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my bony fealty posted:to be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Dune spice = oil. I am very smart.  edit dumb snipe: The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin This was nothing like I thought it was going to be. I really liked it. From what I heard about it I was expecting something like Solaris. But it really is more like Contact. Color me ignorant, but at first I had a ton of problems with keeping characters names straight as they are all Chinese. Like Lei Zhicheng, Yang Weining, or Ye Wenjie. I think it is because I can't quickly recognize a female name from a male name. But the writing/translation was good enough that by 1/2 through I had it all straight. The end of the book went heavy on the hard sci-fi technobabble, but again it was written well enough that I could just shrug my shoulders and go "Sure I can live with that poo poo" Looking forward to reading how humans get out of (or not) the mess they are in. ScottyJSno fucked around with this message at 04:59 on Sep 9, 2019 |
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Sep 9, 2019 04:45
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ScottyJSno posted:spice = oil. I am very smart. poo poo gets dark.
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Sep 9, 2019 05:04
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Arist posted:it was horny as hell. a sentence applicable to every book murakami ever wrote except maybe the one about the sarin gas attacks
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Sep 10, 2019 11:32
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William Shakespeare's Get Thee Back to the Future by Ian Doescher: doing a Shakespeare project and I stumbled upon this, so I've decided to read it for fun. I found it very entertaining, and while there were some moments where Doescher added some unnecessary things (a scene where two policemen talk about time travel particularly stands out, considering BTTF's tight pacing), but sometimes he found a lot of good poetry in the movie's plot (George going 'my destiny is dense romance' was particularly good). A fun read.
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Sep 12, 2019 04:03
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Just finished the 4 book series LA Quartet by James Ellroy. I liked it a lot, and generally recommend it with some caveats. Its about 1950s LA cops so there is tons of racism/bigoted language even by the "heroes" as a natural matter of course. And the heroes are not even close to good people, I know some people really don't like it when the protagonists have irredeemably bad aspects, and in this series they definitely do. The writing also gets more stylized as the series goes on to the point where there is a dearth of complete sentences and sometimes you don't really know what happened in the scene until later. The plots get super convoluted and frequently strain credibility, but the stories are great and there really never is a lull. I think also the earlier books tend to be better, which is nice. If you find you don't like a book you've probably read all the ones you were going to like anyway. A lot of characters carry-over book to book, its especially cool when you get to see characters from different perspectives. The world really feels alive and you can tell ahead of time when someone makes a mistake or trusts someone they shouldn't. Black Dahlia Probably the best of the series, and the most accessible, most straightforward plot (though, that's relative), probably also the most standalone, as the other 3 books have something of an arc. I also thought the characters were easier to feel close to and the gut punches were that much harder (though maybe because it was the first book). It's a more traditional cop noir but I wouldn't go into thinking it's a whodunit or anything. It follows a real LA murder that was sensationalized though Ellroy takes a lot of creative liberties. Really, even if you don't think you're up for the whole series I strongly recommend this to anyone with any interest in Noir. I haven't seen the movie on this but I guarantee it only follows it loosely. The Big Nowhere I really liked this one as well. I thought the crime and investigation was very good though probably underserved. It again is based on a real crime that Ellroy uses as only a tangential jumping off point. There is a hefty dose of politics and back-room dealing in this book (red scare and unionization) which I also thought was really cool. You start seeing a lot more real-life LA celebrities and personalities from this era make appearances and that becomes a common aspect in the rest of the series to make this a psuedo-historical fiction in addition to neo-noir. There is a brutal domestic violence scene which is crucial to the plot but pretty rough, just a warning. LA Confidential The movie (which is excellent) touches on about 30% of the story. Here I thought the story started running off the reality tracks more and more, though the characters and setting are superb. If someone were to pick up JUST this book after liking the movie they'd probably be lost, Ellroy really uses the LA that he's crafted as a driving force and doesn't really slow down to let you catch-up. I surprisingly found this a bit more of a slog than any other book, though I might have just had a bit of fatigue at this point. White Jazz More of a denouement than a climax. Ellroy goes back to a single POV for this story, and the main character is probably the most morally bankrupt of any of the POV characters so far. At this point the book is heavily stylized and the story goes absolutely bonkers at points (EYEBALL MAN EYEBALL MAN). There's some tying of loose ends, some more making of loose ends, no one learns any lessons. It's a good way to end the series, but I absolutely would not blame someone who had to put the book down because they couldn't get through the sentence fragments, crazy plot, and total anti-hero of a vehicle. I did enjoy it though! So yeah, overall if you have a taste for Noir you owe it to yourself to take a ride. The first two books are the best so don't feel obligated to finish off the whole thing if you don't want to.
