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chernobyl kinsman posted:thats not actually what catholic thought about sin is tho. "thought-sin" of the kind discussed by Jesus ("whoever lusts after a woman, adultery in his heart" etc) requires internal and conscious assent. feeling an attraction to someone is not a sin, but indulging that attraction - lust - to the point of fantasizing about them or w/e is. the former is uncontrollable, but the latter is entirely within your control. this is linked to what Jesus says about plucking out your right eye if it offends you and so on. its part and parcel with ancient thought on practicing inner discipline as well as outer. the bible as a whole, and the NT in particular, and certainly subsequent christian writers, are pretty clear that just going through the motions or acting externally pious is not enough; there must be real inner change, which involves real inner mastery of your baser drives like lust and pride and wrath and the whole bunch. Your, or your representation of what they're saying is drawing a much finer line between control and lack of it when it comes to the likes of feeling lust and a conscious, if internal, action. I mean, I have no doubt you're correct on the theology, but the teaching of that theology to kids in a school isn't so nuanced when they talk about sinning in thought. And that sets up a whole host of internalised personal issues in a catholic country.
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Dec 11, 2019 21:51
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Mrenda posted:Your, or your representation of what they're saying is drawing a much finer line between control and lack of it when it comes to the likes of feeling lust and a conscious, if internal, action. i dont really think thats true. its the difference between seeing a woman and thinking "shes hot" vs. imagining what she looks like nude, what shes like in bed, if shed be into making GBS threads on your chest, etc. in the case of pride, its the difference between feeling good about an accomplishment, say, and consciously reviewing the ways in which you're better than others. again, you can control the latter, while not the former. quote:I mean, I have no doubt you're correct on the theology, but the teaching of that theology to kids in a school isn't so nuanced when they talk about sinning in thought. And that sets up a whole host of internalised personal issues in a catholic country. i mean yeah i dont doubt that but now we're talking the failure of educational and catechismal standards in contemporary k-12 catholic schools, which is not exactly the same as "the catholic church" or "catholic thinking"
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Dec 11, 2019 21:59
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The Skystone by Jack Whyte is Arthurian fantasy, not a subgenre I have anything but a passing acquaintance with. As such, I have no real context for this book or its venue. Skystone is set well before the time of Arthur, and instead sets out to tell the story of the origins of Arthur, Camelot, and Excalibur - beginning with the last days of the Roman occupation of Britain. It's an unusual setting, one I've never read about before, and while I have some knowledge of Roman history, Roman Britain is largely a blank spot for me. I enjoyed the setting, it's different from anything I'm used to, and Whyte does a terrific job of evoking an apocalyptic atmosphere. He struck a vibe very similar to any "the end of the world as we know it" Tomorrow AD novels I've read, but the end of the world in question is the end of the Roman world. For all that I enjoyed the setting, the characters in this book are all shallow archetypes. Protagonist Publius Varrus is A Good Man. So is his best friend Caius Britannicus. Claudius Senesca is A Villain. King Ullic Pendragon of the Celts is a Noble Savage. Luceiia is A Good Wife And Mother. Phoebe exists to demonstrate the protagonist's manly virility and then get murdered by the villain to motivate the protagonist. And so on and so forth. There are no surprises anywhere to be had in the book, no one changes or grows as a character, and oh my God aren't Britons special? Maybe all this is par for the course for the genre, but I found it disappointing since I enjoyed the unusual setting.
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Dec 12, 2019 00:39
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I would recommend Rosemary Sutcliff's Sword at Sunset for a probably better twilight-of-the-Roman-Empire take on Arthurian legend.
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Dec 12, 2019 00:41
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Thank you for reminding of The Last Legion, a mediocre-at-best film about this exact same subject that I nevertheless enjoyed. Might pick up one of the titles you two mentioned and revisit that setting.
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Dec 12, 2019 06:35
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i liked bernard cornwell's trilogy. starts with the winter king
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Dec 12, 2019 07:08
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Sisal Two-Step posted:But he does trot out the hoary old trope of "menstration = horror!!!". Or maybe he started that trope? I get it, in a way. If you don't have a vagina yourself, the idea of bleeding from one seems baffling and awful, especially if you are a boomer raised in Maine with little sexual education, but it's still kind of weird to frame what is ultimately a mundane and normal bodily function as a horror trope. I'm not going to go on a huge defense of King or Carrie, but I feel like he's actually much better about his treatment of menstruation horror than most authors. Most of the female characters in the book treat menstruation as a normal bodily process (iirc the gym teacher has an aside where she thinks about what a pleasant non-event her own menarche was); menstruation is specifically horrific for Carrie White because of bullying from her peers, as well as her abusive mother treating female sexual maturation as sinful and keeping Carrie ignorant and terrified of puberty. Menarche is a trigger for Carrie because of her own awful situation, not because of anything intrinsically horrific about it.
