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Hedrigall posted:I agree, this book is brilliant, it's like Ghostbusters but with real actual horror. i second- it's totally retarded (to quote the narrator), but funny and actually kind of scary. if you liked it, i'd suggest Monster by a. lee martinez.
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Nov 14, 2010 01:37
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CaptainScraps posted:I found that one a little weak actually. Just finished The Winter of Our Discontent and my reaction was much the same. I pretty much raced through the second half just to get it over with. My next Steinbeck novel will be East of Eden but it might be a little while before I get to it. Up next: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
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Nov 14, 2010 01:43
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B B posted:Just finished The Winter of Our Discontent and my reaction was much the same. I pretty much raced through the second half just to get it over with. My next Steinbeck novel will be East of Eden but it might be a little while before I get to it. Huh. I'm reading The Winter of Our Discontent too for a class, and I'm really not digging it. Probably because the main character is such an unlikeable rear end in a top hat. Finished reading At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien. A great, fun adventure involving stories-within-stories-within-stories(-within-stories?) all tied together by the author's sneering contempt for "high" culture. It's not quite as good (or full-bore insane as his other novel, The Third Policeman), but it's a ton of fun.
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Nov 14, 2010 01:51
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Just completed Under the Dome by Stephen King. I did enjoy it, though the ending felt a little rushed. The sheer volume of characters you come to know and enjoy during the book makes it totally engrossing. Up next, moving to nonfiction with Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely.
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Nov 14, 2010 02:13
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Franco Potente posted:Huh. I'm reading The Winter of Our Discontent too for a class, and I'm really not digging it. Probably because the main character is such an unlikeable rear end in a top hat. Eh, I'm pretty sure he's supposed to be an unlikeable rear end in a top hat. There were just major pacing issues.
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Nov 14, 2010 03:12
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Just finished up Tome of the Undergates by Sam Sykes. It's a fantasy novel, but a damned good one. There is a good amount of humor, great conflict and chemistry between the characters, and all in all it's a pretty great read. It was refreshing to read about a group of adventurers that really didn't get along and sometimes actively try to kill each other. The story is a little confusing, but once I remembered it was book 1 of a series it made sense to not have everything explained in detail. I am going to keep an eye on this author. So far this had been a great read, even if the descriptions of the actual people are sometimes hard to follow. I put that up to it being this guys first book. Imagine Joe Abercrombie but less bleak and more humor and throw in a bit of David Gemmell for the fight scenes. It's about 9 bucks on the kindle, with the second book in the series coming out in march of next year.
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Nov 14, 2010 07:20
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Just finished my fourth time through The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which might be my favorite book of all time. (East of Eden is in contention for that title as well - hope you like it, B B.) Also finished The Moor's Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie recently; for a while I thought it was a poor imitation of Midnight's Children, but the end definitely helped me appreciate the book a lot more. Still not sure why the main character has progeria, though.
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Nov 14, 2010 19:40
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Binged through Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, Red Harvest and The Glass Key over the last few days. Still need to read The Thin Man and The Dain Curse and then possibly pick up some of Hammett's short stories. I read a shitload of Raymond Chandler over the course of a few months last year and dug his stuff, but just finally got around to checking out Hammett recently. Really liked what I read of Hammett so far - Hammett definitely had a great hand for fast-paced plotting and snappy dialogue. I loved Chandler's prose style and characters, but I'll be damned if I ever completely followed any of his plots. They're both great but definitely have very distinctive styles - can't say I prefer one over the other.
