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Mrs Robinson's Disgrace (Kate Summerscale): I picked it up when I saw her name as I really enjoyed The Suspicions of Mr Whicher. This is about a woman caught in an unhappy marriage in the 1850s who keeps journals of her infatuations with other men. Husband discovers it and files for divorce under the old rules and then under the new ones when Parliament decides to make it quicker and more accessible. So begins the question, to what degree are Mrs Robinson's diaries real? There is a hint of actual affair with Edward Lane, who's the quite the public figure, and who is named in the divorce proceedings. He denies it. The lead-up to the trials is a bit tenuous, except for the chapter focusing on George Drysdale. Drysdale really has little to do with anything, though, except as window dressing for what perhaps had some influence on Isabella Robinson. He was also Edward Lane's brother-in-law, but same thing. The court stuff is fun and I can't help but think that had Summerscale instead wrote about the contradictions and stylings of the divorce proceedings at that time, it would have been much more interesting. Still, well-written and very informative.
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Jan 14, 2013 03:25
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Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, I tried to read it in high school years back, and that went as expected, and tried again this year, and success! I feel as though if I were more well versed in mythology and history, his references would make more sense, so I resolved to read it again in the far future. For the book itself, like most readers, I enjoyed Inferno greatly, as his journeys through Hell kept me amused enough not to care that I did not know who he is talking to 4/5 of the times. Purgatorio fell in the same category, only climbing a mountain is slightly more tedious to read than someone walking though the depths of Hell. Paradiso on the other hand was too much for me. While I did read it all, I felt lost during most of Beatrice's (and others, those drat doctors of the church hiding in the sun!) metaphysical rants, which accounted for a large chunk of the story. Also, as a person living in 2013 waiting for the New Horizons spacecraft to reach Pluto, the idea of a crystalline universe was a difficult idea to fully come to grasp with, especially the sun, and the concept of the Primum Mobile in general. Otherwise, I'm sure if I did research in most of the stuff in Paradiso, it would have probably been an enjoyable ending. Kaskitew fucked around with this message at 07:00 on Jan 14, 2013 |
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Jan 14, 2013 06:57
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GeneralContempt posted:Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, I tried to read it in high school years back, and that went as expected, and tried again this year, and success! I feel as though if I were more well versed in mythology and history, his references would make more sense, so I resolved to read it again in the far future. I only got a few cantos into this last summer before deciding I needed some good supporting material to better contextualize it. I haven't gotten around to it yet, but there's an Open Yale course that looks great.
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Jan 14, 2013 17:37
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Which translation did you read? I read John Ciardi's one a while back, but there's a lot of other ones out there.
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Jan 14, 2013 22:20
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The Mark Musa edition published by Penguin Classics split into three different books. Someone on the internet once pointed out that his edition is more to the point, where Ciardi's is more artistic and goes for the beauty look. I have yet to read Ciardi's version though, but a lot of fans of the work prefer it over Musa's apparently. While Musa does make notes about some of the more obscure references at the end of each canto, I admittedly skipped over a lot of them. However, I did read the ones that I felt as though I absolutely had to know about, or was curious about (such as the Roman mythology references), as most of the note sections were longer than the canto itself.
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Jan 15, 2013 00:01
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I finished Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill, having only started it 8 days ago, which is something of a marvel for me as I have a career, three kids, and a few guitars. I love my kindle paperwhite to loving death. I'd recommend this to any fellow horror hound. It was a fun, pulpy read. Good scares, too. Very reminiscent of his father's earlier works. I think I'll read Hill's Horns next, as that'n is mentioned as similar to this book but superior.
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Jan 15, 2013 19:03
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Just finished Carl Van Vechten's friend of the family Heaven and I've got to say, that was a seminal voyage into parts of me I'm not even sure exist.
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Jan 15, 2013 23:10
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WoG posted:I only got a few cantos into this last summer before deciding I needed some good supporting material to better contextualize it. I haven't gotten around to it yet, but there's an Open Yale course that looks great. I can confirm that this Yale Course is fantastic. Oh Giuseppe. Your voice is like a smooth marinara to my ears. There must be something about hell that makes it much more interesting to read or write about than heaven. Dante's Inferno and Paradise Lost get far more attention than the rest of the Divine Comedy or Paradise Regained.
