|
i promise i'm a mentally ill/traumatized woman who carried around a copy of the bell jar through high school not a groomer
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2023 21:40
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 18, 2024 21:23 |
|
|
Just wrapped up my journey through, of all things, the hunger games trilogy. Mostly because my favorite podcast did a first time reader read through. My main feelings as a parent of young kids: First book was extremely upsetting and gave me literal nightmares Second book was maybe a little less upsetting, but sure got really bleak really fast Third book was full grim awful the whole way through until maybe the last couple chapters, just unrelenting the whole way through Overall, I'm glad I read them, and I'm not going to watch the movies since the viscerality of visual media will just make it all worse. Obviously YA so I didn't analyze the world structure too deeply.
|
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2023 22:14
|
|
|
The Face in the Frost by John Bellairs. This feels like a really interesting missing link in my understanding of fantasy stories, and yet it's also something of a horror-comedy. Two curmudgeony wizards find themselves menaced by the curse of another wizard, and go on an adventure to rid themselves of it. Our protagonists are somewhere between Gandalf and the staff of Terry Pratchett's Unseen University, and the threat they face is never fully in frame but feels increasingly omnipresent as the book continues. I'd love to have seen more stories in this vein, but sadly Bellairs never finished any. And with that I can say I've read six whole books this year, because I didn't get back in the saddle until fall. Hopefully I'll get many more done in 2024.
|
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2023 22:22
|
|
|
landgrabber posted:last book i finished was My Dark Vanessa which i really enjoyed. now fittingly enough i'm reading lolita which like... i enjoyed the initial flowery prose parts but now it's just straight up horrifying. going to force myself to finish it so i can get it out of the way-- i am interested in other nabokov books, pale fire and glory mainly, so i figure it's worth finishing. the ornate prose is lovely when it's visual but like im already a person with ADHD i don't need the constant digressions. Constant Digressions may as well be the subtitle for Pale Fire.
|
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2023 22:39
|
|
|
lifg posted:Constant Digressions may as well be the subtitle for Pale Fire. i kind of think of them less as digressions and more just part of the text that is central but not explicitly so do to the book within a book stuff
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2023 00:04
|
|
|
tetrapyloctomy posted:Over the weekend I read books one through four and book six of the Earthsea series. Weirdly, we had The Farthest Shore (book three) in my house when I was growing up and none of the others, so I'd read that previously. Four and six are alright, but the original trilogy remains fantastic over fifty years after publication. I read them on my Kobo but absolutely will buy some hard copies, it's something I want around when Tet Jr is old enough to be poking around for something to read. Wait there's six of them now? I read the trilogy as a wee lad and Tehanu when it was published in Finnish, and was aware there was another book come out at some point.ee e: I haven't finished a book in ages. I guess Hunt Emerson's Rime of the Ancient Mariner album should count as it does include the original text? Just finished it on the bog.
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2023 04:54
|
|
|
I just finished Alex Reinhart's Statistics Done Wrong: the woefully complete guide, which is an excellent and very accessible text describing a whole range of the worst statistical malpractices active in the sciences. It's written for researchers or the lay public, and I think anyone reading it would gain an improved understanding of the issues involved - these are short, punchy, remarkably clear explanations of the problems, their causes, and their consequences, with crystal clear, intuitive examples and essentially no math needed. Critically, it's recent enough that it accurately describes current bad practices, and includes resources and recommendations on how to address them, either at an institutional level or individually. Frankly, this text should probably be assigned reading for...just about everyone, including nonscientists, and especially for anyone just starting in the sciences, before they even take their first stats class. Oh, and even better: the simplified version is available online for free right here. Really, go give it a shot, and consider getting the full print version. Its only limitations are that it's relatively high level and brief (there are additional more complex or field-specific issues it doesn't address), and as someone already aware of the problems it mentions, I can't be certain it's as accessible as I believe it is. This book stands in severe contrast to the last stat methods book I read, which was written by a luminary in the field and borderline useless. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 08:22 on Dec 30, 2023 |
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2023 07:48
|
|
|
3D Megadoodoo posted:Wait there's six of them now? I read the trilogy as a wee lad and Tehanu when it was published in Finnish, and was aware there was another book come out at some point.ee Yeah, with book five being a collection of short stories that fill our Earthsea lore. I think the first three are must-read, and the latter three are if you want more Earthsea.
