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Syrinxx
Mar 28, 2002

Death is whimsical today

That is a pretty bad rear end picture of Worf though tbh

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an uncanny otter
Mar 31, 2010

WV?: Rise up.
I just finished reading The Manual of Detection, by Jedediah Berry. It's a neat little novel, very reminiscient of Kafka's or Borges' works. It's about a man who works as a clerk at a large detective agency in a city where it's always raining. The city itself is very interesting - it has many quirky locations and can't seem to decide when exactly the story takes place, a sort of mix between 19th and 20th centure aesthetic. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, though. The book got kind of confusing at times, introucing many characters and subplots that were hard to keep track of. Although this was kind of the point, since one of the book's main themes is dreams, and how sometimes you have a dream within a dream, and a dream within a dream within a dream. There's also lots of sleeping involved!

ass is hometown
Jan 11, 2006

I gotta take a leak. When I get back, we're doing body shots.
I just finished IT by Stephen King.
As a reader of anything Stephen king puts onto paper (more out of boredom than anything) this book was nothing like how I expected. The plot was more detailed and the actual energy behind IT as a character was a lot different. Now i'm not here to preach the word of King, the book does have a lot of boring parts (particularly near the end), but I did want to ask some King readers some questions.

For those who have not read IT

  • Why was every form of it, except the clown actually creepy? Do that many people really hate clowns?

  • Why did they kill off Stan and not Richie (useless piece of poo poo character who made the book hard to get through, or at least annoying when the focus was on him)

  • How did Henry Bowers go form school Bully to Killer just by getting a knife in the mail. I understand "The Moon" was talking to him, but in the beginning he seemed like a normal bully, this change seemed precedented in the fact it was obvious that King was building to him going crazy, but such a jump in character progress, it seemed really forced. This is not a question as much as a basis of
    discussion.

The nerd question
Double Spoiler It and The Stand
Did anyone else see connections between IT's Patrick Hocksteader(sp) and The Stand's Trashcan Man/The Kid? I know that they only have a limited time together and that Randal Flagg kills (by way of wolf) The Kid pretty early on but there is something I can not quite put together about these three characters. I know there are similarities between Patrick trying to jerk off Henry Bowers and The Kid using a pistol to sodomize Trashcan Man, and the fact Patrick and The Kid are both killed by the main protagonist (by minions), but did anyone else catch on to this while reading.

Stupid_Sexy_Flander
Mar 14, 2007

Is a man not entitled to the haw of his maw?
Grimey Drawer
Finished up Decipher by Stev Pavlou today.

Got it for 1.99 off the bookcloseouts.com sale, and it's actually a pretty decent book. HEAVY on the tech details and random myth facts, and the guy seems like he got paid by the word when writing it, but all in all it's a damned interesting fiction story about atlantis and the myths surrounding it.

The only downside is the plot tends to wander a bit, and the chapters virtually all end with a dan brown sort of "And if he would have been facing the right way, he would have seen something so amazing his balls would have exploded from joy!".

To be fair though, it's an international writer and I don't read that many books, so that might be a big writing style in whatever the gently caress country the dude is from.

He tends to use it a lot in the novel without it being a chapter ending, just a weird way to end a particular story before it hops to a new guys perspective.

Hey, I got my 2$ worth of entertainment, so it's pretty awesome. No idea how tight the science is in the book, but there is a ton of it about geology, mythology, languages and quantum physics.

Inspector 34
Mar 9, 2009

DOES NOT RESPECT THE RUN

BUT THEY WILL
I just finished up The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson and I'm feeling pretty let down. The book started slow, very slow, but towards the middle it really picked up pace and got interesting even though there didn't seem to be much direction or coherent plot.

I just didn't know where the hell he was going with any of the various story lines. It's not like there are a whole lot of characters to keep track of though. It was more like an extreme lack of forshadowing. No clues whatsoever to what the "big picture" was.

Then, with 30 or 40 pages left, everything happened all at once. It was all pretty fun to read but it left me wanting a lot more I think I would have preferred an extra 50 pages of the fist rebellion and Nell realizing her position and assembling her army and 50 pages less of the primer and turing machine babble. Hell he could have even left in the primer stuff and just made the book longer. It felt like he got tired of writing and just tied up the few loose ends he really needed to.

