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[Ravensmash]

Finished Underground Airlines. All in all, an enjoyable pacy read.

I fancied a classic and I've always been drawn to American fiction - trying Grapes of Wrath!

Only a few chapters in but enjoying so far. I'm liking the contrasting chapters too.

 

[Liu Kang Baking A Pie]

Reading Eating Animals for the third time. It's my favorite book now. It changed my life.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0316069884/?tag=neogaf0e-20

 

[MilkBeard]

Stopped reading for a while, but today decided to get back in, and I pick up The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse. So far, it's pretty interesting. I've already read three of his books in the past, so it's nice to return again to one of his books after a number of years. Been meaning to read this one for a while.

 

[yepyepyep]

Last night I finished Anna Karenina and it is probably up there as one of my favourite books. How is War and Peace compared to Anna? I know the form is a bit different because it includes essays. Took me a long time to read Anna Karenina, not because it was hard to read, but just got busy at various points and also read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in between. Tolstoy's prose in Anna isn't too difficult and it was easy to continue reading even if I took breaks at certain points. Wouldn't mind starting another Tolstoy that I can take a long ass time and read leisurely when it suits me.

 

[TTG]

Last night I finished Anna Karenina and it is probably up there as one of my favourite books. How is War and Peace compared to Anna? I know the form is a bit different because it includes essays. Took me a long time to read Anna Karenina, not because it was hard to read, but just got busy at various points and also read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in between. Tolstoy's prose in Anna isn't too difficult and it was easy to continue reading even if I took breaks at certain points. Wouldn't mind starting another Tolstoy that I can take a long ass time and read leisurely when it suits me.

I quit on Anna Karenina maybe just over halfway through. May go back to finish it yet, but I'm obviously not in the it's-the-best-book-ever crowd.

I really enjoyed War and Peace. It's historical fiction even if there wasn't such a term back then. The scope is wider and I think Tolstoy is a lot better for it, but there are plenty of intimate scenes and character development as well(plenty of everything as you can imagine in a book this long). A lot that made my eyes hurt from rolling so far back into my head in Anna Karenina -- pure and honest Levin mowing the rye alongside simple peasants, then his wooing the second time around which is just puke, is gone. The characters are stronger, it's less melodramatic, Napoleon's invasion makes for some great scenes and Tolstoy is more than up to the task of realizing them. I don't often recommend it because of sheer length, but if you're interested, you won't be disappointed.

The prose is simple, it's Tolstoy, if you find different it's on the translator. I don't know what you mean by essays. The second epilogue(yes second!) is Tolstoy flat out dressing down historians contemporary to his time, so that's one essay at the end and one that you don't have to read, but I don't remember others. You could easily read it paired with something else, there should be a handy character list provided or if you have a Kindle that's even better.

 

[pa22word]

So I usually don't read fiction all that often, but I went on a total splurge these past three or so weeks:

The City & The City - Miéville, China

The Long Walk - Bachman, Richard

It - King, Stephen

The Running Man - Bachman, Richard

Way Station - Simak, Clifford D.

Children of Time - Tchaikovsky, Adrian

Old Man's War (Old Man's War, #1) - Scalzi, John

Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs, #1) - Morgan, Richard K.

The Invincible - Lem, Stanislaw

Stand on Zanzibar - Brunner, John

Roadside Picnic - Strugatsky, Arkady and Boris

'Salem's Lot - Stephen King

Return from the Stars - Lem, Stanislaw

Gwendy's Button Box - King, Stephen and Chizmar, Richard

Various short stories out of...

Bazar of Bad Dreams - King, Stephen

A Long December - Chizmar, Richard

20th Century Ghosts - Hill, Joe

Currently Reading:

The Regulators - Bachman, Richard

Lovecraft Country - Ruff, Matt

Kraken - Miéville, China


Whew, god damn it really is a list when I first take it out and actually draw it up like that fuck o_o

Because I doubt I can fit summaries of all of them in a single post, I'll just do a short list of the books that really stood out to me:

The Long Walk - A tad blunt and it has a few misteps that stem mostly from King wandering from the point and wasting time laying out the logistics of what is going on. Hint: stories like these always work better the more vague the world is. Him going into weird tangents about WW2 alt history just drag the book down needlessly into genre tropes that take you out of the world he's trying to get you so painfully to draw comparatively to our own. King drug Under the Dome into the dirt for the same reason, but I digress...Still I say it's one of my favorite King stories overall. The more he sticks to the ground the better king tends to be I feel. I think the restraint having to work around more subtle everyday terrors does to him makes him more creative. I also thought The Running Man was pretty good for the same reason, even if the cynicism comes across as hamfisted at times.

Lem in general - I think I'm going to love everything this man wrote. The Invincible in particular I would recommend to people who got put off by half of Solaris being told in the form of exposition. He's much more restrained here and the narrative despite a slow start is like lightning in comparison to Solaris. Has the typical Lem faults with cardboard characterization and iffy pacing, but the worlds the man builds and the themes of human arrogance, shortsightedness, and tribal nature in the context of the galaxy he tries and more often than not does tackle aren't really topped by any of the other sci fi "masters" that I've read. Anyone who hasn't given Lem a chance and loves a hard scifi I find it hard to recommend anyone other than Lem.

