What's new

Books You've Read 2015 (1 Viewer)

DaveF

Moderator
Senior HTF Member
Joined
Mar 4, 2001
Messages
28,670
Location
Catfisch Cinema
Real Name
Dave
Station Eleven
Written by: Emily St. John Mandel
Narrated by: Kirsten Potter



A character study of a broken world. But not a story of any of its characters. Station eleven is in dire need of editing, with its majority of time spent on secondary characters.

At times, sub-arcs are compelling. But then the story changes character, timeline, and meanders of course again. Even the framing vehicle feels tacked on.

Read instead the superior The Passage (referenced within this book) and The Night Circus.

Recommendation: Don't read. You've got better books on your wish list.
 

Adam Lenhardt

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Feb 16, 2001
Messages
26,956
Location
Albany, NY
Interesting review, Dave. Station Eleven has been sitting on my "To Read" pile for a while now, but I just never seem to get to it. Doesn't sound like I should be in any rush.

I read:
Red Rising and Golden Son
by Pierce Brown

The first two books of a science fiction trilogy, with the third set to be published next year. The series is set in several centuries in the future, where a rigid caste system has persisted for so long, aided by eugenics and genetic manipulation, that the various classes of humanity are no longer even capable of reproducing outside their castes without medical intervention. The story starts on Mars, following a young miner named Darrow who is a member of the lowest Red class. The reveal of a great lie and the killing of someone very close to him propels him on a journey to challenge the underpinnings of the caste system itself. The first book was a rollicking, extremely confident debut that fits solidly in the mainstream of the classic science fiction canon. The second book muddies the waters substantially while diving into Frank Herbert's "wheels within wheels" political intrigue. I eagerly await the third and final book.
 

DavidJ

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Jul 23, 2001
Messages
4,365
Real Name
David
I've been thinking about Station 11. The wife was intrigued by it too, but that doesn't sound promising, Dave. Adam, I'm glad to read your positive take on Red Rising. I've been considering it for s while and this may be the last little nudge I need to start it.

I just finished Michael Connelly's The Burning Room and I loved it. It's one of the better Bosch novels in some time.
 

Josh Steinberg

Premium
Reviewer
Senior HTF Member
Joined
Jun 10, 2003
Messages
26,250
Real Name
Josh Steinberg
I used to read a ton, and in the last year I've slowed down a lot. I think part of it is that I used to have a 90-minute-each-way train commute to work every day, and now I'm down to about 15 minutes each way, so that's a lot of reading time that's not automatically part of my day anymore. But I really enjoy reading so I need to get back into the habit of doing it more.


At the beginning of the year I read "Return To Tomorrow" about the filming of the original "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" - it's an oral history that was written in 1979 but never published (until now) and is hundreds of pages of interviews with the cast, crew, studio, effects people.. really, it's got just about anything and everything there is to know about that movie. It was a fantastic read. Unfortunately it's only available through a website called Creature Features that wasn't very good at customer service, at least with this one title - I pre-ordered it in July for an October release. I was billed immediately in July (most pre-order places don't charge you the full price until the item ships), but okay, that's not a big deal.. the bigger deal was that the book didn't ship until either the last week of December or first week of January, can't remember which, and that they sent absolutely no notification whatsoever that it was being delayed, and their website wasn't really updated frequently to pass that information along. The book was a real treasure, but the process of getting it seemed a little sketchy.


So far this year, I've been reading Marc Cushman's three volume set about the making of the original "Star Trek" series called "These Are The Voyages". I heard about it thanks to the Star Trek Trivia thread on HTF. I'm in the middle of the third/final volume now. As far as books go, they're pretty schizophrenic - some of it is well researched and really enjoyable to read, and some of it is poorly researched and painful to read... and it goes back and forth between the two frequently. Whenever the author is citing primary sources and publishing original memos and correspondence between the producers and writers and network people, the book is gold - it's absolutely fascinating to see what went into making all of those episodes on tight budgets and tighter deadlines and how the challenges sometimes contributed to (and sometimes hurt) the creativity of the show. On the other hand, when the author is interjecting his own opinions about the episodes, and making ridiculous claims about those episodes, the book becomes repetitive and painfully dull. (For instance, he frequently notes that while an episode was good, all of the alien characters happened to be speaking in English, which he doesn't think is believable, and says takes away from the episode... even though he covers it at the beginning of the book that the network mandated aliens speak in English because subtitling was ridiculously expensive at the time and it was easier for audiences to just hear English, every time there's an alien in an episode not speaking an alien language, he keeps insisting that it's a major oversight or makes the episode impossible to believe. I have to say that in over two decades of watching Star Trek, I never even thought about this until I read his complaints. Some episodes of the original series are great. Some are less than great. That the alien characters speak in English was not one of the things that made a good episode good or a bad one bad.) The author also completely misunderstands how Nielsen ratings worked back then and what they mean, so his endless pages of analysis about the ratings isn't really credible, which then hurts his other arguments. So basically, any primary source the author cites or quotes (like the production memos) are wonderful, but anytime the author is presenting theories or opinions of his own, it's painful to read. I got my copy of the books on my Kindle for $10 each, but I see the hard copies are $30. The book might be worth $10, but if I had paid $30, I might be feeling ripped off. It desperately needs an editor.


