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Just this minute, I finished Saramago's Blindness. Talk about a story that really fills up its pages, and I don't just mean the wall-of-text style. Even through that last-minute happy ending, Saramago still found a way to keep the tension up until the very, very last line. I was really impressed. Now what? Either The Rum Diary, something new by Vonnegut, or a rereading of 1984.
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Jun 2, 2008 06:43
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Netherland by John O'Neil. There was a gushing review of this in the New Yorker, so I picked it up. I liked it more than most of the other "9/11 novels," but that may be because the actual event doesn't play a big role in the book(unlike, say, Falling Man or Exrtemely Loud and Incredibly Close. Mostly it's about a Danish immigrant who finds solace in the small cricket clubs of New York while having family trouble. Since it's literary fiction there's alot of introspection and dwelling on remembered incidents and all that, but there's also enough mystery and emotional stuff to keep the book moving. Plus, it really made me want to learn more about cricket. The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein. Starbucks is promoting this in their stores, but luckily I got it from the library. For the most part I liked the book. It's told from a dog's point of view and it's about his owner and the trials and tribulations of his family life. The owner is a driver for various race teams and schools and is really, really good at driving in the rain. This correlates with how he deals with his wife's death(not a spoiler since it's mentioned on the dust jacket) and the custody battle over their daughter with his in-laws. The sappiness gets a little too over the top sometimes (of course, the dog has his own troubles), but it doesn't ruin the book. I think the racing stuff was thrown in there to keep it from feeling like chick lit. The End by Salvatore Scibona. I wanted to like this book, but it got too boring even for me to get through. The first 90 pages are about a man who works in a bread shop every day from 1900-1940 or something crazy. The first big action in the novel is when he decides to NOT open the shop one day. It picks up a little from there, but I couldn't make it past the 150 page mark. Between this and Knockemstiff the local guys have been letting me down lately
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Jun 2, 2008 08:53
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pill for your ills posted:Just this minute, I finished Saramago's Blindness. +commentary Finished this a few days ago, really enjoyed it. Thanks by the way to my B.B. exchange buddy goon who recommended Baltasar and Blimunda and therefore introduced me to Saramago. I'm very much looking forward to Seeing.
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Jun 2, 2008 13:33
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perceptual_set posted:What was your opinion of the movie, then? I thought the movie was awesome. Daniel Day Lewis is always great and his character's fall into madness is interesting and funny at times (milkshake). I was expecting a book about the father like the movie, but got a book about the son.
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Jun 2, 2008 13:44
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ProfessorFrink! posted:I thought the movie was awesome. Daniel Day Lewis is always great and his character's fall into madness is interesting and funny at times (milkshake). I was expecting a book about the father like the movie, but got a book about the son. I'm still considering reading it, just looking for a cover that doesn't have a movie ad on it.
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Jun 2, 2008 15:14
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perceptual_set posted:I'm still considering reading it, just looking for a cover that doesn't have a movie ad on it. This is the main reason I haven't read I, Robot yet.
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Jun 2, 2008 15:44
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LooseChanj posted:This is the main reason I haven't read I, Robot yet. Same goes for a lot of books lately. I am Legend, No Country For Old Men etc
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Jun 2, 2008 16:01
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Hardcase and The Crook Factory by Dan Simmons. Hardcase is a decent thriller about an ex-PI who's just been released from prison and approaches a mob boss for a job since he protected his son in prison. Meanwhile, he's being pursued by a gang that has a contract out on him as well as a guy who wants revenge for his brother's death. Pretty good page-turner but could have been better, I thought. The Crook Factory was rather good though - Simmons based it on an interesting lesser-known chapter in WWII history: In 1942, Ernest Hemingway was living in Cuba and approached the US ambassador about starting up an amateur spy ring he called "The Crook Factory" with the intent of gathering intelligence about Nazi sub activity in the Caribbean. According to Simmons' afterword, the major historical details he includes are true, but the FBI file on what exactly Hemingway did is still classified, so the bulk of the story is pure speculation. It is a good read nonetheless and his portrayal of Hemingway is interesting. Dorepoll posted:He is my all time favourite author, and this is one of my favourite works of his. If you want another book of his, find Cakes and Ale, which is terrific. Thanks, I've been meaning to pick up some of Maugham's other books eventually. 
