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DO NOT STEAL BOOKS FROM YOUR LOCAL LIBRARY, PLEASE - Voile Staff
I'm graduating in less than a month now, and so I have been looking through my house's bookshelves, raiding them for books that aren't mine and belong to the school in some way. Some of these are library books, some of these are school-assigned books, and still others are books from friends that I borrowed way back in sophomore year and haven't given back in two years. Whoops...
These books include and are not limited to: Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky), The Tempest (piece of shit Shakespeare), Life in Medieval England (by J.J. Bagley, I should give that back to my friend before I graduate...), the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams, this book too...), The Other Boleyn Girl (I still haven't seen the movie), The Name of the Rose (Umberto Eco), Utopia (by Thomas More), Chronicle of a Death Foretold (piece of shit Marquez) The Kindness of Strangers (by John Boswell, why do I have so many books on medieval England around here?), Notes from Underground (also by Dostoevsky), The Stranger (Camus), Magic Knight Rayearth (omnibus edition), Dracula (that ending sucked), and The Six Wives of Henry VIII (I am a history geek).
Oh, and a half dozen foreign language dictionaries (Spanish to English and back again, French to English, Japanese to English, Italian to English, and one anomalous guide to Yiddish.)
So, what have you guys been reading recently in the way of books?
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Recently finished The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen, and am re-reading A Man, A Cat and Two Women by Jun'ichiro Tanazaki.
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I misread "The Kindness of Strangers" as "The Strangers," and then realized that it was on the list almost right underneath with my screen's resolution...
Anyway, of those, I've read "The Strangers" (we read a couple of Camus books in my senior year English class), the Hitchhiker's Guide series (I was originally just going to read the first one for a report, but because I read too fast, I ended up doing the whole series...) and Magic Knight Rayearth (many years ago; I doubt I remember all the details).
Looks like you have an interesting selection though. Did you read Lord of the Flies for school, by any chance?
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Looks like you have an interesting selection though. Did you read Lord of the Flies for school, by any chance?
Not for school. I read it outside of class... or tried to, because somehow I could not bring myself to read it. I think I stopped after the first twenty pages, an all-time low for me. I guess I just didn't have the patience for it at the time. I should try again someday.
And yeah, I do have rather... eclectic tastes.
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Ah, that's a shame... Being all into psych, it was one of my favorites in Sophomore year. Another one I liked was Demian, by Hermann Hesse(sp?). I don't think any schools read it besides mine, though... And since it was a school copy, I didn't get to keep it.
I also did a fuck-awesome final project for Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie at the end of senior year. I had only discovered Touhou about a month before that, and my assignment was to creatively create a soundtrack to it. My inherent lack of creativity was a set-back, but with so much arranged music, it didn't take too long. I remember throwing in a song from the Melty Blood OST and something by Josh Groban that my mom had recommended to me... All in all, my teacher must have thought it was pretty weird. Thankfully, I didn't have to present it...
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My custom title says it all. I read a LOT. Any time you see me I'm carrying a book, and it's usually a different one each time. I really don't care if it's printed, handwritten, or electronic. As long as it's legible it can stave off withdrawal symptoms. For nonfiction, I usually read books on history, science, and mathematics. For fiction, it's sci-fi, fantasy, and mystery. Classic or contemporary, it doesn't matter.
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Non-fiction? I actually read more of that than actual literature, I think... My favorites are the Hawking duo, A Brief History of Time and The Universe in a Nutshell... But my overreaching little brother lost them when he took them to school many years ago, and he still owes me new copies...
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I just finished reading Dog On It. It was way cute. Really good, too.
My favorite book today has got to be Running With Scissors. I know it's not supposed to be taken as such, but wow shota. That guy had such a crazy life.
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I tend to have my nose in books when I'm not playing DS on the go.
Wheel of Time and Song of Ice and Fire series come highly recommended. I've started reading the first Malazan Book of the Fallen title as well.
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Wheel of Time
Excited about the final book? I've read Brandon Sanderson's work and I think he's a worthy successor to Robert Jordan.
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Excited about the final book? I've read Brandon Sanderson's work and I think he's a worthy successor to Robert Jordan.
Final books (http://www.brandonsanderson.com/article/56/Splitting-AMOL), unfortunately. We still have a ways to go. But yeah, though I haven't read anything of Sanderson's, I am very interested to see how he picks up the world Jordan left behind.
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Final books?
That's good. I felt that 1 book wasn't enough to wrap up.
Also reading Gravity's Rainbow. It's very difficult to process.
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Final books (http://www.brandonsanderson.com/article/56/Splitting-AMOL), unfortunately. We still have a ways to go. But yeah, though I haven't read anything of Sanderson's, I am very interested to see how he picks up the world Jordan left behind.
Fuck, I KNEW this would happen! At least I'll have a shit-ton to read. I don't want it to end so soon, anyway. Also, read the Mistborn trilogy. You'll like it.
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Fuck, I KNEW this would happen! At least I'll have a shit-ton to read. I don't want it to end so soon, anyway. Also, read the Mistborn trilogy. You'll like it.
Oh, I think I've heard of that. Sanderson's epic fantasy offering, right?
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Oh, I think I've heard of that. Sanderson's epic fantasy offering, right?
Yeah. They're kickass.
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Yeah. They're kickass.
Thank you for not saying "epic". <_<
What's the name of the first book? I'll pick it up after I'm done with Gardens of the Moon.
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Thank you for not saying "epic". <_<
What's the name of the first book? I'll pick it up after I'm done with Gardens of the Moon.
Some copies just say "Mistborn", but it's called "The Final Empire". Two is "The Well of Ascension", and three is "The Hero of Ages".
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I've been meaning to pick up Paradise Lost, but I can't seem to find it.
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I've been meaning to pick up Paradise Lost, but I can't seem to find it.
:V (http://www.instantrimshot.com)
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read Revolutionary Road lately, awesome story.
Highly recommended:
Caligula
The story is wondrously portrayed, the characters beautiful and cruel...if I can write an essay over how good this book is I would draw up a thesis. This is the good shit and I highly recommend it.
Perfume - Story of a Murderer
Works well as a whole, I can't believe it is not butter type story, pulled a lot of references from this one in my Remi fic so it is worth the read, I believe most of you would enjoy this one.
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I was reading Isaac Asimov's Foundation series some time back. I really should borrow the rest from the library one of these days and finish it. If you're fond of sci-fi, it's a good read.
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I've actually recently been reading a book on writing -- Wild Mind: Living The Writer's Life by Natalie Goldberg -- and have been going through Goldfinger as well (hooray, Ian Fleming).
However, has anyone else ever heard of a [possibly old] detective novel by the name of The Taurus Trip? I forget the author and I'm too lazy to get it out from the dark, labyrinthine confines of my bookshelves right now to find out, but it's a fairly good read.
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I like... physics... and math... books.
I particularily like The Planiverse by A. K. Dewdney.
...Anyone ever read I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream?
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...Anyone ever read I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream?
Years and years ago, because I saw the video game based off of it in stores.
It left me rather unhinged.
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Right now I'm reading a book about Japanese myths. I'm also reading Freedom Writers. I highly recommend it.
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Right now I'm reading a book about Japanese myths. I'm also reading Freedom Writers. I highly recommend it.
Saw the movie. I liked it. I feel like reading the book itself.
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Has anyone here ever read the entire Ctulhu Mythos?
I mean all the stories that are written in letters by late Lovecraft?
I had this one called a collection of Lovecraftian Macabre and Horror, with an introduction written by Peter Bloch, which is really quite nice, but I am afraid today I find that the lack of Lovecraftian horror is missing from my book collection...
What other books should I look for with around this genre?
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I'm not sure, but you're really lucky to have that book. I've really wanted to start up The Mythos, but I can't find a copy of any of the stories...
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Agatha Christie's book are awesome.
Murder in the Orient Express is her classic.
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Agatha Christie's book are awesome.
Murder in the Orient Express is her classic.
Brad Meltzer says hello
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Saw the movie. I liked it. I feel like reading the book itself.
You should I felt like the book was better than the movie. But I always say that when it's book v.s movie
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as a member of a touhou fanforum
i feel obliged to read lolita
so i am
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oh my gawd.
Uninformative post/10
Anyhow, anyone else here read the Chalion series? It's very good, if you're into fantasy.
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I read the foundation series quite a while ago, with other assorted novels and non-fiction books.
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Perfume - Story of a Murderer
Works well as a whole, I can't believe it is not butter type story, pulled a lot of references from this one in my Remi fic so it is worth the read, I believe most of you would enjoy this one.
Mmm, I read this book a few years back. Evidently, I've become a little less sane as a result :/
I've finished reading an English translation of the book "Noli Me Tangere" (Touch Me Not) because it was something that was covered in school last year and it being in FILIPINO which I suck at right now I need to read it so I can prepare myself for next year's... "El Filibusterismo," which I do plan on reading up ahead on in due time so I can familiarize myself with the premise. :V
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Mmm, I read this book a few years back. Evidently, I've become a little less sane as a result :/
I've finished reading an English translation of the book "Noli Me Tangere" (Touch Me Not) because it was something that was covered in school last year and it being in FILIPINO which I suck at right now I need to read it so I can prepare myself for next year's... "El Filibusterismo," which I do plan on reading up ahead on in due time so I can familiarize myself with the premise. :V
admittingly you never read anything by Haruki Murakami
Now that will render you a little timid, the fact that there are so many facets of murderer faces.
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admittingly you never read anything by Haruki Murakami
Now that will render you a little timid, the fact that there are so many facets of murderer faces.
Uhh, what? I read Norwegian Wood, Kafka on the Shore and Dance Dance Dance >_>
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So you did?
That is awesome, now to man-up and read Lovecraftian horror.
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Oh man...Lovecraftian horror...I can't even bring myself to look at the cthulhu picture after reading it...I could before I read it.:(
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Pick up the collected edition, it is not all about the Ctulhu that makes any impact.
If at all, most of the stories are fantasy based even, the horror aspect comes when you start to imagine.
The letters by Lovecraft worth reading:
Pictures in The House
The Rats in The Walls
Colors out of Space
The Music by Erich Zann
The Whispers in the Witch House
etc.
No tentacles, just horror, or a very allegoric level that can scare you the next time you look at a chipmunk.
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I read a few on wiki about the dream world, I would like to know which book has that. :P
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His letters are hardly published, but I saw chapters of it in a Great Collection of Classic Horror in the shelves.
There are other stories, including shorts by Stephen King and even Lumley.
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There are only two books that have change my life...
The lord of the ring was one..., well, more like The Silmarillion (And more specially Turin Turambar's history) Tolkien make me love fictional literature and even anime and manga (don't laugh...before reading it i would have hate all people that watch anime or play rp or even like....uhmmm weaboo's stuff)
But the other one, and the best, is THE ALCHEMIST from Paulo Coelho. Is the best one, the most...sorry, i can't find the words needed to describe it... ='(
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Probably my 2 fave authors are Raymond Feist, and George R R Martin. Any fan of fantasy should pick up a game of thrones and read it if they haven't. It's mega-super. I just wish book 5 was out already, wahhh.
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Never forget Steven Erikson (Malazan Book of the Fallen)
Sequel to Name of the Wind (Kingkiller Chronicles) was delayed - well, the publishers assumed too much about its release date.
On a lighter and brighter note, the next Spook's book comes out in 2 days \o/
hope I'm not the only one who enjoys books for 'younger readers'
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Never forget Steven Erikson (Malazan Book of the Fallen)
Sequel to Name of the Wind (Kingkiller Chronicles) was delayed - well, the publishers assumed too much about its release date.
On a lighter and brighter note, the next Spook's book comes out in 2 days \o/
hope I'm not the only one who enjoys books for 'younger readers'
Funny you should mention. I've just started giving the malazan series a go. Just finished deadhouse gates. While I feel it's good, it also seems like the vast majority of characters don't have long to develop before they are shuffled out of the plot or killed or something. I don't mind characters dying but I want to be a little bit more attached to them before they get the noose >=P.
But.. I'm only done book 2, there's still alot that can happen.
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I finished reading Memoirs of a Geisha a few days ago. I thought it was pretty good, actually, I wasn't really expecting much from it.
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^ The movie turned out pretty disappointing for me though because the intense graphic detail was barely represented in the movie itself. True they choose prominent actors for the roles, but they just don't cut it, the drama is not as intense as I expected it to be.
Geisha needs a remake.
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That new Stephen King book is quite awesome, I must say, it has frightening premises, but it is the epic adventure inside that really brings out the horror aspect.
I read a few on wiki about the dream world, I would like to know which book has that. :P
I don't recall one specific on the Dream World, but there are plenty and in fact like Dreams in The Witch House contains epic mentions of the journeys into the dream world.
In another tale, The Outsider by Lovecraft talks of a boy raised in his surroundings by death.
