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Just finished American Gods by Neil Gaiman. Excellent book although is it just me, or was the whole thing with bringing Laura back to life left hanging?
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Aug 19, 2007 21:16
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Crazy Man posted:Just finished American Gods by Neil Gaiman. No, she changes her mind and gets rid of the coin/Sun
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Aug 19, 2007 21:45
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inedible gauges posted:I just recently finished Paradise Lost on the recommendation of an English professor who described it as the greatest work in the English language. I don't know if I agree with that but I definitely enjoyed reading it. I read an annotated Barnes and Noble version, which helped with some fine details but probably wasn't really necessary to get the gist of it. Overall I was pleasantly surprised by how good it was when I was expecting a really dry retelling of the Bible. Paradise Lost is one of those things where you can read it, even with annotations, and get a pretty good basic understanding of what's going on, but you have to take a college-level course with a professor who knows his stuff to really get even remotely everything out of it. There's simply too much going on within the poem to understand fully. The best way my professor described it was that Milton wrote it in such a way that only God could fully comprehend since he could see every part of it all at once. Maybe that's giving Milton too much credit, but once you start digging around in it you start finding all sorts of crazy things.
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Aug 19, 2007 23:00
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z0331 posted:Paradise Lost is one of those things where you can read it, even with annotations, and get a pretty good basic understanding of what's going on, but you have to take a college-level course with a professor who knows his stuff to really get even remotely everything out of it. There's simply too much going on within the poem to understand fully. The best way my professor described it was that Milton wrote it in such a way that only God could fully comprehend since he could see every part of it all at once. Maybe that's giving Milton too much credit, but once you start digging around in it you start finding all sorts of crazy things. Like what? I'm always interested in those "more-than-they-seem" books. Encryptic posted:That's Wolfe for you - difficult to read but a fantastic loving writer. Hmm, I don't know if I like or dislike that. Maybe if the "less-challenging" means that they're written more clearly or he learned new techniques then that is ok, but I hope doesn't dumb his latter works down, as I've purchased them all (  ) on the strength of book one of BOTNS. Do you know of any other authors(other than the obvious Nabokov) who write in a style comparable to his? It is my favorite type of writing and I can't seem to find anyone else with that kind of mastery of English, although Cormac McCarthy probably could write in that style should he choose to.
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Aug 20, 2007 01:04
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I just finished Catch-22, and I must say that I found the humor to be really entertaining. Now, I'm looking for something to read. It seems that I have run out of ideas.
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Aug 20, 2007 03:08
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QVT posted:Like what? I'm always interested in those "more-than-they-seem" books. You just had to ask, didn't you.  Of course I think I don't have my class notes anymore and now that someone has asked I can't remember too many good examples.A couple of things I can remember are: -In Book 9 when Satan is flying around the globe looking for a hiding spot he traces a cross over it: he flies north past the "river Ob" which goes to the Arctic, then down to the Antarctic, then to Panama from Syria then back East to India. -Also in Book 9, Satan is in his serpent form moving towards Eve, it describes how he has reared up and moving like that. The first letters of lines 510-514 spell "Satan" and appear vertical like the serpent. You could claim this is pure coincidence, but in conjunction with what's going on in the text there's a strong argument that Milton did it on purpose. -Eve is actually presented as the stronger of the two and that's why Satan targets her first. For example, she often proves to use more intuitive reasoning than discursive, intuitive being closer to the reasoning of God who can see everything immediately rather than moving linearly from argument to argument. I can't think of too many other good examples - it's been a while since I've read it. Basically there are a lot of instances where it turns traditional Christian doctrine around, making Eve and Satan the more sympathetic characters.
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Aug 20, 2007 03:25
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Yoked posted:I just finished Catch-22, and I must say that I found the humor to be really entertaining. Now, I'm looking for something to read. It seems that I have run out of ideas. I loved Catch-22 and Gravity's Rainbow reminded me of it occasionally. It has a similar style of humour and the same vibe, but it is very dense and quite difficult. Amazing book though. I also hear that Slaughterhouse Five is pretty good, although I am ashamed to say I haven't read it myself. I just finished The Road, and I have a feeling I didn't really 'get' it. The writing was great, although I was pretty tired when I was reading it, so I didn't get into it as much as I perhaps should have. Any recommendations for the next McCarthy book I should try?
