Anyone read the Dark Tower series? Specifically, the last book? I'm just appalled at King's laziness here, and lack of imagination throughout much of it. There are some issues that I'd like to share with you, and I'd like your reactions to the book as well.

SPOILER ALERT













The ending: How disgusting! Roland is condemned to replay this journey over and over? Bah! I thought pretty decently of the book until those final pages.

The death of the ka-tet: Eddie, died in a good way. The other deaths were meaningless. Jake, and especially Oy, died as if King just suddenly wanted to be rid of them.

Walter: King's ultimate super villain, who plays the evil dude in more than one of his works, comes out of nowhere and gets eaten by spider boy? Pathetic.

Mordred: All kinds of build up, and for nothing. He just follows Roland until the end of the book, and dies in less than a few paragraphs. And doesn't talk to Roland at all. Completely useless character.


Oh, and the Crimson King. Santa Claus throwing flying grenades? GGGRRRRRRRAAAAAAGGGGGGEEEEERRRRAAAHH. Useless! This is supposed to be the Supreme Lord of Chaos. Not some pathetic creature throwing grenadoes.



Those are my biggest complaints, although there are many more flaws.

Steven King is a stumpdicked pigfucker.

I've read everything in the entire world, except anything by or about Steven King. Why? See above small penis/porcine reference.

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I've never read a horror/suspense book that I thought was good, unless you count the RL Stein books that I used to like to read in the 4th-6th grade. Steven King's are among the worst I've ever bothered to waste my time reading. I guess I hate most fiction books, anyway... except Dr. Seuss. He fucking ruled. After that, mostly just stuff like true crime, science, history (especially books about wars), and occasional biographies. Oh, I also spend hours on end pouring through atlases and maps... I'm obsessed with stuff like that. I like old maps, too, they show all sorts of then active railroad tracks that are now abandoned and inadequately mapped.

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i was always fond of kings work, carrie was good, hearts in atlantis was awesome.
though my favorite book is "A Clockwork Orange." I adore that book, i actually wanted to learn the whole language so i could speak it.

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Carrie was from his earlier days, and it was the worst horror book I've ever read. I used to read all the RL Stein books, actually I still have most of em-That being the goosbump books, and some of the RLstein series. I don't really read them anymore though. Now it's mostly just the two trilogies I read, Lord of the Rings and HLector. And sometimes I read the Dark Forces series.

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i want to read the dark tower ... but thats a LOT of reading. im not going to ready many posts in this thread because i dont want to ruin it formyself. i read "the stand" over the summer and enjoyed all 1200 pages of it

i really really really recommend it. a HUGE book like that makes the characters seem more real. the author gets much more time and methods to expand them

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The Stand is fucking amazing. You do, as Transient stated, get very into the characters. Awesomely vivid book. Other than that, I haven't read anything else by him.

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Oh yes. I bought a copy of the Grinch about a month back. Second childhood I guess.

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The Stand started out good enough, but the middle was pitifully boring. This is probably the only case where the movie was better than the book.

yeah, i thought the ending was a little weak too, but the actual apocalypse part was amazing. the way he did like 20 pages of tiny little stories.... very well done.

my heart raced in parts too, like the tunnel scenes

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Love the book, but even for me it was a pain to read.
"Yarblokos? Oh, Apples!" I used to read a lot, but nowadays I don't. I read the "must read" shit like Brave New World, Animal Farm and 1984, but apart from those I've been too lazy. Just finished a fairly boring trilogy called "Journeys Of The Catechist" by the same dude who wrote the origional Alien trilogy, but that's about it.I mostly read Terry Pratchett's stuff nowadays, the last one I read was The Last Hero and before that, Soul Music.

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ditto.
It does have to be the most bland awful stuff i've ever read. I'm not actually into horror reading that much, which might explain the distaste. Mainly i read up about WW2, Terry Pratchett, Tolkien, anything Sci-Fi does it for me.
I didn't mind reading the Da Vinci code either, but i can't see Tom Hanks playing the lead role.

Ho-Hum.

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Did you like the DeVinci Code? I've so far the first chanpter and already I think it might be really cool.

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tis a good read. a few nice twists too.........

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You've got to be kidding me.

I hear the DiVinci code is really good. I've never seen so many people read the same book.

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No, not kidding. Highly overrated story.

