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Enfys posted:I'm really drawing this one out because it's so good it hurts and I don't want to finish it I wish there was more to it too, but the time jumps and the whole thing being very personal and character-driven reminded me at times of Emily St. John Mandel, so I checked what she has been up to and am now reading Sea of Tranquility. Not far in but it's good
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Mar 9, 2024 19:13
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Sea of Tranquility is fantastic and actually improves on what I consider St John Mandel’s weakness to be (her endings are very lukewarm, run out of momentum things usually)
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Mar 9, 2024 19:27
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Sandwolf posted:Sea of Tranquility is fantastic and actually improves on what I consider St John Mandel’s weakness to be (her endings are very lukewarm, run out of momentum things usually) Yeah I couldn't even tell you the specifics of the ending of Station Eleven...an airport I think? But it never has bothered me because it's clearly not her focus or her strength as a writer (at that time at least), and her characters are very good. Weirdly enough, the book I read before this, The Eternal Footman by Robert Morrow, ALSO made me think of her writing because a big part of it is traveling a post-apocalyptic America with a theater troupe. The similarities end here however because that's the third book in a trilogy that is just completely unhinged, but played straight enough that you have to force yourself to step back and take a wide view of things before you realize it
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Mar 9, 2024 19:34
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Enfys posted:I've started the audiobook for This Is How You Lose The Time War as it was available first from the library, though I'm loving it so much that I'm definitely going to read the physical book as well for a reread. The narration is great. lol, also asked my wife to do a simultaneous read with me but she's busy with other books. I finished a couple nights ago, and really enjoyed it. The fact that it's basically half love letters was something I did not know going in. It's totally unlike anything I have ever read and will likely be a very rewarding re-read.
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Mar 21, 2024 18:40
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Enfys posted:I'm not too far in, but the part where Blue spends a century writing a letter using the rings of a tree just floored me so much that I had to stop for a bit to process all my feelings. I have finished yet but I really liked this but too, but then there’s another bit where blue is talking about how nice is it to be so deep undercover that going for a walk in the forest isn’t sus and now I’m thinking how the gently caress are they finding the time away to write a letter in tree rings
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Mar 21, 2024 21:22
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please feel free to start to provide suggestions for next month's book!
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Mar 21, 2024 21:22
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Proust Malone posted:I have finished yet but I really liked this but too, but then there’s another bit where blue is talking about how nice is it to be so deep undercover that going for a walk in the forest isn’t sus and now I’m thinking how the gently caress are they finding the time away to write a letter in tree rings I always felt like those details could have been embellished as the love letters became more grand
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Mar 21, 2024 22:13
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Bilirubin posted:please feel free to start to provide suggestions for next month's book! Have we done Le Guin recently? I'm thinking of giving The Lathe of Heaven a re-read soon because it's one of my all time favorites and it'd be nice to have company, good short book club book too. "Guards! Guards!" by Terry Pratchett is also one I wouldn't mind returning to at all and is something I tell everybody to read constantly. edit - oh duh, like the 2nd to last one lol. Been one of those days. Probably Pratchett then but I'll give it some thought Epic High Five fucked around with this message at 22:45 on Mar 21, 2024 |
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Mar 21, 2024 22:30
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Bilirubin posted:please feel free to start to provide suggestions for next month's book! Haven’t touched it yet but been hearing v good reviews for North Woods by Daniel Mason
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Mar 21, 2024 22:44
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In before someone suggests The Nihilist's Pocket Survival Guide to Modern Society
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Mar 22, 2024 01:21
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I voted for this book of the month so I am determined to read it but it's not engaging me. I'm several chapters in and I can tell I'm supposed to care about the evocative settings and the way they are passing messages back and forth, but I'm not. I assume there's some big timey wimey twist coming up that makes everything more interesting but I'm getting bored to death waiting for it to happen.
