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Bilirubin posted:What did you think of what it did and where do you feel it fell short from your unformed expectations of it? It was interesting how Dwayne responded by Trout's text though Dwayne's mindset going into Trout's book wasn't the best. It made me think about how readers are also affected by what they read though I'm not sure if that was what the author was going for or wanted the reader to think about. In the build up to the meeting of Trout and Dwayne, I found it quirky how the author would interrupt the story to explain what various things looked like within the story before inserting himself into the story and interacting with his creations. His last interaction with Trout seemed so unnecessary and the last pages of the book really confused me. I think I just heard that Vonnegut, Palahniuk among others were people that I needed to read so I think I was hoping for some fiction to blow my mind but the author's interjections seemed to take me away from my enjoyment of the book.
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Feb 23, 2020 07:46
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TV Zombie posted:Just finished Breakfast of Champions. I'm not sure what I expected from it. when I was taking american lit in high school we got to pick two books by different authors from a pretty long list the teacher gave out, to do essays on etc Slaughterhouse Five was the first one that I picked, and my english teacher recognized a Vonnegut-enjoyer enough that she let me break the different authors rule to do Breakfast of Champions for the second one and I will never forget that. Also read the then-new Timequake around that time, and oh buddy, that one's a trip- I think Vonnegut's play with the relationship between author and reader, and his metacommentary on what it means to experience a work in general, was a lot fresher in 1973 than it was when I read it 20 years ago, and way more than it would be today- largely due to the influence Vonnegut has had on younger authors I say this without irony and it gives me no pleasure to report this: the most justice done to ideas that Vonnegut laid down has been the various works of Andrew Hussie
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Feb 23, 2020 08:06
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TV Zombie posted:It was interesting how Dwayne responded by Trout's text though Dwayne's mindset going into Trout's book wasn't the best. It made me think about how readers are also affected by what they read though I'm not sure if that was what the author was going for or wanted the reader to think about. In the build up to the meeting of Trout and Dwayne, I found it quirky how the author would interrupt the story to explain what various things looked like within the story before inserting himself into the story and interacting with his creations. His last interaction with Trout seemed so unnecessary and the last pages of the book really confused me. I think I just heard that Vonnegut, Palahniuk among others were people that I needed to read so I think I was hoping for some fiction to blow my mind but the author's interjections seemed to take me away from my enjoyment of the book.
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Feb 23, 2020 08:43
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Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh. First book of his I've read, I liked it a lot. I know Brideshead Revisited is supposed to be good, is it anywhere close to this one in style? Fun fact: His wife was also named Evelyn. Their friends called them he-Evelyn and she-Evelyn.
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Feb 23, 2020 09:21
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Sham bam bamina! posted:It's one of his less popular ones, but I think you'd like Hocus Pocus more than that or Slaughterhouse-Five. It's probably my favorite Vonnegut. I’m a massive Vonnegut fan and both Hocus Pocus and BoC are among my favorites (along with Bluebeard, Deadeye Dick, and Cat’s Cradle)
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Feb 23, 2020 09:59
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I just finished Her Body and other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado. Honestly one of my favourite books ever, I've never felt so "seen" by a narrative before. Her writing style is so dreamy and organic, every story has such a strange comedic horror element to it I can't recommend it enough. My fav stories were "The Husband Stitch" and "The Resident", I also think I'm one of the few who loved "Especially Heinous" even if it does go on for hours haha. The audiobook narrator Amy Landon is excellent as well, which just adds another level. StrixNebulosa posted:hahahhahahaha oh god i almost wish this were true Also thank you for this list, I was going to ask for any recommendations but a space opera is exactly what I'm feeling haha. Too many to choose lol.
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Feb 24, 2020 01:01
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zentigeist posted:Also thank you for this list, I was going to ask for any recommendations but a space opera is exactly what I'm feeling haha. Too many to choose lol.  If you need more: the Fighting Erasure series at the tor blog is really really good. Scroll down a bit and voila, ladies who wrote/write sci-fi and fantasy and more that have been forgotten by time.
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Feb 24, 2020 01:20
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StrixNebulosa posted:
I'll probably never need another book genre.
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Feb 24, 2020 01:24
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The Forge of Mars by Bruce Balfour is three or four different sci-fi stories, none of them completely terrible by themselves, jammed together into an unsatisfying whole. There's a cloak-and-dagger Tomorrow AD plot about world governments and conspiracies trying to conceal the existence of alien life and harness alien technology for their own purposes. There's a traditional sci-fi first contact story about encountering and trying to communicate with life that's very different from us and communicates in different ways. There's an action story about an unlikely hero who must find it within himself to become a warrior and save the day. And there's an interplanetary love story focused on themes of identity and place. None of these stories hang around long enough to be particularly bad (not good and certainly not original, but not egregiously bad), but you can hear the metallic screeching and grinding when the book changes gears from one to the next, and with an expectedly long list of shallow characters. There's a bit of spice here in that the protagonist is half-Native American and the book engages pretty seriously with that identity, and I don't know enough about the Navajo to comment on how accurate or sensitive the portrayal is, but the whole thing ends up being a short, forgettable mess.
