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Stravinsky posted:However since its 2015, the year of the sheep, instead of being free spirits you should follow me and take on my challenge designed to get people out of their comfort zones and read a bunch of different things by doing each of the following: I was thinking about skipping this year, but this sounds fun and is more or less the type of thing I was going for last year; i.e. diversifying my reading habits rather than brute forcing a set number. Last year I did a few of these categories (female author, non-white author, nonfiction) but several from each category, so this actually seems like a more fun challenge. I will also do the following: 12 books by female authors 12 nonfiction 12 non-American/European books Gravity's Rainbow (whiffed on this last year) true.spoon posted:Also, I only found a childrens book by Stephan J. Myers named The Colour Red, you mean something else right? My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
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Jan 5, 2015 18:27
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Stravinsky posted:There was someone asking about something about the color red category but I can not find you but its an intentionally vague and broad category kinda like the love/hate one. Anything that you can think or someone can think of that can go into that category. Like you can read a book on communism or that one grr martin book with the wedding. Or maybe something a bit more literal. It is meant to generate some book talk and suggestions. I will be kind of disappointed if everyone picks like where the red fern grows, the red badge of courage, or the scarlet letter though Just want to point out that my suggestion of My Name is Red wasn't just about the title; the book has multiple non-traditional narrators including inanimate objects like a coin, a drawing, and the color red. But it is also an excellent book and I am seriously suggesting that someone read it for that number in the challenge, or just in general. Alternate suggestion would be a book about the War of the Roses since you have the theme of red vs white roses and also blood because of the war.
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Jan 6, 2015 01:08
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Someone give me a wildcard book! I was going to wait till I was out of other stuff to read but I am anxious to know now.
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Jan 8, 2015 17:52
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Dienes posted:Lilith's Brood by Octavia Butler. Trilogy of novellas about humans saved from the brink of extinction by aliens with a compulsion for genetic experiments. Okay sounds good; I read Parable of the Sower from her and liked it so this should be cool too. Thanks!
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Jan 8, 2015 19:01
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So I only completed 2 books in January but I am partway through a bunch of others so I think I am on a good pace. The two that I finished were The Secret History (which was recommended in the "Read Some Real Literature" thread) and Alif the Unseen. Both were great reads; The Secret History in particular had some of the most well realized a and unique characters I have read in a book in a long time, and the way Tartt shifted the narrator's (and by extension my) perception of them over the course of the book was fascinating. Alif was also a really cool look into Middle Eastern culture and mythology. I especially liked the obvious author self-insert which gave some insight into her life as an American emigrant and how she believed she was seen. Either of these could be used for my #2 criteria. I also started the Lillith's Brood trilogy which was my wildcard challenge, I am about halfway through the second book and have been waiting for holds to clear in the library. It is good so far, a little heavy handed with the racial metaphors but it is working to get me appropriately frustrated, which I am sure is intentional. I am also halfway through Flannery O'Conner's Complete Stories, which is good but also pretty bleak and with some repetitive themes, so I have been reading the stories between other stuff. I am also reading Italian Folktales by Italo Calvino whenever I am on the shitter at work since each one is basically the perfect length, and also hilarious. I am also rereading Harry Potter before bed every night but I am not going to include that in my challenge, it is just relaxing and seems to be helping with some night terrors I had been having for a few months.
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Feb 1, 2015 03:30
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I keep wanting to update as I finish books rather than do a big info dump at the end of each month but then I forget so here we are. I finished Lillith's Brood and The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor, both of which I discussed a little last month. The latter two books in the Lillith's brood trilogy were good, I liked that they switched narrators which allowed Butler to explore different conflicting aspects of human nature in a pretty interesting way. O'Connor tends to have a formula of self-important people who loathe everyone around them getting some kind of hilarious comeuppance; sometimes those people are self-styled intellectuals who think they know more than everyone, or else uptight white ladies who think they are the height of morality. My favorite of these was The Partridge Festival, where two of these intellectuals meet over their shared interest in a local prisoner who they believe to be a victim of prejudice and hypocrisy, only to spend a bunch of time trying to one up each other until the stories climax. I also read The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2014, The Sound of Waves by Yukio Mishima, and This Perfect Day by Ira Levin. There were some fascinating essays in the BAS&NW although probably too many on global warming; some of my favorites were one about how animals mourne, one about the eventual mission to Mars and how it might be sabotaged by people's boredom, and one about protecting orange crops from succumbing to some greening disease by altering their DNA. Mishima is always good, I had previously read the Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, which was better than this and I am wondering why I waited so long to read more from him. This Perfect Day was pretty run of the mill Cold War era dystopian fiction along the lines of 1984 and Brave New World, although it had an interesting twist of the characters being completely brainwashed by chemical treatments, in a way that was sort've frightening but also laughably unrealistic, but at least worked as a metaphor. Anyway, I will try and start discussing books as I am reading/finished reading them so my thoughts are fresher. I am about to read Big Breasts & Wide Hips by Mo Yan. I will probably wait till later in the year to organize these into a coherent list and cross check against the challenges. Bye.
