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Just recently started getting into books so I haven't read that many yet. I did however just finish reading Nation by Terry Pratchett. Now I am about half way through 1984. Wonderful read so far and it's my first time reading it.
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Mar 24, 2010 05:34
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My Side of the Mountain After mentioning I had enjoyed Hatchet and the like as a youth, a friend recommended My Side of the Mountain to me. It was a simple but very good book. I can't say much plot happened, really, but it was a fast read...maybe four hours total? I am really busy in life right now, but when things slow down I'll be hitting Hamlet and rereading Contact and Siddartha.
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Mar 24, 2010 05:44
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The Secret History by Donna Tartt. It's a roughly 600 page novel, and the plot revolves entirely around an event which occurs 300 pages in. The first half, the lead up to this event, is utterly gripping and compelling prose. Afterwards the story does tend to sag a little, and then as you proceed further, it sags a lot. There were long stretches of the second half where literally nothing happened. However by this stage I loved the characters enough to keep going, and I'm glad I did. The ending was heart-racing once more (once a certain letter surfaces...) and I feel satisfied now that I've finished the book. I just think it could do with some serious shortening in the second half. I really, really loved the many allusions to Greek and Roman history/language/culture throughout the book. Makes me want to study the classics.
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Mar 24, 2010 11:24
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Finished up Boneshaker by Cherie Priest. I went in with fairly low expectations and was pleasantly surprised. The setting of the book is fairly bleak and somewhat depressing, perfect for a zombie romp. The characters were a bit flat for the most part and I also found myself wanting the zeppelin/dirigible stuff fleshed out a bit more. Not literature by any means but a fun read.
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Mar 24, 2010 16:16
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I just finished The Catcher in the Rye and I enjoyed it immensely. I'm a sucker for inner monologues and the ambiguity of Holden's sanity made me keep reading.
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Mar 24, 2010 23:40
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I just finished Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick today and I must say it was a very interesting read about life in North Korea. If you have any interest in this particular subject area or an area that is even tangentially related, I would highly recommend it. The book gives a very detailed glimpse into life in a modern day Orwellian society. I think the thing I enjoyed about this book the most is that it focuses on the people of North Korea and their individual experiences rather than governments and policy, as is usually the case with books about North Korea. The author gathered her information from North Korean defectors, who came from a variety of backgrounds in North Korean society.
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Mar 25, 2010 12:29
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Morganman posted:I just finished The Catcher in the Rye and I enjoyed it immensely. I'm a sucker for inner monologues and the ambiguity of Holden's sanity made me keep reading. uhhh? I don't think his sanity is ever in question.
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Mar 25, 2010 14:53
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Only a few minutes ago I closed Philip K. Dick's Lies, Inc., and put it in my book-shelf to collect dust for yet another decade, or at least until I decide to read it again. It was my second read-through ( the first occurred years and years ago ), and I had - surprisingly enough - forgotten just about everything about the book. It was, to put it simply, good. I am too lazy to write my own plot-summary, so here's the synopsis from the official site of Philip K. Dick's: A masterwork by Philip K. Dick, this is the final, expanded version of the novella The Unteleported Man, which Dick worked on shortly before his death. In Lies, Inc., fans of the science fiction legend will immediately recognize his hallmark themes of life in a security state, conspiracy, and the blurring of reality and illusion. This publication marks its first complete appearance in the United States. In this wry, paranoid vision of the future, overpopulation has turned cities into cramed industrial anthills. For those sick of this dystopian reality, one corporation, Trails of Hoffman, Inc., promises an alternative: Take a teleport to Whale's Mouth, a colonized planet billed as the supreme paradise. The only catch is that you can never comeback. When a neurotic man named Rachmael ben Applebaum discovers that the promotional films of happy crowds cheering their newfound existence on Whale's Mouth are faked, he decides to pilot a scapeship on the eighteen-year journey there to see if anyone wants to return. The structure is warped in a trademark Philip K. Dick -fashion, and it leaves you a bit perplexed. I don't really know if I understood it completely... I think I did, but at the same time I'm wondering if I missed something and that I'm completely off the mark. Anyway, a recommended read to any fan of thought-provoking sci-fi.
