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I just finished The Goblin Emperor by Kathleen Addison. It was basically a coming-of-edge story in a political fantasy setting. It wasn't particularly complex or surprising, though I can't say this was a problem as I was worried that the politics side would get too byzantine and confusing. Not earth-shaking, but it was a solid read and I'd recommend it.
Borachon fucked around with this message at 22:09 on Feb 9, 2015 |
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Feb 9, 2015 19:27
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Borachon posted:I just finished The Goblin Emperor by Kathleen Addison. It was basically a coming-of-edge story in a political fantasy setting. It wasn't particularly complex or surprising, though I can't say this was a problem as I was worried that the politics side would get to byzantine and confusing. Not earth-shaking, but it was a solid read and I'd recommend it. I'm a third of the way through it and it's really compelling, but holy poo poo the naaames 
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Feb 9, 2015 22:02
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Existance by David Brin. A good read, overall, although I disliked Hammish and wasn't interested in anything he did or thought or said. And there was one small error I noticed which bugged me throughout the story.
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Feb 10, 2015 21:13
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Hedrigall posted:I'm a third of the way through it and it's really compelling, but holy poo poo the naaames There is an appendix that explains some of that poo poo. I didn't notice it until I finished reading it, so I hope you learn from my failure.
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Feb 10, 2015 21:17
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Megazver posted:There is an appendix that explains some of that poo poo. I've been using it a bit but it's hard to navigate to and from on Kindle. I just upgraded to a Paperwhite though, and since then I've been using the X-ray feature on character names which is pretty useful.
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Feb 10, 2015 22:05
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I just finished Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain and it's fantastic. I mentioned in the What Did You Begin? thread that the writing reminded me of a kinder, gentler Cormac McCarthy, and that remained so to the end. Frazier has the same kind of lyric meandering and tendency to use archaic words or words of his own devising that sound archaic to craft sentences that have you rereading them just to savor the language, and he has McCarthy's knack for slipping in an unexpected revelation of human nature into a random sentence that just hits you right. The Southern/Appalachian landscape is just as much a character as the desert is in Blood Meridian, too. And while Frazier writes about profound isolation, war, violence, and loneliness, he manages to do so while retaining hope and an ability to love. In other words, I didn't leave each span of reading Cold Mountain with the feeling that humanity is irredeemably hosed, the way most of McCarthy's writing does. The Goodreads quotes page gives you a decent look at what it's like. I like this passage: quote:And it was pointless...to think how those years could have been put to better use, for he could hardly have put them to worse. There was no recovering them now. You could grieve endlessly for the loss of time and for the damage done therein. For the dead, and for your own lost self. But what the wisdom of the ages says is that we do well not to grieve on and on. And those old ones knew a thing or two and had some truth to tell...for you can grieve your heart out and in the end you are still where you were. All your grief hasn't changed a thing. What you have lost will not be returned to you. It will always be lost. You're left with only your scars to mark the void. All you can choose to do is to go on or not. But if you go on, it's knowing you carry your scars with you. PS. I was put off reading this for so long because (and this is so dumb) all the swooning over the movie with Jude Law and Nicole Kidman. That really was dumb. If you're thinking along the same lines, just pretend the movie doesn't exist. Also, Nicole Kidman is not at all a good casting choice for Ada. Rabbit Hill fucked around with this message at 17:44 on Feb 11, 2015 |
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Feb 11, 2015 17:38
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Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Murakami. I consider myself a huge Murakami fan and I've read more of his books than any other author (6 of his 13 novels thus far). I enjoyed the soft sci-fi and cyberpunk touches in this book, but I think it's the weakest novel of his that I've read yet. It's also his earliest work I have read, so I suppose there is a connection there. The parallel storylines were neat and I enjoyed how darkly poetic and mysterious the scenes set in The Town were, but for some reason it just didn't "click" for me like some of his other work. That said, Murakami is still one of my favourite authors and I really did enjoy reading this one.
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Feb 12, 2015 07:49
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electricsugar posted:Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Murakami. me neither. I hated this book and still can't understand why its so highly regarded among his fans. its my least favorite of his having previously read Norweigan Wood, Kafka on the Shore, IQ84 and Wind up Bird.
