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Is it worth while if you've read other bios of him / the Stones? Edit: re Keith Richards' autobio Life.
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Nov 25, 2010 19:37
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Was on Thanksgiving Vacation and read both Oryx and Crake and House of Leaves. Oryx and Crake was really good, my friend who loves characters pointed it out to me. It's a really cool post apoc writing, and the logical deduction of human evolution to mass consumer pharmacuticals and prophylactic pills really astounded me. I however found it difficult to follow the action, and there wasn't much plot as it was all told in flashback, but still it was a really enjoyable read. House of Leaves knocked my socks off and I really enjoyed all of the hidden details. I really liked the exploration segments, but thought that some of the references and diverges were unnessecary but added a lot of flavor to the books.
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Nov 25, 2010 19:53
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ICA posted:Is it worth while if you've read other bios of him / the Stones? I haven't read other bios on him, so I really can't say with any certainty. I did read Exile on Main Street: A Season in Hell with the Rolling Stones, and Keith touched on some of that in his book. I'd say if you're a Keith Richards fan, definitely read the book even if you've read others. He might mention things he hasn't mentioned in other books.
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Nov 25, 2010 21:00
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Aye I've read that. Might get Keith's book then.
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Nov 25, 2010 22:23
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ICA posted:Is it worth while if you've read other bios of him / the Stones? I'll concur with the other poster that Keith's book is great, but disagree on Exile on Main St.: A Season in Hell, which I hated. Edit content: Finished Richard Evan's second book on the Nazis, The Third Reich in Power, which is obviously about prewar Nazi Germany. Unlike the first volume (The Coming Of The Third Reich), which had some innovative elements for a pop history, this book is straight descriptive history. It is overall about the Nazi intrusion into the everyday lives of Germans in all aspects, showing how all these elements were tied together by the drive for re-armament and the need to prepare for war. I learned a lot, but it wasn't nearly as enjoyable as the first volume because of the lack of linear narrative. Still, it was thorough. dokmo fucked around with this message at 23:01 on Nov 25, 2010 |
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Nov 25, 2010 22:54
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A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin. Read it for the first time. Holy poo poo, the ending. Good thing the second book is in an Amazon box at home already.
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Nov 26, 2010 17:17
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OfChristandMen posted:Oryx and Crake was really good, my friend who loves characters pointed it out to me. It's a really cool post apoc writing, and the logical deduction of human evolution to mass consumer pharmacuticals and prophylactic pills really astounded me. I however found it difficult to follow the action, and there wasn't much plot as it was all told in flashback, but still it was a really enjoyable read. Good, now don't read the sequel. It's not bad, but it is unneccesary and completely ruins the perfect, horrible sense of loneliness and solitude built up around Snowman in the first book.
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Nov 27, 2010 04:42
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Just finished "The Sign of Four" by Arthur Conan Doyle. I enjoyed this story tremendously, moreso than "A Study in Scarlet". More modern writers should read Conan Doyle to understand how to tell and pace a story. Anyways, ****1/2 out of 5 stars. Heavy recommenddation.
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Nov 27, 2010 22:06
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Space Cadet by Robert Heinlen. Really enjoying reading through his stuff, considering when he wrote, it's amazing the things he predicted, time scale if terribly off, but still...also, according to him we should be living on venus by now goddammit! Good if you enjoy sci-fi, but confusing because he often is very ciency, an I can't tell if he's using bits of real physics or just bullshitting.
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Nov 27, 2010 22:41
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Slightly Used Cake posted:Space Cadet by Robert Heinlen. Really enjoying reading through his stuff, considering when he wrote, it's amazing the things he predicted, time scale if terribly off, but still...also, according to him we should be living on venus by now goddammit! Good if you enjoy sci-fi, but confusing because he often is very ciency, an I can't tell if he's using bits of real physics or just bullshitting.
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Nov 27, 2010 23:07
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I reread A Supposedly Fun Thing by DFW because God I miss DFW. It was everything I remembered--brilliant, frenetic, beautiful, orgiastic, weirdly spiteful in places (God he hated Balthazar Getty!), and heartbreaking in other places. Finally read Bret Ellis's last book, Imperial Bedrooms, and it was a stone-cold bummer. I know he was trying to return to form with this book, that he was trying to reclaim his lost art (Less Than Zero/Informers era Ellis) and give it a vagrant twist but it felt more like having an old friend from school show up at your house in the middle of the night, long long gone on Xanax and Grey Goose, and start pissing all over your carpet. A few brilliant lines couldn't make up for watching a writer I used to love spazz and flail so pathetically. Also finally got around to Chabon's Kavalier and Clay (no idea why it took me so long except I tend to flake out on anything written in the last 20 years) and it was just jaw-dropping charming. Chabon can switch up his style and cadence like very few writers can and can go from satirizing and savagely lacerating society to being achingly nostalgic and poignant in the course of just a few lines. A solid "A."
