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Jedit posted:I'm a big Mike Carey fan, but I felt the end of TGWATG was telegraphed hugely. How did you not catch on that Melanie was going to set everything loose but leave behind a bit of hope? She loves the Pandora story, thinks at one point that she should be called Pandora, and the title of the book equates her with Pandora. Oh, I saw that coming--it was more the fate of Justineau, who, in most books would have probably died, or have been saved by Melanie who would then die... I didn't see the whole 'becoming a teacher to feral zombie children for the rest of her life' thing coming, which, if you think about it, is a pretty loving twisted ending. I dunno, I thought it was pretty dark and surprising. Then again, I read the book mostly in the middle of the night while feeding a 2 month old (not a zombie child), so maybe I wasn't as sharp as usual. tonytheshoes fucked around with this message at 16:07 on Jun 30, 2016 |
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Jun 30, 2016 16:02
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OMGVBFLOL posted:Recently finished Game of Thrones. It's rare for me to have the patience for a novel that I've already experienced in another medium. Also uncommon for me to have any patience for fantasy and it's associated plethora of created place names and weird phonetics. It transcended all that. Highly recommended. Now you should read all the other good fantasy out there too. GoT is a pretty good stepping stone
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Jul 1, 2016 06:03
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Xaris posted:Now you should read all the other good fantasy out there too. GoT is a pretty good stepping stone ease up, turbo, I've got four more of these to knock out. five if he happens to finish the next one any time soon.
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Jul 1, 2016 07:48
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OMGVBFLOL posted:ease up, turbo, I've got four more of these to knock out. five if he happens to finish the next one any time soon. Four, then.
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Jul 2, 2016 18:56
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Xaris posted:Now you should read
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Jul 3, 2016 11:12
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Secondhand Time by Svetlana Alexievich. An oral history about Russia's transition to capitalism. Some great stories and I felt overall it was the strongest of her books. Completes the 'russians hosed over by their leaders' trilogy.
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Jul 4, 2016 11:04
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OMGVBFLOL posted:ease up, turbo, I've got four more of these to knock out. five if he happens to finish the next one any time soon. do yourself a favour and stop after the 3rd book.
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Jul 5, 2016 15:49
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Let The Right One In I thought this was very decent. Some oddness that might have been the translation. Just happy to read modern vampire fiction that isn't Anne Rice type of pandering shite.
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Jul 6, 2016 15:30
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The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad. Powerful and resonant, but also has some repetitive near-obscurantist prose towards the end. It's still strikingly relevant (it's a novel from 1907 that mentions how inauthentic ethnic restaurants are).
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Jul 9, 2016 22:37
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An impenetrable mystery seems destined to hang forever over this act of madness and despair. Lemons under light still look weird too, I noticed them last time I was in London.
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Jul 10, 2016 02:18
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The Clumsiest People In Europe: Or, Mrs. Mortimer's Bad-Tempered Guide to the Victorian World, by Favell Lee Mortimer (introduced and annotated by Todd Pruzan). A collection of passages from the titular Mrs Mortimer's geography books, aimed at children, from the mid-19th Century. Famously (as the book's lengthy and interesting introduction tells us) she only left England twice in her life, and cobled together her opinions on the outside world from books, journals and popular hearsay. As a result, what the reader gets is a breezy tour of the globe through the eyes of a grouchy and virulently Protestant middle-aged English woman, with all the xenophobia, racism and bizarre assumptions that would entail. Two things in particular struck me while reading: first, her tone is warm but sterm, writing like a schoolmistress to probably very young children, which lends the book an extra layer of discomfort. Secondly, it's sad how many casual cultural stereotypes are still held today. Her passages on the evils of "Mohamedian belief" for instance could come straight out of a right-wing politician. Unfortunately, once the initial novelty wears off, the book itself is not really very fun to read. I learned a good few things about contemporary history and the like, sure, but Mrs Mortimer's style is very repetitive and ended up exhausting me. Definitely a bad idea to read this in only a couple of sittings. The Book Of Phoenix, by Nnedi Okorafor. Picked this up on a whim (and because of the kickin' rad cover art), and