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Spider Kiss by Harlan Ellison. I'd only read I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream of his stuff before. It became one of my favorite stories quickly and I read it a few hundred times before I remembered hey, he's written more than that, and got Spider Kiss. It sat on my shelf for months and now I'm staying with my mom in her hospital room taking care of her and it's one of the books I grabbed mostly at random. What the gently caress is wrong with me? Why have I never read more from him? God drat I love his style. His imagery is great--it's got that element to it that I love so much in Bradbury's imagery; it isn't florid or overdone, it doesn't hint or tease or coax, it is exactly the right words to convey just the right feeling. That's what I want to achieve in my writing. That concise, vivid, powerful imagery. Anyway, I don't exactly know what I'm going to read next, but I have a bag full of books at the foot of my couch bed to dip into starting in the morning.
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Jun 27, 2008 06:19
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The Road by Cormac McCarthy Holy..wow. I've probably never thought that after reading a book. Simultaneously the most depressing and reassuring book I've ever read. Can a book make you reflect on the creature comforts and material well-being of your own life so deeply? Wow this book was good. The first 60 pages started off slow but after that I couldn't put it down. This is my first McCarthy book and his style grew on me after those 60 pages.
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Jun 27, 2008 23:50
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I literally just put down The Butcher Boy by patrick McCabe, and holy poo poo that was the most disturbing and amazing thing I have read in a while. I was in Ireland and I picked it up on a whim because the cover art was cool and I wanted a souvenir, and it turned it to be astonishingly well-written. it's sort of an account of a crazy guy told in first person from his childhood up until full-blown adult craziness and the scary thing is, you understand his logic fully and you get sucked into his world via the writing style. By the end you're just sort of shocked and you don't really feel like reading again for a while. If you see this book, pick it up and give it a read, you will not regret it.
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Jun 28, 2008 11:24
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Lieutenant Hornblower, C.S. Forester drat I love this series and this is one of the best. It's the only one not written from Hornblower's POV as well, and it's interesting to see him from the outside as there's quite a contrast between how his friend sees him and how he sees himself. It occurs to me that I positively devoured this in less than 36 hours. 
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Jun 28, 2008 12:22
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Admiral Crunch posted:I literally just put down The Butcher Boy by patrick McCabe, and holy poo poo that was the most disturbing and amazing thing I have read in a while. I was in Ireland and I picked it up on a whim because the cover art was cool and I wanted a souvenir, and it turned it to be astonishingly well-written. it's sort of an account of a crazy guy told in first person from his childhood up until full-blown adult craziness and the scary thing is, you understand his logic fully and you get sucked into his world via the writing style. By the end you're just sort of shocked and you don't really feel like reading again for a while. Francie Brady, Not a Bad Bastard Anymore. God I love Pat McCabe. Every one of his books is pretty much the same, whimsical and tragic tales of a complete nutter, but they're so damned good. If you enjoyed Butcher Boy you should go ahead and pick up Emerald Germs of Ireland, about a Norman Bates-esque homicidal maniac in a small village, and Breakfast at Pluto, about a half-wit transvestite prostitute with IRA ties. But, uh, give yourself a good break in between 'em, lest you start to feel a little bit loving batshit yourself.
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Jun 28, 2008 19:49
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Ballsworthy posted:Francie Brady, Not a Bad Bastard Anymore. God I love Pat McCabe. Every one of his books is pretty much the same, whimsical and tragic tales of a complete nutter, but they're so damned good. If you enjoyed Butcher Boy you should go ahead and pick up Emerald Germs of Ireland, about a Norman Bates-esque homicidal maniac in a small village, and Breakfast at Pluto, about a half-wit transvestite prostitute with IRA ties. But, uh, give yourself a good break in between 'em, lest you start to feel a little bit loving batshit yourself. Yeah, I'll keep an eye out for those. By the way, do you know if the movie was any good? Because If so I'll probably grab a copy of it.
