I was visiting my nephew this weekend and read Captain Under##### and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopy#####. I was so inspired, I think this may totally change the direction of my writing career.
I was visiting my nephew this weekend and read Captain Under##### and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopy#####. I was so inspired, I think this may totally change the direction of my writing career.
As far as actual "literature" goes I read One Hundred Years of Solitude a few months ago. Goddamn. Shot up into my top 10 favorites of all time, easily.
Other recent reads: "Soon I Will Be Invincible" (enjoyable, even if it's treading oft-treaded ground)
I just finished this about a week ago. I was really worried early on that it would boil down to "Batman did it"
I wouldn't bother with the Baroque Cycle unless you like pirates, physics and economics. And swords. And alchemy. And chemistry. And harem girls. Oh, and cryptography, of course. Can't have a Stephenson novel without cryptography, can you?
I'm about halfway through The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I didn't see the movie but I did read this comic (http://www.lucid-tv.com/oscarnight.jpg). Which made me want to read it.
I like it so far but I'm not sure where it's going or if it might just be a really big piece of world building. Which I wouldn't mind, since I like world building.
I've been reading the Foundation novels by Isaac Asimov. They are so badass. Set 12,000 years in the future, the series is about the fall of the galactic empire told over the course of a thousand years, and the subsequent rise of the second galactic empire. Apparently the fall of the Roman empire was his big inspiration for the story. It is some of the best sci-fi I've read.
I haven't read the Foundation books, but I completely fell in love with the ***** trilogy a while back. I have a complete set of the Foundation books, they're on my list of books to read before I die.
And the middle school teacher who made me read it and I broke up, I don't feel obligated anymore.It took me a bit to realise she wasn't your teacher in middle school. I thought you were either phrasing your graduation from the school in an amusing way, or perhaps you were hot for teacher in that way which attracts media attention.
Only book I ever kept from a public library and I'm not going to Stockton to return it now...
I like you and all but let me say...you might want to start this one in baby steps. Like, maybe they'll like it enough to pay the late fees so they can keep it for a reread.
I'd say mention that goal in your Author's Bio on the back fly but reminding people of libraries when you want them to buy the book is prolly a shitty business plan.
We read Franny and Zooey a couple of years ago when we were doing a book club thing here. I remember passionately hating every character in that book.
I view that as a pretty strong endorsement of the quality of the writing.
Watch out, you're treading on AW's lit-crush.
I wasn't even aware you read English.
I wasn't even aware you read, English.
OK, so it goes in fine, it's just the output process where things get dodgy then.
All right, you eye-snatching motherfucks, bring the strong sack then. I've spent near 42 years never having scanned a page of Vonnegunt. Give me starter I can walk into the book man and pick up, something a non-Vonniegunt reader can hash into.
Start with Slaughterhouse Five, then go to Cat's Cradle, then maybe Bluebeard or Breakfast of Champions.
OK, so it goes in fine, it's just the output process where things get dodgy then.
Player Piano was my least favorite by far. Of course now I can't even recall what it's about.
I quite like Mother Night, too. Quite accessible I reckon
I watched a miniseries called "Tin Man" -- not knowing before I started it that it was a SciFi original -- and it was rather Meh. However, it did remind me how much I loved Return to Oz (ever so much more than The Wizard of Oz), and I got to wondering how closely it followed the other Oz books. So I downloaded the first five Oz books from Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/b#a42) (they're in the public domain) and have been reading them.
There are thirteen in all, and being children's books they're pretty straightforward and quick to read. (I read the first two last night.) They were all published between the turn of the century and the beginning of World War II, and stylistically they're quite spare and remind me of A.A. Milne. Dunno if they're enjoyable, per se, but I feel like I'm Accomplishing something by reading them, learning a new mythology, etc. Plus, it's interesting to see where the well-known films take license with the original stories.
Recommended? Probably not, unless you're really interested in absorbing the official canon of a specific branch of children's literature, as I am.
Yeah, I'm a nerd.
Have you read Wicked?
The only one I can think of is to not publish the book and write a better one.
The U of Chicago Press is still doing a monthly eBook for free.
This month is The Lavender Scare (http://www.bibliovault.org/cgi-bin/DeliverADE.epl?transid=DwSnBiedpubD14dn) which combines history, perverts and shameful behaviour.
Right down my alley, in other words.
Flattery O'Connor is my favorite author.
Shit, and here I thought that was on purpose.