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Nov 28, 2010 20:43
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TWang51022 posted:Just finished "The Sign of Four" by Arthur Conan Doyle. I enjoyed this story tremendously, moreso than "A Study in Scarlet". More modern writers should read Conan Doyle to understand how to tell and pace a story. Anyways, ****1/2 out of 5 stars. Heavy recommenddation. You'll have to let me know if later Sherlock stories ever get past his device of "not telling the reader a single goddamn thing" as a way to make Holmes appear unfathomably brilliant. Because that's really lovely writing.
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Nov 29, 2010 00:26
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I managed to slog through The Neverending Story, a book that definitely lives up to its name. I liked the beginning when it was focused on Atreyu, but once it shifted over to Bastian I couldn't wait to get to the end. His slow spiral into darkness went on way too long and was not nearly as interesting as Atreyu's quest. And every single storyline had such a cop-out ending, especially Xayide's. So she's supposed to turn Bastian into an evil ruler, but then they get separated on their journey and Bastian has a change of heart on his own and then Xayide's magic giants trample her for no reason. The End. Really? It just seemed like Bastian was never in any real danger and he always happened to just magically stumble upon the exact thing he needed whenever there was even a hint of conflict. I guess the whole point was that he created and controlled everything in Fantastica, but it doesn't really make for an interesting story when your main character is all-powerful and virtually unstoppable.
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Nov 29, 2010 02:54
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For some reason I decided I wanted to read some books. I hadn't in a very long time so I bought some books that I had heard of before and noted that I wanted to read it. I read Gates of Fire first, then when I watched the Exorcist for the first time I went out and bought the book. Pillars of the Earth was recommended to me by my boss and I just finished that. Loved it and ordered the sequel.
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Nov 29, 2010 03:33
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Blade_of_tyshalle posted:You'll have to let me know if later Sherlock stories ever get past his device of "not telling the reader a single goddamn thing" as a way to make Holmes appear unfathomably brilliant. Because that's really lovely writing. And you know, even with the device, it's still so entertaining because Conan Doyle really knows how to tell a story. Before I discovered these forums, I finished a collection of short stories by him called "The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Stories", which is a little known collection filled with fun stories. Plus, he wrote a great adventure novel in "The Lost World" and his Brigadier Gerard stories are all apparent classics, too. Of course, he's known primarily for Sherlock. And I just finished another book. "The Immediate Experience" by Robert Warshow. Warshow is a great critic and writer that needs rediscovery. He wrote about popular culture and film in the 40's and 50's, and along with Orwell practically invented the critique of popular culture. This book collects his entire life's work because he died at age 37, while in the middle of an essay on Soviet films of the silent era. He's not necessarily my kind of critic, but his judgment almost never errs, and he writes in a plain, lucid prose only bettered by Orwell. **** out of 5 stars.
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Nov 29, 2010 09:23
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Just finished Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King. This is his best book in quite a while. There are four stories in the book, and while they are all excellent, I think the first story "1922" is the weakest. But by no means bad. I would give this five out of five stars and recommend it to King lovers and anybody who wants to give King a try.
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Nov 29, 2010 13:44
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TWang51022 posted:And you know, even with the device, it's still so entertaining because Conan Doyle really knows how to tell a story. Before I discovered these forums, I finished a collection of short stories by him called "The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Stories", which is a little known collection filled with fun stories. Plus, he wrote a great adventure novel in "The Lost World" and his Brigadier Gerard stories are all apparent classics, too. Of course, he's known primarily for Sherlock. Oh, thanks for the nudge toward Warshow. He's someone I've been meaning to read for a long time. Mostly I remember my father and an old college friend of his, when I was a little kid, talking to each other about how they had both only realized, a few years after reading the piece, just how prescient the essay Warshow wrote on the Rosenbergs had been. So you've definitely reminded me that I need to pick that book up in the very near future.