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Jun 28, 2008 20:13
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Admiral Crunch posted:Yeah, I'll keep an eye out for those. By the way, do you know if the movie was any good? Because If so I'll probably grab a copy of it. I haven't seen it yet, it wasn't out on DVD yet when I read the book, only on VHS. I think that it finally came out within the last year or so, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. It's supposed to be very good.
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Jun 29, 2008 00:27
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Why Darwin Matters by Michael Shermer He writes for 'Skeptic' magazine and Scientific American, a self-described freethinker who went from Evangelical Christian to staunch Darwinian Atheist. He writes of how evolution became a theory and the backlash against it from Creationism, now disguised as "Intelligent Design". Writes extensively about Intelligent Design's arguments and knocks them down one by one. One of the more profound statements was a person doesn't 'believe' in evolution but accepts it, since evolution is not a belief system but a science. Entertaining and informative, if you enjoy his biting column in SciAm you'll love this book.
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Jun 29, 2008 05:42
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The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood. I wasn't expecting to like it because I wasn't wild about the Handmaid's Tale, but I thoroughly enjoyed all 544 pages of it. It's slightly more geared toward women, but I recommend it highly to anyone who has time to read it.
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Jun 29, 2008 07:29
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American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. Interesting book, and I'm still mulling it over. Great satire of that whole culture, though - it shocks you and it makes you laugh and sometimes it just bores you. Very interesting.
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Jun 29, 2008 08:37
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I just finished Gardens of the Moon of the Malazan Book of the Fallen series. Wow, I loved it. Gods, assassins, warriors, magic, everything you'd like from a fantasy novel and it has a good storyline and characters. Next I'm continuing the Malazan series, getting books two through five.
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Jun 29, 2008 09:30
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Cell by Stephen King - At first I wasn't sure about this book, the plot didn't really appeal to me. In fact, the only reason I bought it was becuase I was on Holiday, just finished the second Dark Tower book, and needed something to read by the pool. However I really enjoyed it, and I highly recomend it to anyone who's into those kind of stories.
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Jun 29, 2008 11:12
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Lord of the Flies. I didn't get a chance to read this book in high school and I felt like it was something I really had to read before I died (even though I have plenty of time). I really enjoyed it. The premise was pretty depressing, but I really loved the imagery and how believable the characters were. I found that I wasn't surprised when they killed Simon and Piggy, which I think is good in a book like this.
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Jun 30, 2008 02:08
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The Road by Cormac McCarthy After reading No Country For Old Men I decided to check this out. I had heard it was really sad and depressing and also read that some goon wanted to "call his dad" after reading it. I did find it sad, but all in all, the end of the book didn't do it for me. I could have thought of other ways to make it more sad, but I'm not the author. Anyway, I enjoyed it.
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Jun 30, 2008 02:59
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Elantris, by Brandon Sanderson. Though an interesting read, and enjoyable as well, the ending spoiled it for me. Like in most Fantasy novels (that I've read), moreso in the newer books, it seemed rushed - it left much more to be desired, as if it were the climax instead of the resolution. One of the protagonists solves the problem that has been plaguing him for most of the story, then in the next forty pages saves two countries and his wife. Then the book ends, a few years in the future and with little explanation of what happened during those years. Like all timeskipping books. Sanderson's more of a series guy, though. His Final Empire trilogy is much more well-thought out. I'm waiting to see what he does with A Memory of Light.
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Jun 30, 2008 04:04
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Cell, Stephen King I had ran out of books to read at work so I was picking up assorted books from my Parents shelves. I didn't want to read this one because I was thinking it was going to be something stupid like cellphones coming alive and attacking or something. It was actually pretty fun to read, though I could have down without some of the heavier fantasy elements at the end. Telepathy I can buy, there are ways I could explain it to myself or have it explained that didn't involve PSYCHIC MAGIC POWERS. Levitating though I felt was just too tacked on and just didn't fit with the hive-mind human theme. The Ruins, Scott Smith Reading this made me want to see the movie. I'm guessing it is nowhere near as gross as the book and I think I remember hearing it had a happy ending. I really love how a simple handjob backfired so majorly. I enjoyed the ending ultimately but I foudn myself thinking that one of them would escape, even though I couldn't figure a possible way out. A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess I had heard it's ending was different from the movie and again it was laying around so I picked it up. It must have been an old enough edition to not have the final chapters that were in the European version. It was pretty much exactly like the movie. This and Fight Club seem to be the most faithful movie adaptions I've ever seen.
