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Cream_Filling posted:I like to pretend that christian fiction stopped existing after the CS Lewis/GK Chesterton era. Most of the non-blockbuster urban fantasy if super christian lit. to an amazing degree. It seems like the paranormal romance tweenage porn is all based on christian lit. and feeling guilty.
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Sep 24, 2013 03:48
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The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchett. 5 stars. The first officially YA Discworld book, but despite that it's still dark, scary — truly terrifying in some sequences — and full of mature themes about death and life, and ethics and existentialism. It's also goddamn wonderful from go to whoa. The book is packed with dozens of loveable characters, from the titular Maurice, truly the Danny Ocean of cats, to the many varied and fascinating rats (Darktan and Sardines being among my favourites). Malicia is also a brilliant character, a girl obsessed with narrative tropes of fairy tales, who at last finds herself in one and is having the time of her life. This book made me laugh countless times, and even cry once or twice. It's up there with the best of Discworld, but with more heart, I think.
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Sep 24, 2013 03:52
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Pines by Blake Crouch on the 12th. I grabbed it because the author indicated he was heavily influenced by Twin Peaks. I read it expecting Agent Cooper drinking a drat fine cup of coffee while searching for Laura's killer, instead I got Nadine cheerleading and Ben Horne fighting the Civil War. Ignore.
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Sep 24, 2013 21:59
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Karenina posted:Also, Inch'Allah Dimanche by Yamina Benguigui. I'm not sure what I expected out of this, but it was so underwhelming. I liked the movie. I didn't even know it was based on a book.
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Sep 25, 2013 00:59
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It's got a lot of drama with very little substance to it. Just a series of sad things that don't hit you nearly as hard as they ought to.
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Florida Betty posted:I liked the movie. I didn't even know it was based on a book. Could be the other way around. I plan to watch the movie tonight--maybe I can better judge it with that in mind.
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Sep 25, 2013 22:26
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Team Yankee, by Harold Coyle. One of my favorite books of all time, and the hardest to find(It's print run was REALLY short). I combed every used book store I could find, and finally happened upon a copy in a public library branch after something like two years of searching(you can find it on the internet, but what fun is that?). It's essentially a realistic "what if" WW3 scenario told through the eyes of, and coincidentally written by, an American tank commander stationed in West Germany in the late 80's. What makes it better than, say, Tom Clancy is the superb characterization and related drama and the fact that the guy who wrote it was pretty much applying his training for the conflict-to-be and filling it with his anticipations and fears. Oh, and it's not silly war porn that only a Northrop Grumman Engineer could love. But to each his own. I must admit it has a special place in my heart because I was born in West Germany to two American soldiers, one of them a tank commander, and there was a sort of morbid fascination with it. Especially concerning the reality of what would happen to the families of the U.S. Soldiers stationed there in the event of hostilities(with awkward facts like there only being the one chemical suit in the house and the fulda gap being right next door). Though it is a little jargon heavy, it is kind enough to include a glossary for most things a civilian might have trouble with. Very well written, and absolutely worth your time, even if it's not typically your genre(assuming you can find it).
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Sep 26, 2013 12:00
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This time I've read: The Crimson Labyrinth by Yusuke Kishi. It's an interesting horror piece. It's probably because I'm a big baby, but I had to stop reading this book for a while because I tended to read over lunch and well, part way through the book are plenty of chances to ruin your lunch. So fair warning. I enjoyed it once I devoted time outside my normal reading time to finishing it. From what I can tell, it's a superb translation; I never really felt like I was reading a translation aside from a few parts where I wondered how something was in Japanese (and that was more on me than the translators). Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan. Ok, this book is nearly as old as I am, but I wanted more Sagan after I finished watching Cosmos. The beginning is a bit depressing, because it's like "yup we're stupid and we're probably going to ruin the earth," but soon it becomes "yup space is awesome". And it's always nice to have a reminder of how ridiculously much we spend on defense, even in 1994. The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson. This one will deserve a good review on Goodreads. I feel like I owe the author an apology for not trusting them. The lead is (understandably) a crummy person, and I was really worried this was just gonna turn out to be wish fulfillment. But no, it's about the character growing up and becoming a pretty awesome person. I tore through it in two days, and I need to grab the next book.
