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Just finished my second Haruki Murakami novel, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. I was less engaged with the overall happenings of the plot than in the previous Murakami novel I read (The Wind-up Bird Chronicle), probably because I was enamored with the overall dreamlike style of that book, but once the story actually becomes a little more explicit about what is happening I was able to get a lot more out of it. Murakami's opaqueness is something I find a little frustrating and distancing in the moment as a reader, but really rewarding once I actually sit down and examine the story. Might have to re-read it to really understand it, but the note it ends on specifically was really fascinating.
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Aug 31, 2020 00:14
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Just Finished The Blind Owl and other Stories by Sadeq Hedayat and various translators. Blind Owl is about a quarter+ or so of the book and the rest are short stories of usually pretty short length. Blind owl is an amazing story. Unreliable narrator, fluid timeline, interesting use of symbolism, it was an incredible story that I am surprised doesn't get more attention in the West. It was a wild ride and I'd like to give it another go again late on when the impact of the first read fades a bit. The rest of the short stories were good, though a bit more hit or miss. It reminded me a little bit like an Iranian version of Poe. The lusting after 13 year old girls was kinda distracting as a 21st century reader, but the context of early 20th century Iran it makes sense, and he isn't a lewd writer or anything. The guy is also super fixated on suicide, but the story Buried Alive was probably one of the best "Dead Man Walking" stories I've ever read, so he knows his wheelhouse for sure. I liked it, and from what I understand the different translations do change things up, so I guess do a little research, though the one I read seemed pretty good.
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Aug 31, 2020 16:25
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On Writing by Stephen King I loved it. Fascinating and entertaining insights from one of the world's all-time best selling authors. He knows he writes popular fiction and is not insecure about it, which makes it very honest. He essentially gives a brief look i to his influences and then goes into a great bit of detail regarding the technical, logistical and commercial aspects of writing. I highly recommend to any aspiring authors, but I imagine most have probably already read it. I also liked his description of the business of writing (getting an agent, editor, publisher, etc.). I feel he could have gone into mpre detail about his inspiration for specific stories. He doesnt touch much on where his ideas come from. Ive always wondered how authors regard other works as 'inspiring' their own vs. whether they are copying or plagiarising either content or style.
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Aug 31, 2020 20:35
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I just finished Blindsight by Peter Watts, after seeing it recommended in around three different threads around the site by different people. It was a really interesting take on first contact and is inspiring me to read more sci-fi. I have some lingering questions about the aliens that I'm hoping the sidequel answers, but if not it's fine. I also read all of the Earthsea books by Ursula K Leguin. They're so fuckin good. I originally didn't like Tehanu that much when I first read it years ago, but now it might be my favorite in the series. It's just super cool how it's about a bunch of broken people traumatized and trying to live normal lives after their adventures. Not something I've seen often.
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Sep 6, 2020 01:00
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I just finished Path into the Unknown: The Best of Soviet SF edited by Judith Merril. The stories were mixed, although with uneven translation, but there were some really good ones, most united by mystery and they leave the reader to puzzle WTF. Stories include: The Conflict - shortstory by Ilya Varshavsky Robbie - shortstory by Ilya Varshavsky Meeting My Brother - novelette by Vladislav Krapivin A Day of Wrath - novelette by Sever Gansovsky An Emergency Case - shortstory by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky Wanderers and Travellers - shortstory by Arkady Strugatsky The Boy - shortstory by Gennady Gor The Purple Mummy - shortstory by Anatoly Dnieprov The first two were the mosted dated I thought. Meeting my Brother and A Day of Wrath were my favourites, but An Emergency Case and The Boy also were entertaining. The Purple Mummy predicted cell phones and 3D printers that will be fairly recognizable to the readers.
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Sep 6, 2020 03:29
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Bilirubin posted:I just finished Path into the Unknown: The Best of Soviet SF edited by Judith Merril. The stories were mixed, although with uneven translation, but there were some really good ones, most united by mystery and they leave the reader to puzzle WTF. Stories include: This gentleman died earlier this week. He was a beloved children's author and a creator of his own Scouts-like children's-organization-slash-sailship-flotilla, where kids learned how to write, fence and sail small sailships.
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Sep 6, 2020 10:34
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I need to give that a look. You should check out Mirra Ginsburg's excellent anthology The Air of Mars too.
