|
Vivisector posted:I just finished The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. It's a mystery novel about a boy with autism that goes in search of who murdered the neighbor's dog. He discovers a lot more. It's not a very difficult read, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I generally don't dig first person narratives, but for an author's debut novel to effectively paint a picture of the world through the eyes of someone with an autism spectrum disorder... just wow. I couldn't put this down today. It was quirky, informative, and moving in a human way, not in a saccharine Family Circus way. Goooooooddddddd.
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2007 13:46
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 31, 2024 14:21 |
|
|
Just finished reading Warren Ellis' Crooked Little Vein, and I must say I'm disappointeed. Ellis' comic book writing style just doesn't translate to literature. If you take out all the gross bits, then there would probably be 30 pages left, since there's not really much going in the book. As much as I like Warren Ellis' comic books and various articles, Chuck Palahniuk has him beat by many years, in the shock-literature genre.
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2007 16:24
|
|
|
Just finished A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce. I was thoroughly surprised by how much I liked the book; much of early 1900 fiction does not appeal to me (except for Conrad), so I wasn't expecting much from this. Joyce's style of writing is great, and I love it a lot. I'm now interested in reading his magnum opus "Ulysses", but I haven't convinced myself that I can tackle this huge book just yet. Highly recommended if you haven't read it, one of the greats.
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2007 17:17
|
|
|
I just finished The Steep Approach to Garbadale by Iain Banks - which I have to say I enjoyed despite the hammering it got in reviews, but which seemed to fall apart a little at the very end.
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2007 18:04
|
|
|
God Bless You Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut. It's easily in my top five books ever read. Very, very good.
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2007 20:36
|
|
|
American Pastoral by Philip Roth, here's my LibraryThing micro review:quote:Great book. Slow start, about 80 pages of waxing autobiographical (not to mention pedantic) on the hardships and challenges of being an aging author before getting down to the point. and I gave it 4/5 stars. It was depressing as all hell, though it is a chronicle of the death of a country, so why shouldn't it be? I feel it should have been called "American Eulogy." My next book is going to be either The Merchant of Venice or Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad, though I'm leaning toward the former since I'll be able to finish it before I go home for winter break (where I already have a few tomes lined up). deptstoremook fucked around with this message at 23:38 on Dec 6, 2007 |
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2007 23:35
|
|
|
the curious incident of the dog in the night-time by Mark Haddon. It's definitely up there on my list of all-time favorites now. It manages to be both incredibly funny and incredibly sad at the same time. I've pretty much been telling everyone I see that they have to read this book immediately. So if you haven't yet read this, you should do so.
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2007 23:51
|
|
|
deptstoremook posted:My next book is going to be either The Merchant of Venice or Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad, though I'm leaning toward the former since I'll be able to finish it before I go home for winter break (where I already have a few tomes lined up). If you want a suggestion, I would definitely push Lord Jim. I read it for school, and it's a great book and really interesting; if you've read Heart of Darkness, than you'll love Lord Jim as Conrad wrote HoD while in the middle of Lord Jim as sort of an experiment. Then again, I love Conrad in general, so maybe I'm a bit biased on the matter.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2007 00:54
|
|
|
I just finished The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay . I was very impressed by Chabon’s use of metaphors and his vocabulary. The story was engaging and had me hooked from the first 30 pages. One of the few books I would not hesitate in recommending to anyone. Any suggestions on his other work?
