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I just finished up Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield. It was pretty pulpy historical fiction; it was a fun read but not amazing in any way. The battle and training scenes gave a good sense of hoplite tactics. My main complaint is that the main character didn't seem "real", he was just a vehicle to show what everyone else was doing without much of a mind of his own. So not very deep, but a quick fun read if you like Greek stuff. fake edit: Once again ASOIAF ruined another historical novel for me.....
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Jan 9, 2007 01:48
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I just started and finished reading A Canticle For Leibowitz yesterday (thanks to a power outage). I'm not really sure if I liked the book or not. I loved the first 2/3rds of it's black comedy view of our post-apocalyptic future, but part III seemed to push the religious issues too far into the front, and Miller basically squanders the climax of the book by having his main character talk about how euthanasia is bad for 30 pages. Also, what the hell was the meaning behind the old black lady's second head being Eve or something? That didn't make a bit of sense, especially considering how most of the book eschews and ridicules the supernatural.
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Jan 9, 2007 15:56
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I just finished Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. I read the last 200 pages or so yesterday, despite a disappointing ending I thought it was a really interesting read. Reminded me alot of that movie Pi.
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Jan 10, 2007 08:45
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Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road by Neil Peart. I finished it by deciding not to continue on reading any more. The first part of this book was interesting enough, however the second part is nothing but letters from him to other people. Not only did I get sick of rereading the same thoughts and themes over and over, but I felt a little weird about reading through someone else's mail. I was definitely bored by the time I stopped. I've moved on to Neil Gaiman's Fragile Things.
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Jan 10, 2007 20:13
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American Empire series by Harry Turtledove. This includes the 5th, 6th and 7th books in his Southern Victory series detailing how world history might have been different had the Confederate states won the Civil War. The American Empire series covers the years between world war I and world war II (1918-1941). Loved it.
Total Party Kill fucked around with this message at 20:25 on Jan 10, 2007 |
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Jan 10, 2007 20:22
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The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton. Absolutely loved it. The writing style, dialogue, and character musings reminded me immediately of Wilde. Chesterton throws in a ton of his own philosophy, and what you have is a fun little adventure that tries to be big and grand, but at the same time not. It's like the characters themselves keep the story grounded and end up making it great. I'll be quoting lines from this book for a long, long time. big trivia FAIL fucked around with this message at 21:35 on Jan 10, 2007 |
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Jan 10, 2007 21:32
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Just finished up 2 books. The first was Dies the Fire by S.M. Stirling. I posted about it in The Worst Book Ever thread. The other book I recently finished is The Death of Vishnu by Manil Suri-- and it's absolutely beautiful. It's about a poor, drunk man named Vishnu who lays dying in a poor Bombay apartment. The way Suri tells this story is frighteningly good. For one thing, all 300 pages are effectively written in the present tense. He was so good at making this tense feel natural, I didn't even notice it till page 40 or so. Suri is also one of the few authors I'm aware of who can flow seamlessly between characters. Most attempts at this seem to be disjointed and awkward (S.M. Stirling, for example), or leave you hanging, absolutely desperate for the character to return (George R.R. Martin). I swear, Suri wrote each character just perfectly-- any less of a chapter, I would have been left wanting. Any more of a chapter, and I would have been oversaturated. And it's this character jumping that's so strong--as it should be, since Suri tells of Vishnu through the different apartment tenets and their lives. His religious symbolism is some of the best I've read--sometimes it was a little too explicit, but generally it wasn't. What I found so, so, so well done is the order in which the characters are introduced. We go from a low form of human life to someone potentially entering godhead to someone being thrust back down to a lower form-- all in the context of one tiny, extremely poor apartment building. I thought it was a great depiction of the samsara cycle, and an ever better depiction of toil and struggle and love and if it's worth it or not. Can you tell I liked it? 
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Jan 11, 2007 03:13
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Freakanomics by Steven Levitts was a good book but not nearly as groundbreaking as the many people who recommended it to me made it seem. It has made me look at a few things in a new light but I had a hard time getting into this book. The switching complete change of topic from one chapter to another made it hard for me to get a good flow while reading. The ending also felt like a let down. He goes on and on for two hundred pages about how through data one can find almost anything and there will always be patterns but at the end he completely upends that by citing two examples that buck the data. I figure that is suppose to serve as a warning to not always trust the dat or some type of uplifting message about how you can still succeed in spite of everything but I felt it weakened his argument about how data and raw numbers never lie. The chapters on names and how they affect or don't affect kids read very poorly put together to me. I can't really place why really, they just felt thrown together. I would recommend this book though, it was good enough that those flaws were forgivable.