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2023 19:23
|
|
|
Just finished When Worlds Collide and its direct sequel After Worlds Collide, both by Edwin Balmer and Philip Wylie. The casual racism and sexism aren't TOO bad by the standards of 90-year-old science fiction, but hoo boy are they present. A more interesting aspect of the 1930s perspective is in the sequel, in which (spoilers!) spaceships from several countries make it to the new planet, where they promptly go to war with each other. In the end, it falls to the Americans to rescue the English, who've been conquered by an alliance of the Germans, the Japanese and the Russians. (Note that each "country" consists of only four or five hundred people in total; everyone else died when Earth was destroyed.) Interesting little cultural artifact, but not really recommended unless you really like pre-golden-age science fiction.
|
|
#
?
Dec 30, 2023 22:04
|
|
|
Just finished Bad Cree, a debut novel by Jessica Johns. Its partially a horror novel, partially about isolation and estrangement, set in a First Nations context. I have honestly never read a book set in northern Alberta before so that was new. I was a bit disappointed by it however--I was hoping for more horror and magical realism--and it has that, kind of--but I was left more disturbed by a flatness to the characters, and just a general lack of depth. A story on rails. Mind you, it was entertaining enough to pull me along through it, so I have hopes for this author developing further as it was their first book, and I love hearing these new voices coming out of native lit.
|
|
#
?
Jan 3, 2024 06:13
|
|
|
Finished Dopamine Nation. Didn’t really keep me intrigued the entire time like other books in the same “genre.” Next book: Surrounded by Idiots.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2024 19:03
|
|
|
Just wrapped Stella Maris. It was an absolute slog, as was its companion The Passenger. I would not recommend either to anyone except diehard McCarthy completionists.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2024 21:27
|
|
|
Just finished Dutch House by Anne Patchett. Pretty good, nothing groundbreaking, a smooth read.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2024 21:32
|
|
|
Bilirubin posted:Just finished Bad Cree, a debut novel by Jessica Johns. Its partially a horror novel, partially about isolation and estrangement, set in a First Nations context. I have honestly never read a book set in northern Alberta before so that was new. I was a bit disappointed by it however--I was hoping for more horror and magical realism--and it has that, kind of--but I was left more disturbed by a flatness to the characters, and just a general lack of depth. A story on rails. Mind you, it was entertaining enough to pull me along through it, so I have hopes for this author developing further as it was their first book, and I love hearing these new voices coming out of native lit. This has been on my list. Did you read “The Only Good Indians” by Stephen Graham Jones? If you did, how did Bad Cree compare?
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2024 22:47
|
|
|
tuyop posted:This has been on my list. Did you read “The Only Good Indians” by Stephen Graham Jones? I thought The Only Good Indians was the much better book, being actual horror. Bad Cree was more like Son of a Trickster if you have read that, although Bad Cree leaned more horror, Trickster being more fantasy; both being kinda YA magical realism
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2024 22:55
|
|
|
Notes on Cinematography by Robert Bresson. Fascinating work, likely not useful in the least for making films, but interesting to see into the mind of someone who made such powerful works that were also so sparse and distinct from every other art movement of the time and today.
|
|
#
?
Jan 5, 2024 04:06
|
|
|
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke: The journey through this book - which is as apt a description as any for the meandering it did at times - was both tedious and exciting at the same time, which in itself is a hard feat to accomplish but even more so for an author's debut novel. The author weaves a wonderful tapestry introducing an alternative Victorian-era England ensconced within the delicate balance of a world where magic once danced upon the stage of reality, now poised on the brink of reawakening. The main characters walk the tight line between friendship and enemies, ultimately bringing about a conclusion to which they are unsure of their involvement at all. When I, sitting in front of the well-lit fireplace of my drawing room, set the tome down, I reflected on what had happened over the entirety of the book and found myself content with the outcome. For those that have already feasted upon this book, I hope this review - bordering between flattery and mockery, which when one dwells upon it is sometimes hard to differentiate between the two - elicits a private chuckle as one in-the-know.
|
|
#
?
Jan 5, 2024 18:06
|
|
|
Just finished The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, by Philip K. Dick. I'm generally more a fan of his short stories than novels but this one was so effective at constructing a terrifying reality that I kinda wish it was longer. Some interesting themes are brought together (the collective unconscious, religion, the nature of control) but he's painting with a broad brush here and I have to say the book didn't give me much to think about afterwards. Still, a pretty solid read.
|
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2024 16:16
|
|
|
I just recently finished The Spear Cuts Through Water. The first 25% was deeply enthralling, really pulled me in and I got it for my dad for Christmas. By 50%, the book definitely slowed down and just got very caught up in violence and darkness. The book took some neat swerves and I liked the story overall, but by the end I was skimming pages to make sure I wasn't skipping anything interesting.
|
|
#
?
