AR Book Club

[Avaitor]

I decided to take a quick break from comics and manga after catching up with Rat Queens (although that might change, as volume 4 of Berserk just came in the mail), and bought a cheap copy of The Dark Half. I've been wanting to go on a mini-Stephen King splurge in between the movies for The Dark Tower and It, but at the same time, my interest in getting to the latter has declined. That said, I'm really liking this one so how, although knowing his knack for bad endings, I'm expecting a shit twist to explain everything coming up.

I do want to do a full reread of Dark Tower along with Misery, and finally give The Stand another shot. I can't find the first Dark Tower, or the other novels I mentioned, however, so we'll see how that goes. Which is a shame, since I think those would be good for my flight.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Finished The Wise Man's Fear during my lunch break today. I enjoyed The Name of the Wind but this second book is really where I found myself hooked. The only downside is that I have another Winds of Winter scenario to deal with in that I'll find myself waiting indefinitely for the next book to come out. I do have a copy of Rogues lying around, which I admittedly only picked up for the "A Song of Ice and Fire" and "The Kingkiller Chronicle" spin-off stories included in it, but those will hardly last me for too long.

That said, it's definitely worth reading this series before the inevitable live-action adaptations find a way to screw it up.

I'll be moving onto some other fantasy novels later on, but for now I have a horror novel that I've been meaning to read through.

[Dr. Insomniac]

I read a biography about Leni Riefenstahl by Steven Bach. I've always found Leni Riefenstahl to be one of the most interesting people in modern history. She pioneered several film techniques that would eventually become vital DNA for later movies like Star Wars and The Lion King, yet she also created Nazi propaganda, used children from concentration camps as extras without thinking of their well-being, and Hitler's reign certainly wouldn't have been as prominent without her help. And the book fully captures how brilliant she was in filmmaking while making it clear just how deluded she was, like how she eventually abandoned Hitler's cause but started filming the indigenous Nuba people from Sudan in such a fetishistic way as she did the Germans.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Just finished reading The First Law Trilogy by Joe Abercrombie. I started this due to being overly frustrated in having to wait eons for the next ASOIAF and final Kingkiller Chronicle books to come out, and ended up finding yet another top-tier fantasy series. This time I had the added bonus of having an actual complete trilogy to read through with an actual ending to it's narrative arc, which kind of makes it the best of the three so far. This manages to have the appeal of Game of Thrones in how it subverts many genre tropes and tends to depict it's characters more realistically, but at the same time doesn't move at a snails pace and doesn't lose itself in way too many subplots (and I say this as an avid fan of ASOIAF). In fact, maybe a little to it's detriment, I'd say that by the third book it maybe moves a little too fast at times to the point of having the first half of that book feel really rushed to get to the climax. That said, in the grand scheme of things it's a small price to pay for how well-paced and incredibly engaging the finale is. Most notably, though, the characters are maybe some of the most well-written that I've encountered in all of fiction.

I'll say this much, though, this isn't the type of series for people who want things with happy, neat endings to arcs tied up in a bow. While this series wasn't nearly as kill-happy as something like GoT, it's also not afraid to give you pretty dark and depressing outcomes for it's characters. They are set up to follow clear and easily identifiable genre archetypes, yet none of them end up being what they seem to be on the surface, and their personal journeys either don't take you where you expect them to go, or get their in a way that you didn't expect. In general, except for just two of the main POV characters in the story, the rest are always teetering on the edge of being classified as a hero or villain. However, the engrossing part about how Abercrombie writes them is how he will get you rooting for them to better themselves through their arcs, and at times they will, but then the narrative will always find a way to deal them a disappointing setback; that is to say disappointing, but good in terms of well-written story-telling.

