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"Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel" by Susanna Clark. A blend of historical fact and magical fantasy set during the time of the Napoleanic Wars. An unusually light-hearted story of war and government and an unusually scholarly story of magic. The ending was more melancholy than I was in the mood for, but still a fun read full of archaic expressions and spelling, and lots of footnotes of varying historical merit.
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Mar 19, 2007 08:17
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Weapons of Choice by John Birmingham. Alternate history/Time travel. An American led multinational naval force in the pacific is transferred through time to the battle for Midway in 1942. This book is the first of an ongoing series that shows an advanced world war II. So far it kicks rear end.
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Mar 20, 2007 03:49
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The Average American Male by Chad Kultgen. It is the first novel I have read after a string of nearly 20 short story collections. It read it in its 246-page entirety over the course of about three and a half hours. I am unsure as to whether or not this man needs to be given the Pulitzer Prize, or taken out behind a woodshed and shot. I'm leaning - heavily - toward the former. Basically: If you are a guy, you know exactly what happens in this book, because you have thought your way through literally every situation that happens. It is still worth reading. I have never laughed so goddamn hard at a piece of prose in my entire life. Seriously. Tears of laughter. Tears. And also - almost - the other type. I can't even really begin to explain why. Just, you know, read it, if you're interested.
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Mar 20, 2007 05:54
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Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. I've been recommended this for a long time, and finally got around to reading it. I was a bit baffled at first, but it sunk in halfway through that I was reading something really brilliant. Excellent, wonderful read - a really novel perspective on life and just everything.
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Mar 20, 2007 16:04
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Meša Selimović's The Fortress. Serbian soldier returns home after the slaughter of his regiment in Russia, his numb outspokenness and newfound rigid morality making him more easily manipulated into becoming a cog in other's increasingly dangerous and petty conspiracies (to his own torment). Good pacing and surprisingly compelling given that the protagonist only ever really has a peripheral (if continually active) role in significant events; more witness than a hero. Reminded me a little of Meursault actually, but with too much empathy.
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Mar 20, 2007 22:38
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Kafka on the shore, by Haruki Murakami. A story about fate, basically. Like Macbeth, or the Harry Potter novels, only the exact opposite of those. Where Macbeth's and Harry's prophecies only come true because of what they choose to do, Kafka Tamura's prophecy is fulfilled despite his actions to prevent it. It was a very intriguing story. I especially liked the Mr. Nakata/Hoshino chapters, they were fun to read. Now that I'm done I still have some questions, but I'm not sure they're really relevant to the story so they probably don't have answers. why DID Nakata's class faint during the war when they were out in the mountains? If Nakata couldn't talk to cats anymore because he moved away from the edge between the worlds, how could he talk to the stone? And so on. For school I also had to read heart of darkness, the scarlet letter, a long day's journey into night, a streetcar named desire, the crucible, who's afraid of virginia woolf, and a raisin in the sun. A word of advice: read books/plays when they're assigned, not at the last possible moment before midterms 
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Mar 21, 2007 00:02
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Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy and several days later I'm still checking for the Judge under my bed, naked and grinning like the demonic force of nature he is. It's the stark, biblical story of scalphunters and wanton murderers in the American Southwest in the 1840s and '50s based on the rambling and almost certainly unreliable testimony of someone who was actually there. Regardless of the integrity of the source, it's harrowing, violent, and beautifully written and features the most loving frightening character in literature: Judge Holden. Read this if you like good books, basically. I've been gushing like a little girl to my friends about this and they're thoroughly annoyed so I now I'm gushing here. It's been more than two years since I've finished a book and I'm glad that my dark teatime of WoW and TVs blasting is over. Now it's down to Lolita by Nabokov, The Road, again by McCarthy, or Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar. I adore Nabokov but I'm not sure that following such a dense work of prose as BM with Lolita or another McCarthy is the best thing. I guess it's Hopscotch. My mom's got years of hype and hyperbole riding on this. It better blow my drat mind.
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Mar 21, 2007 02:24
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Just finished Hemingway's The Old Man And The Sea and The Sun Also Rises. They were magnificent and I curse that I have taken so long to read this man.
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Mar 21, 2007 05:12
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Children of the Mind by Orson Scott Card... for like the tenth time.
