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[Tragicomedy]

Haha. Yeah, I had the same reaction; I have this internal rhythm when I read, where there's a mental beat as I reach the end of a sentence; if I have a particularly long sentence then I start to feel unmoored, as if I were trying to swim the length of a swimming pool without taking a breath, so reading Seiobo forced me to change how I was reading; instead I had to focus on different aspects of the punctuation to find my pauses, which I suppose if we're following the swimming metaphor would be finding places to take breaths in the middle of a lap in an impossibly long pool; this is something I found frustrating at first, but somehow clicked with me as I continued to reading it, at which point I was caught up in its rhythms.

At least you are have the decency to include some form of punctuation to indicate a break in thought or shift in perspective I can't even imagine trying to read this otherwise like the time I read that Pitchfork review of Radiohead's Kid A full of pretentious wankery about having never seen a shooting star before despite 25 years of planetary rotation passes through the paths of comets and never once witnessing the burning debris scratch across the night sky like the band Radiohead and their music forming a lazy disco light spilling artificial constellations inside the aluminum cove of the makeshift stage with butterscotch lamps along the walls of the tight city square bleeding upward into the cobalt sky and striking an artificial and perfect wizard's cap for all to see I mean that review is literally just a bunch of bullshit like that going on and on about what an emotional and psychological experience it is to listen to Kid A which sounds a bit like a clouded brain trying to recall an alien abduction as the band loses faith in itself destroys itself and subsequently rebuilds itself into a perfect entity I swear to god the reviewer finally equates the experience of listening to the album to witnessing the stillborn birth of a child while simultaneously having the opportunity to see her play in the afterlife on IMAX which let me tell you is grade A bullshit no questions asked so even though I sort of like that album the very fact that such a review exists makes me not even want to listen to it again and certainly never support such a lazy website with advertisement revenue.

 

[Haly]

Please stop destroying language.

 

[Mumei]

6-7 sentences...? I only read a bit. Not really far at all.

Is that the whole first story?

At least you are have the decency to include some form of punctuation to indicate a break in thought or shift in perspective I can't even imagine trying to read this otherwise like the time I read that Pitchfork review of Radiohead's Kid A full of pretentious wankery about having never seen a shooting star before despite 25 years of planetary rotation passes through the paths of comets and never once witnessing the burning debris scratch across the night sky like the band Radiohead and their music forming a lazy disco light spilling artificial constellations inside the aluminum cove of the makeshift stage with butterscotch lamps along the walls of the tight city square bleeding upward into the cobalt sky and striking an artificial and perfect wizard's cap for all to see I mean that review is literally just a bunch of bullshit like that going on and on about what an emotional and psychological experience it is to listen to Kid A which sounds a bit like a clouded brain trying to recall an alien abduction as the band loses faith in itself destroys itself and subsequently rebuilds itself into a perfect entity I swear to god the reviewer finally equates the experience of listening to the album to witnessing the stillborn birth of a child while simultaneously having the opportunity to see her play in the afterlife on IMAX which let me tell you is grade A bullshit no questions asked so even though I sort of like that album the very fact that such a review exists makes me not even want to listen to it again and certainly never support such a lazy website with advertisement revenue.

Okay, now keep going for twenty pages!

 

[Tragicomedy]

Is that the whole first story?

Okay, now keep going for twenty pages!

Haha, I can't! I need a thesaurus and some free time.

 

[Haly]

Is that the whole first story?

Yeah, about the bird and Kyoto.

 

[Mifune]

At least you are have the decency to include some form of punctuation to indicate a break in thought or shift in perspective I can't even imagine trying to read this otherwise like the time I read that Pitchfork review of Radiohead's Kid A full of pretentious wankery about having never seen a shooting star before despite 25 years of planetary rotation passes through the paths of comets and never once witnessing the burning debris scratch across the night sky like the band Radiohead and their music forming a lazy disco light spilling artificial constellations inside the aluminum cove of the makeshift stage with butterscotch lamps along the walls of the tight city square bleeding upward into the cobalt sky and striking an artificial and perfect wizard's cap for all to see I mean that review is literally just a bunch of bullshit like that going on and on about what an emotional and psychological experience it is to listen to Kid A which sounds a bit like a clouded brain trying to recall an alien abduction as the band loses faith in itself destroys itself and subsequently rebuilds itself into a perfect entity I swear to god the reviewer finally equates the experience of listening to the album to witnessing the stillborn birth of a child while simultaneously having the opportunity to see her play in the afterlife on IMAX which let me tell you is grade A bullshit no questions asked so even though I sort of like that album the very fact that such a review exists makes me not even want to listen to it again and certainly never support such a lazy website with advertisement revenue.

