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I just got finished reading Mass Effect: Revelation (2007) by Drew Karpyshyn, mostly because I really can't wait for the game to come out. This is by the Lead Writer of KOTOR 1 and the new Mass Effect and has done about 4 other novels. sadly, his writing wasnt that strong. his writing was like an advanced College Writing student's work. however, he adequately conveyed the situation in a way that was engrossing and appealing so i enjoyed it.
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Oct 3, 2007 00:21
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perceptual_set posted:I was thinking about reading that soon, would you recommend it? If you haven't read much on the topic of Atheism it'd be a good starting point as it gives a basic overview of a lot of material. If that's the case then I would recommend it, years ago I read a similar book by Taner Edis and it introduced a lot of concepts to me that I've since read much more deeply into. I would suggest reading The Ancestors Tale and The Selfish Gene before passing judgement on Dawkins as an author though. I just finished the Discovery of the Hobbit. It covers the discovery of the small hominids on the island of Flores in Indonesia. It was easy to read and the subject matter was very interesting. But the book gives a lot of detail on the minutiae of the politics between different archeology societies which isn't particular interesting. It would have been better if more attention was given to the Hominids themselves and some more background on paleoanthropolgy.
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Oct 3, 2007 04:16
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Pocket Billiards posted:I would suggest reading The Ancestors Tale and The Selfish Gene before passing judgement on Dawkins as an author though. I will hopefully be finishing The Blind Watchmaker this week. Does that count?
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Oct 3, 2007 04:40
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I received 4 books I ordered from Amazon today, and in about 3 hours, finished The Stranger by Albert Camus. My head was spinning as I read the last 2 pages. Amazing. I'm just starting The Idiot as I type this.
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Oct 3, 2007 06:08
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I just finished In The Country of Men by Hisham Matar. I loved this entire book and thought it was an amazing read. It tells the story of 9 year old Suleiman growing up in 1979 in Libya, during the trials and tribulations of a country going through revolution. The story is told from his point of view, and it is great to see this implemented. His mother drinks throughout the book, but he only sees it as her "medicine." His youthful ignorance is great, and it makes for an enjoyable read. Another feature of the book for Suleiman is his relationships with those around him. Through most of the book, his dad is not to be seen. Suleiman does not understand exactly what his father does, and in his absence, his relationship with his mother grows. Her emotions throughout the book change so rapidly, and Suleiman does not understand exactly what is happening. He also loses his friends and grows farther and farther apart from everybody around him. It is heartbreaking to see him deal with situations that he doesn't understand. I enjoyed the book greatly, and think it does a great job of talking about how relationships change and grow through turmoil. It also gives great insight into Libya and the customs of the country. It is difficult to understand why these customs happen, but by reading the story, one can learn why and where some of these come from. Great read, and fairly short, at 240 pages.
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Oct 3, 2007 06:13
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Without Pants posted:I received 4 books I ordered from Amazon today, and in about 3 hours, finished.The Stranger by Albert Camus My head was spinning as I read the last 2 pages. Amazing. Get out of my brain. I just got 3 books from Amazon today, one of which was The Stranger by Albert Camus. I was going to let it sit until I finished some other stuff, but I'll have to do it after work tomorrow. What else did you get? I also got the hardcover In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, and The Life & Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin by Vladimir Voinovich. I'm getting Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes and House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski tomorrow. drat Amazon taking my student loan check!
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Oct 3, 2007 06:24
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Guy LeDouche posted:The Life & Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin by Vladimir Voinovich. This is one of my favorite books ever. You'll have a lot of fun reading it.
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Oct 3, 2007 06:50
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I just finished The Eye of the Sybil and other Classic Stories by Philip K. Dick, which amounts to a nice collection of the stuff Dick wrote in the late 60s until his death. This book reminded me why I became a fan of Dick's in the first place, most of these stories are so full of great ideas that they make you forget about the workmanlike and somewhat sloppy style of Dick's prose. The man writes about the adventures of everyone from a cop who investigates a killer pinball machine to a colony on Mars who have to contend with aliens bringing their mobile carnivals along with unwanted pests to the planet. I have two other books from this series of collections and urge anyone who has even a passing interest in his writing to pick any or all of them up.
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Oct 3, 2007 09:17
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I finished The Illuminatus! Trilogy yesterday. I'm still trying to comprehend what I just read, but I loved every page of it. I had a hard time getting through the first book due to the random, nonsensical structure of the narrative(going back and forward in time and going from character to character, sometimes in the same sentence), but once I got past that and started getting all the characters straight, I really began enjoying it. It's a hilarious book on it's own but the prevalent underlying themes of free thinking and individualism were expressed very well.