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Jun 2, 2008 16:10
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Weby Yevgeny Zamyatin The Stranger by Albert Camus- Liked this one alot for the absurdism, and I just watched the movie "Battle For Algiers" like a week before so I had great imagery.
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Jun 2, 2008 23:57
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Red Mars | Kim Stanley Robinson I tried reading this series about 10 years ago and remember thinking it was awful. I was so frustrated because the idea of terraforming Mars makes me nerdgasm. I so badly wished they would talk about the terraforming nonstop and be damned with the storyline. So I struggled and gave up on this book many years ago... ...the book it seemed, kept popping up in bookstores as I wandered the aisles and so much that I got curious about how much I might enjoy the story now. Thankfully the book is much better when I'm not 14 anymore. I really enjoyed it though Robinson's scene descriptions can be kind of dull.
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Jun 3, 2008 03:29
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Clayton Bigsby posted:Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin. It's a book that at times seemed almost over-the-top with its flowery prose and magic, but it is so beautifully written and the story is so good that you can easily forgive that transgression. One of the best I've read in a very long time. I have not(!) read a single thing by Helprin, be it novel or short story collection, that has done anything to dissuade me from the belief that he's the greatest living American writer.
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Jun 3, 2008 05:55
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Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa I'm not sure how the knowledge of this book's existence eluded me for so long but after reading a very brief synopsis on the net somewhere, I wound up ordering it. I read James Clavell's Shogun years ago as a young teen and while I'm pretty sure I've praised his asian saga in this thread, I loved how Musashi didn't have to go to such great lengths to romanticise Japan and its people during the period. The title-character Musashi was a bad-rear end and I loved the focus on his life-long journey to follow the Way of the sword. The only thing that slightly irked me was that while all of the supporting characters were really interesting, they all seemed so drat coincidentally connected with one another. Thoroughly enjoyable novel.
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Jun 3, 2008 13:42
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perceptual_set posted:Red Mars | Kim Stanley Robinson There are way too many storylines going on in that series. I agree...more science. I read up through about halfway in Blue Mars and put it down about 6 months ago. The storyline goes straight to government/politics basically. Hunting the Jackal Billy Waugh Probably the best book about CIA/SF operations that I have read so far. Covers 50+ years of Special Forces action from Vietnam to Korea to Libya, Sudan, and finally Afghanistan. Reading about him trailing UBL in the Sudan was very interesting, and his part in taking down Carlos the Jackal was cool also. He had his 71 first birthday taking part in Operation Enduring Freedom. Awesome book.
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Jun 3, 2008 16:27
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ProfessorFrink! posted:There are way too many storylines going on in that series. I agree...more science. I read up through about halfway in Blue Mars and put it down about 6 months ago. The storyline goes straight to government/politics basically. Hmm... that might actually help the series for me. I never got to Blue Mars even when I tried reading this when younger so thanks for the insight.
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Jun 3, 2008 16:56
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Mr Midshipman Hornblower, C.S. Forester Money's tight so I decided to re-read this series from the start, since I own the collection. It's more a collection of short stories than an actual novel. It's a little funny that during the course of the book Hornblower manages to lose two ships under his command, and still ends up being promoted.
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Jun 3, 2008 19:05
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GGAllinThicke posted:I just finished the new Chuck Palahnuik, Snuff and I do believe that will be the last Chuck Palahnuik book I read. For the past 3-4 books of his, I had debated giving up on him, but I always held up hope that he would release a book that was something truly new (new for chuck). And the styles all end up being way too similar. Stick with his first 4 books. After that it gets repetitive. Yeah, just finished this one last night. Complete poo poo, and I used to be a huge Palahnuik fan. One of the characters, who accounts for 1/4 of the book's narrative, ends up being completely extraneous. Stopping after Chuck's first 4 books is perfect advice. Before that was Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl. The end kind of comes out of left field, but it was a good first novel for her.
