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Captain Hotbutt posted:The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories - Don DeLillo I just finished The Names about a week ago and I really loved it, but if you're waiting for something big and exciting to happen in the plot you'll have to wait quite a while. Maybe come back to it when you're in the mood for something with a slow pace.
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Jan 14, 2016 07:47
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I've been reading a lot more this year than previous years, which is something I hope continues throughout. Here are the four books I've finished in the last week or so: The Wrath and the Dawn by Renee Ahdieh: 3.5/5. A young adult novel that's inspired by/based on 1001 Nights. Started out good, kind of slumped, but finished pretty strong. Slightly annoying love triangle. Cautiously looking forward to the release of the sequel later this year. Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli: 4/5. Another YA novel that got a lot of hype this year. An enjoyable and cute story about a high schooler trying to negotiate coming out, social relationships, blackmail, and crushes. Maybe doesn't quite deserve all the hype it got, but a fun read nonetheless. The Nuns of Sant'Ambrogio: The True Story of a Convent in Scandal by Hubert Wolf: 5/5. A book about heresy, attempted murder, sex, lesbian initiation rites, and the Vatican bureaucracy. Started this one back in December, left the last 100pp or so unread, and picked it back up earlier this week. Historiographically, it's really solid; the author does a great job of integrating relevant information into the text (and his extensive footnotes) without it seeming patronizing or overbearing. It's dense, but definitely worth the time and effort to read it. Richard Yates by Tao Lin: 2/5. This was my wildcard recommendation for the 2016 challenge thread. I found Lin's style oddly compelling, but didn't like reading the book that much... it was too much an unrepentant retelling of his abusive relationship with a high school girl. There were aspects of the story that I liked, but by and large, this was neither an enjoyable read nor one that made me want to read his other books.
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Jan 14, 2016 21:43
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Just finished the Audiobook of Dune. The unabridged version, which is oddly part narrated, part dramatised. I've read Dune probably 10 times, and just love the intrigue and interplay between the characters, almost feels like experiencing a chess game from the perspective of Gary Kasparov in some places. A great book leaving quite a few unanswered questions. Just a shame Mr Herbert never got round to writing any sequels and neither did his loving son.
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Jan 15, 2016 16:00
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nerdpony posted:Richard Yates by Tao Lin: 2/5. This was my wildcard recommendation for the 2016 challenge thread. I found Lin's style oddly compelling, but didn't like reading the book that much... it was too much an unrepentant retelling of his abusive relationship with a high school girl. There were aspects of the story that I liked, but by and large, this was neither an enjoyable read nor one that made me want to read his other books. Oh wow, that was fast! And yeah, I absolutely understand being put off by it - Tao Lin is definitely Not A Nice Person, and the way he writes only adds to the air of "detached and unapologetic". I think that's why it resonated so well with me personally - it's stark enough that I found it engrossing, even with the misery. He's definitely an acquired taste. Sorry it didn't do anything for you, though! I haven't read read that much in the past couple of weeks, but three titles is enough to justify a post so: Daft Wee Stories, by Limmy (Brian Limond) - This is a pretty thick book with a lot of very short stories - from ten pages down to just a couple of lines. Some of them are surreal, some are psychological, some of them are very, very funny. All of them surprised me in some way, even when I was getting used to the author's voice and predilections. It might actually be one of my favourite books of the last year, despite on the surface being a colelction of mundane and quirky fables by a cult comedian. I Kill Giants, by Joe Kelly and JM Ken Niimura - I'm not sure how to feel about this. It certainly grew on me - the protagonist is hostile and unpleasant from page one, and Kelly slowly draws the reader into her inner world and the real vulnerabilities and fears that drive her. It definitely gets more gripping towards the climax, and the plot is resolved satisfyingly enough, but it left me cold. Perhaps I wasn't in the right frame of mind, or perhaps I read the book in too many chunks (issue by issue, instead of in one sitting, like I usually do with comic books). It's impressive, and I can definitely see why so many people love it, but I think I only like it. Kill Your Boyfriend, by Grant Morrison, Philip Bond, D'Israeli and Daniel Vozzo. A "cult" comic book, and a lovely little time capsule of empty mid-90s misanthropy. England sucks, family sucks, school sucks, art sucks, crime is cool and rebellious except when it has consequences, but wouldn't it be super fun to *actually* do a crime!?! etc. It feels like it could have been a side-story in his Invisibles series, which he started around the same time, and which actually has interesting things to say about identity and anarchy and such. Well, more interesting things to say than this does.