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Mar 21, 2007 05:54
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I finished Michael Chabon's Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay a couple nights ago. It's a winner six ways from Sunday. Even if the writing were poo poo (it's not), the subject matter covers about a dozen things I love. Even if the subject matter were deadly dull (it's not), the writing is so good it hurts. It's not so much that Chabon is good at scene-setting or characterization. It's that he does these things so well you're absolutely certain Kavalier & Clay are a couple of real guys. The book's set in 1939, and it's not so much that Chabon put a lot of effort into getting the feel right. It's that you're sure the man's got a time machine hidden in his garden shed. Chabon is the sort of writer who's gotten six-figure advances and killer movie deals and Pulitzer prizes for his work. (Kavalier & Clay picked up that last one.) He deserves it all. Kavalier & Clay is a shining example of what storytelling is all about.
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Mar 21, 2007 14:52
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The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead. Racial Allegory about a black elevator inspector who is framed for the collapse of an elevator in a brand new skyscraper in the city. She suspects she is set up by the Empiricists, who inspect elevators with rigorous logic, a rival sect of inspectors who are at war with her own sect The Intuitionists, who inspect elevators by mediditation and instinct. The characters are a little flat, but the plot really does pull you in, as strange as it might be.
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Mar 21, 2007 20:37
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Nicholas Mosely's Impossible Object. Unusual and disjointed but really solid recollection of a love affair. First appears to be a collection of marginally-related short stories, 'til they coalesce into a surprisingly elegant and unified narrative. The clarity you only gain more or less halfway through, plus the tossed-off revelation in the closing pages that some of the preceding episodes were actually meta-fictive short stories makes this one to keep on the "read again" pile and mull over sometime. Good stuff.
inktvis fucked around with this message at 08:17 on Mar 22, 2007 |
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Mar 22, 2007 07:53
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William Gibson's Neuromancer and Pattern Recognition which were both pretty good, although I liked Neuromancer's world more. He seemed to be trying to hard to be Web 2.0 and up-to-date with his depiction of internet culture in Pattern Recognition, but the very detailed and visually descriptive style that I grew to like from the first book was still there. I highly recommend Neuromancer, but Pattern Recognition is kinda slow and definitely less intriguing.
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Mar 22, 2007 08:34
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PresterJohn posted:Michael Chabon's Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay I haven't gotten around to Kavalier & Clay yet. I've read The Mysteries of Pittsburg, which is full of quiet desperation and dreamlike prose, not to mention gangsters and buttsex. I just picked up The Final Solution, but I've barely cracked it open yet. I actually went to get Kavalier & Clay, but they didn't have it. Los bastardos. I've been told it's his best, so I'll have to get around to it. BlameCanada posted:Just finished Lamb by Christopher Moore. It was one of the funniest books I've ever read. Christopher Moore's writing style will make you laugh out loud. Not good when I'm reading and start cracking up in the middle of class! It's all about the Jew-do. Watommi posted:I just finished The Time Traveler's Wife. This is one of the best books I've ever read. Period. (Or full stop, if you're British.) 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. :') Life of Pi isn't exactly fast-paced; Martel's style is vaguely Dickensian. That said, no matter how opposed you are to ornate writing, I'm of the opinion that everyone should read this book. Goddamn. One of the best endings of all time, easily. As for me, I just finished Company, by Max Barry. Excellent premise, and funny as hell. Tonally, it's more of a return to Syrup than Jennifer Government, which was a welcome change. You know it's gotta be pretty entertaining if the first review listed is from Douglas Coupland. It's a very quick read; I buzzed through the whole thing in one sitting. (It's not quite as fast-paced as Syrup, which I also read in one sitting, but it's not all that far off, either. Let it be noted that I'm really not a particularly fast reader; these are just books you can't help but launch straight through.) The story itself is about, well, a company. Corporate drudgery, that sort of thing. Think Office Space. I would definitely recommend it. Syrup is still his best, though. Before that, I had just finished Driving Mr. Albert, by Michael Paterniti, which is a non-fiction book so far-fetched that I thought it was a novel when I first heard about it. The author tracks down a pathologist who performed Einstein's autopsy. The doctor removed Einstein's brain and took it home. He's had it for more than forty years. The story is of a cross-country road trip the two of them take to bring the brain to Einstein's granddaughter, Evelyn. There are times where the prose goes a tad overboard in places. I'm not sure if it's just an inability to get the feeling of the memoir to come through right, or if it's an attempt to attach more meaning to true events than they really had, but overall, it's good. I don't wanna make it sound like Paterniti can't write; he just stretches metaphors a bit at times. Most of the time it flows nicely, and the story itself is always interesting. And before that was The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break, by Steven Sherrill. It may not sound like it, but it's a serious book, it's set in modern-day America, and it really does feature the Minotaur of legend-- working as a grill cook at an American restaurant. It's basically a story about the socially awkward, so goons should love it. The writing style is excellent, and the book is surprisingly moving. I'd recommend all three, really. They're totally different from one another, but they're all good. FuzzyLollipop posted:Now I'm starting Seven Types of Ambiguity by Eliot Perlman. So am I. Never read anything of his. Never heard of it. Someone got it for me for my birthday. I like the title, though. Any sort of preview/endorsement/warning you can give me? AmnesiaLab fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Mar 22, 2007 |
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Mar 22, 2007 17:19
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Just finished Microserfs by Douglas Coupland. It was really excellent. I was shocked to discover that I really identified with some of the characters. I was skeptical since it's a book about the geek/IT life written by someone who wasn't a geek or worked in IT. However, Coupland really did an excellent job of capturing that lifestyle. Next up, jPod!
