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A Finnish translation of The Phantom of the Temple by Robert van Gulik. I mostly read crime novels and van Gulik is one of my favourites because he doesn't gently caress about much. It's basically a police procedural set in ancient China, with illustrations by the author. Very easy to read although I wouldn't be surprised if most people found it a bit too dry.
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Feb 5, 2019 21:37
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Ras Het posted:I don't think you need any context per se to appreciate how bureaucreats and theatre directors getting owned by the devil is amusing Smythe is some sort of theatre director so I agree.
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Feb 15, 2019 21:41
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A Finnish translation of Stallion Gate by Martin Cruz Smith. If it were a motion picture, it would be a pretty intense thriller, but it's not so I don't know what it is. The Finnish title pretty much gives away the setting (a lot of other translations seem to be called Los Alamos as well), and the protagonist is a native American soldier hired to drive Oppenheimer around as well as spy on him. He also fucks a lot and boxes a bit. I thought he'd get owned by the Demon Core after causing a criticality, but whether he did or not isn't part of the story. I wish Smith's editor had told him no-one gives a poo poo about what kinds of flowers and trees and bushes were around during any given scene, which is one of the reasons it would've worked much better as a movie script. The disjointed (at chapter level) narrative is another. I don't even know if I liked the book or not. 
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Feb 17, 2019 06:45
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Ben Nevis posted:Like are you even really reading the Bible there aren't donkey dicks and people dashing infants against the rocks? Oh you mean like a public library?
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Feb 21, 2019 19:27
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I must've read a translation as a kid but anyway I just finished Raymond Chandler's The Little Sister I'd forgotten how wordy Chandler was compared to most writers of similar stories. It's still a quick read but it made me realize that I like hard-boiled prose more than I like hard-boiled characters.
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Mar 1, 2019 14:16
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Ben Nevis posted:Little Sister does have the "You're not human tonight, Marlowe" chapter which is some of my favorite Chandler. Yeah it's definitely ace story-telling but after reading Chandler and Hammett and all that as a kid I spent a decade or two mostly reading hard-boiled "kiosk dicks" which tend to be around 130 pages. And the last Chandler I read recently was novellas which of course are economic with words by necessity. I enjoyed TLS but it was just a bit of a culture shock right in the nostalgias.
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Mar 1, 2019 17:21
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I saw a copy of 2666 in the publisher's bookstore and I think the main theme is wow that's a thick book it won't fit in my bag I'll buy something else instead.
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Mar 3, 2019 22:07
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Finished a translation of Jeffrey Archer's First Among Equals last night and it was poo poo. It's incredibly dry, more like an over-grown synopsis than a novel. Long story short the posh Conservative is a mega-cuck and ends up ousted from his dad's old bank and decides to settle on being speaker, the born-into-the-wrong-party Labour dude can't control his dick but still does pretty OK and ends up deciding he wants to be with his wife even though she's ugly, and the less-posh-because-his-dad-was-only-a-loving-lawyer Conservative has a happy marriage and kids and king Charles III makes him prime minister wow. There's some other stuff too but basically that's the entire plot and story of the book. I don't know how this ended up a best seller - I guess it's an interesting peek into the inner workings of British politics but it's fairly superficial at that. For a novel about politics it has far too little intrigue.
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Mar 19, 2019 18:03
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Haven't read Arto Paasilinna in a while but I just finished Hirtettyjen kettujen metsä (never been published in English; "Forest of Hanged Foxes"). I know he made millions by publishing the same Finnish-guys-have-mid-life-crisis-and-go-to-Lapland-or-wherever-to-drink-and-whore-and-somehow-they-always-have-loads-of-money-and-there's-probably-an-animal-in-it-and-maybe-someone-dies-but-they-were-Swedish-or-Russian-or-German-or-otherwise-deserved-it story with minor variations every year since 1972 in time for father's day, but especially the older books are rather entertaining. I don't blame the French for loving him enough to have made two movies adapted from his books because I guess Finns drinking is exotic for non-Finns. (For some reason the ones the French made movies out of are the only two novels translated into English.) e: No foxes get hanged, just a reindeer policeman (who lives), a multiple murderer (who dies), and sixty German tourists (who die).
