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I've been hitting Gutenberg pretty hard lately. I read Jules Verne's "In the Year 2889." It is a spectacularly corny look at what the technology of a thousand years in the future would be like, as imagined in 1889. He does manage to predict something like personalized news websites or RSS feeds. I'm sure there's some social commentary in the character of the newspaper magnate, but my knowledge of the politics of the late 1800s isn't strong enough, nor have I read enough of Verne's other writing to get it. Edit: He also extrapolates the imperialism of the time as having the empires consume one another rather than falling apart. I read Lafcadio Hearn's "Chita: A Memory of Last Island." It starts with dozens of pages of descriptions of the bayous leading to Last Island, and the cultures of the peoples who lived in them. Then it goes on to a description of the island itself, the playground of the antebellum Louisiana elite, followed by the carnage of the island's destruction. The rest of the book follows a successful fisherman and the girl he and his wife take in after the hurricane, her family believed dead, and her identity never ascertained but her father comes awfully close Today I read "The Island of Dr. Moreau." Having recently read "Lord of the Flies" for the first time, the similarities are obvious...the same theme ofthe bestiality of men is there, though come at from different angles...the inevitability of the descent into barbarism in Lord of the Flies versus an inevitable return to it from an unnatural state of civilization putting the fear into the narrator of such a transformation being possible in all men. Unlike the only other Wells I've read ("The Time Machine") this book reads like it could have been written within the last couple of decades, save for the fact that there'd have been some reference to DNA had that been the case. Kaiser Mazoku posted:Just finished Red Dragon. By far my favorite part of the novel was the look into Dolarhyde's past. Hell, pretty much everything involving Dolarhyde was good. He was a really interesting character. Have you read Silence of the Lambs, and do you know much about Ed Gein? Ed Gein was a real person, a nutcase, probably a murderer, possibly a serial killer, but his grave robbing and taxidermy were enough to get him locked up. He was pretty obviously an inspiration for both Francis Dolarhyde AND Buffalo Bill (though different things about him went into each). VideoTapir fucked around with this message at 02:02 on Aug 7, 2012 |
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Aug 5, 2012 13:25
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I just started Silence of the Lambs. I've seen the movie before so it will be interesting to see how it's different from the book. And I've heard about Ed Gein, but I didn't know he was the inspiration. That's pretty cool and I can totally see it.
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Aug 5, 2012 18:14
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Kaiser Mazoku posted:I just started Silence of the Lambs. I've seen the movie before so it will be interesting to see how it's different from the book. And I've heard about Ed Gein, but I didn't know he was the inspiration. That's pretty cool and I can totally see it. It's quite close. some of the interaction between Lecter and Chilton and the orderly are the biggest differences I remember.
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Aug 6, 2012 01:40
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The Good Soldier Svejk by Jaroslav Hasek. A really great satire following the bumbling Svejk as he attempts to avoid active service during WW1. It's pretty long, even though Hasek died before he could finish it, and at 750(ish) pages it did start to drag after a while, especially with so many of Svejk's anecdotes/side stories throughout; his "shtick" does tend to wear thin after a while but the ancillary characters, particularly the long-suffering Lieutenant Lukas and the gluttonous Baloun, more than make amends. The comedy was genuinely hilarious in parts and Hasek had a great gift for political and military satire with makes it a highly engaging read.
