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My goal for this year is to read some books by various authors.
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Jan 23, 2017 13:53
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CestMoi posted:My goal for this year is to read some books by various authors. Thanks for letting us know.
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Jan 23, 2017 15:04
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Aw crap, I'm doing well on non-white authors but falling behind on women authors. Luckily I have a few coming up in the pipeline, including three by Kathy Acker who I've always wanted to dig into. Somebody wild-card me!
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Jan 23, 2017 16:49
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mdemone posted:Aw crap, I'm doing well on non-white authors but falling behind on women authors. Luckily I have a few coming up in the pipeline, including three by Kathy Acker who I've always wanted to dig into. Human Acts by Han Kang. I read it recently and it's v. good.
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Jan 23, 2017 16:54
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If anyone needs more female authors, the answer is Flannery O'Conner and Carson McCullers.
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Jan 23, 2017 17:18
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I started this year by cycling through a bunch of the "Best American" series from 2015; specifically short stories, essays, science & nature, nonrequired and scifi/fantasy. I find them slightly better than hit and miss but I find the gems to be worth the cost and can always just start skimming if an entry is boring me. Also since they're collections I was thinking about how to apply the percentage challenges to them. On the plus side they're really good about having approx 50% women contributors but not as great about non-white contributors (only about 16% of the total entries by my calculation) so I am going to count the 5 books as "1" for purposes of books by women and "1/2" for purposes of books by non-white authors (so if I read 3 in my next ten it will equal out). I haven't really been paying much attention to the challenge proper outside of that because I had a bunch of leftover library holds or things on my shelf, but I am going to start focusing at the beginning of next month.
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Jan 23, 2017 17:42
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Franchescanado posted:If anyone needs more female authors, the answer is Flannery O'Conner and Carson McCullers. Yeah but I already plowed through the Library of America's volume of complete O'Connor. Making a note of McCullers. Corrode posted:Human Acts by Han Kang. I read it recently and it's v. good. Excellent! Added to the pile which is growing faster than I'm reading them. Which I guess has always been true.
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Jan 23, 2017 17:57
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mdemone posted:Aw crap, I'm doing well on non-white authors but falling behind on women authors. Luckily I have a few coming up in the pipeline, including three by Kathy Acker who I've always wanted to dig into. I am (as predicted) the opposite, most years I'm at ~50% books by not-men authors and like two or three books by non-white authors (out of 100+ books). On the plus side, I was planning to finally check out Octavia Butler this year anyways... I also haven't read any nonfiction, but it's early days yet, and a lot of my nonfiction is in hardcopy, which is always easier to read when the toddler isn't around.
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Jan 23, 2017 18:43
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Guy A. Person posted:I started this year by cycling through a bunch of the "Best American" series from 2015; specifically short stories, essays, science & nature, nonrequired and scifi/fantasy. I find them slightly better than hit and miss but I find the gems to be worth the cost and can always just start skimming if an entry is boring me. Yeah for stuff like this, just apply common sense. A collection with a significant proportion of female/black/whatever authors? Feel free to count it. Using a single short story in a collection to tick a box? Probably not. If you want to count as half or whatever that's fine too. This goes for everyone btw, I'm only quoting GAP because he brought it up and I wanted to reassure people I'm not gonna be conducting a full audit of their reading history. Be cool and read cool things and the challenge will mostly resolve itself.
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Jan 23, 2017 19:45
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I can't release my book reading progress because they're under Book Lord audit. It doesn't matter. I already read them. They were great, they were wonderful. I read way more books than you. No you can't check me, I have support from all the best librarians in the country.
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Jan 23, 2017 19:52
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Hopping in here. Goal: 25 books Challenge: No booklord, but at least 1/3 non-fiction. If I start hitting a bunch of the challenge items like halfway through the year, we'll see. Reading: 1. Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace 2. The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe
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Jan 28, 2017 22:27
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So I just finished Notes from Underground and I would love if someone could help contextualize it for me? I absolutely adored the first part, as an existential nihilist, it felt like a treatise on an idealized life. The second part was bewildering. I loving hated the Underground Man and his petty feelings regarding everything and everyone. The last two pages helped clear it up, absolutely, but I still don't understand the dichotomy of having a man truly aware of his life and his goals being contrasted with a man who's so beyond control of his own brain he's just an absolute boor. Is that essentially it? "A) This is how you should live! B) This is how you absolutely should not live!"? I think I loved it, I know I loved the first part, but I just have a lot of complex, diverse emotions about the second half. Similarly, are there any refinements in existential literature that develop straight outta the philosophy of Notes?
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Jan 30, 2017 06:43
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Finished off The Three-Body Problem over the weekend. I enjoyed it! I thought the beginning (where it seemed to be leaning more towards cosmic horror than science fiction) was stronger than the end, but that might just be the thing I do where I read something with a really strong premise and think 'if I'd been smart enough to have this beginning, I'd have taken it this way...'. Still, the ideas were big and the writing rolled along well enough, which is a nice departure from the usual garbage scifi I read. (The Complete Works of Kahlil Gibran, meanwhile, has turned into something of a slog, although my Kindle reckons I'm about 85% done so by God I'm going to read the rest of it.) 1. The Good Immigrant; Nikesh Shukla (ed.) 2. The Three-Body Problem; Cixin Liu 3. The Complete Works of Kahlil Gibran 4. The Blind Assassin; Margaret Atwood 1) Read some books. Set a number and go hog wild. 2/26 2) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by women. 0/6 3) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by someone non-white. 2/6 4) Read at least one book by an LGBT author. 5) Read at least one TBB BoTM and post in the monthly thread about it. 6) Read a book someone else in the thread recommends (a wildcard!) 7) Read something that was recently published (anything from after 1st January 2016). 8) Read something which was published before you were born. 10) Read something from somewhere you want to travel. 11) Read something political. 12) Read something historical. 12a) Read something about the First World War. 13) Read something biographical. 14) Read some poetry. 15) Read a play. 16) Read a collection of short stories. 17) Read something long (500+ pages). 18) Read something which was banned or censored. 19) Read a satire. 20) Read something about honour. 21) Read something about fear. 22) Read something about one (or more!) of the seven sins. 23) Read something that you love. 24) Read something from a non-human perspective.