I wonder if that's where all those cans came from. I wish I was smart enough to make that joke.
What crime fiction? Anything you'd recommend?
Try Westlake, too, if you haven't. He's fantastic.
That is one of his that I haven't read. I have loved some of his other books, but I read the sample on Amazon and I felt like this one was going to be China Mieville Overdoseland.
Yeah, to a degree. He's created a world of size and complexity that's almost on par with Tolkien or the Star Wars universe. There's times when it's laid on a little thick, but mostly it's great writing and great atmosphere. The plot was predictable at some points, but quite surprising at others. I finished it last night and quite enjoyed it, but I am going to take a break from him before I pick up "The Scar."
I'm reading Wombat's book. I'll report when I have finished. So far, I like it.Me too - the Animals Behaving Badly one. I'm going to write a dissertation on Amazon once I'm done. Perhaps under the "Segmental Phonology in Optimality Theory" section though, to be puckish.
When his closest ally, Hawk, is beaten and left for dead while protecting a bookie, Spenser embarks on an epic journey to rehabilitate his best pal, body and soul.
That sounds like an idea i've been espousing for awhile; secular Christianity. Basically, the problem with Christianity is if you don't believe in God you can't be a Christian. The Jews got it right. Don't kick people out if they don't believe.
There's a lot of good that could come of that. And the Church might not be so fuck*ng crazy if there were a few doubters around to keep them sane.
My exact thoughts. Why should one have to accept any beliefs about the origin of humanity or the universe in order to claim that they are going to follow a moral code based on the principles espoused by Christ (or whomever)?
If religion is not something you believe (which Armstrong says is a surprisingly recent emphasis, and a reactionary one), but something you practice, there is huge scope for the radical and revolutionary ethical ideas of Christ (or whomever) to act as a catalyst for positive social change again, just like they did in the past.
That sounds like an idea i've been espousing for awhile; secular Christianity. Basically, the problem with Christianity is if you don't believe in God you can't be a Christian. The Jews got it right. Don't kick people out if they don't believe.
I think you might be raising the level of discourse around here a bit abruptly.
If religion is not something you believe (which Armstrong says is a surprisingly recent emphasis, and a reactionary one), but something you practice (...).
Also, I just finished Hunger Games, which I note parenthetically (is there any other way) has been previously referenced on TOUAMB exactly twice - once by Toaster expressing glee in 2009 over getting a Hunger Games pin; again by Miles in 2010, and my impression of the book is decidedly mixed. Were I still a teenager I would love it unreservedly. As a grownup with kids there is a serious squick factor to a storyline that pits 24 children between 12 & 18 years of age to lethal combat with one another. Get ready, anyway, Hollywood got ahold of the story and is set to crank out a successor to Harry Potter. I'm eagerly anticipating/ awaiting in horror the product tie ins with Burger King, Disney and Trapper Keeper.
I just finished Hunger Games this morning. Since it was published in 2008 and the Great Outdoor Fight was in 2006, I think Suzanne Collins hella ripped off Onstad. Also Romeo and Juliet.
My anime loving niece pointed that out to me too, but apparently the victors in Battle Royale are still treated like murderous scum once the event is over. In Hunger Games they become the living trophies of the inhuman state they live within.
That is one of the best books ever. I also liked Kraken. I don't like all of his books, but I loved those.
I just finished Hunger Games this morning. Since it was published in 2008 and the Great Outdoor Fight was in 2006, I think Suzanne Collins hella ripped off Onstad. Also Romeo and Juliet.
Kind of thinking I might just alternate rewatching The Wire with reading urban history books for the rest of my life. The other night I found myself staying up until almost 3 reading articles from when St Louis thought about building an El in the early 20th century.
Read and saw Hunger Games this time home, books first. I think I wouldn't have been happy the other way around.
Finally getting around to The Diamond Age. I got about 70 pages into it last summer and then got distracted, so I had to restart. Doing a readalong with my BFF, who almost exclusively reads trashy romance and urban fantasy nowadays, so that'll be interesting. I wonder if she'll like it -- I seriously doubt there will be any gratuitous romantic affairs.
This is one of my favorite books. Like most Stephenson books I'm pretty hazy on how it ended but I remember the rest being excellent.
I'm also stoked to be starting a new nonfiction at the same time -- The Disappearing Spoon (And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements) (http://samkean.com/disappearing-spoon). I think I picked it up based on somebody's positive review on Goodreads, but I'm not sure.