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Aug 6, 2012 13:49
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Red Dragon and Silence are both really amazing thrillers, like cream of the crop in my opinion. Dolarhyde was an amazing character, plus it was great since neither movie version has really done Red Dragon justice. Silence follows the novel really, really closely, but I loved the additional characterization of Jack Crawford. The book has an added subplot with him and it kind of reveals the relationship that Lecter has with Crawford. It's a shame Hannibal was so terrible. I wouldn't bother with reading that one. I think I bid goodbye to that one round about the scene where the villain's sister jerked him off into a cup so she could later be artifically inseminated with his sperm and then murdered him by shoving a live eel down his throat. Seriously. That happened. I suddenly realized that I don't like reading books where that happens. I hadn't realized it before because it had never come up. But now, if I know a book has a scene like that in it, I just won't read it. 100 Best Loved Poems (1995) - Philip Smith  These things are important not because a high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because they are useful. One of the magnificent Dover Thrift editions, this book is just shy of a hundred pages, and like most of the books in the series, can be purchased for only one dollar. That right there, elevates the entire series to greatness; great literature at a price that is finally truly affordable. Skip one candy bar today and you’ve got instead food for the soul. Due to this desire for affordability and therefore concision, many long poems are omitted, a fact owned up to with some degree of melancholy in the introduction. As well, the emphasis, befitting the Dover label, is on American and English developments. This book is, editor Smith asserts, rightfully, merely to serve as an introduction. And as an introduction, well, it is brilliant. In chronological order, roughly at least, the book begins with two anonymous ballads and moves up and on, ending with Dylan Thomas raging against the dying of the light. In between, we’ve hit Marlowe, Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, Jonson, Herrick, Marvell, Gray, Blake, Burns, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Emerson, Kipling, Browning (times two), Longfellow, Whittier, Poe, Tennyson, Whitman, Dickinson, Yeats, Frost, Sandburg, Pound, Cummings and fully a dozen others I don’t mention for lack of space. Some are represented by a single poem, others by several; this book must be reviewed more or less as a greatest hits album would be reviewed. That said, there are some odd choices: Cummings is represented with ‘anyone lived in a pretty how town,’ rather than any number of better poems he did; Gerard Manley Hopkins gets two poems but neither of them is “God’s Grandeur,” etc. But it works despite the unavoidable omissions. It gives you a picture of poetic scale. We run from the exalted verse of Wordsworth to the purely utilitarian minimalism of William Carlos Williams, from the nightmarish intensity of Coleridge to the jocular storytelling of Lewis Carroll, from the dense terror of Poe to the sentimentality of Housman. And, by God, it works. You feel it. You feel it all. And, reading this book through, you’ll be shocked again at just how poetry has influenced the common language. Here you’ll find the origins of “All that glitters is not gold,” “The lap of earth,” “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways,” “And miles to go before I sleep,” “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” “They also serve who only stand and wait,” etc. to infinity. To read this book is to reconnect with the English language as pure expression. Poetry anthology is like any anthological art form, a dicey thing to pull off. You’re apt to disgust people with both your inclusions and exclusions, but this book by and large is what it claims to be. Best loved? Perhaps not, given the strict English bias and the tendency toward brevity. But can it be found in the heart to quibble while turning these lovely leaves? Hardly. Nary a bad poem can be found in these pages. A brilliant collection which finds its only weakness in its concision. But who could lug around the entire body of great poetry? And who could hesitate to return to these masterpieces and reacquaint with them? If your love of poetry has dropped off somewhere and you never read it anymore, pick this one up; you’ll find a hundred (and more) sparks rekindled into flame. 5 out of 5 stars. Rogue1-and-a-half fucked around with this message at 04:05 on Aug 8, 2012 |
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Aug 6, 2012 18:37
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I recently finished Electrified Sheep: Glass-eating Scientists, Nuking the Moon, and More Bizarre Experiments by Alex Boese. It was a pretty interesting series of stories about different scientists and their various... eccentricities. The section about Johann Wilhelm Ritter's "love" of electric batteries certainly stands out. :o Kaiser Mazoku posted:Just finished Red Dragon. By far my favorite part of the novel was the look into Dolarhyde's past. Hell, pretty much everything involving Dolarhyde was good. He was a really interesting character. Red Dragon is actually my favorite of the four Hannibal books because of Dolarhyde. I found him so fascinating as a villain. The other villains in the later Hannibal books lacked what Dolarhyde had. CowboyAndy fucked around with this message at 01:08 on Aug 7, 2012 |
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Aug 7, 2012 01:06
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Just read Revelation Space, Redemption Ark and Absolution Gap back-to-back. Reynolds is the man, fantastic trilogy. I know a lot of people have a problem with how the last one ended, but I thought the ending was suitably ambiguous and melancholic. Next up is Blood Meridian, time for a break in the usual diet of space opera and cyberpunk noir.