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Jun 30, 2008 04:21
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Less Than Zero, Bret Easton Ellis I read American Psycho and Rules of Attraction a few years ago and loved them so I had pretty high hopes for this one and I don't feel like I was disappointed. This book has the only Bret Easton Ellis main character I'd actually want to meet, which is a significant departure from his other works, yet stays consistent in style and theme with what I loved about his other stuff. Nihilist, dark, a commentary on vacuous Gen-X rich kids with serious drug problems. Good times. The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway I've read most of Hemingway's short stories but never one of his novels. My mother had always said great things about this one and having been written so early in his body of work I figured this would be a good place to start. I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would. Things like Snows of Kilimanjaro and The Killers had this wonderful urgency that fits his sparse style so well. The Sun Also Rises is about not having urgency so... good, but not entirely my cup of tea. No, not tea. Whiskey and soda. Five of them per chapter.
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Jun 30, 2008 05:33
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Bram Stoker's Dracula; or most of it anyway. I stopped about 50 pages short because I couldn't suffer the boredom any longer. Characters' excessive rationale and exposition on their reasoning and daily actions and feelings grew extremely tiresome; and if that was intended due to the letters/journals approach then the whole thing is half-hearted because characters recording entire conversations verbatim from either memory or during the act is ridiculous whichever way. The film adaption does more justice to the story than the source does.
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Jun 30, 2008 14:49
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Michael Chabon's Maps and Legends, a collection of essays. The first half of the book is about some random subjects and some literary criticism. I liked it, but loved the second half that talked about his inspiration for his novels. The way he crafted his first novel was especially interesting. I really love Chabon, and this made me embarrassed that I had never read his first two novels, so I ordered them and read- The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. I saw a few pages back that someone didn't enjoy this, but I thought it was amazing. Chabon set out to write a story that takes place over the course of a summer, with June, July and August representing the 3 segments of a story. June is about the creation of friendships and romance, July is about the bliss and heartache that inevitably follow, and August is about everything going wrong beyond your control. I tore through this book, and I really loved the main character who is a bit of stand-in for Chabon. I have Wonder Boys sitting on my bookshelf, I'm waiting a bit since I like to break up author's works. I listened to the audiobook back in the day, but I don't remember it too well. I also read Arkansas by John Brandon. A portion of it was published in McSweeney's 26 or so, and it got me hooked. It's about two men who work in a drug ring as couriers and end up based out of a state park in Arkansas. They end up over their head, which is cliche, I know, but the characters are very well realized. I can't recommend this book enough. I can't remember if I wrote about The Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi Wa'Thiong'O. It's a modern day fairy tale set in a fictional African dictatorship. It's magical realism in a setting that really lends to making the folklore almost seem believable. It's in the top 5 books I've read in the past few years.
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Jun 30, 2008 16:40
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LooseChanj posted:Mein Kampf, Somwhat related, I just finished Hitler: A Pathology of Evil which seeks to be a psychoanalysis of Hitler and attempted to explain how he arrived at the mindset that he did and how a human being could organize the extermination of an entire section of population. It delves a lot into Hitler's youth, his poor relationship with his parents, his possible Jewish ancestry, and a lot of, well, delusional projections he employed. It was an interesting read, though not particularly a casual one. It certainly isn't a book for those who just need something to read, unless you're into WW2, psychology, Hitler, or meglomaniacs.
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Jun 30, 2008 20:25
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rage until the last 50 pages or so, and ultimately, it's disappointing because it's nothing surprising considering the source. Us is better than them. Yawn.
