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perceptual_set posted:An awesome book, I'm glad you enjoyed it. I would like to warn you away from Plot Against America though. I thought it was a heaping mass of dog poo poo and continually stole from Lewis. I think I ranted about it in this thread. Well, I had the Roth book and took the Lewis out of the library first after reading the review. I think Roth is concentrating more on the fallen hero Lindbergh. I don't know if they do it in the book, but if the baby's kidnapping was pinned on a Jew instead of a German (many people believe Hauptmann was a patsy, or just someone holding the money) I could imagine it leading to something like the book describes. I'll shut up and discuss it when I'm done reading it, though. 
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Sep 6, 2007 22:09
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Just finished HeartSick by Chelsea Cain. This is a psychopath/serial killer novel set in Portland Oregon. Well written and the deeply flawed characters were fun. The author was definitely setting up Hannibal Lecter type character for future novels and the main detective has a rather unique back log for why he is so incredibly messed up. Quick paced and fun, though not as gory as I usually go for in these type of books but the cast more than makes up for that. I think this could be a long running series in the vein of the Scarpetta or Rhyme novels and I cannot say that makes me unhappy.
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Sep 7, 2007 03:47
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Mack the Knife posted:Well, I had the Roth book and took the Lewis out of the library first after reading the review. I think Roth is concentrating more on the fallen hero Lindbergh. I don't know if they do it in the book, but if the baby's kidnapping was pinned on a Jew instead of a German (many people believe Hauptmann was a patsy, or just someone holding the money) I could imagine it leading to something like the book describes. I'll shut up and discuss it when I'm done reading it, though. I look forward to hearing what you thought about it.
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Sep 7, 2007 04:08
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To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf. It was an interesting read, but for some reason I just couldn't get that attached to it. Didn't like her style all that much, maybe, so there's not much I can say about that.
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Sep 7, 2007 06:39
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No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy. Read it because people had recommended McCarthy to me and there's a film adaptation of it coming out in November. That the Coen brothers made a movie from this material makes me pretty excited, now that I've read it. The book was a very weird mix of well-written violent mayhem and an old man trying to make some kind of sense out of the violent mayhem. I'm still trying to sort through it, to be honest.
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Sep 7, 2007 07:27
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Stan Lee Jeans posted:To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf. It was an interesting read, but for some reason I just couldn't get that attached to it. Didn't like her style all that much, maybe, so there's not much I can say about that. That book took me ages to finish because I couldn't stay awake for more than two pages. The style is impossible, but the imagery and metaphor in the book is pretty incredible. Read it for AP English a few years back.
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Sep 7, 2007 08:08
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Just finished Sword of the Lictor which is the third book in the Book of the New Sun series by Gene Wolfe. I mentioned in my reviews of the first two books that the writing style is brilliant, it is still here. However, this is the first time the plot has ever struck me as living up to the writing. I loved the plot and especially the characters of one and two, but everything in the book relating to Typhon is the greatest I've ever come across in fantasy literature. The scene at the end of his chapter is worthy of mention as the best I've ever read. If you have any interest at all in fantasy/sci-fi (or books at all) you really deserve to read Book of the New Sun. I have been reading books in between the books of the new sun but this time I wish I didn't have to. I want to see it end. However, I'll keep with my plan and start up Love in the Time of Cholera, my first Marquez book - for the Book Club.
