But seriously... I've thought about finishing Pandora's Star by Peter Hamilton. I put that book down after a 10 or 15 page description of terrain.
Oh, no. I just bought that second-hand.
Pandora's Star is sooooo good. The prologue is just setting the stage; let that thing unfold for a couple hundred pages and you'll be hooked solid.
Ah. Phew.
Since the last time I've posted in the previous thread I've finished
Iron Council by China Miéville, which is actually the third book in the Bas-Lag trilogy but it was cheap and so I jumped ahead. I liked this a lot more than
Perdido Street Station mainly because I thought it was more tightly written. How all the different threads ended up being intertwined in the end was great.
I reread
Star Trek Titan: Synthesis by James Swallow and liked it a bit more than the first time around where I missed out on some of the details. I still don't quite get how downloading the avatar into the deflector destroys the original, though.
I started reading
Die Ästhetik des Widerstands by Peter Weiss (again) and wanted to give up on it after the first few pages for two reasons:
- The sentences were needlessly long and complicated in what I suspect is a (poor) emulation of Thomas Mann's style (Sadly, Peter Weiss is not Thomas Mann).
- The first book opens with an interpretation of the Pergamon frieze, the relating myths and Pergamene history that stretches credibility, to put it mildly. Being a student of Archeology and Ancient History, these things bug me a lot.
However, the book eventually drew me in and I came to accept the interpretations as different, interesting point-of-views since the characters are actually aware that they're reinterpreting art in a way that benefits them, independent of the artists' intentions. That's basically the point of the book so far.
Nothing much is really happening in the book. (I was promised the Spanish Civil War, escape from the Nazis and sad fates at their hands by the blurb on the back, damn it!
) It is interesting, though, and I can understand the fascination it holds for Socialists and Communists, but it is a slow read.
As it's a bit too heavy and big a volume, I've also started
Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds. I haven't gotten very far, yet, but it's off to a promising start.
I bought a few used books today and couldn't help but start reading
The Plot Against America by Philip Roth. (And I just noticed that my edition, despite having been printed in the USA, doesn't show a svastika on the front cover, just an x in place of it. Weird.) So, now I'm reading three books at the same time. I wish I was a bit more focused right now.
