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Finally finished Bram Stoker's classic novel Dracula, I would definitely not recommend it to anybody. It had a decent plot, but the pacing of the entire book was really awful - the first few chapters are good, and then there's about ten chapters of confusion and boredom before it picks back up. The prose is not good at all either - in general, the style of this book is just hugely lacking. I'm pretty surprised that this is supposed to be a classic, I had to really push myself just to finish it.
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Jul 17, 2009 12:52
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Just finished Caine Black Knife, by Matthew Woodring Stover and I'd recommend it to anybody who likes SFF, and even some who don't. The entire story is so fast paced and action packed that I blew through it in a week (350~ odd pages). The entire Caine series (Heroes Die, Blade of Tyshalle, and Caine Black Knife) is fantastic. The setting is a great mix of science-fiction and fantasy as there is travel between a futuristic Earth and psuedo-fantasy world with magic and the like called Home. The protagonist, Caine, is also an anti-hero rear end in a top hat who's no better than most of supposed "evil" people that he murders. On Earth he is a beloved by millions as a star of Adventures, special cubes encoded with his memories and the actions he undergoes on the Home. Sort of like a twisted futuristic version of reality television. Another great thing: Stover is a martial artist and it really shows through in his writing as the book contains the best fight scenes that I have ever read in any genre. Descriptions are visceral and authentic and not for the weak of heart. Stover is a really under appreciated author who pens a unique style of SFF and I can't recommend the above books enough.
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Jul 17, 2009 16:18
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Sethik posted:Just finished Caine Black Knife, by Matthew Woodring Stover and I'd recommend it to anybody who likes SFF, and even some who don't. The entire story is so fast paced and action packed that I blew through it in a week (350~ odd pages). The entire Caine series (Heroes Die, Blade of Tyshalle, and Caine Black Knife) is fantastic. The worst part is that was half a book. At the pace he writes we will never see the end. He said on his blog writing SW books are more financially sound at the moment.
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Jul 17, 2009 21:39
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wlokos posted:Finally finished Bram Stoker's classic novel Dracula, I would definitely not recommend it to anybody. It had a decent plot, but the pacing of the entire book was really awful - the first few chapters are good, and then there's about ten chapters of confusion and boredom before it picks back up. The prose is not good at all either - in general, the style of this book is just hugely lacking. I'm pretty surprised that this is supposed to be a classic, I had to really push myself just to finish it. When we read this in one of my English classes together, it actually was great. Yeah, the plot itself pretty straightforward and not horror after unspeakable horror or anything, but the book actually has some interesting messages about Victorian society. It was really fun to discuss. I agree that, on its own, the story itself wasn't super interesting. It's just been done too much.
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Jul 18, 2009 00:46
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I think you misunderstood the gist of my post - I found the plot to be pretty engaging and generally interesting, but Stoker's actual skill in writing prose is really weak (which is common with epistolary novels I think) and that unfortunately ruined the book for me. If a more talented author had written it, I think I would've enjoyed it a lot.
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Jul 18, 2009 01:16
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I just finished reading The Dark Tower, the ending was good, even the coda ending. There is just a certain character in the past few books that was a bit painful to read, but still worth it. I'm now reading Candide, which is a really quick read, and quite quirky for something written in the 1700's.