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Jan 30, 2017 14:53
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I, for whatever reason, hardly read at all the first few weeks of the month... and then went on to read three books in three days. As such, I'm on track for my 52 books for the year. Here's what I read this month: 1. Giant Days, Vol. 3 - John Allison (4/5) 2. A Man Lies Dreaming - Lavie Tidhar (3/5) 3. Mother Night - Kurt Vonnegut (5/5) 4. The Glass Castle - Jeannette Walls (4/5) On deck for February: Golden Delicious by Christopher Boucher (which I started last night), Theodor Mommsen's History of Rome, Vol. 1 (for the Nobel challenge, but I'll be reading it in English and not in German), Tsar of Love and Techno by Anthony Walla, and whatever the BotM ends up being. 1) Read some books. Set a number and go hog wild. 4/52 2) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by women. 1/11 (Personal challenge: 1/20) 3) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by someone non-white. 0/11 (Personal challenge: 0/20) (Or maybe 1 if we're counting Lavie Tidhar) 4) Read at least one book by an LGBT author. 5) Read at least one TBB BoTM and post in the monthly thread about it. 6) Read a book someone else in the thread recommends (a wildcard!) 8) Read something which was published before you were born. 9) Read something in translation. 10) Read something from somewhere you want to travel. 11) Read something political. 12) Read something historical. 12a) Read something about the First World War. 13) Read something biographical. 14) Read some poetry. 15) Read a play. 16) Read a collection of short stories. 17) Read something long (500+ pages). 18) Read something which was banned or censored. 19) Read a satire. 23) Read something that you love. 24) Read something from a non-human perspective. BookRiot: 2/24 PopSugar: 4/52 BotM: 1/6 In German: 0/5 In translation: 0/10 Nobels: 0/12 nerdpony fucked around with this message at 16:57 on Feb 28, 2017 |
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Jan 30, 2017 16:19
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I started off strong with Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut, which I loved and have been recommending to many friends. Not much to say, since it was an okay BotM thread. Second was The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. This was for my book club. It is an exploration of the lesser-known evils of slavery, such as Resurrection Men, human zoos, Slave catchers/hunters, freedom farms, etc., through the eyes of Cora, a 3rd generation teenage slave who escapes a plantation in Georgia by means of an actual underground railroad that aims to deliver slaves to states offering freedom. This does not happen often, as she is pursued and made victim by slave hunters, society and even other slaves. Not an easy book: the prose is dry, Cora is a distant narrator (she suffers PTSD from years of abuse, refuses to trust people), plot threads are introduced but never fully explored (to disappointing affect), there is no humor, hope is minimal, there is McCarthy-level violence, and the human cruelty on display sadly echoes through to today. There are some major highs: Ridgeway, a bounty hunter/slave catcher who lives according to a personal moral code, is a wonderful villain; characters are not Good/Bad, morality is a complex creature; hope is brought through perseverance and personal insights, not a deus ex machina or faith in an Almighty God. It had read half of the book before I was really grabbed. Other aspects that I enjoyed: the story is told with slight magical realism. This is not cut-and-dried history lesson, it is a heightened world. A great example is a scene that takes place in Tennessee, where Cora is brought after being captured (again). The land has been ravaged by fired, burnt black or still glowing red; a nearby town is plagued with death; they have entered Hell. There are these brief flashes of fantastic imagery, but it never really reaches the fairy-tale/fable/parable feeling of someone like Saramago. Not a favorite of mine; as horrific and exhausting as The Underground Railroad is, it could have done more for an emotional response from the reader. I don't know if it earned its place at the top of many Best of 2016 books, but it's certainly a good book with plenty to discuss and explore. Best book of the month still goes to Mother Night, however. 1) Read some books. Set a number and go hog wild. 2/42 2) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by women. 0/9 3) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by someone non-white. 1/9 4) Read at least one book by an LGBT author. 5) 6) Read a book someone else in the thread recommends (a wildcard!) 7) 8) Read something which was published before you were born. 9) Read something in translation. 10) Read something from somewhere you want to travel. 11) Read something political. 12) Read something historical. 12a) Read something about the First World War. 13) Read something biographical. 14) Read some poetry. 15) Read a play. 16) Read a collection of short stories. 17) Read something long (500+ pages). 18) Read something which was banned or censored. 19) Read a satire. 20) Read something about honour. 21) Read something about fear. 22) Read something about one (or more!) of the seven sins. 23) Read something that you love. 24) Read something from a non-human perspective. I am also 20% through Infinite Jest, roughly 25% through The Hero of a Thousand Faces (J. Campbell) and I just began The Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee, which is the next book club book. Franchescanado fucked around with this message at 14:01 on Feb 27, 2017 |
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Jan 30, 2017 16:20
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Sandwolf posted:So I just finished Notes from Underground and I would love if someone could help contextualize it for me? I absolutely adored the first part, as an existential nihilist, it felt like a treatise on an idealized life. The second part was bewildering. I loving hated the Underground Man and his petty feelings regarding everything and everyone. The last two pages helped clear it up, absolutely, but I still don't understand the dichotomy of having a man truly aware of his life and his goals being contrasted with a man who's so beyond control of his own brain he's just an absolute boor. Is that essentially it? "A) This is how you should live! B) This is how you absolutely should not live!"? Mate, I feel like you're teetering on the brink of some major self-awareness
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Jan 30, 2017 22:28