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Jan 16, 2016 03:47
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Gertrude Perkins posted:Kill Your Boyfriend, by Grant Morrison, Philip Bond, D'Israeli and Daniel Vozzo. A "cult" comic book, and a lovely little time capsule of empty mid-90s misanthropy. England sucks, family sucks, school sucks, art sucks, crime is cool and rebellious except when it has consequences, but wouldn't it be super fun to *actually* do a crime!?! etc. It feels like it could have been a side-story in his Invisibles series, which he started around the same time, and which actually has interesting things to say about identity and anarchy and such. Well, more interesting things to say than this does. You forgot to mention the incest.
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Jan 16, 2016 20:37
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Quarantine by Greg Egan, who has been turning into one of my favorite authors lately, but this was a novella stretched into a novel. So much of the second half is just uninteresting rambling about the implications of a universe where from every possible outcome an infinite number of new universes are born until an outcome is observed and "collapsed" by a human observer with a special brain function that genocides the multiverse. Glad I finished it, but not thrilled with it
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Jan 17, 2016 06:38
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I finished Stelle di cannella!! gently caress yeah, I've officially read a book in Italian (my third language)  The book was good too. It's targeted around maybe middle-school age, so it's not hyper-complex or anything (if it were, I wouldn't have been able to read it), but I found it a thoughtful look at the growing atmosphere of racism and societal hatred in a German town between 1932 and 1933. While none of the main human characters died, it was doubly sad that both Muschi and Koks died, one because of nature and bad luck and the other because of the aforementioned racial hatred. Worth a read if you're learning Italian, especially since the language level is both readable and slightly challenging for relatively weak speakers (like me!).
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Jan 17, 2016 09:57
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Qwo posted:
Just finished I, Claudius and Claudius the God in quick succession, and I've got to disagree with you on the bits about Christianity. First of all, Claudius concerns himself pretty heavily with the affairs of the Jews of the empire—spending a great deal of the first book, for example, documenting Tiberius and Caligula's attempts to impose emperor-worship on the Temple at Jerusalem, strife between Jews and Greeks at Alexandria, etc. Second, one of his closest (surviving) friends is Herod Agrippa, whose own claim to messiahship may have retrospectively magnified the importance of other purported messiahs. Third, Claudius was one of the most prolific historians of his day; in both of Graves's books he rattles off the particulars of internecine strife among far-flung barbarian tribes and minor kingdoms as far away as India. This new Jewish cult insinuated itself at Rome pretty quickly and would surely have been held more interest for Claudius than many other details he includes. Anyway, the books owned. Also finished the audiobook of The Traitor Baru Cormorant. The narrator is kinda... awful. It's a woman, which is fine I guess, named Christine Marshall. She lends a sort of hyperemotional breathiness to a lot of passages that don't merit it, and her "stuffy patrician" voice (used for pretty much all of the male characters we're supposed to dislike) sounds like a little girl mocking her dad. The book itself is fine. Nicely crafted narrative, although its symmetry is so perfect that the ending feels ordained well in advance, so that the last few hours feel more like a march to the gallows than a rise to a climax. I honestly don't know whether that's a criticism.