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Mar 1, 2015 18:00
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Blind Sally posted:here's a "novel" idea: people should read whatever they want He's right that Fight Club isn't very post modern even if a bunch of people on Goodreads shelved it under that label. It's like telling someone not to read Game of Thrones for their history challenge.
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Mar 4, 2015 18:08
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Haha yeah as soon as I was trying to find an analogy I was like "poo poo this doesn't really make sense but whatever it's early".
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Mar 4, 2015 18:30
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Argali posted:Almost done with The Blind Owl, and not quite understanding what all the hype is about. "All the hype" is the one dude who is running the challenge and enjoys the book.
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Mar 8, 2015 17:03
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Just finished Big Breasts & Wide Hips by Mo Yan. It wasn't my favorite of his (that would still pretty easily be Republic of Wine) but it has a good mix of themes in uses in his other works, and is overall probably the best representation of his style if anyone is thinking of getting into his stuff. My only complaint is that things started to speed through quickly at the end of the book when the main character grew up and you entered the 70's - 90's; it seems like his wheelhouse is pre-Communist Revolution through the Cultural Revolution so he skims over stuff after that. Highly recommended, especially as an intro to Mo Yan. I just started reading Get in Trouble by Kelly Link and it is good so far. I will probably use it as my "read a book from this year" challenge.
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Mar 16, 2015 18:41
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I keep meaning to post books as I am reading them/finish them so my thoughts are fresher in my mind, but I keep getting caught up in other poo poo. Anyway, I have done a ton of books since my last post so I will give some brief thoughts on them: Get in Trouble by Kelly Link - This was good although it seemed a little darker than her earlier story collections. Best by far was Two Houses, a story about telling ghost stories on a spaceship that lost contact with its sister ship. Beware of Pity by Stefan Zweig - Purchased this on sale after reading that it was used as the basis for The Grand Budapest Hotel. I can see where the inspiration came from, but obviously Anderson was using the setting/era as a framework for his movie while injecting his own whimsy, so it didn't have any of the charm I was hoping for. It was okay otherwise, if a little dry. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee - Reread this on a whim when I saw it on my sister-in-law's bookshelf. Good as always, I appreciated certain things differently now that I am older. Physics of the Future by Michio Kaku - I had previously read Physics of the Impossible, so I searched out some other stuff from Kaku when looking for more non-fiction I might like. This was probably not as good as the former, but what I really appreciated about it was how infectiously optimistic it was. Most other speculative science stuff I have read in essays or articles lately has been doom and gloom stuff about climate change and ocean levels rising and antibiotic resistance, while this was a bunch of stuff about how rad the future is going to be. Obviously a lot of the predictions should be taken with a grain of salt (which he hammers on over and over again anyway) but it is still cool reading about things currently being researched and what might theoretically be possible or even probable in the next 100 years. Flash boys by Michael Lewis - I always love reading Lewis's stuff, especially about the financial industry which he makes seem appropriately hosed up but also super entertaining. What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe - I didn't realize this was written by the XKCD guy when I checked it out, so at first I was a little wary but then my apprehensions were put to rest pretty soon. Obviously I am not knowledgable enough to know how accurate the science is (and in fact he has a few footnotes about corrections to articles that he received before publication) but it was still hilarious seeing it applied to ridiculous scenarios. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks - This was fascinating although it is kind of crazy to me how far the mental health industry has come in the 30 years since it was published. Although I suppose a lot of the stories were written years prior as he encountered these patients. Right now I am finishing up Mr. Palomar by Italo Calvino and then moving onto The Blue Book by A.L. Kennedy (I am not sure where I saw her name recommended, I think in one of these threads).
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Apr 13, 2015 23:32
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Mr. Palomar by Italo Calvino - This was chill as hell. It was basically about this old dude tooling around Italy, looking at birds and the ocean and stuff and trying to avoid looking at topless sunbathers lest people think he was a perv, and basically just thinking about life and death the whole time. Like one entire chapter will be him looking at a lizard eating flies and thinking about life. The Blue Book by A.L. Kennedy - was enjoyable, I liked the meta stuff about reading in general and when the book was talking directly to the reader, like "this is your book, you smell the odor of the pages and feel the weight in your hands" (which was pretty funny reading it on a Kindle). There was a twist at the end which I felt could have come sooner, as it really defined the relationship between the two main characters. Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer - Powerful stuff, and with some genuinely hilarious sections. A few particular highlights were some of the books within the book, like the Book of Recurrent Dreams and the Book of Antecedents. Currently starting We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen J Fowler, which is off to a pretty interesting start. I will probably do an update on my actual challenge progress for the end of this month, since we are a third of the way through the year.