I also just finished the new Billy Joel biography by Fred Schruers called "Billy Joel: The Definitive Biography". Unfortunately I didn't find it to be very definitive. He had exclusive interviews with Joel and others, but Billy's quotes aren't very insightful (hard to tell if Billy was being evasive or if the interviewer wasn't asking the right questions, maybe a little bit of both), and the scope of the book rarely goes beyond the surface details. Billy Joel is one of my favorite musicians and I was really excited to learn more about him.. but I don't think I heard a single anecdote or story in the book that I hadn't previously read in another interview or magazine article. Very disappointing, especially when compared to Peter Ames Carlin's book about Bruce Springsteen ("Bruce") which was far more definitive.


I haven't read any fiction books this year yet, I should probably get on that.


P.S. Great idea for a thread!
 

DaveF

Moderator
Senior HTF Member
Joined
Mar 4, 2001
Messages
28,670
Location
Catfisch Cinema
Real Name
Dave
Adam Lenhardt said:
Interesting review, Dave. Station Eleven has been sitting on my "To Read" pile for a while now, but I just never seem to get to it. Doesn't sound like I should be in any rush.
Tastes vary, and Station 11 has gotten early, positive press. It's not a terrible book. But it's not a great book. The beginning is terribly dull and takes too long to get going -- insofar as it does. Mostly, I think are many, much better books to be read, and suggest you read them first.

But if you really want a meandering post-apocalyptic tale that doesn't have a driving narrative nor a specific protagonist or antagonist, or even focuses on the putative main characters, but is mostly about the experiences of people before and after...this is for you :)
 

DavidJ

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Jul 23, 2001
Messages
4,365
Real Name
David
Any other HTFers (which sounds kind of bad---them?! They're a bunch of HTFers! But I digress) on Goodreads?
 

Malcolm R

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Feb 8, 2002
Messages
25,081
Real Name
Malcolm
Just starting "The Great Zoo of China" by Matthew Reilly. It seems to be a version of "Jurassic Park," but with dragons.
 

macfan601

Stunt Coordinator
Joined
Dec 13, 2014
Messages
74
Location
Fenton, Michigan, USA
Real Name
Robert
I am currently reading, "and now, back to mannix". This book was researched and written by one of HTF's own members, JoAnn M. Paul. Not only is it a great read about the retro TV show but the author does a great job of applying it to real life. I highly recommend it.
 

DaveF

Moderator
Senior HTF Member
Joined
Mar 4, 2001
Messages
28,670
Location
Catfisch Cinema
Real Name
Dave
Adam Lenhardt said:
I read:Red Rising and Golden Sonby Pierce Brown
The first two books of a science fiction trilogy, with the third set to be published next year.
Aha! I Realized I've got Red Rising in my wish list. Glad to see confirmation it's good. Will listen to it this summer, then.
 

ponset

Screenwriter
Joined
May 24, 2013
Messages
1,315
Real Name
scott
Just finished DOC SAVAGE: The Ice Genius by Will Murray.

Doc and his crew while in Mongolian learn that Japan attacks Pear Harbor.

Setting them on the path to fight the Japanese but also a 500 year old Monglian Warlord.

Very entertaining but its also long winded and somewhat repetitive.
 

Dheiner

Gazoo
Senior HTF Member
Joined
Jun 13, 2001
Messages
3,715
Location
'skonsen
Real Name
John Dhein
We lost one of my favorite authors, today.


Rest in Peace, Terry.


"IT'S TIME TO GO, TERRY."
 

DaveF

Moderator
Senior HTF Member
Joined
Mar 4, 2001
Messages
28,670
Location
Catfisch Cinema
Real Name
Dave
"The end of the world changes everything, in law enforcement terms".


The Last Policeman, by Ben H. Winters

http://www.audible.com/pd/Mysteries-Thrillers/The-Last-Policeman-Audiobook/B008H2WTXE


I'm not a detective / mystery reader, so while this was recommended on a podcast I like, I bought it with some trepidation. To my surprised delight, it was marvelous. The writing crackled as the author create an odd juxtaposition: an earth-killer asteroid will hit in about nine months; meanwhile junior detective Henry Palace is working a suicide case that seems hinky to him. It is a small story, about a fairly normal, globally inconsequential person set contrasted against the looming end of the world.


