|
draculatreefores posted:I just got through Notes from Underground and some other short stories that were included. The Double was really boring, and I'm a huge Dostoevsky fan so it pains me to say that. White Nights was good. Dreams of a Ridiculous Man was good. The first section of Notes from Underground is fantastic, but it loses a bit of its punch when it gets into the narrative section of the next few chapters. Would you overall recommend NfU? I just bought it so I’ll be reading it soonish. After letting the “new book finished” honeymoon pass, C&P was definitely my favorite so I’m excited to read Brothers.
|
#
?
Jan 23, 2018 04:13
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 20, 2024 10:35 |
|
|
Just finished The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories by Carson McCullers, from my Secret Santa from this year (get into the Secret Santa draw next year!). What a odd little book. First, its exceptionally well written, and a bit of a time capsule from a time and place not soo long ago but still feels like a distant dream. The stories are all straight--its not horror per se--but things are just a bit...off. Just enough to be unsettling. Really really good, thanks Santa!
|
|
#
?
Jan 23, 2018 04:58
|
|
|
The Name of the Rose was pretty dense to chew through, but it had a lot of fun treats for medievalists stuffed in there and it concluded in an interestingly satisfying way--the theme of a detective novel that's somehow 'broken' reminds me a lot of The Dead Mountaineer's Inn. (Even if it's more than just a detective novel.) It was kind of halfway between the medieval goofiness of Baudolino and the metatextual weirdness of Foucault's Pendulum, and I think I like both of those a bit more than The Name of the Rose.
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2018 02:47
|
|
|
I really need to get around to reading Baudolino
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2018 03:34
|
|
|
Mountaillou by Emmanual Le Roy Ladurie. Very interesting historical study, but like any popular historical study, I suspect that there is a whole body of criticism for it.
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2018 10:44
|
|
|
chernobyl kinsman posted:I really need to get around to reading Baudolino It's probably my favorite Umberto Eco book. It's unabashedly written for fans of medieval history, and I read it like less than a year after taking an undergrad Byzantine history course. It's also my favorite book that deals with Prester John, though that's only my favorite out of two, and the other (Habitation of the Blessed) is still good, just in more of a fantasy-novel way.
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2018 12:03
|
|
|
FINALLY finished Grant by Ron Chernow. It's pretty drat good, and goes into a lot more details about parts of Grant's life I didn't realize. Makes you think about him in a very different way.
|
|
#
?
Jan 25, 2018 00:07
|
|
|
This is a bit obscure but I read a biography of George Bataille, a French philosopher who was semi prominent in the pre and post-war years. I've always found his writing to be interesting so I thought I would learn more about his life. I couldn't put it down. I've never been so engaged in a non-fiction book. His life seemed to touch so many aspects of what made the 20's and 30's so chaotic, and while he was kind of pushed to the fringes of the intellectual world of the time, a lot of what he wrote is more applicable than ever today. He went head to head with Sartre, he was friends with Lacan (his ex married Lacan actually), had a long and rocky relationship with Breton and the Surrealists, knew Picasso, had correspondence with Camus... Anyway, if anyone has recommendations for biographies of Philosophers that goes into a bit of depth about how they encountered competing politics and philosophies of their time, I'd love to hear them.
|
|
#
?
Jan 25, 2018 21:18
|
|
|
UNCUT PHILISTINE posted:This is a bit obscure but I read a biography of George Bataille, a French philosopher who was semi prominent in the pre and post-war years. I've always found his writing to be interesting so I thought I would learn more about his life. You should post this in the Recommendation thread, because it's gonna go largely ignored here.
|
|
#
?
Jan 25, 2018 21:54
|
|
|
UNCUT PHILISTINE posted:
It's not about philosophers but there's a book called The Hawk and the Dove, which is basically a history of post-war American foreign policy debates told through the rivalry between George Kennan and Paul Nitze.
