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tuyop posted:Holy poo poo I want to read this, but it's not available as an ebook. gently caress buying and reading a 768 page nonfiction tome ever again. I'm one of those really old-fashioned people that refuse to read books in digital format, so wouldn't know anything about that, but I couldn't recommend it enough. It's a really great read. The chapter on the Rwandan genocide is particulary harrowing (I had no idea the French had played such a big role in this particular tragedy).
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Sep 24, 2014 13:37
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Zsa Zsa Gabor posted:I'm one of those really old-fashioned people that refuse to read books in digital format, so wouldn't know anything about that, but I couldn't recommend it enough. It's a really great read. The chapter on the Rwandan genocide is particulary harrowing (I had no idea the French had played such a big role in this particular tragedy). When I was writing my honours thesis I stumbled upon translated first-hand accounts of aid workers in Rwanda and Somalia in the 90s and I remember having to stop my work because I couldn't stop crying. Africa, man.
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Sep 24, 2014 13:42
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I recently finished the Night Angel trilogy by Brent Weeks. It started off kinda dicey, but improved markedly with each book. By the end of the first book, I wasn't sure I'd go on to the next. By the end of the third, I'm totally sold on picking up his new series.
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Sep 24, 2014 14:34
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tuyop posted:Holy poo poo I want to read this, but it's not available as an ebook. gently caress buying and reading a 768 page nonfiction tome ever again.
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Sep 24, 2014 15:15
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Lord Hydronium posted:In the US it's called The Fate of Africa. So it is, I thought that was something else. Getting this right now. Thanks.
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Sep 24, 2014 15:33
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BrosephofArimathea posted:I recently finished the Night Angel trilogy by Brent Weeks. For me it was kinda other way around, book 1 i found awesome and the other books were good but never as great as the first one. I suppose i liked the protagonist not being this all powerfull demi-god kinda thing but a more vulnerable character, also a lot the mystery faded the further the series went on
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Sep 24, 2014 15:55
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Read through a few books this past week: The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood: broken down into its elements, the novel has it all--it's well written, with a distinctive voice, strong, lush prose that doesn't overwhelm the story, a deftly told story that reveals itself slowly and delicately, and a coherence that makes the entire book feels quite tight and thematically whole. And yet, while I did enjoy reading it, I felt it lacked a certain something for me that prevented it from being an outstanding novel. Still, by any objective measure this is a solid book and well worth your time; my inability to quantify what about the book didn't click for me probably shows how subjective it is. The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes: definitely a "minor" book, in the sense that it is short, features few characters, and focuses only on a couple themes. Even still, it's a great work, with really excellent prose, and some puzzles and ambiguities to it that will leave you thinking about it well after it's over. It feels a bit too minor to deserve the Booker Prize, but it's still a good way to kill a couple hours. The Rebel Angels by Robertson Davies: kind of the opposite of Atwood, this book is extremely loose, with a wildly divergent tone, and some truly dated representations of women and Roma. And yet, I had an absolute blast reading it. If you're only exposure to Davies is the pretty self-serious Fifth Business, it's well worth checking out this book, if only to see how crassly funny Davies can get. The characters are quite endearing too, even if, on some level, they're all pretty bad people. The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder: boooooooooring. Wilder crafts some of the most tortuously long sentences this side of Henry James; I found my eyes sliding off the page. I should say that I'm a huge fan of Our Town, but this book did nothing for me. The interrogation of faith and Providence feel much better realized in Graham Greene's work than Wilder's.
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Sep 25, 2014 04:38
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Clay's Ark and Patternmaster by Octavia Butler I just finished Patternmaster and I am pleased with this series and its conclusion. Clay's Ark detailed the story of an alien virus that gets spread to Earth via returning astronauts and Patternmaster deals with the interactions between the victims of the Clay's Ark virus and Emma's and Doro's descendants. Apparently, Patternmaster was written first and the other three books are prequels. The series is well-worth a read and I recommend it.