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Sep 26, 2013 14:08
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I just finished Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'Connor. It was... okay, I guess. I had heard good things, and I liked a couple of the stories (the first, the one about the old man and his granddaughter, and the one about the whiny artist son who thinks he is dying). Overall it was just kind of a slog though.
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Sep 26, 2013 14:20
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Just finished It by Stephen King. I really enjoyed it up until the last 175 pages or so. The ending was really anticlimactic for me. I guess building up the unknowable cosmic horror that was It and still having it be able to be killed by mere humans for the happy ending forced his hand, but I would have much preferred a more Lovecraftian ending (since that was what he was channeling here) where everyone dies or goes insane. I suppose that's not really the King style though. Also, regarding the underage gang-bang in the sewers... My wife saw me reading that part and just started laughing at my face. She said it looked like someone was holding a small turd under my nose. I guess that part was written as well as something like that could be without getting too horribly creepy, but still. Yech. Finally, did King have some unholy power over his editor/publisher? 1/3 to 1/2 of the book could have been cut and nothing would have been lost and it would have been a much tighter narrative. I'll give it 3/5.
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Sep 27, 2013 14:13
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The only Stephen King I've ever read was The Shining and The Mist, and I enjoyed both. I saw the movie and thought it was pretty drat creepy, if that helps. Would you still recommend it? I guess they left the underage gang-bang out of that version.
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Sep 27, 2013 15:39
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Danny Dravot posted:The only Stephen King I've ever read was The Shining and The Mist, and I enjoyed both. I saw the movie and thought it was pretty drat creepy, if that helps. Would you still recommend it? I actually think I would. I really enjoyed the characterizations of the kids. There were some very good, creepy parts to the story, and Pennywise is a great idea. The build-up and slow realization of what's really going on in Derry was done well IMHO. I was just left cold by the "big reveal" and the resolution. Give it a shot - if you don't like it it's only 1200 pages. 
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Sep 27, 2013 15:50
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Yeah, IT is good King, despite the... weirdness at the end. I re-read it recently after a couple years. I figured that maybe I could piece together the part with the sex at the end, like maybe I'd misremembered it or something. Nope, definitely happens. I love the book, but I'll be damned if I know what exactly the point of that was.
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Sep 27, 2013 16:12
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Finagle posted:Yeah, IT is good King, despite the... weirdness at the end. I re-read it recently after a couple years. I figured that maybe I could piece together the part with the sex at the end, like maybe I'd misremembered it or something. Well, according to Bev the sex was to bring them all together again. The reason they had magic to begin with was due to either the Turtle or the Other using them to foil It. After partially defeating It the first time, they started losing that magic somewhat. Eddie's power was his ability to never get lost. As they started to drift away from each other his power dissipated and they became lost under the city. Bev reasoned, "Dad says sex is powerful. We need power and we need to come back together. Everyone should sex me now even though I don't know what it is. Go ahead and put your thing in my thing and bounce up and down on me." I understand the idea; sex magic is a thing (the wand is a phallus, the cup a vagina, etc.). It was still super-duper creepy to read about a 5th grade girl having her first two orgasms and commenting on the size of Ben's dick.
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Sep 27, 2013 16:23
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Every father's dream! 
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Sep 27, 2013 16:45
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I just finished two "Jack Reacher" novels by Lee Child: Gone Tomorrow and A Wanted Man. The titles might strike you as generic, and they are which is fitting for such generic airport novels as these. Jack Reacher is a retired military guy who apparently spends his time wandering around the U.S. aimlessly, randomly getting involved into high-level international terrorism conspiracies by sheer random chance. I've heard the term "murderhobo" thrown around to describe the typical player character in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign, and that seems to fit Jack Reacher pretty well. He wanders around, gets his quest hooks from nowhere, gets himself involved in something despite getting many warnings that this is not his business and it's okay to wander off. He has no home and travels with only a few things in his pocket, and has no real motivation or direction to his wanderings. He has no other life, no friends or family, and only had a vague objective for something besides the crime-of-the-book in one of the books, and that was to hitchhike to Virginia to talk to some unspecified woman. At the end, Jack usually has a big climactic gunfight with a couple dozen terrorists. The authorities don't seem to ever mind all his interference (obstruction of justice, assault on federal officials, kidnappings, and terrorist murder). The books were not bad books, they're fairly intelligent and well-researched without a huge amount of logical holes, but they're not really all that compelling either.