am really glad I did. It's a short but dense SF novel that combines afrofuturism, cyberpunk, superpowers, West African spirituality and anti-colonial themes. It's full of rich prose and vivid imagery - especially if you like beautiful descriptions of fire and food. I found it very difficult to put down, too. The pacing rarely lets up, and while it can be a little jarring, it keeps things racing along at a good clip while also allowing for moments of downtime to feel more satisfying. By the final scenes I felt a great sense of catharsis, and I was really satisfied with the way Phoenix herself ended up. Definitely recommend this. Seconds, by Bryan Lee O'Malley. A colourful and fun story about a twenty-something chef trying to make her life perfect, involving the help of mysterious mushrooms and a ghostly apparition on her dresser. Given O'Malley is best known for his previous work, Scott Pilgrim, this was refreshingly different, while still retaining his voice and style pretty well. Luscious depictions of fancy food, probability-hopping shenanigans and messed-up romance abound, and while I didn't feel as connected to the characters as I'd have liked, I still had a really good time reading this. How The Marquis Got His Coat Back, by Neil Gaiman. A short, fun and quirky little epilogue to Neverwhere. Some neat ideas, but it has the rushed and self-aware tone of a fanfic - which I suppose it kind of is? Not much to say about it really. I liked it! Lud-In-The-Mist, by Hope Mirrlees. I wish I loved this more than I do. It's a classic piece of fantasy storytelling, and Mirrless builds a really rich little world. It's populated largely with stock characters, but the culture they inhabit is detailed enough that for the most part they're endearing enough. The worldbuilding does require enough attention and care that the story takes a l-o-n-g time to build momentum, which I found offputting for the first half of the book honestly. The rambling style of many scenes does mean the tension didn't hold for me. Once things pick up though, there are some really great scenes - at one point it turns into a kind of detective romp. You could even say that the plot concerns a small city truggling with an influx of narcotics. The climax was super, and the ending was a pleasant surprise that put a smile on my face. It's also interesting to read this sort of fantasy storytelling from a world pre-Tolkien and pre-Lewis. Nothing's been codified, and so Mirrlees sometimes writes with the air of a historian, including comparisons to "our" world peppered throughout the text. It's easy to see why this is considered a classic piece of literature, let alone fantasy.
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Jul 13, 2016 23:45
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Just finished An Anthropologist on Mars by Oliver Sacks. What a treasure that man was.
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Jul 14, 2016 06:36
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I read Hyperion as just something to pass the time until the next book in the Expanse series comes out, but was so completely drawn in that I powered through the next 3 books in a few days. I tried explaining the plot in a concise manner to a friend and couldn't find a way to do it justice, there was just so much interwoven with so much else that the time spent explaining it all would have been better served by reading the books. Also, few things will get me to tear up, but the ending of the last book sure did it for me.
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Jul 16, 2016 06:08
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I just finished Empires of EVE, by Andrew Groen. The book concerns the political history of a science fiction sandbox MMO called EVE Online, which is unique in its player freedom and mechanics that can literally allow you to build empires. I play this game and I wanted to understand some of the history of the game I wanted to know more about, and it's really compelling. It's easy to understand even if you're not a gamer, and it all makes sense. It's really unique how people can make a compelling historical narrative out of a video game that gives them no story to really follow. Another pair I've finished recently was Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park books, and it rekindled my interest in science fiction in general. I've always been more interested in medieval fantasy (hence why I'm reading Tolkien's books now), and I've found science fiction to be alien. It's hard to imagine what doesn't exist and isn't relatable to something we have in modern times, but Jurassic Park didn't bother me like that. It's set in the here and now, but with a fantastic discovery. I also liked how it was written, switching between perspectives like GRRM, but I feel Crichton does a better job in adopting a child's perspective than GRRM has (if he did, it's been a while). The story of the book definitely beats the movie, but both are groundbreaking in their own way.
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Jul 17, 2016 19:49
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Pocket Billiards posted:Let The Right One In If you liked that, I will recommend Lindqvist's other novels. Handling the Undead in particular is also highly unconventional.
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Jul 18, 2016 00:15
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Silent Tears by Kay Bratt, a memoir about an American woman volunteering in a super depressing orphanage in China. Not a cheery read. Disturbing.