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The Road, Cormac McCarthy I just finished reading this a few minutes ago but I know that I'm going to be recommending it to people for the rest of my life. One of the best books I've ever read, hands down. McCarthy creates a world that never once feels incomplete or inconsistent. Every detail of this post-apocalypse is so perfect and yet he doesn't hit you over the head with the mundane. The world is constructed in meaningful, almost poetic, vignettes and carefully picked visuals that resonate with terse reality. Heart wrenching and poignant, this book is so important I almost wish I taught a literature class just so I could assign groups of people to read this. The spirit that these characters engender is what we need more of in the world, it's a goal we should all strive for.
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Jul 1, 2008 02:45
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House of Leaves Can anyone point me in the right direction of how to answer the obvious question of, "What the gently caress"?
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Jul 1, 2008 21:36
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buns of molybdenum posted:House of Leaves As in, "what the gently caress are you asking us?"
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Jul 1, 2008 21:39
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perceptual_set posted:As in, "what the gently caress are you asking us?" I get the plot of the Navidson Report and Johnny Truant's story. I get those stories that are explicitly laid out in the book. By "What the gently caress?" I mean what does it all mean? What's the point? What am I missing? There's way too much detail for there not to be an overall theme, or allegory, or connection between the Navidson Report, Zampano', and/or Truant. Right now I have the sneaking suspicion no one knows and there is no good answer and that is the point of House of Leaves. Net Boners fucked around with this message at 22:36 on Jul 1, 2008 |
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Jul 1, 2008 21:49
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The Amber Spyglass by Phillip Pullman, finally finishing the trilogy. Hmph. I don't know. Parts had my eyes watering, and there was some awesome action where everything is going to poo poo and you're wondering how its all going to work out. But, at the end, I'm not sure what was accomplished that wasn't already accomplished several chapters before. Except for a certain guy being dead, who they didn't even need to introduce into the plot at all if he was just going to die without anyone even knowing he was after them. Overall though, I enjoyed the books and am thinking of picking up some of his other works since he has an easy way of character development that makes me care.
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Jul 2, 2008 01:09
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buns of molybdenum posted:I get the plot of the Navidson Report and Johnny Truant's story. I get those stories that are explicitly laid out in the book. By "What the gently caress?" I mean what does it all mean? What's the point? What am I missing? There's way too much detail for there not to be an overall theme, or allegory, or connection between the Navidson Report, Zampano', and/or Truant. I think the point is it's a haunted house and it's supposed to scare you. Didn't work? The connection between all three is Navidson = movie, Zapano = written report, Truant = fellow reader
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Jul 2, 2008 03:15
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Aesop's Fables by Aesop. A bit juvenile, I know; due to that they're often referenced in the West and that I don't recall reading them directly as a child I thought that it would interest myself to become acquainted; also the Ancient Greek association. Some are sharper than others; though generally considering the basic nature of their observation they're just as poignant and pertinent here in the modern. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Excellent story. Having now some account of Shelley's personal life I'm interested to read her The Last Man as she seems to have been well-equipped to write of desolation in some years following Frankenstein.
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Jul 2, 2008 11:44
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The Amnesiac by Sam Taylor. The Author tried way too hard to integrate postmodern literary conventions with his stories within the story, Borges references and deconstruction of identity. Unfortunately, he didn't put too much care into acutally crafting an interesting story.