An in bred child whose only relatives are the skulls that lay on his bed, as are the bones that litter his abandoned domain.
He enters the realm of Nephren-Ka, and never came back, his adventure there is the journey most wondrous like that when witnessing the completion of Salvador Dali's artwork.
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Funny you should mention. I've just started giving the malazan series a go. Just finished deadhouse gates. While I feel it's good, it also seems like the vast majority of characters don't have long to develop before they are shuffled out of the plot or killed or something. I don't mind characters dying but I want to be a little bit more attached to them before they get the noose >=P.
But.. I'm only done book 2, there's still alot that can happen.
Damn I can't argue against your point because it would totally spoil everything, but, yes, you are only at book 2, and a lot can indeed happen.
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@Ghaleon:
I finished Mistborn the other day. Great read. Gonna pick up the second in the series soon.
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The last time i read books was when i was a child... wait no
actually i haven?t read that much very well know books.
latest one was, i guess, Harry Potter 6 (didn?t want to spoiler myself the end, Book 7, until that movie is out).
In the future i might be able to get "and then there were none" somewhere... i really want to have it.
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The last time i read books was when i was a child... wait no
actually i haven?t read that much very well know books.
latest one was, i guess, Harry Potter 6 (didn?t want to spoiler myself the end, Book 7, until that movie is out).
In the future i might be able to get "and then there were none" somewhere... i really want to have it.
I thought I hated books thanks to school (public school pre-college is a waste of time IMO), then I forced myself to read a book of my own choice during my spare time instead of the cheap drivel that school made me read. I found it was enjoyable, which in retrospect is lucky since I've tried reading new series randomly and hating it occasionally.
Anyway, if you find yourself hating to read because you hate the books you are forced to read, try giving something else a shot, and not neccesarily something you already know. It might suprise you...
@Edible: That name doesn't ring a bell to me, should it?
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My bad. Mobius mentioned that to me, not you.
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I've recently been into R.A. Salvatore novels. I've already read through 6 or the 13 books in "The Legend of Drizzt" series and I gotta say, that Elf, is most badass.
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Oh hey, a thread for me.
I just finished up A Feast of (for?) Crows (which should please one poster here). Presently reading Mystery of the Ancient Seafarers, which the National Geographic Society recently put out; covering the histories of several early Mediterranean seafaring civilizations. It's a brief treatment, unfortunately, but I am hoping they interconnect things well.
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I've recently been into R.A. Salvatore novels. I've already read through 6 or the 13 books in "The Legend of Drizzt" series and I gotta say, that Elf, is most badass.
I find the early books are good.. uhh. going from memory:
legacy, exile, sojourn, uhh..something of darkness I think. streams of silver (whatever book is before it), halfling's gem. and the 3 after those.. but it kinda went downhill from there IMO. The most recent books just kinda felt juvenile somehow.
I just finished up A Feast of (for?) Crows
you DID read the 3 books before it right? It's the worst of the 4 existing novels imo.. though it's still good.
I can't wait until book 5 comes out so I can hear about Tyrion.. Somewhat looking forward to Jon snow stories too. I enjoyed it earlier with him, but after he became a spy or whatever it wasn't as enjoyable for me (even after he rejoined the wall).
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The Exile trilogy is probably Drizzt's best; though the Wrath of Menzoberrazan; or whatever the called the third trilogy, was pretty good too. The next couple books were not bad, but it was pretty clear that Salvatore considered things finished with the third trilogy and was just cashing in/following WotC's orders.
And yeah, I've read the three books before Crows. I can dig what you're saying about it being least among equals, if only because it didn't focus on a lot of characters that were previously followed. But, it's really cool to see Jaime become an Anti-hero in his own right, after Tyrion (who is one of the best anti-heroes ever) bowed out of things.
Personally, I sorta liked rogue John Snow, if only because he was constantly tempted to say to fuck with it all and join the Wildlings, and really the only reason he didn't was that they tried to get him to kill an innocent. That's going to make things interesting for his segment in the next book. It's kinda a shame that Samwell got the same kind of vow-breaking in wildling chick wants some, though. Also hanging Brienne made me smile, because now she officially failed at life and never achieved anything she wanted to do.
Also: My prediction: Tyrion is going to join up with Daenerys (Only spelt right).
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The Exile trilogy is probably Drizzt's best; though the Wrath of Menzoberrazan; or whatever the called the third trilogy, was pretty good too. The next couple books were not bad, but it was pretty clear that Salvatore considered things finished with the third trilogy and was just cashing in/following WotC's orders.
And yeah, I've read the three books before Crows. I can dig what you're saying about it being least among equals, if only because it didn't focus on a lot of characters that were previously followed. But, it's really cool to see Jaime become an Anti-hero in his own right, after Tyrion (who is one of the best anti-heroes ever) bowed out of things.
Personally, I sorta liked rogue John Snow, if only because he was constantly tempted to say to fuck with it all and join the Wildlings, and really the only reason he didn't was that they tried to get him to kill an innocent. That's going to make things interesting for his segment in the next book. It's kinda a shame that Samwell got the same kind of vow-breaking in wildling chick wants some, though. Also hanging Brienne made me smile, because now she officially failed at life and never achieved anything she wanted to do.
Also: My prediction: Tyrion is going to join up with Daenerys (Only spelt right).
Tyrion didn't bow out, he's just missing from book 4, and will be in book 5, just like jaime will be missing in book 5...Though you probably know that. In case you didn't, Martin was currently making book 4, and he realized that it was much too big, so rather than cut the book in half (literally), and release it, he decided to cut the characters in half, and release it. The next book is still kind of book 4, only with the characters book 4 didn't include...You'd think that he would release book 5 faster because of this decision, dar...I like Jaime and Tyrion too myself.
I kinda liked Brienne, even though her character wasn't very deep. I can relate to her. She never had it easy with anything, but didn't let that stop her from continuing to try. Every defeat that she had was caused by misunderstanding from false-information given by liars and accepted thru ignorance. Totally the story of my life. If she was given equal grounds and chances as everyone else, she would have not "failed" at life.
Daenerys is a roller-coaster ride. I find I loathe her chapters like 6 times in a row.. super boring, then the next 6 pwn, then they boring, then they pwn, back and forth. I can't remember how well I enjoyed her most recent ones, been a few years >=P.
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Yeah, Daenerys chapters run the gamut. Overall, I like them, but they are so removed from everything else that it's practically a different story altogether, so there's a sort of "Let's get back to the good stuff already!" feeling to a lot of them. And I enjoyed Brienne. She was a cool concept. It's just that her whole life was pretty much a series of failures despite being an awesome knight, and getting hanged by Catelyn is pretty much the crowning achievement of that failure. It really could not have ended better. Shame she had to take Podrick down with her, though.
But really, Jaime becoming a major character is the surprising bit for me. I really didn't see it coming, and had to do a double take when his chapter first appeared. Same with Cersei. But his character development is interesting, to say the least. It'll be interesting to see how he reacts to Brienne's hanging.
Also: I am hoping Sansa gets to do things. Her chapters are important in the sense that it dwells on the abject powerlessness of noblewomen, but more things happening in them would be keen.
Finally: I hope Mance gets a few chapters. He's too cool to die. ;_;
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I've always been a sucker for Vince Flynn's political thriller series. Those books have everything!
Action, espionage, assassins, politics, humor, terrorism, romance, etc.
Very good reads, I recommend them to all readers.
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Just finished reading The Forge of God. Needless to say things didn't end well. :(
Onto Anvil of Stars!
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I've always been a sucker for Vince Flynn's political thriller series. Those books have everything!
Action, espionage, assassins, politics, humor, terrorism, romance, etc.
Very good reads, I recommend them to all readers.
Convince me in 200 words or less.
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Michener is AWESOME. Don't be intimidated by the sheer size of his books. Just start turning pages.
The good thing about Michener is that he writes historical fiction from pretty much all over the world. I started with Hawaii and loved it, along with Caribbean, but if you want a more cross-sectional view of American history, Chesapeake is wonderful. He talks about cooking crab, oysters, and seafood enough to make me hungry.
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One thing I don't like about fantasy novels...And it seems to occur in all of them, is the amount of needless poetry, song lyrics, rhymes, etc. Like the dwarven songs in the Drizzt novels, and the amount of text wasted on various songs (especially the girl and the bear or whatever) in martin books, etc. Am I the only person that's like "man? this AGAIN *skip*". sure seems like it because EVERY author does it, am I the only person who doesn't like that stuff?!
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I like it conceptually, because it adds more flavor to the world.
But a lot of the time, I'll straight up skip it unless I think it's plot relevant. I have no kind of eye for discerning meter or flow; I'd have to hear it most of the time to understand it correctly.
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I am reading Lord of the Flies at the moment for school. It's sad that I am the only one who likes the book. Guess kids these days don't know classics :(
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Lord of the Flies is neat. If only because it's really fun to shout "Sucks to your Ass-mar!"
That, and I imagined that the Lord of the Flies had Darth Vader's voice (I was reading extended universe novels back then =[).
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Lord of the Flies is neat. If only because it's really fun to shout "Sucks to your Ass-mar!"
That, and I imagined that the Lord of the Flies had Darth Vader's voice (I was reading extended universe novels back then =[).
Everything with Beelzebub is good. That is why I am going to make something related to Beelzebub
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I've never read lord of the flies, but I believe everything schools make you read are "classic"s... All the ones I've read still suck hard though.
I also never understood the whole Shakespeare fad. I mean seriously, can people actually enjoy that stuff legitimately? I really think everyone who likes it just pretends to because they think they come across as smart for liking it because it's "difficult" to read. Difficult to read because of hard to grasp concepts and difficult to read because everyone speaks like a retard aren't the same though.
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Shakespeare is a classic because he is the first person who really addressed such literary themes on stage; and as well was a pretty good poet. Shakespeare is only difficult to understand because langauge has evolved since them. If you understand 16th century English, he's actually pretty clear.
As well, he stood out as someone who didn't work with purely contemporary things, nor did he go into history that was quite so idealized as things such as the Grail Romances, with were practically mythology. Shit, back then the idea of wrting about, say, the assassination of Julius Caesar was radical as hell. And he didn't do it as a dry history, he added fairly fitting drama to it all.
Mind you, there are also a lot of red meat for the audience plays, so it's not like he was all classics all the time.
Then, you have to consider that a lot of the themes he wrote about still resonate with people today (at least once you get past the language barrier). That is not an easy thing to do, as a writer.
As well, Shakespeare gets my personal respect for The Tempest, as it was pretty much an early fantasy novel; it wasn't based on any particular mythology or folklore (though it invokes several), it was Shakespeare pretty much making up his own setting.
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I read
faggotry all kinds of stuff.
I just finished Miyuki Myabe's Crossfire. I only bought the thing because it was shiny and brand new and was costing R$1,00(US$0,55?) at my school's book market(they sell used donated books for R$1 each, then donate the money. I always buy a goddamn ton of books in that thing) instead of the original 12 dollars plus import fees and taxes which would normally make it fucking expensive here. First book I read of that kind, it was rather nice.
It's fun to think most of my books are in english, except for brazillian literature(which is awesome, I must say).
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I'm not a literary but or anything, but I enjoy a few dark books.
As I Lay Dying, by Faulkner was the first to kinda mess with my head.
Then Beloved, which I had to read for school, twisted with it more. .__.
In general I like books that use that stream-of-consciousness crap, which is especially why I liked Tsukihime so much :V
I also read a bit of Murakami, but I haven't read Kafka or Nietzsche, I'm wondering if I should start reading their books in my free time. I just hope I don't become a self absorbed existentialist twat after reading them. Not saying all existentialists are, but I just know a few :-\
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Kafka is why I never want to go to the Czech Republic. It must be the worst place in the world to have inspired such writings.
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Kafka is why I never want to go to the Czech Republic. It must be the worst place in the world to have inspired such writings.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEyFH-a-XoQ <-- this
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I'm not going to make the same mistake I made in the old awesome games topic; instead I shall simply say:
TERRY
FREAKIN'
PRATCHETT
Also, Edible: Sanderson is bloody amazing. Get everything by him. Everything. Including Elantris and Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians. The man is a blasted GENIUS.
In other news, I'm a MASSIVE sucker for Weis and Hickman. DragonLance, Death Gate Cycle, Sovereign Stone, and more. I am still really not happy that I've to this day been unable to find the Darksword OR the Rose of the Prophet trilogies, and I check every bookstore I enter.
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I'm not going to make the same mistake I made in the old awesome games topic; instead I shall simply say:
TERRY
FREAKIN'
PRATCHETT
Also, Edible: Sanderson is bloody amazing. Get everything by him. Everything. Including Elantris and Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians. The man is a blasted GENIUS.