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Apr 29, 2015 17:53
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Corrode posted:Has anyone? yes
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Apr 30, 2015 15:35
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I finished We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves which is good, the twist was kinda funny and then it became all about animal rights but was still good. I also red Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson which I chose for my book ord challenge. I will write a longer write up about it another time but it was a "novel in verse" I guess and Carson is a poet and it was my first exposure to more modern poetry and um it was good. I also read Dictionary of the Khazars after seeing a ton of buzz about it throughout TBB and it was really fantastic. I just read it straight in order on the Kindle since it was available through the free Kindle library but I am thinking of getting a real copy and reading some sections in different orders, specifically the ones about the 3 main dudes (Brankovich, Masudi and Cohen) in each book and then the sections for Ateh and maybe just flip around in general. I also read In Other Worlds which is Margaret Atwood's book of essays on SF and then the Complete Stories by Australian writer David Malouf and I enjoyed them both, reading them concurrently. Finally, I just finished Black Boy by Richard Wright and holy crap I didn't realize until the end that it was a true story, it was powerful stuff. I think it affected me more deeply than Native Son because he was just acting like a regular dude going around asking questions and getting the piss slapped out of him for it by his family and white southerners. The second half where he becomes a communist was interesting but not as visceral as the first half about his childhood.
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May 31, 2015 21:30
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Prolonged Shame posted:Someone give me a wildcard! How about A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
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Jun 1, 2015 17:14
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I read the Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson which was pretty cool, basically about the human race perpetually repeating itself by reaching the space age just as it has demolished a planet with global warming, then narrowly escaping to another process to repeat the process. It also deals with AI and what it means to be human. I also went to Vegas last weekend and on the way there/by the pool/on the way back I finished Half a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Shakespeare by Bill Bryson (this one for my biography challenge item). Half a Yellow Sun was powerful stuff, I am definitely going to read more stuff from Adichie. Bryson is always really solid as well, I basically chose the book because I am a huge fan of his, not so much for my interest in Shakespeare (although that has increased after reading the book). Right now I am reading A Frolic of His Own by William Gaddis. He is one of the few big names in postmodernism I haven't read so I thought I would use him for my challenge, and this was one of the two the Chicago Public Library had for loan on Kindle. It is hilarious as hell though, so I will probably read more Gaddis later in the year.
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Jun 10, 2015 16:21
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I read a bunch. I read Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh which was solid, I've been slowly advancing my personal challenge to read more lit from around the world and this was a pretty good choice since it covered the lives of a variety of people from different castes in 19th century India who all end up on a boat called the Ibis. Not sure if I want to read the 2 follow ups just yet, this one had a somewhat tidy ending but I would like to see where things go. I rounded out June with The Best American Short Stories 2013. A few that stood out included The Semplica Girl Diaries by George Saunders about a near future dystopia where suburbanites decorate their lawns with hanging (but kept alive and allegedly not in horrid pain) girls from impoverished countries, and Encounters with Unexpected Animals by Bret Anthony Johnston where a father confronts his teenaged son's older girlfriend. Then since I had 2 days until a vacation I read The Cloven Viscount by Italo Calvino. I think I like his novellas the best; Viscount and The Nonexistent Knight are both hilarious, and Mr. Palomar was pretty chill. I liked If on a Winter's Night and Invisible Cities; honestly I might need to revisit them since I read them a while ago, neither really made me fall in love with Calvino the way the previously mentioned stuff did. I have only read Cosmicomics of his short fiction, and that was so interconnected that they weren't really like a series of short stories. Then over my long weekend I read Packing for Mars by Mary Roach (for my "about space" challenge), Ficciones by Borges, and Censoring an Iranian Love Story by Shahriar Mandanipour. Packing for Mars was fascinating, it goes through the human factor of space travel and is divided into sections about all the various concerns: hygiene, diet, reaction to antigrav and small spaces and being six inches from a person for several weeks, etc. Roach seems like a pretty solid light non-fiction writer, similar to Bryson who I also love. Ficciones was good but I probably need to reread some of the stories; I thought chilling by the lake surrounded by nature and reading the stories and reflecting on them would be ideal, and it was for a few stories. But I was also constantly surrounded by people like my cousins who wanted to drink with me and their little kids who wanted me to play with them. I also was eager to read more stuff before the end of the trip so I didn't give some stories the breathing room they deserved and would read them back to back while I had the free time. I have a few weeks before it is due back at the library so I will probably revisit a few of these. Finally, Censoring an Iranian Love Story was brilliant. The author is telling two narratives, the actual love story and his own story of how difficult it is to write a story in a country with heavy censorship. Of course, poo poo gets postmodern and the stories start to run into each other in weird and funny ways.
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Jul 9, 2015 23:23
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So there's about 5 months left and I have like half the challenges left and a few books left for my own personal challenges. That's easily doable but I have gotten serious about planning this poo poo out since I need to put in holds at the library. I've gotten some good recommendations for absurdism, philosophy, and plays from within the bowels of the thread. The last few I'm thinking through are "unreal" and "hate or love" and I am wondering if people could explain their reasoning behind their choices, just to see if I could get some inspiration. It seems like a lot of "unreal" picks are sf/fantasy or magic realism where bizarre poo poo happens. Likewise "hate or love" can easily default to a love story which are a dime a dozen, although I saw The Berzerker chose a book about the science of annoyance which is pretty cool. Also I am not bashing anyone who went with just a straightforward pick, just seeing if anyone had any special reason for choosing a book in that category and seeing if I could get some inspiration for myself.
