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TomSelleck666 posted:Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev. Great book about a charismatic political nihilist named Barazov who is at odds with his parents, friends, and other associates. Eventually Barazov becomes at odds with himself, as he finds himself falling in love with a wealthy aristocratic widower, and love does not fit in to his nihilistic worldview. It has a really fantastic tragic ending. Poor Russia 
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Apr 17, 2007 08:16
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Earlier tonight I finished Nikolai Gogol's Lost Souls. The story intrigued me, but I think it was a misunderstanding on my part...I went in expecting this very surreal, Kafkaesque side to creep out, and it never did. It's just Chichikov wheeling and dealing for real dead souls, no ectoplasm to be found. Regardless, I still found it an enjoyable read. I've pretty much limited myself to Russian novels lately, and this one was the earliest and most unique one I've read so far. The style reminds me a lot of Dickens, which is really hit and miss...some of the characters in the large cast are really great and memorable, but some of them just fall by the wayside. There are some flashes of that really brilliant 'Russian humanism' that I love scattered throughout, and passages worth quoting and re-reading over again. It sometimes reminded me so much of Dickens and English prose that I was hoping for a more Russian sensibility to start showing up, but now that I look back, that book is really focused on the Russian way of life (19th century) above all else. There are definitely some ho-hum passages scattered throughout, but the last chapter really kicks up the aforementioned 'Russian humanist' factor; I wish that more of the original manuscript was saved for this translated version, I wonder what I missed out on. I'll probably check out some of Gogol's short stories eventually, but first... TomSelleck666 posted:Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev. Great book about a charismatic political nihilist named Barazov who is at odds with his parents, friends, and other associates. Eventually Barazov becomes at odds with himself, as he finds himself falling in love with a wealthy aristocratic widower, and love does not fit in to his nihilistic worldview. It has a really fantastic tragic ending. ...this is next on the menu. Thanks for not spoiling it for me.
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Apr 17, 2007 09:10
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Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell. Oh man, this did not go well. If the power hadn't gone out yesterday, I may have never finished it. Written about ten years before the two Orwell books everybody remembers, Aspidistra is the story of Gordon Comstock, a London poet rapidly closing on his thirtieth birthday who has declared "war on money", and to that end has taken a low-paying job with no hope of advancement, then spends most of the book blaming his various misfortunes on being trapped in a culture that worships at the altar of Mammon, rather than being a twerp that has taken a low-paying job with no hope of advancement. I was baited into this one by a web write-up said that if all those high school kids had read it instead of 1984, how differently they would've turned out...or some such nonsense. It was interesting in places, but every time we get an earful of Gordon's internal rage against the machine (which is seemingly one out of every three pages) I wished that books had throats so I could choke some sense into this one. I would've gotten a bigger kick out of a book about Gordon's friend Ravelston, the upper-class Marxist who just doesn't seem to get the concept of "the people" or "poverty".
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Apr 17, 2007 20:19
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I finished 1984 this morning and loved it. I read it once for a highschool assignment, but being required it was hard to enjoy the book then and never ended up finishing it and instead finished the report using online notes. I'm really glad I came back and read this because it really is a great book. Reading this has inspired me to read some more classics books and I'm going to start Fahrenheit 451 tonight.
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Apr 17, 2007 20:40
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The first book in the Earthsea series by Ursula K. Leguin. I thought it was alright. I love her writing style, the way she uses it to tell Ged's story is great. Problem is, Ged's story itself didn't really do it for me. I saw the identity of the shadow coming a mile off, and all the rowing got on my nerves. My favourite part was at the island of Roke, but that probably has something to do with my weird fixation on wizarding schools. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to read the next one, but the lure of reading about Ged becoming an Archmage is strong... Also, tonight I started and finished Bridge to Terabithia, by Katherine Paterson. I have read a lot of books in my life, but never one as sad as this one. Jesus christ.
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Apr 18, 2007 00:43
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I just read through Dune for the first time, pretty amazing stuff for its time and one of the most impressive works of sci-fi I've ever read. I couldn't help think of Star Wars while reading it Bene Gesserit = Jedi?
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Apr 18, 2007 04:07
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Jackel003 posted:I just read through Dune for the first time, pretty amazing stuff for its time and one of the most impressive works of sci-fi I've ever read. I couldn't help think of Star Wars while reading it Lots of stuff cribs from Dune. I will be god damned if Luke doesn't live on Dune. In KOTOR2, they even had Sandworms there.