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Sep 6, 2020 15:30
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Megazver posted:This gentleman died earlier this week. He was a beloved children's author and a creator of his own Scouts-like children's-organization-slash-sailship-flotilla, where kids learned how to write, fence and sail small sailships. That is sad. It was a very sweet story. e. actually, one of my fencing teachers was Russian and is of an age that he might have stayed at one of those camps. How funny to think it might be so. Sham bam bamina! posted:I need to give that a look. You should check out Mirra Ginsburg's excellent anthology The Air of Mars too. I will look for it. I have several other anthologies that my wife collected over the years to read through; the ones edited by Harlan Ellison and Frederick Pohl will be forthcoming first. Bilirubin fucked around with this message at 17:45 on Sep 6, 2020 |
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Sep 6, 2020 17:43
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I just finished An Anonymous Girl and Catch and Kill (the Ronan Farrow book). An Anonymous Girl was okay. I think it kind of stalled in the middle, and I thought that the choice in perspective for Dr. Shield's chapters was a bit clunky. I get that what the author was trying to convey about her personality by writing in that style but it kind of seemed of forced. I liked the ending though! Catch and Kill was a really fun ride. It reads like a kind of spy novel but it all actually happened, which is a trip. I remember reading pretty much all of the stories about Harvey Weinstein when all that poo poo came out, and some stories about NBC essentially trying to cover it up, but holy poo poo the details of them trying to kill the story were amazing. I went into the book not expecting to be surprised but I very much was. I enjoyed the hell out of it.
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Sep 7, 2020 21:00
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Finished The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson this morning. Awesome fantasy book with some serious world building and cool fighting and magic. I will definitely read the next ones in the series but not right away because, drat, these books are long. At least for me since I'm a slow rear end reader.
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Sep 20, 2020 23:26
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I read Gideon the Ninth. It was ok. The first third of the book seems very promising when it's introducing the setting, the world, and the characters. I liked the mashup between the super serious gothic necromancer and Gideon's flippant personality until it got annoying. All the relationships are very anime. Everyone is tsundere. The last two thirds of the book are straight from a Japanese visual novel game like Danganronpa. Someone among the group of staple anime personality archetypes is the murderer. Finding out who dun it was a lot less interesting than the B plot of who made Canaan House and its super hard necromancer tests. Probably 20k of this 133k book is just names and titles. Everyone has to have 5 titles and nicknames as well. Harrowhard is called Nonagesimus, Reverend Daughter, the Ninth, etc., as well as whatever sarcastic name Gideon decides to call her. Literally every other character has a bunch of names and titles too, and they're not all easy to keep straight. I had a hard time keeping the Houses straight--there are a lot of them, and few of them have any real impact on the plot. I might read the next one if I run out of other books to try.
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Sep 23, 2020 06:16
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quantumfoam posted:Shannon Appelcline did a moderately deep dive on subject back in 2016 with The Science Fiction In Traveller, which is free if you get the watermarked version of it on drivethrurpg.com. If you don't want to go through that hassle at drivethrurpg or spend $3 on the kindle version of it, let me mention some of the mostly forgotten authors Appelcline cited: Good find. I think one of the early Traveller books had a story list of the SF they were inspired by ... which led to me chafing up the books and finding new authors.
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Sep 23, 2020 07:32
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PringleCreamEgg posted:I also read all of the Earthsea books by Ursula K Leguin. They're so fuckin good. I originally didn't like Tehanu that much when I first read it years ago, but now it might be my favorite in the series. It's just super cool how it's about a bunch of broken people traumatized and trying to live normal lives after their adventures. Not something I've seen often. That's a real thing with the Earthsea books, especially the latter ones. Read them as a child / young adult, read them as a mature adult and you have entirely different takes.
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Sep 23, 2020 07:59
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Senlin Ascends - Josiah Bancroft An absolutely amazing and near-perfect sci-fi, fun-time read. Breakneck but fluid pacing, a wonderfully imagined world, and some of the best characters and character development I've read in a while. There's a little bit of a plot contrivance in the last third of the book that made me roll my eyes and threatened to derail the whole thing, but it redeemed itself because it manages to take the adventure, the world, and how the main character develops along with it, to infinitely more interesting places.