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Mar 25, 2010 15:26
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Finished 2 books.. "Al Capone Does my Shirts" for my childrens lit class... and "A Storm of Swords" by GRRM. I'm upset having read it though, because I heard "A Feast for Crows" sucks and GRRM decided to retire in the middle of his series!!! Gurr! Also just bought the Inkspell series by Funke. I'm a kid at heart...
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Mar 25, 2010 23:22
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Just finished two books. First, Haruki Murakami’s “Wind-Up Bird Chronicle”, which I thought was excellent. I love how he presents all these surreal events, and seamlessly mixes them with common day-to-day events. Kind of like magic realism, but less subtle and better. It was long, and some of it dragged a bit, but in general it was a great read and kept my attention for most of it. Recommended. I also finished Ray Bradbury’s classic, “Fahrenheit 451”. This one was OK, but nothing special. I like how he described some of the scenes and situations, but I wasn’t very impressed by the plot, and while I didn’t find it boring, it didn’t grab as much as I like being grabbed by books. The message is good, but I think it’s oversimplified. Also, I didn’t like the end too much. Up next: William Faulkner’s “As I Lay Dying” and “The Story of Art” by E. H. Gombrich, which I’m excited about, as I never received any formal “Art Education”.
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Mar 26, 2010 02:17
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DirtyRobot posted:uhhh? I don't think his sanity is ever in question. A popular theory suggests that he is relating the entire story on a therapist's couch.
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Mar 26, 2010 03:04
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Just finished The Given Day by Dennis Lehane and I really liked it. It's set in Boston (duh!) around the end of the second World War and mixes a fictional narrative with real events leading up to and including the Boston police strike. It's a little bit "The Wire: 1920" in that the story weaves in and out of broader social issues of the time, and although likable, the main characters are pretty screwed up for the most part. It's also pretty drat bleak. I enjoyed it mostly for the setting. A slice of American history I don't know much about. Considering this is less than a century ago a lot of it is quite depressing, anything to do with race relations in particular. For Lehane fans it's not really a thriller, but I guess the same could be said for something like Mystic River. It's a police and family drama with sporadic action and not so sporadic violence. Removed from the setting the story might have been a little weak in places, but the two combined really made for a good read. I've got to add that I really love Lehane's prose at times. He's just great at capturing a really lovely situation and the emotions and personalities of the people in it. There's a load of "moments" in the book, little conversations, crossed paths or set pieces that are just way above and beyond the "genre" fiction that Lehane is known for. I felt the same way about Mystic River though, I think he captures something about people that a lot of authors writing in a similar area can't. I think this is supposed to be part of a trilogy. Based on the end point the next one is probably the prohibition and gangsters and the third the great depression?
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Mar 26, 2010 11:01
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Horrorca posted:First, Haruki Murakami’s “Wind-Up Bird Chronicle”, which I thought was excellent. I love how he presents all these surreal events, and seamlessly mixes them with common day-to-day events. Kind of like magic realism, but less subtle and better. It was long, and some of it dragged a bit, but in general it was a great read and kept my attention for most of it. Recommended. Made quick work of Hemmingway's The Old Man and the Sea. I'm not a huge fan of Hemmingway - though, to be fair, I've only read about two novels and a short story or two - but this is a drat good novella. So, even as a non-fan of his, I think this is an amazingly tale in its simplicity of narrative and tangible characters (I'm probably wording this incorrectly; I just feel as if he did an excellent job creating characters that could very well be real and living people. Except, you know, for the fact that they lack a body and are the conjuration of his imagination).
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Mar 26, 2010 13:34
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DirtyRobot posted:uhhh? I don't think his sanity is ever in question. He definitely seemed like he had bipolar disorder or that he was a sociopath to me, but that is just one of the bajillion weird interpretations of the book.
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Mar 27, 2010 05:39
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Made the mistake of finishing Furies of Calderon in the middle of the night and not having the foresight to purchase the next book in the series. Good book reads a lot like if Tolkien, Weis and Hickman had some sort of test tube baby that had a small case of ADD. Great momentum to the book but could used just a bit more details before jumping characters from point A to B (but that's just me). Solid 8 out of 9 because I'm an rear end in a top hat that believes there are no 10s.
