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What are you reading? (April 2012)

Like everything Karakand says, it translates into: "My taste in literature is superior to yours."

Well if you know anything about me it should be that I don't mind arguing the merit of one thing versus another - in fact, it's pretty much what I do. I just don't understand what "first-person past is that Platonic ideal we should be striving for but ultimately failing at" even means, really; it's so vague that without explication, it's really kinda meaningless.

Edit: You could also elaborate on why third-person omniscient is workman-like, but the first-person one is tripping me up much more. (Then again, as I recall, you were the one who told me I was wrong for arguing against that show-don't-tell BS, so perhaps I won't agree with you either way.) I mean, a perspective isn't inherently one way or another; like any artistic tool, it just is, and what it becomes is determined by its use and by the narrative.
 

Wool

Member
6a00d8341c627153ef01543870417c970c-320wi


Just finished this the other day, loved it. I have seen the movie multiple times, so I already knew everything that was going to happen, but I really enjoy Cormac McCarthy's writing style. I read "The Road" last year, that was awesome as well.
 

Karakand

Member
Well if you know anything about me it should be that I don't mind arguing the merit of one thing versus another - in fact, it's pretty much what I do. I just don't understand what "first-person past is that Platonic ideal we should be striving for but ultimately failing at" even means, really; it's so vague that without explication, it's really kinda meaningless.

Edit: You could also elaborate on why third-person omniscient is workman-like, but the first-person one is tripping me up much more. (Then again, as I recall, you were the one who told me I was wrong for arguing against that show-don't-tell BS, so perhaps I won't agree with you either way.) I mean, a perspective isn't inherently one way or another; like any artistic tool, it just is, and what it becomes is determined by its use and by the narrative.

First-person past is, like show-don't-tell BS, a medium specificity for me, so by default it's something a writer should use if they want to be a Writer. Some things don't readily lend themselves to that frame, some people can't (or don't want to) write in it, and still others don't want to be Writers. The ideal situation and the material realities.

I call third-person omniscient workman because it has amazing versatility, but demands little in exchange from an author. This is why War and Peace can cover a People while As I Lay Dying can only cover a family.

I should have elaborated on this aesthetic difference we have (you come off as very pomo) when I took a pot shot at you (I think it was last month?) but I prioritized something dumb instead. Apologies. Which Ibsen plays are you reading?
 
I'm not really PoMo, as I tend to find PoMo writing to almost always be either quite boring or quite dumb and passe, a snarky sort of "aren't I clever? aren't I IN on everything?" type of writing that strikes me as incredibly lazy, most of the time. I consider myself a lowercase-m modernist, in that I think that the type of freedom afforded to an artist post-Moby-Dick and post-Leaves of Grass is incredibly important and has allowed the last 150 years to see some of the best, most complex art ever made, but I shy away from capital-M Modernism simply because I often find a lot of the authors that actually identified (or are identified) as such to be hit-and-miss.

Anyway, I appreciate your perspectives, though I'm not quite sure what you mean in saying that third-person "demands little in exchange from the author," as again, I think it just sorta depends on the work in question. And for what it's worth, I wasn't saying that showing is a BAD thing, just that the idea that it's some sort of requirement is patently ridiculous. I was more railing against the sort of workshops where it'll be bandied about without regard to context; or agents/editors that would get a work, read it, and say "Author telling-PASS" without regard to whether the telling was done well or fit the type of story being told (which, being online friends with several writers who often bitch about the rather strange sorts of comments they tend to get in response to their work, I've seen a lot).

Really, what I'm saying is that these sweeping sorts of declarations - don't write in the passive, use Germanic words in poetry, show don't tell, write what you know - tend to bug the crap out of me, as they often tend to box in art and turn it into just another thing to be produced en masse.

Edit: BTW, I'm reading all of Ibsen's prose plays. Just started Rosmersholm today.
 

moojito

Member
852528_100819130913_Ghost_king.jpg


Ghost king, by David Gemmell. Seems to me that if you've read one Gemmell book, you've read them all. This one seems to have all the familiar plot elements, but in a setting different enough (roman occupied britain) to keep things interesting.
 

