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Well the whole thing is he was probably already reading them anyway, and had prior knowledge that he would be doing so. But he was already discounting them from his list and now decides I'm going to up my books read count now so that I can feel like I can list them as well. Its just padding so you can say you read more. And we do have two (in reality there are four different forums) where you can talk about graphic novels/comics/manga/ what have you that it seems really off topic to talk about reading them in the book barn.
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Apr 10, 2014 18:21
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Stravinsky posted:Well the whole thing is he was probably already reading them anyway, and had prior knowledge that he would be doing so. But he was already discounting them from his list and now decides I'm going to up my books read count now so that I can feel like I can list them as well. Its just padding so you can say you read more. And we do have two (in reality there are four different forums) where you can talk about graphic novels/comics/manga/ what have you that it seems really off topic to talk about reading them in the book barn. It's not a contest, so stop talking about "padding your numbers". His goal and how he attains it is his personally. It has NO affect on you whatsoever, and it encourages him to read. So stop with this insane de-rail and start posting the books you read and what you thought about them, or stop posting. Edit: This stupid de-rail you started is 100 times worse than discussion about graphic novels. Fremry fucked around with this message at 18:29 on Apr 10, 2014 |
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Apr 10, 2014 18:26
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Fremry posted:It's not a contest, so stop talking about "padding your numbers". His goal and how he attains it is his personally. It has NO affect on you whatsoever, and it encourages him to read. So stop with this insane de-rail and start posting the books you read and what you thought about them, or stop posting. I agree, its not a contest. In reality nothing anyone does on these forums (bar someone hunting me down to murder me because they are mad that I'm questioning grapic novels place in a thread inside tbb) effects me personally. If your problem is that this is all metaposting then I can take it to the tbb general thread or qcs if that helps you.
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Apr 10, 2014 18:35
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Stravinsky posted:I agree, its not a contest. In reality nothing anyone does on these forums (bar someone hunting me down to murder me because they are mad that I'm questioning grapic novels place in a thread inside tbb) effects me personally. If your problem is that this is all metaposting then I can take it to the tbb general thread or qcs if that helps you. Yeah this is all a bit too meta. For what it's worth, here's my current thought process on this question: 1) It's really tempting to give you a mod challenge to write a book report on Persepolis but you don't deserve that so I won't. 2) As far as I'm concerned graphic novels fall within the definition of "book" and are hence fine for discussion in this forum; there's some overlap with BSS sure but I don't see that as a problem that needs to be solved. (Think about it: any rule on that front would get mega-stupid mega-fast, just in terms of enforcement.) 3) That said, I'm also not going to police this thread into some sort of super safe space for book hugs. This is SA after all, and a certain amount of ribbing people for their book choices is also fine so long as it stays roughly on topic to actual books (however defined). 4) Anyone who has any further thoughts on those questions feel free to PM me about it. I'm open to persuasion here but let's keep it out of this particular thread. If you post something in QCS you'll probably need to PM me a link because QCS is a scary place and I don't exactly read it much. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 20:40 on Apr 10, 2014 |
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Apr 10, 2014 20:29
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Stravinsky posted:I agree, its not a contest. In reality nothing anyone does on these forums (bar someone hunting me down to murder me because they are mad that I'm questioning grapic novels place in a thread inside tbb) effects me personally. If your problem is that this is all metaposting then I can take it to the tbb general thread or qcs if that helps you.
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Apr 10, 2014 21:44
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Look, if you want something legitimate to complain about I just finished a book by Gary Gygax on how to be a "Master role-player." It was as bad as it sounds. 35) A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire #1) by George R.R. Martin It's the first time I've actually cared about political intrigue in a fantasy work, and I think GRRM did a great job with the characterization in the novel. I'm going to have to watch the show now to see how it compares. 36) Yi Soon Shin: Warrior and Defender by Onrie Kompan (graphic novel, counts as 1/2) I picked this one up at a local comic convention because the author had a decent pitch. It wasn't as good as the pitch. It has really weak dialogue and art that only really shines on the full page spreads. It did however convince me that I should find an actual book on Yi Soon Shin, so if anyone has some recommendations on that front I'd love to hear them! 37) The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde I'm trying, I really am, but I just didn't enjoy this one. I didn't like the overly melodramatic dialogue, and I'm not a fan of Gothic horror. 38) Role-Playing Mastery by Gary Gygax It's an interesting in the way that a 1920's telephone operator's manual would be interesting to a collector of telephone memorabilia. If you're not into rpgs you will have zero interest in it, and if you are into rpgs then it's a curious relic of a bygon age. It's got a lot of advice for becoming a better roleplayer or GM (some of which is good, a lot of which is really groggy). It also has sections on Gary's game design advice, circa 1987. Gary uses a professorial tone with the book. It's like reading a lecture on roleplaying. That brings my running total to 36.5/120.
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Apr 10, 2014 23:16
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Guy A. Person posted:
Were you stroking your beard and smoking a French cigarette as you wrote this? Just curious.
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Apr 10, 2014 23:28
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Argali posted:Were you stroking your beard and smoking a French cigarette as you wrote this? Just curious. I can't grow a beard. Thanks for emasculating me, dick t 
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Apr 11, 2014 00:06
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:If you post something in QCS you'll probably need to PM me a link because QCS is a scary place and I don't exactly read it much. I dont have pms, but here is a link to the thread in qcs: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3624250
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Apr 11, 2014 04:04
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thespaceinvader posted:26: Imager's Intrigue is in progress - but it's going to be the last in the series I bother with. I'm never terribly impressed with Modesitt when I try his work unfortunately. 26: Imager's Intrigue was, again... fine, but fell apart quite a lot the minute I started looking at it funny. Not impressed. 27: Empress by Karen Miller. My first by this author, I'm interested to see how it goes. Engaging so far.