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Aug 20, 2007 04:18
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Foundation's Edge, Isaac Asimov This is probably blasphemy, but I liked this book better than the Foundation trilogy itself. Which isn't too surprising, my favorite of that trilogy was Second Foundation. I love mysterious behind the scenes type mysteries, and this was sort of a continuation of that theme, with the promise of more to come in Foundation and Earth so I'll definitely be picking that up.
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Aug 20, 2007 06:40
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I just finished Choke by Chuck Palahniuk. Thinking of maybe reading another novel by him next. Interesting read, with a similar narration to Fight Club. Not for the weak stomach though; extremely graphic and sexual.
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Aug 20, 2007 07:44
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I finished Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore. I've been wanting to read something by him for some time now, so I kind of picked it at random. I liked it a lot. It's basically a coming-of-age story of a 15 year old kid, who calls himself Kafka, who runs away from home to escape his fate that his father keeps telling him is going to happen:(the whole Oedipus mythology-thing of how Kafka's going to kill his father and be with his mother and sister), and a story about an old guy, Nakata, who can talk to cats. Seemingly unrelated stories told back and forth over alternating chapters that eventually start strongly intertwining. All of that mixed with heavy postmodern, metaphysical, dreamy-esque soul-searching. Er, yeah, I think that's a good way to put it. Add some philosophy, mythology, music, and literature references, plus Colonel Sanders, and you have yourself a pretty cool book. There's some pretty sad moments in the book, all of them about Miss Saeki, who is such a tragic character  . I kind of started getting creeped the hell out by Murakami's obsession with the whole 'taking a dump' thing, though it is a translation, but still.Two things I'm still wondering is what in the hell the kids were actually staring at during the 'rice bowl incident', and if the thing that came out of Nakata's mouth was supposed to be Johnnie Walker trying to cross over or what not. I think I'll probably find another one of Murakami's books to read next. Don't really know which one, though.
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Aug 20, 2007 14:33
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etement posted:I just finished Choke by Chuck Palahniuk. Thinking of maybe reading another novel by him next. Read Survivor, it's pretty great.
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Aug 20, 2007 14:55
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QVT posted:Hmm, I don't know if I like or dislike that. Maybe if the "less-challenging" means that they're written more clearly or he learned new techniques then that is ok, but I hope doesn't dumb his latter works down, as I've purchased them all ( I wouldn't say his other stuff I've read is "dumbed down", but BOTNS has the distinction of having at least a couple of books written about it that attempt to analyze everything going on in it. The latter three books certainly continue in the same vein as "Shadow" does. If you read a lot of his stuff, you'll notice he likes to use unreliable narrators (like Severian or Latro - the narrator of the "Soldier" books) and tends to leave stuff out that's either revealed casually later on or you have to piece it together from what you've read. I can't say I've read anything that really resembles what Wolfe typically does (I've yet to read anything by Nabokov - been meaning to, though), though McCarthy definitely knows how to use the English language in a manner that rivals Wolfe. Anyway, back to the main topic of discussion: Just finished Number9Dream by David Mitchell yesterday. It doesn't have the same "nested story" structure of Cloud Atlas, making it easier to follow, but I did enjoy the way he weaves in snatches of dreams, video games, letters and stories into the main narrative of a young man in Tokyo trying to find his real father. Great read and I'm looking forward to reading the rest of his stuff.
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Aug 20, 2007 16:35
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Just finished Mythologies by Roland Barthes today. Enjoyed the essays, all of which took a look at some aspect of high and low French culture in the mid 1950's and showed how everything becomes part of a myth that the bourgeoisie status quo is 'natural'. I have to admit I was disappointed that he didn't really cover how a leftist thinker throwing rocks like himself could very well be incorporated into myth, though.
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Aug 21, 2007 04:06
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Factotum, Charles Bukowski Bukowski's always fun, and this novel of his revolving door jobs was no exception. It amazes me how bums on skid row always manage to have enough money to hit the liquor store when I haven't been able to afford more than a bottle of beer in months.
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Aug 21, 2007 11:44
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Just finished It by Stephen King. I enjoyed it though I think it could have been a bit shorter. I felt like some story aspects were wasted, like Tom chasing Bev to Derry and then dying pretty quickly afterwards and the lack of a more thorough explanation of who Bob Gray/Pennywise were, exactly. And why had adults seen him throughout the ages? Especially before clowns were an established thing? I almost feel like King started out writing a book about a creepy clown and then changed things along the way. Anyway, an interesting enough book that I did enjoy, all things considered. I did find interesting, however, the effect that this book must have had on Lost. With the writers of the show having said that Stephen King was a huge inspiration to them, I can see how they could have adopted the use of flashbacks, and the 'everything is connected' aspects of the book into the show. Additionally, Richie is the most obnoxious character ever. Riptor fucked around with this message at 04:04 on Aug 22, 2007 |
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Aug 21, 2007 16:29
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The Picture of Dorian Gray. I don't understand why everyone loves this book so much. It's terribly excessive, and possibly the gayest thing I've read since Sedaris. Henry seemed like a mouthpiece, too. At least I've got Hemingway to chase it with.