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1 The Letters of Samuel Beckett 1929-40 edited by Martha Dow Fehsenfeld and Lois More Overbeck. This covers the first decade of his literary life, starting off with an essay on Proust and ending with Murphy. In between he flees from Ireland before feeling compelled, where he stays for as long as he can before escaping again. Mostly Paris and London, though he does spend some time in Nazi Germany, which I didn't know. He even toyed with going to Capetown, where he really would have been out of place! Like all book of letters there are a lot of mean ones to publishers, some crawling ones to the deans of reading rooms, and a lot of just social letters, none of which are ever particularly interesting, but the most every letter has some digression, normally on art rather than literature, which I figure he decided to keep for his work. Also, he was a terrible speller! 2 The Etruscans: History of Civilisation by Michael Grant. I mostly felt guilty for really liking the idea of the Etruscans without knowing anything, at all! about them. So when I saw this handsome book in a second hand book shop for cheap, I figured why not. So I'm not sure if this near-40 year old book is the cutting edge anymore, but I can honestly say I know something about them. Like how they probably died out because their city-states did not cohere to face off any mutual militarisitc threats, or that they got their start due to ready supply of metal, or that they probably didn't worship the dead and despise the living, despite what Pope said. Now I'm not saying this is particularly in depth stuff, but I am not a classiscist. 3 The Petty Bourgeois by Maxim Gorky as translated by Margeret Wettlin. At the same shop I came across a stout volume of all of Gorky's plays that had been published in the USSR and I couldn't resist it. I must say I don't know a lot about Gorky's comparative translations but this seemed a fine enough one. As for the play itself, I can see why they named a square after him. Political Chekov. 4 Essays on Conrad by Ian Watts. Here I started dogsitting in a university town so I borrowed my host's library card and just started reading criticism on the two authors I read all the time. I wanted to read stuff on de Assis and Bernhard but it was in Portugese and German, respectively. Anyway, this selection of essays is more a covert biography than literary criticism. But it was a good deal shorter than The Three Lives so who's complaining. Watts was also one of the PoWs who built the actual bridge over the river Kwai, so he tacks on an essay about The Bridge Over the River Kwai as Myth at the end. It didn't have anything to do with Conrad, but it was enjoyable. Basically lands the Vietnam war in the laps of Pierre Boulle and David Lean, which seems a bit harsh, but I guess it was his war. 5 Paper Empire: William Gaddis and the World System edited by Joseph Tabbi. I was quite excited to get to this as Tabbi's been plugging this in basically everything he can. Including Joseph McElroy showing off, an essay on the musicality of JR which is nice for someone like me who's less up on his Wagner than he should be. A very successful biography of the man himself as told through his archives. It was funny how Franzen reappears as a bête noire through so many different authors, but I suppose it's to be expected. 6 Joseph Conrad's Under Western eyes : beginnings, revisions, final forms : five essays edited by David R. Smith. I honestly didn't bring my reference with me so just happened to happen across this one. More historical information about the text itself, which is sort of famous among manuscripts because of a reference in a letter by his wife where it sits at the fevered author's feet as he guards it and won't let anyone touch it. Though there's also some more interesting stuff trying to put Conrad's attitude to Russia as a Pole when he had grown up as a Russian. Weirdest of all was something constructing an elaborate freudian interpretation based on a repeated doodle in the margins, a K occasionally converted into an R. I mean, there's something there but to get so heated over it? I'm not sure. 6 The Secret Agent: Centennial Essays edited by Allen H. Simmons and J.H. Stape. I was surprised when I was reading this to bump into again an essay whose opening have frequently quoted it's opening line: "Adam Gills could only find 2 jews in the work of Conrad, I have found at least 9" - mostly among the Anarchists which Cedric Watts is quite confident in identifying. Pedantic and pugnacious, he picks his way through an intertextual relationship between TSA and the works of Lombroso. He also, entertainingly, positively identifies the year of the novel as 1877 (certainly not 1894 as the layman might assume and not as the introduction of the book may have it 1879). There was also something studying the accuracy of Conrad's london entirely based on noise, a very good essay teasing out possible references to Tosca. Most baffling was something by Ludmilla Voitkovskaand Zofia Vorontsova applying some guy Turner's theory of liminality onto TSA. This mostly was achieved by taking a synposis of the text and saying how liminal it was, much like in the work of some guy Turner. Obviously went over my head. 7 A Frolic of his Own by WIlliam Gaddis. This one's really a hoot. There's a bit where someone works out suing god. This reading has pushed Frolic up to being "most fun." 8 The Ethics of Indeterminacy in the Works of William Gaddis by Gregory Comnes. A slender volume that has a very bad opening in that he waffles on about quantum physics. Now I may have the advantage on him here as he was writing in '94 before decades of waffling on about quantum physics. Guy might have transferred from a physics degree or something, but now it just sounds like a Fringe marathon was on as he was trying to fill space.I definitely have the advantage on him as this was written before Frolic was out, and without having been able to ransack Gaddis' letters where he embarrasedly admits to not having read any Benjamin until way after JR when it was suggested to him. So when Comnes seizes on any coincidences linking the two authors works as being, if not proof positive, then certainly reasons to believe in some sort of discipleage. Anyway, not the best thing on him I've read. 9 The Deceptive Text: An Introduction to Covert Plots by Cedric Watts. I enjoyed his essay on TSA so much I dug out this book of his, which is about that fun thing some authors do where they hide what's actually happening in the plot from anyone who glides along admiring the surface effects. In the same entertainingly strident tones he asserts that the misfortunes of Alameyer are all the work of an Arab trader whose machinations have to be totally inferred, though the inference does seem reasonable as Watts explains it. Similarly, Kurtz is deliberately stranded by a sinister quarter master whose incompetence is actually a screen for professional jealousy. He casts two separate stories as ghost stories slyer than Turn of the Screw as you don't even notice it happening, and throws in some religious analogies within the text as a "covert plot" for good measure. After all this it's a brief round the houses of all fiction which has employed similar tricks. Didja know the protagonist of Death in Venice is hounded by the god Dionysus in the form of 7 separate men and the fever itself? Well, food for thought. 10 Arthur Miller by Christopher Bigsby. Colossal biography which knows very well what the story is at any time. This leads to a weird effect where future meaning is definitely stamped on past accidents. Miller's early years are marked by the CIA and HUAC, with the general rule of thumb that any insignificant thing is filed away by Hoover's lot and anything actually compromising is not followed up in the hearing yet to happen. He also chops up After the Fall and scatters it throughout the book. Whenever he needs an example of Miller's difficult relationship with wives, he dips in there, meaning, which is really disorienting. He seems to have been writing that play ever since he was born. Another thing that came across was how short a period it was that Miller did some really significant work. Now I'm speaking out of ignorance, as I've not seen or read any of the less-famous ones, but the biography concludes shortly after The Misfits, 45 years before his death. Once he was happily married I suppose, or once he outlasted McCarthy. It's a good book though, he knows enough to put in the legend first though not without correcting it where the record doesn't support it. He also feels free to digress, going on lengthy walks around politics and the state of the art at the time. He even fends off pro-HUAC revisionists, though this of course leads to some more chronological confusion. 