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Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk. Author had a few clever ideas but they grew stale after the first third of the book. This would have been better as a short story. However, it's good satire and was entertaining enough. Some passages made me chuckle and I might be reading more Palahniuk in the future.
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Mar 30, 2023 23:11
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Gleisdreieck posted:Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk. Author had a few clever ideas but they grew stale after the first third of the book. This would have been better as a short story. Also a reminder that Palahnuik said it's the first of a trilogy and that motherfucker still owes us the other two books, 16 years later.
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Mar 31, 2023 00:23
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Gleisdreieck posted:However, it's good satire and was entertaining enough. Some passages made me chuckle and I might be reading more Palahniuk in the future. Fight Club is fun and worth a read even if you've seen the movie. Invisible Monsters is loving great.
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Mar 31, 2023 07:14
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I don't enjoy his writing, but his writing advice is pretty good: https://litreactor.com/essays/36-writing-essays-by-chuck-palahniuk
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Mar 31, 2023 11:18
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River of Stars by Guy Gavriel Kay. This was a reread, and while I still enjoyed it, the impact was diminished somewhat by me still remembering key events and the ending a decade later. To oversimplify the plot, this book is historical fiction about a dying Not China empire and the looming threat of the Not Mongols invading. Lots of characters and political intrigue going on in a distracted Not China court, while a common bandit decides it is his destiny to rise up and stop the Not Mongols and also take back the northern prefectures already lost to the invaders in years prior. The book doesn't have as happy of an ending as you would think since political machinations ultimately keep the bandit, who is now an effective army commander, from successfully repelling the invaders and retaking the territory when he was literally on the edge of doing so. It's in some ways a frustrating ending as we're trained to want happy endings, and it is a little rushed in the wrap up, but I respect the author for doing it. Also apparently this is a spiritual sequel to the author's other book Under Heaven which I think I'll pick up some time later after I whittle through the to read stack some more. Edit: Forgot to add River of Stars did a decent job of world building. Characters do reference a lot of fictional Not China history and it comes off fairly naturally as they're reflecting on the golden age and dynasties of Not China and trying to process what happened to bring their empire to the verge of collapse. Turbinosamente fucked around with this message at 13:27 on Mar 31, 2023 |
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Mar 31, 2023 13:21
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The Club Dumas I feel like saying that this feels more like an adventure novel than a work of literature is going to get me Gotcha'd by the author, regardless the statement holds. It makes nods at interesting ideas, but never pursues them longer than it needs for you to get your head in that psuedo-intellectual mode you need to be in to appreciate a novel about book forgery and binding. I would propose a theory of the novel. Half of it is something of a forgery itself In that everything, or most of what went on with Borja and Irene is fictional. I think that what happened is The Club Dumas plot happened mostly as planned, and that Corso was brought in as a kind of protagonist to their own foundational tale, but the disappointing reception at the club got them thinking that the tale was missing something. They thought they already had enough action with Milady and Rochefort, but it lacked the drama and conspiracy that the modern audience needs. Then, like how Dumas fleshed out Maquet's and the historical accounts with his own genius, filling the work with life. They too added and embellished the facts to drive the drama and intrigue to the stratosphere. A fictional devilry work is created, and an enigmatic satanist who wants it, a book collector who died is turned into a agoraphobic madman, a controversial author turned into a wiccan nazi, they invent a beautiful young woman, perhaps demonic, to guide the second part of the plot; one who only acts once against any real character, and it's the one whose an actor being paid by the club. It's a fun theory, and more interesting than the straight narrative, but as it is I really wish the novel had either been entirely about art forgery and a secret Dumas manuscript, or had been about the Ninth Gate of Hell. Trying to tie the two together makes the Dumas part feel dull, and the Ninth Gate feel too outlandish. One of the few times I can say a film probably did a better job. Invisible Cities Got Recced this after talking bout Borges. The only problem I have with it, is that I prefer Borges in his approach. That is to say, if Borges had the same materiel he'd have spoken of one of the city concepts in such depth I would be left slack jawed on the floor, ready to fully reconstruct my knowledge of what knowledge is. Calvino it's more of a "Huh, yeah that's a way of thinking about that". Cool, but not sublimely illuminating. The talk between the cities between Kublai and Marco was far more interesting on that front.
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Apr 4, 2023 01:06
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His Cosmicomics are rather more Borgesian in nature.