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Nov 14, 2010 20:54
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french lies fucked around with this message at 17:59 on Dec 26, 2013 |
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Nov 15, 2010 17:08
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Finished Celine Curiol's Voice Over, which was good, even if it did tend to drift off toward the end. It's a tale of obsession centering around a detached, lonely train announcer at the Gare du Nord and the male friend/crush she builds her fantasy life around. Sounds a bit grim, but the level of neurosis is good for a laugh (like irritably telling a dinner party full of condescending guests that she's a prostitute). The blurb makes it sound like some sort of tedious existentialist chore but it's more in line with the newer dryly-comic novelists like Toussaint, so if you don't mind that she just kind of wafts around for the entire novel, it's worth a look. Also Ilya Ehrenburg's Life of the Automobile, being a later work by one of the Russian Futurists (at least in the sense that Futurism was toast by 1928, when it was written). Ehrenburg's a bit unusual in that for all his love of technology and machines, none of it overrides his concern for the people who end up paying because of it. He's kind of like Futurist Zola, I guess. Anyway, Life of the Automobile is a series of excellent short stories based on real figures and events in the early history of the car, largely focusing on André Citroën and his workers, but stretching to international politicking over supplies of oil and rubber as well. The only real criticism I can level is that it's strangely repetitive on certain points, but otherwise it was a bit of a find and a must-read for anyone with an interest in the subject. Last but certainly most confusing was Stendahl's Life of Henry Brulard, which is one of those memoirs which seems to be written by an entirely different author than the novels. It's an extremely rough draft that recounts the first twenty-odd years of his life, left unfinished when he dropped dead in the street at 50-something. Rough means rough; dozens of scribbled drawings and diagrams included in the book, seemingly irrelevant notes, reminders to himself ('Lunch Monday to be paid to Robert') and you'll get used to reading 'it reminded me very much of M. [blank]' (where he couldn't think of the person's name). In its own way it's really effective in getting his real personality onto paper, but that doesn't stop it being one of the more baffling books I've come across, especially in light of what you'd expect it to be. The saving grace is the little idiosyncratic gems that'll poke through the chaos, like the recounting of a guillotining he witnessed.
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Nov 15, 2010 17:12
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I just finished Burning Chrome for a cyberpunk class I'm taking. What a sad story. I like it much more now that I'm older than I did in highschool, when all I cared about was explicit action and I had trouble penetrating Gibson's flowery prose.
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Nov 15, 2010 23:56
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Finished The Winter of Our Discontent today, and I really did not enjoy it. It was an interesting idea, but the aforementioned parts of the pacing were right, and I thought his writing had gotten sloppy (the soliloquies to the grocery foods was intesnely lame). There was a sprinkling of good moments here and there, but ultimately it was the weakest effort of Steinbeck I've read.
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Nov 16, 2010 05:12
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Just finished reading Just My Type by Simon Garfield. It's a mix of a condensed history of typefaces and an examination of the development of today's most widely used fonts. It's written in sedate style and manages the balancing act of entertainment vs education well, especially through use of interviews with the different (unsung) personalities of the typographic world. If I had a criticism of it, it would be that it's almost too flippant in its treatment of the subject and doesn't perhaps convey enough information for one to walk away feeling totally satisfied. However as an introduction to the subject I found it highly enjoyable and now would like to find out more about a subject I had no previous interest in.
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Nov 17, 2010 17:42
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Finnished Imperial Bedrooms about two weeks ago. It's the sequel to Less than Zero. I was sure to pick it up as soon as it came out to get a first edition. It's a fairly typical Bret Easton Ellis book, infact it's too typical in that I'm not sure if it offers anything new to the reader. It's still a fun day read though if you fancy his stuff.
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Nov 17, 2010 21:44
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The Running Man I don't think Bachman put nearly enough instances of the word "friend of the family" into this book. Too bad he died of cancer, or a revised edition could further explore how often I roll my eyes at that word being used over and over. Good book, though. Felt a lot more for this Ben Richards than for the one that wanted to break Killian's goddamn spine with his fist.
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Nov 18, 2010 01:22
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Blade_of_tyshalle posted:The Running Man I'm pretty sure he's still alive! Cancer of the pseudonym isn't fatal.
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Nov 18, 2010 01:25
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urbancontra posted:I'm pretty sure he's still alive! Cancer of the pseudonym isn't fatal. i thought it took a long walk off a short pier...
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Nov 18, 2010 02:36
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Player One by Douglas Coupland If you like philosophy with tons of questions and answers about everything, then you will love this book (this I liked). He is pretty good in this area. The novel is suppose to be a "five-hour story set in an airport cocktail lounge during a global disaster", but ignore that. The story is weak and the characters are somewhat interesting, but in all honesty not important. The author wanted to spooge about his thoughts on life and everything, so instead of writing a pure philosophy book he attached a story to it. Hell, somehow every character turns into a master philosopher at some point in the book. At the end of the book, the author has a 'definition' list of creative (aka lovely) words he attached to obscure lines of thoughts and observations. Cute, but over the top in the ME ME ME LOOKAT ME ME I R SMRAT department. Throw book across room potential? HIGH
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Nov 18, 2010 02:47
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urbancontra posted:I'm pretty sure he's still alive! Cancer of the pseudonym isn't fatal. Richard Bachman is dead. DEAD. But his friend Stevie King's still out there, not writing good ends to novels. 