11 Agapé Agape by William Gaddis. Did you know this was at one time intended to refer to King Lear, with the author writing and tearing up wills, cutting out the devoted daughter who was, presumably, sleeping outside the door of his room like a dog. He discarded that for being "too literal" but you can see traces in the first lines about "sorting out this property", which was pretty quickly abandoned. But did you also know some perfidious editor took advantage of the author being dead to excise three sentences about how fellow-editor Robert Gottleib and the shameful way he treated John Kennedy O'Toole and A Confederacy of Dunces. I don't know if these sentences have been re-instated in a more recent publication but they're not in my '05 edition, I checked. 12 The Lost Steps by Alejo Carpentier as translated by Harriet De Onis. This was something I picked up ages back where a lot of modernist authors were flooding te cheap second hand book shop. Alejo's a cuban musicologist and boy does it show. Not since Antony Burgess have I read so musically-literate a text. It's like The Steppen Wolf for opera lovers. The Cuban element comes from how this guy has to retreat into the wilderness to listen to a river. Anyway, some good stuff. 1) Read some books. Set a number and go hog wild. 12/60 2) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by women. 0/12 3) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by someone non-white. 0/12 4) Read at least one book by an LGBT author. 5) Read at least one TBB BoTM and post in the monthly thread about it. 6) Read a book someone else in the thread recommends (a wildcard!) 7) Read something that was recently published (anything from after 1st January 2016). 8) Read something which was published before you were born. 10) Read something from somewhere you want to travel. 11) Read something political. 12a) Read something about the First World War. 14) Read some poetry. 16) Read a collection of short stories. 19) Read a satire. 20) Read something about honour. 21) Read something about fear. 22) Read something about one (or more!) of the seven sins. 23) Read something that you love. 24) Read something from a non-human perspective. Mr. Squishy fucked around with this message at 02:41 on Jan 31, 2017 |
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Jan 31, 2017 02:32
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And last time I asked for a Wildcard I got loving blanked so someone give me an wildcard you fucks.
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Jan 31, 2017 02:45
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Mr. Squishy posted:And last time I asked for a Wildcard I got loving blanked so someone give me an wildcard you fucks. The Cipher by Kathe Koja.
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Jan 31, 2017 04:22
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gently caress yeah, great throw. That one'll bung you up but good.
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Jan 31, 2017 04:36
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January update! Books read: 1: Revenger by Alastair Reynolds. Straight-up space opera adventure set in a distant future where humans inhabit a vast number of microworlds in a ruined solar system (unclear if ours or not) and digging through the ruins of past civilizations is a major career path. Solar-sail space pirates, revenge, lost siblings, mysterious aliens, fun stuff. Liked it. 2: The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher. Short and arguably kind of banal, but felt genuine enough; the focus was on her experiences during the filming of the original Star Wars movie. 3: Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut. BOTM for January, and one of a handful of Vonnegut novels I hadn't already read. The story of an American playwright/radio personality who lived in Germany during the war and was used as a Nazi propaganda mouthpiece as well as being an Allied double agent, and the long aftermath ending in his trial. Nobody and nothing is to be accepted at face value. Utterly great. 4. Binti by Nnedi Okorafor. Really just a novella at under 100 pages but what the hell, if I count a monstrosity like Jerusalem as a single book then the flipside is that I also get to count short books as a whole book. It's a galactic future for humanity, and the main character is a member of small and "primitive" African ethnic group who's the first of her people to be accepted into a prestigious alien university and leave their ancestral homelands for another world. I'm just going to assume that Okorafor treats the Himba people with accuracy and respect, in the future they're apparently some kind of technological specialists but have kept a lot of their current customs. A main theme is overcoming prejudices and past injustice and hostility. Enjoyed the author's voice, will be picking up the sequel soon. 5. Death's End by Liu Cixin. Finale of the trilogy that started with The Three-Body Problem. Imaginative and cosmic-scale, with pretty sketchy characters and an almost absurdist approach to the problem of apocalypse. Liked it. 6. Empire Games by Charles Stross. Picks up the thread of the Merchant Princes series. Involves cross-world travel between a vast number of alternate Earths; it's actually set a few years into the future from now (alternate future given that the existence of parallel Earths was not made public in the early 2000s). Not going to say much about the plot because it would spoil the first series, but I thought it was a very promising new start. 7. Among Others by Jo Walton. Set in 1979/1980, it's either the tale of a 15-year-old Welsh girl dealing with reconnecting with her estranged father after losing her twin sister and getting away from an unstable and abusive mother; or the same girl wading in fairies and magic and saving the world from her mother who's an evil witch. In either case she's doing it while trying to adapt to boarding-school life, getting some kind of social life together, and reading an awful lot of classic and then-current science fiction, and discovering SF fandom. Obviously has some elements of autobiography in there (presumably not so much in the fairies and saving-the-world department). Thought this was a sweet book. 1) Read some books. Set a number and go hog wild. 7/40 2) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by women. 3/7 = 42.9% 3) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by someone non-white. 2/7 = 28.6% 4) Read at least one book by an LGBT author. 6) Read a book someone else in the thread recommends (a wildcard!) 10) Read something from somewhere you want to travel. 11) Read something political. 12) Read something historical. 12a) Read something about the First World War. 14) Read some poetry. 15) Read a play. 16) Read a collection of short stories. 18) Read something which was banned or censored. 19) Read a satire. 20) Read something about honour. 21) Read something about fear. 22) Read something about one (or more!) of the seven sins. 23) Read something that you love. 24) Read something from a non-human perspective. Extra: At least 10 Norwegian books (translations don't count) - 0/10 so far At least 5 nonfiction books - 1/5 Read every BOTM (except optionally for ones I've read before) - 1/1 as of January No more than 5 rereads (vs. the vanilla goal, I would count them against specific goals) - 0/5 so far
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Jan 31, 2017 11:09