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Apr 4, 2023 02:06
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Just finished Solenoid and I'm pretty sure I am not able to summarize it. Just read it
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Apr 7, 2023 06:10
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Just finished Joyride by Jack Ketchum. His books loosely based on real crimes are pretty good. Not usually my kinda thing but Jack is one of my favs.
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Apr 9, 2023 23:52
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Just finished a the Saint novel originally titled 'Meet - the Tiger!'. It was poo poo. Incredibly boring. Just stupid. Turns out it's the first one, from the twenties, and Charteris himself admitted later that it was real bad. Why the gently caress anyone would print it in 1960 in the same pocket book series that started off with The Maltese Falcon is beyond me. (Or at all, really.l
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Apr 10, 2023 05:18
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Make Something Up by Chuck Palahniuk. A short story collection attempting to trigger disgust by descriptions of gross sex, racism, violence or physical disabilities. Some stories had happy endings but those felt weakest while others had vague references to each other and it was fun to pick those up. Also there is a philosophical essay on language for some reason. Never again will I look the same at defibilirators, horses or car wash places. On the whole a very enjoyable read.
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Apr 10, 2023 14:48
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Book of Imaginary Beings Was not expecting 2 from C.S.Lewis to make the list, and doubly surprised they were both from Perelandra and not one of the races from Out of the Silent Planet. Gonna pick up a copy of The Temptation of St. Anthony as well, I suppose anything Borges goes to the well twice for in a novel has got to be good. Spent a lot of time trying to figure out what animals I would put in an imaginary zoology book. It should be somewhat easier given the glut of fictional monster encyclopedias we have in fiction now. Pokémon, DND, Megaten, Even works like HP. But filling your work with monsters themselves that have already been collected is so much less interesting than the free assossication Borges does with Mythological, Literary, and Religiously Mystic. The effect of collecting them all together Implicitly puts equal weight on all them to be equally unreal; a fascinating effect that probably wouldn't work if there was a Pikachu sitting in there. Actually typing it out, perhaps the reason it doesn't work with Pikachu is less the popularity so much as the over commercialization. It's hard to view Pikachu in a mythic context when you're so inundated with marketing that you can't divorce it from it's brand image baggage.
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Apr 10, 2023 16:20
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Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk Palahniuk's first book feels angrier, more raw, less polished and not funny at all. His detailed knowledge of chemicals and guns already apparent. In comparison with the movie both narrator and Tyler Durden felt like two losers living in a shithole and the concept of a fight club ridiculous. Why didn't they do MMA or something? Chapter 14 posted:MY BOSS BRINGS another sheet of paper to my desk and sets it at my elbow. I don’t even wear a tie anymore. I found this hilarious. An insurance agent not wearing a tie to work. Such nihilism. Was the 90s office worker dress code really so strict?
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Apr 18, 2023 15:42
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i was expected to wear a tie to work as late as 2016
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Apr 18, 2023 17:45
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On St Paddy’s Day you would wear the green tie. It was nice.
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Apr 18, 2023 18:53
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Gleisdreieck posted:Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk I would argue that the white collar nihilism was the most accurate part of the book.
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Apr 19, 2023 00:09
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You should read American Psycho next if you haven't. I did those back to back last year and it was fun.
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Apr 19, 2023 08:01
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This thread made me realize I bought The Invention of Sound but still haven't read it. Also I just learned that Fight Club was Palahniuk's first published novel 
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Apr 19, 2023 08:10
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1793 or The Wolf and the Watchman: 1793 which is the English title apparently by Niklas Natt och Dag. A murder mystery in 1793:s Stockholm, Sweden. It really immersed you in the horrible, disgusting situation it was to live in Stockholm at the time. Quite grotesque in places but I really liked it.
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Apr 19, 2023 09:25
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UwUnabomber posted:You should read American Psycho next if you haven't. I did those back to back last year and it was fun. Good book. I found it difficult to enjoy at first with the excessive prose about superficial nothingness and the repetitive stylistic choices, but then I fell into a sort of trance and was filled with a nameless dread, which I suppose is the point.
