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Purple Rain Man posted:I've been meaning to read this, and I haven't seen the movie either. Would you recommend the book first? Also, is The Road as good as everyone says? My mom (English teacher) has been trying to get me to read it for months. I generally prefer to read the book first, partly because I like to imagine the characters myself, and partly because movies tend to cut so much out. But that's really a personal preference. I haven't finished the book yet, so I'll hold off on advice about whether it's worth reading. But you should definitely see the movie. It's such a good story. I thought The Road was excellent. It's definitely a very straight-forward plot, but I thought that fit the theme and served the point of the story. I certainly did not find it boring. I had a hard time putting it down.
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Sep 11, 2010 14:48
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Purple Rain Man posted:I've been meaning to read this, and I haven't seen the movie either. Would you recommend the book first? Also, is The Road as good as everyone says? My mom (English teacher) has been trying to get me to read it for months. I read the book first and I don't regret it at all. I would recommend that first. The movie is about as faithful as you can get in the time allotted, but the book has a couple things I enjoyed over the movie. Both are great though!
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Sep 11, 2010 15:26
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They Though They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 A history of the German people under National Socialism. Sure to be a good read.
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Sep 11, 2010 20:42
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And destroying the glut of actual literature being read in this thread, I recently bought "How to rescue a dead princess" by Jeff Strand. I loved his Andrew Mayhem books, and this one... this one isn't so good. It's got funny parts to it, but I am mainly reading it because I went through so much god damned trouble to actually get it and be able to read it on my ereader. After this will be the Monster Hunter series, and if I can find a local copy, War of the Sons (the new supernatural tv series novel).
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Sep 11, 2010 23:16
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I just started Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian as the first book I downloaded for my Ipad (which is awesome btw). This book is ballsy as hell. It's about a young woman who works in a homeless shelter in VT and finds a box of photographs which are really well done and professional, apparently taken by a homeless guy who just died. She's trying to work out issues with her personal life due to a near rape a couple years before while trying to solve the mystery of this guy, who used to possibly be a great professional photographer and may or may not have been the son of a millionaire family from Long Island, which is where she herself grew up. The twist? They guy might be the second child of Tom and Daisy Buchanan. Oh that's right, that Tom and Daisy Buchanan. Dude straight up wrote a sequel to what is considered the greatest American novel.  As a Gatsby superfan I couldn't resist it in a guilty pleasure way. After the controversy over the past decade or so with the sequels to Gone With The Wind and Catcher in the Rye you can imagine how crazy this is. So far though, it's working. He's not doing a homage or pastiche of Fitzgerald in the style of the original work...it's a contemporary American fiction novel, and it's not set just a couple years later with the same characters (though there is one character so far that is in both in a way, and there are some flashbacks where he nails the original characters). This isn't a huge thematic novel about The American Dream, it's a bit more personal. The premise is pretty much that this is a world where the events of the original novel were true. They are barely remembered, local legend flavor/E True Hollywood Story/Black Dalia stuff, and people seem to know all the details like Tom's infidelity, Gatsby's bootlegging, who killed Myrtle Wilson, etc. So in Gatsby we see Gatsby and the Wilsons dead and it ends, but life did go on for the rest of the people...what kind of lives did they lead? What would history think of them? But all this is background it would seem for the main story of this woman and her search to find out who the homeless guy was and give him his due.
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Sep 12, 2010 04:02
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Just started The Crusades Through Arab Eyes by Amin Maalouf. It's already an interesting counterpoint to the Western narratives, focused as it is on Middle Eastern sources: for example, a battle that in Western accounts is presented as almost miraculous, with bedraggled and starving knights deliberately fasting before an ultimately victorious fight, is revealed as impressive, but due mainly to the prevailing Turkic tactics of the time, which involved wearing an adversary down through ranged attacks that were ineffective against European armour, and to disunity among rival Middle Eastern princes. Unsurprisingly, the accounts of the brutality of city conquests are appalling and difficult to read. It's been a quick read so far; looking forward to the rest. I've also dived into The Satanic Verses by Rushdie. The prose has so far been spectacular: vivid and imaginative. But I'm just a few pages in at this point. And I'll soon be starting the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation of War and Peace. It's been a while since I've read any Tolstoy, and years since I read this piece, but I'm inspired to tackle it by the quality of the translation, and as a first course to be followed by the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation of Pasternak's Zhivago due out in about a month, which I expect will be well worth reading and a significant improvement over the previous translation. I've picked up a copy of Freedom by Franzen. I don't have a good sense of what to expect, since I never read The Corrections, but I'm looking forward to it once I get through some of the others on my nightstand.
