michaeltraps
Member
Just finished:
About to finish:
Next up:
(never read it as a kid)
About to finish:
Next up:
(never read it as a kid)
-
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What are you reading? (September 2013)
- Thread starter Maklershed
- Start date
The long list is out for The National Book Award.
Here are the nominees in fiction:
I'm going to try to get around to most of these books by the end of the year, but I can tell you that I'm really pulling for George Saunders to win this prize, I think he's the greatest short story writer alive and that 10th of December is a fantastic book.
I believe my next three books are going to be:
Every Love Story is a Ghost Story by DT Maxx, actually won this book on Twitter. It's a biography of David Foster Wallace, perhaps my favorite writer of the last 30 years.
The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner
Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon.
Here are the nominees in fiction:
- Tom Drury, Pacific (Grove Press)
- Elizabeth Graver, The End of the Point (Harper/HarperCollinsPublishers)
- Rachel Kushner, The Flamethrowers (Scribner/Simon & Schuster)
- Jhumpa Lahiri, The Lowland (Alfred A. Knopf/Random House)
- Anthony Marra, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena (Hogarth/Random House)
- James McBride, The Good Lord Bird (Riverhead Books/Penguin Group USA)
- Alice McDermott, Someone (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
- Thomas Pynchon, Bleeding Edge (The Penguin Press/Penguin Group USA)
- George Saunders, Tenth of December (Random House)
- Joan Silber, Fools (W.W. Norton & Company)
I'm going to try to get around to most of these books by the end of the year, but I can tell you that I'm really pulling for George Saunders to win this prize, I think he's the greatest short story writer alive and that 10th of December is a fantastic book.
I believe my next three books are going to be:
Every Love Story is a Ghost Story by DT Maxx, actually won this book on Twitter. It's a biography of David Foster Wallace, perhaps my favorite writer of the last 30 years.
The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner
Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon.
sparky2112
Member
Love me some Saunders, but there's no chance in hell they'll give it to a story collection. Unless I'm wrong. Hell, now that I've said that, they've probably given it to collections before. Ignore me.
Picked that up. Also picked up The Promise of Blood for $1.99 and Hell & Gone for $2.47. Freaking great bargain day.
I second the recommendation to read It before Christine. It is one of King's absolute best novels and is a solid kick in the teeth.
FnordChan, who is roughly 3/4 of the way through The Way of Kings
Yesssss Chaos Walking were some of my favourites in the last couple of years. Have you read A Monster Calls?
Thanks guys. I'll get It next then. Then Christine or the Stand or something. Haha.
i read this
it's by richard yates so it's not bad but i thought it was way too thin to be truly interesting. it's sort of a collection of character sketches about people in an american prep school getting on with their lives under a sense of doom with the outbreak of ww2 and the school closing down.
yates is effortlessly good at creating sympathy for pitiable characters and capturing the pain in simple things like, for example, asking someone to share a room with you next year, but there's so many characters and the book is so short i never got truly invested in it.
now i'm reading this
i've never read anything by pynchon so i didn't know what to expect but i'm finding the absurdist sense of humour amazing.
it's by richard yates so it's not bad but i thought it was way too thin to be truly interesting. it's sort of a collection of character sketches about people in an american prep school getting on with their lives under a sense of doom with the outbreak of ww2 and the school closing down.
yates is effortlessly good at creating sympathy for pitiable characters and capturing the pain in simple things like, for example, asking someone to share a room with you next year, but there's so many characters and the book is so short i never got truly invested in it.
now i'm reading this
i've never read anything by pynchon so i didn't know what to expect but i'm finding the absurdist sense of humour amazing.
Maklershed
Member
Finished Clandestine, which I discovered while reading, even though it came well before the LA Quartet, it runs concurrently to it. Probably is around The Big Nowhere in the timeline.
Now moving on to The Giver
The Giver by Lois Lowry
Now moving on to The Giver
The Giver by Lois Lowry
If you're going to let optional materials prevent you from reading about a mega-hunk like Count Vronksy, I don't know what to tell you.
e: Here's some OG shit, keep a pen and paper with you--which you should already have present since you're reading Russian literature which vomits out characters with 3 names + diminutives like I did after playing beer pong with tequila in college--and write down things you don't understand, then Google them when you're done and enjoy spoiler-free grokking.