I can't really say I disliked it, I'm just a little disappointed by the ending. I've read Snow Crash and Anathem as well and I liked them quite a bit more.

Randallteal
May 7, 2006

The tears of time
Finished The Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro. It's a character portrait of an aging English Butler.

I'm glad I was able to put it to rest, because the ending was satisfying. I had to endure sections of the book where it was obvious to me he was throwing his chance at romance with Miss Kenton away for nothing, but I came to terms with him by the end. Suffice to say, for a while he was too much butler for me to handle.

There were a couple of sections which affected me deeply, but overall I'd say I had issues with plausibility and pacing that kept it out of the running with the other novels I consider the greats of the 20th century. I'm glad I read it, but I have no interest in going back to it for a long while.

Elrobot
Dec 28, 2004
Press the buttons all at once, all of the time
Yesterday I finished Huxleys After Many A Summer. I've read a few of his books and this one really entertaining. A very good satire of Hollywood in between the world wars, with lots of quirky characters. Lots of crazy rantings about God, History, Eternity and fish guts.
I also recently finished The Plague by Albert Camus. My first by him, but I'll definitely be reading more. Camus does a really good job of bringing out the feeling of isolation from the rest of the world and the changes the townspeople(who don't get plagued) in face of such epidemic.

Red Dad Redemption
Sep 29, 2007

Recently finished The High Frontier by Gerard O'Neill. It was an interesting, and relatively thorough, review of the possibilities for space colonization and industry based on (more or less) current technology. It suggests that even now, such a project would be within our reach, and certainly provokes some thought on whether it makes sense to push for the sort of unmanned and planetary missions that it looks like we will be pursuing for the foreseeable future.

On the other hand, it didn't leave me feeling wowed as it seems to have done for many readers, especially those with a technical background. That's not because the material is difficult for a reader without a technical background: far from it, the book is highly accessible for a lay reader. For me, though, it just doesn't seem likely we will push into space in any aggressive way, given the end of the Cold War and the competitive pressures it brought, and the vast resources that we would need to devote to make it happen. Without a feeling that it is a realistic project, I couldn't personally get excited about the topic.

Neo_Reloaded
Feb 27, 2004
Something from Nothing
One Bloody Thing After Another by Joey Comeau

I've been a big fan of Comeau's for awhile now - for his work on the webcomic A Softer World, sure, but mostly for his short stories. He has a quirky writing style, and really knows how to wrap a story up with an ending that feels natural and poignant. This book kind of exposes his flaws as a writer however - he doesn't seem to know how to, or at least want to, write in a normal fashion for any stretch longer than a sentence or two. Without fail, every other sentence sounds like it could come right out of one of his ASW strips. It's kind of like a Palahniuk book in that regard - where Palahniuk over-uses repetition and outlandish metaphors and references, Comeau over-uses his style of writing where outlandish / terrible things are explained in a cutesy step-by-step, color-by-numbers way. Two of the main characters, Ann and Jackie, apparently think in this manner 24/7. The last main character, Charlie, is much more refreshing to read - his thoughts seem more genuine, not constantly played-up for laughs. I wish we had more time with him and his dog, Mitchie.

This complaint aside, the book is interesting. It's definitely on the short side for a novel so the over-use problems never get the chance to become too egregious, and the plot itself is genuinely original and interesting. And Comeau pulls through with a great ending again. I still enjoy his writing - it works great for short stories, where the reader doesn't have time to get sick of whatever the schtick of a particular piece is. But for longer-form stories, I personally feel it needs to be reigned in a bit, with more effort put into developing characters instead of just showing us how witty their thought-process is.

Facial Fracture
Aug 11, 2007

Elrobot posted:

Yesterday I finished Huxleys After Many A Summer. I've read a few of his books and this one really entertaining. A very good satire of Hollywood in between the world wars, with lots of quirky characters. Lots of crazy rantings about God, History, Eternity and fish guts.

Have you read Waugh's The Loved One? If not, you should.