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2007 18:55
|
|
|
Finished J.V. Jones' latest book - A Sword From Red Ice. Decent read at times, but definitely not up to the standards of the previous two books in the series. It suffers badly from Wheel of Time syndrome - stretching what could have been a 400 page into 600+ pages where gently caress-all happens for pages upon pages, pointless plotlines, etc. Rather disappointing, as it's been about 4 years since the last book came out, so I was looking forward to this one. Getting back to my re-read of the Malazan series - I'm (coincidentally) well into Memories of Ice.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2007 23:14
|
|
|
Perdido Street Station, China Mieville I wasn't too impressed with this one. First, it was too long. By far. And it had too many 75 cent words, as if he were trying to say "zomgZ!!! look at my AWESOME vocabulary!!!" Way too many Star Trek/D&D mannerisms and cliches. There was a good story in there somewhere, but it was smothered by all that.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2007 16:56
|
|
|
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami Was not impressed.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2007 19:41
|
|
|
A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby. I picked it up on a whim because I really enjoyed the film versions of his books High Fidelity and About a Boy. What an excellent book. I really enjoyed the narrative - there are 4 main characters and each chapter is entirely from one of their perspectives (each chapter is also labeled with the character's name). It really creates for some interesting situations where sometimes you might have to consider that a character might be lying or just downright wrong in their observations. If this happens, in the next chapter, one of the other characters might inadvertently shed some light on what happened. I guess you have to kind of get to know the characters and get a handle on their personalities and interpret for yourself the subtexts of what they say. I really can't say enough about this book. It's a great read and the way Hornby tackles the grim concept of suicide is fantastic and unconventional.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2007 20:17
|
|
|
Specials by Scott Westerfeld (again, this was my third time through the book. He just came out with a new book in the series, so I went back and read Specials to get back up to speed. Specials, like the rest of the Uglies series, is a pretty entertaining. The series as a whole keeps rehashing the same things over and over, but it's still a good read, if you like YA sci-fi dystopian future type fiction. The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene, which is a excellent book on string theory. He writes with a good bit of humor, which is great in a book like this, and he keeps most of the math involved in string theory out of the book and sticks to explaining the concepts in ways that are understandable to those of us without Math or Physics degrees.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2007 20:29
|
|
|
I Am America (And So Can You!) by Stephen Colbert et al. Yes, it took me a long time to get through this one because I got involved in some other things, including another book. Overall, it was very funny. There were a couple hit and miss, and it was a little short. I learned to take it in doses, and I realize why Colbert only has a 1/2 hour show. Still, though, it was a good read and I recommend it to anyone that likes his program, especially the segment "The Word".
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2007 20:51
|
|
|
S.S. Exploder posted:The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami Oh come on, you can't just leave us hanging like that. Psmith posted:A Long Way Down I'd recommend you pick up Fever Pitch next. Although it's a very different book, I like it the best of all of his. About a Boy has a couple of really great parts of it, but overall I felt it was just okay. The great thing about Hornby novels is they're all so quick and light that I can't really regret reading any of them. I just finished HAWK: Occupation Skateboarder (by Tony Hawk), and it's a pretty entertaining memoirs (although nothing really serious, obviously). This was written in 99' or 98', so it's not entirely up to date, but it was still worth it.
|
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2007 00:20
|
|
|
I just read The Catcher In The Rye for the first time since I was a kid. I found the main character unbearably whiny and his manner of speech drove me up the wall. Still, there were a few poignant moments near the end. I wish I'd kept it as a childhood memory on the wall. Currently reading My Man Jeeveswhich, I think, is the first Jeeves book. It' far funnier than I expected to be. I was a fan by the second story.
|
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2007 12:56
|
|
|
Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha wasn't quite the revelation to me I would have expected based on its frequent namechecks in "books that changed your life/worldview" thread, but enjoyable enough nevertheless. It reminded me of how much Hesse's writing style influenced some of the school essays I penned after reading Steppenwolf as a teenager, and how much of a wannabe I must have come across in them. Luckily I'm not alone here, as e.g. Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist owes quite a bit to Hesse and especially Siddhartha as well. Hunger by Knut Hamsun was great -- "the whisper of blood and the pleading of the bone marrow" indeed! The plot itself becomes secondary, as the story stays focused on the protagonist's mental state. The protagonist's humor -- the sarcasm, the internal monologues, the eccentricities and random stunts -- that he kept alive even when deep in his starvation and delirium counterbalanced the constant despair he was in and made the novel a lively read. My favourite episode was probably the protagonist's surreal night in jail. Also reread two short story collections by Daniil Kharms. His output is very much hit-or-miss and notably uneven in quality. Still, a good number of his violently absurd tales (or "incidences", as he called them), completely devoid of causality or common sense, have me roaring with laughter every single time. The stories average only a couple of paragraphs in length, so even the less witty ones shouldn't bore anyone to tears.