Jan 7, 2024 23:54
|
|
|
I read Old Nathan by David Drake, sent to me as a gift for Christmas. It's a short collection of five stories about Nathan Ridgeway: Old West Wizard, and I have established that there's a special hell reserved for authors who write out accents phonetically, by the fifth one there were some bits of dialogue I genuinely could not make out what the gently caress people were saying, as an ESL reader it was vile. But the four first stories were solid enough, though when I was later told that Drake was friends with Le Guin, I was not surprised. There's some degree of disdain for normal story structures: stories have beginnings and things happen, but there aren't clearly capped ends, sometimes Nathan just decides he doesn't give a poo poo and walks away from what's happening, and Nathan himself doesn't really have anything resembling a character arc in any sense. The fifth one felt out of place, sadly, which felt like a bit of an unfortunate way to end things. While the first four had a kind of fun vibe of "trickster wizard local legend," the last one felt like where Nathan somehow slipped up and became a protagonist who had a story of his own rather than being in other people's stories, which killed a bit of the, hah, magic.
|
|
#
?
Jan 8, 2024 09:47
|
|
|
Just finished Other Russias by Victoria Lomasko. Victoria, now living in exile following the second invasion of Ukraine, is an artist whose work serves as a witness of sorts to populations in Russia that are not otherwise visible, either externally, or (thanks to the state media control systems), internally. The first half of the book is impressionistic sketches of various individuals in "invisible" groups in Russia with accounts of their experiences, including slaves, rural communities and sex workers. The second half provides similar contemporaneous illustrations and accounts of various dissident activities in the country, all from a period roughly 2012-2016. Not a particularly objective or neutral narrative, but still a very interesting read (and I was glad for the lighter burden given the almost all of my current backlog is multi-hundred page academic nonfiction). A common element is that individuals are completely dissociated from political engagement, to the point that the most motivated and successful grassroots activists identify themselves heavily by not doing anything political, because political activity is understood to be both futile and detached from concrete goals. Political activists are conversely alienated from actual policymaking or procedures (since the ones who are capable of it wind up in prison or dead). You can really feel the effect of multiple generations of sabotaging the sense of the civic self. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 08:50 on Jan 13, 2024 |
|
#
?
Jan 10, 2024 03:41
|
|
|
Read The Child Who Never Grew, Pearl S. Buck's short memoir about her intellectually disabled daughter. My own younger brother is going to be moving into a new home not far from my parents, so I might have been looking to read about how she dealt with all that emotionally. It's a fantastic, short memoir that covers giving birth to her daughter in China, raising her there, going to Japan afterwards and eventually the United States where she found an institution for her. Granted, the book is from 1950, so there is some antiquated terminology in it, but it's a very honest book about Buck's feelings, the differing approaches to how disabled people are cared for in China and the US at the time, and eventually Buck's own advice for people facing the same decisions about how best to care for a disabled child. Here's a passage that stuck with me: quote:There is another father—they are not always fathers, either—whose boy loves to work with the cows. I see the lad sometimes, a handsome fellow. He is usually in the dairy barn, caring for the cows, brushing them clean, loving them. I saw his father there one day, that brilliant able man, and he said, “It does seem that if my boy can learn to use the milking machine he could learn to do something better.”
|
|
#
?
