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bal541 posted:Ender's Game again! I love this book! pew pew lazers I just finished this as well (for the first time). The story is amazing and I can't wait to continue the series. I hope the next books are at least good, if not as great as the first.
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Mar 1, 2007 06:19
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I just finished The Forever War by Joe Haldeman in two sittings, which I haven't been able to do with a book for a long time. Vietnam in space, but with the effects of relativity thrown in as well. The happy ending came out of nowhere, but was a nice dose of happy in an otherwise grim book.
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Mar 1, 2007 08:39
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Scipio Africanus posted:I just finished The Forever War by Joe Haldeman in two sittings, which I haven't been able to do with a book for a long time. Vietnam in space, but with the effects of relativity thrown in as well. The happy ending came out of nowhere, but was a nice dose of happy in an otherwise grim book. Great book which I have sitting besides me  I just finish the Reality Dysfunction by Peter Hamilton, for some reasons I love his stories but sometimes skip whole pages because they're devoted to details :/
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Mar 1, 2007 08:40
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Just finished Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad for AP English IV. I love this novella, yet am no closer to defining what this book means to me. I love the use of darkness versus light and the ultimate tragedy of Kurtz. I feel there are several passages everyone can relate to, one being where he talks of the impossibility of relating to another a dream or the epoch of your life. Fantastic stuff, and I urge you if you have the time to read it. It is short, around 76 pages.
JustWalkedIn fucked around with this message at 10:22 on Mar 1, 2007 |
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Mar 1, 2007 10:19
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Twisc posted:I just finished this as well (for the first time). The story is amazing and I can't wait to continue the series. I hope the next books are at least good, if not as great as the first. I'm really, really sorry to disappoint you, but they're not. At all. 
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Mar 1, 2007 15:25
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A Game of Chess posted:I'm really, really sorry to disappoint you, but they're not. At all. Hey, to be fair, Speaker for the Dead is very good ... in a very different way to Ender's Game. It's after the second book that the series goes into slow constant decline.
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Mar 1, 2007 15:57
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Just finished reading We and On The Beach. They were both pretty good, although On the Beach seemed to go pretty slowly.
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Mar 1, 2007 17:31
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I read Ender's Game for the first time two days ago. I enjoyed it a lot, enough to read it straight through with only one break for a short nap. Fast-paced, easy read. It was recommended to me by a lot of different people, so I bought it and I wasn't disappointed in the least. I'm planning on reading Slaughterhouse Five sometime today, and I still want to finish Stephen King's The Dark Tower series, The Stand, and Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.
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Mar 1, 2007 17:43
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A Collection of Essays by George Orwell. Obviously, everyone knows Orwell for 1984 and Animal Farm, but he's just a fantastically interesting man no matter what he writes; I normally can barely slog through anything non-fictional or realistic, but I really enjoyed both his Down and Out in Paris and London (which was the former) and Burmese Days (which was the latter.) In those, as with this collection, you get (or at least I got) the sense that he's a perfectly intellectually honest man. He seems willing to admit all of his faults whenever they are relevant to what he writes, and equally willing to lay all of his views out in the open, such that any biases are perfectly honest. More specifically, in this book of essays, he talks about a number of terribly interesting subjects, most notably the English language and a few of my favorite English authors (well, one English and one American,) Dickens and Henry Miller. I've always felt there was nothing so instructive as literary criticism coming from someone whose writing I already admire, and in Orwell's case, this proves true. I may be gushing here, but honestly, I love his writing so much that I deliberately bought a book of essays. God, he's brilliant.
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Mar 1, 2007 17:48
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I just finished Lolita after a nice long wait between the two parts ( because I had to return it   ). I've been going on a little reading binge after realizing that I'd spent the last year or two not cracking books at all, and Nabokov was the first place I went. So now I've finally finished it and I'm still a little confused about the end, because I had to read the drat foreword that indicated some stuff I hadn't picked up on. I guess I have to go read the last bit again...Got Slaughterhouse Five and One Hundred Years in Solitude to read now and it's so much more fun than doing work.
