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Doctor Zero posted:Really? I didn't think the animals were supposed to be a "great thing" so much as just the way things were now. Well, maybe not the next great thing, like re-invented sliced bread. but there was definitely some prestige to having one, especially a real one or a rare expensive one. It was a social status/symbol. Granted, most of the population didn't know about the androids so they (Earth humans) couldn't really do much about it or care one way or another. I just thought it was interesting. All-in-all I really enjoyed the book and will be reading some more PKD soon.
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Jan 21, 2011 17:18
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I finished Charles Dickens' Pickwick Papers today. It's an enjoyable book, one that's hilarious in parts, but it's kind of disjointed (it's pretty easy to tell it was written in installments, probably without a clear plan for an overarching plot). It's long, too, if that's something you care about. However, it doesn't feel that long when you read it: the book just keeps rolling, right through London to a country farm to debtors prison and probably every boardinghouse in between. It's packed with memorable characters and scenes - Sam Weller is the best literary sidekick since Sancho Panza, I'd bet - and like I said, it's really funny.
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Jan 23, 2011 01:26
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I just finished reading "iWoz," Steve Wozniak's autobiography. Best autobiography I've read since Asimov's. I already knew he was pretty much the nicest living American, but seriously, the guy is more forgiving than Jesus, and more generous than Santa Claus. The description of how he learned about electronics the order in which electronics and computing concepts were introduced to him, and how he applied that when he worked as a teacher (he doesn't go into a lot of detail on the latter part) ought to be required reading for any parent or educator, in any subject. Probably the best part, something you'd expect from him, really, is how Wozniak spends basically the entire book acknowledging the people and the fortunate circumstances beyond his control without which his success would have been severely curtailed or not possible at all. He doesn't minimize his own agency, but he doesn't wallow in his own greatness, either.
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Jan 23, 2011 14:09
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Just finished 'Generation A' by Douglas Coupland. I'm a pretty big Coupland fan, and I liked the weird short stories he put into the novel. Liked the book overall, found it interested that he compared the solitude found from his time-drug to the solitude found in books. Its kinda like he was saying, "stop reading my book and go outside!" I also liked the crazy reveal that Serge was going to eat their brains. That makes him a pretty spectacular villain for future readthroughs.
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Jan 23, 2011 19:08
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Just finished Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon. Well, what can I say? I loved it. It started out a little too close to Big Lebowski for comfort but quickly spiraled/torpedoed/exploded into something else entirely. Something far far weirder. I always find it hard to summarize what I like about Pynchon novels because there's just so much to them, everything and the kitchen sink, even here, which by all accounts is his most accessible. One thing I liked here was that the kooky pop-culture, "post-modern" elements were touched upon and returned to without overstaying their welcome, like, say, the ninjas in Vineland. Pynchon's use of zombies, werewolves, vampires, ghost-ships and various other supernatural craziness was a blast and pretty ingenious. And speaking of fun, this is definitely the funniest thing I've read by Pynchon and the funniest thing I've read in general in a while. I probably laughed out loud at least once a chapter, probably more. Oh yeah and it's got a lot of heart, in places where you don't necessarily expect to find it. Maybe it's just me being a jaded reader of too much hipster ironic wank, but Pynchon getting sentimental toward the end was a nice surprise. I kept expecting a wink or a rug being pulled out from under me but no, the ending left me feeling pretty sappy. Anyway...it's probably time to finally read Gravity's Rainbow. I guess I can't really call myself a fan without having read the book the man is more or less known for
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Jan 23, 2011 23:58
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Just finished Freedom by Jonathan Franzen. On the whole, I liked it. I know there was some discussion about it months ago, when it was still on the best-seller list (wait, it's back). A couple of things that could easily have made me not like it: (1) I read pretty fast. Otherwise I would certainly have been frustrated with characters who disappear for large blocs of the book, and then cheerfully reappear without introduction. If I didn't read fast I would have forgotten who they were. Jessica? Wait, is that the roommate's sister? No, that would be Jenna--Jessica is a little more central. Etc. (2) If I didn't read fast, and had spent a week or so on this book, I would have been really mad when I got to the ending, which was like happy ending or bust, never mind if it makes sense. The funny thing is that this book is discussed as if, since it's by Jonathan Franzen, it has to be High Art Literary Tradition. It just seems to me like any popular novel, not particularly HALT, except the characters are much more ordinary.