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Hello 2017. First update of the year 1) Read some books: 4/?? 2) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by women. 3) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by someone non-white. 4) Read at least one book by an LGBT author. 5) Read at least one TBB BoTM and post in the monthly thread about it. 6) Read a book someone else in the thread recommends (a wildcard!) 7) Read something that was recently published (anything from after 1st January 2016). 10) Read something from somewhere you want to travel. 11) Read something political. 12) Read something historical. 12a) Read something about the First World War. 13) Read something biographical. 14) Read some poetry. 15) Read a play. 16) Read a collection of short stories. 18) Read something which was banned or censored. 19) Read a satire. 20) Read something about honour. 21) Read something about fear. 22) Read something about one (or more!) of the seven sins. 23) Read something that you love. 24) Read something from a non-human perspective. 1. Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon 2. The Fall of the Stone City, Ismail Kadare 3. The Royal Game, Stefan Zweig 4. The Sound and The Fury, William Faulkner off to a good start this year. I'm not going to pretend to understand half of Gravity's Rainbow, but I enjoyed it for the most part. I loved how full of intertextuality this book was, ranging from Homer's classic plays to burlesque, as well as speculative linguistics. Guess I have to reread it in the future, cause the structure just screams "repeated readings". The same could also be said of The Sound and The Fury. My favourite chapter is the second following Quentin. I put Ismail Kadare on the backburner a bit last year after a dull first chapter, but picked it up again after finishing Gravity's and all in all I really loved the novel. If this is one of his weaker (according to a goon from the babyfucker thread) then I'm eager to read some of his better ones. somebody wildcard me, please. If you've got something for challenge no. 24 (I've already read The Elephant's Journey, mind) or an LGBQT author, that would be swell.
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Jan 31, 2017 14:48
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ulvir posted:
Have you read The Book Thief? It's from the perspective of Death. Someone wildcard me now please.
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Jan 31, 2017 19:48
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Radio! posted:Have you read The Book Thief? It's from the perspective of Death. Sir Thomas Browne's Hydriotaphia, urn burial : with an account of some urns found at Brampton in Norfolk
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Jan 31, 2017 23:31
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Nice wildcard. I'm off to a slow start. 1. Angkor by Michael D. Coe 2. The Translator by John Crowley 3. Tristes Tropiques by Claude Lévi-Strauss Angkor is a non-fiction book about the Khmer Empire. A bit heavy on geography at first and kings and dates later on, but apparently the only source for how people actually lived in Angkor is an incomplete account from a Chinese visitor who was there for a few months in 1296. Highlights: priests ritually deflowering pre-pubescent girls, thieves putting their hands in boiling oil as a trial by ordeal. Coe tries to make it interesting. Some nice photos. The Translator is a novel about an American student meeting an exiled Russian poet in 1962. Has a lot of imagery about ice snow etc. being bad due to the Cold War, cold, geddit? but much of it rather moving and mysterious. The bit about being a runaway kid during the Revolution were good. I felt Crowley was repeating himself a bit too much stylistically (the wind imagery is also in Daemonomania). Read Keats. Tristes Tropiques: Messy, noisy, only about half is the main course (fieldwork in Brazil), the rest being reflections on anthropology, writing, Islam, India, etc., autobiography, and only vaguely relevant narrative. A collage, written in haste. The flow of his ideas, unbound by narrative, is baggy and capacious. It's a book of philosophy interrupted by other stuff, not a travel book. The world in it is dying and almost hopeless. It's funny and dense with interesting details and narrative. The anti-Islam stuff at the back is funny. Groke posted:7. Among Others by Jo Walton. Set in 1979/1980, it's either the tale of a 15-year-old Welsh girl dealing with reconnecting with her estranged father after losing her twin sister and getting away from an unstable and abusive mother; or the same girl wading in fairies and magic and saving the world from her mother who's an evil witch. In either case she's doing it while trying to adapt to boarding-school life, getting some kind of social life together, and reading an awful lot of classic and then-current science fiction, and discovering SF fandom. Obviously has some elements of autobiography in there (presumably not so much in the fairies and saving-the-world department). Thought this was a sweet book. It's definitely a fantasy by the end, and it's really not good either; I posted in the sf thread about it already. Twelve already? Cheer up, I'm sure you'll find a new job soon 
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Feb 1, 2017 02:19
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A little slow as I have been working through the 1100 pages of Shogun, which should be finished this month, but still some progress! 1. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling 2. Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston 3. Babylon’s Ashes by James S.A. Corey January update: I’ve seen a few of the movies, but never read Harry Potter and thought it was time to do so. I don’t know what more I can say about it that has not been written before. It was a children's book but good. I was surprised how much time the book spent talking about how bad the Dursleys were to Harry, it was nearly 1/4 of the book until Harry and Hagrid go off to buy supplies. I thought the ending was a bit rushed. Each challenge to get to the Sorcerer’s Stone was only given a page and a half or so and it was always easy challenges for first years to conquer. Even with the rushed ending, I’ll pick up the other books later to read. Babylon’s Ashes was pretty good. Felt more like a conclusion to the previous book and introduced the next big bad problem for the series. The end was a bit anticlimactic with how Marcos was dealt with. It was nice to see at least a bit of improved technology, though not powerful enough to make existing tech useless. With so much focus on humanity, I’m wondering if we’re ever going to get back to more alien stuff. It’s been a while since I read anything about pre-columbian societies and Lost City of the Monkey God was a pretty quick and easy read about an unknown society in Honduras. Based mostly on a few centuries old comments and folk tales, some guys and girls research then head off to find the Lost City of the Monkey God. It’s based on rather recent research(2014-2016) so there are no definitive answers but good for a popular history book. 1) Read some books. Set a number and go hog wild. 2) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by women. 1/8 (HPaTSS) 3) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by someone non-white. 4) Read at least one book by an LGBT author. 5) Read at least one TBB BoTM and post in the monthly thread about it. 6) Read a book someone else in the thread recommends (a wildcard!) 7) Read something that was recently published (anything from after 1st January 2016). 8) Read something which was published before you were born. 9) Read something in translation. 10) Read something from somewhere you want to travel. 11) Read something political. 12) 12a) Read something about the First World War. 13) Read something biographical. 14) Read some poetry. 15) Read a play. 16) Read a collection of short stories. 17) Read something long (500+ pages). 18) Read something which was banned or censored. 19) Read a satire. 20) Read something about honour. 21) Read something about fear. 22) Read something about one (or more!) of the seven sins. 23) Read something that you love. 24) Read something from a non-human perspective.