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2018 21:35
|
|
|
I just read The Joy Luck Club for the first time and cried in my kitchen like a punk bitch. I'm Filipina-American and you can't really universalize Asian-American experiences, but sometimes you can just land certain feelings and hoo boy. I need to delve into more As-Am stuff this year for sure.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2018 07:19
|
|
|
Confederacy of Dunces was hilarious throughout and I can't believe it took so long for me to finally get around reading it. I'll be reading it again sooner than later.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2018 08:36
|
|
|
I recently read Darker With the Lights On by David Hayden and I just finished The Earlie King & the Kid in Yellow by Danny Denton last Sunday. Very much enjoyed them both, though some of Hayden's short stories fell flat in comparison to others.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2018 21:23
|
|
|
I just finished The Remains of the Day. A profoundly depressing book, perhaps because it was so relatable to me. I can’t help but wonder now whether humility isn’t quite the virtue it seemed...
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2018 06:46
|
|
|
The Left Hand of Darkness. Really cool, enjoyed the whole anthropological framing of it all. Can't believe it's taken til now to read some Le Guin. Rip
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2018 15:46
|
|
|
Not a Children posted:I just finished The Remains of the Day. A profoundly depressing book, perhaps because it was so relatable to me. I can’t help but wonder now whether humility isn’t quite the virtue it seemed... I just finished this last week, and I really liked it. I liked that the ending is Stevens is able to emotionally connect with Miss Kenton and then is finally able to be completely honest with a stranger, genuinely opens up, seemingly has an epiphany that he's wasted his life and then...immediately circles back to wanted to live his life in self-induced exile and serving the upperclass. How quickly we fall into old habits, and thought processes and destructive behaviors even after we know that we're doing that to ourselves. Also, it was funny in a dry way.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2018 17:32
|
|
|
Franchescanado posted:I just finished this last week, and I really liked it. I liked that the ending is Stevens is able to emotionally connect with Miss Kenton and then is finally able to be completely honest with a stranger, genuinely opens up, seemingly has an epiphany that he's wasted his life and then...immediately circles back to wanted to live his life in self-induced exile and serving the upperclass. How quickly we fall into old habits, and thought processes and destructive behaviors even after we know that we're doing that to ourselves. Pretty much exactly my takeaway. How the inertia of one's worldview can be overwhelmingly powerful. He actually had the all-important revelation that his own life and thoughts are worthwhile, broke down, then quickly reframed it through his compulsion to self-subjugation. He realizes the warmth of interaction is important in the last page or so, but the reader knows well enough that he will never really understand it as applying to himself. It's an almost cruel reassertion of Stevens' overwhelming compulsion to serve those he considers his betters.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2018 20:49
|
|
|
Just finished Breakfast of Champions. That sure was something!
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2018 05:17
|
|
|
The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks. I’ve read two Culture books and this was excellent. Creepy and fascinating main character and a disturbing plot, especially the rituals with the totems and factory. Short and doesn’t overreach on the plot. The deaths with the bomb and the kite were messed up.. Highly recommended for a short read.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2018 05:58
|
|
|
Rolo posted:Just finished Breakfast of Champions. *
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2018 06:38
|
|
|
Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge was a chore to finish. I picked it up because I like the augmented reality concept and I do appreciate some of the concepts the book came up with for tech that would exist in a world where AR was ubiquitous. Unfortunately there isn't a single likable character and the writing leaves a lot to be desired. I'm sort of baffled at the acclaim and awards this book got. Brother by David Chariandy is a very short slice of life novel that I enjoyed spending an evening on. As the son of an immigrant single mom who grew up in (among other places) Scarborough, Ontario and whose older brother fell in with the wrong crowd... It felt very relatable at certain points.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2018 15:29
|
|
|
Hyrax Attack! posted:The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks. I’ve read two Culture books and this was excellent. Creepy and fascinating main character and a disturbing plot, especially the rituals with the totems and factory. Short and doesn’t overreach on the plot. The deaths with the bomb and the kite were messed up.. Highly recommended for a short read. I've never understood what people see in The Wasp Factory. It bored the hell out of me. Also it uses the trope of trans person is a psycho, which I thought would have made it persona non grata in this corner of the Internet.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2018 15:47
|
|
|
