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October. 58. Making Money. Terry Pratchett. A great book, even if the antagonists were in the lackluster side. 59. Zero History. William Gibson. I'm almost convinced that Gibson gives us a dull start just to finish in an awesome way in all his Blue Ant books. 60. Mitos y Leyendas. Muy Interesante. A brief compilation of myths and legends. 61. Tales from Earthsea. Ursula K. Le Guin. A nice collection of Earthsea stories, some good, some awesome. 62. The Shining. Stephen King. Regular story, quite different from the movie. I think the book is more standard King and predictable. 63. Unseen Academicals. Terry Pratchett. Good book but a minor one in the Discworld series. 64. Managing Risk and Information Security: Protect to Enable. Malcolm Harkins. Good security reference, but too much Intel for my taste. 65. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Seth Grahame-Smith. Mediocre but mercifully quick. 1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year: 65/60 2. Read a female author: Jojo Moyes and others. 3. The non-white author: Khaled Hosseini and others. 4. Philosophy: Thus Spake Zarathustra, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche 5. History: Monsters and Demons, Charlotte Montague. 6. An essay: Unless It Moves the Human Heart: The Craft and Art of Writing, Roger Rosenblatt. 7. A collection of poetry 8. Something post-modern: Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk. 9. Something absurdist 10. The Blind Owl (Free translation if your ok with reading on a screen or cant find a copy!) 11. Something on either hate or love: We Need to Talk About Kevin, Lionel Shriver. 12. Something dealing with space: Transition, Iain M. Banks. 13. Something dealing with the unreal: Los mentales, Pgarcía. 14. Wildcard (Some one else taking the challenge will tell you what to read) (Amberville by Tim Davys) 15. Something published this year or the past three months: Mitos y Leyendas. Muy Interesante. 16. That one book that has been sitting on your desk waiting for a long time: Harry Potter and the Magician's Stone,J.K. Rowling. 17. A play 18. Biography: Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet 19. The color red: Red 1-2-3, John Katzenbach. 20. Something banned or censored: Burmese Days, George Orwell. 21. Short story(s): Burning Chrome, William Gibson. 22. A mystery: The Prefect. Alastair Reynolds. Discworld challenge 37/41 Talas fucked around with this message at 21:49 on Nov 28, 2015 |
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Nov 1, 2015 20:26
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October update. I'm done with the booklord challenge, and almost done with my personal goal as well. It's been a good year for reading  1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year (41/45) oliven posted:Currently reading The Red Notebook by Antoine Laurain, which will wrap up the booklord challenge for me. 38. The Red Notebook by Antoine Laurain: Oh, the age old romantic tale of a man stalking a woman based on items he found in her purse that was stolen. This would be pretty bad if it weren't for the fact that the woman is a stalker, too. In the end it turned out kind of charming, which was surprising as I was expecting the worst halfway through. 39. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien: Never got around to reading this until now, and after having read it I'm pretty impressed they managed to turn this into three full-length feature films. 40. The Mistake I Made by Paula Daly: A single mother in financial trouble is about to get evicted from her home unless she can conjure up a lot of money quickly. A guy offers her money for sex and it's a downward spiral from there. I very nearly didn't finish this one because I was so uncomfortable with one of the scenes early on, but I powered through and in the end I'm glad I did because the book was pretty good overall. 41. Shadows of Self by Brandon Sanderson: The latest addition to the Mistborn series. The first half was kind of underwhelming, but the story picked up after that and managed to throw in a pretty good, albeit somewhat predictable twist in the end. Currently reading Press Start to Play by Daniel H. Wilson and John Joseph Adams.
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Nov 2, 2015 09:40
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oliven posted:39. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien: Never got around to reading this until now, and after having read it I'm pretty impressed they managed to turn this into three full-length feature films. Impressed in a negative way, right?
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Nov 2, 2015 10:19
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Mahlertov Cocktail posted:Impressed in a negative way, right?
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Nov 2, 2015 10:25
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Yeah, the amount of terrible filler in those movies is especially offensive since the book is so tight. It easily could've been a solid two-hour film rather than an interminable slog. Anyway books: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is great. Copeland holds a Marxist Christmas celebration and gives a passionate speech about societal equality, which makes me wish he were the black doctor running for president instead of Ben Carson. Mahlertov Cocktail fucked around with this message at 12:14 on Nov 2, 2015 |
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Nov 2, 2015 11:53
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Mahlertov Cocktail posted:Yeah, the amount of terrible filler in those movies is especially offensive since the book is so tight. It easily could've been a solid two-hour film rather than an interminable slog. Agreed. I've been a Peter Jackson fan since all he had to his name was a handful of no/low-budget horror/muppetsploitation films but I've got to admit the man has lately gone to excessive lengths of, um, excess. Apparently one of those who do their best work when constrained by external factors (such as not having much money in the budget).