In other news, I'm a MASSIVE sucker for Weis and Hickman. DragonLance, Death Gate Cycle, Sovereign Stone, and more. I am still really not happy that I've to this day been unable to find the Darksword OR the Rose of the Prophet trilogies, and I check every bookstore I enter.
I really enjoyed Weist and Hickman at first. I enjoyed the twins series, as well as the dragons one..until about summer flame. After that... ICK. I just *HATE* the new cast, and it's only twisting a knife in a wound that the only old-cast member who is a regular in the new stuff is Tasslehoff, who was probably my least fave.
As for Darksword, you'll probably say something like "EFFFFFF" in 296pt font or whatever, but I always trip across like 5 copies of each book in the series everywhere I go. It's like lord of the rings or whatever lol.
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[size=296]EFFFFFFFFFFFFF[/size]
Yeah, I think I hate you now. :P Also, you're forgetting Raistlin. Who is sheer ownage. And while many of the characters were...less likable, shall we say...I still am a very substantial fan of Gerard. He was my favorite character from the War of Souls, hands down.
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[size=296]EFFFFFFFFFFFFF[/size]
Yeah, I think I hate you now. :P Also, you're forgetting Raistlin. Who is sheer ownage. And while many of the characters were...less likable, shall we say...I still am a very substantial fan of Gerard. He was my favorite character from the War of Souls, hands down.
Eh. I like Raistlin. I just don't remember reading mucha bout him after summer flame.
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I'm reading Sphere.
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Just finished reading The Confessions of an Economic Hitman, which I really, really wanted to like. But I just couldn't. It was bad. And my bullshit alarm went off several times while reading it.
Currently reading Shame In The Blood, which is starting off great.
Recently finished 69 by Ryu Murakami, which I think was probably the second best Japanese novel I've ever read. When it comes to modern Japanese lit, I highly recommend Yoko Ogawa. Diving Pool is just perfection. Haruki Murakami is a must, of course, but his work is pretty hit-or-miss. Some stand out titles include Sputnik Sweetheart, South of the Border West of the Sun, after the quake, A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. Banana Yoshimoto is also quite good. Hitomi Kanehara's Snakes and Earrings was pretty average, and tried too hard to be shocking, while Mari Akasaka is just awful, but Ryu Murakami thinks she's this amazing new rising talent and so Vibrator got published even though it reads like an outline for a novel rather than a novel itself.
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The May Pole of Merry Mount by Nathaniel Hawthorne, in preparation for The Scarlet Letter
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I just finished Heart of Darkness.
They shoulda just named it Moby Dick-Jungle Version minus the homoerotic subtext and talk of whale anatomy.
I find nothing original in it, but it's still very well written. Conrad is a master of sarcasm.
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While I read a lot of mostly everything, I have particular taste for science fiction. The classical authors, like Asimov, Clarke, Herbert and Card are amongst my favorites, but I'm also a great fan of the cyberpunk (Gibson, Stephenson, Sterling) and post-cyberpunk authors (Charles Stross, Cory Doctorow). Fantasy, I'm not too much into, except for the stuff by China Mi?ville.
I'm currently following the release of Doctorow's Makers (http://www.tor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=blog&id=%2038507) like it's a triple-weekly dose of crack.
I just finished Heart of Darkness.
They shoulda just named it Moby Dick-Jungle Version minus the homoerotic subtext and talk of whale anatomy.
I find nothing original in it, but it's still very well written. Conrad is a master of sarcasm.
I don't think they are so much alike. It's true that both deal with representing different facets of human behaviour. But Moby Dick was mainly about obsession with one's fate, while Heart of Darkness was about the darkness in people's heart emerging when they are too long in a dark place (i.e. away from civilization).
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Kafka is why I never want to go to the Czech Republic. It must be the worst place in the world to have inspired such writings.
We have good beer :V
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I suddenly find myself reading like a crazy motherfucker this month. Finished Sphere already(in 3 days), pondered whether or not I should start The Parsifal Mosaic(it's huge), decided not to, yet.
Then hueg bi-annual book Rio de janeiro book convention happened, I bought a few more books to add to my huge book queue. Recently I started The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, which I can't stop feeling I should've read a long time ago.
I read half of it this morning.
After it I've a load of Ludlum stuff.
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Just giving a shout out to Dave Lawrence's The Bartender Journals. So fun. So informative.
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Read the other half of the Guide this morning. Awesome.
Re-pondered whether or not I should start The Parsifal Mosaic, decided not to. Yet.
Now, should I read The Chauncellor Manuscript or Apocalypse Watch?
(Loads of Ludlum, etc.)
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I'm also a great fan of the cyberpunk (Gibson, Stephenson, Sterling)
Okay. Maybe you can do this.
I like Cyberpunk conceptually. The idea of it is awesome as hell. But I've never ever found a Cyberpunk book that was better than mediocre. Can you help me find a cyberpunk book that's good and well-written?
For reference, I've read: Neuromancer, City Come A'Walkin', Virtual Light, some of Idoru (which pissed me off so bad I couldn't finish it), the Mirror Shades anthology, Snow Crash, and Diamond Age.
I didn't really like all of them. I almost liked Snow Crash, except it's pretty clear Stephenson had no idea how to end it and was also profoundly ignorant of history. And I liked the first half of Diamond Age, until Stephenson systematically destroyed everything good about it in the second half of the book and I got so disgusted I put it down thirty pages from the end and swore to punch Neal Stephenson in the face if ever I met him. I almost liked City Come A'Walkin', except for the rocker girl who was psychic for no reason at all. That was just...superfluous and irritating. Gibson's stuff seems to be poorly written and all that well planned. But I admit I read Pattern Recognition first, so I know he can do better. =|
Now that I've trashed what you like, got any recommendations?
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Ironic that you make this post without posting that Neuromancer cover.
And maybe surprisingly, I'm more-or-less of the same opinion as you. I like the concept of cyberpunk much more than I like the cyberpunk books. Though, while I admit the overall writing is not that great (Neuromancer's is borderline craptacular, really) I still find the books very entertaining. While Gibson's best works are the post-cyberpunk ones, I still like the older ones for things like the sense of nostalgia or how the characters are so immersed in the setting they are defined by how they perceive it.
It's been a long time since I read Stephenson, but I will also agree that he has good ideas that he doesn't always develop well.
tl;dr I'm on the same boat as you, and also wanted to know some better-written cyberpunk works. I still find them fun to read though, and also like the other cyberpunk media, but I kind of moved away into post-cyber and hard sci-fi.
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Recently I picked up Dan Brown's Lost Symbol, which is an okay book, okay following to his best franchise ever with Robert Langdon but don't expect any smart stuff beyond the typical boil and unboil.
The other more distinct choice of read, is Hearts in Atlantis, I believe if you have the time for the read, pick it up, I consider this one of the better Stephen King books ever written. (Green Mile ranks 1 on my book list)
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Started reading Shutter Island after watching the trailer for the movie. It's alright so far.
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I've noticed a lack of Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves in this thread, which disappoints me. Trying to explain the book is difficult due to how it's written, but I'll try. The first plot is about Johnny Truant, who finds in his recently-deceased neighbour's apartment a massive stack of notes and pages. As he pieces the notes together, he learns that they're a review of a non-existent movie entitled The Navidson Record. The second plot is Zampan?'s review of The Navidson Record, a movie about a family who decides to move into a new house to try and solve their family issues. After a vacation, however, they discover that the house has changed and is now larger on the inside than on the outside. This is only the surface of the plot, though. As the book goes on, the first plot begins to become influenced by the second plot, and a third plot is eventually added in. It's complex and difficult to read and understand, but I highly recommend it.
I've also began to read Pynchon's Mason & Dixon, but I haven't read enough of it to talk about it here.
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I don't read, but I'm reading Metamorphisis by Franz Kafka right now. Just got finished with ONE.
And by "I don't read" I mean I havn't read a book for enjoyment (until Kafka) since I read halfway through Eragon in middle school.
And for Psychology class I have to read "Walter Dean Myers" by Slam! Oh wait, I thought that giant text at the top was the title. Don't read it, everything about his style is so pointless and it feels as if it was written by a gradeschooler.
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Currently reading Personal Days by Ed Park. It's less like a modernized, less "how to improve the workplace" Dilbert, more like how people in the workplace deal with office politics, isolation, firings and downsizing, in a modern context. It's actually really freaking hilarious and I highly recommend picking it up.
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I'm building pacience to read The Lost World.
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Reading Netochka Nevzanova by Dostoyevskty
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Reading The Critique Of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant, wanting to obtain and read The Magus by Francis Barret, The Grimorie of Armadel, and many more.....
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I just finished Vacuum Diagrams by Stephen Baxter yesterday. Frickin' delicious SF; it takes place from like 3500 AD to 500,000,000 AD, the end of the baryonic universe after the godlike Xeelee's conflict with the dark matter Photino Birds. The writing is just enchanting, it even supersedes Larry Niven, who for a while I considered the king of SF. Other SF I'm into include the Known Space universe by Larry Niven(obviously), and the Eschaton series by Charles Stross, though I've only read one of the two books in it, Iron Sunrise. I do consider it to be the best hard SF book I've read, but it depends on what you're looking for. Iron Sunrise delivers a very dark and gritty, almost cyberpunk-like plot, while Known Space deals more with fanciful theoretical physics and alien species.
For fantasy I really only like Terry Pratchett's Discworld series and Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Discworld is some of the most well-made and hilarious stuff I've ever read, though His Dark Materials is a whole different experience. The concepts Pullman introduces with his multiple universes and epic plot kind of tower above Discworld's offerings, but like Eschaton and Known Space, it depends on what you're looking to read. The Amber Spyglass, book three of His Dark Materials, is the only story of any kind to evoke a strong emotion from me other than laughter. The end actually had me depressed and mopey for a good three hours. But all the books I've mentioned are worth a read.
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Been reading a lot of weird science fiction lately; Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, Vernor Vinge's Fire Upon the Deep etc... Not bad at all. I've also been re-reading a lot of books by Kurt Vonnegut. I think everyone should read Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse Five at least once.
I like sci-fi in general, since it seems to me to deal with the things that are really most important in the world; who and what we are, where we're going, what kind of world we really want to live in. Most people think of SF as an action genre, people using technology to blow stuff up, but there are some really touching stories in the genre.
I like fantasy when it's really imaginative, like harry potter and narnia... And lovecraftian horror, strangely enough for the same reason.
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Recently I started The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, which I can't stop feeling I should've read a long time ago.
Haha, I know the feeling, although I myself read HGttG when I was around 12.
We're all mostly harmless after all.
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Just finished readin' The Secret Garden. Best thing in the world for someone obsessed with flowers.
Now I'm just confounded as ta why I haven't read it before. Oh well.
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Reading machiavelli's "the prince". Also got ahold of the grimorie of armadel.
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"DO NOT STEAL BOOKS FROM YOUR LOCAL LIBRARY, PLEASE - Voile Staff"
I recognize this quote from SOMEWHERE... But I can't for the life of me place it. I almost want to say it's from a really old Infocom text adventure, but I can't be sure...
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Speaking of....
For the heck of it i have stolen a copy of "Desert notes, River notes".
DA ZE!
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Reading Shame in the Blood by Tetsuo Miura. Probably one of the most believable love stories I've ever read. And by that I mean it's emotionally difficult, turbulent, joyous, heartbreaking and hilarious.
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I started The Parsifal Mosaic, but it will be stalled till last month. This month is rather important.
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I tend to read multiple books at a time, so I can divide up my flittery attention span. Right now I'm working on:
The Windup Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi
American Nerd: The Story of My People, by Benjamin Nugent
Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science, by Charles Wheelan
Last and First Men, by Olaf Stapledon
The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Third Annual Collection, edited by Gardner Dozois
I usually try to read about 5 books per month...for December I finished:
The Theban Plays, by Sophocles, translated by Ruby Blondell (for college)
What Makes You Tick?: The Brain in Plain English, by Thomas B. Czerner
Crystal Nights and Other Stories, by Greg Egan
The Notenki Memoirs, by Yasuhiro Takeda
Extras, by Scott Westerfeld
Plus I've gotten a whole big new stack of new books from amazon.com, woot.
Been reading a lot of weird science fiction lately; Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, Vernor Vinge's Fire Upon the Deep etc... Not bad at all. I've also been re-reading a lot of books by Kurt Vonnegut. I think everyone should read Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse Five at least once.
I like sci-fi in general, since it seems to me to deal with the things that are really most important in the world; who and what we are, where we're going, what kind of world we really want to live in. Most people think of SF as an action genre, people using technology to blow stuff up, but there are some really touching stories in the genre.
I like fantasy when it's really imaginative, like harry potter and narnia... And lovecraftian horror, strangely enough for the same reason.
I mostly read SF and non-fiction myself. SF is "the literature of ideas." There really is so much more out there than the generic Hollywood stuff most people think of...there's a big divide between SF media and SF lit. It's all about the "sense-of-wonder," the planet-sized distributed nanotech consciousnesses and quantum cross-brane missions of love and stuff.