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Jan 16, 2013 18:31
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Wrapped up Stephen Baxter's Flood last night. My kind of sci-fi; a bit long winded with some attempt at character development, epic scale, apocalyptic setting, some plausible sounding science stuff, mankind trying to find a way to carry on no matter what. Great stuff, and I wish it was longer than its 500+ pages. Would have gotten a five star rating for me if it hadn't in a few places decided to skip over potentially interesting/dramatic parts by leaping ahead a few years and having a character reminisce on what took place that day. Taking a break for another book, but will continue with the sequel (Ark) next. Not sure why I have not read more Baxter, the few I have gone through so far were fairly interesting and just a bit weak on the characters (though it is clear he is getting better with time).
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Jan 16, 2013 21:29
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The Magister Trilogy (Wings of Wrath, Feast of Souls, Legacy of Kings) by C.S. Friedman. In short: good to the last drop. It actually reminded me a lot of her earlier trilogy, Coldfire. In this case, it's a good thing, because Magister is good enough to stand its ground with Coldfire, which meant that I spent my time enjoying it and thinking about the parallels between them rather than (as in the case with, say, Rai Kirah reminding me of Lighthouse) making me wonder why I wasn't just re-reading the books it reminded me of. It's hard to talk about this without spoiling the poo poo out of things, so any spoilers here are potentially spoilers for both Magister and Coldfire. In particular, stuff that stuck out: - the general theme of power at the cost of humanity comes up a lot in both books, and the balancing act the Magisters perform between being human enough to coexist with human civilizations, but not so human that they are unable to bring themselves to feed is strongly reminiscent of Tarrant's efforts to sacrifice his humanity, and mortality, without losing his soul - the conflict between duty to one's faith and to one's people; in particular, Salvator's concerns about conflict between his duties as king, as Lyr, and as priest, and his misgivings about the Magisters echo both Damien's agonizing over his alliance with Tarrant and the Patriarch's attempts to come to terms with his nature as an Adept - the fundamental mechanic of magic in this setting - that it can be done only at the cost of (some portion of) one's own life - matches the nature of the fae at the end of the Coldfire books. Of course, the Magisters upset this balance Apart from being pleasantly reminiscent of some of my favourite fantasy novels, it was also just a lot of fun in its own right and had a good number of "oh poo poo, that all makes sense now that I know this" moments. I found The Wilding kind of disappointing, but this is a very nice comeback by Friedman.
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Jan 17, 2013 16:45
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I just finished 1632 by Eric Flint. 1632 was well written and edited with enough action to keep things going. I am not a usually a fan of the alternate history genre but Eric Flint did a good job of making the historical setting interesting. I am half way through 1633 and am not as impressed as I was with the first book in the series. The characters seem to be a bit more boring. It might be because it is co-written with David Weber. My major fear is that the disjointedness will continue in this series as it seems most of the books were co-written.
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Jan 17, 2013 17:24
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You are probably right to fear. In my opinion, 1632 was the high point of the series.
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Jan 18, 2013 09:16
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wheatpuppy posted:You are probably right to fear. In my opinion, 1632 was the high point of the series. Yah, though it's not quite as bad as one might fear; there's more or less a main thread of books which are written or co-written by Eric Flint, and a bunch of side stories that are written by other people and are mostly skippable. Quality varies between good and horrible; as long as you avoid anything with the name "Virginia DeMarce" on it you will escape the very worst. None of the later books (at least the ones I've read) are quite as good gonzo fun as the first one, though.
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Jan 18, 2013 16:32
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I just finished Emily Fox-Seton (Frances Hodgson Burnett) This is two short novels, "The Making of a Marchioness" and "The Methods of Lady Walderhurst" which I downloaded just for the heck of it when I was grabbing the better-known "A Little Princess" and "The Secret Garden". I was pleasantly surprised--while of course Our Heroine is a living saint (which seems to be true of the heroes and heroines of many of the books of that period), it's a great Cinderella story, updated for the FHB's time. I enjoyed it very much and will likely re-read in the future when I'm looking for something light-hearted.
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Jan 20, 2013 21:30
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I just finished Old Man's War by John Scalzi. I'd been on the prowl for a sci-fi book that really pulled me in for a while and this absolutely did the trick. Good character development and pacing, I couldn't put it down and as soon as I finished it I immediately purchased the sequel, The Ghost Brigades. So far that has been just as enthralling.
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Jan 21, 2013 12:28
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Just finished The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus. Basically, the voices of children become toxic to adults. Weird, sort of Cronenberg-ish with a dash of Vonnegut, DFW and Dick thrown in, but overall, I felt that it really didn't add up to much. Still, it was a quick and interesting read.
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Jan 22, 2013 02:32
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tonytheshoes posted:Just finished The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus. Basically, the voices of children become toxic to adults. Weird, sort of Cronenberg-ish with a dash of Vonnegut, DFW and Dick thrown in, but overall, I felt that it really didn't add up to much. Still, it was a quick and interesting read. It does have one of the best covers of 2012. 
