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Cannery Row super chill read with just enough melancholy to keep it grounded. Recommended if you're the kind of person who uses terms like cozy unironically.
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Mar 9, 2023 06:41
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Jäätynyt Kokytos, a collection of "spefi" novellas by Petri Salin. I have nothing much to say about it, except this is the cover and ???  e: eh, gently caress. The image is too blurry to tell but the actual photo on the cover is already blurry and pixelated in IRL life.
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Mar 9, 2023 12:26
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A Visit from the Goon Squad Really bad. Awful, clunky writing. Terrible characters in boring situations. Gimmicky and felt like a year's worth of MFA homework. How did this win so many awards HOW. The first chapter is decent and I liked the one about the guy drowning. If The New Yorker had intercourse with a bowl of cold soggy oatmeal and birthed a novel, this would be it. Any aspiring writers that think they're not good enough need to read this ASAP because holy poo poo. Gaius Marius posted:Cannery Row super chill read with just enough melancholy to keep it grounded. Recommended if you're the kind of person who uses terms like cozy unironically. I really liked this one.
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Mar 10, 2023 21:32
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The Black Company series by Glen Cook As a regular in the TG forum, so many things get compared to them, especially when anything dark fantasy gets brought up, sometimes connected to videogames, too, like Myth. But you know what no one ever really mentions? How much loving sexual violence and creepery is in these books. How one of them stars a character who's introduced while having a threesome with underage girls. There is absolutely some interesting stuff in it, and the way it's written and presented is notably different from most other books I've read, enough to make it slightly novel, and one of them really has an eerie, dream-like quality to it that I appreciate even if it made sticking with it a challenge. But if I had known what I was in for in terms of the author being kind of a horny creeper, I probably wouldn't have even started on the series. Everything people say reminds them of the Black Company books reminds them, thankfully, of the good parts, so those remain relatively unimpeachable, but the actual books could get tossed in a landfill and little would be lost.
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Mar 10, 2023 23:24
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Struck by Genius: How a Brain Injury Made Me a Mathematical Marvel by Jason Padgett, Maureen Seaberg: An autobiography describing the life of Jason Padgett, and how he went from a club rat to a mathematical savant after a brutal mugging. It's an interesting look at the life of someone with acquired synesthesia and savant syndrome. He covers the challenges of his life both pre- and post-mugging and explains his journey to accepting his new self and becoming who he is "today" (2014).
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Mar 11, 2023 03:10
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ProperCoochie posted:A Visit from the Goon Squad
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Mar 11, 2023 05:32
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ProperCoochie posted:A Visit from the Goon Squad Omg thank you so much, I fully agree and thought there was something wrong with me because this book was so praised. I wanted to read The Candy House (mainly because the cover looks delectable) but tried AVFTGS first. I couldn’t get into it and abandoned it and felt bad.
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Mar 11, 2023 12:29
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oldpainless posted:I liked the first two well enough but the final one, Golden Enclaved, was just horrid and if my time had even the slightest value I’d be even more annoyed. Counterpoint: I enjoyed the last one so if you get this far you might as well finish the series, but I concede the first two are better than the third.
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Mar 11, 2023 17:56
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No Exit: a Novel by Taylor Adams No, not the existential French play. A fun little page turner thriller. College aged girl is forced to stop at a Colorado rest center during a blizzard. Four other strangers are there. Main character discovers a 9 year old girl locked in a dog kennel in one of their vehicles. Now she has to figure out who's car it is, who to trust, etc. Main character is a scrappy, persistent underdog, you really root for her. Maybe just a bit too plot twisty for my liking the final misdirect on the last page was especially annoying but overall it was a fun read.
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Mar 12, 2023 22:28
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Life For Sale Incredibly pulpy and obviously serialized. This ain't great Mishima, but the cat still knows how to turn a phrase or ruminate on death even when he's doing it in-service of nothing more than some fat stacks of cash. Really made me rethink the way I've been living until now, drive deep down into my heart and finally come to terms with how much I want a hot vampire mommy gf Bartleby the Scrivner give me 1 reason this isn't Melville's masterwork instead of Moby Dick.
