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The Warded Man. by Peter Brett Someone at work told me about it. Currently reading the Second one.
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Nov 1, 2013 07:09
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I recently finished Aldous Huxley's The Devils of Loudun, and it's the oddest book I've read for a while. It's a "non-fiction novel" about the plot to murder a 17th century Priest and "sorcerer", and the effect that had on the exorcists, nuns and operatives of the state who all played some part in the conspiracy. It quotes extensively but gives the impression of being more than half made-up as he vigorously reads between the lines and invents thoughts and feelings. It's too scholarly to be properly novelistic too, like when he makes a fleeting reference to a shy character and goes into a 30 page essay on transcendence from self which is cobbled together from Indian mysticism, Freudian analysis and catholic dogma. I really need to see the Ken Russel film Devils now, just to see how on earth he managed it. Probably junked everything but the nuns.
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Nov 3, 2013 12:49
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I finished both Ulysses and To The Lighthouse recently. I will never look at novels the same way again. Seriously, I consider finally reading these books one of the more valuable things I've ever done with my time!
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Nov 5, 2013 23:54
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Mr. Squishy posted:I recently finished Aldous Huxley's The Devils of Loudun, and it's the oddest book I've read for a while. It's a "non-fiction novel" about the plot to murder a 17th century Priest and "sorcerer", and the effect that had on the exorcists, nuns and operatives of the state who all played some part in the conspiracy. It quotes extensively but gives the impression of being more than half made-up as he vigorously reads between the lines and invents thoughts and feelings. It's too scholarly to be properly novelistic too, like when he makes a fleeting reference to a shy character and goes into a 30 page essay on transcendence from self which is cobbled together from Indian mysticism, Freudian analysis and catholic dogma. It's a spectacular film. I've no idea how it compares to the book, though.
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Nov 6, 2013 00:08
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Good-bye to All That (Robert Graves): Quick note - if the name sounds familiar, he's the one who wrote I, Claudius and Claudius the God. This will now be a frequent recommendation for anyone interested in World War I literature. To me, it rivals All Quiet on the Western Front. Unlike, All Quiet, this is a straight autobiography and Graves gets to namedrop some fascinating individuals. It's always a joy to see Siegfried Sassoon's name pop up (including Graves's caper to keep him from getting in major trouble over some writings). There are postwar explorations. Most striking is the PTSD and Graves said he had nightmares for 10 years after. He meets T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia) at Oxford and attempts a teaching job in Egypt. Compared to the war, he breezes through these, with no real indication of time. Or what landed him at Majorca, which is where was living at the time of initial publication. It's a shame this book isn't better known.
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Nov 6, 2013 08:40
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Maybe it's not as big in the States, but in Britain it's considered a staple text of the First World War.
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Nov 6, 2013 09:09
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Late to the party, but just finished Neil Gaiman's American Gods. I loved just about every page. I really enjoyed puzzling out who each god was and, for the many that I didn't know anything about, reading about them outside the book. There were some very vivid moments (specifically in the historical flashbacks) that I'll remember for a long time. Making a hard course change and jumping into some military history next - I like to shake up my genres.
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Nov 6, 2013 14:43
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Missed out on Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House for the book club last month but still wanted to give it a go. The first half of the book felt like a lot of slow build up but it was worth it for the absolutely entrenched sense of dread pervading the latter half. While the supernatural phenomena occurring in the house were certainly frightening, I found that the slowly unraveling mind of the main character had a much more disturbing effect on me. Her darkly turned thoughts and her inexplicable, alternating feelings of paranoia, sudden attachment, love, and hatred for her fellow guests and the house was like an unsettling glimpse into madness. It still holds up today, and it's one of the most effective pieces of horror fiction I've ever read.
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Nov 7, 2013 09:35
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Just finished "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking". It was a good read, and an interesting survey of studies about introversion and extroversion. The author tries to give a balanced view but sometimes writes as though introverts are the more highly developed amongst us, and extroverts are a bunch of knuckle- dragging neanderthals, but I guess the book is meant to balance out a cultural bias in favor of extroverts. Next I'm reading " Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation" by Michael Pollan.
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Nov 7, 2013 17:10
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moot the hopple posted:Missed out on Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House for the book club last month but still wanted to give it a go. The first half of the book felt like a lot of slow build up but it was worth it for the absolutely entrenched sense of dread pervading the latter half. While the supernatural phenomena occurring in the house were certainly frightening, I found that the slowly unraveling mind of the main character had a much more disturbing effect on me. Her darkly turned thoughts and her inexplicable, alternating feelings of paranoia, sudden attachment, love, and hatred for her fellow guests and the house was like an unsettling glimpse into madness. You should read We Have Always Lived In The Castle next. It's possibly even better.