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Mar 1, 2007 20:03
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I just finished The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson. I picked this up after seeing some good reviews, and it sounded fairly funny. After reading it, I would have to agree on the most part. It was very funny and uplifting at the same time. It was interesting too, and it talked about a time in history that is often immortalized in American culture. I liked reading about the parts of his life that seem to fit right in with the stereotypical 50s household, as I think he did a wonderful job of talking about the childhood. My only complaints would be that he rushed the end. The first 200 or so pages are about 11 years of his life, while the last 50 pages are on the next 8. Two of the characters he talked most about were introduced in those pages, so I didn't get the whole story. This person he talks about, Stephen Katz, is the most wonderful person he's ever met, and then he goes on to talk about him stealing things, being an alcoholic, and then becoming an opium addict. It didn't really fit the story and it didn't make much sense. Overall, I thought it was a good read, as well as a funny read. Not the marvelous book that it is getting attention for, as I seem to see and hear the name Bill Bryson far too often. It's not a difficult read, and it's a good 250 pages to read, enjoy, and laugh at.
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Mar 5, 2007 10:50
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I actually just finished two books, the first of which was The Dead Father's Club by Matt Haig. It was all right, but it took me a while to get used to the way it was written. It's told in a semi-stream of consciousness style from an 11 year old's perspective, so it is meant to seem a little scatter brained. Ostensibly it's a retelling of Hamlet, but I think that it's a wrong to think of it as simply a "remix" and not as it’s own story. The second was Ghost Interrupted by Sonia Singh. I have sinking suspicion that Sonia is a chick-lit "lite" author, but I was looking for something simple to read on a long flight, and I'm a sucker for stories about ghosts. I found it very entertaining, and not too woman centric for me to enjoy. My biggest problem is that it was written more like a short story for a junior high class then a novel. By that I mean that the book moved at a break neck pace, and just left me wanting more details about everything. It went so fast that I literally read it in four and a half hours. All that aside, it was all I was looking for: an entertaining piece of escape fiction. Next up for me is White Noise by Don Delillo.
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Mar 6, 2007 01:44
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Just finished Hitching Rides with Bhudda originally titled Hokkaido Highway Blues which I thought was a much better title. Easily one of the best and most personal pieces of travel writing that I have ever read. Yeah, yeah I know, It's about a westerner in Japan, whoop-de-doo how many other times have you read this before, etc... But what Ferguson manages to do is to make it feel more like you're hanging out with a friend, shooting the poo poo. It brings the book to a whole new level. Next up is Cormac McCarthy's The Road.
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Mar 6, 2007 03:07
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Finished Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood this morning. I've only read one other book by him -- Kafka on the Shore -- which I thought was much, much better. There's nothing inherently wrong with Norwegian Wood, but it just wasn't as crazy and wonderful as I hoped. Didn't quite live up to the 'love story' it was sold as either, but I think this can be blamed on my dislike for the protagonist. He just seemed overly perfect. And obsessed with his genitalia... or maybe that's Murakami himself. Next on my list: Nabokov's Pale Fire, and Sophie Kinsella's Shopaholic & Baby. 
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Mar 6, 2007 04:03
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I finished Urth of the New Sun, which I thought was very interesting and moving in parts, but confusing like the first four books in other parts. I think I might be too dim to fully understand it. Now I'm reading Proust's Swann's Way and it's rather difficult to get through.
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Mar 6, 2007 08:13
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The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson. Alternative History which presents a world where the Black Plague of the 14th century had a 99% mortality rate and destroyed the population of Europe. This new world is dominated by Islam and Buddhism. The book follows a group of characters through the centuries as they are constantly reincarnated into different lives and cultures. I liked it but couldn't finish it. After 500 pages I just lost interest. I don't know enough about Eastern history to know about the points of divergence that make alternative history so much fun to read. I found that it glossed over many important events in history to instead follow the often boring lives of the main characters. There was no story, and no climax. It read like a text book in many places and I could never develop any relationship with the characters as they had different personalities everytime they were reincarnated.