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Nov 18, 2010 03:33
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Blade_of_tyshalle posted:Richard Bachman is dead. King might find a revised copy of any Bachman book in the attic.
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Nov 18, 2010 04:57
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All Clear by Connie Willis (of course I had to reread Blackout). I liked it, but I sure hope she doesn't do one book in two volumes (released at six-month interval) again, and I hope nobody else thinks it's a good idea. Also, I didn't think quite everything got resolved, namely, is Colin one of Eileen's ancestors?
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Nov 18, 2010 08:22
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Coupland doing a philosophy book sounds utterly drastic.
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Nov 18, 2010 15:06
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I just finished Everything Matters! by Ron Currie Jr. and loved it a whole, whole lot. Basically this kid is born knowing the exact time that the world will end, and it the mission handed to him by the voice(s?) speaking to him is to figure out if anything he does actually matters. It was a fairly easy book to get through and a lot of times when I put it down (to go to sleep or work) it was really hard to not pick it back up and read all night. Definitely recommend this for anyone that enjoys.
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Nov 18, 2010 16:53
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I finished One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest a couple days ago. I thought it was a bit of a slog for the first 150 pages, but drat, the last section of the book is awesome. I wish the flashback stuff about the protagonist would've been revealed a bit earlier, but I love the way the book came together. Really funny and depressing story. Next up: Rushing through Asimov's I, Robot, James Gunn's The Listeners, and Terry Bisson's Fire on the Mountain so I can catch up on the reading for my sci-fi class.
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Nov 19, 2010 02:40
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Skavoovee posted:I just finished Everything Matters! by Ron Currie Jr. and loved it a whole, whole lot. ...enjoys vonnegut. great in that same sad/funny way and even bears a passing resemblance to Timequake.
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Nov 19, 2010 02:40
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Just finished Gretzky to Lemieux today. It's a behind-the-scenes look at the 1987 Canada Cup. There's a lot of back-room gossip in the book - players hanging out at strip clubs, Alan Eagleson flipping out at officials, etc. - but the core of the book is a detailed look at the three-game final between Canada and the Soviets. I'm a bit of a hockey fan, so I got a lot out of the game recaps - especially when players looked back after 20 years and were able to put the games in context of their entire careers - but I can see somebody who isn't a fan not getting what the big deal about the tournament is. It was a light read, a nice change from the Greek history I've digging into lately.
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Nov 19, 2010 04:36
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Finally finished Gravity's Rainbow. It's the first "difficult" book I've ever read and it took me about 2 1/2 months, but it was awesome. I've probably missed out of 70% of the meanings and references and symbolism so I'm going to read again soon with a guide book.
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Nov 20, 2010 11:27
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Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone - A journalist in Vietnam during the final days or the war arranges for a shipment of heroin to be transported to his wife in San Francisco to be sold. Predictably, everything goes to poo poo - the journalist returns home to find his wife missing and a crooked federal agent looking for the missing heroin. It's a well-written portrait of the seedy underbelly of 1970s America, though the plot is less compelling than might be expected. Ghost Town by Robert Coover - This was mentioned quite a while back in this thread and I finally got a hold of a copy as it sounded interesting. A nameless traveler in the Old West happens upon a town in the middle of the desert and is flung from one escapade to another with the town's inhabitants, in a surreal take on the archetypes of the Old West. Hidden River by Adrian McKinty - The plot isn't incredibly ground-breaking (an Irish ex-cop turned heroin addict is asked to find the real killer responsible for a girl's murderer) but McKinty has a solid literary style that raises the book above the usual run of crime novels. Will definitely be reading more of his stuff in the future.
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Nov 20, 2010 23:35
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I just finished I Capture The Castle by Dodie Smith. I really loved this book I related in so many ways to the main character I used to keep similar little journals when I was younger.