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Oct 3, 2007 13:41
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Guy LeDouche posted:What else did you get? I also got the hardcover In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, and The Life & Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin by Vladimir Voinovich. Besides The Idiot I also got Crime and Punishment and Kafka's The Trial. But I almost bought Don Quixote!.
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Oct 3, 2007 15:00
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Guy LeDouche posted:I'm getting Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Enjoy! Don Quixote is actually pretty funny. And not in a "funny for literature" way... he's out of his loving mind and spends 90% of the book attacking innocent people because he thinks they are dragons/ruffians/enemy armies. That's pretty much all the book is. DQ: Look Sancho! A group of dark wizards! (points towards a caravan of priests and nuns) Sancho: No sir, wait! (DQ chops off a priest's arm and is mercilessly beaten by the nuns) Sancho: Jesus Christ... On a personal note, I just finished The Return of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle. It was great, but so far pretty much all of Holmes has been. What a fantastic character. I'm really not looking forward to the supposed "decline in quality" that I hear is coming.
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Oct 3, 2007 16:23
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The Broken God by David Zindell. Hadn't read any full on fantasy for a long time, until I was handed this by a friend who reckons it's his favourite book. In terms o building an entire fantasy world, it's quite well drawn, and the metaphysics and mathematics that are explored are really interesting. But Zindell seems to define the main characters by what their cocks look like. Or 'membrums' as he calls them. He just doesn't stop going on about cocks. And there are no female characters to speak of. It's really, really homoerotic. So a gay fantasy love story, which wasn't at all what I was expecting. Also Hope Dies Last by the historian Studs Terkel, a series of interviews with US activists and politicians and teachers and others, on the theme of what their hopes for society are, and their view on the current political landscape. All brilliant, beautifully weighted interviews with a lot of very decent people. Just terrific, I can't recommend this enough.
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Oct 3, 2007 18:34
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CrimsonGhost posted:There is a fourth book coming out this month I believe. So maybe he can rekindle the spark. I read a bit of Leviathan Three but none of the stories were really grabbing me at the moment, so I put it down and I'll get back to it at a later date. I do want to give it a chance because there are some great writers in it (Jeffrey Ford, for instance), so I haven't given up on it by any means.
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Oct 3, 2007 18:51
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Zero Karizma posted:Enjoy! Don Quixote is actually pretty funny. And not in a "funny for literature" way... he's out of his loving mind and spends 90% of the book attacking innocent people because he thinks they are dragons/ruffians/enemy armies. That's pretty much all the book is. Yeah, I've been meaning to get to Don Quixote for awhile, but I've read a bunch of really long novels back-to-back-to-back, so I might have to cleanse the palate with some of my shorter stuff, but I'm really looking forward to reading it. As far as Sherlock Holmes - where should I start? I'm looking for an unabridged "complete SH" but stuff I've seen is lacking, so I think I'll just buy them in order.
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Oct 3, 2007 19:01
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Guy LeDouche posted:As far as Sherlock Holmes - where should I start? I'm looking for an unabridged "complete SH" but stuff I've seen is lacking, so I think I'll just buy them in order. Use the wikipedia page as a guide. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_Holmes You'll want to start with A Study In Scarlet. It's the first appearance of the characters and gives Watson's first account of "I'm living with a mad man." Be warned though, this takes a fairly large detour halfway through and switches to another character's point of view. All the short stories and subsequent novels I've read besides this one remain entirely with Sherlock and Watson. I liked A Study In Scarlet though, I'm just warning you because a buddy of mine was really jarred by the switch. I have them in an all-in-one leatherbound collection from Barnes & Noble. Also, check out these awesome (yet pricey) annotated collections: Short Stories: http://www.amazon.com/New-Annotated...91439219&sr=1-3 and the novels http://www.amazon.com/New-Annotated...91439219&sr=1-5
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Oct 3, 2007 20:23
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I finished The Stranger a few hours ago and am still trying to figure it out. I've read a lot of Vonnegut, so I'm familiar with existentialist characters, but this feels so incredibly stripped down and raw, I'm not sure how to piece it all together. I felt drained by Meursault.
