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derp posted:I read the third policeman and didn't really get it. I liked the beginning and end though. Did you understand the main thrust of the ending? I forget how explicitly O'Brien laid it out.
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Apr 25, 2018 12:02
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mdemone posted:Did you understand the main thrust of the ending? I forget how explicitly O'Brien laid it out. It was obvious from the first chapters that he was dead the whole time , but beyond that I don't know if there was meanings I'd missed. I found the end to be very surreal and creepy and dark, but the effect of it was undercut by the kooky humor of the middle sections of the book. I just flat out didn't get most of the middle. Bicycles and jam and wooden legs and none of it seemed to have any connection with anything else, or any meaning that i could suss out. I think perhaps there was so much to do with bicycles because he killed the guy in the beginning with a bicycle pump? It was just really hard for me to care for most of it when none of what happened had any connection with reality, or any affect on anyone or anything. The character just floated through the story looking at things with a half-hearted curiosity, even when told he's going to be hung the next day he didn't seem to really care that much. I felt most the time as if i could have opened the book at any random page and started reading and felt no more confused than i already was.
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Apr 25, 2018 17:07
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Mrenda posted:Has anyone read Samanta Schweblin's Fever Dream (nominated for the Booker a few years ago.) This was the article that put me onto it. https://lithub.com/samanta-schweblin-on-revealing-darkness-through-fiction/ This came today. I was annoyed that I ordered it as a hardback by mistake but it's only a small book. 150 pages, big print, not exactly big pages. I started and finished it today. 'twasn't bad. At the very least there were some ideas nicely presented that ran through it. It seemed a lot more ambitious than the modern Irish writers I've been reading.
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Apr 25, 2018 20:52
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i got the cosmicomics, ho boy i can already tell this is gunna be a blast
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Apr 25, 2018 21:20
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derp posted:i got the cosmicomics, ho boy i can already tell this is gunna be a blast If you could refrain from having one of your thoughts about it thatd eb great thanks
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Apr 25, 2018 21:47
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i read so much, and post so hard, but in the end it doesnt even matter
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Apr 25, 2018 21:51
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derp posted:It was obvious from the first chapters that he was dead the whole time , but beyond that I don't know if there was meanings I'd missed. I found the end to be very surreal and creepy and dark, but the effect of it was undercut by the kooky humor of the middle sections of the book. I just flat out didn't get most of the middle. Bicycles and jam and wooden legs and none of it seemed to have any connection with anything else, or any meaning that i could suss out. I think perhaps there was so much to do with bicycles because he killed the guy in the beginning with a bicycle pump? It was just really hard for me to care for most of it when none of what happened had any connection with reality, or any affect on anyone or anything. The character just floated through the story looking at things with a half-hearted curiosity, even when told he's going to be hung the next day he didn't seem to really care that much. I felt most the time as if i could have opened the book at any random page and started reading and felt no more confused than i already was. I gotta hand it to you, you aren't afraid to admit you have no sense of humor.
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Apr 25, 2018 22:14
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possibly they were irish jokes that went over my head? most of it seemed like 'lol so random' humor, which i havent enjoyed since my early 20s and family guy.
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Apr 25, 2018 22:24
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flann o brien is much like the famous cartoon invader zim in many ways
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Apr 26, 2018 01:05
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derp posted:possibly they were irish jokes that went over my head?
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Apr 26, 2018 01:39
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i haven't read the book in question, can i still make fun of derp
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Apr 26, 2018 02:17
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chernobyl kinsman posted:i haven't read the book in question, can i still make fun of derp derp posted:is Hemmingway one of those writers everyone loves because he's so mediocre and everyman, or what? derp posted:gave up on karamazov after 20 pages, poo poo's as boring as the bible, going on and on about all these family members.
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Apr 26, 2018 02:28
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JEsus christ derp
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Apr 26, 2018 04:39
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chernobyl kinsman posted:i haven't read the book in question, can i still make fun of derp u should read at swim two birds
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Apr 26, 2018 05:01
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I read books I like some and dislike others ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Apr 26, 2018 05:35
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It's interesting that you describe the shape of the overall joke almost exactly but still claim not to have understood it. quote:The character just floated through the story looking at things with a half-hearted curiosity, even when told he's going to be hung the next day he didn't seem to really care that much. A huge part of the overarching humor of the book is how uninterested the narrator is in anything but publishing his "definitive Index" on the crackpot philosopher de Selby. He's constantly confronted by the impossible, the absurd, the incomprehensible, all hilarious in and of themselves (the sixty per-cent bicycle Gilhaney, the elevator to eternity), but he's oblivious to the clear implication of all this metaphysical chicanery, instead focused on finding this box of cash to pay a printer. So he'll report the facts of his experience, but nearly all of his personal reflections and interpretations have to do with de Selby and the transnational intrigue between de Selby commentators.
