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I'm on a post-apocolyptic bent as of late, so I just finised Jonathan Lethem's Amnesia Moon, which I thought was an interesting take on the genre, though sort of unsatisfying overall. I don't have anything against "happy endings," but I thought things wrapped up a bit too neatly at the end. Now, I'm on A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr. which, so far, has knocked my socks off.
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Nov 28, 2006 23:15
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Finished The Terror by Dan Simmons last night. I'd read elsewhere from other reviews that the book was repetitive and boring, but I couldn't disagree more. I was absolutely hooked from the first page to the last. It's a bit of a doorstop, but I found that it flew by pretty quickly. It's a fictional historical account of the real-life failed Franklin Expedition to seek out the Northwest Passage in the Arctic, but with a terrible, toothy twist. I'm curious about Hyperion, but I don't typically like reading back to back books by the same author (I burn out easily), so up next is The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon. I've had it sitting on my shelf for a while, and I've heard it's excellent, so I should probably get my rear end in gear. tonytheshoes fucked around with this message at 01:07 on Jan 30, 2008 |
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Jan 30, 2008 00:52
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Finished The Ask by Sam Lipsyte last night. I enjoyed reading it, but I don't see how it got as much critical praise as it did. Still, it contained some good laughs and a couple of surprisingly touching moments, and being the first Lipsyte book I've read, I'm definitely going to check out his other stuff. Up next, The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington.
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Mar 16, 2011 17:09
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Finished "The Magnificent Ambersons" yesterday. I enjoyed about 4/5ths of the book, but the ending was AWFUL. It was like Booth Tarkington was forced to write a happy(ish) ending, but then decided to arrive there by the most astoundingly random and stupid means imaginable. Also, Pulitzer Prize? Really? At any rate, I wish the Orson Welles movie existed in its intended form, because he would have probably made something awesome out of the book, but I don't really want to watch the studio patch-job that was ultimately released. Up next, probably something cheesy and sci-fi/fantasy-y to douche my brain.
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Mar 23, 2011 17:01
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Just finished The Four Fingers Of Death by Rick Moody. I've never read anything else by him, but the book reminded me strongly of a cross between DFW and Vonnegut, but never quite achieving the greatness of either. That said, while there were places where the book started to drag, I was glad that I soldiered through because in the end, the final few pages of the book cast an entirely new light on the preceding 700 or so, and made the entire novel much more emotionally resonant. Better than average, but not the greatness I was hoping for. Next up is The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt, a gift from my in-laws that my father-in-law is DYING for me to read so we can discuss it.
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Jan 18, 2012 18:55
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stickyfngrdboy posted:I've just finished Something Rotten, by Jasper Fforde. Just finished "Shades of Grey" by Fforde, and I'm so bummed that the next book in the series isn't out yet. It was awesome. I love books like "Grey" were the author doesn't spoon-feed you everything, but just drops hints here and there of what's actually going on, especially little details in the background (like the whole Wizard of Oz/Frank Oz thing--Gene Wolfe, does this well, too. Anyway, I'm very interested in the Thursday Next series, but I've never read "Jane Eyre," so I'm wondering if you have an opinion of whether or not I should read it before "The Eyre Affair?"
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Mar 19, 2012 17:24
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for getting.
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Rogue1-and-a-half posted:I actually read The Eyre Affair before I read Jane Eyre. Actually, I still haven't read Jane Eyre, I just realized! Oh, man, gotta read that. It helps if you have a passing familiarity with the story, but I don't think it's at all necessary to enjoying The Eyre Affair. Also, if you bog down in the opening bits, just stay with it. I thought The Eyre Affair was pretty great, but the series really opens up with the second one, Lost in a Good Book; the series essentially becomes pure genius with the second book, so finish The Eyre Affair on faith if you have to. Thanks! I think I'll sort of skim through Jane Eyre first then. I really dig Fforde's writing...
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Mar 21, 2012 16:11
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nate fisher posted:I ordered it this morning. I hope I like it more than you. For what it's worth, I just finished it as well, and I quite enjoyed it. I thought it was kind of a cool amalgamation of detective noir, horror and sci-fi, though if you're looking for "hard" science, look elsewhere. At the least, it was good enough to make me want to read the forthcoming sequel...