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Oct 4, 2007 07:16
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I finished Cat and Mouse by Gunter Grass a few days ago. I haven't read any Grass before (I probably should have read The Tin Drum first, judging by the wikipedia page which tells me that Cat and Mouse acts as a sequel), but I was a bit underwhelmed. The joke about Mahlke's adam's apple wore thin after a while, and I kept hoping that the pace would pick up. However, looking back, I'm starting to see some of the novel's good points. The style is entertaining and easy to read and the allusions to various aspects of life under the Nazis are made well without overwhelming the arc of the story. I think I may also have missed some of the allegorical meanings behind the book (ie society toying with Mahlke like a cat with a mouse), and have a feeling that I will understand more upon rereading, and perhaps after reading The Tin Drum. I am currently 130 pages into Gao Xingjian's Soul Mountain. I am beginning to enjoy it more after getting over my initial confusion with the style, plotting and characterisation. Any thoughts on Gao?
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Oct 4, 2007 12:09
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Soon I Will Be Invincible, by Austin Grossman. Freaking fantastic. Next up, American Gods.
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Oct 4, 2007 15:14
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On Blue's Waters by Gene Wolfe. Another brilliant novel. The character of Horn/Silk is really interesting, and seeing the "mistakes" throughout the narrative are great. It follows Horn, a student of Silk (and the purported author of the Book of the Long Sun) who has settled on Blue. It tells of his quest to find Silk, the protagonist of The Book of the Long Sun, and bring him back to Horn's fledgling city. The companions on the journey are colourful, interesting, and sometimes amusing. Normally I find tales involving any sort of travel to be terribly boring, but Wolfe's fantastic prose imbues the tale with a certain mystery, as we piece together the culture and history of Blue & Green, peel away the mystique of Horn, and, most interestingly, discover the secrets of the vampiric race, the inhumi. Rather than being a fairly constant, on-going reflective narration such as that of Severian's, we are now treated to Horn as he writes, more or less, from day to day, recounting his journey to find Silk, interspersed with events that take place as the account is being written (and, if that's not enough, the fictitious manuscript has been found, bound, and edited by Horn's sons). The world he's building now is every bit as alien and exotic as The Book of the Long Sun.
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Oct 4, 2007 16:15
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I just finished Orson Scott Card's "Speaker For the Dead" I'm kinda toggling back and fourth between the Ender's Game series and George R.R. Martin's "Song of Fire and Ice" of which I have only Feast for Crows left to read.
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Oct 5, 2007 03:59
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Just finished The Trial of Flowers by Jay Lake. Phenomenal. On the back of the book it says, A decadent urban fantasy in the tradition of Perdido Street Station, City of Saints and Madmen, and The Etched City. Truer words were never written. It also states the Mr. Lake is more inventive than a hive of meth-addicted weasels. Imitation is supposed to be the sincerest form of flattery and if that were all this book was it would be great. But it is so much more. It is more a culmination of the books listed. Immediately the City Imperishable felt familiar and strange like New Croz and its ilk. The city is filled with men and dwarves, there is magics in the form of nuomenal, and there are dark gods and darker secrets. This is a tale told from three different views and all with the same goal of saving the city. This book took my by surprise with its quality and halfway through I started it over to savor it with expanded understanding. It is twisted and has more than its share of perverse dealings but this book ranks with The Scar as the two best novels of Speculative fiction i have had the honor of reading.
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Oct 5, 2007 04:00
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CrimsonGhost posted:Just finished The Trial of Flowers by Jay Lake. Phenomenal. I've heard about this one before elsewhere and your review makes me want to get a hold of it even more. Sounds like a great read. :  :*jots down another book on the ever-growing list of must-reads*
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Oct 5, 2007 04:16
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3001: Final Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke. It was an awesome look into the future. I read it in one day and it really got me excited in science again. Space exploration rocks. I would recommend this series of 2001 books to anyone who has a passing interest in sci-fi but never took the plunge yet. edit: John Locke posted:I finished The Illuminatus! Trilogy yesterday. I'm still trying to comprehend what I just read, but I loved every page of it. I heartily recommend reading Cosmic Trigger next. It is nonfiction and RAW talks about some of what he was trying to do and also relates it to humanity and other strange phenomena. Ogmios fucked around with this message at 10:22 on Oct 5, 2007 |
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Oct 5, 2007 10:18
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Dracula by Bram Stroker. It was actually alot better than I had thought, I mean I was a bit sceptical about reading about vampires after seeing a ton of garbage about them but it is very well written and not at all a cheesy horror story like you might think. I also read A Briefer History of Time by Stephen Hawking simultaneously which was interesting and I should probably read it again someday. Definitely a great book if you want to get away from fiction for once in a while. edit: by the way are any of Bram Strokers other books worth reading? American Psychonauts fucked around with this message at 00:12 on Oct 6, 2007 |
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Oct 6, 2007 00:05
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The Turk: The Life and Times of the Famous Eighteenth-Century Chess-Playing Machine by Tom Standage. A very well researched and informative book about an amazing machine of the 1700s. Standage also talks about the relation of the machine to modern computing. Don't read to find out what is currently going on in the world of chess as it is a couple years old. Read because it's a good and fun book. Got through this one quickly which I usually cannot do with books. Recommended. Amazon.
