What are you reading right now?

By Rappy
in The Hobby Corner

 Share

Recommended Posts

Grand Master

rajputwarrior

Posted
Posted

so i just finished the first game of thrones book (well almost) and what to move to something else. I kinda struggled finishing the book (effin book is massive) are the next 4 better/more exciting? (lookin at you saints fan...) I kinda want to take a break from the fantasy genre. Thinking of starting the hunger game series (anyone have any quick reviews of those books?), reading The Black Banners or Common's new book . Thoughts? Up for recommendations too... i love pretty much any non fiction involving history events or anything involving current issues. Also, the cheaper the better!

Veteran

neo158

Posted
Posted

I finished The Road by Cormac McCarthy. It's a good enough book, but the manner in which it was written is quite unusual, and I'm not sure I liked that aspect much. I'm now debating with myself whether I should read Where Eagles Dare or Lenin: A Biography by Robert Service. I'm leaning towards Where Eagles Dare at the moment though, seeing as it always gets praise as a book. I may just get all three of Service's books on the main Soviet political powers (I need Trotsky and Stalin), and just read the three of them all together.

I wouldn't mind getting a copy of Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler but it's surprisingly expensive, presumably due to the controversial nature of the book.

Given the choice I would read Where Eagles Dare, the movie is one of my favorites.

Grand Master

Mathachew Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted

so i just finished the first game of thrones book (well almost) and what to move to something else. I kinda struggled finishing the book (effin book is massive) are the next 4 better/more exciting? (lookin at you saints fan...) I kinda want to take a break from the fantasy genre. Thinking of starting the hunger game series (anyone have any quick reviews of those books?), reading The Black Banners or Common's new book . Thoughts? Up for recommendations too... i love pretty much any non fiction involving history events or anything involving current issues. Also, the cheaper the better!

All of the books provide great story telling, but some are better than others. If you find A Game of Thrones to be a tough book to finish, you'll be more hard pressed to finish others, especially the further along you get. A Storm of Swords and A Dance with Dragons are nearly 1,000 pages each (not including the appendix); A Feast for Crows and aDwD are essentially one book split into two volumes and focus on a specific set of characters in each. In aDwD, the timeline eventually converges with aFfC and time progresses further.

As for the Hunger Games. Easier reading and much shorter, but not even remotely as good as A Song of Ice and Fire series. However, they're two different genre's. Hunger Games is good, Catching Fire is decent, but Mockingjay left much to be desired. It's a joke that four movies are planned for the trilogy when there's not nearly enough from the books to fill them.

If you're interested in Fantasy books, Brandon Sanderson has several under his belt and I loved every one of them. Most of his books are shorter than A Game of Thrones, but well over 500 pages easily. His biggest is Way of Kings at 1008. That said, I've read all of his stuff except for his Wheel of Time books as I haven't started that series yet, but what I have read, I have not been disappointed at all.

If you don't care for fantasy books and want something futuristic, Old Man's War is excellent. I do have some issues with it, but overall a nice quality Science Fiction read. I'd also recommend reading its two sequels and then picking up Fuzzy Nation. That was pretty good as well. Side note: FN is a reboot or rewrite from Little Fuzzies, but I never read that and probably enjoyed FN more because of it.

With all of that out of the way, it depends on what you're looking for. I know of some other books you may be interested in, but they range from mysteries/thrillers, to science fiction/fantasy, historical fiction, political thriller, etc.

Grand Master

rajputwarrior

Posted
Posted

All of the books provide great story telling, but some are better than others. If you find A Game of Thrones to be a tough book to finish, you'll be more hard pressed to finish others, especially the further along you get. A Storm of Swords and A Dance with Dragons are nearly 1,000 pages each (not including the appendix); A Feast for Crows and aDwD are essentially one book split into two volumes and focus on a specific set of characters in each. In aDwD, the timeline eventually converges with aFfC and time progresses further.

As for the Hunger Games. Easier reading and much shorter, but not even remotely as good as A Song of Ice and Fire series. However, they're two different genre's. Hunger Games is good, Catching Fire is decent, but Mockingjay left much to be desired. It's a joke that four movies are planned for the trilogy when there's not nearly enough from the books to fill them.

If you're interested in Fantasy books, Brandon Sanderson has several under his belt and I loved every one of them. Most of his books are shorter than A Game of Thrones, but well over 500 pages easily. His biggest is Way of Kings at 1008. That said, I've read all of his stuff except for his Wheel of Time books as I haven't started that series yet, but what I have read, I have not been disappointed at all.

