Ashes of Creation Book Club and Tea Room

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Rumbleforge said:

 Have you ever read The Graveyard book by Neil Gaiman, @Cyreph ?
There is a reason why it's won many awards....  and one of those rare magical books that can be appreciated by all ages. 

Will give it a go. 

How about Good Omens and American Gods? Was thinking of getting them since I'm getting into his book(s). 

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I really like R.A Salvatore.

One of my favourite authors though, is Dan Brown.

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Cyreph said:

Rumbleforge said:

 Have you ever read The Graveyard book by Neil Gaiman, @Cyreph ?
There is a reason why it's won many awards....  and one of those rare magical books that can be appreciated by all ages. 

Will give it a go. 

How about Good Omens and American Gods? Was thinking of getting them since I'm getting into his book(s). 

American Gods is one of my personal all time favorite books.  I have 4 or 5 different editions of it.... one of them autographed by Neil Gaiman.  I almost have a compulsive urge to buy every different printing of it I can find, which is precisely why I didn't suggest that one right away...
(I didn't want to come off like Mel Gibson in Conspiracy Theory, with his compulsive urge to buy every copy of Catcher in the Rye that he comes across....)

Good Omens is a book that, many many years ago, a cousin of my mother gave to me when she came to visit us from England.  It had been her sons, and he sent it with her to give me.   Sadly, my mother saw it one day and thought it was about witchcraft, and threw it out - a decision purely based on how the cover looked. 
It wasn't until just a year or two ago that I finally picked up another copy at our yearly Rotary Club Booksale...  so I've had a interesting relationship with this book, without having read it yet.   That being said, considering its a joint venture between Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, it has to be entertaining, right?  I'll finally read that one one of these days.  (20 years late is still better than never)

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xexeb said:

american is one of my top five books of all time, as well. i refuse to watch the tv series on that qualifier.

It's definitely not the books...the tv series that is, it's a nice time waster though and whilst I enjoyed it, I do think you might be making a good choice to not allow tv casting to influence your perceptions of the characters etc

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Megs said:

xexeb said:

american is one of my top five books of all time, as well. i refuse to watch the tv series on that qualifier.

It's definitely not the books...the tv series that is, it's a nice time waster though and whilst I enjoyed it, I do think you might be making a good choice to not allow tv casting to influence your perceptions of the characters etc

I'm actually a BIG fan of the tv show.... I was worried, being such a fan of the book.  But they've managed to adapt so many of the nuances of the book into the motion picture format, it ways that they never would have been able to do when the book itself came out.  In my mind, its one of the best book to tv adaptations Ive ever seen.  It's certainly the one that I had the most invested interest in, and I feel like it exceeded my optimistically pessimistic hopes. 

You're missing out, if you don't watch it.  
Just my opinion though!

ArchivedUser

Greetings all,

I'm glad I stumbled into this little corner of the AoC forums; I've found my people!

Hmmm.  Tea so far today:  Earl Grey (Twinings Organic) and Black Currant (also Twinings) [I got a sampler box on Prime Day. ]  I also drink lots of loose teas.

I'd post pictures of my library, but the whole room looks like a bookstore exploded.  Once I get a little more organized, I'll try to post a couple.  I'm a pretty voracious reader but haven't been reading as much while trying to complete my PhD.  I read fantasy, sci-fi, cyberpunk, some steampunk, science, history, and some theology.  My library is pretty eclectic.  I prefer a real book, but lately have been reading library books on my Kindle because it's easy to carry with me.

Favorite books/authors: (In no particular order after the first one.)

• Tolkien (collect his books/editions)
• C.S. Lewis
• Timothy Zahn
• Stephen R. Donaldson
• Madeline L'Engle
• Ursula K. Le Guin
• Katherine Kurtz
• Raymond Feist
• Robert Jordan
• Anne McCaffrey

Happy to meet all of you,

ArchivedUser

You guys use Book Depository? I love it. Amazon does not deliver directly to my country. Book Depository delivers for free and has really competitive prices.

