What book are you reading? And what do you like about it?

The Something Awful Forums > Main > General Bullshit > What book are you reading? And what do you like about it?

Doctor J Off: Dec 28, 2005; There Is

deep dish peat moss posted:

I started The Glass Bead Game by Hesse but I haven't got very far because so far all it has talked about is how everything about The Glass Bead Game is too difficult to explain or be understood.

I'm also reading the Glass Bead Game and it's interesting so far. It's mostly talking about the game as a tool to understand life, transcending art. The introduction mentioned that the elevated tone was meant to be taken as ironic, and that lens helps move through any parts that may seem like a heavy slog.

I'm also reading Heaven's Door by Keiichi Koike, which is a sci fi anthology in manga form which gives better twilight Zone vibes than any of its revivals.

I also just finished the complete works of Arthur Rimbaud, and while I definitely get the sense of a teenage drunk that he was when writing, some of the images are evocative and really stick with you.

# ¿ Dec 30, 2023 15:01

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# ¿ May 16, 2024 02:13

Doctor J Off: Dec 28, 2005; There Is

BeastOfTheEdelwood posted:

Ulysses When I was a stupid teenager I absolutely hated stream-of-consciousness writing, but now that I am a stupid adult I think it's pretty neat what Joyce pulled off.

Sometimes I even understand what is going on! Sometimes.

I finished it this year. It took me about eight months, but it was a fantastic read. I would recommend (you may have found this already) getting a companion text either in print or online that connects the narrative between the long stream of consciousness reveries, and also explains the dense web of allusions to other texts as well as the places and people of Dublin and Ireland. It was a great read though. My favorite sections were Telemachus, Sirens, and Ithaca.

# ¿ Dec 31, 2023 17:55

Doctor J Off: Dec 28, 2005; There Is

WILDTURKEY101 posted:

Recently finished Convenience Store Woman by Sakaya Murata. Its a Japanese book about an ostensibly autistic woman who has been working at a convenience store for 16 years. The people she knows keep giving her a hard time about getting a better job and boyfriend, but shes not interested in either of these things. She likes her job and routine and being a “cog in the machinery of society”

Now Im reading The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco which is about a 13th century friar in northern Italy who solves a murder mystery in a monastery. Its really good.

Convenience Store Woman sounds interesting and I'll add it to my list. The Name of the Rose is another one I've been meaning to read since I read Foucault's Pendulum a while back.

I just finished Varieties of Disturbance by Lydia Davis. It's a short story collection in which most of the stories are flash fiction 1 - 2 pages long. She has a real talent for implication and leaving things unsaid, while weaving in a dry humor.

# ¿ Jan 25, 2024 23:48

Doctor J Off: Dec 28, 2005; There Is

redshirt posted:

Anyone else read "Project Hail Mary" by Andy Weir (the guy who wrote The Martian).

I loved it, read it immediately again after finishing it. Also soon to be a movie.

But I've come to understand it's not everyone's cup of tea, and it seems specific to Weir's style of writing.

PHM is about a global effort to ward off an apocalyptic solar event. It has a lot of the same "Science and Engineering" energy that The Martian had.

I read his book Artemis for the 372 Pages podcast and it was not good to say the least. I hope his other books are a lot better than that

# ¿ Jan 26, 2024 16:02

Doctor J Off: Dec 28, 2005; There Is

redshirt posted:

I enjoyed parts of Artemis, but there was plenty I did not like. He should never try and write a woman protagonist, at least until he's a much better writer.

PHM is much better than Artemis, and much more similar to The Martian.

Fair enough. I'll probably avoid his other stuff because I'm much more into soft than hard sci fi.

I'm about to start My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki. I really enjoyed her book A Tale for the Time Being.

# ¿ Jan 26, 2024 16:55

Doctor J Off: Dec 28, 2005; There Is

What translation of War and Peace does everyone read? I've heard that Constance Garnett's is notoriously bad, are there any others someone can recommend?