Old Man's War - A fun book made pretty hilarious considering I read it right before The Invincible and that book has basically the same plot if a lot more constrained and less of a scope. I don't know if I'll read more of the series, though. It came across as pretty vapid and schlocky at times, but hinted that it would eventually explore the themes presented in the first book later in between all the setpieces you're actually there for. I mean there's nothing wrong with vapid schlock as I have consumed mountains of it and ask for more plenty of times, but the pricing on the series is a bit steep non sale at like 10 bones a book for 200 pages a pop is kind of hard to justify. I'll defo look out for sales on the series as the first book if anything was definitely fun.


Stand on Zanzibar - I really, really loved this book. Despite trashing it here the first time I attempted to read it and throwing it down in agony after a second attempt, I finally powered through it and got over my initial abhorrence of the style in which it was written and just got totally sucked into the book. It's pretty telling about the book when I was first reading it and thought the entire time it was alt history for the USSR still being around, only to look it up and be totally blown away when I realized it was written in the late '60s. Incredibly prescient book, even if in hindsight the whole Malthusian dystopia trope has become pretty trite these days, that offers quite a melancholic outlook on humanity and its future that shouldn't be missed. The chapter in the party segment from the machine's POV was probably one of the most agonizing and anxiety ridden things I've ever read, and it is totally awesome. Can't wait to read more of the guy.

The City and The City - Not really what I expected going in at all given what I've read about the author, but overall a very entertaining book. The way the book deals with interstitiality and its ramifications along with social taboos and how they shape society is fascinating...it's just kind of a shame it's all wrapped up in this entirely by the numbers detective story.

Overall a pretty good haul and I liked every single one of the books I read, which considering the number of them I consider that kind of amazing. Would recommend all of them except maybe The Regulators which, other than watching the second season of Mr. Robot and the book getting name dropped while I was in the middle of reading it being super surreal, is pretty fluffy as a king book. King has some really terrible lines in this book such as the classic (paraphrased) "my hand was sweating and as I brushed it across my face I realized it smelled like pussy". Really, King? I mean not to trash it too much as it is pretty entertaining and the core idea of a horror novel set in a child's fantasy is a rather awesome one the plot is pretty thin here and the characters are mostly one note and boring. It's also a quite a bit longer than it needs to be, with king interrupting the story several times for scores of pages of flashbacks and exposition that really isn't needed at all other than I'm assuming the gimmick the book has as a tie in with Desperation, which I haven't read.

 

[WAR recon zero]

Reading Eating Animals for the third time. It's my favorite book now. It changed my life.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0316069884/?tag=neogaf0e-20

Is it about becoming vegetarian or vegan?

I have a moral problem right now. I don't want to be vegetarian but vegetables are not really tasty (when I or my wife make them) and it's way more expensive.

 

[yepyepyep]

I quit on Anna Karenina maybe just over halfway through. May go back to finish it yet, but I'm obviously not in the it's-the-best-book-ever crowd.

I really enjoyed War and Peace. It's historical fiction even if there wasn't such a term back then. The scope is wider and I think Tolstoy is a lot better for it, but there are plenty of intimate scenes and character development as well(plenty of everything as you can imagine in a book this long). A lot that made my eyes hurt from rolling so far back into my head in Anna Karenina -- pure and honest Levin mowing the rye alongside simple peasants, then his wooing the second time around which is just puke, is gone. The characters are stronger, it's less melodramatic, Napoleon's invasion makes for some great scenes and Tolstoy is more than up to the task of realizing them. I don't often recommend it because of sheer length, but if you're interested, you won't be disappointed.

The prose is simple, it's Tolstoy, if you find different it's on the translator. I don't know what you mean by essays. The second epilogue(yes second!) is Tolstoy flat out dressing down historians contemporary to his time, so that's one essay at the end and one that you don't have to read, but I don't remember others. You could easily read it paired with something else, there should be a handy character list provided or if you have a Kindle that's even better.

Well I went ahead and bought a second hand copy of War and Peace so I'll see how it goes. With Levin though I think the point was that he was contradictory and confused in his ideals in how to live an honest life, he gets challenged a bit more and has to reflect on his views in the second half. And I never got the sense that Tolstoy was advocating him as someone to look up to.

 

[Glass Shark]

Just finished Spin, thought it was incredible. Great mix of sci-fi and human drama, and written in an astoundingly clear but eloquent style. I just love the way insanely complex concepts were explained in a way that didn't make my brain hurt. Complete contrast to all of the orbital dynamics in Seveneves.

I hope the subsequent novels in the series are even half as good, but I worry about this story getting long in the tooth.

 

[Liu Kang Baking A Pie]

Is it about becoming vegetarian or vegan?

Not really, though it's definitely what many take away from it. Being a "vegetarian book" is handled near the beginning.

To be perfectly honest (and to risk losing my credibility on page 13), I assumed, before beginning my research, that I knew what I would find — not the details, but the general picture. Others made the same assumption. Almost always, when I told someone I was writing a book about ”eating animals," they assumed, even without knowing anything about my views, that it was a case for vegetarianism. It's a telling assumption, one that implies not only that a thorough inquiry into animal agriculture would lead one away from eating meat, but that most people already know that to be the case. (What assumptions did you make upon seeing the title of this book?)

I, too, assumed that my book about eating animals would become a straightforward case for vegetarianism. It didn't. A straightforward case for vegetarianism is worth writing, but it's not what I've written here.

