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Robert Graves' I, Claudius - someone here recommended it in the recommendation thread last year, and I finally got around to reading it. And how sorry I am that I waited so long! Absolutely loved it. Going to get the follow-up shortly. I found myself forgetting, over and over again, that Claudius' version of history is very biased and he is not much of a reliable narrator, and in a more meta-text sense that it wouldn't even be possible to write a definitively true history of the Roman emperors. Great stuff.
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May 2, 2016 23:45
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Landfall, buy Ellen Urbani: http://www.forestavenuepress.com/catalog/landfall-by-ellen-urbani/ Two families cross paths in interesting ways during/after Hurricane Katrina Would recommend, particularly if you're into the sort of fiction that makes you want to stick your head in a oven
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May 4, 2016 21:15
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The First 90 Days - More corporate b.s. I don't know why I read the things my manager recommends.
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May 9, 2016 04:02
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The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
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May 9, 2016 20:53
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Shattered Sword, The untold story of midway: This was, in the words of the author, an attempt to correct the earlier works on Midway by american authors which relied on very old first hand accounts that were basically all lies, and instead the information for the book was mostly drawn from operational and doctrinal writings from Japan's records. It turns out japan had authoritatively discredited almost all of these early works that the majority of american authors had based their books on. At any rate the author spends way too much time repeating himself, but it was still extremely interesting, the technical detail of such things like how the airplanes had to be warmed up for quite a long time before launching and how much time it really took to recover, rearm, and relaunch aircraft were very informative, and shows how insane it was on any kind of warship in WWII surrounded by aircraft fuel and bombs. Since the author was not necessarily a very good writer it took me a quite long 4 days to read but also had some really interesting appendix data that I appreciated. This was my first foray into battle history and has really piqued my interest. Washout fucked around with this message at 22:03 on May 10, 2016 |
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May 10, 2016 08:38
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“The First Bad Man,“ by Miranda July Really hosed up at several points, almost surreal at others, and ridiculous pretty much all the way through. I loved July's dry humorous prose, though, and I felt it was just as long as it needed to be. HighwireAct fucked around with this message at 23:37 on Jun 10, 2016 |
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May 16, 2016 19:39
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"The Great Gatsby" by Fitzgerald. My girlfriend and I are always looking for stuff to bookclub and we both have neglected the classics so we grabbed this since it's short, and I have to say I was completely bowled over by how much I enjoyed the book. The whole thing is written in all of this surreal language/metaphor, the story is crazy, and where it all ends up even crazier. It's like an absinthe bender recounted to you in full detail by someone with an eidetic memory, and there are bits of prose that are just lush and gorgeous in a way that people don't write anymore. Really happy we decided to read it 
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May 17, 2016 20:13
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How To Build A Girl, by Caitlin Moran. The first novel by writer and pop-feminist critic Caitlin Moran, this is a standard coming-of-age tale turned into something special by the wit, intimacy and humanity of her prose. It follows Johanna, a frustrated teen girl in a dead-end town, who decides to reinvent herself as a pop music writer to save her family from poverty. Along the way there are the typical story beats: sex, drugs, self-discovery, betrayal, etc, all brought to life with rude humour and agonising second-hand embarrassment. The book is also a love-letter to the early 90s, and clearly heavily based on Moran's own childhood. Where it occasionally fell flat to me was the rather clichéd cast of secondary characters, particularly the other members of the music press, but the dialogue between them was often enough to salvage what could have been insufferable scenes. It's a nice book, if a little by-the-numbers.
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May 18, 2016 00:15
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Ham on Rye by Bukowski. Despite never reading it I had somehow used a passage from this book as my favorite quote on my Facebook profile like a decade ago.
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May 18, 2016 02:20
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Just finished Bird Box by Josh Malerman. I was pleasantly surprised. It is a psychological horror novel that presents an interesting take on the tried and true 'band of survivors holed up together in a house while evil lurks outside' genre. It's the first horror novel in a long time that was able to affect me in any way. The author did a nice job building tension, and the ending was better than most books of this ilk.
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May 18, 2016 15:07
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Fathers and Sons by Turgenev late aristocratic literature at its finest, more condensed than Tolstoy, less brooding than Dostoevsky, but as impactful as either. Reading the description of the book doesn't do it justice, the characters come off as natural, and each one can be seen through multiple perspectives depending where you are in your life, it seems like the kind of book that will change as you change.