# ¿ Jan 30, 2024 21:47

Doctor J Off: Dec 28, 2005; There Is

Zugzwang posted:

Pevear + Volokhonsky are great for the major Russian writers.

Garnett was not good enough at Russian to be a translator, and her prose feels antiquated as gently caress.

Oh I remember hearing about them. I'll check it out, thanks for the rec

# ¿ Jan 31, 2024 15:16

Doctor J Off: Dec 28, 2005; There Is

Audiobooks are great, but there are definitely books that need to be read instead of listened to. I read Ulysses last year and it would have been unmanageable as an audiobook.

However a good narrator can bring a book to life that might otherwise be dry. I had resisted reading more F Scott Fitzgerald for a while, but the audio version of The Beautiful and Damned was fantastic.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2024 14:40

Doctor J Off: Dec 28, 2005; There Is

Earwicker posted:

i would never sit and listen to the entirety of Ulysses but i will say that hearing recordings of Joyce reading passages from that and from Finnegans Wake really helped me appreciate both books and contributed a lot to the voice my head adopted while reading them. (but also the recording quality it's hard to stand more than a few minutes)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8kFqiv8Vww

Thanks for the link, it's really interesting to hear it from Joyce himself. I've been putting off reading Finnegan's Wake because of it's reputation as a challenging read, but this could be a way to break into it. I can imagine setting up to take on the reading with a computer with an annotated text, the audio version, and the book in hand.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2024 17:04

Doctor J Off: Dec 28, 2005; There Is

Earwicker posted:

it's definitely better with a guide and there are a few good ones. i prefer a guide in book form rather than online since there are less distractions that way. A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake by Joseph Campbell is great and very thorough. there are also some great essays by Robert Anton Wilson that explain how FW works and are very helpful in understanding it from the outset. i think they are collected in the volume Prometheus Rising or maybe in one of those Cosmic Trigger books

unfortunately there is no full audio version of FW read by Joyce himself, just a few small passages. i've never looked for another audio version. but i will say it's very helpful to try reading certain bits out loud yourself. most words in the book are actually multiple words sort of fused together - sometimes from different langauges - and reading passages out loud helps figure out all the different things he's trying to say at the same time. there's also multiple puns in almost every sentence of the book.

re: Kim Stanley Robinson, the only book ive read by him is The Memory of Whiteness which is about a composer/conductor touring the solar system in some kind of orchestra-ship. it seemed to take place concurrently with the Mars trilogy, as there are a couple chapters that take place on Mars and mention some of the political movements from those books. overall the whole thing felt very thin, some interesting ideas but not a lot of meat when it came to character or story, and it didn't seem to really end up... anywhere or say much. so i wasn't very motivated to read more of his stuff.

I guess back when Joyce was living it would be impossible to store the full readout of Finnegan's Wake. My library has an audiobook copy, so maybe I should read the book with the audio along with it to pair a supplement.

Anyone else on the Libby app by the way? It's the one that replaced Overdrive that connects to your local library system so you can rent ebooks and audiobooks from your phone. It's a handy little app for readers

# ¿ Feb 4, 2024 23:16

Doctor J Off: Dec 28, 2005; There Is

madmatt112 posted:

I read Left Hand of Darkness, it was emotionally exhausting but I really enjoyed it. The exploration of a hermaphroditic human subspecies and the impact that hermaphroditism has on societal roles was food for thought.

Also read the first three Earthsea books. It was a nice change of pace from other fantasy books. Her writing is captivating and so beautiful. I appreciate how the conflict in the books is often internal to a character or externalized in a metaphor/representation of some intangible concept. Instead of good guys and bad guys with weapons and the need to overpower the other to “win”.

My first encounters with LeGuin and I am very impressed.

I highly recommend The Dispossessed if you haven't yet read it. It's a parable between capitalism and communism via the story of a scientist traveling from a moon where a kind of communism was established, when he felt he had gone as far as he could in that system and sought more on the main planet.