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Apr 18, 2007 04:23
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Zero Karizma posted:In KOTOR2, they even had Sandworms there. No poo poo? Are we talking exact copies or something similar to the sandworms? Jackel003 fucked around with this message at 04:57 on Apr 18, 2007 |
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Apr 18, 2007 04:41
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Jackel003 posted:No poo poo? Were they similar to the Sandworms or were they exactly alike in size and appearance? Pretty drat similar to Dune. Plus people rode could ride them. The KOTOR writers were clearly acknowledging Dune, though. It wasn't a rip-off thing.
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Apr 18, 2007 04:59
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I just finished Robert Ludlum's The Hades Factor the first book in the Covert One series. Ludlum wrote the Bourne series of books that turned into the movies. I have yet to tackle anything else of his and I seriously hope that they don't all follow the same structure. The book kept me turning the pages in anticipation and I enjoyed it.
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Apr 18, 2007 09:37
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Hocus Pocus, Kurt Vonnegut. Read the last ~180 pages in one sitting too. Whew. It was a little hard to follow at first, the sequence of events wasn't really clear till near the end. Quite a bit more refined I think than the other novel of his that I've read, Slaughterhouse 5. Vonnegut's got a rather informal voice. I'm feeling guilty because, thanks to being on some sort of a bend towards the unusual, I'm finding his subject matter rather ordinary. At least this provided me with a quote which describes my mom to a Tee: "What makes so many americans proud of their ignorance? They act as though their ignorance somehow made them charming."
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Apr 18, 2007 18:44
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Death in Venice, by Thomas Mann. This is the first Mann that I've read. I liked it immensely. Beyond that I'm not exactly certain what I think of it, I need to read it again. I'm going to try not to gush, but I'll say that anyone at all invested in a creative life should read this short story. I haven't even gotten to the other stories in the book yet. The book is an interesting contrast to Mann's supposed early conservatism (read more in the wiki link). I'm going to sharpen up my rusty german and try to tackle it in the original language. It might be worth it. It also greatly ellucidates a certain Rufus Wainwright song. Oddly enough, John Julius Norwich's A History of Venice is on deck for my reading lineup. I didn't plan it that way or anything, and I didn't even realize that I was reading two books about Venice in a row until I was done with the Mann.
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Apr 20, 2007 18:57
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I just finished Lisey's Story by Stephen King. I liked it a lot and thought it was one of his better novels.
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Apr 20, 2007 20:26
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Dune Messiah, Frank Herbert. This was only 250 pages, the rest of the Dune series are all over 400, so it felt almost like half an installment. I read the first four in the series some 20 years ago, so I have a lot of half-memories of things and it almost feels like spoilers. Like I remembered the whole Duncan Idaho ghola thing, and was wondering where it was in the first book.
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Apr 20, 2007 20:42
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Felipe Alfau's Chromos, the author's recounting of his attempt to get beneath the skin of Spanish immigrants in New York in the '30s/'40s. It really whipped along until the final stages when the showman character indulged in a cloudy extended metaphor for identity, delving into the theory of relativity for pages and pages. Like slick ice on the attention, I caught myself just running my eyes over the words a few times and had to go back and actually read it. For me, it drained the momentum that'd built up. I can only speculate that since it was written in 1945 (though interestingly first published in 1990), relativity was still a literary novelty and he couldn't bring himself to drop it... A shame really, since the rest of the book was really well written and seemed pitched at a nice level.
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Apr 20, 2007 23:09
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inktvis posted:Felipe Alfau's Chromos, the author's recounting of his attempt to get beneath the skin of Spanish immigrants in New York in the '30s/'40s. It really whipped along until the final stages when the showman character indulged in a cloudy extended metaphor for identity, delving into the theory of relativity for pages and pages. Like slick ice on the attention, I caught myself just running my eyes over the words a few times and had to go back and actually read it. For me, it drained the momentum that'd built up. I can only speculate that since it was written in 1945 (though interestingly first published in 1990), relativity was still a literary novelty and he couldn't bring himself to drop it... That's discouraging, but I'll have to check it out myself. I really liked Locos, maybe you would like that more as it doesn't splurge on anything like that.
