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One-armed dwarf wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 07, 2018 8:39 pm

I want to give fantasy a proper wack. Planescape Torment convinced me it can be good.

I guess I should pick up Dune or something.

I consider Dune to be mid fantasy with political drama, try McCaffrey Pern saga for some high fantasy.

If you want something more comedic Piers Anthony's Xanth'a books are solid adventures with plenty of puns, or you can go full comedy with any of the Discworld series.


Fancy something more serious try Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series.


Read most of these book at some point during my teens/twenties, but the last decade or so I've preferred short story anthology's best found in charity shops.

Got a collection of about 20 from the 60's-00's and you tend to find a huge variance In both theme and content with short story's more than series so maybe start there.

I'm not going to dive too deeply I suppose, I just want to get away from the Game of Thrones type stuff which I found really weak.

Dune sounds like the touchstone for a lot of people. I know people like Wheel of Time but it sounds like that gets really bad after a while.

As far as fantasy goes I've only really read Tolkien and the first GoT book. And a smattering of YA fiction when I was a teen.


I'm maybe with 150 pages of finishing Infinite Jest now (book is about 1080 pages). All told I think this was quite bad. The author knows how to write but I think he's most into exercising but with words.

The stuff I liked was reading about the pressures of high level professional athleticism at a tennis academy and the costs of failure/burnout and how the students/players regulate their internal pressures with drugs. Then how that converges with the other half of the novel which concerns addicts in Boston AA finding a framework for living with addiction and recovery. But taking the whole thing together it was frustrating and I'm annoyed that I started reading it. Well I'm nearly finished now.

If you're looking for a decent fantasy series, I've read one called The Demon Cycle - it's set in an old-timey world where demons come out to play at night and the only way to defend against them is with wards they can't cross.

I absolutely adored the first book - The Painted Man - and I'm just holding off on the final instalment of five to drop in price before I pull the trigger and pick that up too. As someone who isn't usually a fantasy fan (ie I've only ever read the GoT books), there's something in there that just managed to grip me from the start and it's a series I'd absolutely recommend to anyone.

Here's a link in case you're interested:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Painted-Man-De ... 131&sr=8-1

Anyway, the book I'm reading at the minute goes by the catchy title of We Have No Idea: A Guide to the Unknown Universe.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/We-Have-No-Ide ... n+universe

Basically it tries to break down higher-level physics concepts to try and explain the universe. What we do know, what we don't know, and why we do or don't know these things. I'm not going to lie, it's a tough read. Some of the concepts are way beyond my understanding, but the writing style makes everything so much easier to digest. There are parts that I've really struggled with, and some of that fact is to do with the way you're taught science at GCSE level, but the parts I do understand are an absolute joy to read. It's nuts reading about the different theories that I've heard about (such as the idea that we might be part of a simulation) and getting to grips with how and why these theories have come about.

It helps that there is a genuine humour to the writing, it's filled with bad jokes that help bring a little bit of levity to the more complicated theories, and it tries to make things as relatable as possible by using animals in the examples (llamas, kittens, hamsters and baboons have all had starring roles in the analogies up to now). It's been tough in places, but I'm feeling a genuine sense of accomplishment having almost finished this book.

Thanks for all the fantasy recommendations.

I'm dropping what I was reading for now. Not even sure I'll finish it, reading it is punishing and unrewarding.

So took a trip down to picadilly circus into their lovely Waterstones and picked this up on paperback


Villeneuve has his film coming out in a few years so seemed like a good one to start with.

They've also got some lovely hardbacks in here. Saw some lovely Tolkien's with nice artwork and coloured maps on the inside cover. Also a bunch of nice editions of classics and a big Philip Pullman HDM hardback.

No Dune hardback sadly.

Yeah I read about the new attempt at Dune, the TV show captured the feel of the books well but I loved Lynch's take on it, yes its a mess at times but its gloriously executed mess.