Animal agriculture is a hugely complicated topic. No two animals, breeds of animals, farms, farmers, or eaters are the same. Looking past the mountains of research — reading, interviewing, seeing firsthand — that was necessary even to begin to think about this stuff seriously, I had to ask myself if it was possible to say something coherent and significant about a practice that is so diverse. Perhaps there is no ”meat." Instead, there is this animal, raised on this farm, slaughtered at this plant, sold in this way, and eaten by this person — but each distinct in a way that prevents them from being pieced together as mosaic.

And eating animals is one of those topics, like abortion, where it is impossible to definitively know some of the most important details (When is a fetus a person, as opposed to a potential person? What is animal experience really like?) and that cuts right to one's deepest discomforts, often provoking defensiveness or aggression. It's a slippery, frustrating, and resonant subject. Each question prompts another, and it's easy to find yourself defending a position far more extreme than you actually believe or could live by. Or worse, finding no position worth defending or living by.

Then there is the difficulty of discerning the difference between how something feels and what something is. Too often, arguments about eating animals aren't arguments at all, but statements of taste. And where there are facts — this is how much pork we eat; these are how many mangrove swamps have been destroyed by aquaculture; this is how a cow is killed — there's the question of what we can actually do with them. Should they be ethically compelling? Communally? Legally? Or just more information for each eater to digest as he sees fit?

While this book is the product of an enormous amount of research, and is as objective as any work of journalism can be — I used the most conservative statistics available (almost always from government, and peer-reviewed academic and industry sources) and hired two outside fact-checkers to corroborate them — I think of it as a story. There's plenty of data to be found, but it is often thin and malleable. Facts are important, but they don't, on their own, provide meaning — especially when they are so bound to linguistic choices. What does a precisely measured pain response in chickens mean? Does it mean pain? What does pain mean? No matter how much we learn about the physiology of the pain — how long it persists, the symptoms it produces, and so forth — none of it will tell us anything definitive. But place facts in a story, a story of compassion or domination, or maybe both — place them in a story about the world we live in and who we are and who we want to be — and you can begin to speak meaningfully about eating animals.

 

[Dec]

Finished IT.

Starting The Cuckoo's Calling.

 

[Razorback]

So I usually don't read fiction all that often, but I went on a total splurge these past three or so weeks:

The City & The City - Miéville, China

The Long Walk - Bachman, Richard

It - King, Stephen

The Running Man - Bachman, Richard

Way Station - Simak, Clifford D.

Children of Time - Tchaikovsky, Adrian

Old Man's War (Old Man's War, #1) - Scalzi, John

Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs, #1) - Morgan, Richard K.

The Invincible - Lem, Stanislaw

Stand on Zanzibar - Brunner, John

Roadside Picnic - Strugatsky, Arkady and Boris

'Salem's Lot - Stephen King

Return from the Stars - Lem, Stanislaw

Gwendy's Button Box - King, Stephen and Chizmar, Richard

Various short stories out of...

Bazar of Bad Dreams - King, Stephen

A Long December - Chizmar, Richard

20th Century Ghosts - Hill, Joe

Currently Reading:

The Regulators - Bachman, Richard

Lovecraft Country - Ruff, Matt

Kraken - Miéville, China

You read 22 books in three weeks?

 

[Ravensmash]

So I usually don't read fiction all that often, but I went on a total splurge these past three or so weeks:

The City & The City - Miéville, China

The Long Walk - Bachman, Richard

It - King, Stephen

The Running Man - Bachman, Richard

Way Station - Simak, Clifford D.

Children of Time - Tchaikovsky, Adrian

Old Man's War (Old Man's War, #1) - Scalzi, John

Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs, #1) - Morgan, Richard K.

The Invincible - Lem, Stanislaw

Stand on Zanzibar - Brunner, John

Roadside Picnic - Strugatsky, Arkady and Boris

'Salem's Lot - Stephen King

Return from the Stars - Lem, Stanislaw

Gwendy's Button Box - King, Stephen and Chizmar, Richard

Various short stories out of...

Bazar of Bad Dreams - King, Stephen

A Long December - Chizmar, Richard

20th Century Ghosts - Hill, Joe

Currently Reading:

The Regulators - Bachman, Richard

Lovecraft Country - Ruff, Matt

Kraken - Miéville, China


Whew, god damn it really is a list when I first take it out and actually draw it up like that fuck o_o

Because I doubt I can fit summaries of all of them in a single post, I'll just do a short list of the books that really stood out to me:

The Long Walk - A tad blunt and it has a few misteps that stem mostly from King wandering from the point and wasting time laying out the logistics of what is going on. Hint: stories like these always work better the more vague the world is. Him going into weird tangents about WW2 alt history just drag the book down needlessly into genre tropes that take you out of the world he's trying to get you so painfully to draw comparatively to our own. King drug Under the Dome into the dirt for the same reason, but I digress...Still I say it's one of my favorite King stories overall. The more he sticks to the ground the better king tends to be I feel. I think the restraint having to work around more subtle everyday terrors does to him makes him more creative. I also thought The Running Man was pretty good for the same reason, even if the cynicism comes across as hamfisted at times.

Lem in general - I think I'm going to love everything this man wrote. The Invincible in particular I would recommend to people who got put off by half of Solaris being told in the form of exposition. He's much more restrained here and the narrative despite a slow start is like lightning in comparison to Solaris. Has the typical Lem faults with cardboard characterization and iffy pacing, but the worlds the man builds and the themes of human arrogance, shortsightedness, and tribal nature in the context of the galaxy he tries and more often than not does tackle aren't really topped by any of the other sci fi "masters" that I've read. Anyone who hasn't given Lem a chance and loves a hard scifi I find it hard to recommend anyone other than Lem.