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Jun 1, 2012 18:25
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Just finished The Dragon's Path by Daniel Abraham. Thought I'd give it a try because a.) I'd enjoyed "The Expanse" series, which was co-written by Abraham, and b.) I keep trying to convince myself that Fantasy is a genre that I might like. Well... I think I'm simply leaning toward the "not a big fan of Fantasy" idea, because I have yet to find a book or series in the genre that can keep my interest. Then again, maybe this one just didn't grab me because it was like Medieval Econ 101 with a bunch of vaguely defined, completely indistinct races, a bunch of morally ambiguous characters who had absolutely no accountability for their actions, and about 200 excess pages of--well, I'm not sure what, because my eyes periodically glazed over in boredom. I love Sci-Fi, but I have yet to find a Fantasy book or series not written by China Mieville or Gene Wolfe that doesn't bore me to tears. Anyway, up next is Carter Beats The Devil which has been absolutely excellent so far.
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Aug 7, 2012 16:18
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Just blew through The Reapers Are The Angels by Alden Bell, and it was fantastic. It was like William Faulkner wrote a zombie apocalypse. The cover looks like a YA novel, but it was anything but...
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Sep 11, 2012 00:22
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Just finished re-reading the original 4 books of the Hitchhiker's Guide series for the first time since high school and, sadly, I probably should have just let them continue to live on in their perceived greatness in my memories (I'm now 36). The first book was just about as good as I remember, the second, still strong, but not as compelling. Unfortunately, by the middle of the third and all through the fourth, I found myself looking forward to just "getting it over with." I didn't even bother reading Mostly Harmless, which I still haven't read, and now, probably never will. This entire experience saddens me because these were my "Absolute Favorite Books of All Time, Ever," for years and years, and the fact is, now they don't even chart in my Top 25. Have I grown out of them? Are the books just a product of their time? I don't know.  [edit] I guess it fall into the same category as movies like "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." Loved it in school, still quote it from time to time, can't really stand watching it anymore...
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Sep 24, 2012 19:06
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Just finished Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates. Sort of a fictionalized diary of a Jeffrey Dahmner-esque serial killer. Pretty chilling. Short, quick read--kinda reminded me of The Wasp Factory by Iain M. Banks, but not quite as... weird...
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Oct 11, 2012 22:16
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jackpot posted:My only gripes with it are the length (240 pages - I literally started and finished it on the same airplane), and the fact that the author really ignores some basic poo poo in order to tell his story. It's 25 years after zombies took over the world - when the main character comes to a ghost town, you really don't expect her to be able to flip on the lights and start pumping gas (in a car whose tires didn't rot after sitting for, again, 25 years. But this happens over and over again. I get why he does this - if you've only got 240 pages, you can't spend half of it with her learning how to siphon gas - but he doesn't even try to explain it. In some places, the power is still on. Why? It doesn't matter, it just is. I know, I know - my immersion. But still. I agree, actually. Didn't notice as I read, but I thought about it after the fact and little things like that were a little wonky. Still, I dug the story...
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Nov 20, 2012 18:36
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Just finished Pure by Julianna Baggott, and I can't help but wish this book hadn't been restrained by the conventions and trappings of YA. Cool setting, so-so story, rudimentary symbolism, and unnecessarily written in third person present tense--a gimmicky annoyance that adds absolutely nothing. Why does YA lit do this? Overall, I DID find it intriguing enough to read the sequel when it comes out--and I actually liked it better than The Hunger Games, but it's not a high priority... YA just annoys me.
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Nov 28, 2012 16:10
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I just couldn't get into this series, especially after such sparkling writing as: "The trailing edge flaps and the ailerons—the spoiler panels on the back sides of the wings— were all straight up like Paula Abdul, which is how pilots set them after runway touchdown." So much of this book contained way too much explanation, as well as... well, dubious writing...
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Jan 7, 2013 00:41
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Just finished Roadside Picnic by The Brothers Strugatsky (aka, the Strugatsky brothers... hurr), and wow. It's like the perfect mix of eerie, vague, mysterious, and just plain cool. This one is gonna stick with me for quite a while...
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Jan 8, 2013 15:27
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Just finished The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus. Basically, the voices of children become toxic to adults. Weird, sort of Cronenberg-ish with a dash of Vonnegut, DFW and Dick thrown in, but overall, I felt that it really didn't add up to much. Still, it was a quick and interesting read.
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Jan 22, 2013 02:32
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V for Vegas posted:It does have one of the best covers of 2012. That it does. This book is weird in that I didn't love it, but I'd recommend reading it--I feel like it might eventually be a classic, but I can't quite put my finger on why. I'm going to read it again someday (most likely if/after I ever have kids) and see if it brings a new perspective to it.