That isn't to say that this series is all dark and dour, though. The trick to what makes Abercrombie's writing so interesting is in how he smartly balances some good, positive morals to his story with plenty of bring and optimistic spots, but also peppers in an equal amount of the more downer, cautionary tales that are essential to layered stories and characters. This kind of series definitely isn't for everyone, but it has become a new favorite of mine, and I am definitely planning on reading the stand-alone novels that take place in The First Law World.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Oh yeah, I remember reading those books years ago. Really liked Glokta and Bayaz.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I found Glokta to be a particular favorite of mine. He has that dry-wit and general sarcastic demeanor that makes his dialogue feel really entertaining, and he's arguably the only character who's better off than he was when the trilogy started, even if he hasn't changed much as a person (which is kind of the theme of the story, anyways).

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Came across this video that I really like: https://youtu.be/U0bU3nsEfMg

In particular, I really find that it applies to all kinds of fiction besides Fantasy as well (which the video touches upon). I have been a fan of books, comics/manga, movies, video games, anime/animation, TV, music, and numerous other mediums of entertainment. I came to a realization through everything that I've consumed that trying to define things by genre is really an imaginary and kind of BS way to categorize things and limit the scope of their true appeal.

At best, "genre" can be thought of as a vehicle for exercising different kinds of story-telling possibilities by conveying a creator or team of creators' intended vision and themes through familiar and appealing conventions to an audience to make for something entertaining on some level. Nothing about any genre or medium of story-telling inherently prohibits a work from having any more or less meaning or value to any person in particular other than by the skill of the craft used to convey that story. Also, obviously there's a degree of subjectivity to the perspective of the individual engaging with that content. Other than that, though, trying to say one genre is inherently inferior to anything else requires an absurd level of mental gymnastics for the people claiming such to truly make sense of.

Like, if you prefer serious movies based on real people to say, superhero flicks: OK, I can understand that. But is anyone seriously going to try and argue that Gotti is a better movie than Spider-Man 2 because the former is not part of a genre that they look down on regardless of how shitty the former is in execution as opposed to the latter?

As for what I'm reading:

I just finished 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill, which was an interesting collection of stories ranging all over the place in terms of quality.

I am also currently reading Children of Dune, the third in the series, and have started the audiobook for Red Country by Joe Abercrombie (the third stand-alone novel in The First Law saga). I had actually planned to save Red Country for later, but ended up moving it to my next book so that I could catch up and read the latest First Law book which just recently released.

[Markness]

I saw a new book, The Past Is Red, by Catherynne Valente come into the library a few days ago and checked it out. I hope it will be good.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Trying to get back into reading after ages of inactivity, and finished 2 books lately. First was She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan, which I found all right. Picture Mulan but more subversive, and you've got an idea of what the novel's like. Another book that I liked more was A Master of Djinn by P. Djeli Clark, though it's admittedly a little too straightforward to do anything daring.

[Markness]

I've become a fan of Clive Barker after reading his novellas The Hellbound Heart and Cabal some years ago now. For his full-length novels, I've read The Damnation Game, Weaveworld, The Great and Secret Show, and Imajica. I am currently on The Thief of Always. His story telling prowess is great both in the short and long forms.
I also feel that finally reading his novels fills up gaps in my psyche that I've missed doing so throughout the decades of my life.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Yeah, I remember liking Weaveworld when I read it a few years ago, yet even though I also liked the first couple Hellraiser movies, I never pushed myself to reading the rest of his work. Blaming my usual laziness there.

[Markness]

Yeah, I remember liking Weaveworld when I read it a few years ago, yet even though I also liked the first couple Hellraiser movies, I never pushed myself to reading the rest of his work. Blaming my usual laziness there.

I used to be intimidated by the page counts of his novels. I overcame that by making reading the books into goals.

[Markness]

I hope the ILL I requested for Clive Barker's Sacrament will come in either later this week or next week. The library I work at used to have a copy but withdrew it.

For the last few months, I've been reading Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel's Dart. It's a very heavy book and also very raunchy.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Bookworm bit me for the first time in ages, and I've been eating through books like I used to again. Probably a temporary thing though. Anyway, favorite books I've read lately are Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu and Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. I really recommend those if you're looking for something weird and Borges-like. Piranesi in particular if you want something you can read in under a day.