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Jul 18, 2009 01:19
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Shadow of the Torturer and Claw of the Conciliator by Gene Wolfe; a pretty challenging yet enjoyable read. I tried listening to the audiobook of the first one last year and found it really difficult to follow, this is definitely something you should read in print. It seemed like every other page there was a "wait a minute, what?" that would cause me to flip back and re-read something to understand what was going on. Sometimes it drags on seemingly pointless scenes that are sort of cul-de-sacs in the narrative thread, and I tended to just plow through them without really trying to get the "why" of them. It's definitely a series of books that I'll enjoy rereading multiple times to try and catch something new. There's an often frustrating and probably intentional lack of detail that keeps you from getting the whole picture as you read. It's a very well-written book and I enjoyed the rather baroque narrative style with which Wolfe/Severian tells the story. One thing it could do without is the little note/appendix at the end; if you can't figure out what an optimate is or the fact that the animals aren't all of present terrestrial origin on your own you're probably aren't going to get jack poo poo out of the books. As it is the whole "Author's note: This has been translated into English from a language that doesn't exist yet..." seems a bit pretentious. Pompous Rhombus fucked around with this message at 01:40 on Jul 18, 2009 |
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Jul 18, 2009 01:32
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Just finished The Bad Girl by Mario Vargas Llosa. First book of his that I've read, but I can see why he has a reputation of a great story teller, and why people have been calling for the Nobel Prize folks to recognize him. The book was great, but not without it's drawbacks. I think it would've been better served to flesh out a few of the scenarios in the novel, and decrease the number of encounters Ricardo had with the bad girl. Some of the scenarios (London in the 1970s in particular) felt like general overviews of that place in that time, and didn't feel personalized enough. The ending was a bit schmaltzy, but a tongue was clearly planted in a cheek for that part. A great novel, altogether. Definitely going to look into more of his books after I get through more of my backlog.
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Jul 18, 2009 02:59
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Pompous Rhombus posted:As it is the whole "Author's note: This has been translated into English from a language that doesn't exist yet..." seems a bit pretentious. I really liked that note! For example, when you're reading you can look up destrier and learn it was a horse for medieval knights, then Severain describes it's claws and you have to do a double take. Details like that really add to the opaqueness of the book and blur the boundary between sign and signifier, author and reader. It's contextual fuckery like that that makes New Sun so tricky and interesting. I think he needed to hit the nail on the head in the appendices because absolutely nothing else is spelled out.
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Jul 18, 2009 05:30
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Roybot posted:I really liked that note! For example, when you're reading you can look up destrier and learn it was a horse for medieval knights, then Severain describes it's claws and you have to do a double take. Details like that really add to the opaqueness of the book and blur the boundary between sign and signifier, author and reader. It's contextual fuckery like that that makes New Sun so tricky and interesting. I think he needed to hit the nail on the head in the appendices because absolutely nothing else is spelled out. See, I already knew what a destrier was and that it shouldn't have claws (thanks ASOIAF, chapters in an economics book that covered medieval history), although I'll freely admit there is other stuff I wouldn't know without looking up. My objection is that the book is already so opaque and cryptic that the appendix is completely unnecessary: it's a "Here, dummies..." for a book that's clearly not catering to the casual reader.
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Jul 18, 2009 05:54
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Just finished Oxherding Tale by Charles Johnson. It's has one of the most satisfying conclusions ever written. There were entire chapters worth of philosophical tangents, but they're just as engaging as the story itself. Now I'm moving on to Frankenstein. Should be fun. 
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Jul 18, 2009 06:10
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Just managed to finish The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass, wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be going into it. But drat, that was the longest loving flashback I've ever encountered. But I think once I'm done with the series, I'll look back and think it was necessary to read it in order to appreciate the entire thing.
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Jul 18, 2009 06:49
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Pompous Rhombus posted:it's a "Here, dummies..." for a book that's clearly not catering to the casual reader. I'm into 'Claw' right now, but I view the endnotes as sort of a coda, saying that this is a historian translating Severian's own words, and here's some historical/linguistic context, like several translators have done before. But he just keeps it to three pages so as not to blow it out to Silmarillion levels of ridiculous historical notes. Also, oh god semiotics, why would you haunt me here?
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Jul 18, 2009 08:19
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I just finished John Dies At The End. Its a pretty good book.
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Jul 18, 2009 09:40
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I finished The Philosopher and the Wolf by Mark Rowlands last night. It is what, I think, popular philosophy should strive toward: it was not too technical yet there was still very much to think about, and he did not let the philosophy become superficial. He wraps his philosophy in his experiential account of what it's like to live with a wolf, but doesn't let it veer off into the depths of either territory -- that is, it never becomes overly sentimental goop nor does it become a treatise on Husserl's account of time -- so it is a pleasure to read throughout. The book serves the purpose of delineating the differences between human and non-human animals, using the wolf and the ape as its conceptual devices for doing so. He also, of course, brings stories of living with a wolf to bear on these thoughts, and the man has some very funny stories indeed. He is a surprisingly good writer too!