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Nov 22, 2010 20:07
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The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: First 3 chapters or so I was utterly bored out of my tiny little mind. Almost put it down so many times... But a lady I work with has read it and encouraged me that it would get better. Holy crud did it ever. Couldn't put the thing down for the past 2 days. And I am not a mystery fan at all. Must go buy the second one...
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Nov 23, 2010 06:36
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One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. What an incredible, exhausting book. It's like a comprehensive history of human society - war, politics, religion, scientific and economic progress, collapse - and yet still manages to feel very intimate. One thing in particular I love about Marquez's characterizations is his sense for the tragic - I'm having trouble thinking of a Buendia whose story isn't heartrending in some way. Colonel Aureliano Buendia's story alone could have carried a book. And then there's Macondo. Great invention. Marquez uses just the right amount of magical realism to keep the town dreamlike, but still grounded enough to carry the weight of its characters. Yup, pretty much nothing bad to say here. One Hundred Years feels like one of those rare books that manages to say absolutely everything the author wants it to. Currently about a quarter of the way through Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore. I'm having fun with the two main characters and the story, but the prose feels extraordinarily bland and utilitarian, particularly after Marquez, and alot of the secondary characters feel like little more than soapboxes for Murakami. Perhaps some of the former complaint is inevitable with Japanese translations - I can't imagine its easy to retain style in the transfer to English.
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Nov 23, 2010 09:08
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Kafka on the Shore is one of the worst loving books I have ever read. Insufferably pretentious, characters constantly spouting hollow profundities, and none of it ever goes anywhere of worth. Towards the end of the book whenever reading dialogue between Kafka and the librarian I was actually saying "shut the gently caress up," aloud. To a book.
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Nov 23, 2010 17:11
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freebooter posted:Kafka on the Shore is one of the worst loving books I have ever read. Insufferably pretentious, characters constantly spouting hollow profundities, and none of it ever goes anywhere of worth. Towards the end of the book whenever reading dialogue between Kafka and the librarian I was actually saying "shut the gently caress up," aloud. To a book. Haven't read it yet, but maybe I'll put it off for now. I really liked The Wind-up Bird Chronicle and I'm currently enjoying Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World; is it anything like these books?
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Nov 24, 2010 03:40
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Yeah, I'm having a hard time getting through it at this point. In retrospect "bland" is a little generous for the prose - a lot of the time it feels sub-college level. What's really grating to me now is Murakami's habit of creating imagery and then explaining exactly what it means through Kafka, as if he either has no confidence in the reader or (more likely) he's desperate that every clever little analogy and symbol gets recognized. Well, Thanksgiving weekend coming up, maybe I an grit my teeth and get it done.
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Nov 24, 2010 17:28
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I just finished My Year Of Flops by Nathan Rabin. I really enjoyed it. I think Rabin is blossoming into a really good humorist. Plus there are some movies in the book I would really like to revisit.
I don't worship the Devil. I DO agree with a lot of the things he tells me. - Dave Attell
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Nov 24, 2010 22:29
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Pfirti86 posted:Haven't read it yet, but maybe I'll put it off for now. I really liked The Wind-up Bird Chronicle and I'm currently enjoying Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World; is it anything like these books? I've read Kafka and Wind-Up Bird and I VASTLY preferred the latter. I don't know which was written first, but Kafka seemed like a much less cohesive experiment in writing the sort of book Wind-Up Bird was. Like, a lot of weird stuff happens, but it's not really connected and it doesn't go anywhere.
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Nov 25, 2010 05:55
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Robbie Savage's autobiography Savage! Shite, obviously. A breezy read though his self-aggrandizing and egoism made it hard to stomach at times. Having said that, it's exactly what I expected. I raced through it to return it to the library so I could start on new books purchased this week; Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, Hunter S. Thompson's Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas (already read, bought for posterity) and Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 and John Peel's semi-autobiography. All of which I have high hopes for.
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Nov 25, 2010 14:08
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ICA posted:Robbie Savage's autobiography Savage! Don't read a bunch of HST at once or you start to notice how much he repeats himself.
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Nov 25, 2010 15:50
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I'm very aware of his style yeah. Very much a fan of it.
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Nov 25, 2010 17:58
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New here. Just finished Life by Keith Richards. Amazing book. It felt like you were sitting in a bar with him, grabbing a couple of beers while he told you about his life. I really enjoyed it.
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Nov 25, 2010 19:16
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