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Nov 29, 2010 14:26
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Life on Mars posted:Oh, thanks for the nudge toward Warshow. He's someone I've been meaning to read for a long time. Mostly I remember my father and an old college friend of his, when I was a little kid, talking to each other about how they had both only realized, a few years after reading the piece, just how prescient the essay Warshow wrote on the Rosenbergs had been. So you've definitely reminded me that I need to pick that book up in the very near future. The best thing Warshow teaches--aside from writing lucid, plain prose--is how an intellectual should respond to our modern-day society: Not behind any sort of ideology (such as feminism, political corectness, etc.), but as a human being, and then if you have ideas about it afterwards, then you can have your ideas, but they must be honest to the experience you had, pre-filtered. Of course, many critics indirectly write about this exact same subject, but no one tackled it (not even Orwell) as directly as Warshow. I actually think Warshow's a little too conservative for my tastes (especially in his piece on the comics), but I can't really blame him for somewhat being a product of his time. It's like complaining that Voltaire didn't fight for atheism more openly, or denouncing Lincoln for believing that blacks were naturally inferior to whites. They were still much ahead of their time, and the same goes for Warshow.
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Nov 29, 2010 19:23
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Two rereads: Old Man and the Sea and The Violent Bear It Away (Flannery O'Connor). I'm adapting the second into a screenplay at the moment, so I've become intimately intimate with that text. O'Connor is actually much closer to Hemingway in style than she is to any of the other Southern Gothic writers (I'm looking at you Faulkner). Their content is, of course, very different (although both books have a lot do with human faith and purpose), but their style is remarkably similar. O'Connor uses more internal thought and flashback, and Hemingway comments more on the physical world and stays firmly in the present, but they both pace their stories in a very direct, almost minimalist manner. Here are two short passages I very much liked: Old Man and the Sea posted:He was stiff and sore now and his wounds and all the strained parts of his body hurt with the cold of the night. I hope I do not have to fight again, he thought. I hope so much I do not have to fight again. The Violent Bear It Away posted:At the moment of his death, he sat down to his breakfast and lifted his knife in one square red hand halfway to his mouth, and then with a look of complete astonishment, he lowered it until the hand rested on the edge of the plate and tilted it up off the table. oooh I just realized these were also both the last major works published by either author - interrrresting. T-Bone fucked around with this message at 20:25 on Nov 29, 2010 |
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Nov 29, 2010 20:16
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The Flock. Nothing like seeing a sapient terror bird inadvertently doom his own species to extinction (by being a loving moron) and then save them almost as inadvertently in the course of saving his own rear end (by being a damned genius). While being incredibly  throughout.
U.T. Raptor fucked around with this message at 07:29 on Dec 1, 2010 |
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Dec 1, 2010 07:27
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Last couple were Tante Jolesch, or the Decline of the West in Anecdotes by Friedrich Torberg and Plutarch's Essays. The Torberg is a look back at the (mostly Jewish) Viennese cafe culture between the wars from someone who was there and is extremely well stocked with stories about intellectuals threatening to (literally) piss all over each other. That's really all it is, but it'll put a dent in any vision you might've had of the cafes as centres of genteel debate and philosophy when you find it's wall-to-wall iceburns and generally dickish behaviour. As an eyewitness document though, it gives an original and fascinating look at the community, and it's generally well stitched together for something as nebulous as a book of anecdotes. The Plutarch I wasn't so sold on, working mostly along the same lines as the far-superior Paralell Lives (argument through slightly shaky logic propped up by selective anecdotes), but with less heads on pikes. So basically you read an essay where he blandly argues 'jerks will get theirs eventually', and then see a footnote at the bottom saying 'he told a totally killer story about this in the Lives where a dude throws a roof-tile and takes another guy's head clean off - you should have read that instead'. I'm not sure that I'd go so far as to say that it's not worth reading at all, but his conclusions and arguments are just so unsurprising and sensible that it can sometimes be a bit of a chore.
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Dec 1, 2010 08:03
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Just finished a few books, Man On Fire. I remember watching the movie, I don't exactly remember the story but I have a feeling the book story seems better. I enjoyed it, nice revenge story. Also continuing the legionnaire theme, I finished Devil's Guard. Over the top story about Nazi's killing communist scum and how Hitler wasn't so bad. I guess the author was pro Nazi or something... The Secret of Excalibur. I read the first two books ages ago, enjoyed it for what it was, although the relationship stress gets really annoying. All I remember was how annoying it was in the second book but some how it was worse in the third book. Hopefully less in the next one....