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Jul 18, 2009 16:00
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Finished re-reading For whom the bell tolls and it's still pretty great
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Jul 19, 2009 01:12
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DADA SQUAD posted:Finished re-reading For whom the bell tolls and it's still pretty great Yeah, that's a good one. Hemingway is high on my reread list.
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Jul 19, 2009 01:33
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Oh, I'm glad someone else here has read The Philosopher and the Wolf. As an animal enthusiast, I found it a fascinating read. Presently, though, I just finished reading Gulliver's Travels. I'd already read it, but hoped it would be better this time. I was wrong. I don't know why I do this to myself. Historically, it's novel, but as an actual piece, extremely lacking.
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Jul 19, 2009 03:58
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JustAurora posted:I'm now reading Candide, which is a really quick read, and quite quirky for something written in the 1700's. Candide is best read knowing that he's making fun of Leibniz for pretty much the whole book. I read it right after we studied Leibniz in Modern Philosophy and it summed up pretty much everything I hate about the guy.
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Jul 19, 2009 08:32
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I just finished Let The Right One In and I feel a bit violated.
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Jul 19, 2009 11:31
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I've always thought that the two most intrinsically poetic American institutions are baseball and jazz, and I've always appreciated William Matthews for basically seeming to agree with me. Time & Money was the last collection of his poetry to come out during his lifetime, and a lot of it deals with the death of his father, and a lot of it deals with youth, and vitality, and sex, so there's kind of an eerie sense of equilibrium, reading it after the fact. There's a certain kind of lightness and quickness here that's almost unique to American poets of a certain generation at a certain age- you can see it in Gerald Stern (who gets an epistolary poem here) and sometimes Plumley too now- that's all over this book. The sensation of a poet so comfortable in their own diction and so resigned, in some weird way, that there's a real muscular grace on every page. If you've ever met a pro-level ice-skater in an everyday situation, I suppose that's the best analogy I can think of, and its unfortunately vague and wobbly. Oh well- this is one of the strongest and most confident volumes of American poetry released in the 90's, and I believe nowadays you can find all of it in Matthews' collected poems, so whatever, go read it.
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Jul 19, 2009 20:35
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I just finished The Burning Skies and The Mirrored Heavens by David J. Williams. It was basically what I was anticipating, a light sci-fi techno-thriller with some interesting ideas about future wars and such. The plot fell apart somewhere in the second book, but the frenetic pace helped keep my interest to the end. I'm not sure if I'll pick up the third book when it's released, but I might buy it if it shows up on the Kindle Store.
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Jul 19, 2009 21:39
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Just finished Gravity's Rainbow, after months of recommendations from friends. What a book! Took many (many) rereadings of sections, and lots of notes and diagrams and idle hours thinking and thinking, but it's really worth it; once you get into the spirit of the book, it's really pretty fun. There are so many things you could discuss about it, but for me the most interesting is that the general subtext of paranoia, I think, is even more compelling now than it likely was when the book was first published. f The (real or possibly imagined) dossiers on Slothrop, for example, from childhood onward, are now effectively a reality for everyone. It's maybe a little puerile to ground the concepts of the book in our daily life (Pynchon actually has some great comments about this in an intro he wrote to an edition of 1984), but even for the most careful of us, the amount of information we create is staggering. Who knows what is important anymore? Where do secrets lie when everything is already known? Can something seemingly tame or meaningless suddenly assume importance when seen in the correct light?
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Jul 19, 2009 22:10
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dirigible stew posted:I just finished Let The Right One In and I feel a bit violated. I want to read this after seeing and enjoying the movie. Would you reccomend it? I just finished City of Thieves by David Benioff. It was a really good read, and quite cinematic. The premise was unusual, and the story was kind of predictable at times, but I couldn't put it down. Great little read.
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Jul 19, 2009 23:47
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dirigible stew posted:I just finished Let The Right One In and I feel a bit violated. Are you talking violated in a good way or a bad way? I have a friend who recommended that I read the book. The movie was great especially if you understand Swedish.