The review part of the review is pretty good, though. And that's more than half of it. There's a lot of wankery there but many of his descriptions of the music are very good.

 

[theapg]

Just picked this up, gonna try and up ma smarts.

 

[Piecake]

If you can find it, Barbara Tuchman's 'Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-1945', maybe? Won the Pulitzer back in the day, I think. Tuchman is/was one of the great American historians/writers...

Forgotten Ally: China's World War II by Rana Mitter absolutely destroys Tuchman's book. I wouldn't recommend it. Mitter states that Tuchman only sources were Stillwell's biography and other American and western sources. She either couldnt or didnt bother to write the Chinese perspective. This wouldnt be a problem if Stillwell was fair and unbiased, as well as the other westerns in China, but Stillwell comes off as a raging, egotistical moronic cowboy.

One of the main issues with the entire Western view of China as well is that Western advisers and what not constantly bemoaned China's inability to fight, poverty, corrupt, etc, but failed to understand that China's infrastructure, economy, military and industrial base was essentially destroyed or taken over by the Japanese. How could they take the offensive against the Japanese and how could their society not crumble when 99% of their industrial base was destroyed, social, government, and institutions were destroyed, and had to flee to an interior city that didn't have those resources to function in any real capacity?

What is more idiotic is that attacking the Japanese even went against the US strategy in the East since they wanted China to hold on until they got there and just keep the attention of a lot of troops. I imagine that a lot of it was racism and Western superiority thinking that clouded their judgement.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CIR97UC/?tag=neogaf0e-20

I bought that book. Havent gotten around to reading it yet though.

 

[Incandenza]

Hyperion by Dan Simmons

I'm glad to finally get around to this book; I've been wanting to read it for some time. I'm about a quarter in and liking it. I'm really surprised at how little background explanation there is for the universe. Everything's been pure inference so far. It feels like I'm reading the sequel to a book that never existed.

 

[Mumei]

Forgotten Ally: China's World War II by Rana Mitter absolutely destroys Tuchman's book.

I have Forgotten Ally out from the library. I am encouraged by the endorsement~

 

[Ranger Taffles]

Well I guess I'm jumping into this.

 

[Piecake]

I have Forgotten Ally out from the library. I am encouraged by the endorsement~

Its a bit survey-ish, but it is a good, informative book with some interesting insight and provides a different perspective

 

[xxracerxx]

was thinking about starting this trilogy. how is it?

Blew through the first one in a day...I am bored to fucking death in the second one.

 

[mu cephei]

I finished Altered Carbon. I enjoyed it but I do wish the noir and investigation elements were more pronounced. I hear the sequels abandon the noir influences completely so I think I'll skip them.

If you haven't already read it, I'm reading a book at the moment called Spares, by Michael Marshall Smith, and it is most definitely sci fi noir. It's full of witty asides, and cool/weird/hilarious scif fi ideas are thrown about all over the place. It's great fun.

 

[Tragicomedy]

The review part of the review is pretty good, though. And that's more than half of it. There's a lot of wankery there but many of his descriptions of the music are very good.

No. It's awful. It's not even about the music, it's about whack imagery of how the music is supposed to make us feel. Which apparently has something to do with a stillborn daughter. Kid A is an album by a good band, not a transformative life experience akin to seeing a shooting star or watching our unborn child grow up to become a movie star.

Pitchfork doesn't even review music any more. I'm convinced most of their staff is too young to have any perspective on music beyond what's hot right now, so they either over praise or shred everything.

You can read the entire RTJ2 review and learn nothing about the album other than the fact that it features eleven songs. The whole review makes it out to be the Malcolm X movement embodied in music form. Ummmm, nope.

I can't.

/thread derail

 

[thomaser]

Naked Lunch is surprising. I thought it would be fairly realistic, but it's hallucinatory and really weird. And it's very, very filthy. Maybe the sickest text I've read, apart from de Sade. It's fun, though, even if I don't understand half of it. Burroughs must have been on something (or rather, everything) while he wrote it.

