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Finished Paul Park's The White Tyger (the third book in his "Roumania" series). Excellent series thus far, though Park is definitely not an easy read. Very Gene Wolfe-ish in style at times. Also read Stealing Life by Antony Johnston. Decent read but nothing incredibly original, and a bit flawed at points.
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May 8, 2007 04:09
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Sasha Sokolov's A School for Fools, which seemed to promise much and had some great passages but tended to squander it. That said, probably not the best thing to have read while ill; hard to concentrate as it is, never mind with the schizophrenic and nonlinear narrative. Pulled together a little for the end, but otherwise it edges a little too close to an empty display of literary acrobatics.
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May 8, 2007 06:44
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Just finished Nightwatch and Daywatch, by Sergei Lutyanenko. Amazing books, about humans gifted with various levels of magic. The light ones and dark ones are locked in an eons old struggle, recently turned cold war, about how the fate of humanity will be decided, and by whom. There will apparently be 4 books translated to english from the russian, and these two are the first. The next is out in June/July. Next up for me is The Historian. I'm only about 20 pages in and just discovering the beginnings of the plot, but the writing is actually quite something. Very subtle, but beautifully put together. It's a mystery about the fate of Vlad Dracula...
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May 8, 2007 08:31
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WimpBastard posted:I've read about Lyra's Oxford, and I know it won't be what I want. Though it does intrigue me. According to Pullman he won't feature a story with the kind of closure I want, and at any rate I suspect it would be hard to write a story like that without screwing it up. I can't remember the ending quite right -- is it where there's a big battle with sentient polar bears (woah) and flying people (woah) with a huge flying fortress of some kind (captained by Lyra's father or something???) and God (woah)?
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May 8, 2007 10:38
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Grum posted:I can't remember the ending quite right -- is it where there's a big battle with sentient polar bears (woah) and flying people (woah) with a huge flying fortress of some kind (captained by Lyra's father or something???) and God (woah)? Thats part of the ending, but the real ending is Lyra fulfilling the prophecy of becoming the next Eve and falling in love with Will. But because the Dust is leaking out through the windows the knife makes they have to close all the windows. Also if they live in another world they get sick and die so they have to live in their own worlds apart from each other forever despite how much they love each other  . Of the battle, "God" is killed (he's not really god) by Lyra and Will unwittingly when they free him from his crystal case. After that I assume the forces of "god" lost the battle since they also lost their leader. Armoured bears are the most loving awesome thing ever though.
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May 8, 2007 13:42
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Skellen posted:Just finished Nightwatch and Daywatch, by Sergei Lutyanenko. Amazing books, about humans gifted with various levels of magic. The light ones and dark ones are locked in an eons old struggle, recently turned cold war, about how the fate of humanity will be decided, and by whom. There will apparently be 4 books translated to english from the russian, and these two are the first. The next is out in June/July. I don't want to blow The Historian for you, but personally I'd skip it. Great eye for descriptive detail, but the narrative flow leaves a lot to be desired.
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May 8, 2007 14:28
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Encryptic posted:I don't want to blow The Historian for you, but personally I'd skip it. Great eye for descriptive detail, but the narrative flow leaves a lot to be desired. Aw dammit. Well, it's the only thing I brought to work so I guess I'll be giving it a chance.
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May 8, 2007 17:28
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Messerschmitts over Sicily: Diary of a Luftwaffe Fighter Commander, Johannes Steinhoff If you're looking for amazing stories of derring-do by dashing Arayan flyboys, this isn't the book. Steinhoff sees almost no action and scores only one kill the entire book. Although he fought in Russia, France, Tunisia and the Balkans, this focuses on a few weeks when his squadron was in sicily. It gives you a really good idea of what the Luftwaffe was enduring at this stage in the war, and it does a great job of describing the antagonism between upper echelons of command the actual fighter pilots. It's an interesting snap-shot of the air war in the Mediterreanian, but not much else.
