I thought it was on the middling side as far as Murakami goes, though I still quite liked it.
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
What are you reading? (November 2013)
- Thread starter Maklershed
- Start date
I thought it was on the middling side as far as Murakami goes, though I still quite liked it.
You were reading Joyce, Pynchon and Murakami all at the same time? Damn.
Yes it is. So I read it from start to finish nonstop. Well, took a little break to browse GAF. I don't do that often and this was the second time I read it, which is uncommon for me as well.
It's a really different kind of book and I happily recommend it no matter what your favourite genre is. It's just so good. After I read it I felt
Yes it is. So I read it from start to finish nonstop. Well, took a little break to browse GAF. I don't do that often and this was the second time I read it, which is uncommon for me as well.
It's a really different kind of book and I happily recommend it no matter what your favourite genre is. It's just so good. After I read it I felt
The ending hit me really hard too, that very last sentence.
...and that means that I can do anything.
I highly recommend you read '600 Hours of Edward'. It is one of my favourite books I've read this year, and has a lot in common with Curious Incident.
edit: Really loving 'Slow Getting Up' so far. It's hilarious, and definitely great insight into the life of a Football player, the hardships of being on the sidelines and not quite making it, etc.
obin_gam
Member
I've only in my second book of Simmons now, Drood (the first one being The Terror) and I have found that payoffs and eventsarent really his strong side. What he does know though, is tone, setting and atmosphere. Those things saves his books, and quite well. Drood would just be a slice-of-life borefest if it wasnt for the wonderful atmosphere he creates within it. Good to know that I should lower my expectations coming into this new one, but I have a feeling I will like it either way because I know he can create great tone at least.
★★★☆☆
This book was not what I expected. Expectations that were set by Simmons' previous book 'The Terror' and the cover & title of Abominable. Those two things set a story in my mind before I even turned the first page.
The Abominable is set into 3 largely equal parts. The Climbers, The Mountain & The Abominable. The first part meanders around parts of England, Austria, India and Nepal, introducing the 3 main characters of the story. The Mountain focuses on Everest, sherpas, base camps, oxygen bottles and the climb. The latter third is where all the bad things happen.
Simmons dives deep into the climbing techniques, history and technology of high altitude climbing in the 1920's. Most of which while interesting was not particularly fascinating, and the first part of the story crawls along while we explore the state of mountain climbing in this day and age.
The second part, The Mountain was where I expected the pace to markedly quicken but ultimately fails to do so. Reading this book without a modicum of knowledge of Mount Everest is quite the barrier to understanding what the hell is going or what the setting is like, despite the authors best attempts to describe the locations and situations. Talking about the North Col, the Second Step without an illustrated map makes it quite difficult to picture the mountain as Simmons describes it.
Unfortunately the book falls apart in part three. Your expectations for what you thought was coming are suddenly met, then swiped away in a few pages. I don't want to spoil it, but it's a shame the story went the way it did because it makes little sense.
Like The Terror, The Abominable is terribly well researched. Simmons shows an expert grasp on the mountaineering techniques of the time and the geopolitical climate around Everest. Unfortunately I was waiting for a payoff that never came, and was left disappointed due to my own expectations I had of the story which I don't think were unfair.
Felt good to turn off the lights and go to sleep after that. I googled that one and it seems good. I have to pick it up somewhere, thanks.
I have read a few of his books and my favourite so far was The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. So you think I should get this as well?
sparky2112
Member
So, you're going to compare Flashman (farce) and O'Brian (Lit) with Cornwell? Guess I find Cornwell very happily occupying the middle ground. Shrug...
Well, I expected Max to die in the end, with the constant reminders "Everybody dies" from Budo, throughout the book. Don't get me wrong, as a farher of two boys, I'm fine with happy ending, but I think author chose the easy way to finish the book.
