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What are you reading? (October 2014)
- Thread starter Maklershed
- Start date
Bedameister
Member
I'm going to spend the next weeks with this baby
Finished Messenger by Lois Lowry, better than the second book, finally bringing out the relationship between the other books, but still doesn't convince me, dunno why.
Beginning Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia, hoping this will be a good urban-fantasy book and not just another effing romance about two special youngsters.
Beginning Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia, hoping this will be a good urban-fantasy book and not just another effing romance about two special youngsters.
hey guys i'm looking for non-fiction books that are well written, accessible, and engaging.
last 2 books I read were The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright
and The Private Life of Chairman Mao
Both of which were fantastic and changed my views drastically about both subjects. Looking for other recommendations by readers who may have read these.. thanks
last 2 books I read were The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright
and The Private Life of Chairman Mao
Both of which were fantastic and changed my views drastically about both subjects. Looking for other recommendations by readers who may have read these.. thanks
Exr
Member
Nice haul! That'll take you a while to chew through I imagine, but if you're still interested in Roman history I really liked Rubicon.
Kadayi
Banned
Ready Player One
I get that it's classed YA fiction and I can appreciate the deep levels of geekiness within it, but the teenage protagonist is such a complete Mary Sue who demonstrates time and again that there's absolutely nothing that he either hasn't read, played, watched or memorized 'hundreds of times' before hand that basically nothing presents any form of challenge to him throughout that I couldn't help but wonder whether I'd missed some early chapter where in they explained that human years had somehow been increased a thousand fold in length in order for him to be able to pack in the requisite life hours necessary to master all of these things, on top of studying and presumably eating, sleeping and shitting like lesser mortals.
I get that it's classed YA fiction and I can appreciate the deep levels of geekiness within it, but the teenage protagonist is such a complete Mary Sue who demonstrates time and again that there's absolutely nothing that he either hasn't read, played, watched or memorized 'hundreds of times' before hand that basically nothing presents any form of challenge to him throughout that I couldn't help but wonder whether I'd missed some early chapter where in they explained that human years had somehow been increased a thousand fold in length in order for him to be able to pack in the requisite life hours necessary to master all of these things, on top of studying and presumably eating, sleeping and shitting like lesser mortals.
hey guys i'm looking for non-fiction books that are well written, accessible, and engaging.
last 2 books I read were The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright
How was this? 9/11 is probably the most important event this generation and I would like to know more about it.
Magnificent. Just as wonderful as his book about Nelson, and related to it in interesting, authoritative, beautiful ways.
That looks very interesting.
Yeah. I don't like self-pimping much, but I wrote this:
It's had some good reviews and stuff. Yeah.
Edit: you said hard sf. This isn't that. Tonally similar, but not hard. (The main character isn't a scientist and doesn't understand the science, so it's not... Quite right. Anyway.)
Meant to say thanks for pointing this out and I'll try and check it out asap! For all the love The Martian gets here, I did not really like it at all, but maybe this will click with me moreso.
Yesterday I started To Kill a Mockingbird. I'm half done and it is really a fantastic, beautiful novel. I love how choosing the viewpoint of a child allowed Harper Lee to show how things affect people in a smart, easily digestible, often funny and definitely poignant way. It also touches upon a subject (racism, obviously) I've been giving a lot of thought lately, so that's great, too.
Am I correct in believing this is required reading in American schools?
Am I correct in believing this is required reading in American schools?
Finished shards of honor. I liked the short story following the end of the novel. The value of life is quite important, easily said, but oft forgotten on the grand scale of war. So many people die in these great wars, and the book focuses on the rich and the powerful like so many other space operas out there, so I like the focus, right there, at the end, on the passing of an individual. A mother's daughter.
The book itself throttles along at a very fast pace. & I suppose makes for a good entry into the universe. I'm not sure about the metaphor at the end of the novel. Overall, I liked it. And may read some more.
The book itself throttles along at a very fast pace. & I suppose makes for a good entry into the universe. I'm not sure about the metaphor at the end of the novel. Overall, I liked it. And may read some more.
Nappuccino
Member
I had to read it twice in school. I doubt it's 100% required at all schools, but it is a pretty popular one.
I read it in school. I doubt every school does but I think it is pretty prevalent reading material in US schools. I think I read it in 7th or 8th grade?
Okay, that's good to know. Thanks!
7th or 8th grade is 13 or 14 years old, right? Man, the stuff they tell you to read in Poland and that age has nothing on this. I mean, a lot of it is fantastic literature, we have a history of magnificent creators, but there's also a ton of bullshit (though I presume that's the case everywhere) and even the good stuff isn't well-suited to the age or doesn't carry messages as important as the ones conveyed by Harper Lee.
hardcastlemccormick
Banned
I'm waiting to start Kindle Unlimited when I feel I'll have enough time to devote attention to all the books I want to read, including 2001 and its sequels, Wool, several Chabon books as you said, several Philip K Dick books, and the few Stanislaw Lem books they have.
