Reddit reviews The Peripheral

Here's a transcript and web audio / web video / download audio, 43MB MP3, 1hr 33min / download video, 197MB MP4, 1hr 41min of the full interview. He also reads a chapter from his upcoming novel The Peripheral, which you can now pre-order (Amazon.com / Amazon UK).

Finally finished my ASoIaF re-read, though I think that was before December. AFfC and aDwD are so fucking underrated. I seriously have a hard time figuring out who the hell is reading that series in the first place that somehow doesn't get those two books.

Kinda want to put some more fantasy/sci-fi in the rotation but over the last couple months I've made some attempts that remind me why I gave up most genre fiction. Started into Simmons' Hyperion and holy fuck if I never hear the word "cruciform" again . . . It seems like there could be a cool story under there, but the writing is clumsy as hell (yes, even after accounting for what's up with the stretch with all the "cruciform" bullshit). Listening to the audiobook might have aggravated the repetitiveness of some portions, but uggh. I feel like I'll eventually finish at least Hyperion just because of how much positive stuff I've heard about the story but I doubt it's gonna reel me in for the two sequels.

Also tried dipping my toe into the first of Sanderson's Stormlight books and goddamn I am not going to finish that one. Turns out everything in the world is a compound word, formed of the kewlest words Sanderson knows. Storm+light. Shard+blade. Oath+pact. "Oathpact." It's a compound word made out of fucking synonyms. It's super high fantasy, which makes me leery to begin with, but every other word is a proper compound noun that I would've made up for my D&D games when I was 11. Despite all the made up words there's still no useful descriptions of the world; I know the magic armor is scaled, but have no idea who the people being killed are or why I'd care. Like three chapters of this jargony bullshit and I still don't even know what the little fairies that apparently appear everywhere, constantly, in response to everyone's emotions, even look like. People sprinting across a battlefield can still casually converse about how clever their tactics are, even while too rushed to simply grip a shield. This is why genre fiction is a ghetto, people.

Got The Peripheral for my birthday a bit ago, and I'm about to be unemployed and sober for a bit so I'm going to be just straight blasting through this bitch. Got some book on a mathematical proof of natural selection for Christmas, should take about an afternoon it looks like.

After that I'm'a stack a couple serious sounding things -- Wittgenstein's Blue and Brown or Philosophic Investigations, go back and reread The Prince, like serious-taking-notes-and-shit style. Mebbe raid my buddy's library of political philosophy textbooks. And 1:1 salt in some lighter stuff -- still got a stack of Thompson's later shit to work through, still need to read Confederacy of Dunces, etc.

> Also, what are you reading lately?

I got the first Saga book (already had #2 and #3) and blew threw that today. Getting ready to start The Peripheral.

I like a lot of Non-Fiction and just finished Think Like A Freak, by the Freakanomics authors and really enjoyed it! If you like novels, I highly recommend The Peripheral