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Dec 1, 2010 13:15
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drat, I haven't posted here in awhile, here goes: Carl Sagan - The Demon Haunted World Great science boosting. Really enjoyed the demonic possession/alien abduction parallels. Terry Pratchett - I Shall Wear Midnight The final Tiffany Aching novel, and rather dark for "YA" material. Douglas Brinkley - The Great Deluge You know the story, Hurricane Katrina and the Gulf Coast plus the Bush administration's appalling incompetence. A couple things leapt out at me. First, apparently there was a huge fight between Bush's team and Louisiana Governor Blanco over the control of the national guard that was politically motivated. Second, some of the rescuing going on took children away from their parents, or wives away from their husbands. As in, a helicopter finds a group of people, and only accepts kids, or women. Good narrative about the whole disaster, recommended. Jorge Luis Borges - Collected Fictions Borges is like the Twilight Zone on LSD. Very enjoyable. The Koran I was a little disappointed in this. Very repetitive, and obsessive at times. Quite obviously transcribed oratory. Ralph Ellison - Invisible Man Excellent story about the injustices black men face from a white society. George MacDonald - Fletch & The Man Who The Man Who isn't the man who dunnit.
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Dec 1, 2010 19:41
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LooseChanj posted:The Koran If I may, what translation did you use? And relatedly, since the Penguin Classics version translated by Dawood is the only version I've read all the way through, I'd be grateful for any recommendations of Islamic goons (or anyone else, really) for a translation that best conveys the sense/poetry of the original.
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Dec 1, 2010 20:22
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LooseChanj posted:Jorge Luis Borges - Collected Fictions Dang, did you read the whole thing? I've been carrying it around for over a year now, every now and then reading a story or 3. Love it, but I couldn't sit down and read through the whole book. On that note, are his collected poetry and non-fiction worth getting? I assume they are, but figure I should ask.
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Dec 1, 2010 21:28
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Just finished up Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. Mixed bag, this one. Murakami occasionally manages to capture some genuine-feeling experiences, like the pain of teenage infatuation, and he's definitely imaginative. His fantasy elements remind me a little of Neil Gaiman. I'm also fascinated by his need to over-explain fairly elementary symbolism within his own work contrasted against his very impressionistic approach to story-telling. But overall the writing is so bad its hard to appreciate the book's finer qualities. I wondered in an earlier post whether the translation from Japanese to English was partly to blame for the bland, clunky prose, but the problem's so persistent I tend to doubt it. Not only does the book lack all style or descriptive subtlety, Murakami takes up way more space than is defensible describing various peoples wardrobes and meals and using characters to either talk about things he likes, clumsily (classical music is the most offended victim) or giving half-assed movie or book reviews. Oh, and talking about symbolism and metaphor. Yeah. His most putrid fuckup, though, has to be Oshima. Never outside of an Ayn Rand novel have I encountered a more insufferable, loathsome character. Murakami wants us desperately to be impressed by him - and I can't help thinking he's a standin for the author, to an extent - but I just felt like punching him in the face everytime he opened up his mouth to give some horrible fortune-cookie piece of bullshit wisdom. It would be different if the character had been some sort of parody, but Murakami takes him seriously, and it's just an incredible failure of writing.
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Dec 2, 2010 05:22
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Red Pyramid posted:His most putrid fuckup, though, has to be Oshima. Never outside of an Ayn Rand novel have I encountered a more insufferable, loathsome character. Murakami wants us desperately to be impressed by him - and I can't help thinking he's a standin for the author, to an extent - but I just felt like punching him in the face everytime he opened up his mouth to give some horrible fortune-cookie piece of bullshit wisdom. Ahaha, I couldn't agree more. This is what I wrote about it ages ago: quote:90% of the text is a tedious introspective monologue, and the other 10% is characters discussing how much they like certain literature or classical music. One particular character, Oshima the librarian, seized every opportunity to turn a conversation into some pretentious remark on the human condition, spouting out wave after wave of ultimately hollow profundities. Remains one of the worst books I've ever read.
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Dec 2, 2010 06:09
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How much creepy sexualization of chubby japanese schoolgirls was there because there sure as gently caress was a lot of it in Hard Boiled Wonderland. It was also one of the worst books I've ever read.
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Dec 2, 2010 08:42
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No chubby schoolgirls, but there was plenty of creepy, unapologetic incest to go around. Murakami's handling of sex in general is pretty embarrassing, actually. The sex scenes are blunt and clumsy and there are frequent out of the loving blue references to the state and cleanliness of the main character's weaponry (said character, Kafka, being a fifteen year old boy).
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Dec 2, 2010 09:01
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Just finished "The Warded Man" by Peter V. Brett.  I liked it. It's a fantasy world that Peter created that has some interesting history. The characters are pretty well done and have some depth to them. It looks like this is at least a 3 part story, I'm waiting for the second book to get here, "Desert Spear". For those that like fantasy settings and such I would suggest it. ETA: It was released under the title "The Painted Man" in some countries.