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Dec 12, 2019 14:09
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Antivehicular posted:I'm not going to go on a huge defense of King or Carrie, but I feel like he's actually much better about his treatment of menstruation horror than most authors. Most of the female characters in the book treat menstruation as a normal bodily process (iirc the gym teacher has an aside where she thinks about what a pleasant non-event her own menarche was); menstruation is specifically horrific for Carrie White because of bullying from her peers, as well as her abusive mother treating female sexual maturation as sinful and keeping Carrie ignorant and terrified of puberty. Menarche is a trigger for Carrie because of her own awful situation, not because of anything intrinsically horrific about it. i would agree with most of this except for the baffling decision to have sue start her own period after carrie dies at the end of the novel. i'm still unpacking what the hell that was supposed to mean. does that count as a spoiler? can you spoil a 40 year old book? oh well. i enjoyed carrie for the most part. i think this stephen king guy has got some real talent! e: i guess it's supposed to imply that carrie's psychic trauma has been passed to sue? here's a book i started but didn't finish: small game hunting at the local coward's gun club by.... someone. it was short-listed for a giller prize, which is the big award in contemporary canlit. every year i feel bad for not reading more canlit but then i pick something like small game hunting up and remember why i don't bother most of the time. this book was boring misery porn. repetitive and dull. the characters were awful people but not even in an engaging way; entire pages would go past where characters think about the same things over and over and over and over. a guy is cheating on his rich wife but doesn't intend to leave her even though he loves his mistress! he says as much for straight up five pages. i GET IT dude. Sisal Two-Step fucked around with this message at 14:54 on Dec 12, 2019 |
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Dec 12, 2019 14:50
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Carrie ending: I believe Sue is supposed to be experiencing a miscarriage due to Carrie.
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Dec 12, 2019 17:54
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Yeah, I recall parsing it as a miscarriage when I read the book, although that was like 20 years ago now and I'm vague on a lot of the details. I think you could also make an argument that Sue's late period and its arrival is a symbol of the cycles of anxiety and eventual bloody catharsis so common in the horror genre, but that may be giving early King more credit than is justified.
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Dec 12, 2019 18:14
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I just finished The Lost World by Crichton. I liked Jurassic Park a ton so I got through this one ok, but by the time I started getting into it I looked down and saw I was already 75% done. It just didn’t grip me from the start like the original. I will say Crichton has a really eerie way of writing death that sticks in my head. Not just the gore of people getting mauled by dinosaurs but their final thoughts and feelings before existence goes dark really messed with me.
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Dec 14, 2019 06:41
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i'm debating whether or not to continue reading less than zero. i never like leaving books unfinished, it's a half-ocd thing, but it's so boring. it's just vignettes which reiterate the same ideas about the character, bolted together and not even smoothly transitioning. i like the "disappear here" and "people are afraid to merge" motifs but the character's disillusionment, which is always present, and doesn't occur or wane, makes it so there's very little emotion to the book. i don't know. i think i want it to be something more than it is. like a great expectations with cocaine, or late capitalism bell jar or something, but it's not that
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Dec 17, 2019 01:32
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Life is too short to suffer through books you don’t like.
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Dec 17, 2019 06:31
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tuyop posted:Life is too short to suffer through books you don’t like. See also: the 3 or 4 times I've started and stopped Infinite Jest
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Dec 17, 2019 15:01
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The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon. A friend recommended I start with it as my first Pynchon. I found it a little tricky to follow at first but once I slipped into the right mindset a few pages in it was pretty straightforward. I quite liked the absurd humour and bizarre characters but a friend of mine read it at the same time and hated the humour. Up until this we’ve had the same sense of humour on everything so ymmv. What really surprised me was how much I connected with Oedipa and by the end I was far more invested in her arc than the humour. Her sense of trying to connect with something larger than herself or with people in a greater way than she currently was is something that was very understandable and relatable to me. Especially the sense of frustration that you are occasionally on the cusp of some grander understanding of the place and reality you occupy before it slips away. Ah yeds.
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Dec 18, 2019 11:25
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EmmyOk posted:The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon. A friend recommended I start with it as my first Pynchon. On my last re-read, the part where Oedipa thinks about the painting Bordando el Manto Terrestre resonated with me. I love that little passage.