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Jan 22, 2013 15:18
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Just finished The Rook by Daniel O'Malley, and it seems to me that by the end, he was just trying to get it all over with. Such a top-heavy book with so much exposition ultimately leading up to... an ambiguously inconclusive ending that may or may not result in sequels. I enjoyed parts of the book very much, but I feel like it was a lot of great ideas (most of them borrowed from every other geeky interest you can name--Harry Potter, X-Men, James Bond) that didn't really gel into a full story. Still, it was one of the few "funny" books that I actually found to be genuinely funny at times.
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Jan 30, 2013 15:30
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nate fisher posted:I just finished The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock. DYING to read this--it's been on my list for a while now. I just finished The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie, and it was the first book in the fantasy genre in years that kept my interest. Found it to be pretty hilarious at times, and damned satisfying, especially for the first book of a trilogy. Reading the rest of the series next, but since I had to wait for them to arrive from amazon.com, I'm currently reading Monster by A. Lee Martinez, but it, well, sucks. At least it's short...
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Feb 19, 2013 19:30
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Just finished The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach--basically Moby Dick meets baseball. I loved the first eight innings of the book, but in the bottom of the ninth, he blew the game... I dunno, I just didn't find the ending very realistic, and Pella was a borderline Manic Pixie Dream Girl who, by the end of the book, annoyed the poo poo out of me. Overall, I did enjoy the book, and I can't imagine it'll be too long before someone tries to make a movie out of it.
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May 22, 2013 14:54
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On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers. Pretty much exactly what you'd want out of a book about pirates and voodoo. One of my favorites of the year for pure reading enjoyment.
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Jun 11, 2013 14:32
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Just finished Downtown Owl by Chuck Klosterman and CK should really just stick to essays. I get the whole Nineteen Eighty-Four parallel (small town itself is Big Brother, etc), but it was basically just a bunch of CK essay material unsuccessfully fictionalized.
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Jun 17, 2013 16:21
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Just finished Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock. I grew up in an area about an hour and a half from the real Knockemstiff, Ohio, and I really recognized and empathized with many of the characters in this book. So grim, but still amazingly touching and human. I highly recommend it. Imagine William Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy smashed together, and you're in the neighborhood.
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Sep 16, 2013 16:37
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nate fisher posted:I hope you have or plan to read his novel, The Devil All the Time. I really enjoyed it. The Devil All the Time is definitely on my list! I'll check out Woodrell. I have a copy of Winter's Bone somewhere, so I need to get to that one as well.
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Sep 16, 2013 21:49
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Just finished Dark Harvest by Norman Partridge. Fun little read, perfect for this time of year. I know some people get annoyed with his style, but I rather enjoyed it--it was like being told a story around a campfire.
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Oct 9, 2013 14:47
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Just finished The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett. Fun read. I might have to visit Discworld again some time...
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Oct 20, 2013 04:38
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mallamp posted:If you actually liked Colour of Magic, then the actually good Pratchett books (Mort ->) will blow your mind for sure.. Cool, will do. Magic was junk food for sure, but I needed something like it to kinda snap me out of my recent reading doldrums.
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Oct 20, 2013 23:03
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Just finished book #2 of the "Shoal Sequence" by Gary Gibson, Nova War. Suffered a bit from "middle book syndrome," and dragged along in a few parts, but overall, I'm having a lot of fun with this trilogy. Fairly derivative, but sometimes that's not a bad thing... If you're looking for a straight-up Space Opera, this would scratch that itch rather well.
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Nov 18, 2013 22:39
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bowmore posted:Just finished the Mortal Engines by Phillip Reeve, the first book. It was really well done and it deserves a place among classic YA books like Harry Potter. I loved how tight the action is and it felt very atmospheric. One of my favorite final lines of dialog in a book is at the end of that one: “You aren't a hero and I'm not beautiful and we probably won't live happily ever after," she said. "But we're alive and together and we're going to be all right.” Considering what just happened, it was amazing.
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Nov 26, 2013 16:15
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Just finished Technomancer by BV Larson. Dumb, dumb, dumb. At least it was free...
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Jan 28, 2014 04:04
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The Black Prism by Brent Weeks. Ehh... I've read a few fantasy novels in a row now, and I have come to the conclusion that very little of it interests me anymore. This one in particular was pretty juvenile. I'm not Captain Maturity or anything, but my 38-year-old self just can't get into this kind of stuff anymore. I still enjoy a lot of Science Fiction, but I'm going to have to be more selective about Fantasy. I have book two on hold at the library, but I think I'm gonna let it pass.