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Jan 22, 2013 02:36
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The Explorer by James Smythe. 1.5 stars, here's why (copied from my Goodreads review): I bought into the hype of this book being a smart, scary, science fiction thriller. Too bad it's neither smart, scary or thrilling. And the science isn't very good either. No qualms about the fiction part though. It sure is a ... story. Other reviews (see Tor.com for instance) have revealed the main plot point so I won't bother dancing around it here: it's Groundhog Day in space. There, now you know. That gets revealed about 20% of the way into the book anyway, so i don't get why some people seem to think it needs to be kept secret like a twist or something. The difference from Groundhog Day though, is that the main character doesn't find himself back in his body the next time around, rather he's duplicated. So he's relegated to being an observer... and that's the rest of the book. He hides in the hull and vent shafts of the ship and watches everything happen for THE REST OF THE BOOK. Granted he finds out a few things that he wasn't privy to the first time, but he doesn't do anything else. It's in literally the last 2 pages of the book that he tries to change events. There is one good reveal in the flashback scenes regarding the main character's wife, but that was the only part of the book that surprised me. There is no other big twist, revelation, or anything else to the story. It's achingly dull reading about the time-warped version of the character just sitting and watching the original version go about things for a whole novel. The main flaw of this book though, is the shoddy science. It's blindingly clear that James Smythe doesn't know a jot about physics beyond watching sci-fi movies. He's inconsistent about lots of things. One good example is that in one scene, a transmission to earth is lagged because they're several light-minutes away. Then in a later scene, when the ship is even further away, one character has a furtive conversation with ground control with NO LAG WHATSOEVER. Smythe, you need to pick one form of communication: C or faster-than-C. Other inconsistencies and mistakes in the physics of the book have been nitpicked in other reviews, such as this one: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/481670579 Go ahead and read some of the other lower-star-rating reviews on Goodreads and see why this book really isn't worth it, despite all the hype lately.
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Jan 22, 2013 03:49
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In the Garden of Beasts (Erik Larson). There aren't many non-fiction books that haunted me the way the first 100 pages of this did. I guess because I embarrassingly know so little about Hitler's beginnings as chancellor. It eased up a bit, until just before the Night of the Long Knives. The book is framed through presence of William Dodd, the misfit American ambassador to Germany. You get a good look at him, but mostly you get a look at his daughter, Martha. Some of the Martha dealings with her lovers is a bit tedious, but never oppressive and never a chore. There are a few questions that Larson didn't answer that I immediately thought of when I finished: It's mentioned in the afterward that von Papen survived, but how? What was the deal with Fritz the butler? Was he a spy? What happened to the Jewish family living at the top of Dodd's home? Not quite as thorough as The Devil in the White City, but that's probably to the book's benefit. It's also not as good as Devil in the White City, but better than both Thunderstruck and Isaac's Storm. Above average, but not an absolute must read.
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Jan 22, 2013 07:35
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V for Vegas posted:It does have one of the best covers of 2012. That it does. This book is weird in that I didn't love it, but I'd recommend reading it--I feel like it might eventually be a classic, but I can't quite put my finger on why. I'm going to read it again someday (most likely if/after I ever have kids) and see if it brings a new perspective to it.
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Jan 22, 2013 15:18
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V for Vegas posted:It does have one of the best covers of 2012. If you want to decide what to read by judging a book by its cover, may I suggest: http://bookcoverarchive.com/ I just finished Practical Demonkeeping by Christopher Moore, based on the fact that a reviewer referred to him as "Daniel Pinkwater for grownups". I'm not sure it will become part of my personal canon like Pinkwater did when I was a kid, but it did have some whimsical ideas I know will stick with me. It was a quick, fun read and would probably be good for an airplane.
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Jan 22, 2013 17:30
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Just finished Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 by Hunter Thompson. Combination mind numbing political analysis/facts and typical insanity. The most interesting thing is I was reading it during the last republican primaries and all the poo poo about Romney and the other goons was pretty directly parallel to the democratic primaries for '72. Maybe I'm just not INTO politics and it's always like that in the primaries but it was interesting to read about how grassroots campaign efforts came through and other efforts were absolutely destructive. Definitely skimmed alot of Hunter's compulsive analyses but a satisfying book to finish for a guy (me) with no political itch.