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Aug 7, 2012 01:58
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Just finished The Dragon's Path by Daniel Abraham. Thought I'd give it a try because a.) I'd enjoyed "The Expanse" series, which was co-written by Abraham, and b.) I keep trying to convince myself that Fantasy is a genre that I might like. Well... I think I'm simply leaning toward the "not a big fan of Fantasy" idea, because I have yet to find a book or series in the genre that can keep my interest. Then again, maybe this one just didn't grab me because it was like Medieval Econ 101 with a bunch of vaguely defined, completely indistinct races, a bunch of morally ambiguous characters who had absolutely no accountability for their actions, and about 200 excess pages of--well, I'm not sure what, because my eyes periodically glazed over in boredom. I love Sci-Fi, but I have yet to find a Fantasy book or series not written by China Mieville or Gene Wolfe that doesn't bore me to tears. Anyway, up next is Carter Beats The Devil which has been absolutely excellent so far.
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Aug 7, 2012 16:18
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Just finished Dead Zone by Stephen King, as part of some confused idea that I should read the Castle Rock books in order. Not my favorite of his books, I enjoyed the first 80% more than the last 20%. The pacing seemed a little wonky in a lot of places. Next, as inspired by this thread, is gonna be In The Year 2889, followed by some other stuff. I found an ebook copy of Pet Sematary, so it might be the next King book on the list.
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Aug 7, 2012 19:19
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Just finished Youth by J.M. Coetzee. I have mixed feelings about the writing and the story in general... overall, I enjoyed it, but I went back and forth between parts I loved and parts that were rather boring. There are some odd parts where the author totally lost me with all these references to other poets and authors (some of which I know well, some of which I don't). In the end, it was kind of a chore to finish even though it is a relatively short book. I can't quite put my finger on it.
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Aug 8, 2012 05:08
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Just finished Starfish, book 1 of Peter Watts "Rifters Trilogy". It's really good, but not as good as Blindsight in the mindfucking manner. But, it very obviously ends as part 1, so I hope the next 2 bring on the wtfuckery.
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Aug 8, 2012 16:20
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Loving Life Partner posted:Just finished Starfish, book 1 of Peter Watts "Rifters Trilogy". Hey , I finished this recently too. I really enjoyed it but felt like towards the end it was starting to.become too much lile a save the whole world film . I dove into it hoping for underwater horrors but the books title misled and had the government as the enemy instead of having a giant starfish. There was no giant starfish sadly. Ill be holding off on book 2.
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Aug 9, 2012 06:13
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I recently finished Flowers for Algernon. Started with no idea what to expect or what it was about, and was left overwhelmed by emotion. Powerful stuff. The beginning's prose style was very gripping, as I instantly became curious about Charlie, the protagonist, and what possible direction this story could go in. I'm a bit hesitant to spoil the plot for others, so I won't say much in that regard other than I was not disappointed. In the middle things sort of become drab, but that is more than made up by the ending. Also, the female characters don't really feel well-developed and are (I feel) nothing more than two-dimensional archetypes. As the book deals heavily with sexuality then this is really off-putting, for me at least. But these are minor complaints, Flowers for Algernon is a tremendous read. I was shocked to see that this book has been quite controversial, having been frequently challenged and sometimes successfully censored. This is apparently due to the parts when Charlie is trying to come to grips with his own sexuality and overcome various mental and developmental barriers there. Figures. Before that I had finally picked up my never-read-but-old-and-worn copy of The Gunslinger, first book in the Dark Tower series by Stephen King. Really liked it, found the setting and characters fascinating, but everything was a bit too enigmatic for me. I've no idea how the series is as a whole, but knowing King then he will probably not deliver on the build-up, as usual. The ending will probably be an incomprehensible mess, but I'll have to read and see. At least I enjoyed this one.