Has anybody started The Mongoliad?That sounds rather non-PC.
That sounds rather non-PC.
It's by Neal Stephenson and others. It's set around a not-historically-accurate Earth during the spread of the Mongol empire. There are Khans in it.
Low hanging fruit, Aug.
I'm suffering through Feast for Crows right now. I'ma power through it but it's my least of them so far. Do Not Like so many of the viewpoint characters.
having read the whole song of ice and fire to date, i cannot in good conscience recommend it to anyone. it's great and compelling and all, unique, fully-fleshed, blah blah, but it's so GODDAMNED INFURIATING and more than once that i wish i'd never picked it up.
And I could tell he was going to rip their arms and legs off and then throw them in the fire and I just didn't want the heartburn.
That reminds me a bit of Neal Stephenson. Paraphrased conversation I had about one of his books:
Him: What are you reading?
Me: Quicksilver
H: What's it about?
M: I'm not sure; I'm only 400 pages in.
That is pretty much what kills that era and kind of writing for me as well.
i fuck*ng LOVE the baroque cycle. i've read it at least three times.
That wasn't a complaint. I felt the same way about Anathem. A couple hundred pages in I was like "interesting things are happening but I can't quite figure out what they're getting at yet."
That wasn't a complaint. I felt the same way about Anathem. A couple hundred pages in I was like "interesting things are happening but I can't quite figure out what they're getting at yet."
enoch and a waterhouse,
i don't count cryptonomicon as part of the baroque cycle. i think even diamond age has an enoch and a waterhouse, they're his way of linking his universe together, but i look at the baroque cycle as just what's labeled baroque on the cover.
how's the mongoliad? i haven't had any opportunity to check it out yet, really. i don't own a device that's comfortable for reading.
yeah, of course, but just because there are connections doesn't mean it's all part of the same series. there are waterhouses in reamde too, and that ain't part of the baroque cycle either. it's a running thread that links together the universe, but the series is a specific set of pages that doesn't include reamde or cryptonomicon
and am working on a Neil Young biography.
and so is reamde. same universe, different series. semantics.
Please tell me that when you say "working on" you mean "writing."
Please tell me that when you say "working on" you mean "writing."
So I wonder if I'm gonna wind up liking this Billy Pilgrim dude.
No one? No one has a book for mom day?
I'm such a curmudgeon about books these days that I can't think of anything I've read lately that I'd actually recommend.I bought her your book for pool reading. She said it was slow. Slow for 'pool reading'
Hmm, mostly I like things that are more humorous. Has she read Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum books?
The Professional is near the top of my reading list, too. I'll be curious to know what you think.Give me your addy on PM and I'll send it over if you want.
Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry
All The King's Men - Robert WarrenRobert Penn Warren is from Guthrie, Kentucky, a village on the periphery of Hopkinsville, the town where I grew up.
Rabbit, Run - John Updike
The Spy Who Came In From From The Cold - John Le Carre
U.S.A. - trilogy of the 42nd parallel, 1919, and The Big Money - John dos Passos -Bible print, bible thin pages, probably better reading than the bible
Give me your addy on PM and I'll send it over if you want.
Hey a book trading thread could be interesting. Or just post books you want to get rid of in this thread and people can PM you.I concur
The next time someone says "The Civil War was not about slavery, it was about states rights" which I've heard a shocking number of times, I'm just gonna laugh in their face* and say "looks like someone got their history from Gone With the Wind."
*I already do that much.
Soon I Will Be Invincible (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soon_I_Will_Be_Invincible)
Check yer gmail?
I picked up David Wong's "This Book Is Full of Spiders" and it's pretty good so far. I don't know that anything could match "John Dies at the End," which I first read in the serialized web format. I seriously lost an entire day at work reading that thing. Now it's been pulled down and made into a book (and also a movie); can't say as I blame him, might as well make a buck or two off of it. But the sequel is decent so far.
Are either of those books anything like this (http://youtu.be/9YrDQ18P9x4)?
What a great book! I just read it a few months ago. Great.
Now I am reading A Canticle for Leibowitz which is pretty awesome. Post-apocalyptic fiction written during the cold war. A secret monastery are the only ones who preserved knowledge of man's technology and writings from before the war-- the general society are all virulently anti-science and anti-technology. At this point they don't even remember what happened to destroy the old world, and even the monks don't understand the technical writings they're copying over and over. There was this part about a guy making an Illuminated (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illuminated_manuscript) version of a circuit diagram that really hooked me.