Anyway, I'm about to go read the last 50 pages of John Banville's The Infinities. It's a hardback that I bought first-hand, which I never do because I am poor, and I am reading the book like a miserly accountant determined to get my money's worth. So far, I feel gypped. The quirks in the premise present themselves too obviously, and even though I'm sure it's tongue-in-cheek or whatever...the woman named Helen desired by both God and a man-who-kinda-played-god named Adam Godley and the "oh, you old goat" comments directed at Pan-in-human-form and the fact that the major intellectual name drops regarding the mathematician main character refer to people I've heard of when I'm intellectually stunted and scared of math and the narrator's tone which just seems like a lazy "detached and amused Voice from Above/Beyond"...Whatever, it all seems sloppy and inappropriately convinced of its own cleverness. Aside from all that, it's mindlessly readable and elegantly written in places, I guess.

I'll edit this post if the last 50 pages prove that this book has much more than a prestige translation of American Gods into something palatable to non-mouthbreathers.

Neurosis
Jun 10, 2003
Fallen Rib

Blindeye posted:

Well, I recently finished the seventh book in Asimov's Foundation Series and was very impressed by the scope of it. I found the two post-trilogy sequels (Foundation's Edge and Foundation and Earth) to be a bit forced and long-winded, it became more of an adventure book with a narrower scope character wise but broader implications for Asimov's universe, which somewhat bothered me. The two prequels however I found to be much more engaging and kept the characters, locations, and implications "to scale."

If you're impressed by the scope, you need to read more space opera.

In that vein, Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky and A Fire Upon the Deep are amazing novels. The latter is possibly more associated with space opera, given it involves simply colossal areas of space and deals in an interesting way with the problem of the technological singularity.

Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space books also paint an extremely interesting picture of an interstellar empire created by believable means. Well, the first few do. Even in the ones that have larger elements of soft sci fi they still incorporate some good hard sci fi elements, and his prose is pretty good for a genre writer (I hate using the last as an epithet, but, eh, it's conventional).

Victoria_alice
Sep 20, 2008
I just finished Borrowed Time by Paul Monette---

probably one of the most beautiful loves to read about, and gave a very good setting of living with aids in that time.

Millow
Apr 30, 2006

some say he's a rude dude with a crude 'tude
The Wars by Timothy Findley. The Wars follows the story of Robert Ross, a young Canadian lieutenant in World War one. hosed up ending to a hosed up book. I really liked it though. I thought the use of first, second and third person narration was awesome.

Millow fucked around with this message at 17:51 on Apr 19, 2010

Psychomax
Apr 4, 2009
Breezed through the last half of Good Omens last night, by Terry Pratchett and Niel Gaiman. I actually got yelled at by my neighbor for laughing too loudly (This was around 2am, mind you.)

Besides being the funniest thing I've read since Catch-22, Good Omens was also indescribably heart-warming for some reason. I had this big stupid grin on my face after I finished it and it didn't go away. I'm already thinking about reading it again.

SilkyP
Jul 21, 2004

The Boo-Box

Just finished The Terror by Dan Simmons. I thought it was a good read, just got kinda weird the last bunch of chapters. Great characters, cool story, some cool actions scenes, and a little naval history.

EDIT: And I'm not sure if this is in all of Simmon's books (this is the first one of his I've read) but he loves to toss the words cock and prick around.

SilkyP fucked around with this message at 00:53 on Apr 20, 2010

Captain von Trapp
Jan 23, 2006

I don't like it, and I'm sorry I ever had anything to do with it.

JLightning posted:

I can't really say I disliked it, I'm just a little disappointed by the ending. I've read Snow Crash and Anathem as well and I liked them quite a bit more.

Stephenson's endings get better the more he writes. Snow Crash probably has his weakest ending, but subsequent books wrap up in a more and more satisfying way. I haven't read Anathem yet, but at least up through the Baroque Cycle he's gotten the hang of bringing his stories to a good close.

If you're up for a fantastic but truly marathon read, treat Cryptonomicon as Baroque Cycle vol. 4 and plow through those in sequence.

Dr Scoofles
Dec 6, 2004

Woodtopian posted:

Finished The Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro. It's a character portrait of an aging English Butler.

I recently read An Artist of the Floating World by the same author thanks to the Japanese Literature thread here in Book Barn.

You mentioned pace as being a problem. I assume it is similar to Floating World in that it goes very, very slowly? Oddly enough this is one of the main things that I really enjoyed about Floating World! Different folks I guess.

