What's the Last Book You Read/Finished?

[VampElvis]

Timeline by Michael Crichton

His passing still feels unreal.

Spoiler

Also, the film changing Doniger's ending was one of the rare incidents of adaptation-done-right, if I may be so bold. The one in the book, while undoubtedly chilling, not only felt anticlimactic, but made those who decided his ultimate fate little better than him, which was rather unfulfilling to read. :/

Aside from that, the book was in top form on the whole, though not nearly as great as the Jurassic Park books. It was still a considerable page-burner, however. What weak bits existed were easily ignored in favor of the abounding upsides of the book.

The medieval world was so fascinating to read about with all its rich descriptions and intricacies of the people of the court. I rather liked how this time round, Crichton glorified history and put science on the back seat. My favorite quote from the book: "If you don't know history, you don't know anything. You are a leaf that doesn't know it was part of a tree." An inescapably apt analogy that immediately made me feel self-conscious of my recent lack of interest in history.

3/5.

I have to disagree about the movie. I thought it was a truly terrible adaptation. Marek was the hero, Marek was the man!......... in the book. I thought the ending to the book was quite clever because, if you really were paying attention, you realize -

Spoiler

the stories were in different dimensions!

 

[LEX]

Spoiler

Er, I think you've lumped my praise for the ending (read: Doniger's only) with the whole movie, which was just plain horrible, on the whole. No surprise there. In the movie, his death was due more to his own doing than anything, which I thought brought things to full circle nicely. Poetic justice, if you will. In the book, his death was decided by other parties, which just left me a sour feeling afterwards. I don't believe that Johnston and co. would have been willing to sink to Doniger's level, as pissed off as they understandably were.

And your spoiler has me thoroughly confused. How was it clever? The fact that Marek's story was in another dimension when... where?... Johnston found his statue in HIS dimension/time? ... Dimension, where... Time, when...



Wait... how is THAT possible, anyway? It's never been about time, but dimensions, gazillions of them.

Well spotted, VE. Never actually looked that much into the ending, though I still don't understand it now. Care to explain?

I guess... that Johnston's dimension accounted for (look at me, making dimensions sound sentient) the fact that Marek would be and choose to live in the past, in some other dimension, and so acted accordingly. Or... wut? ****, time-travel is conundrum enough with throwing dimension-travel into the mix as well.

 

[squeekness]

Micah ~ Laurell K. Hamilton. Much better than the last one as it was brief and not as loaded with smut. Good read.

 

[Sloth7d]

His Dark Materials 1: The Golden Compass

8/10

Very original, fast paced, and enthralling. It's very easy to identify the protagonist in this world where there's nothing but a bunch of manipulative adults deciding what's right and what's wrong for everybody to the point where it's hard to descry the good guys from the bad. The ending was very well done and unexpected. I'm still raging. Almost as much as I raged at the end of Harry Potter GoF.

Praises withstanding, a big complaint I had towards the middle of the book is Lyra dialogue. I just couldn't picture her in my head using words like "dear", "oh dear", and "recompense". It sounded awkward and forced coming from her. Also, a couple of the dilemmas she found herself in seemed too easily remedied at times with too easy a solution. Here's to hoping these two things are fixed up a bit with th next book.

 

[Prison Mike]

Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay

 

[zanos]

His Dark Materials 1: The Golden Compass

8/10

Very original, fast paced, and enthralling. It's very easy to identify the protagonist in this world where there's nothing but a bunch of manipulative adults deciding what's right and what's wrong for everybody to the point where it's hard to descry the good guys from the bad. The ending was very well done and unexpected. I'm still raging. Almost as much as I raged at the end of Harry Potter GoF.

Praises withstanding, a big complaint I had towards the middle of the book is Lyra dialogue. I just couldn't picture her in my head using words like "dear", "oh dear", and "recompense". It sounded awkward and forced coming from her. Also, a couple of the dilemmas she found herself in seemed too easily remedied at times with too easy a solution. Here's to hoping these two things are fixed up a bit with th next book.

I liked Lyra as a character but the story was crap.

 

[Sloth7d]

I liked her too, but her dialogue became a bit off at parts. What didn't you like? Or if you're a christian, I'll understand.

 

[Dark Victory]

World War Z

Unlike the Zombie Survival Guide, which I found to be quite boring, Max Brooks' most recent novel never really hits a slow point, or at least not a signifcant one. While, like his previous hit, it has a repetitive style, here it's not as jarring since he's able to introduce a multitude of characters that all come with a unique perspective of what could have been the end of the world. The novel's pacing felt annoying sometimes, in which I could only read so much in one sitting, but it's still a book I'd reccommend if you're a horror aficionado.

 

[The Navigator]

I have to disagree about the movie. I thought it was a truly terrible adaptation. Marek was the hero, Marek was the man!......... in the book. I thought the ending to the book was quite clever because, if you really were paying attention, you realize -

Spoiler

the stories were in different dimensions!

Spoiler

That was actually where the book jumped the shark for me. Once Chrichton said that the characters from that point on weren't the characters that started...I don't know why, but it just killed it for me. Even though they're exact copies, the people that step into the middle ages are not the people at the start of the book.

Plus Doniger character was so unnecessarily *****ebaggy it made it unreal. Chricton has a character like this in just about every story of his I'd read, but Doniger was by far the worst. I imagine there's a deleted chapter where he opens his vault full of historically important babies and takes a flamethrower to them, all the while pissing on recycled paper and having someone pistol-whip a koala.