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May 18, 2016 17:47
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I read books over vacation: A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy. I had heard about this for years as being a milestone in comedic literature. It was highly enjoyable and aged well. The funniest parts were Ignatius's journal entries with exaggerations about daily life. His traits as an overeducated underachiever were delightful, especially when he yells at the tv for hours. The hot dog vending misadventures were delightful, although the Levy household scenes dragged a bit. Great stuff. The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara. I picked this up after getting into a Civil War kick by playing Ultimate General: Gettysburg. I hadn't read this since 5th grade and it stands up well, especially with the battle descriptions and Chamberlain's storyline. I wasn't a big fan of the "both sides are morally equal approach" as it seemed to gloss over slavery in explaining why the war was fought, with only one black character in a brief scene. Still a great way for readers to learn about Gettysburg. It got me to pick up Battle Hymn of the Republic which I am enjoying now. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. This was the second Vonnegut book I've read, after enjoying Mother Night. This was brilliant in combining an anti-war message with aliens and time jumps, and somehow having it work perfectly. The train and barracks scenes were memorable. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. This was another great read, I liked the idea of Bokonoism and the super-weapon Ice-9. The ending was fantastic and unexpected. Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut. I was disappointed in this book, it felt like the themes didn't come together and the ending didn't go anywhere. Vonnegut adding himself to the story was strange and didn't pay off. Kilgore Trout was interesting. Overall it was a downer but I might have been missing the point. What If? by Randall Monroe. This was a hilarious and informative read. I was worried it would be clickbait in book form, but was highly readable and fascinating. My favorite entry was about trying to stack all known elements and how catastrophic this would get with the radioactive entries. Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett. This was the first Pratchett book I've read. It was excellent, his form of British humor is clever and I enjoyed the characters. The different guards were funny and Carrot was a great hero and I liked how he related to dwarf culture. It stood up well without my having any familiarity with Discworld, although I will seek out more.
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May 19, 2016 18:53
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Just finished The Traitor Baru Cormorant. Great poo poo. I hope to see more of her brutal adventures in the future
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May 19, 2016 21:30
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HighwireAct posted:“The Last Bad Man,“ by Miranda July I'm gonna sound like an idiot but is this The First Bad Man or did she do a sequel? RiotGearEpsilon posted:Just finished The Traitor Baru Cormorant. Great poo poo. I hope to see more of her brutal adventures in the future I'm working on it!
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May 19, 2016 23:53
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General Battuta posted:I'm working on it! Hey, as long as I've got you in the thread - are the Clarified at all inspired by / derived from the Dunyain from the Second Apocalypse sextet?
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May 20, 2016 02:35
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RiotGearEpsilon posted:Hey, as long as I've got you in the thread - are the Clarified at all inspired by / derived from the Dunyain from the Second Apocalypse sextet? Another question from the peanut gallery: Do you have a HEMA background? Cause I do and your swordfight scenes were legit.
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May 20, 2016 06:08
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I'm gonna answer over in the TTBC thread! I just finished The Hot Zone and while it's initially really gripping, Preston's set of tools for creating tension are pretty limited, and eventually it just gets a little silly every time he calls something Lethally Hot or Level Four or High Pucker Factor.
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May 20, 2016 07:44
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Women - Charles Bukowski I liked it more than I thought I would. Characters were well-defined and it was never boring. Despite the rough way that Bukowski writes, I thought the ending was actually kind of sweet and poignant, and came organically from the rest of the books events.
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May 21, 2016 17:44
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The first fifteen lives of Harry August by Claire North https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20706317-the-first-fifteen-lives-of-harry-august Holy poo poo......I read a lot of books and this was one loving amazing. Easily in my top ten books of all time, possibly top 5. I loved every minute of it and I can't even begin to describe it. It's a time travelly novel that touches on a wide variety of subjects and does a great job of dealing with what it means to be human and our finite lifespans and what if you could live forever. Would you still be human?
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May 23, 2016 19:02
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The Great Game by Peter Hopkirk. drat solid, I thought I did a good job of mixing on the ground accounts with big picture politics and strategy. The author has a weird fixation on the phrase Muslim mud architecture, but that's more of an observation than a complaint.
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May 23, 2016 20:42
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General Battuta posted:I just finished The Hot Zone and while it's initially really gripping, Preston's set of tools for creating tension are pretty limited, and eventually it just gets a little silly every time he calls something Lethally Hot or Level Four or High Pucker Factor. The Hot Zone is strange. The story fizzles out about halfway through. In a way it was true to life - the epidemic took its course.
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May 25, 2016 00:18
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General Battuta posted:I'm gonna answer over in the TTBC thread! Read your Q&A and ended up reading your book, it was fantastic but the very end I thought was over the top, why not keep her around as a plot hook later, or just let her escape, seemed added on just for shock value. But then again stuff like death squads and other bizarreness exist in real life too. Definitely an original book that everyone should read though, even if it gave me flashbacks to the time I was stabbed in the back while trying to form a white collar union in a small 15 person IT department.
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May 25, 2016 05:00
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General Battuta posted:I'm gonna answer over in the TTBC thread! My biggest issue with the Hot Zone was Preston's attempts to make it a dramatic narrative. Ebola is terrifying enough on it's own but he tried to make it scarier by giving us every detail about the lives of random researchers and injected cliffhangers into the novel. At least to me, it came across pretty goofy and childish.
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May 25, 2016 05:11
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Just finished "Crooked" by Austin Grossman, which felt exactly as if Charles Stross wrote the secret history of Richard Nixon. I loved it.
