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Bearheart: The Heirship Chronicles by Gerald Vizenor. Read it for my Survey of American Literature class. A woman fucks dogs in it 
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Mar 4, 2012 02:14
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The Kingkiller Chronicle: The Wise Man's Fear, some tale of epic fantasy or whatever. I'm getting more emotional over the next one I'm reading, A Dream Fulfilled: The Story of Barack Obama. My ELL students are reading it, too.
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Mar 28, 2016 02:05
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Zone One by Colson Whitehead. Now I am about halfway through Changing Planes by Ursula K. LeGuin.
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Oct 23, 2020 00:17
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Sandwolf posted:Eyyyy I read that earlier this year, I’m not sure I’ve found anyone else who’s read it. What did you think? I found it to be a very competent and I liked the story (still don’t think I get Mark Spitz) but overall seemed kinda gray. I enjoyed it. Sometimes the prose got very long-winded describing cityscapes and Spitz's life stories, but overall I enjoyed the pseudogov't trying to sponsor zombie cleanup through corporations. It's a great corporate dystopia disguised as a zombie novel. It plays on themes from Romero and other zombie movies, and I appreciated a fresh take on those themes. I too puzzled over Spitz. The book comes right out and says he is an average guy, just a survivor, who lives because he doesn't think too deeply about anything. But he totally does. He starts the story overthinking to the point where he almost dies as a result. It's contradictory and I couldn't figure out why. Overall I interpreted the story as being about PTSD not just from a disaster and subsequent global collapse, but also the day-to-day drudgery of capitalism.
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Oct 25, 2020 02:43
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Changing Planes by Ursula K. LeGuin. It was engrossing. I particularly loved "The Nna Mmoy Language" and "The Island of the Immortals". Now I am working on The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin.
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Nov 19, 2020 08:15
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The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin.
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Dec 28, 2020 08:47
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BadSamaritan posted:I just finished Harrow the Ninth. It was a big weird ride and I’m impatient for my partner to finish their copy so I can talk about it. Sometimes I find the author’s voices and jokes overly irreverent/glib, but man when she hits she hits hard and all is forgiven. Tamsyn Muir to me rides the line between cringe-y dialogue and snappy dialogue. The characters are different and unique enough that they don't all sound the same, but they are all very good at quippin
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Jan 1, 2023 06:36
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The Killing Moon by NK Jemisin. Working on the sequel. The Good Immigrant US version. Various authors. Good anthology of personal essays on what it means to be an immigrant in a post-Trump US.
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Feb 23, 2023 04:05
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Ninth House by Leigh Bardough. It was good. I don't know if I will read the next one as I felt satisfied with this story. If you like ancient magic and frat boys getting their comeuppance, sort of, it's good. It's gritty magical realism which isn't always my cup of tea but this one caught and held me.
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Mar 24, 2023 06:21
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landgrabber posted:i finished house of leaves last week and now my life is meaningless There are a handful of books that, when I finished them, I ended up just picking them back up almost immediately and rereading them. House of Leaves is one of them. I just wanted to read it again because I enjoyed the experience so much the first time.
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May 11, 2023 07:29
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Good-Natured Filth posted:That's fair. I did enjoy a good CYOA when I was younger. Though, I recall keeping a pencil and dozens of bookmarks at hand to keep my place in the various paths I was following. But you'll have a hard time convincing me that page-long, tiny-fonted footnotes within footnotes or mirrored & spiraling text are fun to read. They may not be fun but they are novel! 
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May 11, 2023 22:41
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Good-Natured Filth posted:... Yay! Kids getting into reading! I will recommend this book to everyone with a kid who likes fantastical stuff: The Teaspoon Tree I read over 200 children's books for a college project, and that one was my favorite of the chapter books. It's interesting and has a tone and theme somewhere between Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with a bit of The Phantom Tollbooth. At least those are the books it reminds me of 😄 I also recommend The Thirteen and A Half Lives of Captain Blue Bear for any kid. It's long but exciting and a kid would feel so accomplished reading that whole thing!
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Jul 18, 2023 22:54
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malnourish posted:Piranesi. Quick read and enjoyable but I don't think it's something I'd ever recommend. Yeah it's weird. I really liked Piranesi. A lot. I read it in two sittings. I don't think I would recommend it, either. I think most people I know who read would think it was boring. But I also shy away from recommending books to my friends because I gave a friend a copy of a novel called Virgintooth and she has never forgiven me 😮💨
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Jul 27, 2023 05:08
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Okay I think I can word this in a way that makes sense. Piranesi is a book about someone maliciously torturing someone. It's upsetting. I think some people would hate it because they don't want to read about someone maliciously torturing another person in the most laborious and dreary way possible. The tortured person is sometimes bored to near tears, or nearly drowned, or just so lonely that you see their mind breaking. It's a great book but it is a bummer.
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Jul 28, 2023 01:30
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I love books where somethin weird's goin on and it definitely had that.