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As a footnote nevertheless Sleeper reformed last year and have played a handful of dates this year too, 20 yrs on from their break-up. I went along to their gig at The Fleece, Bristol a couple of weeks ago and had a great time.

Ready Player One. Heard about it becoming a film, heard how good the book was, decided to give it a go. I mean, its been on my Kindle for about 8 months, it's about time I got round to it...

It's good though, the author is setting the scene pretty well up to now. It follows a poor kid who lives in the slums on the outside of a city in his search for Easter Eggs in this world's version of Second Life. This will give him $240 billion dollars and the chance to escape his life of being poor. I've only just been introduced to his online friends, so really not far in at all. Interested to see where it goes and how it plays out.

I've actually started reading both my books in tandem now. I didn't want to leave Infinite Jest unfinished really but I need something more juicy to get me through the dull bits.

Infinite Jest might be coming to a head but I dunno. A bunch of legless Quebecois separatist terrorist-assassins in wheelchairs are getting ready to deploy across America a cassette tape/VHS the content of which is so enrapturing that it induces a blissful coma in the viewer and makes them useless.

Also 'Facebook'.

Dune I've read a handful of chapters so I can't say a lot. The Prince of Atriedis, or is it Arrakis? Is Arrakis another name for the sand planet? I don't know yet. But he's this messiah guy who has the power of seeing or something and his family is going to be betrayed by the Harkonnens.

I like it. They do this thing though where they enter a first-person mode in italics to tell you what another person is thinking. Not sure if I quite like that the way that they change focal position so much.

Random thing I found. There's a level at the end of the Dreamcast game Rez where you hear this refrain 'Fear is the mindkiller'. Actually it comes from this book when Paul is having his hand tortured in a black box which I didn't realise. Don't know what the connection is there though.

One-armed dwarf wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 21, 2018 9:17 am

I've actually started reading both my books in tandem now. I didn't want to leave Infinite Jest unfinished really but I need something more juicy to get me through the dull bits.

Infinite Jest might be coming to a head but I dunno. A bunch of legless Quebecois separatist terrorist-assassins in wheelchairs are getting ready to deploy across America a cassette tape/VHS the content of which is so enrapturing that it induces a blissful coma in the viewer and makes them useless.

Also 'Facebook'.

Dune I've read a handful of chapters so I can't say a lot. The Prince of Atriedis, or is it Arrakis? Is Arrakis another name for the sand planet? I don't know yet. But he's this messiah guy who has the power of seeing or something and his family is going to be betrayed by the Harkonnens.

I like it. They do this thing though where they enter a first-person mode in italics to tell you what another person is thinking. Not sure if I quite like that the way that they change focal position so much.

Random thing I found. There's a level at the end of the Dreamcast game Rez where you hear this refrain 'Fear is the mindkiller'. Actually it comes from this book when Paul is having his hand tortured in a black box which I didn't realise. Don't know what the connection is there though.

Arrakis is the sand planet, also known as Dune.

Paul is Prince of the House Artriedis, given the rights to manage Spice production on Arrakis. Spice is the drug the Navigators use to move the trade ships through hyperspace.

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The best science fiction and fantasy of 2017

omg 6 months later I finally finish infinite jest

I am final form of lit-hipster all shall fear me

Real talk did not like it much at all. If I was a junkie on drugs or alcohol or cigarettes or weed or whatever or a tennis player maybe it'd connect with me more.

At least I understand a bit more on what AA might be like.

edit: I read a description and apparently I missed everything the book was about plotwise. Also you are supposed to read it twice due to its non-linear fragmented narrative

Oh no

Edit2: this explains why my hipster ass cousin said he read it twice. Could not understand why you would do that

edit3: Actually kinda like Nier when you think on it (thinking man emote)

So Dune then.

The Fremen deal with lack of water by keeping all their sweat contained in a big thing called a still-suit. Does this actually work? Cause I'm pretty sure it's all urea/waste.

I know it's fantasy and all.