 

[LProtag]

Almost done with Rise of Endymion. The series has taken some interesting turns and I'm pretty excited to see how it ends.

I have tons of books I've been meaning to read and I don't know where to go from here though. Something by China Mieville? Simmon's Ilium and Olympos? Mann's The Magic Mountain? Eco's Foucault's Pendulum? The Mistborn Triology? Something else entirely?

Help!

 

[Cosmozone]

:-D

I'm very slow with it though, since English is not my first language and I want to look up most unknown words.

 

[Conkersbadfurday]

:-D

I'm very slow with it though, since English is not my first language and I want to look up most unknown words.

Fuck yeah man. Love Lovecraft.

English is my first language and I still need to hit up a dictionary for that guy. He's got quite the vocabulary.

 

[Trouble]

Naked Lunch is surprising. I thought it would be fairly realistic, but it's hallucinatory and really weird. And it's very, very filthy. Maybe the sickest text I've read, apart from de Sade. It's fun, though, even if I don't understand half of it. Burroughs must have been on something (or rather, everything) while he wrote it.

Heroin and lots of it.

 

[Switch Back 9]

Blew through the first one in a day...I am bored to fucking death in the second one.

Pretty much where I'm at. Could not put the first one down, about 1/3 way through the second one and I'm basically forcing myself to keep going.

Like, fuck you Control, I don't care about your new job, gimme more Area X.

 

[Bazza]

Sitting up in the garden with a smoke and a beer reading The Widows House and burst out laughing at the end of a Marcus chapter (not much of a spoiler but like to play safe)

Spoiler

"Murmus Stormcrow" then "but I do believe our great friend here is drunk"

had me in stitches and going back a few more paragraphs and reading from the the point this particular character entered the scene had me laughing even more.

I love little sections like this in books, up to this point things are looking grim and no doubt will continue to be, but little laughing fits in-between are nice.

 

[BossLackey]

Stranger in a Strange Land

As well as my 100+ issue backlog of comics. Really behind.

 

[Mifune]

No. It's awful. It's not even about the music, it's about whack imagery of how the music is supposed to make us feel. Which apparently has something to do with a stillborn daughter. Kid A is an album by a good band, not a transformative life experience akin to seeing a shooting star or watching our unborn child grow up to become a movie star.

"As your ears decide whether the tones are coming or going, Thom Yorke's Cuisinarted voice struggles for its tongue." - a pitch-perfect description of the beginning of Everything in its Right Place.

"The vocoder lullaby lulls you deceivingly before the riotous "National Anthem." Mean, fuzzy bass shapes the spine as unnerving theremin choirs limn."

It's incredibly hard to describe music and the above are examples of it done right.

And not once does he compare the album to watching a shooting star. The stillborn thing is inexcusable but he's talking about a literal shooting star that he literally saw during a Radiohead concert. It's funny that this review is always brought up as some sort of example of Pitchfork's shittiness, and the shooting star thing is always misunderstood.

 

[TheChewyWaffles]

Read the Martian in about two days. It will make a great movie of done well.

 

[TheChewyWaffles]

Pretty much where I'm at. Could not put the first one down, about 1/3 way through the second one and I'm basically forcing myself to keep going.

Like, fuck you Control, I don't care about your new job, gimme more Area X.

Don't diss Control, but don't expect another Annihilation, either. The books get more, not less, abstract through the trilogy.

Edit: sorry for DP

 

[Tragicomedy]

"As your ears decide whether the tones are coming or going, Thom Yorke's Cuisinarted voice struggles for its tongue." - a pitch-perfect description of the beginning of Everything in its Right Place.

"The vocoder lullaby lulls you deceivingly before the riotous "National Anthem." Mean, fuzzy bass shapes the spine as unnerving theremin choirs limn."

It's incredibly hard to describe music and the above are examples of it done right.

And not once does he compare the album to watching a shooting star. The stillborn thing is inexcusable but he's talking about a literal shooting star that he literally saw during a Radiohead concert. It's funny that this review is always brought up as some sort of example of Pitchfork's shittiness, and the shooting star thing is always misunderstood.

