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Brock Manson
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re. Fantasy stuff, The Discworld series by Terry Pratchett is top notch. 
 

It’s a piss take of Fantasy novels, set on a flat earth, and has various recurring characters, including DEATH and shit wizards, and night watchmen etc. 

 

(I tried some of the proper stuff and couldn’t get away with it, either. )

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I loved a lot of the Tolkien stuff back in early high school, think went down the Discworld rabbithile around the time I was struggling with The Silmarillion. Mort was a standout if memory serves but it's years since even thought about that series, let alone read them.

 

Lost interest in fantasy novels until GoT got popular and thought I'd give the books a go. Managed the first two (I think) before getting a bit fucked off with all the padding. Quite often seeing six straight really long paragraphs describing a single piece of chainmail in intricate detail and eventually just thought "bollocks to this, these sections are worse when the Tolkien books would burst into song for a few pages".

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27 minutes ago, Monkeys Fist said:

re. Fantasy stuff, The Discworld series by Terry Pratchett is top notch. 
 

It’s a piss take of Fantasy novels, set on a flat earth, and has various recurring characters, including DEATH and shit wizards, and night watchmen etc. 

 

(I tried some of the proper stuff and couldn’t get away with it, either. )

I always think of the discworld as satire rather than straight up fantasy 

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Just now, Kevin Carr's Gloves said:

I always think of the discworld as satire rather than straight up fantasy 

Absolutely- he’s a supreme piss-taker, but drops a few very salient comments on society in amongst the laughs. 
 

I also love the way The Librarian only ever says “Ook”, but is very clearly the most sarcastic bugger in the entire series. 
 

 

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Ive recently thought about trying to read some of the many Philip K Dick works I never got round to. Despite having read a lot of his stuff there’s even more I haven’t yet. That sort of postmodern exploration of illusory alternative realities, monolithic all-seeing corporations and paranoid, hallucinatory  descents into never ending madness might be a bit too much like real life in 2023 though. What a writer though. The mad fucker. 

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30 minutes ago, Alex said:

Ive recently thought about trying to read some of the many Philip K Dick works I never got round to. Despite having read a lot of his stuff there’s even more I haven’t yet. That sort of postmodern exploration of illusory alternative realities, monolithic all-seeing corporations and paranoid, hallucinatory descents into never ending madness might be a bit too much like real life in 2023 though. What a writer though. The mad fucker. 

 

You've just reminded me I stilI haven't got round to reading A Scanner Darkly.

 

A good friend of mines dropped off a copy when I was just out of hospital after a major lung op and still out my face on (prescribed) opioids and insisted I read it. I noped out and opted to read The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern instead. Night Circus was a really good read tbf and weird memories of it still pop up in the occasional fever dream, but that's all likely skewed a bit by the opiates.

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5 minutes ago, Blastronaut said:

 

You've just reminded me I stilI haven't got round to reading A Scanner Darkly.

 

A good friend of mines dropped off a copy when I was just out of hospital after a major lung op and still out my face on (prescribed) opioids and insisted I read it. I noped out and opted to read The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern instead. Night Circus was a really good read tbf and weird memories of it still pop up in the occasional fever dream, but that's all likely skewed a bit by the opiates.

It’s s good one. Definitely worth the effort.  The rotoscope film adaptation was good too. Although it was never going to be able to match the paranoia of the novel 

 

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29 minutes ago, Blastronaut said:

 

You've just reminded me I stilI haven't got round to reading A Scanner Darkly.

 

A good friend of mines dropped off a copy when I was just out of hospital after a major lung op and still out my face on (prescribed) opioids and insisted I read it. I noped out and opted to read The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern instead. Night Circus was a really good read tbf and weird memories of it still pop up in the occasional fever dream, but that's all likely skewed a bit by the opiates.

Night circus was a great book tbf

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14 minutes ago, Alex said:

It’s s good one. Definitely worth the effort.  The rotoscope film adaptation was good too. Although it was never going to be able to match the paranoia of the novel 

 

 

I haven't even seen the film adaptation. I think I might have missed a trick by not taking my mates recommendation and reading it back when I had few responsibilities and was (legitimately) strung out on opiates. 

 

I'm still an anxious mess after the shitstorm that 2023 has been so far, so it'll have to wait but it's definitely back on the list. 

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He actually wrote a few non-sci fi novels that were really good too. I think he stopped at about 4 simply because he couldn’t get anyone to publish them during his lifetime. It was apparently a constant source of disappointment despite his success as a writer 

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On 24/08/2023 at 20:46, strawb said:

Joe Abercrombie - Everything he writes is good, pretty dark

Mark Lawrence - Book of the Ancestor, Prince of Thorns, The Req Queens War

TC Edge - The Bladeborn Saga

Glen Cook - Chronicles of the black company

Ed McDonald - The Ravens Mark

Scott Lynch - The Lies of Locke Lamora

Terry Brooks - Shannara Series

Anthony Ryan - Ravens Shadow

 

Those are all series of books with multiple stories in

 

Finished the The Blade Itself over the weekend, cracked open Before They Are Hanged today.

Jezal could use a good slap so far, 

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 24/08/2023 at 14:48, Alex said:

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold is another good one. 


Excellent read, not quite what I was expecting but a good ending to it. I also discovered The Tailor of Panama on my shelf so will hopefully get through that too before the flight home.

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  • 7 months later...

just finished jarvis cocker's memoir, good pop, bad pop, which was an enjoyable enough easy read. 

 

also just read tunnel 29, a harrowing story about people in west berlin building tunnels under the wall to free people from the brutal regime in the east. it's a fascinating story, based on true events, which shone a light on a terrifying piece of history i wasn't familiar with.

 

other books i've enjoyed this year include yellowface and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow 

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3 hours ago, wykikitoon said:

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is a great read

Has this on my “to read” list for a while, but I keep putting it off…

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