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Just finished up number9dream by David Mitchell, and I thought it was absolutely incredible. I enjoyed Cloud Atlas, but this was a much better book. He managed to combine toying with reality and perceptions and telling an extremely compelling story very smoothly. The heavy Murakami influence was obvious, and the trip to the remote mental hospital and the references to Norwegian Wood at the end made it absolutely explicit.
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Dec 13, 2007 17:14
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Turned the last page on Iain Banks' Walking on Glass the other day. Decent enough writing, but I couldn't help but feel like I was being continually let down. I mean the entire book was just Banks coasting in neutral, running with a couple of ideas. In the end I could have done with a set of stories that tie together better.
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Dec 13, 2007 18:47
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Into Thin Air by Jon Krakuer (mentioned a few times in his thread). I thought it was a fascinating read about a very interesting subject, and an easy-to-follow narrative like Into The Wild which I also read. The only exception would be the whole issue about how Krakuer mistakingly thought he saw his guide Andy Harris when it was someone else, perhaps leading to Harris' death -- I don't know if I wasn't paying close enough attention, or what, but I really didn't understand that sequence at all. I had initially planned on reading The Climb and Reinhold Messner's autobiographical work about his first summit without oxygen, but I read some poor reviews about both (apparently, only 30% of Messner's book is about the actual summit experience itself), so I might take a pass. I do find the subject of Everest very interesting but have yet to find another book which seems as accessible and interesting as Krakauer's.
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Dec 13, 2007 19:21
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Candide by Voltaire. Held off reading it for ages, put off by it's classic stature. Shouldn't have: very funny, exceptionally readable. Went through it in about 2 1/2 hours. The Chris Ware cover is brilliant as well. loving superb.
RobertKerans fucked around with this message at 10:53 on Dec 14, 2007 |
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Dec 13, 2007 19:39
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Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon may very well be his best novel yet. It's a Sword & Sandles tale about two Jewish adventurers in the Caucasus circa 950 AD. With this novel, I get the impression Chabon is finally comfortable writing "nerdy" stuff, instead of just inserting references to it. He didn't try to do anything more than write a great adventure story with great characters in a great setting, and in doing so, he set himself free to just write some of the best prose I've read since I ran out of Faulkner.
PeterWeller fucked around with this message at 07:03 on Dec 14, 2007 |
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Dec 14, 2007 07:00
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Just finished The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, and well, it was not quite as creepy as I assumed it would be. The stabbing/"behold my progeny" ending fell pretty flat with me, but otherwise it was a pretty good Gothic run-through of a lot of medieval romance themes: battling knights, conniving princes, damsels and what-have-you. Have to admit I thought it was pretty hilarious that the event that set everything into motion was a sickly prince getting crushed under a gigantic helmet that fell out of the sky.
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Dec 14, 2007 08:29
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PeterWeller posted:Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon may very well be his best novel yet. It's a Sword & Sandles tale about two Jewish adventurers in the Caucasus circa 950 AD. With this novel, I get the impression Chabon is finally comfortable writing "nerdy" stuff, instead of just inserting references to it. He didn't try to do anything more than write a great adventure story with great characters in a great setting, and in doing so, he set himself free to just write some of the best prose I've read since I ran out of Faulkner. Glad to hear it. This is up next after Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson.
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Dec 14, 2007 17:57
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Feet of Clay, Terry Pratchett I think I like each Watch book better. This and the previous discworld novel (Maskerade) were both laugh out loud hilarious, something it's nice to see in the series again.
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Dec 15, 2007 12:31
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The In-Between World of Vikram Lall by Vassanji. Up next: Victor Klemperer's I Will Bear Witness Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald One Hundred Years of Solitude Cryptonomicon stuff by Richard Matheson (I Am Legend, etc)
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Dec 16, 2007 01:54
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I just read the short story collection The Mysterious Secret of the Valuable Treasure by Jack Pendarvis. Absolutely hilarious, but not really as good as the things he has written for McSweeney's.
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Dec 16, 2007 02:24
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I just finished Wizard and Glass, fourth book of the Gunslinger series, and don't know if I want to read the last three books. I might try some new fantasy and sci-fi material.
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Dec 16, 2007 07:36
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I just finished the third book in Jim Butcher's Fury series, "Cursor's Fury" and realized it's going to be several more books before it's done. Oh well.