|
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2007 21:55
|
|
|
Finished: After Dark by Haruki Murakami I wasn't into it at first, but about half way through he starts developing some interesting theories about time and existence that were pretty interesting. Starting: Mere Anarchy by Woody Allen
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2007 01:08
|
|
|
I just read The Man Who Was Thursday for the first time and it was my first piece of Chesterton (except for some scraps here and there). Not sure exactly what I made of it - I know that one of the main points with Chesterton is supposed to be how well he writes prose and I'd agree that it was very expressive. There must have been something in the air at that time because his style of prose is actually really similar to Yeats' and Crowley's short stories. As far as the plot/story went though I found it OK, I guess, I'm feeling a bit resentful thinking back actually. I understand that it is more thematic/allegorical than it is story based but some parts seemed really contrived or unentertaining. The reveal of each of the Anarchist council as a policeman was sort of funny and diverting at first but really wore thin and not much seemed to really be left if that was taken out. The increasingly dream like state of everything gave me a new appreciation of Gaiman's choice to include Chesterton as a character in The Sandman at least, plus I liked quite a lot of the sentences and appreciated how pulpy and schlocky the whole kaboodle was at its base - so I got something out of it. Some people love the book though. Is there anyone who does that'd be kind enough to give just a couple of thoughts in passing?
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2007 03:37
|
|
|
voland posted:Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha wasn't quite the revelation to me I would have expected based on its frequent namechecks in "books that changed your life/worldview" thread, but enjoyable enough nevertheless. It reminded me of how much Hesse's writing style influenced some of the school essays I penned after reading Steppenwolf as a teenager, and how much of a wannabe I must have come across in them. Luckily I'm not alone here, as e.g. Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist owes quite a bit to Hesse and especially Siddhartha as well. I just finished Siddhartha as well, and I agree with this. I've never read Hesse before, though. The style was refreshingly clear and easy, though. I finished the book in one 3 hour sitting, so it was definitely worth it. Also finished One Hundred Years of Solitude, which was a bit of a letdown as well. The book felt like it began to drag a bit, and although the theme was solid, I wasn't really that receptive to it, so it didn't hit me deeply. The last couple of pages were decent, but there was no part of the book that really "wowed" me.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2007 04:20
|
|
|
Pontoon by Garrison Keillor. It's fleshing out one of his long-running stories, the 24 ministers on a pontoon boat in Lake Wobegon. Well, fleshing out isn't the right word, it's the story of a woman who died and changed a lot of lives, mostly for the better, there just happens to be some pontoon boats in the story. Basically, if you like Keillor you'll like this book, the ending is absolutely fantastic.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2007 06:42
|
|
|
I just finished Alice Sebold's Lovely Bones and was deeply touched by it. At first I wasn't sure what to think of the ending, but after mulling it over for a bit I realized it was exactly where the book had been heading. It only made sense. I guess at first I just wasn't ready to let go of Susie. I am about to begin Umberto Eco's The Island of the Day Before after it being recommended to me several times by friends. I've never read Eco before but from what I've heard he sounds right up my alley.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2007 06:55
|
|
|
Psmith posted:A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby. I picked it up on a whim because I really enjoyed the film versions of his books High Fidelity and About a Boy. I listened to the audiobook version of this book. It was narrated by 4 separate actors. Very cool how he managed to make it sad and funny at the same time. I decided to check it out after hearing Hornby on NPR talk about how he liked tackling the subject of a woman with the handicapped kid wanting to kill herself to escape the responsibility. It's less depressing than I made it sound though. Worth a look.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2007 07:33
|
|
|
Salt by Mark Kurlansky. It sounded like a really promising history of salt and its role in major conflicts, human settlements, commerce, etc. However, 200 out of 300 pages were...and did you know that the 16th century Hungarians salted cabbage? Here's a receipe! There wasn't enough on salt in the modern era, just a little about iodize salt, Morton's and too much written about Turks and Caicaos. I wouldn't recommend it, unless you are really interested to find out how various Europeans have salted beef and pork for the past few centuries.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2007 16:15
|
|
|
Don Oot posted:Salt by Mark Kurlansky. I read about 20 pages into it then came to the same conclusion as you. I just wasn't willing to push through it. It seemed like the most fantastically amazing concept for a book though. Real pity he couldn't live up to the potential.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2007 16:35
|
|
|
Babylon by Bus by Ray LeMoine and Jeff Neumann with Donovan Webster. "The true story of two friends who gave up their valuable franchise selling YANKEES SUCK T-shirts at Fenway to find meaning and adventure in Iraq, where they became employed by the Occupation in jobs for which they lacked qualification and witnessed much that amazed and disturbed them." An inherently interesting story written smoothly and told by an engaging narrator - funny, and also - of course - kind of upsetting. One blurb compares it to "Innocents Abroad meets Fear and Loathing" - it's a bit less of the latter and more of the former, but that's honestly a good thing. Definitely worth reading if the description interests you.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2007 17:53