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Sep 13, 2019 19:56
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Lockback posted:Just finished the 4 book series LA Quartet by James Ellroy. I liked it a lot, and generally recommend it with some caveats. Its about 1950s LA cops so there is tons of racism/bigoted language even by the "heroes" as a natural matter of course. And the heroes are not even close to good people, I know some people really don't like it when the protagonists have irredeemably bad aspects, and in this series they definitely do. The writing also gets more stylized as the series goes on to the point where there is a dearth of complete sentences and sometimes you don't really know what happened in the scene until later. The plots get super convoluted and frequently strain credibility, but the stories are great and there really never is a lull. I think also the earlier books tend to be better, which is nice. If you find you don't like a book you've probably read all the ones you were going to like anyway. I'm a dumb-dumb so I have two of those 
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Sep 13, 2019 20:56
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Lockback posted:Just finished the 4 book series LA Quartet by James Ellroy. I liked it a lot, and generally recommend it with some caveats. Its about 1950s LA cops so there is tons of racism/bigoted language even by the "heroes" as a natural matter of course. And the heroes are not even close to good people, I know some people really don't like it when the protagonists have irredeemably bad aspects, and in this series they definitely do. The writing also gets more stylized as the series goes on to the point where there is a dearth of complete sentences and sometimes you don't really know what happened in the scene until later. The plots get super convoluted and frequently strain credibility, but the stories are great and there really never is a lull. I think also the earlier books tend to be better, which is nice. If you find you don't like a book you've probably read all the ones you were going to like anyway. the LA Confidential movie is excellent and the Black Dahlia movie is hot garbage.
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Sep 13, 2019 21:50
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TommyGun85 posted:the LA Confidential movie is excellent and the Black Dahlia movie is hot garbage. Somebody should just do a long running series based on the books. It's probably the best way to let that setting unfold. (Outside of, you know, the books)
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Sep 13, 2019 22:04
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Children of Dune by Frank Herbert This book was a good amalgamation of the first two books. While the story advances much like the first book, the internal dialogues are much like the second. I really enjoyed the story that was told, and couldn't help but draw similarities between Lynch and Herbert. The eccentric styles of their crafts are very similar. When you begin asking yourself how many drugs they took, or if you didn't take enough you get into that territory. I also see the same criticisms for both. On to God Emperor. Philthy fucked around with this message at 18:09 on Sep 15, 2019 |
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Sep 15, 2019 17:53
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Can’t believe it got by me for so long because I adore the movie, but, Jurassic Park. That poo poo ruled. I hope the second book, which I’m starting now, is at least half as gripping.
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Sep 16, 2019 00:16
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ScottyJSno posted:The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin Based on this I picked it up and liked it! The name thing didn't bother me as much but I kept your comment in mind and worked hard to memorize characters when they first showed up. I agree with the Contact comparison, though I thought the end was a bit of a cop-out using the technobabble, even if it was cool.
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Sep 16, 2019 02:58
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Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens I found this irritating and anxiety-inducing every step of the way. Kya is abandoned at a young age in the marsh, and essentially raises herself. She's perfect in every way; beautiful, super-smart, loves nature. She's aided in her journey by Tate, a boy who teaches her to read and whose only characteristic is that he loves her, and Jumpin, a magic negro who also loves her as a daughter. And Chase, the town heartthrob and womanizer who also loves her. Chase has been murdered, and the book shifts between the time of the murder and Kya growing up and the events leading up to it. There is no nuance to be found here.
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Sep 17, 2019 16:26
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graventy posted:Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens The best use of the "magic negro" trope is this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJfhB3Vj_G8
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Sep 17, 2019 16:32
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A Life of Jesus by Shusaku Endo. Goes over some of the basic events related in the Gospels chronologically, adding historical context and the author's own opinion and conjecture. The opinion bits get a little repetitive in places. but the book is short and well-written and I enjoyed most of it.
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Sep 17, 2019 19:27
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A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin. The fact that this series isn't better known is criminal- I try to stay up on fantasy stuff and I hadn't heard of it until a few months ago when I bought the book. It was written in 1968, and you can definitely see the influences that it had on later fantasy stories. The main character guess through growth that feels normal for a kid his age and none of the lessons and twists feel forced or unearned. The story moves along pretty briskly, so some locations and characters go by a bit quicker than I would have liked, but what is there really fleshes out the world.
