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Lisa Rogak's Haunted Heart: The Life and Times of Stephen King had come up a few times on the internet. The Goodreads score looked good and I've read a lot of King, so I decided to give it a try from the library. Ugh. It's like reading a scrapbook, but with only the curator's favorite parts clipped. The author admits up front that it's unauthorized and that while the Kings themselves had no participation, they didn't tell anyone not to talk to her. In its stead, there are a few interview with those that know him. Without checking the endnotes, it seems like very few. It's to the point where she talked to a guy that mowed his lawn on a few occasions and had only one or two brief interactions with him. There is no flow and the whole thing reads like bullet points, with no world building, no balance, just dancing from story to story, with very little critique. King's drug issues in the 1980s are mentioned from time to time, but from a detached perspective. Everything else reads like a fangirl's website and I suspect 90% of it was drawn from other people's interviews with him. If you want details on Stephen King's life and thought process, he did a pretty good job himself with Danse Macabre and On Writing. Strangely, he's even juicier about his own life than an unauthorized bio. RC and Moon Pie fucked around with this message at 03:09 on Nov 2, 2015 |
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Nov 2, 2015 03:06
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RC and Moon Pie posted:no world building What does this mean given that this is a non fictional book?
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Nov 2, 2015 03:15
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Piell posted:Were you a nerd in the 80s? Time to get your dick sucked about how awesome it was! How do I hold all these 80s nerd references, help.
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Nov 2, 2015 03:26
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A human heart posted:What does this mean given that this is a non fictional book? That I'm pretty terrible at describing things. Nothing in the book is fleshed out with any background information.
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Nov 2, 2015 03:52
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US(a.), by Saul Williams. I've always been a big fan of Saul Williams's music, and I love the one poetry book I have of his, The Dead Emcee Scrolls, so I was really excited for this. It's a commissioned collection of poetry loosely about America, being American, race in America and so on, and there are some really stunning pieces in here. He's got a great sense of rhythm and beauty and transcendence and plays around with words just enough that it's satisfying without being tiresome. I was surprised by the inclusion of a large chunk of unfinished film script for a biopic Williams had been working on about the life of Miles Davis and his relationship with Juliette Greco in Paris. I'm barely knowledgeable about jazz or any of that scene, so I didn't know what to expect; I've never been too receptive to reading scripts as-is, but this had some great moments. Much more moving though was the lengthy introduction and prologue to the collection, where Williams tracks his relationship with his own American-ness (and blackness) through his childhood. As a collection of poems it's really pretty good. I even found myself bookmarking a few, which doesn't happen to me much. And after finishing it I find myself even more excited for his new album.
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Nov 2, 2015 03:58
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The Crying of Lot 49. Awesome book about secret societies and what-all hidden meanings behind every day life and what have you. “She looked down a slope, needing to squint for the sunlight, onto a vast sprawl of houses which had grown up all together, like a well-tended crop, from the dull brown earth; and she thought of the time she’d opened a transistor radio to replace a battery and seen her first printed circuit. The ordered swirl of houses and streets, from this high angle, sprang at her now with the same unexpected, astonishing clarity as the circuit card had. Though she knew even less about radios than about Southern Californians, there were to both outward patterns a hieroglyphic sense of concealed meaning, of an intent to communicate. There’d seemed no limit to what the printed circuit could have told her (if she had tried to find out); so in her first minute of San Narciso, a revelation also trembled just past the threshold of her understanding.” - Gertrude Perkins posted:US(a.), by Saul Williams. I'm going to have to check this out, I've always been a fan of him as well. I'm not even entirely sure if it's his project, but have you heard his stuff "Martyr Loser King"? edit: on second (any) look it's his next album/a graphic novel edit 2: you already mentioned it Cuchulaain fucked around with this message at 09:58 on Nov 2, 2015 |
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Nov 2, 2015 09:56
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Cuchulaain posted:I'm going to have to check this out, I've always been a fan of him as well. Haha, yeah, that's the project I'm super excited for! It's also a Tumblr he's curating which shares a good amount of interesting art/photography/writing.