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Mar 18, 2023 04:16
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Gaius Marius posted:Bartleby the Scrivner give me 1 reason this isn't Melville's masterwork instead of Moby Dick. I would prefer not to.
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Mar 18, 2023 05:25
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I read Anthony Cumia's book Permanently Suspended. He's still a colossal piece of poo poo. No, I did not pay for it.
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Mar 18, 2023 06:00
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With modern life being what it is I'm almost surprised I don't read very much about people doing as Bartleby did.
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Mar 18, 2023 07:17
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FPyat posted:With modern life being what it is I'm almost surprised I don't read very much about people doing as Bartleby did. skrivening?
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Mar 18, 2023 17:47
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If he'd done that he'd have saved himself a lot of trouble
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Mar 18, 2023 18:00
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Just finished The Wall of Storms, the second book in Ken Liu’s Dandelion Dynasty. The first, Grace of Kings, was just as good as this one but they’re both pretty different novels since they track the lives of the characters closely with relevant themes. Grace of Kings was about legend and power and what it takes to secure power so it can be used well. Mixed in there was also a bunch of young romance and pedagogy and a wide range of lifestyles throughout the mythical land of Dara. And like, a sort of lighthearted joy around so much of the book. The Wall of Storms begins with the children of a main protagonist from the first book and starts to copy its pattern, but that decision was only to add weight to the ongoing tensions and dilemmas faced by the aging protagonists of the first book. This one also leaned heavily into the importance of poetry and philosophy in Dara and I loving adored it. I really don’t know, I wept openly because of both of these novels. There were times I was so distraught from events that happened that my heart was broken for days and I had to read some nonfiction (a book about yellow fever in nineteenth century New Orleans) for a break! The audiobooks are also excellent (I read and listen at the same time usually, swapping to whatever is convenient). Possibly the best fantasy I’ve ever read, looking forward to the next one once I’ve grieved the end of this one.
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Mar 18, 2023 18:06
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Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson I'm hit and miss with Robinson's oeuvre. I've never sat down to power through the Mars trilogy, even though it's universally been stocked in the sci-fi section of every chain bookstore I've been in since I was a kid. However, The Gold Coast is probably my favorite piece of retro-futurism I've read. New York 2140 was the most recent novel of his that I'd read, and it disappointed me, as it felt like an impassioned screed about the 2008 financial crash with a futurist novel wrapped around it. By no means did I disagree with the points Robinson was making, but at the same time, the characters' lives didn't feel nearly far enough removed from the mundanity of the 21st century to paint a compelling picture of the 22nd. There were also a couple of twee coincidences that drove the story - most notably that the main protagonist's ex-husband from many years ago now happens to be the chairman of the Federal Reserve, which weighs heavily on the resolution of the plot. This, then, is the book that New York 2140 prepared Robinson to write. It's explicitly global in scale, it doesn't reach too far into the future, cutting off by mid-century, and there's no reliance on surprise coincidental relationships to move things along. One main character is the woman in charge of the titular ministry, instituted by the UN to guard future generations against the effects of climate change and environmental collapse. Another is an activist with PTSD and a dash of nihilism who simply doesn't feel that any government or agency is doing enough. The book starts off with the latter character surviving a mass death during a heat-wave in India, a globally recognized event that makes addressing climate change all the more urgent. This whole sequence is exactly the sort of science fiction I'm looking for in a book about climate change; it's a riveting, horrifying description of what it feels like to literally cook in your own skin, and how fast peoples' options foreclose in