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Just wrapped up Echopraxia (read) and The Dark Forest (listened). Echopraxia was fine, but not nearly as good as its predecessor. I suppose I'm much more interested in the contents of Blindsight. I thought the writing was stronger in the first one, too. I've said enough about the awful 3 Body Problem books. The ending of the second book was unexpected, though. So credit for that. I think I'm going to temporarily shift off sci-fi with a listen of Mort (first Discworld book, for me) and a read of Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead.
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Nov 27, 2023 15:48
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Mort's an interesting first choice for a Discworld book, curious how you like it. I saved reading Mort until I read a few Discworld books since one of the main characters shows up in every Discworld book, and seeing how they reacted in those other books gave some fun context for Mort. I read The Color of Magic, Wyrd Sisters and Small Gods before diving into Mort. Finished My Best Friend's Exorcism by Grady Hendrix the other day, after a friend recommended it. It was fun. It drug a bit in the middle and it was at no point ever scary, but the bond between the two main characters came through well, and the ending was extremely sweet.
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Nov 27, 2023 16:03
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malnourish posted:Just wrapped up Echopraxia (read) and The Dark Forest (listened). I started to read the third book and quickly stopped. The first two were a lot of fun, though!
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Nov 27, 2023 21:43
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malnourish posted:
I've only read 3 Terry Pratchet books, The Colour of Magic, Pyramids & Mort. I thought all 3 were excellent.
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Nov 27, 2023 21:48
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wedgie deliverer posted:I just finished The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Haven't read a good novel in a long time, and I definitely had a few tears at the ending which I thought was beautiful. malnourish posted:Echopraxia was fine, but not nearly as good as its predecessor. I suppose I'm much more interested in the contents of Blindsight. I thought the writing was stronger in the first one, too.
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Nov 27, 2023 21:56
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Mort is my favorite Discworld book but I can’t separate it from reading it at like 12.
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Nov 28, 2023 02:13
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I am approaching the halfway point in Mort; I'm in my 30s and I'm definitely enjoying it. The intermittent dumb humor passes quickly enough, and some of the jokes are quite funny. I appreciate that it isn't just relying on comedy.
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Nov 28, 2023 02:26
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Professor Shark posted:I started to read the third book and quickly stopped. The first two were a lot of fun, though! Weird, I think the 3rd 3body problem book is the best one. It takes what was set up in the first two books and takes it places, and also times
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Nov 28, 2023 02:48
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malnourish posted:Echopraxia was fine, but not nearly as good as its predecessor. I suppose I'm much more interested in the contents of Blindsight. I thought the writing was stronger in the first one, too. I feel like it would have been a better book if Watts had been more willing to get inside the head of the vampire character. After thinking about it, that's what Blindsight left me wanting that Echopraxia failed to satisfy. Valerie the vampire remains a threatening mystery, perhaps even moreso than Sarastri in the first book, only to be thrown away by the end of it, without any further insight. Perhaps a deeper dive into alien mindsets is what the end of the book is promising, but if there were going to be a third book, I'd think we'd have heard more about it by now.
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Nov 28, 2023 04:28
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istewart posted:I feel like it would have been a better book if Watts had been more willing to get inside the head of the vampire character. After thinking about it, that's what Blindsight left me wanting that Echopraxia failed to satisfy. Valerie the vampire remains a threatening mystery, perhaps even moreso than Sarastri in the first book, only to be thrown away by the end of it, without any further insight. Perhaps a deeper dive into alien mindsets is what the end of the book is promising, but if there were going to be a third book, I'd think we'd have heard more about it by now. I agree. It seemed like the message was even the best of the vampires pale in comparison to a nascent alien hybrid, but it's as if Watts ran out of steam and decided it was time to wrap up. The last quarter of the book is a sprint to the finish line, with just a minor stop for a bit of desert dessert. I want to know if we have a Gohan scenario where the hybrid is "stronger" than the original.
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Nov 28, 2023 04:35
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Trainee PornStar posted:I've only read 3 Terry Pratchet books, The Colour of Magic, Pyramids & Mort. You haven't even cracked the top ten Pratchett books with those. (In no particular order and purely my opinion: Night Watch, Nation, Witches Abroad, Small Gods, Good Omens, Lords and Ladies, Reaper Man, Hogfather, I Shall Wear Midnight, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents.)