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Sep 29, 2013 01:25
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Danny Dravot posted:The only Stephen King I've ever read was The Shining ... I just finished The Shining. It was excellent. It is jarring how thematically different it is from the movie. Next up is The Brothers Karamazov (kicking off a classics phase).
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Sep 29, 2013 14:56
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:Jack Reacher is a retired military guy who apparently spends his time wandering around the U.S. aimlessly, randomly getting involved into high-level international terrorism conspiracies by sheer random chance. I've heard the term "murderhobo" thrown around to describe the typical player character in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign, and that seems to fit Jack Reacher pretty well. The plot of the two books you read sounds essentially interchangeable with One Shot, he ambles into town like a super murdery version of Caine from Kung Fu and finds himself conveniently wrapped up in a huge conspiracy involving some stock archetypal bad guys that need to be taken out. Although One Shot's twist was pretty interesting, it involves a guy being framed for a shooting, and I found myself pulled into more than I expected to be. There's a lot of militaryish porn involving ballistics and firearms and general streetsmart knowledge that Mr. Reacher seems to be an expert in that's fun to read for some reason. One thing that drove me crazy though was the overuse of the phrase "(NAME) said nothing.", does he do that in the books you read? There are a whole lot of characters in this book who do a lot of saying nothing, especially Mr. Strong, Silent Murdery type himself. I did a search on my Nook and the phrase appears in One Shot 144 times.
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Sep 30, 2013 06:08
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RightClickSaveAs posted:One thing that drove me crazy though was the overuse of the phrase "(NAME) said nothing.", does he do that in the books you read? Reacher said nothing. (some guy figured out that it is the most frequent phrase in Childs' collected works. Also, http://www.cafepress.co.uk/mf/45656226/reacher55555_tshirt ) BrosephofArimathea fucked around with this message at 07:14 on Sep 30, 2013 |
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Sep 30, 2013 07:11
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BrosephofArimathea posted:Reacher said nothing. Sounds like this guy would be great at writing novelisations of JRPGs. "..."
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Sep 30, 2013 10:57
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RightClickSaveAs posted:I finished One Shot not long ago, which I grabbed a while ago when it was a B&N free friday ebook, and I guiltily enjoyed it. I'd read more of this series if they're ever on sale for cheap. Murderhobo is a great description for the protagonist, he has to have killed hundreds of people by now with the 18 or 19 books that are out, making him essentially a serial killer drifter. It would be slightly more accurate to describe Jack Reacher as a one-man A-Team who actually manages to hit people when he shoots.
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Sep 30, 2013 14:06
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Finished The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro last night. What a fantastic book. I saw the movie long before I even knew it was an adapted screenplay and am quite frankly amazed at how well the conversion was done. The book is written as a diary which jumps between flashbacks and multiple digressions on the nature of dignity and what it means to be a proper English butler, so the amount of work necessary to turn it into a linear, filmable narrative must have been tremendous. I'm honestly not sure which version I prefer. The movie is beautifully shot and perfectly acted. The book is written beautifully and is far more subtle regarding the growing love between Stevens and Miss Kenton. As a matter of fact, the book doesn't even really make this in any way clear until nearly 65% of the way through. The movie makes this far more apparent much earlier. The book also does a much better job of paralleling the realization by Stevens that he wasted much of his life in service to Lord Darlington and lost his chance at happiness with Miss Kenton and Lord Darlington's understanding that he was a pawn used by the Nazis to push the doctrine of appeasement.. Spoiler free recommendation: read this book. 5/5.
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Sep 30, 2013 15:12
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BrosephofArimathea posted:Reacher said nothing. Actually, it's the 29th highest frequency trigram, which is surprisingly high for such a specific phrase.  Reacher books are a guilty pleasure. They are completely nonsensical. Sociopathic drifter who never loses a fight and always gets laid. The only redeeming quality for me is the Sherlock-like deductions that he makes.
