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SilkyP posted:A supposedly fun thing I'll never do again by DFW. I liked the essay he wrote on tennis that some goon linked in the essay thread a lot so I picked it up cheap online. Only a quarter of the way in. Not bad, nothing I've liked as much as his tennis essay but dude seemed like a pretty interesting guy. Haven't read any of his other stuff but will probably end up reading some of his shorter stuff. I'd like to try Infinite Jest but I'm not sure if it would actually be enjoyable or if it's just a book hipsters like to say they read as a badge of honor. That's the one about his trip on a cruise liner, right? I've never actually read any of his stuff but he's been on my kindle to-read list for like...half a decade by this point. Anyway, just started reading two books who's titles happen to start with the same word: Underground Airlines by Ben Winters. The concept alone was interesting enough to get me to buy it when I saw it on sale. An alternate history thriller/mystery novel where the US civil war never happened and was prevented by some last minute political compromises. It's set in the present day where slavery is still legal, but only present in 4 of the southern states. I'm only about 20% of the way through it, so I haven't really gotten to the meat of the actual mystery yet (it mainly revolves around a freed slave who now works as a slave tracker for the government), but Winters has done a phenomenal job of worldbuilding and examining how the US might have turned out had things gone that way, I.e. Most other developed nations are disgusted by us and levy heavy sanctions, South Africa is still in the midst of apartheid and is a close ally. Unless the mystery turns out to be really unimpressive I'd say it might be one of the best books I've started reading in the past few years. And the other book is Underground by Haruki Murakami. I'm not gonna lie, I've read several of Murakami's books and I'm not much of a fan, but I think one of the reasons that Underground had drawn me in so much is that it's non-fiction. It's a collection of interviews with 40-odd people who were present at the sarin attacks in the Tokyo railway back in the 90's. It's kind of a look into the mindset of the average Japanese person and...I don't think "alien" is the right word, but it's kind of incredible how well the book shows how different the response was to what I imagine the American one would be. An added bonus is that since the attacks were mostly contained to a few small areas you get to see a sort of web forming as each interview subject mentions seeing other subjects reactions. If you're paying attention about a 1/3rd of the way through the book you'll start to recognize other interview subjects from their actions, even if the person currently being interviewed never met them.
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Jan 7, 2017 22:00
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Just started Hyperion, one of my Secret Santa gifts. It started on a somewhat awkward foot, spending way too much time explaining in great detail JUST HOW ALIEN EVERYTHING IS that it put me off, thinking it was going to be one of those scifi books. But then it got into the priest's tale and I have to admit I am hooked; the story is captivating, well written, and the mystery that is just now hinted at makes it hard to put the book down. I seem to have lost most of this afternoon...
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Jan 22, 2017 00:17
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Anathem by Neal Stephenson. So far it's pretty WTF...
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Jan 22, 2017 18:40
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Well, after posting in the TBB Rec Thread, I've ordered the following: Anabasis - Xenophon The White Company - Sir Arthur Doyle The Black Company - Glen Cook (I'm being real original with the titles I'm buying, it would appear) Best Served Cold - Joe Abercrombie Looking forward to finally reading the first two, and am interested to see how TBC pans out, as I'm sure I've seen that recommended by a few people, on here. However BSC is the one I'm least certain about, as I don't think I've really heard much of anything about him, although it was recommended to me by someone so I thought 'why not' and threw it in the virtual basket. (Ah, the ease of online shopping, eh?) Has anyone here read it, before? I'm curious to know what you think of his work, if so.
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Jan 22, 2017 23:23
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Major Isoor posted:Well, after posting in the TBB Rec Thread, I've ordered the following: Flaggy fucked around with this message at 04:38 on Jan 23, 2017 |
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Jan 23, 2017 04:19
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Flaggy posted:I have read Best Served Cold and I enjoyed it, I would recommend reading his First Law Trilogy first (The Blade Itself, Before They Are Hanged, Last Argument of Kings) as Best Served Cold takes place inside of this universe. If you end up liking these, The Heroes and Red Country are set inside the same universe. Huh, ok - I knew it was set in the universe of another series, but I didn't know it revolved around the main trilogy, as I was actually told that it's more-or-less a standalone book. So what's the deal with it; does it just feature a lot of characters and make a lot of references to events in the previous books, or? Since if it's OK for a first-time reader still, I guess I'll go through it, see if I like the author's style of writing, etc. and then if so, get the main trilogy.