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Sep 25, 2014 18:35
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American Gun: The History of the US in Ten Firearms, Chris Kyle (3/5): The subject matter is very interesting, though I probably would have preferred a treatment by a historian. Kyle's writing is engaging enough, but he can't resist dropping in military lingo (e.g. "head shed"), or mentioning that he was a sniper. The actual story of the ten guns is interesting enough without his personal reflections on soldiering. A Storm of Swords (ASOIAF #3), George R.R. Martin (4/5): When I finished A Clash of Kings, I said that the sequel would need to deviate from the template to really hold my interest. It certainly did that and I definitely enjoyed it. But now I am at the point of trying to decide if I want to continue. I have heard mixed opinions on the merits of the next two books. The consensus seems to be that, until we get book 6, we can't really say whether 4 and 5 were worth the payoff. The Lost Symbol (Robert Langdon #3), Dan Brown (3/5): Another reviewer summed it up well: awful writing that I can't put down. I like this kind of light fare for reading on airplanes, because it's quick, light, and entertaining. But he's definitely a mediocre writer. His dialogue in particular is really stilted. This being the third book of his I've read, I also can't help but notice that he's very formulaic. It's still fun, in a summer blockbuster sort of way, but he ought to have a villain who isn't a tall, pale man with twisted ideas of morality. Wyatt fucked around with this message at 17:16 on Nov 17, 2014 |
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Sep 26, 2014 20:09
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I just finished Gone Girl after seeing people raving about it a couple of different places. I almost quit awhile into it cuz the husband was so pathetically oblivious and passive that it started having that cringe comedy effect on me where I just want it to end. The wife wasn't much better early on either, but I stuck with it and it did get a lot better once she got to be her highly-entertaining psycho self.
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Sep 27, 2014 03:45
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His Master's Voice by Stanislaw Lem It is a book I read every couple of years and would recommend it to every science fiction fan. As other works by the some author, It is a semi-philosophical work about inability to make contact with extraterrestrial life. Not overtly long, but pace can be a bit slow at times, considering it is mostly monologue. Still, one of the best science fiction works ever written.
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Sep 27, 2014 15:21
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Impact by Adam Baker. It's the latest book in his zombie apocalypse series that has no real name to it. It was pretty decent. Not terrific, not bad, and it answered a few more questions about what the gently caress was going on. I really like this series because the whole zombie plague thing that happens is not really explained, and we get robo zombies which are always kinda cool. Worth a shot if you dig apocalyptic books. WAY better than Terminus but then again pretty much anything is better than that book.
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Sep 27, 2014 15:35
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Just finished The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell. I have yet to read anything by him I don't like. I read this one without reading anything about it--no book flaps, no synopses, nothing--and it went in a direction I was completely surprised by. Loved it.
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Sep 28, 2014 02:43
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savinhill posted:I just finished Gone Girl after seeing people raving about it a couple of different places. I almost quit awhile into it cuz the husband was so pathetically oblivious and passive that it started having that cringe comedy effect on me where I just want it to end. The wife wasn't much better early on either, but I stuck with it and it did get a lot better once she got to be her highly-entertaining psycho self. Yeah, the first half of the book is pretty slow, but once it hits that big reveal in the middle it both gets much better and makes the first half much more interesting in retrospect. The last thing I finished was Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. Difficult to get through, both in terms of the writing style and the horribly brutal violence, but I'm glad I did. I think it'd be interesting to re-read, now that I know the basic plot- it'd be a lot easier to just immerse myself in the flow of the language and enjoy that a lot more.
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Sep 28, 2014 18:17
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My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki, about a young female documentarian working on a Japanese television series about American meat production. Having just come off of reading A Tale for the Time Being, I have to say I enjoyed this a lot. Ozeki has such a fun way of writing that really makes you feel a closeness with the characters. Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil, about opium dens and drug addiction in Bombay. It gets to be so incredibly bleak that I had to put the book down a couple of times just to process what was going on. The whole thing takes you by surprise, especially since the prologue is so dreamy. Tried to read Post Office by Charles Bukowski because I wanted a better reason to not like the guy other than for his reputation. Got about a third of the way in and couldn't stand all the edgy, cynical manspeak and self-serving prose.