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Jul 28, 2023 03:35
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Battle Royale by Koushun Takami. I am probably going to read the manga soon, too. It was hard to get into at first but once I did I couldn't put it down. It's not written in a style I usually enjoy, and the author over-explains a ton, pointing out plot twists or character motivations multiple times. Sometimes this builds tension, as you wait for the description to end and someone else to die horribly, but sometimes it was tedious. I did like the story and especially the ending. There's a dreamy quality to the ending that gives some ambiguity as to what you are seeing. Some critiques I have heard in the past were mostly plot-related, like how 15 year old kids could manage to shoot guns and hack computers so excellently, and while I have my own thoughts on that in the end I didn't really care about the suspension of disbelief. I cared more about the moral questions and motifs the book brings up, and not all of them are "when should you murder?" All-in-all I think it was really enjoyable and I look forward to seeing if the manga handles some of the agonized descriptions of character A looking at character B and smiling for the twentieth time better than the novel. Now I am working through The Sounds of a Wild Snail Eating which I am not sure I will finish. I do like snails a lot, but something about the author's humanization of this animal is really rubbing me the wrong way.
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Aug 16, 2023 19:26
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tuyop posted:Aw, I loved that book! But yeah I can see how it might not be someone’s cup of tea. I very much enjoy the author's style so I am going to stick with it for a bit. And man I really do love snails 😍
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Aug 19, 2023 06:54
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Yeah my mom never restricted what I read, she just read it with me if she thought it was inappropriate. That way I didn't sneak behind her back and get hosed up reading scary poo poo My bio dad was the one just handing me books and sending me on my merry way, and since my mom didn't outright forbid me from reading anything, I read some... stuff...
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Aug 28, 2023 22:50
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Picked up a couple graphic novels a few months ago and hadn't read them yet, so I powered through them this week. Black Paradox by Junji Ito. Interesting, creepy. Built up the suspense well. Could be turned into a bigger series, I think, but that's not really what Ito is into making. I think he recognizes that horror shouldn't overstay it's welcome. I thought it was more coherent and less dreamlike than some of his other stuff, but still felt like reading someone's nightmare. Shuna's Journey by Hayao Miyazaki was moody, beautiful and a delight. I couldn't put it down. My translation had some nice background information, too, so I got to learn something. I wish he would make it into a full-length feature.
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Sep 14, 2023 15:56
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tuyop posted:The Word for World is Forest by LeGuin I loved that one!!! It was so weird and compelling. I think I read it all on a plane flight and then before bed the same day because I couldn't put it down. And yeah I learned more from and got more out of TWfWIF than from The Dispossessed. I thought The Dispossessed was less subtle, too, and I didn't care much for the protagonist. I would have rather read about another character. I still liked it. Edit: if you liked it check out stuff by James Tiptree Jr., the pseudonym of Alice Bradley Sheldon. She wrote a lot of sci Fi that has a similar vibe to LeGuin. I liked Up the Walls of the World a lot. don longjohns fucked around with this message at 15:52 on Sep 15, 2023 |
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Sep 15, 2023 15:50
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tuyop posted:The island of Doctor Moreau by HG Wells I think pretty much everything else by him is better, yeah.
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Oct 4, 2023 02:16
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Good-Natured Filth posted:Bea Wolf by Zach Weinersmith; art by Boulet: A graphic novel reimagining of a portion of Beowulf. In this version, the main characters are kids, and Grendel is a dreary adult out to ruin the kids' fun. I'm a fan of Zach's ongoing SMBC web comic as well as his books, so I expected to enjoy this. And unsurprisingly, I did enjoy it. It tries to keep the flowery, epic poem nature of Beowulf while making it accessible to a younger audience. Zach does an awesome job with his specific use of words and kennings throughout. The story brings to mind an imaginative, exaggeration that you would expect a child to give when retelling events from their life. Boulet does a great job bringing the story to life with his intricate drawings. A wonderful read all around. This sounds really good. I am going to check my local bookstores for this, thanks!
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Dec 7, 2023 17:21
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Good-Natured Filth posted:Breaking Free of Child Anxiety and OCD: A Scientifically Proven Program for Parents by Eli R. Lebowitz: This book had been mentioned in the Parenting thread and our daughter has some anxious tendencies, so I gave it a read. The big thing I learned is that we don't need to be worried about our daughter. Her anxiety is nowhere near the levels discussed in the examples in the book, and she's pretty good at handling her own anxiety without help when it comes up. The key message of the book is to provide acceptance (understanding that your child is dealing with anxiety which is hard) and confidence (communicating that you know your child can cope with anxiety on their own) to your child. It comes off a bit "tough love" because the ultimate strategy is to tell your child "I know this is hard, but we're not going to do special things for you to curb your anxiety, and you need to learn how to cope on your own." I'm not sure I'm in complete agreement, but if I were parents in the situations described in the book, I'm sure I'd be willing to try anything. I recommend the Anxiety and Phobia Workbook (if it seems appropriate for her age to you) by Edmund J. Bourne. It helped me a lot when I was at a tipping point with my anxiety and even though I no longer need it, I still use the tools and techniques I learned even 7 years after reading.
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Feb 27, 2024 17:45
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silvergoose posted:I just read, in relatively rapid succession She's my favorite! I am rereading Left Hand of Darkness right now with some folks. I read it aloud each week and record it. It's so fun returning to it. I think Changing Planes is one of her most underrated books. Loved it.
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Apr 6, 2024 01:19
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