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I read books 1-2 of Blake Crouch's Wayward Pines Trilogy - the one the low rated TV show is based on. Quick reads, each one took me about 2.5 hours. I was suckered in by Crouch's intro saying "I loved Twin Peaks as a kid, this was my attempt at something like Twin Peaks." It starts off with some good potential, and I must say he writes action well. Short, staccato phrasing, word choice that keeps me in the moment, etc. An example of how to write good action sequences. The trouble is the plot is TERRIBLE. The series twist, which is apparently around episode 5 of the TV series, is so dumb that I very nearly stopped reading. I only kept going because it was a quick read and thought "well, I want to see if anything good comes of this."Nearly halfway through book 3, the answer is No. I'm going to finish book 3 since they're so fast and I kinda want to know how this trainwreck ends, but if your ears perked up at "like Twin Peaks" I'll save you the trouble - this is nothing like Twin Peaks and the comparison is insulting.
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Jul 19, 2015 18:05
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I finished Pawnee: The Greatest Town in America by Leslie Knope. A tie-in to Parks & Recreation, and a good one at that. It reads like a tour guide and has guest essays from characters of the show. It has the same humor as the show and a lot of callbacks to early episodes (the book came out in 2011, so it only really ties into the first 3 seasons). I like to laugh in general, but this book had me laughing out loud every few pages.
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Jul 20, 2015 22:14
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Tipping Point. Very good.
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Jul 20, 2015 23:34
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The Disaster Artist is a funny book.
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Jul 25, 2015 12:26
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The Name of The Rose by Umberto Eco. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
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Jul 25, 2015 14:14
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Our Land Was a Forest: An Ainu Memoir, by Kayano Shigeru This is an account of the author's family's oral history of the Japanese conquest of Hokkaido, and his personal experience with the economic and cultural subjugation of the Ainu. He talks about how his ancestral homeland had been a rich forest, and his life earning his living cutting down more; how the Ainu were forced to work for a living for the same empire that took away their livelihood, and how they were starved to death as they did so. For instance, thinking it would help him escape starvation and disease at a forced-labor camp, the author's grandfather, at age 11, cut off his own index finger. Later, he did escape by feigning illness. After his career as a logger, the author starts a career doing Ainu culture shows, managing Ainu doing ritual dances for tourists, and selling souvenirs. He eventually starts collecting relics and modern examples of Ainu material culture, to build a museum. I got this as an assigned text in a class that had WAAAAY too many assigned texts, a long loving time ago. I had been meaning to read it since, but I never got around to reading more than the first chapter until now. NOW I FEEL LIKE A TOTAL rear end in a top hat. See, I went to Hokkaido, and could have visited the places Kayano talks about. I hardly left Sapporo (to be fair to myself, I saw WAY more of Sapporo than most of my classmates did.) Hell, I might have met the man while he was still alive. I met Ainu a few times that I know of, but I never really connected with them. I don't know that I'll ever find my way back there again, much as I'd like to.
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Jul 28, 2015 01:38
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A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire #3) by George R.R. Martin Better than the first two by a long shot. Game of Thrones and Clash of Kings were great, but this is the book that made me "get", totally and completely, the hype. The first two in A Song of Ice and Fire were all about the buildup to a major cataclysm in the political kingdom that Martin has set up, but book 3 is all cataclysms, all the time. I don't know if I can hop right in to #4 because the sheer length/scale of this one was exhausting. Also, I hear the books after this one can't keep up and the series starts to falter a bit...but it can't be that bad, right?
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Jul 28, 2015 15:01
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Captain Hotbutt posted:A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire #3) by George R.R. Martin books 4 and 5 go to absolute hell in a handbasket. reading book 4 immediately after book 3 is particularly jarring since its easily the most boring one. most people had to wait like 10 years between them or something but when you read them back to back, its brutal. someone did combine books 4 and 5 with rearranged chapter orders and its much more enjoyable tgat way. google A Ball of Beasts or something like that.
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Jul 28, 2015 15:23
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Captain Hotbutt posted:A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire #3) by George R.R. Martin Some storylines are better than others. My experience was to tear through the chapters until I got to one of the less-interesting characters, at which point I felt free to take a break. And, yeah, some of it gets real boring in the fourth book.
