I don’t think Maul or Vader were that bad. Sidious and Tyranus are pushing it, but Bane is on the same level as a 14 year old making his first Naruto OC.

Not to mention good names are slightly more important in a book than a movie. You spend a lot more time seeing the name in a book. Hell, you never even hear the name of some characters in movies.

EDIT: @Taku
Thanks a lot, now I need to clean my screen. Though it does oddly fits considering Darth Bane is supposed to be pretty ripped.

I’ll agree to the Thrawn trilogy; it’s my favourite. However, I also really like the X-wing series with Michael A Stackpole and Aaron Allston- best to read them in order. A common factor is those series actually had some really solid non-movie characters that can hold their own, whereas a lot of books just try and shoehorn the movie core characters in.

(Black Fleet Crisis is one of the worst examples with the completely unrelated Lando alien ship exploration- I was kinda on board with the subplot in the first book, but it went no-where and was ultimately a frustrating tangent.) X-wing series actually just has the movie characters as periphery characters, but just focuses on a squadron of elite pilots. Some of the pilots have pretty big egos, but I thoroughly enjoyed the series.

There’s a lot of real garbage in the EU. The Bantam years especially have the highest heights and the greatest lows. I can’t speak for the Ballantine years so much as I haven’t read much outside of the NJO series and random books like Allegiance (by Zahn again.)

Well, there are certainly far worse stories in the EU- I think it would’ve been much better had it been separated out into its own stand alone book. I might have enjoyed it more. However, I recently reread the series, knowing fullwell that the Lando plot wouldn’t connect, and I tried my hardest to enjoy it for what it is- and I still got impatient with Lando’s story in the second and third books. The set-up in the first book I can enjoy, but not the other two.

However, while it’s not the worst story in the Bantam EU (actually, I rather liked a lot of the thoughtful world-building the author was doing) to me, it’s the best example of trying to shoehorn all the movie characters in that the Lando plot had nothing to do with anything else (and really the Luke subplot was largely disconnected until the very ended.) I think that series, I tended to like some of the smaller elements of storytelling he had- there are cool pieces all over the place, but as soon as I zoomed out to see the big picture, I didn’t like it near so much.

Got another great book I just finished! Kinda more on the serious side of things. It’s Ashley’s War, which is pretty new, but it’s about female soldiers who were (and are) attached to Army Ranger units in Afghanistan. Really, really cool, and not a subject I knew anything about before.

(for the non-Americans, Army Rangers are special ops forces—and at the time that this program started, women were not officially allowed in infantry combat positions in the American army, especially not with special ops units)

Go Set a Watchman is an interesting look at what the first draft of To Kill a Mockingbird was, but a sequel it is not.

So somehow with training and being in and out of the field I managed to read The Book Thief. It left me kinda quiet for awhile. Still not sure how I feel about some of the description or how the ending just sort of trails off.

I believe Stephenson wrote Quicksilver (and the rest of the Baroque Cycle) after Cryptonomicon, which might explain why you liked it more.

I just read reviews for the new installment of a series I loved.
And it just sounds awful.

How depressing. :(

Hopefully it turns out to be better than expected?

Yeah, Seveneves is cool. Didn’t really enjoy the third part as much as the others though.

Didn’t really enjoy the third part as much as the others though.

Hm I felt Cryptonomicon also had a weak ending that didn’t justify the length of the book (1000+ pages, why?). Kind of disappointing to hear, but maybe I will check out Seveneves.

@Deborah – good thing you discovered that before you read it. :P At least now you can go on your way satisfied with how the last book ended, without reading that one.

Finished two books in the last week (Haven’t read for pleasure AT ALL during the semester and I am finally reaping my rewards with a sane summer schedule)

1) The Penelopiad by Margarat Atwood

2) The Girl with All the Gifts by M. R. Carey

Both rather short and quick reads (like cookies after months of healthy eating) but I liked them both tremendously.

I received The Fountainhead as an 18th birthday present from my best friend and I got maybe a 4th of the way through it last summer, but I didn’t have time to sit down and finish it until this past month just due to school. Anyway, it’s probably one of the most important and relevant books I’ve ever read. It not only reaffirmed some of my strongest personal beliefs about how I should approach life (which is something I’ve really struggled to reconcile this past year), but it also perfectly described my relationship and put into words how I feel about my significant other in a way I never could. I’ll probably end up writing a longer analysis of the book after I’ve had some more time to process it and after I’ve properly set up my personal website, but as of now it has joined Meditations on my list of books I believe everybody should read during their lives.