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Jul 18, 2016 01:46
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"Mongrels" by Stephen Graham Jones. Grabbed it while shotgunning titles from the library's eBook section, but when I read the excerpt from the beginning I didn't know if the werewolf thing was figurative or literal. Turns out it's a little of both. Coming-of-age story about a kid living an itinerant life on the margins of the American South and Southwest with his aunt and uncle after his grandfather dies. It's just got werewolf stuff, too. The author's a little too into his Return key and a few of the lines clunk but I was pleasantly surprised by how sober and solidly constructed it was given the premise.
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Jul 18, 2016 18:40
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Slade House - David Mitchell I didn't realize that this was a sequel/side story/franchisee of Mitchell's "The Bone Clocks", so having not read that book I was a little in the dark about things. The first few chapters were great and creepy and weird but then it started repeating itself too much. There's a big hollow thud of an exposition drop about 2/3rds into the book that killed any remaining momentum the book had. Other than a very creepy last paragraph or so, the ending wasn't earned. A reasonable enough read but not as great as it could have been.
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Jul 18, 2016 20:36
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Paisley - from Demagogue to Democrat? by Ed Moloney A very absorbing, journalistic biography of one the most divisive politicians in British and Irish history, and a thorough examination of Unionism in Northern Ireland. It's also a story of fundamentalism, bigotry, bullying, and the awkwardness of politics. I'm reminded of one statement that the Protestant tradition of Northern Ireland is ultimately shallow, and Moloney ends up being inadvertently persuasive on this matter. Paisley, his brand of Christianity, and Unionism were defined by their opposition to Catholicism that they ended up relying on it. Even then, the last third does inspire sympathy in the reader as it describes the peace process and the British government's shameful impotence in the face of IRA violence. It's a fair but an inevitably negative portrait of a man, of a political movement, and of a society. Not up-to-date, as it came out six years before Paisley's death. BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 12:27 on Jul 19, 2016 |
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Jul 18, 2016 23:29
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Captain Hotbutt posted:Slade House - David Mitchell Holy poo poo was I disappointed in this book. I had spent the whole year or two before Slade House's release reading all of Mitchell's previous books, and I still say that everything from Cloud Atlas to The Bone Clocks is a treasure. Then this book came out, and I saw author I valued for his ability to nail multiple different story types and subject matters from book to book, often within the same book, immediately revisit the mythos of his last book with a repetitive ghost story that ends with the promise of more of the same.
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Jul 19, 2016 04:59
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Solitair posted:Holy poo poo was I disappointed in this book. I had spent the whole year or two before Slade House's release reading all of Mitchell's previous books, and I still say that everything from Cloud Atlas to The Bone Clocks is a treasure. Then this book came out, and I saw author I valued for his ability to nail multiple different story types and subject matters from book to book, often within the same book, immediately revisit the mythos of his last book with a repetitive ghost story that ends with the promise of more of the same. I loved Bone Clocks and I was really enjoying Slade House until the ending. I was enjoying how the leftover souls of the previous victims were leaving subtle hints behind and thoight that the repetitive nature would ultimately result in someone figuring it out, but nope....Marinus shows up and is immortal and already knows who the twins are and just kills them. The experience of all the prior victims didnt matter at all.. It was still very well written and I always look forward to something from Mitchell.
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Jul 19, 2016 13:09
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Nazareth posted:Another pair I've finished recently was Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park books, and it rekindled my interest in science fiction in general. I've always been more interested in medieval fantasy (hence why I'm reading Tolkien's books now), and I've found science fiction to be alien. It's hard to imagine what doesn't exist and isn't relatable to something we have in modern times, but Jurassic Park didn't bother me like that. It's set in the here and now, but with a fantastic discovery. I also liked how it was written, switching between perspectives like GRRM, but I feel Crichton does a better job in adopting a child's perspective than GRRM has (if he did, it's been a while). The story of the book definitely beats the movie, but both are groundbreaking in their own way. You'd probably enjoy Sphere. Also Crichton, also (then) modern setting, also fantastic discovery.