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Apr 11, 2014 21:30
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apophenium posted:In January I read: Whoops, forgot about this thread! 3. Harbinger by David Mack 4. The Crippled God by Steven Erikson 5. Consider Phlebus by Iain M. Banks Finally finished the main Malazan series! It was an excellent ride. Definitely going to be reading more from Mr. Banks. I'm taking a short break from the Malazan universe with Masters of Doom and then I'm going headfirst back into Blood and Bone and Forge of Darkness. After that I'll probably return to the Vanguard series or more Culture.
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Apr 15, 2014 22:12
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5) I just finished Raising Steam, it was better than Snuff and I laughed at a few passages, I'll be honest though the last good discworld book was Thud. I'm now behind schedule, not too worried, I'll be travelling for work in July and so will have some time to read. Have kids, its great, but realise you'll have no free time. Dirty Frank fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Apr 15, 2014 |
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Apr 15, 2014 22:37
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Hopefully now that work is less busy I'll have some more time to hunker down with a good book! I just finished a few good ones that I started a while back. 2: Foxtrot (Washington Post, March 30) - I don't remember why I liked this one, I think the blonde kid made a paper airplane. Lots of characters, had a hard time following the story. Would not recommend. 3: Garfield (Washington Post, April 3) - Jon wanted Garfield to kill a mouse, but hoo boy, that cat is lazy. 4: Cathy (Washington Post, April 6) - This one took me a while to chew through, if I'm being honest. There were ten panels (counting the title) and some of them had close to a dozen words each. It was tough to stay focused but I was really proud of myself when I finished it. I kind of lost track of what the overall theme of the book was, though, something about taxes? Could probably use a re-read at some point in the future. I'm up to four books this year, since I consider my Outlook folder at work to be a sort of "never ending story"
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Apr 16, 2014 14:08
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thespaceinvader posted:27: Empress by Karen Miller. My first by this author, I'm interested to see how it goes. Engaging so far. 27: Empress was really quite good actually. Well written, interesting characters, an unusual culture with unusual-feeling language patterns that at the same time weren't (too) distracting or obnoxious. An interesting magic system which was explored, shown rather than told. Overally a very good book though the ending did feel just a little obvious pretty much as soon as Dmitrak was conceived. 28: The Riven Kingdom again by Karen Miller. Next in the series. About two pages in so far.
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Apr 16, 2014 21:10
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44.Good Poems for Hard Times - edited by Garrison Keillor I'm not huge on poetry. For the longest time I avoided it at all cost. When I started teaching English and Language Arts, I eventually had to give into poetry, but I made a promise to myself to only teach and work with poems that I genuinely enjoyed. A few years back I started teaching poems out of "Good Poems". This year, I found myself wanting more. Not every poem blew me away, but there is enough to make me happy. Keillor's anthologies are an EXCELLENT gateway into reading poetry, you can't help but find something you like, and the collection is diverse enough to give you a taste of everything. 45. Lev Grossman - The Magician King Way less depressing than "The Magicians," it suffers a bit from being the middle book of a trilogy, but at the same time Quentin finally gets the Fillory adventure he has been dreaming of. I loved every second of it and I can't wait for the third. 46. Laurell K. Hamilton - Bloody Bones. I will never read another Anita Blake novel, I promise. The first one I got via audiobook for two bucks and it was okay. I picked up a few others, this was the last. If you really like vampire novels and don't want to read anything but Vampire novels, I am sure you will be happy with this. But I am rather tired of vampire novels, especially vampire novels that are so up their own asses with overly convenient and always changing magic systems. If books are a meal, this one is dry white toast. There is worse stuff out there, but there are too many delicious books to read to waste time on these. 47. Jeff Gownly - The Dumbest Idea Ever I got this in the mail as a Goodreads giveaway. It's a graphic novel (I'm sorry but I'm counting it) and it's pretty much meant for kids. In my official review I called it "Blankets for Beginners". (This makes me want to re-read Blankets, which I love dearly). There is a big push in the publishing world thanks to Diary of a Wimpy kid to incorporate comics and story telling as a way to grab kids. A lot of the books are pretty silly and some of them are really dumb cash-ins. This isn't one of those. Gownley loves the format, and his passion for it shows through. That being said, it really lacks the depth that "Blankets", "Persepolis" or "Maus" have, but I think it's a good gateway for kids to read more than superheros and Wimpy kids. 48. William Gibson - Neuromancer I officially only read half of this book, but I am going to count it anyways. I know that people really love this book and it's important in the grade scheme of science fiction. It just didn't click with me, and this is the second time I have tried to read the damned thing. I couldn't force myself to care. I feel bad, and I feel a little guilty, but this one just wasn't for me. I am curious, when other people come across a book they can't force themselves to finish, do you record it? Does it count if you only really read half of it? I can see it both ways. Personally, sometimes it just isn't the right time for a book. If I believe I will come back to it at a later date, I won't record it. If I decide to walk away but I know that I have no interest in coming back to it, I'll just record it in my log - but i also attempt to give it a fair review. Meanwhile... I'll probably finish "Devil in the White City" by the weekend. I'm still working on WORM by Wildbow on my Kindle. I am loving this poo poo out of the book, but it is taking me FOREVER to read.
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Apr 17, 2014 02:11
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Roydrowsy posted:I am curious, I list it on Goodreads as abandoned and sometimes write a review, but I don't count it toward my total.
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Apr 17, 2014 02:56
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Roydrowsy posted:... If I abandon a book intending to pick it back up later I don't count it, but if it's a book that I don't plan to come back to I've been counting them as 1/2.