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Aug 9, 2012 16:46
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Escape from Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West by Mr. Blaine Harding. Ouch. It's a short book; biographical narrative with historical bit interwoven. Very disturbing. Much like Night, only this has been going on for more than 50 years.
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Aug 9, 2012 19:50
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Took a break from reading every Stephen King novel and read Terry Pratchett's The Colour of Magic. I've wanted to read the Discworld books for at least a decade now, and this is obviously the first book in thatseries. From what I'd heard about these books over the years I was expecting it to be completely up my alley. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get into it at all. I can absolutely see what Pratchett was doing with this novel and I suppose I have to say that he succeeded in satirizing the fantasy genre. But while there were some funny stuff (though not nearly as funny as I had expected), I never felt invested in the story or any of the characters. What little plot there is moves from one episodic incident to the next, never giving me the impression that I should care or that any of it matters to anyone. Silly characters doing silly things until the book suddenly just ends on what I presume is a cliffhanger that will be resolved in the following book. While there certainly is value in satirizing a genre as potentially stale as the fantasy genre there has to be an actual plot underneath it all for me to care and this failed to provide that. I probably wouldn't call it a bad novel, but it failed to make any impact on me at all. I don't see myself reading any other books in the series any time soon. Having said that, I might have had the reaction I had because I had just finished The Stand and was just reading this while I was waiting for the next Stephen King book to arrive in the mail. Speaking of: I also finished the The Dead Zone. This was a book I knew absolutely nothing about before reading it and it grabbed me very quickly. Normally I'll read the first half of a book at a dramatically slower rate than the second half, but this story had me invested from very early on. Johnny and Sarah came across as likable characters with relatable personalities. It probably helped that they like me were both teachers. The way King presents the two different character's role in the classroom made me smile as I've found myself being both types of teachers depending on the makeup of the class. The novel has a somber tone throughout most of the story and you can't help but feel for this character and how unfair life can be sometimes. Interestingly, the supernatural aspect of this novel feels secondary to the human stories being told. While the supernatural helps facilitate the tragedy, it is not what I found the most compelling and large parts of the story could be told without any of it. There is one specific moment in the book I wanted to mention: At one point in the book King references his earlier novel Carrie as a book that exists in the universe of this story and I thought it was a misstep. It's not the fact that he acknowledges a book of his own that bothers me, but rather the moment he chose to do it. It happens at the culmination of a tense sequence that had me completely immersed. Then someone says "like in that book, Carrie!" and I couldn't help but laugh out loud. While I suppose it worked as a release of tension for me, I'm not sure King wanted me to get pulled out of the moment the way I was. So that wasn't really relevant for how I feel about the book as a whole, but reflecting on my experience of reading the book it was a moment that definitely stood out. Overall; I definitely enjoyed the book a lot and can't wait to move on to the next book in the Stephen King bibliography.
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Aug 10, 2012 00:08
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Hansen85 posted:Took a break from reading every Stephen King novel and read Terry Pratchett's The Colour of Magic. I've wanted to read the Discworld books for at least a decade now, and this is obviously the first book in thatseries. From what I'd heard about these books over the years I was expecting it to be completely up my alley. Try one of his middle books, at a later date when you're in the mood for it, before giving up completely. His mid career stuff is the sweet spot. His plots are tighter and his other characters are more developed right from the get-go. His early work is pretty rough and meandering and his latest stuff is just repetitive.
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Aug 10, 2012 00:19
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Yeah, Pratchett definitely improves as he goes on. A lot of people say to start with one of the later books like Guards, Guards! or Mort and I'd agree with that.