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Jan 24, 2011 06:31
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Christopher Tyerman's Fighting for Christendom: Holy War and the Crusades. I have on my bookshelf Tyerman's epic God's War, his full length treatment of the crusades. At more than a thousand pages, I wasn't sure I wanted to tackle it yet, so I settled for his 200-page Fighting for Christendom to see. This book barely touches on the acts of the crusades themselves -- I think maybe 30 pages were devoted to them. The bulk of the text is spent describing the cultural matrix in which they arose. He has two main points: the crusades resulted from the increasing theological justification of "holy war", and the acceptance of the link between religion and violence; and the increasing piety of the population of Europe around the turn of the Millennium. The author is also at pains to point out the discontinuity between the crusades and modern "holy wars" -- he shows that these share only language, the justifications and purposes are completely different.
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Jan 24, 2011 14:24
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Invitation to a Beheading by Vladimir Nabokov. A man is imprisoned in a weird fortress and sentenced to death for a crime that doesn't exist. Nabokov was completely channeling Kafka in this one, even though he claims to have never read him before writing this book. I didn't really like it, I don't like Kafka either and it really felt like another Kafka book without any notable Nabokovian touches except maybe for some slight early signs of Lolita. Nabokov claims in the foreword that only "evil people" would notice that, welp. Following previous unpleasant surprises with spoilers in the foreword I skipped it, thankfully the whole ending was described on the back of the book. 
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Jan 24, 2011 20:32
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The Confidence Man by Herman Melville. I loved it! It's like wandering around an 1850's Mississippi steamboat yourself, and eavesdropping on all the sly grifting going on around you. Melville's prose is incredibly weird - even for him, and I think even weirder than Moby Dick. A very strange read; like traveling in real life, most characters encountered don't even have proper names. No real plot to speak of...Which works incredibly well. Full of humour, weird conversations, and ol' timey America.
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Jan 25, 2011 05:57
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IM_DA_DECIDER posted:Following previous unpleasant surprises with spoilers in the foreword I skipped it, thankfully the whole ending was described on the back of the book. God, why the gently caress do they do this.
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Jan 25, 2011 08:22
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IM_DA_DECIDER posted:Nabokov claims in the foreword that only "evil people" would notice that, welp. Nabokov seems to have a lot of distain for people who do not read his books exactly how he wants them to. In my copy of Lolita he includes a short essay on all the idiots he has met who have read his book wrong and drawn incorrect interpretations from the text. I guess he doesn't subscribe to the dead author theory. Edit - Spoilers in the book! In my copy of Brave New World, the introduction tells you very neatly exatly what happens in the book. Why do they do this?? Dr Scoofles fucked around with this message at 10:28 on Jan 25, 2011 |
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Jan 25, 2011 10:25
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Freakonomics, by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner: Interesting, if a bit thin. I see from the footnotes that much of the content is culled from journal articles he's written. I think I might prefer the articles themselves, just to see more of the data and methodology. But I guess this was meant as a more accessible approach to his work, and it did offer some interesting insights. How the States Got Their Shapes, by Mark Stein: Really interesting topic, compiled in the most annoying way. The states are listed alphabetically, when it would have been a much more engaging read had they been handled chronologically. Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson: Excellent cyberpunk/sci-fi. Enough detail to keep the sci-fi aspect from feeling bolted on, but not so much as to bog down the plot. My only complaint: the ending felt a tad rushed, if only because I was reading Miranda to be a more central character than she turned out to be, at least in direct plot terms.
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Jan 25, 2011 15:17
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It's just my general rule to avoid introductions in books now - ever since that terrible War and Peace introduction that both spoiled the entire book for me and compared the prose to "light shining out of Tolstoy's tortured soul in a radiant beam". Ugh.
