This Old Neon Forum

I just finished Jack London's The Sea-Wolf. This was a surprisingly engaging book set on the sea. The main character, Humphrey, is a gentleman whose ship sinks. He is picked up by a ship of seal hunters. Their captain is an intellectual but also amoral and often cruel. Humphrey ends up spending a considerable time integrating himself into the ship and the lifestyle that goes along with it. During the process, he becomes more independent and mature - even courageous. It took a few turns I wasn't expecting but overall it was a fun and engaging story though not mind-blowing. I enjoyed it and will probably read it again someday. Next up is my re-read of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter.

Currently reading John Dies at the End by David Wong.

It's a fun comedy horror book by one of the cracked editors. It's nothing deep, but I'm really enjoying it. It's pretty funny, and occasionally actually creepy. My one complaint is the book feels pretty episodic. It was originally published in sections online, and you can really tell. It probably works better as a series of short stories instead of one novel. Still I'm enjoying it. I'll probably watch the (really low budget) movie once i finish.

I'm also starting Earth by David Brin at a friends recommendation. I'm only a few chapters in so far, but it seems good.


After I finish these I'll probably be starting Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy or some Star Trek book.

I just finished Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter for my second time. I thoroughly enjoyed it, partially to my surprise, as I recall having lukewarm feelings when I read it for my first time more than twenty years ago. Either I'm older and the content was more engaging to me or it is better written than I had understood it to be. It's probably a combination of the two. Anyway, the last chapter was weak and fluffy but most of the story was surprisingly fun and interesting. I plowed through the introduction this time to learn that Hester Prynne, the main characer of the novel that is cast out of regular society in a Puritanical community for having committed adultery, was a real person and that the scarlet 'A' she had to wear each day was also real. I wonder who Nathaniel left that to when he passed... Or perhaps the introduction was another story disguised as reality. I suspect the former but either way I did not know about that, as far as I can recall, from my first reading.

Next up per Spore's vote: Gulliver's Travels!

I'm currently reading through James S. A. Corey's Expanse series. It's a fairly fun sci-fi run that's not quite as heavy on the science aspect as I would like (although the fact that it acknowledges rocks being thrown at planets as being better super-weapons than giant space stations with mining lasers is a plus). So far it's been rather charming, and the characters have been enjoyable as well.

Kanti3000 wrote:Currently reading John Dies at the End by David Wong.

It's a fun comedy horror book by one of the cracked editors. It's nothing deep, but I'm really enjoying it. It's pretty funny, and occasionally actually creepy. My one complaint is the book feels pretty episodic. It was originally published in sections online, and you can really tell. It probably works better as a series of short stories instead of one novel.

Having read both the online and the published versions, I can say that I prefer his original before they made changes to push it out in physical form. It's still a pretty funny read, though.

Drauks wrote:I'm currently reading through James S. A. Corey's Expanse series.

That one is making the round I guess
Read the first two books sometime in the past after someone (I believe it was Vic) mentioned them here and if I remember correctly Share read at least one of them too.
My summary: Entertaining but not really mind-blowing. I was somewhat dissapointed with the second book though. It introduced at least two kinda cool characters (one is basically Brienne of Tarth in SPACE!) but it felt like I read lots of it before as it shares the same plot stucture as the first book, minus the climax...
I have the third book too, didn't bother to read it yet however.

Kiwi the Tortoise wrote:That one is making the round I guess
Read the first two books sometime in the past after someone (I believe it was Vic) mentioned them here and if I remember correctly Share read at least one of them too.
My summary: Entertaining but not really mind-blowing. I was somewhat dissapointed with the second book though. It introduced at least two kinda cool characters (one is basically Brienne of Tarth in SPACE!) but it felt like I read lots of it before as it shares the same plot stucture as the first book, minus the climax...
I have the third book too, didn't bother to read it yet however.

I just finished Leviathan Wakes today, and will be starting the second book shortly. I'm giving it a go at a friend's request, and I'll definitely agree with you as it's not blowing me away. It is enjoyable, though I'm not sure if it will spark enough interest in me to look into Daniel Abraham and/or Ty Franck's other works.

I ended up reading all three books and the novellas. I enjoyed the hell out of LW, but the rest of the series is totally disposable and felt pumped out. Very disappointing.

Okay in the past few days I finished J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It was a pretty decent book. She certainly got a lot better at writing as the series progressed. She still has some irksome habits, though. Disposable characters and scenes...the subtlety of a jackhammer....arbitrary narrative choices....anyway, I did enjoy it and am glad to have read the whole series.

I also started and finished Robert Coates' The Eater of Darkness. This was an odd little book where a gentleman left his family and moved to the US and ends up getting wound up in serial killings using this strange invention that can melt peoples' insides invisibly from a great distance away. He and his partner in crime end up planning a bank robbery as police and several other folks work feverishly to try to figure out what is going on and who is behind it. The voice of the book was strange and the story itself was also strange. It had some quite beatiful passages buried throughout it though. This had been recommended to me by our own Lunario St. Moon, who I have yet to successfully convince to create an account here ;b I'm working on it.

Okay, I'm still chipping away at my Kindle book, Caleb Williams, and now I think I'm going to start a new (to me) Heinlein book I got for Christmas / my birthday for my next physical book. Good times...good times...

Oh yikes - I didn't remark on the other two books I finished. I re-read Gulliver's Travels and enjoyed it even though I don't care for the author's voice. It's still a fun read and the topics it portrays indirectly are pretty interesting. I also read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. This was a pretty fun book and was my first read through of it. It's certainly one of the better novels written for children out there. I enjoyed it. I wonder how much it varies from the Disney adaptation of it...it's been so long since I've seen it, am not sure...

I finished A Dance With Dragons last month and enjoyed it quite a bit. Both Dragons and Feast suffer from GRRM separating the characters by books and not time. It wasn't a confusing read, but the two books share a lot of similar themes which would have been appreciated better if the stories were together. Not to mention the title A Feast for Crows matches the 5th book better than A Dance With Dragons does (before splitting up the forth book, A Dance With Dragons was supposed to be the title of the next book in the series, what is now the 6th upcoming book).

Comparitively, this book did not have as many ground breaking moments as the third book did, but at the same time, this book was all about reacting to what happened in the 3rd book, which I found to be even more captivating. This was the first book where I didn't feel like any of the chapters dragged. In AGOT it was Bran, in ACOK and ASOS it was Catelyn, in AFFC it was Brienne. This may be due to the fact that the content in this book has not yet been covered by the show, excluding Bran who benefited by differing a little from the book. It also had the more interesting characters compared to the 4th book.