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Jul 2, 2008 14:54
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^^^ Post-modernism is pretty much the worst. I've never read a post-modern work that didn't have all the same problems. Over the past month I've read: I just finished The God Delusion by, who else, Richard Dawkins. While I don't think his argument for God "probably" not existing is very strong (it hinges on the assumption that a god would have to be the result of evolution itself and is therefore less likely to exist than even we are, an assumption he doesn't ever explain), his refutation of all things religious and all the religious arguments FOR the existence of God is incredibly solid. Only the most brainwashed religious zealot could walk away without their faith at least soundly shaken. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book and recommend it to everyone. However, I feel like it would have been better had his chapter on "Why There Almost Certainly Is No God" been focused more on explaining the mechanisms of evolution and natural selection for readers that are new to the concept (Dawkins seems to assume a working knowledge of evolution prior to reading the book) rather than trying to disprove God's existence with what's ultimately a baseless argument, though a compelling one. In a previous chapter, he makes a solid argument that the burden of proof lies with people who claim God exists, not with atheists, and then proceeds to categorically debunk all the arguments for God's existence, and this is much more effective than his own argument for God's non-existence. But that's only one out of 10 chapters, and all the rest are fantastically interesting and entertaining to read. I also read American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. While I thought it was a terrific book, many sex and torture scenes, particularly of violence towards women, seemed a bit much and essentially precludes any and all women from reading the book. I have a strong stomach and am no fan of censorship, but when a passage in a book makes even ME feel sick, someone's stepped over a line somewhere. In some cases, as well, the scenes just sort of felt like filler. Other than that I thought it was terrific and the few segments where Bateman reflects on himself and his life were some beautifully written prose. I can't wait to get my hands on more of Ellis' writing. I'm thinking of picking up The Informers next, which I understand is in the style of movies like Crash and Babel, or loosely interconnected stories, except with a lot more nihilism. I've been on a Palanhiuk binge lately and read Fight Club, Lullaby, and I'm reading Survivor right now. All terrific books. Lullaby is a very interesting take on witchcraft and really makes you reflect on the power of life and death and how it should be used. Fight Club I'm sure we're all familiar with--very twisted. Both were enjoyable reads. So far, Survivor is shaping up to be the most well-written of the three, but I'm only a quarter of the way through it. Palanhiuk reminds me a lot of Vonnegut, just with a lot more necrophilia. Blindness by Jose Saramago. I don't get the hype. The writing style was annoying (WALL OF TEXT), the conversations difficult to follow, the plot slow, his philosophical interjections were more rambling and incoherent than thought provoking, and without names to give the characters I found myself having a hard time, well, giving a poo poo about the characters. I respect the intent of the book, and the concept was interesting, but I just can't get into the entire writing style, or the style of Latin American writers in general. Nevil Shute's famous end-of-the-world narrative On The Beach. An interesting look at the lives of people facing inevitable, painful death. Incredibly depressing but a terrific read. It's also famous as one of the books that really helped to jump-start the nuclear arms control movement. And finally, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. I sort of enjoyed this book, but now I just feel like a bad person because I found myself getting increasingly annoyed with the child's autism symptoms to the point of anger. It's not like the kid could help it. I guess what I'm taking away from this is I'm not cut out for special education. I'm currently reading The Grapes of Wrath because in high school I got behind and Sparknoted it. I have a lot of free time. Notorious H.P.B. fucked around with this message at 15:01 on Jul 2, 2008 |
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Jul 2, 2008 14:57
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pingofdeath posted:I have a lot of free time. Envious.  pingofdeath posted:Blindness by Jose Saramago. I don't get the hype. The writing style was annoying (WALL OF TEXT), the conversations difficult to follow, the plot slow, his philosophical interjections were more rambling and incoherent than thought provoking, and without names to give the characters I found myself having a hard time, well, giving a poo poo about the characters. I respect the intent of the book, and the concept was interesting, but I just can't get into the entire writing style, or the style of Latin American writers in general. I came here to post this. I finished Blindness last night and thoroughly enjoyed it. (As, uh, I guess people can tell from my new avatar and title) To tell the truth, I thought the book was just "good" up until the whole gang of thugs comes in and the ensuing terrible rape scene. It was at that moment, I think, where I started to really feel for the characters and to care about their plight especially after the doctor's wife killed the lead thug with the pair of scissors. I can see how the style would be so off-putting to make you dislike the entire work, I suppose, but if you're able to overcome it, or get used to it, or even enjoy it like I did, the entire book is much easier to swallow. To my surprise, all of his books are written in the same style; I thought it was something he came up with for the book to sort of convey the feeling of blindness. This is definitely a "love it or hate it" book. I went out and bought four books last night; I'll post about them in the other thread.