If you don't care for fantasy books and want something futuristic, Old Man's War is excellent. I do have some issues with it, but overall a nice quality Science Fiction read. I'd also recommend reading its two sequels and then picking up Fuzzy Nation. That was pretty good as well. Side note: FN is a reboot or rewrite from Little Fuzzies, but I never read that and probably enjoyed FN more because of it.

With all of that out of the way, it depends on what you're looking for. I know of some other books you may be interested in, but they range from mysteries/thrillers, to science fiction/fantasy, historical fiction, political thriller, etc.

(Y) thanks for that. i'll keep reading the game of throne books (did pay for them) but after i read another one. definitely want a break. yeah i know they keep getting bigger. the stories are awesome, i love it. but sometimes the ADD just takes over and i can't keep going. As soon as the war and what not started i got pretty hooked, but everything before that was good, but not great IMO. Martin is a fantastic story teller though, i'll give him that. Definitely knows how to set up the mood and setting as good as anyone.

I'm interested in hunger games cause 1) i've heard good things about it and 2) it's a solid price for 3 books...

The John Scalzi books you have been all about in this thread are peaking my interest as I am also a sci-fi so maybe i'll check those out. But to be honest, i am in the mood for some non-fiction...

Mentor

Emily_June

Posted
Posted

stiff.jpg

An unexpectedly interesting and humorous look at what happens to human bodies after expiration.

I read that one a couple of years ago. Hilarious, and educational. Loved it.

That's being made into an HBO series for 2013. Playtone (Tom Hanks) will produce with author Neil Gaiman writing the pilot.

Yeah, I know. I didn't realize it wouldn't be until 2013 until after I finished it, though. Now I'll have to reread it before the show starts. I read so many books, that after a couple of months of finishing one, I forget a lot about it.

Mentor

Paul Ferson Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted

Finally finished Clive Cussler's The Spy. It took me quite a lot of time because of readjusting to school and trying to create a proper sleeping schedule. It got better as it went on. Since it's my first Cussler novel I have no idea if all his books are like that but it definitely was a slow burner at the start. It was well enough written, all the same. I might go through the trouble of finding other books in the Isaac Bell series, so I can have the full collection.

25623.jpg

Now, I'm onto this. This is Young Stalin by Simon Montefiore (perceptive, aren't I?). It's a biography of Josef Stalin during his early life. For anyone who's been looking at this topic regularly, you might remember I read Young Hitler by Claus Hant. I'm reading this because of Hant's book, which is definitely one of my best reads this year. I hope this can be just as good. So far it's started off brilliantly, retelling the bank robbery Stalin masterminded in Tiblisi, in Georgia. I hope it remains as decent to read. A bit pointless but worth noting is the back cover gives literally no information, but has a pretty cool series of images of Stalin during his early life.

Grand Master

Mathachew Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was written in such a way that I could not continue. It's only the second book I ever stopped reading willingly, which is unfortunate. It reads far too much like it was written nearly 200 years ago. It would be understandable for the dialogue to match the time, but even the sentence structure and odd way of people coming in and going out of scenes was, I found myself rereading certain parts because I couldn't tell when person X joined the scene or if person A or person B were actually speaking. Far too much figuring what just happened to even remotely enjoy it. Bummer.

book_the_androids_dream.jpg

  • 2 weeks later...
Rookie

newguy88

Posted
Posted

I just finished reading Benjamin P. Thomas's biography of Abraham Lincoln and I am currently reading Lincoln by David Herbert Donald. Thomas's biography was very good and Donald's is good too. Interesting to learn about Lincoln's human side, he was quite a prankster and jokester.

This topic is now closed to further replies.
 Share
Go to topic listing

  • Posts

    • DWARF mini review: the world's smallest smart telescope for night and day sky captures

      By Nick H. · Posted

      I sort of agree with you on that. I had a telescope - a real hefty thing, although only around 500CHF - that got me so fascinated about the stars and planets. I would stare for hours, amazed that I could see the craters of the moon or the rings of Saturn in "realtime" (quotations because, y'know, speed of light and whatnot). A friend of mine has a telescope like the one mentioned in the review, and the pictures are amazing to look at. But there is something missing for me. I may as well just go to NASA's website and look through their gallery.
    • Halo: Campaign Evolved is out next month with new prequel missions

