Talk about a series that falls off a cliff. First 2 books were really good but then it turned into these 1000 page garbage philosophical masturbation nonsense where nothing ever happens.

Agreed. I read the first 4 or 5 of them, but the last one I started has been sitting half finished on the bookshelf for years.

I have just started Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen series. About 20% of the way through book 1. Has anyone read this series? Am I wasting my time? I've heard the first book is slow and confusing, and it certainly is, but it's worth pushing through the first half of book 1?

I have never finished Gardens of the Moon but I don't have anything bad to say about it. I was in the middle of it when Dance with Dragons came out and I've never gotten back to it. I might someday. I enjoy Erikson's writing style quite a bit, there's just sooooo much going on in the first book, and then 12,000 pages more of soooo much going on in the subsequent books that it's all a bit overwhelming.

The Malazan Reread of the Fallen on Tor helped me know wtf was going on, strong recommendation to read their summaries after each couple of chapters. Amazing how much stuff they point out that I had no idea was even there.

Does that Reread have spoilers??

Policy is that the summaries (the stuff written by Bill & Amanda) are spoiler-free, the comments are wide open and have spoilers.

Righto. Will have to use that.

Extremely loud n incredibly close trailer is out

Thanks for the review. Finished Goon Squad, enjoyed it but didn't love it as much as others [vs Rules of Civility I think I liked more than it probably deserves.]

As for Eugenides name-dropping Danceteria, [or Palladium, Roxy, original Sound Factory] -- it's begun to dawn on me that these will live on mainly as literary/historical references that freeze a moment of time, like Woodstock, Monterey Pop, and the punk scene in NYC.

One wonders if he attended a lot of techno parties in Detroit [and of course Goon Squad is all about music].

Quicksilver probably up next, I guess.

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus - History of Americas before Columbus.. Wow very interesting. Well written. Easy to read. More examples of scientists clinging to past beliefs worse than religous leaders. Only half way through...

The first half is full of eyeopening "it seems obvious now" moments.

Basiclly says "most the commonly taught histories of the Americas are BS based on incorrect facts and faulty assumptions...then details evidence discovered in the last 20 years to back it up".

The book's main arguement is that the Americas were already heavily populated when Columbus arrived. These people possessed technology very advanced that was not, as much of history tells, puny and weak compared to what Europeans had developed. Agricultural methods were advanced and very productive, providing the basis for the establishment of large sedentary populations, much larger than previously thought. These large populations and societies were mainly destroyed by disease prior to major contact with the euros. It is a lot more interesting than this sounds.

Sounds like the politics forum

Just started a reread of Candide by Voltaire

Pretty sure all translations should be the same except footnotes, so if you own this book, read the 1st sentence of the 3rd paragraph.

I miniloled.

Reading "Did Marco Polo Go to China? " by Frances Wood a bit meh on the entertainment value and halfway through the argument is weak, however the discussion of the difficulty in translation, cultural references, non-standard spelling, language changes and such is very interesting.

It leads you to laugh at those that say they know exactly what a sentence, phrase or even word means in a 1000+ plus year old book. Even with a 900 yr old very popular one like Marco's( there are 400+ originals around....although they are all different) agreeing on words, names and places is tough.

and in his book, Marco says he didn't write it. He dictated it to a fellow prisioner(a romance writer) while in jail.

And I do like the book. But I like it as a history of travel, people and authors of the times.

A+

I finished reading Mary Karr's Lit, the third of Karr’s memoirs (I haven't read the second, Cherry, about her adolescent sexuality and probably won't). Though I read it because I was curious about her Wallace connection, that proved to be an extremely minor feature in a book that chiefly focuses on her alcoholism as an adult and her early marriage and its failures, which became a bit repetitious. The descriptions of her experiences in AA in the middle section of the book are pretty engaging—and since I have learned so much about AA from being half-way through Infinite Jest I'm beginning to have a strong sense of what their meetings and philosophy are like, at least from the perspective of those who've been helped. She records a couple of really funny confessions, including a story about a housewife who hid her whiskey in the body cavity of a frozen turkey in her basement freezer where she could sneak down a get a few sips while cooking, etc.—and how, one evening, when she couldn't get it free of the frozen turkey, she tipped the bird up and chugged from it! There's also a story of a young man who buried liquor in his backyard so, after he got out of rehab, he could get drunk without his mother realizing it by taking a straw and a beach towel out for the day and pretending to lie in the sun while draining the bottles. (She met Wallace through AA, no surprise, and though they fell in love they couldn't keep it together for more than a few months--also no surprise.)