Old Man's War - A fun book made pretty hilarious considering I read it right before The Invincible and that book has basically the same plot if a lot more constrained and less of a scope. I don't know if I'll read more of the series, though. It came across as pretty vapid and schlocky at times, but hinted that it would eventually explore the themes presented in the first book later in between all the setpieces you're actually there for. I mean there's nothing wrong with vapid schlock as I have consumed mountains of it and ask for more plenty of times, but the pricing on the series is a bit steep non sale at like 10 bones a book for 200 pages a pop is kind of hard to justify. I'll defo look out for sales on the series as the first book if anything was definitely fun.


Stand on Zanzibar - I really, really loved this book. Despite trashing it here the first time I attempted to read it and throwing it down in agony after a second attempt, I finally powered through it and got over my initial abhorrence of the style in which it was written and just got totally sucked into the book. It's pretty telling about the book when I was first reading it and thought the entire time it was alt history for the USSR still being around, only to look it up and be totally blown away when I realized it was written in the late '60s. Incredibly prescient book, even if in hindsight the whole Malthusian dystopia trope has become pretty trite these days, that offers quite a melancholic outlook on humanity and its future that shouldn't be missed. The chapter in the party segment from the machine's POV was probably one of the most agonizing and anxiety ridden things I've ever read, and it is totally awesome. Can't wait to read more of the guy.

The City and The City - Not really what I expected going in at all given what I've read about the author, but overall a very entertaining book. The way the book deals with interstitiality and its ramifications along with social taboos and how they shape society is fascinating...it's just kind of a shame it's all wrapped up in this entirely by the numbers detective story.

Overall a pretty good haul and I liked every single one of the books I read, which considering the number of them I consider that kind of amazing. Would recommend all of them except maybe The Regulators which, other than watching the second season of Mr. Robot and the book getting name dropped while I was in the middle of reading it being super surreal, is pretty fluffy as a king book. King has some really terrible lines in this book such as the classic (paraphrased) "my hand was sweating and as I brushed it across my face I realized it smelled like pussy". Really, King? I mean not to trash it too much as it is pretty entertaining and the core idea of a horror novel set in a child's fantasy is a rather awesome one the plot is pretty thin here and the characters are mostly one note and boring. It's also a quite a bit longer than it needs to be, with king interrupting the story several times for scores of pages of flashbacks and exposition that really isn't needed at all other than I'm assuming the gimmick the book has as a tie in with Desperation, which I haven't read.

Wow...I'd love to be able to read that fast.

What did you think of Altered Carbon? I loved it.

 

[pa22word]

You read 22 books in three weeks?

If you look at the list and start breaking it down it's not really that surprising. Most of the books on the list barely qualify as novels at 200-250 pages like most of the scifi and king stuff I have there. The only really long haul book on there is IT, which took me about 5 days to finish, and that was my own damned fault because I kicked the can down the road on the book for a lot longer than I should have just to get it done for the movie. In a perfect world I probably would have sat on it more rather than burning through it like I did. Anyways, most of that stuff I was burning through a book a day at 250ish pages. That's a personal thing, really. I typically like shorter novella style stories in fiction because I think it forces a lot of authors to practice restraint more in their long windedness, which often results imo in a much stronger plot.

Wow...I'd love to be able to read that fast.

What did you think of Altered Carbon? I loved it.

I really liked it! A lot of interesting ideas and the whole concept of saved personality states that jump through human shells was really inspired. I wish he would have toyed around more with the social and political implications of a post-biological society, but I imagine that's again reserved for later books to flesh the world out more. Again this goes back to my enjoyment more of a tighter single book 200 pages type stories, but eh. The way he resolved the plot some may see as an asspull, but it was so cool that I didn't really care. I read the other books aren't really that great or I would have already started them. You know anything about them?

 

[kswiston]

I am a third of the way through Midnight Tides, which is book 5 of the Malazan Book of the Fallen series. Even though I was skeptical about leatning about even more characters on a completely separate continent from the first 4 bools, this one might actually be the easiest to follow so far.

 

[tonysidaway]

Old Man's War - A fun book made pretty hilarious considering I read it right before The Invincible and that book has basically the same plot if a lot more constrained and less of a scope.

That read like a Harry Harrison satire, but seemed to be playing it straight. Eventually I just stopped reading because the characters had lost whatever made me interested in them in the first place. I don't think I quite get the point of military SF.

Stand on Zanzibar.

Loved it in the seventies. I wonder how it would hold up now. I reread Shock Wave Rider about five years ago and really enjoyed it, though my feelings about the events are now somewhat tempered by experience of the real life internet.

The City and The City - Not really what I expected going in at all given what I've read about the author, but overall a very entertaining book. The way the book deals with interstitiality and its ramifications along with social taboos and how they shape society is fascinating...it's just kind of a shame it's all wrapped up in this entirely by the numbers detective story.

I've got the audiobook, which is ready by John Lee. I read it as a travelogue, and the detective novel served to provide some structure. I'm not familiar with the author's other work but I suspect it may be too gruesome for me to enjoy.

There are some consonances with Italo Calvino's classic Invisible Cities, though that's a completely different kind of book. Coincidentally I also have an audiobook of the Calvino read by Lee.