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Nov 2, 2015 12:09
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A month of few books. The Silo trilogy took up most of it.Booklord Challenge Update posted:1. 89/96 books read; 15 nonfiction (17%), 26 rereads (29%) 85. The Departure by Neal Asher Um, wow. Were the Polity books this heavy-handed and overtly libertarian and I just didn't notice? Or has Asher just started caring less about keeping his politics out of his fiction? The main character is a Randian superman, a child prodigy who grew into a genius polymath (and cybernetically enhanced master of several martial arts styles and expert marksman, of course). But rather than being able to take his natural course and become a Captain of Industry™, he was declared a Societal Asset and forced to work for the government. When he rebelled against this, they erased his memories and sent him for execution -- but he saw this coming and set up an intricate system of failsafes that would see him free and more dangerous than ever, ready to enact his revenge. That's the setup and backstory. The actual book is revenge porn as he sets out to bring down the one world government, which is of course omnipresent and all-powerful but also so inefficient and corrupt that one man can plausibly destroy it (and so incompetent that billions will inevitably die in the next few years anyways, so it's OK if the main character sets off armageddon). There also some jabs at contemporary socialized medicine in there.  I think I can safely not read the next two books. 86. Wool by Hugh Howey 87. Shift by Hugh Howey 88. Dust by Hugh Howey  Holy gently caress, I'm reading a lot of soul-crushing books this year. This is another one where I'm constantly going "oh poo poo oh poo poo oh poo poo" because I know any temporary success the protagonists may be achieving is, indeed, temporary. It ends up on an upbeat note, kind of, but honestly I'm not optimistic about their chances (or the fate of the other silos). The theme of these books can be pretty well summed up as "The person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it." Hell, the entire second book is basically about what happens when smart, dangerous, powerful people panic. 89. Broken Angels by Richard Morgan I had a persistent feeling of deja vu reading this. I'd swear I've never read it before -- I have Altered Carbon and Woken Furies in hardcopy, but didn't have a copy of Broken Angels until this year. Maybe I read a plot summary before starting Furies? Anyways, it's a typical Kovacs novel, more or less. A simple job gets progressively less simple, there are double- and triple-crosses, some people get horribly hosed up, Kovacs needs a new sleeve. A fun ride, but I didn't like it as much as the other two, I think. I picked up Black Man along with Angels, and I've had Market Forces on my bookshelves for years -- maybe I'll get around to reading them before the end of the year. For now, though, I'm reading The New Space Opera, a short story collection.
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Nov 2, 2015 16:30
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Mr. Squishy posted:1 One Third of a Nation by Arthur Arent and others. A play exploring the dire housing situation in depression-era New York. Agit-prop long past its sell by date but still fascinating, mostly for being in such a foreign style. (17) 52 Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Read this for the first time since back at school. Lots of fun stuff hidden just beneath the surface, tactful allusions of incest, homosexuality and rape. And a job lot of misogyny, my lord. 53 A Frolic of his Own by William Gaddis. Continuing the slow reread of Gaddis. Much as I hate him, Franzen might be right in calling this boring in parts. I even missed the bit where he looks at the lake and thinks about Native American gods. 54 The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon by Sei Shōnagon as translated by Ivan Morris. I guess a lot of the virtues in Japanese literature are pretty untranslatable, there are a lot of lists. Who was she, Feudal Japan's John Ashbery? C'mon. Anyway, lots of fun stories of a barking madaristocracy. Very very extensively annotated, most of which I ignored. 55 The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles. This was fun, horror stories of terrible hotels and terrible people. I felt a fool for not clocking that the John Malkovich film i watched half of was adapted from this. 56 The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller. Boy, this was junk. And absolutely, totally, plot-free. From the intro where the author chides our ever-corsening world 4 times in 2 pages, to a characterization which reads likes a dating profile posted by a truly despicable ponce. 57 The Mask of Dimitrios by Eric Ambler. Vaguely communistical travel-writing around 1930s Europe, where you needed letters of introduction everywhere, even to the local brothel. Guy could spin a yarn, I'll say. I ran 2 months together to try and make it look better, but boy. No production at all. In my defence I'm 400 pages into Mill on the Floss, but jeez. Also, I'll need to get cracking on the book lord challenge! 57/60 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22
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Nov 2, 2015 18:57
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ToxicFrog posted:I picked up Black Man along with Angels, and I've had Market Forces on my bookshelves for years -- maybe I'll get around to reading them before the end of the year. For now, though, I'm reading The New Space Opera, a short story collection. Black Man is OK, but not as good as the Kovacs books. Market Forces is really dumb though.