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Nov 7, 2013 17:28
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Recently I did some reading on the Ainu; all my library had were two books however. Harukor: An Ainu Woman's Tale by Honda Katsuichi wasn't bad. The author studied the Ainu thoroughly and wrote a historical fiction novel about them to educate readers. It was interesting, but... I liked Our Land was a Forest by Shigeru Kayano much better. This one was a real account of the Ainu. It started with some history of the author's family, and then became about his life, like how he established an Ainu museum to preserve memories and knowledge. It could be really infuriating at times, because of the way the Ainu were treated. As it stands, I'm glad I read Harukor first. This one was much more interesting, but I think Harukor helped give me more of a background that this one couldn't. Afterwards I fell back into my YA ways. I read Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor. This one had a really good prose style that I don't normally see in YA works. And over all, it just had this sort of stylishness to it, but it had substance, you know? I really want to read the sequel, and will have to soon. Next, I read Plain Kate by Erin Bow. I really didn't like this one at first, something about it sort of rubbed me the wrong way. But I grew to like it, and found it very sweet. It had an interesting take on magic. After that, I opened up Lament by Maggie Stiefvater. I have to confess, I normally don't go for the Paranormal Romance genre. But I'd heard good things about this one so I decided to try it. I quite liked it. I'm not too familiar with the fae, but that seemed like an interesting direction to go in. I read its sequel, Ballad afterwards. The main character of it is the best friend of the girl from the first. I didn't like it quite as much, mainly because I didn't feel like she wrote a guy's voice as well as a girl's. It simply didn't feel authentic to me. But it was really interesting to be able to see an outside perspective of the girl from the first book. Today I finished Obernewtyn by Isobelle Carmody. My library put it in Adult fiction, but I think it belongs in YA. It's sort of a SF fantasy. More SF than Fantasy, I suppose. Post-apocalyptic rollback sort of story. Apparently she began it in High School (though she didn't send it out until she was in college, so it's not like some Eragon situation), which is pretty impressive to me. There's sequels, but I've got a million books checked out at the library to finish first, but I'll definitely come back to it.
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Nov 7, 2013 22:45
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Just finished The Hunger Games trilogy. I enjoyed it a lot and now I'm stoked for the second movie.
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Nov 7, 2013 23:10
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Caustic Chimera posted:After that, I opened up Lament by Maggie Stiefvater. I have to confess, I normally don't go for the Paranormal Romance genre. But I'd heard good things about this one so I decided to try it. I quite liked it. I'm not too familiar with the fae, but that seemed like an interesting direction to go in. Not really my thing, but her stuff is really good as far as YA paranormal romance goes, and the relationships tend to be a whole lot better than, say Twilight. She's become a better writer, too, and the current Raven Boys series is probably her best yet (not my thing, yes, but I work in a bookstore, so...).
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Nov 7, 2013 23:34
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funkybottoms posted:Not really my thing, but her stuff is really good as far as YA paranormal romance goes, and the relationships tend to be a whole lot better than, say Twilight. She's become a better writer, too, and the current Raven Boys series is probably her best yet (not my thing, yes, but I work in a bookstore, so...). I'll definitely try it out, thanks. Yeah, one of the things I liked about Lament was that it seemed like when things were unsettling or creepy about the love interest, they were, you know, supposed to be. Other than being so so about romance, that's part of the reason I tend to stay away from the genre, I fear/suspect that most of the relationships would be problematic, and it seems like I encounter enough of those in books not about romance. But since I don't read the genre, that might be me being completely and utterly unfair.
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Nov 7, 2013 23:56
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funkybottoms posted:Not really my thing, but her stuff is really good as far as YA paranormal romance goes, and the relationships tend to be a whole lot better than, say Twilight. She's become a better writer, too, and the current Raven Boys series is probably her best yet (not my thing, yes, but I work in a bookstore, so...). I disagree about The Raven Boys being good, especially wrt the relationships. Blue basically has no personality at all and is entirely defined by her relationships with four boys. I found the book surprisingly enjoyable, but I think that's a really problematic protagonist.
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Nov 8, 2013 02:08
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elbow posted:I disagree about The Raven Boys being good, especially wrt the relationships. Blue basically has no personality at all and is entirely defined by her relationships with four boys. I found the book surprisingly enjoyable, but I think that's a really problematic protagonist. Sorry, yeah, I should clarify that I intended to compare the relationships in Twilight to the Shiver series. Kinda left a few words out, huh? Story-wise, though, Raven Boys is the best thing she's written.
