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Metro 2033 by Dmitry Glukhovsky, something of a roller coaster in its engagement, varied from atmospheric and memorable to dull in some sections. Orders of magnitude less spectacle than the video game it inspired.
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Jan 17, 2020 08:40
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Zamboni Rodeo posted:That happened to me with Greg Egan's Quarantine. I read the Kindle edition so I didn't know. So when I got a paperback copy to give to my cousin and saw the blurb, I made my own blurb from the Amazon description and glued it over the one on the back of the book. It's a drat good read, though. Just don't get the paperback edition. Can I ask what plot points in particular were given out by the back cover? Quarantine had quite a number of reveals in its second half.
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Jan 19, 2020 08:12
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The Grey posted:How did you manage to pick such a huge book for your first one in a decade? It's not raw length that's the problem, it's that people need a real page turner to get them back into groove.
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Feb 1, 2020 23:34
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I finished Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era by James M. McPherson. Plenty informative, and served its purpose of giving me a general knowledge of the course of the war, but I'm not enamored with his writing style.
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Mar 6, 2020 20:40
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Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson. A bit scattershot in that I felt that things came and went without being explored to their full potential. I did have fun reading the page where he tears down the optimistic hopes of his previous Mars Trilogy thanks to the discovery of Perchlorates.
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Mar 12, 2020 02:50
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Pere Goriot, by Balzac. Interesting to read because it contrasted in its priorities so much with Stendhal's Red and the Black, though covering the same historical territory of Parisian balls, social climbers and opera visits. Balzac is much less concerned with politics and is nowhere near as enamored with romance or sentiment. One thing that stood out to me is the seemingly complete lack of stigma towards marital infidelity. FPyat fucked around with this message at 03:09 on Mar 19, 2020 |
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Mar 17, 2020 01:03
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The Library at Mount Char, Scott Hawkins. I don't know what all the fuss was about, some of the dialogue was painfully juvenile.
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Mar 29, 2020 22:50
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The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym by Edgar Allan Poe. Strange and inconsistent, but the ending sticks with me. Wouldn't be surprised if it influenced Lovecraft's Antarctic novel a hundred years later.
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Apr 3, 2020 02:57
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Servants of the Wankh by Jack Vance. Unclear why he didn't realize how British readers would react to his naming. Both the humans and aliens seemed China-derived in one way or another..
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Apr 8, 2020 03:24
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An Army at Dawn by Rick Atkinson. Did an decent enough job of conveying the events of the North African campaign, but I'm left with the suspicion that Antony Beevor or some other writer might be more my style when it comes to narrative history. The narrow focus on the US and British Armies meant I was mostly left in the dark as to what was going on at sea and in the air. More in-depth Axis perspectives would also have improved things.
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May 30, 2020 11:51
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Napoleon: A Life by Andrew Roberts. A very long book, yet it still managed to feel condensed. The battle descriptions were my least favorite part - mostly just described the actions, without delving into the tactical thinking.
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Jan 28, 2021 09:03
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I read Blue Highways: A Journey Into America by William Least Heat-Moon. The author spends 1978 driving through 31 out of 48 continental states, and he chronicles the adventures that pass as he drives down backroads to see the country outside of the cities and interstates. He sees many towns with interesting local character, gets to know a few dozen locals from all over, and even has a few hitchhikers along the way. All along there's a real sense of the deep-time history of the land, coupled with an elegiac feeling that the old country is in the process of dying out, and . The book has a such wonderful spirit to it that I would recommend it to any American, and any foreigner who has interest in the country.
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Jul 20, 2021 14:42
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bowser posted:That's been on my to-read list for a while, along with PrairyErth. Has there been any books with this concept revisited in recent history? I imagine the backroads and small towns of the US have changed a lot since 1978... There was Blue Highways Revisited, which collects many photos of the same places and people Heat-Moon visited 30 years after the book was published. I also know of In America: Travels with John Steinbeck, a Dutch travel writer's experiences travelling the country.
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Jul 21, 2021 03:06
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Finished up The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896, which met my expectations of familiarizing me with the major individuals and events of the period and giving a good look at social and economic conditions. I want to know more about many of the topics, but the book is plenty long already. It's incredibly frustrating that the next book in the series, covering 1896-1929, seems to be in publication limbo. If there are any books, textbook or narrative, that will do as a substitute, I'll be glad to know about them.
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Sep 19, 2021 08:33
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NGDBSS posted:If you're talking about Anathem, I bounced off that back when it was first published and it turns out that was probably for the best! Someone who's actually familiar with the philosophy dug in and found that it's mostly crankery. That's disappointing. I guess I'll have to go and read some Umberto Eco and Godel Escher and Bach for my fill of philosophical writing.
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Oct 8, 2021 12:42
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I finished To Climates Unknown by Arturo Serrano, the second alternate history book I've read not written by Harry Turtledove. The sailor William Adams is killed in a freak accident in the 16th century, preventing him from being stranded in Japan as famously fictionalized by James Clavell. The changes bubble up from there, each chapter utilizing real historical figures and exploring how the world changes as they succeed where in reality they failed. Marvelous amounts of research, including the use of Celestia to calculate the correct positions of celestial bodies. It's just a shame that the book's climax is the worst case of a 180 degree turn in quality I have ever seen. The final verbal confrontation between the world's oppressed and its oppressors is rendered out in words you'd expect to hear in a children's cartoon. It's a shame to feel let down by a book that by all rights should have been a masterpiece of the genre. It is worth reading for the price of Kindle Unlimited, despite all that!