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Jan 22, 2013 17:53
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Finished up The Space Whiskey Death Chronicles by William Vitka. It's a short story collection, so it's a bit hit and miss. Some stories are pretty good, some are kinda craptastic. Solid 3 out of 5 stars though. I'd give it 4, cause some stories are actually pretty good, but the formatting on the kindle version has quite a few errors where words are not spaced correctly and that just bugs the poo poo out of the  in me.I really liked the western story, and the gargoyle story was pretty awesome. I think it's a goon writer, so it's worth peeking at the sample at the very least.
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Jan 23, 2013 17:03
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Flag in Exile, by David Weber. There's something reassuring about the fact that you can predict the entire plot of an Honor Harrington book before you even open it. Honor gets thrust into some new position of authority. Horrible people commit atrocities at great length and horribleness. Honor explodes the poo poo out of people who totally deserve it. There's a big, final space battle where Honor beats the bad guys while suffering incredibly high casualties. I feel like the final space battle and the final sword duel should have switched positions - the latter was the real climax of the book. I couldn't bring myself to care about all the Peeps/Manties space politics when all the Grayson religious subterfuge was so much fun. Next: The Long Earth, by Terry Pratchet and Stephen Baxter.
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Jan 23, 2013 19:42
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Did I really read an entire book without anyone else posting here? The Long Earth, by Terry Pratchet and Stephen Baxter. An extremely compelling book, primarily for the setting for which it is named. What happens to human society when there are an infinite number of parallel universes devoid of human life, all of them easily accessible to anyone with the knowledge required to reach them? I almost wish the story had focused more on the staggering ramifications of Earth suddenly being thrust into a post-scarcity existence. However, the other thread of the story - Joshua and Lobsang's journey into the distant edges of the Long Earth - was also plenty exciting, and Lobsang was a fantastic side character, to which Joshua didn't quite compare as a leading man. Ending talk: Talk about a non-ending, though! After all the weird out-of-nowhere talk of Joshua being the chosen one, he sure didn't do a thing while Lobsang handled the entire confrontation with First Person Singular. Then suddenly Madison is destroyed in a nuclear attack, and then it cuts off in the middle of a thought. Bizarre way to end the book. Next, going big with former Book of the Month Cloud Atlas.
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Jan 25, 2013 21:45
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Finished up American Gods by Neil Gaiman the other day. I liked it quite a bit. I loved the first quarter and flew through it, and then some time around the middle it kind of slowed down. Really weird pacing, but it held my attention and was a fun, interesting read. Also finished The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes. I loved it. The main character, Tony, was just so well drawn. Tony is a total rear end in a top hat, but I never disliked him. I actually related to him a lot more than I'd like to admit. The ending was a little weird, it was like it was too dramatic for it's own good, and caused it to seem paradoxically anticlimactic. At least to me. Still loved it, couldn't recommend it more.
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Jan 25, 2013 21:56
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I finished up A Murder is Announced by Christie from the murder mystery read-through here a while back and A Clash of Kings by GRRM from the A Song of Ice and Fire series a bit more recently. The first was my first Christie novel (and I'm  as hell for figuring out the twist), and the latter obviously a 'build-up' novel to ASOS. I feel like there were things he cut out of this book just for the sake of having cliffhangers, but I guess that's just his style. It reads quickly for a 900-something page book. Only 3 books left until I get to join the bad thread.  Next up are The Handmaid's Tale and The Book Thief.
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Jan 26, 2013 19:59
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Autumncomet posted:
These two books are in my top 5. I'm excited for you.
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Jan 27, 2013 02:32
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I just finished Ubik by Philip K Dick. What an amazing book, PKD really knows how to churn out mindtwisting science fiction. I loved it. Time to start on Valis.
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Jan 27, 2013 14:54
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I just finished No Easy Day by Mark Owen. Overall I am somewhere in the middle with it. I enjoyed this first part of the book that dealt with his training to become a SEAL (as a former Marine I am a sucker for things like this), and the last part that deals with the raid on OBL's compound. While I think some of the greatest fiction has come from wars and the military, in relation to non-fiction not so much (of course Jarhead and Generation Kill are really good non-fiction books).
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Jan 27, 2013 16:51
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A Memory of Light, the last book of The Wheel of Time series. I wasn't impressed by this book. If anything, it was kind of a letdown. Too many shonen jump moments, the Last Battle went on forever, the fight between Rand and the DO was just guh, and then end. The end of chapter 40 was my favorite part. It really did lose momentum about halfway in. So nuts to that book. Grave Peril, book 3 of the Dresden Files. Here's a simple review: hell's bells, hell's bells, hell's bells, hell's bells, hell's bells, hell's bells, hell's bells, and so on and so forth. Really? This series gets better?