I don't expect to cram them all into a single month, but I'd like the focus to see the lot through. Right now I'm too busy with Walden and finishing Southern Reach.
AngmarsKing701
Member
Mine is also on Unlimited, as are several GAFfers'. Make use of that subscription!
AngmarsKing701
Member
I'm about 300 pages in and it's taken me several weeks to get here. So far it feels like way too much setup. I feel like I haven't reached the meat of the book yet. I don't want to put it down but at the same time I'm struggling to make significant progress.
As for Vic
I liked her better as a child and maybe that's why the book is so long.
hardcastlemccormick
Banned
If it's a book by a Gaffer I'll just buy it outright.
For me it's a type of focus. I consider reading a type of meditation and it's brain exercise in many ways. So, to answer your question, yes, though indirectly.
AngmarsKing701
Member
If it's a book by a Gaffer I'll just buy it outright.
For me it's a type of focus. I consider reading a type of meditation and it's brain exercise in many ways. So, to answer your question, yes, though indirectly.
The writing thread really needs a new OP with a list. Sigh. I'm probably gonna forget a few, but here's a selection:
Mine: Ahvarra: The Heart of the World
Fidelis Hodie: Derek Agons Slays a Dragon
cosmicblizzard: Freeze Kill
H.Protagonist: Dead Endings
We love sales! We also love reviews! Thanks!
It's really, really cracking.
The title sets it up as one of those patrician polemics about reconstituting the educational conditions and priorities that churned out little 19th century classicists.
But it is just all about Homer. My only problem (which is peevish) is that he resorts occasionally to the kind of thing Bloom does with Shakespeare - "this text is not representational; this text transcends/radically precedes/utterly comprehends". It makes me cringe less when we talk this way about Homer than about, say, Shakespeare, but it's still just creamily banal adulation.
But there's not much of that. And there is a great deal of brilliant writing about Hellenic attitudes, language formation, masculinity, archaeology and philology, the monumental nature of oral (which is to say remembered/improvised) poetry. Enormously good eye for many-sidedness in the poems - things like Telemachus meaning either, or both, "far from war" or, suggesting inherited prowess with a bow, "war from afar".
Man, I could not recommend it enough. He writes it like he was there, and it's all backed up by extensive research. You couldn't possibly imagine how good this book is..
By the end you will know more about the subject than any history Professor..
AngmarsKing701
Member
I would like opinions on this as well. I have the actual 18 lb book on my shelf and am not looking forward to toting it around unless it's worthy.
Yeah. I don't like self-pimping much, but I wrote this:
It's had some good reviews and stuff. Yeah.
Edit: you said hard sf. This isn't that. Tonally similar, but not hard. (The main character isn't a scientist and doesn't understand the science, so it's not... Quite right. Anyway.)
You wrote this? As in, also wrote The Echo and The Machine (which is supposed to be particularly fab and was shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke award)? Woah. Not that I've read them yet, but The Explorer is at the top of my next-book-to-buy list.
George MacDonald was a nineteenth-century author, poet, minister, possibly immortal adviser to the Romanov family, and writer of some pretty great comics. He is best known for his fairy tales, and has been mentioned as an influence on a number of major literary figures, including Tolkien, Lewis, Auden, L'Engle, and Chesterton. The book collects some of his best known shorter fairy tales, including the The Light Princess, The History of Photogen and Nycteris: A Day and Night Mährchen, The Giant's Heart, and The Golden Key. It also includes his essay The Fantastic Imagination, which is, er, fantastic. You can read that here.
I love his stories for their characteristic fairy-tale-ness (I don't really have a working definition, myself, but read them and I think that they capture that je ne sais quoi quality that fairy tales from Little Red Riding Hood to Hansel and Gretel have, for his prose, for his (admittedly stereotypical for the period) use of an omniscient narrator, which gives it that old-fashioned late-Victorian / Edwardian feeling. I don't know that I'm really able to articulate why I like it so much, but it's on my short list of favorite books.
Sounds interesting. I don't mind Shakespearean hagiography, myself, but Bloom's fanboyism is rather over the top.
You just sold me lol.
Ordering now.
Grumble, grumble. Wrote a post and my internet ate it.
Deep Black Sea was okay. Dead Space + Resident Evil underwater, complete with Wesker-type enemy. Short and light. Every character is a Mary Sue or a boring archetype or stereotype or just... bleh. Was exactly what I wanted to read though. Not sure what's next.
Might just read some comics I've had in the backlog for a while (or one of the dozens of book books there)
Deep Black Sea was okay. Dead Space + Resident Evil underwater, complete with Wesker-type enemy. Short and light. Every character is a Mary Sue or a boring archetype or stereotype or just... bleh. Was exactly what I wanted to read though. Not sure what's next.
Might just read some comics I've had in the backlog for a while (or one of the dozens of book books there)
Maklershed
Member
If it's a book by a Gaffer I'll just buy it outright.