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Jan 11, 2007 03:55
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vivisectvnv posted:White Noise by Don DeLillo I read that last summer, I agree with your assessment. It does tend to wane off. And YES it's great fodder for a screenplay. DeLillo's writing is quite cinematic.
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Jan 11, 2007 05:00
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I just finished Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Good book with a few incredible passages, but I ended up not liking the character of Tereza much at all so her chapters really seemed to drag on. The last chapter was extremely well written and probably one of the better parts of the book overall.
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Jan 11, 2007 05:20
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I read Lee J. Nelson's The Boy in the Box in one day. Original, yes. Kafkaesque, yes. But in the end all I got was a story that petered out while saying "Hey! This was Kafkaesque!" Could have been so much better. I'd love to find a modern author that has done Kafka better than Kafka.
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Jan 11, 2007 05:45
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Lawnie posted:Finished Closing Time by Joseph Heller. The sequel to Catch-22. Oh, by the way, it was so bad, I'm considering making a I think that was mostly Heller's point. Not to make a sequel with all the zany characters of old, but to show how time wears on them all. Oh, and I just finished The Count of Monte Cristo - good read but a little difficult to get into.
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Jan 11, 2007 07:51
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smiley. Please, never read it. Ever. No matter how much you loved Yossarian the first time, he's just a creepy old man in Closing Time.
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Just finished reading Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut today. I remembered how my friends hated it when they were forced to read it in middle school, but a friend convinced me to read it by praising it the best book of all time. I disagree, but it is very good. It's zany and full of world war II history and reflections on war, and it was really entertaining and easy to read. A couple of weeks back I read Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, which I thought was fantastic. The book expresses a lot of Bulgakov's frustration and fear about living in Soviet Russia, and if you're interested in that, Christian mythology or a decently written female character, then you'll probably enjoy it. It also has a fantasy element to it -- a sort of magic realist/german romantic feeling. I have no idea what the real name for that is, but i hope you can still get the idea. Excellent.
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Jan 12, 2007 01:26
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I just finished The Odyssey while listening to a companion course from The Teaching Company. It was excellent. The lectures, while slightly excessive were certainly a great help. It really went into great depth about the Greek notions of hospitality and the meanings of certain sections. In fact, I love using TTC courses for any classic works I read. (If available, obviously.) If you've never tried them, I highly recommend that you give it a shot.
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Jan 12, 2007 01:33
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shadow of a goat posted:I think that was mostly Heller's point. Not to make a sequel with all the zany characters of old, but to show how time wears on them all. That's dumb. Why would you intentionally write a terrible book? The only parts of Closing Time I really hated were about Steeplechase. Whatever the amusement part was called. The book became much worse as it continued, but the park was easily the worst part.
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Jan 12, 2007 04:03
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I just finished Robert Charles Wilson's (Charles, not Anton!) fantastic book Spin, and I'm still floored from just how good it was. If you see it in a book store, definitely pick it up, but don't you DARE and read the blurb on the back, which is a total spoiler. It's a bit ironic that this book is about the virtue of patience and yet I couldn't wait to find out what happens further in. I spent the last night reading and collecting tired eyes for work. Highly, highly recommended!
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Jan 12, 2007 10:34
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I just finished Larry Niven's Ringworld. I'm sure many people here have read it so I don't really need to go into detail. For those who haven't, it's an excellent book, kind of medium strength sci-fi, Niven definitely likes to talk about his gadgets and the like, he's to future tech what Clancy is to military hardware, except you no, not awful. Now I'm 70 pages into Pratchett's Sourcery so we'll see how that goes.
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Jan 12, 2007 14:27
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I just finished H. Beam Piper's The Cosmic Computer and, ick. The poor guy can't finish off a scene to save his life. It doesn't help that his characters are postage-stamp flat, either.
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Jan 12, 2007 16:16
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Bukowski's "Post Office", in under 30 hours too. drat is he a quick read, almost as quick as Douglas Adams.