Jan 10, 2024 17:14
|
|
|
Just finished Circe: I love Greek mythology, and this takes that and puts a new perspective and twist on it, while still remaining faithful to Homers Illiad, and the Odyssey. Seeing this fantasy setting from the perspective of a lesser god was really interesting and cool, and its just such a great story to read with very good character depth and growth.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2024 08:19
|
|
|
I said come in! posted:Just finished Circe: I love Greek mythology, and this takes that and puts a new perspective and twist on it, while still remaining faithful to Homers Illiad, and the Odyssey. Seeing this fantasy setting from the perspective of a lesser god was really interesting and cool, and its just such a great story to read with very good character depth and growth. Cool, just found this one in a stack of books that ended up at my parents' house, will look forward to that. I read Call for the Dead by John Le Carré. Was looking to get into his books and this is all they had at the bookstore. A quaint, slow mystery. (Extra quaint because of the context of its time, relying on evidence of phone operators etc.). Not really good, I think; too little happens, too much of the plot is in the past, but inoffensive and enjoyable. A fun twist, though the actual ending was disappointing. I'm sure his later books live up to the reputation. Aeble fucked around with this message at 12:08 on Jan 12, 2024 |
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2024 12:05
|
|
|
I said come in! posted:Just finished Circe: I love Greek mythology, and this takes that and puts a new perspective and twist on it, while still remaining faithful to Homers Illiad, and the Odyssey. Seeing this fantasy setting from the perspective of a lesser god was really interesting and cool, and its just such a great story to read with very good character depth and growth. Circe is a good book, but The Song of Achilles is fantastic. Beautiful prose, just masterfully written.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2024 17:50
|
|
|
Aeble posted:I read Call for the Dead by John Le Carré. Was looking to get into his books and this is all they had at the bookstore. A quaint, slow mystery. (Extra quaint because of the context of its time, relying on evidence of phone operators etc.). Not really good, I think; too little happens, too much of the plot is in the past, but inoffensive and enjoyable. A fun twist, though the actual ending was disappointing. I'm sure his later books live up to the reputation. Yes, his first two books are very different than his later ones. You can tell he's not really comfortable writing about spycraft at first. A Murder of Quality is probably about the same... quality. I would strongly recommend reading The Spy Who Came in from the Cold at some point. It is one of his strongest books and very much shows the things he's good at. If you like it, try some of his later books. I just finished Stoner by John Williams and am working my way through Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest. Both excellent, but now I think I'm in the mood for a book about happy people who are good at their jobs...
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2024 19:21
|
|
|
i finished stoner recently too and poo poo popped. williams knows how to write em
|
|
#
?
Jan 13, 2024 02:46
|
|
|
I finished Augustus by Williams the last week and that was also quite good. Very interesting take on Julia the Elder
|
|
#
?
Jan 13, 2024 02:55
|
|
|
I reread the Tripods trilogy, a sci-fi YA novel series that I first read in elementary school: The White Mountains, The City of Gold and Lead, and The Pool of Fire, all by John Christopher. It holds up pretty well, at least by the standards of 1960s sci-fi and 1960s YA literature. However, there are two big glaring things that I noticed this time which I didn't remember at all from when I read the books as a child: 1) Will, the narrator character, isn't the hero at all, he mostly just hangs around with the characters who actually deserve the credit. 2) There are NO female characters in books 2 and 3 of the trilogy. Seriously, there's not one. At all. Zero. And no, Eloise's corpse doesn't count.
|
|
#
?
Jan 13, 2024 03:59
|
|
|
The thing remember about the Tripods was even as a child sensing some S and M overtones in the later books
|
|
#
?
Jan 13, 2024 13:08
|
|
|
tetrapyloctomy posted:Circe is a good book, but The Song of Achilles is fantastic. Beautiful prose, just masterfully written. Waiting still for my library to have this available! The waitlist is long. Reading A Thousand Ships right now! I am in my Greek mythology era currently lol.
|
|
#
?
Jan 15, 2024 03:02
|
|
|
fez_machine posted:The thing remember about the Tripods was even as a child sensing some S and M overtones in the later books The thing I remember about The Tripods is that the television series was even more boring than Dr. Who. I considered that rather impressive. I don't remember being bored by the book. Maybe I never finished it.
|
|
#
?
Jan 16, 2024 01:04
|
|
|
Finished a couple lately The Night Manager by LeCarre I saw the Tom HIddleston mini-series a while ago but remembered very little, and I think the book is quite different anyhow. The book was good, but definitely a bunch of LeCarre-isms (The real hero is the overlooked, conventionally unattractive intelligent agent, eh?). The main character is kind of generally unlikeable but the bad guy and his cronies are fantastic. LeCarre also cannot write women other than past-their-prime upper class dames. I'd say generally the show probably did a better job with the story and Hiddleston played the main character much better than he was written, but the book is a fun little spy romp a little more updated than his more classic fair. Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann A friend recommended this a while ago and I figured I should read it before watching the movie. I haven't seen the movie but I assume the book is considerably different since it's told in a more journalistic style and not as a dramatic piece. I liked it quite a bit, really cool procedural during a totally batshit time of law enforcement and investigation. It probably made too much of a hero out of Tom White, and probably could have painted a more complete picture of that time period in regards to where natives (even rich ones) sat in the social landscape of a place like Oklahoma, but it was a compelling read. I'm glad I read it before watching the film.
|
|
#
?