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Nov 8, 2013 03:00
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PhilippAchtel posted:Just finished "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking". It was a good read, and an interesting survey of studies about introversion and extroversion. The author tries to give a balanced view but sometimes writes as though introverts are the more highly developed amongst us, and extroverts are a bunch of knuckle- dragging neanderthals, but I guess the book is meant to balance out a cultural bias in favor of extroverts. Yeah I started reading that book on introverts and almost couldn't get through it because of the weird axe-grinding vibe and generally shoddy use of science. I thought it was far worse than even the typical pop-science dreck. Which I guess is to be expected since the writer isn't a scientist or even a science-oriented journalist. There's interesting elements I saw in the previews/editorials she did to promote the book, but I thought the book overall was pretty bad in a way which obscured those elements and contextualized and interpreted them really poorly. This is one of those issues of flawed understanding despite being right in parts you often see with people dipping their feet into fields where they're not really experts. A criticism which I think could also be applied to Pollan as well. OXBALLS DOT COM fucked around with this message at 05:09 on Nov 8, 2013 |
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Nov 8, 2013 04:49
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I had to take a break from a decent but meh book and decided to re-read The Giver. It still holds up as a solid YA dystopian story, but was a very different experience this time. As a father, I found myself in a don't-gently caress-with-my-children mood from the start. The plot still has its holes, but I cranked through it and look forward to the day my kids decide to read it and the conversations we can have about it.
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Nov 8, 2013 06:49
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Just finished Ellroy's The Black Dahlia. I haven't been so engrossed in a crime novel like this in years, really good stuff. Going to buy the rest of the LA Quartet for sure.
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Nov 9, 2013 14:42
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Just finished my first "read for review" book, and it was actually much better than I was expecting. I figured books given out by the author for free would, well... suck. Odium by Claire C. Riley features a slightly whiny, yet strong female protagonist in a Zombie Apocalypse. It's post-apoc so we don't get to see what caused it, but instead get treated to a walking dead-esque plot. Good zombie fluff, I enjoyed it.
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Nov 10, 2013 06:32
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I just finished Ack-ack Macaque by Gareth L. Powell. An alternate universe Sci-fi adventure with a talking monkey from WWII set in the 2050s. I thought the start was strong but the ending was predictable. I started skipping pages to finish the book. The plot summary sounds absurd though. Picking up: The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB by Christopher Andrew (Planned to be a long read) And Guardian of Night by Tony Daniel
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Nov 10, 2013 08:56
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"Making Money" by Terry Pratchett. Alternate universe much like our own ... just set on a disc, carried by 4 titanic elephants standing on a Herculean cosmos "swimming" turtle ......... so fantasy then. Ex-con finds he must reinvigorate a dying city bank. Have read "Going Postal" a while ago, the precursory book but now I find I have to read it again to make sense of some things. I'd like to read "Predictably Irrational" by Dan Ariely next. Non-fiction just hoping to achieve some understanding of psychology
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Nov 10, 2013 14:16
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Julzie posted:"Making Money" by Terry Pratchett. Alternate universe much like our own ... just set on a disc, carried by 4 titanic elephants standing on a Herculean cosmos "swimming" turtle ......... so fantasy then. Ex-con finds he must reinvigorate a dying city bank. Have read "Going Postal" a while ago, the precursory book but now I find I have to read it again to make sense of some things. The third book, Raising Steam, came out this week in the UK. Enjoy. 
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Nov 10, 2013 17:11
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Jedit posted:The third book, Raising Steam, came out this week in the UK. Enjoy. Oh my goodness there's a third! Thank you very much for telling me this! I'm in Aus, shall have to see if I can get my hands on a copy, wonder if it's out yet XD
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Nov 10, 2013 23:17
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Julzie posted:Oh my goodness there's a third! Thank you very much for telling me this! I'm in Aus, shall have to see if I can get my hands on a copy, wonder if it's out yet XD Yep. Someone in the Pratchett thread was saying that one Aussie bookseller has been selling copies since the 1st, but it was due out on the 5th.
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Nov 10, 2013 23:30
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Just finished The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon. Enjoyed it quite a bit more than I thought I would. Has a very Dashiel Hammet feel, gritty and noir.