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Jan 12, 2007 17:10
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Just finished Lawrence Block's All the Flowers Are Dying, the latest in the Matt Scudder series. It's my favorite of the newer "detective" novels, with an excellent sense of setting and always realistic. No crazy twists, no drawing-room solutions (though Block does that terrifically with his Bernie Rhodenbarr "Burglar" series). This one continues the serial killer story from Everybody Dies with the nameless homicidal genius returning after faking his own death in the house fire- no one was sure he was dead, but they had nothing to follow him with. This book generates a genuine sense of fear with "AB" the killer, because he is smarter than our protagonist and the police, and can blend into many situations like the pure psychopathic predator he is. Old friends return- Mick Ballou the Irish gangster, Danny Boy Bell the information merchant. Block has a real talent for character and drawing you in with intriguing and realistic conversations that drive the story. He deserves his Hugos. I just started the latest in his slightly light-hearted Keller series, Hit Parade. Those are about a hit man, and also enjoyable- light and literary, not heavy action. Block delights in thinking up how to get away with murder, and the Keller books are good reading.
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Jan 12, 2007 17:39
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The last book I read was Ripley Under Ground, the second book in Patricia Highsmith's Ripley series. While not as good as the first book, I'm a huge fan of Highsmith's writing, and the way she goes through the machinations and logic of Ripley's plans keeps me reading. This second book has some cat-and-mouse action, but a lot of it is devoted to characters standing around, talking about art forgeries. This is why I assumed they didn't make a movie of this book - until I discovered that they DID make it into a movie, but it was never released. The next book, Ripley's Game, was made into a movie with John Malkovich. Highsmith was definitely influenced by the story of Elmyr D'hory (Wikipedia it) when she wrote this novel. It's pretty facsinating (d'Hory's like) if you have the time to read about it.
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Jan 12, 2007 17:59
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Just finished reading Jonathan Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn last night. It is about the exploits of Lionel Essrog, a small time wiseguy with Tourette's, who is investigating his mobster boss's murder. Very entertaining, and it was hard to restrain oneself from laughing when Lionel goes on a Tourettic tangent (I can only assume it was Lethem's intention, but I still felt as if I shouldn't be... how can one refrain from chuckling at him spouting "gently caress-me-Bailey-phone!" in a serious situation?) I felt it kind of petered out in the final act, with many of the key focuses of the investigation being left either relatively unanswered or finished up in passing - Tony? Who was the Polish giant? What about the Detective? The epilogue itself seemed tacked on. It would have been better if it had not been included, rather than giving half-answers and an "and everyone lived happily ever after" vibe, but I still thoroughly enjoyed the originality of the work and the difference of perspective - something I quite enjoyed in Mark Haddon's Curious Incident.... Not sure what's next on the docket...
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Jan 12, 2007 18:44
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My job just got incredibly tedious. I usually would just read in between periods of actual work but this required my eyes but not my mind. It was just the worst kind of tedium so I turned to audiobooks from my library. American gods worked well, the guy gave everyone pretty distinct voices and it was easy to follow. I think I made a mistake with Neuromancer, however. I've never read cyberpunk before. I've played Deus Ex, and beneath a steel sky, and have always wanted to, but this was my first cyberpunk book. Sorry, "book". It was very hard to follow. My gloved hands were coated with incredibly stinky chemicals so I couldn't rewind and if I missed some transition between reality or cyberspace or jumping behind someone else's eyes I was hosed. The parts I caught were awesome as hell and I think when I leave this job I will give it a read through. Also the guy read it in this slow alabama drawl. And every time he tried to put emphasis on something it came across like "gonna make you squeel like a piggie" and I found it very distracting. Then at the end it was all "as read by the author"  Also I notice that Do Clonal Yakuza Assassins Dream of Vat-Grown Sheep? by zack parsons was almost directly lifted from neuromancer, at least the first page. I haven't read SA story time in a couple years but I was thinking that it was sounding extremely familiar.
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Jan 12, 2007 20:01
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I just finished reading Fritz Leiber's The Big Time. After reading his short story "X Marks the Pedwalk", I was fairly impressed by his work (XMtP is about a outright war between pedestrians and automobiles). TBT was interesting it some ways, but overall it strikes me as akin to Sartre's "Waiting for Godot" in that NOTHING EVER HAPPENS. For the most part. My (perhaps too-) high expectations were disappointed.