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Jul 28, 2015 23:44
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Man I keep falling behind in posting in this thread. I read 13 more books! To button up my personal non-fiction challenge I read The Sports Gene about the science of why people are good at different sports, The Worst Hard Time about the dust bowl, and The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan by Rick Perlstein. They were all interesting; Perlstein was the best of the lot but I thought Invisible Bridge wasn't quite as good as Nixonland. I read Between the World and Me for my 15. Something published this year/past 3 months challenge, although I haven't had time to post my thoughts in the book of the month thread. I read In the Realms of the Unreal: Insane Writings for my unreal challenge, not just based on the title - well I guess sort of since it was taken from the Henry Darger's 15,000 page book which I started reading about when I did a search for "unreal". It is also a collection of writing from people institutionalized for mental health problems. It was about as hit and miss as you would expect, the poetry and some of the surreal stuff was good but then there was a lot of incoherent stuff which wasn't even well written. I might pick another book for this challenge. For my poetry challenge I read The Best of the Best American Poetry (as in, the best of the anthology series "The Best American Poetry") which was really good, it covered 25 years from 1988 on, I like the more modern stuff which is more about cool thoughts and imagery and not making the best rhyme. I'm probably talking out of my rear end there since I don't know much poetry otherwise so I apologize. I just finished Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead for my Absurdist challenge which was really funny; it was also my first play in book form I have read, but I am not using it for that challenge, so I am looking forward to reading another in the next month or so. For my books not from America or Europe personal challenge I read The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk, The Pickup by Nadine Gordimer, and The Day the Leader was Killed by Naguib Mahfouz. They all complimented each other really well although by accident, I read Nadine Gordimer as a South African writer but the protagonist ends up moving to a Middle Eastern country with her husband. Pamuk's was my favorite of the bunch but they were all really solid. Then I also read the Tibetan Book of the Dead in preparation for The Blind Owl which I am reading next. I also read The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi which was not super great and The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton which was really good but I am not going to say much about either of those because I need to shower and drive to an out of state wedding.
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Aug 28, 2015 17:31
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High Warlord Zog posted:Read the Dahl book.
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Sep 20, 2015 22:04
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I decided to write up some of my book lord challenge picks, my reasons for choosing them and my thoughts etc. Here are the first two: Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson I came upon this accidentally; I was looking for poetry and had seen Carson’s name tossed around as a good modern poet. This was the first book that popped up in an Amazon search and it intrigued me immediately because of the color red challenge. It’s a verse novel, definitely something I wouldn’t normally seek out so perfect for the challenge. The story is based loosely on the myth of Geryon, a red monster who Hercules kills in one of his trials. In the retelling, Geryon is a young boy who falls in love with an older boy named Herakles. The color red is used throughout symbolically, and the language is beautiful in general. The Best of the Best American Poetry A selection of poems to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Best American Poetry series. I had no idea where to start with poetry and the Best American series are generally pretty solid, so this seemed like an all around good primer on modern poetry. I enjoyed it a lot and made a list of about 20 poems I especially liked to check out other works by those poets. My favorite was A Happy Thought by Franz Wright: quote:Assuming this is the last day of my life
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Oct 2, 2015 21:23
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Also since I haven't done this yet, here is a Big rear end Stat Dump: Thru September: Personal Challenges Woman authors - 16/12 non-American/European authos - 13/12 Nonfic - 13/12 Gravity's Rainbow - 0/1 Booklord Challenges 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. History 6. An essay 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. Something on either hate or love 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. That one book that has been sitting on your desk waiting for a long time 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. A mystery List of stuff read 1. The Secret History by Donna Tartt 2. Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson 3. Lilith's Brood by Octavia Butler 4. The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor 5. The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2014 6. The Sound of Waves by Yukio Mishima 7. This Perfect Day by Ira Levin 8. Big Breasts and Wide Hips by Mo Yan 9. Get in Trouble by Kelly Link 10. Beware of Pity by Stefan Zweig 11. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee 12. Physics of the Future by Michio Kaku 13. Flash Boys by Michael Lewis 14. What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe 15. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks 16. Mr. Palomar by Italo Calvino 17. The Blue Book by A.L. Kennedy 18. Bad Feminist Roxane Gay 19. Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer 20. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen J. Fowler 21. Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson 22. Dictionary of the Khazars by Milorad Pavic 23. The Complete Stories by David Malouf 24. In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination by Margaret Atwood 25. Black Boy by Richard Wright 26. The Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson 27. Half a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 28. Shakespeare by Bill Bryson 29. A Frolic of His Own by William Gaddis 30. Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh 31. The Best American Short Stories 2013 32. The Cloven Viscount by Italo Calvino 33. Packing for Mars by Mary Roach 34. Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges 35. Censoring an Iranian Love Story by Shahriar Mandanipour 36. The Sports Gene by David Epstein 37. The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton 38. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates 39. The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi 40. In the Realms of the Unreal: Insane Writings 41. The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan 42. The Best of the Best American Poetry 43. The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk 44. The Pickup by Nadine Gordimer 45. The Day the Leader was Killed by Naguib Mahfouz 46. Tibetan Book of the Dead 47. The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan by Rick Perlstein 48. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard 49. The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat 50. Embassytown by China Mieville 51. Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller 52. The Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh 53. Hear the Wind Sing/Pinball 1973 by Haruki Murakami 54. Number9Dream by David Mitchell 55. Operation Dark Heart by Anthony Shaffer 56. Fear and Trembling by Søren Kierkegaard 57. Tractatus Logico Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein
