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Just finished The Neverending Story by Michael Ende. I didn't realize this was a book until a few months ago, and decided to give it a shot as I had such fond memories of the movies from when I was a kid. As great as I thought the movie was though, the book was even better. It certainly had a lot more to the story than you'd ever get out of the movie, and a lot of the ideas/lessons in it are a lot more thought provoking, espcially when you're older, and can be a bit darker as well. I shall read this to my children one day!
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Mar 27, 2007 01:31
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Just wrapped up DayWatch. Man that was a drat good book.
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Mar 27, 2007 03:00
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bobservo posted:The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler... I love Chandler. I try to re-read through the Marlowe novels about once a year. None of the characters are realistic, but neither are they supposed to be. The toughs play their roles, as do the cops and dames, and especially Marlowe. Every time somebody compares Chandler to pulp noir, I cringe just a little. The dialog is absolutely brilliant, even the cheapest goon in a Marlowe novel can play on words at the drop of a hat. Above that, the novels are interwoven with a sense of self aware heartache that really (cliche warning ahoy!) trancends the genre. Marlowe (and Chandler himself while he was writing them) teeters right on the edge of total collapse, but is lucid enough to make you care. As for me: Tamerlaneby Justin Marozzi. Not much to say, it's a biography of one of history's greatest conquerors, as well as a genocidal megalomaniac. The book itself is actually excellent. A great deal of the book reads like a travelogue for the author, as he retraced Timur's steps. It draws links and demonstrates some of the cultural impact that remains in the area 600+ years later. It also served as a quick Central Asian history lesson for somebody with no real knowledge on the subject. All in all an interesting read. The Battle for Spain by Antony Beevor. Before reading this I knew almost nothing about the Spanish Civil War. The book isn't a military history per se, the battles get little more than passing mentions. Instead, Beevor weaves an absolutely heartbreaking history of how semi-feudal Spain tore itself apart. I have read Hemingway, and about Hemingway, and this book makes abundantly clear where his antimilitary disillusionment came from. The war was fought between competing ideologies, with both sides looking to dominate, instead of serve the Spanish people. Between the fascist authoritarianism, Stalinist Communist paranoia, and contemptibly cynical realpolitik by the western powers by the mix, I found myself getting emotionally involved in how horribly hosed Spain really was at the time. Fascinating. Speaking of realpolitik, I'm about to jump into Kissinger's Diplomacy. Somebody wish me luck...
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Mar 27, 2007 07:24
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I've just finished Martin Cruz Smith's Red Square which was very good. For those that haven't read it it's basically a crime/thriller set during the social and economic breakdown of the USSR. It flicks between a revitalised post-war Munich and a Moscow in political limbo. Reminds me of Ian Rankin's Rebus series except with much better writing and a much more interesting setting. About to start The Master and Margarita.
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Mar 27, 2007 07:55
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Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere was extremely good, and I just finished it a week or so ago. I loved the story, and the bits of London geography, and the story. Awesome read! Also, it's a month ago or so now, but I can't stop talking about Douglas Coupland's Eleanor Rigby, so I won't. It's a really introspective thought-based narrative, but I loved it and will probably read it again and again.
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Mar 27, 2007 08:38
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Just finished Black Beard by Angus Konstam. An in depth and fun look at the pirate that terrorized South Carolina and plundered ships throughout the Spanish Main. I love reading historical books and this one was right up my alley. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in colonial sailing, history, or the golden age of piracy.
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Mar 27, 2007 18:31
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Last week I finished the first two books in Robin Hobb's Farseer Trilogy: Assassin's Apprentice and Royal Assassin. I'm a die-hard ASOIAF fan, so when GRRM recommended Hobb, I figured I'd give the trilogy a shot--I'm on the third book, Assassin's Quest, right now, and I've gotta say Martin's praise of Hobb is well-deserved. Her style isn't as gritty as Martin's, but the way in which she delivers her story really cemented a connection between me and the protagonist, Fitz, a connection which rivals or perhaps even surpasses those I've made with Martin's. Maybe it's the first-person narration, I'm not sure, but I'm definitely hooked. It's only too bad that I couldn't finish the third book before the quarter started.
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Mar 29, 2007 00:37
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"Stranger in a Strange Land" by Heinlen. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Mar 29, 2007 00:56
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"His Last Bow" by Arthur Conan Doyle. A good 'ending' to a great series, I felt. I'm not sure if I even want to tackle Casebook.
