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chaos rhames posted:I really enjoyed Inherent Vice by Pynchon but kinda struggle with his other works, although I did enjoy them when I could. Are there any more approachable works in postmodern fiction? Nabokov's Pale Fire is approachable, hilarious and very weird. Murakami is pretty great, just don't start with Norwegian Wood, that one's kind of an autobiographical novel more than anything else.
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May 6, 2016 23:31
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chaos rhames posted:I really enjoyed Inherent Vice by Pynchon but kinda struggle with his other works, although I did enjoy them when I could. Are there any more approachable works in postmodern fiction? White Noise by Don DeLillo is fantastic and you won't have to struggle with it.
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May 6, 2016 23:43
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WAR DOGS OF SOCHI posted:White Noise by Don DeLillo is fantastic and you won't have to struggle with it. It also makes a great pairing with Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49. While we're on DeLillo, what's the logical next step to exploring his output? I picked up Underworld a while back but haven't started on it yet as it's a little intimdating. hope and vaseline fucked around with this message at 23:48 on May 6, 2016 |
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May 6, 2016 23:44
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I'm looking for a short story that I read in Grade 8 that I was telling students about today, but have been unable to find online. The details: - The primary theme of this story is the morality of capital punishment - The story deals with a future society that puts people into a deadly apartment while their trial takes place, they sit and wait for judgement, unconnected to the trial or the outside world - The apartment has *something* in it that kills the person when they're found guilty - The protagonist is found NOT GUILTY in the end, however when they go to open the door to leave, it's revealed the doorknob has a small needle in it which injects and immediately kills the GUILTY person Anyone know it? I'd like to find an online version and print it off for Monday
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May 7, 2016 00:44
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hope and vaseline posted:It also makes a great pairing with Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49. Good to know about Pynchon. I have Gravity's Rainbow and have yet to make it past 20 pages of that, so maybe Crying is more something I can handle. Underworld does seem kind of intimidating and marks the point -- for me --at which DeLillo starts goes down the post-modern rabbit hole. Falling Man...Omega Point...the one about the dude riding in his limo...it's pretty difficult for me to parse what their meanings are. Underworld still retains enough of the quirkiness that I like about D.D. though and I enjoyed it. The others? Not so much. People love Mao II, so maybe give that one a shot?
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May 7, 2016 00:57
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Beaten to Stanislaw Lem. My two favorites of his are Memoirs Found in a Bathtub and the Futurological Congress (a/k/a What if Hunter S. Thompson were Polish and wrote science fiction).
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May 7, 2016 03:59
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:Beaten to Stanislaw Lem. My two favorites of his are Memoirs Found in a Bathtub and the Futurological Congress (a/k/a What if Hunter S. Thompson were Polish and wrote science fiction). I'm almost done with Return from the Stars and it's great. Scratches the time dilation culture shock itch I enjoyed with Forever War and so far is proving to be a really fun, interesting read.
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May 7, 2016 04:01
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Professor Shark posted:I'm looking for a short story that I read in Grade 8 that I was telling students about today, but have been unable to find online. Sorry, at first I was thinking Kafka's In the Penal Colony but that's not it at all. We have a Book Barn thread for identifying things like this, might be worth trying there: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2704537&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=114
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May 7, 2016 04:32
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Mr. Squishy posted:Nobody reads PYF it's a forum of user control panel browsers. If you're looking for literary fiction (Szymborska and Lem are good in their fields, tho), check out Olga Tokarczuk's 'Primeval and Other Times' for some cool Eastern European historical suffering / magical realism stuff, and Bruno Schulz's short stories are fantastic - I've heard the existing English translatot had taken some liberties, as he didn't speak Polish well enough to understand everything, but it seemed to read fine to me. Anyway, there should be a new translation coming out, so maybe wait a bit? Also, Ferdydurke by Gombrowicz has quite a cult following both in TBB and outside of it, although it can be dividing. If journalism is more to your taste, Ryszard Kapuściński's books are great opinionated travelogues to some of the more politically interesting places of the second half of 20th century.
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May 7, 2016 06:35
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Mr. Squishy posted:Nobody reads PYF it's a forum of user control panel browsers. It's old stuff, but I quite enjoy Henryk Sienkiewicz, especially "The Trilogy" and The Teutonic Knights. They're stories of swashbuckling knightly adventure set in 16th- and 17th-century Poland. The closest comparison I can make is Dumas, albeit with a lot more consonants in the names.