But, it's been a while since I read it, so...

 

[LEX]

Spoiler

I couldn't stand Doniger either. The hyena laughs? Overkill times nine thousand. Not even the flimsy explanation that he was pretty much stunted in emotional growth from adolescence onwards helped me to tolerate all of his regular bouts of dickery. That deleted chapter, if put in the book, wouldn't have at all fazed me.

 

[VampElvis]

Spoiler

Er, I think you've lumped my praise for the ending (read: Doniger's only) with the whole movie, which was just plain horrible, on the whole. No surprise there. In the movie, his death was due more to his own doing than anything, which I thought brought things to full circle nicely. Poetic justice, if you will. In the book, his death was decided by other parties, which just left me a sour feeling afterwards. I don't believe that Johnston and co. would have been willing to sink to Doniger's level, as pissed off as they understandably were.

And your spoiler has me thoroughly confused. How was it clever? The fact that Marek's story was in another dimension when... where?... Johnston found his statue in HIS dimension/time? ... Dimension, where... Time, when...



Wait... how is THAT possible, anyway? It's never been about time, but dimensions, gazillions of them.

Well spotted, VE. Never actually looked that much into the ending, though I still don't understand it now. Care to explain?

I guess... that Johnston's dimension accounted for (look at me, making dimensions sound sentient) the fact that Marek would be and choose to live in the past, in some other dimension, and so acted accordingly. Or... wut? ****, time-travel is conundrum enough with throwing dimension-travel into the mix as well.

Spoiler

It's been several years since I read it so I'll probably mess this explanation up. I did see where someone else stated they were copies - that's cool it was no biggie for me. BUT when you jumped back to present (and maybe when you went to the past, I can't remember ) - you left that time stream and jumped to a different time stream. So the guy in the desert at the beginning was from another dimension, and you can probably follow the logic from there. But I have some nagging memory of there being some other tidbit that there was no way that guy could have been in the desert. I'll have to call my brother. He'll surely remember. He named his son Marek!

 

[squeekness]

Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay

Did you like it? I thought it was great. Of course I read it after watching the show and the characters weren't as well rounded out as they are in the show, but so much of the dialog was word for word. I thought it was wonderful that they didn't change too much for the show.

 

[Max J Power]

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon

A great book that, as far as entertainment goes, I liked but didn't love.

 

[katie_girl09]

The Monk - Matthew Lewis.

Jeez, what a stinker. It could have been pretty good too.

 

[Duneboy]

the october country by ray bradbury

 

[ChrisBaleBatman]

I'm currently half way through Dostoyevsky's 'Notes From Underground'. Getting into the second chapter, 'A Story of the Falling Sleet'.

It kinda scares me how much I connect with this story.

 

[Poetic Chaos]

I just finished Twilight.

I had no intention of reading it but a girlfriend of mine finally broke me down. While I was captivated enough by the story and characters to want to keep reading...it was still almost painful to get through. I just found it completely ridiculous how often Bella describes Edward's beauty. Perfect this. God-like that. It got annoying fast and it didn't let up at all through 500 pages.

I don't know if I'll continue with the rest of the series.

 

[mongoose-mania]

Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton.

 

[nite-owl]

Belching Out the Devil: Global Adventures with Coca-Cola by Mark Thomas

 

[Max J Power]

Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett

Completely lives up to its status as classic crime fiction.

 

[ChrisBaleBatman]

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell by David Michaels (aka, Raymond Benson).

I'm re-reading this. I'm a huge fan of the games, so those were my starting points. I'm pretty sure Carly St. John was supposed to be Grimm...but someone, somewhere let it slide. Some of the overexplanations can be tiresome, especially in the middle of an action sequence when all I really want to read is how badly Sam is kicking the **** out of the other guy.

Still, I'm enjoying it (again).

 

[GuardianofOa]

Just finished Horns by Joe Hill last week and I picked up Peter and Max by Bill Willingham (Of Fables fame) yesterday and read it straight through til the wee hours. Was a most fantastic read. Horns on the other hand. Well, it's no 20th Century Ghosts or Heart Shaped Box, but it will hold up in time. Anxious for more from both writers though.

 

[GuardianofOa]

Did you like it? I thought it was great. Of course I read it after watching the show and the characters weren't as well rounded out as they are in the show, but so much of the dialog was word for word. I thought it was wonderful that they didn't change too much for the show.

Very few charatcers are the same from the tv show to the books. I like the show as its own title, but the books are a little more in depth with Dexter than the series. After having read all of the books, I see such a huge similarity between each book; Catch the reader with a new mystery, introduce new characters, mess around with old characters, build up the story, then boom, book over. The only thing I don't like about the books is that the endeings are too abrupt.

Plus Michael C Hall is oh so dreamy as the determined dark doting daddy....Ok, enough alliteration.

 

[squeekness]

Very few charatcers are the same from the tv show to the books. I like the show as its own title, but the books are a little more in depth with Dexter than the series. After having read all of the books, I see such a huge similarity between each book; Catch the reader with a new mystery, introduce new characters, mess around with old characters, build up the story, then boom, book over. The only thing I don't like about the books is that the endeings are too abrupt.

Plus Michael C Hall is oh so dreamy as the determined dark doting daddy....Ok, enough alliteration.

LOL, yer funny. Since you liked them so well, maybe I'll go ahead and check out book two.

 

[Chris Wallace]

Reading Moonwalk right now.