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How are you enduring that lol
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Aug 2, 2017 17:42
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derp posted:How are you enduring that lol Holding yourself to 52 books a year means gritting through the bad ones
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Aug 2, 2017 17:44
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Holding yourself to 52 books a year means gritting through the bad ones I thought you were smarter than this
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Aug 2, 2017 17:52
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Holding yourself to 52 books a year means gritting through the bad ones Nice. I'm aiming for 25 this year but i think i will probably make it to around 35 if i stop picking 1300 page monsters like 1Q84 that book was a big waste of time btw
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Aug 2, 2017 17:53
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I am also doing a side project of reading though Sci-Fi/Fantasy recommendations from the SciFi thread That is also having its ups and downs
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Aug 2, 2017 17:55
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Mel Mudkiper posted:I am also doing a side project of reading though Sci-Fi/Fantasy recommendations from the SciFi thread I'm interested in which ones you like and don't like, have you posted about it in that thread
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Aug 2, 2017 17:57
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Lightning Lord posted:I'm interested in which ones you like and don't like, have you posted about it in that thread Yeah I am in summary Asimov is real real bad Gibson is a good craftsman Cherryh is impenetrable KS Robinson is actually decent The Forever War is emblematic of the core problem with Sci-Fi as a genre Neil Gaiman sometimes forgets how to write for 150 pages and hides twists so poorly I think it might somehow be deliberate
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Aug 2, 2017 18:04
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i hate neil gaiman
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Aug 2, 2017 18:08
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I'm reading my way through The Book of Disquiet at the moment, very slowly. A lot of the slowness is because every few pages I'm brought to wonder about the significance of situating my lonesomeness via a wall I once sat atop that placed me in a warm embryonic breeze, or the self-acknowledgement I feel when someone smiles at a friend and I'm caught between their looks of passing awareness. It's very annoying. I need to really set aside time for it, purposefully for the feeling he inspires. I'd like to get at the heart of everything he says, but there's so much of it that makes you ponder I feel I'm going to have to buy my own copy and having it sitting on the desk near me for whenever I want to feel ok in loneliness. In a coincidence, I was at a poetry night on Monday with one of the "top" poets in Ireland (as in she's recognised and funded by the Irish state, and is friends with all the other top literary people.) She mentioned Pessoa, and his heteronyms being important to her work, and while it's poetry not without issue, it did have a depth to it that showed she'd spent serious time in consideration of the subject matter, even if it's not something she's fully immersed in herself.
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Aug 2, 2017 18:08
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incidentally i just started the first game of thrones book cuz apparently the show diverges from it at some point and its okay so far but i haven't gotten to a sex scene yet so..
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Aug 2, 2017 18:10
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Cherryh is impenetrable no idea who this is but there's no way im reading anything by any author whose wikipedia bio has its own separate section for "world building"
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Aug 2, 2017 18:11
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My fundamental issue with sci fi so far has been that they seem to treat the characters in their stories as unfortunate obligations they have to out up with to talk about their space ships One author literally spent more pages describing how people survive the g force of space travel than how the character feels after seeing her family get murdered
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Aug 2, 2017 18:11
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Yeah I am I think ~*literary*~ people take to writers like Jack Vance better than pew pew laser guns spaceships stuff, or whatever is on the best seller list
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Aug 2, 2017 18:20
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Or alternatively we just read Richard Powers and Jose Saramago
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Aug 2, 2017 18:22
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Or alternatively we just read Richard Powers and Jose Saramago I think closing yourself off to writers because of what's stamped on the spine is bad myself The problem isn't genre IMO it's that people who read that exclusively are tender headed and marketing has favored garbage since Terry Brooks made millions of dollars from rewriting Lord of the Rings but worse
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Aug 2, 2017 18:24
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Well I agree about not closing yourself off which is why I am reading them but I am definitely finding the "Why" of the experience different
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Aug 2, 2017 18:26
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Well I agree about not closing yourself off which is why I am reading them but I am definitely finding the "Why" of the experience different IMO you're reading a lot of fannish books, and stuff that has historical importance but isn't really worth bothering with today. Like CJ Cherryh is definitely one of those authors. Asking a general SF/F crowd for good stuff is going to net you suggestions like that because the previously disposable nature of genre means that interesting stuff that didn't sell a trillion copies or was the first to do something sort of has fallen through the cracks, and modern marketing pushes doorstopper ninety part series Also I'm interested in your take on the Forever War because I remember enjoying it a lot at 16 but not really anything about it other than the premise and the whole bit about the military trying to improve morale by legislating faux insubordination by forcing the troops to say "gently caress you, sir!" at the end of all briefings Lightning Lord fucked around with this message at 18:37 on Aug 2, 2017 |
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Aug 2, 2017 18:31
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Tree Goat posted:somebody (hai i think?) recommend baker's the peregrine like a while ago but i am just now getting around to it because of my bad brain and habits. I got the tip from someone else here but yeah its badass. Hill of Summer was good too, but I didn't feel weird enough to start reading the diaries
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Aug 2, 2017 20:47
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I posted about The Peregrine after hearing about it from a Werner Herzog discussion on poetry.
