Metal Reviews

Soon as I finish Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, I'm going to begin reading LOTR: The Fellowship Of The Ring.

You can probably guess I'm a big fan of Tolkien-esque dark fantasy novels.

The Pirates! In an Adventure with Whaling

Fucking awesome.

The last Harry Potter book.

Robert Asprey- The Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte

Not sure if I'll be finishing this one. So far, its focusing too much on Napoleon while saying very little about his society- the causes of the French revolution, for example, get about two pages. I'll see how it does when Napoleon begins to take center stage in the French military.

And why must historians use modern colloquialisms?

finished Blood Meridian. epic book that i got a lot more out of the second time i read it. now reading Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. he's saying that the reason European culture ended up dominating North American/Africa/etc is because of environmental differences. very interesting so far.

That is definitely a very interesting and well written book.

Found that online and have been wanting to get a hold of it.

Just finished Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding by Hume after the month it took me to finish. Now attempting to decide what to read between these books:

EL Doctorow - City of God
Henry Miller - Tropic of Cancer
Gore Vidal - Myra/Myron Breckenridge

Ya, so I think I'm giving up on the Napoleon book. Instead I shall read:



Really, who approves these horrible covers?

The Historian--Elizabeth Kostova

This book is REALLY good. Hugely addicting page-turner that has a lot of substance to it. It's about vampires, which kind of made me wonder if I would like it, but any doubts I had have been washed away. Lots of cliffhangers and a really great story that is told in a very interesting way (difficult to describe but you'd know what I'm talking about if you've read it). I'm not done yet, but this is one of the best books I've read in a while...a nice change since I've been struggling to read the Fellowship of the Ring since I feel like I should read it.

Also read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Weird book but good...really interesting look into the way mentally retarded people think. seriously.

I think I should post the following here. In my life I have made it a priority to visit and be a member of any library that was available to me wherever I lived until now. The thing is that it was mostly smaller cities and in non-english countries (greece, sweden, denmark) so finding english fantasy and science fiction was not always the easiest thing.
So then I was walking around in copenhagen yesterday and I passed in front of the main public library so I thought, let's check this out. Maaaaaan! First of all, it's a beautiful place. Maybe not so much as libraries in really huge american cities (which I have only seen in movies or documentaries) but still a nice place. It looks like a mall for books! And the english section is huge! There were so many fantasy and science fiction books (compared to my previous experiences) I felt intoxicated! It's a pitty I'm leaving denmark in a month and I don't have the chance to properly take advantage of such a library! Anyway, that's my book related story for today, hope it fits this thread.

i quit halfway through the historian. you know a book sucks when you can literally skip entire chapters and still not miss anything. wouldn't recommend the book to anyone.

i read parts of The Curious..., and there i agree that it's a very interesting book.

Reading Myra Breckenridge. Story about a transexual woman in 1950's Hollywood. Definitely a precursor to/influence on Chuck Palahniuk's trangressive literautre.

You suck. Actually, I don't really care if you don't like it, but at least admit that it's because all of the history stuff was a bit much, not because you can skip chapters or whatever...i don't understand that at all, just because the story is told from two vantage points doesn't mean you can skip parts of it. I would agree that sometimes she goes into more detail than necessary with the history shit, but I don't think that stops it from being good. But also, i think I overrated it in my previous post. still good though.

Ahh, that sucks man. Still, where are you leaving Denmark for? If an English country, you will find English books to your heart's content...

And I'm about 300 pages into Assassin's Quest by Hobb and really enjoying it. Its a complete change of pace from the other two, being a travellogue rather than a political intrigue story, but she can (hurray!) do travellogue right, unlike most authors in the genre. Though its been a bit padded so far, there's just something about her world's social structure that rings true, and Fitz is an insightful enough narrator (as well as probably the best take on a true hero in the fantasy genre) that his travels become interesting by virtue of being seen through his eyes. I'm very happy I read this trilogy, and hope it ends well.

I'm going back to Greece which is not a reading heaven for sure. Not only is it not a country where english is popular, even libraries are neglected and very poor in content where they exist. So I know I won't have any chance for free reading soon. But I'm not very worried. I intend to sample books through downloaded e-books or samples (like amazon's "Search inside") and then order bunches of them.

I'm happy that you like the books you're reading. The third book is a bit different that the other two as you noticed yourself. The ending is interesting for the fact between 2 of my friends who read it one hated the ending the other loved it hahaha let's see what you think!

i do think what i think about The Historian because of all the unnecessary text. it's one thing to describe to set the stage for something, another thing entirely to merely fill it up and turn a decent 400-page book into a shitty 800-page one.

Finished it yesterday...I do agree that it could have been better if it was a bit shorter, but I still thought it was pretty good. The ending was satisfying but a bit predictable, unlike the rest of the story.

The Historian was a bit of a disappointment. I started it without knowing about the vampires, and so was rather WTF vampires? when I got to it.

Has anyone read any of Ian Irvine's books? Rather good fantasy series, only read The Well Of Echoes quartet and the one after as far as it's gone so far...

Edward Saïd - Orientalism
Michael Hodges - AK-47 - The Story of the Peoples' Gun
Robin Lane Fox - Alexander the Great

So I got The Road by Cormac McCarthy today...haven't started it, though. We'll see about dis.