I'm now about halfway through Ruth Ozeki's My Year of Meats, a picaresque story of a documentary filmmaker working with a Japanese station on a series about American housewives cooking various meat based dishes on behalf of an industrial meat conglomerate. It's quite funny and incisive at the same time. Another of hers, A Tale for the Time Being, is a metaphysical story about creativity and disappointment, and is also quite good.

# ¿ Feb 9, 2024 23:35

Doctor J Off: Dec 28, 2005; There Is

redshirt posted:

Is there a German word to describe the feeling of continuing to read a long rear end book not because you're particularly interested anymore, but rather you feel a sense of duty and obligation to finish it?

I don't know but this post reminded me of an opposite phenomenon where it took me like 400 pages to get into Mason & Dixon but by the end I really enjoyed it.

Speaking of huge tomes, I'm listening to Freedom by Jonathan Franzen on audiobook and I'm really enjoying it. It's a long sprawling novel about the growth and dissolution of a family, and their various backgrounds. The style really lends itself to listening, and I've been getting through it at the gym and on my commutes.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2024 02:37

Doctor J Off: Dec 28, 2005; There Is

I'm about a quarter of the way into Sally Rooney's Beautiful World, Where Are You. It really captures the mood of now in that it's about some extremely online people talking a lot about political and climate crisis. Rooney has a way of nailing characters in brief descriptions, and her books have a strong sense of place. I also really liked her book Normal People which I read a few years ago.

I'm going to read some F Scott Fitzgerald next; got Tender is the Night from a thrift store and This Side of Paradise out from the library on audiobook.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2024 04:22

Doctor J Off: Dec 28, 2005; There Is

I'm reading Tender Is the Night by F Scott Fitzgerald and Children of God by Mary Doria Russell.

Fitzgerald is great as ever. He's fully developed in his mature style. There's a sense of foreboding doom permeating the story just dripping with disappointment and failure. It's a great read.

I'm also enjoying the Russell, but I put off reading it because of how much of a downer the first one was (The Sparrow). If you like realist sci fi about what might happen on first contact it's worth a read.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2024 01:39

Doctor J Off: Dec 28, 2005; There Is

TK8325 posted:

after war and peace ive went on a strugatsky brothers kick. i read the doomed city and roadside picnic. both are really good and i like how they dont waste time giving long explanations of the world, it just exists and here are the characters and the challenges they face. roadside picnic was really good. ive seen tarkovskys movie a few times and played the games and always thought the games were good but they really missed the point of the book.

These guys sound interesting, I've never heard of them before but I've enjoyed the Eastern bloc sci Fi I've read. Anyone ever read Stanisław Lem? I read memoirs found in a bathtub over a decade ago and I think it would be worth revisiting.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2024 14:36

Doctor J Off: Dec 28, 2005; There Is

Nigmaetcetera posted:

Heavy poo poo doesn’t get me down, my anti-depressants and ketamine infusions are working and I’m now able to engage with negative content without getting down in the dumps about it.

What enjoyable hosed up poo poo do you recommend, though? I’m into sci-fi, fantasy, conventional horror, and extreme splatterpunk horror provided the author doesn’t seem like they’re getting sexually aroused by their own writing. I’m also, reluctantly, willing to check out literary fiction, I guess, or at least I’ll pretend to read it so I can seem like less of a dullard to other goons.

I just finished the sequel to the Sparrow and I liked it much less than the first. It goes through a tonal shift about halfway through and treads on some really uncomfortable territory alluded to above and isn't fully successful. Also much less hosed up poo poo happens compared to the first. It might be worth reading if you enjoy the first though

If you're looking for literary fiction F Scott Fitzgerald is a revelation if you haven't read him yet. I feel really stupid at having a schoolboy bias against him in the past but it was great getting to read through his books for the first time.