Jedit posted:I've never understood what people see in The Wasp Factory. It bored the hell out of me. An old boss of mine gave this book to me to read cuz he was a huge banks fan and it really didn't grab me at all. the twist at the end feels really contrived and completely irrelevant to the rest of the book. Anyway we never got on all that well after I gave it back to him and told him it sucked
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2018 16:58
|
|
|
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein This was fine. It's witty and entertaining and full of bon mots and sly observations but the calvacade of names and anecdotes don't always feel as if they bear as much fruit as they should. The overall effect is like living next door to a life, which is intriguing but it doesn't have the strange, overwhelming poetic flooding of Three Lives. Probably the most impactful element is the way she notes that people come to a bad or a good end later in life, and then says "but I am getting ahead of myself" and only a hundred pages later does the situation of the bad or the good end arrive and suddenly we're kind of burdened with a respect for how life is intractable. Definitely the funniest moment is Stein trying to get a book published and her publisher requesting more commas, and because she's a friend of his she agrees to give him two (2) commas, which she later removes.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2018 18:23
|
|
|
The Ship of the Dead by Rick Riordan Book three in Riordan's Norse series, and I enjoyed it pretty well. Not sure it's the strongest of the series, though, this book goes a mile a minute with barely a chance to breathe at any point along the way. It's nonstop adventure, and while I think the book could have stood to slow down - the encounter with Aegir in particular served no point - the characters and relationships were charming enough that I don't mind. Still, I get the feeling this book was planned to be far more ambitious than it ended up being. The end of the last book teased Percy Jackson coming over for a Greek/Norse crossover book, but Percy and Annabeth disappear after the first chapter and have no impact on the plot. The end of the book also resets events in the trilogy mostly back to the status quo, with the only lasting changes being the advance of the Magnus/Alex romantic subplot and the reveal of the Irish girl einherjar's parentage. It's a brisk, enjoyable, self-contained read that I suspect can be safely skipped once the rest of the series is out and done.
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2018 05:14
|
|
|
Consider Phlebas, book 1 of the culture series. I liked it more than I thought I would. It had some rough chapters for me where it seemed like they'd never quit fleshing out little intricacies of character but overall good read.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2018 15:35
|
|
|
Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic Really fantastic non-fiction read about the origins of zoonotic infections. Very well written, not at all dry. Reveals a great deal of interesting information about Ebola, SARS, Lyme disease, influenza, and a handful of other more rare and bizarre diseases. Sciencey but not to the point that a layman can't understand it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2018 20:39
|
|
|
The Crow Road by Iain Banks I'm going through Banks' greatest hits and this was an enjoyable story of a Scottish man's coming of age. I liked the characters and the setting. I've been to the towns in western Scotland where the family lives and the descriptions were great. Probably could have been 100 pages lighter. It was interesting to see the author's reactions to the beginnings of the first Gulf War, and the detailed descriptions of computers in the early 1990s were a nostalgic read. A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge (audiobook) This was a fantastic listen. I hadn't read anything by Vinge before and this was a masterpiece. I especially enjoyed the world building, a coherent universe without lightspeed travel, and despicable villains. The spider society was well crafted. Highly recommended for any sci-fi fan. Pyramids by Terry Pratchett I've been going through Discworld for the first time and this was another delightful entry. Funny, likable characters, good story, a winner all the way. My favorite scene was the pyramid contractors trying to use their duplicates in the time loop to evade overtime laws.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2018 23:02
|
|
|
SammichBacon posted:Consider Phlebas, book 1 of the culture series. I liked it more than I thought I would. It had some rough chapters for me where it seemed like they'd never quit fleshing out little intricacies of character but overall good read. If you liked that book you're in for a fantastic time with the rest of them.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2018 23:05
|
|
|
Hyrax Attack! posted:Pyramids by Terry Pratchett They weren't trying to evade overtime laws, they were trying to evade crocodiles. It's the work gangs who were exploiting overtime. It is a good book, though, and even better if you know how the UK driving test used to operate.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2018 16:38
|
|
|
Three Men in a Boat. A good yarn made more interesting by the fact that I live within the immediate vicinity of where some of it takes place
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2018 17:58
|
|
|
fridge corn posted:Three Men in a Boat. A good yarn made more interesting by the fact that I live within the immediate vicinity of where some of it takes place You live in a boat? That's a wild coincidence
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2018 23:00
|
|
|
A human heart posted:You live in a boat? That's a wild coincidence Don't we all, in some way, live in a boat?