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Jan 13, 2007 03:38
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I've finished A Game of Thrones, the first book in the Song of Ice and Fire series, and it was freaking amazing. It's the first time that I've been so much into a fantasy book since I was about 14. Unfortunately someone in my library borrowed the sequel 
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Jan 13, 2007 15:31
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Bernard Cornwell Enemy of God. Its Arthurian novel full of magic even more than your usual fireball fare but yet again you swear that there is no magic or whatsoever in single page. Cant wait till read last book Excalibur.
Galewolf fucked around with this message at 23:32 on Jan 13, 2007 |
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Jan 13, 2007 23:30
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I just breezed through Tracker by G. Maurice Goodwin, and was again reminded that no matter what school of thought profilers belong to, they are all, without a doubt, egotistical assholes. At this point I've totally given up on trying to learn anything useful and instead am enjoying reading the various Douglas/Ressler/Turvey/Goodwin books as glorified law enforcement pissing contests. Also finished re-reading David Lykken's The Antisocial Personalities which was relievingly scientific after the hot mess of that other book.
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Jan 14, 2007 00:56
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Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell. The premise is that we (as humans) make decisions within seconds, and sometimes microseconds, that are scarily accurate. We then tend to do one of two things: *Ignore that ‘thin-slice’ (as the author calls it) of information and go on to talk and second guess and make mistakes *Go with the snap decision because we have either learned to trust our instincts or because our psyche forces us to do so It's really fascinating stuff, and as someone who makes these decisions and relies on them, I found it to be very true. It's a helluva good read... I posted a few more thoughts here: http://scottmcdaniel.org/w/a/280
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Jan 14, 2007 08:21
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Just finished reading A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon. My girlfriend and I had both agreed that it seemed very much like a book I'd enjoy, as I rather enjoy quirky, darker humour books that touch on real life issues. Sometimes the stronger the issues the better. Having heard great things about The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, I requested it for Christmas. The writing itself was very well done, and I enjoyed the overall style, however a book about a man thinking he's dying while his cheating wife debates leaving him, while their gay son deals with love, and their daughter struggles with marriage ended up being a little TOO depressing for me. It certainly creates very good characters, but I found myself at the end of the book simply wishing for it all to end so I could read something dumbed down.
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Jan 15, 2007 01:24
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Axissillian posted:Just finished a few books Guess what book I just finished? I think that makes me the second American male to have read it after 21.
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Jan 15, 2007 02:41
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I've been reading the Pratchett 'Discworld' Novels. Just finished Soul Music, and before that Lords and Ladies and Men at Arms. I didn't care for L&L that much (although there were a few good jokes), M@A was great, and SM was pretty good. Taking a break from these for a bit before going on to the next ones. I finished George R R Martin's children's book The Ice Dragon while on the train this morning. From an adult's perspective, it was a decent little fable, and there are some nice illustrations. Overall it seemed somewhat violent for a childrens book (the age listed is for 9-12 years). There's a scene in the book where the main character is watching the wounded from a war go by her home, and GRRM describes the horrific injuries they have, from burns to missing limbs. There's also a battle scene toward the end, which seemed more like 'fantasy' violence. It's a little hard for me to remember what it was like to be 9 years old, but to me the scene with the wounded soldiers would be very disturbing to someone that old. Started on Neil Gaiman's Coraline after finishing The Ice Dragon. This is again a YA adult book. So far it seems to be hitting all of the Gaiman themes: Plucky girl character, a strange world hidden just under the surface of things, weird character names like Ms. Forcible, and disturbing imagery. Oh yeah, and there's drawings by Dave McKean. Overall, I'm enjoying it so far, and I'd imagine someone in the 9-12 year range would too, if they enjoyed a creepier sort of story. Also in the past few weeks I read the latest couple of issues of Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine. The standout story for me was 'Fool' by John Morressy. It's a fantasy where the main character is an ugly child who is gotten rid of as a child and the story of how he comes to a position of power as a fool in a rich lord's household, using his wits and secret power. What's great about the story is Morressy's exploring of the darkness of humanity, and what lengths people go through to survive in a world that would throw them away. I recently (in the past couple of years) became a fan of Mr. Morressy and it was a shame to hear that he passed away this past year. He's written some lightweight humorous fantasy stories (the Kedrigern stories), but the ones that really struck a chord with me were the ones where he explored the darker areas of the human heart. One of the stories I had as an audiobook 'The Resurrection of Fortunato', which is the story of what happens AFTER the end of Poe's 'The Cask of Amontillado'. It was given a great reading by Harlan Ellison, which helped leave a good impression with me. John Morressy R.I.P.