The last quarter, which deals with her religious conversion (to Roman Catholicism!), left me feeling that she's pretty credulous (despite her insistence on how long it took to overcome her rational and agnostic views). She seems to fall easily into an acceptance of petitionary prayer and to think of good things in her life as if “God had a plan” for her—even though she mentions the problems with these views. She also dances around the problem of evil, etc. At the same time, her new-found religious beliefs are what get her through the day, where previously she'd been intoxicant-dependent or cripplingly depressed (and sometimes both).

Between the serious portrait of a spiritual seeker in The Marriage Plot and this book, I'm thinking that even among those not part of the religious right, faith in a higher power remains strong in the US.

I just finished Terrorists in Love: The Real Lives of Islamic Terrorists by Ken Ballen and Peter Bergen.
In the book, we follow the lives of six islamists that Ballen interviewed. All of the stories are very interesting. Several of them shows the corruption of Al Qaeda and how it drove a jihadist to try to convince youths to not join Al Qaeda. One of this, drove one of the narrators to becoming more fundamentalist, since Al Qaeda wasn't Muslim enough. To another character it drove him to religion, but a religion of peace.

Perhaps the most interesting chapter for me dealt with the corruption in the Pakistani government. From the book, it seems crystal clear that the government was keeping Osama safe (also the new Taliban). It is quite troubling given that Pakistan has a nuclear weapon.

got about 190 pgs to go in Glamorama. I feel at times like BEE is leveling me like the movie Funny Games is meant to its viewers. I am enjoying it and it seems obvious to me who his targets are, I am enjoying reading it, but I'm not so sure I'd call it a great book, yet. That said, I've gotten through the first 350ish pages pretty easily.

just finished "the road" and "no country for old men" by mccarthy after reading the suggestions in here and i loved both of them. might try blood meridian or suttree soon. now im reading "white noise" after seeing alot of recommendations in the thread but not really feeling it so far.

My signed personalised copy of The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson arrived yesterday. I'm pretty excited about it. I'm about 10% of the way in, and it's already extremely interesting.

It's a standalone novel set in his awesome Mistborn world. He knew I was Australian from previous correspondence with him, so his personalisation was pretty funny.

Very cool, Klavs

I've read a lot of McCarthy, but almost in reverse chronological order. The second book of the border trilogy killed my desire to read anymore of his work, but after purchasing my Kindle the first book I bought was "The Orchard Keeper". I think I will try the Blarg method and read through McCarthy in chronological order and will probably reread Blood Meridian and then stop.

I'm like 75% finished The Orchard Keeper and the writing makes it fly by sometimes, and at other times I have to reread sections because I didn't understand them, but in general the story is lackluster and not much is happening at all. Great writing, poor story telling is my take of McCarthy's first novel. It may change in the next 25%, but I doubt it.

I came at McCarthy pretty scatter-shot too, I think. Everything up to Blood Meridian is really Faulknerian imo (which isn't a bad thing, but it can feel a bit, I don't know, strange I guess (Suttree is fantastic though)). After that he seems to pursue more novel/varied narrative territory. Really can't wait for his next book; parts of the Road were so luridly fascinating that I really hope that in his old age he goes a bit off the rails and just starts writing with bizarre, crotchety abandon.

Well, fwiw, 80% of Americans self-identify as Christian, Catholic, or 'Other' Religion in the latest major survey [2008] on the topic. 15% as "No Religion" but only 0.9% gave 'Athiest' and 0.7% gave 'Agnostic,' so, yeah, a vast majority of Americans believe in a higher power. [5% refused to answer the question].
2p2 is obviously not remotely indicative of Americans at large.

The 'none' group seems to have grown the fastest over the past 20 years, almost doubling since 1990.

Re-reading Middlesex currently.

Just impulse-bought King's Under the Dome. I haven't ready any King in at least 20 years...but I like the premise of this one.

John Grisham's The Litigators.