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Dec 18, 2019 14:46
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Walkaway by Cory Doctorow. Set in 2070 Canada, some people cast off society and take 3D printers into the wilderness to live in communes. And also people are uploading themselves to live in computers. And also there are zeppelins and drones flying around. Alone, one of these elements might have been a good story but this was a dull mess. Doctorow is less interested in how a new society may work than he is in making comparisons to message board arguments. Dunno why it was set in 2070 when most tech seems identical. The antagonists are cookie cutter faceless governments and plutocrats who keep sending drones to blow up things as the plot demands. Perspective switches between identical characters who can’t believe how much they are right about everything and anyone not walking away is dumb. People uploading themselves is terribly executed. No questions about how it’s not the same person or someone talking to their copy, just a lazy excuse for characters to stick around after dying. Much better done in the Otherland series. Doctorow is an excellent writer, Radicalized was fantastic and his short stories are great, but after this I’m gonna steer away from his attempts at novels.
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Dec 24, 2019 22:34
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Moby Dick by Herman Melville [Copied from BotM thread] I absolutely loved the story portion, which I felt like maybe 30% of the book. The other 70% felt like Encyclopedia Whale. Which was very interesting at first (So much so I was sitting in Wikipedia going over it all), but lost me when it felt like Melville obsessed over every little bit of whale and never stopped writing. Skeleton? Heads? Skin? Brain? Intestines? I could be entirely off, and maybe it was really 70/30 just because content that doesn't interest you seems to drag. I do admit I'm terrible at allegories and most likely much of this content went right over my head. (Even reading an annotated version) Those last 30 or so chapters were amazing, however. It really saved me from feeling bad about reading this. I'm glad I stuck with it and finished it. Maybe I'll revisit it again a few years from now.
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Dec 25, 2019 23:39
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the parts about whales are the cool and important parts and the plot is mostly incidental. this shocks you!
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Dec 26, 2019 01:50
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The Whiteness of the Whale might be my single favorite passage in English prose
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Dec 26, 2019 06:01
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Mover posted:The Whiteness of the Whale might be my single favorite passage in English prose it's insanely good
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Dec 27, 2019 04:36
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A Squeeze of the Hand ftw
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Dec 27, 2019 16:28
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Agent Running in the Field by John Le Carré. I love Le Carré but this latest from him is mostly just...strange. The ties to current events are fine and handled fairly deftly, and Le Carré retains his eye for character, but the last fifty pages turn into a bizarrely comic interlude that doesn't mix with the rest of the book.
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Dec 27, 2019 16:37
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Giger by H.R. Giger Got this for Christmas. I was really into Giger about 30 years ago, and I have a lot of his portfolios that I used to hang all over my walls. (Looking back, I'm not sure how my parents let me do this.) I wouldn't do this today, but I still enjoy his unique aesthetic. It's a short book, about 100 pages or so, filled with art on every page, but also an autobiography. He writes about growing up and various influences he had, girlfriends, and other life adventures. You get to see the direction his art went from smaller displays to eventually being hired on designing props for movies. He writes about other artists he was friends with and a few encounters. It's a perfect mix for a quick read and some fantastic art to look at. Nothing boring here, it's all interesting.
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Dec 27, 2019 19:22
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North American Lake Monsters by Nathan Ballingrud --- I don't normally write reviews for the books I've read, but this one struck me as important. Nathan Ballingrud is a magician, an arcane master of manipulating fear, despair, anguish, sadness and grief. I'm used to single-author collections starting out on a really high note, but tapering off shortly thereafter. This doesn't happen in North American Lake Monsters. The only low point, to me, was "S.S.", though I'm willing to give that one a re-read since I've finished the book now. Every other story was stunning. "The Crevasse" had me feeling terror in the middle of the day. "The Way Station" had me wide-eyed and imagining fantastical, cosmic images in my head. Two of the stories in particular: "The Monsters Of Heaven" and "The Good Husband", were head and shoulders above possibly any short story I've ever read. The pacing was spot on, the odd existential horror was there, the writing was painterly, and the human emotion in it hit me like a sledgehammer. If you enjoy horror in any capacity, do yourself a favor: read this book.
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Dec 27, 2019 19:33
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In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. I enjoyed it a lot and would like to read more books like it!