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Mar 29, 2007 05:43
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The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway. I don't get the big deal. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Mar 29, 2007 17:03
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Ewar Woowar posted:I've just finished Martin Cruz Smith's Red Square which was very good. For those that haven't read it it's basically a crime/thriller set during the social and economic breakdown of the USSR. It flicks between a revitalised post-war Munich and a Moscow in political limbo. Reminds me of Ian Rankin's Rebus series except with much better writing and a much more interesting setting. I expect to see your next post as "I just finished Master..." I mean, two days, what's taking so long? Anyway, I just finished My Tank is Fight! by Zack Parsons. I heard about it from some website so I decided to pick it up. His own term, "Pulp history" pretty much sums up the whole book and it was a fun (even interesting) read. Also helps if you have any interest in WWII.
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Mar 29, 2007 20:54
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DonkeyHotay posted:The Battle for Spain by Antony Beevor. Before reading this I knew almost nothing about the Spanish Civil War. The book isn't a military history per se, the battles get little more than passing mentions. Instead, Beevor weaves an absolutely heartbreaking history of how semi-feudal Spain tore itself apart. I have read Hemingway, and about Hemingway, and this book makes abundantly clear where his antimilitary disillusionment came from. The war was fought between competing ideologies, with both sides looking to dominate, instead of serve the Spanish people. Between the fascist authoritarianism, Stalinist Communist paranoia, and contemptibly cynical realpolitik by the western powers by the mix, I found myself getting emotionally involved in how horribly hosed Spain really was at the time. Fascinating. I'd really recommend Homage to Catalonia. As you might already know, it's Orwell's account of his involvement with the POUM militia, which was essentially a non-Stalinist Marxist group, and how it became demonised by the Stalinists as a fifth column. Really well-written, as honest as I think it's possible to be in such an ideologically-charged atmosphere, and an obvious seed of Orwell's distrust of any form of totalitarianism.
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Mar 29, 2007 21:21
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Just a few minutes ago I finished Ubik by Phillip K. Dick. One of the few instances where the epilogue added so much to the story. I'm still trying to decipher exactly what went on, but it's definitely recommended to anybody.
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Mar 30, 2007 18:49
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Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton. I liked Ian Malcolm in this novel and the way the park conforms to his mathematical expectations with him mocking in the background and ocassionally giving informative speeches. The Diagrams add gracefully to the story and act as a useful tool in building tension without being too elaborate or confusing for the average reader. After reading the book, I feel the directors of the film really captured the hapless hero in Alan Grant with the actor Sam Neill playing the part well of a man thrust into the role of responsibility. Film/books have become appealing to me so I've started "Battle Royale" and fully recomend it. I'm 1/4 through and it's kept me hooked.
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Mar 31, 2007 11:33
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Italo Calvino - Invisible Cities What the gently caress. Really. What the hell just happened? It was good, but I only sort of got it. The descriptions of the cities were loving awesome, but the whole last bit with the chess game was really odd. I understood it, but I thought Marco Polo could already speak Kublai's language? I just thought of it as a bit out of chronology, but who knows! A great example of something post-modern: totally ironic and ridiculous.
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Mar 31, 2007 19:16
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I just finished One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest which was a nice departure from a heavy load of recently assigned classical Greek plays and literature (The Illiad, Prometheus Bound, Seven Against Thebes, and Antigone). (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Mar 31, 2007 21:37
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Euphoria 5L posted:Italo Calvino - Invisible Cities I'm glad to see some Calvino lovin' I just finished reading Numbers in the Dark for the eleventy-bazillionth time. His short stories make you think.
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Apr 1, 2007 00:35
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I just read Miss Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locust in a single volume edition by Nathanael West after Day of the Locust being referenced to in Y: The Last Man. The main character of Y comments that it's his favorite novel and I assumed that Brian K. Vaughn, whose works I enjoy immensely, liked it as well. So, I picked it up on a whim. While they weren't the greatest books I've ever read, West was able to make me feel strongly for and familiar with the characters in both of the books despite their very short lengths. Also, one of the main characters in Day of the Locust is named Homer Simpson. I would highly recommend picking up either or both if if you are interested in either early Hollywood or the woes of an newspaper advice columnist...