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Sep 7, 2007 12:16
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Ever since Otherland, I have been a big Tad Williams fan. I know some have mixed feelings, but for me it was a perfect combination of Fantasy and Sci-Fi. So I always look for more Tad Williams stuff - the Shadowmarch series has been okay, but sometimes the man can take a long drat time to get to the point. When I saw Rite: Short Work by him, I decided that even though I almost always hate anthologies (The Legends books being dramatic examples of the opposite) I had to take the plunge, so I picked it up. I wasn't sorry either - some exceptional short story telling and it is still amazing to me that a man who has to take 50,000 pages and 3-6 years to write one story can pump out some pretty good short fiction. Before that I finished "The Excalibur Alternative" The premise was kind of cheesy - Alien Race picks a bunch of British Knights to fight their battles on distant worlds. It works however and managed to keep me until the end. Of course at this point I'm starting to think I'm a Weber whore, but hey, as long as I enjoy the ride I'll keep paying the money. Besides there are very few people who write hard Sci-Fi like he does nowadays - The Honor Harrington series is one of those very few books who can make a cynical bastard like me cheer for the hero at the end. Next is "Off Armageddon Reef." I've started it already and it looks very promising - I didn't want to put it down. Another David Weber book, but one I've been looking forward to for a long time. I just bought a whole stack of 5 books with some leftover Christmas money from a return to Amazon, and I saved this book for last. Btw, Jasper Fforde is a very recent find for me, but one well worth the time. He writes a very well crafted and imaginative book - his "Nursery Crimes" series is well worth a look. I just bought the first in his "Thursday Next" series, which looks to be very promising. Hobbes24 fucked around with this message at 14:47 on Sep 7, 2007 |
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Sep 7, 2007 14:44
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I just finished The White Hotel by D.M. Thomas and I have to say I was blown away. The narrative is split between a case history of Sigmund Freud, coupled with the dream narrative of the subject and real-life events in the woman's history, leading ultimately to the Holocaust. It was a tough read (mostly because a lot of the imagery is quite explicit and it's difficult to seperate the pinings of a female character on the verge of sexual liberation from the fifty-year old man writing it), but very rewarding.
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Sep 7, 2007 20:22
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Finished Umberto Eco's The Island of the Day Before earlier this evening. Fantastic book all around - really enjoyed it, even more so than Baudolino. I'll admit that the philosophizing in Eco's work gets a bit dense for me at times, but I love his way with words, even allowing for the fact I'm reading translations. I'm going to dive into another short story collection next - Gene Wolfe's Innocents Aboard.
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Sep 8, 2007 06:24
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The Devil You Know [B/] [b](USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Sep 9, 2007 04:14
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Jackson's Marginalia, a study of readers' responses in books, from symbols and illustrations to less cryptic additions. Unsurprisingly it's at its best concentrating on a single reader over a range of books, or vice versa; otherwise his evidence seems to stack up fairly haphazardly. Also he seems happy enough to rely on sources from the 18th and 19th centuries, which was a bit disappointing (in spite of his justifications). Disappointing mostly because in terms of the 20th century he flits over Nabakov's margin notes, some Graham Greene, then teases with a great source in the form of a heavily-annotating lecturer from the Harvard archives, only to say he doesn't really have the space to go into it. Why spend 50-70 pages obsessing over Coleridge's every scribbling then? So crazy, drifting focus, but still an interesting read.
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Sep 9, 2007 08:04
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Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez I don't know what to say about this book, other than it was written and structured very well. I don't think waiting 50+ years for your teenage sweetheart's husband to die is love, it's more like demented obsession, so I can't say the novel's subject matter struck me as anything but absurd. The ending was a little anti-climatic and drug on a bit more than I thought comfortable, but overall I'd say it's a very good read.
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Sep 9, 2007 13:44
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Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick. I thought it was pretty good, but never really got why you would make androids that are so difficult to distinguish from humans and have no apparent safeguards. Asimov is the master of robots and it never really got up to his standards.
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Sep 9, 2007 15:27
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On The Road by Jack Kerouac. I really had to force myself to plough through this, I found it absolutely turgid and dull. Maybe it's a generational thing, and the idea of casting off your responsibilities and spending time bumming around getting drunk was revolutionary and exciting when the book was written. For me though, the thing just read like a more florid version of a 19 year-old gap-year student's Livejournal. Endless bullshit philosophising and reading about other people getting drunk and not doing anything exciting doesn't make for a good book.