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Sep 12, 2010 21:32
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I started I Am America And So Can You yesterday. It's comical but I have a feeling it will lose that zing the further I get into it.
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Sep 12, 2010 23:04
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Just scored again: 1st (only edition) of James Cutbush's A System of Pyrotechny (Philadephia, 1825). Pix when it comes in the mail.
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Sep 13, 2010 00:50
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Folderol posted:I've also dived into The Satanic Verses by Rushdie. The prose has so far been spectacular: vivid and imaginative. But I'm just a few pages in at this point. This is an excellent book. It gets a little heady at times, but stick with it and you'll be glad you did.
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Sep 13, 2010 03:09
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7 y.o. bitch posted:I was really struck by the subtlety of James's writing in terms of psychology - I felt like we got more of the long paragraphs of everyone's inner-workings, especially Isabel's, as they grew up and became more mature emotionally. 7 y.o. bitch posted:I thought James's realism was also striking, and I thought of it in relation with Dickens, where Dickens forces the world at large into a fictional society of signs/form, while James takes an artificial form (idealistic American girl becomes rich) and makes it as lifelike as possible (almost). I agreed with/found interesting some other stuff in your post, but I'm dragging it forward from a page back already so I'll leave it. Pflirti86 posted:
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Sep 13, 2010 04:15
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I just finished The Double Bind. Jesus...the ending!
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Sep 13, 2010 04:43
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Astroman posted:I just finished 
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Sep 13, 2010 14:06
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A few days ago I started Journeys To The Heartland, book 1 of the Wolves of Time series by William Horwood. It's an oldschool animal fantasy in the vein of Duncton Wood or Watership Down. So far it's okay. I'm a sucker for animal fantasy. I also started reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince for the 4th time and am loving it. It's going by a lot faster than Order of the Phoenix did, but i suspect that's because a) it's a much quicker novel with less text per page, and b) I'm meant to be reading The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker for my Animal Behaviour course, and thus find myself procrastinating a lot by reading Harry Potter. And on the subject of procrastination, I just picked up Jurassic Park and read the first 20 pages when I should now be sleeping. I love this book, even though I really resent Crichton's anti-science attitude throughout. The last laugh is on him though. He wrote this book in order to warn against and admonish scientific endeavour for endeavour's sake, yet it (and the movie) only inspired a whole generation of biologists/geneticists to aspire to clone extinct animals  (woo thylacines by 2050!  )
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Sep 13, 2010 19:09
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LooseChanj posted:Ha yeah, It was the book I had started a few posts up, but I should really get my rear end over to Finished Books thread because I really want to discuss this one!
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Sep 14, 2010 00:26
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I just started Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep. It's pretty good for a 71 year old detective novel. Although I have to say I was kind of surprised to see the term "fag" used for gay as I didn't think it was that old.
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Sep 14, 2010 00:49
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37ArmsToBind posted:I started I Am America And So Can You yesterday. It's comical but I have a feeling it will lose that zing the further I get into it. I felt that as I read farther and farther into that book, it got better and better. Things became more and more ridiculous, and I was consistently laughing out loud to myself the whole book through. I am (and was) a huge fan of Stephen Colbert, though, so keep that in mind.
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Sep 14, 2010 07:17
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I just bought The Windup Girl, because it won a Hugo, and because it has a nice cover.
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Sep 14, 2010 07:39
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Just ordered Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, both by the greatest and loveliest Brontė of 'em all. It'll feel good to finally own hardcovers instead of relending the same old library copies with their excessive underlining and teenage exclamation and question marks (the ones with little noughts for periods).
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Sep 14, 2010 11:18
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All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy, so far interesting. His theme of the landscape being almost more pronounced than the actual characters continues. They feel muted a bit. Can't explain it right. Also started Neuromancer by William Gibson. Began this at lunch today, so far is fantastic. Reminds me a lot of Blade Runner and Johnny Mnemonic. Bought as well Mote in Gods Eye, but didn't start.