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Dec 16, 2007 10:21
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Nothing More posted:I just finished the third book in Jim Butcher's Fury series, "Cursor's Fury" and realized it's going to be several more books before it's done. Oh well. I just finished the first book, Furies of Calderon, and really enjoyed it. Not as good as the Dresden Files, but still good. On to Terry Pratchett.
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Dec 16, 2007 18:02
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Grammaton posted:I just finished Wizard and Glass, fourth book of the Gunslinger series, and don't know if I want to read the last three books. I might try some new fantasy and sci-fi material. Just stop and walk away. Make up your own ending. Or wait until he realizes he wrote crap and then redoes the books.
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Dec 16, 2007 20:54
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ScreinNaimme posted:Or wait until he realizes he wrote crap I realized this during the first chapter of the Gunslinger. Am I the only one?
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Dec 16, 2007 21:14
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Finished rereading Erikson's Memories of Ice yesterday. I thought it was excellent the first time around, but having read it again right after reading the first two books really helped my enjoyment of it even more. I'm partway into my first read of House of Chains at the moment and I'm almost afraid that Erikson won't be able to top the high standard he set with MoI.
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Dec 16, 2007 22:14
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just finished pilates wife. REALLY good if your into historical (roman) fiction.Kept me interested the whole time.
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Dec 17, 2007 03:09
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I recently reread Jumper by Steven Gould, a book I enjoyed immensely as a kid in middle school. I picked it back up after hearing that it was about to be made into a movie due to be released this February. It was a fast and uncomplicated, just as I remembered - perfectly suited to a young adult audience. Older readers will likely find it too simplistic.
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Dec 17, 2007 21:38
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I just got done with To Say Nothing Of The Dog by Connie Willis, which was probably the cutest science fiction book I've read yet. It's sometimes very funny, in a dry and nonchalant way, and it's got a decent love story too so I guess it's fun for the whole family 
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Dec 17, 2007 22:18
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I just finished Eclipse, which is a vampire book, it was really awesome, a little too much romance for my liking though.
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Dec 17, 2007 22:20
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The Old Man & The Sea. Somehow I made it through my teenhood without having to read this in school, and all questions of meaning aside, it's a beautifully written story. Cannery Row by John Steinbeck. Another great little book. I don't have much experience with Steinbeck other than this and Grapes of Wrath, so I'm left wondering if all of his books are so different in tone? Wittgenstein for Beginners. Read this because I've been banging my head on Tractatus Logico Philosophicus for a week. It didn't really help my understanding any. In Praise of Idleness by Bertrand Russell. A collection of essays from the early to mid 1930's arguing in favor of non-proletarian socialist change and against national socialism and communism. His analysis of why Communism in Russia does and will continue to suck through the 20th century is well done, but his arguments for socialist world government are dated and silly.
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Dec 18, 2007 05:11
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Last book to finish was World War Z by Max Brooks. It was...interesting to say the least. In the horror world zombies are my thing I guess (though I'm not a big horror fan). It was decent but way too long. I began to lose interest in it about 3/5s through it and had to force myself to finish it because it just got boring. Overall it was probably a six out of ten.
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Dec 18, 2007 06:51
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GrazoTheClown posted:Slash by Slash and Anthony Bozza I also just finished this one. I thought it was a great book, and it really gave some insights as to the way the band members worked/didn't work well together, and why they are no longer together. Anyone who liked Guns N' Roses or likes Velvet Revolver would probably find it an interesting read.
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Dec 18, 2007 09:40
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Kire posted:Light by M. John Harrison. It's a sci-fi book, set partially in 1999 and partially in the distant future. Three plotlines go through the book and only meet at the very end, one following a scientist/psychopath named Micheal Kearny in 1999, the other two plotlines following two separate people in the distant future. Not a very good book, the author really likes to use nonsense-science to inflate the descriptions of things which really got on my nerves. Many things are left unexplained, and there are a few minor plot holes. It does have a few elements that are truly entertaining, mainly those of the distant future setting: K-tech (mysterious, sought after alien technology), shadow operators (living AI constructs), New Humans (ineffectual alien conquerors that somehow wound below the humans they conquered in the social hierarchy), action sequences that unfold on a time scale of nanoseconds. It just feels like in his attempt to describe a SF setting that is truly unique, Harrison has left the reader behind.
