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Gertrude Perkins posted:You know what, that really does make sense in hindsight. Maybe it's because I didn't read the whole of 8 in one sitting - usually I'm quite good at catching that kind of symmetry. Not only is Hempel's art bad, it's also sandwiched between the two best artists to work on the run - Bryan Talbot and Michael Zulli. This makes it look even worse by comparison. What bugs me most, though, is that he got the longest run of any artist on the book.
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Aug 10, 2014 14:03
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An Anthology of Chinese literature : beginnings to 1911 - edited and translated by Stephen Owen. I'm far more interested in the literature from about the T'ang dynasty through the Ming, but mostly because the majority of literature pre-T'ang focuses on poetry, towards which I am rather indifferent. The personal "essays" are my favourites. However, I don't read Chinese and so I can't speak to the quality of the translation or of the choice of material. I'll leave that to an expert. I did like Owen's discussions of how Chinese literature and literary theory evolved over the centuries, with brief reviews of particular period before the translations.
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Aug 10, 2014 20:07
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Sandman, vol. 9: The Kindly Ones - A really good story with a lot of interesting conflict and a great ending. Marred by what has to be the weakest artist in the whole series. Still, the climax hit me pretty hard, which led me inexorably into... Sandman, vol. 10: The Wake. As a standalone volume it's beautiful, heartfelt and wistful. As the climax of the series, I can't imagine anything better. Sandman is a loving masterpiece.
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Aug 10, 2014 23:18
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Gertrude Perkins posted:Sandman, vol. 10: The Wake. As a standalone volume it's beautiful, heartfelt and wistful. As the climax of the series, I can't imagine anything better. Sandman is a loving masterpiece. The Wake is so good and Zuli's art is just outstanding. It and Seasons of Mist are my favorite volumes but you're right, the whole series is indeed outstanding. You're probably already planning on reading them but Death: The High Cost of Living and Sandman: The Dream Hunters are definitely worth your time. Most of the non-Gaiman stuff that comes later is hit or miss (Destiny one shot, the other Death miniseries, Petrifax mini) but the whole 75-issue Lucifer series is really solid. Gaiman's also 2 issues into the six part Sandman: Overture; it's coming out really slowly and infrequently but it's the first new Sandman comic in nearly 20 years so I'll take what I can get.
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Aug 11, 2014 00:42
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I LOVE Lucifer. I get that sandman is better, but I think I like lucifer more.
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Aug 11, 2014 03:05
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xian posted:I LOVE Lucifer. I get that sandman is better, but I think I like lucifer more. The more you read around, the more you'll realise Sandman isn't better than Lucifer. Gaiman was doing something new, but he was recycling from limited sources. Brute, Glob, their pet Sandmam and Prez Rickard all appeared in old DC comics - this is known. What is less widely known is that their stories were featured in a single issue of Cancelled Comics Cavalcade. Carey has since topped both Lucifer and Sandman with The Unwritten, so go read that as well.
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Aug 11, 2014 15:49
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I Am Hydrogen posted:I finished 1Q84 by Murakami over the weekend. I really enjoyed it up until the end. I'm fine with not having all my questions answered and loose ends, and I don't need some epic conclusion but the ending just wasn't satisfying, especially considering it's nearly 1,000 pages and just seemed to end. Having said that, I love Murakami. The characters were great, his prose was beautiful as always, and the plot was really interesting. Funny enough, I just finished it despite telling myself that I should shelve it when I got to the halfway mark. By the time Aomame got to the compound, poo poo started getting real weird and took me out of the relative realism of the story that had been going on up until that point. Book was really about 500 pages too long, and that's a travesty.  On the flip side, I finished Les Chants de Maldoror and it was one of the most beautiful books I've ever read. Most people say that it loses its poetry about midway through, which I guess is correct since it really does become less flowery, but the imagery in the entire book is so powerful that you could perfectly picture everything Lautreamont illustrates - whether you want to or not.
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Aug 11, 2014 16:15
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MNSNTZR posted:but the imagery in the entire book is so powerful that you could perfectly picture everything Lautreamont illustrates - whether you want to or not. The segment with the shark sure left an impression, good lord.