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Sep 17, 2019 20:12
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The Hydrogen Sonata by Iain M. Banks, the last book of The Culture series. Science fiction/space opera with a post scarcity utopian civilization interacting with higher/equivalent/lower tech civilizations as well as with straight up anomalies throughout the run of the series. I believe there's talks about Amazon buying the rights to turn the first book of the series, Consider Plebas, into a movie or tv show or whatever. Can't wait to see how they gently caress that one up. I haven't been that hooked on a series like that in years. It was a good ride, but now I'm not sure what I'll read next.
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Sep 23, 2019 08:32
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God Emperor of Dune by Frank Herbert Meh. It's the second book again. I may may read the final two, but not anytime soon. I felt this was disappointing and unnecessary. The first three books is what I really enjoyed. Philthy fucked around with this message at 04:39 on Sep 25, 2019 |
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Sep 25, 2019 04:34
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Ghostwritten by David Mitchell This will be the 6th novel of Mitchell's Ive read and his style never bores me. I enjoy how he loosely connects short narratives to make a grander point. I was a little unimpressed with number9dream previously as the plot just didnt engage me, but this one was fantastic.
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Sep 25, 2019 20:38
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TommyGun85 posted:Ghostwritten by David Mitchell number9dream was actually impressing me until the book kept going past a perfectly good ending to set up a cliffhanger it had no intention of resolving. gently caress off with that poo poo. I still like it better than Slade House, though.
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Sep 25, 2019 22:43
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Solitair posted:number9dream was actually impressing me until the book kept going past a perfectly good ending to set up a cliffhanger it had no intention of resolving. gently caress off with that poo poo. I still like it better than Slade House, though. I loved Slade House up until the very end. I thought Mitchell was setting up a situation where each victim was leaving a clue for the subsequent victim and so on to eventually stop the twins but then it was just a huge deus ex machina.. My favorite book of his so far is Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet with Cloud Atlas being his most impressive. Ive got Black Swan Green next and am hoping its as good as his rest and theyve all been good, nitpicks aside.
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Sep 25, 2019 23:08
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Curwood's "The River's End". If not for the American-style racism (Chinese basically aren't even human) and all the sister-frenching it would be an OK pulp novella... Too bad it's a novel. The writer just padded it out with some call of the wild poo poo. I understand this was one of Curwood's most highly regarded novels (with several movie adaptations) so I can't wait to read the rest I have
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Sep 26, 2019 02:54
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TommyGun85 posted:I loved Slade House up until the very end. I thought Mitchell was setting up a situation where each victim was leaving a clue for the subsequent victim and so on to eventually stop the twins but then it was just a huge deus ex machina.. My problem with Slade House is that it's a repetitive, limiting book from an author whose greatest strength is the variety of ideas he can seamlessly fit into most of his works.
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Sep 26, 2019 04:52
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frogge posted:The Hydrogen Sonata by Iain M. Banks, the last book of The Culture series. To be fair Consider Plebas is the only one that's a straight up action book. Player of Games and Use of Weapons have good moments though. I could see those being made into a movie fairly easily.
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Sep 27, 2019 07:02
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Larry Parrish posted:To be fair Consider Plebas is the only one that's a straight up action book. Player of Games and Use of Weapons have good moments though. I could see those being made into a movie fairly easily. It's a solid choice. An adaptation of Inversions would be ruined by having too many winks and nudges to the audience about what's really going on.
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Sep 27, 2019 08:50
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TommyGun85 posted:
I've read just about everything he's written and Black Swan Green is my favorite. It's a bit different than his other novels, but I really enjoyed it.
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Sep 27, 2019 16:28
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Black Swan Green is one of the most British books I've read in my life. It feels like what you'd get if the kind of author that insists on using a typewriter had a fetish for the ZX Spectrum instead.
Sham bam bamina! fucked around with this message at 21:02 on Sep 27, 2019 |
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Sep 27, 2019 20:58
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The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris Really, exceedingly, insanely well researched and detailed to an almost comical level. You certainly get interesting insight into New York politics of the time, and there's enough witty incidents in there to keep it an entertaining read. All of that detail, and the fact that it only covers a tiny - if action-packed - part of Roosevelt's life means that it is exhausting. I liked this a lot, but I have no desire to read the other two in the trilogy. Bad Blood - John Carreyrou The big Theranos-expose book. Interesting, current, infuriating. I thought the last part of the book where the author begins detailing their part in the narrative would be a little iffy and rely on "personal heroics", but it ended up being about as balanced as it could have been.