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Jul 20, 2016 04:48
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Geek Love by Katherine Dunn. It's been a while since I've read such a twisted, satisfyingly dark novel. I thought the ending fell flat a little bit but the rest of the book was excellent.
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Jul 20, 2016 06:57
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I just finished seveNeves by Neil Stephenson. The first 2/3 of the book were really good, but when it made it's way into the last third there was just too much explanation and not enough story, and a bit of a letdown on the ending. I liked it though.
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Jul 20, 2016 15:04
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The First Fifteen Lives Of Harry August, based on the goon love i saw it getting. It was fantastic! The idea of a secret society spread over time was so fascinating to read about, especially all the implications, which I felt like the author explored decently well, but man is there a lot more meat on that bone. What was so interesting to me was the relationship between Harry & the antagonist, and how it evolved and what it becomes for the last third of the book. I didn't see it coming, and it was a delight to read. Highly recommended.
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Jul 21, 2016 02:30
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AFewBricksShy posted:I just finished seveNeves by Neil Stephenson. Yeah, it should have been two separate books.
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Jul 21, 2016 03:15
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Solitair posted:Yeah, it should have been two separate books. That's exactly what I said to my friend who lent me the book last night. He wrote 2 books and didn't finish the second one. There was a ton of explanation and world building in the beginning of the book, but I was completely fine with it because it was the beginning of the book. Then he ended up having to do a ton more world building after the skip, and it just took me out of it. Way too much discussing of orbital mechanics and engineering after the great climax of the first part of the story.
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Jul 21, 2016 13:50
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What's weird is he wrote the whole book just to get to that ending and explain how you could have a bunch of different Star Trek humanoids. But the earlier material is so much more engaging. I do kind of wish we'd had stories about raising the early space generations instead. That seems like it would be really hard and really brutal.
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Jul 21, 2016 22:45
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The Pale King by David Foster Wallace I don't know what to think considering it was unfinished. A fun read and had its moments but I have a hard time recommending it to anyone outside of people who want more DFW to read.
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Jul 23, 2016 13:12
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Did it just trail off and leave you hanging? Or was it more judt a scattered collection of notes and chapters?
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Jul 24, 2016 03:56
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OMGVBFLOL posted:Did it just trail off and leave you hanging? Or was it more judt a scattered collection of notes and chapters? The latter. There was no plot so nothing to be left hanging on.
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Jul 24, 2016 04:55
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Tuf Voyaging by George RR Martin. An excellent series of stories about a nobody space trader who obtains world shaping powers from an artifact ship. Great character development and plot twists. Crazy how some of the stories are 40 years old now. Highly recommended.
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Jul 24, 2016 16:32
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The current book of the month, Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees. I'm just going to quote myself a bit from the thread: Like the best of fantasy, it's about what is true. It's a story of what truth and authenticity can be found in the delusions of dreams and everyday life. It's like the Note that the protagonist fears, the dreadful reminder of the Real outside of words or thought. It's compact compared to it's descendants (such as Little, Big), but almost every note of it is painfully, achingly true. Even the overt sweetness of the ending reminds of the redeeming possibilities of fantasy. And it's maybe the first time in years that I have been truly thrilled to read a book. This is what it was like to read a beloved book as a child. BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 20:14 on Jul 26, 2016 |
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Jul 26, 2016 20:06