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Jun 3, 2008 19:42
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I recently finished Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift, Slaughterhouse-Five by Vonnegut and Lord of the Flies by William Golding. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Jun 3, 2008 23:08
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Kirby_AF posted:I recently finished Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift, Slaughterhouse-Five by Vonnegut and Lord of the Flies by William Golding. Wow, your description of each one really makes me want to read them. I was hesitant before, but now I'm definitely reading each one... tomorrow.
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Jun 4, 2008 00:16
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Jean-Paul Fartre posted:Weby Yevgeny Zamyatin And.......?
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Jun 4, 2008 05:08
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Saltykov-Shchedrin's The Golovlyovs. The morally bankrupt Porfiry wrests control of the family estate away from his overbearing, embittered mother, Arina, as the rest of the family disintegrate. Saltykov has a reputation for being a giant of 19th century Russian satire, but this is just unremittingly bleak; everytime someone steps up to offer resistance to Porfiry's running rampant, they immediately crumble away again. And seeing as Porfiry alienates everyone around him, it has a tendency to break through any dramatic tension and coast toward nullity. All the resolution comes in about three pages after 300 of apathy and scorn. Skewers the landowning class? Check. Written well? Sure. Depressing and lopsided? Totally.
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Jun 4, 2008 09:25
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Pocket Billiards posted:And.......? *spoilers??* Well, I didn't like it as much as I thought I would. It had interesting concepts such as the glass city and the outside wild world, but it didn't go into enough detail I thought. You can definitely see a lot of similarities between it and 1984. And D503 never finishing a sentence or thought,just, ...., got really annoying. I enjoyed Brave new world much more. edited for spelling like an idiot. Jean-Paul Fartre fucked around with this message at 06:30 on Jun 5, 2008 |
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Jun 4, 2008 10:51
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Thirteen by Richard K. Morgan. Another good read from Morgan - nice to see that he didn't just retread the same territory that he already covered in the Takeshi Kovacs books. Good take on race and gender issues in particular, even if it was a bit slow at points.
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Jun 5, 2008 04:46
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I'm not at all ashamed to admit that I just read Brother Odd and Odd Hours, both written by Dean Koontz, back to back last week. I had recently read 1984, Slaughterhouse Five, and gave up on Catch 22, so I needed something fast and fun. Brother Odd is a good old fashion "who done-it" style book and almost as good as the first Odd book. The main character, Odd Thomas, is spending time at a monastery to clear his head and his intuition once again tells him some crazy poo poo is about to go down. Odd Hours has him working as an assistant to some old guy in a sleepy Californian seaside town when, strangely enough, his intuition tells him some crazy poo poo is about to go down. Read them if your a fan, but if you've never read one, start with the original and best one,Odd Thomas. Next up, Atlas Shrugged. Talk to you guys in a few months.
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Jun 5, 2008 06:10
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The Inugami Clan by Seishi Yokomizo! The head of a prosperous silk company dies without naming a successor, and his last will and testament sends his remaining family members down a dark, bloody path! Spooky. It's probably one of Japan's most popular mystery novels. I think Yokomizo ended up writing around 40 some books involving the same detective, and this is the first. It was a quick read with a really brilliant set up, but I found that near the end the excitement fell flat as the killer was revealed. Still, I had fun with it either way.
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Jun 5, 2008 15:50
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C2C - 2.0 posted:I have not(!) read a single thing by Helprin, be it novel or short story collection, that has done anything to dissuade me from the belief that he's the greatest living American writer. I agree, though Freddy and Fredericka was a little too farcical at times. However I would argue that T.C. Boyle is right up there too... Just finished Wuthering Heights which was a lot more messed up than I ever expected. I always thought of it as a romance novel but it was rather entertaining and had some good characters in it.