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May 7, 2016 07:16
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Book Barn, I really enjoyed China Mieville's Kraken but wasn't really gripped by most of his other works. I enjoy sci-fi, supernatural and western. Can anyone who's read Kraken or other works by Mieville recommend me something similar? Thanks!
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May 8, 2016 22:09
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NotAnArtist posted:Book Barn, I really enjoyed China Mieville's Kraken but wasn't really gripped by most of his other works. I enjoy sci-fi, supernatural and western. Kraken's just about the only thing of Mieville I haven't read, unfortunately, but I'm vaguely familiar with it -- so take these rec's with a grain of salt. If you liked the eldritch horror -- squid gods, etc., -- the root of all that is Lovecraft. If you liked the vaguely humorous take on fantasy, Terry Pratchett is your go-to; start with Guards, Guards.
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May 8, 2016 23:13
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NotAnArtist posted:Book Barn, I really enjoyed China Mieville's Kraken but wasn't really gripped by most of his other works. I enjoy sci-fi, supernatural and western. Hm, The Water Knife by Paulo Bacigalupi comes to mind. If you've seen Sicario it was really evocative of that movie to me. So a little bit of Sci Fi western going on. Not at all silly, though. All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anderson is a not-bad book that kind of blends Sci Fi and fantasy and is kind of funny at times.
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May 8, 2016 23:34
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Kraken's just about the only thing of Mieville I haven't read, unfortunately, but I'm vaguely familiar with it -- so take these rec's with a grain of salt. Kraken was really entertaining, especially if you've got an idea of Mieville's works. I wasn't sure how long a laundry list of ''I haves'' to give the thread but I've read a ton of Lovecraft's works and legacies as well as a bunch of Pratchett in high school- thanks though! tuyop posted:Hm, The Water Knife by Paulo Bacigalupi comes to mind. If you've seen Sicario it was really evocative of that movie to me. So a little bit of Sci Fi western going on. Not at all silly, though. I'll look into those both, thanks!
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May 9, 2016 03:37
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I read House of Leaves and it was cool, but I really just want more books that involve exploring strange, unique places like the book's impossible labyrinth. Where can I get more of that?
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May 9, 2016 05:43
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:For the jazz book recommendation I almost recommended "Moon Over Soho," a book about a British cop who is also an apprentice wizard tracking down jazz vampires who feed on jazz musicians Just wanted to chime back in that I just started in on this series (though the first book is actually Midnight Run, not Rivers of London) and, while I am only 15 minutes into the first book, I can already tell I'm going to love it. Thanks for the recommendation
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May 9, 2016 07:27
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MrSmokes posted:I read House of Leaves and it was cool, but I really just want more books that involve exploring strange, unique places like the book's impossible labyrinth. Where can I get more of that?
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May 9, 2016 08:35
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MrSmokes posted:I read House of Leaves and it was cool, but I really just want more books that involve exploring strange, unique places like the book's impossible labyrinth. Where can I get more of that?
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May 9, 2016 09:46
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MrSmokes posted:I read House of Leaves and it was cool, but I really just want more books that involve exploring strange, unique places like the book's impossible labyrinth. Where can I get more of that? Finch is a noir story about a fungal city. The City and The City is a detective story where for political reasons two cities are on top of one another.
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May 9, 2016 10:03
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MrSmokes posted:I read House of Leaves and it was cool, but I really just want more books that involve exploring strange, unique places like the book's impossible labyrinth. Where can I get more of that? The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson is THE haunted house novel
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May 9, 2016 12:11
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anilEhilated posted:Obviously much less literary but how about Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer? I was going to chime in and suggest this as well!
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May 9, 2016 15:28
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Epic High Five posted:Just wanted to chime back in that I just started in on this series (though the first book is actually Midnight Run, not Rivers of London) Rivers of London is the UK title; Midnight Riot is the US title.
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May 9, 2016 15:33
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Splicer posted:I too am looking for stories with a heavy emphasis on exploration. You might enjoy Rendezvous with Rama (don't bother with the sequels trust me). The Terror by Dan Simmons is kind of about exploration, it's a great 800-page dive into slow starvation and death by exposure on a 19th century arctic exploration voyage. Arkwright is a multi-generational story about the ground crew of an interstellar colonization ship, though also kind of about science fiction itself. The Three Body Problem is also kind of about exploration in a nontraditional sense. I actually found Russka by Edward Rutherfurd had a great sense of pioneering through the first act, though it's more historical fiction about Russia for most of the book, and the characters (like all Rutherfurd characters) are less compelling than Follett's characters even if the history might be better. Not nearly as much "milky breasts" as Follett, though, for what it's worth. Oh, and Seveneves by Neal Stevenson might also scratch the same itch, since it's (mostly) about coping with a crazy disaster and somewhat about exploring the aftermath. Maybe Zone One as well? I don't know. It's an attempt at a literary zombie book and I thought it was fairly successful.