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Sep 30, 2013 16:32
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Jedit posted:It would be slightly more accurate to describe Jack Reacher as a one-man A-Team who actually manages to hit people when he shoots. To be fair, the A-Team was basically a band of murder-hobos, too.
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Sep 30, 2013 17:04
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I just finished Anthony Burgess' Honey for the Bears. It took me a few chapters to really get into the story as a dark comedy and stop trying to take it as a serious satire of the Cold War. By the end, it reminded me of late-Soviet black comedies that I have watched. It is worth a read to follow Paul Hussey embark on a drunken, inept mission to sell synthetic dresses, only to crash and burn in a flaming pile of brandy, inept police, and questions of everyone's sexuality. All to illustrate that the people are the people and the state is the state with the details being mere window dressings. E: I'd watch the hell out of a noir screen adaptation.
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Sep 30, 2013 17:16
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Cream_Filling posted:To be fair, the A-Team was basically a band of murder-hobos, too. Apart from never killing anyone, hence my qualifier.
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Sep 30, 2013 18:23
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*edit* Just finished Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence. It wasn't as bad as the internet makes out, but was still pretty generic. The person who summed it up as 'The Blade Itself - diet lite zero lowcarb edition' was pretty close, although 'badly written Bakker' works too. Grimdark without the characters or world to make it compelling. Has some pretty interesting ideas, but couldn't give a drat about any of the characters. In fact, aside from maybe four - Main Guy, Main Sidekick, Magic Negro, Mutant from Fallout - I couldn't even remember their names. I'll probably read the next one if I get bored. Jedit posted:Apart from never killing anyone, hence my qualifier. However, much like The A Team, if Reacher doesn't manage to shoot someone, he will almost always throw them into/through/off something. BrosephofArimathea fucked around with this message at 21:30 on Oct 2, 2013 |
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Oct 1, 2013 02:36
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Just finished The Black Count by Tom Reiss which I picked up after seeing it pop up in a few threads here. Great read and sadly learned some things that had of course had been white-washed in history. Alexandre Dumas improbable rise is a fascinating read, has he essentially escapes being a slave to rise near to the top of the French Military only to be imprisoned and later freed with nothing with his rights in jeopardy because of Napoleon. Sadly most of my education in history has been very "american" even though I took AP World and AP Euro and probably learned more about the French Revolution from this book. Which has lead me to order Citizens and The Days of the French Revolution. But first on to: Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar geeves fucked around with this message at 20:24 on Oct 1, 2013 |
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Oct 1, 2013 20:22
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Oldstench posted:The Remains of the Day Ishiguro just writes about quiet, terrible regret so well. I tore through Never Let Me Go in one sitting, on a couch in a public library, trying not to cry. Also, the trio that adapted Remains of the Day also worked on the movies Howard's End and A Room with a View. Both are great movies and great books.
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Oct 3, 2013 04:05
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Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra for the 2nd time. It continues to be one of the strangest yet oddly attractive books I have.
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Oct 3, 2013 09:13
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War of the Worlds Managed to pick up a lot of older sci-fi books when the Borders near me was closing down. I may have read it as a teenager, I definitely read The Time Machine. Definitely didn't remember Wells being so heavy handed with his commentary.
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Oct 3, 2013 09:49
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The Lies of Locke Lamora Pretty decent stuff - especially for a debut. I liked the world that Lynch created but thought the lack of any kind of internal narration flattened the characters a little bit. The flashbacks were nice and they fleshed out a little bit of the character's motivations, but it was tough to really care about them one way or another. There are multiple sequels out now but I'm not sure if I really will bother reading any of them. Again, decent book, easy and fast to read, good filler stuff between more challenging endeavors.