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Jan 25, 2011 17:07
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Chamberk posted:It's just my general rule to avoid introductions in books now - ever since that terrible War and Peace introduction that both spoiled the entire book for me and compared the prose to "light shining out of Tolstoy's tortured soul in a radiant beam". Ugh. I stopped reading all kinds of foreword and introductions but how the hell am I supposed to avoid spoilers on the back of the book? The back of Invitation to a beheading seriously read(HUGE SPOILER OF EVERYTHING) his prisonmate is actually the executioner and in the end the protagonist wishes himself away
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Jan 25, 2011 18:34
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Chamberk posted:It's just my general rule to avoid introductions in books now - ever since that terrible War and Peace introduction that both spoiled the entire book for me and compared the prose to "light shining out of Tolstoy's tortured soul in a radiant beam". Ugh. Yeah, Royall Tyler's The Tale of Genji is a masterful edition with copious amounts of footnotes and appendices, but goddamn that loving introduction that basically gives away the story (Oh yeah, Prince Genji totally fuckin' dies by chapter 50). Same goes for Sōseki's I am a Cat; the forward almost immediately tells the reader that the cat dies at the end. Granted that the cat is almost more-or-less a narrator rather than a main character, but gently caress, why give away the book like that?. I pretty much avoid forwards now too, at least until I finish reading the goddamn book. It's too bad too, as a lot of forwards are honestly good essays that go deeply into explaining the motivations of the author. I think sometimes specialists assume we already know the basic story (a story they know expertly and deal with on a scholarly basis all the time), and forget that maybe we want to read their new translation not because its a new translation or because it's got new footnotes, but because we don't know the goddamn story yet and want to read it like any other goddamn novel. Maybe translators think the plot of their special work is as well known as the ending of Romeo and Juliet.
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Jan 25, 2011 19:31
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Chamberk posted:It's just my general rule to avoid introductions in books now - ever since that terrible War and Peace introduction that both spoiled the entire book for me and compared the prose to "light shining out of Tolstoy's tortured soul in a radiant beam". Ugh. I stopped reading introductions after Edward Said's introduction to Kim spoiled the fact that the lama dies and that this is a major point in the novel. Thanks for that, you rear end in a top hat.
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Jan 25, 2011 22:48
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Just finished Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes. Fictional, but drawn off of the author's experiences in Vietnam. I really enjoyed it and would suggest it to anyone interested in bleaker war stories.
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Jan 26, 2011 01:42
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Today I finished Hull Zero Three by Greg Bear. Despite a couple of rough spots I really enjoyed it, probably because I'm a complete sucker for stories with amnesiac protagonists who wake up on mysterious spaceships. The whole "what the hell happened here?!" premise makes for great page turners in my experience. It also has the most awesome synopsis I've read for a long time, which really made me want to pick up the book.
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Jan 26, 2011 13:51
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IM_DA_DECIDER posted:I stopped reading all kinds of foreword and introductions but how the hell am I supposed to avoid spoilers on the back of the book? Yup, I have that edition too. Infuriating.
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Jan 26, 2011 21:22
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Chamberk posted:Yup, I have that edition too. Infuriating. Vintage International? Got a bitchin cover though.
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Jan 26, 2011 22:35
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Pfirti86 posted:Same goes for Sōseki's I am a Cat; the forward almost immediately tells the reader that the cat dies at the end. Granted that the cat is almost more-or-less a narrator rather than a main character, but gently caress, why give away the book like that?. Because the cat's death has absolutely no bearing on the story itself, its themes, or the point of why Soseki wrote the story. Soseki killed him off because he couldn't think of another way to end it. I guess it kind of sucks having a plot point ruined for you, but most of the novels listed aren't good because they have some surprise twist or ending.
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Jan 27, 2011 01:09
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z0331 posted:Because the cat's death has absolutely no bearing on the story itself, its themes, or the point of why Soseki wrote the story. Soseki killed him off because he couldn't think of another way to end it. Yeah, that's why I put the line in about the cat acting more as an interested narrator rather than the mover of the story, which is really more of a series of observations and caricatures of the late-Meiji era. I didn't exactly read it for the cat, I'll agree. I'm just saying that it kinda read different knowing the poor thing was gonna drown at the end. Anyways, I stand by my avoidance of forwards until I finish reading. I didn't even read the forward to Herodotus' Histories, and I knew the Greeks won.