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Feb 12, 2015 21:00
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So today I begun and finished Arthur C. Clarke's 3001... yeah, not great. I dunno if he was rushed, or just wanted to finish his overall story but this feels forced. Think there was a lot of story to be told here but the author squashed it all into a very short space of time and the conclusion was like something out of a very good episode of Red Dwarf (not conventinally good). I dunno. Poor. But unoffensive.
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Feb 14, 2015 22:08
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The Atrocity Exhibition, by JG Ballard. This was a strange read. The first Ballard I read cover to cover was Crash, so I had an inkling of what I was getting myself into - a couple of the chapters (essays?) I was already familiar with, too. But this book definitely feels like what it is: a prelude to ideas expanded on more evenly in his later work. There are snippets of excellent ideas, and some sentences will stick with me, but for the most part I found the annotations (my edition features Ballard's commentary after each chapter) more interesting than the original text. My favourite passages are, for better or worse, the ones I had read in isolation: Why I Want To gently caress Ronald Reagan and The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race.
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Feb 15, 2015 01:03
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electricsugar posted:Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Murakami. It baffles most people I tell but that's my favourite Murakami novel, though I can understand why you might think otherwise. As a story, sure, it has a lot of issues, but as an experience I found it really effecting and it's one fo those rare books that get better when you are forced to study them. There is a lot of interesting stuff going on in the imagery that really spoke to me. Also, it's really funny.
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Feb 15, 2015 01:23
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1941: The Year that Keeps Returning by Slavko Goldstein. Good short summary/writeup here. I thought the book was loving fantastic, I'd even recommend it to people who don't care about the Balkans at all.
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Feb 15, 2015 07:25
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Fat Lowtax posted:1941: The Year that Keeps Returning by Slavko Goldstein. Good short summary/writeup here. I thought the book was loving fantastic, I'd even recommend it to people who don't care about the Balkans at all. This looks amazing. Added to my Amazon wish list; I'll pick it up when in paperback. Finished Rex Libris: I, Librarian today, the first volume of the comic. I've been trying to read more graphic novels/comics, and borrowed this one -- found it underwhelming. The art, storyline, and dialogue all failed to engage me (but I'll probably read volume 2, anyway, since they're quick). Bummer, too, because I was excited for it.
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Feb 16, 2015 01:39
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Viginti posted:It baffles most people I tell but that's my favourite Murakami novel, though I can understand why you might think otherwise. As a story, sure, it has a lot of issues, but as an experience I found it really effecting and it's one fo those rare books that get better when you are forced to study them. There is a lot of interesting stuff going on in the imagery that really spoke to me. Also, it's really funny. I have to agree. That and Kafka on the Shore are some of my favorites books of all time, and I reread them every few months. Barring 1Q84, Murakami has a real talent for concurrent narratives where you're trying to figure out how one fits in with the other and you can't properly convey it but nonetheless understand what's going on on some implicit level -- it's just really fun to read.
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Feb 16, 2015 02:24
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Willa Cather's My Antonia. On a recent trip, I got to tackle and finish quite a few books I had on the go and this was perfect fodder. In a sense, nothing much happens in it and the whole framing / excuse for the book is a bit thin. (The author meets someone from her home town on a train, they say "That Antonia was quite a character, heh?", the companion writes up his memories and the author says, "welp, here they are". I believe this part got cut from some editions.) The story is perhaps nothing special, just one event after another, but it's a remarkably kind and humane story where even the villains are understandable and the hard struggle of taming the prairie isn't glamourised. And there's some nice prose: quote:The only thing very noticeable about Nebraska was that it was still, all day long, Nebraska. quote:There seemed to be nothing to see: no fences, no creeks or trees, no hills or fields. If there was a road, I could not make it out in the faint starlight. There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made
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Feb 16, 2015 17:24
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Reread Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle. It's held up well, and is one of my favorites of his -- VALIS is also up for a reread this year. His essays and criticisms are also fascinating ...I forget how much I enjoy him until I revisit his work. The I-Ching plays a central role in the characters' decision making and conduct. I just found out, too, that Dick used it to decide major plot / them points in the novel. Wild stuff.
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Feb 16, 2015 23:27
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I read VALIS for a college class on Gnosticism, and I can't imagine trying to make heads or tails of that book without having at least a cursory understanding of Gnosticism before I began. How did you fare?