the face of unendurable heat. A lot of the action involving the titular ministry takes place in Zurich and the surrounding Alps. Robinson has a real gift for vivid descriptions of place, and I ended up enjoying this more than NY2140, as it seemed like he was describing it much as it is today, rather than the physically transformed but socially unchanged New York of the previous novel. One thing that elevates this book above NY2140, though, is a series of anonymous first-person vignettes taking place all around the world and sprinkled throughout the narrative. These range from a slave-labor fishing boat being liberated by vigilantes, to an African farmer's wife browbeating him into participating in the local arm of a global carbon-sequestration plan, to a woman who's spent multiple decades in refugee camps finally being released. This really makes the book global in scope and drives home the many impacts of climate change. Ultimately, this too is a book of policy prescriptions wrapped in a novel. Robinson is basically trying to sell democratic socialism to mainstream American liberals, hence the tagline across the front of my paperback copy that this was "one of Barack Obama's favorite books of the year." That ended up being a pretty hilarious marketing conceit, as Obama's continuation of War on Terror drone strikes is explicitly called out halfway through the book. One of the main plot lines of the book is the campaign to convince central bankers to issue a "carbon coin" that is only paid out upon proven sequestration of carbon. Robinson clearly believes, for better or for worse, that central bankers hold the real levers of power. There's also a lot of talk in here about blockchain money that's already starting to seem pretty dated, central bank digital currencies for maximum traceability are a big chunk of what Robinson puts forward. In both this book and NY2140, he also pushes airships as the future of air travel, and alludes to a global culture of people who live in permanent airship colonies. It's only an allusion in either novel, though; I wish he would get it out of his system and write the book entirely focused on the blimp people. Overall, not my favorite novel I've read in the last few years, but well-paced and inventive enough to get me through 500 pages pretty rapidly.
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Mar 19, 2023 01:11
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Gaius Marius posted:Life For Sale Incredibly pulpy and obviously serialized. This ain't great Mishima, but the cat still knows how to turn a phrase or ruminate on death even when he's doing it in-service of nothing more than some fat stacks of cash. Goons love Moby Dick so I assume it's garbage. Bartleby was good, have you read the sequel?
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Mar 20, 2023 15:45
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There's a sequel?
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Mar 21, 2023 05:12
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3D Megadoodoo posted:Goons love Moby Dick so I assume it's garbage. Bartleby was good, have you read the sequel? bruh
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Mar 21, 2023 05:53
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Gaius Marius posted:There's a sequel? Bartleby & Co.
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Mar 21, 2023 06:07
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A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924 was alternately tremendous, heartbreaking, and from time to time rather darkly funny. I won't want to read anything else about the period for a long while. Shame about the author's ridiculous behavior.
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Mar 21, 2023 09:39
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Gaius Marius posted:There's a sequel? Dogma.
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Mar 21, 2023 10:33
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I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai Not quite as good as I was hoping, it dragged in the middle, but the ending really picked up and was honestly riveting. I was glad I kept at it, it was a satisfying conclusion even though it wasn't exactly what I was hoping for either. istewart posted:Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson Thank you for this, I'm going to try it. I liked NY2140 a lot and couldn't get through the first of the Mars books but this sounds good.
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Mar 21, 2023 15:29
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Gaius Marius posted:There's a sequel? Bartleby 2: Re-Scrivened
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Mar 22, 2023 04:04
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Bartl3by jumped the shark, tho.