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Jan 18, 2007 15:54
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From Falling Bodies to Radio Waves, by Emilio Segre (again). Excellent history of the classical physics era from a physicist. Delves nicely into the movements, organizations and interpersonal relations between the men who shaped classical physics. The follow-up book From X-rays to Quarks picks up the story and covers the "modern" period of physics.
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Jan 20, 2007 00:15
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I actually just recently gave up on Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris. I got about half way through, and couldn't relate to the character at all. I've never read about a character who was such the antithesis of me. I was constantly annoyed when he would dismiss his father, because his father was the character I related to the most. Each time the father would begin to interest me, the narrator would change subjects because of Sedaris's boredom. So I decided, with the help of the Vonnegut thread, that Vonnegut humor may be something I'd enjoy, and since my friend had thrown a beaten up copy of Slaughter House V at me on my porch a couple of years ago, I found it in my room an began to read it. I finished it in two days, and highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys dry humor and the odd insights of a very dry wit. I won't even try to summarize the tone of a Vonnegut novel, so I will merely recommend it. It's short, so it isn't too difficult to just try it for a taste.
Lao Tsu fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Jan 24, 2007 |
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Jan 20, 2007 00:55
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Just finished reading The Lost Continent by Bill Bryson. As the book goes on, he staedily gives in more and more to the temptation to lament how things aren't any more as they were. It really becomes just a giant whinge by the end of it, although quite a funny one. Now for The Crucible
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Jan 20, 2007 01:27
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Originally based on the recommendations from the SA forums I recently finished A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin. And it was great! The funny thing is that a friend of mine recommended the same series some years ago, but I dismissed his weird taste as a D&D, elvish, centaur and Tolkien wannabe fetish! Before I go on with the rest of the series I'm going to read some George Pelecanos: King Suckerman just to mix it up.
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Jan 20, 2007 01:29
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I just finished Elizabeth Roudinesco ~ Lacan, a biography of Jacque Lacan. Not as good as people tended to say: her prose is often confusing, often refers to her previous books without much explanation (as her history of psychonalysis) and gives almost no explanation of any technical term she adoperates. Yet there are plenty of good anecdotes and as far as I know is the most recent and complete biography on the absolute master. Probably a read that would come more useful to someone that has already been initiated to the thought of Lacana and to psychonalysis in general.
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Jan 20, 2007 13:53
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I just finished reading Brother Odd by Dean Koontz. I've read a lot of his other novels, but I think the Odd Thomas series is his best. The books' plots are more well fleshed-out, and the characters seem more believable, at least as believable as supernatural characters can be. So if anyone has been debating getting into Koontz but doesn't know where to start, definitely start with Odd Thomas. I'm going to start reading Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future by Mike Resnick next, and will also dive into American Gods by Neil Gaiman Gaiman for the second time. I couldn't get into it the last time, but I promised myself and my boyfriend (who recommended it highly) that I'd give it another chance.
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Jan 20, 2007 17:39
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I just finished Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman. I don't care much for his poetry, but there were a few really good short stories in there.
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Jan 20, 2007 17:44
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Just finished all four books in the A Song of Ice and Fire(A Game of Thrones,A Clash of Kings,A Storm of Swords,A Feast for Crows) series after 2 weeks and many after work marathon reading sessions.
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Jan 20, 2007 19:35
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I just finished reading The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. It was an interesting premise (lots of people are sterile, so handmaids have to step up to the task of creating babies, to explain it very poorly and quickly), and her writing style is pretty unique, but I think I prefer her poetry better. It's not a book I'll read again, but I'm still glad I did. Lao Tsu and squidtrick, have you read Cat's Cradle by Vonnegut? I liked it better than Slaughterhouse-Five, but those are the only two books I've read by him. Good stuff though, for sure!
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Jan 20, 2007 20:25
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