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Mar 23, 2024 20:06
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mewse posted:I voted for this book of the month so I am determined to read it but it's not engaging me. I'm several chapters in and I can tell I'm supposed to care about the evocative settings and the way they are passing messages back and forth, but I'm not. I'd come back to it later, tbh. If you are not feeling it early on, the payoffs won't hit as hard
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Mar 23, 2024 20:58
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Proust Malone posted:Haven’t touched it yet but been hearing v good reviews for North Woods by Daniel Mason Looks like I already own that so seconded
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Mar 23, 2024 21:47
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81sidewinder posted:I'd come back to it later, tbh. If you are not feeling it early on, the payoffs won't hit as hard No. I have a week to finish this and as we all know from high school, compelled reading is the most enjoyable reading
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Mar 23, 2024 21:56
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Ok so the book finally grabbed me and I finished it. Random thoughts: - I felt like it ended abruptly and I would have appreciated an epilogue a love story where they never get to sit next to each other is sadistic - I'm not sure I ever fully grasped the "upthread"/"downthread" terminology, pretty sure upthread was into the past, downthread was into the future - Has anyone discussed consent in relation to Red kissing and inoculating Blue as a child, altering her life trajectory? Like it's time travel so as far as we're concerned Blue has always had a childhood illness, but it marks her as separate from her faction and sets her up to return Red's affections. Did Red groom Blue? - I enjoyed the Garden faction being communal/nature based and the Commandant's faction being totalitarian/mechanized. - I felt like the names Red/Blue were lazy and would've appreciated Proper Names. There was good riffing in the letters as they talked about each others names, but it feels like Red/Blue were placeholders, then they wrote love letters to each others names, and they were stuck with them. The names did help visualize Red "going green" at the end. I'm half joking with these comments and don't want a flame war. I thought it was a good book. 4/5. e: oh yeah the plausibility of people who have never met falling head-over-heels in love with each other solely through these letters. yes it is possible, fine, but it felt like "the plot of this book is that they fall in love therefore they fall in love" mewse fucked around with this message at 15:19 on Mar 25, 2024 |
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Mar 25, 2024 15:05
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I kind of felt like since they were presumably raised in a loveless combat based environment from infancy, that any kind of connection other than "go kill that guy" would cause strong feelings, even if not warranted in our reality. It's also possible that their names are lazy for the same reason, why name a weapon with any thought other than something utilitarian (see 007, etc)
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Mar 25, 2024 16:23
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I'm still number 21 in the library queue, I don't think I'm going to make it
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Mar 25, 2024 17:46
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mewse posted:- Has anyone discussed consent in relation to Red kissing and inoculating Blue as a child, altering her life trajectory? Like it's time travel so as far as we're concerned Blue has always had a childhood illness, but it marks her as separate from her faction and sets her up to return Red's affections. Did Red groom Blue? The fun thing is that we don't know the answers to these, because we don't actually know how time travel works in this universe. If you subscribe to the Lost-style 'what happened, happened' then you absolutely could argue there was something untoward going on. I don't see it that way, but you could absolutely argue this. mewse posted:the plausibility of people who have never met falling head-over-heels in love with each other solely through these letters. yes it is possible, fine, but it felt like "the plot of this book is that they fall in love therefore they fall in love" Another one that really comes down to your theory on how time travel works. Meant to be? Maybe! The ambiguity feels like a feature and not a bug. McSpankWich posted:I kind of felt like since they were presumably raised in a loveless combat based environment from infancy, that any kind of connection other than "go kill that guy" would cause strong feelings, even if not warranted in our reality. It's also possible that their names are lazy for the same reason, why name a weapon with any thought other than something utilitarian (see 007, etc) Felt like Spy vs Spy for me, except they fall in love
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Mar 25, 2024 18:23
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81sidewinder posted:The ambiguity feels like a feature and not a bug. Agree with this wholeheartedly. I think treating the time travel - and for that matter the faction war - as backdrop and not as mechanical to the story leads it to be much more nuanced and interesting; it just is. It is certainly not a mechanical time travel story like Primer or Looper in this instance.
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Mar 25, 2024 18:51
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theysayheygreg posted:It is certainly not a mechanical time travel story like Primer or Looper in this instance. I was very relieved the time travel was easy to follow, and not deliberately complicated like Looper
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Mar 25, 2024 19:07
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McSpankWich posted:I kind of felt like since they were presumably raised in a loveless combat based environment from infancy, that any kind of connection other than "go kill that guy" would cause strong feelings, even if not warranted in our reality. It's also possible that their names are lazy for the same reason, why name a weapon with any thought other than something utilitarian (see 007, etc) In the scene where theyre at the eastern front, and one other place, the regular people are described in a way like they’re just props. You know they’re going to die so intervening to kill them earlier carries no moral weight. What does it matter if they’re scared or not? What does it matter if you ride with the Golden Horde to burn a town? Blue or red to the other then is the to real person in their existence who shared their experience. I wondered why in a love story they didn’t explore what is meant to be married in deep cover over year while in love with the opposite agent?