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Nov 3, 2015 01:49
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Fellwenner posted:I haven't updated at all this year, so I'm just going to add a couple of the best books I've read so far. The rest are here. I had a decent couple of months for September and October, here's the score: 37. Slow River, by Nicola Griffith. There are three storylines layered in this novel, all of our protagonist at differing points of her life. They present very different persons as she has grown up, suffered hardships and traumas. The depth of character is really well done and is far and away the focus of the story. The cyberpunk trimmings didn't seem overwrought. Solid story. 38. Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell. Perfect. Just perfect. I'm going to need to read it again before reviewing. 39. Uprooted, by Naomi Novik. Standalone fantasy. One of those from nothing to everything sort of books. Light on the romance, thank god, detailed and I thought very well done. 40. Whose Names Are Unknown, by Sanora Babb. A novel of the dust bowl and resulting Okie migration west, originally slated for release in 1939 but canceled due to preemption by The Grapes of Wrath. The land and hardships endured are described well, but the characters not so much. Plus the theme highlighting the plight of the poor was rather too obviously done. 41. Balanced on the Blades Edge, by Lindsey Buroker. Really, and I mean really, light fantasy with a dose of romance as well. It's not overdone, though. I will ... probably ... read the next one at some point. 42. Between Shades of Gray, by Ruta Sepetys. This is sort of a YA Night, only about Lithuanian deportations and persecutions by the Soviets. The writing is kind of detached and simple, and probably went through additional editing in order to make it YA. 43. Pulphead, by John Jeremiah Sullivan. Essays on pop culture. Engaging writer, it turned out to be an interesting read. Biggest takeaway I had was an old (think early 1930s) blues singer named Skip James who is fantastic. Made very little progress on Booklords list... 1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year. 3. The non-white author 6. An essay 8. Something post-modern 9. Something absurdist 10. The Blind Owl 16. That one book that has been sitting on your desk waiting for a long time 17. A play 18. Biography 22. A mystery
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Nov 6, 2015 06:11
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Well life has basically been a series of slow-motion explosions lately, so I haven't been reading as much as I would like. Still, got through a few good ones: Collected Stories by Gabriel Garcia Marquez Unsurprisingly, this was a very good collection. It was pretty neat to read some of his rougher early writing--you can see a lot of the themes and stylistic ticks that would end up becoming mainstays in his later fiction. There are definitely some standout stories, and a couple that didn't really do anything for me, but overall Marquez is just a consistently excellent writer. 9/10 The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers It is crazy to me that McCullers isn't taught in school alongside Harper Lee and Flannery O'Connor as one of the southern authors. Her prose is strong and her characters have a lot of depth and the plot itself--while bearing some surface similarities to To Kill a Mockingbird (probably an inevitable comparison when you are dealing with race, class, southern small-town politics, and growing up) is actually a lot more nuanced and certainly more pessimistic. A very human book, and a hell of a first novel. 9/10 The Complete Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino I love Calvino, but I have mixed feelings about this collection. The premise is very cool - each story is a creative interpretation of some scientific "fact" (some are not even remotely true) told by the same narrator, Qfwfq, an entity as old as the universe, who over the course of the collection goes from being a speck of matter to the last dinosaur to a man living in New York, and everything in between. There are some very interesting and fantastical takes on these mini-prompts, but a fair number of them just feel bloated, padded, or rambling. This collection represents an interesting formative period of Calvino's writing, and it shows in some places. The prose here doesn't sparkle like it does in his later work, and at their worst, the stories feel like bad Borges fanfictions. When they are good, they are very good, but much of the writing is very dense and discursive, which can make it a bit of a chore to read. Not a bad read if you are a big Calvino fan, but it's kind of mid-tier compared to his other writings. 7/10 The Book of Other People edited by Zadie Smith This was a charity anthology of 23 stories, where each other was simply asked to make up a character and write a story driven by that character. There are a lot of big names here, and a few that I'd never heard of before. Two of the stories were even contributed by graphic novelists, which I thought was pretty cool. It's a bit of an uneven collection, unfortunately. Some of the authors did a great job of creating these deep, complex characters, and then forgot to actually write a story where anything happens. A few of them are promising on a conceptual level, but just don't quite stick the landing. And a handful of them are just legitimately great, more than making up for the lackluster entries. If a broad swath of character studies by a very solid mix of authors sounds like your bag, you can do a lot worse. 7.5/10 Sixty Stories by Donald Barthelme Barthelme is easily one of my all-time favorite authors of short fiction. Sixty Stories is a collection that he culled himself as a definitive representation of his work, and it is hard to find fault with his choices. I'd read a number of the stories before in different places, but the bulk of them were new to me. Barthelme's style isn't for everyone, but something about it just clicks for me, and I absolutely loved this collection. He doesn't get enough credit for his influence on the American literary landscape, which is a real shame--you can see his touch all over the place. You can find a decent number of his stories for free online, and if you like them, you won't regret picking this book up. 10/10 Suddenly, a Knock at the Door by Etgar Keret Keret is another author that seems to be pretty polarizing. His stories tend to be very short (a couple of pages, typically), and there are almost always some surreal elements. This may not be his strongest collection of stories, but there are still some real gems here. He has a great knack for creating complicated, realistic characters in very few words, and then infusing their world with something bizarre and profound. His stories tend to stick with me after I've finished them, and a few have this sort of delayed effect where it takes a few minutes to see just what he was doing. His prose isn't particularly remarkable, but he's got a very conversational, breezy style that makes the stories a joy to read. Recommended for anyone that likes their fiction short and sweet, with a surreal / magical realist bent. 9/10 Point Omega by Don DeLillo It is hard to say what this book is "about." On the surface, it is primarily the story of an insecure young filmmaker trying to pitch an idea for an interview to a sort of Paul-Wolfowitz-meets-Kurtz man who played a key role in planning elements of the Iraq war. There isn't a lot of plot momentum--you could argue that nothing really even happens until the last third of the book--but it's what is under the hood that is interesting. To me, it seems like much of DeLillo's work post-Underworld has been preoccupied, maybe even obsessed, with the concept of stasis. You can see that all over this book: an art exhibit where the film Psycho has been slowed down to a 24-hour runtime plays a prominent role, as does a desert landscape where time seems to stand still. DeLillo's prose is beautiful, and while this is a very understated book, something about it resonated with me. 9/10 Booklord Challenge Progress: quote:
edit: V-- 
Grizzled Patriarch fucked around with this message at 21:37 on Nov 6, 2015 |
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Nov 6, 2015 18:45
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Nice, you can join Guava and me in the Heart is a Lonely Hunter loving Rules Club.