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Apr 26, 2018 16:59
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thanks. that makes a bit more sense. i didn't really make the connection that the de selby stuff was coming from the same narrator, since the guy was dead. i figured it was a second narrator documenting things and making notations somehow.
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Apr 26, 2018 17:03
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i'm alternating between if on a winter's night a traveler and the glass bead game. both are good. the only other book i've read that centers around a game (or games), player of games by ian m banks, is genre bullshit, but i like the whole game concept, so if anyone can recommend me something along those lines i'd be happy to read that poo poo
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Apr 27, 2018 03:10
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A Game of Thrones, perhaps? Real answer: The Master of Go, by Yasunari Kawabata.
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Apr 27, 2018 03:37
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Nabokov's The Defense has chess as a central theme, although I'm not sure if it fits your description
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Apr 27, 2018 03:42
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Awesome I love go, added to list
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Apr 27, 2018 03:43
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Also I just finished luzhin defense and it is not ever in detail about chess but is very good
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Apr 27, 2018 03:44
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Sum by David Eagleman is a pretty neat little book. It's 40 (very) short stories about what happens when you die - ~100 pages in total - and I'm about halfway now and it's good!
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Apr 27, 2018 08:00
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Finicums Wake posted:i'm alternating between if on a winter's night a traveler and the glass bead game. both are good. The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop.
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Apr 27, 2018 08:19
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Finicums Wake posted:i'm alternating between if on a winter's night a traveler and the glass bead game. both are good. the royal game by Zweig
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Apr 27, 2018 08:58
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Bolaño's The Third Reich is centered around a grognardy wargame. It's a pretty decent novel
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Apr 27, 2018 09:07
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Lex Neville posted:Sum by David Eagleman is a pretty neat little book. It's 40 (very) short stories about what happens when you die - ~100 pages in total - and I'm about halfway now and it's good! so what happens?
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Apr 27, 2018 09:08
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Mel Mudkiper posted:But then you will miss out on all the world-building What's wrong with world building?
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Apr 27, 2018 09:14
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Burning Rain posted:so what happens? 40 different things duh
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Apr 27, 2018 09:39
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OscarDiggs posted:What's wrong with world building? It's what C grade scifi and fantasy books are bulked up with
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Apr 27, 2018 09:43
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Ras Het posted:It's what C grade scifi and fantasy books are bulked up with Thanks.
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Apr 27, 2018 09:59
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I object to the idea that a 'world' can be 'built'
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Apr 27, 2018 11:21
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OscarDiggs posted:What's wrong with world building? 
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Apr 27, 2018 14:54
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Lex Neville posted:Sum by David Eagleman is a pretty neat little book. It's 40 (very) short stories about what happens when you die - ~100 pages in total - and I'm about halfway now and it's good! I read this awhile back hoping that it would have more interesting interpretations of the concept of the afterlife, possibly referencing a variety of real world cultures as well as his own ideas. But it was much more allegorical stories that usually had the message "living forever isn't all it's cracked up to be". Not that it was bad at all, it was interesting and good, I just imagined it being something different, and kind of wish that first book existed.
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Apr 27, 2018 16:55
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Guy A. Person posted:I read this awhile back hoping that it would have more interesting interpretations of the concept of the afterlife, possibly referencing a variety of real world cultures as well as his own ideas. But it was much more allegorical stories that usually had the message "living forever isn't all it's cracked up to be". Yeah, I enjoyed it quite a bit, but it could have been trimmed to 30 Afterlives.
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Apr 27, 2018 17:02
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Not a chance friend. To many questions.
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Apr 27, 2018 19:03
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Who just followed my reviews on Goodreads. Show yourself coward
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Apr 27, 2018 19:29
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CestMoi posted:Who just followed my reviews on Goodreads. Show yourself coward its chiryo40 whatever 
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Apr 27, 2018 19:58
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OscarDiggs posted:Not a chance friend. To many questions.
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Apr 27, 2018 22:43
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Sham bam bamina! posted:There are answers to many questions. I will give them. What .. what is the manner in which the world was built, O shambambamina 
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Apr 27, 2018 23:26
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