Topic: What books/comics have you been reading lately?

[Gunlord]

Continuing my way through Dracula. This book is REALLY good, actually...the story may be familiar, but Stoker has an excellent command of the epistolary format.

[Ratty]

Finished "Knight of the Black Rose" took a while because it's had to compete with the game "Jade Empire" for my attention and often lost, though it's not really a bad D&D based book. Now trying to decide if I should read "Azure Bonds" or the next Ravenloft or Dune novel.

Reading Kekkaishi and Rosario Vampire currently. Every year I get to read the next volume of Excel Saga and Battle Angel Alita: Last Order and Yotsuba&!. Every once in a while I visit the local library and read some of the Mythos.

If you like long Asian reads and haven't read it yet, read Bandits Of The Marsh. It's the Robin Hood-esque Chinese novel that inspired the Suikoden games. But it's Chinese classic, so it's very long winded.

Cool, I'll have to check that out, but it'll be a bit lower on my list. I've wanted to read "Journey to the West" and "Three Kingdoms" for a while to.

Continuing my way through Dracula. This book is REALLY good, actually...the story may be familiar, but Stoker has an excellent command of the epistolary format.

Finished it? What did you think? I made a topic about that in the main forum, you could post your thoughts there to but the topic has been dormant for a while.

[Kale]

If you like Chinese, you should look up Jin Yong books. Especially The Smiling Proud Wanderer, and The Condor Heroes series.

Kekkaishi is pretty awesome, though the later parts far out does the beginning.

I began reading Monster Hunter Inc. but I quit after... the second book, when I found out book 3 wasn't about the main character... it was an okay series, but the second book was really like the first book.

Also read a lot of The Ranger's Apprentice, up to book 7 I think, and sort of dropped off there too. Book 8 has something I hate as the evil guy, so it sort of threw me off. Evil cults or organization, and fake ones at that, are something I really hate as a major player.

[Ratty]

If you like Chinese, you should look up Jin Yong books. Especially The Smiling Proud Wanderer, and The Condor Heroes series.

Kekkaishi is pretty awesome, though the later parts far out does the beginning.

I began reading Monster Hunter Inc. but I quit after... the second book, when I found out book 3 wasn't about the main character... it was an okay series, but the second book was really like the first book.

Also read a lot of The Ranger's Apprentice, up to book 7 I think, and sort of dropped off there too. Book 8 has something I hate as the evil guy, so it sort of threw me off. Evil cults or organization, and fake ones at that, are something I really hate as a major player.

Hm I'll try to keep that in mind, my local library is very understocked. But thanks for the suggestions in any event

[Lumi Kløvstad]

Understocked library? Buy a Kindle/Nook.

On MY (frankly brilliant and awesome and totally in no way a paid for product placement) Kindle Fire, I am now reading A Game of Thrones.

[Ratty]

Understocked library? Buy a Kindle/Nook.

On MY (frankly brilliant and awesome and totally in no way a paid for product placement) Kindle Fire, I am now reading A Game of Thrones.

Nah, I intend to resist e-readers for a lot longer yet. I just don't find reading from a screen as satisfying, and it scares me how incredibly easy censorship will become when everything is digital and changeable remotely. (Amazon or your government doesn't want you to see something? They can just change or delete all copies of it immediately.) I'll eventually get one I'm sure but for the time being I've got a surplus of unread books in my personal library anyway, and if I live to be a crotchety old man some kids going through my stuff after I die will think it's weird I still held onto physical books.

[Lumi Kløvstad]

Nah, I intend to resist e-readers for a lot longer yet. I just don't find reading from a screen as satisfying, and it scares me how incredibly easy censorship will become when everything is digital and changeable remotely. (Amazon or your government doesn't want you to see something? They can just change or delete all copies of it immediately.) I'll eventually get one I'm sure but for the time being I've got a surplus of unread books in my personal library anyway, and if I live to be a crotchety old man some kids going through my stuff after I die will think it's weird I still held onto physical books.

Well, I still maintain a large physical book collection, but now instead of picking a book or three to take on a weekend drive down to Seward, I can always pack my Kindle and be completely set. I am swapping my customized Fire for an E-Ink screen model though; it's a cute reading tablet, the Fire, but it's not as easy on my eyes or battery efficient as an E-ink screen.