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May 9, 2016 17:46
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Peztopiary posted:Finch is a noir story about a fungal city. The City and The City is a detective story where for political reasons two cities are on top of one another. A personal warning about Finch: I found it brutally depressing. It was a solid noir novel, but it was not light fair.
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May 9, 2016 21:55
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Splicer posted:I too am looking for stories with a heavy emphasis on exploration. You might enjoy Rendezvous with Rama (don't bother with the sequels trust me). Since Rama was mentioned, I'd add another SF exploration classic: Ringworld. The first sequel is okay but I wouldn't go any deeper into the series.
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May 10, 2016 00:23
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Selachian posted:Since Rama was mentioned, I'd add another SF exploration classic: Ringworld. The first sequel is okay but I wouldn't go any deeper into the series.
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May 10, 2016 10:56
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NotAnArtist posted:A personal warning about Finch: I found it brutally depressing. It was a solid noir novel, but it was not light fair. Yeah, I could see that. I thought it was less depressing than the mother's coded letters to her son, which I remember as being part of House of Leaves.
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May 10, 2016 11:28
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Luvcow posted:I really loved reading Salt and Cod by Mark Kurlansky because i could read them in small installments when i had some down time and everything inside was interesting. Its been years (a decade? 20 years??) since i read them but i'm always looking for a nice bathroom reading book that i don't have to fully commit to. Any ideas? Hey this post is a few pages back but this is one of my favorite genres (a nonfiction examination on one subject from various angles, usually with a very simple title followed by a longer explaination) so here goes a list of similar books: --Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook an Eat by Bee Wilson --At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson (the house and all the stuff in it) --Rain: A Natural and Cultural History by Cynthia Barnett --Rust: The Longest War by Jonathan Waldman. This one is particularly good for short reading as it's almost like a set of short articles. There's one about the Statue of Liberty, one about cans, one about a guy who sells rust prevention products online, etc etc. --Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America by Jon Mooallem --Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by Dava Sobel and, of course, everything by Mary Roach,who has the benefit of being absolutely hysterical --Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers --Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex --Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal --Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void
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May 11, 2016 00:59
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HelloIAmYourHeart posted:Hey this post is a few pages back but this is one of my favorite genres (a nonfiction examination on one subject from various angles, usually with a very simple title followed by a longer explaination) so here goes a list of similar books: this is awesome thank you, will check these out
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May 12, 2016 04:08
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I am finishing up East of Eden by Steinbeck. I think it is an absolutely beautiful and well woven novel. Looking for something else that can follow this up. I really enjoy late 19th century, early 20th century American stories. I have read by Steinbeck: East of Eden, Tortilla Flat, The Pearl, The Red Pony, Of Mice and Men.
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May 12, 2016 20:43
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a_young_doctor posted:I am finishing up East of Eden by Steinbeck. I think it is an absolutely beautiful and well woven novel. Looking for something else that can follow this up. I really enjoy late 19th century, early 20th century American stories. Have you read any Flannery O'Connor? She's probably my favorite short story author ever, and she was writing around that same time and using a a lot of the same settings. Grab a copy of A Good Man is Hard to find and I guess start with either the titular story or Good Country People. If you like those, pretty much everything she's ever written is as good. Wouldn't be surprised if you could even find one of those online somewhere.
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May 12, 2016 20:52
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a_young_doctor posted:I am finishing up East of Eden by Steinbeck. I think it is an absolutely beautiful and well woven novel. Looking for something else that can follow this up. I really enjoy late 19th century, early 20th century American stories. I agree about East of Eden, and Tortilla Flat is one of my favorite novels. I think you'd really enjoy some F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Beautiful and The Damned would be my recommendation. Tender is the Night would be my second choice.
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May 12, 2016 21:13
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Mover posted:Have you read any Flannery O'Connor? She's probably my favorite short story author ever, and she was writing around that same time and using a a lot of the same settings. This is a great recommendation, but I might suggest just getting the complete collection of short stories. They're organized by collections, there are extra stories, a great intro essay about how odd Flan was, and (unless you're buying it used) it's the same price. I'd also throw in a recommendation for Carson McCullers, like Ballad of the Sad Cafe.