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Feb 1, 2017 02:38
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1. The Heart of What Was Lost - Tad Williams 2. The Two Towers (LOTR #2) - J.R.R. Tolkien 3. The Return of the King (LOTR #3) - J.R.R. Tolkien 4. Drums of Autumn (Outlander #4) - Diana Gabaldon 5. Paddle Your Own Canoe - Nick Offerman 6. The Snow Child - Eowyn Ivey 7. The Shadow of the Wind (Cemetery of Forgotten Books #1) - Carlos Ruiz Zafon 8. The Book of Strange New Things - Michel Faber 9. Sula - Toni Morrison 10. The Silmarillion - J.R.R. Tolkien 11. The Mysterious Benedict Society - Trenton Lee Stewart 12. Beautiful Ruins - Jess Walter 13. The Grace of Kings (Dandelion Dynasty #1) - Ken Liu 14. Murder on the Orient Express - Agatha Christie 15. Lost City of Z - David Brann Man, I got off to a running start with this month - I don't expect to read this many in months to come, but I got a lot in (mostly because many of them were short). Standouts were The Snow Child (a magical tale set in Alaska in the 20s, based on the old fairy tale), The Shadow of the Wind (one of my favorite mysteries, set in post-WWII Barcelona), The Lost City of Z (about an explorer's doomed search for a city in the Amazon), and Murder on the Orient Express (a fantastic murder mystery that deserves the acclaim it gets). 1) Read some books. Set a number and go hog wild. (15/52) 2) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by women. - Ivey, Morrison, Christie, Gabaldon 3) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by someone non-white. - Liu, Morrison This one, I'll have to edit - I'm trying to get through a massive amount of books I own and not a whole lot of them are by people of color. So I'm reducing this to 10% - which I'm not meeting this month, but will hopefully get back on track in months to come. 4) Read at least one book by an LGBT author. 5) Read at least one TBB BoTM and post in the monthly thread about it. 6) Read a book someone else in the thread recommends (a wildcard!) 7) Read something that was recently published (anything from after 1st January 2016). -The Heart of What Was Lost 8) Read something which was published before you were born. - LOTR, Murder on the Orient Express 9) Read something in translation. - The Shadow of the Wind 10) Read something from somewhere you want to travel. 11) Read something political. 12) Read something historical. - The Lost City of Z 12a) Read something about the First World War. 13) Read something biographical. 14) Read some poetry. 15) Read a play. 16) Read a collection of short stories. 17) Read something long (500+ pages). - The Grace of Kings 18) Read something which was banned or censored. 19) Read a satire. 20) Read something about honour. 21) Read something about fear. 22) Read something about one (or more!) of the seven sins. 23) Read something that you love. - LOTR 24) Read something from a non-human perspective.
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Feb 1, 2017 05:43
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4/52 total 1/24 female authors 2/12 non-fiction The Arithmancer is a Harry Potter fan-fiction that a few people in the Let's Read: "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality" thread have recommended. It's OK. It has that usual fan-fiction issue of being largely unedited, which means it's not as good as it could be, but even accounting for that it's never going to be great. But it's also not bad.  On the other hand, A Minger's Tale definitely is bad. You know that guy who thinks he's raconteur, but his stories go nowhere, aren't funny, and have no connection to anything? RBN Boookmark is that guy. Also he's a bad writer, a liar and a plagiarist. For some reason I was actually sent a free copy of this to review, which is a thing that happens occasionally. I guess it's because I review a lot of stuff on Goodreads? Anyway, that was the only reason I read it, and if I hadn't agreed to review it then I certainly wouldn't have finished it. Fight Like A Girl is a good book that I personally didn't get much out of. I'd certainly recommend it as an introductory text on feminism, but if you're at all familiar with contemporary feminism then there's probably not much there for you. And finally there's A Confederacy of Dunces. I know people say this book is the funniest thing ever written, but I just don't get it. I didn't so much as smile once. The characters and situations are pathetic and unpleasant. I don't even know what's supposed to be amusing about any of it. It's not atrocious or unreadable, it's just mildly unpleasant the whole way through. It reminded me a lot of Catch-22, another supposedly hilarious book that I just didn't find amusing at all. Full reviews on Goodreads.