Mumei

Member
Finished the first volume of Prince Valiant. It was cheesy, but I can just imagine reading it every week if I were growing up in the late 1930s. I wish those sort of long-form weekly newspaper adventure comic strips were still around.

And I've started Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. It's probably the most depressing book I've read in a long time.
 

bengraven

Member
Finished the first volume of Prince Valiant. It was cheesy, but I can just imagine reading it every week if I were growing up in the late 1930s. I wish those sort of long-form weekly newspaper adventure comic strips were still around.

And I've started Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. It's probably the most depressing book I've read in a long time.

God, to be young in the early half of the 20th century and unashamed to read science fiction and fantasy novels and comic books.

Every day having that big, beautiful illustrated (bursting with color on Sunday) comic strip in the newspaper or going into the drug store and seeing a little paperback with an alien being fired upon by an ideal American male holding some exotic, tiny-wasted woman in a protective grip...back when the future was dogfights in space and horror was a small town in New England where the neighbors are turning green and speaking in jibberish verse.

Would have been a great time to live in as a child - every day a new excitement.


Also, they are still around. I've seen them in some Midwest Sunday paper comic sections. I'm not sure if they're reprints or new stories, but I would bet an wooden nickel (ha) that they are new.
 

Jintor

Member
quiet-the-power-of-introverts-in-a-world-that-can-t-stop-talking-amz03073521450us-1-1.jpeg


Someone else in here was reading this, so I started reading it. I like it so far, but haven't had much reading time. I do have a 15 hour flight in my immediate future though :|
 
Just picked up Stina Leicht's OF BLOOD AND HONEY

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Cannot put it down. Great urban fantasy set in Ireland of the Troubles during the 70s.
 
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Finished (very) early this morning. I hesitate to recommend it because it is so sad. It's beautiful and charming also though, so you should all read it.
 

aidan

Hugo Award Winning Author and Editor
Just picked up Stina Leicht's OF BLOOD AND HONEY

aQjnk.jpg


Cannot put it down. Great urban fantasy set in Ireland of the Troubles during the 70s.

Yes! Love, love, love this book. There's even a quote from my review in the sequel, And Blue Skies from Pain.
 
Saw this on Huffington Post and thought I'd share here ...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/05/ereaders-ebooks-survey-how-many-people-read_n_1405449.html

The report showed that as of February 2012, 21% of Americans had read an e-book, and that owners of e-readers read an average of eight books a year more than people without the devices (24 vs 16).

:)

However, 19% of respondents aged 16 and over said that they hadn't read a single book in any format, over the previous 12 months - the highest since such surveys on American reading habits began in 1978. If this figure is accurate, that means more than 50 million Americans don't read books at all.

:(


Perhaps most interestingly, e-book readers are still voracious consumers of print books too; 58% of e-book owners said that they were reading a print book the previous day.

:)
 

LiQuid!

I proudly and openly admit to wishing death upon the mothers of people I don't like

bengraven

Member
I have so many books on my Kindle based on recommendations from this forum, Amazon, and other forums that I have forgotten what many of them are about.

So last night for the hell of it I clicked on one and just started reading completely blind, not knowing anything but the title and author.

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10% in and I'm fairly certain it's not a zombie novel, but it's definitely a sole survivor sort of story.

They better not be dead and this is heaven/hell/limbo or I'm just wasting my time.
 

AcciDante

Member
9780307593313.jpg


Over halfway through now. I definitely like it a lot, but I don't know how interested I would be if I didn't enjoy Murakami's writing. I probably wouldn't finish it if it wasn't for that. At the point I'm at now, I don't really have any idea where it's headed, and not in a good way.
 

Ceebs

Member
Oh man...I am going to have to read Sacre' Bleu again. Just realized he has written an in depth readers guide to follow along with complete with tons of photos of locations and pretty much every painting mentioned in the book.

http://guide.sacrebleu.info/

Just ordered the hardcover as well after seeing it in person at Barnes & Noble. It's a stunning book to just look at. Color images of painting, color maps of Paris, a half dust jacket that hides some very nice looking art printed on the actual cover, and the all the type is printed in what looked like several shades of blue ink.