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Mar 22, 2023 07:54
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Archduke Franz Ferdinand Lives! A World Without World War I by Richard Ned Lebow – This 2014 book is a counter-factual study by Lebow speculating, as the title states, what the world would look like if World War I had never taken place. After making the case for both counter-factual history (basically asking “what if” a certain historical event had or hadn't happened), as well as the case for the assassination of Franz Ferdinand being key to the outbreak of World War I. From there Lebow proposes two counter-factual histories, which he dubs the best and worst plausible worlds, though in both worlds there is not only no World War I, but also no World War II, Holocaust, or Soviet Union. In “The Best Plausible World” the prevention of WWI leads to reduced tensions between the various European countries and a democratic Germany and Russia. This leads to a more productive Europe and world in general as less money is spent on the military. Europe remains the global power and with no Holocaust the Jewish scientists that would have fled to US remain in Europe. The downside to this world is that European colonialism persists longer, the civil rights movement in the US is delayed, and several technologies that were developed for the the various war efforts (ie Radar) arrive later. In “The Worst Plausible World” Germany and Russian turn authoritarian and, with Austria, form a power bloc which is rivaled by a alliance between Britain and France. This leads to a Cold War between the two powers until in the 1970s, when a mistake during a British training exercise leads to a nuclear exchange with Germany. I liked the book overall but I felt certain parts of Lebow's counter-factuals were weaker than others. It works best when in focuses on general trends but gets bogged down when it looks at specific individuals and moves further from the early 20th century.
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Mar 23, 2023 22:57
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Ninth House by Leigh Bardough. It was good. I don't know if I will read the next one as I felt satisfied with this story. If you like ancient magic and frat boys getting their comeuppance, sort of, it's good. It's gritty magical realism which isn't always my cup of tea but this one caught and held me.
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Mar 24, 2023 06:21
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don longjohns posted:Ninth House by Leigh Bardough. I love Gritty. Didn't know he was in any books!
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Mar 24, 2023 09:26
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I just finished Crime and Punishment. My main take-aways were 1. Raskolnikov is a jerk. 2. Porfiry Petrovich is basically a Russian Columbia, and 3. There's an off-putting amount of casual antisemitism in this book.
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Mar 24, 2023 21:41
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Just finished up the Three Body Problem series by Liu Cixin the other day, and while it has a bunch of warts it left me with a warm nostalgia. It's been a long time since I read a series that was so much based around Big Space Ideas like this, with bizarre premises and weird aliens and solar system scale problems. As is tradition, the characters are about an inch thick and anything approaching romantic situations is absolutely painfully awkward, but imo it completely pays it back in hard-ish sci-fi shenanigans. It's super irregular, spending dozens of pages on periods where nothing happens sometimes and zipping right past significant planet-sweeping situations at others, so I admit I skimmed some pages, but I'll definitely see what else the author has in his stable.
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Mar 25, 2023 06:04
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I read The Warriors by Sol Yurick Presumably everyone knows about the awesome 1979 movie. The book was a bit different. General plot is a group of gang members are on the wrong side of town and need to get back home, through enemy territory. While the movie is a pretty fun, goofy romp, the book has a much more serious and dark tone, with nary a "can you dig it" or "come out to play-ay". There wasn't even a rival gang of mimes. What I found most interesting was the constant push and pull of machismo played out with nearly every male to male interaction. The author goes into detail why characters take certain actions, and it's usually because they are protecting their status, or trying not to insult another gang member by holding eye contact too long, etc. Or pretending not to see another character's glare because if they acknowledge it, they would need to confront it. Lots of small decisions in this vein throughout the book. It creates an interesting (sometimes exhausting) tension. It's an ugly book with some hosed up poo poo happening, for example the main characters flat out murder a guy for looking at them the wrong way, then gang rape a girl as her head rests on the body. After this, the gang proceeds to spend a couple pages goofing off; the gang leader teases them with candy, eventually leading to them all throwing a dirty piece of candy at one member constantly while he growls to cut it out. Illustrating that they're still just loving kids, and culminating to another example of the pecking order/masculinity etiquette they have to perform. One of the characters' arc is he emerges as a more dominant person (I don't know what the deal was with him eating a shitload of food...), however at the end of the book it's more or less all for nothing; a bleak ending. Book was written in 1965 and has some slurs in it. About 200 pages, easy to read in an afternoon. Recommended if it sounds interesting
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Mar 26, 2023 01:13
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The Warriors is good as either a movie or book even with the drastic differences between the two of them. One thing they both strongly agree on and show throughout however is that New York City is an utter cesspool
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Mar 26, 2023 02:03
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WHY BONER NOW posted:I read The Warriors by Sol Yurick If it sounds interesting, you may want to skip to the original original and read Xenophon's Anabasis. quote:In 401 B.C. the Middle East was as much the center of the world attention as it is today. Ten thousand Greeks joined the army of Cyros marching on Babylon to overthrow the great King of the Persians, Artaxerxes. Among the Greeks was an Athenian gentleman, Xenophon, who went along as a sightseer but soon found himself cast in the main role. https://www.press.umich.edu/6479/march_up_country https://www.amazon.com/Anabasis-Persian-Expedition-Xenophon-ebook/dp/B000FC1DA4/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
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Mar 26, 2023 03:10
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The Spear Cuts Through Water, which ruled and made me cry at work.