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Jul 28, 2015 15:24
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Book 3 is the clear gem in the series. Book 5 leaves a half dozen cliffhangers ... Apparently book 6 opens with some major poo poo to finally address some of those points, so maybe he just needs to burn through 2 lamer books before hitting a juicy one.
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Jul 28, 2015 18:33
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There was supposed to be a several year gap in-story after book 3. He ended up not doing it but then didn't have anything to fill the space other than boring endless wanderings.
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Jul 28, 2015 18:47
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It's weird to me how often I hear folks say how boring those long rear end books are yet still suggest them over and over to other people and pine for more. Is it a low self-worth kinda thing? edit: I just finished Gilead and it was really good and I feel like a better person for having read it. It's one of those books you pray to find every so often that reminds you of the absolute pleasure of reading. It's quick too. Anyways, if you liked Gilead have you tried this book called A song of fire and ice?! GunChicka fucked around with this message at 02:53 on Jul 29, 2015 |
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Jul 29, 2015 02:50
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GunChicka posted:It's weird to me how often I hear folks say how boring those long rear end books are yet still suggest them over and over to other people and pine for more. Is it a low self-worth kinda thing? You are looking at it wrong. This is a series with 3 really strong books at the start, and 2 other books that are not as quite as strong. Even the last 2 books have highlights that keep you reading (book 5 is better at this). So no. If I could give any advice to readers of ASOIAF is take a break after book 3. I read the first 4 books back to back (took about 3 months) about 10 years ago, and it made the 4th book even rougher. By the time book 5 came out it was a pretty long break, and I actually enjoyed it despite it's flaws. So for me there is only 1 book I didn't enoy.
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Jul 29, 2015 13:01
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nate fisher posted:You are looking at it wrong. This is a series with 3 really strong books at the start, and 2 other books that are not as quite as strong. Even the last 2 books have highlights that keep you reading (book 5 is better at this). So no. Good advice. I powered through 1, 2, 3 relatively quickly and waited a year or so before working through 4 and 5. Like I said earlier, book 5 at least has some build up, it just does not deliver (and that's presumably where book 6 comes in).
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Jul 29, 2015 16:26
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moot the hopple posted:I thought it was the gooniest wish fulfillment book. I posted in this thread that I didn't mind Ready Player One after I immediately finished it but as the weeks went on, I kept thinking about the book and getting annoyed about it. I recently went back and re-read it, along with Armada and god-loving-drat. Armada doubles the gently caress down on the nostalgia wank and the 1980s as viewed through a Middle Class White Man's Lens. The main character is an rear end in a top hat whose dad dies and leaves behind a bunch of dumb 80s poo poo that no kid in the middle 21st century should care about. Of course his mother is totally okay with the idea of her son trying to recreate his father's life by living an unhealthy simulacrum of it. Oh, and turns out, being good at video games - specifically one that was designed by every major video game developer (ranging from the likes of Gabe Newell to Shigeru Miyamoto and Hidetaka Miyazaki) will help save the world! Oh, and he gets enlisted into the world-saving army corps because he's so good at video games and is made a captain or some poo poo and there's an even more generic female stand-in that wants to make out with him immediately because he's so loving good at video games. Then they fight the bad guy alien invasion, his dad shows up and had something to do with the video game (SURPRISE) and literally all of the cities along the Atlantic get hosed up by the aliens' weapons but because we win, the aliens give us cool technology to make up for it but ZACK loving LIGHTMAN, hero of the video game wars, doesn't trust 'em...perhaps they did this for nefarious purposes??? THE ? END. Also the afterword mentions that this poo poo is getting made into a loving movie so gently caress everything. Basically, gently caress Ernest Cline's books. You can watch a middle-age white man masturbate on the internet elsewhere.
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Jul 30, 2015 12:46
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Vanderdeath posted:Basically, gently caress Ernest Cline's books. You can watch a middle-age white man masturbate on the internet elsewhere. Link? Kidding, of course. Reading your review confirms my suspicions that Armada is basically a cover version of a certain award-winning science-fiction novel from the mid-80s. Also, even the booksellers I know that enjoyed RPO did not think this was nearly as good.