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Aug 2, 2017 20:57
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The Peregrine is really, really good
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Aug 2, 2017 21:19
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I was reading Kim S Robinson's Aurora, but I quit after 150 pages when there were 5 pages about moving Mars rocks around, all told in loving detail. I wouldn't say a lot of these authors see characters as unfortunate obligations, but they often use them solely as tropes and tools for the plot, without much interest in what the characters are like as people, what makes them tick, etc. even the better ones seem to be more an attempt on the part of the author to create an 'interesting character', rather than letting them live, for the lack of a better word. which is ok, I guess, because the plots are often created in a similar way to thrillers or crime books, i.e., like intricate puzzles that have lots of moving parts, which have to fit together perfectly and move the whole book towards a climax. whereas living characters make things go off the rails. plus, you need to devote quite a few pages to show what they're really like, and it's a waste of pages you could use to talk about a rad solution to a physics problem.
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Aug 2, 2017 21:54
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Burning Rain posted:I was reading Kim S Robinson's Aurora, but I quit after 150 pages when there were 5 pages about moving Mars rocks around, all told in loving detail. Has anyone talked about three body problem? Cause that trilogy is like the embodiment of this and I loved it. The characters are like, whatever--but the ideas. So many ideas. Like, the kind of idea where you think 'ah i could write a novel based around that idea!' but you get one every chapter, sometimes multiple per chapter. Its hit after hit of whatever chemical your brain spurts when you learn something new. Feels good man
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Aug 2, 2017 21:58
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i've been translating some genre stuff over the last year and a bit, so it's been on my mind quite a bit. like, a lot of people seem to have disliked Grossman's the magicians because the main character is much more 'real' than they're used to. so there are complaints about him being a whining pussy. which is sort of the point of the book, and it does a decent job at showing how an upper middle class teenager who has everything still manages to ruin whatever good that happens to him because he's just a neurotic rear end with an impossible idea of what he 'really' wants from life. also, ex-goon's Robert Bennet's City of Stairs is actually a very good example of what i talked about before, of a story as a carefully designed puzzle, with characters just being there as chess pieces. pretty much all of their personality characteristics are directly relevant to the plot. which is interesting i n a way but dull in another way. but it's still a lot better than a whole bunch of other books where the plot is not character-driven, so hey, there's no reason for them to have a personality.
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Aug 2, 2017 22:05
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Burning Rain posted:I was reading Kim S Robinson's Aurora, but I quit after 150 pages when there were 5 pages about moving Mars rocks around, all told in loving detail. ironically I thought Aurora had the best characterization of any of the authors I've read so far
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Aug 2, 2017 22:07
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Read 'book of strange new things' if you want sci fi with good characterization. Michel Faber is pretty much the best.
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Aug 2, 2017 22:09
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Lightning Lord posted:Asking a general SF/F crowd for good stuff is going to net you suggestions like that because the previously disposable nature of genre means that interesting stuff that didn't sell a trillion copies or was the first to do something sort of has fallen through the cracks, and modern marketing pushes doorstopper ninety part series asking a general sf/f crowd for good stuff is going to get you recommendations based on how good a book's "magic system" is
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Aug 2, 2017 22:16
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Holding yourself to 52 books a year means gritting through the bad ones i read 80 books last year and almost all of them were good
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Aug 2, 2017 23:48
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A human heart posted:i read 80 books last year and almost all of them were good do you just spend all your free time reading or...