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Apr 1, 2007 00:41
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Just finished "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman," by Richard Feynman, a really fascinating look into a genius Nobel Prize-winning physicist's life. I think that stories about Feynman's eccentricities explain the nature of genius better than hearing that he discovered such-and-such theorems. If I were a schoolteacher I might assign this book in an introductory science class, and we'd talk about the last anecdote, which concerns what Feynman calls "Cargo Cult Science": Stuff like parapsychology, which looks and smells like science but lacks the real scientific mindset. I also just finished Marcus Aurelius' "Meditations," which felt a little long and very repetitive by the end but was a great read for summarizing Stoic philosophy.
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Apr 1, 2007 01:37
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Designated Targets - John Birmingham The sequal to Weapons of Choice in which a multinational US-led naval force is transported from 2021 to June 1942. In the sequal, the powers of the world are armed with the knowledge of how the war would have ended and strategies are quickly adapted. Also, with 21st century technology in the hands of both the allies and the axis there is a great acceleration in the world's technology. Going to be starting the nextbook Final Impact tonight.
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Apr 1, 2007 03:06
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I just finished The Fall of Reach by Eric Nylund and it was much better than I expected. Good background on the Master Chief and why he is the way he is.
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Apr 1, 2007 03:40
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I just read Dear Catastrophe Waitress by Brendan Halpin. It impressed me so much that I immediately bought the rest of his books from Amazon. I've never read such pitch-perfect dialog before, and I've never felt so emotionally invested in characters. The story follows a boy and a girl who were both basically broken up with in hit singles. One of them was a punk rock song called "Phillipa Cheats", and the other was a ballad to a guy's premature ejaculation called "Two Minute Man." It's a quick, easy, fulfilling read.
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Apr 1, 2007 03:41
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Pontius Pilate posted:Anyway, I just finished My Tank is Fight! by Zack Parsons. I heard about it from some website so I decided to pick it up. His own term, "Pulp history" pretty much sums up the whole book and it was a fun (even interesting) read. Also helps if you have any interest in WWII. You DO know who Zack is, right? I just finished 'Heart Shaped Box' but Joe Hill. Not too bad...a little queasy about the last quarter, but a solid horror story. Tomorrow I'm starting 'the Tipping Point', by Malclom Gladwell. I really enjoyed 'Blink', and I'm in the mood for something to get me inspired.
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Apr 1, 2007 07:07
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I recently finished off Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita and think it may have just pipped the Wind-up Bird Chronicle as my favourite book. Weirdly enough, I've had it for seven years and never even opened it. I wish I'd done it sooner. It follows the Devil and his retinue around Moscow as they cause absolute havoc. It's really quite funny at times, as well as a frightening insight into Stalinist Russia. More than a few characters are met by someone "looking official" and disappear never to be seen again. And if I ever get a cat, I'm calling it Behemoth.
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Apr 1, 2007 15:48
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I just finished George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones, and picked up A Clash of Kings today. I usually don't like fantasy, but this stuff is pretty awesome. I don't know if I need to spoiler this, but I hop that Joffery dies embarrasingly. What a oval office.
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Apr 1, 2007 21:04
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Just now finished The Kingdom of Matthias for my US History class. Frickin' Second Great Awakening lunatics and their delusions of grandeur. This Matthias guy was a loving nutball who went from being a repressed Calvinist boy to the New Prophet of the Jews without ever having met a Jew in his life. Basically he wanted to extort everyone within ten miles of himself and get laid hourly in the name of god. The prologue was kinda funny: it describes his meeting Joseph Smith some years before his death. Apparently even the founder of the Mormon church said "This guy is hosed up." Another weird bit: Matthias had a black female servant who remained his most faithful supporter throughout the years and allegedly poisoned the one member of their cult who died at the compound, Scientology style. That servant? Sojourner Truth. 
pill for your ills fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Apr 1, 2007 |
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Apr 1, 2007 21:31
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Just finished American Gods, by Neil Gaimen... Amazing as usual, I recomend either his books or graphic novels, they are all very very mind opening.
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Apr 2, 2007 05:49
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pill for your ills posted:This Matthias guy was a loving nutball who went from being a repressed Calvinist boy to the New Prophet of the Jews without ever having met a Jew in his life. Basically he wanted to extort everyone within ten miles of himself and get laid hourly in the name of god. I just finished "Watership Down"...for about the nine-hundredth time. God I love that book.
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Apr 2, 2007 07:28
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Just finished the second Dresden Files book. Again, not deep reading but very fun. It's definitely like Harry Potter, all grown up and living as a P.I. in Chicago.