A couple of years ago the BBC announced a forthcoming dramatisation of The City and the City, and checking now I see that this Spring they announced a cast led by David Morrissey.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2017/david-morrissey-the-city-and-the-city

 

[Atraveller]

I'm reposting my review from goodreads here.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2121318196

Jon Ronson embarked on a fascinating journey to examine the dynamics, elements and legal aspects of public shaming. The book included doxxing, however internet shaming wasn't its sole focus. The author interviewed several high profile shamees, and delved into what the emotion could do to a person. Why certain cases blew up, and what made certain cases unable to garner sustained internet outrage.

The book tried to unravel the workings of mob mentality, but it went nowhere, as the faux-scientist that wrote the book on mob mentality was a raging misogynist/racist who was admired by Mussolini. Only at the end the of the book the author tried to resolve it with "behavioral feedback loop" on the shaky ground of only a few paragraphs, it was given no room to expand nor develop.

While the book was analyzing internet shaming, it did acknowledge the violent and misogynist nature of internet pressure, unfortunately it did not spend any thought on why female victims received disproportionate attack on their sex. When the author was interviewing a convicted 4chan troll and brought it up, the troll gave a "boys will be boys" non-answer, and he just let it slide, never to bring the subject up again.

I enjoyed reading chapters that were about the power of shame, and how it acts as a motivator. But what fascinated me the most, is the existence of reputation services that are not quite PR firms (many of whom of sinister inceptions, sexual criminals who tried to hide their past): An industry that manages how people see you on search engines! They feed the internet with packaged messages (blog posts, photos, news articles), authentic or manufactured, and push the scandalous records back pages. These materials are uploaded according to a schedule to mask their artificialness, and companies adjust their tactics to match the ever changing search algorithms. Though this book didn't answer all of my questions perfectly, I still think it's worth a read.

 

[pa22word]

That read like a Harry Harrison satire, but seemed to be playing it straight. Eventually I just stopped reading because the characters had lost whatever made me interested in them in the first place. I don't think I quite get the point of military SF.




Loved it in the seventies. I wonder how it would hold up now. I reread Shock Wave Rider about five years ago and really enjoyed it, though my feelings about the events are now somewhat tempered by experience of the real life internet.




I've got the audiobook, which is ready by John Lee. I read it as a travelogue, and the detective novel served to provide some structure. I'm not familiar with the author's other work but I suspect it may be too gruesome for me to enjoy.

There are some consonances with Italo Calvino's classic Invisible Cities, though that's a completely different kind of book. Coincidentally I also have an audiobook of the Calvino read by Lee.

A couple of years ago the BBC announced a forthcoming dramatisation of The City and the City, and checking now I see that this Spring they announced a cast led by David Morrissey.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2017/david-morrissey-the-city-and-the-city

About old man's war: ...yeah I put that comparison there hoping someone would catch that I wasn't being kind to the book. When I originally wrote the post I had a line saying that it reminded me a lot of starship troopers played straightfaced, but took it out because it's a long series I guess and I didn't want some raving fans in here ripping me to shreds because of its beautiful long form plot filled with thematic depth I have to read 7 books to understand. Like reading it and The Invincible nearly back to back was really surreal because Scalsi seemingly venerates everything about mankind Lem so masterfully lays bare and resoundingly eviscerates in The Invincible the thematic whiplash was so strong it was hard to finish OMW.

I'm not trying to be overly hard on the book because as a dumb action movie type book to read on the bus or something it's not bad, but yeah...seemingly a rather vapid and kind of dangerous veneration of the destruction of the other in pure black and white terms that doesn't actually exist in any one conflict, human or otherwise. Like I was waiting on the book to drop something on me that might hint that the nearly facist ideological bent of the terran empire might not be for the best only for its main plot reveal at the end to be that the ur-race is actually secretly pitting the other races against each other so they can bulk up enough to fight them themselves? That kind of masturbatory single sided veneration of military progress for the glory of destruction for destructions sake is actually kind of gross, really. Like a little kid filming spiders and wasps going at it and putting it on YouTube, and instead of gasping in horror at this notion the book kind of shrugs and goes with it. The entire world featured in the book just feels exceptionally hollow, and the authors literal slaughter of the only diplomatic force in the story, the sheer carnal pleasure he derives from doing so, and the utter contempt he displays for such weak kneed pansies doesn't lend me to think much of him, really. The entire world he paints seems like some kind of neocon's wet dream where hegemony and unilateralism enforced by overwhelming military might is the name of the game, and the only solution to any and all problems.

Zanzibar: I thought it held up for the most part. Some of the stuff doesn't work in the modern context but he hits way more than he misses. I'll be sure to check out Shock Wave Rider though, sounds right up my ally!

I'll also put invisible cities on my reading list.

 

[mid83]

I'm still reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by Shirer, and likely will for a while. It's a massive book and I tend to read multiple books at a time.

In terms of other books I'm reading, I'm on a bit of a current affairs/geopolitics kick.

Just Finished:

Pretty interesting survey of the history of the world's four oceans, and three important seas (Mediterrian Sea including the Persian Gulf, Carribbean Sea, and South China Sea). He also discusses current day geopolitical issues in each area along with recommendations of how the US can and should respond. He also discuesses issues such as piracy and the importance of enviornmental issues related to the world's bodies of water (with a big emphasis on global warming). I enjoyed it.

Currently Reading:

A timely book after Brexit and Trump's election by a Financial Times columist. It's also a short read as well (just over 200 pages), so you can easily knock it out in a day or two.