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Nov 11, 2013 06:54
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Just finished The Desert Spear by Peter Brett, 2nd book in the Demon Trilogy after The Warded Man. Wasn't blown away by the Warded Man, but it was good. No different here - long, long setups with the climax of the book happening less than 40 pages from the end of the 577 page hardbound. With so much supernatural amazing poo poo going on in his world, he loves to expound endlessly on mundane matters.
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Nov 12, 2013 19:05
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Year Zero: A History of 1945 by Ian Buruma. It offers a rather solid overview of the tumultuous period immediately after World War Two. At ~400 pages long, it didn't go as in-depth as I may have wanted (no coverage of the Franco dictatorship in Spain). It did, however, make me more interested in reading more about the history of Asia during that period.
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Nov 13, 2013 03:53
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Eight Million Gods by Wen Spencer. I don't know if I like the book, or hate the book. It's... it's complicated. I read the book, and it was enjoyable, but it was also one of the most insipid, mary sue esque books that I have ever read, and I don't know if the meta feeling from it is what I enjoyed, or that it was badly written fluff that was entertaining. So, I just dunno. The plot of the book is american girl runs away from overbearing mom to live in japan to write books. She gets involved in a murder, and ends up trying to figure out if it's a real murder or some kinda weird war between all the kami in japan. Now... basically this girl is the female equivalent of an attractive neckbeard. She reads yaoi, can barely speak japanese but somehow understands glorious nippon culture, and has wacky zany friends that can help her with things like plot armor and development, and she's also an internet superstar. It's... god drat it's an appalling mary sue setup if I have ever read one. BUT. The plot of the book is actually decent, and that is what throws me all over the map when it comes to "Did I like it? I think I did. I dunno, I mean, parts of it were incredibly lame, but... the plot was interesting, but weird goony anime lady....  "Gonna spoil the gently caress out of the book now :Crazy lead girl has a mental disorder that makes her write ALL THE TIME. She gets wiggy if she can't write. So, she's an author. Turns out she's been writing real poo poo, and she's an oracle. She hooks up with some amazingly japanese except perfect hair and no accent random guy who turns out to be an assassin that has been looking for his kidnapped father, and also turns out to be some kind of were-cat thing and they are totally in love and he saves her and she saves him and they bang and everything is perfect for her. SHE'S AN AUTHOR WRITING A BOOK ABOUT A GIRL WHO IS AN AUTHOR WHO IS WRITING A BOOK AND GETS INVOLVED IN WACKY ZANY ADVENTURES BECAUSE poo poo SHE WRITES IS REAL. It's loving meta as poo poo, and also kinda poo poo as well. Now, WITH THAT IN MIND, as loving retarded as that sounds, the plot gets resolved in a combination of "Thank god the white person was here to save us" like The Last Samurai and an actual good ending. It has a loving poo poo TON of japanese phrases and words and comes off as  to the extreme in some points, but it kept being interesting enough for me to finish.I guess... gently caress man, I dunno. I kinda hate myself for liking it. It's like if Rothfuss wrote a book about GLORIOUS NIPPON instead of wizards. I haven't read any of her other work, so no loving clue if this is boilerplate for her or if this is actually a new idea or style for her. It's... gently caress it's hard to explain. I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE ABOUT A GOD BEING MURDERED AND TRYING TO FIND OUT WHO DID IT OUT OF THE 8 MILLION GODS JAPAN APPARENTLY HAS. It was not that. That would have been pretty cool, but alas, it's about some anime geek who has mental problems moving to japan to write a book and getting caught up in a murder. If that sounds somewhat interesting to you, you'd probably like the book. If it doesn't, you will hate this with the fiery passion of a thousand suns.