Edit I also just read Mary Oliver's New and Selected Poems vol 1 and really enjoyed it. Almost all of them were nature poems that implied much more than they said and many were profound. I just started reading the complete stories of Franz Kafka so that should be rad.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2024 01:34

Doctor J Off: Dec 28, 2005; There Is

ulvir posted:

others suggested P+V, but i’m going to here and say that with Tolstoy, go with The Maudes’ or revisions/updates to The Maudes’ translation. it’s a way better translation

I've heard rumblings here and there that the P+V are not ideal translations even if they are better than Constance Garnett, so maybe I'll check this one out.

I'm also listening to some of those P.G. Wodehouse Jeeves books on audio as somebody mentioned earlier in the thread. They're a lot of fun, even if they're a bit unchallenging. I listen to them at the gym as I work out.

Also going to start Solaris shortly

# ¿ Apr 7, 2024 13:12

Doctor J Off: Dec 28, 2005; There Is

kntfkr posted:

I'm reading Ubik and it's good.

I like Dick ( :rimshot:

) a lot for his bizarre and out there ideas that were prescient from the time he was writing. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldeitch sticks out in my mind even though it's been years now since I read it.

Also I'm listening to an audiobook of Tales from Earthsea by Le Guin. I'm still in the first, long story, but it's really good.

# ¿ Apr 10, 2024 16:32

Doctor J Off: Dec 28, 2005; There Is

AARD VARKMAN posted:

The Left Hand of Darkness is really good too. I wasn't as blown away by Earthsea as most people seem to be, reading it as an adult

The first three almost feel like proto YA fiction. The later ones have a more mature tone you might be interested in if you like her other stuff.

A Scanner Darkly is great and my favorite of Dick's novels. Quite a depressing read though.

# ¿ Apr 10, 2024 17:11

Doctor J Off: Dec 28, 2005; There Is

Earwicker posted:

my favorite is Jorge Luis Borges. he mainly wrote short stories, and also essays. his short stories are fascinating, some of the best i've ever read, especially the ones from the collections "the Aleph" and "the Garden of Forking Paths"

also recently read the Sound of Things Falling by Juan Gabriel Vásquez and quite enjoyed it

and yes Marquez is great. Hundred Years of Solitude is brutal but incredible

I've only read Love in the Time of Cholera some years back but I really enjoyed it, so this is a good reminder

# ¿ Apr 11, 2024 19:13

Doctor J Off: Dec 28, 2005; There Is

kntfkr posted:

I’m reading a book called Septology whoch was nominated for a nobel prize or something, it said so on the cover.

Went like twenty pages before the first period. It sucks.

This sounds like a lot of fun.

I read Jason's Athos in America, a kind of comic short story collection. I love the way he shows action with a limited amount of dialogue. It really brings out a sense of isolation, which is a reoccurring theme.

I am about a quarter of the way through Stanislaw Lem's Solaris. It's super creepy and foreboding. It's about an exploration to a planet with an ocean that is seemingly alive and conscious, and the madness that descends on the people who try to investigate.

# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 20:09

Doctor J Off: Dec 28, 2005; There Is

Solaris is excellent, and at just over 200 pages it's a brisk read. Highly recommended.

# ¿ Apr 30, 2024 15:15

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# ¿ May 16, 2024 02:13

Doctor J Off: Dec 28, 2005; There Is

I'm reading The Tunnel by William H. Gass, a huge tome of a postmodern novel it took the author 26 years to write. It's slow going, but quite good, and funny too. It's about a history professor who completed his life's work about the causes and effects of Nazism in Germany and needs only to pen an introduction to it. He keeps writing on and on until he foes into his own life and the rage and bitterness consuming him, tunnelling into his own life's history before he begins digging a massive tunnel in his basement.

# ¿ May 12, 2024 20:10

The Something Awful Forums > Main > General Bullshit > What book are you reading? And what do you like about it?