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Jan 7, 2022 06:21
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Truman, by David McCullough. Pulitzer well-earned. The sections before and after his presidency come off the page more.
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Feb 2, 2022 22:32
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Eisenhower in War and Peace, by Jean Edward Smith was mostly quite fine, though I noticed that the book failed to write about Ike's reaction to the Holocaust. It has a photo of him visiting Buchenwald, but neglects to actually mention the visit in the text!
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Feb 13, 2022 00:03
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If Reagan were born 50 or 60 years later he'd have a podcast called Reaganland.
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Mar 2, 2022 21:59
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Finished Tudors: The History of England from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I. A lot of executions for a book not about the French Revolution or Stalin.
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Mar 30, 2022 15:46
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Pandora's Box: A History of the First World War was a bit weak when it comes to military matters, and didn't have much to say about most of the smaller nations involved in the conflict. However, the explorations of the social, political, and cultural experiences of the major powers in the war was worth the long pagecount, although he would often talk in foucauldian sociologist-speak.
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Jul 21, 2022 21:07
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Finished Voices from the Front: An Oral History of the Great War by Peter Hart. The first oral history I've finished that isn't a work of fiction. Don't know what to say other than that it did a fine job of condensing the collective experiences of millions of British servicemen into its pages.
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Aug 20, 2022 02:48
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Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach was a nice way to spend some hours. The things she did cover were quite well presented, but there are two notable topics that I wish the book spent time on - the embalming of Vladimir Lenin and the weirdness of the cryonics movement.
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Sep 15, 2022 01:53
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The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1815 - 1914 was just magisterial in cramming 800 pages full of every single thing that could be said of its subject, all the way down to a page delving into the return of the beard and mustache to European faces. I hope that Daniel Howe's book about America 1815-1848 is similarly good.
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Oct 8, 2022 02:00
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In two days, I read Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time. Hopefully navigation comes up often as a matter of import in the Aubrey-Maturin books.
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Nov 8, 2022 05:42
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It'd be pretty hard for his rep to grow because he's already pretty much the number one speculative short story writer in the world in esteem.
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Dec 23, 2022 14:01
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How many pages is the recounting of murders?
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Dec 24, 2022 04:03
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I read Notes from Underground by Dostoevsky. I guess I'll read Crime and Punishment sooner rather than later, because it was the most emotionally rich fiction I've read in a long while.
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Dec 31, 2022 10:56
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Convenience Store Woman was short, unsubstantial, and ultimately uninteresting. I liked the parts describing day-to-day operations at work, but it didn't add up to much.
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Jan 1, 2023 11:05
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I read The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad, his nonfiction work where he says everything he has to say about sailing, the sea, ships, and what the maritime world means to him. A must-read for everyone with an age of sail fixation. He bemoans that the steam engine is creating a world where sailors feel no deep connection with the wind and weather.
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Jan 6, 2023 23:58
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I liked Hidden Figures. It's unimbiguously uplifting and hopeful, which puts it in contrast to most of the books about black history I look at. Reading the book lowered my opinion of the movie, which only covers a small slice of the book, maybe fifty to sixty pages or so.
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Jan 29, 2023 20:38
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One of those books where the things its ardent fans say make it sound terrible.
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Feb 7, 2023 17:46
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Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed by James C. Scott pursues through many examples the ways in which the world has been molded into forms suited to bureaucratic observation and management. Very educational, but it's such a drat shame that a long chapter on the Tennessee Valley Authority was cut out.
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Feb 9, 2023 20:12
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Guy has sex. Then it gets nightmarishly frightening.
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Feb 10, 2023 20:22
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The Power of Art by Simon Schama tells of the life and works of eight artists; Caravaggio, Bernini, Rembrandt, Jacques-Louis David, JMW Turner, Van Gogh, Picasso, and Rothko. Van Gogh's chapter specifically allowed me to see him in a heartbreaking new light.
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Feb 14, 2023 15:03
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The Glorious Cause by Robert Middlekauff taught me plenty about the formation of America, but regrattably had nothing at all to say about how all this affected the natives.
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Feb 24, 2023 05:20
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With modern life being what it is I'm almost surprised I don't read very much about people doing as Bartleby did.
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Mar 18, 2023 07:17
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A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924 was alternately tremendous, heartbreaking, and from time to time rather darkly funny. I won't want to read anything else about the period for a long while. Shame about the author's ridiculous behavior.
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Mar 21, 2023 09:39
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His Cosmicomics are rather more Borgesian in nature.
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Apr 4, 2023 02:06
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I read Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany largely because Tom Hanks and Spielberg have been working on adapting it into a miniseries. The subtitle had me worried about it possibly being hokey patriotic crap, but it turned out to be a heartbreaking book, harshly revealing the suffering of both the flyers and the German population they bombed. His strategic analysis of the effectiveness of the bombing campaign, too, was lucid and penetrating. I'll gladly read Miller's book about the Vicksburg campaign.
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Apr 27, 2023 08:14
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