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Aug 22, 2007 09:16
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Stan Lee Jeans posted:The Picture of Dorian Gray. I don't understand why everyone loves this book so much. It's terribly excessive, and possibly the gayest thing I've read since Sedaris. Henry seemed like a mouthpiece, too. At least I've got Hemingway to chase it with. I've got this on my shelf at the moment, waiting to be read. Sorry to hear it disappointed you. Knowing Wilde, perhaps it would have been more effective in the form of an aphorism and not a novel.
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Aug 22, 2007 11:16
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I just finished "The Rising" by Brian Keene. I've been looking for a good zombie novel for ages. The closest I've come was a short story by Stephen King entitled "Home Delivery", which only left me wishing he had made it into a full book. Instead we have novels like "The Rising" to look forward to. Now I'm not saying that Keene is completely talentless. He's a mediocre writer, but not awful. Still, his abilities are simply not enough to create a proper zombie apocalypse. It's clear that he knows his stuff when it comes to zombies. He lifted the wit, durability, and motor ability of the "Return of the Living Dead" ghouls, grafted on human drama elements taken almost DIRECTLY from "Day of the Dead", and topped it off with "Evil Dead" style possession. The only problem is that his borrowed story elements are all plain to see, and his brand of zombies leaves the survival margin for the living very, very close to zero. Thus, it's hard to get attached to any of the characters, because they're all essentially hosed. In fact, later on, when new characters are being haphazardly thrown at you, you won't care about any of them except the small group of protagonists. Another problem with this book is that it feels just plain trashy. Perhaps this is an issue that's better blamed on the publisher, but the adhesive on the book's spine was ridiculously weak. Halfway through I was having to hold the pages in as I cautiously flipped through them. And at least throughout the first half of the book, it's very clear that the only editing done on the manuscript involved the Microsoft Word spell-checker, because there's at least one terrible grammatical error every five pages or so. It was almost enough to make me toss it back into the pile, but apparently Keene resolved to proofread the last part, because it's fine. There's also some terribly lazy writing in play. Coincidences such as a cell phone running out of juice at the worst possible second. Zombies that just so happen to be in places where it just isn't practical for an intelligent zombie to be (lounging around in a house or in a body of water). Some of the action is frenzied and unintelligible. The dialog for the scientist character is a little too "grammar textbook" to be believable. The characters are all excellent with every kind of weapon (usually missing once and then hitting the head on the next shot). And to top it all off there is literally no ending. It's not even a proper cliffhanger, as it leaves the main characters in peril and simply stops mid-paragraph. After that it's nothing but advertisements for more crummy horror novels. I think there's a sequel to this book, but I'll pass. I guess I'll have to keep waiting for that perfect zombie novel. 
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Aug 24, 2007 01:32
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On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Ian Fleming Only 3 more Bond books to go now! I was pretty astonished to see Bond get MARRIED, but as you can imagine that didn't last more than a couple pages. I think noticed the inspirations to a few Austin Powers gags in this installment, like the army of hypnotized sex-kittens.
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Aug 25, 2007 11:19
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Stephen King's The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower. I can see straight-off why so many folken dislike this book as opposed to the rest of the series, and why the end disappoints them. I thought it was a perfect end to the story and I enjoyed the way it worked out. Dragged a tad in the middle though. Edit: I can't loving count in Roman kizeesh fucked around with this message at 16:19 on Aug 25, 2007 |
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Aug 25, 2007 16:06
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Just finished Only Revolutions by Mark Z. Danielewski. It was one of the most bizarre books I've read in a long time, and not just because of the plot or the characters, but just the way he wrote it. I enjoyed it, though I got tired of flipping it around every eight pages by the time I got halfway through. He does have an interesting way with words.
