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nyquil posted:I just finished A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, and it was hilarious the whole way through, all though the end was a little confusing and seemed there for the sake of ending the book. But overall it was hilarious and awesome. I'm about a hundred pages from finishing Confederacy and loving every sentence of it. I've been living in New Orleans for about a year and Toole is so letter-perfect in capturing the characters of this place it's scary. The artist who lives in my building is so close to Ignatius Reilly (minus the gas) I wonder if he and Toole actually knew each other in college. I think I might fire up a discussion/fawning thread for the book once I'm done.
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Dec 18, 2006 17:21
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I just finished H. Beam Piper's The Cosmic Computer and, ick. The poor guy can't finish off a scene to save his life. It doesn't help that his characters are postage-stamp flat, either.
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Jan 12, 2007 16:16
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InfiniteZero posted:I see that there's a new book that must be the sequel to this, and I think I'll pick it up. I'm sure other people here have read Moore, and I'm curious -- judging by the synopses at the end of BSF, it looks like he has a pretty standard formula: whacky mythical creature or supernatural powers are considered from the humble standpoint of a regular joe. Am I correct in this assumption? He's got BSF where a person discovers they are a vampire. He's got a book where a person discovers he's the grim reaper. He's got a book where a guy is best friends with Christ. He's got a book where a guy befriends a demon. Hmmm. It's not so much that Moore's subject matter is narrow - though it is - what irritates me is that his range of characters is narrow, too. When I reviewed Moore's Fluke, I put my beef like this: PresterJohn posted:I think of the Moore Character Creation System like a series of binary toggles covering a narrow range of traits. Smart and sympathetic versus dumb and lovable. Sensitive and lonely versus shallow and promiscuous. Charmingly inept versus fearfully efficient. Late forties versus mid-twenties. Moderately debauched versus unspoiled (but eager to learn). The sequence ends with more universal characteristics that tie into the plot – good guy versus bad guy and ignorant doof versus knowing conspirator. These two are linked. The good guys always start the book ignorant and discover the secret surprise twists over the course of the story. The bad guys are almost always the ones who know the tricks ahead of time. It's not necessarily bad that Moore works to a formula. The results are usually quite enjoyable. While I feel Fluke is the weakest of his books, (that I've read) I remain a fan and I have the fresh-from-the-bookshop copy of You Suck (his latest) here to prove it. And regarding your spoilertag question, I seem to remember they poked holes in Jody's coat of bronze. The badguy was completely encased, so even if he turned to mist he couldn't escape. That's IIRC, though.
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Feb 8, 2007 22:00
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Mack the Knife posted:Is You Suck a sequel? I assumed it was BSF retitled, since BSF is a dumb title. You Suck is a sequel. It picks up at pretty much the instant BSF ends. It is outstanding so far. The early highlight is Tommy panicking when he becomes physically perfect when he turns into a vampire. Naturally, for a guy who was circumcised as an infant, the foreskin comes as a surprise. PresterJohn posted:And regarding your spoilertag question, I seem to remember they poked holes in Jody's coat of bronze. The badguy was completely encased, so even if he turned to mist he couldn't escape. That's IIRC, though. Quoting myself. Whoo. Anyway, my spoilertag recollection is A) correct and B) very much a part of the sequel.
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Feb 9, 2007 16:07
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I'm on a serious readin' kick these days. Read & Reviewed: Rumble on the Bayou by Jana DeLeon. Blech. I think the only thing more soul-crushing than reading by-the-numbers romance would be writing it. DeLeon is a first-time author. It shows. Badly. Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde. Fforde is over his first-time jitters and the Thursday Next series is starting to kick real rear end. Check it out if you're into British humour and metafiction. Finished and on-deck for Review next week: Dope by Sara Gran. A modern noir. Gran has a good voice, very reminiscent of Chandler or Hammet. On the other hand, her well-researched "By God it's NYC in 1950 and don't you forget it!" setting gets dull, and her plot has the classic private eye problem: Talk to person, get new contact, talk to new contact, get clue, trace clue to next person, lather, rinse, repeat ad nauseam. It does have a nice double-reverse trick ending, though. Read but not Reviewed: Skin by Roald Dahl. Beautiful short fiction, though the common theme - "This is so pleasant and nice and OH GOD STEPHEN KING CONTENT OUT OF NOWHERE!" - starts to tire when you read the collection fast. Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs. M'eh. I definitely agree with the underwhelmed response another goon already expressed about this. Relentlessly kooky, frequently funny, and it's got a definite dark side. Still it's quite unfocused, even for a memoir, and the ending - 'I shall become a writer so I can share all these zany experiences!' - made me want to plant those scissors in Burroughs's back.
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Feb 23, 2007 18:50
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A Game of Chess posted:I'm really, really sorry to disappoint you, but they're not. At all. Hey, to be fair, Speaker for the Dead is very good ... in a very different way to Ender's Game. It's after the second book that the series goes into slow constant decline.
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Mar 1, 2007 15:57
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I finished Iron Council by China Miéville last night. It was marvelous. If more folks could write like this I would be proud to be a sci-fi nerd. Miéville provides just enough info about his weird fantasy world to let your imagination fill in the blanks and leaves you clamoring for more. He dances with language in a downright literary way that's all too rare in the sci-fi aisle. The boy can write, I tells ya.
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Mar 9, 2007 19:20
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This week it's Jennifer Government's turn in my little critical pillory. I didn't think it was actually bad, but it's hardly the smart, biting satire it's billed as. It's the novel equivalent of a summer popcorn movie. It features evil corporations set loose in a super-capitalist alternate universe – c.f. snakes set loose on a plane. Now I'm onto Michael Chabon's Kavalier and Clay, and I'm enjoying it a lot more. I just finished the part about the golem of Prague. After reading Iron Council I could have had a nice little 'books featuring golems' theme going if not for Barry's bloody Jennifer Government.
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Mar 16, 2007 15:09
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I finished Michael Chabon's Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay a couple nights ago. It's a winner six ways from Sunday. Even if the writing were poo poo (it's not), the subject matter covers about a dozen things I love. Even if the subject matter were deadly dull (it's not), the writing is so good it hurts. It's not so much that Chabon is good at scene-setting or characterization. It's that he does these things so well you're absolutely certain Kavalier & Clay are a couple of real guys. The book's set in 1939, and it's not so much that Chabon put a lot of effort into getting the feel right. It's that you're sure the man's got a time machine hidden in his garden shed. Chabon is the sort of writer who's gotten six-figure advances and killer movie deals and Pulitzer prizes for his work. (Kavalier & Clay picked up that last one.) He deserves it all. Kavalier & Clay is a shining example of what storytelling is all about.
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Mar 21, 2007 14:52
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Pfirti86 posted:This Side of Paradise isn't too shabby either if you like Fitzgerald. I read it right before I started at Princeton and really enjoyed how accurate it was even 80 years later. Whatsup Tiger goon. Yeah, the fact that the eating clubs' characters are mostly the same after almost a century is freaky.
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Jul 31, 2009 21:55
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Luisfe posted:You seriously ought to get the second sequel. I've already mentioned in this thread before, but hey, there is no such thing as "getting too much Dumas". Ten Years Later can be a pain in the rear end to find because it's usually broken up into volumes. For reference, if you go for ebooks, this is the correct order of Project Gutenberg files: Vicomte de Bragelonne = #2609 Ten Years Later = #2681 Louise de la Valliere = #2710 The Man in the Iron Mask = #2759 Those four files, I think, cover all of the third book. There are some false leads out there, even on Gutenberg, that are just bits and pieces rather than the full story.
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Oct 10, 2009 13:34
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