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Nov 2, 2015 10:07
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Gertrude Perkins posted:It's also a Tumblr he's curating which shares a good amount of interesting art/photography/writing. Chalkin' this up to another thing that's going to take up large amounts of time. Bam.
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Nov 2, 2015 10:37
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Gulp by Mary Roach. She is a treasure; I'm always looking forward to reading whatever she's written.
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Nov 2, 2015 19:56
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The Old Man's War I can't recall the author but it was an enjoyable book. I was able to figure out several key plot points early on but that didn't detract from the book. It was an interesting novel and quite graphic and militaristic. I didn't come away with the feeling the author was really trying to make a point but the novel touches on death, war, love, and why we fight. I would recommend it as a solid sci-fi/military novel.
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Nov 2, 2015 19:58
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We by Yevgeny Zamyatin. An early 20th century Russian dystopian novel with some beautiful imagery. Really enjoyed this one.
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Nov 3, 2015 02:59
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Almost done with Scarcrow and the Army of Thieves by Reilly and wow is it fun, like Commando, but he has to save the whole world instead of just his daughter. The action is very snappy and I have a grin the whole time I'm reading it. The stuff about being scared of China's economy is funny with hindsight. Contrasts well with the other Reilly book I read, Seven Ancient Wonders which had great setpieces but didn't describe the action very well and went pretty spergy on describing the tomb trap mechanisms. I miss TBB's airport fiction thread.
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Nov 3, 2015 05:34
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The Dispossessed (Le Guin) - uh, I have to admit, I didn't like this. I know a lot of people adore Le Guin but I haven't enjoyed any of her books. I always find her sentences clunky as hell, and I hated that here we're infodumped a lot of worldbuilding about attitudes towards homosexuality, the abolition of the nuclear family, communal living arrangements, and so on, but what we SEE is a weirdly conservative paean to 'human nature': a kind of biotruth-misogynist heterosexual nuclear family who live alone, and who are so great that they inspire the only homosexual character to reevaluate his life choices. Why write a book about the struggle between anarchism and capitalism, and then only show me the most bourgeois couple in the whole of anarchism? Triton (Delany) - this is supposed to be read in response to The Dispossessed (and Delany's criticisms of her book in The Jewel-Hinged Jaw). I enjoyed this much more. Bron is the ultimate Nice Guy, and the tensions between a nominally progressive society and someone actually being a huge dickhole are much more foregrounded. Delany owns as usual. The Ginger Man (Donleavy) - Irish bloke goes around punching women, dodging rent and smothering babies. Great writing and has offended half of Goodreads into giving one star reviews.
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Nov 3, 2015 09:12
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jlechem posted:The Old Man's War I can't recall the author but it was an enjoyable book. I was able to figure out several key plot points early on but that didn't detract from the book. It was an interesting novel and quite graphic and militaristic. I didn't come away with the feeling the author was really trying to make a point but the novel touches on death, war, love, and why we fight. I would recommend it as a solid sci-fi/military novel. John Scalzi! All the other books in that series are totally worth reading too - I posted about finishing the sixth and most recent one, The End of All Things, just a little bit upthread 
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Nov 3, 2015 10:21
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effectual posted:I miss TBB's airport fiction thread.
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Nov 3, 2015 12:16
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^ Same!effectual posted:Almost done with Scarcrow and the Army of Thieves by Reilly and wow is it fun, like Commando, but he has to save the whole world instead of just his daughter. The action is very snappy and I have a grin the whole time I'm reading it. The stuff about being scared of China's economy is funny with hindsight. Contrasts well with the other Reilly book I read, Seven Ancient Wonders which had great setpieces but didn't describe the action very well and went pretty spergy on describing the tomb trap mechanisms. Have you read his earlier Scarecrow books? They're a little (a tiny bit) more grounded in reality in terms of tech and so on, but they're just as balls-to-the-wall ridiculous.
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Nov 3, 2015 18:06
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ghost crow posted:We by Yevgeny Zamyatin. An early 20th century Russian dystopian novel with some beautiful imagery. Really enjoyed this one. LOVE this book. Just finished American Gods, and... eh. I was pretty disappointed overall. I didn't dislike it, but I really wanted to love it and didn't. It just seemed anticlimactic to me. I do, however, think it might make a decent TV series.
