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Guy A. Person posted:lol this character literally just came up 1 minute ago on a podcast I'm listening to. I had a big problem with that section of Blindness.
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Jul 21, 2016 18:44
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Franchescanado posted:I had a big problem with that section of Blindness. I was thinking less of Blindness, and more of something like The Road. In Blindness at least it is effectively a prison scenario where a group of disparate people have been quarantined into an asylum where there aren't even any guards, so the strong begin to prey on the weak. In The Road it's like "nothing but cannibal rape gangs from here to the coast, son!" But yeah I think it says bad things about society that this is the constant fear that people live under. Like we can't even let our current corrupt government fail because otherwise we will be the prey of these horrible animals.
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Jul 21, 2016 19:05
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The Road at least isn't really meant to be taken literally on a sidenote Oprah thought it was about global warming and I still lol when I remember that
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Jul 21, 2016 19:12
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blue squares posted:M-O-O-N, that spells I disagree with the fundamental assumptions idgi
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Jul 21, 2016 19:44
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Mel Mudkiper posted:I disagree with the fundamental assumption of most post apocalyptic fiction and find it to be generally ahistorical my one true dream in life is that I get to experience post-apocalyptic fiction where the premise is that humans actually manage to function alongside each other, like we did tens of thousands of years prior to modern society and technology.
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Jul 21, 2016 20:00
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Mel Mudkiper posted:idgi Tom Noonan from Stephen King's The Stand is a mentally handicapped adult who has a verbal tic where he spells everything like Moon. "I love apocalyptic fiction! M-O-O-N, that spells apocalypse!"
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Jul 21, 2016 20:10
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ulvir posted:my one true dream in life is that I get to experience post-apocalyptic fiction where the premise is that humans actually manage to function alongside each other, like we did tens of thousands of years prior to modern society and technology. Like Dog Stars is the worst because it views society breaking down as humanity becoming feral raiding groups of four or five people each murdering each other to survive.
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Jul 21, 2016 20:41
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Like Dog Stars is the worst because it views society breaking down as humanity becoming feral raiding groups of four or five people each murdering each other to survive. I want a !kung post-apocalyptic novel
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Jul 21, 2016 20:51
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blue squares posted:Oh my god I have no attention span and can't finish any loving books. Like My Beautiful Friend. So instead I'm reading Station Eleven which is really good and a twist on what was once my favorite genre Station Eleven is bland and not that good. Agree with the person saying it is an MFA book. Now if you want a good post-apoc book try Wolf Road, that's a humdinger and not a boring piece of poo poo, and there is only one crazy person in it (or is there?). Also there was still a crazy murderous cult in Station Eleven (plausible) but also a travelling group enacting Shakespeare (lol as if that is remotely plausible, also, heaby-handed much 'there is still beauty in the world' urgh). the_homemaster fucked around with this message at 21:13 on Jul 21, 2016 |
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Jul 21, 2016 21:07
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The traveling Shakespeare company was actually rad because traveling shows definitely used to exist and makes sense for people to want to band together both for protection but also to entertain people and make their livings that way.
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Jul 21, 2016 21:32
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If you went to the Globe you'd think the world was ending, what with all the pandering to groundlings.
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Jul 21, 2016 22:10
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I enjoyed Station Eleven so much I read it in a day. And while it's not all that important, I think I need to defend the theatre troupe. I found the travelling Shakespeare company charming and not too far-fetched in a post-apocalyptic setting, particularly since it has historical precedent (as somebody above me pointed out). It's probably one of the more page-turny books that could justify its place in a lit thread--it expertly weaves a lot of disparate arcs and addresses big human questions with considerable style. I don't consider "too skilled/educated/workshopped" to be a legitimate criticism at a time when a lot of mediocre novels get praised seemingly just because they're so goddamn opaque that reviewers slap the "postmodern" label on them and call it a day.
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Jul 21, 2016 23:17
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Guy A. Person posted:The traveling Shakespeare company was actually rad because traveling shows definitely used to exist and makes sense for people to want to band together both for protection but also to entertain people and make their livings that way. they existed right up until the late 70s/early 80s here in norway even
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Jul 22, 2016 06:59
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Franchescanado posted:Tom Noonan from Stephen King's The Stand is a mentally handicapped adult who has a verbal tic where he spells everything like Moon. 