I'm very keen to read The Remains of the Day, it may be my next purchase once I'm through with North and South.

Sexpansion
Mar 22, 2003

DELETED

Click here for the full 464x700 image.


See No Evil, by Robert Baer.

This is a good read if you're at all interested in the new world of intelligence gathering (new as in not during the cold war). Baer was in the CIA and obviously can't write about everything he wanted to, so the book feels a little light, probably from necessity. He also has a pretty big axe to grind with the direction of the CIA when he was in it so the book comes off as fairly preachy. But there's a lot of great meat in here, especially his descriptions of the training the CIA had him go through.

Edit: Also became the crappy movie Syriana.

Nuclear Tourist
Apr 7, 2005

Just finished Blindsight by Peter Watts. Considering emailing the guy and thanking him for putting it up online for free.

Great read, very interesting blend of hard sci-fi and horror which at times gave me the heebie-jeebies. A bit slow at first but turns into a real page-turner in the second half.

freebooter
Jul 7, 2009

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood. Sure was funny to read a diehard feminist writing a book about a dashing young stranger who sweeps the protagonist up in his burly arms and makes passionate love to her.

Awkward Davies
Sep 3, 2009
Grimey Drawer

FakeHipster posted:

I just finished Red Mars.

I loved it. The first hundred (heh) pages are a bit tough, but once you're into it, you're really into it. Robinson does a fantastic job of describing the new world, and the detail he goes in to about Mars (in terms of scientific, technical, environment, social etc etc) is stunning. Red Mars is the first book is a three book series, and I'm already about half way through the second one (Green Mars) and enjoying the poo poo out of it.

I love books on an epic scale, and Red Mars covers literally hundreds of years, from the absolute first people to colonize Mars to...well, I don't know yet, but I'm hoping it'll be as awesome as the first half of the trilogy.

UPDATE: Finished Green Mars. The beginning took some getting used to (the radically different situation on mars) but ultimately I got into it and really really liked it for the same reasons I liked Red Mars: massive universe, believable technology, interesting social dynamics. I really like a book, or a series, that is a world I can step into, and the Mars trilogy is definitely like this.

Just started Blue Mars, and having the same problem as the start of Green Mars, but hoping it will pick up.

Rurik
Mar 5, 2010

Thief
Warrior
Gladiator
Grand Prince
I spent nine hours in a train yesterday and that gave me the time to finish Kevade by Oskar Luts. We have to read four Estonian books as part of our Estonian literature class (Finnish translations are fine too for those whose Estonian isn't fluent enough) and this children's classic was one of my choice.

Children's classic is actually an understatement, it's more a national classic. It is a tale about a class of young children perhaps nine or ten years old and spans one school year. The focus is on character development and children's lives; the book is especially famous for its funniness as there are a few boys who come up with pranks and ensue all kinds of hilarity.

The book was written in 1912 and 1913 and was filmed in 1969. It is still shown in Estonian television several times a year and I also saw it many times during the years I lived in Estonia. Here is a scene where köster (I figured he was a kind of school priest who keeps order and teaches religion but he is also seen performing actual priest duties like baptizing children) scolds Joosep Toots, an especially mischievous schoolboy, for his behaviour (Toots was on his schoolmate's little brother's baptization event, found their wine stock, got himself and his schoolmate drunk and interrupted the baptization by starting a grammophone).

Wether Kevade's influence or not, these kind of school stories are an entire small genre in Estonia. I haven't seen much of this in Finnish literature, but I've understood that there's something like this in Sweden also. Anyway Kevade was a really good read with it's down to earth humour, realistically depicted characters and an attitude to life which consists of small everyday joys and passive sentimentality (that seems to be a running current under Estonian thought).

The book's name means "Spring's" - either it's in genitive for artistic reasons or simply a local expression since "kevad" is the nominative case for spring.

Anyway, unless one seeks a fancy pancy school story, this beats the crap out of some Harry Potters.

Edit: Here is a more detailed info on the movie for anyone interested.