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Apr 17, 2014 04:05
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Roydrowsy posted:46. Laurell K. Hamilton - Bloody Bones. Couple of recommends from me on this score ... https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/706016.Clan_Novel_Saga_Volume_1 Novelization of White Wolf vampire RPGs, it's actually quite good. It used to be 13 individual clan novels edited into 4 and chronicles a major event through several different points of view. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21277.Already_Dead Vampire noir stuff, sort of detective-y. Fun series. Roydrowsy posted:I am curious, If I don't finish it but intend to I won't count it until I do read it, abandoned books aren't counted at all. Fellwenner fucked around with this message at 10:01 on Apr 17, 2014 |
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Apr 17, 2014 09:58
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Fellwenner posted:Couple of recommends from me on this score ... I'll take a peek at them both, as I'm not one to turn away from a reccomendation, but in general, I think I'm just done with vampires in general. That being said, I've got Poppy Z Brite's "Lost Souls" in my audiobook waiting list, so perhaps my mind will change. In the end, there are just so many vampire books you can stand though.
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Apr 18, 2014 01:18
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17) Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn. Nick Dunne's clever and beautiful wife disappears from their home on the morning of their fifth anniversary. Nick's definitely a lovely person, but is he a killer? Goodreads review. 18) Sharp Objects - Gillian Flynn. After two little girls disappear in the little Illinois town of Wind Gap, a serial killer is suspected. Wind Gap escapee turned journalist, Camille, returns to cover the story but finds her dysfunctional family sucking her back in like a black hole. Goodreads review. 19) Dark Places - In 1985, small-town Kansas boy Ben Day apparently murdered his whole family in a sacrifice to Satan. His baby sister Libby was the sole survivor, and her testimony put him in jail. Twenty-five years later, a society of ghoulish true-crime fans is willing to pay Libby to reinvestigate the killings. She takes the offer. Goodreads review. 20) Fever - Mary Beth Keane. A retelling of the story of Mary Mallon, better known as Typhoid Mary. Goodreads review. 21) Blackout - Connie Willis. Three historians travel back in time to WW2 to observe the evacuation, Dunkirk and the Blitz, and then find themselves unable to return home. 22) All Clear - Connie Willis. The sequel to Blackout. I didn't like these two much; they felt bloated and the characters weren't distinct. Goodreads review. 23) The Magicians - Lev Grossman. Really didn't like this one. Goodreads review. Why do I find it so much easier to review books I didn't like? Is it because I'm secretly an awful person? Right now, I'm reading 'Wearing the Cape' by Marion G. Harman. It's about a girl who gets an overpass dropped on her head by a terrorist and then turns into Supergirl, which puts her well ahead of the game because usually when people get overpasses to the head they turn into a pancake. The terrorist just showed up in her bedroom in the middle of the night looking like a sad angel; I'm terribly worried that he's going to be the romantic interest. ETA: No, my mistake, the eighteen-year-old heroine's assigned romantic interest is her twenty-seven-year-old divorced teacher. I think I'd have preferred the terrorist. attackbunny fucked around with this message at 16:06 on Apr 21, 2014 |
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Apr 21, 2014 15:00
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attackbunny posted:Why do I find it so much easier to review books I didn't like? Is it because I'm secretly an awful person? Personally, I find it a lot easier to pin down why I don't like something than why I do. Case in point... 25. Memories of Ice, Steven Erikson I didn't like this book nearly as much as I did Deadhouse Gates (or its sequel House of Chains). I don't think it's actually a worse book, but it has a bunch of things I object to: - It features a lot of Kruppe, and I cannot loving stand Kruppe or his bloated, self-aggrandizing speeches. - The entire subplot with Silverfox, Mhybe, and the Tlan Imass could have been resolved in about five minutes if she'd spent those five minutes explaining her plans instead of acting secretive and paranoid; I have no patience for plots that hinge entirely on people who are able to talk to each other, but unwilling to. - I honestly cannot bring myself to give a poo poo about half the characters or the gods they worship, and most of the ones I do care about die messily at the end anyways. If I had to sum this one up, I'd say it feels like a Black Company book, except it's not as good at being one. At least it features more Quick Ben. 26. House of Chains, Steven Erikson And we're back to Malazan books I enjoy! The characters in Seven Cities and the Dryjna Rebellion interest me a lot more than the war against the Pannion Domin. 27. Collected Stories of Morlock the Maker, James Enge Not an actual book, but after reading a Morlock story in The New Sword & Sorcery I went and tracked down the rest; most of them are available online, and there's about a (short) book's worth. I'll probably read the novels soon, too, but I wanted something short and refreshing after 4000+ pages of Malaz. It's quite different from the fantasy I've been reading lately, and I really like it -- anyone have recommendations for similar books? Next will probably be the Divergent trilogy so that my wife and I can discuss it without fear of spoilers, and then the next book or two in the Malazan series. I do want to finish the entire series this year, but I don't think I could read all ten books back to back.
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Apr 22, 2014 02:21
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My reading habits slowed down for a bit a little while ago, but then picked right up again soon after thanks to a new job that requires I take a ~45 minute train ride each way (worth it though, it's a fantastic job). I've tried my best to attack my to-read list as randomly as possible so I don't just fall back on reading space opera back to back  The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia. This is not very good at all. It's basically a concept art book for a few modern Zelda games, expect anything more and you'll be seriously disappointed. I guess it got such high reviews because fans were happy with that?