Have you ever read Greg Egan? He's one of my favorite authors, for pure hard science and speculation. Though he's able to introduce good characterization and emotion too, so it's not too dry. But he still has stories with summaries like "some polis residents, Diaspora style, perform a highly complex experiment regarding quantum physics and existence." Though I have tons of other favorite SF authors and books I could rant on and on about.
Just finished readin' The Secret Garden. Best thing in the world for someone obsessed with flowers.
Now I'm just confounded as ta why I haven't read it before. Oh well.
I read that and "A Little Princess" over the summer. Frances Hodgson Burnett is genius. I love those sentimental old English-y novels. Also, Victorian England had some sort of proto-moe going on.
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Seeing as we're on the current SF roll, I'll put in a recommendation for Alastair Reynolds and his Revelation Space series (Revelation Space, Chasm City, Remption Ark, etc). They're really interesting, with elements of Lovecraftian in them. Although he's relatively recent, you'll find him on Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com/Alastair-Reynolds/e/B000APTREU/ref=sr_tc_2_0).
Highly recommend his work to anybody who loves sf.
Also, I'm reading Dostoyevsky's The Double right now, can anybody recommend me some other classics from this period?
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I just finished "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime" by Mark Haddon. It's really quite interesting. Though after finishing it, it made me realize how much the main character, Christopher and I are so much alike. -Plays ominous music.-
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Extras, by Scott Westerfeld
I like you already. Scott Westerfeld is a genius. Right now, I'm typing with The Last Days nestled into my chair next to me. His Uglies series is great, and while Extras (am I the only one who thought of Aya and her Moggle as Aya and Momizi?) isn't the best one in the series, it's still worth your time. I do like his Peeps series as well. A smart, believable, biological vampire story? Yes please.
I read that and "A Little Princess" over the summer. Frances Hodgson Burnett is genius. I love those sentimental old English-y novels. Also, Victorian England had some sort of proto-moe going on.
A Little Princess is great. Also, even though it's quite far from Victorian England, I get those same kinds of vibes from Anne of Green Gables, which I need to get back into at some point.
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The Great
Ghastly Gatsby
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I'm currently reading L'?le myst?rieuse (The Mysterious Island) by Jules Verne.
I have a bunch of books I'd like to read soon (in order):
The Republic by Plato. I've read some dialogues in the past few months and liked them.
Notre-Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame) by Victor Hugo. I've listened to the musical a couple of time and I really enjoyed it.
A few more books by Jules Verne that have been in my room that I've bought a few years ago and never got to read...
I'd like to read those before summer starts. I'll probably have to read a few more books for Philosophy/English/French classes this spring.
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I recently got my own solid copy of Critique of Pure reason, so I don't have to use a library copy.
Hooray.
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Hey, a literature thread. I've been wanting to get back into reading for quite some time now, as it's something that I've always enjoyed yet always put off as well. Maybe this thread will help out. ;D
Right now i'm working on the Art of Happiness, with the Stuff of Thought by Steven Pinker currently on the backburner.
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Overload of Terry Pratchett (Vimes and Moist, and some Death thrown in, but mostly Vimes, because he's possibly the best character ever written) and Brandon Sanderson (Warbreaker and third Alcatraz). About the only things making being at home tolerable.
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Just finished Gatsby. Probably one of the most depressing books I've ever read.
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Oh God.
I just finished reading The Mysterious Island, and it was amazing. You have to love Jules Verne's style (a lot of descriptions, which I believe is part of the beauty of his books) and a bit of science fiction. Considering the story is during the 19th century, though, most inventions he describes exist now. There aren't a lot of inventions in this book though, since it tells the story of five people landing on an island (a mysterious one, you guessed), and they don't invent a lot of things, but it's very interesting to see them build a place for them with nothing at all to help them.
The events happening around them kept me up at night, wanting to know more and I had to hold myself not let tears of joy flow out at the end.
The Republic, here I come! :V
Edit: I almost forgot, I suggest you read Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea before reading this one. You'll understand why.
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Just finished Gatsby. Probably one of the most depressing books I've ever read.
Don't tell my mom that.
We gave her 2 obviously depressing books and that one to read. She says she doesn't want to be sad so I'm telling her to read Gatsby as it's not glaringly sad right off the bat.
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I like you already. Scott Westerfeld is a genius. Right now, I'm typing with The Last Days nestled into my chair next to me. His Uglies series is great, and while Extras (am I the only one who thought of Aya and her Moggle as Aya and Momizi?) isn't the best one in the series, it's still worth your time. I do like his Peeps series as well. A smart, believable, biological vampire story? Yes please.
A Little Princess is great. Also, even though it's quite far from Victorian England, I get those same kinds of vibes from Anne of Green Gables, which I need to get back into at some point.
I first enjoyed one of Westerfeld's books back when he didn't write YA, "Evolution's Darling," a nice little SF novel. I haven't read any of his other YA, but I do have Leviathan sitting on the top of my "To read" stack :) I never thought of that Aya connection, but now I can't unsee it.
Yeah, I want to read Anne of Green Gables too. And not just so I can better enjoy the anime adaptions!
The Republic, here I come! :V
I just read it myself for college last semester, and there's one particular edition I recommend:
http://www.amazon.com/Republic-Plato/dp/0872207366/ref=tmm_pap_title_0
The major difference is that instead of presenting the text in prose form like the original, ("That's true," he said. "It is indeed, " said I. "But I have another question...") it presents it like the dialogue in a play or a screenplay, ala:
CEPHALUS: That's true.
SOCRATES: Indeed, it is. But tell me something else...
I think it makes the book flow way better. It's far more orderly and clear, not just long jumbled paragraphs of "I said," "He said," where you can barely tell who's talking. Plus it's a good translation and has notes throughout the book. After reading it I liked it so much I got my brother a copy for Christmas. It's got some really fascinating and challenging social concepts in it. Also, "lol the Greeks were all pedos."
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Just finished Gatsby. Probably one of the most depressing books I've ever read.
For me that was The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
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I just read it myself for college last semester, and there's one particular edition I recommend:
http://www.amazon.com/Republic-Plato/dp/0872207366/ref=tmm_pap_title_0
The major difference is that instead of presenting the text in prose form like the original, ("That's true," he said. "It is indeed, " said I. "But I have another question...") it presents it like the dialogue in a play or a screenplay, ala:
CEPHALUS: That's true.
SOCRATES: Indeed, it is. But tell me something else...
I think it makes the book flow way better. It's far more orderly and clear, not just long jumbled paragraphs of "I said," "He said," where you can barely tell who's talking. Plus it's a good translation and has notes throughout the book. After reading it I liked it so much I got my brother a copy for Christmas. It's got some really fascinating and challenging social concepts in it. Also, "lol the Greeks were all pedos."
Ah, I already got one from my brother who has yet to read it I think. He chose that one cause it's the most recent and complete translation, with a lot of notes(in French, that is). I actually noticed it was in prose and I was surprised. The other dialogues I read (Meno, Gorgias and Crito) were actually like plays as well. I agree, it makes them very easy to read, as well as leaving more space on the sides to take notes yourself...
Also, "lol the Greeks were also all homosexuals."
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I recently got my own solid copy of Critique of Pure reason, so I don't have to use a library copy.
Hooray.
And you understand it? I tryed to read the Critique of Practical Reason and I had a lot of troubles to understand Kant's "18th-century-legalese-german".
That remind me that I still need to finish Either/Or.
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Right now, I'm re-reading The Aeneid, written by, as most of you would know, Virgil.
This is probably one of the reasons why I'm so in love with this stuff~
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Just got really into Philip Roth. He's a Pulitzer winner who writes mostly about Jewish-American assimilation in fiction, and honestly, it's like he's writing about my entire life.
Anyone who wants to know why I'm so jacked up in the head or having needs to read Portnoy's Complaint.
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I read a Russian translation of Le Petit Prince recently (de Saint Exupery). Wonderful read, it really is very humanistic, although I'd have liked it to have gone on for a bit longer.
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And you understand it? I tryed to read the Critique of Practical Reason and I had a lot of troubles to understand Kant's "18th-century-legalese-german".
That remind me that I still need to finish Either/Or.
At first, i was confused by his use of the word 'priori'. Until i got out the dictionary.
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I read a Russian translation of Le Petit Prince recently (de Saint Exupery). Wonderful read, it really is very humanistic, although I'd have liked it to have gone on for a bit longer.
That is a fantastic read.
Read it in original French for French class 2 years back.
I need to get an English translation to make Jan eat it...
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I'm reading The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman which is pretty much the only interesting English literature from the 17th century.
Yes, I'm an embarassment to teenagers. :V
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I'm reading The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman which is pretty much the only interesting English literature from the 17th century.
Yes, I'm an embarassment to teenagers. :V
The fact that I envy you for simply posessing that book, let alone having the time to read it, is a sure sign that your statement applies to the both of us.
:V
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The fact that I envy you for simply posessing that book, let alone having the time to read it, is a sure sign that your statement applies to the both of us.
:V
Who said I had the time? I've so much to do in a day I can barely afford an evening read before sleep. :-\
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I read a Russian translation of Le Petit Prince recently (de Saint Exupery). Wonderful read, it really is very humanistic, although I'd have liked it to have gone on for a bit longer.
One of the first books I read in my life.
I finished book 1 of The Parsifal Mosaic. Dammit it's amazing.
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Reading "Outlet" by Randy Taguchi. Disturbing and hilarious, and just pitch perfect.
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I'm stalled at halfway through reading a book called "Half-safe" which is really bloody rare, published in the 1950's. Always found the story of what the guy did inspiring, although I havent read the entire book getting halfway through with how little i read is an accomplishment to me lol.
I will finish it at some point!
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While not rare, I finally bothered to get a copy of Dracula the other day. I'm enjoying reading it, and I'm really liking how it's written.
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While not rare, I finally bothered to get a copy of Dracula the other day. I'm enjoying reading it, and I'm really liking how it's written.
The first part (Jonathan Harker's journal) is just fantastic. The second part is great. The third part is... eh, I won't spoil it, but I'd like to hear your reaction to it once you're done.
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Reading "Symmetry through the eyes of a chemist".
Alright for complex math to illustrate amazingly simple concepts.
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After reading Gatsby, I finished Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms. I have no more faith in the world.
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AFTA bored me to tears.
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I've been reading Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz.
I've just gone a few chapters in but I'm going to guess that I'll be sucked into it this weekend when I don't have to work.
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AFTA bored me to tears.
I read "For Whom the Bell Tolls" and absolutely loved it. Then I read "A Farewell to Arms" and absolutely loved it. Then I read "The Sun Also Rises" and it bored me to tears. I guess that's where my threshold is...well, then again, I was still in high school.
Hemingway is such a manly writer :gar:
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Has anyone read The Count of Monte Cristo?
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I read "For Whom the Bell Tolls" and absolutely loved it. Then I read "A Farewell to Arms" and absolutely loved it. Then I read "The Sun Also Rises" and it bored me to tears. I guess that's where my threshold is...well, then again, I was still in high school.
Hemingway is such a manly writer :gar:
What bothered me about Hemingway is he could take a subject like World War One and make it mind-numbingly boring. I understand he used word economy, and pared his fiction down to the barest essence, but for him this process sucked all the life out of the story. Whereas with other writers who also like word economy, such as Fitzgerald, it works.
I think this because of which words - or rather, which details - the writer chooses to leave in. for Fitzgerald, he emphasized much more the intangible aspects of his characters. With Hemingway, he would chop a story down and hack away at it until it had all the charm of a shopping list.
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Has anyone read The Count of Monte Cristo?
Thanks for reminding me to go grab that from the Library. The most recent books I have read are books 1 and 2 of the Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larson (Fantastic mystery stories) and Catch-22 (Damnit Yossarian!). Finally, I'm planning on hunting down a copy of "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair, and probably some of Orwell's earlier works too.
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Finished Warbreaker last week. Lightsong is one of the most entertaining characters I've ever come across. WRITE FASTER SANDERSON
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The Stranger by Albert Camus. It's... eye-opening, if anything. The part where Monsieur Perez desperately chases the funeral carriage carrying his mother freaked the hell outta me.
Read The Myth of Sisyphus after to get a better understanding of what the hell Camus means.
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Right now I'm reading A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, and I really got to say, it seems odd to me. It's divided into three parts, each with someone else's P.O.V. in the story. I only finished the first part though, and I have to finish the second part by Thursday for school. I dunno why I don't like it, it doesn't seem to hold on to my attention for that long.
And I really hate that Father Tom character.
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The Stranger by Albert Camus
I know that book. Have you finished? 'cause I just the remembered the whole shooting some random guy five times because the sun was in his eyes
part.