Rurik fucked around with this message at 08:44 on Apr 23, 2010

Green Crayons
Apr 2, 2009
The Hamilton Case, Michelle de Kretser: Struggled through this one. Ostensibly about the murder of a white Englishman in Sri Lanka near the end of British rule, with the main character being a lawyer who helps solve the crime. Instead, the titular murder case is given about twenty or so pages (the most interesting pages in the book, I might add), and everything else is about the life and times of a native colonial apologist in 1930's Sri Lanka - the aforementioned lawyer. Oh, and the lawyer is pretty much a douche. Krester plays around with some interesting ideas (the power of narratives, concepts of identity, the ability of single actions to determine the course of whole lives), but it really feels like she was just shoehorning in the plot to fit around these preconceived ideas on what her book needed to discuss. More often than not it was done in a very disjointed and clumsy fashion, so we're left with a book that focuses on a dick of a main character which attempts to hit you over the head with various "academic" points of discussion. Feel free to skip without a moment's hesitation.

The Iliad, Homer (translation by Stanley Lombardo): Good story, lots of pretty explicit warfare and death. This really just felt like an extended Days of Our Lives episode bloated with magic, gods and bloodshed. Lots of bloodshed. This, to me, was a good thing. Some weird pacing issues near the end, but that probably has to do more with a change in cultural importance than anything else (lol funeral games during a war). Will definitely be reading The Odyssey. I don't recommend Lombardo's translation; it's "moderized," so you'll have these ancient, epic characters using phrases you might hear on the street. It really breaks immersion.

Where Angels Fear to Tread, E. M. Forster: A very odd sort of novel. Short and it goes by pretty quick, it tries to explore where happiness and goodness can meet - somewhere in the middle ground between a good and proper (but joyless) society as embodied by England and the happy and unrestrained (but amoral) society as embodied by Italy. The plot itself is palpable but nothing that will make you loose sleep over because you Just Need to Finish It. I wasn't too impressed with the end, either. A pretty average sort of novel, it really just fills like filler amidst all of the really good or really bad things I have been reading this year.

nate fisher
Mar 3, 2004

We've Got To Go Back
I just finished Matterhorn - A Novel of the Vietnam War by Karl Marlantes. Any one that enjoys books that capture the despair of war and the conflicts of the men who fight will love this book. It ranks up there with some of my all-time favorite war novels like The Naked and the Dead, Fields of Fire, and The Things They Carried.

GibbonTrainer
Apr 19, 2010
Just finished Our Man In Havana by Graham Greene. Like The Human Factor (same author) it satirizes British Intelligence, this time in Cuba (pre-Castro) rather than London. Darkly humorous throughout it revolves around a vacuum cleaner salesman named Wormold who is recruited by MI6 and consequently struggles to maintain his fake network of spies and informants. Misunderstandings follow and it all gets a bit serious for the protagonist. Good characters, well-written and a short read, it is also amusing in its seeming prediction of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which occurred 4 years after the book was published.

Subjunctive
Sep 12, 2006

✨sparkle and shine✨

Nuclear Tourist posted:

Just finished Blindsight by Peter Watts. Considering emailing the guy and thanking him for putting it up online for free.

Great read, very interesting blend of hard sci-fi and horror which at times gave me the heebie-jeebies. A bit slow at first but turns into a real page-turner in the second half.
You might also like Neuropath, though it's not as intricate as Blindsight. Also, if you haven't read the extended endnotes, you might enjoy losing an hour to his survey of the literature and so forth.

Nuclear Tourist
Apr 7, 2005

Interociter posted:

You might also like Neuropath, though it's not as intricate as Blindsight. Also, if you haven't read the extended endnotes, you might enjoy losing an hour to his survey of the literature and so forth.

I'll check those out, thanks!

Cosmopolitan
Apr 20, 2007

Rard sele this wai -->
I finished Brian Greene's The Fabric of the Cosmos; it's one of the best science books I've ever read. He has the perfect balance between headache-inducing detail and oversimplification, and all of his analogies did an adequate to excellent job of illuminating the concepts. If you're interested in a humorous overview of the field of physics from classical times to speculations about the future, I whole-heartedly recommend this book.

Gravy Jones
Sep 13, 2003

I am not on your side
Just finished (the Arthur C Clarke Award finalist) Redemption Falls by Chris Wooding and was completely underwhelmed in every way. Vaguely interesting setting, but one-dimensional characters, derivative (even for the genre), predictable and linear plot and every "twist" telegraphed. I can't think of a single thing that was either original or suprising.