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Feb 17, 2015 00:35
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Wasn't he pretty out of it by the time he wrote valis?
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Feb 17, 2015 00:46
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Xandu posted:Wasn't he pretty out of it by the time he wrote valis? Valis came after his nervous breakdown in 1974; he wrote some pretty wild stuff around then -- believing himself to be two simultaneous individuals, himself (PK Dick) and "Thomas," an early Christian in Rome. Rabbit Hill posted:I read VALIS for a college class on Gnosticism, and I can't imagine trying to make heads or tails of that book without having at least a cursory understanding of Gnosticism before I began. How did you fare? I enjoyed the book as a stand alone novel, but also did a lot of background reading to accompany it. He's an author for whom I appreciate best when I have supplementary criticisms/analyses to read, because there's so much going on. I really recommend The Shifting Realities of Philip K Dick, too, which includes a broad selection of his essays and commentaries. I have not yet read The Exegesis of Philip K Dick, but want to, because I think his diaries will be an insightful complement to his later work. I also want to read I am Alive and You Are Dead, which is something of a biography by E Carrere.
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Feb 17, 2015 01:32
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Rabbit Hill posted:I read VALIS for a college class on Gnosticism, and I can't imagine trying to make heads or tails of that book without having at least a cursory understanding of Gnosticism before I began. How did you fare? Bitchkrieg posted:I really recommend The Shifting Realities of Philip K Dick, too, which includes a broad selection of his essays and commentaries. I have not yet read The Exegesis of Philip K Dick, but want to, because I think his diaries will be an insightful complement to his later work. I also want to read I am Alive and You Are Dead, which is something of a biography by E Carrere. With no formal education in philosophy, I found VALIS incredibly difficult and The Exegesis to be almost totally impenetrable. I love PKD and can pick out the themes in his "normal" novels pretty easily, but those two...
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Feb 17, 2015 01:43
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I read The Sublime Object of Ideology by Slavoj Zizek, as recommended by my undergraduate thesis director. I'm honestly not well versed in Hegelian dialectics and only have a basic understanding of Lacan. Thankfully my Marx and Freud helped carry me through, although I feel like I missed so much of what Zizek was trying to describe. I also watched The Pervert's Guide to Ideology to immerse myself more in Zizek's world, but it was still pretty dense reading. I definitely need to go read up on some Hegel, but Lacan just seems like a wall of text to me.
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Feb 17, 2015 02:20
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What are you studying?
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Feb 17, 2015 02:58
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cloudchamber posted:What are you studying? I'm an English major, which means I have no future. Since I'm not in graduate school yet I don't have a specific area of study fully declared/developed, but I find cultural studies to be really compelling, particularly in regards to race relations. As of right now I'm building my theoretical groundwork to prep for graduate school, hence my delving into theory. I'm currently being guided towards reading more about ideology and affect, which I find to be really exciting stuff! I am trying to find some books that make Lacan more palatable however, since he is constantly alluded to in many of my readings.
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Feb 17, 2015 03:14
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Wayfarers by Knut Hamsun. Set around the mid-1800s when Norwegians migrated to America en masse, it's a really character-driven novel about two rootless men from Nordland, Norway. They practically roam the coast between Northern and Central Norway, never feeling at home anywhere, and inable to settle down for longer periods. They keep bouncing back and forth between rags and riches, almost, and the central character August is practically always on the hustle, planning one scheme after the other. It was really quite captivating. On a deeper level it's about the conflict between the old-fashioned ways of living in the rural areas, and the emerging industrialisation of the country, and shows on a human level part of the reasons why so many decided to look for a new life across the Atlantic.
ulvir fucked around with this message at 23:27 on Feb 17, 2015 |
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Feb 17, 2015 23:23
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Recently finished Annoying: The Science of What Bugs Us by Joe Palca and Flora Lichtman. It's a couple of NPR staff members who joined together some unrelated stories about smells that annoy humans, sounds that annoy humans, etc. Most of the examples they point to have exceptions and they don't really take anything bigger, so it just feels like a brief catalog of "here's why skunk smell is annoying" type of stories. Not great. Also finished Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More by Janet Mock. This is a memoir by a multiracial trans woman, talking about her childhood and her transition and relating it to bigger challenges faced by trans people. It's really fascinating and emotional, well-written and stays interesting throughout. I would definitely recommend this one to anyone interested in the subject matter.