Next Up:

I want to educate myself on Putin and the sort of things that have been going on in Russia for years, most of which have been ignored in the US prior to the 2016 election. There may be better books on Russia an Putin, but these are two new releases I saw this week at B&N, so I plan to read both here in the next few weeks.

Any recommendations on good books about modern Russia and/or the rise of Putin would be much appreciated as well.

 

[jasonmb17]

Just finished Hild by Nicola Griffith. What a slog. I read it after seeing Jason Concepcion (@n3twork) from the Ringer recommend it as a post GOT void-filler. Enjoyable story buried in endless minutia and Russian novel level name management.

 

[pa22word]

I'm still reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by Shirer, and likely will for a while. It's a massive book and I tend to read multiple books at a time.

In terms of other books I'm reading, I'm on a bit of a current affairs/geopolitics kick.

Just Finished:

Pretty interesting survey of the history of the world's four oceans, and three important seas (Mediterrian Sea including the Persian Gulf, Carribbean Sea, and South China Sea). He also discusses current day geopolitical issues in each area along with recommendations of how the US can and should respond. He also discuesses issues such as piracy and the importance of enviornmental issues related to the world's bodies of water (with a big emphasis on global warming). I enjoyed it.

Currently Reading:

A timely book after Brexit and Trump's election by a Financial Times columist. It's also a short read as well (just over 200 pages), so you can easily knock it out in a day or two.

Next Up:

I want to educate myself on Putin and the sort of things that have been going on in Russia for years, most of which have been ignored in the US prior to the 2016 election. There may be better books on Russia an Putin, but these are two new releases I saw this week at B&N, so I plan to read both here in the next few weeks.

Any recommendations on good books about modern Russia and/or the rise of Putin would be much appreciated as well.

Check out Kotkin's Armageddon Averted, Putin Country by Anne Garules, Nothing is True and Everything is Possible by Peter Pomerantsev, anything by Arkady Ostrovsky, and the may/jun 2016 edition of Forign Affairs magazine (can get it on newsstand apps on both apple and Android, probably online on pc too) titled "Putin's Russia: Down but Not Out" which features some really great articles by the aforementioned Kotkin and Fyodor Lukyanov.

Of all of that id most rec you to check out putin country. It's a rather fascinating book that serves as part social history of the Russian countryside in the modern era and part personal narrative of the person writing the book and her experience from the cold war up on being in the Russian countryside.

I also ended up enjoying Luce's book, even if I questioned some of his endgames and solutions on some things. Would also recommend it!

 

[Ravensmash]

I'm really liking Grapes of Wrath.

Something clicked and I can now read the dialogue without having to second guess it continually, haha.

Some of the prose is fantastically beautiful.

Only negative (of my experience) is that I'm finding it hard to visualise some of the characters.

Steinbeck really likes to have these very intense descriptive paragraphs when you first meet a character - everything is there at once which usually results in me forgetting details and forming my own country looking dude.

 

[aravuus]

What's the difference between It and It: Film tie-in edition?

Latter costs less and is a 100 pages shorter. I want to read the book after seeing the new movie and of course I'd rather pay 7 bucks rather than 15, but I also want the complete experience.

 

[pa22word]

What's the difference between It and It: Film tie-in edition?

Latter costs less and is a 100 pages shorter. I want to read the book after seeing the new movie and of course I'd rather pay 7 bucks rather than 15, but I also want the complete experience.

Latter says not available to purchase for me, and get a blank page when I check out the book details tab.

I'm guessing it's just smaller print and cheaper bind they mass produced for selling during the run up to the movie. Word count is probably the same. It might be special stuff in the back of the rego edition, like the edition I read a few weeks ago had an excerpt from Sleeping Beauties in it I think, which they may have cut from that edition for margin cost reasons. Who knows, lol

 

[Alcotholic]

The Disaster Artist is one of the funniest books I've ever read. I don't think I've actually laughed reading a book before.

 

[pa22word]

So I burned through the new le Carre book last night, and it was okay. The story felt like it took an eternity to finish even though it's a pretty short book just because of the way it's formatted, with the majority of the plot delivered through flashbacks and epistolary format. It's themes of historical and cultural relativism viewing the cold war in strictly black and white terms when it was one of the greyest conflicts of modern history and the contempt the author holds towards revisionists while reflecting that the body count was indeed regrettable feels like an alluring stance towards what happened, it ultimately feels like a hollow straw man. Le carre doesn't really accurately give weight to revisionists arguments and instead reduces them down to caricatures he can easily swat down while maintaining the moral high is a rather troubling defense that seems to allow justification for just about anything. His anachronistic appeal to European "nationalism" (maybe "continentalism" is a better term? "european federalism"?) as a central driving force of Cold War policy ultimately comes across as rather laughable when the western alliance was never as close as anyone would comfortably like to admit in hindsight, and feels like a rather cheesy attempt to make commentary on Brexit in a book whose plot really has nothing to do with it.

About halfway through Lovecraft country, and thus far I'm rather disappointed in it. The soft anthology structure of the book seems to give the author fits, with really none of the settings and/or stories really feeling as developed as they should. The super blunt nods to Lovecraft come across as really hamfisted. I mean I really doubt anyone buying a book titled "Lovecraft Country" needs the author to repeatedly and bluntly name drop everything he's calling reference to. Breathe man, the work speaks for itself! The grand party structure of the characters also hurts the book I think. Lovecraft really worked because of the concept of the one person slowly losing their minds and being corrupted by the world they inhabited, and giving the events more than one perspective dampers that pretty much irreparably in execution. While the core idea of the book as Lovecraft with White Supremacy as the Lovecraftian mythological systems typical in Lovecraft's work is novel enough to carry me to the finish line, I can't be left thinking what could have been.