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Aug 10, 2012 00:33
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I just finished The Ware Tetralogy by Rudy Rucker. It's a collection of four books - Software, Wetware, Freeware and Realware - that deals with the side-by-side evolution of the human race and a race of robots that were built as servants but then taught independence. It starts off as a fairly simple story but grows increasingly complex through each book and provides a good illustration of how quickly cultures can change in only a few years (each book is roughly a generation apart) and how people readily adapt to changes in technology. The books raise some interesting questions about evolution and what would happen if people were given access to things like immortality and magic. The end does feel slightly unsatisfying but I understand why it ends the way it does as any other ending would have either been super depressing or made a lot of readers mad.
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Aug 10, 2012 02:42
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The Fourth Part of the World (Toby Lester): I'm still not 100% sure of what the overall point of it was, but it's not bad. It's a bit about the knowledge of the outer parts of the known and unknown world from the 1200s onward with the last section being about the creation of the first map(s) calling part of the new world America. There are some interesting stories about explorers - really, for all the Christopher Columbus we've had shoved down our throats for our lifetimes, his are the most interesting chapters. For the guy who's so controversial, Amerigo Vespucci, there really isn't much. On the negative, the images and parts of maps reproduced are too darn small. I probably couldn't make much sense of the Latin markers on them, but I wish there was something larger than a wallet-sized picture of them. Addendum: Yikes, Europeans held on to the story of Prester John. For 400 years they were hoping to encounter him. Columbus thinking he had found Earthly Paradise isn't nearly as nutty. Satan's Circus (Mike Dash): True crime. Three-quarters of it is a straightforward tale about policeman Charles Becker and the murder of a small-time gambler named Herman Rosenthal he is supposed to have orchestrated. Dash thoroughly describes the events, testimony and other details, but the heart of the book isn't specifically Becker's innocence or guilt; it's about ambition. Herman Rosenthal's ambition to get rich, Becker's ambition to achieve something of importance, DA Charles Whitman's ambition to convict Becker and thus be a hero and be elected to higher office. All of it would end badly. One of the better true crime books I have read in some time.
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Aug 10, 2012 07:41
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The Perfect King: The Life of Edward III, Father of the English Nation by Ian Mortimer. The story itself is pretty good, Edward was a fascinating dude and there's plenty of chivalry, wars, plagues, and intrigue that happened during his reign, but what stands out for me is Mortimer's writing, which is at the same time breathless with excitement yet careful of not stepping outside of what the historical evidence shows. I'm not a guy who really reads or likes a lot of biographies, but this one was pretty good.
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Aug 10, 2012 14:46
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I've just finished Heart Of Darkness, which I've wanted to read for some time. It was an interesting book but a challenging one to read. I'll be reading Child Of God next; I'm very keen on Cormac McCarthy's writing but I've actually heard relatively little about this one.
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Aug 10, 2012 21:00
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Metal Loaf posted:I'll be reading Child Of God next; I'm very keen on Cormac McCarthy's writing but I've actually heard relatively little about this one. Almost every time I tried to describe this book to someone, they got a distinct "why would you do that?" look on their face; it's not a real fun book to talk to people about.
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Aug 10, 2012 21:57
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Bolverkur posted:The Gunslinger, first book in the Dark Tower series by Stephen King I haven't read them either, but from what I have heard it sounds like your fears may be well warranted. Still, it is on my Amazon shopping list so I'll probably get wrapped up in that series soon enough.
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Aug 10, 2012 22:01
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I've just finished book one of 1Q84. I don't read as much as I should,b ut I've never come across a book quite like this. It tells a story that seems far fetched, but isn't too distant to be relatable. Even in the oddities and confusion of it all, the book seems to relate closely to how I wish I could deal with certain situation or how I sometimes feel like I'm helpless. Does anyone know of any other books similar to this? Ones that are simply fiction, have some sort of adventure, and have you begging for more? It was like reading a reality TV show, but the people involved with rational and intelligent.