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Jul 30, 2015 13:57
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So Armada is Ender's Game but terrible? Wow, who would have thought the amazing mind behind Best Selling Amazing Novel Ready Player One wouldn't be a good author 
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Jul 30, 2015 14:50
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Haha, Ernest Cline is basically the male nerd version of Stephanie Meyer. I mean, you should know what you're in for after RPL.
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Jul 30, 2015 15:16
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hope and vaseline posted:Haha, Ernest Cline is basically the male nerd version of Stephanie Meyer. I mean, you should know what you're in for after RPL. Ok, canceling my library hold of this. I just "finished" 1st to Die by James Patterson, which I only picked up bc my library had it available digitally and I wanted a free crime thriller. It is one of the worst books I've ever read. I was slightly interested in the whodunnit so I skimmed the second half of the book but paid little attention to the cliched, shallow caricatures of characters or embarrassing dialogue after a while. How does this guy sell zillions of books?
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Aug 2, 2015 02:20
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Is there a single James Patterson book that is good? p.s. do not include any that were written entirely by other people but have his name on it instead
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Aug 2, 2015 03:12
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Finally read The Postman by David Brin. Once I understood it as three distinct short stories, tied together after the initial writing, it worked better. It's a strong post-apocalyptic novel; rooting the dissolution of the USA in violent survivalist/separatist groups makes as much sense in 2015 as it did in 1985. Finished Look Who's Back by T Vernes after reading a NYTimes review -- political and social satire, especially if/when it ruffles feathers, is completely my poo poo. Almost done with One of Us about the Anders Brievek massacre in Norway. Have also been plowing through a bunch of graphic novels, DMZ, Transmet, Saga, etc.
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Aug 2, 2015 16:31
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blue squares posted:Is there a single James Patterson book that is good? p.s. do not include any that were written entirely by other people but have his name on it instead The first couple of Alex Cross books were decent brainless serial-killer airport fic twenty years ago or so before Patterson's shameless mercenary hack tendencies kicked into complete overdrive, I guess.
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Aug 3, 2015 00:43
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I kind of feel the same way about John Sandford's Prey series - the first few were dumb fun but as the hero eventually got promotion after promotion I kinda tuned out.
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Aug 3, 2015 04:07
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Patti Smith - Just Kids. She wrote a biography of a guy I don't care about.
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Aug 3, 2015 08:00
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Interview with a Vampire by Anne Rice. I like listening to audio horror books, and this one was available through my library online. I remembered liking the movie a lot so gave it a whirl. It was good at first, but as the book dragged on and on I wanted to strangle the main character Louis and his pedantic and never ending prose, insisting on describing everything in minute detail. I did start the next book (The Vampire Lestat), because the story was ok... I just grew very tired of it halfway through. Hopefully Lestat won't describe every drat thing including the colour of the drapery and how beautiful it is. So far there's a lot navel gazing about the human condition so I'm not too sure...
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Aug 3, 2015 09:17
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Vanderdeath posted:Armada doubles the gently caress down on the nostalgia wank and the 1980s as viewed through a Middle Class White Man's Lens. The main character is an rear end in a top hat whose dad dies and leaves behind a bunch of dumb 80s poo poo that no kid in the middle 21st century should care about. I got friends that justify their massive and endless accumulation of videogames / boardgames / anime by saying that it's "a collection" that they're going to pass on to their kids. Like their kids are going to be interested in dubs of "Gunsmith Cats" or obscure wargames from the 1990s. Anyways, I just finished The Peripheral by William Gibson. Short review: good, enjoyable. Long review: it may be the most Gibsonesque novel that Gibson ever Gibson'd, layered thick with "Chinese biopolymer" and extemporaneous declarations of how the world is. Some impressions: * The prose is actually very enjoyable and there's lots of quotable quotes: "poo poo. Volumes of it. Hitting a multitude of fans." * I even managed to pick the short story it was based on: "Mozart in Mirrorshades" by Bruce Sterling * Of course, nothing is really explained in the end: the story device just is. But that's okay - it's a way to set up the story. * The post-apocalypse reconstructed London is actually a nice setting because I hated the London that appeared in Zero History. The setting of the decaying, second-world USA is also neat. * The ending, as is traditional in Gibson, is a bit disappointing and comes down to two powerful but nebulously defined entities clashing head-on until one out badasses the other. ("Our vague high-tech stuff is being defeated by the enemies vague high-tech stuff. So I need you to go and do this specific task. No, I won't explain why.") So don't read it for the ending. * I hope he doesn't turn this into a trilogy. * They spend a lot of time in armoured convoys or explaining security details, which does drag by the end. * Some nice characters like Connor Penske, the crippled veteran of "First Haptic Recon (speed, intensity, violence)" who rides around the decrepit badlands of his home town at all hours on a motorcycle adapted to fit his crippled body.