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Feb 18, 2015 04:22
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I just finished No Quarter by Tanya Huff. I asked my girlfriend to give me something with sex and violence for the bus. There was very little violence, and no sex at all. In fact, the book is the third in a series and made very little sense to me for most of the book as I've not read any of the other ones. My girlfriend assured me that it was a stand alone book, but it most certainly is not, so I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt and guessing she gave me the wrong one. Anyway, it was decently written for being bad fantasy. It's quite annoying that the story relies on the main characters to act like immature children. I mean, they apparently have good reasons for being that way, but I never felt invested in that, so when the payoff is that they grow up a little at the very end it feels inconsequential. I would not recommend it to anyone.
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Feb 19, 2015 16:23
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I just finished Three Body Problem, based on the recommendation of it here and in the sci-fi thread. I have to say I was quite impressed. It's perspective very different from most western science fiction that does feel very Chinese to my not-at-all Chinese perspective. Even so, it it was very readable and engaging, speaking to the quality of the translation. Both the plot and the characters were interesting. The revelation of exactly how and why things were happening was surprising, and the hook for the next book was good, too. I'm looking forward to the sequels, which isn't something I frequently say with multi-volume epics.
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Feb 19, 2015 16:52
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Borachon posted:I just finished Three Body Problem, based on the recommendation of it here and in the sci-fi thread. I have to say I was quite impressed. It's perspective very different from most western science fiction that does feel very Chinese to my not-at-all Chinese perspective. Even so, it it was very readable and engaging, speaking to the quality of the translation. Both the plot and the characters were interesting. The revelation of exactly how and why things were happening was surprising, and the hook for the next book was good, too. I'm looking forward to the sequels, which isn't something I frequently say with multi-volume epics. I strong-armed the local library into getting this, and can't wait to read it. Your remarks have bumped it up a few places in the reading queue. 2014 was a good year for science fiction.
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Feb 19, 2015 17:04
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I just finished The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons. I've really fallen behind on my reading and I was never a literary genius in the first place, so I have to admit I didn't really "get" it. But the mysteries and stories that made up the book kept me glued to the couch for an entire weekend so I guess I liked it. Kind of in a cyberpunk mood so I'll probably move on to an overdue re-read of Neuromancer next.
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Feb 20, 2015 00:43
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Is non-fiction OK in here? I just read this: Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh it's the memoir of a neurosurgeon in the UK, I wouldn't say I loved it as it's a bit too traumatic for that, but an amazing book. He evocatively describes the highs of successfully treating patients and the misery, both of the patients and his own, when it goes wrong. Rather than a discussion of brain surgery it's more about the fallibility of even the best and brightest, the difficulty of relating to patients, and the ability to decide not to treat. Superbly written as well.
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Feb 20, 2015 21:08
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Just finished The Deep by Nick Cutter. I didn't even realize it was out, I just happened to see it in my local bookstore. I picked it up because I read The Troop last year and found it to be a great book of truly frightening body horror gross-out stuff, and I'm pleased to say the new book left me with a similar feeling. It's sci-fi/horror that takes place at the bottom of the ocean where researchers are looking into a new miracle substance they've discovered that may be able to cure a disease up on land, and things get crazier from there. Really quick fun read, really gross and scary, totally fun.
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Feb 21, 2015 02:44
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Just finished Richard Kadrey's Metrophage, his first novel and the first cyberpunk anything that I've read since the early 90's. Maybe because I played a bit of the Shadowrun game recently it put me in the mood for it. I agree with his assessment in an interview: as a first-time novelist he furiously waved his hands around throughout the whole book - afraid the reader would stop reading if he let up for one moment.
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Feb 21, 2015 08:57
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I really wanted to like Station Eleven, having come off of reading Oryx & Crake (which was amazing), but the writing is so heavy-handed and repetitive at times that I just wanted it to be over. Wouldn't recommend unless you need a quick fix for post-apocalyptic fiction that isn't particularly challenging or innovative.