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Dec 18, 2007 18:54
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I just finished the first book of the Temeraire series by Naomi Nowik, His Majesty's Dragons. I am usually skeptical of what I call fluff fantasy (fluff sci-fi is just fine, thank you  ,) but this was completely awesome. I couldn't stop reading, and I'm going to blitz through the rest of the books as soon as I'm done with finals. I hear Peter Jackson is making these into a movie, and I am pumped. I haven't been this excited, reading, since I was in High School reading Game of Thrones and The Chronicles of Amber.
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Dec 18, 2007 19:44
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I just finished The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman. I saw the film and had a lot of questions after I watched it and thought I would read the book. The book is outstanding I thought. The anti-religious themes did not emerge until the end of the book, and in the second book of the trilogy that I am about halfway through he really kicks it up a notch. Anyway, the pacing of the story is perfect, the explanations behind each idea are presented very well, and the world Lyra Belaqua lives in is very well described. I just loved the book, and am tackling The Subtle Knife right now and it is also very well done.
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Dec 18, 2007 20:25
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Finished Grendel by John Gardner. It tells the story of Beowulf from the villain's perspective. Sort of like an existential version of Wicked. I really liked it. It's tragic and entertaining at the same time. Grendel reminds me a lot of the Monster from Frankenstein. Definitely worth a read for fans of Beowulf. Oh, and it stays close to the original poem, unlike some OTHER modern Beowulf stories I could mention.
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Dec 19, 2007 01:33
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Zero Karizma posted:Oh, and it stays close to the original poem, unlike some OTHER modern Beowulf stories I could mention. You know, if you want something that's as faithful as possible to its source material, go read a history book. <  > No seriously, look at all the contradictory re-tellings of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Does that make it suck? Is the radio show somehow more canon than the movie? A story's a story, and they can get told more than once without each subsequent iteration being scorn worthy. Eh, that's a bit a rant ain't it?  Edit: Also, I loved Gardner's book. LooseChanj fucked around with this message at 02:09 on Dec 19, 2007 |
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Dec 19, 2007 02:00
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Dorrit Cohns Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction. The genius of this book is staggering! I have been shopping around for a good book about Narratology for quite a while, and finally purchased Transparent Minds on the advice of an old professor. The book is divided into two parts: Consciousness in third-person context and Consciousness in first-person texts - and the insights contained within these 265 pages will serve to imbue your reading experience.
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Dec 19, 2007 02:22
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LooseChanj posted:You know, if you want something that's as faithful as possible to its source material, go read a history book. < Oh don't get me wrong, I loved Grendel too. The book completely takes it's own spin on the story without wildly altering major plot events from Beowulf. The recent Beowulf animated movie is what I was referring to for being a completely different story. From what I heard, the director really wanted to do a hardcore faithful to the poem "ultraviolent-dicks-swingin'-in-the-wind" NC-17 version, but was pressured by the studio to turn it into the neutered version we have now. I don't mind if the author makes the change, but turning Grendel's Mom into a smokin' hot seductress was a lame by-the-numbers Hollywood choice.
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Dec 19, 2007 05:37
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Zero Karizma posted:The recent Beowulf animated movie is what I was referring to for being a completely different story. From what I heard, the director really wanted to do a hardcore faithful to the poem "ultraviolent-dicks-swingin'-in-the-wind" NC-17 version, but was pressured by the studio to turn it into the neutered version we have now. I don't mind if the author makes the change, but turning Grendel's Mom into a smokin' hot seductress was a lame by-the-numbers Hollywood choice. I loved the new movie, what I was ranting about is the automatic assumption that it sucks because it's not faithful to the original poem. Hell, when you think about it the original *written* poem isn't the original form of the story. Stories are stories, not history. And they get retold, and things get changed. They get better and worse. Not just automatically worse. But then I really liked The Thirteenth Warrior too.
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Dec 19, 2007 15:24
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Zero Karizma posted:Oh don't get me wrong, I loved Grendel too. The book completely takes it's own spin on the story without wildly altering major plot events from Beowulf. I really enjoyed the movie. I've read that Grendel was a Christian re-telling of an earlier pagan epic. Anyone have an opinion about this? I haven't read it, but the movie starts with a funny jab at Christianity, and Beowulf actually laments its rise in a Nietzschean/Gibbonsian way.
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Dec 19, 2007 16:48
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Just finished Atlas Shrugged for the first time. I enjoyed the book immensely at first but I was more than ready for it to end by the thousandth page as Rand's writing style and message had both gotten very repetitive. I was also disappointed in the final fate of my favourite character, Eddie Willers.