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Jun 6, 2008 02:07
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2001: A Space Odyssey by Aurthur C. Clarke. I've never read any Clarke, but I thought it was well written and satisfied my nerdy scientific wants. Also, I'm probably not alone in this but when I saw the movie and hadn't read the book, I was incredibly confused. The books explains everything that the movie requires the viewer to put together. It really tied the story together. The ending is crazy.
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Jun 6, 2008 21:05
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Read these both fast; Feynman's Rainbow by Leonard Mlodinow, and A Wild Sheep Chase, by Haruki Murakami.
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Jun 7, 2008 06:16
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Epileptic Raver posted:Read these both fast; Feynman's Rainbow by Leonard Mlodinow, and A Wild Sheep Chase, by Haruki Murakami. People, is there any chance we can have some analysis of what we read. This isn't PYF. Almost everybody posts some description of what they read and whether or not they liked it. It's nice when there is some discussion about the books instead of a list. We can do this!
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Jun 7, 2008 06:36
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Look to Windward by Iain M Banks - I come for the imaginative world-building craziness, I stay for the competent, tongue-in-cheek prose. I liked this better than Excession and probably The Algebraist, but not as much as Use of Weapons. This was kind of my last shot at Banks' Culture stuff and I'm glad to say I'm interested in reading more. Unfortunately the only other one I have is Inversions, so it'll have to wait. The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Genocide, and Power in Cambodia Under the Khmer Rouge by Ben Kiernan: a very thoroughly-researched book taking hundreds of eyewitness interviews into account and giving an examination of the factors leading up to the Khmer Rouge, as well as life under the regime and it's fall. It's amazing how much the Cambodian people put up with, and how thoroughly loving insane and disorganized the government was. A Game of Thones by Fat Guy With a Beard - This is my first re-read of the series. It's pretty different the second time, knowing what's going to happen to certain characters, actually being able to follow all the names he throws out, and picking up on some minor details that are probably going to have big consequences. I like books with re-read value like this. The Road by Cormac McCarthy: Fragments of sentences. The color gray. A perplexingly well-regarded book. Book Barn, way to let me down.
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Jun 7, 2008 06:38
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The Amazing Maurice & His Educated Rodents, Terry Pratchett Discworld's pied piper story, with a talking cat, talking rats, and Beatrice Potter. Interesting ending too. Not what I'd expect from a "young adult" novel either.
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Jun 8, 2008 17:07
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Encryptic posted:Thirteen by Richard K. Morgan. Another good read from Morgan - nice to see that he didn't just retread the same territory that he already covered in the Takeshi Kovacs books. Good take on race and gender issues in particular, even if it was a bit slow at points. I just finished this last night myself. In addition to the commentary on race and gender issues, I really enjoyed the commentary on human nature. The conversations between Marsalis and Onbekend concerning human nature are especially interesting. The plausibility of the book is outright scary. A super-powerful China and a fractured America in the next 50 years honestly wouldn't surprise me in the least. Ironically, the book itself is a reflection of current race issues, as its title in the UK, Black Man, was deemed too racially touchy for America. I also recently finished Bonk by Mary Roach. I thought her previous book Stiff was fun and informative (even a bit eye-opening), but Bonk was sorely disappointing. It fails for two reasons: 1) It reads like a high-school report on the history of sex research (poorly detailed and full of anecdotes), and 2) I don't think Roach even wanted to write this book - throughout the book she winges about how uncomfortable she is about all the sex stuff.
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Jun 9, 2008 15:41
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How The Dead Live by Will Self and Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy. How The Dead Live was really good - it follows a woman who's dying of cancer as she reflects on her life. When she finally does die, she discovers that being dead isn't much different from being alive, albeit with a number of surreal differences. Despite the oddball premise (which was what attracted me to the book in the first place) - it's really very well written, very funny and touching at times. Some parts reminded me a bit of the afterlife scenes from Beetlejuice as well as some stuff I've read by Jonathan Carroll. Outer Dark was also excellent - I've read all of McCarthy's Western novels but I haven't yet read any of his early "Southern Gothic" novels. As always, his gift for describing landscapes as well as dialogue is fantastic. Noctone posted:Ironically, the book itself is a reflection of current race issues, as its title in the UK, Black Man, was deemed too racially touchy for America. Heh - I figured as much about the title change when I read the book. The title design for Thirteen is kinda cool with the 1 and 3 replacing the I and E, nonetheless.