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Jan 18, 2016 18:03
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Blindness (Saramago). I'd heard a lot about this book, but it was a bit of a let down. I didn't like the stylistic gimmicks, especially when all the characters have the same voice and it blends into a mess where it's impossible to tell who's speaking; even less when it becomes a weird cod-philosophical treatise on human nature. The writing about women veers from uncomfortably lurid to annoyingly complimentary (you know the type of book - women turn out to be stronger than the men and sickeningly self-sacrificing and lovely and dignified even while the author's describing how they're naked and getting brutally raped). I don't know. The stilted, distant style left me cold. I wasn't that into it. Also would all the toilets really be blocked and people making GBS threads on the floor within like 3 days? If I had to pick one thing I remembered from this book it would be that there was a LOT of poo poo on the floor and boy, was the author not going to let you forget about it!
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Jan 19, 2016 14:29
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I read A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal by Ben Macintyre. It is about the most damaging spy in MI6's history and spans the 1930s up until the early 1960s. The author does excellent work presenting his research and framing the story through relationships between spies, their families, countries, and competing agencies like MI5 and MI6. I learned a lot about how spy agencies were structured during the Cold War, and how British classism let a Soviet spy thrive for so long as his superiors refused to consider that they had been duped. Even with a large cast of characters the author navigates the reader masterfully and I never got confused about who was who, even without much of a background on events. There are fascinating action scenes (some actually involving Ian Fleming), but the author doesn't resort to sensationalism or idolize any characters, and is careful to remind the reader of the human costs of Philby's betrayal, both to his country and to his relationships. Great stuff!
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Jan 22, 2016 02:19
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Mojo Threepwood posted:I read A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal by Ben Macintyre. It is about the most damaging spy in MI6's history and spans the 1930s up until the early 1960s. The author does excellent work presenting his research and framing the story through relationships between spies, their families, countries, and competing agencies like MI5 and MI6. That sounds better than Philby's own book about the matter, My Silent War, which I read about a year ago. Philby's account starts out with a somewhat sketchy history of his rise through the ranks on both sides but then once he gets to the meat of the whole Cambridge Five ordeal, it sort of boils down to him saying he got away with it because he was just so much smarter than everyone (and of course very good at taking advantage of good ol boy networks) and that this was also, apparently, the reason he did it. Much of the book is a sort of who's who of MI5 and MI6 in the 50's and his opinions of this or that person's character and failings, which is mildly interesting but mostly tedious. I guess you had to be there. The book was written and published while he was living in the USSR so I'm sure it's all sorts of censored and it has a rather obvious agenda. But it's an interesting artifact. An interesting side note is the possibility of Graham Greene having been involved or possibly even having warned Philby allowing him to flee to Russia. Earwicker fucked around with this message at 07:26 on Jan 22, 2016 |
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Jan 22, 2016 07:22
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Just finished Roadtrip Rwanda, by Will Ferguson. Ferguson is a humorist who has written a series of travel books, and in this one he joins fellow Calgarian and lucky to be alive Tutsi Rwandan Jean-Claude on a trip to J-C's former country to deliver soccer gear to needy kids and travel to see how the country is getting along nearly 20 years after the genocide. I have a personal interest in central Africa--my family were forced to leave Belgian Congo during the building Congo Crisis, and a friend of mine was an MP with the UN stationed in Rwanda in the aftermath of the genocide (Neither he nor my family talk about their time in Africa as a result)--so as soon as I heard an interview on the CBC with Will and J-C I went and bought the book. Who would have guessed a book telling the story of a genocide (in part) could be so damned funny? Seriously, its a surprisingly positive, optimistic book. Rwanda has made a remarkable recovery, more following the Asian model of management than Western (think Singapore here). It also offers a cautionary note that has already come to pass since the book went to press--a nation wide referendum recently passed to change the constitution to allow President Kagame a third term. Does this represent a slide towards dictatorship (it is already an admittedly authoritarian government, again think Singapore) or really express the will of the people (who by all reports from the book appear happy and secure)? They travel across the country, visiting people, monkeys, gorillas, banana salesmen, tea plantations, family, a prison, and churches, in which unspeakable horror was visited upon maybe a million people. And yet, yes, funny. For example, while driving in the west along Lake Kivu they stop their Land Rover to pick up a few students who were walking back to their refugee camp from school. This is a Congolese camp, that is more like a town at this point, and these young women had high hopes for their future (including a desire to become a chemical engineer of some sort). They pose for a picture, then ask for a copy. Will thinks about what all will be involved in getting one printed, getting their address, mailing it to them at their refugee camp that doesn't even have electricity in the middle of no where western Rwanda from back in Canada, when one of them interrupts his day dream to say "no, email would be easier, don't you think?" A wonderful, provocative read. (And instructional: Rwanda's main beer comes with formaldehyde in it) Bilirubin fucked around with this message at 07:30 on Jan 24, 2016 |
