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The last three weeks were pretty much taken up by the count of monte cristo. That was a great book but god drat was it long. He can just go on for pages about what people were eating or wearing or how much money every person in the room makes per annum... poo poo that has nothing to do with anything. The dude is rich. I get this. Please get to the revenge. This week, though I read stranger in a strange land. I loved the beginning but towards the middle and the end I just... well heinlein wanted to challenge my mores and I guess he succeeded. I don't dig cannibalism or free love, I guess, and cults are basically my biggest fear so I didn't like anything michael tried to achieve. I wanted him to fail and I wanted people to reject that lifestyle, but it looks like I'm the rear end in a top hat. And before that was slaughterhouse-five, which was a good read. I didn't even recognize the intro as being what kurt vonnegut actually did and take his word for it being true until I was 80% through it. It threw me for a loop for a character in a story to tell me this was a true story, partially, and be expected to believe him but after that it was a good book.
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Nov 16, 2006 18:55
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Lawlita posted:For the two of you who just finished the Count of Monte Cristo, did either of you see the movie? I didn't actually read Dumas til after having seen the movie, and I found that I enjoyed them for very different reasons... I was suprised that out of all the adaptations of the count of monte cristo I've seen, the anime where he's a space elf with space cancer and all the duels are fought in giant robots was the most faithful to the book. And if you're talking about the 2002 movie it was fine while I watched it but in retrospect, and after reading the book, I really hate it. The old man teaches him fighting instead of science and history and languages? Instead of smugglers he finds pirates who make him fight jacopo to the death, who he spares, and makes his slave? His actual slave doesn't appear. Haidee was completely absent, benedetto (and betruccio) was completely absent... oh and they had to make albert his illegitimate son and he gets back together with mercedes to try to dig out a happy ending without any redemption. The movie, with hindsight, was ham fisted as gently caress all and I am glad I read the book.
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Nov 16, 2006 20:01
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For such a well referenced book I finished the metamorphosis in a couple hours. Maybe doug stanhope poisoned the well for me but I didn't see why you would attach so much literary interpretation to it. I tried to find somewhere to explain why it's so famous for being famous but all I found was a write-your-termpapers website with a sample page, and a wiki blurb mentioning that there are entire books that discuss the metamorphisis in length.
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Nov 17, 2006 14:39
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Just finished Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It was a fun to read as the movie. I've never done drugs, and never will, but his descriptions are just fantastic.
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Nov 17, 2006 20:20
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wayfinder posted:I finished "Der Schwarm" by Frank Sch�tzing recently, which reaffirmed my dislike of German SciFi. I periodically give it a chance, and so far, it has always dissappointed me hey I've been on this book for about a year. I overestimated my ability to translate german run-on sentences, so, so far I know that he works in a bar, doesn't like his coworker erwin, it's his birthday, and he's about to meet a dog. Basically the first two and a half pages.
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Nov 22, 2006 16:45
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I just finished Dirk Gently's holistic detective agency. I liked it but I wish there was a douglas adams thread as I'm not sure I get how it was resolved and would like to have it explained to me. I think you have to understand coleridge or have read the rime of the ancient mariner or something. Baby Babbeh posted:The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon. It's about an autistic boy who decides to try and solve the mystery of who killed his neighbor's dog, and then comes face to face with the break up of his parents relationship. It's narated first person from the POV of the autistic boy. The wierd, detached nature of this perspective is what gives the book most of it's appeal. The plot itself is sort of bland, but it's written in such a way that you don't really mind. Very quick, easy read and I'd reccomend it if you've got a weekend to kill. a few years ago a friend lent me this book. The title comes from a sherlock holmes story, and the kid tries to be like sherlock holmes. The parts where he talked about sir arthur conan doyle were interesting, made me lose respect for him, and ironically got me into sherlock holmes stories for a while. I think I got up to the speckled band before I got tired of it.
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Nov 27, 2006 17:07
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HamsterHuey posted:I just finished it too. net neutrality act, no child left behind, clear skies bill Every time I hear one of these names I think of the ministry of love 
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Nov 28, 2006 05:03
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I just read long dark teatime of the soul by douglas adams. For years I had been mad at douglas adams. He blew up the earth, twice, and killed every interesting character he's ever made as a giant gently caress-you to his fans. Dirk gently, whatever that was, could go take a flying leap for all I cared. Now I've read them and I liked them and it's over and he's dead and there are no more, ever. I'm sad now 
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Nov 29, 2006 17:25
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Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. After a while I was excited it was nearing the end. I kept reading and kept thinking "god when are they going to get to the punishment." Maybe if I knew the punishment wasn't until the epilogue I could have gotten more into it. Or maybe it was his conscience that punished him and once he stopped believing he was a higher class of person he was free to get the right type of punishment which presumeably will leave him purified at the end of it. I'm glad I read it and I definitly have something to mull over while I digest it.