Easystride
Member
I recently finished A Handmaids Tale, and I will start A Prayer for Owen Meany tomorrow.
nakedsushi
Member
Huh, I didn't have end notes in mine and read it fine. Skip the notes?
Mackenzie 92
Member
Not yet. How is it?
I thought it was OK, kinda got a pedo vibe from the main character haha
Haha, I guess I can understand that, but
I never thought that myself, when he reveals his plan while talking to her, that moment of realizing he saw the ledger and that they were married, he was just putting the plan in motion, which I thought was really lovely, and how emotional she got knowing she'd miss him for so long, all while Pete was there too.
many places
Member
Dark Places by Gillian Flynn. I read her first book, Sharp Objects, and absolutely loved it.
Mackenzie 92
Member
Oh my god. Oh. My. God.
I just finished The Name of the Wind. Holy Shiitake Mushrooms it was good. I take that back. I've read a lot of fantasy over the past month. I finished the Night Angel Trilogy, started the The First Law. But none of them made me feel whatever I am feeling right now (probably euphoria). It is hard to describe what made it so exceptional. I've been waiting for a book like this and I finally found it. I'm so happy it hurts. On to the next book.
I just finished The Name of the Wind. Holy Shiitake Mushrooms it was good. I take that back. I've read a lot of fantasy over the past month. I finished the Night Angel Trilogy, started the The First Law. But none of them made me feel whatever I am feeling right now (probably euphoria). It is hard to describe what made it so exceptional. I've been waiting for a book like this and I finally found it. I'm so happy it hurts. On to the next book.
LittleBoots
Member
It's well-written and has some great figurative language. But it's taking me a while to finish it because there's hardly any dialogue throughout the entire thing. That's something I usually really look forward to reading.
AngmarsKing701
Member
That's why they're so lovable.
But really, the Kingkiller Chronicles is a very flawed work even by fantasy standards. There's nothing wrong with enjoying it but I think it's important to a reader's growth to understand the pitfalls writers sometimes (or oftentimes) make, even if you have no intention of being a writer yourself.
I liked Ready Player One, but that shit was amateurish.
For many adults, reading fiction is simply a form of entertainment. Different people are entertained by different things. Therefore, I think its pretty foolish to talk about a reader's growth in that context because he might not give two shits about that. He reads to be entertained, and if the novel entertains him, great.
If you find dissecting novels fun and recognizing well-written and well-crafted works with interesting ideas fun as well, then great. Thats entertaining to you and growth in that context makes sense because there is something you want to improve upon. the other reader? What the hell is there to improve? He reads for entertainment and all you are doing is shitting on his parade by telling him that his book sucks.
Well, for one, when you passively consume a subgenre that is as loaded with eurocentrism and misogyny as fantasy without making some effort to identify the various forms in which they appear, that affects your worldview in subtle but not insignificant ways.
There's a reason why the "boys club" mentality exists in gaming/fantasy circles, and it's because the entertainment these circles consume is self reinforcing. It requires conscious effort to not fall into the same line of thinking.
There's a reason why the "boys club" mentality exists in gaming/fantasy circles, and it's because the entertainment these circles consume is self reinforcing. It requires conscious effort to not fall into the same line of thinking.
Could not care less about any of the shit that dude nagged about. Since he references nothing past the first few chapters I'm going to assume he didn't even read the book before writing that.
I consider a book good when I am entertained by it. The same with movies, I can't remember the last movie I watched that wasn't light hearted/fun.
Youre assuming too much. Just because someone doesnt think critically about literature doesnt mean they don't think critically about politics, social issues, science, non-stupid looking dogs, whatever.
Reading for most is a time when they relax. They spend their mental energy on other topics that are more important to them. Claiming that that will turn them more, even if its only slightly more, misogynistic and narrow-minded seems pretty ridiculous to me when you don't know anything else about the person.
The Rincewind books were my favourite growing up, but I find it hard to go back to Colour Of Magic/Light Fantastic/Sourcery now. Eric/Interesting Times/The Last Continent are still fantastic reads however. The City Watch are always good <3 Angua.
The Last Hero is a fantastic book, it's not really a comic or anything it just has a lot of illustrations throughout. I have the hardback edition and it's absolutely gorgeous (the story is really funny too.)