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Dec 2, 2010 17:46
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The Instructions by Adam Levin. I'm just gonna say that you guys are going to want to read this. Any fans of Dave Wallace will be reminded of Infinite Jest, which praise I do not give lightly and I mean it in the kindest possible way. Highly recommended.
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Dec 2, 2010 18:20
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Joachim Fest - Speer: the Final Verdict. Despite the terrible title, this is an excellent biography of the man known as "Hitler's architect". He was really much more than that, a complicated figure -- on one hand, a very close friend of Hitler; on the other, a man who saw himself as an apolitical servant of his country. The way he dealt with his guilt and responsibility for the Nazi's crimes forms the second, more interesting, half of the book. The author tries to make Speer into a stand-in for all the German citizens who weren't Nazis but who helped them enact their mission, which I think was a reach, but there's no question that this paradox -- why did so many normal people help others do insane things? -- is what makes Speer a fascinating subject.
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Dec 2, 2010 19:06
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Tolstoi - War and Peace. It took me a month and a half, but i finally got through this beast of a novel. It's a mix of a soap opera set in the early 19th century and Tolstoi strange essays on the philosophy of history. Frankly, I could have done without the latter: The second epilogue consists only of a treatise on free will. This would have been logical, if only free will had been put to question somewhere in the main narrative of the novel, but as it stands, it just seems like Tolstoi added it here because he couldn't sell it somewhere else or something. I was really glad that in the end Prince Andrej stayed dead. Having him come back from the dead not only once, but twice really gave me the impression that I was reading 'The Bold and the Beautiful 1809.' EricBauman fucked around with this message at 12:22 on Dec 4, 2010 |
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Dec 4, 2010 12:19
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I just finished the obscure Fauna by Alissa York, which follows a handful of characters living in Ontario, Canada, and explores how their relationships with animals bring out the best and worst in them. I have nothing but good things to say about the descriptions of the animals, which are beautiful, and they also seem to be meticulously researched. However, I think the author should have just published a book about animals going about their day, because she sure doesn't write characters well. York would often introduce what seemed to be important points about the characters (hints of drug addiction, self-harm, dead pets, young relationships with older men, etc...) and utterly fail at elaborating on them or how they affected the characters. This made the plot seem haphazard and lame. Also includes a terrifically awkward sex scene, which is a hell of a bonus. Moving onto Junky by William Burroughs.
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Dec 4, 2010 16:16
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Just finished Unbearable Lightness by Portia de Rossi. Very sad, but well-written, Portia talks about her anorexia and bulemia, her crippling insecurity and her fear of being outed as a lesbian while starring on a hit show. She finally had to get help when she collapsed on a movie set. I wouldn't say I "enjoyed" it, but it was pretty interesting and an easy read.
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Dec 4, 2010 20:51
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The God Engines by John Scalzi. Have to say I'm extremely disappointing in this book. It was a short book about theology and the use of religion, but ultimately, didn't really go anywhere and just petered out in the end. I'd recommend it if you like to read about sci fi and how religion can be evil, but when we compare this to his other great books like Old Man's War...we're left feeling empty on that front.
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Dec 4, 2010 20:51
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No posted:I just finished the obscure Fauna by Alissa York, which follows a handful of characters living in Ontario, Canada, and explores how their relationships with animals bring out the best and worst in them. I have nothing but good things to say about the descriptions of the animals, which are beautiful, and they also seem to be meticulously researched. However, I think the author should have just published a book about animals going about their day, because she sure doesn't write characters well. Junky is amazing. "Enjoy" isn't the right word, but it's an enthraling journey.
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Dec 5, 2010 05:52
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Just finished up The Infernal Game : Cold Warriors by Rebecca Levene and it was actually pretty damned good. It's sort of a spy/horror/noir mixup, where the various governments of the world had an occult setup during the cold war, and stuff happens and it's actually pretty good. I am really surprised by it, it was a lot better than I had thought it was going to be. I am definitely going to be following this series.
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Dec 5, 2010 10:06
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Lots of people recommended Matterhorn in the greatest war novel thread so I decided to read. Have to say it was one intense book. There isn't much I can say, it paints a pretty clear picture of how horrible war is. Really glad I read it.
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Dec 5, 2010 14:04
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Interworld by Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves. I guess you could call it a short story because it's very short. It's about a kid who joins an army of himself from other universes and dimensions to battle evil and restore the balance of magic and technology kinda. Wished it was a bit more fleshed out because the concept was pretty nice.
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Dec 5, 2010 15:52
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