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Nov 6, 2015 19:38
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Fedelm posted:May I also have a wildcard? I think I'm still open to this unless I missed something? Fedelm posted:1. Riders to the Sea and In the Shadow the Glen - J.M. Synge. 12. Kitchen - Banana Yoshimoto. Along with its companion short story "Moonlight Shadow," this novella was as good as promised but I didn't know they would focus so much on bereavement and loneliness. At least they ended on a  note.13. Omon Ra - Viktor Pelevin. According to another review, "The straight face that Victor Pelevin wears at the start of Omon Ra -- which begins like a coming-of-age novel about an impoverished Soviet boy who dreams, with his best friend Mitiok, of flying to the moon -- quickly breaks into a maniacal grin." I think a lot of the satire flew over my head -- I'm not too familiar with Soviet propaganda -- and I spent too much time worrying whether Omon was going to die. Great book and easily fits at least three Booklord challenges. Currently working on The Plague and All You Need is Kill. Fellwenner posted:38. Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell. Perfect. Just perfect. I'm going to need to read it again before reviewing. It's been decades since I read it but I remember having very mixed feelings. I think this character study of Scarlett O'Hara (and Melanie Wilkes) is pretty fair though: http://12-12-12.livejournal.com/207019.html
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Nov 7, 2015 18:20
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Fedelm posted:I think I'm still open to this unless I missed something? I got you, North by Louis-Ferdinand Céline
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Nov 7, 2015 19:07
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I still need a wild card too, actually. Preferably one that I can find online for free / cheap, since I'm going to be traveling.
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Nov 7, 2015 21:06
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Grizzled Patriarch posted:I still need a wild card too, actually. Preferably one that I can find online for free / cheap, since I'm going to be traveling. le père goriot https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/b/balzac/b19fg/
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Nov 7, 2015 22:04
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Fedelm posted:It's been decades since I read it but I remember having very mixed feelings. I think this character study of Scarlett O'Hara (and Melanie Wilkes) is pretty fair though: http://12-12-12.livejournal.com/207019.html Oh, I hated Scarlett. I could understand where she came from and some of her decisions, the fact that she was strong and independent, but I found her to be on the whole pretty awful.
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Nov 8, 2015 00:47
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June – November – nothing but comics! - 52/60 26. The Wicked + The Divine, vol 1. Took me a little bit to get into, I found it hard to follow in the beginning. But once it got going, it was good. 3.5/5 27. So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, by Jon Ronson. As Ronson’s books usually are, this one was very entertaining and interesting. I didn’t feel like I got a lot out of it, though. 4/5 28-31. Fables vols 3-6 by Bill Willingham. This has its ups and downs but it’s mostly just ups! 4/5 32. The Walking Dead vol 23 by Robert Kirkman. Not the most groundbreaking comic out there, but still a solid zombie story. 4/5 33-34. Saga vols 1-2, by Brian K Vaughan. Really loving great. 5/5 35. Sex Criminals vol 1, by Matt Fraction. Picked this up because I loved Fraction’s Hawkeye and was surprised at how good this was. 5/5 36. Rat Queens vol 2, by Kurtis J Wiebe. I was never into DnD but this series just hits the spot for me. 5/5 37. As If! The Oral History of Clueless, by Jen Chaney. I was never really into oral histories but couldn’t pass this up. A really interesting look behind the scenes of one of the best comedies ever. 4/5 38. Hawkeye vol 4, by Matt Fraction. Devastated that this has ended. 5/5 39. World of Trouble, by Ben H Winters. This is the final book in a trilogy about a detective trying to solve cases while the earth is in chaos because of an impending asteroid impact. It wasn’t the best ending, but it is such a lovely book. 4/5 40. Station Eleven, by Emily St John Mandel. Believe the hype – this is a really good addition to the post-apocalyptic genre. 4/5 41. Ms Marvel, vol 2. 4/5 42-43. The Islanders, vol 3 and 4, by Katherine Applegate. Lovely YA fluff. 3.5/5 44. Dark Places, by Gillian Flynn. Didn’t enjoy this as much as Gone Girl, but it was still a great page-turner. 4/5 45. The Martian, by Andy Weir. Such a fun read. There some goony loving bits in there, but it didn’t detract from my overall enjoyment. 5/5 46. Ghostwritten, by David Mitchell. Every time I start reading a Mitchell novel, I’m ready to give up in the first 20 or so pages, but then he always manages to hook me in anyway. 4/5 47. Lady Killer., by Joelle Jones. I was ready to fall head-over-heels in love with this book, but I finished it wanting a bit more from this. I don’t know what – just something else. 4/5 48. The Walking Dead, vol 24., by Robert Kirkman. 