I’m currently reading Hyperion by Dan Simmons. It’s the slowest going on a book I’ve had all year, I’m progressing through it but I can’t say at this stage whether I’m enjoying it… Normally if I’m not connecting with a book I’d just leave it to the side and maybe come back to it again, but I’ve heard a lot of people really rave about it… so I’m continuing on, always presuming the wow factor must be a few pages ahead of the one I’m currently on 
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The Queen’s Gambit was a really good book. Now that C has finished rereading it I may pick it up sometime soon.
Hyperion is on my list of shame of unfinished books. A third into it and I could not see what the fuss was all about. Something else came along, and I think it ended in the charity shop 2 years ago before we moved.
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Cheers for letting me know I’m not alone in it anyway! I was starting to think it was just me 
I’m about half way through I’d say. I finished up the poets tale, but the next one better be a an absolute belter or it may end up suffering a similar fate to your copy!
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I don’t think I understand feeling ashamed of not finishing a book. There are lots of books I have finished, ranging from those I put down in disgust after a page or a chapter to those I ran out of impetus on midway through. Some of the latter I plan to come back to, but with others, no way.
I read primarily for pleasure, and sometimes for curiosity. For the most part, if the author doesn’t give me pleasure, I figure it’s either a mismatch or their not being very good. But I’m no more obliged to enjoy Jane Eyre than C is to enjoy the flavor of cilantro.
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In fairness I have a theoretical ‘shelf of shame’ for games, but I don’t actually feel ashamed of having not gotten one to the table… But it sounds better than shelf of regret… although now that I have typed those words… I kinda like them!
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Definitely not feeling ashamed, there are plenty of books that I did not connect with, but I don’t think it is only their part. There is also my side, I was not ready at the time to get a book that was so dense and with slow pace. Sometimes I am.
They go in a mock “wall of shame” when they are famous and critically acclaimed. My wall include books like “Foucault’s Pendulum”, “War and Peace” or “Hyperion” where, either for their side or for mine, I had to leave unfinished. Some of them I try and retake. Some I don’t…
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I can’t remember if the book I read by Dan Simmons was Hyperion or not, but I do remember it was awful, and I gave away the two books of his I had bought in a box of second hand books shortly after I finished the first book. Giving away unread books when I’m starved of English reading material is something I have never done before or since.
(Google tells me it was not Hyperion)
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Wow, yeah that’s a deeper cut, giving them away when English reading material is scarce for you. I don’t think Hyperion is that bad or I’d have stopped already, but I was definitely expecting more considering a lot of people I’ve spoken to rated it very highly. But who knows, perhaps I’ll perform a “classic, mid-book review turnaround” and really enjoy the second half of it. I’m not holding my breath, but who knows.
For what it’s worth: I quite enjoyed Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion though I found them heavy going; I ploughed on with Endymion and The Rise of Endymion without enjoying them at all (there’s a particular transitional oddity between TFoH and E that started me off on the wrong foot, but I won’t go into spoilery details); and I haven’t felt any urge to pick up a Simmons book since. I understand he’s recently got into conspiracy-theory levels of right-wing politics which isn’t really my thing.
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I’m reading Zahn’s first Thrawn book at the moment. It’s all my pet peeves in a single book, but I’m determined to finish it. Don’t think Star Wars books are for me!
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I think that came through loud and clear even in his fiction, if the book I read was any indication.
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Out of curiosity, what are your pet peeves? I am just wondering if I see the same things in the book and they just don’t bother me, or if I am not seeing them at all.
I said it in the other book thread a month or two back, but the big one for me is contrived situations set up to show how intelligent a character is, especially in predicting other characters’behaviours. It makes me lose faith in the author doing anything other than using contrived solutions in response to any issue with some “sonic screwdriver”.
I much prefer naturalistic writing. Believable characters who make understandable choices, and are all very different from each other, is a magical art that marks the best authors IMO.