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Feb 24, 2020 18:35
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What is up with Audible's search? I'll search for an exact title, and get a whole lot of other books by other authors listed before the thing I want. Not every time, but often enough to be aggravating. One time I kept scrolling and scrolling through the results and finally got fed up and looked on Amazon instead, where it was listed first as expected. Is it just broken?
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Feb 25, 2020 01:37
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Been on a spooky kick and digging it. Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. I liked it. Not outwardly scary but just tense enough to keep me reading. I ended up liking the house itself more than the supernatural tendencies of it. Jackson’s descriptions of the architecture and unusual floor plans helped me develop a better mental image of the setting than most books do. From there add in some interesting characters and unsettling bits and you end up with a really fun book to read. The Elementals by Michael McDowell. Again, I loved the setting. Being on a pseudo-island with an ocean tide time lock, waking up in the middle of the night and seeing something in the empty third house is right out of a nightmare I’d have. McDowell has a cool way of painting a mental picture of a place with no light whatsoever except the moon reflecting on old windows and white sand. When the sun was gone and the tide was up, it was like reading about another planet. The horror aspects, which were drat spooky, mixed well with the southern gothic family the story revolved around. I don’t write great reviews but if you like horror and haven’t read this I recommend it. It reminds me of how I felt after reading The Shining for the first time.
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Feb 26, 2020 16:03
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zentigeist posted:I also think I'm one of the few who loved "Especially Heinous" even if it does go on for hours haha. I did too. I read it on some website and had no idea it was in a collection, so thanks for this post. I’ve got something new to add to my reading list now.
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Feb 28, 2020 17:10
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Wounds by Nathan Ballingrud In reviewing Wounds, it's impossible not to compare it to the author's previous work, North American Lake Monsters. Both are short story collections involving the strange, the abnormal, and the supernatural. But, whereas NALM has a tenuous theme connecting the stories, Wounds has a very strong overarching theme that ties all of the stories together and culminates in its final piece. All of the stories hint at small nuggets, tiny visions of a Hell that exists in Ballingrud's impressive imagination. Each story seems to introduce a different otherworldly idea or concept, from the Atlas of Hell being introduced in the story by the same name, to the "angels" introduced in "The Visible Filth". The final story, "The Butcher's Table" (new to this collection), amalgamates these ideas and expands on them, allowing us to fully explore the vast imaginative depiction of Hell that Ballingrud so obviously is tittering with excitement to share with us. The love Ballingrud has for his craft and the world he has created just drips off of the page. No story in the collection ever drags, making this the second 5-star book of the author's that I've read. I can only imagine what further horrors he has in store for us. Blackwater by Michael McDowell (collecting all 6 novellas in the Blackwater series) Blackwater is a strange book to try and pigeonhole or sum up simply with a genre label. In the great flood of 1919, in Perdido, Alabama, Oscar Caskey and his family's servant, Bray, find a young woman named Elinor Dammert stuck in the top floor of the Osceola Hotel. After welcoming Elinor into their family (all of this happens in the prologue!), we follow the saga of the Caskeys through multiple generations over the course of 6 novellas, taking us into (I believe) the 1970s. There's no doubt that Blackwater is a superb example of the Southern Gothic genre; it's chock full of rich southern well-to-dos fretting over family politics, relationships, inheritances, and the like. But, there's something more here. Without spoiling the story too much, Michael McDowell uses themes and scenes of intense horror and grotesque supernatural violence like they were exclamation marks, hammering fear and unease into the backdrop of what would otherwise be a straightforward family story. There were some scenes that left my jaw hanging open - I think the juxtaposition of horror against the mundane, sanitary life of the Caskeys makes it all the more effective. As an entire saga, I'd give it a 4/5 or 4.5/5. I will say, though, that the last two books didn't hold my attention like the first four did, I'd give those probably a 3/5. In the end, McDowell managed to wrap up the whole series beautifully and poetically, tying the whole thing up in a little bow that you see coming a mile away, but that doesn't detract from it at all. I enjoyed every bit of it. Count Thrashula fucked around with this message at 20:27 on Feb 28, 2020 |
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Feb 28, 2020 17:46
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Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (Gregory Hays Translation) I had tried reading other translations before, and they were so poor that none of them stuck. The Hays one is wonderful and I'll definitely be revisiting it in the future. Shoe Dog by Phil Knight Very readable memoir by the founder of Nike. I doubt he wrote this himself, but it's one of the more enjoyable memoirs I've read recently. Feels a bit disjointed towards the end when he glimpses over the death of his son, becoming a billionaire etc.