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Dec 27, 2019 22:31
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Have the last few pages of Moneyball left. Really great book, and far more crunchy on the numbers than the movie. Michael Lewis is great at making stats legible, even if he leans heavily on genius source material to explain it. I'm reading Born to Run by Christopher McDougall at the same time. Lewis has the better book. McDougall can't quit the hyperbole and ~~astonishment~~. He's got a crazy enough subject without being so heavy handed. Anyways... I can't believe they did Mike Magnante so, so dirty. Also, the chapter about their 20th consecutive win is pure magic. ThePopeOfFun fucked around with this message at 02:37 on Dec 28, 2019 |
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Dec 28, 2019 02:32
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COOL CORN posted:North American Lake Monsters by Nathan Ballingrud --- I don't normally write reviews for the books I've read, but this one struck me as important. Nathan Ballingrud is a magician, an arcane master of manipulating fear, despair, anguish, sadness and grief. I'm used to single-author collections starting out on a really high note, but tapering off shortly thereafter. This doesn't happen in North American Lake Monsters. The only low point, to me, was "S.S.", though I'm willing to give that one a re-read since I've finished the book now. Every other story was stunning. "The Crevasse" had me feeling terror in the middle of the day. "The Way Station" had me wide-eyed and imagining fantastical, cosmic images in my head. Two of the stories in particular: "The Monsters Of Heaven" and "The Good Husband", were head and shoulders above possibly any short story I've ever read. The pacing was spot on, the odd existential horror was there, the writing was painterly, and the human emotion in it hit me like a sledgehammer. If you enjoy horror in any capacity, do yourself a favor: read this book. I read this almost a year ago (another recommendation from this thread) and the first story (forgot its name) absolutely floored me. The rest of the book definitely doesn’t disappoint either. Highly recommended.
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Dec 29, 2019 12:54
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EmmyOk posted:The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon. A friend recommended I start with it as my first Pynchon. This was a relatively recent read that really makes me feel like a big dumb. I practically dragged myself through it after hearing about some of the ideas in the book that I figured would be right up my alley. I admittedly don’t even remember much outside of feeling lost but I always like reading a post by someone who appreciates a book I could not because I feel like I can pick up a shard of meaning out of noise. Relevant to my literary inabilities, I recently finished The Princess Bride by William Goldman. I love the kind of book that feels like the perfect adventure. I got a lot of the same vibe when I finally read The Neverending Story or, more recently, The Vorrh. Also, the parallels between the story’s idealism and interspersed metatext raining-on-the-parade from Goldman are awfully cute. I’m trapped in rural Ontario for the holidays so the only recognizable book I could find at the local store was The Dead Astronauts by VanderMeer. I enjoyed reading Annihilation in the past so fingies crossed!
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Dec 30, 2019 15:34
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The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon Excellent. Weaves history and geography through it's narrative quite deftly. I loved the language - Zafon has a way of perfectly summing up a character's entire personality and history into a single witty sentence. It's all a little overwhelming (plots upon plots upon plots with twists and reveals, mainly packed into the last third of the book) but it's still massively rewarding.
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Dec 30, 2019 17:44
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Franchescanado posted:On my last re-read, the part where Oedipa thinks about the painting Bordando el Manto Terrestre resonated with me. I love that little passage. Went and read this again and definitely agree nut posted:This was a relatively recent read that really makes me feel like a big dumb. I practically dragged myself through it after hearing about some of the ideas in the book that I figured would be right up my alley. I admittedly don’t even remember much outside of feeling lost but I always like reading a post by someone who appreciates a book I could not because I feel like I can pick up a shard of meaning out of noise. It’s not for everyone for sure. I feel that sentiment always comes across a bit dismissive but that’s not my intention. One of my pals whose read a lot more literature than I have and we’ve always had the same sense of humour tried twice and couldn’t stand it. I think the dreamy quality has a certain rhythm (?) that you end up falling in sync with or not. Part of that is enjoying the absurdity which I did (my pal did not) and the other is if you can connect with Oedipa herself and what she’s experiencing. If either of those don’t click for you I can see it leaving you ice cold
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Dec 31, 2019 20:15
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The good news is, if you dislike The Crying of Lot 49, you could still very much try any other Pynchon novels and enjoy them. The Crying of Lot 49 is an outlier for reasons other than it's length, it has a certain tone and feel that's different than his other books. Pynchon repeats themes and ideas, but every book has it's own unique tone and voice. Mason & Dixon is no Inherent Vice, is no V., is no Gravity's Rainbow, etc.
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Dec 31, 2019 21:03
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What would you guys recommend for Pynchon then if someone didn’t really like the dreamy, absurd tone? I hear Mason & Dixon is fantastic and it sounds much more grounded than the rest.