The customer service is also great. I ordered a few books on Sunday, and they gave a mass coupon on Tuesday. I emailed them to ask whether I can apply the coupon retroactively. On the same day, they emailed me saying it cannot be done, but they can help me cancel the order with no cost to me.

So I just reordered the books, and benefited from the coupon. 

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Rumbleforge pushes open the door with a loud creak.  "Hmmmm, hinges haven't been oiled in awhile", he wonders to himself.

As he wanders into the room he notices the book shelves have a layer of dust and the teapot has gone cold. 

"Well, this just won't do at all!"

Rumbleforge fires up the stove and opens the windows for some fresh air.

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I recently finished reading The Midnight Front by David Mack.

David Mack is probably more well known for his Star Trek novels (and good ones at that) but this is, to my knowledge, his first foray into his own new book series.

The Midnight Front is set in a world like our own, only one which a secret culture of magic hides beneath it.  Set in the 1940s, this world of magic had it's own conflict which ran parallel to WWII - and the leaders of nations involved in WWII were more than happy to take advantage of this magic for their own ends. In somewhat of a unique take on modern urban fantasy type books, magic in this series seems solely based on pacts with demons. (Or should I say soul-y? hah pun!)

Now, this is where I'm going to get a tad personal, because this book hit me in the gut in 2 or 3 places, and rarely have I had this kind of reaction.   This is largely due to my own current state of affairs at the moment, but I'll touch on that in a minute. 

But the first thing to really get me were some of the scenes of what the Nazi's did to people.  There isn't a lot of it, but what there was really got to me - because I knew it was real.  Some of those acts mentioned are so much worse than any supernatural event depicted in the novel because they did happen.  I know they aren't depicted in this book for shock value, they're a reminder of why the stakes were so high.  But it was a bit like a kick in the old gut of my emotions.  I guess that just means I still care.

Another aspect that really got to me though was more subtle and chewed away at my subconscious.  There is a revelation in this book about the afterlife that I found troubling, but I won't go into it for reasons of spoilers.   And I think this is just an issue of timing, because I'm at a point of my life where I'm having to acknowledge signs of my own aging and mortality, I'm watching my father struggle to do things more (he'll be 75 this year) and he's even still having to help his 94 year old mother out all the time who (until last week) was still living in her own home alone. She had a small accident however and hurt her foot, so she is currently in a nursing home while she recovers... or maybe forever.  This is a sore subject right now because she doesn't want to be there, she wants to be able to die in her own home.  I held my own mother's hand when she passed away in our home, which is another thing I've been thinking a lot about again with all this going on.   So between this aspect of the book and everything thats going on in my head right now, I had some near existential crisis moments pondering mortality, the meaning or futility of life, and all that jazz. 

But most of that baggage is all on me, not on this book - which is a bit gritty and dark mind you, but it's a interesting story full of well thought out characters.  So don't let my own issues make you think I didn't enjoy the book for what it was, because I did.  In fact, the whole book played out in my head rather cinematically - it would probably make a good movie series. 

As soon as I finished that book, I started reading The Night Dahlia by R.S. Belcher.

This is what I'm currently reading right now.  It's the 2nd book of his "Nightwise" series, though it's set in the same modern day real world of his Brotherhood of the Wheel series. Again, this is another "supernatural urban fantasy" affair, which has to be a genre in it's renaissance right now.  I'm not in this book far enough to talk much about it right now, but I'm enjoying it as I enjoy all of R.S. Belcher's books.  He just writes in a style thats so easy for me to just stink into. 

So, anyone else been reading anything interesting?

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I love the smell of tea and books in the (pick time of day)

I just started reading the grim company. so far it is an interesting book that reminds me a lot of the game tyranny in its background. it is still a bit early to say how good the book is but I like it so far.

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Hah!  The author has a somewhat fitting name, doesn't he?