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Sep 23, 2020 16:01
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Random Acts of Senseless Violence by Jack Womack. You know how Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale as well as Gibson’s Neuromancer are both often credited with foreseeing the lovely trajectory the US and human society at large is on? Definitely add this book to that pile. It came out in ‘93, and I’m surprised people who read it on its initial release aren’t crowing about it now, because matters of race, corporate overreach, classism, queerness, and a dismantled social contract are the book’s primary concerns. It’s an epistolary work written as a series of journal entries from a 12-year old girl whose parents are an upper middle class liberal couple in decline. It’s hard to talk about the narrative arc without loving up the experience for someone coming in fresh, because the voice is excellent, and the way details are parceled out is nothing short of perfect. Womack nails the tone of an insecure, clueless 12-year-old girl perfectly. And the way the whole picture comes together is masterful. It’s a book concerned with the loss of innocence both on a personal and broader, societal scale. I’ve made it sound like it’s about the protagonist, and it is, but it’s just as much about circumstance, happenstance, and misfortune, and how those things can make monsters out of anyone. I really don’t know how to talk about this book and I’ve not yet had enough coffee. But if you’re interested in political satire, being punched in the face, or reading fiction with very uncomfortable parallels to the current environment, I’d recommend it. This is one that will upset you. I sort of regret reading it. It’s a well-crafted book, but after a certain point, I was reading it to see how that craft was exercised more than I was for the plot because the experience is kind of miserable, if poignant.
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Sep 23, 2020 16:54
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The Last of Mr. Norris, also known as Mr Norris Changes Trains in the UK. This is the first half of a shabby edition I have of Christopher Isherwood's Berlin Stories, the other half being Goodbye to Berlin. Both feature the city in 1930-1933, with many of the characters teetering on the brink of an abyss, kind of like the city itself. The story centers around the puzzling title character, Arthur Norris, an Englishman who enjoys a personal blend of coffee, fine silks, warm baths, and a good spanking from attractive women. The Berlin Stories being semi-autobiographical, the narrator is a thinly-veiled version of Isherwood who finds himself drawn to the odd, nervous-looking, masochistic Norris, himself based on Gerald Hamilton. Norris turns out to be as shady as they come. He's good at suggesting it himself, like someone asked "where were you and what were you doing on the night of the murder" responding with "haha, what's anyone doing anywhere?" and tugging at their collar, sweating vigorously. Norris isn't a subtle man, and this isn't a subtle story. For the most part, we see little of the characters beneath the surface. People are living in dire straits, but their motives and the implications of their circumstances are barely explored at all. Like there's a meaty, juicy story that Isherwood is dancing around, or at best drawing the contours of. Lots of intrigue and suggestion with little payoff. Also, while I can't say I'm against reading mean-spirited narrators (or authors), the superficial storytelling combined with the desperation in the setting gave me the impression of a well-to-do foreigner pointing and gawking at human beings living under miserable conditions. Apparently Isherwood came to the same conclusion years later: quote:What repels me now about Mr Norris is its heartlessness. It is a heartless fairy-story about a real city in which human beings were suffering the miseries of political violence and near-starvation. The ‘wickedness’ of Berlin’s night-life was of the most pitiful kind; the kisses and embraces, as always, had price-tags attached to them, but here the prices were drastically reduced in the cut-throat competition of an over-crowded market. … As for the ‘monsters’, they were quite ordinary human beings prosaically engaged in getting their living through illegal methods. The only genuine monster was the young foreigner who passed gaily through these scenes of desolation, misinterpreting them to suit his childish fantasy. Other books finished in September: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson, Daughter of the Cold War by Grace Kennan Warnecke, and How to Avoid Being Killed in a War Zone by Rosie Garthwaite.
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Sep 23, 2020 23:07
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I just finished Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo. I enjoyed Ninth House so I figured I'd check out some of her other books, and this was really fun! It being pitched as an Ocean's 11-style story with magic was a pretty solid description! I love heist poo poo in general (especially kinda silly stuff like the show Leverage), and this very much scratched that itch. I finished the last page and grabbed the sequel immediately after. I kind of look forward to the Netflix adaptation of this universe that's coming out at some point, though I haven't read the main trilogy that apparently set up the lore for this so we'll see.
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Sep 24, 2020 02:39
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BananaNutkins posted:I read Gideon the Ninth. It was ok. The first third of the book seems very promising when it's introducing the setting, the world, and the characters. Gideon the Ninth is one of those books where it's a big advantage to have it in paper rather than Kindle where you can easily flip back to the Dramatis Personae, which is very useful on a first read. 17 characters is a lot to keep track of. The sequel has way fewer new characters, but it's weird and confusing in entirely different ways.