Books are great, but they quickly get heavy and portability is ever a large concern of mine, so I'm big on ebooks.

[uzo]

Nah, I intend to resist e-readers for a lot longer yet. I just don't find reading from a screen as satisfying, and it scares me how incredibly easy censorship will become when everything is digital and changeable remotely. (Amazon or your government doesn't want you to see something? They can just change or delete all copies of it immediately.)

That's pretty paranoid of you. You are forgetting a crucial fact in this matter. Pirates. Data is never taken down for good. A trace always exists. With piracy, censored/deleted materials can live on.

Think for a moment. Who is the most likely to be anti-government, and want to expose and spread ideas they might ban? It's the same people who provide you with your warez and assorted media copies. These are the people that run wikileaks. Anti-government, socialist, anarchists. Your books are safe.

It really all comes down to one question. Does government censoring actually work? No, especially not in this day and age. Look at China, Iran, North Korea, Egypt, Syria, etc. The people get the info. They get the outside connections. There is no stopping the internet.

Take off your tin foil hat and come out of the basement.

[Gunlord]

With piracy, censored/deleted materials can live on.

I agree generally with this, but in reference to e-readers specifically, if you wanna pirate stuff, devices like Amazon's (or Barnes and Noble's) e-readers aren't very good, since they're proprietary and can be manipulated by the corporations remotely, from what I understand. Granted, I suppose this may be technically true for any sort of personal device, even PCs, but unless I'm mistaken it's much much harder for anyone to manipulate data inside your personal PC than it is for Amazon or whoever to fiddle with things on your Kindle or e-reader.

[Lumi Kløvstad]

iunno. About a third of the books on my Kindle were pirated at some point, and none of them are missing yet.

Seriously. Tracking down every single pirate and prosecuting is not worth time or resources. I'm not saying people shouldn't pay for stuff, but I am saying that Amazon has no cause or profit in banning you for life for nicking a totally uncensored ebook copy of Vampire Diaries from those really nice Russians you met in a chat room last week.

On a censorship note, Amazon is pretty big on unabridged, uncensored editions of just about everything, because that keeps them on good terms with the publishers who then return as customers at a later point. If word got out that Amazon was censoring their books, they'd lose money from someone, and since ebooks via their Kindle service is one of the few avenues of income Amazon has TOTAL control over, they're not willing to risk jeopardizing that channel. They'll sooner crack down on comically overpriced HDMI cables with witty reviews than questionable reading material.

[Ratty]

That's pretty paranoid of you. You are forgetting a crucial fact in this matter. Pirates. Data is never taken down for good. A trace always exists. With piracy, censored/deleted materials can live on.

Think for a moment. Who is the most likely to be anti-government, and want to expose and spread ideas they might ban? It's the same people who provide you with your warez and assorted media copies. These are the people that run wikileaks. Anti-government, socialist, anarchists. Your books are safe.

It really all comes down to one question. Does government censoring actually work? No, especially not in this day and age. Look at China, Iran, North Korea, Egypt, Syria, etc. The people get the info. They get the outside connections. There is no stopping the internet.

Take off your tin foil hat and come out of the basement.

You give pirates too much credit. Not something I would have expected from someone who on the other hand has insisted pretty much all criminals who are in prison deserve to be there, and that prison conditions should be as harsh as possible.

True there will always be pirates and bootleggers, but the grand age of internet piracy (or internet privacy, depending on how you look at it) is over.
As of the first of last month all of the major ISPs in the US agreed to monitor their users for suspicious activity, such as using torrents, and are implementing a graduated response system to scare most of them away and prosecute those who persist. I don't care how hardcore an anarchist is, throw them in jail for a few years and take all of their possessions then tell them if they ever get on the internet again you'll put them back, and they're probably going to live a life less connected. The government already does these internetless conditions for sex offenders who are released so not only are such restrictions possible, they're already being done. I think it's only a matter of time until such restrictions are placed on persistent internet pirates, it's a logical next step.