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Mar 6, 2007 16:59
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I just finished Syrup by Max Berry. I finished it in one sitting, simply because it is pretty hard to put down once you get into it. I really liked Berry's marketing wit throughout the novel, but felt that the end was a little flat compared to the rest. Still a good read, though.
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Mar 6, 2007 20:28
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I just finished Voltaire's Candide. I found it to be a very amusing and biting satire of the philosophies of the time period it was written, and all around it was a very enjoyable picaresque novel. Only took two real sittings to finish, it's very short. Highly Reccomended.
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Mar 6, 2007 20:54
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I finished up The Western Way of War by Victor Davis Hanson. If you have any interest in ancient Greece; this is a must read. It examines every aspect of hoplite warfare without being overly tedious or rambling. Also The Nonexistent Knight and the Cloven Viscount by Italo Calvino. A fun read. If you liked Calvino's other works, you'll like this one. Knight is easily the stronger of the two stories; Viscount's resolution was a bit too easy leaving you with a pretty obvious message.
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Mar 6, 2007 21:58
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Finished Darkly Dreaming Dexter yesterday and I'm on Dearly Devoted Dexter as of today. The show is amazing and I wanted to read the source material, there's a lot of difference between the novel and the show, a lot of things were made up for the show I believe because the book would have only made about 5 episodes instead of 12 or so. I still enjoyed it. Before these books I was reasing Zodiac and Zodiac: Unmasked to get myself ready for the movie when it came out. I enjoyed the first book, second one dragged a lot so I didn't finish. Movie was disappointing somewhat but still alright. After this second Dexter book I'm going to start American Psycho and the rest of the Ellis books that I have. 5 serial killer books in a row. Nice.
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Mar 6, 2007 22:53
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Moonraker, Ian Fleming. Then I made the mistake of watching the movie.
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Mar 6, 2007 23:15
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The Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain - One of Twain's later works, TMS drops the pretenses of Twain's unfairly-mislabeled Americana genre for a dark and biting look at human nature. Swiftian in its mission, this novel doesn't tell us anything we don't already know, but it does manage to say it in delicious monologues delivered by Satan. Yes, in Twain's novel (a relative of) Satan comes to earth to interact with humans and comment upon their nature; people are delighted by him at first, but soon become disturbed by his extreme utilitarian ways. It's a pretty dark book by an obviously cynical man, yet the criticisms of human behavior are plainly spoken by TMS's outsider. The novel is unfinished, but the version of it I read ends on an appropriate and chilling note. Check it out at Gutenberg.org. Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis - Even though it's an outdated criticism and lampooning of England's post-WWII decaying social structure, Lucky Jim is still worth reading. While Amis' criticisms of a buffoonish upper class must have been outrageous in the 50s, contempt for the rich is hardly anything new today (and deservedly so with people like Paris Hilton). James Dixon is a great character, and a great anti-hero- the way he is annoyed by everyone and everything reminds me a bit of Tom Ripley from the Ripley books, except with less murder. The book can be slow at times, and many may not find the struggles of a self-admitted loser professor trying to keep his job at an English college interesting, but know this: Lucky Jim has the best multi-page description of a hang over that I've ever read. The book is really funny in a uniquely British way. Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris - This is the only David Sedaris book I haven't read yet, so I went into it with expectations that were met. I was happy to see a few essays in this tiny book written as other characters, instead of David's usual autobiographical fare. David's life is entertaining, and stories about himself make up the majority of his work, but I prefer his "non-David" pieces a little more. They give him the chance to be much, much darker, and allow him to satirize types of people in a much more effective manner. Pretty soon he's going to run out of interesting stories about himself, so if he continues to write more, I'm sure I'll get to see more of the kind of writing I prefer.
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Mar 8, 2007 00:17
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Leospeare posted:Just finished "The Basic Eight" by Daniel Handler (who is also Lemony Snicket, and has a good reason for using a pseudonym for children's books because his adult books are hosed right the hell up). It was quite a ride. It's about a pretentious high school clique who call themselves the Basic Eight, who are the kind of kids that I loved to hate in high school, and how they deal with things like first loves, alcohol, and Satanic murder. Normally I'm not a big fan of high school lit, but I love Handler's style so much that if he wrote the phone book I'd read it and love it. Just finished The Basic Eight last night and I enjoyed it. Somewhat like Heathers. The only weak point was that the Fight Club'ish twist with Natasha is figured out way too early.
