What Book Did You Read Last Night??? (5 Viewers)

[Cornu Ammonis]

copyright infringement? I don't know what you're tolkien about.

It’s when things are too similarillian to someone else’s intellectual property.

 

[chris d]

Outer Dark - Cormac McCarthy. Another cheerful slice of life from CMC. Going to give this fella a break for a while and go back to Discworld.

 

[Cormcolash]

Discworld is class. They had a bit of a dip at one point, and then came back more serious but even better.

 

[Lili Marlene]

Discworld is class. They had a bit of a dip at one point, and then came back more serious but even better.

Where do you think it dips? I read loads of them as a teenager, just randomly picking from the library really, but started from the start a few years back and have been slowly going through them in order.

 

[Cornu Ammonis]

Never caught the Discworld bug, I read 2-3 of them and felt that was more than enough.

 

[Lili Marlene]

Some are better than others, certainly the early ones aren't great. His method seems to be to start off with about seven different strands of story and jump between them, eventually tying them all up very neatly at the end. I find he can get carried away with his own ideas at times and sometimes one of the strands goes off on a mad tangent of puns or parodies, or the tying up is too sudden, but when it works it feels glorious.

I dunno. I'm in the thick of it right now, i'll let you know if it was all worth it in about a decade.

 

[Cormcolash]

Where do you think it dips? I read loads of them as a teenager, just randomly picking from the library really, but started from the start a few years back and have been slowly going through them in order.

I think from Jingo up to The Last Hero there is a bit of a dip, but then Night Watch was fucking class and he was back on form.

 

[Lili Marlene]

I think from Jingo up to The Last Hero there is a bit of a dip, but then Night Watch was fucking class and he was back on form.

Interesting, I read a fair few of them and I do remember Jingo and the Fifth Elephant being a bit of a slog but Thief of Time blew my mind at the time. I'll get to them again.

 

[Cormcolash]

I think he was running short on ideas during that period, and then at some point decided to head into the industrial revolution and it got great again

 

[David Kronenbourg]

Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh. Creepy noirish tale about an odd woman working at a boy's prison in 1964 who becomes obsessed with a new colleague. Very good.

The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson. Cosmic horror story about a fucked up old house which sits on an inter-dimensional plane.

 

[MacDara]

Funny you should mention that last one, as it was featured in the latest episode of Lovecraft Country (which I’m not sure if I like or not yet).

 

[MacDara]

I finished Sam McPheeters’ Mutations the other week, and I’ve started Dan Franklin’s Heavy. The latter is structured in such a way that it feels like reading a dissertation, but at least the tone isn’t overly academic so it’s an easy enough read.

 

[David Kronenbourg]

Funny you should mention that last one, as it was featured in the latest episode of Lovecraft Country (which I’m not sure if I like or not yet).

It's not good (Lovecraft Country). Badly written, tonally all over the place, rubbish cgi, messy execution and handling of the themes. The book wasn't great but it was a bit more fun than this clumsy adaptation. I preferred the second half of the book so I hope the show improves as it goes along.

 

[MacDara]

The tonal thing seems to be a thing when Jordan Peele is involved with TV, at least going by this and the godawful Hunters (the bones of a brilliant show when it takes itself seriously, but absolutely ruined by incongruous fantasy sequences, dance numbers, etc).

 

[David Kronenbourg]

The tonal thing seems to be a thing when Jordan Peele is involved with TV, at least going by this and the godawful Hunters (the bones of a brilliant show when it takes itself seriously, but absolutely ruined by incongruous fantasy sequences, dance numbers, etc).

Yeah, the Twilight Zone reboot had the same tonal issues

 

[Cornu Ammonis]

The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson. Cosmic horror story about a fucked up old house which sits on an inter-dimensional plane.

One of my favourite books!

 

[pete]

And we’re done. It was very good sf with abysmal dialogue.

For the record the audiobooks were 13 hours & 26 minutes, 22 hours & 37 minutes, and 28 hours, 52 minutes, proving the expansion of the universe.


Meanwhile...

The Three-Body Problem: I (2017) - IMDb

Amazon is reportedly pursuing a deal for a three-season TV series based on Liu Cixin’s Hugo-winning sci-fi novel trilogy “Remembrance of Earth’s Past”. The price tag? Up to $1 billion.
The Financial Times broke the report, saying international investors are telling them Amazon is negotiating for the rights to produce three seasons based on the book series that began with (and is better known by) the title “The Three-Body Problem”.
Set against the backdrop of China’s Cultural Revolution, in the first book a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. One civilization, on the brink of destruction, captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile different camps start forming amongst humanity with plans to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion.
In a statement reported by Chinese news outlets, including Caixin, YooZoo Pictures stated that it remains the sole owners for the film and TV rights for the series and didn’t comment on whether Amazon had approached the company.
Cixin was also asked by Chinese news outlets and he revealed he knew nothing about the project and doesn’t know if he’d be invited to work on it. A $30 million film adaptation of the first book was shot in 2015 but has yet to be released.
Amazon previously made a deal for two seasons of a “Lord of the Rings” series, a deal rumored to cost $500 million for two seasons. “The Three-Body Problem” deal, if the report is accurate, is notably bigger than that.

‘Game of Thrones’ Creators Tackle ‘The Three-Body Problem’ for Netflix

‘Game of Thrones’ creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss and ‘The Terror: Infamy’ showrunner Alexander Woo will adapt Liu Cixin’s ‘The Three-Body Problem&#82…

www.hollywoodreporter.com

 

[David Kronenbourg]

Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh. Creepy noirish tale about an odd woman working at a boy's prison in 1964 who becomes obsessed with a new colleague. Very good.

Reading her second book My Year of Rest and Relaxation. I like it but I'm not as immediately drawn to it as I was to Eileen.

 

[Lili Marlene]

Reading her second book My Year of Rest and Relaxation. I like it but I'm not as immediately drawn to it as I was to Eileen.

We had big discussions about this earlier in this thread. I'll have to pick up the new one.

I'm starting a Finnegans Wake book club with the survivors of my Ulysses book club, @Cornu Ammonis as the resident Joyce expert, any advice?

 

[David Kronenbourg]

We had big discussions about this earlier in this thread. I'll have to pick up the new one.

I missed that. Will have a dig...