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Jun 16, 2014 22:10
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bowmore posted:The consensus is that Brent Weeks tends to write towards the lower age groups, his stuff may as well be YA. bananahammock Poutling posted:Brent Weeks writes like he has acute ADHD and has completely run out of ritalin. I think his stuff is less YA and more "I should write adaptation novels for video games". I actually agree with both of these... I would have loved this when I was 15, but now my tastes are so much more sophisticated--now if you excuse me, I'm going to go finish reading The Brain Eaters. Just kidding, I already read it... I suck.
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Jun 17, 2014 14:27
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Finished The Three by Sarah Lotz after reading some of the buzz about it. Wow. I. HATED. THIS. BOOK. The ending was a page taken straight out of Stephen King's worst (I can't tell you the specific book since it ruins the ending of both)--however, unlike King, the journey to the stupid final destination wasn't fun or compelling. The book was written in the same style as World War Z, another book I disliked for many of the same reasons. If you're using "oral accounts" and other bits and pieces of media, and if you can't write in varied and unique voices, it's probably not a good way to go about things. Also, if you are going to write from the POV of an American (or any other nationality other than your own--the author is apparently South African), do some research so you don't call a public bathroom a "public convenience." It sounds stupid and it's glaring. Plus, overusing ethnic words sounds phony, too. In this case, the Yiddish ones--a couple of characters were New York Jews, and they threw around "meshugganah" about a thousand times. This isn't Fiddler on the Roof. I can understand a few words, especially ones that have become ubiquitous--putz, schmuck, etc--but it was really annoying and noticeable. Look, I don't need things like motives and reasons to be spelled out for me in books. Some of my favorites end without any sort of "why." But if you're going to give me one, don't make it something so stupid it makes the rest of the book a waste of time. Blah.
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Jul 14, 2014 15:10
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nate fisher posted:Crap I was thinking about ordering this book, but I also disliked World War Z (mainly because I don't like reading fictional oral accounts). Is this book all oral accounts? Oral accounts, news articles, web chats, phone conversations... A lot of people enjoy the book, so if you can find a sample, I'd check it out first--it just wasn't for me.
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Jul 14, 2014 20:44
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Hedrigall posted:No really, I'm not going to to read the book so could you tell us in spoiler tags what Stephen King ending she ripped off? I will as soon as I can post again from an actual computer--don't wanna risk messing up the spoiler tags. Anyway, part of me feels bad for railing so hard on the book, but I guarantee I've loved books that others have completely despised (The Four Fingers of Death by Rick Moody comes to mind...).
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Jul 15, 2014 03:51
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Hedrigall posted:No really, I'm not going to to read the book so could you tell us in spoiler tags what Stephen King ending she ripped off? HUGE SPOILERS AHEAD-This post will ruin both a Stephen King novel and The Three by Sarah Lotz. If you haven't read King's more recent books or if you intend to, you might not wanna look at this... Basically, the end is very similar to Under The Dome. The Three (the three kids who survived the plane crashes that happen at the beginning) turn out to have been possessed, I guess, by some sort of entity, be it alien or a god or a runaway android or AI or whatever--the book is very ambiguous about this--and the whole thing was just some sort of experiment to see what would happen if the entity tried to bring about the end of the world. They came to earth a long time ago to "plant the seeds" and then returned later to see if it worked. It was really stupid. Reminded me of the entity that slapped the dome on top of the city in King's book to create a human ant farm and observe human behavior. Blah.
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Jul 15, 2014 14:37
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Poutling posted:I don't know that I took it that literally, to me the ending was still pretty ambiguous as to whether or not the narrator of the last part was truly crazy and just made poo poo up in her head. I guess that could be it, but the way the author handled it, I feel that would be the equivalent of "it was all a dream". I dunno... I love unreliable narrators, but just couldn't see it that way. Anyway, I was interested enough to finish it, so I suppose that was one thing it had going for it.
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Jul 15, 2014 15:29
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Finished The Darwin Elevator by Jason Hough, and I'm a little ways into the second book, The Exodus Towers. Just a little fast food reading, but it's surprisingly well-written, and as long as you don't think about it, pretty good. The pacing is lightning fast, and the author certainly isn't afraid to chase his protagonists up a tree and then cut it down...
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Aug 1, 2014 15:51
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Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain. Buried beneath the geysers of word vomit lies a pretty decent story with some good laughs. I would definitely recommend it, though I do think it odd that a 19-year-old would have as much insight into the world as Billy does. I know he's a combat-hardened vet, but still... Anyway, I enjoyed it overall.
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Aug 25, 2014 14:33
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