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Jul 20, 2009 00:43
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Of Human Bondage by Maugham. I have to say, this is the best book that I have ever had the pleasure of reading. Also high on my list is Razor's Edge, but this book has me in awe. If you don't know the premise, it follows a club footed boy named Philip that because of the death of his parents, is raised by his minister Uncle and submissive Aunt in a small English town. He struggles with his deformity and searches for his place in the world while always wondering what the meaning of it all is. It steadily follows his life into early adulthood. Nothing is left out, we are there for everything he goes through and everyone he meets for 30 years. It's maddening and breathtaking at the same time. My reasoning in reading it was because I wanted to be immersed into turn of the 20th century London and Paris. It satisfied that criteria perfectly, vividly putting me there at that time in an authentic way I never imagined possible through print. Maugham is a master, perhaps THE master, at developing realistic characters. Everyone I met in this book felt totally fleshed out and genuine. Everything just makes sense - it's hard to describe! Even though I wanted to strangle Philip at times, I understood why he was doing what he did, because his struggles are universal. From an early age he begins questioning the meaning of life and through his quest to find out he is nearly destroyed. I've heard some complaints about the ending, but I think that both Philip and the reader deserved a happy ending by that point. I can't recommend this book enough. If you start it and waver in your desire to continue, try to stick it out. It's worth it!!
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Jul 20, 2009 03:25
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Sharpe's Tiger by Bernard Cromwell, the first book of the Sharpe series. A very, very welcome break from research material. An anti-hero, plenty of action, pretty accurate description of Napoleonic warfare - complete with historical commentary in the epilogue - and not badly written at all. It's not a masterpiece, but it's a very solid adventure book, and just today I bought the sequel without hesitation. Overall, it's not as overblown as C.S Forester's Hornblower series, and it's a lost faster than the Aubrey and Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian. Think of it as a middle point between O'Brian's ship fetish and Forester's sentimental and patriotic adventures of the Best Guy in the World against the Evil Enemies of Britain.
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Jul 20, 2009 07:10
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Realizing that I had really dropped the ball on reading certain classics, I read both 1984 and Brave New World yesterday. They were both available in full online, so that helped. BNW was an interesting read, but not nearly as engaging and disturbing as 1984. The end of that one has been running through my head all day. And now I can see just how much movies like Equilibrium and V for Vendetta have taken directly from this book. All in all, I'm glad I finally got around to reading them.
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Jul 20, 2009 13:53
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Just finished reading Jeffrey Archer's Prisoner of Birth. It was a good read, really enjoyed the pacing and the plot.
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Jul 20, 2009 15:42
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Just finished Drood by Dan Simmons. It's the best Wilkie Collins & Charles Dickens fanfiction you will ever read. And you don't need to know a thing about either one of them to enjoy the book.
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Jul 21, 2009 02:42
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Just finished A Clash of Kings. Thought it was great altho the ending wasn't an amazing as the one in A Game of Thrones. 100 pages into A Storm of Swords atm, however its so much to digest I really take my time with all these Song of Ice and Fire books. I find myself flipping back and forth to the notes / family trees in the back so I can keep track of everyone. Great stuff, I love them.
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Jul 21, 2009 02:52
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Just closed the cover on Blindness. I didn't enjoy it at all. The plot was predictable and the moralizing ham-handed, but what irritated me most was his writing style. Saramago ignores punctuation and indentation to ill effect; when the dialogue and narration isn't confusing, it's boring or preachy. I planned to read some criticism on his work, but now I have zero desire to read more Saramago or investigate further. Does anyone who's read and liked Saramago have suggestions or comments?
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Jul 21, 2009 04:41
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Lamar posted:Just finished A Clash of Kings. Thought it was great altho the ending wasn't an amazing as the one in A Game of Thrones. 100 pages into A Storm of Swords atm, however its so much to digest I really take my time with all these Song of Ice and Fire books. I find myself flipping back and forth to the notes / family trees in the back so I can keep track of everyone. Great stuff, I love them. ASoS will kill your brain. Just so you know. To contribute, I just finished Dune, and I loved every second of it. It was a bit jarring at first to be dropped right into the middle of the universe (Duniverse?), but once the initial shock wore off, I couldn't put it down.