Those sentences you posted convey absolutely nothing at all. Tones coming or going? "Cuisinarted" vocals? Rubbish.

The shooting star business is not misunderstood. It's completely irrelevant to the concept of reviewing the actual album. So many of their interviews end up being incoherent ramblings about the author and not the music. This is just one example in hundreds.

Music is personal, but the worst thing a reviewer can do is write a story about themselves and not the actual music. Digging in a thesaurus to use thirty large words to convey a point that could be done with fifteen smaller words is inexcusable, but it's the Pitchfork way.

 

[Shengar]

At least you are have the decency to include some form of punctuation to indicate a break in thought or shift in perspective I can't even imagine trying to read this otherwise like the time I read that Pitchfork review of Radiohead's Kid A full of pretentious wankery about having never seen a shooting star before despite 25 years of planetary rotation passes through the paths of comets and never once witnessing the burning debris scratch across the night sky like the band Radiohead and their music forming a lazy disco light spilling artificial constellations inside the aluminum cove of the makeshift stage with butterscotch lamps along the walls of the tight city square bleeding upward into the cobalt sky and striking an artificial and perfect wizard's cap for all to see I mean that review is literally just a bunch of bullshit like that going on and on about what an emotional and psychological experience it is to listen to Kid A which sounds a bit like a clouded brain trying to recall an alien abduction as the band loses faith in itself destroys itself and subsequently rebuilds itself into a perfect entity I swear to god the reviewer finally equates the experience of listening to the album to witnessing the stillborn birth of a child while simultaneously having the opportunity to see her play in the afterlife on IMAX which let me tell you is grade A bullshit no questions asked so even though I sort of like that album the very fact that such a review exists makes me not even want to listen to it again and certainly never support such a lazy website with advertisement revenue.

This post turn my lingual brain into mush :x
Seriously, does anyone really write something like that?

 

[Mifune]

Those sentences you posted convey absolutely nothing at all. Tones coming or going? "Cuisinarted" vocals? Rubbish.

The shooting star business is not misunderstood. It's completely irrelevant to the concept of reviewing the actual album. So many of their interviews end up being incoherent ramblings about the author and not the music. This is just one example in hundreds.

Music is personal, but the worst thing a reviewer can do is write a story about themselves and not the actual music. Digging in a thesaurus to use thirty large words to convey a point that could be done with fifteen smaller words is inexcusable, but it's the Pitchfork way.

Okay so now you're changing your original assertion. Before it was that the writer is comparing the album to seeing a shooting star. Now that I've pointed out your error, it's that the shooting star bit is "completely irrelevant."

Opinions are like assholes and all that. You don't like reviews that approach personal essay territory; I see value in it. You hate Pitchfork with a fiery passion; I think they do good work on occasion. You hate writers that use big words; I like to expand my vocabulary while reading. Opinions are great!

As for the stuff I posted conveying "nothing," well, I disagree. I think there's some great descriptive writing in that review. But whatever.

 

[Tragicomedy]

Okay so now you're changing your original assertion. Before it was that the writer is comparing the album to seeing a shooting star. Now that I've pointed out your error, it's that the shooting star bit is "completely irrelevant."

Opinions are like assholes and all that. You don't like reviews that approach personal essay territory; I see value in it. You hate Pitchfork with a fiery passion; I think they do good work on occasion. You hate writers that use big words; I like to expand my vocabulary while reading. Opinions are great!

As for the stuff I posted conveying "nothing," well, I disagree. I think there's some great descriptive writing in that review. But whatever.

Wait, what? I can't tell if you're being serious right now. Either that, or reading comprehension isn't being kind to you.

In my completely random gibberish sentence above meant to convey nothing at all, I randomly clipped parts of the garbage Pitchfork review. One segment read

I can't even imagine trying to read this otherwise like the time I read that Pitchfork review of Radiohead's Kid A full of pretentious wankery about having never seen a shooting star before despite 25 years of planetary rotation passes through the paths of comets and never once witnessing the burning debris scratch across the night sky

I will apologize in that I've obviously struck a bit of a nerve here and forced your hand to come to the defense of this magnanimous piece shrouded in mellifluous phraseology and stunning imagery that evokes the melting of a Stradivarius B-flat trumpet amidst the burning embers that encompass the murky ashes that remain from my previous post.