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Feb 21, 2015 22:18
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I just finished The Maze Runner trilogy after watching the movie. I've got to say I was rather disappointed with the ending, but the entire idea was entertaining and kept me intrigued the entire time so a +1 from me!
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Feb 21, 2015 23:07
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Read a couple of graphic novels recently: Saga, vol. 3, by Brian K. Vaughan & Fiona Staples. Saga continues to be really exciting and bizarre! The narration is starting to grate a little on me, but I have a feeling it'll pay off. I loved the novelist character especially! The Absence, by Martin Stiff. I had no idea what to expect going into this. There was this guy signing his new book when I was in Forbidden Planet in London last year, so I decided to pick it up. It's a big, lengthy graphc novel, all in grubby but detailed black and white. Follows the story of a man who comes back from WWII,but nobody is pleased to see him return. There are disappearances, a mysterious stranger building something in the middle of nowhere, and a sense of unease and paranoia throughout, that Stiff ties up rather beautifully at the end. If you like dark stories set in small postwar English villages, with a hint of the supernatural, it's worth picking up.
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Feb 22, 2015 20:18
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I finished Andy Weir's The Martian. It was incredibly entertaining. I feel like a lot of that hinges on the main character's sense of humor more than anything. If it had been grim and dark and unrelenting it would have been a total slog to get through. Fortunately, it was fun and exciting, and it really gave a strong main character to root for. I wonder what the Ridley Scott adaptation will be like when it comes out. He usually makes movies where the characters are so self-serious and that's not what the main character is at all...guess we'll see.
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Feb 24, 2015 16:31
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Just read through Meat Market: Female Flesh Under Capitalism, by Laurie Penny. A short book, collecting four essays on different aspects of capitalist imposition and oppression of women's bodies. A lot of what Penny writes here, particularly the first two chapters (on the sex industry and eating disorders, respectively), is expanded on and refined in her excellent book Unspeakable Things, which came out last year. The last chapter, on housework and domestic labour, is uncomfortable reading, especially given that it's one of the areas in which feminist activism has stalled (or as Penny puts it, 'quietly crawled into a corner and died'). But the third was the one that really stuck out to me: an impassioned and pretty much spot-on critique of the old guard of feminism's ironic and frustrating reluctance to recognise trans women. It feels quite prescient - this book was published in '010, but all the familiar trans-erasing names are there, from Julie Bindel to Germaine Greer, both of whom were recently and publically taken to task for their transphobia. It's a short read (I polished it off in an hour), but it serves as a good introduction to Laurie Penny's work, and sets the stage for the essential follow-up.
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Feb 25, 2015 11:22
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Infinite Jest david Foster Wallace Seriously, what the gently caress did I just spend almost a month reading? I know theres a thread either for him or the book in here, gonna go check that out and get some drat answers!
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Feb 27, 2015 01:26
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Just sat down and read through the collecte Death, from Neil Gaiman's Sandman. Like a lot of people, Death has always been one of my favourite Sandman characters. This collection features all the Death side-stories, many of which follow on from the events of A Game Of You. It's warm and touching, but also often very sad, as you'd expect. The artwork is top-notch, and an appendix to the book contains a cavalcade of different artists' depictions of Death herself, from Jeff Smith (of Bone fame) to Moebius. A weird little time-capsule appears at the end of the book: a short six-page informational comic from 1992, in which Death gives a sex-ed lesson about how to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, featuring a cameo from Hellblazer's John Constantine(!)
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Feb 28, 2015 01:59
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Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay. Fantasy fiction with a tip of the hat to history like he normally writes. Only this was less interesting, more repetitive, and one of the most anti-climactic stories he's done. Definitely felt like "Baby's First Game of Thrones" as there was a wall in the north, wolves, sex, and a strong focus on court politics. Only not nearly as exciting or captivating at all. I also read Adam Sternbergh's Shovel Ready. A drat good book. Cyberpunk noir that moves at a super-fast pace, with Cormac McCarthy violence and tone. All the good noir stuff: a nihilist main character who takes a dangerous missing persons job for a big client, the greasy underside of the big city, all with a near-post-apocalyptic and technological twist. A great rainy-day-quick read. Can't recommend it enough.
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Feb 28, 2015 21:51
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