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Jan 24, 2016 07:25
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Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. A dense journey through the bleak and cruel west. I didn't know what to expect other than "deconstructed western" and "classic" and "brutal". This is 300 pages of a wave of mutilation, a step into the evil and destructive nature of man. Blood is shed for its own sake. There is no place for a moral man under the baking sun. I'm excited to come back to this book in a year or so to dive in deeper. There's a lot to explore, and I barely scratched the surface on my first read.
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Jan 25, 2016 13:49
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Franchescanado posted:Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. How does this compare to No Country for Old Men, or The Road?
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Jan 27, 2016 05:26
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ulmont posted:How does this compare to No Country for Old Men, or The Road?
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Jan 27, 2016 05:39
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ulmont posted:How does this compare to No Country for Old Men, or The Road? At least one eminent critic speaks in almost nothing but superlatives of Blood Meridian. I enjoyed The Road a bit more, but Blood Meridian may be the better book. Some passages read like prose poetry. It's beautifully brutal. There's a lot to unravel. The Judge is the most intimidating antagonist I've ever encountered.
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Jan 27, 2016 06:10
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ulmont posted:How does this compare to No Country for Old Men, or The Road? The other two posters nailed it, but here's my two cents. No Country was more fun to read for me, but Blood Meridian is just better on every level. It's much more dense than I was expecting, so there are whole passages that flowed around me like a wave crashing. Scenes and actions take on multiple meanings, so there's a lot to think about. It's also much darker and more violent. I usually don't cringe while reading, but there's some rough stuff. A scene describing how two characters were scalped, eviscerated, impaled and then set over an open flame all while alive and awake shook me. The prose is also better. So, overall, it's the better book. But I haven't read The Road yet, but will later this year.
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Jan 27, 2016 14:15
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Franchescanado posted:The other two posters nailed it, but here's my two cents. for me, Blood Meredian and 2666 were the most overrated novels I have ever read.
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Jan 27, 2016 22:43
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TommyGun85 posted:for me, Blood Meredian and 2666 were the most overrated novels I have ever read. What are the two greatest novels you've ever read?
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Jan 27, 2016 22:57
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Franchescanado posted:What are the two greatest novels you've ever read? not sure if they are the greatest but my personal favourites are Pale Fire by Nabokov I, Claudius by Graves Infinite Jest by Wallace I just never understood the appeal of Blood Meridian. Its written very well just like all of his work but the ultraviolence gets tiresome for me.
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Jan 27, 2016 23:16
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TommyGun85 posted:not sure if they are the greatest but my personal favourites are I actually took a break halfway through the book, one reason being exhaustion from the violence and bleak atmosphere. I appreciate the violence, though. The book is a meditation on violence, war, death, bloodshed, human cruelty, destruction, and it's pages pour blood like the elevators from the Overlook Hotel. It's gruesome. I feel desensitized by most violence, but McCarthy just piles it on where you can't just shrug it off. And it's a genre where the fastest shooters and white men are rewarded for their violence. The book manages to peel back that heroic gaze and shows the destruction that is left behind. It uses a historical narrative to explore a dark part of American history and it exaggerates the violence without comedy, rubs your face in it, and doesn't even let you clean off before the next bullet is fired. And it's written very drat well, as you mentioned. I wouldn't consider Blood Meridian a favorite, but I do believe it deserves its recognition. I get why it didn't appeal to you. You have good taste in books, so I figure you can appreciate my defending it in good nature.