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Jan 23, 2017 05:19
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Major Isoor posted:Huh, ok - I knew it was set in the universe of another series, but I didn't know it revolved around the main trilogy, as I was actually told that it's more-or-less a standalone book. It's pretty stand alone but set in the same world. IIRC it involves a minor character from the trilogy and not spoilery about what happens in the trilogy
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Jan 23, 2017 06:24
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ltr posted:It's pretty stand alone but set in the same world. IIRC it involves a minor character from the trilogy and not spoilery about what happens in the trilogy Oh, well that's a relief, then. Assuming I enjoy it, I might use BSC as a springboard into the rest of his works. And in that case, would it be best to invest myself in the trilogy, or are the other standalone book(s) better (individually) than the entries in his trilogy?
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Jan 23, 2017 11:01
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A Wizard of Earthsea Been playing a lot of RPGs lately and have been reading a lot of dystopian fiction so I thought I'd change it up and have a go at some of the 'fantasy canon' I didn't read as a teenager. I'm maybe 1/3rd of the way through and it's not grabbing me. I think if I'd picked this book up at 12 I'd have read it in two sittings. The subject matter is pretty typical of young adult fantasy but the prose is quite formal in the way it's written, seems almost too formal and adult for a story about a teenager with magic powers going to wizard school.
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Mar 7, 2017 15:06
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Reading these two simultaneously
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Apr 20, 2017 03:33
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The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars by Michael E. Mann. Quite compelling so far, it's by the scientist at the centre of the 'hockey stick' climate reconstructions from tree rings, ice cores, sediments, etc and the East Anglia hacking incident. It's a reasonable length about 450 pages but it isn't too dry with technical detail or lengthy backstories of every scientists mentioned. I'm learning something every chapter. I like the writing, it reads well. A lot of these culture war type books can have a smug/snarky tone which I don't like even if I'm sympathetic to the writer's viewpoint. Thankfully this isn't the case here. Not as far as I've read at least.
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Apr 20, 2017 03:56
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Tommy_Udo posted:Reading these two simultaneously what's mysterious about that barrel?
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Apr 20, 2017 06:17
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A human heart posted:what's mysterious about that barrel?  Who killed the d00d inside it.
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Apr 20, 2017 08:53
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Stefan Zweig's Montaigne. Pushkin Press (God bless 'em) have been heavily pushing Zweig recently; lots to discover and really worth it.
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Apr 27, 2017 19:15
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Just started 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson. I'm a huge fan of the Mars Trilogy and his first book, Icehenge, so I'm excited to see how this one goes.
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Apr 27, 2017 23:29
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The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock. The sticker covered most of the word Devil so it jus said The D All the Time which I have to believe was intentional. I hope everyone gets a chuckle out of it like I did. Also Stephen Kings IT
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Jun 5, 2017 04:17
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Bloopsy posted:Just started 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson. I'm a huge fan of the Mars Trilogy and his first book, Icehenge, so I'm excited to see how this one goes. Looking forward to hearing how this is, because I'm about halfway through New York 2140 by same. Really digging it so far, it's like... utopian dystopia, I love the way he brings out these elements of the landscape, of esoteric systems, of finding the best in people.
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Jun 10, 2017 21:49
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I'm currently reading The Cardinal by Henry Morton Robinson, written around 1950. It's basically about a working-class American's rise to become a cardinal in the Catholic Church and his daily trials and tribulations. I'm only 11% in but am enjoying it so far.
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Jun 15, 2017 11:27
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Pocket Billiards posted:A Wizard of Earthsea Where are you at exactly? I can't quite remember the pacing but I do remember that the last half of the book takes a pretty significant turn. I read it 5 years ago (at 26) and it seemed to hold up well. YMMV.
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Jun 15, 2017 20:55
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Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian. I started a few days ago and I'm 148 pages in already! I've tried to read this book before on three separate occasions and bounced off because of the sheer difficulty of parsing everything (especially ship stuff) - but hey. This time everything's clicking and while I'm still going through that period where I have to look at the chart of a ship's parts to understand things, the rest of the book is coming together. I like Jack (a good natured bloke), I like Stephen, I'm curious about Dillon's bad attitude(?), and above all I love the humor. So - hopefully, hopefully I'll be able to post in the What did you just finish? thread soon!
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Jul 16, 2017 02:30
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I found both A Wizard of Earthsea and The Farthest Shore to just be the worst kind of bollock-achingly dull shite, but The Tombs of Atuan for some reason is the exact opposite and well worth slogging through the first book in order to get to.