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Apr 21, 2023 16:32
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MartingaleJack posted:I found it difficult to enjoy at first with the excessive prose about superficial nothingness and the repetitive stylistic choices, but then I fell into a sort of trance and was filled with a nameless dread, which I suppose is the point. Please stop talking about my posting history
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Apr 21, 2023 17:25
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Spent the last few months re-reading the Neapolitan novels, in the sense that I read the first 3 in 2015 but never read the fourth one, so I read the first three again to finally finish. Truly a masterpiece series that had gave me several moments of true shock, beautiful prose, and a crushing storyline. Definitely going to read as many other Elena Ferrante books as I can. Also going to check out the TV adaptation, maybe I can hear what the difference between dialect and proper Italian is.
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Apr 23, 2023 14:13
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Just finished The Road by Cormac McCarthy - This was the first book I've read by McCarthy. Fast read in a unique style. Bleak and atmospheric, but I personally didn't get much out of it. Though I did have a good laugh at reading reviews of the book by disgruntled high school students who were forced to read it. Also finished reading A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines by Janna Levin. This was kind of interesting to me because it focused more on the personal and emotional lives of Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing, other books I've read that feature them as characters/focal points typically focus on the mathematical achievements, so this was... different. Can't really recommend for or against this book. It was OK.
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Apr 25, 2023 22:25
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Tess of the d’Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy, 1891) An antiquarian unfortunately tells drunken lout John Durbeyfield that he’s descended from the d’Urbervilles, a once illustrious but now extinct tribe of Norman aristocrats. Tess, his teenage daughter, is sent to what he imagines is a moneyed branch of the d’Urberville family to “claim kin” and Alec d’Urberville (né Stoke) rapes her. Working at a distant dairy farm, Tess meets Angel Clare, an aspiring gentleman farmer working at the dairy for a year to learn the ropes. Angel falls madly in love with Tess, who does her best to push him away. Her chastity gone; she vows she’ll never marry. But Angel doesn’t take no for an answer. She tries repeatedly to confess what she thinks is her sin, but he won’t hear it. He says he’s got a confession of his own but it can wait until after the wedding to tell it. The marriage contract sealed; Angel confesses that he isn’t a virgin. When rather young, he was seduced by an older woman. A little relieved that their sins are so similar, Tess tells Angel about Alec. Out, vile strumpet! Angel abandons Tess to her own devices while he goes to start a farm in Brazil. Alec finds Tess again. He’s reformed and is now a hellfire and brimstone preacher. Well, he was reformed, but the sight of so debased a harlot corrupts his weak male resolve and he pursues Tess once again. After much ruin, sickness, and death in the South American jungle, Angel thinks he might have judged Tess a little too harshly and returns to England. But Tess—worn down by Alec pointing out that her husband abandoned her, left her destitute, and hasn’t so much as written a word to her in years—has given in and is now posing as Alec Stoke’s—I’m sorry, Alec d’Urberville’s—wife Angel’s return breaks Tess’s already fragile psyche and she murders Alec. She and Angel go on the lam and have a lovely belated honeymoon while evading the police, but they’re surrounded at Stonehenge and Tess is taken into custody. Angel watches as the black flag of death is raised over the prison then takes her younger sister ‘Liza Lu’s hand. She will be his do-over wife.
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Apr 26, 2023 17:08
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But was it good?
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Apr 26, 2023 17:42
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Oh, it was great. Can't wait for Jude the Obscure.
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Apr 26, 2023 18:57
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Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk Jump to me reading author's musings on beauty, modelling and transgender issues. Just as in Fight Club the book starts with an epic scene and the rest of it is a non-linear telling of events leading up to it. Compared to his later works the violence and disgusting stuff felt rather tame, theme du jour being surgery, body mutilation and prescription drugs. There are many plot twists that are revealed troughout the book which was neat. All in all I was entertained.
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Apr 26, 2023 22:09
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I read Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany largely because Tom Hanks and Spielberg have been working on adapting it into a miniseries. The subtitle had me worried about it possibly being hokey patriotic crap, but it turned out to be a heartbreaking book, harshly revealing the suffering of both the flyers and the German population they bombed. His strategic analysis of the effectiveness of the bombing campaign, too, was lucid and penetrating. I'll gladly read Miller's book about the Vicksburg campaign.