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Mar 25, 2024 20:19
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Proust Malone posted:I wondered why in a love story they didn’t explore what is meant to be married in deep cover over year while in love with the opposite agent?[/spoiler] I liked this. We didn't get mired down in the details, it was focused on the the love they had for each other
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Mar 28, 2024 15:42
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81sidewinder posted:I liked this. We didn't get mired down in the details, it was focused on the the love they had for each other I really loved how the details of the story's universe and background weren't really explicitly laid out or the focus of the narrative, but I didn't feel lost.
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Mar 28, 2024 16:01
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The book for April is: Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchettquote:Welcome to Guards! Guards!, the eighth book in Terry Pratchett’s legendary Discworld series. Get to reading (or rereading) it and discuss here!
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Apr 3, 2024 14:46
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Wow I just finished this a few months ago! I will share some thoughts later in the month.
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Apr 3, 2024 17:34
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First ever Discworld I read, if you’ve never read Discworld this is basically the best book to start with, imo
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Apr 3, 2024 18:07
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I read the first one or two discworlds but there's so many I just get bogged down. Nothing at the library for a while, but at least I should be able to find this at a used bookstore
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Apr 4, 2024 02:26
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in order to write good fantasy i must read good fantasy, and apparently this bad boy's available at the local library... either i'm good to check out two at once or ive got to speed through The Corrections lol e: success 
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Apr 4, 2024 21:04
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Sandwolf posted:First ever Discworld I read, if you’ve never read Discworld this is basically the best book to start with, imo Same. I think it might have been the only book the library had in at the moment. (I was spurred on by the adventure game.) I remember taking it to one of the reading chairs and just dying laughing even a few pages in.
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Apr 7, 2024 16:36
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read the first 100 pages today. i flinched when i saw the dedication to gaiman as well as their Good Omens advertised and was right to because the humor is way too satisfied with itself and annoyingly genre savvy. prose wise it seems written more like it wishes it were a movie than a book. i mean obviously it has its buddy cop influences but still, are the other Discworlds written any different? well even so Gwards Gwards is fun and loose and fast to chew through, and pratchett is for sure good at keeping the story going and unfolding with POVs shooting around all over the place (just how i like it). but i didn't like the dwarf bar scene at all. in contrast poo poo like the monkey swooping around the rooftops of a city to get back to his infinite library someone stole a book from, and also he's a monkey--that's good poo poo. i keep reading, wishing someone was restraining pratchett somewhat in his jokes and dialogue, some of the crap he has his characters say is pretty rough to read. will probably finish
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Apr 8, 2024 03:29
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Will check this out actually I missed all the previous ones. Just have to make my through *checks notes* Paradise Lost first. 🫠
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Apr 8, 2024 16:54
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crickets are chirping in here. hello? i finished Guards! yesterday and enjoyed it overall. it really was a breeze to read and the characters were interesting. well, i didn't care for sybil much in the back half of the book where she becomes relegated really to being vime's love interest/kidnapee, very zzzzzzzzz. carrot worked well as the new guy but seemed underutilized by the end, as did his connections to being a dwarf at all (seriously, the bar never comes up again? wha) dialogue was solid when Pratchett's on his a-game. the rest is terrible, stuff borne from the Gaiman school of thought of genre savvyness. i cannot freaking stand how trope aware everyone is, it's unbelievably obnoxious and the pitiful pop culture references like dirty harry fugging sucks. attempts at social commentary are cheeky but lack real teeth, and the overall resolution of reinstating the status quo plus that sort of obnoxious liberal view of the common man a la Parks and Rec adds up to annoyance. i finished Guards wishing it were more grounded and less too clever for its own good. while very readable (and i enjoyed the chapterlessness) the prose also had a tendency to feel like i said as if a movie script were being written out. but it's not like i hated it. i'll check out more Discworlds someday. well? anyone else been readin
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Apr 12, 2024 14:53
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I agree with most of what you said. I was expecting carrot to somehow be crowned king or at least recognized and such and then bungled in some way but they did practically nothing with that, and then just lazily brought back the Patrician. I think part of the problem with pop culture references in media in general is that they always age poorly, and now you're sitting there looking back on what could have been a hot take in 1989 and it's just silly. A lot of people who told me to read Discworld said to start with Guards! Guards! because it's the best set of the books, I've now read the first one or two books in each of the story sets and I have to say that this one is my least favorite, by a lot. I think my favorite are the witches, starting with Equal Rites, then Mort starting the Death novels, and then The Colour of Magic starting the Rincewind novels. I think the thing I like the most about Discworld is that all the novels are standalone and only make slight reference to each other (with the exception of the direct sequel books), so you really can just jump in and read whatever. I am definitely finding all the novels underwhelming, but probably solely based on the hype other people give them. Even the freaking librarian always comments about how much she loves them every time I take one out "Oh I try to reread the whole series every few years! Enjoy!" I can't imagine going back and rereading any of the ones I've read so far. McSpankWich fucked around with this message at 15:43 on Apr 12, 2024 |