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Jul 2, 2008 16:39
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I finished both the His Dark Materials trilogy by Phillip Pullman and The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. Both are children's adventure novels with religious overtones. His Dark Materials was very, very enjoyable. Some parts of the 3rd book were dragged on despite being incredibly boring and in the end were unimportant, but overall it's one of my favorites and I'll certainly pick it up again at some point. The book is quite atheistic and even anti-church if you're trying to connect things to reality, but to be honest I found it refreshing. I cannot wait for The Book of Dust if Pullman ever gets around to finishing it. Hopefully the future movies don't hold back on the atheism because they really gutted The Golden Compass, and it didn't stop churches from boycotting it anyway. The Chronicles of Narnia is a collection of 7 books. Overall it was a very easy read, and didn't keep me nearly as interested as His Dark Materials, but I'd also say it's far more for children than HDM. I probably would have liked it more in my young teens. From best to worst: The Horse and His Boy; Prince Caspian; The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe; The Silver Chair; The Voyage of the Dawn Treader; The Last Battle; The Magician's Nephew. I probably won't pick the book up again since unlike HDM, the movies so far have have been more interesting than the books. Disney's going to need to work some serious magic on The Voyage of the Dawn Treader though, which I believe is coming out next, as that was a boring book and will probably be much more boring as a movie. Unfortunately The Horse and His Boy doesn't really use any of the characters from the other books, so it'll probably be done last. scavok fucked around with this message at 18:27 on Jul 2, 2008 |
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Jul 2, 2008 18:08
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The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break, Steven Sherrill I picked it up at half-price books after seeing it mentioned in the absurd premises thread. It sounded interesting and I really enjoyed it. I found myself getting adrenaline rushes and getting exciting like it was an action book or something. A mini adrenaline rush where I fear for the character even though nothing really happens that would warrant a reaction from me. I haven't had that feeling in a long time, so that was nice. It was a nice story and I found myself wanting the minotaur to I guess "bull" up and charge some poo poo. I liked the way the world moved on around the mythical beings and sort of let them die in their own private way.
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Jul 2, 2008 18:55
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Queen of Candesce: Book Two of Virga by Karl Schroeder I happened upon the first of this series Sun of Suns last year and fell head-over-heels with the steampunk-meets-zero-g setting, and was very happy when the story proved out over the long run. Imagine an enormous, self-contained bubble of oxygen inside which countless miniature kingdoms have been created, all circling an artificial sun that doesn't create enough gravity to keep anything in place. Towns are built in ramshackle fashion and spun to create "ground", fans are needed to circulate air, people can travel with "wings" through the empty spaces... It's everything that's cool about zero-g, but no spacesuits. This second book took a different tack, focusing on a single "kingdom" within the world of Virga, and the protagonist's convoluted path to reunite herself with those she was separated from in book one. The setting is one of the largest "countries": a massive, spinning barrel-world inside which thousands of people live, stuck to the interior by centrifugal force. And the worst part is that, between the snipers, sentries, barbed wire, mines, and spinning velocity, there's no escape. The people, places, and events in this story are very cool and different, and overall I gave the book a thumbs up, although I don't think I would rank it as highly as I did the first one. Waiting for book three... Little Brother by Cory Doctorow I avoided this one for a while due to the "young adult" classification, but finally gave into the internet buzz and plowed through it. It's available for free under the creative commons, so nothing lost but a few hours. Without being spoilerific, the story is about a tech-savvy teen who gets himself in some very deep water with Homeland Security, a how he takes the hacker's ethos to heart in his attempts to right their wrongs. Think RFIDs, hacked Xboxes, anonymous TOR clustered-wifi networks, and a whole host of present-day and near-future technologies at the hands of young and brave patriots who are always smarter than the bad guys. The story is actually kind of charming, and if you keep the "young adult" thing in mind it reads pretty well. Doctorow has immersed himself in tech gadgetry and internet memes as one of the editors of the BoingBoing blog, and that is readily apparent when reading the story. But understanding his intended audience, he pulls off this use of slang and internet-geek trappings without being too overbearing with it. I never thought I would read a sci-fi book that contained references to LARPing and ARGing that I was able to read without cringing or getting douche-chills, but it works quite well here. The political overtones were a bit too simplified for my taste, making the bad guys too "bad" at times. I think the best part are his "info pauses" where he explains (in very understandable, if not over-simplified, terms) the underlying history, or inner workings, of various technologies. If you've ever had a hard time explaining public/private key crypto to someone, read this book and you'll have a very succinct explanation to use. Overall I think I really liked the book, even though I thought it tried to shoehorn in a bit too much coming-of-age into the story. Certainly worth the 3-4 hours it would take you to read it, to be honest, and hell, it's free, so there you go.