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Aug 11, 2012 06:33
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funkybottoms posted:Almost every time I tried to describe this book to someone, they got a distinct "why would you do that?" look on their face; it's not a real fun book to talk to people about. Having just completed it this morning, I can agree that it certainly isn't. It was a very good read, though. I was planning to read Outer Dark next since I've had it sitting on my desk for a couple of weeks, but I think I'll be taking ashort break fom McCarthy. I've been meaning to re-read The Great Gatsby for a while so I'll probably do that. Wheat Loaf fucked around with this message at 16:10 on Aug 11, 2012 |
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Aug 11, 2012 15:17
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Bolverkur posted:Before that I had finally picked up my never-read-but-old-and-worn copy of The Gunslinger, first book in the Dark Tower series by Stephen King. Really liked it, found the setting and characters fascinating, but everything was a bit too enigmatic for me. I've no idea how the series is as a whole, but knowing King then he will probably not deliver on the build-up, as usual. The ending will probably be an incomprehensible mess, but I'll have to read and see. At least I enjoyed this one. As someone who read the series over a decade and a half, anxious waiting for releases, King stumbles a bit, but really brought it home well for the ending. He gets a bit too meta, but the series is un-apologetically personal to him, and I found it endearing.
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Aug 11, 2012 15:30
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thathonkey posted:I haven't read them either, but from what I have heard it sounds like your fears may be well warranted. Still, it is on my Amazon shopping list so I'll probably get wrapped up in that series soon enough. For what it's worth I do recommend that first volume, if only to read about a very interesting and mythical fantasy universe. I'm not big on King, but I did find this to my liking. Also as a fan of the Dollars trilogy I really enjoyed the influence those movies had on the book. Loving Life Partner posted:As someone who read the series over a decade and a half, anxious waiting for releases, King stumbles a bit, but really brought it home well for the ending. He gets a bit too meta, but the series is un-apologetically personal to him, and I found it endearing. That's good to hear, I'm thinking of giving this series a chance. At least I won't have to wait the decade (or more) for the rest of the series! That's my biggest problem as an avid fantasy reader, the (way too) popular trend of epic series. Sometimes I just want to be able to finish something and be done with it, not have to wait several years for some epic drama to conclude!
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Aug 11, 2012 20:08
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I just finished Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. Jesus Christ. This book had a pretty strange effect on me, and at first, I could only read little bits at time. It would literally give me nightmares. After about 40% through it, I think I just got used to the prose and the violence and was able to burn through fairly fast, right up until the last two chapters. I literally just finished the book but I feel like I should go back and reread those chapters now because, while I understand what happened (or at least I think I do), I think I was just so numbed by everything that happened in the preceding chapters that it wasn't as clear as it could have been. Also, I've never felt this bad about liking characters in a book before. I mean, they're all total loving sociopaths, but in some ways they're all super badass as well. I've read both No Country for Old Men and The Road before, and while I'm not yet sure whether I can say this book was better than those, or that I liked it more, I feel I can safely say that it is definitely on a completely different level. Sorry if this post makes very little sense, it's late and I've been reading for like the past 3 hours straight.