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Mar 8, 2007 00:51
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I just finished James Patterson's Honeymoon. I enjoy these types of books, and though they're not classics or anything like that, thrillers are fun for me to read. I want to read real books, but these are just so much easier. I thought it was a really good read. Had me on my toes, brought out suprises and secrets every 30 pages or so, and was a pretty well laid out story. Some parts of it didn't make sense and didn't flow well, but I had fun and will probably read another one of his fairly soon. Now I'm off to start The Great Gatsby!
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Mar 8, 2007 17:12
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Just finished The World According To Garp. It left me crying.
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Mar 8, 2007 19:04
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Proust's The Guermantes Way. Surprising cliffhanger ending, given what I understood to be his total disinterest in editing and dividing the work out into digestible sections. Nice double-whammy with the ridiculous slapstick leading into the grim revelation too. Probably the best volume thus far, but as I said, that's a pretty meaningless judgement. Back off to the pile for something else...
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Mar 9, 2007 01:37
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The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Guin. I was put onto this by a friend, and got it from BookMooch. Like a lot of her stuff it tends to be anthropology discussion disguised as a novel but its no less interesting for that. Definitely worth the read.
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Mar 9, 2007 03:02
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I went to the school's library recently and got a little bit out of hand - checked out eleven books at one go. So far, I've finished these: Logan's Run, which went by really fast (obviously, it's a pretty short book) and left a strange impression. I never quite know what to make of books like this - the underlying concept of the revolution of all of the 21-and-unders seemed really silly, but it didn't hinder my enjoyment of the book very much. A World Out Of Time and Ringworld by Niven, as well as Inferno, by Niven and Pournelle. I like Niven's stuff that I've read thus far - his prose isn't too dense or unreadable and it's pretty interesting. I'd actually read A World Out Of Time before, though I didn't realize it until about halfway through. Inferno was good - a revisitation of Dante's old ideas, rehashed from the perspective of a science-fiction writer travelling through - though Benito being Mussolini was pretty obvious - I guess it probably wasn't really intended as a twist, anyway. I also just finished The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson, which was a little bit odd. What, Victorians - and yet, I still enjoyed it. He, too, seems to be able to write in such a way as to make me actually enjoy the reading of it, while some authors get to the point where it's a chore just to slog through. Remaining in my stack of to-reads are Footfall, The Mote in God's Eye and Alas, Babylon, all three of which I've read before, and A Game of Thrones and Perdido Street Station, which I got on recommendation. I read in cycles - I'm on a kick right now, so I've been devouring these books.
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Mar 9, 2007 06:57
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I just finished Sartre's Nausea today, and I can honestly say it was one of the best books I've ever read. Looking forward to picking up a copy of No Exit in the near future. I started Haruki Murakami's Kafka On the Shore today, which I got for Christmas but didn't start reading until now. It's a lot easier to get into than The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, the previous novel of his that I read.
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Mar 9, 2007 08:23
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I just finished On Becoming a Biologist by John Janovy Jr. This work is basically a primer on what life is like for a working day biologist. Janovy covers issues such as the philosophy that guides a biologists work, occupational opportunities and the realities of teaching. Offers a balance between wide-eyed idealism and the pragmatics of reality that everyone seeking a career in biology are bound to face.
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Mar 9, 2007 08:41
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I just finished The Life of Pi, which is a novel of an Indian boy traveling to Canada with his family when the cargo ship they were aboard sank. Most of the book is set in the Pacific. It is extremely entertaining, quite touching, and oftentimes just downright beautiful. :') I highly recommend it.