I definitely hate them big words, yessirre! I'm practically illiterate, so them teaching folks let me do oral exams for my masters program. I'll leave etymology and neology to the pros.

My bias is obviously against large words and has nothing to do with their use in appropriate contextual manner...

 

[Freeza Under The Shower]

This post turn my lingual brain into mush :x
Seriously, does anyone really write something like that?

Apparently, ancient Greeks didn't even have spaces. No interpunction whatsoever.

You have to wonder how we are "reading" those texts at all.

 

[Tragicomedy]

This post turn my lingual brain into mush :x
Seriously, does anyone really write something like that?

Sadly, yes. The majority of those phrases and imagery were pulled directly from a "professional" music review. I wish Vonnegut was still alive so I could mail him the full thing and hear his take on it. He was always quick to raise the bullshit flag for this sort of affront to the English language.

"Literature should not disappear up its own asshole, so to speak."

 

[xxracerxx]

Pretty much where I'm at. Could not put the first one down, about 1/3 way through the second one and I'm basically forcing myself to keep going.

Like, fuck you Control, I don't care about your new job, gimme more Area X.

I just don't know if it will keep me interested. I am just not enjoying it and Control is a terrible character.

 

[Tragicomedy]

I just don't know if it will keep me interested. I am just not enjoying it and Control is a terrible character.

While I agree the second isn't nearly on par with the first, there's a lot more going on than first meets the eye. That book also has a crazy moment that sent shivers down my spine.

 

[cheezcake]

Hyperion by Dan Simmons

I'm glad to finally get around to this book; I've been wanting to read it for some time. I'm about a quarter in and liking it. I'm really surprised at how little background explanation there is for the universe. Everything's been pure inference so far. It feels like I'm reading the sequel to a book that never existed.

Yesssss, so good

 

[fakefaker]

Finished up The Quiet Twin by Dan Vyleta and was thoroughly disgusted and entranced by it. Now gonna go full retro with Ten Years To Doomsday by by Chester Anderson and Michael Kurland, and with The Nylon Pirates by Nicholas Monsarrat.

 

[Necrovex]

So Wonder by R.J. Palacio is on sale for $2.75 at Amazon's Kindle Store.

It has around 5,600 reviews, sitting at a five star rating. Anyone on Gaf gotten the chance to read this novel yet?

 

[Tragicomedy]

So Wonder by R.J. Palacio is on sale for $2.75 at Amazon's Kindle Store.

It has around 5,600 reviews, sitting at a five star rating. Anyone on Gaf gotten the chance to read this novel yet?

I loved it. Five stars. I think it should be required reading in middle schools everywhere.

 

[Necrovex]

I loved it. Five stars. I think it should be required reading in middle schools everywhere.

If Tragic states it's five stars, then that means it's leaping up to my top five of my reading backlog now. Here I come 50/50 challenge for 2015!

 

[Dénouement]

Just finished Landline by Rainbow Rowell. It was okay. I assume I must have been enjoying it though since I finished it in a few hours, so there's that going for it I guess.

Have a huge list of books I got impulsively both in and out of my kindle that I should probably read before I get anything else. First up is Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty I guess.

 

[bengraven]

Liking Lonesome Dove so far, just need to get over that initial beginning hump, and really feel hooked. Been so long since I've read something this lengthy as well, so there's that hurdle. It's funnier than I was expecting also.

One of my favorites of all time. Funny and ironic at times, tragic (GRRM has nothing on McMurtry), heartbreaking, but moving and beautiful as well.

According to EW this week, Chris Pratt just finished reading Lonesome Dove and is moving on to other Larry M books. Hm...I wonder if he picked it up on his own or if someone is considering a remake, because he's a total Dish.

 

[Intheflorsh]

If you haven't already read it, I'm reading a book at the moment called Spares, by Michael Marshall Smith, and it is most definitely sci fi noir. It's full of witty asides, and cool/weird/hilarious scif fi ideas are thrown about all over the place. It's great fun.

I will definitely check this out, thanks.

 

[lightus]

So Wonder by R.J. Palacio is on sale for $2.75 at Amazon's Kindle Store.

It has around 5,600 reviews, sitting at a five star rating. Anyone on Gaf gotten the chance to read this novel yet?