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Jan 27, 2011 04:27
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Finished Manjit Kumar's Quantum today. It's basically the history of modern physics, from the turn of the 20th century until now; all the physicists, what they argued about, and the experiments that led to all the major discoveries. It gets a bit technical at times, but for the most part, you can get through it without any preexisting knowledge of physics. Highly recommended if you're into this sort of thing. Cosmopolitan fucked around with this message at 07:41 on Jan 27, 2011 |
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Jan 27, 2011 07:38
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Oh man, good books have been plentiful in the recent history for me. The Informers and Pygmy are the two really notable ones though. Both very humorous and had a story that really kept me engaged the whole time.
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Jan 28, 2011 06:56
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Nuclear Tourist posted:Today I finished Hull Zero Three by Greg Bear. Despite a couple of rough spots I really enjoyed it, probably because I'm a complete sucker for stories with amnesiac protagonists who wake up on mysterious spaceships. The whole "what the hell happened here?!" premise makes for great page turners in my experience. It also has the most awesome synopsis I've read for a long time, which really made me want to pick up the book. It is also the rarest of all endangered species: the short science fiction novel.
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Jan 29, 2011 02:02
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Nuclear Tourist posted:I'm a complete sucker for stories with amnesiac protagonists who wake up on mysterious spaceships. I just finished Middlemarch by George Eliot. Masterful examination of naivete and experience, and the preliminary infatuation and subsequent disillusionment of marriage. It's so important that this book is long: it needs time to feel realistic in these areas, plus it's fascinating to see how the lives of the characters gradually intertwine.
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Jan 29, 2011 07:59
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dancehall posted:I saw the beginning of a movie with the sound off on a bus or something which seemed to be exactly this. Any idea what it could have been? My first guess would be Pandorum. Pretty decent sci-fi/horror flick if you ask me.
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Jan 29, 2011 13:06
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I just finished Singularity Sky by Charles Stross. Aside from the excessive military and technical jargon in the spaceship battle scenes, it was a really enjoyable read and explored some neat social concepts.
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Jan 30, 2011 01:36
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I just finished "Pillars of the Earth" by Ken Follet. It took me awhile to really get into it, but once I had a feel for all the characters and places, I could not put this book down. I really, really enjoyed it. I'm curious if the sequel is worth a read?
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Jan 30, 2011 06:08
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PonchtheJedi posted:I just finished "Pillars of the Earth" by Ken Follet. It took me awhile to really get into it, but once I had a feel for all the characters and places, I could not put this book down. I really, really enjoyed it. I'm curious if the sequel is worth a read? I think this one I will need to sit down and read. I was enthralled by the mini series they did, I wonder how much was changed between the book and the tv series.
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Jan 30, 2011 06:20
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calandryll posted:I think this one I will need to sit down and read. I was enthralled by the mini series they did, I wonder how much was changed between the book and the tv series. A hell of a lot. The miniseries was a very watered down, slightly sanitised and abridged version of the book. Read the book!
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Jan 30, 2011 09:17
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PonchtheJedi posted:I just finished "Pillars of the Earth" by Ken Follet. It took me awhile to really get into it, but once I had a feel for all the characters and places, I could not put this book down. I really, really enjoyed it. I'm curious if the sequel is worth a read? Loved Pillars of the Earth, hated the sequel. It's set some odd years later, and a totally different boring story.