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Nov 28, 2023 14:50
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What I like about Pratchett books is you really can read them in any old order, he does a good job of reintroducing the characters in each one. My first book was Small Gods, which was a nice stand alone novel, and my second was Soul Music, which was in the middle of the Death and Wizards lines, and I loved it.
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Nov 28, 2023 15:27
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The older audiobooks read by Stephen Briggs are excellent too, and can generally be found on YouTube. It's my go to for falling to sleep to because the stories are entertaining and funny enough to keep my mind occupied but because I already know the stories it's not too stimulating to keep me awake and it doesn't matter if I fall asleep halfway through. It's also so full of jokes and great writing that every time I listen to one I hear/notice new things. Dunno how good the new audiobooks are. I gave them a try but bounced off hard because of how they handled the footnotes. In the Stephen Briggs version it's just read as is but with a slight echo, making it clear it's a footnote, whereas the new audiobooks ring a bell to start and end a footnote. The bell effect is just a bit too long and it takes me out of the main text completely. Stephen Briggs is also just a delight to listen to. He really nails the Pratchett vibe and his voices are great. You can really tell he loved Pratchett and his works, where the new audiobooks feel more produced and way less authentic.
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Nov 28, 2023 18:29
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I didn't realize the bell effect signalled a footnote, but that makes sense. I love the narration though. I think Sian does a phenomenal job creating a cozy atmosphere and the voice of Death is superb. I have a sample size of one half finished book. Looking forward to more though, perfect for the commute. (Only "issue" is I'm going to chew through my Audible credits at my current rate of consumption)
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Nov 28, 2023 22:48
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verbal enema posted:Also just finished Hyperion by Dan Simmons and now I gotta read the rest of the trilogy(?) now I enjoyed the entire series. I usually go back and reread it every few years. Mister Kingdom fucked around with this message at 03:05 on Nov 29, 2023 |
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Nov 29, 2023 02:58
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Strata by Pratchett. It wasn't all that good but it wasn't all that bad, either, especially for 4˝€. There were a couple of times that things happened and it wasn't at all clear what had happened, but it didn't bother me too much because they weren't important things. What happened to the raven, anyway?
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Nov 29, 2023 09:48
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Thick as Thieves by Peter Spiegelman: Picked this up from someone in the recommendations thread. A solid heist book that's a quick read. You don't get too much depth here, but the twists and turns, tension, and character interactions kept me engrossed. I don't think you'll be disappointed with this book if you like a good heist story.
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Dec 1, 2023 15:06
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I just finished Slow Horses by Mick Herron and I liked the story and whatnot, but there was something about the author's style of writing that picked away at my enjoyment. Like he would build suspense in a kinda artificial way by just describing something poorly
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Dec 1, 2023 15:15
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jesus WEP posted:I just finished Slow Horses by Mick Herron and I liked the story and whatnot, but there was something about the author's style of writing that picked away at my enjoyment. Like he would build suspense in a kinda artificial way by just describing something poorly
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Dec 1, 2023 15:45
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jesus WEP posted:I just finished Slow Horses by Mick Herron and I liked the story and whatnot, but there was something about the author's style of writing that picked away at my enjoyment. Like he would build suspense in a kinda artificial way by just describing something poorly I picked that one up a while ago, mostly because I grew up with a guy whose name is almost the same as one of the characters. It was all right as spy stuff goes, but it just never seemed to get into gear.
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Dec 1, 2023 19:48
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FInished The View from the Cheap Seats by Neil Gaiman. I liked it, but was surprised on how many of the intros to books he wrote which I had already read.