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Sep 9, 2007 21:19
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shabutie posted:Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick. The book isn't about the robots, it's about the humans. Dick used that story to explore the idea of whether or not there is a fundamental difference between man and machine, and oddly enough reached the opposite conclusion of that of the movie based on the book.
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Sep 10, 2007 06:39
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The Genius Factory - David Plotz This was really an interesting book. It's the history of the "Centre for Germinal Choice" the Nobel Prize winner sperm bank and the author's encounters with the donors, the children and their families. I really learned a lot from this book, it covers the history of eugenics, artificial insemination and the sperm bank industry along with the stories of some very colourful characters like Graham who funded the project and Shockley, inventor of the transistor. It really was a fun read.
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Sep 10, 2007 08:00
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Confessions of an Irish Rebel by Brendan Behan. This one is more disjointed and repetitive than Borstal Boy, but is still quite entertaining. It has the feel that it was dictated, and it probably was. The foreword by his editor makes it seem so. Colorful language and a terrific way of capturing moments of his past make this a great read for anyone interested in Ireland, specifically during and after WW2. The author is hardly perfect but he had a gift with language, and a refreshing viewpoint at the time. Now, his memoirs are an interesting relic and his poetry and plays are his lasting gift.
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Sep 10, 2007 13:01
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George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London. Much better than I thought it would be. I really don’t know what I was expecting, I knew a basic bit about what it would be like, but this book was much more. First of all, Orwell was poor (at that time). Dirt poor. There’s no way you were expecting the author of 1984 and Animal Farm to be this devastatingly impoverished. It’s a really interesting book that puts a human face on the destitute, and certainly something that everyone should have to read in high school.
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Sep 10, 2007 15:20
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I just finished The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King. Not a bad little story, especially after just reading the Dark tower series, there's something nice and homely, with a slight smack of the James Herbert about it. Also nice to read about a child for a change, so rather than it being a rut of cynicism and depression, the kid actually has some nice thoughts and isn't riddled with guilt over some past action. The ending was fairly typical King, i.e. a letdown, but in this case it wasn't too bad.
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Sep 10, 2007 18:37
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Just done with Neville Shute's On The Beach. Amazingly done, especially with his dialogue. Though I may cry now.
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Sep 11, 2007 00:49
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FURY-161 posted:Just done with Neville Shute's On The Beach. Where did you find it? None of the stores around here have copies and I don't have the patience for shipping times.
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Sep 11, 2007 03:44
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Just finished Dubliners for my Joyce seminar class. It was the fourth time I'd read it, but definitely the most fulfilling, due mostly to the wonderful footnotes in the annotated Norton edition. There's nothing like rereading a book and remembering why it's one of my favorites, and then finding even more reasons to love it. Now I just have to brace myself for Ulysses in a few weeks.
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Sep 11, 2007 03:55
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Odd Thomas First Dean Koontz book I've ever read. It had a very surprising ending, I totally didn't see it coming.
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Sep 11, 2007 04:15
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perceptual_set posted:Where did you find it? None of the stores around here have copies and I don't have the patience for shipping times. I found it in Half-Price books in the "Old, old fiction section. The one that doesn't have those pretty hardcovers or mass-market paperbacks. The books that are printed on all that crappy yellow paper" section. I just tore through the apathy section of Douglas Coupland's work. Aside from Generation X, he didn't really seem as relevant. Throughout Microserfs and jPod, he keeps trying to imply that he's relevant and still hip and understands the mind of a twenty-something, even though he's moving into his 30s-40s. He just doesn't have the bitterness or the cleverness that made Generation X great.