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Oct 6, 2007 03:21
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I just finished "Winkie" by Clifford Chase. Very good if you have a heart. Sad and funny at the same time. Makes you wonder about your toys, while having a pretty obvious Anti-Bush view of America.
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Oct 6, 2007 16:34
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Delta of Venus, Anais Nin Well, what do you say about        Actually, they were pretty well written stories and way classier than Penthouse forum letters. Edit: House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski The whole Johnny Truant framing story went over my head. Was he freaked out by the subject matter in the book he was editing, or did he just go naturally crazy? I thought the implication was that the material was effecting him, but I suppose it was meant to be ambiguous. This subplot was rather aimless. The main "meta-story" of the Navidson record intrigued me, I love pseudophysics stories, but the oblique way the story was told left me a little unsatisfied, like watching R-rated soft core porn. I recently watched the movie 1408, and it's more direct treatment of the "haunted places" concept really riveted me and was a much more satisfying way of telling such a story. (I haven't read the short story.) Some of the formatting tricks were annoying, but I thought they really did help the mood, especially during the Explorations. There are a couple stretches of 50+ pages which go by in mere minutes thanks to insanely sparse formatting, which really tickles the page counting dork in me. I wish someone would really make the Navidson Record, it'd rock. The book is interesting, but not really direct enough to be really satisfying as anything other than a conceptual experiment. LooseChanj fucked around with this message at 00:33 on Oct 7, 2007 |
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Oct 6, 2007 18:00
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hatu posted:Dracula by Bram Stroker. It was actually alot better than I had thought, I mean I was a bit sceptical about reading about vampires after seeing a ton of garbage about them but it is very well written and not at all a cheesy horror story like you might think. I haven't read anything by Stoker, but if Dracula peaked your interest in the classic gothic literature, you should try Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. The story won't surprise anyone anymore but it's still excellent. The version I bought was bundled with some of his other short stories, most of which were quite good aswell, though not all of them.
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Oct 7, 2007 02:43
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Maradon! posted:I just finished Orson Scott Card's "Speaker For the Dead" I have read a lot of OSC lately too! I was reading Ender's Game and even though it was awesome I was a little worried that I might be reading harry potter in space. I read the books in order of release, and I'm up to shadow of the hegemon. After reading his wiki page and hearing his religious views and how he thinks gay people should just play ball and pretend to be straight to keep from messing up the rest of society I can't stop noticing every time a religious person speaks, and how often. I guess I feel like I've been preached to, stealthfully.
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Oct 7, 2007 04:16
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Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'Connor. Collection of really morbid stories that are funny in a dark, dark way. The best one is probably The Lame Shall Enter First but they're all great. I have to say though, if you read it all in one sitting, the stories start to sound similar to one another. So read one a day, or something.
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Oct 7, 2007 05:22
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tear leopard posted:Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'Connor. Collection of really morbid stories that are funny in a dark, dark way. The best one is probably The Lame Shall Enter First but they're all great. I have to say though, if you read it all in one sitting, the stories start to sound similar to one another. So read one a day, or something. Ny uncle gave me this for my birthday, maybe 11th or 12th, somewhere in there. My mom apparently wasn't very happy, but I loved it.
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Oct 7, 2007 07:37
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Just finished 2012: The Return of Quetzlcoatl by Daniel Pinchbeck. Really, flat-out amazing book. Pinchbeck manages to mix metaphysics, anthropology, and personal memoir in a way that i've never read before (Terence Mckenna is similar, but still not quite as personal). Anyone interested in any of the myriad 2012 apocalypse theories should absolutely read this book for a full perspective on them, although i have to say, you may be a little lost without reading his first book, Breaking Open the Head, as he drops a lot of references to things he discussed in detail in that book. Now i'm working my way through the Nine Billion Names of God by Arthur C. Clarke, a book of short stories that's pretty drat awesome so far, and slogging my way to the end of Michael Moorcock's Von Bek Trilogy (i'm almost done with the second book, and it's really lost my interest, but i refuse to just drop it. Someone encourage me, please.). I was thinking of picking up Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem next, as i've heard good things and i just read the excellent first issue of Omega: The Unknown from marvel comics.
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Oct 7, 2007 16:42
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Finished A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon last night. I really enjoyed it, very funny in places, and the last 100 pages or so were brilliantly farcical. That's me two for two on books of his that I've enjoyed.