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Mar 24, 2019 06:04
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I read the Finnish translation of Simenon's Lettre ā mon juge which you can tell is very bad right from the beginning as it's a novel written in letter form (a 200-page letter) and they are never ever good. Two hundred pages of a bored upper middle-class guy in a loveless marriage who falls in love with a younger woman and casually beats her and finally strangles her because he's insanely jealous of her past faffing on about how people can't understand him except you, my judge! The worst thing? Of course it's autobiographical (apart from the ending). e: Also I bought 2666 and it cost 26,66 
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Apr 4, 2019 13:54
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I'm reading a collection of novellas by Veikko Huovinen and this bit in one of them made me LOL out loud in IRL life on the bus this morning (translation mine, sorry): [...] At last, Lispe Ryynänen asked: - Did your husband go out. We didn't come at a bad time, did we. - My husband is in hiding, laughed Jutta Grahn. Hannele Nygård and Lispe Ryynänen tried to smile as well, even though it all felt a bit odd. They looked around alertly. The door to the bedroom was open, and white twin beds were visible. At least those were new! Suddenly, the hem of the bed spread swung and a man's face peeked from under the bed. - Arse, said the man, and quickly retracted his head into cover. It seemed like he was snickering in his hiding place. Lispe Ryynänen went red. Beads of sweat appeared on her forehead. She was undergoing menopause. Hannele Nygård went all pale. She was almost feeling faint. How sorry they felt for Jutta Grahn. - My husband is a bit extravagant, said Jutta Grahn. [...] (Jutta Grahn's Husband, Veikko Huovinen) I'm rather easily amused.
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Apr 5, 2019 15:02
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Turbinosamente posted:Though not set in the Hitchhiker's universe there is Starship Titanic which was written by Terry Jones based on Douglas Adam's idea/PC game/outline/whatever. It is extremely similar in tone and sci-fi shenanigans faced by a group of people, some alien some from Earth. If Jones' name wasn't on the cover I would have thought it was straight Douglas Adams. The game is an absolute bastard, by the by.
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Apr 10, 2019 13:24
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An after-market Sherlock Holmes novel called The Seven-Per-Cent Solution. Turns out that while everyone thought that Holmes was dead and then came back and it was all due to Moriarty, what actually happened was Watson realized Holmes was doing too much coke, making him rave about his old maths tutor who he saw as a criminal mastermind. With the help of Mycroft he cons Holmes into coming to Vienna where Sigmund Freud cures him of addiction. Then at the last moment It's not a bad read, or more to the point, it's not any worse than the original stories, but unlike most of them it's novel-length. There are a few allusions to period-appropriate real and fictional poo poo every here and there but not so much as to make it Alan Moore levels of unfun.
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Apr 14, 2019 19:16
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Turbinosamente posted:So that's what the plot was. like all Sherlock Holmes fan fiction books (let's call them what they are) I don't really subscribe to the notion that Only Originals are True - whether it be in literature or any other form of art. But the book is ultimately forgettable. Going to read an Ellery Queen novel next, which was neither written by Ellery Queen nor features Ellery Queen.
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Apr 14, 2019 22:24
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Turbinosamente posted:Makes a lot of it feel rather fan fiction-y. I wouldn't know 
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Apr 14, 2019 22:58
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After finishing (a Finnish translation of) Simenon's "Le testament Donadieu" I have to wonder if any of his non-Maigret work is even decent, let alone good? I guess it's a bit unfair seeing as my take is based on three novels out of hundreds he wrote. Still two more to go and I'm kind of dreading them. (Oh yeah it's a story about the fall of a seemingly-great house and it's hell of boring because, despite having a goodly amount of poo poo happening, everything is just so loving psychological that it makes me sick. The extremely french dialogue doesn't help. I kept getting a "what if Maugham but worse" vibe while reading.)