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Jul 23, 2016 02:11
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Hahaha. The character is Tom Cullen
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Jul 23, 2016 04:30
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stepgen king is not good
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Jul 23, 2016 07:42
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I like the one about the writer in New England struggling with an evil that is a metaphor for addiction
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Jul 23, 2016 07:50
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Lunchmeat Larry posted:on a sidenote Oprah thought it was about global warming and I still lol when I remember that is that why it was on her book club or whatever? I have been dimly aware that Oprah had Cormac McCarthy on her show or something and I always wondered about that because he seems very much not to be writing the kind of thing Oprah would enjoy she doesn't really seem like a baby tree kind of person Zorodius fucked around with this message at 11:24 on Jul 23, 2016 |
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Jul 23, 2016 11:22
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Actually King has three good books
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Jul 23, 2016 16:11
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blue squares posted:Actually King has three good books calling your bluff
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Jul 23, 2016 19:12
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Dark Towers 1, 2 and The Shining (Kubrick film shooting script)
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Jul 23, 2016 20:20
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Dark Tower 1 is edgelord bullshit sorry
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Jul 23, 2016 20:32
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I quite like The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
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Jul 23, 2016 20:38
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blue squares posted:Actually King has three good books The Stand, The Shining, and It. Misery, Bag of Bones, and Duma Key
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Jul 23, 2016 21:21
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You guys know when i wrote bad poo poo about Stephen King I was trolling right It's The Shining, On Writing and Skeleton Crew
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Jul 23, 2016 21:29
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What is the worst book you've read in the last few years? Mine is "World War Z" by Max Brooks. This is just bad, not bad literary fiction, but it was still interesting because of the ways it failed. Some of these ways were normal, like it was incredibly badly written, and every character in it (it consists of interviews with people from around the world) all speak with the same voice and are essentially the same person, and nothing interesting ever happens. But it also failed in a way I had never considered before, so even though reading it was a miserable experience there was still some value in it: Max Brook is unable to properly use poetic language. He doesn't understand the difference between first-person and third-person poetic imagery, and I had never seen anyone fail so awfully in that way before. The main thing he did was use a poetic image that would have been hackneyed and bad in third person, in first person. The one example that stuck with me was a member of the japanese or chinese navy who had been set ashore and was watching the ship (I think it was a sub) disappear out to see, at night, with the captain looking at him, and he thought something like "and the last thing I saw were the lights of Shanghai reflected in the captain's eyes". It's bad in many ways (such as you have to be very close to someone to see lights reflected in their eyes), but this person would never ever ever have said something like that when interviewed about his life. It would never ever have happened. And every character did this, they all said, in first person, the bad lines that the hack writer had thought up, and no one ever stepped in and said no. After this book I started noticing it in other books, but no one has gotten it wrong as much, it's usually just one instance here and there, and not as jarring. So reading bad books can be good, in that you learn more about how literature works by seeing how it can fail. Saerdna fucked around with this message at 22:23 on Jul 23, 2016 |
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Jul 23, 2016 22:21
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I really liked 11/22/63. Worst book I've read in a while is The Darkness Between the Stars by Kevin J. Blanderson. Almost forty loving POV characters and only a few of them have any sort of personality.
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Jul 23, 2016 22:29
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Im reading some Kate Chopin and really digging it!. Cheers to Kate.
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Jul 23, 2016 22:32
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I liked World War Z well enough for what it was. It may have been a time and place thing for me. That's one of those books I read at 17 that I probably will never return to. The worst book I've read recently (and probably the worst book I've ever read in my entire life) is Hell House by Richard Matheson. I like to read horror books in October, and a couple years ago I had lined up some Ligotti I hadn't read, Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill, and Hell House, and all three were disappointing, but Hell House was the only one that actually made me angry about how bad it is. It's an ugly, offensive book with no redeeming qualities.
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Jul 23, 2016 22:40
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I listened to the audiobook of World War Z on a long international flight, and maybe it was the crippling jet lag, but it was pretty cool to listen to. The whole interview style and different people reading the different sections really worked with the story.
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Jul 23, 2016 22:51
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I ordered a cheap nasty ripoff edition of The Ramayana which was an abridged and clunky translation. Should have known better I suppose.
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Jul 23, 2016 23:37
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Saerdna posted:What is the worst book you've read in the last few years? Gilead, obviously
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Jul 23, 2016 23:50
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Schmischmenjamin posted:Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill I read that one too, it got pretty doofy by the end.
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Jul 24, 2016 00:16
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blue squares posted:Gilead, obviously City on Fire
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Jul 24, 2016 00:42
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Mel Mudkiper posted:City on Fire 
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Jul 24, 2016 00:51
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read the blind owl
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Jul 24, 2016 00:56
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im not going to read this entire thread again just to find out yall argued about legit fantasy artforms again but the white book is a good book about an autistic man who stands on ceilings
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Jul 24, 2016 00:57
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fantasy zone posted:legit fantasy artforms
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Jul 24, 2016 01:37
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Mel did you like my gif
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Jul 24, 2016 01:39
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Solitair posted:I read that one too, it got pretty doofy by the end. I loved it at the beginning when it was horror, but it got less interesting as it departed from the initial haunting premise. That's Joe Hill's problem. Anytime he strays away from horror (with the notable exceptions of some of the short stories in 20th Century Ghosts) his poo poo falls all apart. That's my biggest problem with The Fireman: the few parts that are scary are so, so good, and the rest of it is derivative sentimental mushiness, with all the irritating polysyndeton that implies. I guess I like it alright, but it's nowhere near the heights of Locke & Key or NOS4A2. But whatever, that's not what this thread is about. I'm finishing that frickin book 2night and starting Sometimes A Great Notion. I'm PUMPED.
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Jul 24, 2016 02:01
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