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Aug 13, 2012 18:03
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I just finished Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson. I'd read The Diamond Age and Snow Crash before. It wasn't as easy to get into as those, but I definitely saw echoes of those books here. A lot of Quicksilver reminded me of the KFC scenes in The Diamond Age, for instance; and the "hey guys I read some stuff"-ness about Snow Crash was present and a lot more intense, purposeful, and better integrated into the story here. I felt compulsions to wiki a lot of the characters to find out if they were real or not, as there were a lot I'd never heard of, and Stephenson manages to make both his fictional and real characters equally believable. Things really get going, and it got hard for me to put down, around the time that Newton is introduced. The stuff leading up to that didn't make all that much sense, and still doesn't. The whole Gandalf-Frodo thing that seemed to be going on early on kind of gave me a wrong impression I think. Does Old Daniel's thread ever lead anywhere in the next two books? The plot synopses I've read for them don't suggest anything of the sort...but neither do synopses tell you what's going on in this book either. This is the best thing in the book, and one of the best things ever: quote:Daniel saw in a way he'd never seen anything before: his mind was a homunculus squatting in the middle of his skull, peering out through good but imperfect telescopes and listening-horns, gathering observations that had been distorted along the way, as a lens put chromatic aberrations into all the light that passed through it. A man who peered out at the world through a telescope would assume that the aberration was real, that the stars actually looked like that--what false assumptions, then, had natural philosophers been making about the evidence of their senses, until last night? Sitting in the gaudy radiance of those windows hearing the organ play and the choir sing, his mind pleasantly intoxicated from exhaustion, Daniel experienced a faint echo of what it must be like, all the time, to be Isaac Newton: a permanent ongoing epiphany, an endless immersion in lurid radiance, a drowning in light, a ringing of cosmic harmonies in the ears. Though the phrase "homunculus squatting" kind of sticks out so much that it's hard to miss it when it occurs again in an unrelated context. Or...I think it was unrelated, but I didn't mark the page, so it would be hard to go check. It's just such an unlikely combination of words that it doesn't seem like it could be unintentional. VideoTapir fucked around with this message at 17:19 on Aug 17, 2012 |
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Aug 13, 2012 19:37
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I just finished Wool Omnibus Edition by Hugh Howey. It was *really* good. Dystopian post-apocalypse fiction that is, as the reviews state, character-driven. The first full story is available in the sample chapters, it was really well done with a twist that I simply didn't see coming. Very good read!
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Aug 13, 2012 19:54
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Stuporstar posted:Just finished Connie Willis' To Say Nothing of the Dog, a playful romp through time (mostly the Victorian era) full of literary allusions. I think I would have enjoyed it more if she didn't lay the exposition on so thick ... Has anyone else read Connie Willis? Is she an over-explainer in all her novels, or is this one an outlier? I have a copy of Passage on my reading pile and I'm wondering if I should bother. Belatedly and I haven't read To Say Nothing of the Dog, but Willis is best as a short story writer. She doesn't over-explain and there's some pretty good stuff there. Maybe in TSNotD she remembered she's writing for the SF fans, who need everything spelt out for them.
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Aug 13, 2012 20:25
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So the last few books I've read have been Ready Player One By Ernest Cline. I really enjoyed this book, describing it to one of my friends as a love letter to the 1980s and geeks, and while being someone born in the late 80s I still got a huge kick out of it. I wouldn't call it was a delightful read, and I'll admit to literally cheering and pumping my fist during a fight scene towards the end. Joe Golem and the Drowning City by Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden. I'm a huge fan of Mignola's work with Hellboy and BPRD and having read his other book with Golden, Baltimore: Or the Steadfast Tin Solider and the Vampire I wanted to give this a try. I thought it was good, I liked it, alot. It was a quick read, had a very nice Steampunk meets Lovecraft vibe too it. The Age of Reagan:1974-2008 By Sean Willnetz, a history of the rise of Reaganite politics from the mid-70s up till 2008 (when the book was written). It was a very interesting book, though I found his speculation that Obama might herald the end of the Age of Reagan, to be sad in hindsight since when this was written the Tea Party wasn't a thing yet. I would still recommend reading this is your looking for a history of the Conservative movement in America in the Post-Vietnam age. The Reactionary Mind: Conservativism from Edmond Burke to Sarah Palin By Corey Robbin's. This books is a collection of modified articles making up the various chapter of the book. Robbin's thesis is pretty much all conservative thought can be traced to the idea that fundamentally they exist to keep power out of the hands of the lower orders, seeing the rich and powerful as having something unique that makes them deserving of their privilege. The thesis really hit home with me (not just from my suicidal readings of the Freep thread in D&D) but from a conversation with a friend I had about Occupy Wall Street where he used Social Darwinism to support exploitation by the 1% I'm currently finishing up Tear Down This Myth:The Right Wing Distortions of the Reagan Legacy by Will Bunch. Another book I really liked for its very plain language ability to refute many of the hagiographies written about Reagan since the mid to late 90s and following his death in 2004. I'm currently deciding if I want to read Red Shirts,Boneshaker(a steampunk novel from Tor, The Affinity Bridge another steampunk novel from Tor (yeah I know they make a lot of junk genre fiction, but they can be entertaining reads)
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Aug 14, 2012 11:13
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I just finished Yakuza Moon. There are some doubts to its veracity (and it is a memoir of sorts), but I found it pretty interesting. Next on the list is Coffinman by Shinmon Aoki. I'm kind of curious to find out how different it is working as a mortician in Japan versus the U.S.