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Aug 3, 2015 14:10
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I recently finished Number9Dream by David Mitchell; just before that I read Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami. I didn't make a plan of it, but I was delighted to read them back-to-back as Number9Dream heavily references Norwegian Wood. My significant other had asked me for years to read Murakami's NW and I just now read it to cleanse my palette from feverishly reading Mitchel novels. Not being a Beetles fan I also ran into the odd coincidence that both novels are titles of Beetles songs. Both books are about young men (~20 years old) coming of age in Tokyo and heavily focus on their growth in the realms of personal identity, romantic life, and existential aim. As for Murakami's Norwegian Wood I found the book to be enjoyable but fairly forgettable. The principal character, Toru Watanabe, writes a memoir of his experience as a young man early in his college career. He experiences the loss of a close friend, falls in love with another, and generally fumbles through many segments of early adulthood. For context, I read Murakami's Kafka on the Shore in my first year of college (some time ago) and absolutely loved it. The only other book I've read from him is 1Q84. My feelings for that book echo Norwegian Wood in that I felt like there was beauty there but the narrative falls short. I feel it was completely worth the read but I can't see myself re-reading it at any point. As for Number9Dream, I absolutely loved it. The narrator, Eiji, is from a small, backwoodsy island in Japan; he was born a bastard and his mother left he and his twin sister at an early age. Eiji decides to go to Tokyo to meet his father whom abandoned him and his sister before birth since he was a married Tokyo socialite at the time of conception. As with Norwegian Wood, the title of this book is lifted from a Beetles song title. It also affects the structure of the book: each of it's nine chapters includes a dream, daydream, journal, or story interspersed throughout the general narrative. The book was extremely exciting and provided a lot of existential reflection and beauty that I love to find in a novel. it was apparent from the first chapter that the book was, at least in part, a homage to Murakami. Several references to Murakami and Norwegian Wood are found throughout the book: 19/20 year old protagonist in Tokyo, starts off his journey as a virgin/near-virgin, each plays guitar, has a rich, womanizing friend that likes to double-date and swap partners, Beetles song title for each book, characters named/nearly named after NW characters (Watanabe, Nagasawa, Naoko/Naoki), themes of suicide, primary character in a mental rehab facility in the mountains)
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Aug 5, 2015 03:41
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Ubik by Philip K. Dick. I loved it. Picked up the enormous "Exegesis of Philip K. Dick" a couple days ago, and will likely read it in parallel with a few other Dick novels for the full experience.
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Aug 5, 2015 16:11
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The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman. Definitely not the best Gaiman I've read, even taking into account the younger target audience. A lot of pretty interesting ideas don't really get fleshed out, and potentially cool characters show up briefly only to be forgotten along the way. If I were feeling charitable I'd say this could be an attempt to capture the transience of life and contrast it with the permanencce of death, but I'm not feeling charitable. Not that there aren't good parts - there's some fun mythology going on behind the scenes, which is where Gaiman seems to be having the most fun writing. It felt like the kind of premise that would have worked really well as a short story, or even retooled into a Sandman arc, but overall it was pretty forgettable as a book. Decrypting Rita, vol. 2: Imperfect Forward Secrecy, by Margaret Trauth. A reality-hopping posthuman identity crisis continues and only gets more tangled and kaleidoscopic. Some really great sequences that really play with Trauth's style and the medium itself, particularly a date that becomes a future car chase. It's still relentlessly, joyously queer (in every sense of the word), and the silliness only makes the serious parts feel more weighty. I cannot wait for volume 3 to be published. 111 Thirteen, by Tom Hoyle. A YA novel about an Evil Cult that recruits serial killing teens, a special 13-year-old orphan who was born at the moment of Y2K. No big write-up for this one because honestly it's kind of pathetic and ham-handed, with a competition between how many times the author can describe the cult leader as "evil" and "insane" and how many times he can work the number thirteen into the story. Tensionless drivel.