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Apr 27, 2023 08:14
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Boco_T posted:Spent the last few months re-reading the Neapolitan novels, in the sense that I read the first 3 in 2015 but never read the fourth one, so I read the first three again to finally finish. Truly a masterpiece series that had gave me several moments of true shock, beautiful prose, and a crushing storyline. Definitely going to read as many other Elena Ferrante books as I can. Also going to check out the TV adaptation, maybe I can hear what the difference between dialect and proper Italian is. it's wild that they made a series of novels about an ice cream flavour
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Apr 28, 2023 13:22
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What If? 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe: A sequel to the first What If? book from the creator of XKCD. If you read the first one, this is more of the same. If you aren't familiar, Randall takes silly questions and answers them seriously using science to back it up. Examples of questions are "What would happen if the Solar System was filled with soup out to Jupiter?" and "If ALL of Japan's islands disappear, would it affect Earth's natural phenomena?" Randall's writing style is a good mix of seriousness and comedy that makes it a breeze to read through the book, and it's an enjoyable way to learn some high-level science. I've always been a fan of Randall's work so I'm biased, but I do think it's a great read for anyone even remotely interested in the scientific analysis of absurdity. If this does sound interesting to you, you can get a taste of what the books are like since it started as a pseudo-blog and a portion of his books are already on the blog.
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Apr 28, 2023 16:21
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The Unbroken, by C. L. Clark. A very interesting book in concept: a fantasy version of North Africa under colonial occupation by a fantasy version of a European power, with a narrative centered on a physically disabled princess seeking a lever by which to seize the throne that she believes is hers by right, and on an officer in the colonial army conscripted from this land, educated and trained in the empire, and now returned to her home as an occupier. Both women are also queer and attracted to one another, but this is no happy fantasy romance because this is not a happy book. While I feel that this book is structurally a mess, one that I feel does a poor job of juggling its world-building and its characters' journeys, the book is an unflinching look at colonialism, the divided loyalties of the colonized peoples, and the push-and-pull of well-intentioned but dangerously imperial colonists. I almost feel like the inclusion of overtly fantastical elements like magic is to the story's detriment, there's more than enough drama and story here already. If you like grim and unflinching portrayals of colonialism from the eyes of the colonizers, the colonized, and those caught in between; badass LGBT women (one physically disabled, one a woman of color); or both, I recommend this one. This is the author's first outing and the second book is available at my library, so I'm very interested to see how the story, and the author's writing, evolve.
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Apr 29, 2023 00:33
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Cythereal posted:The Unbroken, by C. L. Clark. I read the sequel recently, and I think that the writing definitely improved between the books, and I can see the author continuing to get better in the third. There is definitely still some character juggling though. And while there is a little more magic, I think that it's better integrated into the plot. All that to say, I thought the second book was actually better than the first which can be rare for a trilogy, especially a debut one.
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Apr 29, 2023 01:30
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No idea why I read two books about carbonated beverages back to back but: For God, Country, and Coca-Cola by Mark Pendergrast - A pretty exhaustive history of the company through the lense of US/World history. This was a really interesting read! Started off a bit slow at first (the entire early history of the company can be summed up as lots of paperwork fuckery that isn't the most thrilling to sit through) but once the book got to the Depression era it got a lot more interesting IMO. For example, during World War 2, the company put up a massive marketing effort to keep troops supplied with Coke via mobile bottling stations. Imagine living through this world changing event and you're experiencing the horrors of war-torn Europe firsthand and your job all day is worrying about, like, syrup supply lines. And some of the Coke guys just hosed off and went to ski chalets instead lmao. I'm not really doing the book justice but its worth a read if you find the intersection of consumerism and cultural history interesting like I do. Seltzertopia: The Extraordinary Story of an Ordinary Drink by Barry Joseph - This book was extremely repetitive, light on detail and too hokey for me, honestly. Almost the exact opposite of the Coke book. I was interested in the history of seltzer as it pertains to Jewish American culture but too much of it was focused on these guys in Pittsburgh trying to build their own old timey seltzer delivery business. I shouldn't have googled that the business folded so early into the book which put a huge damper on the author's glowing romanticism of the startup. There was barely any real history even in the modern era (the 2010s literally just two quick blurbs that are just like "oh yeah and companies like LaCroix and Polar are really blowing up in sales") and then too much of it was about, like, old timey clowns using seltzer with detailed recaps of Three Stooges bits. Really did not enjoy this one but it was very short so I powered through. My favorite part: One of the book club suggested discussion questions at the end was "does Seltzertopia pass the Bechdel Test" which feels like a Dril tweet and it got a good laugh out of me.
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May 1, 2023 13:21
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How interesting are the Coca-Cola company's strategies in the 1950s and 60s?