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Apr 22, 2019 23:02
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TFTO To have and have not by Hemingway. Originally two novellas expanded with a third part to make a novel it changes tack pretty markedly at one point but instead of veering from the central theme of eat the rich the third part just expounds on it. Pretty powerful stuff; I wish I'd read this first instead of Farewell to Arms. Of course the main character is an American macho bastard but I don't know if Hemingway knew how to write any other way? The first two parts work(ed) really well as separate stories, too.
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Apr 29, 2019 03:28
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Robot Wendigo posted:Last month's BOTM, The Doorbell Rang. It was my first Nero Wolfe, and won't be my last. Wolfe is such an enjoyable prick. They're the perfect blend of the eccentric genius detective fiction and A.A.Fair style boiled detective fiction genres.
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May 4, 2019 09:18
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Just finished a "Signet Double Mystery" of Wife or Death and The Golden Goose and it and they are completely forgettable in and of themselves but it's weird how important a name is/was in crime fiction. Neither of the novels were written by Ellery Queen (a NÄM DE PLYM anyway), nor do they feature Ellery Queen, but were billed as his works. The style of the two novels - originally published one year apart - is so different that I doubt anyone would have thought they were written by the same person(s). It's like when Evan Hunter (an assumed name) published crime novels under a pseudonym, and then they were later published under another pseudonym - Ed McBain - because that was much better-known than Hunter.
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May 4, 2019 16:35
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chernobyl kinsman posted:what makes john langan 'literary' Writes books. That's pretty dang literary, literally.
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May 6, 2019 07:33
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 I just looked up what "literary" means in this context and I'm loving glad I live in a civilized culture where we don't have an equivalent word or concept.e: Not that I actually found any reasonable definition for it apart from "books I think are really good".
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May 6, 2019 15:32
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Seriouspost: People who have opinions about Pratchett are people who have opinions about Rick and Moety and anime. Just read.
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Jul 26, 2019 19:54
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nankeen posted:i am terry pratchett Permabanned for being dead.
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Jul 27, 2019 13:55
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Samuel Delany's 1971 novella collection "Driftglass", which I apparently bought in 2000 but never got more than half-way through before this month. It's reasonably well-aged sci-fi with some pretty brainy bits but my main thought while reading was "man, punctuation is great and this Delany character should use more of it".
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Aug 8, 2019 21:12
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kalthir posted:the last third of the book was just alternating chapters about workers' rights and the excesses of the rich. Don't ever read an in-depth
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Aug 27, 2019 11:49
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Lockback posted:Just finished the 4 book series LA Quartet by James Ellroy. I liked it a lot, and generally recommend it with some caveats. Its about 1950s LA cops so there is tons of racism/bigoted language even by the "heroes" as a natural matter of course. And the heroes are not even close to good people, I know some people really don't like it when the protagonists have irredeemably bad aspects, and in this series they definitely do. The writing also gets more stylized as the series goes on to the point where there is a dearth of complete sentences and sometimes you don't really know what happened in the scene until later. The plots get super convoluted and frequently strain credibility, but the stories are great and there really never is a lull. I think also the earlier books tend to be better, which is nice. If you find you don't like a book you've probably read all the ones you were going to like anyway. I'm a dumb-dumb so I have two of those 
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Sep 13, 2019 20:56
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Curwood's "The River's End". If not for the American-style racism (Chinese basically aren't even human) and all the sister-frenching it would be an OK pulp novella... Too bad it's a novel. The writer just padded it out with some call of the wild poo poo. I understand this was one of Curwood's most highly regarded novels (with several movie adaptations) so I can't wait to read the rest I have
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Sep 26, 2019 02:54
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C-Euro posted:Finally finished Don Quixote nearly two years after starting it. The first book was really boring but the second one was much more enjoyable. Shout-out to my new job that has me commuting by train, along with my self-conscious nature compelling me to read on said train instead of just playing my 3DS.  E: Oh, apparently it is complete. 3D Megadoodoo fucked around with this message at 04:07 on Oct 7, 2019 |
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Oct 7, 2019 03:58
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Sarern posted:I'm doing the same thing! But slowly, because post-Cold-War le Carré is extremely depressing. I think you mean inter-Cold-War.