Have you read The House of God by Samuel Shem, SWQ? That’s a very funny book about working in a hospital. In the same “medical-internships-are-hell” subgenre, you might also read Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell, which is even funnier. Beat the Reaper is about a former hitman who attends medical school as part of the Witness Protection Program, but of course his past catches up with him. The House of God is kind of dated (1978) and has a lot of jargon, so you might read Beat the Reaper first. They do have science/medicine parts to them, but mostly silliness.

EDIT: I recently finished reading Slavery and Social Death by Orlando Patterson. Has anyone else read this book? The preface, introduction, and first chapter are worth the price of admission.

Oh! While this is not about residency, your mention of short stories reminded me of Frank Huyler’s The Blood of Strangers (i. e., donated blood), a group of connected stories all about working in the ER.

I’d recommend either Malazan Book of the Fallen or The Black Company. Malazan has a more complex world and story, but for some reason The Black Company just sticks with me more.

OMFG yes, have you not heard me wax poetical about the Tenebran trilogy? One of the finest high fantasy series I’ve ever read.

Anyone have recommendations for good stand-alone fantasy books for a picky reader? My tastes have ‘refined’ so much over the last few years that it’s gotten really hard to find new books. The last one I read was Uprooted by Naomi Novik, which I quite enjoyed, but that was 2 months ago :S

For elaboration on picky: I have a strong preference for female authors and I can’t stand bad prose. I tend not to read a lot beyond my favourite authors because I pay so much attention to prose that even just slightly bland writing can turn me off after just a few chapters. I’m not much a fan of standards like Neil Gaiman or GRRM because of this. I’m not picky about settings, storylines as long as they’re not completely unoriginal and don’t objectify women. My favorites list starts with Margaret Atwood and Ursula LeGuin, but also has less-known authors like Kevin Crossley-Holland and Meredith Ann Pierce.

I blame academia for making me over-critical and basically killing my enjoyment of fiction, but I’m trying to get better! I just need some help breaking out of my shell.

Seanan McGuire recently published a stand-alone, Every Heart a Doorway. I haven’t read it yet, but I’ve heard good things.

I can think of a few first-in-series books that work as stand-alone books:

A Natural History of Dragons: a Memoir by Lady Trent by Marie Brennan might be good, assuming you enjoy Novik’s Temeraire books.

The Fairy Godmother by Mercedes Lackey is also enjoyable, if you want a sort-of behind-the-scenes look a traditional fairy tales.

Dealing With Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede was also good, if a bit YA.

I can think of a few. Some of them have sequels, but the first book still works as a stand-alone:
The Scorpio Races, by Maggie Stiefvater. A Celtic-inspired island in the middle of nowhere with killer horses that come up out of the ocean. There’s a review on the main site.
The Thief, by Megan Whalen Turner. Heavily inspired by Greek mythology, but with a setting that has eighteenth/nineteenth century levels of technology. Has a snarky first-person narrator.
Howl’s Moving Castle, by Diana Wynne Jones. Comic fantasy, fairy-tale parody. Completely hilarious, and has a great heroine.
Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel. A Post-apocalyptic tale blended with a literary novel, featuring a wide cast of characters before and after the collapse of civilization.
Book of a Thousand Days, by Shannon Hale. Retelling of an obscure Brother’s Grimm fairytale, set in a fantasy world inspired by Mongolia. A Young Adult romance, and a very good one.

Dealing with Dragons works just fine as a standalone, but it’s technically the first in a four-book series. (and the first book to be written is the last in the series, which explains why it’s a bit weird comparatively) They’re short, though, and are definitely YA. That being said, it’s also one of my favorite series of all time; the first book is about a princess who runs away from home and becomes housekeeper/personal assistant for a dragon. (the other books focus more on other characters, who are also all wonderful, but Cimorene still plays an important role)

EDIT: what about Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books? They’re not standalone, but they’re not really a direct series, either; they all take place in a single shared world. Some of the books are sort of in sub-series, like the City Watch books, but frankly can be read individually anyway. (I read them in basically random order.) If you want female protagonists, try the Witches books or the Tiffany Aching ones. (the Tiffany Aching books are YA, but exactly the kind of thing I wish I’d read in middle school. Sadly, they didn’t exist then!)