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Aug 14, 2012 12:55
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KomradeX posted:I'm currently deciding if I want to read Red Shirts,Boneshaker(a steampunk novel from Tor, The Affinity Bridge another steampunk novel from Tor (yeah I know they make a lot of junk genre fiction, but they can be entertaining reads) Boneshaker is fun in a kind of pulpy way, and it's probably a little smarter than you'd expect. Cherie Priest is actually pretty brainy and has (I think) degrees in both history and religion, so she really knows her stuff and will gladly debate people about historical accuracy, etc (hosted her at my store a while back).
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Aug 14, 2012 15:16
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tonytheshoes posted:Just finished The Dragon's Path by Daniel Abraham. Thought I'd give it a try because a.) I'd enjoyed "The Expanse" series, which was co-written by Abraham, and b.) I keep trying to convince myself that Fantasy is a genre that I might like. I do enjoy Fantasy and I was of the same opinion about The Dragon's Path. It's not you, it's the book.
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Aug 14, 2012 16:45
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VideoTapir posted:Things really get going, and it got hard for me to put down, around the time that Newton is introduced. The stuff leading up to that didn't make all that much sense, and still doesn't. The whole Gandalf-Frodo thing that seemed to be going on early on kind of gave me a wrong impression I think. Does Old Daniel's thread ever lead anywhere in the next two books? The plot synopses I've read for them don't suggest anything of the sort...but neither do synopses tell you what's going on in this book either. The frame story with older Daniel doesn't continue until The System of the World, but The Confusion owns, since it's pretty much the adventures of Eliza and Jack.
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Aug 14, 2012 20:29
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I just finished the 1340 page complete collection of Bone by Jeff Smith. I'll let my Goodreads review sum it up:Me on Goodreads posted:Better than Watchmen. Bartleby is adorable
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Aug 16, 2012 12:48
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I finished re-reading The Great Gatsby yesterday. It's still great (no pun intended) and I found myself enjoying it a lot more now that I've had the opportunity to read it since school.
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Aug 16, 2012 13:21
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I just finished Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn and was pleasantly surprised. About a 1/3 of the way through I decided it had to be Amy because Nick kept on being to upfront about lying to the police so if it just continued and he was the bad guy it would have been sort of silly. I was on the fence if they were acting in concert for a while though. I felt Amy's writing in the diary was too over the top/kitschy. At first I thought the author was trying too hard but then it was obviously on purpose and made perfect sense when you learn the whole thing is faked. I thought the ending was great and, honestly, it was what I was hoping for. Sort of the cherry on the old mentally deranged situation sundae. Has anyone else read it?
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Aug 16, 2012 14:28
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Lyon posted:I just finished Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn and was pleasantly surprised. About a 1/3 of the way through I decided it had to be Amy because Nick kept on being to upfront about lying to the police so if it just continued and he was the bad guy it would have been sort of silly. I was on the fence if they were acting in concert for a while though. I have read it and I didn't think too highly of it. It wasn't aggressively terrible or anything it just felt a bit melodramatic with the constantly escalating stakes.
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Aug 16, 2012 15:31
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