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May 8, 2007 22:40
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I just finished Atomised by Michel Houellebecq, at the recommendation of a mate. He claimed it was one of the most interesting and brilliant books he read last year. (I'm slightly concerned about him) drat odd novel, the translation by Frank Wynne is fantastic and the writing itself is very good. But my god is the story strange. Two brothers Michel and Bruno have the same mother and are both raised by their respective paternal-Grandmothers. Both grow up completely incapable of relating to the world and to other people, one a sex-obsessed overweight alcoholic, the other a work-crazed micro-biologist who feels no pleasure in anything. It then follows their lives, focussing mainly on their mid-life crises. Maybe it's just me but I couldn't relate to either of the characters in the story at all, (perhaps that was the point) and it's downright pornographic at times. The ending however is a loving cop-out, a 10 page epilogue which is complete drivel and that both scientifically and logically makes no sense. That Michel's research and discoveries (which are only vaguely hinted at) somehow leads the entire world to start cloning a uber-race of androgynous geniuses, with the rest of humanity giving up sex and dying out noticably withing 50 years, is just stupid. An entire book describing that might have been more interesting, but this was just a badly structured what-if tacked on the end like a bad children's morality tale. An interesting diversion.
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May 8, 2007 22:48
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Dammit, wrong bloody thread. Why do I have multiple browser windows open? My apologies.
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May 9, 2007 01:20
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Skellen posted:Aw dammit. Well, it's the only thing I brought to work so I guess I'll be giving it a chance. Hope you like it better than I did. Interested to hear your thoughts either way.
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May 9, 2007 04:27
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Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut I enjoyed it, but I feel that I will get more out of it if I re-read it. The stuff he has to say about war and the way we view life is very interesting. I'd reccomend it to anyone who hasn't read it yet. I think I'll read Mother Night by Vonnegut next.
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May 10, 2007 00:05
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J.L. Austin - How to do Things with Words Really awesome if you know who Austin is. He knows his poo poo. His account of language is interesting and speech act theory is really nifty. If you've got an interest in how to use language this is the book to read. It's a bit complicated at parts (okay, it's incredibly complex), but it's interesting enough that if you get lost you'll still be able to get something out of it. Read it if you have an interest in the subject (or philosophy in general). Mikhail Bulgakov - The Master and Margarita This book is pure unmitigated awesome. I loving loved Woland and his crazy-as-gently caress entourage and the mayhem they cause. Certain scenes still evoke a  from me, and it's laugh-out-loud funny at points. His anti-Soviet barbs are pretty blatant, and it's got a lot of depth. I'm planning on rereading it, partially because it's really good and I missed a lot the first time through, and partially because it's so drat fun. The entire book is complete madness, and thoroughly Russian.Next up is Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust  . God dammit, I am going to be one of the five people in history to have read the whole thing!
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May 10, 2007 02:00
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I just finished, Welcome to the Monkey House by Vonnegut, which was excellent. My favorite short stories were at the beginning, Harrison Bergeron and the title story Welcome to the Monkey House, but the pace didn't slow from beginning to end. I didn't read one that I didn't like. This is only my third book of his that I've read, and I should probably go back and reread the other two. I'm not really covering new ground, but Vonnegut is amazing. I think I'll give him a rest for a little bit because I have a laundry list of things to read, but what would be the next to read, considering I've read Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse? Is there a logical progression? I know a lot of goons regard Sirens of Titan to be one of his best, I'll probably try for that next.
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May 10, 2007 02:47
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Fight Club It was full of gimmicky bullshit and I loved every word of it. Angrykraut posted:I just finished, Welcome to the Monkey House by Vonnegut, which was excellent. My favorite short stories were at the beginning, Harrison Bergeron and the title story Welcome to the Monkey House, but the pace didn't slow from beginning to end. I didn't read one that I didn't like.
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May 10, 2007 22:09
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Skellen posted:Next up for me is The Historian. I'm only about 20 pages in and just discovering the beginnings of the plot, but the writing is actually quite something. Very subtle, but beautifully put together. It's a mystery about the fate of Vlad Dracula... Please do yourself a favour and skip it. It's really not worth it. Trust me, its not. I read page after page after page, wanting to feel scared, to feel the excitement and I had a sense that the awesome stuff people are saying about this book is just around the corner... ...and then I read the last page. The moment never came.
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May 10, 2007 22:51
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I just finished The Man in the High Castle and I'm sad to say that I did not enjoy it at all. It's frustrating because I love alternate history and this book is enjoyed by a lot of people. I just felt like I was reading the plot to some TV drama, nothing seemed relevant or important. Ugh.