What's more the FBI now has the IP addresses of all the people who ever uploaded or downloaded anything on megaupload, so there's a few million people they can scare away from ever pirating again right off the bat, and a lot of people who will be going to prison/sued for all their worth as well. No doubt it's a similar story for the recently shuttered torrent site Demonoid. Once the millions of casual pirates are gone governments can do serious damage to the hardcore crowed who weren't initially scared away.

And besides, if the government or amazon wants to keep people from seeing something, I'M not going to risk anything to see it, most people won't. You don't need to completely destroy something for censorship to work, just make it so most people don't have access. Or alter it so the version most people see is the one you want them to. And with digital media they can find the people who do get access to restricted content so bonus for the powers that be. Not to mention if there were something like a revolution in a powerful country the internet could be shut off completely, though that's not likely to happen unless it was an extremely powerful country.

And please, do we really need to bring out the tinfoil hat bit again? Amazon has the power to pull anything they want, all they need is an excuse, they've done it before. With unauthorized editions of 1984 and Animal Farm, of all things. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html

[Lumi Kløvstad]

Again I say:

Tracking down every single pirate and prosecuting is not worth time or resources.

Which do you think there are more of? Pirates who nick an MP3 here and there? Or cops? Just because they CAN track everyone doesn't mean they will. It's a waste of the money and manpower, and cracking down on music thieves is a less valuable effort than tracking down the guys with AK-47s and IEDs who want to murder us by any sane investor's logic. Plus, for each of these policies you've mentioned, there has been MASSIVE public backlash against such policies ever since January.

The war of "piracy vs privacy" is now upon us, and as it turns out, the taxpayers aren't such big fans of Big Brother taking over and taking their hard won cash to catch a few wayward copies of Born This Way.

[Ratty]

Which do you think there are more of? Pirates who nick an MP3 here and there? Or cops?

Like I said, once most casual pirates get cease & desists and/or warnings from their IPSs under this new plan, which was agreement between the major IPS and organizations like the MPAA with the blessing of the White House, they will stop. After that it's only a matter of concentrating on the hardcore pirates. Millions will already be getting such notices and possibly jail time/lawsuites from the closing of megaupload and similar sites. And remember it's not the government doing this monitoring, it's the ISPs themselves. No one can complain about the government misspending their resources for this monitoring, because they're not the ones doing it.

Just because they CAN track everyone doesn't mean they will. It's a waste of the money and manpower, and cracking down on music thieves is a less valuable effort than tracking down the guys with AK-47s and IEDs who want to murder us by any sane investor's logic.

Why does it make more sense to crack down on the guys with AK-47s? They aren't cutting into anyone's profit margins. A wise and ambitious politican would do well to stay on the good side of the entertainment industry. Just look what celebrity endorsements did for Obama in 2008.

Plus, for each of these policies you've mentioned, there has been MASSIVE public backlash against such policies ever since January.

Really? I haven't heard any public outcry since SOPA, most people seem to think government control of the internet was defeated with that, which is very far from the truth. Even before SOPA the US along with a bunch of other countries had already signed ACTA which is more far reaching than SOPA.

The war of "piracy vs privacy" is now upon us, and as it turns out, the taxpayers aren't such big fans of Big Brother taking over and taking their hard won cash to catch a few wayward copies of Born This Way.

Like I said, a wise politician would listen to the entertainment industry, and all politicians listen to campaign money.

[Lumi Kløvstad]

And a wise voter votes against the politicians who have shown that they can be bought by campaign donations.

Now can we get back on topic? This thread is supposed to be about books, and I'm sorry for the derailing my comment had a part in causing.

We can argue anti-piracy policies somewhere else.


On topic: Halo: Ghosts of Onyx was a pretty good videogame book.

[Gecko]

I just got my copies of the Marvel Masterworks series Uncanny X-Men vol. 1 and 3 in the mail today! They're collections of the X-Men comic books that take place in the main universe (Earth 616). I've read the first two stories in vol. 1, and it's pretty entertaining. I skipped vol. 2 because it's so damn expensive. I know it contains all of the Phoenix Saga issues, but damn, that's more than I'm willing to spend at the moment. I'm just now really starting to get into the X-men (well, really I have been all summer), so it's pretty fun catching myself up with things. There's a lot of material to look into.