There's been a good deal of post-apocalptic stories in recent years. My previous read, Station 11, is just the latest example. The Last Policeman makes this conceit fresh by working in a pre-Apocalyptic World. The end is near. Society is fracturing. Businesses are failing; technology-based services are becoming erratic. The economy is stressed. And yet, people still go to work, do their jobs. And Henry Palace has an unsolved case to work on.


Just because it's the end of the world, there's no excuse for poor manners or antisocial behaviors.


While the story is self-contained, it's the start of a series (a trilogy, I think). I wholly enjoyed this audio book and look forward to the second.
 

DaveF

Moderator
Senior HTF Member
Joined
Mar 4, 2001
Messages
28,670
Location
Catfisch Cinema
Real Name
Dave
I've completely given up on all hopes of reading (on my Kindle) "A Wise Man's Fear", book two in Patrick Rothfuss' series. I bought the Audible version last night, finally got the 1GB (!!!) file downloaded today, and will listen to it. It's 42 hrs, so will probably take a couple of months. But I'm looking forward to finally enjoying the second in the alleged trilogy.
 

davidHartzog

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Aug 17, 2004
Messages
2,832
Real Name
John smith
Erik Larsen's Dead Wake, on the sinking of the Lusitania, based on extensive research, is well-written and engrossing. Adrien McKinty's violent Gun Street Girl is an effective thriller set in 1980s Northetn Ireland.
 

Richard Gallagher

Reviewer
Senior HTF Member
Joined
Dec 9, 2001
Messages
4,275
Location
Fishkill, NY
Real Name
Rich Gallagher
I'm currently reading Valley of Death: The Tragedy at Dien Bien Phu That Led America into the Vietnam War by Ted Morgan.


It's impossible to understand how the U.S. got caught up in the quagmire of Vietnam without understanding what happened to the French.
 

DavidJ

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Jul 23, 2001
Messages
4,365
Real Name
David
I like Larsen's books, David, so I'm planning on reading Dead Wake. I'm glad to hear it is good.

I just finished Red Rising. I have mixed feelings about it. It was a true page-turner that I couldn't really put down (read it over a couple of nights staying up later than I intended both times), but it is quite dark. I found it darker than even The Hunger Games.
 

Dennis Nicholls

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Oct 5, 1998
Messages
11,392
Location
Boise, ID
Real Name
Dennis
I recently finished reading Without Marx or Jesus by Jean-François Revel. This was a widely debated book on college campuses back when I was in college 1971 - 1975. His thesis is that human progress will only come under US leadership: not from the Communist bloc, not from Europe, not from the third world, and certainly not from his decadent homeland France. Quite a tour de force from a French intellectual. Too many math and physics classes for me to have read it back then, but I sought it out after reading his more recent follow-on book Anti-Americanism published in 2002.


It's interesting how controversial books can be widely debated in college coffee houses then ignored by the following generation. Back then Without Marx or Jesus was up there with BF Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity and Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom. Some of my younger relatives have never heard of any of these works. But then my own generation paid little attention to Mark Twain's Letters From the Earth or Freud's Moses and Monotheism.
 

Dennis Nicholls

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Oct 5, 1998
Messages
11,392
Location
Boise, ID
Real Name
Dennis
Richard Gallagher said:
I'm currently reading Valley of Death: The Tragedy at Dien Bien Phu That Led America into the Vietnam War by Ted Morgan.


It's impossible to understand how the U.S. got caught up in the quagmire of Vietnam without understanding what happened to the French.
The study of history is a never-ending saga. France has taken a long time - possibly since 1815 - to discover it's not a military superpower any more. France's fall in WWII followed upon the US and the UK reneging on military guarantees made to France after WWI. Churchill's The Gathering Storm contains a useful and very readable summary of the follies of the post-WWI era leading up to WWII - have you read it?


I'd really like a suggestion for a history of the Sykes-Picot "agreement" between France and Britain dividing up the Ottoman Empire. Basically France got Syria and the UK got Iraq and Palestine. Meanwhile Italy took Libya. France and Britain tried to enlist the US in their scheme by trying to give the US a mandate in Armenia but the US said no to that idea. Most of the problems in that part of the world date from these actions.


Has anyone read the recent book by James Barr, A Line in the Sand: The Anglo-French Struggle for the Middle East, 1914-1948 ? It might be what I'm looking for.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Forum statistics

Threads
356,712
Messages
5,121,143
Members
144,147
Latest member
cennetkaralowa
Recent bookmarks
0
Top