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Mar 27, 2010 07:24
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Just finished today with Transition by Ian Banks. It was an interesting book but I have a question for anyone who's read it. The basic premise is about an organization where they can move between universes using their ability to "flit" between realities. When they move between realities they would posses the mind of a semi-random person in that universe. The problem I had with the book was that sometimes they would travel to universes where all of humanity was dead. So where did they get the bodies?
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Mar 27, 2010 07:44
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Postmodernism For Beginners by Richard Appignanesi and Chris Garratt (with Ziauddin Sardar and Patrick Curry). Here's yet another book that's been sitting on my shelf for fifty million years without getting its spine broken. I was inspired to pick it up by the latest debate about the validity (or non) of the Western canon, and while this book did give me a lot to think about, I still can't escape the feeling that I've been hit over the head with something. Maybe I should've taken notes. Or maybe I just need to take a nap...
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Mar 27, 2010 20:30
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Recently finished Music for Chameleons by Capote and Balzac's The Black Sheep. The only critique I have is that Balzac writes from the perspective of the French aristocracy at a time during which their problems were more invented than real; alas I cannot read French, and so perhaps my interpretation is one of ignorance (of linguistic/stylistic nuances and so forth). 
Shizmo fucked around with this message at 21:44 on Mar 27, 2010 |
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Mar 27, 2010 21:40
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Daemon by Daniel Suarez Finished this up this weekend, and it was pretty cool. Granted I had avoided the spoilers mentioned in the thread, but since I was already in the process of reading it I decided to just finish it. I liked it. I didn't LOVE it, but I did like it. Great b movie plot. One of the things I didn't really like about it much was just the fact it just doesn't really move much plot wise. Once you read the back, and understand that this evil program is out on the internet and hell bent on loving people up, the plot really never moves anywhere else. Newer and more interesting poo poo gets lobbed into the story, but the basic premise is still "crazy computer program". Granted, a nice chuck of disbelief has to be thrown in as well, since the program does some crazy poo poo in the book, but if you are willing to read a book about a killer ai program on the internet, chances are you won't be too phased when some of the crazy poo poo pops up. I feel like the author kinda stole a page from Koontz or King and just decided to throw together a "meh" ending. Nothing as lame as "OMG WE NEED TO FIREWALL AND EMP ALL THE INTERNETS, AT THE SAME TIME" like something out of a michael bay film, but still just... "meh". Still, if you like techno thriller kinda books that don't suck as much rear end as Prey did, give it a shot. I am going to check out the sequel in a few days, first I am going to get through the Andrew Mayhem series and maybe a book or two by Joe Hill.
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Mar 28, 2010 03:20
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Women and Gender Equity in Development Theory and Practice: Institutions, Resources, and Mobilization edited by Jane S. Jaquette and Gale Summerfield Being the last book I had to read for a graduate seminar on Global Development (Globalization), I was excited to read this book. It tends to put a few different ideas into a much wider, if not global, perspective. I was happy to see that a few pro neo-liberal authors were given a chance to voice their efforts. I was also happy to see a well-rounded debate on American minded feminism and how it is often criticized for being a central portion of "modernization" theory applied to all countries. This debate alone makes the book well worth reading. It also did a good job at discussing the fact that factories around the world want educated, single women to work for them given that they can trap them into working cheaply. If you're interested in gender studies and perhaps learning about a few lesser discussed ramifications of global development, i'd suggest this book. Just keep in mind that studying this stuff will not make you happy or popular.
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Mar 28, 2010 21:41
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Morganman posted:I just finished The Catcher in the Rye and I enjoyed it immensely. I'm a sucker for inner monologues and the ambiguity of Holden's sanity made me keep reading. Today I sat out in the woods under the bright sun for the last fifty pages of The Catcher in the Rye. The jumpy monologue almost bothered me at first but it didn't take more than five pages to keep me reading. I also enjoyed the book. I also just finished The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. I never would've grabbed a 700 pager off the shelf on my own, but since it was a gift, I made it through the book over the course of three months and it was worth the time. Ms. Rand's philosophies made me think very differently. Highly recommended.