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Apr 20, 2007 23:20
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I just finished The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James. Somehow I've come this far in my life without reading anything by James before. I had absolutely no idea what to expect and was just so blown away - his dense and lyrical style, poor Isabel, who you end up just wanting to slap. Amazing. Sadly, it's one of those books that's so good that I don't know what to read next. Started Glamorama by Brett Easton Ellis, but I'm finding it shallow and poorly written - I think I'll give it a rest and come back to it after I finish the giant pile of James' other books I bought last night in a fit of obsessiveness!
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Apr 21, 2007 02:03
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Sexpansion posted:Oddly enough, John Julius Norwich's A History of Venice is on deck for my reading lineup. I didn't plan it that way or anything, and I didn't even realize that I was reading two books about Venice in a row until I was done with the Mann. You'll like it a lot I think, in many ways it's better written than his stunning three volume history of Byzantium. I knew virtually nothing of the city beyond the basic outline of its geography and history before reading the book, and I was very impressed with its accessibility and depth of information. King Leopold's Ghost, by Adam Hochschild. A lively, engaging history of the Congo Free State. Hochschild makes no pretense of impartiality in his history, but he presents the facts well and cursory research indicates accurately, and Leopold's atrocities in the Congo River Valley hardly deserve unbiased discussion - it's very possible that the exploitation of the Congolese peoples under his rule resulted in more deaths than the Holocaust. Overall an excellent piece of pop history on a depressingly little known corner of the history of inhumanity.
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Apr 21, 2007 08:12
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I just finished Dune: The Battle of Corrin. I JUST FINISHED THE LAST DUNE NOVEL!..... for now. I read all 12 books in a row and, yeah I guess I liked them, but right now I'm just glad it's over. I loved the original 6, really enjoyed the 3 House books, but these last 3 (the Jihad books) were so-so for me. The cymeks were ok, the robots were wimpy, the Cogitors are retarded, the so-called EVERMIND was painfully dumb and uninteresting and the space battles weren't epic enough. There were some nice pieces of Dune lore here and there though...
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Apr 21, 2007 12:51
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bledking posted:I just finished Dune: The Battle of Corrin. If it wasn't written by Frank, it's not Dune.  I'm just starting Children of Dune.I just finished The Neon Bible, John Kennedy Toole's other novel. There's a blurb on the back that compares it to Catcher in the Rye, but it reminded me more of Ham on Rye, being it's a novel about the author's youth. I suppose the tone was closer to Catcher though. It was a fun read, short (162 pages), and like all really good novels the ending sucked, as well as being pretty much inevitable.
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Apr 21, 2007 14:10
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I just finished Fahrenheit 451. In the back there was an interview with Bradbury which seemed to be somewhat recent (it mentions the Iraq war). In it, he talks about a 451 movie coming out with Mel Gibson producing. How accurate is this? I read this book right after reading 1984. I didn't find it nearly as entertaining as Orwell's book but found that Bradbury's future has been much more accurate than Orwell's. It's scary how situations in the book mirror today (Granted, not to such extremity).
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Apr 21, 2007 15:41
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krustster posted:Whoah, excuse me? Is that literally what it's about, or is that some kind of metaphor? Because that sounds amazingly awesome. Yep, that's what it's about, except filtered through a geek lens. (His A Colder War, collected in Toast, is the same idea but better IMO) Me, I haven't had a lot of time to read for fun lately, but I did manage to get enough time to finish The Cheater's Guide to Baseball, about all the ways in which player and teams can bend or break the written and unwritten rules, from the relatively legal (sign stealing, specialized groundskeeping) through the mild illegal (spitballs, featuring Gaylord Perry) to the worst of the worst (betting on baseball, with chapters on the Black Sox and Pete Rose). Recommended for baseball fans.
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Apr 21, 2007 15:58
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perceptual_set posted:I just finished Fahrenheit 451. Yeah, I didn't think 451 was about censorship as much as it was about anti-intellectualism. To quote Bill Hicks: "whatcha readin' for?"
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Apr 21, 2007 16:56
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It's scary how situations in the book mirror today (Granted, not to such extremity).