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Oct 2, 2015 21:47
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CestMoi posted:What did u think of these 2? I think I'm the one that recommended them at the start of this thread for philosophy and it's cool to read that people have picked them up, even if the one guy who read Fear and Trembling that I saw earlier seemed to sort of miss the point imo. Yeah I did get those recs from you! I credit you earlier in my post. I actually am only a bit into Tractatus Logico Philosophicus but finished Fear and Trembling last week. Fear and Trembling was...rigorous. I probably didn't do it justice since I mostly read it on the bus which was not the most conducive place to digest Kierkegaard's language, so I found myself needing to reread stuff a few times to get an idea of the argument he was making. Even then a bunch probably went over my head, but I feel like I got the key points. Some parts that stuck out to me: I liked the hypothetical about a dude hearing a preacher telling the story of Abraham and going home and deciding to do the same since his son is his most precious possession, and then the preacher who didn't really understand the story himself would be horrified at the man's misunderstanding. I also liked the story of Agnes and the merman and how the merman feels guilt at her falling in love with him, and it causes a cycle of them being miserable (the whole third problema in general was easier to relate to than the first two). And how the problemas all ended with the line "if this is the case, Abraham is done for and faith doesn't exist". I've been reading some essays/the wiki article to get a better handle on some of the stuff I didn't get (like the suspension of the ethical and the Hegelian stuff) but I have since returned the book to the library. I am taking my time with TLP so that I can get more out of it. It probably helps that it is 80 years closer to my own time. I am enjoying it so far tho and will write something more substantial once I am done. These are my first strict philosophy texts and I am glad I went for both, I will probably get Thus Spake Zarathustra at some point too.
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Oct 4, 2015 07:47
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10. The Blind Owl I read the Tibetan Book of the Dead in preparation for this and I am glad I did. I didn’t personally get a ton out of the TBD (except kind of the general themes of repetition, and the awesome part where you see your own reincarnation parents’ parts up close during your creation) but it helped understand what was going on in the Blind Owl when the author was repeating parts of his life with the same characters (more like character archetypes) recurring over and over. I enjoyed it a lot although I understand people saying that didn’t feel like they penetrated all the layers; I feel like it’s one of those books you can study for years until you fully appreciate the entirety. 14. Wildcard - Lillith’s Brood trilogy by Octavia Butler I got this assigned as my wildcard. I’ve read Butler before but wasn’t planning on revisiting her, and also in general I like single books over series/trilogies, so I suppose although it was in my wheelhouse it was a good wildcard pick since I wouldn’t likely have read it otherwise. I did really like how each book followed a different species as they all struggled to understand each other: first a human waking up among a totally alien species, then one of those aliens as the two species started sharing Earth together, and finally a hybrid of the two species. And Butler really nailed writing first person narratives of how the different species thought and understood each other. The anti-alien bigots were written pretty cartoonishly stubborn and evil, although I guess that was sort of the point to get us to empathize with how that sort of attitude is seen by the victims. All in all a good trilogy.
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Nov 9, 2015 04:21
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2. Female Author - Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay I actually made it a goal to read at least 1 female author per month on average this year, so I read a bunch of different female authors. I chose to use Bad Feminist toward the book lord challenge since it was specifically about how Gay relates to feminism and her experiences as a woman. It is a collection of essays which made it easy to cover a range of topics from funny to heavy. My ultimate goal when reading more diverse authors was to try and experience worldviews outside my own, and Gay’s book was good for showing phenomena I am familiar with from a wildly different perspective than my own. 3. Non-white author - Black Boy by Richard Wright I had previously read Native Son so when I saw another Wright book on Amazon’s daily deal I bought it immediately. It actually took me the majority of the book to realize it was based on Wright’s actual experiences, which honestly shook me up because of how intense some of his experiences were. Most of the time he was just trying to get by, asking really basic questions of the people around him - something I take for granted - and getting attacked for it. The second part where he moves to Chicago and joins the Communist Party wasn’t as powerful, and I also understand why Native Son is considered his masterpiece, but this was still really remarkable. 4. Philosophy - Fear + Trembling by Søren Kierkegaard and Tractatus Logico Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein I already talked about F&T earlier (probably badly), and I am not sure how equipped I am to talk about TLP. Both of these were recommended by CestMoi who seems to know his poo poo, but as my first exposure to really heavy philosophy I was kind of overwhelmed. There were definitely parts of each where I had “aha!” moments, but unfortunately more parts where I got lost. I think I still feel like I did get something out of each, even if that was mostly a desire to further educate myself on philosophy. I think my next step would be to pick up Bertrand Russel's History of Western Philosophy (also recc’ed by CestMoi, thanks man) to get a better overview of philosophy in general.