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Nov 3, 2015 19:18
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Recently finished reading "On the Beach" by Nevil Shute. Pretty darn good. I'm going to start reading "Necessary Errors" by Caleb Crain
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Nov 3, 2015 21:51
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Mahlertov Cocktail posted:John Scalzi! All the other books in that series are totally worth reading too - I posted about finishing the sixth and most recent one, The End of All Things, just a little bit upthread Yes that's it! I haven't read the others because the reviews seemed to indicate the story went downhill and the last book especially was poor. This book ended at a good place and I hate to ruin it.
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Nov 3, 2015 22:14
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I read Slade House by David Mitchell on my vacation. I'd rate it up there pretty high in the pantheon of Mitchell Mythology. Again it's 5 different first person short stories with a common theme of the house that tells a story. Part of the reason I liked it is because I was interested in all 5 of the stories, which is always determines how much I like the book. For like Cloud Atlas and Bone Clocks I wasn't really interested in more than 2-3 of the 6 parts of the book, so I rate those lower. As a standalone, it's quite quick and readable and tells an interesting story, although I guess the ending is probably a bit weird if you didn't at least The Bone Clocks. If you've read the other 6 Mitchell novels, you get a pretty good amount of universe development considering this book is only 230 pages. Bonus for me was that I was on vacation in England so the copy I picked up happened to be a signed copy.
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Nov 3, 2015 22:41
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jlechem posted:Yes that's it! I haven't read the others because the reviews seemed to indicate the story went downhill and the last book especially was poor. This book ended at a good place and I hate to ruin it. I very much disagree. I think the further books went in really cool directions, though if reviewers were particularly enamored of the straight-up militarism in Old Man's War then I'm not surprised they didn't love the series as it went on.
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Nov 4, 2015 08:24
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Prism Mirror Lens posted:The Ginger Man (Donleavy) - Irish bloke goes around punching women, dodging rent and smothering babies. Great writing and has offended half of Goodreads into giving one star reviews. I read a sample of this and it is good. Excerpt: (Main character interacting with a prostitute) And when she had a few drinks she got frightfully crude. I was shocked. Asked me how big it was. I almost slapped her face. With it. However the main character is not Irish. He rather loathes them in fact.
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Nov 5, 2015 06:21
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Payndz posted:So do I! You'd be the perfect one to write a new OP for it 
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Nov 5, 2015 06:42
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I finished The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers on the train this morning. What a sad, gorgeous book. For real, though, it is crushingly sad - even when actively depressing events aren't happening, there's just such a pervasive sense of loneliness (duh, it's in the title) and not fitting in that weighs on all the characters. I loved how Singer, the character whom all the others look up to and project their own ideas onto, not only has his own inner life and problems, but also projects his own desires onto Antonapoulos, who, like Singer to the other characters, simply listens to Singer and gives vague responses. In a book about misfits trapped in their own lives, it's a compelling (and, again, loving sad) parallel.
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Nov 5, 2015 09:48
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Can of Cloud posted:Recently finished reading "On the Beach" by Nevil Shute. I went through a real tear into these sorts of books in the last couple of years. I think Alas Babylon still stands out as my favorite.
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Nov 5, 2015 16:21
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I also recently finished Slade House. I am a very big fan of Mitchell's work and re-read some of his books every so often. I had pre-ordered the book a while back and forgot that it was coming out on 10/27. Very oddly enough, I happened to be reading through The Bone Clocks and finished it on 10/25. For even more  I started Slade House on 10/27 and finished it within five days--the time span that occurs in the book as well...Anyways, the book was very good. I think it stands on it's own but a reader would really benefit from reading The Bone Clocks (and, to a lesser extent, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet) prior to reading this book. The book was sufficiently creepy and I found each of the characters to be interesting; they definitely each had their own voice and gave their own perspective on Slade House. Likewise, Slade House reacted differently to each character... Does anybody have a link to a good fan resource for Mitchell's novels? I love how characters (or their ancestors/family) re-appear in different books and I'm also interested in how the timeline of each of his books looks as a whole considering that many story segments occur at the same or nearly-same time.