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Sep 11, 2007 05:39
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Zero Karizma posted:Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. Wow did I hate this book. It really felt like I was reading about some rambling born-again Christian trapped on an island with nothing to do but ramble on about God. I seriously could not wait for it to end. I get that its all about mastery, self-reliance and being thankful for what you have. I just wish the drat thing was shorter. Robinson annoyed the hell out of me. I liked Moll Flanders better, it gives you a great picture of what the life of a woman was like back then. Moll was married five times(once to her own brother), a whore for 12 years, a famous thief for 12 years, transported to Virginia for her crimes for 8 years where she eventually grows rich and dies as a good woman. I love this book because Moll is such a cool and modern character for her time, the stereotypical meek housewife who faints at the sound of a fart gets pretty annoying after the first six books about them. Which brings me to how I just read Uncle Silas by Le Fanu. It's a pretty good book, but a major part of it involves the heroine flailing about the house "almost out of her very wits with fright" and generally being dumb and passive. I still liked it though, a sound hatred for a character adds a little spice to the story. Classical gothic horror story, not really frightening or exciting anymore for modern people but still a nice read because of the historical value. (The cover said that this book inspired Bram Stoker's Dracula) Right now I'm finishing up Katherine Dunn's Geek love, a bizarre book about a carnival family trying to save their business from bankruptcy by providing their own freaks. The mother ingests all kinds of weird stuff (drugs, insecticides, radio isotopes) to make her children more "special".
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Sep 11, 2007 16:39
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The Demon by Hubert Selby Jr. While being several magnitudes less horrific than Last Exit to Brooklyn, its no less exhausting to read. In part this is due to a pretty sparse first half, plot wise, and an overlong (by some chapters) crescendo. I'm inclined to believe this is deliberate though, as the central arc concerns the main character's (a sort of proto Patrick Bateman) extremely gradual progression, and lapse and relapse, through increasingly horrible forms of degeneracy and self abasement. The wearing effect of the "demon" constantly scratching at the surface of his thoughts is brought to bear on the reader through the repetition of recurring patterns of thought and behaviour that anyone even remotely familiar with depression or anti-social problems will know only too well. I'm now reading Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to try and get my head back on straight. Zero Karizma posted:George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London If you liked that you should check out A Clergyman's Daughter. There's a fantastic chapter that's just one long, rolling transcript of the inane and insane chatter of the London homeless who can't sleep because of the cold. Its claustrophobic and horrible, but a great read. joedevola fucked around with this message at 23:59 on Sep 11, 2007 |
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Sep 11, 2007 23:56
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The Altruism Equation: Seven Scientists Search for the Origins of Goodness by Lee Alan Dugatkin If you've read books by Daniel C. Dennett, Dawkins or Steven Pinker then you probably won't find a whole lot of novel stuff in this book. Though it does go into some biographical information of the scientists involved and their observations or experiments, which I found interesting and made it worth reading for me personally. It's quite short and easy to read, and is not very technical at all.
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Sep 12, 2007 02:35
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Finished Wolfe's Innocents Aboard and Collected Novellas - a collection of 3 Gabriel Garcia Marquez novellas (Leaf Storm, No One Writes To The Colonel, Chronicle of a Death Foretold). Short story collections seem to be hit/miss in my experience, but Wolfe's a great writer of course, which made even the less interesting stories readable. Marquez's work was excellent as usual - Definitely one of the best writers I've had the pleasure of discovering recently. Just started re-reading an old favorite of mine - Sean Russell's Beneath The Vaulted Hills.
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Sep 12, 2007 04:07
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I just finished John Green's sophomore book of An Abundance of Katherines. It's definitely a one-day read if you have a few hours, as it's slated towards 'young adults'. I really enjoyed it how Green's writing style has changed some, yet retained the same aspects that were great about him in the first place. 'Katherines' is enjoyable, mostly light, and yet deals with an 180year-old's problem with being a prodigy and not a genius (which heads into the consumption/creation that humans have struggled against for centuries). I highly recommend giving An Abundance of Katherines a try if you have an afternoon free and would like to read something enjoyable yet light.