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Mar 9, 2007 09:24
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Jubilee by Margaret Walker It described the life of Vyry, a slave on a plantation in GA, from the antebellum years to after the Civil War. It's a very good book. The language the characters used was difficult to understand when I first started reading, but it didn't take long for me to understand what they're saying! :o) I highly recommend!
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Mar 9, 2007 16:45
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The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus What is there to say? I've read this book four times now, and it's one of the greatest things I've ever read. A beautiful exposition of why and how we can deal with the world by revolting against the absurd. It's obviously more complex, but that's enough for a short review. House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende It was pretty good, I must admit. It was very reminiscent of 100 Years of Solitude but it was different enough, especially in its political sensibilities, to be enjoyable and original. It's a good piece of magical realism, with a crazy cast of characters that are quite real and endearing. It's obviously an allegory for Chile, but it's so well-done you won't notice it much. Next up? Finishing Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity by Richard Rorty and reading a bunch of Dostoevsky I have. First Notes from Underground followed by The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov. Oh, and Invitation to a Beheading and Ada by Nabokov somewhere in there. Apparently I'm going on a Russian binge.
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Mar 9, 2007 18:50
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I finished Iron Council by China Miéville last night. It was marvelous. If more folks could write like this I would be proud to be a sci-fi nerd. Miéville provides just enough info about his weird fantasy world to let your imagination fill in the blanks and leaves you clamoring for more. He dances with language in a downright literary way that's all too rare in the sci-fi aisle. The boy can write, I tells ya.
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Mar 9, 2007 19:20
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I finished reading A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah. It's his memoirs during his teenage years during Sierra Leone's civil war in the 1990s. His story of idyllic childhood being shattered by war is haunting and mesmerizing, almost unimaginable to someone like me who lives in a first-world country.
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Mar 9, 2007 22:35
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meganclash posted:I just finished The Life of Pi, which is a novel of an Indian boy traveling to Canada with his family when the cargo ship they were aboard sank. Most of the book is set in the Pacific. It is extremely entertaining, quite touching, and oftentimes just downright beautiful. :') I'm struggling to finish Only Revolutions by Mark Z Danielewski. I admire it for its craft, especially the dozens of connections made between stories, but it isn't a very compelling READ. To anyone who's finished it: is it worth it for me to push my way through the rest? Something tells me that just by asking that question, it's not. 
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Mar 10, 2007 01:19
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I recently finished Winkie by Clifford Chase, which, strangely is about a teddy bear who runs away from home and ends up falsely accused of terrorist activities. I picked it up because the cover caught my attention while I was on my break at my job at Borders. The dust jacket made it sound hysterical; it was actually quite touching, if a little odd in some places (such as when Winkie poops for the first time and then gives birth). Also just finished Breakfast at Tiffany's by Capote, which was just one of those books that I've never read that everyone should read. I was surprised at how much it varied from the movie. Or, I suppose, how much the movie varied from the book. Now I'm starting Seven Types of Ambiguity by Eliot Perlman.
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Mar 10, 2007 02:08
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Camus' The Plague. I don't really know why everyone comes down on this one quite so hard, but I think it's my favorite of his books that I've ever read. Chilling, in parts. Also, Robert Dallek's biography of Kennedy, An Unfinished Life. While Dallek is an entertaining writer and does a pretty decent job of analzying the administration's foreign policy and stuff, but as much as he attempted to be impartial, he kind of er... really... doesn't succeed at all. Thuycides' Peloponnesian War. Again. Because he's amazing.
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Mar 10, 2007 03:48
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A Game of Chess posted:Camus' The Plague. I don't really know why everyone comes down on this one quite so hard, but I think it's my favorite of his books that I've ever read. Chilling, in parts. Who the hell comes down on this one? People here or people you know in real life? I'm about 30 pages from the end and I'm digging it just fine.
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Mar 10, 2007 03:55
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Zero Karizma posted:Who the hell comes down on this one? People here or people you know in real life? I'm about 30 pages from the end and I'm digging it just fine. I don't remember what thread it was in, but I'm pretty sure there was discussion on this board about Camus and it was almost unanimous that it was his worst book. Which confused me.
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Mar 10, 2007 04:08
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