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Nov 5, 2015 16:48
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The Sean posted:Does anybody have a link to a good fan resource for Mitchell's novels? I love how characters (or their ancestors/family) re-appear in different books and I'm also interested in how the timeline of each of his books looks as a whole considering that many story segments occur at the same or nearly-same time.
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Nov 5, 2015 16:52
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Mahlertov Cocktail posted:I finished The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers on the train this morning. What a sad, gorgeous book. For real, though, it is crushingly sad - even when actively depressing events aren't happening, there's just such a pervasive sense of loneliness (duh, it's in the title) and not fitting in that weighs on all the characters. I loved how Singer, the character whom all the others look up to and project their own ideas onto, not only has his own inner life and problems, but also projects his own desires onto Antonapoulos, who, like Singer to the other characters, simply listens to Singer and gives vague responses. In a book about misfits trapped in their own lives, it's a compelling (and, again, loving sad) parallel. I also just finished this and I'm seconding all of the above. All I really have to add is read this, read this, read this. It's now one of my favorite books of all time. Absolute masterpiece. Also, even though it is absolutely a horribly sad book that ruined my life, I also found it genuinely heartwarming much of the time. The ending didn't leave me in a pit of despair, even though maybe event-wise it should have. Horrible things happen constantly, but even through it all there's this sense of hope; the characters mostly persevere and look forward to something better, and they all care about each other. Read this book.
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Nov 6, 2015 05:38
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Guava posted:I also just finished this and I'm seconding all of the above. All I really have to add is read this, read this, read this. It's now one of my favorite books of all time. Absolute masterpiece. Yeah I should've mentioned that the characters don't spend the whole time moping around either, nor is the tone really negative; it's just that it's a sad setting and McCullers deals with it really evocatively. The characters are delightful and nuanced.
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Nov 6, 2015 11:39
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The New Father by Armin Brott. Another baby book for dads - focused on the baby's first year. Great book if you are going to be a father.
Good-Natured Filth fucked around with this message at 00:39 on Nov 9, 2015 |
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Nov 9, 2015 00:36
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Solar Express by L. E. Modesitt Jr. A sci-fi novel by an author mostly known for fantasy, but Solar Express is my favorite kind of first contact story: one without any aliens whatsoever as humanity encounters an artifact that defies our understanding of science, and the majority of the story focuses on the humans trying to piece together what they can. Everything dealing with the discovery and exploration of the artifact is good, but the bulk of the story rests on the relationship between the protagonists - a relationship that falls flat in my opinion, as both protagonists are very flat characters who don't grow or change over the course of the book. The other major story beat, one of international tension and crisis between Earth governments in response to the discovery, is if anything even less interesting. The bad guy of the book is sci-fi China, which proceeds to go down a checklist of villain stereotypes without ever providing a hint of motivation or characterization beyond "bad guys." It's not an actively bad read, and the regular interjections of media news stories helps flesh out the setting a little better, but I regret buying this in hardback. The end of the book also hints at some weirdness that makes me wonder if Modesitt isn't coyly hinting at this book being related to one of his other series.
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Nov 10, 2015 05:34
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The Wake, by Paul Kingsnorth, is the best contemporary novel I've read since Blood Meridian. For a book containing several scenes of medieval brutality it is surprisingly humorous (mostly because of the unreliable, delusional narrator). Written in a heavily modernized form of Old English, it takes several pages to get familiar with the vocabulary and spelling but it's very much worth the effort. It's set during the time of the Norman conquest of England, told from the point of view of a dispossessed landowner and devotee of the old Norse gods, Buccmaster, who fancies himself a "grene man of the holt" who will drive the French invaders out through guerrilla warfare. It's something like Don Quixote told from the point of view of a less chivalrous Don Quixote. In short, it's a literary achievement as well as an interesting piece of prose in its own right.
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Nov 13, 2015 00:43
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That book sounds really cool, Utz, and this:Utz posted:The Wake, by Paul Kingsnorth, is the best contemporary novel I've read since Blood Meridian. is a hell of an endorsement.