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Feb 28, 2020 22:04
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Peanut Butler posted:I say this without irony and it gives me no pleasure to report this: the most justice done to ideas that Vonnegut laid down has been the various works of Andrew Hussie where should I start as a fan of sweet bro and hella jeff?
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Feb 29, 2020 10:44
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Well, if January was the succulent meat of my 52 book project, (Black Griffon's review of books read in) February was the tough but vital greens. The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson I love queer romance and... this book crushed me. It dragged me first across hot coals, and then dumped me in ice cold water where I struggled until I was once again dragged across the coals. It's ceaselessly nerve wracking, holds your heart in a steel gauntlet and does not stop until the end, and it's beautiful. It mixes forbidden lust, worldbuilding, victory and wounds in a way that cannot keep from pulling you in so far that when things occur as they must, you're hopelessly bound and pulled along. Read it. Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds Where some stories weave their richness deep into the cloth, displaying dense embroidery, others weave vast displays where you struggle to see each end simultaneously, and Pushing Ice is one of those. It's rich and deep, yes, but what truly makes the book remarkable is the scope of time it shows. Reading some other Reynolds blurbs, a lot of his books involve things happening thousands to millions of years in the past or future, contemporary or contemporaneously, and that's very much my poo poo. Pushing Ice has its issues with characterization and occasionally dry dialogue, but by the end of the journey, you love the characters still, and you, along with them, have seen so much. Read it. Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer Now comes the brussels sprouts (I happen to like them, but for the metaphor, indulge me). Let me get the bad stuff out of the way firsthand, so that I may praise the book fully, for it is praiseworthy. Too Like the Lightning is too heavy on rape themes. For reasons that involve the core themes of the novel, I assume that Palmer sees virtue in not shying away from such themes, but it's still jarring and lessened my enjoyment of the work. But still, I truly enjoyed the work, more than I can put into words. If Pushing Ice a work of scope in time, Lightning is a work of scope in society. Rarely have I seen a representation of our world a few centuries in the future that is so fully realized and ambitious. Some works might show a future indiscernible from our own except for a few details, some might show a future so far gone that it no longer resembles humanity, but Lighting shows something slavishly bound to our contemporary past and our current, a humankind that cannot let go of old ideals whilst still building to utopia and . It's a world that is brutal, careless and authoritative, while still being unfathomably liberated and merciful. It's not the extreme parody of either side or section of a radius, but a realized world of good and bad, of changes I desperately want to happen, and changes I desperately hope will never come to pass. At the beginning I was turned off by the narrative style, and at times the book is a little too self-indulgent and overwrought (good God, that certain someone draped over the knees of two certain somebodies near the end), but I cannot stay mad, and I am still drawn in. And yes, dear reader, the fact that I finished the book only a few hours past has certainly affected the way I now write these reviews. I apologize if it's grating, but like a scene in the book that shows how an idea might stick to the mind like a barnacle, there is a feeling and notion that will not leave me and which now type these letters in turn. Read it, but please, know what you're reading.
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Feb 29, 2020 23:38
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Xander77 posted:Bernard Cornwell's Grail Quest. I'm almost done reading a history book that, while not covering the Hundred Years War in that much detail, is forthright about the reasons why it was fought. Stay tuned.
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Mar 1, 2020 07:52
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cornwell sucks but lmao at the idea of trying to read the hundred years war through a postcolonial lens with france as "a peaceful land"
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Mar 1, 2020 20:20
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ah, medieval France...a peaceful nation, innocent of the knowledge of warfare,
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Mar 1, 2020 20:22
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Wasnt France literally the military powerhouse of Europe for a great deal of the Middle Ages
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Mar 1, 2020 20:26
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Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë This was a tough read. I simply could not come to like any of the characters. While this is another Gothic romance from the Brontë sisters, the mood was appropriately set, but I feel the craziness and spitefulness of the characters were cranked beyond my level of comfort. Around halfway it did turn for the better, but the initial half had already soured my mood for the story being told. I really enjoyed Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, and I was hopeful this was on the same level, overall I feel this was ultimately a miss.
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Mar 1, 2020 22:40
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Philthy posted:Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë sincerest condolences on both this terrible opinion and the idea that you need to "like" characters in order to appreciate a novel Mel Mudkiper posted:Wasnt France literally the military powerhouse of Europe for a great deal of the Middle Ages yeah e.g. they are almost singlehandedly responsible for the Crusades
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Mar 2, 2020 03:05
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Wasnt France literally the military powerhouse of Europe for a great deal of the Middle Ages pretty much up until WW1
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Mar 2, 2020 03:46
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weed cat posted:where should I start as a fan of sweet bro and hella jeff?