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Aug 11, 2014 16:21
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Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult, by Dayal Patterson. Really, really good if you are into black metal or extreme music in general. Kinda started losing interest when it detoured away from Scandinavia (the section on Les Légions Noires excepted), I would have much preferred a bit more on the Swedish scene and Finland than a couple of chapters about Polish Nazi whatever. Overall, it's well written, well researched and easy to read. And 600 pages long, so it's pretty comprehensive. I guess more significantly, though, it got me pulling out albums I bought 10 to 15 years ago and never really listened to. Including some stone cold classics. All that free (kinda) music makes the $12 book a steal.
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Aug 12, 2014 13:00
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Cat of Many Tails, by Ellery Queen. I'd previously more or less written this serious off due to my less-than-stellar experience with The Roman Hat Mystery, but holy poo poo, what a mistake. This was a phenomenal thriller and a perfectly fair whodunit at the same time, and one of the most engaging mysteries I've read in a long time. I am using it to kick off the next Whodunit Challenge Thread!
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Aug 13, 2014 20:57
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Cyberbia: Doomsday General, by Justin Greene. This was a weird one. A local author who gave me a free copy while I was at work, telling me he was aiming for a teen book with crossover appeal. It's truly bizarre: part "trapped inside the videogame!" sci-fi, part British young-teen drama, part tense kidnap thriller, with a lot of strange comedic asides that come from nowhere. The tone shifts dramatically from chapter to chapter, and even from paragraph to paragraph; I have no clue what the actual target audience would be. And yet I blitzed through the whole thing, was interested and entertained as much as I was bewildered and frustrated. I'd recommend it if you want a strange, idiosyncratic SF ride. Lawen, I have book 1 of Lucifer (signed!) and Sandman: Endless Nights waiting on my bookshelf. I agree, Season of Mists is one of the best of the bunch!
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Aug 14, 2014 17:49
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Jedit posted:The more you read around, the more you'll realise Sandman isn't better than Lucifer. Gaiman was doing something new, but he was recycling from limited sources. Brute, Glob, their pet Sandmam and Prez Rickard all appeared in old DC comics - this is known. What is less widely known is that their stories were featured in a single issue of Cancelled Comics Cavalcade. Just finished the Ship That Sank Twice. Highly recommend the Unwritten.
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Aug 14, 2014 21:18
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The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce’s Ulysses which was phenomenal. It goes over the entire history of the publication(s) of Ulysses and everything surrounding the controversy and it's transformation from "pure filth" to being revered by many as the greatest English novel ever written. It was much more than simply "Ulysses was banned, Ulysses was unbanned". With the almost near mass hysteria Ulysses caused, especially since it seems tame by today's standards, it almost seems like a fictional account of a novel that turned people and governments into lunatics. But it all actually happened. If you're a fan of Ulysses, or even if you hate the book and/or Joyce himself, it's still very much worth the read. It's a fascinating account of how modernism and censorship clashed and how it has affected us all the way up to present day. It's also well written and highly engaging, so give it a shot if you're interested!
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Aug 16, 2014 01:15
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Flatland, by Edwin A. Abbott. A lovely, quirky satire and maths-fiction story. A light and breezy read, but tickled all the right parts of my brain; I was particularly reminded of George Gamow's One, Two, Three... Infinity. The Fractal Prince, by Hannu Rajaniemi. This sequel goes heavy on the world-building, giving us a glimpse of life on Earth - nad it's strange. Well, The Quantum Thief was strange, sure, but this one has a whole parallel mythos of jinni and Secret Names and intricate politicking. I'm not sure I understood all of it, but I still really enjoyed it. Also, Mieli is fast becoming one of my favourite SF characters ever (her romance with Sydän was genuinely moving) but I wasn't feeling Jean as much in this one. Maybe because it felt like he took a backseat to some of the more impressive setpieces. Either way, really looking forward to getting hold of The Causal Angel!
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Aug 17, 2014 20:01
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I just finished reading The Girl with All the Gifts. I went into it pretty much blind, so I was a little disappointed it turned out to be about zombies, but it ended up being really good. Definitely worth picking up.