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Apr 5, 2007 00:56
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World War Z: An Oral History Of The Zombie War by Max Brooks loving awesome book, I've read nothing like it and certainly the best story dealing with zombies I've ever read or seen in the movies. This certainly puts any George Romero plot to shame. Mr. Brooks has done his homework.
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Apr 5, 2007 03:38
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Just finished "You Suck" by Christopher Moore. It was a continuation of his vampire books. Not a bad read, very fast and flowed well. I enjoyed it but I like Moore's writing style very much so ymmv.
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Apr 5, 2007 05:11
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The Oddessy was great. The original adventure, wandering seas, meeting spartans, eating a variety of animals after sacrificing them to gods, and at the end, a delicious fight scene where revenge is extracted. I could definatly see why people have loved this book throughout history. The same cannot be said for The Iliad. If there ever was a book that better showed alot of what is wrong with contemporary fantasy this would be it. You have heroes that never die, a book which is basically one long fight scene, plot holes abound, and gods that do basically everything remotely dangerous for the variety of heroes, allowing all the danger to fall out of the fight scenes and everything exciting to become boring. Granted, considering the author and the place the book is from, it isn't exacly fair to blame Homer for these shortfalls. But never the less, the book does start to grate on you when Athena comes down and saves hero x yet again from dying to random army guy a, because certianly the hero can't die to a worthless subordinate. The Selfish Gene goes from fantastically intriguing to fantastically boring and back again like a game of pong. The parts where it is interesting are great, but when it gets boring it gets boring with a vengence.
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Apr 5, 2007 15:59
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Wait, contemporary fantasy?
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Apr 5, 2007 16:01
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DonkeyHotay posted:Wait, contemporary fantasy? Did I mispell something or does contemporary fantasy not mean modern fantasy? Edit: Also, I know the Iliad is 2700 years old, I'm saying that when I read it, it reminds me of everything I hate about modern fantasy.
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Apr 5, 2007 16:20
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Donna Tarrt - The Secret History. Decent book with half decent language. The story is great though and that's what kept me going. Nothing special to say really, wouldn't recommend this strongly to anyone who isnt intressted in psychic brats who's intressted in ancient greek culture.
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Apr 5, 2007 20:03
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Just finished, Life, the Universe, and Everything while on my current readthrough of the Complete Hitchiker's Guide. I always forget how amazingly well written these books are. They're easily some of the best sci-fi I've ever read. In fact they remind me of Vonnegut quite a lot.
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Apr 6, 2007 03:02
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Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. My brother recommended this to me; it started out great, and ended with a  It's got a lot of crazy history stuff which I had to trudge through (it reminded me of a Crichton novel, information overload), but drat it's got awesome parts, like straight out of a kickass action flick.
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Apr 6, 2007 05:02
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A random book I picked up at the library called Inside and Other Short Fiction - Japanese Women by Japanese Women, its a collection of contemporary stories by current female authors. The stories are ones that are generally not translated into English. Most of the stories were typical of modern Japanese fiction: minimalist, abstract and have a general feeling of malaise, yet I thought Junko Hasegawa's story Unfertilized Egg was entertaining, well written and made me go look for some of her other stuff.
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Apr 6, 2007 16:31
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pipebomb posted:You DO know who Zack is, right? Zack? Oh yeah, he's the author. I recently completed The Cold War: A New History by John Lewis Gaddis. A wonderful, spectacular history that's only 250 pages! Anybody can and should read it. I'm afraid to start on the longer works of his though...
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Apr 6, 2007 21:28
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Witold Gombrowicz's Cosmos. A new translation (well, 2004 is still new-ish) which is probably a good thing since I just read that the previous translations weren't from the original Polish, but done secondhand from the French/German editions. There's a recipe for quality if ever I heard one... The narrator being slowly trapped and channeled into one particularly irrational course of action by aggressive symbols and meaning should be familiar ground for Gombrowicz fans, and "Witold" even takes another turn as the narrator. Absurdly funny as always, but the prose is a little more frantic and disjointed this time round. Also darker than Transatlantyk or Ferdydurke, but I won't elaborate on that without figuring out spoiler tags. Another excellent book, with the bonus that his work as a whole only seems to become tighter and more coherent with each new one I get my hands on. Still a favourite author.
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Apr 6, 2007 22:32
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