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Nov 13, 2015 07:46
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I hope you won't think I've oversold it. Blood Meridian is the richer book for sure. But this is a really good book too, especially because of the language -- it really adds a depth and context to the story, and underscores the book's many ironies regarding Buccmaster's beliefs about his own culture. Just really interesting from many perspectives! I'm re-reading already because of the learning curve the language added, so now I can get more out of the first 20 pages or so. I'm interested to hear what others think, so please consider reading it.
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Nov 14, 2015 20:38
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I haven't read it yet but I suspect I'll enjoy the concept of The Wake's gimmick more than actually reading it. That said, I'll at least try it eventually.
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Nov 14, 2015 22:55
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Just finished The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins, and I enjoyed it for the most part, but I can't help feeling that there is a mind-blowing book bubbling just below the surface of a pretty good one. Unfortunately,
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Nov 16, 2015 16:07
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I listened to Oryx & Crake on a road trip home, and it was loving phenomenal. The storytelling was perfectly paced, and the places she takes you, the characterizations were amazing, and Margaret Atwood is a boss at analogy, so many just stuck in my brain. Can't wait read to other two books.
Loving Life Partner fucked around with this message at 01:05 on Nov 17, 2015 |
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Nov 17, 2015 01:00
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Loving Life Partner posted:I listened to Oryx & Crake on a road trip home, and it was loving phenomenal. The storytelling was perfectly paced, and the places she takes you, the characterizations were amazing, and Margaret Atwood is a boss at analogy, so many just stuck in my brain. Can't wait read to other two books. Year of the Flood kinda sucks but the Maddaddam was very good.
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Nov 17, 2015 03:14
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Heinlein's Beyond this Horizon. This book never seems to make it into any compilations of Heinlein's works. Wonder wh - oh yeah, all the eugenics. I'd dearly love to see a comparison even between the original 1942 serial version and the 1948 novel, as you can see the waffling and backtracking trying desperately to fend off the upcoming wave of distaste for the subject matter. All "why, of course the Nazis had it all wrong with their stupid racial theories, and a proper eugenics program would be far more rational and empirical about desirable traits (every single protagonist is white, Africa and Asia is populated by barbarians, and the only desirable traits are the ones relevant to a well educated 1920's American male)". Kinda feel as though the novel may regain its relevance when we really get into genetic engineering (though, naturally, the novel itself has good old fashioned breeding programs, complete with an utterly predictable and kinda depressing love story) ... Stuart Laycock's All The Countries We've Invaded - a breezy 256 page book detailing the nearly 200 countries Britain invaded, conquered, attacked, or otherwise had been militarily involved with. The summary pretty much tells you the basic positives and negatives of the book - it's a quick light read / reference, that's utterly lacking in any details. You get the names of certain wars, some details, and you can go check wikipedia for everything else. Laycock apparently collaborated in writing similar books for America and Italy - I wonder if those two are equally "rah rah, go [Subject matter]". Naturally enough, all atrocities are neatly elided, land-grabs are treated as a matter of course, every single mention of "we invaded this country to pursue our slaving interests" is followed up with "but let us not forget that we opposed slavery a mere century later!". Perhaps most baffling / annoying of all, the author seems utterly incapable of writing the word "insignificant", when describing British participation in joint invasions. 3 out of 70 ships in the attack were British? A significant contribution. Among the paratroopers was a single British advisory? A highly significant part was no doubt played by him. Also, I kinda get the feeling the book was meant for highschool students, possibly even for use as supplementary material by particularly cool history teachers. That would explain the very simple language, constant whitewashing, repetitive use of key phrases ("event A was unfortunate for us, but then event B was very fortunate for us") and terrible "cheeky" humor. Can't say I haven't learned anything though. Xander77 fucked around with this message at 10:27 on Jan 25, 2019 |
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Nov 17, 2015 12:09
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Finally got around to reading The Martian. It was...alright. I admit I'm not a big fan of technical science fiction but the pacing was good and it was an easy read. Wouldn't read again but would watch the movie.
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Nov 17, 2015 17:41
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