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Author Topic: Books&The likes  (Read 11480 times)
Lukipela
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Re: Books&The likes
« Reply #15 on: December 30, 2003, 10:57:56 pm »

Hmm, I rather liked the Death Gate cycle, well the first four books anyway...

Pratchett however is of a completely different class, that is true. Quite the genius.

Since were just dropping names, has anyone read John Conolly? Not SciFi/Fantasy, but thriller. He writes some quite spooky, yet exciting books, amongst which his 3rd book "A killing Kind" is an absolute masterpiece.

For those of you wohol like books who play like action movies (relaxing and not too many plot twists) I'd recommend Clive Cussler. Not a pinnacle of literature, but his books are a good way to pass a rainy afternoon. And he does write good action scenes.

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Re: Books&The likes
« Reply #16 on: January 04, 2004, 09:35:35 am »

Some of my favorite books have been the Ender series, Harry Potter series, The Lord of the Rings, and many by Tom Clancy.
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Re: Books&The likes
« Reply #17 on: January 05, 2004, 12:17:46 pm »

I forgot about the Harry Potter books. If you've not read them you should, you'll likely be surprised by them.

I also like alternate history books. Has anyone here read anything written by Harry Turtledove? Some of his work is pure 'what if' history, where some crucial decision that went wrong in real history was done right in the alternate timeline (or vice versa). The rest of his work is a sci-fi spin in the alternate time line. A good book to read, just as a fun read IMO, is Guns of the South.
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Death 999
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Re: Books&The likes
« Reply #18 on: January 05, 2004, 09:36:18 pm »

As far as Ender is concerned, well, Ender's Game is utterly classic. Speaker for the Dead is also interesting, but when they gain the ridiculous abilities they have in Xenocide and whatever that other book is, oh, the story is utterly pointless.
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Lukipela
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Re: Books&The likes
« Reply #19 on: January 05, 2004, 10:05:38 pm »

Has anyone read the Ender spinoff series, the shadiow thingy? I've read Ender's Shadow, and I recently picked up Shadow of the Hegemon, although I haven't read that yet.. Anyone have any comments, is it worthwile at all?

Sidenote: Other strange scifibooks: Hyperion, very very weird.
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Death 999
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Re: Books&The likes
« Reply #20 on: January 06, 2004, 01:10:33 am »

Ender's Shadow retroactively turns Bean into superman. Pathetic.

The Shadow of the Hegemon is a little better in that regard. At least you don't have a super-genius1.5 year-old hiding in a toilet tank, reinventing calculus in his head.

As for Hyperion, I like it. I have heard that the sequel provides many answers, few of which are genuinely interesting, so it's better NOT to have them answered. However, I doubt this.
« Last Edit: January 06, 2004, 01:11:27 am by Death_999 » Logged
Michael Martin
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Re: Books&The likes
« Reply #21 on: January 06, 2004, 07:22:26 am »

Re: Hyperion: That's somewhat more true for Rise of Endymion than for the others.  The Fall of Hyperion is absolutely mandatory.

Endymion is OK, but ends halfway through, and Rise of Endymion looks like he didn't have time to get real answers to his questions and wrote down the working stopgap answers instead.  If you force yourself to forget everything you know about the relevant subjects and don't think too deeply, it works decently.  (For the "how does it go in the end" part, anyway).
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Lukipela
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Re: Books&The likes
« Reply #22 on: February 09, 2004, 10:30:42 pm »

Reanimating this, has anyone else read the "Dortmunder" books by Robert E Westlake? Hysterically funny. For other amusing actionbooks, have a look at pretty much anything by Carl Hiasen. You can just feel his train of thought derailing into absurd situations.
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Re: Books&The likes
« Reply #23 on: February 10, 2004, 09:26:58 pm »

I did not see Lord of the Rings, i know most of you have seen the film already, i have (after i read the book), and for me the films were great, but the book was necessary for me to follow the storyline. The films were still way too short in my eyes.

Oh, and another (this time SF) great book:
"Unendlichkeit" in german - alas i forgot who wrote it
(Amazon.de says it was Alastair Reynolds)
(Amazon.com says it is "Revelation Space" in english)
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