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May 25, 2016 12:17
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Quandary posted:My biggest issue with the Hot Zone was Preston's attempts to make it a dramatic narrative. Ebola is terrifying enough on it's own but he tried to make it scarier by giving us every detail about the lives of random researchers and injected cliffhangers into the novel. At least to me, it came across pretty goofy and childish. I'd forgotten about that - some researcher in a random car accident? Irrelevant to the story, and it all fizzles out with talk of hotel bills and office space at the CDC.
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May 26, 2016 10:57
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Fat Man and Little Boy - Mike Meginnis The two atomic bombs that explode over Hiroshima and Nagasaki wake up as brothers, eventually settling in France to help run a hotel built on the ground of a former concentration camp. That's just the basic plot, but there's much much more, including miraculous pregnancies, a spirit medium, and creepy twins. The book is one of the best I've read this year. Scary and sad and beautiful; every page dripping with nuclear fear and fallout. There's a couple of subplots that don't really add much, but they're minor in the grand scheme of things. The first section of the book - in a freshly bombed Japan - is terrifying but gorgeous, a nearly perfect first quarter of a novel. Highly recommended.
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May 29, 2016 19:55
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tonytheshoes posted:Just finished Bird Box by Josh Malerman. I was pleasantly surprised. It is a psychological horror novel that presents an interesting take on the tried and true 'band of survivors holed up together in a house while evil lurks outside' genre. It's the first horror novel in a long time that was able to affect me in any way. The author did a nice job building tension, and the ending was better than most books of this ilk. I read this based on your suggestion and I enjoyed it too.
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May 30, 2016 05:54
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Recently finished The Peripheral by William Gibson. I'm not sure what to think of it yet. His Neuromancer was what led me to read his Pattern Recognition, and then this. Had a helluva time trying to make sense of the first hundred pages or so.
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May 31, 2016 12:31
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Finally finished Catch-22. What a great book! I don't think I've ever actually laughed out loud at a book before, and this one made it happen like a dozen times. It was also great to have a book with realistic, relatable characters in it for once. It actually ended on a much more positive note than I was expecting, as well, which was a nice surprise! I think it may actually be my favorite book I've ever read.
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May 31, 2016 15:16
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Leocadia posted:Just finished "Crooked" by Austin Grossman, which felt exactly as if Charles Stross wrote the secret history of Richard Nixon. I loved it. I read this last month and it was great. Totally my jam. Just finished The Devil in Silver by Victor Lavalle. A man is thrown in a psych ward with a secret, the Devil lives behind a silver door at the end of the hall. As horror it wasn't great. As a story of people ground down by the institutions of society, it was.
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May 31, 2016 16:37
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GlyphGryph posted:Finally finished Catch-22. What a great book! I don't think I've ever actually laughed out loud at a book before, and this one made it happen like a dozen times. It was also great to have a book with realistic, relatable characters in it for once. It actually ended on a much more positive note than I was expecting, as well, which was a nice surprise! Welcome to the club 👍
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May 31, 2016 16:42
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I just finished Mieville's Perdido Street Station. The setup is long (about a third of the book) - I think I caught myself more than once wondering when things were really going to start happening. It also seemed for a bit that he was just being weird for weird's sake. I don't really mind that so much, but it was an early nitpick. Then poo poo starts happening all at once, and I realized just how essential that setup really was. Everything was connected incredibly well, and even bits that seemed just like exposition turned out to be bigger than I'd have expected.
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May 31, 2016 23:56
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I just finished Ubik and wow what a mindfuck. I have to reread this immediately to try and piece together everything that happened.
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Jun 1, 2016 12:08
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I loved Ubik. It's stuck with me for a long while now.
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Jun 1, 2016 20:30
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Just finished Dune and thought it was pretty fantastic. I've heard many mixed things about the series going forward, is messiash worth a look?
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Jun 2, 2016 01:12
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meanolmrcloud posted:Just finished Dune and thought it was pretty fantastic. I've heard many mixed things about the series going forward, is messiash worth a look? Look at it like this. When Herbert wrote Dune, he was writing a novel When Herbert wrote all the sequels, he was writing a franchise.
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Jun 2, 2016 01:23
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The 4th dune book is sort of cool because it's a depressed worm man monologuing at people about philosophy
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Jun 2, 2016 06:32
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I just finished the first book in Jack Vance's Lyonesse trilogy, Suldrun's Garden. Bizarre and fun medieval fantasy romp. A bit heavy on the use of sexual menace as a plot device or indicator of villainy, but it doesn't savor it for prurient interest a whit, so I'm prepared to forgive it that flaw and recommend it.
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Jun 2, 2016 16:30
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RiotGearEpsilon posted:I just finished the first book in Jack Vance's Lyonesse trilogy, Suldrun's Garden. Bizarre and fun medieval fantasy romp. A bit heavy on the use of sexual menace as a plot device or indicator of villainy, but it doesn't savor it for prurient interest a whit, so I'm prepared to forgive it that flaw and recommend it. Ah, nice use of the word prurient
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Jun 3, 2016 00:43
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A human heart posted:Ah, nice use of the word prurient I'm not one to shy from getting my prur on, but there's a time and place
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Jun 3, 2016 20:02
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