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May 10, 2007 23:10
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I just finished A Fire in the Sun by Effinger, the sequel to When Gravity Fails, it was great, less techno-centric than WGF but a great mystery read. Took a bit to get into, but that was probably just me as I wanted to read about 8 different books and couldn't make my mind up. Then I read 69 by Ryu Murakami, a book about 1969 in a small Japanese town and the main characters struggle between what he wanted to do and what he did. It was light, often hilarious and fun. My only real issue was it was very short, more novella than actual novel. Now I have to find more of his works.
CrimsonGhost fucked around with this message at 18:02 on May 11, 2007 |
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May 11, 2007 12:17
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Just finished Martin Amis' The Rachel Papers. It's his first novel, and it's about a year in the life of a precocious Oxford applicant - Charles Highway - as he tries to bag the girl he has his eye on. Charles starts out as a really unlikeable character who's too big for his boots, but you really begin sympathising with him as the novel progresses, even as you know your opinion of him should be going down. Plus there are some (rather funny) sex scenes! I didn't get the impression they were meant to titillate - Amis makes sure to have the most juicy screws sound mechanical and methodical.
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May 12, 2007 01:40
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WimpBastard posted:Thats part of the ending, but the real ending is Lyra fulfilling the prophecy of becoming the next Eve and falling in love with Will. But because the Dust is leaking out through the windows the knife makes they have to close all the windows. Also if they live in another world they get sick and die so they have to live in their own worlds apart from each other forever despite how much they love each other I'll admit it. It was extremely sad. I think I might have even shed a tear or two. And yes, it was glorious. The Amber Spyglass was brilliant, and its one of those books that I will cherish for a long time that felt this satisfying to read, and feel.
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May 12, 2007 02:04
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Demons by Dostoevsky. Yeah it starts off light-hearted, but when it gets dark it gets dark. Better than Brothers Karamazov by a good amount.
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May 12, 2007 04:13
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I just finished Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose. I felt that it was better then the HBO series of the same name. It really gave you a sense of fear, dread, and reality that wasn't in the TV show.
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May 12, 2007 09:13
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dpvtank posted:Please do yourself a favour and skip it. It's really not worth it. Trust me, its not. I read page after page after page, wanting to feel scared, to feel the excitement and I had a sense that the awesome stuff people are saying about this book is just around the corner... "I just finished the most tedious book I've read this year." "Was it 'The Historian'?" "Yeah---wait, what?" I felt the same way about Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norrel, though; so if you thought that was the tits, by all means, go nuts with The Historian.
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May 13, 2007 02:02
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Pontius Pilate posted:Just finished The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by whatever that guy's name is. I enjoyed it much more than The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and it seemed as if I was the only that didn't hate the ending. Hemmingway said it was cheating as does everybody I know but I guess I could look past it. Or something. In my opinion, everything went downhill after Tom appeared. The extremely complicated escape plan he concocts for Jim annoyed me so much that I was tempted to skip past it, but I ended up trudging through for the humor alone, which, contrary to the rest of the novel, seemed to become a main focus. The ending also ultimately made the moral struggle Huck went through pointless, as his opinion on slavery never really changed, but simply conformed to suit Tom. I suppose I enjoyed it overall, but I'll take Hemingway's advice next time and stop after Jim's taken away. Lately, I've finished Everything Is Illuminated, which was funny and moving, though I felt that I was missing out on quite a lot because I don't know particularly much about Jewish folk tales or traditions. For example, I only realized recently that Brod's 613 sadnesses are a sort of reference to the 613 mitzvot. Moved on to Dune, which was interesting if only because the universe felt especially alien, though the way Herbert decided to establish the mood was by throwing unexplained terms at the reader and interlacing the text with vaguely described philosophical treatises. Something about his style of writing also began to grate on me, but the story was interesting enough to carry me along to its close. Also read Alan Moore's Voice of the Fire which is billed as a novel but is really more of a collection of short stories with a common theme/location, in the vein of something like The Martian