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Aug 17, 2014 20:02
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I just finished Radley Balko's Rise of the Warrior Cop, which is a quasi-academic look at the militarization of police in America. I actually started the book before the Ferguson, MO mess happened, so I guess I chose an opportune time to read the book. Much of what Balko wrote about has popped up in discussion of the police response to the demonstrations / riots. I think the book. Is reasonably fair for a biased author. Balko is a former CATO institute guy, so it comes as no surprise that he is opposed to the drug war in general, and the heavy police aspect of it in particular. To that extent, he didn't set out to explore or answer a question, wherever the answer took him, he pretty obviously set out to write an anti-SWAT polemic. That said, he does a decent job maintaining objectivity. He recognizes the historical need for *some* kind of elevated police response, and he treats many of the core facilitators of police militarization more fairly than I expected. Had he wanted, the book could have been an exercise in making GBS threads on Daryl Gates. Instead, he gives Gates (and other like him) credit and consideration where it is due, while describing their role in making the police look like the military. One advantage of his CATO background is it allows him some third-party freedom from Democrat/Republican rivalry. He does a good job explaining how Republicans and Democrats both facilitated the militarization of police by endorsing the practice when used against groups they didn't like, which served to legitimize the practice in general. The book's biggest weakness is twofold. First, he attempts to root the analysis in something he calls the "symbolic Third Amendment," which he identifies as the root of the Castle Doctrine and American discomfort with militarized policing. This seems like a reach, and an attempt at inventing a novel approach to distinguish his treatment from others'. The Third Amendment is not a very good starting point, or unifying theme, for this work. At least, the actual military would have to have played a more overt role for the Third Amendment to be as important as Balko makes it. There is no need to invent a fictional gloss on an essentially forgotten amendment to lend theoretical coherence to his narrative: the Fourth Amendment was created in large part to address the issues Balko is writing about. Second, some of Balko's legal analysis, specifically of federal appellate Fourth Amendment law, is superficial and flawed. While Balko is correct in the general contours of the Burger/Rehnquist retrenchment against the Warren Court's criminal procedure revolution, the decisions limiting Fourth Amendment remedies to the problems Balko addresses are not nearly so one-sided or cut and dry as he makes them out to be. Crucially, Balko completely neglects the decisions of the post Kagan/Sotomayor court, which potentially represent the high water mark of the anti-Warren campaign. All in all though, it is a well-documented, largely fair examination of an important topic. It might be a waste of time if you are already of the opinion that the police act too much like the military, as it won't do very much to challenge your current views.
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Aug 18, 2014 00:02
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Robinson Crusoe. The things that mainly struck me were the autistic amount of pointless detail Crusoe goes into when he's talking about things, especially the stuff he brings off the ship; the amount of work he does (building his first canoe takes five months, and that's just half a paragraph) and the religious themes and how much of a prick Crusoe is. For instance near the end he meets a Spanish dude and Friday's father. The Spaniard tells him there are other white guys living nearby, so Crusoe sends him and Friday's dad to rescue them in exchange for Crusoe's help sailing to the mainland. Then another ship turns up, Crusoe helps them out in exchange for a ride home, and then sails off without waiting for the others to come back! They're stuck on his island with some mutineers who were forced to stay there. It's also the first book of a trilogy, sort of. Apparently in the next book Crusoe goes to China and Siberia, and the third one is some religious navel-gazing Defoe said he came up with on the island. Oncogene posted:The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce’s Ulysses which was phenomenal. It goes over the entire history of the publication(s) of Ulysses and everything surrounding the controversy and it's transformation from "pure filth" to being revered by many as the greatest English novel ever written. It was much more than simply "Ulysses was banned, Ulysses was unbanned". With the almost near mass hysteria Ulysses caused, especially since it seems tame by today's standards, it almost seems like a fictional account of a novel that turned people and governments into lunatics. But it all actually happened. If you're a fan of Ulysses, or even if you hate the book and/or Joyce himself, it's still very much worth the read. It's a fascinating account of how modernism and censorship clashed and how it has affected us all the way up to present day. It's also well written and highly engaging, so give it a shot if you're interested! Hmm, I wonder if my sister's read this? Might be a good Christmas present if she hasn't.
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Aug 18, 2014 16:44
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Just finished Glock The Rise of America's Gun by Paul M Barrett. Gives an interesting clear cut view of firearm history in the USA as well as how Glock became so popular and changed the industry.