Actually, I just finished reading it last night and I really enjoyed it (4/5 stars). It's kind of like Wizard of Earthsea meets Wheel of Time, only (mostly) in first person, and with a setting that seems to be a blend of victorian and medieval. I liked the magic system. It's very technical, very scientific. The third person framing story is nowhere near as well written as the first person parts, so don't bail if you don't like the way it opens, because the book immediately comes to life once it switches over. The pacing sags here and there, and the author follows all sorts of rabbit trails (some more interesting than others) but I think that's part of the charm. It's a really big story that covers a long time period, and the tone of the book shifts as the character's life changes. You could probably make three or four books out of it if you wanted to, and they would all be very different kinds of books. Overall I liked it well enough that I'm planning to start the second book as soon as possible.
And while I'm here I guess I might as well update... I also recently finished:
Lyonesse book 3 - Madouc by Jack Vance
I thought this book was a little weaker than the first two, but only a little. Overall, it's a great series. Very consistent, and very unique, very funny, and with a massive scope that kind of blew me away. I definitely need to read more stuff by Vance. I'll probably either tackle the Dying earth, or Planet of Adventure next.
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
A novella about a couple's sexual misadventures on their wedding night. Both are virgins, and both have sexual problems that they haven't spoken about. McEwan's writing is fantastic, but everything else... Pretty good, but I didn't love it. Felt kind of hollow. Three stars, mostly for McEwan's excellent writing voice, along with a couple of great moments.
The House of Souls by Arthur Machen
A collection of four short stories in the weird fiction/horror genre. Machen was a big influence on Lovecraft and is considered pretty important as a horror writer. Two of these stories (The White People and The Great God Pan) are supposedly his best works. Both were very odd, kind of unsettling. I'm still not sure exactly how I feel about them. I was both underwhelmed and impressed at the same time. For some reason I like them more now than right after I finished. I suppose they got under my skin a little, which is interesting.
Gabriel Allon book 1 - The Kill Artist by Daniel Silva
About an Israeli secret agent who has a cover job as an art restorer. This is really well written for the genre. The words flow beautifully, and make a nice little movie play in your head without ever drawing attention to themselves. It's fast paced with decent characters. Not action packed (definitely more cerebral) but when the action kicks in, it's very well executed. There are a metric ton of books about this character, and the series seems to be well regarded by most fans of the spy genre. I thought this was a great start, and I've heard some of the later books are even better, so I'll probably work my way through these for a while and see what's up.
I don't think I could've handled that sort of ending at all. I cried and cried and cried just reading Budo talk about fading away and his emotions about it all. His tears on his face and the feeling like a balloon lifting up. I'm getting emotional just remembering it! All the foreshadowing early in the book I directed toward thinking that someday he would fade away.
Glad you read it though, it really stuck with me and I still think about it plenty. I might buy a few copies as christmas gifts.
Freeza Under The Shower
Member
it's certainly held as a classic in 'need' of reading by writers in philosophy, if that counts.
I still intend to read it, which is something I say about a lot of books though...
fierrotlepou
Member
Can I ask you where you find the time to read? When do you read?
I wish I could read more books but I just don't have the time. I think.
Well, Monday through Wednesday the library is open until 8:00 PM. I get off work at 5:00, so I usually go there once or twice a week to read. I don't get distracted there, so I usually make good progress. I also sometimes go Saturday or Sunday if I'm bored at home. I also get some reading done at work; I have an hour lunch and two fifteen minute breaks.
And sometimes I just read at home!
It's just a matter of prioritizing; sometimes I start playing a new game (130 hours of Pokemon in the last month is the main reason I haven't been updating!), sometimes I'm watching more television, sometimes I'm seeing friends more, etc. But if you decide to make time for it, you'll find that the time is [probably] there.
Joe Shlabotnik
Banned
I could be wrong but it seems like you average two or three books a week? In the immortal words of Ron Burgundy, I'm not even mad. I'm impressed! You ate a whole wheel of cheese?
You're right that you can make time if you try. (The dozen or so books I've read lately coincided with all my vidjagame systems breaking except for my 3DS. Completely unrelated, I swear.) Still, you seem to read extremely fast. I'm jealous. The Goldfinch is 800 pages long and is going to take me at least two or three weeks to get through. I love it so far, though.
The book was pretty ehhhh I found, but the audiobook was quite well done (if you're listening to the same one I did,) you will have a lot of the characters voices and accents stuck in your head for a long time after you've finished it.
What have you read so far?