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Jan 28, 2016 00:28
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I just finished Another Country by James Baldwin which I would say is one of the best books I have read in a while. The book is from 1962 and takes place in the late 50's, it follows a group of close friends and lovers, who are musicians actors and writers, in NYC's Village and Harlem, struggling with their careers and with race and sexuality - and the novel deals with these topics in such a direct, frank, and powerful way that was really rare at that time, or even in this time. Very strongly recommended
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Jan 28, 2016 00:58
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I just finished The State of Play, which was an interesting collection of essays on (mostly) social issues in video games both past and present, even if I didn't agree on all the perspectives therein. It had a pretty wide range of opinions, though, ranging from talking about race in the history of video games as a whole to specific things like the usefulness of Twine and the (as categorized by the author) 'almost nonsensical' success of Flappy Bird. No real complaints since it was a Christmas present and I didn't have to pay for it.
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Jan 28, 2016 02:36
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I finished Mad River by John Sandford. I never read the Prey series but have gone in order for the Virgil Flowers books. This one was a bit less of a who-dunnit than the previous books, but still pretty entertaining and Virgil getting angry is great (especially on audiobook). My favorite so far in the series is probably Shock Wave, that one kept me guessing.
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Jan 31, 2016 06:55
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Bilirubin posted:Just finished Roadtrip Rwanda, by Will Ferguson. Ferguson is a humorist who has written a series of travel books, and in this one he joins fellow Calgarian and lucky to be alive Tutsi Rwandan Jean-Claude on a trip to J-C's former country to deliver soccer gear to needy kids and travel to see how the country is getting along nearly 20 years after the genocide. Sounds good. I'm putting it on my "to-read" list. Lately I read: The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon Kind of glad this was my first Pynchon because "V." and "Gravity's Rainbow" seem so drat giant and intimidating. I really liked the last third of the book and the mystery/conspiracy/reality at the center of the book was strong. I didn't necessarily like the characters all too much but that was probably the point. Still, I wouldn't mind reading more Tommy P. in the future because his rhythms, and use of language are really cool and enjoyable. The Curse of the Wendigo (Monstrumologist #2) - Rick Yancey I really liked the first one in the series, and this follow up was a little disappointing. It doubled down on learning more about the characters and their role in the larger world around them, which just seemed to take away from any sense of momentum. The mystery/monster wasn't as compelling as it was in the first book either. However, it did introduce some great new characters and the last half of the book was appropriately creepy, gory, and developed the two main characters in a fascinating way.