Every character was running from something and had some kind of backstory flashback and redemptive moment and someone of them were just so banal and loving pointless I don't know why he bothered. It's like he couldn't come up with anything interesting. The only two vaguely interesting characters have stories that don't really go anywhere... possibly setting up for a sequel I will never read.

The best example: The ship's doctor is a cynical washed up alcoholic. Late in the book it is revealed that he used to be a respected doctor but operated on a friend while drunk and killed him. He swore he'd never operate on someone again and became a cynical washed up alcoholic. A couple of chapters after this STUNNING reveal he is put in a position where he has to operate on someone to save their life. So he operates on them and saves their life. The end. That is the sum total of that character's back story and redemtive arc. I mean seriously, why even bother?

Bah! I mean I wasn't expecting much but it's been a while since a book annoyed me this much.

Gravy Jones fucked around with this message at 11:51 on Apr 26, 2010

Awkward Davies
Sep 3, 2009
Grimey Drawer

nate fisher posted:

I just finished Matterhorn - A Novel of the Vietnam War by Karl Marlantes. Any one that enjoys books that capture the despair of war and the conflicts of the men who fight will love this book. It ranks up there with some of my all-time favorite war novels like The Naked and the Dead, Fields of Fire, and The Things They Carried.

Have you read Dispatches?

Chamberk
Jan 11, 2004

when there is nothing left to burn you have to set yourself on fire
Finished The Magicians by Lev Grossman last night. It was an interesting parody in some ways of Harry Potter and The Chronicles of Narnia, but on the other hand it treated its characters like they were out of The Secret History or Special Topics in Calamity Physics. It was an interesting mishmash, but the last 100 pages or so took an odd turn and I ended up having mixed feelings about the book. It was okay, but not great.

robotsinmyhead
Nov 29, 2005

Dude, they oughta call you Piledriver!

Clever Betty

Chamberk posted:

Finished The Magicians by Lev Grossman last night. It was an interesting parody in some ways of Harry Potter and The Chronicles of Narnia, but on the other hand it treated its characters like they were out of The Secret History or Special Topics in Calamity Physics. It was an interesting mishmash, but the last 100 pages or so took an odd turn and I ended up having mixed feelings about the book. It was okay, but not great.

I just finished it too and felt almost exactly the same way.

If you read the book jacket, you get a good idea about how the story is going to go, but then it feels like he's shoehorning that ideal into the story that is meandering somewhat all the way through.

nate fisher
Mar 3, 2004

We've Got To Go Back

FakeHipster posted:

Have you read Dispatches?

Oh God yes. Great book.

Chamberk posted:

Finished The Magicians by Lev Grossman last night. It was an interesting parody in some ways of Harry Potter and The Chronicles of Narnia, but on the other hand it treated its characters like they were out of The Secret History or Special Topics in Calamity Physics. It was an interesting mishmash, but the last 100 pages or so took an odd turn and I ended up having mixed feelings about the book. It was okay, but not great.


While I enjoyed it I do agree about the last part of the book. I found myself enjoying it less and less during that last 100 pages. Still well worth the read.

Hedrigall
Mar 27, 2008

by vyelkin
I'm disappointed hearing everyone say the ending of The Magicians is a downer, because I just got up to the second part, when Quentin goes to Manhattan. I hope it's not as bad as you guys are making it out to be. I love the book so far. Does it help that Lev Grossman has said he's writing a sequel, to be published in 2011?

Last night I finished Barrel Fever by David Sedaris. It was good, funny as usual, but having read all of his other books prior to this one, I wasn't used to the fiction short story format. I kept thinking to myself "This can't have happened to him, it's too absurd," then remembering it's a short story not an essay. A few of the stories I really, really liked, while most of them were amusing but not that exciting. I was more interested in the few essays at the back of the book, especially The Santaland Diaries, which was an absolute scream. It elevated the book from a 3-star to a 4-star, for me. Makes me want to go back and read Naked and Me Talk Pretty One Day now. :3:

Basically, David Sedaris (like Augusten Burroughs) should stick to writing about himself, not ficiton.

