More thoughts on Gathering Storm, Duke? I am trying to finish up my current book to get to it!

I have been reading the so called classic 'How to win friends and influence people' by Dale Carnegie. Maybe i had too high expectations or because of the way i read it, but the ideas presented are nothing different from what can be found by a 2 second google search.

I may have just broke the first principle 'don't criticise', but I will re-read it as advised to see if my opinion changes (and my life!)

Any other's read this book and 'did it chage your life'?

Any books you recommend on confidence building, social interaction?

the thing about _how to win friends . . ._ is that is was so huge all subsequent advice has been influenced by it so now it looks like nothing special, but at the time it was a bit of a revelation. kind of like _theory of poker_

Just finished Mona Lisa Overdrive. I'm still trying to figure out exactly what happened from the end of Neuromancer onward.

Like, in Neuromancer, the plot was all up in your grill pretty much the whole time, but in Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive it feels like all the really big **** is happening right at the edge of each character's periphery, and you have to piece together all their individual viewpoints to get the big picture. I think I have the main idea, but I can't get all the details worked out.

that sounds about right. i had to read "neuromancer" 3 times before i had the vaguest idea what i was reading. i can't recall if i had the same confusion with CZ and MLO; i think by then i had a pretty good idea what WG was trying to say/do.

it might be time to read neuromancer again. maybe this time i'll actually understand it.

Finishing up with two books right now...The Time Traveler's Wife and the last Burke novel, Another Life. Both pretty good. Looking forward to starting Hyperion soon.

Pretty good job by Sanderson filling in. You can tell a Sanderson chapter (or partial), though, the dialog suffers and the motivations for the protagonist of the chapter sometimes don't track. Jordan's attention to detail (painful for some) is what make these books great. For those of you saying Sanderson is a better writer than Jordan you're crazy. It's like comparing any solid 300 hitting baseball player to Albert Pujols. Yeah, Sanderson may have a better batting stance, but Jordan hits 'em out of the park.

I tried to read it slow to savor it but I find I'm blowing through it (page 570 in a week). Not much seems to be happening like in most Jordan's books except books 1,2,3 and 11, but it could end with a helluva climax (or not). It doesn't matter to me though, I've waited 4 years for this and it's a great journey.

I take back my opening sentence. Great job filling in, all things considered, Mr. Sanderson.

I don't think you can judge Sanderson entirely on this book. It's a monumentally difficult task to write someone else's story and attempt to use their voice. You need to pick up Mistborn and give it a read - I really think the writing there is better than Jordan's.

Not the storytelling, mind you. I love WoT and, like you, can't get enough of that world.

James

Just finished The Time Traveler's Wife...it was very good...incredibly well-written and moving. Quite satisfying all the way around.

I picked up Hamlet, going to finish it tonight. Haven't read a whole lot of shakespeare, hopefully it will be good.

I've read this thought it was good but slowed down alot near the end

Just finished The Amazing Adventures of Kavaleir and Clay. I enjoyed the book but I didn't get the most out of it since some life events caused me to take half a year to read it. Very good characters, and I love a book that you can like every character.
Very soild all the way through.

Next book up is Brief Interviews With Hideous Men. Maybe a short story book is a good idea since I have been having trouble finding time to read.

Ken

Interesting...I thought it was near-perfect for the last third of the book....

I just finished this and a "Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again". Both had me loling (the latter more than the former) and I pretty much never lol at literature/written things*. "Brief Interviews" was a bit uneven, in that some of the stories were, imo, tedious and weird and not really much fun to read. Some, on the other hand, were great.

On a related note, I now have the word "avuncular" stuck in my head, and a few days after zipping through the last of "A Supposedly Fun Thing" I got this weird and powerful urge to read more DFW. And so but I went to pick up "Consider the Lobster" from the library and couldn't find it on the shelf** and I panicked and instead grabbed "Oblivion." I haven't really gotten into it yet.

I'm also about half way through "Dubliners" now. It's pretty good.




*(for some weird reason; for the most part, only really stupid internet **** gets more than a smile and a "that's clever/funny/awesome").

**(that library is a bit of a cluter****; I have like a thirty percent success at finding what I came for rate, which really is absurd since they're goddamn books and should stay put; there's like no acceptable reason things should be this difficult to find).

You can never go wrong with Hemingway.

After that, Carver. Munro. Richard Ford. And, of course, as mentioned above, Joyce's Dubliners.

Dom, totally agree! Go read the negative Amazon reviews and prepare to be amazed. TTW was one of the most satisfying books I read this year.

James

I loved Kavalier and Clay also. One book that I universally recommend to basically any demographic.

James

Just started reading Catch-22. Liking it so far.

I wrote a post about this several pages back, but Gargantua and Pantagruel is hilarious, and amazing. Rabelais is like the Douglas Adams of the 16th century.

I just finished reading it. IMO, its the best book in the series since at least Crown of Swords, maybe since the first 3 (which imo are all approximately equal and all the best in the series). Sanderson is just a better writer than Jordan is, he writes better dialogue, he writes better action sequences. Its not obvious which parts are Sanderson and which parts were already there from Jordan, but the book is just much more fast paced, more engaging and...better, than most of the last 5 or so books in the series. I was really starting to get a little tired of WoT, tbh, but was obv going to keep reading it until it finished. Now I'm actually excited about it again, and cant wait for book 2 of the series finale.

I feel like I disagree with you on every specific point you raise, and yet we come to the same conclusion. Weird.

Seems like the very common tendency to have nostalgia for things that were simply because they used to be different.

See: any time "the good old days" are mentioned anywhere.

finished the prologue - found it a little confusing. I was like, "Oh yeah, Nynaeve! Oh, the forsaken! Oh right, the Seanchan!" I might go to like a WoT website to get myself fully caught up. But man, I am pumped.

Thats what I did, it has been a little while since I read most of them, so I just went to Wiki and read the synopses for all of the books before I read it, just to refresh my memory.

Prologue is, as always, the worst, most boring part of the book, and could probably just be skipped. The first 100 pages or so is just ok, but it really picks up after that.

Agreed. I didn't put the book down until I was finished with it. I even took it with me to Six Flags so I could keep reading while waiting in line! I can't wait to start her new book, Her Fearful Symmetry. I read the first few pages and am happy to say Time Travelers Wife does not look like a fluke. She is a wonderful writer.