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Apr 12, 2024 15:40
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Detailed annotations for this book are available here, which may help on some of the more dated references: https://www.lspace.org/books/apf/guards-guards.html People generally recommend starting here with Pratchett not because this is his best book -- it isn't-- but because it's his first good book where you can see his mature style taking shape, and because all Ankh-Morpork and environs are big enough that they eventually draw in all the rest of the Discworld, like a drain, so by starting here you start everywhere. The witches and wizards and death books may all have higher highs than the guards series but they have lower lows and start in much more wobbly ways. So this is a good foundation to start with. It's sortof like reading the first Jeeves and Wooster book. It isn't wodehouse's best, but you can see the peaks from here. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 15:53 on Apr 12, 2024 |
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Apr 12, 2024 15:46
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McSpankWich posted:I am definitely finding all the novels underwhelming, but probably solely based on the hype other people give them. Even the freaking librarian always comments about how much she loves them every time I take one out "Oh I try to reread the whole series every few years! Enjoy!" I can't imagine going back and rereading any of the ones I've read so far. This is what makes Pratchett so strange. I have read a couple books, including Guards Guards, and not really been impressed at all, yet some people are SUCH FANS and I can't figure out why. Is this how people who hate MST3K feel?
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Apr 12, 2024 18:16
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I think Pratchett was much more novel when their books were first being published. The style has been aped so often since that it doesn't really stick out as noteworthy any more. I like the books but I've never had any desire to reread them either, and if I had gone in with those sorts of expectations I probably would be a bit confused too. Don't get me wrong they're fun to read and I recommend them to people who haven't, but I wouldn't try to sell it as a literary revelation to anyone who has read anything popular from the last two decades.
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Apr 12, 2024 18:56
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Pratchett has been imitated a lot but he's also extremely British in a way that may not always vibe with American readers. If you look at the annotations linked above a great deal of the stuff he writes isn't just "generic British joke", he's referencing very specific British cultural touchstones that American readers are unlikely to pick up on.
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Apr 12, 2024 19:10
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That might explain it. It definitely wasn’t for me
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Apr 12, 2024 19:12
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The other thing with Pratchett is that lots of people had tried to write comic fantasy and the only remote prior successes were parts of Robert Asprin's Myth series and national lampoon's Bored of the Rings. (Of "dildo and frito bugger" fame). It's harder than it looks to write light comedy that also genuinely works as a fantasy novel and maybe even has a theme and a point and character development. It *looks* easy if its done right, like Wodehouse, but so does ballet.
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Apr 12, 2024 20:30
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i don't doubt its difficulty but holy crap he fucks up like two distinct moments with wonderful buildup by way of pop culture reference with his own hands. twice. no comic should do this it feels inexcusable, 1990 or 2024. i fear a better writer could have done something with the concept of blue balling readers in the most awkward ways possible but Pratchett settles for simply making GBS threads on some of his scenes instead. i'm really curious about the humor of the first Discworld nowMcSpankWich posted:I agree with most of what you said. I was expecting carrot to somehow be crowned king or at least recognized and such and then bungled in some way but they did practically nothing with that, and then just lazily brought back the Patrician. I think part of the problem with pop culture references in media in general is that they always age poorly, and now you're sitting there looking back on what could have been a hot take in 1989 and it's just silly. A lot of people who told me to read Discworld said to start with Guards! Guards! because it's the best set of the books, I've now read the first one or two books in each of the story sets and I have to say that this one is my least favorite, by a lot. I think my favorite are the witches, starting with Equal Rites, then Mort starting the Death novels, and then The Colour of Magic starting the Rincewind novels. i would have greatly enjoyed that, Carrot somehow being thrusted into the position not by his own choice to contrast how much Vetenari obviously wants his power. i mean him essentially being a dwarven human could've meant representing both in the multiculturalistic bath of annkhmoore or however. hey and on that note, for a fantasy work featuring unique races like the ork (?) bouncing, this was quite a human dominated narrative. well, i guess you can argue the book's philosophy is addressing human rule and such but i don't think a few extra elves or gnomes could've hurt
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Apr 12, 2024 22:44
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