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elbow posted:Try Joe Sacco's Palestine. Kopijeger posted:Also, Guy Delisle's travelouges, particulary Shenzen and Pyongyang. Seconding these and adding My Friend Dahmer (and pretty much any Sacco is really good)
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Jun 6, 2015 12:26
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Dune, for the first time in years. It's still really good. Something tells me I should quit being a loving child and read some real literature, but I probably won't.
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Jun 8, 2015 00:07
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Jon Do posted:Dune, for the first time in years. It's still really good. then get the gently caress outta here!!!!!!!!!
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Jun 8, 2015 00:52
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Jon Do posted:Dune, for the first time in years. It's still really good. Dune isn't real literature? Hersey. I just re-read Sum of All Fears or "one of the last good Clancy novels" P good.
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Jun 9, 2015 01:26
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Thunder Moose posted:Dune isn't real literature? Hersey. 
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Jun 9, 2015 11:15
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I recently raved about Mike Dash's Batavia's Graveyard, so I went on to read another of his books: Satan's Circus. In a nutshell, it's about the career of a cop in early 20th century New York, his intersections with the famous and infamous, and his eventual trial for murder. It covers the later years of the Tammany Hall machine, the period leading after "Gangs of New York", graft and crime. I didn't like it quite as much as BG, but it's an undeniably messier story that sprawls over decades and a huge cast of characters. Most of the book is endnotes, references and an index. But it's still an intriguing story of an astonishing corrupt time and place.
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Jun 9, 2015 11:39
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I just finished A Succession of Bad Days- the sequel to Graydon Saunders' The March North. Still fantastic, and we get to find out a lot more about the setting. I'd describe it as the mix between the engineering parts of Verne's Mysterious Island, and a psychic harem anime starring incredibly powerful sorcerers.
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Jun 9, 2015 20:13
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I just finished The Maddaddam Trilogy (Oryx and Crake, Year of the Flood, and Maddaddam) by Margaret Atwood. I went into Oryx and Crake not really knowing anything about it, and having not read anything else by Margaret Atwood, I think I bought it in a bundle or something, and loved it, so I bought the other books and read through them on my lunch breaks at work. All three were great, but I think the one I liked most was Year of the Flood. Though I did like how in Maddaddam the climax of the story is not shown but told as like a simplified after action report. Also, despite the depressing setting, all three were darkly hilarious.
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Jun 10, 2015 18:05
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Kick-rear end, by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr. I'd seen the film adaption of this a few times, so I had some idea of what to expect: ultraviolence, maybe a little teenage angst, a lot of bad language. What I got was, well, kind of that, but nothing else. To put it bluntly, the film is far better. The art is ugly, the writing is like the dialogue from a Zack Snyder film with added swears (there's a queasy casual homophobia to it too) and at no point did I really feel I cared what was happening. They changed a lot of the plot events (and character backstory) for the movie, and as far as I can tell every alteration was for the better (apart from Big Daddy's reveal of what's in the suitcase - which would have worked much better if I'd been given any opportunity to care at all about him as a character). For a minor phenomenon this was a hell of a damp squib. The Martian, by Andy Weir. The first audiobook I've listened to in a while, the performance by R.C. Bray being something amazing, as far as I was told. And you know what? I was told right. He captures the mood of the situation perfectly, from the deadly seriousness of Mark's position to the genuinely funny parts. The writing is pretty stellar all round, and the plot unfolds like a novel-length version of a classic 70s disaster movie procedural, with desperate plans and tiny overlooked problems leading to catastrophe. Really gripping, sad, and the ending was really satisfying.
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Jun 12, 2015 22:24
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I just finished A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin. What can I say that hasn't been said about the series and Game of Thrones in general? Parts of it were exceptionally thrilling, and the ending was perfectly melancholy without being a total "haha it's a total cliffhanger you jerks! Don't forget to buy book 3!". Also, the politics and multiple kings angle was never too hard to follow or boring. Their motivations were all well-rounded and it never felt contrived. There were parts that did feel like filler and it seemed like Martin was spinning his wheels for a couple of characters - most of Daenarys' time in Qarth trying to get supplies and stuff really feels like it, especially with the lucky deus ex machina conclusion to her time there - but they were few and far between. I don't think I'm going to start the 3rd book right away but I look forward to it eventually.