Okay, then you absolutely should read The Fairy Godmother, if only for the shout-out to Mort.

Also, I thought up another few books:

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell, by Susanna Clarke, but given how long it is, it’d probably take you several months to get through.

But on a similar note, Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal might be good. It’s another “first in series, but works as stand-alone”. It’s basically a Jane Austen novel, but with magic.

I’ve also been reading Sorcery & Cecelia: or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer off and on. More Regency era with magic, but it’s written as letters between two girls.

Also by Patricia C. Wrede – Thirteenth Child. Basically, Little House on the Prairie with magic.

Miel, have U read The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss? It has one of the most resourceful, intelligent, multi-skilled (if hot-headed) protagonists I’ve ever read. Very cool.

^ Thumbs up for Sabriel and its sequels. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is one of my favorites of all time. Miel, have you read Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake? I think it’s tailor-made for your taste. Beautifully written, beautiful atmosphere, like Dickens crossed with Poe crossed with Austen. The first book in the series is Titus Groan.

Sly, we should have an argument about The Name of the Wind. I found Kvothe very irritating and so miraculously skilled at everything he puts his hand to, and so attractive to all the ladies. I know he’s an unreliable narrator or whatever, but there wasn’t enough ambiguity about his version of events (like in stories like The Turn of the Screw or Lolita or even Wuthering Heights) to make us doubt what he’s telling us, or make you feel a little uncomfortable. I think I would have been able to forgive this if Denna had been treated better as a character. Her character was just meant to be So Beautiful and So Mysterious, (literally, every time she shows up) it felt almost chauvinistic to me.

Granted, everybody else seems to love this book except me and my super-feminist former roommate, so maybe we’re just weird. The worldbuilding was really great though, and the magical school tuition subplot was definitely unique.

I haven’t read The Name of the Wind but I also admit to being a super feminist so I guess I might find some characters off-putting then :/ I’ll put it on the list though since sometimes I do like polarising books ( Cloud Atlas comes to mind, I loved it until the preachy ending epilogue!).

@organiclead, you’re in for a treat with Lirael and Abhorsen! I know some people don’t like them as much because they’re slower paced but that’s part of their charm—they do so much worldbuilding that there wasn’t time for in Sabriel. Also read “Nicholas Sayre and the Creature in the Case” if you get the chance, it’s more like the heart-pounding horror adventure that Sabriel was. There’s also another book coming out in October! I’m going to be cautious about it because Clariel wasn’t great but it’s still exciting!

Name of the Wind kind of turned me away when I found out the beginning chapter has little or nothing to do with the rest of the book. I really don’t like books that try to hook you with something that has little to nothing to do with the rest of the book.

@Miel Looking forward to getting them and getting more answers on what world building was hinted at in the first book.

Sly, we should have an argument about The Name of the Wind. I found Kvothe very irritating and so miraculously skilled at everything he puts his hand to, and so attractive to all the ladies.

OKAY YES THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I FELT

I just don’t think I can care enough about the next one to read it, whenever it comes out. Yes, Kvothe does legitimately earn all of his various skills, and he has to work at them—but he is just too perfect compared to everyone around him (literally no one else comes close to him in skill, and he’s extremely arrogant) and he seems to pick up all these things extremely quickly. Here’s this horrible trauma he has to go through! Conveniently, he either has the skills or very quickly figures out the skills he needs to get through it! How… nice.

As per usual, I’m going to allude to the Dresden Files. Harry Dresden is superficially a similar character; he’s an extremely powerful and dangerous magic user with a mysterious background who’s unfairly judged by a lot of people. But he doesn’t give me the same feeling at all, for a few different reasons:

1) Harry’s power builds up slowly. Sure, by Skin Game he’s got a crazy amount of power, but it takes him fifteen books to build up to that, and he’s around 40 now. Kvothe just seems to learn everything immediately; by his twenties, he’s done more than basically anyone else has ever done in their entire lives.
2) Harry’s definitely not the most powerful person out there. Yes, he’s very powerful, almost unrecognizably so compared with how he started off. But that means he’s just barely in the big leagues. Kvothe usually is more powerful/smarter/better than everyone around him, and it’s obvious from the framing device that he’s going to end up one of the most powerful people ever, eventually.
3) Harry downplays his accomplishments and skills constantly; from his perspective, his accomplishments are mostly a result of being in the right place at the right time and being too stubborn to die. Kvothe is arrogant and beats everyone by being so much more clever or so much more powerful or whatever than them.
And possibly most importantly, 4) other characters have lives and can like or dislike Harry without it being a commentary on their moral character. People who dislike Kvothe are terrible (or at least stupid) and mostly get comeuppance. People who do like Kvothe seem to mostly exist for the purpose of helping him on his journey. If other people have non-Kvothe-related motivations, they aren’t treated as nearly as important as their Kvothe-related motivations.