      By +pmrd · Posted

      As opposed to catching bad press because it's the engine's fault? The engine has all the tools a dev needs to optimize their game, Epic isn't gonna hold their hand to make sure they use them. Also, Epic isn't forcing anyone to use Lumen, Nanite or super high resolution meshes and textures. Just because Nanite can render meshes with millions of polygons doesn't mean you should use it like that, in fact, Epic recommends you avoid doing that. Most of the stuttering can easily be fixed by cutting down on unique shaders by using master materials and generating a PSO cache and compiling every shader before loading the game and also managing what must be loaded and unloaded at runtime, it's up to the developer to set all that up properly.
    • DWARF mini review: the world's smallest smart telescope for night and day sky captures

      By Malisk · Posted

      I think it depends on what you're looking for to do, and the time you have to spare. With my Dwarf 3, I easily spend 3-4 hour sessions; half an hour driving to an un-light polluted place, another half hour unpacking and setting up the smart scope + tripod for equatorial tracking, then 15 more minutes mucking around with settings and shooting calibration frames, spending a few hours shooting, merging with past photo sessions, etc. It's crazy how time flies and I often get home later than I expected. It's something I still need to set aside a good part of an evening to do, all in all. For one session, where you often need like four for best results when it comes to deep space objects. Even with a smart scope like Dwarf 3, regular non-astro photography is still way more approachable to people getting into photography. I find this is a time consuming niche no matter how I go about it. With practice, I can probably begin cutting time here but I think where smart scopes find their home is among people who love to shoot the night sky but don't have the spare time to go deep with the "navigator level" attunement to the night sky itself in addition to everything else. Having said this, _if_ you have even more time to spend on this hobby, it will probably be even more rewarding to do it more by hand and learn the skies and the details of how it all works.
    • Microsoft confirms a new, useful Teams' app is coming very soon

      By Malisk · Posted

      I misread the title and thought Teams itself would be redesigned. Imagine having this one as a native WinUI app.
    • Dell, HP PCs ran into endless reboot, BitLocker recovery loops but Windows 11 isn't to blame

      By hellowalkman · Posted

      Dell, HP PCs ran into endless reboot, BitLocker recovery loops but Windows 11 isn't to blame by Sayan Sen Last month Neowin reported on a major issue on Dell systems wherein a bug in its official support tool was leading to endless blue screen of death (BSOD) and restarts. Following our report, Dell officially acknowledged its SupportAssist-related crash issue, confirming that the culprit is not Microsoft's operating system but rather a faulty version of its own remediation software. In a newly published support advisory, Dell stated that version 5.5.16.0 of Dell SupportAssist Remediation and Alienware SupportAssist Remediation can trigger blue screen errors and unexpected system restarts. The company notes that the problematic component operates independently of the main SupportAssist application, meaning users should not remove the primary SupportAssist software when troubleshooting the issue. According to Dell, the crashes are linked specifically to the SupportAssist Remediation service, which is bundled with SupportAssist OS Recovery Tools, and as such it has since released an updated version, 5.5.16.1, which is said to resolve the problem. Affected users are advised to first verify whether version 5.5.16.0 is installed by checking the Installed Apps section in Windows Settings. If so, Dell recommends updating SupportAssist OS Recovery Tools through either SupportAssist's "Update Software" feature or Dell Command Update. Dell also advises users to back up important data before performing the update and to ensure systems remain connected to power throughout the installation process. If you are still having issues though make sure to report to the Dell support forum. As it turns out though Dell is not the only PC maker currently dealing with update-related headaches as HP is also facing a separate but probably equally frustrating issue involving recent Windows Secure Boot updates that were released with recent Windows 11 Patch Tuesdays. Similar to Dell, HP also put up its own support article where it explains the issue. The company says that affected devices could hit a brick wall when booting as they run into a BitLocker recovery loop after the April 2026 updates. The problem appears to affect systems wherein the new UEFI Secure Boot CA 2023 certificates fail to apply properly. As such affected users will find themselves entering their recovery key over and over again despite the system otherwise functioning normally. HP says such PCs should be updated to the latest available BIOS version and configured with the necessary Secure Boot certificates before installing Microsoft's Windows 11 Patch Tuesday updates. Systems that are already experiencing the problem may require BIOS configuration changes to restore normal boot behavior. Admins can find information regarding that in the support article here on HP's official website.

  • Recent Achievements

    • One Month Later
      DJC50PLUS earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Week One Done
      DJC50PLUS earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • Proficient
      Eric Biran went up a rank
      Proficient
    • Dedicated
      Conjor earned a badge
      Dedicated
    • Week One Done
      Windows Guy earned a badge
      Week One Done

  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      493
    2. 2
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      246
    3. 3
      Steven P.
      72
    4. 4
      +Edouard
      69
    5. 5
      neufuse
      68
    Show More

  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!