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yeah I did, and I have to write an essay for school about it. don't forget the dude he shot was a danged Arab :V
it's a good book, I definitely agree with Camus' idea that the absurdity of the universe should simply be subverted with personal goals and ideals. its really dry though, that's kind of a turn off to a lot of people. what did you think?
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Loved the stranger when I read it this summer. I also started reading "The Black Death" although his account of a plague outbreak in Algeria was somewhat less compelling.
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The Stranger is sweet. Read that for English last year and will probably eventually nerd it up and read the original version~
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The song 'Killing an Arab' by The Cure is based on The Stranger. If your teacher seems like an aging goth, include that factoid in your report.
And yeah, it's a great book. Glad to see they're still teaching it.
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Death of a Salesman. It makes me wonder what I'll be like when I'm sixty.
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Went to the library and checked out Dexter in the Dark for like the 50th time.
I think I'll be able to finish it before the library makes me give it back this time...
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Reading 'And Then There Were None'. How original I know.
I like reading a lot from Agatha Christie and Stephen King. My favorite from Agatha Christie is Death on The Nile, and Salem's Lot from Stephen King.
Any recommendations for horror and mystery novels? Something similar to these two authors would be great.
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Am slowly reading through Catcher in the Rye. Can't help but hear the protagonist's voice as that of Alex from Kubrick's rendition of A Clockwork Orange.
Heh,
Thought what I'd do was, my brothers, I'd become one of those gluhonemoys. That would be real horosho.
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That's definitely far closer to the mark than the teenage hero Holden is normally depicted as.
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That book is so fucking awesome.
Also finally finished Dexter in the Dark... it was okay. For sure the worst of the series though cuz of its weirdness.
Need to return it and think of what to read now.
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I'll be a discordant voice in the choir and say I hated The Catcher in the Rye. It didn't catch my interest at first and going on I just couldn't help not giving a crap.
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Holden Caulfield is a self-centered prick from start to finish. Everyone sucks, everyone's beneath him, he couldn't give a toss about what anyone else thinks or feels, the whole world owes him. In other words, he's a convincing young man. That's what Salinger was trying to do. That Holden ended up lauded as some kind of symbolic teenage antihero of the ages shows that Catcher in the Rye is almost as misunderstood a book as Lolita.
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Reading the Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell while furiously continuing to read through various textbooks.
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Holden Caulfield is a self-centered prick from start to finish. Everyone sucks, everyone's beneath him, he couldn't give a toss about what anyone else thinks or feels, the whole world owes him. In other words, he's a convincing young man. That's what Salinger was trying to do. That Holden ended up lauded as some kind of symbolic teenage antihero of the ages shows that Catcher in the Rye is almost as misunderstood a book as Lolita.
Lolita misunderstood as in "Lolita is NOTHING BUT PORRRN!" or "HH/Lolita was manipulating Lolita/HH, not the other way around!"
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Lolita is misunderstood in that the prevailing notion that Lolita seduces Humbert Humbert - probably created by the 1962 version of the movie - has become so strong that we use the term "lolita" today to refer to a young seductress. Never mind the fact that Nabakov himself said it's the story of a delusional man. Never mind that Humbert Humbert realizes at the end of the story that
he ruined Lolita's childhood
. No, everyone thinks it's the story of a tween girl who seduces a middle-aged man.
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Lolita is misunderstood in that the prevailing notion that Lolita seduces Humbert Humbert - probably created by the 1962 version of the movie - has become so strong that we use the term "lolita" today to refer to a young seductress. Never mind the fact that Nabakov himself said it's the story of a delusional man. Never mind that Humbert Humbert realizes at the end of the story that he ruined Lolita's childhood
. No, everyone thinks it's the story of a tween girl who seduces a middle-aged man.
Or the fact that the book was written from Humbert's perspective, thus putting his bias on the events?
Anyways, I don't see how else it could be interpreted as "tween girl seduces innocuous pedophile." May you please explain your perspective? When I read it through, I thought Lolita was manipulative and took control of HH's feelings for her personal gain.
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Anyways, I don't see how else it could be interpreted as "tween girl seduces innocuous pedophile." May you please explain your perspective? When I read it through, I thought Lolita was manipulative and took control of HH's feelings for her personal gain.
Like I said, it's a meme about the book because of the connotations of the word "lolita". Most people with this idea about the book's plot either haven't read it, or have, with their perspective colored by the pre-existing meme.
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@ Chapter 4 or 5 of Monte Cristo (In french of course), Damn, Dumas sure knew how to write.
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From start to finish I got the idea (still pretty clear) that the commom notion of Lolita as the young seductress was really off.
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Best plot ever.
(http://www.inquisitr.com/wp-content/dr-seuess.jpg)
All jokes aside, I'm trying to persuade my English teacher into letting me borrow The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian over trimester break.
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Finished count of mont? cristo, forever gay for Alexandre Dumas now.
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Just finished Catcher in the Rye. I disagree with the upthread comment of Caulfield being a self-centred prick in the sense that he has no centre whatsoever. He would not be facing the issues that he does if he were so convinced of his own superiority. Instead, he has no sense of scale and an atrophied sense of empathy due to his self-imposed isolation. All he has to live for are his memories of people that are no longer around him, which has forced him inwards.
Now, this will be a simplistic interpretation, but actual human contact with the people that he has not labeled as "phoneys" (not labeled so most likely due to his cynical take on humanity not having yet developed by then) actually kick-started his sense of empathy again, gave him a buoy of sorts, where before he was ready to drown, what with becoming a deaf-mute.
Hence, I can indeed see Caulfield as an illustration of disillusionment and loss of sense of self, with the hint of such a mindset having the potential to become a self-destructive spiral. With the context of the War and the crap that society went through during much of the 20th century, this becomes a poignant allegory for its time, though I reckon some parts are still relevant today.
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I'm halfway through Nightwatch by Sergei Lukyanenko, although I've seemed to have misplaced it. (It's been missing for a while.)
It's a good read, if you're into horror or fantasy literature.
But, does anyone recommend the sequels following it?
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I'm halfway through Nightwatch by Sergei Lukyanenko, although I've seemed to have misplaced it. (It's been missing for a while.)
It's a good read, if you're into horror or fantasy literature.
But, does anyone recommend the sequels following it?
If you don't mind a certain degree of power creep, then they're great, though Day Watch goes of on a tangent that was less interesting to me in the middle. The flavour remains strong throughout, so if that's what drew you in, you should be set.
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If you don't mind a certain degree of power creep, then they're great, though Day Watch goes of on a tangent that was less interesting to me in the middle. The flavour remains strong throughout, so if that's what drew you in, you should be set.
Funny, if you're referring to Рогоза, I personally found that subplot really interesting (despite it introducing a plot hole big enough to fly the international space station through).
But yeah, if you enjoyed Nightwatch, you'll likely enjoy the latter. There is a bit of power creep as mentioned, but they're still fantastic. Also the plot of Twilight Watch is basically Vampires: now IN SPACE (okay, not really, but still :P), which is all kinds of awesome.
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And Last Watch is Vampires: IN SCOTLAND, which is either more awesome as it sounds, or exactly as awesome than it sounds, depending on who you are. Also totally worth it.
if you're referring to Рогоза
Not sure. It was the one with the werewolf or witch (I think) woman and the beach and something about this little kid who nearly drowns and this guy whom I think the woman falls in love with and it's all a jumble in my mind, since I haven't read the thing in years.
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Not sure. It was the one with the werewolf or witch (I think) woman and the beach and something about this little kid who nearly drowns and this guy whom I think the woman falls in love with and it's all a jumble in my mind, since I haven't read the thing in years.
OH. Oh that one. That's actually the first plotline in Day Watch, not the middle one, and yeah it's kind of bad. Didn't like it either, it's vaguely plot-relevant but not really at the same time. Meh.
Incidentally, did you read anything else by Lukyanenko? I'm a huge fan of Labyrinth of Reflections and Spectrum (sadly both still untranslated).
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OH. Oh that one. That's actually the first plotline in Day Watch, not the middle one, and yeah it's kind of bad. Didn't like it either, it's vaguely plot-relevant but not really at the same time. Meh.
Incidentally, did you read anything else by Lukyanenko? I'm a huge fan of Labyrinth of Reflections and Spectrum (sadly both still untranslated).
Ah, well, my bad. I should reread the series, not like that's a bad thing, rare hit-or-miss storylines notwithstanding. And no, haven't read his other stuff - never seen it, honestly, otherwise I mighta grabbed a copy.
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I'd recommend Flowers for Algernon; it's really a good book about a mentally disabled person who becomes a genius and learns that the world isn't all it's cracked up to be. But he writes down progress reports anyways so that other people of his like can be helped. It's mostly science fiction though.
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Just finished "And Then There Were None." Now I'm reading "The A.B.C Murders." The only reason I got into Agatha Christie was because of U.N. Owen was Her?.
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Just finished The Comforts of Madness. I must say I have a very different outlook on insanity now.
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i just started Vampire Academy it seems ok for now i wonder how it will do later..
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I'd recommend Flowers for Algernon; it's really a good book about a mentally disabled person who becomes a genius and learns that the world isn't all it's cracked up to be. But he writes down progress reports anyways so that other people of his like can be helped. It's mostly science fiction though.
This, so fucking much.
Just finished Neil Gaiman's Sandman series. Also reading Gravity's Rainbow, but making no progress at all.
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Finished 1984.
If anyone was in IRC at the time, yes, I did say it was a bit boring. Because really,
why reread your life?
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why reread your life?
(http://i44.tinypic.com/72rcjk.jpg)
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(http://i44.tinypic.com/72rcjk.jpg)
You dork.
You got the joke. :|
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Reading John Dies at the End. Can't sleep, soy sauce will eat me. The writing is a little scrubby, but everything else about it is awesome.
Also reading Gravity's Rainbow, but making no progress at all.
Story of my life.
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I read The Stranger and The Plague for French literature class and I loved both of them.
Just as Camus said : "L'absurde n'a de sens que dans la mesure o? l'on n'y consent pas." (Rough translation: Absurdity only makes sense if you don't accept it.)
I did an essay about both of them, comparing the individual reaction in front of life's absurdity and the collective one. I suggest that you read The Plague if you haven't, because while The Stranger opened my eyes, it IS dry and left me with a feeling of "My life has no meaning now what?", The Plague is the fight against absurdity and the logical reaction ( Well, he talks about religion and suicide being answers, but that religion is only turning yourself to a belief in order to avoid the question and suicide is just giving up on finding the purpose of your life, therefore they are not really answers). I should also add that a part of The Plague I liked is that Rieux doesn't actually judge anyone, even the priest. While he doesn't agree with his preech, he believes that the actions he takes are far better and that a man should not judged based on his ideas but on his actions.
I also did one about nature's influence on Meursault's life. One thing it made me realize is that while his attitude isn't right (and the fact he refuses to actually involve himself in his own life), he made me realize how much small pleasures that come from senses are as important as moral and spiritual ones.
I've read Rousseau's Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men (french version) and I didn't like it that much. I found he put too much importance on things that weren't and he takes a long time to explain a few basic ideas of how the world was before(and he really explains how we didn't develop language in one day and how complex it was, for little purpose except say that it came from necessity). If anything, the good part is that it was a major influence in his times and brought different ideas about property and society.
I'm planning to read The Fall and The Rebel soon. I still have to finish Plato's Republic.
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Perhaps I should more stuff about Epicurus/Rosseau/the boys so I can understand what Nietzsche was raging on...
In other news, I am convinced that Gravity's Rainbow is a collection of short stories that never did the Kenosha Kid.
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Perhaps I should more stuff about Epicurus/Rosseau/the boys so I can understand what Nietzsche was raging on...
In other news, I am convinced that Gravity's Rainbow is a collection of short stories that never did the Kenosha Kid.
I approve of this dude^
BTW, have you ever read Spinoza?
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I've been reading the Twilight books, and they're phenomenal works of art that everyone shoulhahahahaha
BTW, have you ever read Spinoza?
I read Ethics as part of my philosophy degree, eventually writing an essay disagreeing with his proofs for God's existence. Fun times.
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Read To Kill a Mockingbird to keep sane during exam period, found it quite interesting how Atticus Finch, despite being a great guy and all, can't seem to deal with the roots of the problem, instead simply trying to be decent towards black people. In any case, a fantastic read. Currently reading the authorised history of the MI-5.
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I've been reading the Twilight books, and they're phenomenal works of art that everyone shoulhahahahaha
I read Ethics as part of my philosophy degree, eventually writing an essay disagreeing with his proofs for God's existence. Fun times.
Damn, Philosophy Degree on MotK. What are the chances? You seem like the kinda guy who'd be right at home on SuperFani.
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reading
Eifelheim by Michael Flynn
Foundation by Isaac Asimov
Train Man by Hitori Nakano
mostly Eifelheim right now.