Guys -It is really fuck*ng weird.
Sounds fuck*ng awesome, that's what it sounds like. Give William James' "The Varieties of Religious Experience" a whirl next, you're in for some intraplanar shenanigans.
I highly recommend the book "S". I'm not a mystery reader but this thing has me caught up. There's the story itself, the margin notes of the two readers, and various side puzzles to solve with the provided props stuck in the pages.
author? link maybe? i'm intrigued.
Bill Bryson.
I wasn't really big on the guy. His writing was interesting, but 'The Mother Tongue' was kind of a cock-up, and his science writing is goofy to the point that it wears on me.
I got 'The Lost Continent' from my pops for Christmas, though, and shit is funny. I was at a gathering today, reading it to ignore screaming babies, and I was laughing my ass off at some of the turns of phrases he gets in there. N.B. that I'm only like 40 pages in, but thus far, it comes with recommendations.
I just finished John Dies at the End yesterday. I liked it, but I'm not sure I understood the end.
I had to take a break from reading Infinite Jest because the narrator (??) said that black people never have tattoos "for obvious reasons." What?? The black people I know have lots of tattoos. What.
I haven't read that book but I am always sorry when I buy a book for Kindle and find out that it has footnotes.
A quick Google search suggests the narrator is not alone in assuming that.
Has anyone here tried to read IJ on a standard Kindle or other basic non-touchscreen e-reader? Or talked to anyone who has? I'm wondering if the endnotes would be too much of a hassle on an e-reader.
A quick Google search suggests the narrator is not alone in assuming that.None of those guys must be sports fans. Tatted up guys of all shades are in abundance.
None of those guys must be sports fans. Tatted up guys of all shades are in abundance.
The person saying "black people don't get tattoos, for obvious reasons" was not from the tennis academy, he was living in the halfway house.
I am so tantalizingly close to the end.
It was a defining tension: the very conceptual tools with which he pursued life’s most desperate questions threatened to keep him forever at a distance from the connections he struggled to make.
I finished that book. Hmmm.
I am doing some Googling, and for some reason I am having a (false?) memory of reading some of his philosophy articles at some earlier time. Lately a lot of weird memories are surfacing in a way which feels very strange.
OK you guys, read the Gormenghast series. Weirdo "fantasy" written in the 1940s and 1950s, before the all-pervading influence of Tolkien. A really unique vision-- a surreal castle filled with unique and strange characters living a life of pedantic and pointless-seeming ritual. Characters all have wonderfully distinct voices and use lots of strange vocab a la Onstad. The second book is hilarious, the first book is a little more "dramatic."
These are so good, you guys.
“That's why I like listening to Schubert while I'm driving. Like I said, it's because all his performances are imperfect. A dense, artistic kind of imperfection stimulates your consciousness, keeps you alert. If I listen to some utterly perfect performance of an utterly perfect piece while I'm driving, I might want to close my eyes and die right then and there. But listening to the D major, I can feel the limits of what humans are capable of - that a certain type of perfection can only be realized through a limitless accumulation of the imperfect. And personally I find that encouraging.”but the quote is not related to imperfection. He says something like "I find as I get older that I have grown bored of exciting things, but I never get bored of boring things." This is the kind of line that feels a little... tautological maybe? Not quite the right word. It reminds me of those Andy Warhol quotes that Wombat doesn't like. But I think it captures something related to something that Woolf has Walsh say in Mrs Dalloway, about how as he gets older he is no longer interested in "adventures," but perceives everyday life in a "richer" way that he couldn't when he was rushing around in his youth. I hope like hell that is true.
Quality, not quantity, m'man.
Besides, if shit goes south and it becomes a trudge by, let's say, 14, you don't want my 'trapped in a train with crazy guy' rampage on your conscience, right?
“Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.”
“However baby man may brag of his science and skill, and however much, in a flattering future, that science and skill may augment; yet for ever and for ever, to the crack of doom, the sea will insult and murder him, and pulverize the stateliest, stiffest frigate he can make; nevertheless, by the continual repetition of these very impressions, man has lost that sense of the full awfulness of the sea which aboriginally belongs to it.”
I might read Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little next. I adored those books when I was a kid.
I wish my library had good comics, it would save me a lot of money and bookshelf space.
For the love of god don't read Punpun if you don't want to get sad. It's sad as hell. The bird is abused and mistreated from page one.
Don't forget to re-read Watership Down while you're at it.