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Sep 27, 2020 04:20
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BurningBeard posted:Random Acts of Senseless Violence by Jack Womack. Thanks for recommendation, downloading from library now.
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Sep 28, 2020 18:34
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Hyrax Attack! posted:Thanks for recommendation, downloading from library now. No worries. I’d say enjoy but that’s not going to happen. Do share your thoughts though when you finish. It gives you a lot to chew on.
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Sep 30, 2020 19:17
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I just finished The Fireman by Joe Hill and holy gently caress his novels suck. His short stories are so good! It seems if he writes a full novel he tells a good story that goes for so long it becomes a bad story.
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Oct 3, 2020 05:51
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A Wizard of Earthsea by Le Guin. I really, really liked it. I don't really get so much why this was traditionally classified as "children's literature" though... YA seems much more appropriate. Still trying to collect my thoughts a little bit about it right now, suffice it to say I thought it was fantastic. I assume the rest of the series is good too? Otherwise I'm fine leaving it as a self-contained experience.
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Oct 3, 2020 11:55
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YA as a category didn’t really exist until maybe 35-40 years ago,” - when my Gen X rear end was a kid, all there was, literarily, was ‘the children’s section’ which contained everything from Little Golden Books to Beverly Cleary to The Hobbit. So novels were either normal(adult) or for children, and Earthsea was perceived as falling under the ‘children’ umbrella.
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Oct 3, 2020 13:40
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Drone posted:A Wizard of Earthsea by Le Guin. The rest are good. However, Le Guin took a 30 year break from the series and when she returned with Tehanu, it's clearly written with the eye of a much older woman, re-examining her work. Not to everyone's taste. The first three however are cut from the same cloth.
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Oct 4, 2020 07:04
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BurningBeard posted:Random Acts of Senseless Violence by Jack Womack. I love this book, but it's also sickeningly difficult at times and I read it in about 2014. It's also chronologically the first (but not the first released) in a series of novels that take on more typical cyberpunk, pulp and post-apocalyptic motifs and the protagonist from this book shows up in a minor role elsewhere. Elvissey was a pretty decent read and stood alone as far as a I recall.
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Oct 5, 2020 00:39
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I also happen to have just finished A Wizard of Earthsea and I feel like I would have enjoyed it a lot more if I'd read it when I was younger. It was definitely well-written, and I really liked the Taoist sensibilities that she worked into the magic and plot, but something about the style and/or the pacing just didn't totally hook me for some reason. I'm on my library's waitlist for The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed and I'm definitely curious how different Le Guin's style is for those since Wizard didn't really suit my current tastes. (I've also somehow never read Le Guin before now which is why I just reserved a bunch of random titles, so I'm pretty unfamiliar with her style in general at the moment.)
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Oct 5, 2020 03:22
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Just finished my great literary albatross Ulysses. I am glad to have finally done so, because it was really remarkable.
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Oct 5, 2020 03:41
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Bilirubin posted:Just finished my great literary albatross Ulysses. I am glad to have finally done so, because it was really remarkable. It's rad, I am a couple of hundred of pages in. The way he captures the thought stream is incredible.
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Oct 5, 2020 05:49
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Finished Neruomancer and it was alright. Like I'm sure it's just me, avacado toast man having been marinated in the juices of the things inspired by Gibson over 30 years, not catching on rather than any issues the novel.
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Oct 5, 2020 17:00
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Just finished Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth. I thought it was good. Very methodical and detailed. Any other books in a similar vein?
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Oct 5, 2020 18:19
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BurningBeard posted:No worries. I’d say enjoy but that’s not going to happen. Do share your thoughts though when you finish. It gives you a lot to chew on. It was a solid read, thanks for recommending. The part that stood out to me most were her dad being forced to go from a professional creative job to abusive retail work where he was classified as a manager so they wouldn't have to pay him overtime, and its so bad he winds up dead.
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Oct 5, 2020 18:33
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Saul Kain posted:Just finished Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth. I thought it was good. Very methodical and detailed. Any other books in a similar vein? I enjoyed the Dogs of War by Forsyth but I can't say I've read much Dadlit.