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One of these days I'm going to get off my ass and read The Three Musketeers. And also finally finish with Tristram Shandy.
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ahahahaha fuck you gravity' s rainbow
at least i got halfway through this time
currently reading a driver's manual
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Hey, I got a slight question. I'm in the process of writing a book--actually the first in a eight book series--, and I'm wondering if I could make a whole new thread for it, or if I should just talk about it in this thread.
Thanks in advance.
--Chagen46
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Hey, I got a slight question. I'm in the process of writing a book--actually the first in a eight book series--, and I'm wondering if I could make a whole new thread for it, or if I should just talk about it in this thread.
Making a whole new thread would probably be best for summat, I think.
I just realized that the Yorkshire accent I picked up in my writing from The Secret Garden never wore off. .__.
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Just read through Fight Club. Great read, I should have decided sooner. If anything, it gives me a lot to think about.
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I just finished reading Ally Kennen's Bedlam.
And god it was awesome.
Just started reading through Berserk today, I'm a third through the book and I am drooling all over it :getdown:
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I am reading through some Lovecraft works, but I always stop to read Le Petit Prince. Such an amazing little book.
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Read Red Azalea earlier this year as part of an english course and fell in love with it. I actually enjoyed writing that paper... and I never enjoy papers.
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I haven't read Gravity's Rainbow - it looks intimidating - but The Crying of Lot 49 is accessible and I've read it twice, loving it both times. It's absolutely great. Relevant, funny, and persistently clever. I'm starting on V, but I keep getting distracted and having to start over. It's pretty dense in comparison, with its tightly-packed references, and doesn't have as much narrative drive.
The Crying of Lot 49 is like the literary equivalent of all those conspiracy stories, but played for dark comedy. I've heard the Illuminatus trilogy might be more good stuff in this vein, too...
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Just reread Good Omens for like the sixth time
Damn that's a good book
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With all the translated modern Japanese fiction I've been reading lately, I feel sort of obliged to make a multi-title post.
Overall, it's difficult for someone like me, who doesn't read Japanese, to get a good idea of what the country's literary output is like. I rely solely on what's been translated already. Some of these books are clearly translated for their mass market potential - not outstanding works of literature, but likely to sell in the paperback sections. Others are indeed award-winning novels that are getting their due outside of Japan.
In any event, I'd like to cover some of the titles I've been reading so far, offering my humble and amateur opinion of what you might find in your bookstore. I've listed these in order of most favorite to least favorite.
Haruki Murakami - Hugely popular, and with good reason. I'm not going to go through every title this guy has churned out, but there are some key works that are worth getting to first. Norwegian Wood is a pretty heartbreaking love story, and it's what put him on the map in Japan. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, a noir thriller that plumbs the unconscious, did the same in the United States. Personally, though, I think he makes a better short story writer than a novelist. The Elephant Vanishes, as well as after the quake and Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman are three short story collections filled with the strange, the chilling, the elegant and the hilarious. Here's a sample. (http://web.mit.edu/norvin/www/somethingelse/murakami.html)
Yoko Ogawa - Probably even better than Murakami, she has won every major literary award in Japan, but is bizarrely virtually unknown in the English-speaking world (inexplicably, she does quite well in French). She's had a scattered short story published here and there, but her collection of novellas, The Diving Pool, is a great introduction to her minimal and very disturbing style. She can invoke primal fear through subtle manipulations of language, and seems to have a penchant for the small cruelties of everyday people. Beautiful stuff. She has a newly-translated novel out, Hotel Iris, which also looks very promising.
Banana Yoshimoto - People seem to either love her or hate her. I love her. I've only read Amrita and Hardboiled/Hard Luck, but both are written in a relaxed, unpretentious language, following the lives of young people in Japan, with just a touch of the surreal now and then.
Ryu Murakami - No relation to Haruki. He's probably best known for Coin Locker Babies, a futuristic dystopian piece. Not so well known is his book 69, an extended memoir about his late teens in Japan, 1969, at a time when student riots and university strikes gave a generation of post-war Japanese the sense that they were going to accomplish a revolution in their country. It's a funny and touching story, and he writes unashamedly about himself.
Jun'ichiro Tanizaki - Considered one of the fathers of 20th century Japanese literature. His short stories read a little bit dated, but still hold up to the test of time. A Man, A Cat and Three Women is a great collection of his stories. He seems to be drawn to characters who are pitiable, but have no one but themselves to blame for the messes they get themselves into. Fun fact: Yukari-sensei from Azumanga Daioh gets her name from this author.
Hideaki Sena - This is the guy who wrote Parasite Eve while he was still a grad student. Yes, it's a thriller. It's a thriller with SCIENCE! This story is about a man who loses his wife in a car accident, so he extracts part of her liver to make a cell culture that he can keep as a pet, only the mitochondria in his wife's cells are in fact sentient and homocidal. Surprising and highly entertaining.
Randy Taguchi - This author is more famous for her internet presence than anything else, but Outlet - a story about a woman whose brother dies under mysterious circumstances - is a solid exploration of those favorite themes of Japanese literature, sex and death. It engages the reader from the first page and keeps you turning pages. The ending was also pretty funny.
Tetsuo Miura - Author of the novel Shame in the Blood. Written in 1964, this heartbreaking story about a young family struggling to keep their heads above the waters of life is really six different inter-related stories. It's touching, and well-written if a little old fashioned sounding today (e.g., when a woman is raped, she apologizes to her husband for infidelity), but be warned, it's pretty god damned sad.
Mari Akasaka - This was another female author that I wanted to like, as it seems too few woman authors get translated (or maybe there are just fewer female Japanese authors), but her book Vibrator, an exploration into the dark side of sexuality, reads more like a rough draft than a novel. At barely over 100 pages, it's more a novella anyway. I really hope she either a) gets a better translator or b) improves her writing, because she's very daring, fearless even.
Taichi Yamada - Strangers, a book about a middle-aged man who meets a couple who look exactly like his long-dead parents, is sparse and chilling, but tends to be a little long in the expositions. Maybe that's just a Japanese thing, but I prefer stories that show rather than tell. This novel does it, for the most part. Just be prepared for the occasional narrator speech.
Koji Suzuki - Author of the Ring series, he writes competent thrillers, even if he does seem to tangent into areas he can't fully cover, biting off more than he can chew. The novel Ring itself contains a whole other side to the Sadako character that the movie doesn't even hint at, too.
Hitomi Kanehara - I really wanted to like her first translated novel, Snakes and Earrings, as it gives us a look inside Japan's counter-culture youth, but it seemed to be trying way too hard to be shocking. And then it reached some pointless "Huh?" ending. But Ryu Murakami likes her, so maybe I need to give that book another shot.
Natsuo Kirino - In fairness, I'm not a big fan of thriller novels, so Out already had the deck stacked against it. It does, however, portray Brazilian-Japanese - descendants of Japanese immigrants to Brazil who've returned to Japan, and often looked down upon as not being "real" Japanese - in a positive light, which was pretty bold. However, it rests on the lazy "fat people are slovenly and selfish" trope as it drags itself towards a wholly predictable ending.
Yasutaka Tsutsui - You know the kind of writer who decides they're going to write satire, and so they write some utterly outrageous story that beats you with a giant 2x4 upon which is written "Message of the Story", over and over again, while using plenty of exclamation points and not using characters so much as caricatures? That's this guy. Salmonella Men on Planet Porno gets props for the title but little else.
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Despite the Godspeaker trilogy being utter crap, the Rogue Agent series by Karen Miller (writing as K.E. Mills - okay, pseudonyms are one thing, but really?) is surprisingly wonderful. It's very...Pratchetty, and I say that as high praise, and the first book features one of the most evilly evil villains I've come across in quite some time. Recommended.
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japanese literature
Thanks for this post; my knowledge of Japanese literature, and especially contemporary Japanese literature, is sadly deficient, and I'll have to check out some of the authors you recommend. By the way, what's your favorite Murakami short story? If I had to choose but one out of his two short story collections, I'd go with "Tony Takitani" for its power and exquisite sadness. Perhaps I'm being overly sentimental (and then Tony Takitani really was all alone ;_;
), but I found it genuinely moving.
I'd like to fill in some of the gaps in Tengukami's list and discuss three of the Japanese authors I have read, one extensively (Mishima).
Yukio Mishima: Mishima is fascinating, both as a historical figure (c.f. Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters) and in terms of his literary output. He can craft the most beautiful, delicate prose and apply it to describe the most frightening pathology, reflecting his twin obsessions with beauty and death. His style is characteristically analytical, at times intensely lyrical, and occasionally veers into the pornographic. An example should make these points more clear; the following is an excerpt from "The Temple of the Golden Pavilion".
Yes, this was really the coast of the Sea of Japan! Here was the source of all my unhappiness, of all my gloomy thoughts, the origin of all my ugliness and all my strength. It was a wild sea. The waves surged forward in an almost continuous mass, hardly letting one see the smooth, gray gulfs that lay between one wave and the next. Piled up over the open sea, the great cumuli of clouds revealed a heaviness and, at the same time, a delicacy. For that heavy, undefined accumulation of cloud had for its edging a line as light and cold as that of the most delicate feather, and in its center it enveloped a faint blue sky of whose actual existence one could not be sure. Behind the zinc-colored waters rose the purple-black mountains of the cape. Everything was imbued with agitation and immobility, with a dark, ever-moving force, with the coagulated feeling of metal.
Abruptly I remembered what Kashiwagi had said to me on the day that we first met. It is when one is sitting on a well-mowed lawn on a beautiful spring afternoon, vaguely watching the sun as it shines through the leaves and makes patterns on the grass - it is at such times that cruelty suddenly springs up within us.
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion is a good introduction to his work. If you're looking for a concise read, you might want to try The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea, but be aware that that book has some scenes of truly sickening brutality in it. His tetralogy, the Sea of Fertility, is substantial and can be tiresome (e.g. long, dragging explanations of Yuishiki doctrine) but is still worth a read. Here (http://www.101bananas.com/library2/priestshiga.html) is an excellent short story of his, "The Priest of Shiga Temple and His Love".
Of special note are his plays. Mishima's reputation as a novelist is established in the West, but his abilities as a dramatist are relatively unknown (over in Japan, he was rated as the best 20th century Japanese playwright in a recent poll of critics, or so I've heard). I've recently read Donald Keene's translation of five of his so-called modern Noh plays, and I have only the highest praise for them: they connect on both an intellectual and emotional level and lack the heaviness present in his novels which can dilute their impact.
Kenzaburo Oe: I've read his best novel, The Silent Cry, Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids, and some of his short stories. Volumes have been written about Oe's oeuvre, so I'll just make the following banal observation: on a formal level, The Silent Cry is a masterpiece. Oe's style is to write compactly, in tight clusters, and layer image upon image to the point where the overall effect is nigh-hallucinatory. This style is beautifully realized in The Silent Cry, which quite apart from the seriousness of its ideas, is perfectly constructed. Just read the first chapter (http://books.google.com/books?id=l4XrlNMBqIMC&lpg=PP1&dq=the%20silent%20cry&pg=PP6#v=onepage&q&f=false), even the first paragraph. This book is demanding, but everyone should give it a try.
However, I do find his later novels - Somersault and The Changeling - to be artless and filled with pedestrian prose; I couldn't finish them. I would stick to early-mid Oe.
Yasunari Kawabata: I've read only his short stories - typically really short, no more than 5 pages - as collected in Palm-of-the-Hand Stories. Kawabata's fiction is said to be quintessentially Japanese, and in translation reads unlike most literature I've come across. It's filled with suggestion and ambiguity, and rewards careful attention and patience in unlocking its secrets. It's exceedingly beautiful. If you like slice-of-life you'll love Kawabata. I'd recommend reading his short story the Izu Dancer to see if his fiction attracts you.
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Mishima's quite a character. I love The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea, but when he started going crazy and getting all nationalist wannabe samurai, I tuned out. There's a reason why boomer authors like Murakami can't stand him, but there's no denying he had an ornate style and good lord was he prolific.
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I've read quite a bunch of Mishima works in my time [sic] and I also have to say that The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea was probably one of the works that stood out most in my mind, probably even more so than some of his other well-known works. Though I usually do stomach some of his more recent stuff, I suppose I just have a raging hard-on for that kind of style of writing or something? I have no idea, really.
Re: Murakami
Holy crap, Tony Takitani was sad. There's no doubting it. It was very sad. Yet, I still couldn't put it down! I guess I gravitate towards that kind of thing, too... Which leads me to something I've been re-reading...