4/5 49. The Girl on the Train, by Paula Hawkins. It was ok – a pageturner, but nothing memorable. 3/5 50. Bitch Planet, vol1., by Kelly Sue DeConnick. Awesome, awesome, awesome. 5/5 51. Welcome to Night Vale, by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor. I think they did a great job evoking the atmosphere from the podcast in page form, and the story was fun too. 4/5 52. Sex Criminals, vol 2., by Matt Fraction. My reading got a bit interrupted and maybe for that reason I wasn’t quite as into it as I was in the first volume. Still a solid story. 4/5 I'm really falling behind here, especially on the specific challenges: Goals: 1. Read 52/60 books 4. Philosophy 5. History 7. A collection of poetry 8. Something post-modern 9. Something absurdist 10. The Blind Owl 13. Something dealing with the unreal 14. Wildcard 16. That one book that has been sitting on your desk waiting for a long time 17. A play 18. Biography 19. The color red E: I'll take a wildcard as well, please!
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Nov 8, 2015 11:27
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elbow posted:E: I'll take a wildcard as well, please! Blindness by José Saramago
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Nov 8, 2015 12:07
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Things have been a bit busy over the last couple of months, moved to a new city and started a new job. I have been reading but not keeping up to date with my thoughts on what I’ve read (which was one of the main reasons for doing the reading challenge in the first place) and now forgotten a lot of what happened in these books.  1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year. [46/52] 4. Philosophy 5. History 7. A collection of poetry 18. Biography 37. World War Z (Max Brooks) I liked the reportage style used for this and it kept me interest. Zombies as a concept have terrified me since I was a kid but I made it through this ok. 38. A Colossal Failure of Common Sense (Lawrence G. McDonald with Patrick Robinson) Story of a guy who was working at Lehman Brothers when things went pear shaped. Wasn’t great, didn’t like the voice used and everyone he directly worked with was always the smartest and saw everything coming and it was the evil boss that did it etc., just too black and white. 39. The Throwaway Children (Diney Costello) Two young sisters lose their father in WWII, their mother marries a man who doesn’t want them around so she hands them over to the state. They get shipped off to Australia by the authorities and things only get worse from there. Was interesting enough for this type of book. 40. The Color Purple (Alice Walker) I saw the film years ago and since I no longer remembered what happened decided to pick up the book. I’ve forgotten a lot of the details already again (read this in September). 41. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (Patrick Sueskind) Another book I saw as a film years ago. Great book. I often get bored by books with lots of description but not in this case. Certainly I felt equal parts sympathetic and repulsed by Grenouille, gets you very much into his worldview. 42. The City & the City (China Mieville) A murder-mystery taking place in two cities which occupy the same location. The story begins with a dead woman found in the first city and the detective assigned to the case. Things quickly become complicated, involving cross-city underground factions and conspiracies about the nature of “Breach”, the mysterious authority responsible for maintaining the strict separation of people living in different cities occupying the same space. 43. The Traitor (Seth Dickinson) Starting this book you know it cannot end well, it’s in the title. Baru Commorant is a small child when her home is taken over by and expansive empire with very strict ideas of how the world should be. Baru essentially becomes the protégé for a mysterious “Merchant”, is selected to entire the empire’s administration and sent to another subdued society as the empires representative. The middle section was a good but in some sense fairly conventional fantasy novel structure, which is very much deliberate. Baru is not a typical protagonist and has her own agenda. Even though you have been told her plans broadly, you still don’t want to believe to what lengths she will go to. 44. The Blind Owl (Sadegh Hedeyat) I have no idea exactly what I read in this. Things happen but I have no idea if they’re happening in the world of the book or the mind of the character. 45. Blindsight (Peter Watts) I reread this in preparation for reading the sequel. One thousands of alien ships turn up and take photos of the entire world. A team of augmented humans are sent into space to make contact with these aliens. I still don’t fully understand this book, but has a lot of interesting themes and questions. It’s always nice for aliens to be truly alien. 46. Echopraxia (Peter Watts) The sequel to Blindsight. I understood even less of what was happening in this, but then what else can you expect of a “Baseline”? Not as good as Blindsight for me, Daniel is a less engaging protagonist than Siri and overall less interesting story.