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Dec 31, 2019 21:44
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Sandwolf posted:What would you guys recommend for Pynchon then if someone didn’t really like the dreamy, absurd tone? I hear Mason & Dixon is fantastic and it sounds much more grounded than the rest. There is literally a psychic talking dog within the first 30 pages. It's great. Probably...Vineland or Inherent Vice or Bleeding Edge... The main character of Inherent Vice is constantly stoned and has a history of LSD, so sometimes he gets some hallucinations, but the narrative structure isn't very dreamy. I wouldn't recommend Vineland as an intro to Pynchon, though. It's a good book, but it's my least favorite of his. The important thing with Pynchon is knowing that his whole literary drive is to question the idea of knowledge, perspective and "knowing" things. His characters are presented with questions. As they try and find answers, they only reveal more questions. Ultimately they must confront that it is impossible to fully know anything, which is what leads to the major paranoia Pynchon is known for. "If They get you to ask the wrong questions, They don't have to worry about the answers." Within that mystery, though, there is room for understanding, or embracing absurdity's beauty. So you don't read a Pynchon novel to find a solution to the mysteries, but to find personal insights and meaning in the act of searching.
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Dec 31, 2019 22:02
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Franchescanado posted:The good news is, if you dislike The Crying of Lot 49, you could still very much try any other Pynchon novels and enjoy them. The Crying of Lot 49 is an outlier for reasons other than it's length, it has a certain tone and feel that's different than his other books. Pynchon repeats themes and ideas, but every book has it's own unique tone and voice. Mason & Dixon is no Inherent Vice, is no V., is no Gravity's Rainbow, etc. I like absurdity! I have a close friend who hated Crying but swears by plenty more of Pynchon. I’ll definitely try another of his from all the positive posts about it here.
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Dec 31, 2019 22:05
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Sandwolf posted:What would you guys recommend for Pynchon then if someone didn’t really like the dreamy, absurd tone? I hear Mason & Dixon is fantastic and it sounds much more grounded than the rest. you're never going to completely get away from the absurdity w/ pynchon, he's too interested in having his characters Know Something Is Up and then having them be completely justified. mason & dixon is probably the least prone to getting trapped in the characters brains for a bit, if only because of the sort of weird picaresque tone of the whole thing that keeps driving the characters forward and not letting them dwell. honestly if you bounced off lot 49 i'd say V is a good shout, it does a lot of what lot 49 tries to do a lot more fully and the more absurd, dreamy stuff is extremely visceral in a way that makes it difficult to not be engaged by
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Dec 31, 2019 23:07
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CestMoi posted:you're never going to completely get away from the absurdity w/ pynchon, he's too interested in having his characters Know Something Is Up and then having them be completely justified. mason & dixon is probably the least prone to getting trapped in the characters brains for a bit, if only because of the sort of weird picaresque tone of the whole thing that keeps driving the characters forward and not letting them dwell. honestly if you bounced off lot 49 i'd say V is a good shout, it does a lot of what lot 49 tries to do a lot more fully and the more absurd, dreamy stuff is extremely visceral in a way that makes it difficult to not be engaged by As opposed to Gravity's Rainbow where the dreaminess just carries you along with it from scene to scene, stopping by various minor characters on its way Bilirubin fucked around with this message at 01:24 on Jan 1, 2020 |
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Jan 1, 2020 01:21
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Foundation by Isaac Asimov This was a great book to end the decade with. However, it kind of spoils a lot of scifi I've enjoyed before it. Consisting of five short stories that link together spanning a hundred or so years, it tells the story of seeing the future of the Galactic Empire falling. There is so much Dune here, and the opening story is totally Imperium of Mankind's Terra from Warhammer 40k which eventually leads into Adeptus Mechanicus themes throughout. You have machines that are maintained by priests whose religion is science. You have visions into the future and trying to pick the right paths so humanity doesn't spend 30,000 years in darkness. You have personal shields that make guns useless. So much in such a tiny book. This was written in 1942! Yeah, I knew he influenced scifi, but this is kind of ridiculous. As much as I liked Dune, it's kind of heart breaking to know almost all of it was written already 20 plus years prior. It was a very cool read. Not much action, but a whole lot of politicking with smooth moves left and right. Philthy fucked around with this message at 04:07 on Jan 1, 2020 |
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Jan 1, 2020 03:57
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Franchescanado posted:There is literally a psychic talking dog within the first 30 pages. It's great. Is there a site that gives you a succinct overview of particular literary author’s works like the above? Cause it was extremely helpful. If not...there should be. I’d read a lot more literary fiction if I knew what I was supposed to get out of it / think hard about before I dove in.
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Jan 1, 2020 22:51
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ketchup vs catsup posted:I’d read a lot more literary fiction if I knew what I was supposed to get out of it / think hard about before I dove in. jesus christ. just read the sparknotes
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Jan 1, 2020 23:11
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