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Mar 22, 2007 21:08
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I read Of Mice and Men on a train a week ago. I had read it in Finnish in high school I think, and decided to give it another go when I got it cheap at a sale at my book store. It was a great train book - short and easy to read, but also sadder than I remembered. I think I'll be going back to similiar shorter classics this summer. I started Tom Holland's Rubicon a few nights ago, and it seems nice so far.
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Mar 22, 2007 22:26
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RachelO posted:"Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel" by Susanna Clark. A blend of historical fact and magical fantasy set during the time of the Napoleanic Wars. An unusually light-hearted story of war and government and an unusually scholarly story of magic. The ending was more melancholy than I was in the mood for, but still a fun read full of archaic expressions and spelling, and lots of footnotes of varying historical merit. I just finished The Last Full Measure by Jeff Shaara, absolutely brilliant, rounds off the Civil War trilogy he and his father have written perfectly.
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Mar 23, 2007 01:24
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Finished Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond recently. Not sure why it took me so long but I finally did get around to it. He offers some very convincing arguments of why Europe/Asia are so dominant in the world. Very readable and is of great interest to anyone remotely interested in history or a new perspective. The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. Didn't think much of it but at the very least it was short. Just didn't have very much to it and was pretty redundant. If you're very interested in slaves or Douglasses then I'd say go for it.
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Mar 24, 2007 00:15
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AmnesiaLab posted:And before that was The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break, by Steven Sherrill. It may not sound like it, but it's a serious book, it's set in modern-day America, and it really does feature the Minotaur of legend-- working as a grill cook at an American restaurant. It's basically a story about the socially awkward, so goons should love it. The writing style is excellent, and the book is surprisingly moving. Holy poo poo, he was my writing professor a few years ago. I absolutely love that guy and his writing. I don't usually see alot of people who have read his stuff. Did you try Visits from the Drowned Girl yet?
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Mar 24, 2007 00:40
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Robot Bastard posted:Actually, we already knew about that. It's more efficient than the Hohmann Transfer, but not to the point where it's worth the extended travel time (unless you're talking about huge distances, i.e. travelling from the Earth to Neptune...and you don't mind taking thirty years to get there.) Now I'm wondering what Belbruno's point in writing the book was v  vAlso finished: One Good Turn, Witold Rybczynski, a short book about what the author decided was the most important tool of the millenium, the screwdriver. He traces the ancestry of the screw-as-fastener back to the 13th century (or so) and then moves forward with the development of the screwdriver, ending with a chapter on Archimedes and the water screw. Also also finished: The Invention that Changed the World, Robert Buderi. The invention/discovery of radar, its uses in WWII, and subsequent development. Pretty interesting, but I thought it dragged at the end.
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Mar 24, 2007 02:57
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I finished Gilgamesh this afternoon. Herbert Mason's rendition really had some beautifully poetic moments. Seeing as this is one of the oldest pieces of literature in existence (or perhaps the oldest?) is gave me a very engaging perspective on friendship, love, loss, and death. Loved every page of it, but it seems like it'd be more beneficial for me to read it all in one sitting next time.
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Mar 24, 2007 03:52
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perceptual_set posted:The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson. Wait, really? It's been a long time since I read it, but I know I was a bit  when it came to figuring out how the characters' names were linked, so the way I figured out they were the same people was how they had been acting similarly to their previous incarnations. It was only after that I realized "Hey, [character whose name starts with B] seems exactly like... [character whose name also starts with B]... aw poo poo, of course!"
