3D Megadoodoo posted:sorry to hear that, getting my next of kin to prop an open book on top of my face before sealing the coffin |
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Jun 27, 2022 01:55
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I started reading Ian Wallace's "The Rape of the Sun" and it looks like it's clearly from the 1960s, inside and out: ...only it's a first edition and impression from 1982. |
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Jun 27, 2022 02:15
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yeah i support the NDP.... New Directions Publishing (just started reading satantango)
https://i.imgur.com/xQxnooW.png |
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Jul 2, 2022 22:02
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satantango is good im gonna read chasing homer some time this summer. it has a silly gimmick where you scan QR codes to get a chapter soundtrack composed specifically for the novel |
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Jul 3, 2022 14:47
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reading A Talent to Deceive by Robert Barnard; it's a retrospective look at Agatha Christie's work and an attempt to answer the question of just why that work ended up so enduring and appealing. It manages to be appreciative without descending into hagiography (chapter two is talking about all those kind of racist world domination thrillers she wrote, like Passenger to Frankfurt and The Big Four), which I'm enjoying. |
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Jul 3, 2022 15:33
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Got a new stack of Asimov in the mail: Asimov's Mysteries, Earth is Room Enough, Nightfall and other stories, The Martian Way, and The Currents of Space. I have a feeling I'm single-handedly driving the prices of old Asimov paperbacks in Finland up in on-line second-hand book shops :-(
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Jul 3, 2022 16:11
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baka fwocka fwame posted:i thought this one was okay but it sort of kept being the same twist over and over im gonna peruse my collection and see which ones i liked best I was initially a bit irritated at the obvious twist but liked it much better on a re-read. There's dark stuff in there and also hope! |
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Jul 3, 2022 16:18
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beer pal posted:yeah i support the NDP.... New Directions Publishing (just started reading satantango) loved it great book if you like despair and desperation https://i.imgur.com/xQxnooW.png |
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Jul 9, 2022 21:31
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ulvir posted:satantango is good chasing homer? why wheres he going ahaha i liked dead astronauts by vandermeer was gonna finish it finally good band too. but i put it somewhere. best chap was murder control i tried to do ny trilogy by auster again but i wasnt enjoying it as much as i thought i would. hes just really dead technically precise when hes explaining things buried giant is still p good |
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Jul 10, 2022 00:29
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| reading books with their own soundtracks is usually an experience i read the salvation (i forget if name of book or series) opener by petey hamilton and it sucked but the ost made it an epic adventure between good and evil | |
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Jul 10, 2022 00:32
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I'm finally doing the Black Company reread I'd been meaning to do for like a year. I'm four and a half books in now (Shadow Games, since I read The Silver Spike in chronological rather than publication order) and enjoying the poo poo out of them. Although Shadow Games has me really wanting to smack Croaker and the Lady (mostly Croaker) and yell "just kiss already! you idiots!". |
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Jul 10, 2022 01:06
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21 Lessons For the 21rst Century by Yuval Noah Harari. Once read it seems like kind of common knowledge but I guess the benefit to readers is stressing that these are important issues. |
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Jul 10, 2022 01:32
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ToxicFrog posted:I'm finally doing the Black Company reread I'd been meaning to do for like a year. I'm four and a half books in now (Shadow Games, since I read The Silver Spike in chronological rather than publication order) and enjoying the poo poo out of them. drat i read the first one and never finished it but it was p freakin cool i forget why i stopped |
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Jul 10, 2022 04:08
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all this Vandermeer talk reminds me : last year I chewed through all 3 Ambergris books, I always highly recommend City of Saints and Madmen to get people hooked.