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Jan 31, 2016 18:37
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The other day I just finished The Ghost by Robert Harris, a pretty good airplane thriller. The protagonist is a professional ghostwriter hired to write the memoirs of the recently ex-Prime Minister of Britain and who then of course digs up some intrigue and conspiracy. I don't know a ton about British politics but from the context he seems to be a sort of Blair stand in. It's a pretty good, well structured thriller with the early days of the War on Terror as background. Kind of comparable to some of the most recent LeCarre books but lighter. I'm not normally a fan of books about writers unless they are exceptionally good, and while this wasn't exceptionally good, it's a bit different and an interesting look at the world of ghostwriting. Earwicker fucked around with this message at 20:50 on Jan 31, 2016 |
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Jan 31, 2016 20:47
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Supervillainz, by Alicia E. Goranson. Based around the lives of a queer community in Boston in 2001, this book is a weird but engrossing blend of action and interpersonal drama. A trans woman is blamed for the murder of a masked vigilante, and it puts the lives and livelihoods of her and her closest friends in jeopardy. There's espionage, romance, revenge, sex and action, as advertised on the book cover. The story is heavy on regular "queer and/or trans living in turn-of-the-millennium Boston" slice-of-life stuff - I really liked the characters (Bit and Devon, the main protagonists, in particular), so I was happy they were allowed time to interact and be fleshed out. (I really enjoyed the minor thread of Galeno and Chloe's relationship, too - a lot of the smaller moments in the book feel lifted straight from life.) This does come at the expense of the action though, and the pacing means that some major set pieces feel rushed and hard to follow. That said, I enjoyed it overall, and it's worth checking out for its unique premise alone. AM/PM, by Amelia Gray. A short collection of even shorter stories, one per page. They're little snapshots of relationships, both romantic and social, with a smattering of philosophical musings and brief prose poems here and there. Some of them raised a chuckle from me, but the more serious vignettes lacked that much of a punch. Still, it was a nice breezy afternoon read. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, by Gabriel García Márquez. I'd only read a couple of his short stories before now, so I didn't really know what to expect. This is an enormous, sprawling, ambitious novel. At least two dozen major characters, spanning fifteen decades of a small, isolated town and seven generations of a family, and every paragraph is crammed full of beautiful prose and detail. It's difficult to say anything new about this - it was a Nobel Prize winner, it's hailed as one of the Greatest Books Ever Written etc. I adored the political plotlines, the interpersonal conflicts and the grander schemes like hunting for Úrsula's gold. There were some parts that didn't grab me, though, like the rainstorm or the inomnia plague. (There's also a buttload of incest, and the ways Márquez depicts "men" and "women" made me kind of uncomfortable at times). I can't escape the fact that this novel is a canonised Great Work, and that legacy was inescapable even when I was engrossed in the text. I'm glad I read it, but I'm also perversely glad I can SAY I read it.
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Feb 2, 2016 04:06
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Ransom by David Malouf. Nice book about the forces that rule our thoughts and lives, but did not exactly have much room for ambiguity or subtlety. Malouf is like Guy Gavriel Kay, if Guy Gavriel Kay was able to write.
BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Feb 3, 2016 |
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Feb 3, 2016 18:50
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Annihilation - Jeff VanderMeer (Southern Reach Trilogy #1) Creepy, unique, and never boring. The downside is that it knows that it begins a trilogy so it doesn't do anything, except keep getting weirder, more mysterious, and a little more confounding -with barely any payoff to anything. No real climax, and no reveals that make you go "wow!"
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Feb 4, 2016 03:06
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I just finished up Kliph Nesteroff's The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels, and the History of American Comedy, which is a collection of stories about the shaping of comics. Alas, he pretty much skipped the influence of women in the business. Ellen DeGeneres is on the compilation cover, but I can't remember a single mention of her in the text. Moms Mabley gets slight mention after also being on the cover. Roseanne Barr is mentioned once in passing. I was also surprised that there wasn't a single Andy Kaufman story (he's mentioned once for Fridays). Good stuff for the vaudeville through mob/supper club era, but after the Jerry Lewis Show debacle, the book gets way too rushed. A lot of the 1990s is devoted to the various travails of Jon Stewart. Martin is mentioned as a show, but not Seinfeld. Jerry Seinfeld gets some coverage, but Martin Lawrence does not. Weird. RC and Moon Pie fucked around with this message at 04:08 on Feb 4, 2016 |
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Feb 4, 2016 04:06
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Super You by Emily V. Gordon. I don't typically read self-help books, but I'm a fan of her and her husband's podcast, and they were promoting the book, so I thought I'd support them for the free entertainment they've been giving me. And I'm not going to not read a book I paid money for. I didn't like it. She throws a lot of comic book and pop culture references into it to help relate the topics being discussed to the reader, but it all felt forced to me. The book also didn't seem organized very well in terms of how she was trying to help the reader become more confident. The ideas seemed sound enough, but she referenced a lot of anecdotes from her life - almost to the point that I could label the book as self-help/autobiography. All that having been said, I'm not the target demographic, so I'd expect it'd be more enjoyable for someone who is earnest about improving their self-confidence and being happy with their self image.
