Finished The Shining. I didn't like it.

Moving on to Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie.

I think Shining, as a book, would be way better if the movie didn't exist. Nicolson ruins what that character should have been in the book. It's supposed to be a tragedy what happens to him.

I didn't watch the movie, so I cannot tell anything about it. I only know what people say about it. Normally the book is always better than the movie, that is why I prefer to read.

The problem is not the tragedy, but that is very obvious what will happen. Stephen King is also very wordy, and in a bad way. He extends boring parts almost endlessly, but make the supposed better parts very brief. Not only with this book, it is almost if this is his trademark.

I find that's true about Tolkein but i don't notice it with King as much.

I hope you try that JFK book of his, I really got a kick out of it. If you're the guy who liked the Bachman stuff (I can't remember), I think you'll really dig it

Tolkien, yes, no doubt about that. I read the Lord of the Rings, and the movie is definitively better.

Maybe I will read, but not in the early future.

Finished Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie.

It is good and I will continue to read the series, but nothing extraordinary.

Reading now Dark Orbit by Carolyn Ives Gilman.

I liked Dark Orbit a lot, just the end left a lot to be desired.

Almost finishing Ancillary Sword. I liked the first one more.

Finally got around to the last couple books of Saga of the Seven Suns. Book six was a kinda slow intermission, though it really introduced us to the Klikiss. Book 7 did a great job at being the climax for such a massive story. In the end, I'm not under any delusion that the series is great literature, but it was fun. I can't think of anything else I've read that tells, essentially, a single cohesive story over that many pages and still avoids really bogging down. It really is technically impressive in how large of a cast and how many plot arcs the whole thing juggles.

Read Mistborn, and it... turned out better than I had feared from the early bits. Vin seemed to be going down a really annoying road at first, but she actually learned things and grew as a character rather than getting caught in tough-abuse-victim stasis. Sazed was great. The facts of the Lord Ruler were really interesting, and used information we knew but probably hadn't correlated to make something that was certainly a twist but also pretty well executed.

Read Awake in the Night Land, a collection of four novellas/short stories set in the Night Land setting of William Hope Hodgson. Awake in the Night was pretty good and Cry of the Night Hound had some REALLY interesting stuff. The Last of All Suns still took Hodgson's conceits but swerved hard into something between Shadow out of Time and the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was pretty awesome, though it had its weaknesses. The third story (last I've to mention), Silence of the Night, was competent, but its tone was at odds with the rest, since it was the only one to defy the basic precepts of the setting in ways that didn't quite sit well: I mentioned a Lovecraft story in Last of All Suns, but that one still owes far, far more to Hodgson. Silence, however, seems more to present Hodgson's future history of earth through the lens of Lovecraft's view of the universe (it even drops a mention to the Hounds of Tindalos), which is very much at odds with Hodgson's that is otherwise used throughout. I'd probably think less of it if it weren't followed by Last of All Suns, which in its own way bridges the Hodgson-Lovecraft gap created by Silence.

Read The Servant Lord by Aneeka Richins. It's good, but it's also the second book in a series so I've some trouble talking about it without excessive spoilers for book one. This one... it's YA fiction, technically, though as with most good YA fiction when you're in the meat of the story it would not be easy to know: when I say this bit of "Young Adult" fiction compares in interesting ways of tone and theme to All the Windwracked Stars, that doesn't mean it's lighter and softer. Both books present a bleak struggle, are dark in the right places, and feature the right amount of redemption to be the light at the end of the tunnel of suffering to get there. The characters have to go through a lot for the promise of a happy ending to their story (And that simply as much as one can be had, given all that's come before), and sometimes it looks like all their struggles are for the impossible, even if the laws of narrative say that you won't have a shaggy dog story just yet (and that applies equally to Muire and Ki).

Rapid Fire Round: Clockwork (Phillip Pullman) and The El Dorado Adventure (Lloyd Alexander). Both kids' books. I can defend YA as not being qualitatively different from "Adult" books, but books for younger readers such as these are a different matter. All the same, the good among them don't talk down to their audience, which means they are still enjoyable at a multiple of the intended age. Clockwork is one I read first as a kid, and I have to say on rereading it there's a surprising lot in there that would, frankly, go over the head of a reader of 8 years. For The El Dorado Adventure... It's no secret that Lloyd Alexander is one of my all-time favorite authors, and reading the Vesper Holly series just reaffirms why. He tells a story first, and it usually feels like he just happens to tell it in such a way that it's suitable in content and linguistic considerations for younger readers.

I've also read The Dreamer, by EJ Mellow, lately, but I've talked about that at length in its own thread. I've also also read Dark & Day, by Israel Grey, lately, but I think I'm going to talk at length about that one, too...

Almost finishing Zeroes by Scott Westerfeld (That was fast!). Young adult novel, but a very good one.

Started too Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. Only the first chapters, but I think I will like this one a lot.

I read Scorpion Shards and it was kind of bad.
Can anyone recommend me any urban fantasy books where people have superpowers, ideally centered on younger characters? Doesn't even need to be all that good, I'm just interested in looking at the settings. Just don't give me any traditional superhero stories, I want downward spirals and 'powers, but at a cost' type things.

I'm currently reading the Old Man's War series by John Scalzi, it uses a lot of tropes but it's still a really fun series with an interesting mystery

Just read a French parenting book calling Bringing Up Bebe. It was OK--it certainly brought to light the extreme neuroses of American-style parenting.

Now I'm reading Tracked, which is like Hunger Games meets Nascar... but there's a love triangle, and I'm sick of love triangles for the sake of love triangles, so I often find myself putting it down.

I'm also reading The Floating Islands, which seems OK, if a little overwrought.

Glad to hear Scalzi's OMW series is good! That was a huge book deal he signed, so it would've been bad for everyone (readers, writers, industry) if it flopped.

Best parenting book is called The In credible Years, A Troubleshooting Guide to raising kids two to eight.

Highly recommend it. My five year old is an angel and I think, honestly, this book helped

I have a hated of kids so I probably won't read it.
Still looking for The Last Colony so reading brave new world. It's so scary because it's so reminiscent of modern society.

Yeah, only read it if you're a parent with a kid under eight. Otherwise you just won't care.

Yeah, great series. I only read the first three books, but they are a closed story. I read other books from John Scalzi and I liked them all, placing him as one of my favorite authors. I recommend Red Shirts from him.

Yeah, that's the book that got me into him, redshirts is brilliant

It's a (completed) web serial rather than a book, but Worm checks off your other boxes.

Recent reads...

Excavation by James Rollins: This is what Kingdom of the Crystal Skull should have been -- maybe some theoretical science stuff, but "magic" artifacts, interlocking conspiracies, and trap-filled ruins representing a poor man's understanding of some South American theology. It's not great, but as something I read to kill time on a plane, it was more than serviceable.

By the Mountain Bound, by Elizabeth Bear: I didn't like it as much as All the Windwracked Stars. It lacked something of the weird beauty of the first book by virtue of being in a more recognizable setting and giving more answers. Still, it was good, and there was something gratifying in finally understanding more, but still not all.

I was just scanning through this thread, and felt like quoting this out of context.

That is all.