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The GOT Book Club

Read that a while ago. It's the one with the spiders yeah? Was pretty good. If you like that kind of sci fi I have really enjoyed so far a series of books by a lady called G Cockel. First one is called Archangel Down. The kindle versions are often on sale for 99p on Amazon.
Can't remember if I picked this one up from a recommendation here but just finished The Last Astronaut by David Wellington. If you like sci-fi it's fairly tense tale about first contact with some interesting ideas about potential alien life forms.
 
Read that one years ago based on a recommendation. Agree with your assessment—-it’s not nearly as clear or profound as the author (Pirsig?) suggests

He was clearly a very intelligent man and I enjoyed the way he explained his ideas, but as you say, it wasn’t as profound as he assumedly thought it would be.
 
Any sword and sorcery fantasy recommendations?
Really enjoy Wheel of Time, have just finished reading the Broken Earth Series, Jim Islingtons Licanius Trilogy and Sandersons Mistborn Trilogy.
 

Any sword and sorcery fantasy recommendations?
Really enjoy Wheel of Time, have just finished reading the Broken Earth Series, Jim Islingtons Licanius Trilogy and Sandersons Mistborn Trilogy.
Bit darker than what you have been reading, but have you tried The Black Company series by Glen Cook? Here's the Wikipedia synopsis:
The series follows an elite mercenary unit, The Black Company, last of the Free Companies of Khatovar, through roughly forty years of its approximately four-hundred-year history. Cook mixes fantasy with military fiction in gritty, down-to-earth portrayals of the Company's chief personalities and its struggles.
 
I’m about a quarter way through “ Where the Crawdads Sing” by Delia Owens. I bought it as a Christmas present for Mrs Blueloon after a recommendation by a friend. She never started it so I recently did. Wow! Got into it right from the start, its vivid descriptions put you right there with the lead character . I’m just taking it slowly, enjoying it every time I pick it up . It has a bit of a “To kill a Mockingbird “ feel to it.
 
Any sword and sorcery fantasy recommendations?
Really enjoy Wheel of Time, have just finished reading the Broken Earth Series, Jim Islingtons Licanius Trilogy and Sandersons Mistborn Trilogy.
I think the best massive series is Malazan by Steve Erikson - 10 big books and in a league of its own IMHO. Almost literally, as very few people have ever written such a sustained series in this style. Never read a more epic series of books, low key they are not.

He's a very skilled author and hugely influenced by Glen Cook mentioned by @atrottel above - so definitely grimdark, no twee fantasy elements. But he 100% does deal in classic fantasy symbols / tropes / archetypes and what have you. There's no GRRM-style transcending the genre here, this is 1000% fantasy epic.

One weird thing about the series is that the first book, Gardens of the Moon, is quite an outlier in style (a lot of implied stuff that is not the easiest to follow when book 1 is usually where the author spells stuff out about their world) and seems to switch a lot of people off. I really like it as it goes and wish he had retained more of the style , but he reverts to a more conventional approach almost immediately in book 2. Maybe his editor had a word - the series was a real slow burner that quietly built a following here in the UK before finally taking off in the US (Erikson is Canadian).
 

One weird thing about the series is that the first book, Gardens of the Moon, is quite an outlier in style (a lot of implied stuff that is not the easiest to follow when book 1 is usually where the author spells stuff out about their world) and seems to switch a lot of people off. I really like it as it goes and wish he had retained more of the style , but he reverts to a more conventional approach almost immediately in book 2. Maybe his editor had a word - the series was a real slow burner that quietly built a following here in the UK before finally taking off in the US (Erikson is Canadian).
Yes, I found Gardens of the Moon pretty tough - it started OK but I slowly lost interest in some of the characters and admitted defeat. I probably need to go back and give it another go.

I'm just starting out on the Instrumentalities of the Night series (Glen Cook's take on a fantasy medieval Europe). This type of thing has obviously been done in different styles by George R.R. Martin and Neal Stephenson (I have The Baroque Cycle somewhere on the Kindle) and this series can apparently also be difficult to get into - so we will see...
 
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excellent book.really enjoyed reading it.jeez what that man went through and survived them all in the end.film was good but as always the book is much better.
 
Thought the film was massively plop and really didn’t do justice to what he / they went through.

It was too “ bitty “

Book is standout though.
ya quality the book.i suppose so much happened you could never fit it all in and do the book justice on the big screen.
.what was it something like 46 days on the raft.if he had known what was coming after it he probably would have thrown himself overboard.
he survived all his family as well at the end.man was made from the toughest stuff.
 
Just finished Salvation by Peter Hamilton. Kept me interested: future tech with a bit of detective work, time-shifting and space opera.
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