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Nov 8, 2015 14:59
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10. The Blind Owl I read the Tibetan Book of the Dead in preparation for this and I am glad I did. I didn’t personally get a ton out of the TBD (except kind of the general themes of repetition, and the awesome part where you see your own reincarnation parents’ parts up close during your creation) but it helped understand what was going on in the Blind Owl when the author was repeating parts of his life with the same characters (more like character archetypes) recurring over and over. I enjoyed it a lot although I understand people saying that didn’t feel like they penetrated all the layers; I feel like it’s one of those books you can study for years until you fully appreciate the entirety. 14. Wildcard - Lillith’s Brood trilogy by Octavia Butler I got this assigned as my wildcard. I’ve read Butler before but wasn’t planning on revisiting her, and also in general I like single books over series/trilogies, so I suppose although it was in my wheelhouse it was a good wildcard pick since I wouldn’t likely have read it otherwise. I did really like how each book followed a different species as they all struggled to understand each other: first a human waking up among a totally alien species, then one of those aliens as the two species started sharing Earth together, and finally a hybrid of the two species. And Butler really nailed writing first person narratives of how the different species thought and understood each other. The anti-alien bigots were written pretty cartoonishly stubborn and evil, although I guess that was sort of the point to get us to empathize with how that sort of attitude is seen by the victims. All in all a good trilogy.
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Nov 9, 2015 04:21
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ulvir posted:Blindness by José Saramago Good wild card, but it's too good; I've already read it twice, most recently last year!
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Nov 10, 2015 10:24
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Then you get Maqroll by Alvaro Mutis (either the complete seven novellas NYRB set or the previously published sets of 3 and 4 novellas, I won't judge you)
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Nov 10, 2015 11:05
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Burning Rain posted:Then you get Maqroll by Alvaro Mutis (either the complete seven novellas NYRB set or the previously published sets of 3 and 4 novellas, I won't judge you) Thanks, I'll try and get a hold of these!
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Nov 12, 2015 01:41
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thespaceinvader posted:1: Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson Definitely going to pick up the rest of the series. Going to have to up my game to hit my target, too...
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Nov 12, 2015 19:00
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2. Female Author - Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay I actually made it a goal to read at least 1 female author per month on average this year, so I read a bunch of different female authors. I chose to use Bad Feminist toward the book lord challenge since it was specifically about how Gay relates to feminism and her experiences as a woman. It is a collection of essays which made it easy to cover a range of topics from funny to heavy. My ultimate goal when reading more diverse authors was to try and experience worldviews outside my own, and Gay’s book was good for showing phenomena I am familiar with from a wildly different perspective than my own. 3. Non-white author - Black Boy by Richard Wright I had previously read Native Son so when I saw another Wright book on Amazon’s daily deal I bought it immediately. It actually took me the majority of the book to realize it was based on Wright’s actual experiences, which honestly shook me up because of how intense some of his experiences were. Most of the time he was just trying to get by, asking really basic questions of the people around him - something I take for granted - and getting attacked for it. The second part where he moves to Chicago and joins the Communist Party wasn’t as powerful, and I also understand why Native Son is considered his masterpiece, but this was still really remarkable. 4. Philosophy - Fear + Trembling by Søren Kierkegaard and Tractatus Logico Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein I already talked about F&T earlier (probably badly), and I am not sure how equipped I am to talk about TLP. Both of these were recommended by CestMoi who seems to know his poo poo, but as my first exposure to really heavy philosophy I was kind of overwhelmed. There were definitely parts of each where I had “aha!” moments, but unfortunately more parts where I got lost. I think I still feel like I did get something out of each, even if that was mostly a desire to further educate myself on philosophy. I think my next step would be to pick up Bertrand Russel's History of Western Philosophy (also recc’ed by CestMoi, thanks man) to get a better overview of philosophy in general.
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Nov 14, 2015 08:35
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Any impression of me knowing anything is pure coincidence. That said, definitely pick up History of Western Philosophy if you're interested just bear in mind that Russell gets a bit flustered about Germans post-Kant and can't really deal with them so don't think what he says is a particularly good representation of their ideas. In terms of what I recommended I think I'd probably recommend the Tractatus again, because it's worth it even if the only thing you understand is the first bit and the last bit and you grasp absolutely nothing in the middle and it gives you a lot to think about. I think my love of Fear and Trembling is partially down to how well it addresses the sorts of problems that I had with Christianity during my childhood so I can see that as perhaps not being the best thing to recommend generally but it's difficult to think of anything particularly accessible but in a similar continental vein. Myth of Sisyphus? idk. I might make a philosophy thread since philosophy is cool. Edit: Apparently A New History Of Western Philosophy by Anthony Kenny + Bryan Magee's The Story of Philosophy are good alternatives to the biased History of Western Philosophy so maybe check them out?? CestMoi fucked around with this message at 13:26 on Nov 14, 2015 |
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Nov 14, 2015 13:16
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I think they were both good recs for what it's worth. I was raised Catholic so I know all about having internal struggles with my faith. Like I said I do feel I got something out of each of them but I also felt I wasn't fully getting everything, but I blamed myself for that more than anything. Part of the reason was because 90% of my reading is done on my commute or when I can steal a few minute break at work, so not really conducive to reading something really challenging. But they got me to think and piqued my interest in more philosophy so I think they were good!