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Jun 13, 2015 19:04
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Just finished DisneyWar by James B Stewart. Not really someone who was super into or familiar with Disney, and it's not the sort of non-fiction I normally read, but it was a fun read. Just kind of disappointed by the anti-climax of the ending, you frame this whole loving war and Shakespearean rise & fall then can't just wait until it's finally finally resolved to put out the book? The book should not be ending talking in the present tense with "No matter when or how Michael Eisner leaves Disney", it was pretty lame. Couldn't you have waited a little, Stewart?! It's like he got 99.99% of it and then went "gently caress it, let's go!"
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Jun 14, 2015 08:32
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The Painted Bird by J Kosinski took me about three days to get through. It's a fictionalized memoir, of sorts, about a young boy in Eastern Europe during World War II. After his parents are forced to send him to away so they can enter hiding, he is passed from village to village, caretaker to caretaker, who abuse and malign the child in different ways. During his journey, he experiences profound violence and alienation from the superstitious, anti-semitic peasants: rapes, brutalizations, death, and a descent into nihilism -- stopped only by the Red Army. Suffice to say, there's a lot going on in this novel and it takes a surreal, detached tone towards its subject. The violence -- sexual and physical -- is pornographic and puerile, and there's the very real sense that the narrator - a child of 8-10 - is the only human not entirely reduced to base animal behavior. It's a difficult book to read, but (like most other Holocaust and war fiction, I think) also important.
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Jun 14, 2015 20:12
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Finally finished Black Ajax by George MacDonald Fraser. This was my "wildcard" for the Booklord Challenge, for those who are participating, so this book was assigned to be by another goon. I wasn't particularly interested in the subject matter (historical fiction based on the life of a real boxer, Tom Molineaux) but it eventually grew on me and was a funny and sad story. It dragged a bit at the beginning, which I think is why I kept putting it down to read other books. I'm not sure if I'd read anything else by the author because this took me a few months to power through, but it was an interesting experience and certainly not something I would have read on my own accord.
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Jun 15, 2015 15:39
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I finally finished William Gibson's Mona Lisa Overdrive, the final book of his "Sprawl Trilogy". I liked it, but I think it starts very strong and ends very weakly, especially compared to a lot of his other work. I've read 5 gibson novels now, as well as his short story collection (Burning Chrome). I have to say, he's clearly a person who like to focus on and refine his good ideas. I can't really hold that against him, and I consider him one of my favorite writers because I relate very much to the dysfunctionality of his characters. But I also feel like 3 of his books are practically different drafts of the same story. The "revelation" at the end of Mona Lisa Overdrive is literally the same one as the end of Neuromancer. Yeah a few different things happen plotwise, but digital afterlife and the AI making contact with an alien AI is all revealed in Neuromancer. Mona Lisa Overdrive shares continuity (and characters) with Neuromancer, and doesn't really offer anything new, just the same revelations through the eyes of different characters. The thing is, these "different characters" are archetypically similar to characters from his other books. Like I said, I can't get mad at him for basically looking at his own work, choosing the parts he likes/is good at and building stories around those parts specifically. Mostly I am disappointed, because after reading my first two-three Gibson books, I felt elated: this is a guy I can really dive into. 2-3 books later, I feel like there's a lot less "new" material in his books than I expected to find from how many titles he's written.
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Jun 15, 2015 16:18
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That seems like a pattern of Gibson's trilogies. The middling Virtual Light shifted into the awesome Idoru and finished with the anti-climatic All Tomorrow's Parties, which seemed a lot like he said lets see what all the old characters are doing and send them off. Pattern Recognition, Spook Country and Zero History have a loosely shared cast, but also a lot of characters that are nearly identical and even very similar plots. Obviously, I read all of them but they left me with the feeling that they were less than they appeared to be.