I finished the Di Vinci Code about a week ago, and it's a fun read. I dunno about the whole religous concept, but it's a decent puzzle book.

i havent read the dark towers, but i did enjoy a couple of other books by king ie: Carrie, IT, Cujo, The tommyknockers and The shining. hes not brilliant but the books are good for school reports and all because the teachers lap it all up

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Yeah I've read the shining, I've also seen both movie versions....

yeah the only thing that scared me was when the grass lions covered in snow came to life (on the movie) only cos i saw it when i was 8 and love playing in the snow.

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The movie's not really scary to me, it's just eerie as fuck.

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I just finished WISEGUY by Nicholas Peleggi, the true story which the movie Goodfellas was based about. One of the best books I've ever read. I'm also reading a book called Red Mafiya about the Russian Mob, very interesting but terribly written.


I WANT MORE BOOKS!!!!!!! I've recently become obsessed with true crime novels....but all my local book stores just carry a bunch of shit for the most part.

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I love true crime books. Check out crimelibrary.com, I'm sure you'd find some interesting stuff there. It's not a book store, just a website with archives on various famous crime tales. They've got quite a large serial killer section. If you are interested in that, you might also check out mayhem.net, but I must warn you ahead of time, there is an annoying song playing in the background that I can't ever get rid of without muting my sound card or shutting off my speakers. Even disabling sound in my browser doesn't work.

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You could always go for some Macabre. They don't call it murder metal for nothing.

Cool, thanks for the insight Chris. I'm not really into reading too much about serial killers, I'm more into organized crime and what not...But I'll give the site a try.

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The site has a lot of mob content, although I have to admit I've never read any of it myself.

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I just finished reading a fucking awesome book on serial killers. "My Life Among the Serial Killers" by Helen Morrison, M.D. who's spent hundreds of hours with serial killers like John Wayne Gacy, Richard Macek, Robert Bendella, Ed Gein, etc. She prys deep into the psyche of these anomolies to try and explain her leading theory on why serial killers kill, and goes into eerie detail about the abominable acts they commited and why. She also attacks the other leading theories and stereotypes about serial killers, and does a good job too. Seriously the scariest fucking book I have ever read. She really connects you with the emotionaless mind of these guys.

Go buy it!

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Haha, the Walkin' dude.

Kings early shit was nice......pretty much everything after the 80's was garbage....just my opinion though.

I dont read non fiction anymore....my favorite author is Sagan.

"Talk Nerdy To Me"

i read all the time, and i read anything, although i have stayed away from stephen king for the most part. dunno why.
the room im in at the moment is a home-library. ive recently been reading from the occult shelf. not evil occult, more hippies stuff. like "the truth behind dowsing and devining" or "the secret of the pyramids", "atlantis:fact or fiction", "the power of plants".
some really interesting stuff there, but it will turn you crazy if you read to much into it.

has anyone read "catcher in the rye"?
would anyone care to explain the point behind it? the writing style flows incredibly and the whole thing is perfect except for the complete, total, lack of any plot whatsoever. i read the whole thing expecting something to happen, but it turned out it was the just like the first two chapters in a longer book, with a friday-afternoon ending.

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So, who's read Charles Bukowski's novel South of No North? Fuck, this book is damn weird....

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I'm currently reading two books-

1. "There are No Children Here" by Alex Kotlowitz, it's very good so far.
2. "Amphibians and Reptiles of New England (Habitats and Natural History) by Richard M. DeGraaf and Deborah D. Rudis. It's nothing more or less than I expected when I bought it.

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i'm on a crime kick too, i'm reading "lost light" by michael connolly. pretty good so far.

has anybody ever read anything by dave warner? "city of light" is possibly one of the best books ever written, crime or otherwise.

I've recently read his "The Most Beautiful Woman in Town: And Other Stories" book. The language is weird but I guess most metaltabbers will enjoy it

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C. Bukowski gets pretty dirty....it's HI larious.
In this book, it starts out with this guy, Hank, in a bar. A lady sits next to him and suddenly pulls this wire cage from her purse. It has 4 little people in it, 2 guys and 2 girls, all about 3 inches tall. She even tells Hank about how hot she gets when they start to get down on each other. Well, they almost get really into it, and so Hank and the woman take the little people home. They fuck.

...and that's just the first chapter...

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My Father was a life long USMC recon intsructor however passed away when I was twelve......in the past year or so...I have read MANY non fiction accounts of USMC and their adventures (for lack of a diff word) including a story of the most successful USMC Sniper "Carlos Hathcock" with 91 confirmed kills.
Yes...I know....I'm a ODD gal.

As I stated in an eariler post I am reading A Game Of Thrones by George R. R. Martin. It is the first of the series(The 4th book just came out.) This is the first real fantasy novel I have read, excluding The Hobbit and the LOTR trilogy. Usually I read fairly casually, but I have only had this novel for a week and two days and I'm already surpassing the 400 page mark. I cannot put this book down...has anyone else read it?