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Mar 24, 2007 06:59
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I just finished Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C. Clarke, holy loving poo poo, after about a year of not reading sci-fi, I am hooked again, I read it in one day. Then yesterday I read Foundation's Edge by Asimov, and then today I am determined to read Enders Game. Christ. Books are pretty cool eh guys?
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Mar 24, 2007 07:03
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Just finished Attention All Shipping: A Journey Round the Shipping Forecast by Charlie Connelly. It's a travel book that follows all the areas of the British shipping forecast (radiating outward from the UK to Iceland and the coastline of northwest Europe). An excellent, amusing and charming travel book for Anglophiles or people who like things nautical or weather related. I'm all three. (I know it sounds a bit geeky but it's quite a good read.) *edit* Geeks got good taste in books! *nother edit* Axis, your ava makes me want to break out Image-Music-Text for the first time in years.
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Mar 24, 2007 07:15
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The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco I absolutely enjoyed this book all the way through. The history, the pop-culture, the high culture, the references scattered everywhere, really brought this whole story alive for me. I do like most of Eco's work and I found this an easy read when compared to say Foucault's Pendulum. Then again, Foucault's Pendulum was suppose to be difficult.
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Mar 24, 2007 09:41
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Just finished Orson Scott Card's "Xenocide" - the third book in the Ender quartet. I sure hope they wrap this thing up soon :P Also got through "How to Succeed in Evil" - it'll take you an hour to get through; check it out 
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Mar 24, 2007 10:06
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Lobok posted:Wait, really? It's been a long time since I read it, but That's right...part of the time. Some stories their reincarnations resembled nothing of what their character had been before especially with K. There were times where they connected with what had been established for them previously but I didn't feel it was consistant enough. Did you enjoy it, though? thesurlyspringKAA posted:I just finished Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C. Clarke Unfortunately, I really don't think any of the sequals do the story justice. The story has such an ending that I felt I had to jump through a window and immediatly make my way to a book store to pick up the next one... But the others seem dissapointing.
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Mar 24, 2007 14:23
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Recently: Borges - The Book of Imaginary Beings I really need to read Borges more often. This is one of those "does what it says on the box" books--it's basically a brief encyclopedia of imaginary or mythological creatures and what various authorities have said about them down the years, but it's utterly fascinating since Borges clearly did a hell of a lot of homework. Read a few pages at a time in between other things. Edward Humes - Monkey Girl The definitive story of the Kitzmiller v. Dover creationism trial. Pretty much lays bare what a bunch of scumbags the old Dover school board was. Daniel Levitin - This Is Your Brain on Music A really excellent read for anyone who finds either music or neuroscience interesting. Explores topics like why people respond to rhythm, absolute pitch, and why songs get stuck in your head. Naomi Novik - Black Powder War The third book in the Temeraire series. Seems like this one was there mostly to set the stage for a slam-bang finale in the fourth. And what the gently caress is up with Tharkay? On deck:   I really wish my library supported a Netflix-style queue system. The worst part is that I just looked through the pile for things to return and I couldn't bring myself to part with anything. Contrabassoon fucked around with this message at 17:14 on Mar 24, 2007 |
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Mar 24, 2007 16:50
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Just finished The Great Gatsby, a book I was never assigned in school, so I never got around to reading it. I'm trying to catch up on all my ignored classics. Gatsby was pretty good. I'm on a bit of a Lost Generation kick. So far I'm liking Hemingway a lot better, but I hear that Fitzgerald's other works are far better than Gatsby.
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Mar 24, 2007 17:58
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The last one I've finished is called Mirages' Market by Felipe Benítez Reyes. This book has win the second most important literary prize in Spain (the second in money, the first in quality). And it worth it. It's funny and satiric, paroding all the elements in today's bestsellers (davinci's and so) the author builds a serious novel about metaliterature and reality construction. Hope you can find it in English (I must admit its virtues relys very much on Spanish grammar and lexic, so maybe the translation would not be so funny.
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Mar 24, 2007 23:25
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Foundation & Empire, Asimov. Didn't like it quite as much as I did Prelude and Foundation, but it wasn't bad.
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Mar 25, 2007 01:29
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The last book I read was Anansi Boys, by Neil Gaiman. It's a modern tall tale about the son of the trickster god Anansi. Anansi dies and his son Charlie finds out he has a brother. After meeting his brother, his life turns into a huge mess, and Charlie gets another god to try and get rid of his brother. This only complicates things. It's a pretty funny book.