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Sep 29, 2014 14:32
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Norwegian Wood. Trash.
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Sep 29, 2014 15:42
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I finished Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk, the other day. It's very short and definitely worth a read. It was interesting to notice how different it is to the film. A lot of dialogue seems to have originally been spoken by other characters, and of course there's plenty that didn't make it to the film (the screenplay was by a different guy) I didn't find him an overtly 'intellectual' writer like, for instance, David Foster Wallace was. Neither does his prose reach the florid, articulate heights of Dickens, Dostoevsky et al.; that 19th century beautiful, never-ending-sentence style. Both of these qualities are what I usually seek in literature but Palahniuk is quite different. He's a really anti-materialistic, go-your-own-way writer. It's also sleek, abrupt and idiomatic. He's also really into gore, which can get a bit repetitive but the plot keeps you hanging in there. I've since moved on to Haunted, which I'm finding more interesting (presumably because I'm not hearing Edward Norton's voice).Mira posted:Tried to read Post Office by Charles Bukowski because I wanted a better reason to not like the guy other than for his reputation. Got about a third of the way in and couldn't stand all the edgy, cynical manspeak and self-serving prose. Agreed. Bukowski gets old fast. I feel Chuck Palahniuk's almost in the same league; their gimmick is also their style and it gets a little grating after a while. Still, Palahniuk's way more relevant and readable. LoRdOfThEDaNcE fucked around with this message at 18:34 on Sep 29, 2014 |
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Sep 29, 2014 18:28
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Also Invisible Cities and Under the Jaguar Sun. I loving love the way Calvino writes, how he describes all these lofty scenarios and places on such a large scale. But I always feel as if I've retained nothing when I'm finished because there's never any ongoing narrative thread.
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Sep 29, 2014 18:55
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Just finished up Ali Smith's most recent novel, How to be Both. It was...weird. The book makes a jarring shift halfway through the novel that, while not terrible, never hooked me as much as the first half, and its really sympathetic and enjoyable main character. Smith is a great writer whose prose is full of forward momentum, but the sudden perspective jump just took me too far out of the novel.
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Sep 29, 2014 21:53
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Mira posted:Also Invisible Cities and Under the Jaguar Sun. I loving love the way Calvino writes, how he describes all these lofty scenarios and places on such a large scale. But I always feel as if I've retained nothing when I'm finished because there's never any ongoing narrative thread. Thanks for the heads-up. I'm gonna check this guy out as he seems interesting. Can't ever remember reading an Italian author except Dante (and that was via a Dorothy Sayers translation [I'll be reading the English translation of Calvino, too]). Incidentally, I noticed (via Wikipedia) an apparent similarity between Invisible Cities and Haunted in that they both appear to use interesting frame narratives. Also, I think I know what you mean about weak narrative threads but I'm okay with that as I feel that some authors, instead of giving me a 'story' per se, tend to introduce me to a certain way of articulating, thinking or feeling, etc. Like, David Foster Wallace, for me, is more about the way he writes than what he writes about- they're intrinsically and thematically connected, of course, but it's his 'voice' that grabs me. Maybe it's the same way for you with Calvino; a kind of it's-the-journey-that-matters™ thing. When you're finished you can't really remember much that happened, but you really appreciate how that 'not much' was conveyed to you.
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Sep 29, 2014 22:24
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Lilith's Brood, Dawn, Adulthood Rites and Imago by Octavia Butler This was a great series, Butler does a great job writing believable aliens. This series explores what it means to be human and how we can be saved and conquered by aliens at the same time. Neuromancer by William Gibson I was worried that this would be horribly dated but it's held up well and I wouldn't be surprised to see it being published for decades to come. Affliction (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Book 22) by Laurell K. Hamilton I'd say it's 75% sex (mostly BDSDM), 20% violence and 5% other. This book (and the rest of series) is definitely not for people who don't appreciate frank depictions of sex and sexuality. It was pretty good.
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Sep 30, 2014 04:08
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The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks It was... not his best. It felt a bit anticlimactic but overall I enjoyed it and it had some really interesting ideas. Bible and Sword by Barbara W Tuchman Fascinating look at the Balfour Declaration and the British in Palestine. It was more interesting when she was looking at the medieval period and the crusades more than the modern history stuff.