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Jul 10, 2022 16:42
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baka fwocka fwame posted:drat i read the first one and never finished it but it was p freakin cool i forget why i stopped Well, if you ever want to go back to it, these days you can pick up the first three books in omnibus edition as Chronicles of the Black Company; that covers the entire story arc with the northern empire, the Lady, the Taken, and the Dominator. I've talked to some people who feel that it gets bad after the first three (or sometimes the first six) but personally I enjoyed it right to the end and felt that it absolutely sticks the landing with Soldiers Live. Yeah, that first trilogy is a hard act to follow (and stands well on its own if you want to stop there), and you could I think make a case that the Books of the South and the Books of Glittering Stone aren't as good, but I think they're well worth the read. They are a lot more decompressed than the earlier books, though. The campaign around Ghoja, in particular, has a lot less "Croaker disposes of an entire year of campaigning, several major battles, and a month-long siege in a single paragraph". |
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Jul 10, 2022 17:36
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Finished Shadow Games and Dreams of Steel and now I'm on to Bleak Seasons. I think this is the low point of the series for me; I don't find Murgen nearly as engaging an annalist as Croaker or the Lady, a good chunk of the book is spent recapitulating the siege of Dejagore which we've already seen from other perspectives in the previous book, and the time-displacement stuff means that you know quite early on that Murgen is going to go through some really bad poo poo later, but not exactly what, which is a narrative structure I find pretty stressful. |
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Jul 11, 2022 14:51
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started reading Susan Cooper's Seaward again, because I think I read it as a kid but can't remember anything except the chess. i guess i'll finish it tonight, it's not long. i have so many things to do that aren't reading a literal kids' book but  E: oh, I guess I didn't remember much because there's not much to remember. Next up: Bukowski 3D Megadoodoo fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Jul 11, 2022 |
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Jul 11, 2022 17:29
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I forgot Bleak Seasons is also the one that introduces the love triangle subplot where Croaker is consumed by jealousy about Blade making eyes at the Lady and ends up driving one his best officers to defect to the enemy about it, despite ample evidence that Blade won't actually act on his feelings without the Lady's invitation and that the Lady only has eyes for Croaker. Which is a plot structure that frustrates and annoys me and is badly overused. In this case there's the mitigating factor that the whole thing is a ruse the three of them cooked up together to get Blade inserted into the enemy forces as a mole but that takes like two books to come to light. When I first saw people advising to stop reading The Black Company after the first 3-6 books I was pretty confused but on reread, yeah, I can definitely see why someone would want to bail when they hit the Books of Murgen. The payoff in Water Sleeps and Soldiers Live is loving tasty but it is a bit of a slog to get there; I wouldn't blame someone -- especially someone who already didn't like the Books of the South as much as they did the first three -- for deciding to cut their losses. |
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Jul 13, 2022 13:31
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Against all better judgement I started reading Fire & Blood, the Game of Thrones prequel book. I'm not even one chapter in and I have had to take notes as to who is who between Aeon Ageon Aygeon and so on |
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Jul 14, 2022 16:08
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I read a book on the history of the printing press and now I kinda wanna copy a book by hand as a fun project |
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Jul 14, 2022 20:41
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The Hello Machine posted:I read a book on the history of the printing press and now I kinda wanna copy a book by hand as a fun project wtf you seem like an amazing poster im rereading the wild boys, made some more progress into the irish nonfic thing about their lit tradition. i finished dead astronauts. |
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Jul 15, 2022 01:51
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The Hello Machine posted:I read a book on the history of the printing press and now I kinda wanna copy a book by hand as a fun project Title? (TIA) |
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Jul 15, 2022 02:01
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3D Megadoodoo posted:Title? The Origin of Printing in Europe by Pierce Butler. I found it for free on clearance at a local bookstore! I'm not sure how much I'd pay for it, but it was really nice as train-ride reading and I really dug the detail he goes into on literary culture before they had the press! baka fwocka fwame posted:wtf you seem like an amazing poster Thank you that is so nice!! |
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Jul 15, 2022 06:06
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Hello, I just finished up "The Expert System's Brother/The Expert System's Champion" by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Both very good, very interesting explorations in to a human colony that had to adapt to a hostile planet. I think I enjoyed the first book a bit more, the second introduces an interesting antagonist, but it's a bit muddier. Still a cool story though. I also read Master of Revels which is a sequel to Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O (without Neal Stephenson) and unfortunately nowhere near as good. The primary character gives a strong Mary Sue vibe, and everything about the story is just really really convenient. |
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Jul 28, 2022 23:56
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i just finished the ted chiang short story collection 'stories of your life and others'. pretty good before that i read white noise by don delillo that i found in one of those free little libraries outside the church that i walk past on my way to the grocery store every week but its mostly religious stuff + self help + danielle steele. pretty good https://i.imgur.com/xQxnooW.png |
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Jul 29, 2022 00:08
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reading "I, Strahd" about the origin of the famous DnD vampire any good horror people wanna recommend?
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Jul 29, 2022 01:56
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Jinh posted:reading "I, Strahd" about the origin of the famous DnD vampire My favourite horror writers are Clark Ashton Smith, Algernon Blackwood (Wendigo is creeeepy), and William Hope Hodgson. Everywhere, everyone is red and green |
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Jul 29, 2022 02:08
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xcheopis posted:My favourite horror writers are Clark Ashton Smith, Algernon Blackwood (Wendigo is creeeepy), and William Hope Hodgson. thanks, i'll check them out! 