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Dec 2, 2023 22:23
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Gentleman Bandit: the True Story of Black Bart, the Old West's Most Infamous Stagecoach Robber, by John Boessenecker. A biography of Charles E. Boles, US Civil War veteran and legendary stagecoach robber who went by the moniker Black Bart after a character in a dime novel story. Boles was notable for doing all his hold-ups entirely solo, never actually harming anyone physically (he only even fired his gun once during a robbery, entirely on accident and after it was all done), and for refusing to rob any passengers. There's at least one story of an early hold-up where a passenger started to hand him her valuables and he just passed them right back to her. And he hid out for years by using his ill-gotten fortunes to fund a modest but quite comfortable lifestyle in San Francisco where he posed as a gentleman mine owner who occasionally left "to check on his investments." The charm of this soured by how he left a wife and three daughters destitute back east when he disappeared to start his career. Interesting overall, though Boessenecker's writing is a little dry. He's very thorough about documenting time and place for all sorts of events, so you could in theory use the book as the start to finding most of the places Boles did his robberies.
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Dec 2, 2023 23:10
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Just finished The King Must Die by Mary Renault, might have been recommended somewhere in this forum, actually! A mean story, beautifully told. I kind of just don't like reading about Bronze Age warfare and killing and slave-taking I suppose, but I'll say that I did gain some insights in how the mundane can be textured and the readers' attention can be led. There's simply no bland connective tissue here, every paragraph flows from one to the next to the next. No moment is treated as unimportant, yet hardly anything feels important either? Climaxes seem to just float on by without leaving much of an impact on anyone, specially not the hero of the story. The main character is a heroic dick, of the kind you see in all the epics, but he's very much not interesting. Not a whole lot going on in that head of his, beyond self-importance, impersonal lusts, exhortations to the gods, and some scant sentiment. He's proud, I guess, but so are all the rest. Everyone else seems to be afforded some emotions for the reader to see, some dignity as they die or grieve, some potential to be someone... but Theseus is just the hero pulled on strings and destiny. If Theseus were not in the book, and it were just some fictional travel literature, it might have just been better. A masterclass in writing that is economical but not characterless (except for the main character!), yet of such a well-trod subject (come on, it's Theseus!) that I could barely muster the enthusiasm for one read, let alone another. Guess I won't ever properly contemplate the craft of it. Sorry, Miss Renault, but I would rather read go back to reading some Chaucer.
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Dec 5, 2023 08:11
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Camp Damascus: Cool concept, kinda squandered. A lot of clumsy telling in this book. The titular camp, a supposedly dominating presence in the community, isn't established very well. Would've liked flashbacks or another point of view that explored life at the camp and the nightmare of having your sexuality suppressed more. The themes are ripe for horror but this book isn't scary. That said, using gay conversion therapy as a vehicle for (an attempt at) horror is novel enough for me that it did a lot of heavy lifting. And the MC is hella likeable. The prose is nothing special but it's a entertaining and fairly quick read.
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Dec 5, 2023 13:06
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Finished And On That Bombshell and it was a great read. I've been a Top Gear fans since the reboot and the book was great at answering all the questions I've had about the show.
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Dec 5, 2023 15:12
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The Star Diaries: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy was one of the finest speculative short story collections I've read, and it's not my favorite only because of Borges and Calvino's Cosmicomics.
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Dec 5, 2023 15:43
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slandergoose posted:Finished And On That Bombshell and it was a great read. I've been a Top Gear fans since the reboot and the book was great at answering all the questions I've had about the show. I didn’t know this existed. I always wanted to know how much of it was scripted. Like the episode where they drove lorries.
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Dec 5, 2023 16:16
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The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante A vertiginous trip into the mind of a teenager, it was good although I liked Ferrante's Days of Abandonment more. Netflix has an adaptation, I should watch it sometime.
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Dec 6, 2023 23:19
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Discworld talk: If you can get your hands on it I would also recommend The Last Hero, a big coffee-table style book with illustrations by Paul Kidby. Although it one of the later Discworld books, it was the first one I read and I found it to be a good introduction to the series. Anyway some books I've recently read: I re-read David Eddings' Elenium trilogy (The Diamond Throne, The Ruby Knight, and The Sapphire Rose) and I still enjoyed it, even if it is mostly comfort-food fantasy. The series is basically a retread of Edding's Belgariad series, but the changes in details make it feel different and interesting enough so that it still feels unique. I also tried to re-read the sequel series The Tamuli, but I just could not put up with it for a second time. The plot just didn't really grab me and the heroes rely on too many literal deus ex machinas. Inspired by the Tintin fanart on Adam Murphy's Instagram, I read Tintin in the New World by Frederic Tuten. This book came out in 1993 and I remember seeing it in the bookstore as a kid who had just read the various Tintin comics that were available at my local library, but I didn't read it until now. The book itself is a “postmodern” novel in which Tintin meets the cast of Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, which I haven't read so I might not have been fully able to appreciate Tuten's book. On the other hand it might just be that Tuten bit off more that he could chew in trying to blend low and high culture and the book might just be bad. The fact that there is a 100 page dream sequence in a 240 page book can't really be a good sign can it?