I actually ended up re-reading the Romance of the Three Kingdoms because... Well, I really enjoyed it. There should be some English translations floating around for those of you who are also interested, I think you can just do a google search or something. I also managed to find some old and dusty copies of The Legend of the Condor Heroes, written by Wuxia writer great Jin Yong, from my grandmother's bookshelf. For those of you into kick-ass kung fu shenanigans with some semblance of story and characterization, Jin Yong's works are probably a great start. The Legend of the Condor Heroes and The Return of the Condor Heroes are probably his most well-known works, but some of his more obscure ones are great too, like The Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber, which got adapted into a Manhua (Manhwa/Manga for those who can't tell) and actually it got translated to English, too! Guess it's not as obscure as I thought.
I have a massive boner for Eastern Literature, too. Aside from classics. I'm such a nerd
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Thanks for this post; my knowledge of Japanese literature, and especially contemporary Japanese literature, is sadly deficient, and I'll have to check out some of the authors you recommend. By the way, what's your favorite Murakami short story?
Ah, right, this question. I can't really pick a favorite, but I do have a few.
UFO in Kushiro is genuinely disturbing. It's classic Murkami - sparse writing, dreams spilling into a reality with unsettling effect, questions that are thankfully left unanswered. If it's not my favorite, it's right at the top, right next to The Kidney Shaped Stone That Moves Every Day. Elegant, graceful, and pitch-perfect. Sleep is very much in this same vein.
On the lighter side, The Second Bakery Attack, which I linked to above, is also a favorite because of its almost Tarantino-like comedic value. Family Affair is also hilarious, albeit for different reasons, as is Barn Burning.
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As I am wont to do on vacations, I've been catching up on reading that I should've done far earlier. My two most recent targets were Neuromancer and Ender's Game.
I'll start off with the latter so that I can get rid of all the bile that has built up - I strongly, very strongly disliked Ender's Game. It is clear that the author knows very little about his main subject matters - children, politics and the military, which he covers up by skipping any details that would have made the story interesting. There is so much tell and so little show in the writing that nothing has any personality of its own.
It surprised me to notice that the author is both extremely cynical and shockingly naive at the same time. The fiction that he has created regarding political activity and military training does not stand up to the slightest comparison to real-world equivalents (and I am even taking into account the age of the book). His so-called "understanding of the human condition" stops at extremely obvious takes on stress and grossly exaggerated cruelty and negligence. Dostoyevsky understood the human condition. This is just a lame parody.
There is little good to say about Card's control and expertise of writing, as well. His foreshadowing frequently falls flat, and calling his characters two-dimensional is extremely generous. Any development at all could have given them a life of heir own, but none happens. None. It is even hard to say if characters changed at all throughout the course of the book because there is so little that we find out about them in the first place.
Little else I can say, really. I do not see what makes this book shine in the eyes of so many. Perhaps I have missed something. I am open to comments, of course, and do realize my critisizm is very scathing and might be a degree unfair.
Neuromancer, on thte other hand, was an excellent read. The writer paints a dark and dirty cyberpunk setting with characters that simply drip with flavour. There is an intentional degree of stream-of-consciousness writing that gives a great insight into the mind of the broken and drugged-up main character that can sometimes be hard to follow, but, despite the sensory overload, the author still manages to get the story across at a well-balanced pace.
The science fiction the author portrays takes a second seat to the characters, but is still recognizably thought-out, if a bit romantic at times. There are a few McGuffins lying around, but I found myself ignoring such issues, eager to get back to the character play.
And the characters are excellent. I personally enjoy stories about teams of misfits coming together to accomplish a greater goal, and the group here is compelling - each one has their own stories to tell and their own conflicts with the others, creating a complex web of relationships that seems to have formed without the author's actual input.
My one real complaint is that the book ends extremely abruptly, without giving the reader a chance to wind down. The feeling is almost like several deadlines were breathing down the author's neck at the time. Otherwise, great.
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Just finished reading another contemporary Japanese author. In this case, Spinning Tropics, by Aska Mochizuki. It's the story of a Japanese woman teaching Japanese in Vietnam in the late 90s, who ends up falling for a Vietnamese woman, Yun. Then a man enters the picture, complicating matters, but not nearly in the way I expected. This isn't your typical love triangle, as both the narrator's and Yun's cultural backgrounds put pressures on the way they deal with their feelings for each other.
There's a lot of good in this book. The author does not seem to have a lot of love for Japan, which she often depicts as having a cold and rigid society, but she's also not head-over-heels in love with the way Vietnamese society works. So we're spared a condescending "look at these silly but charming noble savages" attitude, and instead have a woman who, while in no hurry to get home, is also struggling with cultural clashes and integrating in a new country. She also provides numerous examples of what makes Vietnamese society what it is, without passing judgement or trying to rationalize away anything.
What she and Yun have can't really be called "love" per se. Neither one of them have ever been with a woman before, so neither are sure how to handle their feelings for each other. Additionally, cultural pressures on how they're "supposed" to behave have an influence. Yun, while clearly attracted to the narrator and passionate about their relationship, at the same time firmly contends that she must one day meet a nice man, preferably a foreigner, marry him and have children. She also demonstrates great jealousy when the narrator begins dating a Japanese man, Konno. It's a conundrum that the narrator takes at face value, maintaining a cool distance until Yun does something that finally gets her attention, whereupon the narrator's feelings for Yun tailspin, much to her surprise.
It's a love story, I suppose, but a very cruel one. No one is in the right in this story; everyone is a bit selfish, a bit confused, but ultimately real enough that we become endeared to them. On the down side, the supporting characters feel more like background to the story than a part of the story. But this could just be the case in order to underline how absorbed the narrator is within herself, and with her feelings towards Yun.
Not a bad read.
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I just finished the first volume of The Twelve Kingdoms a few days ago, and it was as enjoyable as Ruro said it would be.
While I'm waitin' for my hold on the second volume to come in at the library, I'll be reading Murakami's Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, which Ammy suggested to me, well, ages ago. Told you I'd get around to it! :P
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?I'm currently reading the Joy Luck Club. Not sure how to describe it, but it's very emotional and leaves a large impact. How's the movie?
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Glad to hear it, Matsy!
?I'm currently reading the Joy Luck Club. Not sure how to describe it, but it's very emotional and leaves a large impact. How's the movie?
The movie is pretty terrible, because while the book has chapters that clearly label whose flashback is whose, this is not at all clear in the movie. Plus the protagonist has the acting ability of a piece of plywood.
Just started Hotel Iris, by Yoko Ogawa. It is absolutely brilliant, possibly because it's tailor-made to my tastes. I won't go into the plot here, but Google should give those interested a fair synopsis.
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Glad to hear it, Matsy!
The movie is pretty terrible, because while the book has chapters that clearly label whose flashback is whose, this is not at all clear in the movie. Plus the protagonist has the acting ability of a piece of plywood.
Just started Hotel Iris, by Yoko Ogawa. It is absolutely brilliant, possibly because it's tailor-made to my tastes. I won't go into the plot here, but Google should give those interested a fair synopsis.
How disappointing. I actually saw the movie, but it was a really long time ago when I was little.
Not sure if I said anything about this book, but it's called Lockdown: Escape from Furnace, by Alexander Gordon Smith. It's great for people who don't really like to read all that much. It got me back into reading. His vivid imagery and fast pacing make the book an easy read.
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So, sometime in the trimester my Social Studies Honors class is going to read Lies My Teacher Told Me. Does anyone know if it is any good?
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Just finished the second Hunger Games book, Catching Fire. The series is pretty cool. Right now I'm looking for the third book, Mockingjay.
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I finished Touching the Void today. Fun book.
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So, sometime in the trimester my Social Studies Honors class is going to read Lies My Teacher Told Me. Does anyone know if it is any good?
It's really good if you're interested in revisionist history. It's all about how history textbooks tend to leave out enormous amounts of history and make history class seem like the past is just one consistent narrative, instead of presenting conflicting evidence and different perspectives. Basically, it's why history class sucks in the United States. His style is great for just jumping around through the book and not getting lost. I highly recommend it, myself, but only for someone who cares for history-- anyone else would find it an interesting book filled with factoids at most.
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I picked up the second volume of The Twelve Kingdoms yesterday. I plan on starting it soon. :3
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I just finished the fourth volume of The Twelve Kingdoms.
I am struck dumb by how EXCELLENT that ending was. Oh my god. I can type just fine, but there is gibberish coming out of my mouth. My mind was blown by how much awesome the last chapter contained.
Yoko Nakajima is my favourite main character ever, and by far the most realistic heroine I have read in... ever.
And the writer, Fuyumi Ono, is my role model. I wanna write as good as she does, someday.
:* :* :*
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Reading The Named, the first book in the Guardians of Time series. Very cool :O
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I just finished the fourth volume of The Twelve Kingdoms.
I am struck dumb by how EXCELLENT that ending was. Oh my god. I can type just fine, but there is gibberish coming out of my mouth. My mind was blown by how much awesome the last chapter contained.
Yoko Nakajima is my favourite main character ever, and by far the most realistic heroine I have read in... ever.
And the writer, Fuyumi Ono, is my role model. I wanna write as good as she does, someday.
:* :* :*
This only makes me more freaking excited to start reading the second volume, once I get this project out of the way. Oh yessssss. 8)
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I finished Ozzy Osbourne's book last week.
Seriously, it's beautiful. His life is the most fucked up thin in the planet :getdown:
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Just finished Defender of the Imperium.
Now to wait for the third omnibus :V
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New Wheel of Time book is out. <3<3<3
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Finished Their Eyes Were Watching God, it was great, I guess.
Now starting The Great Gatsby for English.
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http://www.michaelastackpole.com/?p=1373
Buy an absolutely awesome book.
Get a sequel written.
THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THIS
EVERYONE BUY THIS BOOK NOW
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I've commited myself almost entirely to novels written by Patrick O'Brian; his distinctive and usual style has captured my amazement, and I have an unrivaled passion for his literature. I doubt I will begin to attempt anything else until I've read each of his books at least twice. His writing is often complicated and confusing to people who are unfamiliar with him. You'll probably find some negative reviews which criticise the style of writing in his novels, but really, they're all just frustrated because they couldn't adapt their minds to accommodate O'Brians style.
In fact, here's a beautiful picture of a beautiful novel (http://thierrygagnon.com/IMG/arton104.jpg) that will seize your attention if only you have the patience and determination to try. The writing is often so complex so as to discourage you at times, but I can guarantee enjoyment if you have the necessary conviction to continue reading no matter the discouragement.
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Just finished Now You're One of Us by Asa Nonami. It's the story of a young woman who marries into a big extended family who all live in the same house. Without giving too much away in terms of plot, I'll say that for most of the novel, I was like "Oh, OK, I get it - it's a cult" and you sort of expect a certain set of things to happen. Then I got to the last 10 pages and ... wanted to scoop out my eyeballs with a grapefruit spoon. It's a real work of horror, if a tad predictable at times, with a stomach-churning ending.
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IT'S GRAVITY RAINBOW TI- aargghhhhhhhhhhhhhh
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In fact, here's a beautiful picture of a beautiful novel (http://thierrygagnon.com/IMG/arton104.jpg) that will seize your attention if only you have the patience and determination to try. The writing is often so complex so as to discourage you at times, but I can guarantee enjoyment if you have the necessary conviction to continue reading no matter the discouragement.
How do I know if I'm not actually enjoying the book and that the only reason I think am is because I keep telling myself that the book is enjoyable. I wonder if I'm doing that with the Haruhi novels.
Also, I am currently reading Of Mice and Men. Everything seems happy right now(relatively), too happy. I've heard about Steinbeck and I read The Pearl, which I hated, so something going to happen to ruin everything(likely death) and someone/a bunch of people are going to come out bitter as a result. Could be wrong, but I guess I'm going to find out.
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How do I know if I'm not actually enjoying the book and that the only reason I think am is because I keep telling myself that the book is enjoyable. I wonder if I'm doing that with the Haruhi novels.
Also, I am currently reading Of Mice and Men. Everything seems happy right now(relatively), too happy. I've heard about Steinbeck and I read The Pearl, which I hated, so something going to happen to ruin everything(likely death) and someone/a bunch of people are going to come out bitter as a result. Could be wrong, but I guess I'm going to find out.
This one's different. Of Mice and Men was the only Steinback book I actually enjoyed reading.
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Of Mice and Men is a masterpiece. It's incredible how heavily your opinions of the characters are affected by how they are interpreted by their peers, when the characters can appear to be very different if you evaluate them from an alternative approach or perspective. The narrative is arguably candid and unbiased, but the dialogue is not; whether you choose to agree with a characters' opinion or choose to formulate your own will decide how you determine a character and whether or not they are, "Good," or, "Bad." The would-be antagonists, for example, are only really portrayed as antagonists by the men of the ranch. If you were to develop an independent opinion of these characters, uninfluenced by the social perception that is demonstrated in the book, you would actually recognise an individual personality which isn't very antagonistic at all.
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This one's different. Of Mice and Men was the only Steinback book I actually enjoyed reading.
Well, I did hear from a friend that it's way better than the Pearl...