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Jul 21, 2009 06:10
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ranarium posted:Just closed the cover on Blindness. I didn't enjoy it at all. The plot was predictable and the moralizing ham-handed, but what irritated me most was his writing style. Saramago ignores punctuation and indentation to ill effect; when the dialogue and narration isn't confusing, it's boring or preachy. It was a year or more ago that I read it, but I don't remember the writing style bothering me that much. But I'm pretty flexible in my taste. A Clockwork Orange is my favorite book, one of the reasons being that it was very satisfying to learn that lingo just by reading it--I understood everything they were saying by halfway through the book on the first read. I guess I just like to adapt to whatever I'm reading to try to better understand it. Writing style seems to kill books for a lot of people. But I don't know, I guess it just depends why you read books.
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Jul 21, 2009 06:24
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In contrast with ranarium, I just read Blindness and loved it. I thought that the plot was pretty neat, the characters were very well written, and that in general Saramago provided a very realistic feeling portrayal of a random group of people forced together in a time of crisis. The general situation of a suddenly blind world was really interesting, which helped because it gave Saramago a lot to work with I think. Plus I didn't mind the style at all, I felt like he really helped evoke the feeling of blindness onto the reader, which I liked a lot. I feel like I've heard that the sequel ("Seeing") sucks, but I can't remember where I heard this and if it's not true then I'll probably read it at some point. The only thing I think I didn't like was the ending, where they all get their sight back at the very end, and then it's over without delving into what effect that'll have on the characters/world at all. I mean unless he was specifically setting up the sequel, it felt pretty lame - almost like it just got tacked on because he couldn't think of a better way to conclude things now that the characters were beginning to get settled. It wasn't a huge deal, though.
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Jul 21, 2009 09:49
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wlokos posted:The only thing I think I didn't like was the ending, where they all get their sight back at the very end, and then it's over without delving into what effect that'll have on the characters/world at all. I mean unless he was specifically setting up the sequel, it felt pretty lame - almost like it just got tacked on because he couldn't think of a better way to conclude things now that the characters were beginning to get settled. It wasn't a huge deal, though. Yeah, I'm not a fan of "It's up to your mind!" type endings either. But like you said, it wasn't a big deal. Also, although I did enjoy the book, I don't really have any intention of reading Seeing. It just doesn't feel like the story needs any more expansion.
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Jul 21, 2009 10:08
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Anunnaki posted:Yeah, I'm not a fan of "It's up to your mind!" type endings either. But like you said, it wasn't a big deal. Also, although I did enjoy the book, I don't really have any intention of reading Seeing. It just doesn't feel like the story needs any more expansion. Without spoiling much, the story of Blindness doesn't get expanded in Seeing, at all. It's only a sequel in the sense that it takes place in the same world, and some of the characters from Blindness very quietly show up in the middle of the book. The stories are tangentially related thematically (inexplicable thing happens to world, effects on world are observed), but Seeing doesn't deal with another blindness or the lingering effects of Blindness' plot at all. That said, Seeing is a really good book with some fantastic scenes. I can understand why someone may say it "sucks" if they were expecting a straight sequel rather than a spiritual successor, but if you go in free from those expectations then it should be pretty rad. Also, as a side note, if anyone liked Saramago's writing style in Blindness, wants more, and wants to read something that seriously blows it out of the loving water, read his book The Gospel According to Jesus Christ.
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Jul 21, 2009 11:55
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The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares. This is a remarkable little book; it's just a novella, but it has a lot packed into it. Borges wrote a prologue praising it pretty highly, and in fact if you like Borges you need to read this book, since it channels him quite well.
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Jul 21, 2009 13:45
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A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. A good primer for the history of physics. A few section merit rereads having a pen and paper nearby for note-taking. Not that it is overly complex, but at the same time, it is a simplification of some complex topics.
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Jul 21, 2009 15:47
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The Elfish Gene: Dungeons, Dragons, and Growing Up Strange by Mark Barrowliffe. http://www.elfishgene.com/ Great book about a boy growing up obsessed with wargaming. It's very accessible to people who've never played pencil and paper RPGs. There are a ton of funny moments in the book.
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