Ah I had no idea. I only knew of you angmars. I'm more than happy to put a list in the OP.
If you're a GAFer and want to pimp your book, please post here and let me know.
AngmarsKing701
Member
Rest
All these years later I still chuckle at what a fucking moron that guy is.
I read a 2011 translation of The Art of War. The translator wasn't confident in his translation, and constantly made this apparent by stating it in footnotes. It's book that I plan to read several translations of though, so I'm not really let down by the lack of quality in this one.
Dead Prince
Banned
3 chapters leflt for Ender's game.
should i read the rest of the books in the series?
i guess i'll wait. then i'm off to Doing Malice.
should i read the rest of the books in the series?
i guess i'll wait. then i'm off to Doing Malice.
hardcastlemccormick
Banned
At minimum, I'd suggest Ender's Shadow and Speaker for the Dead. They're pretty different, but if you like one of them, read that respective branch of the story until you get bored.
H.Protagonist
[-_-]/
Hey, Maklershed. Mine just released, so I wouldn't say no to it being added to the front page list. ^_^
Dead Endings - Goodreads Link
FrakkinFordy
Banned
Finished my 2nd (or 3rd?) read through of IT and onto The Stand. Once done it's onto a re read of the Assassins trilogy (Hobb).
whatevermort
Member
Yup, that's me! (And thanks very much - really appreciate it!)
Finished Steelheart. That was a great read. I liked how Sanderson essentially wrote a superhero novel, but he did it for himself....not the comic book audience. His vision of metabeings is quite interesting and he continues to excel at world building and magic systems. I like how his YA novels still have that aspect about his writing, but focus the plot in on one central character with a strong supporting cast rather than 3 or 4 central characters with a large cast around them. It's actually hard to consider his YA novels YA....they're really just smaller forms of his epics.
Maklershed
Member
Ok, so here's the list I have so far for the OP. If you're on this list and you don't like what I'm linking to or prefer to link to somewhere else, please let me know.
aidan (Hugo Award winner): http://aidanmoher.com/blog/
AngmarsKing701: Ahvarra: The Heart of the World
cosmicblizzard: Freeze Kill
Elfforkusu: Wrath of Flight
Fidelis Hodie: Derek Agons Slays a Dragon
H.Protagonist: Dead Endings
whatevermort: The Explorer
aidan (Hugo Award winner): http://aidanmoher.com/blog/
AngmarsKing701: Ahvarra: The Heart of the World
cosmicblizzard: Freeze Kill
Elfforkusu: Wrath of Flight
Fidelis Hodie: Derek Agons Slays a Dragon
H.Protagonist: Dead Endings
whatevermort: The Explorer
hardcastlemccormick
Banned
My library finally got in their copy of Brave New World Revisited, which I had been anticipating for a while. But to be honest the book wasn't very illuminating. Huxley's original novel was enlightening in possibilities but I never took it literally, but it's clear Huxley takes his views extremely literally, written as an all-encompassing prediction as much as I viewed it as a single slice of a potential world. His brief overview of a budding science of psychology reveals a level of confirmation bias that made me doubt his conclusions, and a lot of his abstracts read less like proper social theories and more like modern snack-food non-fiction in the "one anecdote per theory" formula.
I'm a Huxley fan mostly because of his utopian novel Island, which is one of the more powerful novels I've ever read. I find it more interesting for writers to address what they think we should be doing. So many cynical essays bitterly complain about the placated masses watching television but never explain what it is they think those masses should be bothering their noggins with instead. If they would do so, much of their point would become extremely amusing and hypocritical. At times during Revisited I found myself waiting for the chapter titled "Millenials" - much of the content would match up with the empty, over-simplistic blogs bitterly decrying the youngest generation of mild cultural differences.
I did like parts of the book though. The latter chapters address the human mind as a complex beast, suggesting that over-propaganizing a populace will make them immune and wary of the process. His thoughts on the Nazi regime, while not revelatory, were engaging. The chapter on drugs was also really interesting (in historical context, but also his thoughts on how powers-that-be might use them when the exact opposite has happened, War On Drugs and all that).
I'm a Huxley fan mostly because of his utopian novel Island, which is one of the more powerful novels I've ever read. I find it more interesting for writers to address what they think we should be doing. So many cynical essays bitterly complain about the placated masses watching television but never explain what it is they think those masses should be bothering their noggins with instead. If they would do so, much of their point would become extremely amusing and hypocritical. At times during Revisited I found myself waiting for the chapter titled "Millenials" - much of the content would match up with the empty, over-simplistic blogs bitterly decrying the youngest generation of mild cultural differences.
I did like parts of the book though. The latter chapters address the human mind as a complex beast, suggesting that over-propaganizing a populace will make them immune and wary of the process. His thoughts on the Nazi regime, while not revelatory, were engaging. The chapter on drugs was also really interesting (in historical context, but also his thoughts on how powers-that-be might use them when the exact opposite has happened, War On Drugs and all that).
Thanks!