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Sep 28, 2019 18:38
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Sham bam bamina! posted:Black Swan Green is one of the most British books I've read in my life. It feels like what you'd get if the kind of author that insists on using a typewriter had a fetish for the ZX Spectrum instead. So how does it compare to Brideshead Revisited?
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Sep 29, 2019 04:21
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I just finished The Testaments, the sequel to The Handmaid's Tale. It's a pale shadow of the original. It's bland and kind of pointless and spends too much time trying to connect the original novel with the TV adaptation. It feels, more than anything, like a script for the upcoming season of the show.
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Sep 29, 2019 16:39
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Ten Caesars by Barry Strauss, a survey of ten of the most important Roman emperors from Augustus to Constantine. It is written in a very straightforward style - if you want an introduction to the history of the Roman Empire this would be a good place to start. Having come from the other direction, that is already having read Suetonius and Tacitus and the Historia Augusta, I found it to be a serviceable summary of much of what you'll find there, but by no means anything approaching a replacement for the sources. There are 10 chapters, each about one of said Caesars. They all follow a similar pattern of describing appearances, accomplishments, personality, foibles, and legacies. There is a particular focus on the women who influenced each Emperor, much of which is speculative and freely admitted as such. This is a general weakness of the book, though an unavoidable one, where speculation and phrases like "we can imagine" mix with source material and archaeological evidence. Roman rule and events in Judea are also disproportionately focused on compared to any other part of the Empire - we learn in some detail all about different Jewish revolts, but little about others anywhere else. There is at least one instance where something unverified (that is, did Diocletian go to Rome early in his reign?) is presented as fact, which is a little annoying. Overall the author mostly doesn't let his own opinions or interpretations creep in too much. Because of the narrow scope there are large amounts of time that are left blank or only vaguely sketched out. The jump between Severus and Diocletian is particularly jarring, and glosses over what a wacky era the third century was for Rome. A good book for someone interested in history or leadership or Rome but without much knowledge of the last. If you're fairly familiar with the Roman Empire already this one can safely be skipped.
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Sep 29, 2019 22:43
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Captain Hotbutt posted:Bad Blood - John Carreyrou What do you think about the baritone voice? Real or fake? Her parents insist that it is in fact her real voice, but I dunno after hearing her talk a few times.
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Sep 30, 2019 00:43
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DeadFatDuckFat posted:What do you think about the baritone voice? Real or fake? Her parents insist that it is in fact her real voice, but I dunno after hearing her talk a few times. Obviously fake. It’s loving hilarious.
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Sep 30, 2019 05:57
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there’s no way it’s not an affectation lmao
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Sep 30, 2019 07:58
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it's absolutely fake
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Sep 30, 2019 17:47
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Might as well post this review here too. Finished the Final Frontier sci-fi anthology curated by Neil Clarke. Overall it was a mixed bag for me.The most common element in the stories inside the collection besides FTL + STL travel (and hibernation/coldsleep) was the Gliese 581 star system being a destination. Some of the stories in the anthology hit really well for me, while all but two of the remaining stories were "just" really good. Figuratively and subjectively, Greg Egan's "Glory" and Carter Scholz's "Gypsy" were the worst stories of the Final Frontier anthology for me. I bounced so hard off the Greg Egan story I figuratively became a flight-hazard for low flying drones and ultralights. In Carter Scholz's "Gypsy" the out of nowhere one paragraph "no we fixed everything" email from earth was so tonally off from the rest of the story it pulled me out the book completely/made me laugh for 3 straight minutes, which was probably not the reaction Scholz was aiming for. A Jar of Goodwill/Tobias S. Buckell: A mix of Bruce Sterling's Schismatrix, Ray Bradbury's Martain Chronicles and a 1st contact story. Mono no aware/Ken Liu: A generation ship and Doomsday of the the planet earth story that works really well. Rescue Mission/Jack Skillingstead: Super-strong homage of Ray Bradbury's Martain Chronicles series. Shiva in Shadow/Nancy Kress: Kress's story went darker, way darker than I expected it would. Slow Life/Michael Swanwick: Elements of Heinlein's really good YA stories plus faint elements of Ray Bradbury's martain chronicles stories. Three Bodies at Mitanni/Seth Dickinson: Loved the human-hive mind concept and the <Exterminate YES/NO?