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Dec 11, 2006 21:09
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Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep. I always feel like I need some kind of professional literary analysis after reading a good book. I just don't trust my analysis. Mine interpretation of the ending doesn't feel like it is good enough to hold up to the rest of the book. Once it completely left bladerunner behind (or once bladerunner completely gave up all pretenses of sticking to the book) I am left with religious implications crossed with cow tipping and I just don't know.
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Dec 13, 2006 01:15
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I just read the phillip K. Dick reader. It was a collection of his short stories. I've now read every book he's ever had turned into a movie. Maybe. I'm not even sure which of the short stories based the movie "screamers" because I've never seen the movie and even if I had hollywood just takes one of his premises and runs with it in a more marketable direction so it might not even help to know. It was good. I really enjoy his stories. He's not the best writer, I've been told, and I guess I can see that. However, he really knows how to make you sweat right along with his paranoid characters. It feels a little dated because he wrote most of these in the sixties or seventies and I thought people would stop assuming rockets were going to be the defacto transportation by the fifties, but whatever.
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Jan 6, 2007 06:43
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dirtycajun posted:I am now embarking on the Song of Fire and Ice, wish me luck. good luck. I'm 700 pages in the song of ice and fire's first book, game of thrones. It's amazing how many chapters end with a line that makes me want to read four or five more chapters to find out what happens next. It's a great book.
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Jan 8, 2007 00:08
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My job just got incredibly tedious. I usually would just read in between periods of actual work but this required my eyes but not my mind. It was just the worst kind of tedium so I turned to audiobooks from my library. American gods worked well, the guy gave everyone pretty distinct voices and it was easy to follow. I think I made a mistake with Neuromancer, however. I've never read cyberpunk before. I've played Deus Ex, and beneath a steel sky, and have always wanted to, but this was my first cyberpunk book. Sorry, "book". It was very hard to follow. My gloved hands were coated with incredibly stinky chemicals so I couldn't rewind and if I missed some transition between reality or cyberspace or jumping behind someone else's eyes I was hosed. The parts I caught were awesome as hell and I think when I leave this job I will give it a read through. Also the guy read it in this slow alabama drawl. And every time he tried to put emphasis on something it came across like "gonna make you squeel like a piggie" and I found it very distracting. Then at the end it was all "as read by the author"  Also I notice that Do Clonal Yakuza Assassins Dream of Vat-Grown Sheep? by zack parsons was almost directly lifted from neuromancer, at least the first page. I haven't read SA story time in a couple years but I was thinking that it was sounding extremely familiar.
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Jan 12, 2007 20:01
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Twelfth Nightstalker posted:Finished A Clash of Kings. Starting A Storm of Swords. I really need to catch up on these books so I can participate in those huge threads. (Haven't read book 4 yet, so I'm rereading the other 3 to catch myself up) I am like a quarter of a book ahead of you. PM me if you want to talk about the book but don't want to wade through the "we're too good for spoiler tags, deal with it  " thread
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Feb 7, 2007 00:26
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I just finished "the drawing of the three" in the dark tower series. I was pretty upset because the first thing to happen was he gets his shooting finger chewed off and it felt like it was entirely too early in a ten-whatever book series to have the main character be permenantly maimed but it grew on me and I like the way it turned out so far. I'm looking forward to book 4 because that's when I hear the series really hits its stride.
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Apr 24, 2007 04:28
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reflir posted:This turned me off the whole dark tower series. I read the first book and thought it was alright, then read the first couple of pages of the second and he got his fingers chewed off. I stopped reading thinking I'd go back to it later but I never did. The first thing I did was search every dark tower synopsis on wikipedia for mentions of the word finger to see if he ever, ever got them back. I mean he killed an entire city. He hasn't kicked nearly enough rear end yet to hang it up and become a newbie wrangler. Actually I had thought he lost his third and fourth finger and it wasn't until the wastelands that I realized he lost his trigger finger. Jesus, his trigger finger! loving lobsters  and I was upset that no, there was no mention of them ever again so it's basically permenant and I should stop worrying. Anyway I'm halfway into wastelands now. I think it's worth it. It makes him less of a lone wolf and allows the suspension of disbelief that he would ever need or put up with companions.
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Apr 24, 2007 22:52
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I just finished the waste lands, the third book in the dark tower series. With the heavy emphasis on riddles, it makes me want to get my hands on some "real" riddles. Not riddles roland would call idiocy. Old timey rhyming riddles like the ones bandied back and forth between bilbo and gollum in the hobbit. I'm pretty tired but when I googled for them all I got were stupid story riddles where the answer is to ask one gatekeeper what the other would say, or bizzare answer-less riddles that microsoft apparently gives to job applicants which focus mostly on estimation and in what order you would troubleshoot your lights not turning on.