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Feb 4, 2016 04:45
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Captain Hotbutt posted:Annihilation - Jeff VanderMeer (Southern Reach Trilogy #1) I loved the first one, hated the second, and was only okay with the third since it wasn't the second. In other words, quit while you're ahead.
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Feb 4, 2016 05:05
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The third one is far and away the best and it synthesizes the first two into something richer, more human, and more awe-inspiring. The best is at the end. Don't read for reveals. Like the characters, you'll never get firm answers out of Area X (although you will get a couple absolutely chilling insights, and Acceptance includes a lot more hard resolution than I expected). The book, like the setting, wants you to slow down and experience what's happening now instead of trying to force what you're experiencing into a framework that will (inevitably) distort and damage it. Notice how often the books hit on themes of imperfect translation, miscommunication, and misunderstanding.
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Feb 4, 2016 06:04
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I can't stand the whole "anything I could explain won't be as good as what's in your imagination!" backpatting bullshit from authors/creators (not talking about you, Battuta! I'm thinking of books like Bird Box and maybe Southern Reach, not sure because I didn't make it past the 2nd book). Listen up horror/fantasy/weird writers, you are a professional imagination-haver, readers are paying you because what you could come up with SHOULD BE way better than our imaginations! That's why we're reading this kind of stuff to begin with! We want our minds to be blown!! So yeah, when the ending of a book or a series is "Well you don't find out what the monster/weird poo poo was, but the characters sure go through a lot!", I feel cheated.
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Feb 5, 2016 08:20
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Galápagos, by Kurt Vonnegut Loved it! Got through it in about a day, couldn't put it down really.
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Feb 5, 2016 15:18
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Hedrigall posted:So yeah, when the ending of a book or a series is "Well you don't find out what the monster/weird poo poo was, but the characters sure go through a lot!", I feel cheated. Authority lays out the origins and purpose of Area X pretty explicitly, but also makes the case that understanding this is less important than understanding the relationship between humans and Area X, and the way that relationship alters and drives both sides.
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Feb 5, 2016 15:45
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General Battuta posted:Authority lays out the origins and purpose of Area X pretty explicitly, but also makes the case that understanding this is less important than understanding the relationship between humans and Area X, and the way that relationship alters and drives both sides. I have listened to Jeff* talk about these books in public and asked him questions in private, so it's not a lack of understanding- I just don't think the conclusion lived up to the potential of the first book. Honestly, I wish it had been much more ambiguous. *Jeff is an awesome dude and I like his other books. Go out and buy them.
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Feb 6, 2016 01:46
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Dead Goon posted:Galápagos, by Kurt Vonnegut Its one of my favourites
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Feb 6, 2016 06:19
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Just finished The Sirens of Titan by Vonnegut, and really found it lacking in substance. Disappointing after Cat's Cradle being one of my top 5 favorite books, and Slaughterhouse Five was a good read as well. Might have to check out this Galapagos.
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Feb 6, 2016 14:16
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| # ? Jun 3, 2024 22:20 |
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Wolf In White Van, by John Darnielle. A hell of a debut novel. Told from the perspective of an isolated, disfigured man who runs a play-by-mail adventure game, the book follows episodes from his life, including traumas and mundane details from his past. Darnielle's writing style means that even the smallest details of a memory or a mental process are rendered in vivid, livable detail. I especially adored the way he describes the psychology of creating imaginary worlds, and of guiding people through them. There are parts that are silly, and parts that are poignant and very moving. I can see why it was on so many Best Of lists when it came out.
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Feb 6, 2016 20:03
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