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Jun 9, 2008 18:07
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Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy I really enjoyed this book. The characters are just fantastic and even their feelings seem real. I liked Levin's story better than Anna's, but that may just be because I related to him better than her. Not an awful lot happens plotwise, but I quickly found that that wasn't the point. I don't think that I like this as much as War and Peace overall, but it didn't have Tolstoy's boring essays about how Napoleon didn't influence history or whatever, so let's call it a draw. Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov Loved it. Didn't have too much trouble with the different style because it felt like a game skipping around to try and find out what Kinbote was on about and looking up the strange references in the index. Oh, and the poem was hilarious. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller Really like his writing style, especially in his stream of consciousness chapters. The gently caress scenes weren't as graphic as I was led to believe. Of Mice and Men by Joseph Steinbeck It was good, but absolutely crushing.  Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Read this based on the recommendations here and thought it was fantastic, really interesting way of telling a story.
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Jun 9, 2008 23:52
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Yesterday I finished Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion & the End of Utopia by John Gray. While reading the first chapter I found myself ridiculing the guy for his conflation of secularism and religion (quite a major mistake in my estimation), but once I got over that I started to enjoy the book for what it is: a challenge to modern liberal thinking in terms of its base assumptions. At the heart of his critique Gray seems to equate those who want to improve the lot of humanity as Utopians and, therefore, commiting folly. To my way of thinking though, this attempt is not perfectionist at heart - because we know that there are inevitable tensions between us that cannot be completely eradicated, what could become a missionary zeal to transform society to its ideal form is tempered. I'd definitely recommend the book despite my disagreements with it.
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Jun 10, 2008 11:43
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Just finished up Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. Story of Cal (formerly Calliope) and the journey throughout history of the gene that made him what he was/is. I enjoyed the trek through history, and the idea of the impossibility of separating yourself from the past yet the futility of being consumed by it, At least that is what I got out of it. I say it makes a great summer read but you don't have to take my word for it! *reading rainbow theme*
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Jun 10, 2008 12:11
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Julius Caesar, by Shakespeare. I'd read it once before, but I hadn't expected Caesar to die in the middle of the play, so I thought everything after that was beside the point. When I realized the play was supposed to be about Brutus more than Caesar, I re-read it and appreciated it much more. Now I just feel dumb for having read it the first way.
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Jun 10, 2008 20:17
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A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. This proved to be, in my opinion, the best book on the subject of modern theoretical physics. As far as the required introductory sections before getting to the fantastical theories, this book was much better at explaining the weak force, the strong force, gravity, and the electromagnetic force. It also explained relativity more clearly than "The Elegant Universe" did. He also gave both sides of every argument and worked through the complete evolution of thought up until 1988. I wish Hawking was in better condition to write a more modern book, because he has been the best at explaining this subject, in my opinion.
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Jun 11, 2008 15:18
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Stephen King's The Stand. I really enjoyed this book. It kept me interested all the way through.
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Jun 11, 2008 20:13
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Roger Zelazny's Jack of Shadows. I'd read it years ago, loved it, and recently decided I needed to own it. Sixteen dollars for the '72 mass market paperback, and that's the cheapest copy I could find in half-decent condition. Awesome book, though. Economical and dense, a lot of good, dark anti-hero fantasy crammed into not a whole lot of pages.
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Jun 12, 2008 01:34
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Finished Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan. loving awesome read. Great cyberpunk story. Working on Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. It's a little daunting at first just due to jumping around between the different characters and their storylines, something I also struggled with in A Song of Ice and Fire. But similarly, once you get your bearings the book really pulls you in.
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Jun 12, 2008 02:12
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