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Aug 19, 2014 16:37
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Finished Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. Not my first read for either of them, so some parts were pretty obvious which of them was writing. This was a great read and almost impossible to put down. The flips on biblical figures and constant jokes about human behavior ranged from giggle worthy to earning a hearty laugh.
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Aug 20, 2014 02:40
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Recently finished Leviathan Wakes by James Corey and really enjoyed it! It was a big space opera that didn't feel like a big space opera - perhaps since it took place in our own solar system. Corey built some good characters with Holden and his crew of the Rocinante, they remind me of the crew of the Serenity in Firefly.
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Aug 20, 2014 12:17
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Xandu posted:I just finished reading The Girl with All the Gifts. I went into it pretty much blind, so I was a little disappointed it turned out to be about zombies, but it ended up being really good. Definitely worth picking up. How big of a spoiler is that? I got spoiled on it but I can't tell if its a big deal to know that going in or not.
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Aug 21, 2014 00:01
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Atomicated posted:How big of a spoiler is that? I got spoiled on it but I can't tell if its a big deal to know that going in or not. The thing in the spoiler tags isn't a big deal by itself. Any more information than that would be a pretty big spoiler though.
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Aug 21, 2014 00:05
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withak posted:The thing in the spoiler tags isn't a big deal by itself. Any more information than that would be a pretty big spoiler though. I think it's better/more fun going in cold, but most people should guess what's going on fairly early on.
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Aug 21, 2014 01:31
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Ok that's good to hear because Between hearing that it involves zombies and reading the back of the book text description I'm pretty sure I've pieced together that the girl is a zombie and not aware of it. But if that isn't played as some last chapter of the book surprise revelation then I might read it some time.
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Aug 21, 2014 02:45
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With or without the thing in the spoiler tags, you will probably piece together the plot twist pretty quickly.
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Aug 21, 2014 02:49
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Just finished Ancillary Justice and mostly really liked it. It was a pretty satisfying space opera that had a cool setting that felt really fleshed out without the book having to sprawl to accommodate it. I was a bit wary of reading another first book in a trilogy when the sequels haven't yet been written but I thought it worked really well as a stand alone novel. If I never get around to reading the other two books, I'm still glad I read this one.
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Aug 21, 2014 04:02
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Just finished the new Haruki Murakami novel Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage. After the tremendous waste of time that was 1Q84, I was wary on picking up another Murakami novel, but this one was vastly superior. Shorter, tighter, with a plot where things actually happen (don't get me wrong, I did Murakami's flat characters, unexplained weirdness, and continual digressions, but 1100 pages of it was far too much). There are still characteristic dream-like atmosphere, but the stakes felt much more real and personal.
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Aug 21, 2014 06:19
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Just finished Crime and Punishment, delving further into my recently-found affinity for Russian literature. Now I'm reading Unbearable Lightness of Being.
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Aug 21, 2014 15:49
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Recently finished Available Dark by Elizabeth Hand. It tells the story of an alcoholic, aging photographer who takes a job evaluating photographs for a collector. Things go very, very wrong. This is the second book in a series, the first being Generation Loss, which I hadn't read, but didn't impact my enjoyment of this book. I found it for five dollars on a clearance table, and took a chance. Glad I did. Robot Wendigo fucked around with this message at 17:52 on Aug 21, 2014 |
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Aug 21, 2014 17:49
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Finished The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin, which was a surprisingly engrossing read because I've always wanted to know what it would have been like if the mother of Jesus Christ kept a diary and wrote about how miserable she was after her son was crucified. Also Ru by Kim Thuy, about Vietnamese immigrants living in Canada. Each chapter comprises a really short vignette of a young woman recounting and reconciling her old life with her new one. The prose can get a little overwrought but it was pretty interesting.
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Aug 21, 2014 19:01
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cheekyvixen posted:Just finished Glock The Rise of America's Gun by Paul M Barrett. I read that a year or so ago. It was an interesting juxtaposition with some reading on general police matters. The contrast between the 'we're outgunned' rationale common in police circles justifying more and more weapons, and the shrewd marketing of Glock pretty pointed. I don't necessarily think cops should carry revolvers, but it least noteworthy that Glock's marketing didn't just sell a bunch of pistols, it got its biggest institutional customers to swallow its slogans whole.