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Oct 6, 2020 00:28
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I just finished The Passage by Justin Cronin. This is actually my second attempt at reading it. The first time I got as far as finishing the chapter with Peter's visit to Auntie and just lost interest. I really struggled to be engaged by the story after the jump forward in time. I restarted and it held my interest this time, but I think the quality of the writing is very uneven. It's like reading old sci-fi books that were published in periodicals - every chapter happens to end on a cliffhanger (that usually turns out to be nothing and is dismissed two chapters later) and it often is very disjointed when there's a change in time or location, like the author has retooled a short story or plotline from something else to fit this one. There are stretches of the book where it was quite compelling, especially when it's alternating between a current storyline and little chapter long vignettes from the past to give context. I've started the second book and it's used a lot in the early chapters. I do think the first part of the book is the strongest with characters that are relatively grounded and the setting where a virus is discovered in the Bolivian jungle that turns people into vampires because of glandular changes and a secret program to weaponise this is undertaken under the guise of medical research. Only to then add these supernatural elements like the animals at the zoo and the collective consciousness stuff and then to ramp it up until you have people shooting an RPG at a giant mass-mind controlling demon. Like the Strain, I've never felt that it's an improvement to take traditional horror folklore, create some scientific justification for it with a virus or parasites, etc and then just fall back onto all the regular supernatural stuff anyway.
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Oct 6, 2020 01:25
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Read And Soon I Heard a Roaring Wind: A Natural History of Moving Air by Bill Streever. I got it for free and I have a weak spot for pop science mixed with History. It was alright. I did learn some cool stuff about the history of weather forecasting. The framing he used of his own sailboat journey was very "Rich White Guy Telling You Stuff At Dinner" but it was not very drawn out. It was also a really easy read, which was kind of a nice break.
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Oct 6, 2020 14:41
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Hyrax Attack! posted:It was a solid read, thanks for recommending. The part that stood out to me most were her dad being forced to go from a professional creative job to abusive retail work where he was classified as a manager so they wouldn't have to pay him overtime, and its so bad he winds up dead. Yeah that got me too. I have to say though that all the stuff surrounding the comically evil, self-interested boss didn’t land as well for me just because the delivery was tonally kind of different to everything else. Like the book does a really nice job of strattling the line between balls-out satire and believably grim, but that particular bit came off a little too cartoonish for my liking. The head banging on the wall was kind of ridiculous. What did you think of the voice shift as she got deeper in with the other girls? I couldn’t decide if I liked it or not, because it kind of read as someone outside the culture trying to ape its style. I don’t know about Womack’s background so I might sound like an idiot right now. Like there was stuff in there I thought was insightful, poetic, and cool, but it all came off a bit overdone to me and I think the effect was hard to believe because of the shortened timeline between when she started spending time with them and after.
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Oct 6, 2020 17:13
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Saul Kain posted:Just finished Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth. I thought it was good. Very methodical and detailed. Any other books in a similar vein? I asked a similar question in the recommendation thread highlighting specifically your takeaways and The Spy Who Came In From The Cold seems a good fit. I fell off it because quarantine has given me book ADD. But enjoyed what I read of it.
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Oct 6, 2020 17:17
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Yeah, in general Forsyth is by himself in that class, but leCarre does a good job of the "Methodical, believable thriller" and Spy works exceptionally well both as an entry point or just as a standalone. Forsyth kinda goes off the rails with the... interesting political opinions in his later books while LeCarre's perspective has aged extremely well.
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Oct 6, 2020 18:37
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Hahaha i think what you meant was pants on head bananas crazy.
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Oct 6, 2020 20:53
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BurningBeard posted:Yeah that got me too. I have to say though that all the stuff surrounding the comically evil, self-interested boss didn’t land as well for me just because the delivery was tonally kind of different to everything else. Like the book does a really nice job of strattling the line between balls-out satire and believably grim, but that particular bit came off a little too cartoonish for my liking. The head banging on the wall was kind of ridiculous. Those are good points. I thought the head banging on the wall fit the story well and was believable, and helped to get across how the family's survival hinged on the whims of a horrible person who likely had mental issues as there are no other jobs available and zero social safety net. I did like how at the end when she goes to his building he's acting affable and relaxing. I thought that hinted at he absolutely should not be in a position of power but away from the bookstore isn't all terrible all the time. It was interesting how the family declined in different ways, and it was effective how they weren't spoiled rotten or unlikeable before the downfall. The scene with the VanMan screwing them was upsetting. The voice stuff worked ok, got the idea of her changing across but yeah could be a little clunky. I did like how her new friends weren't stock characters but had pasts and different behavior.
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Oct 6, 2020 21:41
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BurningBeard posted:Hahaha i think what you meant was pants on head bananas crazy. I was being polite, I don't know how insane the recommendee might be.
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Oct 7, 2020 15:04
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