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Aug 25, 2007 21:50
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Our Posthuman Future by Francis Fukuyama. Initially I was skeptical of all his proclamations about the ethical problems of biotech and such, but I must say he's made some fair points. Maybe a bit heavy on philosophy for those who aren't interested in it, but otherwise a good overview of what the possible consequences of new technologies will be. I can't say I always agreed with him, but that's just me. A fair read, I had expected preachier. v  v
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Aug 25, 2007 22:20
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Finished Michael Chabon's The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. Didn't get into it as much as his other work I've read, though to be fair it was his first novel. Reading Umberto Eco's Baudolino right now and enjoying it.
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Aug 26, 2007 10:09
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I finished A Farewell To Arms by Ernest Hemingway a few days ago. The dialogue seemed even less realistic in this one than in the other stories of his I've read. Maybe I need to reread it, or maybe I missed the off-balance love scenes in The Sun Also Rises, but much of the dialogue was difficult to read because it wasn't realistic at all. The story was good despite this fault.
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Aug 26, 2007 13:56
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Finished Claw of the Conciliator book two in the Book of the New Sun series about 4 days ago. I don't really have much to say about it that I didn't say about the first book. Wolfe's prose is perfect, I love the story and that cliffhanger is killing me and I cannot wait to see how it ends up. My only complaint at this point is that the books will end. However, my only real complaint is that they feel very dreamlike and it is sometimes hard to get your footing of what is actually going on. Finished Mary by Nabokov earlier tonight. I feel a bit conflicted about it at this point. For me, Nabokov is primarily the master of the English language so reading a novel of his that was originally in Russian and then trying to hold it up against Lolita isn't much fair. So while the writing was certainly high level and shone through the translation(done under his supervision) it isn't quite the same type of book. The story here however was excellent, just amazing. I rarely like the endings in books - often it feels like they are done either to shock or fulfill expectations of the reader. This ending was brilliant and upon reflection pretty much the perfect way to end his first novel. Both of them are highly recommended. I know I seem to recommend almost every book I read, but I tend to quickly stop books I don't enjoy so this isn't a problem. See my opinions of Fathers and Sons in the "Books you Stopped Reading" thread.
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Aug 26, 2007 15:13
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The Guns of the South - Harry Turtledove HOLY CHRISTING poo poo, TIME-TRAVELING WHITE-SUPREMACIST SOUTH AFRICANS GO BACK IN TIME TO GIVE THE CONFEDERATES AK-47'S TO WIN THE CIVIL WAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Okay, once I got past the seemingly ridiculous plot I found that this was one of Turtledove's best novels. There were no skin-crawling sex scenes, no cast of a million characters with their own subplots and no endless repeating of certain descriptors (uniform colors over and over). It broke Turtledove's usual practice of having characters mainly be fictional and instead followed General Robert E. Lee for most of the book. It was also a very intelligent book and had tons of discussion on nation building and policy which I found endlessly entertaining. After reading 20 of his books, this has been my favorite of his.
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Aug 26, 2007 19:09
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Rare posted:I think I'll probably find another one of Murakami's books to read next. Don't really know which one, though. I'd definitely recommend The Wind up Bird Chronicles Read it about two years ago and it has still stuck with me vividly, which is unusual. I myself just finished Jonathan Lethem's Fortress of Solitude which I bought a thrift store solely for the awesome cover(hey, at least I'm honest). Which actually turned into a good read that did an amazing job capturing the evolution of New York and its residents from the 70s to today. Also a ring that gives super powers 
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Aug 26, 2007 21:28
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The Fifties by David Halberstam. It gives a great overview of an entire decade in America, covering politics, entertainment, military, pretty much anything. It's very epic in scope (over 700 pages) but he's a good enough writer, so amazingly in never got boring. If you're at all interested in history, I'd recommend it, and apparently he has a new book coming up which covers the Korean War in more depth, so that seems like a logical place to go if you enjoy The Fifties.
