The GOT Book Club

[Efcjake]

I did finally finish The Wheel of Time and it was quite satisfying. I don't know if I am overconfident after finishing that massive series but I am starting Malazan Book of The Fallen. One of my mates is a big fan of this series so I will actually have someone to discuss it with as I read it which will be nice.

 

[Black Belt Jones]

I did finally finish The Wheel of Time and it was quite satisfying. I don't know if I am overconfident after finishing that massive series but I am starting Malazan Book of The Fallen. One of my mates is a big fan of this series so I will actually have someone to discuss it with as I read it which will be nice.

I loved Malazan - for a certain style of fantasy (maximalist, epic) I think it's the best ever and maybe ever will be, given what it took to write.

I read them back to back which it sounds like you did with WoT? This worked for me keeping things fresh in my mind, but obv there's a risk you can burn out with it, esp as Malazan is so full on.

The usual advice, which you've prob heard, is don't give up on it if you don't like Gardens of the Moon. My copy even has a forward from SE saying as much himself. I felt completely the opposite - loved book one. But it's certainly a different style as he was learning his craft.

 

[Efcjake]

I loved Malazan - for a certain style of fantasy (maximalist, epic) I think it's the best ever and maybe ever will be, given what it took to write.

I read them back to back which it sounds like you did with WoT? This worked for me keeping things fresh in my mind, but obv there's a risk you can burn out with it, esp as Malazan is so full on.

The usual advice, which you've prob heard, is don't give up on it if you don't like Gardens of the Moon. My copy even has a forward from SE saying as much himself. I felt completely the opposite - loved book one. But it's certainly a different style as he was learning his craft.

Yes I've been warned. I will try and do them back to back like I did with WoT.

One of my other mates did pack it in and I have been warned that certain books follow completely different characters and not all plot threads tie to the end game plot.

I have a feeling this might take me til Christmas when I will be picking up the final The Expanse series book.

 

[sdk]

I tend to alternate between nonfiction (usually history) and fiction.

Just finished Gods of the Upper Air by Charles King, a fine history of the late-19th/early 20th-c. origins of cultural anthropology in the USA. It focuses on the careers of Franz Boas and some of his famous students (Margaret Mead, Edward Sapir, Ruth Benedict, Zora Neale Hurston, etc.). Very engaging and sadly relevant with regard to my country's current zeitgeist, in which long-discredited notions about racial and sexual essentialism seem to be having a new day in the sun.

Now I'm getting into James Ellroy's Perfidia, a large novel that features some of the characters from other books (e.g., American Tabloid, L.A. Confidential) earlier in their lives, at the dawn of US entry into WWII. All of the benzedrine, booze, and blackhearted anomie one expects from Ellroy, with a crime story that interacts with the mounting anti-Japanese fervor on the West Coast that would result in Japanese and Japanese American internment, which, besides being a gross civil rights violation, was also one of the most massive swindles of American history. Pretty much classic Ellroy, but more so.

 

[Terrarian]

I did finally finish The Wheel of Time and it was quite satisfying. I don't know if I am overconfident after finishing that massive series but I am starting Malazan Book of The Fallen. One of my mates is a big fan of this series so I will actually have someone to discuss it with as I read it which will be nice.

I'm thinking of getting that sometime myself, for some reason I thought Sanderson wrote it.

 

[Walter Ego]

I finished brothers karamazov. I’d give it a 6/10. The general synopsis is be nice if you can even though there are knobheads in the world that aren’t and God may or may not exist, still be nice anyway.

 

[Walter Ego]

I’m on To kill a mocking bird now.

 

[Efcjake]

I'm thinking of getting that sometime myself, for some reason I thought Sanderson wrote it.

Just the last few books when the original author Robertt Jordan had passed away.

 

[wm02]

After reading a couple books about Ancient Egypt by Toby Wilkinson, I’ve moved on to this. Really enjoying it thus far. The author wrote the book about Washington’s Spy Ring (in my hometown on Long Island) and was later adapted as the TV series Turn.

 

[degsy]

I did finally finish The Wheel of Time and it was quite satisfying. I don't know if I am overconfident after finishing that massive series but I am starting Malazan Book of The Fallen. One of my mates is a big fan of this series so I will actually have someone to discuss it with as I read it which will be nice.

Just downloadedBook 1 will see how I go.

 

[Efcjake]

Just downloadedBook 1 will see how I go.

I found it a little bit tough to get into at the beginning. There isn't a lot of introduction, the author kind of just throws you right in to the story.

I'm about 100 pages in now and I am starting to get to grips with what is happening.

 

[degsy]

I found it a little bit tough to get into at the beginning. There isn't a lot of introduction, the author kind of just throws you right in to the story.

I'm about 100 pages in now and I am starting to get to grips with what is happening.

Me too

 

[Bilko]

I quite like Matt Craig, however I found this one fairly average and actually only finished it because my new books hadn't arrived. Give it a go if you like but he had written far better imo

 

[Bilko]

Enjoyed this one ,well written, thoughtful. Story of a young fella having to leave Ireland, and then as the years passed due to circumstances, finding it harder to return.

 

[LostLegend]

In April of 1846, twenty-one-year-old Sarah Graves, intent on a better future, set out west from Illinois with her new husband, her parents, and eight siblings. Seven months later, after joining a party of pioneers led by George Donner, they reached the Sierra Nevada Mountains as the first heavy snows of the season closed the pass ahead of them. In early December, starving and desperate, Sarah and fourteen others set out for California on snowshoes, and, over the next thirty-two days, endured almost unfathomable hardships and horrors.In this gripping narrative, New York Times bestselling author Daniel James Brown sheds new light on one of the most legendary events in American history. Following every painful footstep of Sarah's journey with the Donner Party, Brown produces a tale both spellbinding and richly informative.

Something a bit heavier this time.
I listened to a podcast about this a few months back and this book was highly recommended by the host.

Really liking how deeply descriptive the book gets on the surroundings. The towns they pass through with the sights and smells and the vibrant colours and vistas when out in the wilderness. Really gives a vivid image of the stunning countryside these horrific events took place in.

Just got around to finishing this and holy Christ is it a dark read.

I’ve read books on Treblinka and the Cambodian killing fields and this ranks up there with them for harrowing content.
What those people went through is utterly unfathomable. It’s a miracle any of them survived at all.

The image relayed by one of the relief parties of finding one of the camps that the fire had melted 15ft down to the bottom of the snow drift is pure nightmare fuel:

“a void in the snow surrounded by bloodied bones of children and the body of what appeared to be a woman stripped of all her flesh. At the foot of the crater was a camp fire surrounded by pale faced, skeletal children all weeping inconsolably”

A difficult but bloody good read non the less. May need something a little lighter hearted next though!