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Apr 28, 2007 08:43
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Astfgl posted:Did you try this site? Thanks, that was fun for a while. Some of them were just dumb but many were alright. I still haven't completely scratched this itch so I'm back to where I started!
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Apr 29, 2007 18:07
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Alright I just finished wizard and glass from the dark tower series. How much further is it worth it to go on? I take it from the front page article recently about worst villain reveals that the ending is less than satisfactory
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May 20, 2007 20:20
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Maradon! posted:I just finished Orson Scott Card's "Speaker For the Dead" I have read a lot of OSC lately too! I was reading Ender's Game and even though it was awesome I was a little worried that I might be reading harry potter in space. I read the books in order of release, and I'm up to shadow of the hegemon. After reading his wiki page and hearing his religious views and how he thinks gay people should just play ball and pretend to be straight to keep from messing up the rest of society I can't stop noticing every time a religious person speaks, and how often. I guess I feel like I've been preached to, stealthfully.
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Oct 7, 2007 04:16
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snyprmag posted:Snowcrash. I started it because I made a joke about killing people with binary somehow, and somebody recommended it off that. very entertaining with the right mix of action, computer mumbo jumbo, and religious history mumbo jumbo with enough humor so that it didn't take itself too seriously. I loved the opening to that book but after the pizza got delivered I wasn't as thrilled. It was still an enjoyable read, but the beginning was just fantastic and it never really caught me the same way again.
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Oct 14, 2007 04:41
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I just read the Raw Shark Texts, and last year I read house of leaves. I'm in the mood for more narrator-possibly-isn't-all-there experimental novels. Just the idea of an unreliable narrator appeals to me even if it's completely rear end backwards to go looking to be deceived ahead of time. e: poo poo, yeah, narrator Krinkle fucked around with this message at 01:37 on Feb 15, 2012 |
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Feb 15, 2012 01:20
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about the Raw Shark Texts: one thing I don't get is the book is about a man who is disassociative, the idea is he's been shattered by this event and left with fragments of his life, and the story is fragmented also. There are 32 chapters, and 32 lost fragments (called negatives: Photographs and negatives play into the main story), so half the book is out there somewhere hidden on the web. What I don't get is after five years the official forums has a lead on like two. There's an extra chapter translated from the hebrew version, and an extra chapter translated from the portuguese edition. 80% of the negative chapters are "I have no idea" and the rest are "I heard it was this but who knows". One of them the author admits to leaving under a park bench in england and if nobody published it for him then OH WELL. House of leaves had a lot of extra interpretations and codes and things that you could get online and it really helped my appreciation of the book. Raw Shark Texts came out five years ago and has huge question marks over half the story? It feels really frustrating. I feel if they can't figure it out by now, they never will?
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Feb 15, 2012 19:42
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Just finished Caves of Steel by isaac asimov. I got exactly what I hoped, a buddy cop detective novel where one of them is a robot and the other doesn't like robots! Oh man the capers they get up to. It was great. I also read I, Robot last week.. the real one, not the one with will smith on the cover. I'm going to stick with Asimov for a while since I'm enjoying these.
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Feb 17, 2012 08:51
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thanks! I had no idea all his novels were in a series. It looks like the naked sun is next?
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Feb 17, 2012 09:07
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I just finished I Am Legend. The mark of a good book is even if you know the twist it can still churn your guts up on the journey. Thinking back on the will smith movie, if they focused grouped out the twist, what exactly was the relation to the book, from which most other things were changed?
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Apr 13, 2012 02:33
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I just finished The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest and I'm all bummed out to discover the drama surrounding the author: that Stieg Larrson's Dragon Tattoo books got published posthumously, that he died of a heart attack when the elevator was out and he had to take the stairs unexpectedly, that he planned ten books and was halfway through the 4th when he died. And that there is still, eight years later, a legal dispute between his girlfriend of 30+ years and his brother and father preventing her from finishing it and releasing it. Read a whole bunch of stuff about the Swedish legal system and his anti-racist newspaper and how getting legally married would have given his address to the public and made him a target to Nazis so he never did it but now he's dead and his really-kind-of-obviously wife got dicked over out of the rights to his work because his family are being bastards. Man. For so many books about how hosed the Swedish legal system is it's either ironic or poetic that his estate is all hosed up because of it and I can't decide which. Anyway I read all three books in the past two weeks, loved them, wondered what took me so long, and started grieving for the author.
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Jan 9, 2013 22:20
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