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Nov 14, 2015 17:00
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5. History - Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West by Stephen Ambrose This one was recommended by a friend’s dad who is a history professor. I knew probably the minimum amount you could possibly know about Lewis and Clark being an American (basically their names and the fact that they tried to find an all water route across the country) so this was super informative and interesting. One thing I found kind of interesting but jarring was how he handled slavery and American attitudes toward Native Americans. Like he didn’t do it incorrectly, he said all the right things and definitely didn’t whitewash how terrible people in that time treated their fellow human beings, but sometimes it would just come out of nowhere. Like he would be talking about some feat of courage and then it transition to “just to be clear, this guy was a slaveholder which is monstrous”. I almost wish he (and I guess all historians writing about this period) would relegate this to prologues, basically saying upfront that despite all the accomplishments of these men that they also owned slaves and were out to steal land from natives which is something we need to reconcile with some of the good they did, rather than interrupt the main text. 8. Post-modern - A Frolic of His Own and Agapē Agape by William Gaddis I’ve read a decent amount of post-modern stuff already but never any Gaddis, who was a pretty big name to neglect. To be perfectly frank, I went with the two books that were available in e-book form through my public library. They were both really great though and covered surprisingly similar subjects. I enjoyed Frolic a ton although I think Agape was the stronger of the two. I really want to tackle JR and the Recognitions although those might have to wait due to their length and other stuff I want to read before year’s end. 9. Absurdist - Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard I wasn’t 100% sure what covered absurdism; it turns out I had read a lot of the “classics” at least according to wiki and google (Catch-22, stuff from Kafka, Camus and Sarte) and a lot of the rest were plays. I was intending to read R&G for my play but I also had a deeper list for plays so I pulled a switcheroo and read it for my absurdist challenge. It was hilarious, full of really clever word play and ideas. I want to reread it alongside Hamlet since it’s been awhile and I certainly missed some of the references to that play.
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Nov 20, 2015 22:44
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I have now finished my challenge of reading 30 books this year! 1. Forge of Darkness by Steven Erikson. Gosh it was so great to get back into the Malazan world. I wasn't that impressed with Assail from last year, but FoD blew me away. Can't wait for Fall of Light. 2. What Judgments Come by Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore. Very disillusioned with this series and Star Trek books in general. One more and then I'll probably take a break from Star Trek books for a while. 3. The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang. A horrifyingly tragic story, both the events detailed in the book, and the afterword about Chang herself. Well written documentation of the horrors perpetrated in Nanking. Non-fiction 1, Female Author 1 4. Storming Heaven by David Mack. Finally finished this series. Truth be told, now that it's done I'm wondering why I stuck with it for 8 books! It had its moments, and I did enjoy a lot of the characters. 5. The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker. Quite a sweet story of two magical beings enduing immigrant experience of early 1900s America. Eager for more from Wecker. Female Author 2 6. Joyland by Stephen King. Read this in one day. Once again King nails a story, but completely flops the ending. Still worth reading, however. 7. Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. The exact opposite type of fantasy I enjoy. Hated this basically from page one, but kept reading. It did not get better. 8. Perdido Street Station by China Mieville. The exact type of fantasy I enjoy. Loved this basically from page one, and kept reading. It got even better. 9. The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander. I think everyone should read this book. Made me informed and angry to a huge problem. Wonderfully written. Non-fiction 2, Female Author, 3 10. Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. Relatively enjoyable. I'm writing this blurb a month or more since I read this. I liked it, but it didn't really leave a huge impression. I plan on reading the sequel. Female Author 4 11. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce. I feel like this one was completely over my head, but I still found it enjoyable. Definitely didn't make me want to convert to Catholicism. 12. The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie. This one had been hyped up a bit. It was good, but not great. Strongly recommended if you enjoy fun characters. Not recommended if you feel bad if there are only 2 female characters in the whole book. 13. The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu. Holy loving poo poo. This is the kind of book that makes me unashamed to admit I enjoy sci-fi. Brilliant from start to finish. Highly anticipating the 2nd and 3rd books. 14. Hunger by Knut Hamsun. A strange and twisted tale. Darkly humorous and thoroughly enjoyable. 15. Star Trek: Vulcan's Heart by Josepha Sherman and Susan Shwartz. A sequel of sorts to Vulcan's Forge, which I read last year. No where near as fun as the first book, with some creepy moments. I'm very cynical about Star Trek books now. Female Author 5 16. The Pale King by David Foster Wallace. The first sentence of this book made me cry a little bit. Painfully fragmented, but beautiful nonetheless. Boredom as transcendence. Would have been interesting to see where DFW would have taken the plot. 17. Inversions by Iain M. Banks. Finishing a Culture book is bittersweet. I liked this one a lot more than I thought I would, given that it's only barely a Culture book. Very unique format. 