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Aug 5, 2015 16:16
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Gertrude Perkins posted:The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman. Definitely not the best Gaiman I've read,
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Aug 5, 2015 16:57
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I just finished one of the best books I've ever read. She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb (1992). Wow. The first person story of a girl from age 4 to adulthood. She has a difficult life, and by the time she finishes high school, she's 257 pounds. Every character in this book is deep and real. I stayed up until 1:30am last night finishing it. I'm going to the store right when it opens to get his next book.
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Aug 6, 2015 13:50
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Wasn't sure if serious, so checked Goodreads:quote:This book sucked. A) What the hell does a MAN know about writing about a fat girl's life? NOTHING. Thus making whole book wrong. B) Obviously didn't research anything about the main character, places her in situations she would NOT be in at the weight prescribed. What did he actually ASK WOMEN what they weigh? Guess what moron, they LIE. A 200lb woman can still fit in a car, loser. I could go on forever. The only reason I even read this book was because I forgot a book on an airplane and was offered this. When choosing between reading ANYTHING and watching yet ANOTHER Julie Roberts movie in-flight, I will chose the book. I should've watched the stupid movie. I want those precious moments of my life back. The only reason I will give this one star is because it has accomplished the act of being shaped like a book. The reviews are glorious.
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Aug 7, 2015 03:34
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A 200lb woman can still fit in a car, loser.
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Aug 7, 2015 09:48
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To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis. It took me a while to get through as I'm more a fan of the time travel aspects than the goofy Victorian era comedy of errors, but the ending was great and the plot threads came together well. I still liked Doomsday Book a lot more. I'm now starting The Ocean at the End of the Lane, so far so good.
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Aug 9, 2015 15:25
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I just finished Authority, the second book in Jeff VanDerMeer's Southern Reach trilogy. It was an interesting diversion after the first book, Annihilation. I loved Annihilation, so I was cautious going into this one, since I'd been told it took a very different approach to the Southern Reach, but I really enjoyed it. It definitely felt like the middle book in the trilogy; there was a lot of setting up of plot points, adding to the world, that kind of thing. I'm just about to start Acceptance, the final book in the trilogy. I'm excited to see where this goes.
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Aug 9, 2015 20:33
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The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, and Other Stories by Hilary Mantel. The first Hilary Mantel I've read, and a really good collection of stories. They all deal with similar things - femininity, the minute mundane details of everyday life, anxiety, the extreme and strange existing among the normal. Some of the stories in here (especially 'The Long QT' and 'The Heart Fails Without Warning' gave me genuine chills, some of them twisting the knife with the last few lines. I'll definitely be reading more of her stuff.
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Aug 10, 2015 07:46
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On an impending flight from Frankfurt I had nothing to read, so I bought a bunch of books for the Nook and also picked up "a blind date with a book" -- a brown-paper-wrapped book with a few handwritten notes on the paper providing a vague description of what was inside. It promised a tense thriller, so I eagerly opened in on the plane and started to read. It was Yannick Murphy's This Is The Water, and it was such an awful experience I'm surprised to see reviews that liked its second-person narrative and who didn't think the ending was just a snoozer. I followed that up with Paula Hawkins' The Girl On The Train, which was vastly superior, and then about 2/3 of Gone Girl. I wish I'd been able to go into the latter unspoiled, but it was still a fun read. More than anything I'm glad I had something to read after This Is The Water, which had just annoyed me the whole way through.
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Aug 10, 2015 18:17
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Just finished "Flower for Algernon", by Daniel Keyes. All I can say is wow. What an amazing book, and emotionally devastating at the end. Was bawling my eyes out. Such a great look at the ramifications of technology on life, and the rise and fall of an individual.
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Aug 11, 2015 18:47
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Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis Sick story, I will soon jump in American Psycho
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Aug 11, 2015 20:14
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Great book. Worth reading a couple of times. American Psycho is good but there are a few really tedious chapters.
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Aug 11, 2015 22:23
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