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Just finished Empowered #6.
What the fuck.
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Uwaaaaaaa~
My school doesn't have Pendragon books 9 and 10.
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reading
Eifelheim by Michael Flynn
Foundation by Isaac Asimov
Train Man by Hitori Nakano
mostly Eifelheim right now.
in all this time the only one I've finished is Foundation. I just haven't been reading as much ;-;
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I'm currently reading the The Crucible for class and Unexpected Magic by Diana Wynn Jones.
The Crucible is fun. The class is reading it aloud and the lines are begging for large hams everywhere.
As for magic, I read the "The Plague of Peacocks" and I'm not sure how to describe how I feel about it.
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The Crucible is REALLY fun
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I decided to become more cultured and checked out The Time Machine from the library today. Finished the first chapter, and it seems not that bad. I'm wondering how involved a story can be told in such a small amount of time, but let's see where this goes.
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I really enjoyed that one. Considering the time period in which he wrote his novels, Wells was very clairvoyant.
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Reading "The Tree of Knowledge" by P?o Baroja and Lord Dunsany's "Complete Works". Both are proving to be beyond my expectatives.
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I still need to go out and spend my $50 from mum for xmas... thinking of trying to pick up House of Leaves and maybe a copy of John Dies At The End as well. Any other suggestions along those lines?
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Finished The Well of Ascension finally. Damn fine book; damn fine series so far.
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holy god i actually finished gravity's rainbow
but the DICKS, what do they mean?
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Oh, hey, never noticed this thread before. I've been reading Terry Pratchett myself, and have read pretty much every book except Wee Free Men, Maurice and his Amazing Rodents, and The Science of Discworld 2.
I finished I Shall Wear Midnight recently. It made me squee with fangirlish glee, mostly due to one character~
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I've recently returned to the world of books.
I've been reading since I was, like, 3, and then shit happened and I lost my ability to read, and had to more or less force myself through books. Luckily, it's back now, :3 So would anyone reccomand me anything?
Right now I'm reading Dracula, Frankenstein, and a bunch of old magazines from the 1890's-1920's. You know it's old when it says "The new play by Sir Oscar Wilde"... They're mainly compliation books of Swedish magazines, but there are also a few old issues of London Times.
Including one article where a female journalist argued for the de-sissification of love-letters. .___.
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I've been reading The Wine-Dark Sea, and cannot help but remark at Mr. O'Brian's excellence of prose.
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Including one article where a female journalist argued for the de-sissification of love-letters. .___.
I snickered.
Would probably be best to start with your favourite genres. Dracula and Frankenstein, eh? Maybe some Jules Verne and HG Wells might do you good. And since they're 19th century writers, their stuff is up on Project Gutenberg if you don't want to get the books from your library.
Of course, I'd also recommend Little Women, but that's because I like to recommend Little Women to everybody. :derp:
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Hmm, I have some Jules Verne in my bookshelf, but I don't think I've heard of HG Wells. Will try and look him up next library visit, :) Little Women should also be in my bookshelf somewhere, though I can't remember reading it, will try and find it. Thnks for the tips, :)
Am using Wikisource to read Frankenstein. It's good so far, but it's painfully clar in certain parts that it was written by an 18-year-old girl. I'm referring to the part that goes:
Frankenstein is emo.
His famly is emo, too(thanks to recent events), however, they are trying to cheer up.
Frankenstein's father tells him to cheer up.
Frankenstein won't cheer up, becuase he's busy BEIN' EMO.
Frankenstein's girlfreind is emo, but not as emo as Frankenstein.
Frankenstein wants to kill himself.
(SPOILER AHEAD, and I can't find the damn SPOILER-tag.)
[ruro]I found it for you![/ruro]
Frankenstein goes on a vacation to the mountains.
We are treated to a long bit of scenery porn.
Frankenstein, however, cannot appriciate the scenery, for he is too emo and therefore NOT WORTHY.
Frankenstein meets his creation.
Creature: "Hi, uh, you kinda dumped me into the world with no explenation or excuse. Would you please take some resbonsibility for me?"
Frankenstein: "You are a big fat, stupid doo-doo-head, begone!!!! >:((" *Runs up and starts hitting the monster, who is too well-built to be affected by his meager punches*
The creature(Adam?) is starting to look more mature than his creator. .___.
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The creature(Adam?) is starting to look more mature than his creator. .___.
Curses, you figured it out. <_<
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Curses, you figured it out. <_<
Well, I was kinda suprised, seeing as the movie with Mr. Badham(Kenneth Brannaugh) just had him kick the idiot ball instead of acting so blantantly immature. That actually answers a few raised eyebrows pretty well.
Also, the women in the book are, eh... His wife/sister is sort-of-maybe-a-little bit of a Mary-Sue.. Mostly in the first chapters, though.
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Still trying to read through The Jesus Sutras by Martin Palmer...
It's enlightening about the mixture of two religions: Taoism and Christianity.
______________________________
Edit: I recently finished reading, A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines.
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I'm reading "The tooth fairy" by Graham Joyce at the moment. The title doesn't give it away but it's horror. I've not posted here before so just in general, I should say my reading taste is a bit eclectic. I've got classics and literature stacked up there with YA fantasy etc. It helps to keep life interesting.
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Readthe Great Gatsby in school. I was being bumrushed with other assignments, so I didn't read it as thoroughly as I would have liked. After reading about what people say about makes me feel that symbolism is like a big load of bs. I know a lot of it does make sense, but at the same time, it seems like you can just make crap up. We also got to see part of the movie. Seems kinda boring. It's like they really wanted to stay true to the
book, what with Nick reading his lines directly from it (it just sounds weird to me), but then they shuffle scenes around and change minor details(like Myrtle's party having so many people.) It just seems boring, which may or may be the point. I wonder what the new movie's going to be like.
So far I like the other adaptations of the books we read better, namely of Mice and Men and The Crucible. Mice was good sans Curley's wife(we get it, you like the barn) and the ending(the class laughed,) while the Crucible was really hammy( best part was Proctor's WHOOOOOOOOREEEE!
. It's ending was funny too. Hopefully the Great Gatsby movie gets better.
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I finished reading Gatsby the other day actually. Have to write a paper on it on my vacation though....
I am attempting to read some Art Spiegelman, even though that's not literature. Also trying to read Confucius' analects and sayings of the Yi Ching/Book of Changes. Also trying to read my Shakespeare books, Henry VIII, Richard III, King Lear, and Hamlet. I might read We The Living and Thus Spake Zarathustra because those, along with the Shakespeare books, have been sitting on my shelf for too long.
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Didn't realize there were so many other avaricious readers here :)
I have to read As I Lay Dying and Heart of Darkness for class but I'm trying to fit in Anna Karenina on the side T.T
It's a struggle.
The last books I've read are The Stranger and The Picture of Dorian Gray on my own.
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Just finished The Cleanest Race (http://www.amazon.com/Cleanest-Race-Koreans-Themselves-Matters/dp/1933633913/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1300297742&sr=8-1) by BR Myers, and I definitely recommend it if you're interested in North Korea or just want a good read in general. If nothing else, check out the talk (http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/TheCle) he did for C-SPAN. It's long, but extremely interesting (it was the reason I got the book in the first place).
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Reading The Dream of Perpetual Motion at the moment, a book I picked up off the contemporary fiction shelf based on its cover (so shallow!) and the entrancing summary imprinted on the back - promising a steampunk setting inhabited by zeppelins and mechanical men, romance, philosophizing on the relationship between magic and technology, and multiple allusions to the Tempest. Here's a thematically important (and spoiler-free) passage, riffing on the contrasting images of the Virgin and the Dynamo (http://www.bartleby.com/159/25.html):
Two moral forces shaped how we think and live in this shining twentieth century: the Virgin and the Dynamo. The Dynamo represents the desire to know; the Virgin represents the freedom not to know.
What?s the Virgin made of? Things that we think are silly, mostly. The peculiar logic of dreams, or the inexplicable stirring we feel when we look on someone that?s beautiful not in a way that we all agree is beautiful, but the unique way in which a single person is. The Virgin is faith and mysticism; miracle and instinct; art and randomness.
On the other hand, you have the Dynamo: the unstoppable engine. It finds the logic behind a seeming miracle and explains that miracle away; it finds the order in randomness to which we?re blind; it takes a caliper to a young woman?s head and quantifies her beauty in terms of pleasing mathematical ratios; it accounts for the secret stirring you felt by discoursing at length on the systems of animals.
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I'm up to The Hundred Days, now, and his literary proficiencies are forever confounding, even to those who are accustomed to it.
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Reading Barrel Fever by David Sedaris again. Most of his work is him relating stories about his family, which are also hilarious, but this collection of short stories are at times cringingly funny.
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Reading The Hero of Ages, currently in part 4. Started off slow compared to the first books, but the last two chapters have more than made up for that.
Chapters 44 and 45 cemented Ruin as the best damn character in the series. Is there anything, anything he hasn't had a hand in?
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I am reading light novel of oreimo, prety fun one
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I just wanted to post something that was not in the nature of, "I'm reading this." So hear goes *Musters courage*
I thought I might share this; Stephen Maturin's perspective on Monarchy is a government in his era, in addition to some following reflexions concerning the logical fallacies of men. He is a character of Patrick O'Brian, and although his tone may exhibit a certain irascibility, I find the excerpt to be attractive for how it illustrates the man's opinion, as susceptible it may be to contradiction from impassioned modern advocacy. What matters is how imbursed the character is with consideration for his era, and the politics that mattered then, which very successfully portrays one who is authentically integrated into his scene, and not lazily so.
For the scrupulous among you, the environment is the year 1812; the other man is a certain Mr. Evans, who is citizen of the young United States of America. Stephen has been captured after one of America's several initial victories of that conflict, and is prisoner of war throughout his dialogue.
"Can you really maintain that the hereditary king cuts a very shining figure?"
"I cannot. Nor is that to the point: the person, unless he be extraordinarily good or extraordinarily bad, is of no importance. It is the living, moving, procreating, sometimes speaking symbol that counts."
"But surely mere birth without any necessary merit is illogical?"
"Certainly, and that is its great merit. Man is a deeply illogical being, and must be ruled illogically. Whatever that frigid prig Bentham may say, there are innumerable motives that have nothing to do with utility. In good utilitarian logic, a man does not sell all his goods to go crusading, nor does he build cathedrals; still less does he write verse. There are countless pieties without a name that find their focus in a crown. It is as well, I grant you, that the family should have worn it beyond the memory of man; for your recent creations do not answer - they are nothing in comparison of your priest-king, whose merit is irrelevant, whose place cannot be disputed, nor made the subject of a recurring vote."
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Haven't read this thread in a year, so I missed out on two conversations I could have jumped in on, how unfortunate.
David Sedaris
I like the part where he describes what it was like to grow up in Raleigh, NC. Kind of a rib since he does that in most of his writing, but I also love reading along and being able to identify all the locations exactly.
All I've read recently was Mogworld, Yatzhee's book. Pretty enjoyable, perfect for reading on a stuck train!
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Yeah, it's true. Sedaris milks his family for the bulk of his material. Which is why I like Barrel Fever - these are short stories about fictional characters, and have nothing to do with his family.
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Whoa haven't posted in this thread since forever lol.
So, in my quest to get more and more into cyberpunk, I stumbled across and acquired a copy of Neuromancer this sunday.
Being a massive Matrix, Blade Runner and Johnny Mnemonic fanboy, I have high expectations.
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There's a shining spot on Borders' closure - fifty, sixty percent off, plus my membership.
Picked up Halo: Cryptum, Temple, and Unknown Solder #1 for cheap. Gonna grab an overview of the German Armed Forces during World War Two next.
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I'm finally finishing The Return of the King. It's impressive to see how well-developed (certain) characters become, especially with with Tolkien's lofty, history text book like style.
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Does anyone remember reading "The Good Earth"? My class (and only my class) is reading that for the rest of the remaining year and it sorta caught my attention.
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Does anyone remember reading "The Good Earth"? My class (and only my class) is reading that for the rest of the remaining year and it sorta caught my attention.
Yeah, went over that one in high school English class. I don't think I ever read the sequels, though.
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Managed to get thirty books for five bucks at the Borders' final day.
Currently working over Generation Kill. Nice read.
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Got Alice in wonderland in Chinese for less than a pound :V
Thought it'd be an easy way to pick up more words and reading
I got stuck on the first page :3
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Currently following:
The Power of Five series (by Anthony Horowitz)
Artemis Fowl series (by Eoin Colfer)
Septimus Heap series (by Angie Sage)
The Kane Chronicles (by Rick Riordan)
Finished:
Percy Jackson and the Olympians series (by Rick Riordan)
Looking to get:
The Heroes of Olympus series (by Rick Riordan)
Recommendations?
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noodles recommends Dune