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Nov 14, 2015 08:35
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I think they were both good recs for what it's worth. I was raised Catholic so I know all about having internal struggles with my faith. Like I said I do feel I got something out of each of them but I also felt I wasn't fully getting everything, but I blamed myself for that more than anything. Part of the reason was because 90% of my reading is done on my commute or when I can steal a few minute break at work, so not really conducive to reading something really challenging. But they got me to think and piqued my interest in more philosophy so I think they were good!
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Nov 14, 2015 17:00
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5. History - Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West by Stephen Ambrose This one was recommended by a friend’s dad who is a history professor. I knew probably the minimum amount you could possibly know about Lewis and Clark being an American (basically their names and the fact that they tried to find an all water route across the country) so this was super informative and interesting. One thing I found kind of interesting but jarring was how he handled slavery and American attitudes toward Native Americans. Like he didn’t do it incorrectly, he said all the right things and definitely didn’t whitewash how terrible people in that time treated their fellow human beings, but sometimes it would just come out of nowhere. Like he would be talking about some feat of courage and then it transition to “just to be clear, this guy was a slaveholder which is monstrous”. I almost wish he (and I guess all historians writing about this period) would relegate this to prologues, basically saying upfront that despite all the accomplishments of these men that they also owned slaves and were out to steal land from natives which is something we need to reconcile with some of the good they did, rather than interrupt the main text. 8. Post-modern - A Frolic of His Own and Agapē Agape by William Gaddis I’ve read a decent amount of post-modern stuff already but never any Gaddis, who was a pretty big name to neglect. To be perfectly frank, I went with the two books that were available in e-book form through my public library. They were both really great though and covered surprisingly similar subjects. I enjoyed Frolic a ton although I think Agape was the stronger of the two. I really want to tackle JR and the Recognitions although those might have to wait due to their length and other stuff I want to read before year’s end. 9. Absurdist - Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard I wasn’t 100% sure what covered absurdism; it turns out I had read a lot of the “classics” at least according to wiki and google (Catch-22, stuff from Kafka, Camus and Sarte) and a lot of the rest were plays. I was intending to read R&G for my play but I also had a deeper list for plays so I pulled a switcheroo and read it for my absurdist challenge. It was hilarious, full of really clever word play and ideas. I want to reread it alongside Hamlet since it’s been awhile and I certainly missed some of the references to that play.
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Nov 20, 2015 22:44
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12. Something dealing with space - Packing for Mars by Mary Roach So for “space” I definitely wanted to read some non-fic about space; I’ve read my fair share of space sci-fi and whatever but this seemed like a better opportunity. I did some searching and landed on Packing for Mars, which is a pop science book about the challenges of sending humans into space for long periods of time. It was really cool and interesting, she interviews people from a few different countries’ space programs and relays a lot of really cool stuff. There was a ton of funny and interesting observations, but my favorite bit came from a footnote in a chapter about the challenges of creating custom or standard issue suits/equipment for astronauts of different body types. Apparently in the original Apollo missions, back when they were using bladders for the astronauts to urinate into, they had three different sizes for the piece that fit over an astronaut’s penis, but in order to protect egos they were labelled “large”, “extra large” and “extra extra large”. It just struck me as funny that some of the most important and brave men in history still had to compensate. 13. Something dealing with the unreal - In the Realms of the Unreal: Insane Writings edited by Joan Oakes So again I hit google just to explore what this could possibly cover, and one of the first hits when you type in “unreal books” is Henry Darger, who wrote a book called The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion. The title and description sounded perfect, except that it is a 15,145 page book that has never actually been published. So reading more about Darger, I decided to try and find a book about him instead, but this lead me to this book, which is a book of works by people institutionalized for insanity. It was actually a bit disappointing in that I should have expected the subject matter - a lot of rambling essays and poetry about feeling trapped and misunderstood. I was hoping for more colorful and wild imagery along with some fiction, and while there was a bit of that it was more mundane than I expected. It was also obviously very hit or miss, leaning toward miss. It definitely isn’t something I would have ever discovered or considered reading if not for this challenge, so while it didn’t fit it to the letter I consider it a success. 15. Something published this year/past 3 months - Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates I usually don't read books right when they come out so I was excited about this challenge, I wanted to wait for something to pop up on the NY Times best seller list that appealed to me, and when I saw this start to pop up on my Facebook feed it was really a no-brainer. I have read some of Coates articles and been amazed at how he writes so beautifully while also making his perspective easy to understand. I was psyched to be able to talk with people on social media, at work, and on SA about a new book that felt really important and relevant to our times, on an issue that basically every human has a perspective on. I’ve already reread it once and skimmed it a few more times, I have a feeling this is one I will be going back to a lot partly because it is so short anyway but it also had something every few pages that challenged my world view and caused me to simultaneously want to put the book down to digest it and also to plow ahead.