For more information - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...=books&n=507846

I also starting reading The Lord of The Flies..a classic I have not read yet..


POST!!! WHAT ARE YOU READING?!!

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ive been reading 1984 for the past few weeks, little bits at a time, its pretty interesting, im about a third of the way thru.

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Ahh, a classic, I've seen the movie as well...pretty fucking boring(3+ house too i beleive)...but it's fairly decent if you've loved the book.

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i liked lord of the flies. im actually reading the great gatsby right now but im not getting any of it.

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ive got as i lay dying waiting for me after i finish 1984, any opinions on that one

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1984 has been my favorite book for a long time, i reread it now and again. this book was written in 1949, thats what makes it far out.

im reading classical literature, ancient mythology for the most part now. think im gonna start on some plutarch, roman lives and essays tonite since i finished a mediocre translation of the eddas. also got livy's history of rome and the egyptian book of the dead. there even might be an epic of gilgamesh book around here.

books i want to read

niccolo machievelli-art of war
the snorri translation of the eddas, hopefully oxford or penguin has a good version
the aenid<or however you spell it>the roman national epic
don quixote-spanish national epic
an autobiography on ghengis khan or history of the mongels
any history on ancient seafaring,trireme construction, famous ancient battles at sea
any history that deal with the carthaginians and pheonicians, the punic wars etc.

edit: also any indepth history on the crusades, knights of templar,knights of malta,knights of rhodes, the hospitallers etc.

snorri was the author of the eddas not the translator! get "the sagas of the icelanders" its a collection of all the sagas pertaining mostly to iceland. i read king harald's saga this year and really really dug it. the one i got had an awesome intro that talk about how snorri died and everything. great story

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Last night I finished Camus' "The Stranger". Great book.

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Can anyone recommend some good horror books? As in truly frightening stuff... (I don't get scared easily)

I wish I could know some too...haha your best bet is probably reading true crime...I mean Stephen King is just tame.

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King is shit for a good scare. I've read some good horror books, but none of them really scared me shitless--if that's even possible from a book.

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You're fucking crazy man! I tried reading ACO but that cockney blew my fucking mind. Got to like page 5 then fell into a coma for 20 years.

At the moment I'm reading "Hiroshima Joe" which is cool. It's about a bisexual war vet living in japan after the bomb, stealing old ladies purses to pay for his opium and prosi addictions.

Waiting patiently on the shelf is "the devils" by fyodor dostoyevsky which looks fucking brilliant.

and King is a hack.

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cool, i look those up. what i read was "masks of odin" which was a translation of most of the codex regius, the elder eddas. the author omitted parts of the poem so it could fit into some stupid new-age theory of the cosmos or some shit. and they let you know in the last chapter that you are not infact reading a full translation which i wasnt happy with. i got snorri confused with the monk guy who found the codex regius and made copies and preserved it, but whatever, its cool.

Non Fiction here.

Sagan is the shit!

Carl?

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I'm not a huge fan of King, but he is a good writer and does have some stories that I liked such as Salem's Lot. I like more of the fantasy books that go hand in hand with powermetal. Like the Lord of the Rings series and shit.

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In speaking of fantasy....has anyone read R.A. Salvatore's Icewind Dale Trilogy or the Dark Elf Trilogy? I was reserching these books on the net and they look fairly interesting.

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I've heard good things about that series. I need to check it out.

Right now I'm reading "The Dragonbone Chair" by Tad Williams, book 1 of "Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn". The writing style is quite unique, but maybe I'm biased because I'm a Williams fan.

For non-fiction I just finished "Into Thin Air" by John Krakauer, about the ill-fated Everest expedition in 1996. Now I am beginning "The Long Walk" by Slavomir Rawicz, a memoir about a man who escaped from a Siberian prison camp and walked all the way to India. I think the party went without water for 9 days or more in the Gobi Desert.

read those as a kid, when i was into DandD, i strongly advise against it. ra salvatore and possible the whole genre of rpg board game books are the equivalent of supermarket romance trash. unless if you're into a fixed and easily identifiable sense of good and evil, cornball overused plots that are spoonfed, pet characters who are omnipotent, allwise and infallable, books written without any significant moral or philosophical meaning behind them than go for it. in terms of literature these are kids books, superman comics have more relevence in substance and meaning, and that isnt saying much.

read frank herberts "dune" series, its a good example of a fantasy based plot, that encorporates a well researched understanding of ancient religion, ecology,geology,astrophysics,genetics as it was known in the 60's, tyrannical governments, both the latin and arabic language. it took the man years of research to write these books and they are meaningful beyond the genre, hold more depth than just reading about wierd monsters and cool magic weapons and the like.