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Feb 1, 2017 09:24
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A human heart posted:Sir Thomas Browne's Hydriotaphia, urn burial : with an account of some urns found at Brampton in Norfolk Feel free to ignore this guy and get an actual wildcard btw
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Feb 1, 2017 09:55
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What's wrong with it? Urne-Burial is short, not too hard to find, and a way off the beaten track. Sounds like a perfect wildcard to me. Read The Garden of Cyrus with it too, they were originally published together. ulvir posted:I'm not going to pretend to understand half of Gravity's Rainbow, but I enjoyed it for the most part. I loved how full of intertextuality this book was, ranging from Homer's classic plays to burlesque, as well as speculative linguistics. Guess I have to reread it in the future, cause the structure just screams "repeated readings". What do you mean by speculative linguistics? It's been so long since I've read it that I've no idea what you're talking about.
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Feb 1, 2017 11:31
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Corrode posted:Feel free to ignore this guy and get an actual wildcard btw Is there a problem
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Feb 1, 2017 11:59
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A human heart posted:Is there a problem I just glanced at the title and assumed it was another 'read this thing that's out of print and costs $50' suggestion, if not then no bother.
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Feb 1, 2017 12:36
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Corrode posted:I just glanced at the title and assumed it was another 'read this thing that's out of print and costs $50' suggestion, if not then no bother. You don't know anything about books so I'm not sure why you're in charge of this thread.
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Feb 1, 2017 13:37
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Corrode posted:I just glanced at the title and assumed it was another 'read this thing that's out of print and costs $50' suggestion, if not then no bother. It looks like his complete works are split into three volumes on Kindle for free, and it seems to be included in Vol. 2., or there's this version for $2 that has a few other pieces. Safety Biscuits posted:What do you mean by speculative linguistics? It's been so long since I've read it that I've no idea what you're talking about. I feel like this is a reference to the Kenosha Kid gag? Or maybe one of the Pavlovian experiments that occurs in the book, like Grigori's conditioning to attack?
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Feb 1, 2017 14:08
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Franchescanado posted:It looks like his complete works are split into three volumes on Kindle for free, and it seems to be included in Vol. 2., or there's this version for $2 that has a few other pieces. It's an almost 400 year old work, so it's easy to find online. I second the suggestion of reading it with its companion piece, The Garden of Cyrus.
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Feb 1, 2017 14:25
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A human heart posted:You don't know anything about books so I'm not sure why you're in charge of this thread. It was all rigged, five million illegals voted for me
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Feb 1, 2017 16:15
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Safety Biscuits posted:What do you mean by speculative linguistics? It's been so long since I've read it that I've no idea what you're talking about. speculative might not be the correct phrasing, but around the midpoint Pynchon goes on for several pages discussing phonetics in a bunch of languages (some of which I believe are fictional) and a grapheme. reminded me of Borges tbh
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Feb 1, 2017 16:22
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It was a good month in books, not surprising, because many of these were culled from Best Of lists or goon recommendations at the end of the last thread. I decided count Latin American authors for challenge #3. We can fight if that doesn't work for you. 1. A Biographers Tale by AS Byatt - Grad student gives up post-structuralist literary critique and gets laid. That's an unfair summary. I sort of liked the conclusion and like parts, but the getting from here to there was sloggy for me and it never quite clicked into being good. This was probably the worst book I read this month. 2. A Taste of Honey by Kai Ashante Wilson - A man reflects back on a pivotal week in his life and how it might have been different. I was expecting something more in the vein of Sorceror of the Wildeeps. This was good, but not really what I was hoping for there. I like the world Wilson has created and there are some clever little inversions in there. 3. Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut - BOTM. We are what we pretend to be. There was a lot to unpack here, and a surprising number of ties to the current political situation as well as the way we behave online. A good book. Would recommend. 4. Umami by Laia Jufresa - Reviewed upthread. Pulled off an NPR Best of 2016 list, and they were right, at least about this one. Would recommend. 5. Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosely - I'd seen recs for this here and there. It's a hardboiled detective novel set in Watts in the 1940s, with a down on his luck black factory worker hired to locate a white woman who frequents black clubs. This hit the hardboiled tropes well and did it interestingly and with it's own spin on things. 6. The Story of My Teeth by Valeria Luiselli - This was written for (and the author says in conjunction with) workers at a Jumex factory in middle of nowhere Mexico. An auctioneer expounds and demonstrates the uses of storytelling in enhancing value. A goon recommendation from last year (don't recall who, sorry), this had many positive aspects. I felt there was potentially a really good storyline that was dropped, but this really does adhere to the homage to storytelling aspect. There's a lot to sift through, with references to authors both historical and current. A fact I found fun, and you might(n't), is that Luiselli was quoted for a blurb on Umami, and Jufresa is cited in My Teeth as a neighbor of the main character (though her first book wasn't yet published at the time). There is a notably interesting artifact in here where the translator has provided a rather eclectic timeline that winds up shedding light on the story as a whole. By eclectic I mean it has entries like "2300 years prior to this date Plato wrote Republic" or "Exactly 40 years prior to this date, Virginia Woolf had 2 teeth removed and wrote the short essay Gas about the experience". It's wholly of the translator, but winds up tying together aspects of the story nonetheless. I could see the right reader really enjoying this novel. 7. For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf by Ntozake Shange - Recommended by Guy A Person at the end of the last thread, this is a "chorepoem." It's a series of interconnected poems meant to be performed on stage with dancing and music. As such, it contains aspects of both play and poetry, but I counted it as a play. I feel that's fair as it is at it's heart a performance piece as well. And holy poo poo, this was a surprise standout this month. This is just a tremendous work. Beautiful and raw and I'd strongly recommend this to someone who doesn't know what play (or poetry) to read. 8. A Natural History of Hell by Jeffrey Ford. Grabbed at the library due to an interesting name a cover blurb from Joyce Carol Oates. Most of the stories focus on the supernatural and are broadly in the realm of horror. My favorites tended to tie into sort of pre-existing folk tales. At his best, I think Ford here channels Bradbury a bit, and I assume some of the references are deliberate. On the whole it was solid with a few standouts and no real duds. 1) Read some books. Set a number and go hog wild. 8/60 2) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by women. 5/12 3) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by someone non-white. 5/12 4) Read at least one book by an LGBT author. - Taste of Honey 5) Read at least one TBB BoTM and post in the monthly thread about it. - Mother Night 6) Read a book someone else in the thread recommends (a wildcard!) 7) Read something that was recently published (anything from after 1st January 2016). - Umami 8) Read something which was published before you were born. 9) Read something in translation. - The Story of My Teeth 10) Read something from somewhere you want to travel. 11) Read something political. 12) Read something historical. 12a) Read something about the First World War. 13) Read something biographical. 14) Read some poetry. 15) Read a play. - For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf 16) Read a collection of short stories. - Natural History of Hell 17) Read something long (500+ pages). 18) Read something which was banned or censored. 19) Read a satire. 20) Read something about honour. 21) Read something about fear. 22) Read something about one (or more!) of the seven sins. 23) Read something that you love. 24) Read something from a non-human perspective.