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Aug 26, 2007 23:04
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Rare posted:I finished Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore. I've been wanting to read something by him for some time now, so I kind of picked it at random. I liked it a lot. I also wrapped up a Murakami book, two actually since they were one and a sequel. Wild Sheep Chase and I immediately read Dance Dance Dance afterwards. I love Murakami and look forward to more of his books. I'm also halfway between Paul Auster's New York Trilogy 
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Aug 27, 2007 02:25
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The Regulators (1996) By Stephen King - I read a healthy amount of Stephen King as a teen, but whenever I come back to him as a twentysomething, I'm left disappointed. It could be that my tastes are now too mature for "besteller" novels, or it could be that King is just a bad writer. One thing is clear, though: this book isn't good. The Regulators begins with a homicidal assault on a small Ohio town by a group of Power Ranger knockoffs driving futuristic vans -- and it gets weirder from there. All the violence comes from an evil entity named Tak, who is using the imagination of the neighborhood's autistic boy to trap a small suburban street in a land of fictional terror. King likes to remind the reader often that all the madness in the book is being caused by a child -- a fact which is made explicitly clear in the narration. Characters will often cap their observations about the changes in their environment by saying, "...it's almost as if a child thought it up!" And the characters do make observations. A lot. Most of the dialogue can be replicated with this formula: "Hey [Character X], you'll never believe it, but [Action Y] is happening in front of my very eyes!" The book also has a blunt quality that sucks all the joy out of the rewarding experience that reading should bring. Plot points and character connections will be hinted at, but before you can feel any sort of satisfaction for figuring (admittedly simple) things out on your own, he goes ahead and states the obvious about six times just in case some of the duller readers weren't paying attention. It's extremely condescending, not to mention frustrating. After witnessing King shoot subtlety in the face for the sixth or seventh time, I was left wondering, "Does he really think his readers are this dumb?" I was drawn to The Regulators because of its interesting concept and because I wanted to read a light novel after having read too much Wilkie Collins. Books can be dumb fun, but this one made me feel dumb. I mean, King even trots out the "autistic people are actually geniuses instead of mostly being severely retarded" nugget of wisdom that I'm sure the supermarket book-buyers eat up with a spoon.
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Aug 27, 2007 18:10
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Domukaz posted:I finished A Farewell To Arms by Ernest Hemingway a few days ago. The dialogue seemed even less realistic in this one than in the other stories of his I've read. Maybe I need to reread it, or maybe I missed the off-balance love scenes in The Sun Also Rises, but much of the dialogue was difficult to read because it wasn't realistic at all. The story was good despite this fault. Just finished this as well. Maybe the pseudo-Italian syntax through you off in the dialogue? Although he uses that technique with Spanish in TSAR. I thought the conversations were fine. Personally, I loved it even more than TSAR. Farewell to Arms was possibly the most gripping story I've read yet this year, and it really helped to cement my love for Hemingway. With that I've read all of his major works except for For Whom the Bell Tolls, which I'll have to attack sometime. The only one I really didn't love was Old Man and the Sea so far, but maybe I was too young to "get" it all since it was my first. No one else seems to like the Nick Adams stories, by the way; why is that? I quite enjoyed them.
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Aug 28, 2007 04:14
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bobservo posted:The Regulators (1996) By Stephen King Speaking of mediocre horror novels, I just finished reading The Grave (1979) by Charles L. Grant. Every once in a while I read something from a while ago, and it's really amazing how much has changed in the world even from 25 years ago. The last book like this I read was 'Heat' by Ed McBain, a police procedural from the early eighties, which was interesting in the sense that cell phones were not in common use yet and how that shaped the actions of the characters. In the case of 'The Grave', the main character, Josh Miller, runs a business finding things, for example old manuscripts or, the thing which sets events in motion in the book, an old plow. In today's world there's no way someone in a small town could run a self-sustaining business doing this. People looking for weird items would turn to ebay or websites specializing in the types of things they were looking for. In the book, there's also a lot of calling people and them not answering, being before answering machines and cell phones became common. I read Charles Grant's wikipedia entry this morning, which said he self described what he wrote as 'quiet horror' which I guess would be another way of saying not much happens for the majority of the book. Basically for the first 3/4 of the book Miller runs around and has a couple of vaguely disquieting things happen to him, and it's not until the last quarter that it becomes clear that there is some supernatural evil at work. I couldn't really buy into the main character at all. For someone supposedly with a knack for finding things, his tactic for finding the aforementioned plow is wandering around fields in town, which just seems ridiculous. A more likely way to find it would have been to contact museums or county fairs or antique shops or whatever, but the author needed the character wandering around in fields to find 'The Grave' of the title (although 'The Graveyard' would have been a better title). Additionally, the main character has a visceral fear of wasps after suffering a wasp attack as a child. As someone who actually suffered a wasp attack as a child, and who doesn't curl up into a fetal position everytime I see one, I had a hard time buying into this character flaw. The only thing that this book had going for it was it's length. At only 217 pages, it's over quickly. It used to be that that was the length of a novel, which is another sign of the times it was written in. Also, I either picked this up from a pile of books that someone was giving away, or I maybe spent 50 cents on it at the library sale (can't remember exactly), so I probably got my money's worth. The book is a part of longer sequence of books set in the same fictional town, so maybe there is some additional depth going on (but I doubt it). The wiki entry also mentioned that Grant won the World Fantasy Award, which is the most prestigious of the genre awards, as well as a couple of other awards, so either he wrote some better books or the WFA's have lower standards than I thought. EDIT: I just was thinking I had read something else by him, and sure enough I had listened to a story of his on audiobook, a story called "Coin of the Realm" which wasn't too bad, if nothing special. It's the story of a tollway operator whose toll booth happens to also collect tolls for those on their final journey... Chronic Reagan fucked around with this message at 00:49 on Aug 29, 2007 |
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Aug 28, 2007 16:13
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2010: Odyssey Two by Arthur C. Clarke. It was a good follow up to 2001, and I really enjoyed it. After reading this, I wish we would put more emphasis on space travel in our society than we currently do. I liked the sweeping nature of the book. I will read the the third one in the series some time soon.
