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Kiefer wrote:
Drood. By Dan Simmons. It's kind of like a cross
between Charles Dickens and Edgar Allen Poe.
It had be hooked by page 10.
I wish I could say that book wasn't an immense disappointment in the end. It just went....nowhere. I'm in the middle or reading Hyperion again. I have such a love/hate with Dan Simmons. The Hyperion books, Ilium/Olympos, Carrion Comfort, Summer of Night are all awesome. Drood, The Terror, and Black Hills were just painful.
Jon Frohlich wrote:
I wish I could say that book wasn't an immense disappointment in the end. It just went....nowhere. I'm in the middle or reading Hyperion again. I have such a love/hate with Dan Simmons. The Hyperion books, Ilium/Olympos, Carrion Comfort, Summer of Night are all awesome. Drood, The Terror, and Black Hills were just painful.
You know, I'm on page 453 and I have to agree. I have no idea where the story is now going.
It seems it's just rambling. I'll brace myself for the ending.
I just re-read INTO THIN AIR this weekend since Neil Beidleman came to where I work a few months ago to give a talk and it was amazing to see the story through his eyes.
I saw the book sitting on the shelf and was feeling lousy this weekend, so I wasn't going outside anyway. I read it years ago, but seeing Neil's presentation gave the book another dimension to me.
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. Pulitzer winner. 800 pages of New Yorkers feeling sorry for themselves. They need to climb a mountain.
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides. Five sisters kill themselves, and teen neighbors try to figure out why. Not as good as Middlesex, but still a fun read.
The Dinner by Herman Koch. Would you cover up a crime for a despicable teenage son?
Fight Club by Chuck Palanuik. Interesting for first 50 pages, monotonous after that. Macho overdose with a stupid ending. What's up with the cult status of this story? Maybe the movie is better than the book.
Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery. Middle-age concierge befriends precocious tweener girl in rich Paris apartment building. Best book on this list.
Oman wrote:Fight Club by Chuck Palanuik. Interesting for first 50 pages, monotonous after that. Macho overdose with a stupid ending. What's up with the cult status of this story? Maybe the movie is better than the book.
I like Chuck's books, but in this case the movie is definitely better than the book. I found the book rather meh after seeing the film.
Just finished Art Davidson's Minus 148° and about to dig into Steve House's Beyond the Mountain. I really enjoyed Minus 148° and would recommend it to almost anyone. I'm not really sure what to expect out of the Steve House book yet, but we'll see.
Oman wrote:The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. Pulitzer winner. 800 pages of New Yorkers feeling sorry for themselves. They need to climb a mountain.
Agreed. I also agree with this review as it applies to Top-10 books in general today: While a certain amount of hype has been bought and paid for, the rapturous reviews of this book leave me wondering how intellectually bankrupt this country must be to find this work brilliant. A perfect example is the recent bestseller Bonfire of the Vanities. Ugh! What a shallow, manipulative book that left me feeling sick to my stomach, like I'd just been suckered.
I almost never read fiction, especially today. What has happened in real life (non-fiction) is almost always more interesting than some made-up story.
Currently reading Eisenhower at War 1943-1945. An account of a gifted leader under tremendous pressure.
[quote="mountaingoat-G"]I just re-read INTO THIN AIR this weekend since Neil Beidleman came to where I work a few months ago to give a talk and it was amazing to see the story through his eyes.
Along the same lines I just started Goran Kropp's Ultimate High from his 96 solo of Everest after biking from Sweden to Nepal.
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