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Oct 1, 2014 12:51
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Language of the Night by Ursula Le Guin. A great little book collecting Le Guin's essays on writing and reading science fiction and fantasy (mostly scifi). Highly recommend for people who are interested in writing fantasy or science fiction at all.
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Oct 2, 2014 01:17
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recently finished The Old Man and the Sea and The Metamorphosis. both brilliant. obviously.
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Oct 2, 2014 11:58
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The Martian by Andy Weir A "technical thriller" about an astronaut stranded on Mars after a disastrous dust storm (the only really glaring error in the book, IMO, was this scenario). Written mostly as a stream of personal logs over the 500+ days of his ordeal. Pretty good, not great. Lots of 'back of the napkin' calculations for staying alive, play-spaceman dialogues between characters, and witty monologues. Modern Robinson Crusoe? This was the first novel-length book I've ever read in one day.
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Oct 2, 2014 12:11
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The Children Act by Ian McEwan The only thing I know about McEwan personally is that he throws himself in with that obnoxious New Atheist crowd, so this book reads like some weird-rear end wish fulfillment tract involving a heavy-handed scenario that lets him 'save' a poor, brainwashed victim of organized religion. The writing is good for what it is, but everything else is so on the nose. Previously I've read The Cement Garden and The Comfort of Strangers, and thought they were incredibly dull. So I think McEwan as a whole, I can just write off.
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Oct 2, 2014 14:20
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Franco Potente posted:Read through a few books this past week: I've heard this very thing from a few friends who have read this book. I've read Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood (which was a fantastic read), but not any of her other works. Will look to find a copy and read it myself.
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Oct 4, 2014 07:25
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Finished Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle. It's about a guy who suffers a horrific facial injury when he's seventeen. The novel jumps back and forth showing his life pre and post injury, and how he uses his imagination to survive in each part of his life. The book is bleak and disturbing, showing how being young and emotionally unstable can change the direction of your life forever. Darnielle does a great job of getting into the mind of a loner who lives through his fantasy novels and games, and how dark that path can go. A great book. I'm sure it's going to win a few awards.
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Oct 5, 2014 23:49
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Blank by Lippe Simone. Basically, imagine an apocalypse that happens because everyone forgets everything. Pilots forget how to fly, people forget how to drive, etc. Now, take that idea, and make it boring. Now you have this book. The idea that people would still be people but would not know anything about anything was a tremendously interesting idea to me. It's a very novel and unique way of bringing around an apocalypse without the overuse of zombies. The problem is, when using this idea, when you change literally 99% of the characters shown in the book into tribal cavemen, there is a LOT less interesting things to the apocalypse and a shitload more "Holy gently caress this is boring as hell!" There are 3 main characters, all of whom suck. There are plot developments that literally come out of nowhere and end up being done for no reason because otherwise there's not a reason for it to happen and the scenery of it would be SO COOL. It's just a waste of a good premise for a book. Example, one of the people who retains some of their memory is a woman who goes to the zoo and opens all the animal enclosures. Why? No reason. The only plot related reason is so she can throw fruit at monkeys later in the book so they chase after people chasing her, and panthers/lions/etc chase after the monkeys and she gets away. That's it. Oh yea, the reason we all lose our memory and go tribal and retarded is because of solar radiation that somehow fries just one part of our brain. loving retarded book.
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Oct 6, 2014 06:38
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The Good Terrorist by Doris Lessing. This was my first book by her, about a group of young revolutionaries trying to establish themselves in some derelict squat in London. Honestly, I didn't understand the whole point of going into the minutiae of Alice getting everything else settled in (Lessing spends half the book making the main character do clean-up). I guess it's supposed to reflect the irony trying to control everything about her and live in the same way as the fascists she condemns, but it got to be a slog to read. Still recommend, though.