I thought the Dune series was written by a woman, but that she did research and live parts of hr books just to get authenticism in them. I might be thinking of someone else though. Or is that a pseudonym?

EDIT: I don't know who the heck I'm thinking of, but the books I'm thinking of were popular back in the early to mid 80's. It obviously wasn't Dune though.

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John Saul is pretty good with horror or mystery or something, I recently finished Black Creek Crossing, that was good. Now I'm starting Midnight Voices. I reccomend him, if like you like mystery and horrr.

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Pandemonium - Seriously, check out these books..they are more of a history lesson that a fantasy, losely based off The Wars of Roses between the Yorks and Lancasters.(Stark and Lannister in the novel) I mean dragons and elves are far in the past already in the novel..maybe the other books include them I do not know...however it is a fantastic read, and I would definitely reccomend it, even too people who hate the fantasy genre. The characters are so well thought up and the plots are so tediously suspicious it will keep you reading until your eyes force blood.


Low-Tech - Thanks for the insight..are DandD expansions based on these books? I noticed a video game called "D+D The Icewind Dale", I beleive it was called that...I trust your knowledge, and will read further into these books if I ever purchase them.

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best fantasy books ever were the piers anthony incanrations series and the dragonlance series (theo ne with seasons) raistlin is metal

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Trans...I'm not saying those books aren't good...but the incarnations series have really queer looking covers...


http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/038...458#reader-link

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very queer.... kinda looks like the oc

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It reminds me of the old style covers that had nothing to do with the actual story, but just got the attention. You have pretty women that might appeal to guys, but they look graceful so that might appeal to ladies. Marketing.

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best fantasy i've read is Robin Hobb's books, all of them are great. especially the Tawny Man trilogy.

At the mo i'm reading the Hagakure and Beyond Good and Evil.

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A person that needs marketing to help decide a book purchase should not be reading books.

EDIT - Except for children..

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Yep....Carl.
Demon Haunted World - Science As A Candle In The Dark
is his best work IMO.

just found some books laying under my pc that were good reads:
irving stone - the agony and the ecstasy: about michelangelo, prob not so well recieved around here.

gene wolfe - the shadow of the torturer: very decent fantasy

ed sanders - the family: charles manson and what not, pretty interesting if you're into that kinda stuff.

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I've just picked up Bill Hicks's "Love All The People" again.

Love this book so much.

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I read lots for a time, then stop for ages, before reading heaps again.
Mostly I read fantasy and science fiction. The books I get are usually borrowed from other people.
At the moment, I am just into a book called 'The Reality Disfunction' that someone game me and claimed is awesome. Though for the most part it is following 3 or 4 stories at the same time, which I find iritating.



If any of you want a really good gory book, then pick up the first book of the Necroscope series by Brian Lumley. It has vampires and soviets!

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i read every night before bed unless im exhausted. otherwise i get pissed that id ont fall asleep instantly

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Same for me.

yup, know that scenario. also when u switch the lights off and put down ur book to fall asleep. then it doesn't happen and u have to start reading again. enough to make me try opium.

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I usually do that, though more often that not it finds me reading until 2 or 3 in the morning.

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nah it doesnt take me long to get tired, i dont have any problems sleeping..knock on wood

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I'm reading 5 books on the Waffen-SS and "The Life of Pi" atm!
(SS books because I'm joining a living history society in Jan. which specialises in the 12.SS Hitler Youth division.)

and will you be playing the part? and which legion?

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Seeing as this is probably the most traditionally intellectual thread in chit chat, and considering the subject matter, don't you think it should be called "For those of you who read"?

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i wouldnt worry about it.

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"I would not worry about thy title of subject."

Jeez! But yes, I noticed the title as well..I wasn't going to make a new thread..I did my part to recylce the old shit threads!

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We have to few threads about the books and movies we like. What happened to those?

I'm obliged to read four or five books a week. Most of them are not very good. A few are worthwhile. The last worthwhile book I read was Immortality, by Milan Kundera, which almost entirely redeemed him in my eyes.

I watch as many as twice this number of movies, where the situation is the opposite; I watch a lot of really good movies and a few very bad ones. A lot of subtitles, which entails reading.

I should probably start a movie thread to talk about those. Or somebody could do it for me.