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Dec 7, 2023 06:30
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Jade City by Fonda Lee. I loved it so much I went out and got both sequels. It's like an alternate history setting with k-drama family politics mixed with super powers. One of the best works of recent fiction I've read in what feels like a really long time.
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Dec 7, 2023 07:02
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Bea Wolf by Zach Weinersmith; art by Boulet: A graphic novel reimagining of a portion of Beowulf. In this version, the main characters are kids, and Grendel is a dreary adult out to ruin the kids' fun. I'm a fan of Zach's ongoing SMBC web comic as well as his books, so I expected to enjoy this. And unsurprisingly, I did enjoy it. It tries to keep the flowery, epic poem nature of Beowulf while making it accessible to a younger audience. Zach does an awesome job with his specific use of words and kennings throughout. The story brings to mind an imaginative, exaggeration that you would expect a child to give when retelling events from their life. Boulet does a great job bringing the story to life with his intricate drawings. A wonderful read all around.
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Dec 7, 2023 16:46
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Good-Natured Filth posted:Bea Wolf by Zach Weinersmith; art by Boulet: A graphic novel reimagining of a portion of Beowulf. In this version, the main characters are kids, and Grendel is a dreary adult out to ruin the kids' fun. I'm a fan of Zach's ongoing SMBC web comic as well as his books, so I expected to enjoy this. And unsurprisingly, I did enjoy it. It tries to keep the flowery, epic poem nature of Beowulf while making it accessible to a younger audience. Zach does an awesome job with his specific use of words and kennings throughout. The story brings to mind an imaginative, exaggeration that you would expect a child to give when retelling events from their life. Boulet does a great job bringing the story to life with his intricate drawings. A wonderful read all around. This sounds really good. I am going to check my local bookstores for this, thanks!
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Dec 7, 2023 17:21
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How To See by David Salle This is a book by a contemporary artist about contemporary art, and I think it's exactly what I've always wanted. I don't have any education in art history, and I'm slowly fixing that. It's always been easier for me to understand and appreciate older art, with its more traditional "form and structure". In fact I always thought I had to learn phrases like, I dunno, "removing the signifier", "killing the object", and every single artist's goddamn intentions to understand contemporary art, but now I think it's much more about "irony" and "quotation" and, still, "form and structure". "How to See" covers of a huge swath of the later half of the 20th century art world from the point of view of someone who was there. Salle was friends with the artists, he was at the parties, he saw who survived. In "The Petite Cinema of John Baldessari" he brings in everything from Godard to the (brief?) fall of welded metal art to talk about why Baldessari left painting behind. But nobody is reading this book. At least not many. Which is unfortunate because I think a lot of people are as confused about the art world as I am and could use a book like this, and I sure would love to read conversations about it. I felt the same way about New Sounds: A Listener's Guide to New Music by John Schaefer, which was an even more plain-spoken introduction to the world of strange, new music. (And if you want to see and hear something great, watch this youtube video of In C by Terry Riley) Now, I'm off to read the "White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art,” essay.
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Dec 7, 2023 18:41
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Starter Villain, by John Scalzi. It tries to be a love letter to classic James Bond type supervillains via a down on his luck schlub suddenly inheriting his mysterious uncle's estate including a volcano fortress, but runs into the problem that Scalzi only has a handful of jokes to tell on the subject and doesn't know how to write this kind of corny but still entertaining plot. It's a quick read that made me laugh a little, but I'm glad I got it from the library instead of paying money.