So mad I read the Kindle version first.
 

Goody

Member
vzXDA.jpg


Harry Crews died last Wednesday. Very sad about that. I had passed these up at a local antique mall, two weeks ago. Not because the prices were unfairly high, I just couldn't really justify spending that money.

Well, now I can. The 4 hardbacks were about 250. The paperback was 5. Body is signed. I'm reading A Feast of Snakes now. I'm halfway through and it's one of the best books I've ever read.

I'm really bummed about his passing. He was absolutely one of the greatest American writers. It really stinks now that his books will probably be a little harder to get ahold of.

Oh, and here's his interview with Dennis Miller, just for the heck of it: http://youtu.be/qpeFmXJG4Ak
 
After finishing Escape from camp 14 I needed something lighter.

51i8E3AwNDL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU02_.jpg


I started it once last year and gave up, decided to give it a second chance.
 

JGS

Banned
I was a member of group 2 until I got my Kindle and now I'm well on my way to surpassing group 1.

As for group 3, I don't see any reason other than lack of availability that I would ever choose a physical book over an ebook now.
I'm in that group and there's no way I'm ever paying full price for an e-book until it's the only option. My Kindle is home to specials and free books.

The library is my new favorite place to shop. I'm reading Sphere right now since it was a dollar.
 
What's it called when the author is describing a character's action but says 'you'? As in, "You decide to open the door and walk down the street". I read a book like that recently (can't remember which one but I commented on it in one of the reading threads at the time) and it drove me absolutely nuts. Other than that I generally don't notice what tense the author uses.
 

JGS

Banned
What's it called when the author is describing a character's action but says 'you'? As in, "You decide to open the door and walk down the street". I read a book like that recently (can't remember which one but I commented on it in one of the reading threads at the time) and it drove me absolutely nuts. Other than that I generally don't notice what tense the author uses.
2nd person? I hate it because I'm never into the story that much.

I notice tense but don't mind as long as the story is good. 2nd person is hard to pull off with me though.
 

Sonicbug

Member
2nd person? I hate it because I'm never into the story that much.

I notice tense but don't mind as long as the story is good. 2nd person is hard to pull off with me though.

That is the weirdest thing... the only time I've ever seen something written in second-person it was either a chose your own adventure book or interactive fiction. Is there some other genre that would actually use that? o_O
 
Just finished:

storm.jpg


I was rendered speechless by the amount of awesome and despair contained within.


I need your guys help.
I am trying to get my wife a new book for this vacation were going on since she can't find anything.
She loves Name of the Wind, HP and stuff like Hunger Games(1st two books only.)
She loves worlds that are well crafted in the books and where magic(if there is magic) is a rationalized thing of
the universe. Like sympathy. Phew this is kind of all over the place. Anything jump to your minds?
 
Finishing Hunger Games Trilogy. Good and bad in equal measure. Collins cannot write exposition at all, and has the attention span of a 5-year old child. But the world defends itself in this Battle Royale/Fallout manner.

Going to steer clear of Young Adults fiction from now on.
 

suzu

Member
I need your guys help.
I am trying to get my wife a new book for this vacation were going on since she can't find anything.
She loves Name of the Wind, HP and stuff like Hunger Games(1st two books only.)
She loves worlds that are well crafted in the books and where magic(if there is magic) is a rationalized thing of
the universe. Like sympathy. Phew this is kind of all over the place. Anything jump to your minds?

Maybe check out the "Mistborn" trilogy, by Brandon Sanderson. The first book is called "Mistborn: The Final Empire".
 

Ceebs

Member
I need your guys help.
I am trying to get my wife a new book for this vacation were going on since she can't find anything.
She loves Name of the Wind, HP and stuff like Hunger Games(1st two books only.)
She loves worlds that are well crafted in the books and where magic(if there is magic) is a rationalized thing of
the universe. Like sympathy. Phew this is kind of all over the place. Anything jump to your minds?