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Jul 16, 2017 17:49
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Well, I've finally started Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie, after buying it ages ago, after receiving recommendations for it here. I'm only just reading the prologue so it's far too early to give much of an opinion, but it does seem decent enough so far. Looking forward to continuing with it, and seeing if it's as good as they say! (And after that, I'll likely be reading The Black Company)
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Jul 17, 2017 04:09
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I'm reading The Murder at Sissingham Hall by Clara Benson, because it was free. The only remotely interesting thing about this is the back story. They were released as "newly discovered manuscript from the 1920s" until the author decided to do a spin off series and confessed. Thing is, this is utterly poo poo, like it's written by the same person who write those nice books about nurses your Nan likes poo poo. I could have told them it was a scam from the first sentence. No matter how much casual racism you throw in you can't hide the fact that you clearly didn't have a classical 1900s education kids.
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Aug 1, 2017 20:09
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Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami, about a third of the way through and this is already turning out to be another great book from him. Quite possibly my favourite modern writer, was surprised to see there wasn't a thread on here devoted to talking about his books.
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Aug 5, 2017 07:28
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Started my 4th or 5th re-read of Dancers at the End of Time by Michael Moorcock. One of the rare scifi books I read as a nerdy teenager and still enjoy.
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Aug 5, 2017 07:37
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Starting Days of Fire by Peter Baker. Prologue has already made me realize there is so much I don't know about the Bush administration.
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Aug 11, 2017 04:16
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Just started up Rob Bell's What Is The Bible?: How an Ancient Library of Poems, Letters, and Stories Can Change the Way You Think and Feel About Everything. I've been an atheist for almost half my life but the last few months I've been kinda rethinking things and coming back to religion and Rob Bell's fresh, unique take on Christianity has been a big part of that, between his podcast and the previous books of his that I've read, What We Talk About When We Talk About God and Love Wins: Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived (the guy loves his subtitles). This one's about the context of the Bible that gets missed a lot, between historical/cultural context that would have been obvious to the original audience that would be lost today or nuances in the Hebrew/Greek languages that don't survive translation perfectly intact, etc, a subject that's always fascinated me even when I wasn't religious, so I'm excited to dig in to this one.
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Aug 26, 2017 18:35
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Chuck Buried Treasure posted:Just started up Rob Bell's What Is The Bible?: How an Ancient Library of Poems, Letters, and Stories Can Change the Way You Think and Feel About Everything. I've been an atheist for almost half my life but the last few months I've been kinda rethinking things and coming back to religion and Rob Bell's fresh, unique take on Christianity has been a big part of that, between his podcast and the previous books of his that I've read, What We Talk About When We Talk About God and Love Wins: Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived (the guy loves his subtitles). This one's about the context of the Bible that gets missed a lot, between historical/cultural context that would have been obvious to the original audience that would be lost today or nuances in the Hebrew/Greek languages that don't survive translation perfectly intact, etc, a subject that's always fascinated me even when I wasn't religious, so I'm excited to dig in to this one. but i do subscribe to the robcast. He has a tender, charismatic voice that makes everything feel ok and likes to play around with the ideas inside christianity in a really cool way. Which really tickles my brain because of the vast volumes of mythology, exposition and catechisms I have stored up from my fundamentalist upbringing (THANKS A LOT MUUUM AND DAAAAD). Let me know your thoughts on his Bible book. One thing I don't like about him is he evades the actual truth value of his claims by saying "what a boring question- a more interesting one is..." which is like a really dumb dodge because the truth value is important and its pretty obvious he is smarter/has outgrown a lot of the literal stuff but can't let it all go because its his income/social standing. I just finished season 1 of True Detective so I've just begun to finally read 2666 by the great Bolano himself. Feat. gruesome murders, cartal trouble and... a missing academic with a fervent fan club? We'll see!
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Aug 30, 2017 12:55
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You might also be interested in A History of God by Karen Armstrong, though fyi I own it but have not gotten around to reading it so I couldn't tell you if it was worthwhile.
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Aug 30, 2017 17:12
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Lampsacus posted:yeah lol if i'm ever going to go back to believing in some monotheistic god, rejoin organized religion or shuffle back into a church. I just finished it and while Love Wins is still my favorite of what I've read of his so far, this one was really good. He has a really interesting take on the Bible in which he acknowledges that the Bible is a human work, not a divine one, and that the important thing to think about when reading it is not the actual words on the page so much as "what message where the authors trying to get across with this?" and "why does this still resonate today?" Probably my favorite bit that will stick with me the longest is his recontextualizing some Old Testament stories as deliberate appropriation of contemporary mythology in order to show how different God is from the pagan gods of the time--audiences in the time these stories were first being told would have been familiar with stories of the gods demanding someone sacrifice their son or flooding the earth in their rage at humanity, but a God calling off the sacrifice and reaffirming a promise to bless all mankind or promising humanity that such destruction would never happen again would have been a radically new understanding of divinity compared to the familiar pagan gods. soylon posted:You might also be interested in A History of God by Karen Armstrong, though fyi I own it but have not gotten around to reading it so I couldn't tell you if it was worthwhile. I actually also own that one but haven't gotten around to reading it yet either. I'll have to bump it up higher on my list.