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Dec 7, 2023 20:20
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Cythereal posted:Starter Villain, by John Scalzi. It tries to be a love letter to classic James Bond type supervillains via a down on his luck schlub suddenly inheriting his mysterious uncle's estate including a volcano fortress, but runs into the problem that Scalzi only has a handful of jokes to tell on the subject and doesn't know how to write this kind of corny but still entertaining plot. It's a quick read that made me laugh a little, but I'm glad I got it from the library instead of paying money. Coincidentally, I just finished my turn with my library's copy of Starter Villain. This is a fair assessment. I liked it, but it's not Scalzi's best. It was kind of interesting as an exercise in how a Bond villain might "actually" work in the world, with only a little exaggeration from what's possible in the present day. Still worth the time to read if you want something light.
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Dec 8, 2023 10:51
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Rabbits by Terry Miles. It's been a while since I've spent an evening ensconced in a cozy chair and reading an entire full-length book cover to cover in one sitting, but this did it for me. Rabbits, I only learned after checking it out from the library, got started as a podcast before being adapted to a novel, and it shows in some ways. Essentially, the book is about one of those augmented/alternative reality games that were briefly the Next Big Thing before being largely forgotten about - a game that takes place in real life, following clues and unraveling puzzles to find rewards, but supposing that there's a secret underground ARG surrounded by a shadowy conspiracy and vast rewards. Most of the book is spend following the protagonist as they become involved in the game, following clues and solving puzzles, and I feel the book does a pretty good job of striking an atmosphere where everything seems off-kilter and it's unclear whether there's actually supernatural events afoot or if the protagonist - explicitly identified as neurodiverse - is becoming delusional and seeing things that aren't there because of their obsession with the game. While the ending is an expected letdown, and the book is undeniably dated in some ways (what is never specifically stated to be Slenderman makes a few appearances), I felt that the book was a pretty enjoyable ride up until that point. I also have to credit the book for never stating a gender for the protagonist, and thus making the love interest gay or straight as you desire. The book is told in the first person, the protagonist has a gender-neutral name, and nothing in the story indicates their gender one way or another (as it happens the audiobook used a female VA and so the author decided to make the protagonist of the book officially female moving forward, thus making this a book with a gay love story). I frankly don't expect satisfying endings from this kind of book, but I enjoyed the trip to get there. As someone who might be neurodiverse myself, I related very much to the mood throughout the book of "Did I actually see that, or is my mind making up connections that aren't there? I'm self-aware enough to know that the latter is very possible, but all the same I'm pretty sure I saw something I shouldn't have..."
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Dec 8, 2023 20:10
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Cythereal posted:Rabbits by Terry Miles. Oh nice! I didn't realize they adapted the podcast into a book. I enjoyed the Rabbits podcast (along with a few others that Terry Miles has done), so I'll be adding this to my "to read" pile.
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Dec 8, 2023 20:19
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They also turned it into a short film https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drjQfQtv2BQ
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Dec 8, 2023 20:24
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lifg posted:How To See by David Salle I have an art history degree and it doesn't help much with contemporary art other than giving me something to blame for it. Since art is now "anything you want it to be" that means everybody has been pushing the boundaries for the past 100 years and you get stuff that worked and a whole hell of a lot of poo poo that didn't. I can't remember if I posted about it here but in a similar vein I read The Quality Instinct in hopes of improving my ability to detect good art from the collector's side of it and did not get what I wanted out of it. Lots of nice and amusing museum anecdotes though. And God I'd love to chat about art all day too. Edit: Dumb question lifg, have you read Georgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists? That's the work pointed to as having begun the entire concept of art history and it covers all your high Renaissance favorites. If I recall it was written contemporaneously to the time period or not too far off and I think Oxford press is the most common English translation you'll find? It's been a while. Turbinosamente fucked around with this message at 20:45 on Dec 8, 2023 |
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Dec 8, 2023 20:40
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Turbinosamente posted:Edit: Dumb question lifg, have you read Georgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists? That's the work pointed to as having begun the entire concept of art history and it covers all your high Renaissance favorites. If I recall it was written contemporaneously to the time period or not too far off and I think Oxford press is the most common English translation you'll find? It's been a while. I haven’t but I will. I really haven’t read much in this area.
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Dec 8, 2023 21:59
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