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Jul 2, 2008 20:05
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Night Watch, Terry Pratchett Best discworld novel EVER, and definitely the deepest. Quite a moving climax and ending as well.
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Jul 2, 2008 20:39
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Treasure by Cussler wasn't nearly as bad as that one thread had lead me to believe. Sure, Dirk Pitt is a racist, womanizing mary-sue and the near epitome of male power fantasy, but the book delivered on its promise: entertainment. It's a comic book without pictures written for "big boys" who still want to see the good guy kick the bad guy's rear end and tap the hot chick's (or chicks' as the case may be), and while the quality of the prose seldom rises above that of undergraduate creative writing, I ended up not giving a poo poo because I was alternately cheering for Dirk and booing the various bad guys. I wanted to dislike this book. I wanted to make fun of the kinds of people who would read this kind of book. I ended up loving it for being the honest to goodness romp it was. Also, it's loving awesome reading about a president who won't order the military to fire upon thousands of poor Mexican women and children because he knows the News Media (Cussler subtlely leaves out "Liberal" in that phrase) would tear his administration to threads. The fact that this comes on the eve of unearthing the lost treasures of the Library of Alexandria from a small hill in South Texas makes it all the more ridiculous and awesome. Here me, fellow Goons. If you want to take a break from pretending that there's depth and significance to Neil Gaiman's writing or slogging through yet another depressing book by McCarthy, read some of this Cussler nonsense. It will remind you that literature can also be a medium for good, old-fashioned fun.
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Jul 3, 2008 01:49
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On the Road by Jack Kerouac My new favorite book, now almost finished reading it a second time.
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Jul 3, 2008 04:59
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Hit and Run by Lawrence Block. Block is a veteran Crime/Mystery writer and this latest book feels like a paint-by-numbers by him. A hitman is framed for an assassination and he must figure out how to escape and also who set him up. I like the book because the characters are okay, but they still feel like puppets most of the time. When the book is concentrating on Keller (the main character) and his life on the run it's fun and it resonates, but halfway through the story takes a detour and that's where things go to poo poo. Coincidence comes into play way too much during the last half of the story and it ruins the great setup Block had going for the first half. An enjoyable read, but disappointing in the end.
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Jul 3, 2008 08:06
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I finished Siddhartha and just loved it. I found so many of the ideas in it to be terribly simple and almost obvious but still fascinating and useful. It's typically eastern, complete with the inevitability of suffering and the unifying power of OM. Overall I thought it was just a great, great little book.
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Jul 3, 2008 08:19
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pingofdeath posted:
I experienced the same thing and ended up skipping quite a few pages as I neared the book's conclusion. It felt really odd considering how much I initially enjoyed the book and its autistic protagonist.
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Jul 3, 2008 10:58
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| # ? May 14, 2024 02:42 |
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Meatballs again? posted:I experienced the same thing and ended up skipping quite a few pages as I neared the book's conclusion. It felt really odd considering how much I initially enjoyed the book and its autistic protagonist. Actually I started getting annoyed and wanted to skip it, because the portrayal got poo poo towards the end. I mean the story was decent until he tried to go to london, and then skipped telling the journey because he was told it sounded repetative, which was a loving cop-out because he wouldn't have been at all capable of making it. Myself I just finished World War Z Neat. It really gets the feel of a proper documentary history book. Can't wait for the movie.
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Jul 3, 2008 23:59
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