Chronicles. There are some excellent stories (Confessions of a Mask, Angel Language) and only one truly awful one (Phipp's Fire Escape, a masturbatorial stream-of-consciousness excerpt of Moore's life and the layout of modern Northampton.) Just finished Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell today. Overall, it was an enjoyable book, but it could've used a good editing to remove quite a bit of unnecessary material. I suppose the supplementary material is part of the book's charm, but the falling action/denouement consisted of only 160 pages of a 782 page novel, and there were still unresolved plot issues, one of which I found entirely contrary to other events that occur in the book. If enchantments break with the death of the enchanter, why are Strange and Norrell still trapped in Eternal Darkness? It would've been a much more satisfying ending if the spell had broken, and I can see no point in having the magic continue unless Clarke wishes to continue it as a series. However, I haven't heard any news about a possible sequel, though I do know there are a few stories relating to the Strange/Norrell universe in The Ladies of Grace Adieu. Next on my list is The Red and the Black... careeningcar fucked around with this message at 04:11 on May 13, 2007 |
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May 13, 2007 04:08
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Euphoria 5L posted:Mikhail Bulgakov - The Master and Margarita I loved Master and Margarita, I actually went to a bunch of the places that Bulgakov talks about in Moscow recently, including the cafe where Berlioz bites it. I just finished my last segment of books: Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh- really funny in parts, but not quite as acerbic or biting as The Loved One. Full of Catholic angst and all that, but it was pretty good. Time and the Hunter by Italo Calvino- again. really hilarious. It's this whole essay told in multiple points of views, from a reptile who watches the evolution of birds, to a single cell meditating on its nucleus to a human being in a car crash. Everything keeps coming back to time, and though it might sound pretentious, Calvino has a real awareness of his philosophical bullshit. In one segment he goes on a whole 30 page essay about love and self and being and I started getting really tired of it until he revealed that the protagonist was a camel. Lady Chatterly's Lover by D.H. Lawrence- I read the whole book thinking, 'what's the big deal, I can't even see why this is offensive,' until I reached the end and realized that the book was an antique and was published completely censored. Kind of funny in retrospect, but I'm pretty pissed.
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May 13, 2007 10:27
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Heretics of Dune, Frank Herbert. Boy did this one take me awhile to get into. I must have read this before, but for the life of me I don't remember. This installment is very different from the Dune novels before it, in that it's primarily focused on the psuedo-Catholic Bene Gesserit sisterhood. (And I hate those bitches.) I liked some of the exposition about the Bene Tleilax, but their secret axlotl tanks being human wombs felt like savage ret-conning. I think a lot of the hate for the post Children stories, and especially the last two novels comes from the fact that Herbert seems to have left behind the Atreides as a messiah idea. It doesn't help that a good 2/3's of the action in this book takes place on other planets either. Not to mention that in the last book the planet itself has been destroyed! I was going to read that last book, Chapterhouse Dune, next but I think one of the reasons it took me so long to get through this one is because I was just overloaded. So I'm gonna take a break and read another Bond next.
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May 13, 2007 14:52
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Just finished Gabriel Garcia Marquez's 100 Years of Solitude yesterday. drat, that was a fantastic book. I'd been meaning to read it for a while and finally picked up a copy from the secondhand book store a couple weeks ago. I loved the way he intentionally tells the story as if all the strange events happening were perfectly normal. Really draws you into the story even more.
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May 13, 2007 15:17
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Just finished "Never Let Me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro to add to my list of Really Depressing rear end Books including "Requiem For A Dream" and "The Virgin Suicides." Why do I keep reading books like these?
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May 13, 2007 19:36
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Old Man's War by John Scalzi. I had wanted military sci-fi and it delivered, but not quite to the extent that I wanted. It was more science fiction than military and didn't quite have the feel of Starship Troopers, where Rico is talking about his platoon and its organization or the equipment they used or the battles he fought in. The mundane military stuff actually kind of drew me in as much as anything else. I guess because Scalzi has no military background, he wouldn't be terribly familiar with that kind of stuff though. It was still a quick and fun read and I'd recommend it. I'd especially recommend it if you liked Starship Troopers, but didn't like the History and Moral Philosophy lectures or if you liked the Forever War.