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Sep 12, 2007 07:57
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Well. I finished Shogun, and I went ahead and got Tai-Pan, but the truth is, I'm so completely fulfilled by Shogun that I'm not sure I ever want to read another adventure novel again. It's sitting in the pit of my psyche like a rock, so I'll give it time to digest and move on to a lighter genre. Namely About a Boy, by Nick Hornby. I really liked Fever Pitch, so I guess now I can find out if his charm translates to a real novel format.
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Sep 12, 2007 13:29
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Just finished Vince Flynn's Act Of Treason, which I picked up on a whim because it was on sale for half price, and the previous books of his that I'd read were fairly entertaining. I was disappointed by this one, though. Compared to the earlier Mitch Rapp (badass Jack Bauer-style CIA agent/assassin) novels, it was severely lacking in action - I think there were only four set-pieces in the whole 450 pages, and one of them was a fake and pointless 'you must fight me to prove your worthiness and gain my respect' affair. The rest of it was mostly politics, lots and lots of it, and self-important Washington windbags bitching and backstabbing while Rapp skulks about occasionally torturing people or waiting for Chloe, er, Dumond to hack into computer files. Rapp felt even more robotic than usual, though in fairness I didn't know that his wife had been murdered in the previous story, so he wasn't on top form. Also, based on Flynn's general tone in the previous books, it was fairly easy to work out who was going to commit the treasonous act of the title right from the first chapter. Those drat liberal atheists! 
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Sep 12, 2007 14:50
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I just finished Peace on Earth by Stanislaw Lem and I found it to be a pleasant read with some great sci-fi speculation thrown in the mix. I wish it would have ended a bit differently I really wanted the virus to gain some sort of recognizable intelligence. Plus after you have figured out the ending, Lem's description of it feels kind of lacking, but the build up to that ending was incredible. I couldn't put the book down. The basic story involves an international pact to move all armaments from the Earth to the Moon. The arms race continues there through the use of super-computers that use evolutionary programs to devise new weapons and defenses. Communication is severed with the moon as a result of the pact, so that no nation can discover what is happening there. They send a pilot to investigate, but he returns with the hemispheres of his brain severed and his memory hazy. The rest of the novel is the pilot trying to figure out what happened on the moon. I enjoyed the book so much that I purchased a few others from Lem, including 'Solaris' 'His Master's Voice' and 'Fiasco'. I can't wait for them to arrive.
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Sep 12, 2007 14:57
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Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana, about the exploits of an expatriate vacuum-cleaner salesman who is recruited into a British spy agency during the Cold War. He then proceeds to falsify contacts and reports, before he apparently inadvertantly strikes gold, and becomes the target of another superpower's espionage. Some subtle dark humour throughout; fairly enjoyable, yet I was left feeling a little underwhelmed at the end. Taking on Jasper Fforde's Lost in a Good Book next, after having thoroughly enjoyed The Eyre Affair.
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Sep 12, 2007 16:34
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Finished The Citadel of the Autarch a while back. Hated the military battle sections, and it was kinda iffy in other parts but overall it was still great. I have to take care not to taint it with memories of the book I read afterwards, though. Also finished Urth of the New Sun afterwards to end the series. What a loving mistake. This has got to be one of the most awful books I've ever read. Wolfe took every single thing about the series and threw it away in favour of a steaming pile of poo poo. The real series had parts which were difficult to read but certainly understandable. He reaches the level of gibberish and walks right past it in Urth. It's hard to properly explain my hatred of this book. Even the cameo's are pure poo poo. Whatever you do, if you loved the first four books do not read this. You will regret. I think I will have to take some time off reading to get over this crushing blow to what I thought was a great writer. I have no idea if Wolfe can ever redeem himself so I'm going to finally read Love in the Time of Cholera for the book club, and then some Nabokov. Colonel - I've heard good things about Fforde. Hopefully it goes well.