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

If you like magic at all you will love this book. The book has tons of footnotes that are citing all sorts of historical magical texts, studies, and stories. I have read it a few times and it's dense enough to always find some new stuff in there.

It's set in the early 19th century. The premise is that magic once existed back when the world was more wild, but it has disappeared. There are tons of magicians around, but they are all theoretical ones, until a man reveals himself to be an actual practicing magician. Add in one naturally talented apprentice, some high society drama, the Napoleonic Wars only with magic, a terrible deal made with a fae, and a mythical magical king. The book really hits all sorts of stuff (granted it's a 1000 page monster)

It has a kinda slow first 50 pages or so, but I could not put it down afterwards.
 

alazz

Member
Just finished The Fall by Camus, and just started Caves of Steel by Asimov.

The Fall was excellent and nuanced beautifully. It's astounding how developed Clamence was in such few pages. Though I need to reread it because I tend to read only at night and I've been particularly tired this past week. A lot of the paragraphs drifted by my eyes without perception, and it's a pretty detailed novel, so I gotta feeling it'll still read like an unread book. And honestly, I can't think of the last time I've wanted to reread a book in my life.

Caves of Steel I've been wanted to read for a long time.
 

Mumei

Member
God, to be young in the early half of the 20th century and unashamed to read science fiction and fantasy novels and comic books.

Every day having that big, beautiful illustrated (bursting with color on Sunday) comic strip in the newspaper or going into the drug store and seeing a little paperback with an alien being fired upon by an ideal American male holding some exotic, tiny-wasted woman in a protective grip...back when the future was dogfights in space and horror was a small town in New England where the neighbors are turning green and speaking in jibberish verse.

Would have been a great time to live in as a child - every day a new excitement.

Also, they are still around. I've seen them in some Midwest Sunday paper comic sections. I'm not sure if they're reprints or new stories, but I would bet an wooden nickel (ha) that they are new.

Not where I live. :(

Before Prince Valiant I read Little Nemo. I remember first finding it at the library and then remembering the movie Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland that I saw when I was a kid.

Still I haven't enjoyed either as much as Calvin & Hobbes.

Anyway, I finished The New Jim Crow. It's such an utterly depressing book. Wonderfully informative, but ... yeah.
 

Keen

Aliens ate my babysitter
I need your guys help.
I am trying to get my wife a new book for this vacation were going on since she can't find anything.
She loves Name of the Wind, HP and stuff like Hunger Games(1st two books only.)
She loves worlds that are well crafted in the books and where magic(if there is magic) is a rationalized thing of
the universe. Like sympathy. Phew this is kind of all over the place. Anything jump to your minds?
Maybe Farseer Trilogy, and its sequels, by Robin Hobb and Memory, Sorrow and Thorn trilogy by Tad Williams
 

finowns

Member
Yes! Love, love, love this book. There's even a quote from my review in the sequel, And Blue Skies from Pain.

Do write books?


I also like her books but still waiting for the main character (LIAM?) stop dealing so easily with the priests they are a bunch of bastards.
 
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

If you like magic at all you will love this book. The book has tons of footnotes that are citing all sorts of historical magical texts, studies, and stories. I have read it a few times and it's dense enough to always find some new stuff in there.

It's set in the early 19th century. The premise is that magic once existed back when the world was more wild, but it has disappeared. There are tons of magicians around, but they are all theoretical ones, until a man reveals himself to be an actual practicing magician. Add in one naturally talented apprentice, some high society drama, the Napoleonic Wars only with magic, a terrible deal made with a fae, and a mythical magical king. The book really hits all sorts of stuff (granted it's a 1000 page monster)

It has a kinda slow first 50 pages or so, but I could not put it down afterwards.

Great book, I've read it twice now. The first time through it can be pretty slow, but for fans of dry humor there's always something to keep it entertaining. And the footnotes are amazing, beginning to end.
 

Jay Sosa

Member
This awesome book:

4120yizU-2L._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg


And it has one of my most favorite paragraphs ever:

Billy turned on the television. He came slightly unstuck in time, saw the late movie backwards, then forwards again. It was a movie about American bombers in the Second World War and the gallant men who flew them. Seen backwards by Billy, the story went like this:

American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.