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Mar 29, 2010 00:22
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John Wyndham's -Chocky- (same guy who wrote -Day of the Triffids-) Fantastic short novel for a different perspective of alien visitation. Raises thoughtful and interesting questions.If you've read -Day of the Triffids-, you'll recognize Wyndham's typical introspective first-person narrative. $$$$/$$$$
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Mar 29, 2010 08:30
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indago posted:Today I sat out in the woods under the bright sun for the last fifty pages of The Catcher in the Rye. The jumpy monologue almost bothered me at first but it didn't take more than five pages to keep me reading. I also enjoyed the book. Just don't go gangbusters with objectivism! And for content, I finally got around to Wuthering Heights, to which any real commentary is superfluous at best; anyone have an opinion on the whole "sympathy for the devil" motif which I found myself contemplating?
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Mar 29, 2010 10:25
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Shizmo posted:Just don't go gangbusters with objectivism! I thought it was an exhausting ride, at one sitting I'm full of nothing but sympathy and compassion for the characters and then the next time I picked up the book I felt outraged by their behaviour and beleived I hated them. Some books walk the fine line between love and hate whilst this book leaps back and fourth over it non-loving-stop. Heathcliff is a bastard but I still want him to be happy 
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Mar 29, 2010 12:45
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Dr Scoofles posted:I thought it was an exhausting ride, at one sitting I'm full of nothing but sympathy and compassion for the characters and then the next time I picked up the book I felt outraged by their behaviour and beleived I hated them. Some books walk the fine line between love and hate whilst this book leaps back and fourth over it non-loving-stop. Heathcliff is a bastard but I still want him to be happy
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Mar 29, 2010 15:39
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wickles posted:I identified with Heathcliff in a big way, what does that make me? It makes you a tragedy 
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Mar 29, 2010 16:18
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wickles posted:I identified with Heathcliff in a big way, what does that make me? A loveable bastard  I think a lot of people identify with charactes like Cathy and Heathcliff. Real life doesn't consist of perfect relationships and flawless people. People are selfish, they row, they gently caress up and not every action is logical. I probably have more in common with Cathy than I do with any Austin heroin. Actually I have nothing in common with an Austin heroin because I can never think of anything really witty to say when confronted with the town gossip, dammit.
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Mar 29, 2010 17:41
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Just polished off Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith. I don't even know what to think of it. The parts that weren't supposed to be made up were very detailed and very accurate, and it made me feel like if I didn't know that I was reading a fictionalized account of Abraham Lincoln's dealings with the undead I might have felt I was learning a lot about the guy. That said, there should have been a proper epilogue to tie up some loose ends. Also some of the the diary entries were hard to understand (only a few) because the author failed to mention who exactly was writing (you knew it wasn't Lincoln because he never refers to himself in third-person, but no other writer or diary is mentioned in these cases). That said, if you're looking for a quick, mostly historically accurate, and funny book to read then I would suggest picking this one up. It flies and is pretty drat amusing.
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Mar 29, 2010 19:55
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Just wrapped up Burglars Can't Be Choosers by Lawrence Block. I enjoyed it, it had a nice little twist on the mystery genre being that the protagonist is a burglar, not a detective or anything. So the criminal needs to solve the crime. Basically, he is robbing an apartment, when the cops show up and find a dead body. Instantly he's the suspect and has to find the true killer. Not the greatest book i've ever read, but it was fun. I might have to grab the sequals.
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Mar 29, 2010 21:22
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Krakatoa:The Day The World Exploded by Simon Winchester. It's a nonfiction account of the 1883 eruption of, well, Krakatoa. Winchester is a decent writer, he keeps your attention, but drat if the man isn't the master of diversion. It took me about 200 pages to reach the actual eruption, and in the meantime I learned more about the Dutch spice trade than I needed to know. Oddly, it was still a fun read.
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Mar 30, 2010 03:06
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Got done with 2666 by Roberto Bolano. I really enjoyed how the author crafted the settings in the novel, and the more-or-less ambiguous tone of the book was great.