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May 1, 2023 14:39
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FPyat posted:How interesting are the Coca-Cola company's strategies in the 1950s and 60s? IMO very interesting because Coke and other big corporations were lowkey pioneering sociological research that they were doing to better understand demographics and sell more soda. Also company head Robert Woodruff would send angry letters to his personal friend Dwight Eisenhower when he was photographed drinking Coke with a straw at the white house because it was too "feminine" and the President would meekly reply back "but it makes the drink last longer" which I find hilarious. 60s were kind of interesting because Coke was still doing very homey, nostalgic advertising which seemed really stale when the various youth counterculture movements started picking up steam.
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May 1, 2023 14:51
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Finished The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu the other day and overall, I'm very disappointed. The first 75% of the book was extremely intriguing; the mystery behind the phenomenon was unique and kept me wanting more, and the concept behind the three-body problem and its implementation in the VR world was a ton of fun to read about. But, once the curtain behind its origin was revealed, it began to fall apart. What really ruined the book for me though was the last 25%, which I can only describe as "exposition overload". How the characters tackled how to disable the boat was completely ruined by them explaining exactly what they were going to do, removing any suspense or emotional impact well in advance; the author would've been better served to leave what was going to happen up in the air and reveal it as it happened. Since he didn't, the event itself lost any 'oof' and was uneventful, at best. The imagery of the event was super cool, though. From there, once the team found the messages between Triosolaris and Mike Evans, everything fell apart. The interrogation of Ye was devoid of any emotional impact since she freely admitted to what she had done with no reservation (never loving talk to the cops). The only positive that came of it was the limit to what she knew about the scheming of Trisolaris and Mike Evans, which was ruined shortly afterward. Once that part was over, the revelations of everything from Trisolaris' point of view, in my opinion, ruined all the setup the book had built. The realtime discussion between Trisolaris and Evans and others felt forced, and the Q&A between the Trisolaris scientist, military officer, and consul specific to the construction of the sophon and its use drug on and revealed so much that it became boring, despite the imaginative quantum background to it. It felt like Trisolaris too quickly learned of how humanity functions and that their plan to trick them all with "miracles" was too on the nose, and the labored explanation of how they did it in the form of a Q&A seemed like the author felt the need to justify and answer everything up to that point, all at once, and he, in my opinion, should've held some of it back for the second or third book. Beyond all that though, the characters lacked any unique and defining traits, which made it difficult to differentiate between who was who. Their motivations were paper thin (except for Ye, but even then, they were still lacking), and their extreme attitudes toward humanity's overall fate was too black and white to where it became unbelievable. I also had a hard time with the cultural shift specific to societal comradery and a sense of duty toward your job, passions and culture. It's the same type of cultural viewpoint you see in anime or any sort of Chinese/Japanese/Korean content, which isn't a bad thing, but not something I find interesting enough to commit to in a book. How characters yell "you must take care of your health!" or "you are so smart!" doesn't work for me, and characters became far too open with each other too quickly only after one basic conversation. I'm committed to finishing the series to see where it's going though I'm 50 pages into book 2 and am already annoyed by its posturing and the characters' need to preserve their bloodline or whatever. I hope it gets better from here but for such a renown and respected series, I was expecting better.
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May 1, 2023 18:39
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Honestly, my experience with these books was that they kept getting stupider as they went on. I put it down about halfway through The Dark Forest and haven't felt the slightest urge to go back to it.
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May 1, 2023 19:04
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anilEhilated posted:Honestly, my experience with these books was that they kept getting stupider as they went on. I put it down about halfway through The Dark Forest and haven't felt the slightest urge to go back to it. I’m glad it’s not just me, there was a lot of potential for a great story that feels was blown by book one’s reveals. My brother said each book gets better and that “it changed my view on aliens” and so far all I think is that he hasn’t read much sci-fi, then. Gonna push through to see how bad it gets.
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May 1, 2023 19:54
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Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-García. It was tremendous fun and exactly what I expected it to be, which in no way diminished the experience. Very creepy, excellent horror, so well written. The visuals are so good it’s begging to be adapted. Normally I don’t care for books being made into TV/movies but I am SO excited to see this when it comes out.
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May 1, 2023 20:20
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I gave up on book 2 as well. The 1st book had interesting bits but was a bit boring overall, book 2 was just boring.
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May 1, 2023 20:40
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