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Super Mario Bros. 3, by Alyse Knorr. The second I've read of the BossFight Books series on videogames, and one from the new run of titles. Knorr explores the level design, music, aesthetics, technology and cultural legacy, mixing it with vignettes from her own childhood and memories playing the game with her father and brother. The writing about the game itself is fairly interesting, though nothing I didn't already know about the game through osmosis. The stories of her own experiences growing up with the game were more interesting to me, and spoke to the power of media, and games in partcular, to shape people's worldview. It's a shame, though understandable, that the book is so heavily weighted toward picking apart the game itself - though it doesn't so much pick apart as appraise as a paragon of the medium. Not that MSB3 isn't excellent, but the lavish praise is a constant theme, and gets a little repetitive. However, I can see this being a good jumping-off point for someone just starting to explore videogames critically, as Knorr touches on a lot of other games scholars. The Marbled Swarm, by Dennis Cooper. A short and viscerally, fascinatingly horrible novel told from the perspective of a cannibal of teenage boys. After the horrors of his George Miles cycle, I was expecting some of the same themes and literary tricks to show up here, but the bluntness and Cooper's flare for combining the grotesque an the mundane always manages to throw me. His detached style is brought to the forefront in this: the titular 'marbled swarm' describes the narrator's deliberately roundabout and opaque manner of speaking, that helps blur the lines of reality, fantasy, subjectivity and intimacy. There's a running theme of voyeurism and iterations on the same person here, too - though sometimes even the self-reflexive style comes off as overindulgent (at one point he namedrops George Battaile, and it's like, "well, duh"). He's still unafraid to wallow in the darkest recesses and toxicities of gay masculinity, and the world he builds is practically a dystopia of seedy predator-victim relationships. A olid book if the subject matter is something you can stomach. The Blindfold, by Siri Hustveldt. A novel made up of three longish short stories and a novella, combining to form stories from the life of a woman in NYC and the people who move through it. There are running themes of deceptive identities, flawed and incomplete romances, and a sense that nobody is entirely as they appear. The titular blindfold is both metaphorical - Iris is unable to see past her own assumptions of the people in her life - and literal, in a wince-inducing climactic scene. Definitely not the sort of thing I normally read, and parts of it (like the first chapter/story, with the tape recordings) feel like they could have been standalone works, but I enjoyed this plenty! Filmish, by Edward Ross. A pleasant comic book crash course through film history and theory, touching on ideas of language, bodies, the cinematic gaze, power structures and technology. The sort of thing I would totally recommend to someone just getting into film as an art form. The artwork is clean and crisp, though a little bland - Ross has a serious case of same-face with most of the people he draws - but it's written passionately and excitedly.
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Jul 27, 2016 00:47
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Salem's Lot by Stephen King. A solid vampire story, helped by author willingness to kill off protagonists and an excellent villain. Good that there is a small scope with a little town, with no need to travel the country. I liked how the ending doesn't tie up all the loose ends. The master vampire is dead but at a huge cost, and the countryside is overrun by feral vampires that the heroes can't do much about.
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Jul 30, 2016 18:44
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American Gods by Neil Gaiman. This book was not so good. Gaiman's prose was drawn out and wooden, and overly clichéd producing many groaning eye-rolling moments. The dialogue felt forced and unnatural. The pacing was absolutely dreadful with unnecessary padding and filler stuffed between each shock "wouldn't it be cool if.." story beat. So many "wouldn't it be cool if.." moments made this book feel like a cheap novelisation of a graphic novel of sorts. While the book noticeably improved during the third and final part, mostly due to the tighter pacing and increased tempo of the plot, it is not enough to save the work as a whole. 2/5
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Jul 31, 2016 07:15
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Jedit posted:If you liked that, I will recommend Lindqvist's other novels. Handling the Undead in particular is also highly unconventional. Little Star is one of those books that I would recommend in a heartbeat, if only for the 'did I like it? I think I liked it. I don't know why I liked it, though.' feeling when you're done. Also, as I usually do, Let the Old Dreams Die is a short story collection that includes little 'what happened next' stories for Let the Right One In and Handling the Undead. The Let the Right One in 'epilogue' isn't great, but the Handling the Undead one could have easily been the last 5 or so chapters in the main book.
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Jul 31, 2016 14:20
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The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin, an experience like reading an open, untreated wound. I really like the way the book is structured, and how interesting it makes the main character's life despite it being miserable from start to finish.
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Jul 31, 2016 14:39
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The Long Way Down by Craig Schaefer. I'd heard quite a bit of praise for this series, so I gave it a shot. Glad I did--the story moved quickly and was satisfyingly dark, the characters were enjoyable, and Schaefer's take on magic appealed to someone who grew up reading Doctor Strange in the Seventies. This is a definitely a series I will return to.
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Jul 31, 2016 23:22
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Bukowski's love is a dog from hell. Preferred You Get So Alone... myself but generally I find his personality a lot easier to handle in his poetry than his novels.
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Aug 1, 2016 18:09
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