|
|
|
Wildstrike posted:I just read The Man Who Was Thursday for the first time and it was my first piece of Chesterton (except for some scraps here and there). The Man Who Was Thursday may easily be one of my favourite books. For me it was mainly about a strong feeling of irony woven through the book. The plot is less important for me than the humour. Par example: An elected council of anarchists? Come on. That is brilliant!. Once I began reading it as a "funny" book, instead as a "serious" piece of work, I began to love it. I wasn't familiar with his other works, although wikipedia revealed he was a pretty funny guy in real life too: "On another occasion he remarked to his friend George Bernard Shaw, 'To look at you, anyone would think there was a famine in England.' Shaw retorted, 'To look at you, anyone would think you caused it.'" The Man Who Was Thursday made me laugh out loud on several occasions. A friend of mine who shares an ironic sense of humour had to agree with me: The book is just about being witty. It's filled to the brim with it! To contribute to the thread: Anthem by Ayn Rand. It's just one of the books you have to read, even when it isn't part of my national literary canon (being Dutch and all). This book made me feel depressed, it's quite brilliantly done. It's a dystopian novel wherein all individuality is taken away from people and all actions are decided and only meant for 'the greater good'. UnlikelyHero fucked around with this message at 16:31 on Dec 11, 2007 |
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2007 20:45
|
|
|
I finished Smonk by Tom Franklin over the weekend. Nihilism meets Southern Goth and nothing nice happens.This was just a fun read.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2007 21:09
|
|
|
I guess I'll start posting in this thread, since I read it so regularly. About a week ago I read The Time Traveler's Wife. It was good stuff. It's rare for authors, or storytellers in any medium, really, to take full advantage of time travel. This books did. My favorite example of this is how Henry visits the scene of his mother's death multiple times, even taking an active role in it - offering a young blanket to his young self, providing some details to a policeman, etc.. I'd say the ending was quite good, but didn't quite live up to my expectations. But my expectations were pretty high and I certainly was not displeased when I put the book down. I'll be rereading it again in a few weeks just so I have a better understanding of what Henry was going through at particular points in his life when he visits Claire from the future earlier on in the story, before we know what the heck is going on in that future. I also read The Stranger by Albert Camus. More good stuff! I won't say as much about this book because I haven't devoted the proper time to it that such a book deserves, but I will say that the intro summed up what I thought was a neat point - while Camus frequently calls Merseault a stranger on the fringes of society, he is very much like you and me. Until his crime, he fits in. He generally gets along. He works hard at his job. It's only in extenuating circumstances like his mom's funeral where his inability to deal with emotions as others do comes through. I just finished Atonement. There's a movie adaptation with Keira Knightley coming out! Wee! Anyways, it was pretty good, but didn't live up to my expectations. Although I did slap my head when I got to the end of Part III and saw "BT, 1999". Going through the book, I found the perspectives a bit confusing, as they didn't quite match Briony's description of what she was trying to do. Then again, what she was trying to do during the story was a poor attempt at modernist stream of consciousness, and what she was doing in 1999 was a lot more mature. Also, I wish I'd actually read Twelfth Night at some point, since Robbie Turner is so frequently compared to Malvolio. Durr.
|
|
#
?
Dec 11, 2007 16:14
|
|
|
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. Just recommended it in another thread, going to recommend it to everyone until the sheer greatness of it fades slightly. The autobiography of a preacher written for his young son who he won't see growing up, it's monumentally well written. Best book I've read for a long time, a great piece of literature. I was incredibly impressed with it, I can't throw too many superlatives it's way.
|
|
#
?
Dec 11, 2007 21:42
|
|
|
Democracy at Risk by Stephen Macedo. A good read about the status of civic engagement in America and offers solutions to fix the problems within the current system. Very insightful, while many of the solutions offered are basically social engineering the book is a good analysis of where America stands in regard to voter turnout, volunteering, trust of neighbors, ect.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2007 01:11
|
|
|
The book I just finished was powerful enough to make me turn to the BB forum for the first time. The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman. Anyone else who's read that book through to the end (and the 2 preceding it, "The Golden Compass" and "The Subtle Knife") will know what I mean when I say holy poo poo I need a hug right now. The plot just gets better and better and better and it looks like it's going to have a perfect ending until it all crashes down into a final 25 pages you will never, ever forget. Ever. So hopefully the next book on my list, The Children Of Men by P.D. James (school assigned), will be good. Or, at least, a little less depressing. (Yeah, you know an AP English 12 course is good when you have to read "Children Of Men." Ha!)