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Nov 26, 2015 19:22
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I feel like one rigid challenge isn't so bad, and Blind Owl is good and something a lot of people hadn't read so it was good! For sure don't have like Catch 22 or Slaughterhouse Five or something a ton of people have already read.
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Nov 27, 2015 04:07
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Mahlertov Cocktail posted:REQUEST: Could someone/several someones recommend me books for post-modern and absurdist categories? Preferably on the shorter side, considering how far behind on the quantitative challenge I am. Post Modern: Crying of Lot 49, Agape Agape Absurdist: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, The Metamorphosis
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Nov 30, 2015 23:23
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CestMoi posted:I think it's kind of sad that a few people are reading Blind Owl and just going "well I'm obviously not smart enough to get this", you are smart enough The Book Barn posters and I believe in each and every one of you. Thank you.
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Dec 9, 2015 20:06
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17. A play - Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller This (as well as a bunch of other plays) was recomended by Blind Sally. I had obviously heard of it before, but all I knew was the name “Biff Loman” and the thing about whistling on the elevator. I didn’t really know what to expect, except for the general theme of feeling used up and abandoned by the American Dream. I really liked Willy’s relationship with Charley and his son Bernard; actually the varied relationships between the characters was a highlight for me in an already good play. Highly recommended 18. Biography - Shakespeare by Bill Bryson I got this more because I like Bryson than because I was interested in Shakespeare. It was actually really fascinating though, I didn’t know how much of Shakespeare’s life we actually don’t know about: his actual date of birth, details about his early life, what he really looks like, even the exact number and order of all of his plays. Bryson is always really good about constructing an interesting narrative out of whatever he is writing about, so this managed to be informative and interesting.
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Dec 9, 2015 21:58
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I still am waiting on Aziz Ansari's Modern Romance to free up from the Chicago Public Library and I have about 300 pages left in Gravity's Rainbow but then I am done with everything! Also I read several essays this year but I want to pick one to actually talk about and apply to my goal.
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Dec 10, 2015 23:28
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Bobby The Rookie posted:Hitting month 12 strong with my first actual update and a request for a wildcard. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
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Dec 17, 2015 20:30
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20. Something banned or censored - Operation Dark Heart by Anthony Shaffer (also Censoring an Iranian Love Story by Shahriar Mandanipour) When I was looking for a banned/censored work I wanted to focus on those that have been challenged in the US and I noticed one Operation Dark Heart in particular since it was so recent. Apparently because of some potentially sensitive national security information, this was heavily censored prior to release. I wasn’t able to find an uncensored version unfortunately, although I did read a few articles which compared some sections that were uncensored to the final version. It was an interesting read since I know very little about this modern military, and this was written by an actual intelligence officer (albeit one who paradoxically seems to like attention) so it was worth the read. Seeing the page filled with blacked out information and wondering what was being withheld also made it an interesting reading experience. I also want to talk briefly about Censoring an Iranian Love Story by Shahriar Mandanipour. This book was interesting because it was specifically about censorship in Iran, more specifically about a writer's struggles with the Office of Censorship, and how he would need to craft his novel specifically to avoid the censors pen as much as possible while still telling the story he wanted to tell. It wasn’t the exact challenge (which I why I also chose ODH) but it was a fascination look at Iranian culture and the process of actual censorship. 21. Short stories - Italian Folktales by Italo Calvino I actually started this one over a year ago, but only made a concentrated effort to finish it this year for this challenge. These are a series of 200 very short stories collected and arranged by Italo Calvino. The links to more well known fairy tales were evident, and there is a ton of repetition, like:
22. A mystery - Who Censored Roger Rabbit by Gary K. Wolf I hadn’t realized the movie was based on a book, and when I found out in the book they are comic strip characters who speak in visible speech bubbles (which factor into the clues) it seemed like an interesting mystery. And it was for the most part, and it was easy to see how and why it was optioned for a film, but otherwise the movie outshined it by a bunch. In typical pulp detective fashion, most of the characters are unlikable schemers, including the PI himself and even the book’s namesake. The writing and story aren’t anything to elevate it above being a decent detective story with a fun gimmick.