quote:Because the games were developed [with a focus on gameplay], it could be said that Zelda's story lines were afterthoughts. So even though the series producer (Eiji Aonuma) says that the writing was an afterthought and came about by chance, they still thought it was a good idea to base a book around it. Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. I have mixed feelings about this one. I felt like half the time it was a charming, accessible, little introduction to zazen. In other parts I struggled with the overly abstracted examples. I'm not sure I'm convinced the talks by Shunryu Suzuki translate well to book form. I always felt like I was "missing something" when he used these elaborate koan-like examples. Ironically, just by thinking too much about it I'm probably missing the point. Sitting and meditating is nice though, so I'll just keep doing that and not really worry about it. The Books of Skyrim (download). A ~1200 page behemoth of short stories, religious texts, instruction manuals, poems, plays, songs, journals and notes from the Elder Scrolls Universe. Some of the short stories were really good, to the point they could be transplanted into their own volume to make the whole thing more accessible and readable to most fantasy readers. The problem is that for most of it, you really have to be quite familiar with the video games and the lore for it to have any kind of context. I'm a fairly big fan of the games so I have that foundation already, but others may not. Still, I enjoyed almost the entire time I spent reading it, which was probably far too long since it was easy to pick up and put down between other books. The Communist Manifesto. I think this is the third time I've read this over the years. Each time I felt I understood the concepts a little more. Even still, I'm nowhere near qualified to offer any kind of opinion of this without showing my general political ignorance. If you are interested, you should probably look up a review from someone qualified to make one. I'm currently reading The Poverty of Philosophy, also by Marx. I'm making (very) slow progress with it. I usually have to reread parts since I'm exhausted on the way home and don't have the energy to get absorbed in it. I think I'm going to have to have multiple titles on the go at the same time. Leave the stuff that requires effort for the ride to work when I'm fresh and just read some easy genre fiction or something on the way home when I'm tired.
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Apr 25, 2014 03:12
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Xik posted:
Please review The Lusty Argonian Maid volumes 1 and 2 at your earliest convenience.
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Apr 25, 2014 15:01
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Dienes posted:Please review The Lusty Argonian Maid volumes 1 and 2 at your earliest convenience. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, Bethesda decided not to publish the majority of that play. Instead, teasing us with the genius contained within two tiny volumes. The volumes contain extracts of Act 4, Scene 3 and Act 7, Scene 2 of the piece. Volume one is about the importance of weapon maintenance. quote:Crantius Colto: [..] Here, polish my spear. I'll admit that when taking game-play updates introduced in Skyrim into account, this advice is largely irrelevant since the mechanic of weapon degradation was removed. Still, I feel that historical context is important and this information was clearly invaluable at the time when it was introduced in Morrowind, since weapons could "wear". The last thing a player would want was to be swarmed by a pack of Cliff Racers and be stuck with a blunt or broken weapon. Not only did volume one impart valuable information to readers, it did so in an amusing and memorable fashion. It would therefore be a struggle to give it any less then five spears out of five.  Volume two attempts to convey various pointers about baking bread. quote:Crantius Colto: This loaf isn't ready for baking, my sweet. It has yet to rise. This is especially so when combined with the tip below, which conveys the importance of pre-heating the oven before going ahead and inserting the mixture. quote:Lifts-Her-Tail: Very well, but I'm afraid my oven isn't hot enough. It could take hours! The prose is similar to volume one and I am unable to fault it. But while volume two also contains useful information, it is arguably of less importance then what is conveyed in volume one. After all, when was the last time you heard of someone having their life saved thanks to a correctly baked loaf of bread? For this fact alone and because it can't be reviewed without at least partially comparing it to the first volume, I must give it a lower score of 4 bags of flour out of five.  If I have piqued your interest (which I hope I have), and you are interested in reading the full volumes, you can do so online without having to blunder through the ~1200 page Skyrim ebook I linked in my previous post.
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Apr 26, 2014 01:21
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thespaceinvader posted:28: The Riven Kingdom again by Karen Miller. Next in the series. About two pages in so far. 28: The Riven Kingdom was good, very good. I really felt for the main characters, I was duly horrified for them when the evil 29: Hard Magic; Grimnoir Chronicles #1 by Larry Correia. I am basically reading it on the recommendation of the Writing Excuses podcast and finding it... fun, but not exceptional. The real issue I have with it is that it's not properly noir and with a title like that, it really should be. It's not in first-person narration, and that really messes with my expectations of what it's going to do. It's OK, but not exceptional.
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Apr 26, 2014 10:36
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April! 34. Claudette Colvin: Twice Towards Justice - Philip Hoose 35. The Joy Luck Club - Amy Tan 36. The Night Circus - Erin Morganstern 37. The Tombs of Atuan (Earthsea #2)- Ursula K. Leguin 38. Darkness, Take My Hand (Kenzie & Gennaro #2) - Dennis Lehane 39. Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino 40. Dodger - Terry Pratchett 41. Hollow City (Miss Peregrine’s #2) - Ransom Riggs 42. Happy Hour in Hell - Tad Williams 43. Life & Fate - Vasily Grossman 44. The Last Dragonslayer (Chronicles of Kazam #1) - Jasper Fforde 45. Wonder Boys - Michael Chabon 46. The Alloy of Law - Brandon Sanderson 47. Memoir from Antproof Case - Mark Helprin 48. The Song of the Quarkbeast (Chronicles of Kazam #2) - Jasper Fforde 49. The War of the Flowers - Tad Williams 50. The Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut Lots of books read this month! Many of them (in fact, about 6) were written for young adult audiences. The Earthsea books continue to be excellent, and Jasper Fforde's "Chronicles of Kazam" is a cute little series that reminds me of Fforde's other series, the Thursday Next series, only without disappearing up its own rear end too much. Terry Pratchett's Dodger is a fun read, too - Pratchett takes on Dickensian London, with characters like Benjamin Disraeli, Sweeney Todd, and Dickens himself. Life and Fate was my first BIG book of 2014; it was a massive tome about Russia during WWII. It was good, but it took me about 2 months to get through. It doesn't quite measure up to War and Peace, but what does? The Joy Luck Club was a lovely book about Chinese-American mothers and daughters, and The Night Circus was a wonderfully whimsical fantasy romance. (It suffers from a soppy love story and very little explanation of the magic, but I definitely enjoyed the plot and the beautiful imagery.) Wonder Boys is also a pretty solid book from Chabon, one of his better efforts, though I usually roll my eyes at the writer-writing-about-writers novels. I liked Calvino's Invisible Cities, though I couldn't tell you exactly why - it's just a collection of short descriptions of fantastic cities. Unfortunately, there were one or two stinkers - Memoir from Antproof Case was too grandiloquent to be enjoyable, and I hated the narrator. Happy Hour in Hell was also pretty bad, but I'm back on a Tad Williams kick now that he's announced a sequel trilogy to my favorite fantasy trilogy of all time so... hopefully Happy Hour is a fluke? War of the Flowers was pretty fun, on a reread. Chamberk fucked around with this message at 05:18 on Apr 30, 2014 |