18. Culture and Imperialism by Edward Said. Whew, this book was a struggle. I'm trying to acclimate myself to non-fiction. I enjoyed this, but it was tough at times to motivate myself to pick it up. Non-fiction 3 19. The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu. Superb followup to The Three Body Problem. While not as inventive as the first book, it still brings in some interesting ideas. Tie that in with some better pacing and you've got a real winner. Eager for the third book. 20. Second Nature by David Mack. Mack can churn these things out. Lazy dialogue with tons of Trekkie pandering, flat characters and an overall boring and pointless plot. 21. Black Against Empire by Joshua Bloom. Very interesting as a history book. Would have enjoyed more analysis from the author, but still an insightful read. Non-fiction 4 22. The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson. A roller coaster ride full of awesome characters and a hugely gut wrenching twist. 23. Fear and Trembling by Soren Kierkegaard. Good, but firmly over my head. Kierkegaard's writing is easily approachable, but I found his ideas of faith slightly harder to grasp. Non-fiction 5 24. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling. My fiancee is a big Harry Potter fan and I felt bad for never finishing the series. This book is fun and a lightning fast read. Female author 6 25. Chamber of Secrets by Rowling. More of the same, but still good. 26. Prisoner of Azkaban by JK Rowling. More of the same, but with slightly darker themes. Very enjoyable. 27. Goblet of Fire by JK Rowling. More experimental than the last three and certainly longer. I enjoyed this one when I read it a long time ago, but not so much on the reread. 28. Order of the Phoenix by JK Rowling. Meandering and with far more relationship scenes than I would have liked, but with a slightly more interesting plot and finale than book 4. 29. Willful Child by Steven Erikson. What a letdown. Erikson falls into the trap of satire for satire's sake, without really showing an alternative to the regressive sc-fi shows of the 60s. Instead he just relishes in it, turning the sexism and transphobia up to 11 while repeating the same unfunny jokes for ~300 pages. 30. Half-Blood Prince by JK Rowling. Much better edited than the prior two books in the series with a HUGE finale that sets up for the final book exceedingly well. My side-goals of reading 5 non-fiction and 5 unique female authors is also complete! Glad I did this, as I would not have read any of the non-fiction stuff this year. I'll probably finish at least one more book before the year's out. Not really planning on doing a reading challenge in 2016. I really want to finish wildbow's Worm and start rereading the Malazan Book of the Fallen. Maybe I'll change my mind though, we'll see.
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Nov 20, 2015 23:04
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thespaceinvader posted:1: Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson The Phoenix Code was another Women in SF/F storybundle book, and well worth the reading. A mix of romance, mystery, and thriller, set in a scifi universe where androids are just starting to exist, it was an interesting (if a little overdone) exploration of humanness and emotion, but to say much more would be spoileriffic. Suffice it to say, it's a solid read, and I'll be looking up more of this author's work.
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Nov 24, 2015 22:23
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So when's the new thread going up?
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Nov 25, 2015 06:27
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screenwritersblues posted:So when's the new thread going up? Late December or early January, I would imagine.
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Nov 25, 2015 07:17
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Years not up yet, plus someone else can be booklord or something because I'm going to be super busy for the foreseeable future
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Nov 25, 2015 23:26
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Stravinsky posted:Years not up yet, plus someone else can be booklord or something because I'm going to be super busy for the foreseeable future I'll take on next year's if you like. I'll even use your challenge if you like or we can go back to the old way of just pick a number and read that many books for the year.
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Nov 26, 2015 04:35
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I liked the challenge. Even if some of my selections weren't super clever it got me to stretch a bit in what I was reading which was cool.
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Nov 26, 2015 08:26
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Let's do a similar challenge but you could mix it up a bit and create some of your own categories. I'll post an actual update in here later today but long story short I'm behind as fuuuuuuuck.
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Nov 26, 2015 09:54
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Change all the challenges apart from reading A Blind Owl.
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Nov 26, 2015 13:05
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Not that The Blind Owl doesn't warrant a reread, but I would personally prefer that, if there's another "read this specific book" part, it's a different book. Not big on rereading stuff like a year after I first read it most of the time.
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Nov 26, 2015 13:09
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I liked the challenges, but I wouldn't mind swapping some of them out for next year (absurdist, dealing with space, etc) for something equally challenging and creative. I had a really fun time trying to pin down the unreal one
ulvir fucked around with this message at 14:56 on Nov 26, 2015 |
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Nov 26, 2015 14:54
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