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LooseChanj posted:Yeah, I didn't think 451 was about censorship as much as it was about anti-intellectualism. To quote Bill Hicks: "whatcha readin' for?" Exactly. I didn't quite understand the government's stance on book burning since no one wanted to read in the first place. Although Bradbury certainly didn't focus so much the government apparatus and instead most of the observation covered every-day life and how shallow and stupid people had become. I don't want to spoil it for anyone who wants to read this (and you should) but it's fascinating how so many of the activities enjoyed by people in this book are general approximations of things people do all the time now.
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Apr 21, 2007 17:05
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DeimosRising posted:You'll like it a lot I think, in many ways it's better written than his stunning three volume history of Byzantium. I knew virtually nothing of the city beyond the basic outline of its geography and history before reading the book, and I was very impressed with its accessibility and depth of information. That's good to hear. I'm not far yet, but I'm enjoying it. I plan on reading at least the first of his Byzantium histories after A History of Venice.
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Apr 21, 2007 19:46
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I just finished A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore. I thought it was ok. It didn't leave a lasting impression or anything through. It started out strong, then just petered off for me. I don't know if it had any worthwhile message about death or something; I didn't find one. It was funny in some parts, especially in the beginning.
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Apr 22, 2007 01:01
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Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco. goddrat that was quite a read. The whole constructed plot coming into existence because they made it was a really impressive idea. Awesome, awesome characters. Agliè is totally rad.
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Apr 22, 2007 13:16
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On the Road by Jack Kerouac. I've had several people highly recommend it, but I had the hardest time warming up to Kerouac's style. In all, I thought it was a worthwhile read and did a terrific job capturing the mood, but the fact that it was extremely fast paced and redundant really bothered me.
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Apr 23, 2007 06:13
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perceptual_set posted:I just finished Fahrenheit 451. In the back there was an interview with Bradbury which seemed to be somewhat recent (it mentions the Iraq war). In it, he talks about a 451 movie coming out with Mel Gibson producing. How accurate is this? The Mel Gibson movie isn't going to happen. Frank Darbabont (The Green Mile, The Shawshank Redemption) has had the rights to it for five years. According to IMDB, he just recently announced that he's in the final stages of actually making the movie happen. We might get a movie in a couple years at best. The last book I read was The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I expected good things, but it was honestly not all that spectacular. Oprah loved it, though.
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Apr 23, 2007 07:06
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The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. And it was a bloody masterpiece. I'd been putting it off on account of the setting (1940s-50s Barcelona) but it turned out to be absolutely great. One of those books where you read a few paragraphs and you actually feel like you're sweating buckets sitting outside a spanish cafe in the broiling sunlight. Not quite as big on the Massive information dump in the last few chapters, after such a slow and fun build up, slowly revealing all the mystery a piece at a time, it was a bit saddening to have the whole story literally fall into Daniel's lap in a 100 page block 4/5s of the way through. That aside, I'd recommend this author.
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Apr 23, 2007 20:18
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I just finished The flight of the Eisenstein in the Warhammer 40k / Horus Heresy series, an excellent read along with the 3 Horus series before it. It was about how Captain Garro took a control of a Frigate to send his warning back to the emperor of Horus' betrayal at Istvaan. Can't wait until Fulgrim comes out in the summer.
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Apr 23, 2007 21:40
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deadguy posted:The Mel Gibson movie isn't going to happen. Frank Darbabont (The Green Mile, The Shawshank Redemption) has had the rights to it for five years. According to IMDB, he just recently announced that he's in the final stages of actually making the movie happen. We might get a movie in a couple years at best. That's really dissapointing. I wanted to be the rear end in a top hat that walks out saying, "The book was much better!"
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Apr 24, 2007 02:17
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Just finished Puddin'head Wilson by Twain for a 19th Century Lit class. I thought it was a clumsy little novel with a very muddled aim, and was not one of my favorites from Twain. I'm reading a short story called The Aspern Papers by Henry James as we speak, which is shaping up to be very interesting. I've never read anything by James before but I enjoy his style immensely. I'd really like to read Portrait of a Lady sometime on my own sooner rather than later. As for leisurely reading, the last novel that I had time for was House of Leaves, which I thought was incredibly gripping and engaging throughout. I very much empathized with Johnny's descent into madness and the way the novel continuously straddled the line between fantasy and reality. A great winter break read.