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Apr 27, 2014 06:59
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April - 7: 9. The Politics (Aristotle) 10. The Prince (Niccolo Machiavelli) 11. Twelve Years a Slave (Solomon Northup) 12. The Fault in Our Stars (John Green) 13. If on a winter's night a traveller (Italo Calvino) 14. The Communist Manifesto (Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels) 15. The Age of Revolution: 1789-1848 (Eric Hobsbawm) A very productive month! The figure's a little inflated because I read about half of the Politics in the back end of March so really it's more like 6 1/2, but whatever. I'm not going to get any more read this month I don't think. The Politics made for some interesting reading. The opening few books are mostly Aristotle trying to fit together what seem to be conflicting ideas about the role of slavery in society and I don't think he really comes to a proper conclusion - either way it's pretty outrageous stuff by 21st century standards. The middle part is mostly about forms of government, and for someone who was only vaguely aware of Greek political philosophy beforehand it's intriguing that what he settles on as the supreme form of government is "polity", i.e. true-meaning aristocracy with limited democratic franchise. Then after a pretty thorough examination of what we would think of as politics, he gets into nuts and bolts stuff about education and then a semi-related discussion about music which sort of tails off halfway through, presumably because books are missing or he never got around to writing any more. It's odd to read from the perspective of a society which has thousands of books on a tightly focused range of subjects but I quite enjoyed the way this ran through whatever appeared to be on Aristotle's mind at the time. Sticking to what I said about trying to read by theme a little more I read the Politics and the Prince one after the other and it was pretty interesting to see where things had evolved and where they'd stayed the same. 16th-century Italian government has a lot more relation to the Greek city-states period than modern nation-states so a lot of the basic assumptions that don't really work in the modern era were still relevant 1800 years further on. Macchiavelli has a very cynical view, but it's hard to disagree with the truth of what's said. Twelve Years a Slave was harrowing. I don't really know much about US history or slavery in the South, so it was pretty educational in that respect as well. Northup's humanity really stands out as the centrepiece of this. The Fault in Our Stars was the cooldown book after a run of non-fiction and the pretty heavy Wolf Hall. I think I ran through it in under a day. Touching and funny and romantic. Someone I know thought it was "horribly unrealistic" about cancer patients, which was pretty funny given that John Green worked with cancer patients and half the point of the book was to write about them as real people instead of being "cancer kid" archetypes. If on a winter's night a traveller sure was a thing. It was definitely clever, and I enjoyed the way it all fit together. I think someone in the "real books" thread said they felt like the in-universe book chapters were pretty satisfying short stories instead of feeling like the start of a book which left you hanging on for more, which I'd agree with. It's encouraged me to read more Calvino which is usually a good sign. I have the Penguin Classics edition of The Communist Manifesto and the opening commentary was really insightful. I learned a fair amount about the origins of social/communist thought which was helpful for the next book and set a lot of things I half-knew straight. The Age of Revolution was brilliant. It's obviously heavy on the Marxist analysis of history, which is fine with me. I found the stuff about the French Revolution far more interesting than the Industrial Revolution, probably because the nature of the French (political and social upheaval) compared to the Industrial (increase in shipping figures, woo) is way more exciting. It's a great run through the period though and I liked seeing how a lot of the same ideas which show up in the Politics influence moderate liberalism a couple thousand years later. Next I have The Fall of Paris: The Siege and the Commune by Alistair Horne. I read about the Commune last year so getting another perspective on it (and a bit more of the history of the Siege) will be fun. As ever though, all that reading history has done is convince me I need to read more. A tough life! After that it was supposed to be The Handmaid's Tale but that's been bumped down the list to accommodate The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea. I noticed when I quoted this I'd put myself down as having read 9/26 when it was actually 8, because I apparently can't count. 15 should be correct now. In any case I'm bumping my goal up to 40, because at this rate I was going to hit 26 by about mid-June which would rather defeat the point. The meta-goals are expanding as well to accommodate, so the new ones are as follows: 40 books, 5 women, 5 non-white people (each of which excludes people I've already read), 20 non-fiction. Year so far: 01. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (Robert Tressell) 02. Always Managing: My Autobiography (Harry Redknapp) 03. Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe) 04. Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things that Happened (Allie Brosh) 05. Dracula (Bram Stoker) 06. The Drowned World (JG Ballard) 07. The Tudors: The Complete Story of England's Most Notorious Dynasty (G.J. Meyer) 08. Wolf Hall (Hilary Mantel) 09. The Politics (Aristotle) 10. The Prince (Niccolo Machiavelli) 11. Twelve Years a Slave (Solomon Northup) 12. The Fault in Our Stars (John Green) 13. If on a winter's night a traveller (Italo Calvino) 14. The Communist Manifesto (Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels) 15. The Age of Revolution: 1789-1848 (Eric Hobsbawm) Total: 15/40, 2/5 women, 2/5 non-white people, 7/20 non-fiction
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Apr 27, 2014 11:09
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thespaceinvader posted:29: Hard Magic; Grimnoir Chronicles #1 by Larry Correia. I am basically reading it on the recommendation of the Writing Excuses podcast and finding it... fun, but not exceptional. The real issue I have with it is that it's not properly noir and with a title like that, it really should be. It's not in first-person narration, and that really messes with my expectations of what it's going to do. It's OK, but not exceptional. 29: Hard Magic gets a near-complete reversal from me. Once I'd figured out that despite what the dust jacket said, it WASN'T a magical noir detective story set in the thirties, which it was trying SO hard to seem like in the first few chapters, and just settled in to enjoy it for what it is (fun magical adventure/spy story, not noir in the slightest), I really enjjoyed it, to the point that I was up til about 1am last night reading (but not finishing) it - it's drat long. Finished it this morning and had a great time. Heartily recommend it. 30: Hammer of God by Karen Miller is next. Intrigued to find out how the series concludes. Then probably more Larry Correia.
