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Messages - guessingo

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16
Brandon Sanderson / Re: Don't listen to the jerks
« on: April 14, 2011, 01:39:53 PM »
There are always haters out there. I don't see why you let them get to you. They are in the minority. Just ignore them. Didn't Brandon say he was starting on Book 14 January 1st? He wrote the Mistborn book last year. He is also a known and diagnosed workaholic.

Also, note... it is much better for the last book to be great than it is for it to be out fast. If he spends more time on it, it gets polished more. Anyone remember how there was talk of a Robert Jordan documentary and it was going to be called The Wit of the Staircase. This means that you have your best ideas when you are coming down the staircase. Or doing something other than working.

Why let this get to you? I am one of those WoT fans that is half dreading the last book. Then it will be over. I am about the same age and Brandon and started reading WoT in High School. I remember when one of the books came right around my college finals. I read the book instead of studying. I don't want it to be over. It will probably take me months to make it through the last book since I don't want it to end.

I don't know why people even bother getting upset over this.

17
Books / Re: What are you reading, part 3
« on: April 12, 2011, 02:27:47 PM »
Of course, as my taste is impeccable. For starters, see my sig.

What a way to take a compliment. I laughed when I read this.

18
Books / Re: Peter Orullian's first book
« on: April 12, 2011, 02:26:35 PM »
Peter Orullian has a big idea up on Whatever. I like the ideas in his stories. However, I think I may agree with the comments about his prose. The prose is workmanlike. It seems like he may have all these great and complex ideas, but may not know how to make the words flow well on paper. Then again, I may be thinking that because when I read someone else's comments about a book, it sort of biases me before reading it. I still plan on reading his book. I like the concept of choice and consequences.

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2011/04/12/the-big-idea-peter-orullian/#comment-251262


19
Books / Re: What are you reading, part 3
« on: April 11, 2011, 01:44:32 PM »
I have a Daniel Abraham book sitting on my couch. Going to read it when I finish Antiphon. I think the one you mentioned is the one I have. A lot of people have been praising him. I don't do as much as reading as the rest of you. I actually audio far more books than I read. I also want to go back through this list and read some more Peter's book reviews. I have a hunch, I'll like books he recommends.

20
Books / Re: Peter Orullian's first book
« on: April 11, 2011, 01:37:48 PM »
@bookstore: Your reading pace is incredible. I don't know how you keep track of all those books. They would all get jumbled together if  I read at that pace. Particularly if it was in the same genre. It seems like you read 100 books/year. Have you always read at that pace?

21
Books / Re: Peter Orullian's first book
« on: April 07, 2011, 05:42:44 PM »
I find I don't get much out of blurbs for fantasy books. They all sound alike to me. Thats why I usually look for reviews first. Mixing religious theology with WoT sounds interesting.

I would be very interested in what Peter thinks of this given that he works on WoT with Brandon.

22
Books / Re: What are you reading, part 3
« on: April 05, 2011, 02:36:53 PM »
The Big Short by Michael Lewis. It is about the guys who saw through the mortgage bond fraud on wall street and bet against it years before anyone else. They actually created the Credit Default Swap industry. These Swaps are insurance on mortgage bonds. By buying these bonds they were betting that the mortgage bonds industry would completely collapse and since they held insurance on these bonds, they would get paid when the bonds failed. The whole industry was a complete fraud. Wall Street took garbage sub-prime mortgages, then gamed the models that the rating agencies used to rate them to give them ratings that meant almost not chance to fail. These are mortgages that start at 2% interest and jump to 15% after 2 years. Wall Street even made up fancy names for parts of the bonds called Tranches and Mezzanine levels. They actually ran out of mortgages to sell. So they took the worst mortgages in the worst bonds and then repackaged them again into what they called Collaterized Debt Obligations and then got those rated high. The book is about the small number of people who actually read the bonds materials and realized "this is complete garbage". They did it years in advance. Absolutely fascinating. Michael Lewis is the guy who wrote The Blind Side. It is very easy to read. I actually listened to it on audio. You do not need any background in finance to follow it. He provides enough where you can look up more wikipedia.


Canticle by Ken Scholes: I like this book, but not as much as the Elitist Book review. His writing improved in the 2nd book. In the first book there is this huge catastrophe at the beginning. He plays lip service to how horrible this is, but does not give a real good sense of loss. I like how he wrote Vlad Li Tams voice in this book. However, the story was a bit contrived. Everything is going bad then one of the heroes by chance happens on something and then is able to save the day. (well sort of. More bad things happened later). Also, though I like that the book is short (under 400 pages) which is contrast to a lot of fantasy. He seems to bite off more than he can chew in 400 pages. I don't get the sense of depth I get from other authors. All that being said. The world is very interesting. He mixes magic and robots which is neat. I am now on Antiphon and will keep going. His writing seems to improve with each book. The world is extremely original.
Another thing I really like about Scholes is that he is very efficient in his writing. Stuff happens. He gets to the point quickly. He really makes every sentence count.