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Nov 13, 2019 20:54
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Philthy posted:Foundation by Isaac Asimov It's the first Asimov I read and it really got me into the "oh hey huh not all fantasy is BAD poo poo THAT SUCKS" vibe. And it left me wanting for more.
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Jan 2, 2020 03:51
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Zamboni Rodeo posted:Literally just finished The Leopard by Jo Nesbø earlier tonight, which is book 8 in his series about a police detective in Oslo, and holy poo poo this man can write crime novels (I read The Snowman a few months ago). Both books are so richly plotted and Nesbø writes with such a compelling urgency that they were nearly impossible to put down. And even though yes, the protagonist of the series ultimately prevails (which is the point), he's a flawed character who's self-aware enough to know that he's flawed, but also flawed enough that he's unable or unwilling to fix those flaws. That describes about 100% of male Scandinavian crime novel protagonists. I forget - does he also have a daughter (it's never a son for some reason) and diabetes?
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Jan 7, 2020 06:27
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"Bartleby". Melville sure loves words. I liked it because it's timeless.
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Jan 15, 2020 22:56
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Thanks, Dover Thrift Editions, for revealing the big plot twist in "Benito Cereno" on the back cover. Really made me enjoy the story.
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Jan 19, 2020 01:37
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eddiewalker posted:I’m pretty ashamed to admit I hadn’t read an actual book in over a decade, but I just tore through ‘11/22/63’ by Stephen King and I’m hungry for more. Good news: there's more!
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Feb 1, 2020 01:21
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"Pebble in the Sky" because I decided to read all of Asimov's books in order as part of a broader "get into the basics of fantasy literature" effort (which, prior to this, has consisted of reading "Foundation" and "Hyperion"). A bit old-fashioned on account of being old, and the minor* love story is stupid as always. Clever enough sciencing. *) thank god not in THAT sense even though its a fantasy book by an old sex pest
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Jan 14, 2022 00:34
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Chernabog posted:robots malfunctioning. Robots are just printers with appendages.
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Jan 19, 2022 13:14
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Fernando Arrabal's Baal Babylone (Viva la Muerte). After learning my lesson with another book in the series, I read the foreword last. The story hit even harder when I learned that it's at least partly autobiographical. It's weird to read a novel with so much repetition but still didn't get boring. Helps that it's way less than a hundred pages, of course. It's kinda poetic but obviously I have no idea how it reads in the original French. Too bad his other novels haven't been translated into Finnish. Apparently his plays caused a fracas in other countries, including Sweden, but not in Finland. 8/10. 
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Feb 9, 2022 12:45
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Besettelse og åndsutdrivelse i Bibelen, historien og vår egen tid (Possession and Exorcism in the Bible, History, and Our Own Time) by Tormod Engelsviken. I've had the book since the late 1990s I think. I don't know how I acquired it exactly. Anyway it was poo poo. It's the only book by a "theologist" I've ever read and man does the text not hold up to even rudimentary scrutiny. Like he's just contradicting himself every other sentence, and the Bible every other. (I'd hoped it would be an actual look into what the title said.)
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Mar 16, 2022 13:12
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Shitstorm Trooper posted:Yeah, I've seen the sequel too. One of the best Shatner vehicles, if a bit long.
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Mar 21, 2022 00:22
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The Shining
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Mar 27, 2022 14:50
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