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Oct 7, 2007 17:08
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Hero by Perry Moore. I read the excerpt in a magzine last month (Entertainment? People?) and was intrigued. Basically, this kid has a washout superhero for a Dad, he's been asked to try out for the Superhero club, he thinks he's gay, and he thinks he has a crush on the Superhero Leader. It's a fun little book (I think it's listed as a "Teen Novel") especially if you dig superhero stuff. I read it during recovery from my back surgery and was pretty happy. I didn't set my hopes to high, I figured it would be a cutesy throw-away read, but I got a bit more than that. Don't expect it to be very original or contain alot of deep intrigue, but hey, it's a teen/young adult book. Here's the Amazon link with a summary: http://www.amazon.com/Hero-Perry-Moore/dp/1423101952/ref=sr_1_1/002-5515471-3096023?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1191799586&sr=1-1 Kris fucked around with this message at 00:29 on Oct 8, 2007 |
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Oct 8, 2007 00:25
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The Blind Watchmaker - Richard Dawkins Having grown up in a very strict fundamentalist Christian home, I was always taught that evolution is an evil plot put forth by the scientific community to destroy my faith. For a few years I have been questioning everything that I blindly believed in and thought that learning some new ideas would be interesting. I'm also thinking about reading Dawkins' The God Delusion. This was also my first non fiction book that I've read by choice! Total Party Kill fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Oct 8, 2007 |
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Oct 8, 2007 00:40
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Ogmios posted:I heartily recommend reading Cosmic Trigger next. It is nonfiction and RAW talks about some of what he was trying to do and also relates it to humanity and other strange phenomena. Thanks, I'll pick that up after I finish Cryptonomicon.
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Oct 8, 2007 01:32
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perceptual_set posted:The Blind Watchmaker - Richard Dawkins I'd go for The Selfish Gene as well, probably before The God Delusion, the best dissection of evolution I've ever read, taken from the point of view of genes. For other well written books on evolution and associated biological questions, On Being the Right Size and Other Essays by JBS Haldane is well worth reading (title essay here), and basically anything by Steven Jay Gould is fantastic. Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan is great as well, concerned with cosmology.
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Oct 8, 2007 15:07
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RobertKerans posted:I'd go for The Selfish Gene as well, probably before The God Delusion, the best dissection of evolution I've ever read, taken from the point of view of genes. For other well written books on evolution and associated biological questions, On Being the Right Size and Other Essays by JBS Haldane is well worth reading (title essay here), and basically anything by Steven Jay Gould is fantastic. Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan is great as well, concerned with cosmology. Thanks! I will probably follow your advice. I am in the process of trying to have a "fair and balanced" self-education on these matters and picked up Lee Strobel's The Case for a Creator but I've had to make so many notes in it and post-its pointing out errors or outright lies that I'm considering just putting it down. I'm also watching a critical analysis of the documentary of the same name on youtube and it is just filled with footnotes on his errors. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH3i4a6HSGs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bofjcIK-isM
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Oct 8, 2007 16:14
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Vampire$ by John Steakley. Now, when I saw that this book used a dollar sign instead of an “S,” I was worried. But a couple goons were really talking it up in the movie thread, so I figured “You know, I usually think vampire books are lame and by far the most pretentious lame-rear end novels of the horror genre. But maybe, just maybe, this one will be different.” Nope. Well, it was SORTA different. Instead of gay “dark yet classy” vampires, this focused on the hunters, who were practically dripping with false character depth. I mean, the book telegraphed everything in point-blank no room for misinterpretation. I mean, every chapter pretty much read like this: Jack Crow was a magnificent bad rear end. But on the inside he wanted to cry. A lot. Like full on “sissy-bitch tears.” Tears of eternal sadness. Like when a puppy is hit by a car, and only an 8 year old retarded boy is there to help. So the simpleton is cradling the dying puppy and weeping… and just then, he drops his lollipop. That’s how Jack Crow felt. That and like an rear end kicker. As he went off to kick rear end, a tear rolled down his cheek. His partner noticed the watery glint in Jack’s eyes… and remembered that there was no Santa Claus. He wanted to die. Oh, and can we agree to stop naming every action hero “Jack” for a decade or so? We have completely exhausted the plausibility of people having that name. I know it’s the most wicked sick name in English, but enough already. In my 25 years, I've only met like three "Jacks" in real life.
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Oct 8, 2007 16:30
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Just finished The Scar by China Mieville. I thought it was significantly better thand PSS, completely engrossing, and ridiculously well written. I really can't say enough good things about this book. He uses a lot of big words too, and now my vocabulary is bigger and gooder.
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Oct 8, 2007 18:54
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