Jan 17, 2024 01:46
|
|
|
The Xenogenisis Trilogy by Octavia Butler aka Lillith’s Brood Man what a hosed up set of books that seems to have entirely missed its opportunities. Humanity almost annihilates itself in nuclear war but at the last moment, encounters some aliens who want to rebuild the planet and humanity. The premise is nice and the first book deals a lot with the… serious issues of consent the aliens have. Lots of stuff like “you say no but your body says yes [to intimacy with aliens]”. We later learn that the aliens have an awful plan for humanity. But the aliens are extremely sympathetically written, culminating in the third book being entirely from an adolescent alien’s perspective. Instead of handling its issues and giving us some kind of interesting epilogue or twist or anything, we get hundreds of pages of aliens describing alien biological processes, over and over again. Stuff like, “humans can’t eat that bush but I can because I neutralize its poisons inside my body before they cause harm”. Very repetitive and… alienating. Really disappointed! The first two are at least interesting stories, the third is a turd.
|
|
#
?
Jan 17, 2024 13:40
|
|
|
On the Same Page by Haley Cass, really liked it! I really enjoyed seeing how Gianna changed in the flashbacks! There were just so many scenarios that totally shocked me and made me audibly gasp. There were so many intriguing scenarios that popped up during the story, and it had me hooked. Definitely recommend this if you're looking for a good LGBTQ+ romance novel. Excited to check out Down to a Science, a companion novella to this.
|
|
#
?
Jan 17, 2024 17:31
|
|
|
The Arming of Europe and the Making of the First World War by David G. Herrmann. The author's thesis is that the land-based arms race amongst the great powers of Europe was an important cause to the outbreak of World War One, one he argues is overlooked compared to others like the naval arms race between Britain and Germany. While the arms race itself only started in 1911 it was itself a response to several diplomatic crises from the preceding years starting with the reshaped balance of power caused by the Russo-Japanese War. The chapters are chronological, most focus on a specific diplomatic crisis although when there wasn't one a chapter will cover the developments of the intervening period. The book touches on a lot of different areas since the arms race wasn't merely about acquiring new weaponry but also coordination between alliances and army expansion: how much of the male population to conscript, how long they served, and how to organize, mobilize, and employ the reserves in case of war. I found the author's case persuasive, since he wasn't arguing that it wasn't the sole or main cause but an important and overlooked one it was easier to accept, and though the author wasn't intending to he makes a good case for Germany and Austria-Hungary since their response to Russia's loss in the Russo-Japanese War was to exploit the imbalance of forces as much as they could by threatening war in order to strengthen their hand in diplomatic negotiations and once Russia recovered and the Triple Entente began to build up their forces and improve strategic coordination the Central Powers implemented rapid military expansions and then attacked whilst they thought they had a comparative edge.
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2024 00:11
|
|
|
I've been interested in detective stories and after reading Satu Rämö's "Hildur" books, which were pretty good by the way, I read the "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" as it was recommended to me. The middle part of the mystery was fun, captivating and in my opinion, well written. However, the start of the book was very dull. Moreover, the main male character was so boring that my eyes almost dried up in their sockets. The main female character was better though. The final straw was the ending, which I found outright childish on so many levels. It was like out of Harry Potter or something. Actually come to think of it Harry Potter had a more mature ending, lmao. And childish endings are fine if it's a children's book, but this evidently wasn't as indicated by the very graphic violence, both sexual and otherwise. I'd add that the main villain was well done. These types of works are frustrating as they get me worked up as I see the greatness but I get mad at the lovely bits ruining it. Stieg Larsson was a writer who wrote interesting side characters but was pretty bad at writing a main character. I'm sure that the monstrously bad translation to Finnish made it all so much worse, as it was often hard to grasp what the gently caress was going on. Hey translator, I hope you have learnt by this point that "West Indies" is not "West India", and that Barbados is not there. Jesus loving christ.
|
|
#
?
Jan 20, 2024 07:27
|
|
|
A Gentleman in Moscow. I enjoyed the elegant writing and the seamless plot that had a fantastic pace. The descriptions of food and gastronomy in general were a delight too. Unfortunately the author had insulated his main character from all the turbulence provided by history and it felt a bit too neatly wrapped up with a bright pink bow to top.
|
|
#
?
Jan 21, 2024 18:13
|
|
|
Keisari posted:I've been interested in detective stories and after reading Satu Rämö's "Hildur" books, which were pretty good by the way, I read the "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" as it was recommended to me. The middle part of the mystery was fun, captivating and in my opinion, well written. That's a decent summary of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I largely enjoyed my read of it, like it was a good airport lounge novel ... occasionally thrown off by cardboard characters, the authors self insert, male gaze, infodumps. And I'm still angry about the solution.
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2024 15:07
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 18, 2024 21:23 |
|
|
Furious Lobster posted:Unfortunately the author had insulated his main character from all the turbulence provided by history
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2024 17:03
|
|