Kvothe just isn’t the same sort of character as Harry, so he drove me nuts.

(in fairness—it’s been quite some time since I read the books, but this is my lingering impression of them. I don’t regret reading them, and I legitimately enjoyed them; they have an interesting world and are well-written. The world is just entirely centered around Kvothe, and that massively turned me off. And that’s not even getting into the female characters (who I really didn’t think were that amazing—I loathe the Generic Beautiful Mysterious Woman #567 trope, and no, “he’s young and in love so he doesn’t see her flaws” is not an excuse) and the weird insistence on pretending the Chandrian stuff is a mystery when the reader figured out they were involved literally during the scene where they showed up.)

I used to think that I couldn’t like a book with terrible prose and pacing. Swords and Deviltry has proven this wrong. The writing sucks (in the same way that most pulp fiction kind of sucks) but I adore Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, their interactions and the world inside.

It’s been a surprisingly interesting read for me because this is my first pre-Tolkien fantasy series. I picked up this book because I wac curious who the two figures who watched Ankh-Morpork burn in the beginning of The Color of Magic were. I can imagine a young Terry Prachett curled up under the covers, a flashlight in hand, reading Fantastic magazine well past bedtime, telling himself just one more page. I can see Gary Gygax re-reading these books years later, trying to capture the sense of danger and mystery in the random roll of dice. It’s reverse engineering influences on modern products that you didn’t even realize were referencing something else.

It’s also the middle of the night, so it’s probably just that paradoxically melancholy-whimsical mood the night air brings.I don’t know, I’m just wondering if other people get this way when they read something that influenced something that they really like.

After a quick Wikipedia search, I’m definitely adding him to my list. He’s probably going to have to go to the back though because I’m probably going to have to either custom order it or get it off Amazon.

Anyone here read Charlie Stross? I’ve enjoyed two books of the Laundry Files series so far, wondering if I should get into more of his work. Thoughts?

Ooh, didn’t realize it had finally come. Does it read quickly? I had heard it had quite the high page count.

Can U elaborate on what U expected?

Hild by Nicola Griffith was a good read. Very immersive in its portrayal of England at the crossroads of Christianity and paganism and the writing is beautiful. Things I liked less: the ending (although apparently a sequel is in the works), and the fact that there were so many shoes set up in the course of the book and not one of them really satisfyingly dropped. I have my complaints about GRRM, but at least when he picks up a shoe and waves it in his reader’s face, he will drop the fucking shoe and things will happen (at least until AFFC).

I would still recommend it, especially to people who like beautiful writing and history.

^ To be unfair, half a book should not be that long without its own sense of arc. Otherwise, why publish it as its own book? (Because it was already insanely long. sigh)

It’s been awhile since I read AFFC, so maybe I’m being retroactively harsh. :P

AFFC felt very different from the first three books and I feel like I didn’t appreciate it enough the first time through. It really shows the devastation and hangover after too much war, whereas the first books almost indulge or glorify war. A much needed sobering methinks.

That said, the Iron Islands got so boring…

Vol 1 Gulag Archipelago Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn- Amazing read, although it's absolutely baffling to me that the USSR worked as well as it did considering the number of engineers and scientists they were locking up. And then just unbelievable cruelty and wanton oppression and immorality. Fascinating stuff.

Goblin Emperor- Katherine Addison. The faux Shakespearean English (?I guess? It was mostly just thou's and thee's) through me off for a little bit, then I got used to it and ended up really liking it. Really liked the central conflict of heir forced to take the throne, but was never prepared because they were so far down the chain (and whose mother was in disfavour by the previous emperor). The struggles to navigate the entirely unknown world of court politics was well done.

Fifth Quarter- Tanya Huff. really strange book with body swapping. I think a more interesting premise than what I actually got, though I did power through it. So it was compelling enough, I guess. Some real cringe incestuous feelings though...