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Apr 24, 2007 02:38
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Casino Royale by Ian Fleming I really enjoyed it, I feel it had a better plot than the movie and explained Vesper's betrayal better. The one tiny problem I had with it was the amount of French that was used, I know it was written in the '50's so it was more common place then but I felt a little out of the loop during the baccarat game. If you like the movies you should check this out.
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Apr 24, 2007 02:46
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I just finished "the drawing of the three" in the dark tower series. I was pretty upset because the first thing to happen was he gets his shooting finger chewed off and it felt like it was entirely too early in a ten-whatever book series to have the main character be permenantly maimed but it grew on me and I like the way it turned out so far. I'm looking forward to book 4 because that's when I hear the series really hits its stride.
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Apr 24, 2007 04:28
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Mr. Fahrenheit posted:Casino Royale by Ian Fleming I read this right after the movie came out and loved it. I thought the movie followed the book pretty well, except that it had a whole hour more of story before it started on what happened in the book. But...poker?!? And not only that but the uber-hip trendy hold'em poker! Blasphemy! And it didn't help that they had to shoehorn the terrorist instead of commie thing either. That probably screwed up the whole plot about Vesper's interests. Am I ever going to finish Children of Dune? Stay tuned to this thread. 
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Apr 24, 2007 15:12
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Zodiac by Neal Stephenson. He's the writer of Snow Crash and Diamond Age, but Zodiac takes place during modern times and has no science fiction in it at all. It's about an enviromentalist who's fighting big corporations that dump toxic chemicals, and how he gets in trouble for it. I actually like it a lot more than his sci-fi stuff because it is funny, flows well, and doesn't have a convulted storyline.
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Apr 24, 2007 17:29
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Krinkle posted:I just finished "the drawing of the three" in the dark tower series. I was pretty upset because the first thing to happen was he gets his shooting finger chewed off and it felt like it was entirely too early in a ten-whatever book series to have the main character be permenantly maimed but it grew on me and I like the way it turned out so far. Having read the whole series, that first spoiler you talked about just makes things more difficult for him, but interesting. The third book, The Waste Lands is when I really, really got hooked on the series, and then it gets progressively, unbelievably weird after book 4 (beyond the typical 'suspension of disbelief' weird, I mean). I thought it went downhill after the fourth book, but I hope you enjoy the rest of the series though. I just finished Sunshine by Robin McKinley, which was a refreshing vampire novel after spending my life reading the Anne Rice vampire books. It gets repetitive at times, and too many loose-ends are left hanging, but otherwise McKinley is an engaging author and some of the characters - particularly the main vampire, Con, are extremely compelling. Despite the vampires and demons and weres running around, the world of the novel is extremely believable and given to you only in tiny hints at a time, so you are constantly surprised as you learn more about the setting and culture. Sage of Chaos fucked around with this message at 21:57 on Apr 24, 2007 |
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Apr 24, 2007 21:53
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Krinkle posted:I just finished "the drawing of the three" in the dark tower series. I was pretty upset because the first thing to happen was he gets his shooting finger chewed off This turned me off the whole dark tower series. I read the first book and thought it was alright, then read the first couple of pages of the second and he got his fingers chewed off. I stopped reading thinking I'd go back to it later but I never did. edit: I just finished the first part of the collected vampire: the masquerade clan novels. It's about the vampire apocalypse. I would recommend reading the clan novels separately, the way the collections are sorted (chronologically) makes the build up really, really really slow and the action far too short. reflir fucked around with this message at 22:08 on Apr 24, 2007 |
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Apr 24, 2007 22:06
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reflir posted:This turned me off the whole dark tower series. I read the first book and thought it was alright, then read the first couple of pages of the second and he got his fingers chewed off. I stopped reading thinking I'd go back to it later but I never did. The first thing I did was search every dark tower synopsis on wikipedia for mentions of the word finger to see if he ever, ever got them back. I mean he killed an entire city. He hasn't kicked nearly enough rear end yet to hang it up and become a newbie wrangler. Actually I had thought he lost his third and fourth finger and it wasn't until the wastelands that I realized he lost his trigger finger. Jesus, his trigger finger! loving lobsters  and I was upset that no, there was no mention of them ever again so it's basically permenant and I should stop worrying. Anyway I'm halfway into wastelands now. I think it's worth it. It makes him less of a lone wolf and allows the suspension of disbelief that he would ever need or put up with companions.
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Apr 24, 2007 22:52
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