 

[aravuus]

Latter says not available to purchase for me, and get a blank page when I check out the book details tab.

I'm guessing it's just smaller print and cheaper bind they mass produced for selling during the run up to the movie. Word count is probably the same. It might be special stuff in the back of the rego edition, like the edition I read a few weeks ago had an excerpt from Sleeping Beauties in it I think, which they may have cut from that edition for margin cost reasons. Who knows, lol

¯\_(&#12484_/¯

Went with the longer one, just in case lol.

I'm not a particularly big King fan. I've only read a couple of his books, I remember hating one of them, can't even remember the rest. So I was obviously skeptical despite the fact that I loved the new movie.

But I read the first, I dunno, 20 pages last night and I feel like this might be it (har har) for me. The King book I can finally get into. The starting chapter was much more pleasant to read than I remember any of hist other texts being, the words just kind of flew by, but they still stuck with me. I want to say it was absolutely fantastic at setting up the atmosphere and making me see what King wanted me to see, but admittedly that's probably thanks to the fact that I just saw the movie and it's imagery is still very fresh in my mind.

Either way, I'm very excited to continue reading it tonight. Gonna lay in bed in a dark room with a cup of coffee and my iPad all night. Gonna try and remember to update my reading status on Goodreads, too. It's always fun to see the finished reading activity graph with massive books like this.

 

[Apt101]

Prince of Lies, James Lowder, Forgotten Realms The Avatar series IV. Cyric the lord of the dead, god of murder and patron of assassins, lord of strife, butting heads with the other gods across the planes. I should be done with it today or tomorrow. Probably the best FR novel I've read.

Halliconia Spring, Brian Aldiss, first in a trilogy. Seems to be a tale of the evolution of society on an earth-like planet with binary suns and centuries-long seasons. I hear it eventually spans beyond the evolution of culture onto the actual biological and climate-related changes the planet undergoes. It's not the greatest sci-fi I've ever read at 24% in, but I am enjoying it.

 

[Osahi]

A Column of Fire by Ken Follet, the third entry in the Kingdsbridge saga after Pillars of the Earth and World Without End.

Trying to pick up reading again after the last months I couldn't find the time for it. I did always have a book begun, but it was hard to finish. I think because I choose pretty 'intensive' reads of many pages and very literary writing style (Last one was a dutch translation the Eight Life of Nino Haratischwili, which is 1200 pages and deals with many characters. I loved it, but I didn't feel like progressing and it became a slog)

I just started A Column, which is a way easier read. So I'm pretty sure I'll finish it swiftly. Thing is, though I loved the previous two and Fall of Giants, Follets writing style has begun to bother me in Edge of Eternity and Winter of the World. I feel like he often overexplains or simplifies, without leaving any room for subtext. First chapter of A Column of Fire has the same issue, but it might improve as this is still setting up everything. At least the annoying reliance on coincidences of the latter parts of his Century Trilogy (where the grandchildren of the main characters of book one offcourse stumbled into each other on the world stage again) should not be an issue here...

 

[Sidewinder]

Finally managed to make myself read again, finished 'Das Versprechen" by Friedrich Dürrenmatt and I'm in the middle of my first Haruki Murakami book "Norwegian Wood".

First one is pretty good, the movie "The Pledge" with Jack Nicholson was based on it, gonna have to watch it again sometime. The second one seems to be very good indeed, heard much praise for it.

Next I'll probably continue with "Noble House", the second to last book in the Asian Saga by James Clavell. Probably gonna feel sad and empty after finishing this outstanding series...HBO, please consider doing an epic series out of these books, thx!!1 At least do Tai-Pan mmkkay?

 

[Maklershed]

Really have been loving Pillars of the Earth. It's one of those books I could read forever. Its like ASOIAF but less sadistic and more uplifting.

 

[sparky2112]

Finished:

GODDAMN. This is 560 pages of RELENTLESS. Winslow packs about ten novels worth of plot in here and still somehow manages to do character building - that's quite the trick. As a bonus, you get a picture of how truly terrible the CIA and other parts of the U.S. government were with regard to Central/South America and how utterly corrupt Mexico is (although you probably already knew that). I'll hold off reading its sequel, The Cartel, for a while, but I'm already looking forward to it.

Not sure what I'm doing next.

 

[thomaser]

Finished Daniel Levitin's "This Is Your Brain On Music". Lots of cool insights into all the connections between music and the brain. They are complicated to say the least.

Now, starting one of those huge works. I bought it many years ago on a recommendation from someone in a What Are You Reading?-thread here on GAF. Don't remember who, though. "Lanark - A Life in Four Books" by Scottish author Alasdair Gray. Looks like fun! Starting with "Volume 1, Book 3".

 

[Sean C]

Boy, that is one big book. King pretty much crams in all the ideas into this one. At times I think scenes go on way past the point where they've made their point, but overall the approach is effective. Compared to the movie, which understandably zeroes in on the kids, this is a much wider story about, well, an American town and all the ways its problems are America's problems in microcosm. The very end of the story is a bit of a reprise of King's earlier "The Body" (i.e., Stand By Me) in terms of

Spoiler

capturing the sense of nostalgia for friendships left behind in childhood

.