More on subject: is it mostly thrillers, fantasy, and suchlike here? Does anybody like anything that would allow me to engage in a conversation with you people without being antagonistic? Jim excluded.
The A Clockwork Orange language is a lot simpler than it appears at first.
The Possessed, or The Devils, or whatever the hell they want to call it, could be a lot better. But I'm not big on Dostoevsky to begin with; if you like him you'll probably enjoy it.

Read "On The Road" by Jack kerouac also, enjoyed it much more the second time, deffinately recommended!



Yah, it's a funny mix of english and russian, I can't remember off-hand what they call it?


I will be an enlisted man of the 12th SS division (Hitler Youth). I will take part in battle re-enactments, have my own uniform, learn the language etc... Sounds like fun to me anyway!

I like fantasy and other such nerdy books when I am reading fiction, but I read more non-fiction than fiction. They are mostly memoirs and travel accounts, so that's probably not what you are looking for.

I do plan on checking out that "Sagas of the Icelanders" that Transient wrote about.

Then again, most people read such novels for pleasure. Personally after spending days on end reading technical shit about code syntax, I couldn't care less for some narrow (or broard) minded twats opinions, anything deeper than a puddle, or more complex than a can of liquor.

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I was just saying I'd be willing to talk about books if anybody read something I liked. If not, I'll go back to occasionally showing up to berate somebody and leave this thread alone. There was no snobbish intent; I read for pleasure and in my spare time too, just different things, and I doubt you want to talk about what I read any more than I would the opposite. But you do get a lot of twats' opinions, at least with thrillers, anway.

They call the language in Clockwork 'nadsat.'

It would depend on whose memoirs and travel accounts.

The Sagas of the Icelanders are uneven. The best are as good as anything from that era could hope to be.

I haven't read A Clockwork Orange(not yet anyhow..the movie was good)..but I've noticed the reviews talking about this langauge that they use can be very confusing..comments, suggestions?

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They use the same language in the film, just less of it. Basically it's a challenge when you start out but Burgess knew it would be and makes it pretty easy to pick up the words out of context. Kind of how you'd learn any other slang, but in written form. If you don't want to do that, there are probably online glossaries out there for everyone's convenience. I'm pretty sure some copies of the book actually come with a nadsat glossary despite the author's directions to the contrary.

But it's mostly just a matter of wanting it.

BAM!

http://soomka.com/nadsat.html

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Wanting it or looking up the dictionary.

part of the language or slang in the book, i have heard theorized, is a clue about russian dominance in the region in a clockwork orange. alot of the slang is russian and german. i went to high school with a lot of russians who were kinda perplexed by the book. and so some people were led to believe in a sort of russian coldwar "negitive utopia" underlaying to it that is not exactly spelled out for the reader, i myself have only read some parts of the book,mostly the omitted last chapter thats not in the film. for some reason the english classes i had back then never made this book part of the mandatory reading, whereas my friends classes did and everyone was all about the movie.

horrorshow-similiar to a russian word good

cutthroat britva- britva,blade or knife

theres alot more, my memory is fuzzy. i havent looked at the book in years

damn I tried to pick up A Game of Throne today at my university's bookstore, but they sold out just yesterday...i gotta wait for the next order or go to some other place to get it now

Yes, awesome job man..pick it up and post what you think of it!(well, when you find it..)

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i got it today, i just finished the second chapter, and im confused as hell? lots of characters mentioning other characters , not too sure how they are connected

i checked this out and found a few versions, what one you got? have you got a link to it?

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look it up on amazon.com, i always read the customer reviews. like the book i read on the older eddas got bad reviews which i agree with

You just have to keep reading man..the stories unfold soon enough.

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yeah the story is getting good... not a good time to get hooked on these books with exams rolling around the corner

btw anyone here ever read Death Gate Cycle by Hickman and Weiss?

A Clash Of Kings - George R. R. Martin

This is the sequel to "A Game Of Thrones"..I'm just about done that so I had to pick this up.

KevC, how are you liking this series so far?

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I dont read, used to. Best book I've ever read was The Silence of the Lambs (Thomas Harris) yeahh it was really good 'cause I saw the movie first, wich for some odd reason made the book all that better.

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You should read because maybe then you would realize the spelling of "which."

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damn, and I capitalized it all haha

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i thought silence of the lambs is from this book called "red dragon". not my kind of book, im not interested in sadists and serial killers. but i read a bit of it and i think the sceenplay was adapted from that book

edit: granted this is comming from a dude who just posted some animal > man death video in the "funny internet crap" thread <but i dont know where else to put it>