23
Books / Peter Orullian's first book
« on: April 05, 2011, 02:13:46 PM »
Has anyone read the arc to his first book? I first heard of him when I saw an excellent interview he did with Brandon Sanderson. He asked alot of non-standard questions. Brandon seemed to get asked alot of the same questions over and over again and this guy asked new and interesting questions.

I also checked out his website. I am curious what people think of his book. I think it is out next week.

http://www.orullian.com/


24
Books / Re: Please suggest what to read next
« on: March 24, 2011, 03:00:48 PM »
I second World War Z. It is the Zombie book to end all Zombie books. I don't even like zombie books or movies. It was great. 

What kind of book do you want? you just mentioned "what should I read next" This is mainly a fantasy forum. Matterhorn is historical fiction (is that any good?)

If you like historical fiction, the bet historical fiction novel I ever read was The First Man in Rome by Colleen McCullough. Her research for that project is amazing. It takes a good 200 pages to get into it. She uses alot of latin terms so at first you will be constantly going to the glossary. She also has a massive number of characters. The romans were not too creative with their names so for a while you will be flipping to the pages about characters since they are hard to tell apart.

It is 1200 pages, but it is a remarkable book. That whole series is remarkable. She writes about the late republic and how it morphed into an empire. It actually starts with the famous Julius Caesars grandfather (he had the same name) and focused on 2 men who were Caesars uncles by Marriage (Gauis Marius, Lucius Cornelius Sulla).

The one thing she does remarkably well is she makes likeable characters without making them anacronistic. Historical fiction writers routinely make a likeable character think and act like a modern, western person so we can identify with him. Then he or she is put in a world foreign to us. She doesn't do this. They do not have modern, western values of freedom and democracy. They would not even grasp the concept. However, you can easily identify with them and understand where they are coming from.

One word of warning. She does not going into graphic detail on the violence but she does not gloss over just how brutal the Romans were.

25
Brandon Sanderson / Re: Vote for Vin!
« on: March 24, 2011, 02:53:06 PM »
after reading Brandon's story about Min and the guy from Terry Goodkinds books, I think Suvudu should do a fantasy author death match.

This will let brandon take out all his rage on Terry Goodkind and put an end to him.

26
Movies and TV / Re: The Hobbit Movie
« on: March 23, 2011, 02:59:58 PM »
they have started production. I am not sure if that means filming. Right now the first one is scheduled to be released in late 2012.

27
Books / Re: What are you reading, part 3
« on: March 22, 2011, 02:36:46 PM »
@bookstoreguy: Why was it so urgent to get the books out every year? Was it for income? I like it better when authors spend more time on books. Now I know Brandon gets his out fast, but he has said that he is a workaholic and he has a stockpiling of writing from before he was published.

BTW, has erickson said anything about what is next? Is he going to write in the same world. I didn't really like the first book much. However, you have praised them so much, I'll probably keep going eventually. I can't put my finger on exactly why I didn't like it. Part of it was that the arch at the end was too fast. It felt off. It also didn't quite make alot of sense. I also did not find the characters all that compelling. But as you and others have said, it is book 3 that draws you in.

28
Books / Re: What are you reading, part 3
« on: March 17, 2011, 03:06:19 PM »
sorry about the double post on the same book. My conputer locked up when I posted the first time. Then I got busy and did not have time to re-write it for a while. You can go ahead and delete on of them.


29
Books / Re: What are you reading, part 3
« on: March 15, 2011, 05:32:25 PM »
Just finished The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich . This the book The Social Network was based on. Zuckerberg is portrayed as alot less of a jerk than he is in the movies. I don't feel sorry for the guys from Harvard who sued him. They did not offer to pay him and wanted him to do all the real work for their website which they would then own. There is absolutely no way they knew enough about development to bring Facebook to where it is now. They did not know how to code at all. There is a tremendous amount of technical talent behind that site. Business guys who don't know how to code don't get that. They basically wanted someone else to do the real work for them. Ideas are cheap, it is The Execution of the Idea that matters. As expected the book glosses over the technical aspects of what they were doing when this started and focuses on the partying. No way there was that much partying. They were coding 70-80 hours/week. This is probably not interesting to readers and the author doesn't have the knowledge to really understand just how much work is involved in this kind of thing. For the record, I don't use social networking sites.

30
Books / Re: wise mans fear sold out at Barnes and Noble
« on: March 10, 2011, 08:14:06 PM »
Peter: where was that announced?

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