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Sep 16, 2010 00:23
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Dangerous Liaisons by Choderlos de Laclos. Grabbed it for my kindle and its pretty awesome; debating between sleeping or to keep reading.
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Sep 16, 2010 07:28
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Burning through the Harry Bosh series by Michael Connelly - I went out of order, so going back to fill in holes, think I've got about 4 left. The Poet is next.
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Sep 16, 2010 14:20
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I Shall Wear Midnight by Pratchett after abandoning the dull and terminally smug House of Leaves. I love his YA stuff probably a bit more than I do most of his usual disc stuff, nowadays. And my word knowing what I know about his condition made reading Tiffany and the Baron's conversation a real struggle.
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Sep 16, 2010 21:36
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I just started Libra by DeLillo, which a friend finished and passed on to me. I read/loved White Noise over the summer, so I'm excited to read this one.
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Sep 17, 2010 19:00
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I just started Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago the other day. It's been on my bookshelf for a little while and with election season kicking into gear, I kept getting an urge to finally read it. That said, I'm already a chapter in and it's an interesting read. I'm glad I got around to it. Also, I picked up Dickens' Pickwick Papers today. I've heard good things and it seems like as good a place to start with his work as any.
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Sep 19, 2010 23:22
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I picked up Paul is Undead from the library a couple of days ago but am not too far into it yet. It's supposed to be a kind of satirical look at the whole Beatles phenomenon except through the lens of horror. My problem with it so far is that while the author calls the various undead "zombies" they are so far divorced from the traditional definition that it becomes meaningless to call them that. The "zombies" in the book have their original intelligence, age (up to around 50 then they stop,) can eat normal food, have sex and are almost indestructible other than a small spot on their neck and even then you need a diamond bullet to kill one. Also its supposed to be an oral history except early on the author interviews John Lennon and he really, really doesn't sound like anything Lennon said at all. He writes Lennon in a kind of broad "British" accent with plenty of "fooken" and "sod all"s mixed in.
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Sep 20, 2010 11:17
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I just began/bought The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast by Douglas G. Brinkley, after someone mentioned it in the Hurricane Hoedown thread. I'm only a few hundred locations in, but it's already painting New Orleans as basically the perfect combination of poor planning and incompetent public officials. Brinkley doesn't make a direct comparison, but Nagin on the weekend before the storm hit sounds a lot like Bush on 9/11, a do-nothing clown.
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Sep 20, 2010 20:00
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I have just begun Babycakes, the fourth Tales of the City book by Armistead Maupin (the series follows gay- and counter-culture in San Francisco throughout the 70s and 80s, from the perspective of various characters of different backgrounds all connected through a kickass mysterious landlady, and is totally loving awesome) I'm also reading Jurassic Park by Crichton and when I finish I will move onto The Lost World. And now I'm going to hop on Bookdepository and buy Stephen Fry's new autobiography The Fry Chronicles, which picks up from where Moab Is My Washpot left off and covers his college years and early TV work. I love Stephen Fry
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Sep 21, 2010 07:58
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I'm about 80 pages into Little Dorrit by Dickens. In the 'protagonists you hate' thread somebody mentioned it in response to my hatred post about North and South's heroin Miss 'do-gooder' Hale. I decided to face up to my prejudice against pure, sweet good girls in 19th century fiction and give it a go.
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Sep 21, 2010 16:32
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I've been working my way through the Harry Potter books, thanks to the TBB thread - on "Prisoner of Azkaban" now. Is it me or is there a huge step up in her writing in that book? I'm also reading The Good German by Joseph Kanon, which follows a murder mystery in post-WWII Berlin. It's interesting reading this after I read Gravity's Rainbow - a lot of the same names are coming up, a lot of the same ideas and places. This book tends to be a little more prosaic, though, considering it's a murder mystery and not a zany romp. Finally, I'm rereading Donna Tartt's The Secret History. That goon favorite The Magicians owes a lot to this book, as much as it does to Harry Potter and Narnia. I'd forgotten how much I really liked this book the first time through - even though you know the murderers from the very first page it's still riveting.