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Aug 28, 2007 20:36
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Ogmios posted:2010: Odyssey Two by Arthur C. Clarke. It was a good follow up to 2001, and I really enjoyed it. After reading this, I wish we would put more emphasis on space travel in our society than we currently do. I liked the sweeping nature of the book. I will read the the third one in the series some time soon. I hated how he suddenly changed the planet and moon that all the events were centered around. The only lame excuse he could come up with was, "Oh each of the books takes place in its own seperate universe."
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Aug 28, 2007 20:41
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Been a while since I've been as uninvolved in a book as in Kawabata's Snow Country. Just couldn't get into it; the self-conciously overwrought writing and anaemic dialogue reminded me of the worst of Thomas Mann, and I'm not that wild about Mann. Sure, it's only 170 pages, but I still had to fight off the urge to put it down twice. Maybe Seidensticker's translation is just garbage?
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Aug 28, 2007 20:51
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David McCullough's 1776 was pretty disappointing. I didn't really investigate what the book was actually about and thought it would be an overview of the Revolutionary War and its causes. Turns out, the title is so restrictive that he actually only covers the military campaign of 1776. Amazingly enough, he manages to spend less than 1 combined page on the following topics: French and Indian War, Stamp Acts, the Declaration of Independence (!), and Yorktown. On the bright side, it's got me interested in American history again; I just won't be getting it from David McCullough. On the bright side, I appreciated the book's profiles of King George and the British parliament.
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Aug 28, 2007 22:03
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Agent Dwarf posted:David McCullough's 1776 was pretty disappointing. I didn't really investigate what the book was actually about and thought it would be an overview of the Revolutionary War and its causes. Turns out, the title is so restrictive that he actually only covers the military campaign of 1776. Amazingly enough, he manages to spend less than 1 combined page on the following topics: French and Indian War, Stamp Acts, the Declaration of Independence (!), and Yorktown. On the bright side, it's got me interested in American history again; I just won't be getting it from David McCullough. On the bright side, I appreciated the book's profiles of King George and the British parliament. So he amazingly manages to spend less than one page each on a bunch of stuff the book isn't about and it sucked because it wasn't a general history of a time period for which there are literally hundreds of available general histories?
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Aug 28, 2007 23:11
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Native Son by Richard Wright Holy poo poo did this begin to drag and drag, I ended up skipping Max's and the DA's final speeches (which were probably good but I just couldn't do it). Way too much poo poo about Bigger's feelings in book 3, he went from wanting to die to wanting to live every paragraph. I did enjoy the book through book 2 because there was actual action mixed in with the social commentary.
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Aug 28, 2007 23:33
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The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie. Blew me away. I was disappointed in Dr. Sheppard, since I liked him as a character.
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Aug 28, 2007 23:46
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Reaper Man, Terry Pratchett This is probably the funniest Pratchett I've read since Good Omens, in a real laugh out loud sense. Although I didn't get the point of the whole mall lifeform? subplot, the idea of Death getting laid off and the consequences were interesting. Edit: Alternate Warriors, edited by Mike Resnick Mostly really bad fan-fic type short stories about various historical figures and what might have been had they been badasses instead of milquetoasts. A couple interesting takes on MLK's "dream" meme. I have a strong feeling that the stories I enjoyed most were about people whom I'm more ignorant about. I started reading AW months ago actually. I'd read a story or two between novels. Now I've moved Anais Nin's Delta of Venus into that position. LooseChanj fucked around with this message at 12:03 on Aug 29, 2007 |
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Aug 29, 2007 10:50
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