Smaller ones are:
- Using each chapter to hit a particular narrative beat, beat achieved, chapter ends. It’s very direct.
- Those little chapter prefaces linking military tactics to the theme of the chapter is a nice idea, but in practice grows weary.
- And generally very ‘objective based’ writing that pretends to be a character study, but is more about actions and stuff happening with very little introspection or true character analysis. It’s all very surface level.
Characters and naturalistic writing is what I look for in authorship. Was hoping with the set up that this would be the case here, but it’s more of a Lee Child “my protagonist is awesome and flawless and can kick everyone in the face without breaking a sweat because I said so” approach.
(And obviously all the above is my preference, and I totally understand why others would enjoy that kind of book!)
For reference: Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch and The Secret History are some of my favourite books. Feel free to rip them apart in kind!
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Well, there’s certainly plenty of your first peeve in these books, can’t argue with that 
Wasn’t sure what you meant by the military tactics in the prefaces until I realized you are reading Thrawn. When I hear the first of Zahn’s Thrawn books, I think of Heir to the Empire, which has a very different feel to the book you are reading. Not sure if it would be up your alley or not, but I will say it and the rest of that trilogy just feel like SW. I will admit that Thrawn, while enjoyable, did not capture that feeling nearly as well and was probably the SW book of Zahn’s I least enjoyed.
And I can’t rip apart your favorite books, I haven’t read them, and likely never will (no offense intended, they just aren’t in my preferred genres). Everyone is entitled to enjoy the things they enjoy, and don’t need to justify it. Don’t need to justify their dislikes, either.
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I quite enjoyed The Secret History. And now I’ve just bought the Audible version of The Goldfinch, which I’ve been considering for a while… 32 hours is long, but I have a bit more listening time these days so hopefully I won’t get bogged down.
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So I read The Last Emperox by John Scalzi, and it was very satisfying. He continues to be, while not my favourite author, definitely one of my most consistently favourite.
It’s hard to explain. Pratchett has moments of utter brilliance that make me gasp, put the book down, and never want to read anything else ever again. Brin crafts beautiful, deep, fascinating aliens and worlds and technologies that make me weep for the lack of creativity in so many authors. Others do much better military sci-fi (Haldeman, Campbell), others better space operas (Vinge, Hamilton), and so on. Scalzi isn’t as fantastic in a specific way as so many other authors are.
He’s a craftsman. He sets out to tell a good story that will make you chuckle sometimes, think sometimes, and everything will be wrapped up in a believable, intelligent, satisfying way, and he always delivers. Anyway. I hope one day to write stories like he does.
Other than that, read King Lear (I continue to hate Lear and have no sympathy for him… Cordelia, on the other hand, is the real tragedy in that play), and need to read Antony and Cleopatra for Monday.
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I am listening to it at the moment and I must say I like this trilogy (I think it is supposed to be three books but that has rarely stopped any author from continuing if they like the world they were writing in). The whole setup is smart and a recent chapter had him explain the monopolies and how they were going to affect everything moving forward and yeah… well… obviously it’s a “not even tried to hide it” poke at our reality… I found myself nodding and nodding.
I generally enjoy Scalzi’s books but I cannot say that I have read all of them.
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I am almost finished with The Fallen Fortress, book four of R.A. Salvatore’s Cleric Quintet, then it will be on to The Chaos Curse to finish it off.
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Scalzi is one of the writers whose book I could not feel motivated enough to finish. That was The Ghost Brigades, the sequel to Old Man’s War. A friend described that series to me as like Starship Troopers without the philosophy, and, well, I guess it was the philosophy that made ST appealing to me. I did get through another of his books—I think Agent to the Stars—but though it made one interesting legal point, it didn’t seem to have any other substance and it was one of the types of comedy I don’t enjoy. I can’t really offer a criticism of Scalzi as a writer—it wouldn’t be informed, and I can’t point to any one outstanding thing that put me off—it’s just that he’s not a writer for me.