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Aug 23, 2014 08:05
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Tarka The Otter, by Henry Williamson. One of those Children's Classics that I never had growing up. It's a chunky tome of a book, which is remarkable given how small the "plot" synopsis actually is. Williamson writes about the life of an otter named Tarka, from "the first year" to "the last year", and covers everything from his childhood to being pursued by hunters and hounds. It's really driven by the author's absolute love of nature, and so you get these gorgeous passages about rivers and different creatures who'll appear for a single scene just so they can step briefly into the spotlight. The creatures themselves - Tarka and the other otters, birds, fish and dogs - are barely anthropomorphised, and the book doesn't shy away from including the grim and grisly parts of life. Hunger Games has nothing on the brutality of nature. I can imagine going around Exmoor and exploring the different locations along the rivers, though I imagine most of it's changed in the hundred years since this was written.
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Aug 23, 2014 14:39
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Bear Attacks:Their Causes and Avoidance by Stephen Herrerro The best authority on bear on human violence, period. Haven't picked it up in a while, so gave it a re-read on a rainy cabin day. Like most instances of browns and blacks attacking white people, it turns out poverty and a long history of oppression are the root causes here. Would you like to walk in the woods and not be eaten by a bear? Do you wonder if you need a tun in bear country? Have you heard black bears hunt and eat humans? Should you avoid associating with women because their periods attract bears? Herrerro is the pre-eminent expert on bear-human interaction and provides answers to all these questions. More importantly, he supports his recommendations with the best available science. Bears are a sensationalized topic, and advice on life in bear country is often tied up in a man vs. wild ego-driven compensation act. Herrerro provides definitive, thorough, and dispassionate information on the whole range of bear encounter scenarios. I have recommended this book many times in my work as a bear management professional, and recommend it again here.
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Aug 23, 2014 20:38
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Considering I do a lot of hiking on the AT, the Smokies, and the Blue Ridge Parkway I might want to read that.
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Aug 23, 2014 21:49
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nate fisher posted:Considering I do a lot of hiking on the AT, the Smokies, and the Blue Ridge Parkway I might want to read that. Yep, black bears aren't very dangerous, but the food conditioned and human habituated bears common in those parks can be a handful. Lots of fun though if you enjoy loving with bears in situations where they are unlikely to flip poo poo and dismantle you.
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Aug 24, 2014 21:33
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Closer. The second Dennis Cooper I've read (the first being God, Jr.) and the first of the George Miles cycle. It's an intense and unflinching exploration of desire, sex and death, and some moments made me just stop and stare at the page, slack-jawed in shock. I've already ordered my copy of Frisk, and am now in the position of wanting to read pretty much everything this guy's done.
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Aug 25, 2014 14:26
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Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain. Buried beneath the geysers of word vomit lies a pretty decent story with some good laughs. I would definitely recommend it, though I do think it odd that a 19-year-old would have as much insight into the world as Billy does. I know he's a combat-hardened vet, but still... Anyway, I enjoyed it overall.
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Aug 25, 2014 14:33
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I just finished Cannery Row by John Steinbeck, and it knocked my socks off. I wasn't really digging it at the start, but about a third of the way through, the stories just seemed to "click". The location and the characters became these immensely complex, melancholy, beautiful things, and it was hard to put the book down because I just had to finish. This and Of Mice and Men make me wish that I had started reading Steinbeck a whole lot sooner, and I'll probably start another one of his soon.
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Aug 25, 2014 21:54
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Jedit posted:Not only is Hempel's art bad, it's also sandwiched between the two best artists to work on the run - Bryan Talbot and Michael Zulli. This makes it look even worse by comparison. I put Hempel at #2 behind Zulli.
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Aug 25, 2014 21:56
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Captain Hotbutt posted:I just finished Cannery Row by John Steinbeck, and it knocked my socks off. I wasn't really digging it at the start, but about a third of the way through, the stories just seemed to "click". The location and the characters became these immensely complex, melancholy, beautiful things, and it was hard to put the book down because I just had to finish. Cannery Row is amazing. Doc's place is worth the stop in Monteray.
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Aug 26, 2014 01:06
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