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Oct 3, 2013 13:44
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I just re-read The Crying of Lot 49. I'm pretty sure I hated it this time as well. I can appreciate the (too?) clever writing and the (too?) obscure references. I get a sense of a love-hate relationship with '60's counter-culture permeating the book. What I don't get is what I'm supposed to take from the book. If you break down the story into its basic plot, a woman has either stumbled into a centuries-long conspiracy pitting two rival mail systems against one another, a woman's ex-lover is rich enough to play a terrible practical joke on her, or a woman slowly goes insane, it seems simple enough. But so much is guarded by Pynchon's writing. Perhaps that was the point? Wrap a conspiracy story in confusing prose to make it even more mysterious. Perhaps not. Am I simply too ignorant for Pynchon? Please note, Pynchonites, this is not a critique of him, but of myself. He writes far above my pay-grade. Take this sentence, for example: Pynchon posted:[He] Would then proceed at a KCUF record hop to look out again across the gleaming gym floor and there in one of the giant keyholes inscribed for basketball see, groping her vertical backstroke a little awkward opposite any boy heels might make her an inch taller than, a Sharon, Linda or Michele, seventeen and what is known as a hip one, whose velveted eyes ultimately, statistically would meet Mucho's and respond, and the thing would develop then groovy as it could when you found you couldn't get statutory rape really out of the back of your law-abiding head. I mean, goddammit, it's a terrible sentence. I spent 20 minutes just trying to parse that poo poo the first time I hit it. I actually had to discuss it with a friend until it finally made sense. There are many more examples in the book. Huge, rambling run-ons that force multiple re-reads until what they are trying to convey is made somewhat apparent. Perversely, I've heard this is his most accessible work. I read about 1/2 of V. five or so years ago and just couldn't finish it. It was too ridiculous. I feel I should just give up and only read genre fiction from now on.
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Oct 5, 2013 16:25
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What's wrong with asking a reader to read twice once in a while?
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Oct 5, 2013 17:44
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I think it's bit wrong when it's a sentence that isn't hiding any deep hidden meaning or anything else to really merit a re-read. I hate Pynchon though.
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Oct 5, 2013 18:18
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Oldstench posted:Take this sentence, for example: I think he's hiding in a corner looking at underage girls playing basketball? I have, honestly, no idea. Have you tried anything by Nick Cave or Martin Amis? It reminds me a little of The Death of Bunny Munro, only not as comprehensible. They might be worth looking at if you do like that sort of thing. Nettle Soup fucked around with this message at 23:36 on Oct 6, 2013 |
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Oct 5, 2013 18:19
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Just finished The Hobbit for maybe the 4th time, it's one of my favourite books and as of right now it is about 77 years old.They really don't make them like this anymore. Now I just have to get around to finally watching the film 
You wanna know my kung-fu?
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Oct 5, 2013 21:12
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Please tell me you are talking about the old animated film that kicked rear end. And as a kid who spent summers mostly living outdoors and let to wander around on my own, I still love The Hobbit dearly and have worn through two paperbacks. Anyway, I finished Starship Troopers last night and it was awesome. The first half was a very quick read and full of action while the second half really did a fine job fleshing out the world. I think it would make an interesting back to back read with The Martian Chronicles.
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Oct 6, 2013 01:52
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Since Jonathan Lethem's new novel was released a month or so ago, I decided to read Motherless Brooklyn. It was really solid. I laughed out loud a few times at Lionel's outbursts and tics. The plot was a by-the-numbers mystery, but with a few variations in setting and character. I was worried about picking up Lethem's books, as they have a reputation for being "hipster trash," but there was real merit here. Sometimes, things are well-liked for good reason. MillionsV fucked around with this message at 17:33 on Oct 6, 2013 |
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Oct 6, 2013 17:30
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Mr. Squishy posted:What's wrong with asking a reader to read twice once in a while? Absolutely nothing. As I said, "this is not a critique of him, but of myself. He writes far above my pay-grade." It's just sotamarsu posted:I think it's bit wrong when it's a sentence that isn't hiding any deep hidden meaning or anything else to really merit a re-read. that I agree with this sentiment. The sentence in question is ultimately just describing a man flirting with underage girls at a dance, but it's just such an awkward sentence that I simply couldn't parse it. Anyway, just read To Build a Fire by Jack London to cleanse my palette. Great story. Rooted for the dog the whole time.
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Oct 6, 2013 19:49
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I just finished High Plains Drifter by Ernest Tidyman. Just watch the movie. The book was pretty much the same anti-hero in a world of poo poo, but left you hating the stranger while shaking your head that he (an unapologetic drunken rapist) was one of the three most upstanding people in the whole town. At least he was blunt and honest about himself. If you like mindless, trashy quick action reads as a break from deeper books, it is worth a read. It did leave me wishing the movie ended the same way.
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Oct 8, 2013 16:09
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