When I started reading regularly again in the last quarter of 2011 I was - save six weeks of temporary employment - unemployed. So, when I started I hadn't been reading regularly for years, and I'd maybe read 10 - 15 real books in the past four or five years, and hardly any of them had been unrelated to school - and those had mostly been GRRM and Murakami. At the time I felt like I had to keep it up, to make it a habit or it was something that I'd fall out of the habit of. So, after rereading The Count of Monte Cristo for the book club (which was my catalyst for starting to read again), and finally spending most of August working through Don Quixote, this happened:
8/23 - The Souls of Black Folk
8/24 - Soulless
8/25 - Siddhartha
8/27 - Gulliver's Travels
8/29 - The Complete Fairy Tales (George MacDonald)
8/30 - Kitchen
8/31 - Exile and the Kingdom
8/31 - The Bamboo Sword: And Other Samurai Tales
9/1 - Mistborn: The Final Empire
9/3 - The Well of Ascension
9/4 - The Hero of Ages
9/5 - Snow Country
9/5 - The Mikado
9/7 - Contact
9/9 - The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
9/9 - The Social Contract
9/10 - The Door to Lost Pages
9/12 - Musashi
9/13 - All the Shah's Men
9/14 - The Habitation of the Blessed
9/15 - A Wizard of Earthsea
9/16 - The Tombs of Atuan
9/17 - The Farthest Shore
9/18 - A Personal Matter
9/19 - The Fifth Head of Cerberus
9/20 - The Killer Inside Me
9/22 - Jane Eyre
9/23 - Palimpsest
9/23 - Storm Front
9/25 - The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories
9/25 - Fool Moon
9/27 - Sleight of Hand
9/29 - If on a winter's night a traveler
9/29 - Infinite Worlds: The Fantastic Visions of Science Fiction Art
10/2 - Peace (Gene Wolfe)
10/3 - The Man in the High Castle
10/6 - Cordelia's Honor
10/7 - Young Miles
10/8 - The Book of the New Sun (1 - 2)
10/9 - The Book of the New Sun (3 - 4)
10/10 - The Urth of the New Sun
... And entries on 10/13, 10/14, 10/15, 10/19, 10/19, 10/20, 10/21, 10/23, 10/23, 10/23, 10/27, 10/28, 10/29, 10/30, 11/02, 11/04, 11/05, 11/06, 11/07, 11/09, 11/11, 11/12, 11/13, 11/14, 11/16, 11/17, 11/19, 11/23, 11/24, 11/25, 11/26, 11/26, 11/27, 12/1, 12/3, 12/8, 12/11, 12/12, 12/22, 12/23, 12/25, 12/27, 12/28, 12/29, and 12/30; not including comics or manga volumes. I think I was averaging a book every day and change around this time, though I was slowing down at the end.
I'm at ~69 books this year going by the way Goodreads counts them, but I have a job now so I have less time and I don't feel like investing such a large chunk of my day to reading when I just have less free time than I did. I don't think it's about speed, exactly. I do read pretty fast, if online self-tests are anything to go off of, but I'm not one of those superhuman freaks (who I am jealous of). I think it's mostly about persistence - ten pages here, fifteen pages here, a chapter here; it adds up.
re-reading Neuromancer and starting "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman (again)... been too distracted to read consistently much.
like the imagery of the old cover better...
This is my copy, I like it the most:
Extremely good book and as relevant as ever.
It's the one from audible. Guy's name is Grover Gardner.
I'm looking forward to Randall Flagg. Haha.
Fury Sense
Member
Holy shit Mumei. That's impressive and sounds like a great time. Did you even chew? How do you digest all that.
Yup. I read about 100 books a year when I was younger just because I would bring a book with me absolutely everywhere and read whenever I could: while eating, while waiting for class to start, while waiting for my mum to pick me up from school.
This was elementary school for me... though probably not ~100 per year! I actually tried to see if the library kept any sort of records of what books I had checked out over the years, but unfortunately - for my purposes, anyway - they don't.
You don't really stop thinking about / processing books when you finish them. It's funny because there is some overlap - like I'd sometimes be thinking about the previous book while reading the next book. It's not that they blend together or anything; just that the other one hadn't completely left my head.