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Feb 1, 2017 17:40
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Nuns with Guns posted:It's an almost 400 year old work, so it's easy to find online. I second the suggestion of reading it with its companion piece, The Garden of Cyrus. Yeah, I found a copy online with both works. I will admit the title totally threw me off at first too, but having done some extremely cursory research I'm kind of excited to see what I think of it. Thanks, a human heart! Sorry in advance that I'm probably too dumb to really appreciate the work. Anyway, here's my January list: 1. Working Stiff- Judy Melinek. A NY medical examiner talks about her job. It's a good mix of the actual process of handling each case and the gory details of things like "worst death you ever saw" that most readers are probably looking for. 2. Does This Mean You'll See Me Naked?- Robert D. Webster. loving awful. Ostensibly a book about what being a funeral director is like, but in reality just Webster complaining about other people (especially The Youth) and talking about how perfect and upstanding he is compared to other funeral directors. Garbage. 3. Rest in Pieces: the Curious Fates of Famous Corpses- Bess Lovejoy. More like a series of short articles than a coherent book, but very entertaining nonetheless. Pretty much exactly what the title says: each section focuses on one famous corpse and describes all the weird poo poo that happened to it. Like, a bunch of people in the 1800s tried to steal Lincoln's corpse and hold it ransom once (they failed). 4. Catalyst: A Rogue One novel- James Luceno. Okay, this is a Star Wars novel so maybe I shouldn't be surprised, but this was uninteresting and trite. Takes all the interesting moral implications of Galen Erso's character from the movie and replaces them with boring black-and-white bullshit. 5. Never Suck a Dead Man's Hand- Dana Kollmann. A forensic CSI talks about her job. Okay but forgettable. Thought it was a lot funnier than it was. 6. Agent Zigzag- Ben Macintyre. I'm a sucker for Macintyre's genre of "weird WWII shenanigans" so I loved this. 7. Longitude: The True Story of a Long Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time- Dava Sobel. How the problem of finding longitude was solved. Very short (only like 120 pages?) and definitely felt more like a glorified article than a book. Definitely "pop history"- favors the narrative over incorporating source material into the work itself (rather than just listed in the back) and doesn't go into a lot of detail. 8. British Intelligence: Secrets, Spies, and Sources- Stephen Twigge. A general overview of each aspect of the British Intelligence apparatus from its foundation to modern times. Less exciting than the title sounds, especially as it doesn't really go into detail on any individual secrets, spies, or sources- it's mainly focused on the evolution of intelligence organizations as a whole over time. What it's really good for is as a reference for National Archive materials- if it mentions something in passing it will cite the Archives codes for the source materials, which makes it a really handy tool for further, more in depth research. 9. The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary- Simon Winchester. I felt it became very repetitive by the end; the story of WC Minor, a criminally insane dude who helped create the OED, just doesn't have enough to it to support an entire book by itself. The details about how the dictionary was put together were much more interesting, but were pushed aside to focus on Minor's day to day life. By the end, both dictionary and Professor are only mentioned in passing, which is disappointing from a book that from first glance appears to be about all three equally.
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Feb 1, 2017 20:59
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Walter Mosley - Devil in a Blue Dress (Ben Nevis' post above sums it up. I liked it, and will read a few more from the series through the year.) Kurt Vonnegut - Mother Night (Read this for TBB BOTM. Have only read the "big" Vonnegut books before this one, really enjoyed it. Good discussion in the thread.) Tana French - The Trespasser (Latest book in the 'Dublin Murder Squad' series which I promise are better than that series title suggests. This one was a return to form after a pretty mediocre fifth book.) Walter Mosley - A Red Death (Second "Easy Rawlins" book, a follow-up to Devil in a Blue Dress. Less plausible than the first which is saying something, but still okay.) Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller - The Only Rule is it Has to Work (Moneyball, but with better detail and lower stakes. I loved this. Two sabermetrics nerds get to take over an indy-league baseball team and try all of their weird, stats-suggest-this-will-work ideas. Do they have great success? Sometimes!) 1) Read some books. Set a number and go hog wild. 5/40 2) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by women. 1/8 3) Of the books you read this year, make sure at least 20% of them are written by someone non-white. 2/8 4) Read at least one book by an LGBT author. 6) Read a book someone else in the thread recommends (a wildcard!) 8) Read something which was published before you were born. 9) Read something in translation. 10) Read something from somewhere you want to travel. 11) Read something political. 12) Read something historical. 12a) Read something about the First World War. 13) Read something biographical. 14) Read some poetry. 15) Read a play. 16) Read a collection of short stories. 17) Read something long (500+ pages). 18) Read something which was banned or censored. 19) Read a satire. 20) Read something about honour. 21) Read something about fear. 22) Read something about one (or more!) of the seven sins. 23) Read something that you love. 24) Read something from a non-human perspective.
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Feb 1, 2017 21:49
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