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Jul 29, 2022 02:10
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Jinh posted:thanks, i'll check them out! It's all early-20th century but very well written. Smith was a contemporary and friend of Lovecraft; his works aren't nearly as well known but I consider him to be the superior writer (and far less racist, which I admit is not a difficult task). Aside from fantasy horror, he also wrote sci-fi horror, mostly dealing with alien planets and life that are truly alien. Blackwood is more of a "every day horror" writer - stories take place in the current time, although often in areas that are lonely (of course!). Hodgeson might be best known for The Night Land (which I now enjoy but it took a few tries to get into the writing style) but don't overlook his nautical stories; they are fantastic in all senses of the word. They are, mostly, short stories, and so are great for reading at night or while waiting at the doctor's, etc. Everywhere, everyone is red and green |
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Jul 29, 2022 02:25
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I'm reading "Kháron ladikján" ("Kharonin lautalla" / On Kharon's Raft?) by Gyula Illyés, which claims to be an "essay novel" which seems about right. It's about getting old, being old, death etc. Pretty good stuff - I almost never make any margin notes in books, or dog-ear pages for quick access later, but I've done so many times with this one. I just suspect the Finnish translation isn't quite as good as it should be, since some sentences seem off-kilter.
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Jul 29, 2022 04:29
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Finger Prince posted:I also read Master of Revels which is a sequel to Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O (without Neal Stephenson) and unfortunately nowhere near as good. The primary character gives a strong Mary Sue vibe, and everything about the story is just really really convenient. i hadn't heard of this sequel so i got really excited and then really unexcited over the course of this paragraph lol
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Jul 29, 2022 05:03
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biosterous posted:i hadn't heard of this sequel so i got really excited and then really unexcited over the course of this paragraph lol It sort of reads like, what if a huge Shakespeare nerd (who may or may not be a stand-in for the author, or someone they know) went back in time and met Will Shakespeare and foiled the plot of a meddling witch by using her powers of knowing everything about Shakespeare! , and also some other stuff happened that was tangentially related in other timelines but who cares, Shakespeare! And, like it wouldn't be so bad, but the whole way the character is introduced, is like oh no, the main character from the previous book has been removed from the plot! Well good thing his ultra cool theatre nerd kid sister showed up in town today with exactly the skillset required to instantly join the time travel gang, questioning literally nothing about the whole getup, to rescue big bro in Shakespearian times and stop the evil witch! It's bad. I skimmed a lot to get through it. Not terrible, just, I wanted it to be over while I was reading it. |
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Jul 29, 2022 05:17
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3D Megadoodoo posted:I'm reading "Kháron ladikján" ("Kharonin lautalla" / On Kharon's Raft?) by Gyula Illyés, which claims to be an "essay novel" which seems about right. It's about getting old, being old, death etc. Pretty good stuff - I almost never make any margin notes in books, or dog-ear pages for quick access later, but I've done so many times with this one. I just suspect the Finnish translation isn't quite as good as it should be, since some sentences seem off-kilter. Are your notes comments on specific passages? |
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Jul 29, 2022 05:28
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xcheopis posted:Are your notes comments on specific passages? Yeah I don't, like, write my shopping list in the marginals lmao. |
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Jul 29, 2022 06:32
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Finger Prince posted:It sort of reads like, what if a huge Shakespeare nerd (who may or may not be a stand-in for the author, or someone they know) went back in time and met Will Shakespeare and foiled the plot of a meddling witch by using her powers of knowing everything about Shakespeare! , and also some other stuff happened that was tangentially related in other timelines but who cares, Shakespeare! And, like it wouldn't be so bad, but the whole way the character is introduced, is like oh no, the main character from the previous book has been removed from the plot! Well good thing his ultra cool theatre nerd kid sister showed up in town today with exactly the skillset required to instantly join the time travel gang, questioning literally nothing about the whole getup, to rescue big bro in Shakespearian times and stop the evil witch! wow that is, like, really far removed from the previous book and all the stuff that made it great. thanks for the heads up i will give it a pass!
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Jul 29, 2022 14:18
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| i read ice by anna k again, still workin on other stuff | |
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Jul 30, 2022 08:32
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3D Megadoodoo posted:Yeah I don't, like, write my shopping list in the marginals lmao. Well, vs. notes on the translation |
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Jul 30, 2022 15:44
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Last year I decided to spend a month only reading science fiction written by black women. It's been eighteen months and I'm still doing this. So far it has varied from "interesting end of okay" to "blew my friggin' mind". |
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Jul 30, 2022 18:11
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xcheopis posted:Well, vs. notes on the translation Oh, those too. There's some stuff that makes sense as is, but if "corrected" to sound better (in my mind) still make sense but might alter the meaning 180 degrees. So it's a lot of big-rear end question marks for me because I don't read Hungarian. I know I should trust the translator as it's a (or more the) big publisher and a prestigious series but I'm always suspicious of translations  e: Because when it's translated from English, I can look up the source, and often spot mistakes even without it.
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Jul 31, 2022 14:33
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| # ? May 23, 2024 06:25 |
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during a trip I read Jenny Erpenbeck’s Aller tage abend and Joshua Cohen’s The Netanyahus. the first was great and the second made me chuckle a bit but was otherwise just okay now i’m slowly reading the concept of anxiety by Kierkegaard |
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Jul 31, 2022 22:14
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