I finished "The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making" yesterday. I don't think this was the right book for me. I can tell that it is really good and I liked it very much but I couldn't read a page without my mind wandering off to other things. It never really hooked me the way books usually do, so that I'm completely immersed in the book. It's a pity really, because I loved the characters and everything about it, it just never really gripped me. Could just be that it wasn't the right book at that time, I'll give it a bit of time and will give the sequels a chance at another time.
I'll be going on a two week vacation on sunday, so I won't be reading anything till than and assemble a list of stuff to read. Can't wait to read the newest Garrett PI novel!
I'll be going on a two week vacation on sunday, so I won't be reading anything till than and assemble a list of stuff to read. Can't wait to read the newest Garrett PI novel!
Salvor.Hardin
Banned
I have about 40 pages left so I'll finish it today. The excessive use of french in the earlier parts of the books was a bit annoying and at one particular part the narrative did drag on for a couple of pages in which Nabokov explains the details of their journey in a terribly dry manner.
But on the whole, the story is excellent, the character development is second to none, and although the prose can get a bit tedious at times, it reads like a dream most of the time.
Genuinely excited to see how this ends.
As I'm on my week off (late summer vacation) I did a bit of reading on the beach (my favourite place to read).
Finished reading
As a huge Blade Runner fan I was really late reading this book. Quite different from the movie and I didn't really love the spiritual aspect of the story, but still I pretty much loved this book.
I was really looking forward to reading this book but I was disappointed. I thought the subject matter would be really interesting but I was wrong. Maybe it's just the way the book was written but I found it boring.
Started reading
Finished reading
As a huge Blade Runner fan I was really late reading this book. Quite different from the movie and I didn't really love the spiritual aspect of the story, but still I pretty much loved this book.
I was really looking forward to reading this book but I was disappointed. I thought the subject matter would be really interesting but I was wrong. Maybe it's just the way the book was written but I found it boring.
Started reading
Should have been clearer
I have no problems with a comic/illustration book its just the waiting I hate, I've got used to finishing off a book and having the next ready to go off the kindle store in minutes, waiting 2 days for a book is something im not used to these days 
Came here to talk about this. Just finished it. Had a 300 page marathon as I got close to the end of this huge book. It was just too good to put down and I absolutely needed to know what happened next. I love the characters so much. And the world Sanderson created is wonderful. Its extremely interesting and very mysterious, leaving lots of details left in the air for explaining later. Also has some very surprising philosophical moments that made me think. Lots of authors attempt this, but very few accomplish it in the way this did.Taking a break from the Mistborn series to read:
Big spoiler!:
The part where Kaladin and crew go to Dalinar's rescue, with Dalinar fighting through the Parshendi ranks and finally breaking through to see the bridgemen fighting and declaring it the most glorious thing he had ever seen actually swelled a tear or three in my eyes.
The part where Kaladin and crew go to Dalinar's rescue, with Dalinar fighting through the Parshendi ranks and finally breaking through to see the bridgemen fighting and declaring it the most glorious thing he had ever seen actually swelled a tear or three in my eyes.
Yes. That's all I can say. Yes. It's such a "FUCK YEAH!!" moment. Can't wait for the next book in the series.
sparky2112
Member
That's actually one of my big bitches about a series like this. I don't want to have to marathon a series each time a new book comes out so I can pick up references in Book 1 that the author finally bothered to explain in Book 7. Just build the world. Meh - one man's mystery is another man's annoyance, I guess.
I loved that part! Can't wait for the next book too.
Big spoiler!:
The part where Kaladin and crew go to Dalinar's rescue, with Dalinar fighting through the Parshendi ranks and finally breaking through to see the bridgemen fighting and declaring it the most glorious thing he had ever seen actually swelled a tear or three in my eyes.
Definitely. I was grinning from ear to ear. Such a great book. One of my favorites from recent memory.
I just started reading this:
I picked it up on a whim. I'm really liking it so far. I was afraid it would be a little too generic based on the title, but it seems my fears were for naught. I hope it continues to impress!
Definitely. I was grinning from ear to ear. Such a great book. One of my favorites from recent memory.
I just started reading this:
I picked it up on a whim. I'm really liking it so far. I was afraid it would be a little too generic based on the title, but it seems my fears were for naught. I hope it continues to impress!
I thought that book was fantastic. You made a good choice.
And yea, WoK is awesome. Easily Sanderson's best