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Sep 12, 2007 21:02
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peanut- posted:On The Road by Jack Kerouac. I felt the exact same way. I think that everything that you listed is also why the book maintains its popularity with young people. I just finished The Metamorphoses by Ovid. I usually dislike poetry, but I couldn't put this down. Those gods were so fickle!
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Sep 12, 2007 21:21
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QVT posted:Finished The Citadel of the Autarch a while back. Hated the military battle sections, and it was kinda iffy in other parts but overall it was still great. I have to take care not to taint it with memories of the book I read afterwards, though. I've heard that Wolfe didn't want to write Urth of the New Sun, but he was talked into it by the publisher, which probably explains a lot. I don't really care for it myself either. There's some interesting bits like Severian encountering Typhon at the height of his glory but other than that, it's not up to the high standards of the previous books. The series definitely ended on a good note with "Citadel" and it should have stayed that way without tacking on "Urth". I'm not a big fan of "Citadel" either, for what it's worth. I'd vote for Shadow of the Torturer being my favorite in terms of the prose and imagery, but all 4 books are great, of course. Hope you'll enjoy Love In The Time of Cholera, though. I've been on a Marquez run recently and that was easily one of the best books I've ever read. Encryptic fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Sep 12, 2007 |
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Sep 12, 2007 21:30
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Encryptic posted:I've heard that Wolfe didn't want to write Urth of the New Sun, but he was talked into it by the publisher, which probably explains a lot. I don't really care for it myself either. There's some interesting bits like Severian encountering Typhon at the height of his glory but other than that, it's not up to the high standards of the previous books. The series definitely ended on a good note with "Citadel" and it should have stayed that way without tacking on "Urth". Probably meant for another thread, but their first meeting was my favourite scene, likely in all the novels I've ever read. The meeting again just was not the same As I suppose you can only kill someone once - but the whole "oh he's an unkillable ghost who will now time travel for the hell of it, and isn't really jesus much at all felt like he didn't know where to go with it. It seems like people have read quite a bit too much into that last book. Even his night with "Thecla" was a let down. I'd agree that Shadow is probably about tied for best with Sword. I especially liked the play, was that in Shadow, I can't remember. Good, I look forward to the Marquez.
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Sep 12, 2007 21:47
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QVT posted:Probably meant for another thread, but their first meeting was my favourite scene, likely in all the novels I've ever read. The meeting again just was not the same As I suppose you can only kill someone once - but the whole "oh he's an unkillable ghost who will now time travel for the hell of it, and isn't really jesus much at all felt like he didn't know where to go with it. It seems like people have read quite a bit too much into that last book. Even his night with "Thecla" was a let down. I'd agree that Shadow is probably about tied for best with Sword. I especially liked the play, was that in Shadow, I can't remember. The play was in Claw of the Conciliator. They performed it in the Autarch's gardens after Severian escapes from the antechamber and gets outside to meet up with Dr. Talos and Baldanders again. I think I'll have to re-read BotNS after I finish re-reading the other book I'm working on.
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Sep 12, 2007 22:03
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thequiethero posted:I enjoyed the book so much that I purchased a few others from Lem, including 'Solaris' 'His Master's Voice' and 'Fiasco'. I can't wait for them to arrive. I recently read 'Eden' by Lem, and it fell flat for me. A bunch of astronauts crashland on the planet Eden, and explore the environment. The astronauts are only identified by their job, i.e. the Cyberneticist and the Captain. It's a short novel, but it took me a while to get through. A lot of the book is descriptive, and maybe it was a function of the translation, but I found it hard to visualize any of what the author was trying to get across. The first half of the book is mainly exploration of the immediate environments and the second has the crew finding the civilization that lives on Eden. The society they find is strange and dystopic, with factories creating and then destroying strange items in infinite loops, a vault of skeletal remains, and denizens that are intelligent, but debased somehow. I have a feeling that Lem was using this book as a mirror to view the society of Poland or maybe Europe, but whatever point it was he was trying to make was lost on me.
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Sep 12, 2007 22:42
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