John Jhonson
Sep 20, 2008

Elrobot posted:

I also recently finished The Plague by Albert Camus. My first by him, but I'll definitely be reading more. Camus does a really good job of bringing out the feeling of isolation from the rest of the world and the changes the townspeople(who don't get plagued) in face of such epidemic.

I read this recently as well, and it was incredible. Most people will tell you that The Stranger is required reading if you like Camus (it is), but you might want to try Exile and the Kingdom. It's a book of short stories and it gives you a good introduction to the different styles Camus employs.

I just finished Journey to the End of the Night by Celine and it blew me away. I really don't how to describe it, other than incredible. On a related note, I'm considering Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller. If anyone has read Celine or some of the more pessimistic works like it, how does ToC stack up?

nate fisher
Mar 3, 2004

We've Got To Go Back

John Jhonson posted:

I read this recently as well, and it was incredible. Most people will tell you that The Stranger is required reading if you like Camus (it is), but you might want to try Exile and the Kingdom. It's a book of short stories and it gives you a good introduction to the different styles Camus employs.

I only read 3 books by Camus and those are the 3 in your post. Where does someone go next?


Hedrigall posted:

I'm disappointed hearing everyone say the ending of The Magicians is a downer, because I just got up to the second part, when Quentin goes to Manhattan. I hope it's not as bad as you guys are making it out to be. I love the book so far. Does it help that Lev Grossman has said he's writing a sequel, to be published in 2011?

It has nothing really to do with how it ends. I just think the writing gets weaker as it gets closer to the end. Still it wasn't as bad as what Dan Simmons does sometimes.

That said I am very happy he is writing a sequel. I liked the character of Quentin and will be picking this up on release.

Gravy Jones
Sep 13, 2003

I am not on your side

Hedrigall posted:

I'm disappointed hearing everyone say the ending of The Magicians is a downer, because I just got up to the second part, when Quentin goes to Manhattan. I hope it's not as bad as you guys are making it out to be. I love the book so far. Does it help that Lev Grossman has said he's writing a sequel, to be published in 2011?

I'll be the lone voice that says I enjoyed the later parts of the book a great deal more than the first half (which I still enjoyed).

I think my take on the book was different to most though. Less "Harry Potter with swearing" and more "The Outsiders with magic". To me the book takes a very British tradition in juvenile literature (which includes much more than just the explicitly mentioned Potter and Narnia) and inserts into it characters from a much more American tradition (Cormier, Blume, Hinton etc).

Maybe I'm giving the author too much credit, but I think there's a lot more going on than taking an existing setting and making it edgier.

Fodder Cannon
Jan 12, 2008

I love to watch Fox News and then go club some baby seals

nate fisher posted:

I only read 3 books by Camus and those are the 3 in your post. Where does someone go next?


The Fall. It's told as a series of monologues by a former Parisian lawyer. It's only around 150 pages but you'll probably want to read it at least twice.

Stupid_Sexy_Flander
Mar 14, 2007

Is a man not entitled to the haw of his maw?
Grimey Drawer
The Hunt for Atlantis.

By Andy Mcdermott.

It was good. :colbert:

Written by a goon, and blatantly airport fiction, and damned if it isn't good. There are some "meh" parts, where he tends to use the dan brown style "AND THEN SOMETHING AWESOME HAPPENED" to end the chapter, but I can forgive it when the book is much better than a Dan Brown novel.

Gonna grab the rest of the series and read em too. JUST TRY AND STOP ME :colbert:

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Stupid_Sexy_Flander
Mar 14, 2007

Is a man not entitled to the haw of his maw?
Grimey Drawer
Just finished up Strange Magic by Gord Rollo tonight.

This guy is rapidly becoming a favorite author. I have all 3 of his books, and while Jigsaw Man was kinda strange, Crimson was awesome, and Strange Magic worked pretty well.

It is a pretty good book, and while it has it's strange moments in it (sort of like the title suggests :haw: ) it does flow pretty well, and the ending is a nice one. One of my main complaints about King and Koontz, et all is that they can get 80% through the book and keep me entertained, but the endings tend to come right the gently caress out of left field and suck.

I would recommend reading this guy if you are looking for a new horror author. So far so good!

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