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Mar 25, 2007 02:01
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Giant Telescopes, W.Patrick McCray, about the development of, well, giant telescopes since the Hale 'scope in the 40s. It started out interesting but by the end it was just one big blur of meetings and crises. Not recommended.
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Mar 25, 2007 04:44
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I recently finished: Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. Astounding. He is a master at work and I need to read a lot more of his stuff now. Incredibly violent but the violence is far from gratuitous. It's dense, and I still don't get the ending, but it was impressive. Indeed, he deserves kudos for this. Oh, and by the way, Judge Holden is the scariest monstrosity in any form of media ever, and I doubt that anything in the world will ever evoke more fear and hatred than he did. Being and Time (Division One) by Martin Heidegger What the gently caress did I read. No, seriously, explain this. He wasn't as unclear as some say he is but there is so much going on I'm taking Division One to be an entire book and scrapping the project of reading Division Two right now. It scares me. How We are Hungry by Dave Eggers I like Eggers. He's good. This was my introduction to his work, and I enjoyed it immensely. He is a drat good stylist, but something strikes me as odd. He seems familiar. His writing reminds me of somebody, and he definitely seems like a writer pulled out of the past, but the details elude me. Reminds me of Dubliners, except without the cohesion of that set of stories. Ada or Ardor by Vladimir Nabokov  I love Nabokov and enjoy the games he gets up to but here he goes all out. As obsessed with memory as ever, this is a loving tour de force. Beautiful, Nabokovian, and powerful, but it requires a rereading. With French and Russian dictionaries. And about five notebooks. And a timeline. This is epic, and while I enjoy Pale Fire more, it's better than Lolita. Yes, I said it. It's one of those books that I will never understand, but the bits I get are jaw-dropping. As usual, he's darkly humorous and too witty for his own good.
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Mar 26, 2007 02:49
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I powered through Love in the Time of Cholera today. Simply beautiful. Garcia Marquez's writing never ceases to draw me in. The expose of love and relationships are simply amazing here.
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Mar 26, 2007 07:02
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The Terror by Dan Simmons This story follows two British Discovery ships Erebus and Terror that are trapped in ice at the Arctic Circle while looking for the Northwest Passage. The book captures claustrophobia so well that you can almost smell the wet wool of shipmates and feel their growing despair. I'm glad I didn't read this in the middle of a blizzard for fear of completely losing all of my faculties. Also, not only are they stuck on the ice without hope of rescue or leaving for help; but something is out on the ice killing indiscriminately and violently. This book was close to 800 pages but I thought it could have gone on longer because I was so engrossed in some of the characters. There's a short preview here if you want to read part of the first chapter.
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Mar 26, 2007 20:18
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I just finished The Man in the High Castle by Phillip K. Dick. It was pretty nuts, I'm still mulling the ending over.
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Mar 26, 2007 20:36
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I just finished On the Beach ten minutes ago. Boy, that was rough. I had 30 pages left to go when I got off the bus and came home to finish it. I really enjoyed this book and had that bittersweet tightness in my chest, all choked up feeling while I read that last little bit. It's been a little while since I've had that feeling from something I've read and I'm hoping for it again in Sea of Glass. I think this pretty much did it for me: He got into bed with Mary, mixed the drinks, and took the tablets out of the red cartons. "I've had a lovely time since we got married," she said quietly. "Thank you for everything, Peter." He drew her to him and kissed her. "I've had a grand time, too," he said. "Let's end on that." They put the tablets in their mouths, and drank. drat. Now I have to try and switch gears and study for my test tomorrow...
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Mar 26, 2007 21:14
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Just finished: A Chill in the Blood by P.N. Elrod, one of the stand-alone novels about 1940s Chicago gangster vampires. Underwhelming. It seemed okay and then just degraded into "POWERS POWERS POWERS to win" instead of him outsmarting the villians.
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Mar 26, 2007 23:05
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I finally finished Paradise Lost after reading it very, very slowly for almost three months. The ending is perfect and some of my favorite writing ever: They looking back, all the eastern side beheld Of Paradise, so late their happy seat, Waved over by that flaming brand, the gate With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms: Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon; The world was all before them, where to choose Their place of rest, and providence their guide: They hand in hand with wandering steps and slow, Through Eden took their solitary way. I love it so much. Now I have to read Paradise Regained.
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Mar 26, 2007 23:36
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