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Apr 27, 2014 11:57
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elbow posted:March - 22/52 April - 30/52 23. A Country Doctor's Notebook, by Mikhail Bulgakov. Very funny and, surprisingly, much easier to read than it is to watch the TV adaptation. 4/5 24. I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down, by William Gay. I really wanted to read some more Southern fiction after watching True Detective, and this appealed to me the most (though I still have a long True Detective-themed wishlist). It's a collection of short stories, not one of which was disappointing. 4/5 25. Wool, by Hugh Howey. I'm not sure if this lived up to its expectations for me. I really enjoyed it, as I tend to enjoy all long, world-building post-apocalyptic/dystopian novels (e.g. The Stand, The Passage), and I thought the characters were interesting and surprising. I disliked how the novellas were broken up, and wish more of the characters stayed around for long enough for me to care about them. 3.5/5 26. The Man in the High Castle, by Philip K Dick. I'm not ashamed to say that a lot of the philosophical and political stuff went right over my head when I was reading this. I was expecting a much more plot-driven novel, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. 3/5 27-29. The Walking Dead, Vols 18-20, by Robert Kirkman. I can't get enough of this series. 5/5 30. Blindness, by Jose Saramago. A re-read for my book club, I found it a lot harder to get through than I did the first time around. It's still an outstanding post-apocalyptic novel for me, probably because it pulls no punches and is, for the most part, confined to such a small space. 4.5/5 I will definitely increase my goal, but I'll wait until I hit 52 to decide by how much.
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Apr 27, 2014 12:55
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thespaceinvader posted:29: Hard Magic gets a near-complete reversal from me. Once I'd figured out that despite what the dust jacket said, it WASN'T a magical noir detective story set in the thirties, which it was trying SO hard to seem like in the first few chapters, and just settled in to enjoy it for what it is (fun magical adventure/spy story, not noir in the slightest), I really enjjoyed it, to the point that I was up til about 1am last night reading (but not finishing) it - it's drat long. Finished it this morning and had a great time. Heartily recommend it. The Grimnoir series is basically depression era x-men meets steampunk, but in a good way.
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Apr 27, 2014 14:32
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Ok, I am way behind, but here is my offering so far: 1) Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury: Not much to say about this one. I enjoyed it. The prose was satisfying. It's just greatly overshadowed by 1984 as far as dystopian books in its neighbourhood. 2) The Road, by Cormac McCarthy: "He walked out into the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it." The Road is an incredibly bleak and hopeless novel. It's a story about a father and his son and survival in a wasted land. There really isn't very much more to it. The pair travel east, across the continental United States. This and survival are their only goal, while a father's love of his son is the only motivation. McCarthy's stark and eloquent prose is a good enough reason to read this book. Grammar is often left by the wayside though, and this can be especially noticeable during dialogue where there is no standard punctuation to structure it. I found this to be almost complementary to the bleakness of the novel, but it can be confusing at times. The ashy and desolate landscape is described over and over...and over, but at under 300 pages it never gets to the point of boredom, maybe just despair. 3) A Canticle for Liebowitz, by Walter M. Miller Jr. I think this book would have had more of an impact on me if I was around during the cold war, or if I was Catholic, or even if I even spoke Latin. It was still competently written and interesting sci-fi. 4) A Walk in the Woods, by Bill Bryson: The first part of this book was hilarious, and most of Bryson's interactions with his friend Stephen on the trail are quite amusing. I'm very interested in long-distance hiking, so this was a decent book to read. I am not sure I'd recommend it to anyone who is already an accomplished long distance hiker, but it's a reasonable primer about what it's all about and about the history of the Appalachian Trail. If anything, it shows that no matter your age or what shape you're in, you can get out on the trail and enjoy it.