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Oct 6, 2014 14:04
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Amphibian Evolution by Rainer Schoch. Its a detailed examination of the latest on amphibians from the fossil record, and ties in really well with specific details we have from the rather unique life history seen in the living amphibians. Take away message: frogs, salamanders, and caecilians are not stand ins for the early tetrapod condition, but are the result of hundreds of millions of years of independent evolution. Really neat stuff in it about what we can learn about growth and development from the fossil record too. This text could also serve as the course text for a vertebrate paleontology course, if you dare have one of those but fail to mention dinosaurs (and can survive the bitter tears of your student evaluations).
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Oct 6, 2014 21:23
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robotsinmyhead posted:The Martian by Andy Weir This is almost exactly how I felt about the book. I finished, had a decent number of gripes and random complaints, but then I realized I'd read the entire thing in one sitting. Not a perfect book in any way, but pretty drat compelling of a read.
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Oct 7, 2014 03:34
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Blank by Lippe Simone. Sounds like it needs more giant robots.
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Oct 7, 2014 07:50
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tonytheshoes posted:Just finished The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell. I have yet to read anything by him I don't like. I read this one without reading anything about it--no book flaps, no synopses, nothing--and it went in a direction I was completely surprised by. I'm reading it now and am enjoying it very much as well. I'm currently at about the halfway point of Horologists Labyrynth. The only gripe I have is that while it is very well written and entertaining and suspenseful, its not very mysterious. I wish it was written a little more subtle with less exposition. Anyway, obviously I don't know if there are any major twists coming up so don't spoil it for me. The only book of his I read previously was Cloud Atlas which I thought was very well written and I loved the "gimmick" of the stories merging together but I actually hated the main plot and pretty much all of the characters.
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Oct 7, 2014 18:24
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Epiphany, by Ian Jay. A lovely graphic novel, a coming-of-age story about faith, in which a highschool freshman and preacher's son runs into one of the two gods of his world. It's warm and very personal, and Jay's art style really works for me, especially with some of the gorgeous splash pages. Worth picking up a copy. Coin Locker Babies, by Ryu Murakami. I really enjoyed In The Miso Soup, so I had a vague idea of what kind of thing to expect from this. What I did not expect, though, was that I would be gripped with empathy, sympathy and revulsion from the first few pages. The story of two boys abandoned in coin lockers as newborns, it follows the first twenty years of their lives, set against a backdrop of a grotesque and grubby Tokyo. Kiku, a natural athlete, ends up meeting a girl with a pet crocodile, and together they stoke a thirst for revenge. Hashi, an eerily talented and fragile boy, becomes a troubled queer aspiring singer. As their lives separate and converge, Murakami stokes tension and unease with healthy doses of shock. By the last few chapters I simply wasn't able to get up from my seat. This was pretty drat excellent.
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Oct 8, 2014 00:16
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For those of you who have read The Bone Clocks, do you think it adds much to the story if you've written everything else Mitchell has published first? I've only read Cloud Atlas and loved it, and knowing that he brings back characters from previous books in TBC, I'm still deciding whether to take the plunge into the rest of his novels or to just go for this one.
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Oct 8, 2014 04:07
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elbow posted:For those of you who have read The Bone Clocks, do you think it adds much to the story if you've written everything else Mitchell has published first? I've only read Cloud Atlas and loved it, and knowing that he brings back characters from previous books in TBC, I'm still deciding whether to take the plunge into the rest of his novels or to just go for this one.
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Oct 8, 2014 04:42
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A few mentions of Spyglass Magazine/Luisa Rey is all I caught but I've only read Cloud Atlas.
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Oct 8, 2014 04:58
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Thanks for your opinions, it doesn't sound like it makes a huge difference then. I've been looking forward to reading it!
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Oct 8, 2014 06:13
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elbow posted:For those of you who have read The Bone Clocks, do you think it adds much to the story if you've written everything else Mitchell has published first? I've only read Cloud Atlas and loved it, and knowing that he brings back characters from previous books in TBC, I'm still deciding whether to take the plunge into the rest of his novels or to just go for this one. I imagine if you're written everything Mitchell has published first, there is a certain element of novelty that will lack for this one as well, mister Mitchell.
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Oct 8, 2014 07:35
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