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2007 01:53
|
|
|
Asimov on Physics by, as you may have guessed by the title, Isaac Asimov. It's a bit of an old book, I'm pretty sure it's as old as I am, but I just like reading his stuff, even if it's not all that up to date. I like his sense of humor a lot. Extras by Scott Westerfeld. This is the fourth book in his Uglies series, and I think the series is still going strong. I enjoyed it at least as much as any of the other books in the series, if not more.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2007 02:23
|
|
|
Enders Game I'm on "classics" sci-fi kick, the classics I never read growing up, but recently Battlestar Galactica (new to me) has totally made me want sci-fi books as opposed to my usual fantasy. Great book. Finished it in 1 sitting.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2007 09:23
|
|
|
Low Red Moon, Caitlin Kiernan Not my usual cup of tea, but she's a pretty good writer so it's still a very enjoyable read. A little heavy with the "you'll see" and "you can't imagine"s though. Gads, I hate "just trust me" characters, but I suppose they come with the territory. The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, H.P. Lovecraft Yep, finally got around to reading this book I bought 20 years ago. My first Lovecraft, and I feel like I've been mind-raped but in a good way. It was a tough read, I was constantly going back and re-reading paragraphs I'd just loving read because when I thought about them my mind was a blank. One thing I thought was interesting were some of his ignorant cosmological ideas, but then at the time he was writing had the concept of a galaxy even been discovered? It's hard to believe we had no clue about gas giants like Neptune back then either. Only one mention of Cthulu in the whole drat book. 
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2007 15:56
|
|
|
Just finished two. First: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Seas by Jules Verne I was just in Paris and there's a restaurant called the Jules Verne under the Eiffel Tower. It reminded me how I never read this classic. It's really good. Some parts have become a bit silly with time, usually stemming from the fact that the Nautilus wields electric energy like magic spells. (Disney pretty much handled this problem with their movie version by just changing every mention of "electricity" to "nuclear power.") For the most part it's a light hearted adventure tale similar to the ending of The Life Aquatic, but Nemo himself has some extremely dark overtones that manage to make him fascinating, terrible and admirable at the same time. Second: Ishmael by Daniel Quinn I've seen it mentioned enough that I figured it was time to read it. I really do like these one-sided philosophical lecture type books. Ishmael has a great style to it and is a fun read, but I'm pretty sure I don't agree with a word of it. In my opinion, it's worth checking out, since I always love hearing alternate/interesting theories on life. But it basically can be summed up as: "Civilization is bad. We should become hunter-gatherers again and live like the animals." So, yeah. Idealistic bullshit that could NEVER happen, but it was mildly intriguing. It's short too, like most of these types of books. LooseChanj posted:Only one mention of Cthulu in the whole drat book. Cthulu is probably the most over-referenced character of all time. His actual involvement in the mythos is pretty much 1 major story and a bunch of name-droppings in the others. I always say this in Lovecraft-related threads, but seriously check out some of his non-mythos stuff. Herbert West--Reanimator (sorta kinda the basis for the cult classic cheesy horror flick: Reanimator.) is my absolute favorite story of his. The Rats In The Walls is pretty bad rear end too.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2007 20:50
|
|
|
LooseChanj posted:Only one mention of Cthulu in the whole drat book. My first Lovecraft was 'The Call of Cthulhu', which, I gather, is the only story where it features heavily, and I found it kinda meh. A friend of mine strongly recommended 'At the Mountains of Madness', though, and it was just fantastic. Quite readable, and very gripping stuff. On the subject of scientific concepts, that same friend pointed out that the story nonchalantly references continental drift at a time when it was considered a pretty radical theory.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2007 21:58
|
|
|
Song of Solomon - Toni Morrison Read it for my english class. Didn't really enjoy it, but meh, she knows how to make everything connect.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2007 05:16
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 31, 2024 14:21 |
|
|
I just finished Foundation's Edge by Issac Asimov. I really liked the original Foundation trilogy, so I decided to look at the first sequel to it. I think it holds up favourably to the original three, even with the different sort of format (a complete novel, rather than a shorter stories being compiled into novels like the original was). The material is faithful to the previous works, touching on prior events while bringing in new aspects. I also bought a used copy of Prelude to Foundation, so I think I'll be reading that next.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2007 06:44
|
|