The most implausible part, though, is that

Spoiler

the other Losers have all heard of the adult Ben because he's a famous architect

. Heh.

 

[Morat]

Just finished rereading Rory Stewart's Occupational Hazards which is a weird and brilliant first hand account of his year trying to run an Iraqi province in 2003. I would also recommend his earlier book The Places In Between, in which he walked alone across Afghanistan in 2002. If you like great travel writing of the Lewis/Newby/Thesiger variety, you will not be disappointed.

 

[woodland]

Hey all, wasn't sure if there was a book recommendations thread for this, but has anyone read Boomerang by Michael Lewis? I really liked his writing on the Icelandic economic crisis, how it related to the fishing lots, etc. Anyone know of any more stuff along this line?

Thanks!

 

[NipplesAndToes23]

I'm reading Binti Home by Nnedi Orkorafor. I like how it blends African tribalism with aliens, higher education, and space shit.

 

[Dec]

Finished Cuckoo's Calling. It was alright.

Going to try Realms of the Elderlings next.

 

[fakefaker]

I'm reading Binti Home by Nnedi Orkorafor. I like how it blends African tribalism with aliens, higher education, and space shit.

You might just like The Prey of Gods by Nicky Drayden then.

 

[G-Fex]

I decided to take up reading a Star Trek novel. I wanted to start with the Return but instead got one more conveniently with kindle. Started reading No Time like the Past, a crossover novel.

Think I'll start reading the dragonlance D&D novels next.

 

[Alcotholic]

The Disaster Artist was awesome.

I was trying to decide between George Orwell's 1984 and Ursula LeGuin's The Farthest Shore. My friend mentioned never having read Animal Farm, so I decided I should reread that. Its been 13 or so years since I read it.
Then I'll read 1984 after.

 

[You Pay This Much]

God No!

I restarted about a week back. I've been meaning to finish this for a long while.

 

[fakefaker]

Wrapped up Good Luck, Yukikaze by Chōhei Kambayashi and wasn't too impressed by it. All the action in the first book seemed to be an after thought in this one replace by over analyzing and repetition of ideas and facts...

Next up, Murder as a Fine Art by David Morrell.

 

[KonradLaw]

Finished:

GODDAMN. This is 560 pages of RELENTLESS. Winslow packs about ten novels worth of plot in here and still somehow manages to do character building - that's quite the trick. As a bonus, you get a picture of how truly terrible the CIA and other parts of the U.S. government were with regard to Central/South America and how utterly corrupt Mexico is (although you probably already knew that). I'll hold off reading its sequel, The Cartel, for a while, but I'm already looking forward to it.

Not sure what I'm doing next.

Well, you could read Winslow's The Force. One of best books of 2017

 

[aravuus]

Still at the beginning of It, but I'm enjoying it so much so far that I'm thinking of reading more King after this.

Is there really no Kindle version of the original The Stand? All I can find on Amazon is the revised version with a million more pages.

 

[moojito]

I'm a short way into this:

Cephrael's Hand by Melissa McPhail

It's pretty good so far! Reminds me a bit of the way of kings/stormlight archive books, for some reason. I briefly looked over the reception on goodreads and it seems to be a solid series so here's hoping it doesn't fall off the rails like a few recent trilogies I've tried.

 

[Maklershed]

Still at the beginning of It, but I'm enjoying it so much so far that I'm thinking of reading more King after this.

Is there really no Kindle version of the original The Stand? All I can find on Amazon is the revised version with a million more pages.

I was gonna say there has to be cause that's how I read it but then I remembered I had a first edition hard copy because it was chock full of breathtakingly racist content that got removed in revised editions.

EDIT: Btw, I noticed in most Stephen King books (especially if the protagonist is on the run/traveling) someone gets a 'sack of burgers'. Has anyone ever done that before? Just ordered a bag full of burgers? Undetermined number and no fries or anything. It always struck me as weird.

 

[pa22word]

I was gonna say there has to be cause that's how I read it but then I remembered I had a first edition hard copy because it was chock full of breathtakingly racist content that got removed in revised editions.

EDIT: Btw, I noticed in most Stephen King books (especially if the protagonist is on the run/traveling) someone gets a 'sack of burgers'. Has anyone ever done that before? Just ordered a bag full of burgers? Undetermined number and no fries or anything. It always struck me as weird.

Yeah it's old time lingo from classic diners. I dunno about elsewhere, but in the south a lot of the more retro places or local fast (such as braums in the southwest) offerings do bags of burgers with x or y number of burgers in them. They usually come sauceless other than mayo to preserve integrity of the burger with a shitload of ketchup and mustard packets inside.


Much like a bucket of chicken or a pizza, it serves as a quick way to feed a family when parents are feeling like they want to take a lazy day and stay out of the kitchen.

Also a really awesome stoner food

 

[Maklershed]

Yeah it's old time lingo from classic diners. I dunno about elsewhere, but in the south a lot of the more retro places or local fast (such as braums in the southwest) offerings do bags of burgers with x or y number of burgers in them. They usually come sauceless other than mayo to preserve integrity of the burger with a shitload of ketchup and mustard packets inside.

Interesting. I think the only place I knew of that did something like that in the northeast is White Castle. Never been to one myself though.

 

[aravuus]

I could really go for a sack of burgers, but alas, no such thing in Finland.

I guess I'll just read the revised edition of The Stand, then.