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May 13, 2016 00:03
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a_young_doctor posted:I am finishing up East of Eden by Steinbeck. I think it is an absolutely beautiful and well woven novel. Looking for something else that can follow this up. I really enjoy late 19th century, early 20th century American stories. My favorite Steinbeck novels are sortof weird choices -- Cannery Row, The Wayward Bus, and Travels with Charley -- but the obvious one missing there is Grapes of Wrath, which will also have that same epic, massive tome feel that East of Eden has. In addition to the Flannery O'Connor rec, I'd also suggest James Michener, especially Tales of the South Pacific and/or Hawaii. He's more a historical-fiction writer than a literary writer like Steinbeck but he's respectable enough and he's great if you want that historical feel.
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May 13, 2016 00:55
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Thanks everyone, I will definitely plow through all of these recommendations and report back with where I'm headed next!
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May 13, 2016 10:35
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Re Flannery O'Connor: The recommendations here have set me off looking for an e-book collection of stories, and I found this at Amazon. I like to check out the one-star reviews because occasionally there's actually something of substance there. In this case, I'm seeing a complaint about typos in the Kindle edition, which would usually steer me somewhere else. But one of the one-star reviewers says the books was published by CreateSpace. This could very well explain a poor presentation or poor formatting and indicate that this edition almost certainly is, shall we say, "unofficial," which I'd want to avoid on that basis alone. But the product details list the publisher as Farrar, Straus and Giroux. I know that Amazon often gets reviews and listings for different editions muddled together and whatnot, and that may very well be what has happened here (that particular review is six years old, so maybe the "unofficial" version, if there was one, was removed from the site long ago). Anyway, before I go throwing $10 at this book, can someone confirm that it'll give me a satisfactory presentation of the material?
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May 13, 2016 15:11
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Secret Agent X23 posted:Re Flannery O'Connor: The recommendations here have set me off looking for an e-book collection of stories, and I found this at Amazon. I like to check out the one-star reviews because occasionally there's actually something of substance there. In this case, I'm seeing a complaint about typos in the Kindle edition, which would usually steer me somewhere else. But one of the one-star reviewers says the books was published by CreateSpace. This could very well explain a poor presentation or poor formatting and indicate that this edition almost certainly is, shall we say, "unofficial," which I'd want to avoid on that basis alone. You might as well get it. If it turns out to be poorly formatted, just return it for a refund. That has happened to me before, and it's mostly quick and painless, even if it's after the 7 day return window.
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May 13, 2016 15:56
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Florida Betty posted:You might as well get it. If it turns out to be poorly formatted, just return it for a refund. That has happened to me before, and it's mostly quick and painless, even if it's after the 7 day return window. I might just do that. I'm aware of the return policy, although I wasn't sure what the time limit was. The thing is, I'm not sure that I'd get around to diving into it deeply enough to get a good idea of how well done it is within that time. But now it occurs to me that it wouldn't be a big deal to take a few minutes to spot check it after downloading it. edit: Or I could just download the free sample first. Secret Agent X23 fucked around with this message at 16:10 on May 13, 2016 |
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May 13, 2016 16:06
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a_young_doctor posted:I am finishing up East of Eden by Steinbeck. I think it is an absolutely beautiful and well woven novel. Looking for something else that can follow this up. I really enjoy late 19th century, early 20th century American stories. I'll never pass up a chance to pimp John Dos Passos's "U.S.A." trilogy (The 42nd Parallel, 1919, The Big Money). It's a bit different from a typical novel in terms of structure: ongoing interlinked stories interspersed with mini-biographies, vignettes, and snippets of headlines, news stories, and the like. But once you get accustomed, it's a terrific look at the first thirty years of the 20th century.
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May 13, 2016 16:58
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Secret Agent X23 posted:Re Flannery O'Connor: The recommendations here have set me off looking for an e-book collection of stories, and I found this at Amazon. I like to check out the one-star reviews because occasionally there's actually something of substance there. In this case, I'm seeing a complaint about typos in the Kindle edition, which would usually steer me somewhere else. But one of the one-star reviewers says the books was published by CreateSpace. This could very well explain a poor presentation or poor formatting and indicate that this edition almost certainly is, shall we say, "unofficial," which I'd want to avoid on that basis alone. It links to the paperback version I recommended, so it looks like a digital version of that copy. I'd say that review is for an older edition, since her complete short stories collection has been around since the 70's and has gone through multiple prints.
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May 13, 2016 17:21
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