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Dec 19, 2007 18:34
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Finished Green Grass Running Water by Thomas King last night. A quick read even though it has 431 pages. The plot revolves around Aboriginal culture, Christian tales, and three people's problems. I didn't expect the book to be funny and it was one of the main reasons I kept reading. I recommend it to anyone looking for something funny or about Aboriginal people in a modern setting.
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Dec 19, 2007 19:51
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Timequake, Kurt Vonnegut This was
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Dec 19, 2007 23:55
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Ender's Game and The Speaker for the Dead. Ender's game was pretty good. SftD got all preachy and was mired in neckbeard fantasy. No thanks. I also really didn't like how Card kept on invoking Catholicism; it was irritating and I felt like he was constantly proselytizing. I was originally planning on reading more of the series, but that's about all I can take.
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Dec 20, 2007 01:47
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Iniquitous posted:Ender's Game and The Speaker for the Dead. Ender's game was pretty good. SftD got all preachy and was mired in neckbeard fantasy. No thanks. I also really didn't like how Card kept on invoking Catholicism; it was irritating and I felt like he was constantly proselytizing. I was originally planning on reading more of the series, but that's about all I can take. I was wondering if it was worth continuing on, I was a little worried going into Ender's Game that he was a mormon.
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Dec 20, 2007 01:50
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Midnighters - The Secret Hour by Scott Westerfeld. Not too bad, but not nearly as good as the books in his Uglies series. I was a little disappointed. It sounds like it could be a pretty cool concept, but the book just didn't deliver. Where's My Cow by Terry Pratchett  The book is actually a companion to his novel Thud! It's set up like a children's book, about 30 pages and fully illustrated. It's a little over the heads of the audience it looks like it would have been made for. It's fairly amusing if you've read Thud! or just about any other Discworld books. I'd been looking for it on and off since I read Thud! and I finally came across a copy today.I should get to reading my book for the book swap now
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Dec 20, 2007 02:29
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Cross-posted from the Book Exchange thread. Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar The book was, first of all, beautifully written. I'd read somewhere that Cortázar loved the work produced by his translator so much he even recommended him to other writers. To help set the mood of the book I filled my iPod with jazz music as most of the events take place while the characters are listening to various jazz records. The book details the events surrounding Horatio Oliveira, an Argentinian living in Paris. He and his "intellectual" Bohemian friends sit around and get drunk and make literary references and various name-drops. A series of events cause Oliveira to return home to Argentina where he rages against the machine of normal life. The main character would probably have had a successful posting career on these fora had it been around in the 60's. With his treatment of women throughout and his obvious self-love he would make an excellent angst-ridden goon. There were a lot of ways to read the book (it is actually after all two books in one) and many chapters can take duel meanings if one only reads every other line or only the even/odd pages. It was fun deciding how to read the book and reminded me in some ways of House of Leaves in respect to its reader involvement. However, some of Cortázar's stream of consciousness writings can be so dense that I had to skip some sections because they just drove me insane. Some of the longest chapters in the book are the ones in which absolutely nothing of importance happens, so two or three days are spent slogging through a chapter only to find that it wasn't important to the plot at all, which is kind of annoying.
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Dec 20, 2007 20:15
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Necro Beer posted:Just finished Atlas Shrugged for the first time. I enjoyed the book immensely at first but I was more than ready for it to end by the thousandth page as Rand's writing style and message had both gotten very repetitive. I do think what happened to Eddie makes sense, however. His inability to let go of the past and adapt made him no more tragic a casualty than the rest of the people of the US, sacrificed because they were helping the looters, unwilling or unable to break away. It's indicated that many of them have the best of intentions. The only difference was that he was a sympathetic character and the millions of others who are sure to die with him were faceless extras. It did seem lame and contrived, since they made it clear Hank took many of the people from the plant with him, including the doctor who patched him up near the end. They all "disappear". If you remember that Eddie was being watched for 12 years by Galt, it's clear that apparently he didn't live up to the exacting standards required for entrance into Galt's Gulch. To continue the thread, I also finished up David Weber's In Fury Born. It was pretty standard stuff for him, entertaining enough to finish but there's nothing really there but re-tread military sci-fi, same as his Honorverse stuff, only in one book instead of twelve. Bhodi fucked around with this message at 21:15 on Dec 20, 2007 |
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Dec 20, 2007 21:10
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