I started feeling a bit emotional just reading the synopsis. Nope nope nope nope

Spoiler

I'll have to add it to the backlog.

 

[survivor]

Finished reading Foundation, I don't know why I haven't done that earlier since I, Robot was and is still my favourite sci-fi and short story collection. One thing I found interesting, with all the limitless possibilities when writing a novel of space battles and what not, and yet the majority of the novel is pretty much just office politics. It would be perfect for a TV show so cheap to adapt with no worries about expensive action scenes.

Some of the ideas explored here were pretty clever and just like in I, Robot with three laws of robotics, I enjoyed how Asimov took a single concept of predicting the future and tried to show different variations and problems related to it. Of course the downside with his approach for jumping around 200 years is the lack of focus on characters. Most of them felt similar to each other and were really just there to show how smart they were at outsmarting their opponents. Although if Asimov took his time to expand on each individual character, this thing would have been a minimum of 1000 pages. I'm glad he didn't.

Also finished reading To Live. I haven't read any Chinese novels before and I saw this get recommended a lot and plus it was a pretty short. Deals with the life of a peasant farmer family in China before and after the revolution. Some pretty grim and depressing stuff, but I think it did suffer by the very simplified writing. I don't think it was an issue of a translation but rather a choice by the writer, but I felt the story lost a lot of emotional impact due to the simple writing. Still it was quite good.

 

[Necrovex]

I started feeling a bit emotional just reading the synopsis. Nope nope nope nope

Spoiler

I'll have to add it to the backlog.

Let's read it together, and we can cry together over it on Skype.

 

[ShaneB]

If Tragic states it's five stars, then that means it's leaping up to my top five of my reading backlog now. Here I come 50/50 challenge for 2015!

I liked it as well. It definitely skews young at time, but very emotional.

One of my favorites of all time. Funny and ironic at times, tragic (GRRM has nothing on McMurtry), heartbreaking, but moving and beautiful as well.

According to EW this week, Chris Pratt just finished reading Lonesome Dove and is moving on to other Larry M books. Hm...I wonder if he picked it up on his own or if someone is considering a remake, because he's a total Dish.

I just got passed the 20% mark, and still waiting for the have-to-keep reading moment. Im liking it, just the tension isn't there yet.

 

[LProtag]

Has anyone here read How to Read Literature Like a Professor? I've heard it mentioned quite often, but I wasn't ever sure if it was something I needed to read. I'm sort of a failed academic myself as I chickened out of graduate school for English and instead went into secondary education (I'm not saying high school teachers aren't academics, but obviously the focus of the job is solely focused on education; any sort of academic analysis is done for the purpose of using it to instruct).

I guess what I'm trying to ask is: Is this still a useful book for me, or will it just retread what I've learned during my undergraduate studies?

 

[FlowersisBritish]

Has anyone here read How to Read Literature Like a Professor? I've heard it mentioned quite often, but I wasn't ever sure if it was something I needed to read. I'm sort of a failed academic myself as I chickened out of graduate school for English and instead went into secondary education (I'm not saying high school teachers aren't academics, but obviously the focus of the job is solely focused on education; any sort of academic analysis is done for the purpose of using it to instruct).

I guess what I'm trying to ask is: Is this still a useful book for me, or will it just retread what I've learned during my undergraduate studies?

I read it in Highschool, and in my mind it's helpful for the transition from High School to college. But if you've written more than a couple of college level english essays, you probably won't gain much from the book. Might not hurt to give it a read though, just as a refresher of some tools you don't often use or forget about. Won't change the way you read things, but it'll be a nice refresher.

 

[LProtag]

I read it in Highschool, and in my mind it's helpful for the transition from High School to college. But if you've written more than a couple of college level english essays, you probably won't gain much from the book. Might not hurt to give it a read though, just as a refresher of some tools you don't often use or forget about. Won't change the way you read things, but it'll be a nice refresher.

Alright, thanks!

 

[Easystride]

I've been in a bit of a reading slump since finishing Stoner back in October, but Ordinary Grace has really gotten me out of that slump. I haven't been able to put my Kindle down. I love books from this time period (1960s). I'll have to check out more books by William Kent Krueger after I finish this. It looks like my library has a number of them available for the Kindle. Any particular suggestions from this author (or any other books set in the 60s for that matter)?