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Mar 2, 2020 05:13
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Sham bam bamina! posted:I'm afraid that it's all downhill from there. IT KEEPS HAPPENING
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Mar 2, 2020 05:45
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chernobyl kinsman posted:sincerest condolences on both this terrible opinion and the idea that you need to "like" characters in order to appreciate a novel There was a time in my life I would have likely enjoyed this tale, but tastes change.
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Mar 2, 2020 06:16
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Pandora's Star by Peter F. Hamilton. I got the e-book after making a list of "First contact" sci-fi novels. How you every started a ebook have to have it seeming go nowhere, only then realize it is 800 pages long. That happened with this one. I love the main story of "wierd poo poo happening with weird aliens let go check it out." But there is so much nothing between cool plot points. The author seems to have a he need tell every detail about everything in every scene. I would skip whole pointless pages about the future engine of a future train and company that made it. Or about how beautiful a mountain next to the important mountain is and wierd grass on it. I must have put it down for weeks at a time because after the exciting parts it would slow way down and focus on the daily life of character that won't be important for 200+ pages. It is not a bad book though and I will read the second part because the mystery and cliffhanger. I would say if you like mysterious aliens, and rich beautiful people trying to figure out what is going on with them then you will enjoy this book. Just know the it 1 2000 ish page book split in two volumes, it is a long hall.
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Mar 2, 2020 09:01
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ScottyJSno posted:It is not a bad book though and I will read the second part because the mystery and cliffhanger. I would say if you like mysterious aliens, and rich beautiful people trying to figure out what is going on with them then you will enjoy this book. Just know the it 1 2000 ish page book split in two volumes, it is a long hall. Fair warning, literally everything Hamilton writes is a billion pages.
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Mar 2, 2020 12:36
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Higher Education by Charles Sheffield is a lot like the book of his I previously read and posted about, The Billion Dollar Boy. It's short, good, satisfying, and I'm not sure if I'd want to read a full length novel in the world he's clearly building or not, simply because Sheffield is so good at writing a tight narrative with a good ending. Higher Education is clearly but not explicitly set in the same world as The Billion Dollar Boy, and as a professional educator, the first part of this book where the high school student and his teacher have a frank discussion about education versus the job market, how if you protect young people from failure it severely hurts their ability to grow, and a future where the only good schools are private company-run establishments for children of employees, is chillingly plausible. It's a pity that goons told me that Sheffield is dead, because both of his books so far that I've read, I've enjoyed a lot.
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Mar 2, 2020 15:00
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Killing Pablo. Got inspired to read it after watching Narcos. Narcos was a pretty good adaptation of it. I think if you enjoyed one you will enjoy the other.
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Mar 2, 2020 17:54
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Best. Movie. Year. Ever.: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen - Brian Raftery Pretty much summed up in the title. A rundown of the movies from 1999 and why they were great. Fairly light and free of anything new to say, but it hit all the right nostalgia buttons. The examinations of things like Sundance, Blair Witch's marketing, and the popularity of smaller, mid-range, more "mature" fare such as The Best Man could be their own books but they're only lightly realized as the book moves from release to release. The View from the Bridge: Memories of Star Trek and a Life in Hollywood - Nicholas Meyer Interesting, breezy, slightly self-serving, but still a decent read because Meyer has an interesting voice and some interesting opinions about "the biz". Not too gossipy, which was appreciated. I'm not really into Star Trek and either was he so having that outsider's perspective kept it fresh.
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Mar 2, 2020 21:51
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Sham bam bamina! posted:I'm afraid that it's all downhill from there. no where should i start with vonnegut 
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Mar 3, 2020 11:33
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weed cat posted:no where should i start with vonnegut cat's cradle or slaughterhouse five
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Mar 3, 2020 16:09
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chernobyl kinsman posted:cat's cradle or slaughterhouse five I'd suggest Cat's Cradle. S5 is great but I feel like you'll get more out of it if you build to it. Breakfast of Champions is probably one of the last of Vonnegut you should read.
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Mar 3, 2020 16:25
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Start with God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater or Jailbird or something for maximum cred.
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Mar 3, 2020 17:50
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Sham bam bamina! posted:Start with God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater or Jailbird or something for maximum cred. do not start with Jailbird start with Cat's Cradle or Player Piano Sandwolf fucked around with this message at 18:42 on Mar 3, 2020 |
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Mar 3, 2020 18:18
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weed cat posted:no where should i start with vonnegut Mother Night, Sirens of Titan and Cat's Cradle
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Mar 3, 2020 18:32
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Mother Night, Bluebeard and Sirens of Titan. I am right.
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Mar 3, 2020 21:16
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Galapagos. Fite me
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Mar 4, 2020 16:14
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Read each book in publication order, then listen to each episode of the Kurt Vonneguys after you finish each book.
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Mar 5, 2020 01:14
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