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Nov 13, 2013 04:27
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I just finished The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan. Dorrigo Evans grows up from 1916 or so in Tasmania, Australia to become a surgeon and enlists in WWII where after some exploits in Syria his unit winds up in Java or somewhere and surrenders to the Japanese. They're POWs building the Siam-Burma railway. A good portion of the book is spent following the horrors of his lot, starved, full of tropical diseases and cholera, & the brutality of the guards while forced to work in the jungle building an impossible railway line. It was highly readable, but horrible and beautiful and... detailed. Very detailed. The details regarding these men in the camps and what they endured and were subjected to sometimes seemed to go on for chapters. It's written in a detached way, describing the beauty and the horrors so it never really becomes too much, although it really is a bit much, but then again it's true. It's based on what the author's father went through. Then there's all the story after the war and before. The book jumps around in time. Mainly a lot of different women, a love that lasted a lifetime, and a disconnectedness from the world. Occasionally I didn't like our main character too much but it all made sense in the end. There's also several chapters from the points of view of the Japanese & Korean guards during the war and well after, in their obscurity and while on trial for war crimes. It's quite well done and makes you rethink your preconceptions a little. A good book, would recommend if you have a strong stomach and heart. art of spoonbending fucked around with this message at 18:19 on Nov 13, 2013 |
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Nov 13, 2013 18:03
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The Ugly American by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer. A very telling fictionalized examination of the failures of the United States' foreign policy in SE Asia. While not jingoistic and reactionary as a whole, I felt some elements were tinged with a bit of a white man's burden to uplift the uncivilized foreign masses. Some of the caricatured cultures also seemed terribly reductive and only loosely based on reality. Nevertheless, the book places the onus for losing the hearts and minds of the people squarely on America's bullheaded shortsightedness and xenophobia through several engaging and cautionary tales. I felt that the authors lost some of their satirical bite by including an afterward in which they laborious explain how, even though this is a fictional work, it was based on very real people and problems that were sabotaging the diplomatic process. As it was written in the midst of the Cold War, I suppose Burdick and Lederer felt the need to spell out these problems in very clear, unmistakable terms. Still, it reads as a prescient look at how the ideological front would be lost in the years to come.
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Nov 14, 2013 05:45
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Just finished Ender's Game. I either missed this one growing up or have erased it from my memory. Easy and enjoyable book.
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Nov 14, 2013 17:04
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I just finished Hyperion. It thought it was excellent. Going to finish up Horns which i've been putting off then I think I might pick up S that J.J. Abrams just put out. Looks interesting.
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Nov 14, 2013 18:22
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I finished The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo the other day. I had heard about it, but never knew what it was about. I decided to read it after my girlfriend recommended it, and I ended up liking it! I liked the characters and I'm a sucker for mysteries, so now I'm off to read the two others in the trilogy.
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Nov 14, 2013 19:15
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Bone posted:I finished The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo the other day. I had heard about it, but never knew what it was about. I decided to read it after my girlfriend recommended it, and I ended up liking it! I liked the characters and I'm a sucker for mysteries, so now I'm off to read the two others in the trilogy. I'm a big fan of the series, and I think The Girl Who Played with Fire is probably my favorite of the three, though the whole trilogy is really good.
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Nov 14, 2013 19:56
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Nikaer Drekin posted:I'm a big fan of the series, and I think The Girl Who Played with Fire is probably my favorite of the three, though the whole trilogy is really good. ...if you like learning about the Swedish Constitution. Bone, you should check out Jo Nesbo, Jussi Adler-Olsen and Henning Mankell, all of whom do dark Scandinavian mystery/thrillers better than Stieg Larsson (in my opinion).
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Nov 14, 2013 20:01
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funkybottoms posted:...if you like learning about the Swedish Constitution. Bone, you should check out Jo Nesbo, Jussi Adler-Olsen and Henning Mankell, all of whom do dark Scandinavian mystery/thrillers better than Stieg Larsson (in my opinion). This is really weird, I came to post that I have been burning through the Martin Beck novels by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. I just finished the eighth novel, The Locked Room and have the ninth novel on hold at the library. Sjöwall and Wahlöö are supposedly the grandparents of the dark Scandinavian thriller but I haven't read anything by Nesbo or the others, so I cannot really say if that is true or not. I discovered them because I was interested in the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and some article mentioned that Larsson was influenced by Sjöwall and Wahlöö. He definitely borrows some ideas from the Beck novels and the sense of realism is there too.
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Nov 14, 2013 20:16
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Nikaer Drekin posted:I'm a big fan of the series, and I think The Girl Who Played with Fire is probably my favorite of the three, though the whole trilogy is really good. It's also the only one published in English under its original title.
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Nov 15, 2013 01:34
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iamhaen posted:I just finished Hyperion. It thought it was excellent. Going to finish up Horns which i've been putting off then I think I might pick up S that J.J. Abrams just put out. Looks interesting. I would highly recommend reading the sequel. It takes a bit to get going but by about 1/3rd of the way through the book holy poo poo it gets good.
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Nov 15, 2013 02:02
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The Incrementalists by Steven Brust and Skyler White I gave this one three stars after reading it on my kindle. The narrative is a bit muddled at times and the story suffers for it. The Incrementalists are a group of people who pass their memories and personalities on after they die to new members which allows the group as a whole to meddle with people's lives at critical points to make the world a better place. The book revolves around a new member's induction which goes awry. It's basically a mystery novel with a dash of romance and a twist of urban fantasy.
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Nov 16, 2013 04:27
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