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Jan 27, 2013 17:24
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Yea, the first 3 are the "worst". After that you get into more of the mythology of the fae, apocalyptic battles, demons and angels and porn star witches (still one of my favorites of the series) then it kinda shits itself for a book or two, and then cranks back up into "oh, gently caress that's pretty cool". Get used to Hell's Bells though, that's his catchphrase for about 98% of the series. It lessens in the later books.
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Jan 27, 2013 17:39
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I thought it was just supposed to be the first two that sucked, and it picked up at book three? I read the first two, and have serious doubts about continuing.
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Jan 28, 2013 05:47
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foxatee posted:A Memory of Light, the last book of The Wheel of Time series. I wasn't impressed by this book. If anything, it was kind of a letdown. Too many shonen jump moments, the Last Battle went on forever, the fight between Rand and the DO was just guh, and then end. The end of chapter 40 was my favorite part. It really did lose momentum about halfway in. So nuts to that book. If you don't like the third dresden book you probably won't like the rest of the series. Also, what's a "shonen jump moment"
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Jan 28, 2013 15:51
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50 Shades Darker or, In which Anastasia Rose Steele fellates a stalk of asparagus. I hate myself.
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Jan 29, 2013 04:13
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Drewsky posted:Finished up American Gods by Neil Gaiman the other day. I liked it quite a bit. I loved the first quarter and flew through it, and then some time around the middle it kind of slowed down. Really weird pacing, but it held my attention and was a fun, interesting read. Slightly weird, but I read those two books back-to-back this time last year. I didn't really like American Gods all that much (it wasn't bad by any stretch--I enjoyed parts of it a lot--it just didn't keep me engaged). The Sense of An Ending is definitely one of my favorite books, though. I too related to Tony a bit too much, but I wouldn't consider him a huge rear end in a top hat. He just happened to have a positively-biased revisionist history of his own life, but that's just being human. Or maybe I'm an rear end in a top hat 
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Jan 29, 2013 06:36
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The Grey posted:I thought it was just supposed to be the first two that sucked, and it picked up at book three? Well, the first one has "First novel syndrome", the second one is just a poo poo book, and the third one is basically trying to clear up the plot threads from the first 2. There are some other poo poo books (Proven Guilty was a horrible plot, as was the halloween one), but overall the series is pretty good. If by book 4 you are just completely hating it, bail cause it really takes a bit to get into the crazy poo poo that makes the series fun.
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Jan 29, 2013 09:36
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Alright, I just finished Summer Knight, book 4 of the Dresden Files. This was by far a better, more enjoyable read than the last three books. It wasn't without flaws (the dialogue really suffers at times), but at least I'm not getting repetitive description and "hells bells" on every drat page. I guess I'll stick with it until something better comes along. Oh, and someone asked me to explain shonen jump moments. Basically, aMoL suffered from a lot of anime fight sequences. It was just ridiculous.
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Jan 29, 2013 19:59
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foxatee posted:Oh, and someone asked me to explain shonen jump moments. Basically, aMoL suffered from a lot of anime fight sequences. It was just ridiculous. Jordan's greatest strength as a writer- after world-building and describing dresses- was describing combat; pretty much every one of Sanderson's fight/battle scenes read like a Hollywood script to me and I found them mostly disappointing (The poo poo with the flaming arrows as Lan rode to fight Demandred? Egwene in the dramatic beam of light when the Seanchan attacked the White Tower? So many moments like that).
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Jan 29, 2013 20:25
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funkybottoms posted:Jordan's greatest strength as a writer- after world-building and describing dresses- was describing combat; pretty much every one of Sanderson's fight/battle scenes read like a Hollywood script to me and I found them mostly disappointing (The poo poo with the flaming arrows as Lan rode to fight Demandred? Egwene in the dramatic beam of light when the Seanchan attacked the White Tower? So many moments like that). Keep in mind that Sanderson normally puts very big emphasis in his fight scenes on clever use of magic and tricks within his magical systems. Which is something he couldn't do that as much within the wheel of time universe. So you might very well be right that Jordan was better at combat scenes within the WoT books, but I wouldn't say Jordan is better at describing combat than Sanderson. In my case, I disliked Jordan's magic duels because I felt it was too often just a magical equivalent of a arm wrestling match. Example: that time when Nynaeve fought Moghedien for the first time. Whereas in Sanderson's books the antagonists are always way stronger and often more skilled, yet often end up losing because the protagonist uses the magical system in a much more intelligent way (and/or has some clever tricks up his/her sleeve). Basically, read the Mistborn/Alloy of Law for Sanderson's take on magical combat and read the Way of Kings because it's his best book and really good.
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Jan 30, 2013 00:02
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