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Jun 15, 2015 19:28
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:Finished up The Fold by Peter Clines. Just finished reading this one too. Well, I did the audio book and I liked the narrator. I thought it was really fun and a cool sci-fi horror story. Not super impressed with the characterization of women (fell a little flat) but I ain't mad at it. Would make a stellar film. Speaking of The Martian, I can't believe so many people liked it. I tried reading it but found the writing sophomoric and stale. Didn't make it past the first chapter. Should I give it another go? It seemed like it would be reeeeeeally boring.
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Jun 15, 2015 19:37
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frenchnewwave posted:
The prose and characterization aren't really why people like it. You should probably just wait for the movie, though.
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Jun 15, 2015 19:42
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Snak posted:
Most appropriate avatar possible next to this post. I just finished "Making His Way - Frank Courtney's Struggle Upward" by Horatio Alger. The phrase "Horatio Alger story" got stuck in my head and it occurred to me that I'd never read one, so I picked one arbitrarily. Holy hell is this a steaming pile of garbage. To summarize: Frank Courtney is the son of a wealthy, sickly widow, who marries a much poorer man, who also has a son who does not get along with Frank at all. The stepfather forges his wife's will, giving himself all of the property, and more or less disinheriting Frank. Frank goes to New York to Make His Way. He takes a job selling tea at exploitative wages and decides that just won't do and quits. He is approached by a man attempting to sell stolen bonds and happily makes himself an unwitting accomplice in the crime, and is then recruited into playing a role in a sting to get the thief. It turns out the bonds were stolen from the home of a wealthy Wall Street type, who later wishes to meet Frank, but not before Frank runs into the man's daughter and grandson who don't have carriage fare, and he pays for them, ingratiating himself to the family. He is almost immediately offered a job for 20 times the money he was making before. This is after chapter after chapter about the various pursuits of boys living on their own and how little they pay and how Frank is cut out for better things! His test to get the job (as the rentier's secretary) is to transcribe a dictated newspaper article. That's it. He later returns home to meet an old acquaintance who had been taking care of his family's home, and who by chance found the real will, and Frank's inheritance is restored, the end. No, wait, the end is where the author writes: "Frank does not regret the year in which he was thrown upon his own resources. It gave him strength and self-reliance; and however long he may live, he will not cease to remember the year in which he was 'Making His Way.'" Yes, he learned strength and self-reliance from being a door-to-door salesman for a few days. And his success came not from lucking into a meeting with a rich dude, who only gave him the time of day because he, being raised rich, had the bearing of a rich kid; but from his rugged individualism. How in the everloving gently caress did it ever become a conservameme that Horatio Alger wrote things from which poors should draw inspiration?
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Jun 15, 2015 22:51
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I just finished rereading Let The Right One In, by John Ajvide Lindqvist. I was first introduced to the Swedish film adaptation not long after I had an unfortunate encounter with Twilight. Given that I have since read the book multiple times, I think you can guess my opinions on the adaptation. Let The Right One In is a tale of a twelve year old Swedish boy named Oskar in 1980s Blackeberg, a small suburb of Stockholm. He's overweight, he gets bullied in school, he wets himself fairly regularly and he has a very unhealthy fascination with murderers - even noting to himself as he looks at one of his newspaper cuttings of someone who has just been executed in the electric chair, that that could be him in twenty years. A girl about his age called Eli and her father move in next door, and after an incredibly awkward first meeting, they gradually fall in love. Eli just so happens to be a vampire - she's twelve, but she's been twelve for a very long time. It's also a story of a drunk named Lakke and his friends - including a woman named Virginia who he has always been in love with but never been able to tell. A story of a widowed mother planning to marry a cop - to the dismay of her delinquent son. Simply put, it's a story of suburban Sweden, and how everything changes when a vampire and her hired helper move in. So yeah, it's a very good book, and well worth your time. There is also a sequel - a short story called Let The Old Dreams Die which gives its name to the collection it is in. If only I had the money...