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Dec 21, 2015 04:18
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6. An essay - Kafka and His Precursors by Jorge Luis Borges I read several essays from Grizzled Patriarch's essay megathread including CestMoi's suggestions. The one that I enjoyed the most was probably this one by Borges on Kafka, mostly because 1) I am a big fan of Kafka (duh) and 2) I was just introduced to both Borges (through recommendations on this forum) and Kierkegaard (again a rec from CestMoi) this year. I don't have a ton of insight myself except to praise Borges' observations and say that I enjoyed the different comparisons and examples that he provided and that it made me want to read more Kafka. 11. Something on hate or love - Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari This was a recommendation from a friend; although he hadn't personally read the book he had heard about it and was intrigued, and when I mentioned some of the categories I had left for the challenge he brought this up. The library waiting lists were obscenely long and I have developed an aversion to actually paying for books now so I signed up for a free month of Audible and listened to the audio book, with the bonus that Aziz himself narrated and I got to heard his wonderful delivery of his jokes. I was actually impressed with the scientific rigor that was involved in the book, although it is filled with Aziz's brand of humor and obviously geared toward people in my demographic (middle class late 20/early 30 people in developed countries) it still delved into a pretty broad range of topics. I am still on the waiting list for the book and am probably going to skim it again to read my favorite parts (see if they read different to me than the delivery) and see some of the charts and images that I missed out on with the audio book. 16. Book sitting on my desk a long time - Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon I was likely going to (finally) read this book this year anyway for my own challenge, but it was also an obvious choice for this challenge. I first got this, Infinite Jest and DeLillo's Underworld after I discovered post-modern literary fiction and saw a list on Amazon titled "most difficult long books" or something, and figured it was an interesting challenge. I was able to get through Underworld and Infinite Jest after some adjustment but GR kicked my rear end several times then it became intimidating to pick back up. This has been sitting on my self for nearly 10 years and after several attempts I finally was able to complete it. I don't know why it took me so long, the first few hundred pages were challenging with all the jumping around but once you get a significant way into Slothrop's story things start to make a lot more sense. I know I still missed a significant amount but I also enjoyed the hell out of the vast majority of it. I legitimately gagged at one part (those who have read it probably know) and last night when I was finishing it Blicero's speech about America being the Deathkingdom was super haunting. Anyway, I enjoyed it and will probably revisit it in the future (probably not another 10 years).
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Dec 31, 2015 07:46
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Also massive End of Year Stat Dump: Personal Challenges Woman authors - 16/12 non-American/European authos - 16/12 Nonfic - 19/12 Gravity's Rainbow - 1/1 Booklord Challenges 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. List of stuff read 1. The Secret History by Donna Tartt 2. Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson 3. Lilith's Brood by Octavia Butler 4. The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor 5. The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2014 6. The Sound of Waves by Yukio Mishima 7. This Perfect Day by Ira Levin 8. Big Breasts and Wide Hips by Mo Yan 9. Get in Trouble by Kelly Link 10. Beware of Pity by Stefan Zweig 11. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee 12. Physics of the Future by Michio Kaku 13. Flash Boys by Michael Lewis 14. What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe 15. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks 16. Mr. Palomar by Italo Calvino 17. The Blue Book by A.L. Kennedy 18. Bad Feminist Roxane Gay 19. Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer 20. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen J. Fowler 21. Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson 22. Dictionary of the Khazars by Milorad Pavic 23. The Complete Stories by David Malouf 24. In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination by Margaret Atwood 25. Black Boy by Richard Wright 26. The Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson 27. Half a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 28. Shakespeare by Bill Bryson 29. A Frolic of His Own by William Gaddis 30. Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh 31. The Best American Short Stories 2013 32. The Cloven Viscount by Italo Calvino 33. Packing for Mars by Mary Roach 34. Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges 35. Censoring an Iranian Love Story by Shahriar Mandanipour 36. The Sports Gene by David Epstein 37. The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton 38. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates 39. The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi 40. In the Realms of the Unreal: Insane Writings 41. The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan 42. The Best of the Best American Poetry 43. The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk 44. The Pickup by Nadine Gordimer 45. The Day the Leader was Killed by Naguib Mahfouz 46. Tibetan Book of the Dead 47. The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan by Rick Perlstein 48. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard 49. The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat 50. Embassytown by China Mieville 51. Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller 52. The Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh 53. Hear the Wind Sing/Pinball 1973 by Haruki Murakami 54. Number9Dream by David Mitchell 55. Operation Dark Heart by Anthony Shaffer 56. Fear and Trembling by Søren Kierkegaard 57. Tractatus Logico Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein 58. Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh 59. Memoirs Found in a Bathtub by Stanislaw Lem 60. Incognito by David Eagleman 61. Agape Agape by William Gaddis 62. Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose 63. Who Censored Roger Rabbit by Gary K. Wolf 64. The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News--and Divided a Country by Gabriel Sherman 65. Italian Folktales by Italo Calvino 66. That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott 67. Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari 68. Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon --- Pretty psyched about my reading this year, I definitely diversified my reading in a huge way and more than met my own expectations as well as the Book Lord's challenge. Next year my personal challenge is reading only books by female authors. I have a ton of recs from the forums and elsewhere and am hoping to put up a blog in the next few days.
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Dec 31, 2015 08:10
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Bobby The Rookie posted:23. 'The God of Small Things' - Arundhati Roy (*Wildcard) Glad you liked it, it was one if my favorite books I read last year (well 2014). I liked the way the story sort've spiraled outward from the life altering event at the center of everything.
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Jan 1, 2016 20:52
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