The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new.

When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody again.

The American fliers turned in their uniforms, became high school kids. And Hitler turned into a baby, Billy Pilgrim supposed. That wasn't in the movie. Billy was extrapolating. Everybody turned into a baby, and all humanity, without exception, conspired biologically to produce two perfect people named Adam and Eve, he supposed.
 

JGS

Banned
That is the weirdest thing... the only time I've ever seen something written in second-person it was either a chose your own adventure book or interactive fiction. Is there some other genre that would actually use that? o_O
Fortunately not a lot of places. In one of my college English classes, we were forced to read some whacky story told in 2nd person plus excerpts of others.
 

VALIS

Member
Finished the first volume of Prince Valiant. It was cheesy, but I can just imagine reading it every week if I were growing up in the late 1930s. I wish those sort of long-form weekly newspaper adventure comic strips were still around.

I recently ordered all four volumes of the new reprint series and can't wait until they arrive. Some of the best comic strip/book art ever committed to a page, IMO.

What I'm reading, Slaughterhouse Five for the first time since high school. But that post above makes me want to seek out more Harry Crews books. Phenomenal author.
 
I recently ordered all four volumes of the new reprint series and can't wait until they arrive. Some of the best comic strip/book art ever committed to a page, IMO.

What I'm reading, Slaughterhouse Five for the first time since high school. But that post above makes me want to seek out more Harry Crews books. Phenomenal author.

What's the quote underneath your username from? It's funny.
 

rac

Banned
Finally finished 2666 and thought it was incredible. Definitely going to go back some time and read The Savage Detectives and other books by Bolaño but now I think I'm going to read The Long Ships unless someone else has a better suggestion.
 

Guileless

Temp Banned for Remedial Purposes
Reading about Al Qaeda (The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright) today while smoking pork shoulder, listening to baseball, and drinking beer in ideal conditions. America.
 
That is the weirdest thing... the only time I've ever seen something written in second-person it was either a chose your own adventure book or interactive fiction. Is there some other genre that would actually use that? o_O

The only time I've liked perspective is in Ted Chiang's novella The Story of Your Life:
excerpt from story said:
When you are three, you'll pull a dishtowel off the kitchen counter and bring that salad bowl down on top of you. I'll make a grab for it, but I'll miss. The edge of the bowl will leave you with a cut, on the upper edge of your forehead, that will require a single stitch. Your father and I will hold you, sobbing and stained with Caesar salad dressing, as we wait in the emergency room for hours. I reached out and took the bowl from the shelf. The motion didn't feel like something I was forced to do. Instead it seemed just as urgent as my rushing to catch the bowl when it falls on you: an instinct that I felt right in following. (331)

The rest of the stories in the book are in other perspectives, but this one really stood out to me. I guess he did another called Liking What You See but I haven't read that one yet.


Stories of Your Life: and Others by Ted Chiang
 

Zona

Member
That is the weirdest thing... the only time I've ever seen something written in second-person it was either a chose your own adventure book or interactive fiction. Is there some other genre that would actually use that? o_O

Charles Stross has two novels written in second person present tense. Rule 34 and Halting State if I recall correctly. It made them an... interesting read. Even more so because the view point character, the You, would change from chapter to chapter.
 

Tesseract

Banned
anyone have a hard time coming back to fiction after reading a shitload of non-fiction? my brain is locked in study mode. all i can think about is math.

it's really troubling.
 

Mumei

Member
I recently ordered all four volumes of the new reprint series and can't wait until they arrive. Some of the best comic strip/book art ever committed to a page, IMO.

What I'm reading, Slaughterhouse Five for the first time since high school. But that post above makes me want to seek out more Harry Crews books. Phenomenal author.

Yeah, I'll be picking up the next three volumes the next time I am at the library downtown.

Started Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. I don't really know how much I'm getting (or supposed to be getting), but I am enjoying it. The edition I'm reading has some additional stuff in the back, so I'm hoping that might clarify any confusion I might have by the end.
 
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