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Aug 2, 2017 23:51
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well i didn't really read as many as i should have, due to slacking around and being neurotic
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Aug 2, 2017 23:56
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having a crazy fast reading speed helps
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Aug 3, 2017 00:14
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Tim Burns Effect posted:asking a general sf/f crowd for good stuff is going to get you recommendations based on how good a book's "magic system" is Yes but their profound ignorance of the genres they like doesn't help. It's like if someone's only knowledge of literature was Harold Bloom's list and the bestseller list
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Aug 3, 2017 00:46
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I feel like if there was sci fi that went well beyond it's pulp best seller trappings they would probably not even call it sci fi
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Aug 3, 2017 01:59
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Does no one like Arthur C. Clarke?
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Aug 3, 2017 02:13
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derp posted:do you just spend all your free time reading or... I am on an absolute tear this year and am already well into the 70s. Honestly I always read on my commute and occasionally before bed and on a break at work; just going from "occasionally" to making it a point to doing 20-30 minutes in the afternoon and before I go to sleep has increased my speed considerably, as well as making sure I get an hour or two done during the weekend. EDIT: oh for reference I usually read between 60 and 70 per year, my record is in the low 80s maybe and I have 5 full months left in the year Guy A. Person fucked around with this message at 02:51 on Aug 3, 2017 |
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Aug 3, 2017 02:39
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Mel Mudkiper posted:I feel like if there was sci fi that went well beyond it's pulp best seller trappings they would probably not even call it sci fi I'm honored to post on the same forums as esteemed author Margaret Atwood
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Aug 3, 2017 02:56
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david crosby posted:Yeah His Master's Voice is one of his best. I'm just reading it on my ereader. It's fun in the beginning but Cyberiad is basically a collection of bedtime stories, lots of repetition. The only scifi that I feel has a right to exist is scifi that's actually about either alienness and existence or the ramifications of technology on the nature of human. Crap scifi either uses space as a pure background for a story that could have taken place in any other context, or just talks about technology in a fetishistic way or as a source of cheap suspense. Most American scifi does that, it's surprisingly rare to find a scifi story that is genuinely interested in alien forms of existence or the oddness of existence itself. Those aren't uninteresting or nerdy questions and Solaris shows that you can make a good story about them, but instead most writers prefer pew pew steel plate penis ships and tough guys. Other than Lem I've only read Philip K Dick who might qualify as good scifi, but I don't even particularly like him. About the amount you people read: I don't read anywhere near that many books, if I read 20 a year it's a lot. But after I spend some time reading I usually go for a walk or bike ride and then I'll think about the book I read for hours. Sometimes I put a book down for a week and just spend a whole week thinking about it before I continue with it. Shibawanko fucked around with this message at 03:58 on Aug 3, 2017 |
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Aug 3, 2017 03:51
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Ted Chiang is pretty good, not sure if you would classify him as Science Fiction though. Btw, I think Lem is not particularly good at writing interesting characters but that is not the point of his stories.
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Aug 3, 2017 07:00
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the first Hyperion book was cool possibly by accident (the second is... fine in that it wraps the story up but I wouldn't call it remotely literary). The Sparrow is neat but does some annoying stuff and is a bit too on-the-nose. Uhhh sci fi overall definitely has more redeeming qualities than fantasy thoughm
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Aug 3, 2017 11:13
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Shibawanko posted:I'm just reading it on my ereader. It's fun in the beginning but Cyberiad is basically a collection of bedtime stories, lots of repetition. A few recommendations other than what you're reading right now: Memoirs Found in a Bathtub - a very Kafkaesque book that isn't sci-fi and tells a story of a paranoid man trapped in a bureaucratic world of a fictional intelligence agency where he tries to find his way in a labirynth of lies and double-crosses. It's quite a ride. If after reading Solaris you're still interested in the concept of an impossible contact with a civilization operating on a different set of rules than humans then Fiasco and Eden both explore it from different perspectives. Tales of Pirx the Pilot - despite being a collection of short stories and having a silly name these are really good. They tell the story of one man's moral dilemmas that get more complex and impossible as his career unfolds and the whole thing comes together nicely in the end. If you're interested in authors that were at least approaching Lem's level then there were some interesting Russian authors - like Strugatsky brothers.
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Aug 3, 2017 12:58
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I'm glad we finally have a sci fi thread on this forum
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Aug 3, 2017 13:31
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