> framing plot. The Deeps of the Sky/Elizabeth Bear: Very good 1st contact story between gas-giant lifeforms and carbon/water (human) based lifeforms told from the gas-giant lifeform viewpoint. Diving into the Wreck/Kristine Kathryn Rusch: Enjoyable. Felt like a more personalized and spooky mission in the RPGlite Starcrawlers game. The Voyage Out/Gwyneth Jones: An inter-personal teambuilding story that reminded of Philip Jose Farmers Riverworld + Julian May's Golden Torc series in their most positive aspects. The Symphony of Ice and Dust/Julie Novakova: Was a nice spin on "the 1st explorers to XXX" + "story told through journal entries" tropes. Twenty Lights to The Land of Snow/Michael Bishop: A really solid generation ship story, and it's open-to-all-genders Lama status. The Firewall and the Door/Sean McMullen: pretty much a thinly disguised "Fund Elon Musk!/Fund NASA! DAMMNIT!!" rant. Permanent Fatal Errors/Jay Lake: A solid homage to Heinlein's Lazarus Long meta-character without the creepiness of later Heinlein stories. Gypsy/Carter Scholz: Think "The Martian" set on a spaceship written by Peter Watts. Story had a future Earth so crapsack, 2000 AD's Judge Dredd series was a Disney Kids super-optimistic cartoon in comparison. Sailing the Antarsa/Vandana Singh: peaceful yet explorative, with a tinge of Homeworld 1 (without the genociding of Kharak though). The Mind is Its Own Place/Carrie Vaughn: one flew over the cuckoo's nest meets FTL was a odd but potently enjoyable mix. The Wreck of the Godspeed/James Patrick Kelly: liked the mystery-mystery reveal in it along with plethora of religious beliefs. Seeing/Genevieve Valentine: story was sort of a Oliver Twist approach to astronaut training, pretty weird but good combo. Travelling into Nothing /An Owomoyela: Weird, confusing enjoyable. Reminded me of Robert Reed's the Great Ship short stories somehow. Glory /Greg Egan: Unable to get into the story. Not surprising, I've NEVER been able to get into a Greg Egan story. The Island /Peter Watts: The Island has maybe Watt's most happy ending in all of his scifi stories, which says volumes towards Watt's writing style. quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 15:17 on Oct 2, 2019 |
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Oct 1, 2019 21:10
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DeadFatDuckFat posted:What do you think about the baritone voice? Real or fake? Her parents insist that it is in fact her real voice, but I dunno after hearing her talk a few times. Hard to say from the book. It's only really brought up once as "breaking" to something high-pitched and more natural in a moment of excitement. Seeing interview clips and stuff makes me think it's a total put-on though. Also, considering all the fraud and insanity going on, the voice was the least interesting part of the story - just some weird footnote on a weird tale.
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Oct 4, 2019 12:38
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Getting a bit off topic, but her lawyers are sueing her now. I cannot imagine that's good. https://gizmodo.com/bet-you-thought-youd-seen-the-last-of-me-1838782242
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Oct 5, 2019 02:32
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Adam Tooze's "Wages of Destruction". Deconstructing certain myths about Nazi war policy and "economic miracle". A lot less boring and dry than it sounds. Fairly dense though. Depending on where you went to high-school, even the basic "the Third Reich's economic plans were built entirely around stealing resources, slaves and food from Eastern Europe and the USSR, and practically nothing about the way things worked was actually efficient" may be news to you. "Rogues", a short story anthology edited by GRRRRRRRRRRR Martin. Read it for the sake of a more interesting take on Martin's "The Princess and the Queen", which I didn't get. Most of the stories were terribly dull and utterly helpless. I'm not saying short stories need a punchline or a twist, as such, but most of these felt like standard "twist" stories with the twist omitted, leaving them dangling in the wind. The only items of some note (stealing the descriptions directly from wikipedia): quote:"Tough Times All Over” by Joe Abercrombie quote:“A Year and a Day in Old Theradane” by Scott Lynch quote:“How the Marquis Got His Coat Back” by Neil Gaiman quote:“The Lightning Tree” by Patrick Rothfuss quote:The Rogue Prince, or, a King’s Brother by George R. R. Martin, set in the Westeros of Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, hundreds of years before the events of A Game of Thrones. Matt Hughes, Joe R. Lansdale, and (naturally) Connie Willis were exceptionally poo poo. Xander77 fucked around with this message at 23:13 on Oct 5, 2019 |
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Oct 5, 2019 23:00
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Xander77 posted:Rothfuss Ew. 
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Oct 6, 2019 06:45
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Finally finished Don Quixote nearly two years after starting it. The first book was really boring but the second one was much more enjoyable. Shout-out to my new job that has me commuting by train, along with my self-conscious nature compelling me to read on said train instead of just playing my 3DS.
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Oct 6, 2019 18:02
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