The middle ground with the predictable plot and black and white characters! I get it, it's light and sometimes entertaining, just expected something a little different.
re-reading Treasure Island. Such a classic and timeless book, the definite pirates novel. all the characters are awesome and even the outdated language (which people criticize I don't know why) used is charming gives the novel authenticity, I certainly would enjoy this less if it was rewritten in modern english.
I sometimes name my ship in FTL the USS Hispaniola and the starting crew Hawkings, Livesey and Smolett, sadly it never gets past sector 5 normal is just brutal!
I sometimes name my ship in FTL the USS Hispaniola and the starting crew Hawkings, Livesey and Smolett, sadly it never gets past sector 5 normal is just brutal!
I can still remember Happy Crappy! LOL!
Norwegian Wood
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Sputnik Sweetheart
Kafka on the Shore
After Dark
My job gives me a delightfully large amount of reading time so 160 books a year is likely my average.
Mumei said:
This isn't something I can relate to however. I don't really tend to think about a book at all when I'm not reading it. I also don't really process books in my head. Attempts to do so, say as part of an English class, have always been the fastest way to destroy my enjoyment of a work.
I think this post influenced a nightmare.
I tend to forget stuff in fiction novels after some time like names and I dreamt that I had a final on all these different novels but couldn't remember anything. D:And Zona, I love your avatar! :3
sparky2112
Member
Oh, Jack and Stephen, how I love you...
You're insane. How do you even read so much?! I am happy if I can finish a book on a monthly basis.
I would love if I could get through a book a week.
obin_gam
Member
Start doing audio books instead of texts. That way you can do other things while "reading" it and it will take far less time to go through a book.
My fear is the likelihood of zoning out as a book goes, and missing key stuff. Has this been a problem for you (or anyone else who uses audiobooks)?
Tragicomedy
Member
I've tried audiobooks and found that zoning out is pretty common. My work around is I read exclusively while at home, and listen to audiobooks while driving to and from work. For some reason, I never zone out in my car.
Amazon + Audible with syncing books is the way to go. My four most recent books ended up being 80% reading, 20% listening.
obin_gam
Member
It's a risk yes, but your brain picks up far more of the story than you might think even if you happen to zone out.
I couldn't get through the first chapter of Cordelia's Honor with him. =\
Freeza Under The Shower
Member
depends on how you read too. Novels are easier than non-fiction, but non-fiction allows for skipping / skidding as a reading strategy, as much of it is repeating known steps / arguments and getting the point out by page 100.
Speed reading also helps.
I decided to choose something a little lighter after War & Peace and the Road.
Currently working through The Blade Itself:
This is what I do, but I drive for at least 2 hours a day so the percentage is reversed.
Currently working through The Blade Itself:
This is what I do, but I drive for at least 2 hours a day so the percentage is reversed.
I've just finished:
I've been meaning to read this for a little while, mainly due to it having the highest Goodreads rating I've seen for a book with several thousand reviews. It's nothing genre-changing by any means, but honestly in my mind it compares favourably with all of the other notable epic fantasy series published recently (Way of Kings, Kingkiller, First Law etc...)
Engaging characters, deft pacing and a story that manages to breathe new life into the 'hero in training' trope. Highly recommend it.
Next up:
I've been meaning to read this for a little while, mainly due to it having the highest Goodreads rating I've seen for a book with several thousand reviews. It's nothing genre-changing by any means, but honestly in my mind it compares favourably with all of the other notable epic fantasy series published recently (Way of Kings, Kingkiller, First Law etc...)
Engaging characters, deft pacing and a story that manages to breathe new life into the 'hero in training' trope. Highly recommend it.
Next up:
Goodreads said:
The Culture Vulture
Member
http://www.amazon.com/gp/gss/browse
Under Kindle, then Kindle Daily Deals.
Looks like the Black Friday deal is novels movies are based on
http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.ht...rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1531758342&pf_rd_i=154606011
Nothing too exciting there for me. I would recommend John Dies At The End for $1.99 if you haven't read it.
Blood Meridian is McCarthy's magnum opus. You should definitely read that.