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Jun 15, 2015 23:04
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hectorgrey posted:So yeah, it's a very good book, and well worth your time. There is also a sequel - a short story called Let The Old Dreams Die which gives its name to the collection it is in. If only I had the money... I've read it. It's good. The collection also contains a partial sequel to Handling the Undead, so the more Lindqvist you've read the more you'll get out of it (the correct amount to read is "all of it"). To whoever it was who read Kick-rear end - it's not Millar's best work. If you want to give him another chance, try Superior.
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Jun 16, 2015 13:13
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Jedit posted:The collection also contains a partial sequel to Handling the Undead, so the more Lindqvist you've read the more you'll get out of it (the correct amount to read is "all of it"). Well, since it was just my birthday, and my mum asked me what I wanted, I can apparently expect Handling the Undead and Let the Old Dreams Die at some point next week. Really looking forward to it - I don't normally read horror, but Lindqvist is apparently really good at it...
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Jun 18, 2015 00:43
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Man, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet was such a slog, and I feel bad for disliking it 'cause goodreads reviews are making me think I'm the only one. Probably just taking issue with the style in which it's written, since it's his most straightforward book alongside Black Swan Green, which I also thought was kinda' dull. Someone please tell me this was their least favorite Mitchell book, too.
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Jun 18, 2015 01:29
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Mira posted:Man, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet was such a slog, and I feel bad for disliking it 'cause goodreads reviews are making me think I'm the only one. Probably just taking issue with the style in which it's written, since it's his most straightforward book alongside Black Swan Green, which I also thought was kinda' dull. I think people who're already fans of his other poo poo tend to dislike this. This was the first one of his I've read and I enjoyed it more than a couple of others I've tried since then. Megazver fucked around with this message at 02:49 on Jun 18, 2015 |
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Jun 18, 2015 02:21
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I've read all of David Mitchell's books and I rank them like: 1. Black Swan Green 2. Number9Dream 3. Ghostwritten 4. Cloud Atlas 5. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet 6. The Bone Clocks But I'm sure somebody else is out there to tell me that I have them in the exact wrong order. I think it always comes down to how much I like the setting. The top 2 were the single stories where I liked the setting. Ghostwritten I liked most of the settings. Cloud Atlas I was about 50/50 on, Thousand Autumns I didn't like the setting, and Bone Clocks I only liked maybe 1.5 of the 6 stories. The prose is always good, so I never have trouble getting through it, I just don't remember or feel anything for the ones I'm not interested in.
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Jun 18, 2015 02:47
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Finished up 14 by Peter Clines. I read The Fold by him earlier in the month, and that was a sort of semi sequel where it and 14 share the same universe. No real crossover characters though. That being said, The Fold was a lot better book. 14 just took a long, long, long time before the plot started to kick in. Yes, it's a mysterious building. Yes we need to find out why. Yes I understand we are going to explore but FOR THE LOVE OF GOD loving ACCOMPLISH SOMETHING ALREADY. It's worth a read, but it's not really something you should worry about running out and buying this minute. The Fold handled the weird universe idea a lot more interestingly, to me anyway. If you read The Fold and hated it, you are gonna hate 14 with a passion. If you read The Fold and liked it, you'll probably get some happiness out of 14.
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Jun 18, 2015 17:20
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The Incomplete Tim Key - A fairly lengthy poetry collection of pretty short poems. Most of them are quite funny, though some of them fall a little short. The good ones took me by surprise with bursts of laughter, little nuggets of well-crafted and sometimes poignant comedy. One of the weirder sections of the book is 'The Keith Power Conundrum', in which Key includes forty draft versions of the same poem, exploring a variety of set-ups, scenarios and facets of the characters involved. Add to that an enormous and extensive set of footnotes, some numbering hundreds of words long, and you have a pretty meaty collection of Tim Key. Which is good, if (like me) you're a fan of his work.
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Jun 18, 2015 20:33
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I just finished the Frontlines Scifi trilogy by Marko Kloos. Fun little fun in space that's a lot more self aware about the fascist tendencies of the genre. I've just started Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. This book reeks of nerd persecution complex in that one  geek has completely revolutionized the world in one generation with a cutting edge piece of software and now EVERYBODY uses it even while it seems that human civilization is collapsing due to energy issues and and and-  Some piecesof media make you want to go out, find the nearest nerd and wail on him/her with a baseball bat. Also, The 80s are epitome of human culture in this drat book.