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Sep 1, 2017 05:06
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I liked A History of God, but drat it's hard to read in paperback. Tiny text, large chapters, very few paragraph breaks. Good for getting perspective though. Started Rabbit by Patricia Williams (Ms Pat). It's the coauthored autobiography of Ms Pat who is a comedian that's been doing the rounds on a few different podcasts like Marc Maron's. She grew up in poverty with an alcoholic mother, was molested as a child, pregnant at 12, dealt drugs, abusive relationships, etc. It's pretty folky kind of story telling and even with all the horrific poo poo in there it's quite an entertaining read. If you've heard Ms Pat on podcasts before you'll know what to expect.
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Sep 1, 2017 06:53
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I wanted to buy Tarry Flynn by Patrick Kavanagh but turns out it's not in the Euro-zone Amazon.com Kindle shop (only in the .ch where I'd have to move my entire account for one book) and it'd be a huge pain to actually legally acquire it. Has anyone read it and is it actually good enough to bother buying in a more complicated way than 1 Click ?
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Sep 1, 2017 09:49
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Hello friends. I like to read books. Do you like to read books? Books I started reading recently: Orlando, virginia woolf, and The Peregrine, ja baker I haven't read, or even heard of most of the books in the past page. exciting
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Sep 1, 2017 17:22
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Just bought: Just started: The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson A story about the Great Migration, the movement of over 6 million African Americans out of the Jim Crow South and into the North and the West following World War I and ending at the peak of the Civil Rights Era - told through the words of those who lived it and backed by thousands of historical records.
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Sep 2, 2017 23:29
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"Shardik" by Richard Adams
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Oct 2, 2017 02:04
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After Charlottesville, I grabbed Mein Kampf by that Austrian guy. Forced myself to finish it. It really is a slog, even if you manage to skip over all of the antisemitic bullshit he's so famous for. It just rambles in sections and some of it, despite all the help he had putting it together, is incoherent garbage. I am positive most of the people who are part of the current neo-nazi/alt-right/white whatever/4-chan kekistan poo poo have never read it. If they have, they just skimmed and really did not put energy into comprehension (which is funny because the author hates on people who do exactly that). It's totally clear that the author considered himself an intellectual despite sucking at school, was mad at his dad, then had a lovely time in Vienna, held lovely jobs, never got laid, and blamed everything around him for all of it. Sound familiar? I'm following up with Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich right now since it has been on my shelf forever and I'll now have some context as I make it through the first few chapters.
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Oct 4, 2017 15:44
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Was at my favourite bookstore in Kelowna recently and got the following The Dubliners was dirt cheap, given that terrible fake pulp fiction cover. I had never heard of that Dick either but it was similarly cheap and how bad could it be? The Coates fits into a growing interest I have, given current events, into what really comprises the "black experience" today and how can we possibly solve this gaping wound in the US
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Oct 22, 2017 03:46
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After reading nothing but religion/spirituality stuff for two or three months now, I succumbed to an itch I've had for the last year or so to read a bunch of Tolkien and started The Silmarillion. I tried reading this one like a decade ago in early/mid-high school after reading LOTR but bounced off. I'm finding it a lot more engaging now, though, between no longer having a 15-year-old's taste in books anymore, greater familiarity with the epic/mythic/biblical style he's invoking, and the Kindle's X-Ray feature helping me keep the Finwës and Fingolfins and Finrods straight. I've also got Children of Húrin, The Hobbit, and the LOTR cycle loaded up on my Kindle but I don't know if I'll dive straight into them afterwards or take breaks for other stuff in between.
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Oct 23, 2017 00:16
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 $1 each at goodwill, look mostly unread. I heard these were good even if you know dick-all about wh40k
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Oct 23, 2017 00:33
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Meyers-Briggs Testicle posted:
 They're good pulpy sci-fi / military sci-fi stuff, very readable. I knew nothing about Warhammer before I picked up the Founding, and I still know very little about it, but I'll root for Gaunt.
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Oct 23, 2017 00:51
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