a freshman level philosophy/politics essay. I slogged through the entire series but wouldnt recommend it.

It was actually a knock at Terry Brooks. From the way you described Goodkind, that's who I thought you were talking about at first.

I have never read anything by Terry Pratchett. I have had several folks tell me he is quite funny.

jherward you should really use spoilers

I dont really care but someone else could be reading it and thats one hell of a spoiler.

i heard the same...they were wrong
I kinda felt like i was walking in on some inside joke.

the lost city of Z- a real life tale of the search for a lost amazonian city...really great so far.

I read one thing by Terry Pratchett. Never wanted to read another. Definitely agree with the feeling that you are walking in on some inside joke.

Good call,I'll ask a mod to change it.