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Jun 19, 2015 15:25
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yeah I couldn't make it past chapter two
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Jun 19, 2015 17:50
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I enjoyed Ready Player One but it's the last 'Weren't the Eighties great'? book I need to read.
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Jun 19, 2015 18:28
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I thought it was the gooniest wish fulfillment book. Protagonist is celebrated for poopsocking old as poo poo videogames and remembering movies to such a sperg detail that he can quote them verbatim. His love interest is totally interesting and has a personality unlike all the vapid girls online because her avatar has flaws (at one point he describes her as "rubenesque" and I cringed so hard). His online friend winds up not only being a person of color but a girl and LGBQT in the trifecta of tokenism.
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Jun 19, 2015 22:29
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moot the hopple posted:I thought it was the gooniest wish fulfillment book.  That is the goonist loving wish fulfillment book. Now I gotta slog through it just to see this train wreck in action.
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Jun 19, 2015 22:40
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It's actually as terrible as everyone says and yet it's also entertaining. I read it in two days when I needed a quick dumb book between more serious lit. The world of the book is fun to read about and overall I liked the experience. But yes it's dumb wish fulfillment
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Jun 20, 2015 03:57
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Not getting the hate for Ready Player One. It's not serious literature, it's a fun, quick 80s nostalgia romp that caters to poo poo that nerds like. Stop overthinking it and just enjoy it.
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Jun 20, 2015 04:29
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Lawen posted:Not getting the hate for Ready Player One. It's not serious literature, it's a fun, quick 80s nostalgia romp that caters to poo poo that nerds like. Stop overthinking it and just enjoy it. If you qualify the posts above as "overthinking", I don't think you've done much thinking in your life.
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Jun 20, 2015 08:27
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The only part of Ready Player One I liked was that one of his passwords was "Setec Astronomy".
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Jun 20, 2015 21:09
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moot the hopple posted:I thought it was the gooniest wish fulfillment book. Terry Pratchett's fandom have a custom where anyone quoting Monty Python at a meet has to pay a fine. The reason for this will become perfectly clear when I tell you that I have witnessed a group of people in the queue at a signing reciting the entire of Life of Brian.
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Jun 20, 2015 23:56
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Just finished Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven. I didn't realize it was a decade old until near the end. It was all in all pretty good. I enjoyed the alternation between Mormon history and the story of the Lafferty case. However, I am not sure I buy his ultimate conclusion that the Mormon church today bears the scars of a culture of violence. It is pretty clearly the case with the FLDS and other splinters who attempted to remain true to the spirit and letter of the nineteenth century church, but the mainline Mormon church pretty clearly sold out to survive and prosper. It was especially fascinating to read this post-Warren Jeffs. He was spot on in explaining how that all came to be. Re: Dean Koontz from a couple pages back, I recommend Watchers. He's never been anything but pulpy, but his early stuff was tighter. He got rich and lazy.
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Jun 21, 2015 06:36
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I just finished The Variable Man by Phillip K Dick. I enjoyed it, I like how PKD describes scenes and character motivations in brief sort of poetic bursts. Maybe a little dated in a couple spots but pretty good overall. edit: Just finished The Shadow out of Time by HP and I really enjoyed it. Dr. Gene Dango MD fucked around with this message at 02:52 on Jun 23, 2015 |
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Jun 21, 2015 12:39
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Personal by Lee Child, yet another Jack Reacher book. This was one of the ones where it's like the last season of the A-Team: He's working for the government. It was OK. I prefer the ones that happen in America, with rural diners and good ol' boys.
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Jun 22, 2015 18:25
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The Fifth Witness by Michael Connelly - was a decent law romp from the defense side of things starring Connelly's slightly shady Lincoln Lawyer (Haller). It was a bit all over the shop, but overall was a good read. Gone Girl - Great book, but terrible ending. You could tell she ran out of steam and it really shows. I was actually upset with how bad the ending was.
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Jun 23, 2015 07:45
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