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Mar 26, 2023 03:28
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Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus A wilder ride than I was expecting. It's exquisitely, precisely, understatedly written with brutal deadpan humor that is delightful. The sorrow of the book is understated -- to a fault, I thought, wondering when we would ever have to reckon with the many awful tragedies that set the events of the book into motion. By the end I was mostly convinced, though I think we could have reckoned with them a little more -- I didn't feel the tragedy of the book as deeply as I think I should have. This is a Serious Book and deserves more than the chicklit cover and blurbs it was given.
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Mar 26, 2023 12:54
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Talk about the Warriors (the movie) inspired me to re-wqtch my favourite movie, Calamari Union.
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Mar 26, 2023 14:10
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Jester by Geoff Hart: A self-published, fantasy novel that I got in a StoryBundle years ago when I hoarded digital bundles. It has a lot of potential but ultimately falls flat. The book follows the tale of Morley, a little person, who agrees to assist a sorcerer in exchange for becoming "normal" sized. Obviously, this is a bad idea, and he gets trapped into helping the big bad of the book. The build up in the first act is really good, but the actual adventures of the second act amount to talking in tense conversations with the hidden races (Elves and Goblins) of the world. Nothing of substance comes from these conversations, and you never feel like Morley's in any real danger (or accomplishing anything). The resolution to the big bad's evil-doing is only a few pages long and pretty lackluster. There are hints at a larger world of magic in the author's head that never make it to paper, and it's disappointing.
Good-Natured Filth fucked around with this message at 01:22 on Mar 27, 2023 |
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Mar 27, 2023 01:18
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Just finished The Recollections of Rifleman Harris by Benjamin Harris - a first-person recounting of an English foot soldier's experience in the Napoleonic wars. A truly hellish narration filled with death, plague, and the struggles and an infantryman who finds his experience glorious despite it all. The narrative itself was somewhat scatterbrained at points, but details Harris's experience being recruited into the English Rifle corps, some of the battles, a grueling retreat, his experience on recruiting duty, and Harris's life as a soldier after becoming ill with malaria (though it's never mentioned/not known exactly what the disease was in the book itself). Something that surprised me a bit was that reading some of Harris's rather graphic descriptions of the deaths and mutilations of fellow soldiers was a lot more affecting to me than, say, watching a war movie depicting graphic violence or even actual bodycam footage of modern battles that occasionally comes out - maybe I'm just overly desensitized to violent imagery. I don't know that I would recommend this to a general audience. Aside from the graphic descriptions, there was not a lot of dramatic tension, making it a bit of a slog at some points. Harris would also often take diversions from the narrative that sometimes made the overall narrative hard to follow (eg "I fought with Soldier X in the battle today, Soldier X did x y z things and then died in another battle a few years later... back to the battle today). The edition I have also has numerous OCR errors. Still, if you want to know about life as a foot soldier in the 19th century, there aren't many (any?) other first hand written accounts (most infantrymen of the time were apparently illiterate). Next onto something lighter: "A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines" by Janna Levin .
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Mar 30, 2023 13:09
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Just finished Play it as it lays and it was very, very good. Didion’s style is incredible here.
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Mar 30, 2023 16:13
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