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2018 00:23
|
|
|
Consider Phlebas It was okay. First of his I read. I was expecting something better to be honest. BUT I did get confused on a few scenes of space maneuvering, so the fact that a TV adaptation got announced like today is good news indeed. Googling "Idirans" gave me some okay results, let's see what an Amazon budget can do. Liked the little epilogue thing it had. Next Culture book I'd prefer a bit more of the Culture itself to be honest.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2018 00:18
|
|
|
Whip Hand by Dick Francis Crime novel about a man, Sid Halley, who used to be a successful horse jockey until an accident cost him the use of his hand, and his ability to ride. He turned into a private eye after people in the horse racing world kept getting him to investigate stuff that they either didn't want the regular police to know about, or the regular police just didn't have enough horse-related knowledge to be efficient. In this book he's sent to investigate why horses at a certain racing stable are suddenly failing to thrive as young adults. I really enjoyed it. A lot of private detective novels feature characters who are ex-cops or ex-military, but an ex-jockey isn't just refreshing but it provides a lot of insight to horse racing in general (at least concerning 20th century English racing) as well as proves settings not normally seen in crime stories. I mean, who else uses horse racing? But it's executed very well. The author himself used to be a jockey. This book is part of a series so I'll have to read the others.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2018 03:59
|
|
|
Finished Unlimited Memory by Kevin Horsley, it was on Kindle unlimited. Pretty good book about basic and advanced memorization techniques. I would recommend to anyone who has a job that requires lots of information to be remembered on hand, college/uni students or anyone who reads/watches lots of nonfiction. This book helped me a lot. I read a lot of nonfiction, watch documentaries but I might remember like 10% of it. Since I finished this and started using the techniques found it. I feel like I remember 60%-70% of information and anything I want to remember. Even in general life I remember and forget less. I wrote a full review on it on goodreads which you can read here if you want https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2300332065 It is a pretty easy read and short book. So if you are interested in improving your memorization, I recommend this. If you have Amazon Prime/Kindle unlimited it is free and 100% worth reading. Even for those who don't read non fiction is good for helping you memorize/recall things more easily in life.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2018 16:20
|
|
|
Mr. Nemo posted:Consider Phlebas Generally people recommend Player of Games as a follow up. It's not set in the Culture itself but gives a much better idea what they're actually about and what they do. There's a couple set within the Culture proper but most of them takes place elsewhere, because the interesting things are the Culture's interaction with others. It being a utopia and all makes life within the Culture kind of difficult to write interesting stories about.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2018 18:45
|
|
|
The Jungle - Upton Sinclair I don't know if there's a name for it, but this book suffers from what a lot of fictional agenda driven books do and that's sticking a manifesto into the narrative through speeches and monologues in conversations. Atlas Shrugged is probably the worst I've read with a 100 page long speech in the middle and some lengthy monologue every other chapter. Thankfully in the Jungle it only starts to happen towards the end. The sheer volume of tragedies suffered by the main character Jurgis put me off a bit too. Nothing by itself seemed far-fetched, but all these things happening to one person is a stretch in plausibility. My family are eastern European immigrants. In fact my grandmother, mother and aunties all worked packing meat and canning. It was much more recent than the Jungle's setting of course but there's a few things that really struck a chord. The anxiety and distrust about buying real estate, signing contracts, banks, insurance, etc really hit the mark. Especially the point that these immigrants that are doing unskilled labour learn to speak english in the context of the work they're doing as labourers, meat packers, etc so when people start talking variable interest, stamp duty taxes, conveyancing fees, etc they are just completely unequipped for it and fearful. Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight - Alexandra Fuller Autobiography of a white girl growing up in Rhodesia, Malawi and Zambia. I couldn't put this one down. It's a bit of everything, the historical and political background, coming of ages stories, life in the bush, family struggles and tragedy and very well written as well.
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2018 00:34
|
|
|
Just finished the Area X trilogy by Vandermeer. Was good stuff! And just in time for the movie
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2018 06:22
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 20, 2024 10:35 |
|
|
Bilirubin posted:Just finished the Area X trilogy by Vandermeer. Was good stuff! And just in time for the movie Nice to see people enjoying this series. Didn't really have much fanfare here for that series. Did you like the sequels? I think the first one was by far the best. The 2nd one is interesting but a slog and the third was kinda of a mixed bag also. Mr. Nemo posted:Consider Phlebas Ya also the end scene of Consider Phlebas has some really big set pieces that will be really expensive in CG... Hopefully Amazon tries to make it their flagship sci fi/fiction show and give it a good budget.
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2018 14:51
|
|