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Apr 28, 2014 00:21
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screenwritersblues posted:16) The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt April 17) Freedom By Jonathan Franzen: I really wanted like this book, but I found it rather uninteresting. I just didn't get what was going on and also, what's with Frazen's obession with human waste? 18) In Cold Blood by Truman Capote: I enjoyed this book. It was really interesting and also my first real true crime novel. Everything about the book had me roped in. 19) This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald: My second Fitzgerald book. I didn't like this one as much as The Great Gatsby, but it was still really good. 20) The Rules of Civility by Amor Towles: I grabbed this book around the same time as Freedom and put it off for some odd reason. The author seemed to have based the book off a bunch of Walker Evans photos, which is pretty cool and all, but the story itself kind of fell flat. 21) The Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster: This is the second book that I read by the man and it is the most depressing book that I've read. It also was hard to follow at times, which kind of turned me off. Currently Reading: Elanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell: After hearing about this book through the YA thread, I decided to give it a shot. It's good so far, so that's a good sign. 21/30
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Apr 28, 2014 04:47
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:28: Raising Steam - Terry Pratchett 44: Blood and Iron - Jon Sprunk 45: Origin - J.A. Konrath 46: The Memory of Death - Trent Jamieson 47: Vampire Council : Hunted - Patrick Kampman 48: Chance in Hell - Patrick Kampman 49: Texas Hold 'Em - Patrick Kampman 50: Witch's Kurse - Glenn Bullion 51: Monster Hunter Legion - Larry Correia 52: Monster Hunter Nemesis - Larry Correia 53: Broken Blade - Kelly McCullough 54: The Entropy Conflict - David Conyers 55: The Eye of Infinity - David Conyers 56: The Palace Job - Patrick Weekes Blood and Iron was decent but not really that great. I liked this guy's first series better. It took a LONG time to actually get vaguely to the point of the plot, but at least it sets up the action nicely for the following book. Origin was decent. Not great, but b movie horror kind of decent. Basically the US finds Satan in a sarcophagus when they are digging the Panama Canal and decide to keep him hidden away in a special bunker in the middle of the desert, and he wakes up. It's got it's bad points, but it reads sort of like a somewhat decent b horror movie. Memory of Death was a surprise, and fairly decent. I'd recommend if it you liked the series. Vampire Council was a bit odd. I went into it thinking it was the 3rd Chance book (the others being Chance in Hell and Texas Hold 'Em) except it wasn't. It's a story all on it's own, but based in the same world. It's a decent read but not fantastic or anything. Chance/Texas were both ok but hard to pin down. They are almost romance, and almost good urban fantasy, but just kind of an odd duck. Still, worth a read if you like vamps and werewolves and some decent humor. Witch's Kurse is the latest book by Bullion. All his books seem to be in the same world, and this was a sequel to the last book. Not terrific, but not bad. More interesting and a bit of a backstory over anything else. Monster Hunter Legion/Nemesis - both pretty good, almost Nemesis kinda suffers from the DBZ ANIME bits about GONNA POWER UP NOW. Gives the backstory on Agent Franks though, so it's still a decent read. Should be released in a few months, or you can buy the e-arc like I did off the Baen website. Broken Blade - Did not really like it that much to start, but it grew on me. Entropy/Eye are both short story collections but I loving LOVE this guy's work. Well worth it if you are a Lovecraft fan. The Palace Job was pretty good. I had asked for recommendations for pratchett styled fantasy and this was recommended. It was quite a bit more violent than I had thought it would be, but overall once it picks up it rocks pretty well. Nothing really stands out as OH poo poo AMAZING in this batch, but all were decent reads.
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Apr 28, 2014 17:30
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bollig posted:Hey, I'm doing this, although this is a bit late, but my goal every year is to read fifty books. I'm well behind the curve this year. And I'm going to have to do it reading Asoiaf #'s 4 and 5 (just finished 5 up). In years past I wrote book reviews that were due every Monday, which was a great way to keep myself reading at a steady clip. But here's what I've got so far: Oh boy I'm way behind: 11) Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman - Great stuff. If you thought 'Blink' was interesting but super lovely, then this is something you should read. I went into it thinking that I wasn't going to show any of the biases that he mentions, but boy howdy, he showed me wrong. Don't read it before you go to sleep, it can be hard to follow sometimes, but that's a good thing because he's really sinking his teeth into some studies. 12) Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage - By Alice Munro - Southern Ontario Gothic is easily my favorite genre and, embarrassingly enough, this was my first go with Munro. Really loved it. Always refreshing to read something literary that doesn't have its head up its own rear end. 13) The Drunkard's Walk - Leonard Mlodinow - Kind of on the same thing as Thinking, Fast and Slow, in fact it talks about Kahneman in a couple pages. As far as I know, it's a pretty good introduction to statistics, and was relatively interesting. A little more pop-sciency than TFS. 14) Mike and PSmith by PG Wodehouse- When I first got my Nook, I crammed every Wodehouse I could liberate from Gutenberg on it. So now whenever I travel and I finish everything that I brought with me, I open one up. This was my first Wodehouse with PSmith (the P is silent) and he's easily my favorite character. There's a lot of cricket in it but you don't need to know a lick about cricket to read it well. 14/50 Here's my lineup: Reading in English: Master of the Senate - LBJ runs over bitches, it's like 1100 pages. This will be my 3rd book over a thousand pages this year. Reading in German: Emil und die Detectiv - I'm studying for a pretty important German test. If anyone has any recommendations that are a little more difficult than this, I'd be much obliged. I'm thinking Munchausen next. Last year I read all of the Hugo Award Nominees and I think I'll do it again this year, but having not read the wheel of time series, I'll be skipping that one.
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Apr 28, 2014 17:49
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:The Tamarack Murders - Patrick McManus WAit, the Fine and Pleasant Misery guy wrote mysteries? How are they? Any good?
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Apr 29, 2014 03:50
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Mr. Squishy posted:1 The Devils by Fyodor Dostoyevsky as translated by David Magarshack. 29 Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton 30 Nostromo bu Joseph Conrad 31 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert as translated by Alan Russel 32 A Woman's Life by Guy de Maupassant as translasted by H.N.P Sloman 33 The Ascent of F6 by W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood 34 The Aspern Papers and Other Stories (The Real Thing, The Papers) by Henry James 35 Washington Square by Henry James 36 The Blithedale Romance by Nathanial Hawthorne 37 What Maisie Knew by Henry James 38 La Bête Humaine by Émile Zola as translated by Leonard Tancock ♀ 2/20 Σ 38/60 The Wharton is a novella that's apparently a common set-text in school. It's a well executed one note tale of gothic sadness. Pretty good, pretty far away from the other Wharton I've been putting off reading. Also it's by a woman!! I've not given up on my sub-goal. I've talked about Nostromo, it's good, odd. Madame Bovary is very good, there are a handful of metaphors in there which alone could make a book. I really shouldn't have read the Maupassant straight after, as Flaubert really puts him to shame. It's still good. Also there's one chapter where he hands over the book to Jack London and there are 3 brutal killings and a dog called "Murder". The F6 was actually bundled with another Auden/Isherwood play, On the Frontier, but left me so cold that I didn't think I'd bother. Maybe it'd be good on the stage, with the Britten music. I read a lot of James this month, all of them on the short side. I prefer these to the larger books that I just flounder in. The Aspern Papers is quite a nice collection, all of the stories fixed on the way to treat other people as complicated by the demands of art. The editor in the title story is a brilliant creep. Washington Square was rather Conradian. Very shallow characterization and baffling actions carried forth with total sterness, and also there's a bit where they brush against life's hidden brutality. Maisie was just an exhausting display of the most intricate sentences riddled with constant irony. A small child with no concept of sex has to negotiate a confusing kaleidescope of affairs and tenuous marriages which dictate the lives of the just awful adults who take care of her. The Hawthorne was alright. I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone though. The Zola was mental. Bloody, savage sex and death setting off descriptions of the life working for the railway and satire of the legal system. Is this what Zola's like?