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May 13, 2007 20:29
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Mythic posted:I just finished Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, and enjoyed it very much. It's a casement into the final days of an independant Nigerian clan and the influence, and struggle against, colonialism and Christianity. But inside that is the story of a man trying to cope with life, the future, and his final failure. He is symbolic. Really it's a casement into the human condition. Anyway, I just finished Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles. Overall, a good book. It took me a few chapters to realize the book doesn't feature one continuous story line (although bits and pieces of stories in the beginning of the book are brought up later on). Some of the stories were weaker than others, but many times they were rather short in comparison. Now time to start At the Mountains of Maddness
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May 14, 2007 01:14
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Doctor No, Ian Fleming Steadily working my way through the Bond series, this is another one that stands out. I think it's the first actual mad scientist Bond has faced. I was a bit let down by the method in which Bond offs Doctor No. Like all Bond novels, it's all fairly plausible but I think Fleming was pushing the limits of some of the technical stuff, like hijacking rockets.
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May 16, 2007 22:51
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Robert Musil's Young Törless. Worth a read, but as a debut, nothing really distinctive. Which is to say he'd mastered a certain textbook Austrian style, but isn't really a patch on his later work, not to mention being consumed a little with forcing out the deep psychological insight. Quick read though, and the climax is surprisingly gripping. And John Hodgman's The Areas of My Expertise, extensive study of which has helped my understanding of Lost as some kind of hobo-metaphor.
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May 17, 2007 02:29
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Samurai!, Saburo Sakai. An excellent, but hard to find-book about World War II from the perspective of the greatest Japanese ace to survive WWII. Although well researched and with assistance from an AP reporter, some of the stories are a little far fetched. Never the less, provides great insight into the training regime of Japanese flyers, and combat conditions in China, Rabul and finally the home islands. The Rum Diary, Hunter S. Thompson. I love the pictures he paints and the characters he created. I could literally see each scene he was describing. As a wanna-be jaded and degenerate reporter, it's everything I aspire to be!
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May 18, 2007 00:48
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I'm currently reading "We" by Yevgeny Zamyatin.... and it is bitchin'. Although it is so not a utopia book - more like dystopia.
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May 18, 2007 08:56
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perceptual_set posted:I just finished Year Zero by Jeff Long. It's plague fiction about an ancient virus from the first century AD being re-released by the opening of a holy relic. The virus quickly spreads threatening to wipe out humanity. Because the virus was first introduced in the first century, scientists begin cloning humans from bones found at Golgotha in Jerusalem. One clone claims to remember his name. And he is Jesus Christ. I just finished this based on your reveiw here. I liked it more than I thought I would. It took a long time to get rolling though and I almost put it down three or four times. It was a little roller coasterish with the up and down pacing but it worked pretty well. And I was happy to find that he ended the book better than his others which always felt rushed and hanging. Then I read Scar Night by Alan Campbell. It wasn't until I finished the book and looked at the author's bio that I saw he was one of the programmers for the GTA series. That's kind of cool. The book itself was dark and gloomy, with an Angel and an Assassin and a whole bunch of not yet cliche wrokings. It had a Bas Lag kind of feel to the world, which is a plus for me. This is the first book in a trilogy and I look forward to where it goes from here. The rich mythology the author is conveying is very foreboding and well thought out.
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May 18, 2007 12:47
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space pope posted:Samurai!, Saburo Sakai. An excellent, but hard to find-book about World War II You know, I think I might have that here somewhere. I'll slot it into my to-read pile.
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May 18, 2007 15:45
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I just finished The Grapes of Wrath and The Bone People. I think the next I'm going to read is a book called On Beauty by Zadie Smith.
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May 18, 2007 16:07
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I just finished The Gunslinger, first book of the Dark Tower series by Stephen King. I read it about 2 years ago but gave up on the series ironically because I was reading through the books far too fast. Interestingly it does tie in really well with the later books in the series, 2,3 and the start of 4 that is (I never got any farther than that) Still love how bleak and brilliant it is, and I somehow must have missed quite how cold blooded and ruthless Roland is. especially with the whole Massacre an entire town of bible bashing hicks, even the children.
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May 18, 2007 18:56
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Just finished The Culled by Simon Spurrier, and I'm working on a young adult sci-fi book called Earthseed by Pamela Sargent.
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May 19, 2007 15:46
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Just finished A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin. I know its been out for a while but after reading it I'm amazed I never picked it up before. Dark and real world with beautiful intrigue and backstabbery. It was drat good and looks like I've picked up another author to read.
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May 19, 2007 16:15
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