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Sep 21, 2010 17:26
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I'm reading Jane Eyre. You can't trash me on the cost, it was free. I really like it though 
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Sep 21, 2010 19:17
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muscles like this? posted:I just started Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep. It's pretty good for a 71 year old detective novel. Although I have to say I was kind of surprised to see the term "fag" used for gay as I didn't think it was that old. I've read some of Chandler's short stories but I can't recall having read The Big Sleep. I did recently rewatch the film for a Boggie fix and forgot how convoluted the plot was. wikipedia posted:The Big Sleep is known for its convoluted plot. During filming, allegedly neither the director nor the screenwriters knew whether chauffeur Owen Taylor was murdered or had killed himself. They sent a cable to Chandler, who told a friend in a later letter: "They sent me a wire ... asking me, and dammit I didn't know either". Have you found this to be the case with the book?
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Sep 22, 2010 00:35
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Just started Ian M. Bank's Use of Weapons because of the thread here in BB. Only a few chapters in and I'm worried I'm going to get lost.
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Sep 22, 2010 00:57
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Chamberk posted:I've been working my way through the Harry Potter books, thanks to the TBB thread - on "Prisoner of Azkaban" now. Is it me or is there a huge step up in her writing in that book?
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Sep 22, 2010 02:29
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King Plum the Nth posted:I've read some of Chandler's short stories but I can't recall having read The Big Sleep. I did recently rewatch the film for a Boggie fix and forgot how convoluted the plot was. Yeah, it's convoluted as poo poo. Marlowe solves the case he was originally paid for like half way through the book and then just wanders around solving a mystery that nobody asked him to, wasn't getting paid to do and constantly told people he wasn't trying to. The chauffeur thing is a great example. You never find out exactly what the circumstances were of his death and it never really effects anything. To be fair, it was Chandler's first book.
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Sep 22, 2010 02:58
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Chamberk posted:Finally, I'm rereading Donna Tartt's The Secret History. That goon favorite The Magicians owes a lot to this book, as much as it does to Harry Potter and Narnia. I'd forgotten how much I really liked this book the first time through - even though you know the murderers from the very first page it's still riveting. It is amazing that Tartt, Bret Easton Ellis, and Jonathan Lethem all ran in the same circles at Bennington College during the 80's. When I first read The Secret History I was reminded some of Ellis (not in the style but in some of the subject matter). Once I found out they was friends during college it all made sense. The Secret History is one of my favorite reads of the last 10 years (I know it came out in the 90's but I didn't read it until a couple of years ago). Funny I am rereading Ellis' Rules of Attraction right now. I read it many years (15?) ago. I remember loving it, but now I wonder if I loved it just because I was young and wanted to live a life of decadence. Time to find out.
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Sep 22, 2010 14:00
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Innocent Mage by Karen Miller, just got done reading her other trilogy. I am also starting Shadowmarch by Tad Williams, hopefully its good.
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Sep 24, 2010 04:37
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I just picked up I am a Cat by Soseki Natsume. Looks interesting, ought to be a fun read.
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Sep 24, 2010 04:49
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Flaggy posted:Innocent Mage by Karen Miller, just got done reading her other trilogy. I am also starting Shadowmarch by Tad Williams, hopefully its good. I started one of her books, Empress I think it was called, and found the actions of her protagonist to be so outlandish and unbelievable that I sadly had to shelve it. I don't know why but the fantasy genre tests my patience more than any other. I have a slight prejudice in that I imagine a lot of authors in that genre have great imaginations and zero life experience, which is reflected in their work. 'Cool dragons, awful dialogue' kind of thing.
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Sep 24, 2010 16:23
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Just started the audiobook of Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America. It's narrated by Scott Brick so I will love it even if the book is terrible, which I have heard it is definitely not.
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Sep 24, 2010 17:01
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Dr Scoofles posted:I started one of her books, Empress I think it was called, and found the actions of her protagonist to be so outlandish and unbelievable that I sadly had to shelve it. I don't know why but the fantasy genre tests my patience more than any other. I have a slight prejudice in that I imagine a lot of authors in that genre have great imaginations and zero life experience, which is reflected in their work. 'Cool dragons, awful dialogue' kind of thing. It gets better, and there is not one dragon in the whole book. I say give it another shot, it gets alot better that it fleshes out a whole religion/world and the ending if you make through the trilogy is insane.
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Sep 25, 2010 02:10
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