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Apr 29, 2014 10:44
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:WAit, the Fine and Pleasant Misery guy wrote mysteries? How are they? Any good? Yup. Surprisingly good. There's a little humor in there, but nothing like his short stories get with the slapstick. It's treated as a serious thing. I was pretty surprised by it. They start out pretty funny, but it seems the more of em he writes the less humor really gets into the book and he focuses more on the murder aspect of it. Still, if you are a fan of his short stories, you will probably dig his murder mysteries 
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Apr 29, 2014 11:52
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26. Marek Hlasko - The Graveyard 27. Werner Jaeger - Paideia II: In Search of the Divine Centre 28. Gilbert Seldes - The Stammering Century Hlasko's The Graveyard is an odd mix of anti-communist satire and passion play about a staunch communist getting pegged as an enemy of the state after drunkenly yelling at a couple of cops. He takes the high road and figures he can clear himself on communist principle, only to find that there really is no principle. Hardly news that communism was lousy, but still worth a read to see a satirist of Hlakso's talent beating up on an incredibly bloated, slow-moving target. Kudos on the disastrous personal life too; he went from winning the State Literature Prize to being exiled within two years, was picked up by Polanski as a screenwriter, but lost the job on account of accidentally killing Krzysztof Komeda, Polanski's composer, then died himself a few months later. Moving onto Jaeger's Paideia trilogy which covers classical Greece's changing notion of what constitutes an ideal man, this second volume is pretty much The One About Plato. It was written in the '30s, so few surprises, but its clearly written and thoroughly argued, and provides a good overview of the underlying structure of Plato's body of work. I was a big fan of the first volume since it covered a lot of ground that usually gets glossed over (names like Tyrtaeus, Theognis and Archilocus), but what can you do? Hard to ignore Plato. Last up was The Stammering Century, a broad survey of small movements and communes in 19th century America. There's a quote from Emerson in there which sums it up pretty well: "We are all a little wild here with numberless projects of social reform. Not a reading man but has a draft of a new Community in his waistcoat pocket." If anything it's an attempt to rehabilitate radical movements as embodying something essential in the American character, even redrawing a few well-known figures in what Seldes considers their rightful context. Interesting for sure, but I imagine the style might put some off - slightly starchy and aloof for something written in 1928 (he reminds me a bit of Mencken in that sense).
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Apr 29, 2014 13:13
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ltr posted:1. The Fires of Heaven (Wheel of Time, #5) by Robert Jordan 16. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson 17. On Basilisk Station (Honor Harrington, #1) By David Weber 18. Terms of Enlistment (Frontlines, #1) by Marko Kloos 19. Solaris by Stanislaw Lem 20. Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein Progress: 20/52 I'm surprised by my progress this month. It's my busiest month with all the classes I teach going in full swing, but I still managed to read five books. A Short History of Nearly Everything was fantastic. Like1491 last year, there was so much good information that I ordered a used paper copy of it from Amazon so that it's easier to reference pages so I can incorporate some of the information into my lectures. Anyone who has the slightest interest in science and how we know what we know should read this book. On Basilisk Station I know how bad the series is, but I have had the first two books on my kindle for over a year and wanted to clean out my backlog. It actually was a fun read, but not going further than the second book since everyone agrees it gets much worse the further in the series you go. Terms of Enlistment Is the pretty standard story of boy joins the army, does some stuff. I did really enjoy the story and would recommend it to others. Very similar to Starship Troopers which I also read for the first time this month. Sometimes I think the flashbacks to the classroom was to heavy-handed in I want to say Libertarianism, but overall it was a good book. And now for something completely different, Solaris. This was quite different Sci-fi from what I have read in the past, but it was really good. I don't even know where to start with why I liked it. I guess it encapsulates the idea that if we were to actually meet an extra-terrestrial species, the difference between us and them would be so vast that there is little chance we could understand each other.
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Apr 29, 2014 18:05
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Fremry posted:1. Roadside Picnic by Strugatsky Brothers 6. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline Another slow month, I'll blame it on work, but I really should have gotten another one done. That being said, I enjoyed Ready Player One. I have a friend who is a middle school librarian and after a bunch of novels about the end of the world, how horrible humanity is, how hosed humanity is, and or a combination of all three, I asked her for a recommendation for something that's an easy read and in which humanity isn't the antagonist. She said it was her favorite book she read last year (she reads mostly YA because that's what her students are reading), and she has recommended it to a couple of our friends who also liked it. It was exactly what I needed at the time. It was a super easy read and entertaining. I understand why it's a YA novel that appeals to an older crowd, because if you are familiar with 80's pop culture (mostly movies and videogames), it is quite a nostalgia trip. A very good tip I got from the YA thread, if you plan to read this, watch "WarGames" with Matthew Broderick.
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Apr 29, 2014 19:15
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