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Mar 30, 2010 04:55
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Phillip K. Dick - Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said This was incredible, my favorite PKD by far. Full of  and a pretty satisfying and weird payoff.Grant Naylor - Better Than Life Red Dwarf owns, and so do the novels. Andy McDermott - The Hunt For Atlantis A Michael Bay James Bond movie in words with a female Indiana Jones. Charles Darwin - The Origin Of Species I'm amazed by how much he figured out without knowing about stuff like DNA. It was pretty amusing how many of the criticisms and fallacies of fundamentalist Christians he addressed as well.
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Mar 30, 2010 22:42
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LooseChanj posted:Charles Darwin - The Origin Of Species quote:The diffusion of the animal creation over the face of the earth does indeed involve a most interesting and difficult inquiry. Whence came the innumerable tribes of human beings, diversified in form, complexion, and character, which inhabit every continent and island of our globe ? Whence the myriads of animals, and birds, and lesser creatures, which every where teem in the most astonishing profusion and variety; peopling its mountains, and plains, and forests, and glittering on its surface? Who can solve the problem? Who will undertake to make out successive returns of this mighty population, to mark out the progress of its migrations, and trace back its genealogies through a succession of 4000 years, up to its cradle, the ark, reposing on the summit of Ararat, amidst the silence of universal desolation? It is a question about which so little is known, and so much must depend on conjecture, that it seems rather calculated for the exercise of ingenuity, or even the indulgence of scepticism, than likely to lead to the development of truth. We may observe, however, that to us the difficulty seems the same, whether the deluge existed or not; whether we suppose the migration to have proceeded from the mountain of Ararat or the garden of Eden.
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Mar 31, 2010 00:55
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Listen, I didn't face ten long tours against the goddamn 'bots to come back home and lift baby weights.
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LooseChanj posted:Phillip K. Dick - Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said I finished that, for the second time, about 2 weeks ago. I think my favorite of his by far. I've noticed on a bunch of books the ending is sometimes quite abrupt.
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Mar 31, 2010 01:54
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LooseChanj posted:Phillip K. Dick - Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said Ugh, I really want to read this but I've been having little luck finding a fairly cheap hard copy. Just finished Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. It's was really good. The part about abortion and crime rates was of particular interest to me because I used to wonder about that a lot when I was around 14 or 15. I've been recommending it to people but they all think it's a boring economics book. I'm sad to hear that the second one's not that great.
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Mar 31, 2010 02:07
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ClosetWeevil posted:Just finished Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. It's was really good. The part about abortion and crime rates was of particular interest to me because I used to wonder about that a lot when I was around 14 or 15. I've been recommending it to people but they all think it's a boring economics book. I'm sad to hear that the second one's not that great. There are no boring economic books  They may be dry, but never boring.
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Mar 31, 2010 02:14
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ClosetWeevil posted:Ugh, I really want to read this but I've been having little luck finding a fairly cheap hard copy.
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Mar 31, 2010 02:22
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Dem Bones posted:It's in the Library of America Dick 60's and 70's which isn't too bad a price if you don't have the other novels collected there (and are interested in them). Oh cool, I actually don't have any of these books and I've only read two of them, so this is a great deal.
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Mar 31, 2010 02:37
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I just finished up Dune for the first time. I thought it was pretty drat good but I'm hesitant to read the other books.
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Mar 31, 2010 04:03
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Pompeii by Robert Harris - Not only history fiction but Roman history fiction? This book should have been a shoe in for me but I found the first 2/3 so incredibly boring it took me a few goes to finish it. It wasn't until the volcano erupted (do I really need to spoiler that?) that I actually got interested into the story at all. I found some of the historical things interesting though, such as some of the details about how the aqueducts worked and general stuff about the area at the time which I admit I knew little about. Despite that it took me a lot of effort to finish it (which is unusual). So much so that at one point I gave up on reading it to read... Outlaw by Angus Donald - This is a darker-that-usual take on Robin Hood where instead of a noble warrior in green pants prancing around with his merry men he is a greatly feared and murderous outlaw. I read this a lot faster than usual as it is one of those "can't put down" books. I'd highly recommend this one and can't wait for the second one he is writing at the moment.
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