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Jan 30, 2011 11:52
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Catching Fire (book 2 of Hunger Games) First half good. Second half UTTER poo poo. Ugh, I'm going to take a break before I try Mockingjay. Suzanne Collins has good ideas, but she is such an unskilled, talentless writer. I feel like I cannot say this enough until the end of time,  SUZANNE COLLINS IS AN UTTERLY lovely WRITER
Hedrigall fucked around with this message at 16:46 on Jan 30, 2011 |
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Jan 30, 2011 16:29
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Hedrigall posted:Catching Fire (book 2 of Hunger Games) totally agree. Collins should've taken some more time to think the story through. got about 60 pages into Mockingjay and set it down because i no longer cared about or for Katniss, whom i feel was a character with squandered potential. one of my coworkers absolutely loved Mockingjay, though, and says it takes a minute to warm up... recently finished Leviathan Wakes, the first of the forthcoming Expanse Trilogy by James SA Corey, aka Daniel Abraham and Ty Frank (who is George RR Martin's assistant, so take Martin's jacket quote with a spoonful of salt). it started off a little slow- one of the two main storylines begins as kind of standard noir- but once it picked up i found it totally engaging. something to keep an eye out for if you want some non-corny space opera.
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Jan 30, 2011 16:52
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Just finished Anathem, which I wanted so desperately to like but ended up disliking, even as I still now want to like it. I couldn't put my finger on what was bothering me until I realized that I was being spoon-fed anything not immediately apparent - the use of the dictionary, the extensive explanations of simple platonic philosophies and quantum metaphysics to characters who should already know this stuff - and this writing method snowballed into blatantly having characters say, "GEE, A NEW TERM! WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?" and someone would then go on to explain what HAS JUST BEEN SAID or was READILY APPARENT FROM CONTEXT in simpler terms. Easily could've cut a good 200 pages by getting rid of the painful, redundant, unnecessarily didactic bits. Also, knowing that Erasmus was 18 or 19 in the story, it read like something written by an 18 or 19 year old. I don't know if that was Stephenson's intention, but there were far too many cringe-worthy sentences in the book that reminded me of something I would have written, or even actually did write, when I was in high school. This was either a masterfully done tactic, as with the way a villain would become cartoonish in his inability to accept the narrator's worldview, or it was really clumsily written. I haven't decided yet. It did make the rare eloquent passages all the better, though. The good: some pretty clever alternative earth stuff, in which things had more than one recognizable analog but were, for the most part, just different enough to not be pegged to any one source. The quasi "hard sci-fi" elements allowed for some nifty plot elements, but the implications of them didn't get explored enough. For my tastes, at least.
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Jan 30, 2011 19:28
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Just finished reading Flow My Tears The Policeman Said by Philip K Dick. The book kept me on the edge of my seat cover to cover. Dick is a master of weaving a future dystopia in which you are forced to question what you once thought was reality. The book leads you to expect some sort of penultimate climax but just sort of dissipates into nothing. It is an interesting way to wrap things up and kind of throws things for a spin Anyways if you're into the whole future dystopia thing crossed with a good quick action/thriller pick this one up.
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Jan 31, 2011 05:40
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Hedrigall posted:Catching Fire (book 2 of Hunger Games) Mockingjay is definitely my least favorite of the trilogy. It drags on way too much in the beginning (which lasts too long already). The writing is not what I like about the book. I'm forgiving enough that since I REALLY enjoyed the storyline itself, I'm willing to overlook the problems with the writing.
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Feb 1, 2011 00:03
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Hedrigall posted:Catching Fire (book 2 of Hunger Games) I recently finished the last book in the trilogy and really enjoyed all 3 books. They are YA fiction so the writing isn't going to be superb, and while I agree that it could have used a bit more editing to smooth things out, I still think it was an enjoyable, easy read.
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Feb 1, 2011 01:27
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The part that made me flip my poo poo and yell into the book "YOU ARE A BAD WRITER SUZANNE COLLINS" was the final chapter where Katniss wakes up on the hovercraft and Haymitch is there with that Gamemaker dude and Haymitch says something like "I'll explain it all to you now." And then the narration spends a paragraph or two explaining the twist of the book to you. Something that could have been revealed in dialogue, or in some way other than a neutrally toned exposition dump.
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Feb 1, 2011 03:03
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Damnit guys, use my Hunger Games thread! I think it's languishing on page 4 or something. I'm pretty sure poor exposition is a hallmark of YA. I thing like Harry Potter the story makes up for any writing flaws. What really annoyed me about the last one was the death of a character being written about so vaguely in a trying too hard to write "beautifully" way that I had no idea they died until the next chapter was them dealing with the aftermath
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Feb 1, 2011 04:10
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