ThunderPeel2001

Books, books, books...

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My brain just did its best souffle impression for that, Nach. What on earth...

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I loved the article on the Parisian Clockwork Cleaners!

Really? I think it's rather poorly written and dull as a vasectomy sans painkiller. Which is to say arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

I don't know if a vasectomy would be extremely painful without painkillers, maybe it'll be fine? Anyway, you are free to not read any books you think are stupid. Atlas Shrugged worked for me and I look forward to reading The Fountainhead.

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I don't know if a vasectomy would be extremely painful without painkillers, maybe it'll be fine? Anyway, you are free to not read any books you think are stupid. Atlas Shrugged worked for me and I look forward to reading The Fountainhead.

I couldn't say. But I continue reading it because it does present interesting ideas, but they're just couched in such an annoying writing style. I may give up, I may not, we'll see.

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Man, New Hope for the Dead is funny. The story and characters are great too. I'm only 100 pages in, but I think I like it as much as I liked Miami Blues, and I liked Miami Blues a lot. Charles Willeford is the man.

I just added Kroms

Accepted! And sorry for my crazy-long wishlist. That's just the result of much, much, much procrastination and is only on the internet for me to reference when I need it, but without having to pull a .txt file from my email on connections I'd rather not sign into my email from and hey what a run this sentence turned-out to be.

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I just added Kroms and Erkki (the latter of which I suspect stopped using it)

I'll probably use it, but not daily to track my progress or something. I read maybe one brick a month, or maybe less, depending on how sleepy I am. Also I'm not adding all my books there before I move to my new apartment, which desperately needs a kitchen but I've been too lazy.

Also, from that follows that if you ever see me adding a lot of books to Goodreads, you'll know that I've moved :)

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Have any of you have contact with the Occupy-movement? If you do, and if you did enjoy it, can I perhaps interest in David Graeber's latest work? (If you aren't familiar with Graeber: he is regarded as one of the intellectuals behind the ideology of the whole movement.) Now I haven't read it yet, but I wanted to highlight this since it might be of interest to you staters. It's called Debt: The First 5000 Years and basically retells economic history as we know it, and from what I've read about it, championing debt as a way of keeping a social balance. The reviews have been great, and here's a great one from a really smart dude.

blogs_zunguzungu_graeber-383x577.jpg

Me? I'm currently debating what to read, after finishing W. G. Sebald's The Emigrants, a long ritual of elimination since I have way to many unread books stacking up.

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I loved that review - if only because it's one of the rare instances where someone uses the term 'begging the question' correctly and knowledgeably!

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What do you think of Nietzsche? Also, of Nabokov? Ever since I read James Salter's Burning the Days I've wanted to read Speak, Memory but I haven't got off to it yet.

I'm not the person you want to ask about Nietzche. I have this pathological hatred of philosophy, which was not disabused when I read his polemic. It has some literary merit beyond the silliness, but not really enough that you should seek it out. You millage will probably vary though.

Nabokov is sort of singular. His writing is wonderful to the point of exhausting the reader. Lolita remains the only epic I have enjoyed, and a book I think about all the time.

Speak, Memory is on my bookshelf, but apparently he spoils some of his books in it. So I might be a while in getting to it.

Here is one of Nabokov's short stories.

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Just last week I finished the fifth Wool book.

It's a book series about life in an underground bunker after some unspecified apocalyptic event. I can highly recommend it. http://www.amazon.com/Wool-Omnibus-ebook/dp/B0071XO8RA/ref=pd_sim_kstore_2?ie=UTF8&m=A1HC3MLVT7QPHY

it started as a self published short story the writer dropped on amazon without any advertizing and it kind of exploded from there. :tup:

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Now I'm reading:

Tobias Wolff "Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories" - Very, very good. I just LOVE how he turns quotidian, more or less rural scenes into the mystic realm. I really wish I could explain how I feel about this, it's such an amazing effect. Especially considering how raw, down-to-earth and visceral his prose is.

Aleksandar Hemon "The Question of Bruno" - An emigre writer, escaped the civil war in Yugoslavia and now writes weird and wonderful stories about his history and the history of his people. In one story, called "The Life and Work of Alphonso Kauders" he just piles on facts to build a portrait of a special man, facts such as these:

Alphonso Kauders had a mysterious prostate illness and, in the course of time, he said:

"Strange are the ways of urin."

One of Alphonso Kauders's seven wives had a tumour as big as a three-year-old child.

Alphonso Kauders stood behind Gavrilo Princip, whispering - as urine was streaming down Gavrilo's thigh, as Gavrilo's sweating hand, holding a weighty revolver, was trembling in his pocket - Alphonso Kauders whispered:

"Shoot, brother, what kind of Serb are you?"

Alphonso Kauders, in the course of time, said to Stalin:

"Koba, if you shoot Bukharin ever again, we shall have an argument." And Bukharin was shot only once.

There are plenty more, and an appendix. When I realized that these facts actually are canon and used as mythology in other stories, I felt pure glee.

Some poems by Charles Simic, here and there - all great stuff but I probably don't need to tell you.

Criticism by James Wood (mainly from The Irresponsible Self) and Coetzee (Inner Workings, On Stranger Shores). Really makes me wish I could articulate better in English (any language, really).

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Has anyone read any Ken Macleod? I read his novel Learning the World and enjoyed it, but his bibliography is a bit difficult to figure out where to start on. I'm not sure whether to try one of his series or just pick a random other standalone novel of his to give a go.

Any advice?

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After playing Arkham City I went back and re-read some of the Batman collections I own. I've decided that Long Halloween and Dark Victory, the Loeb/Sale books, are probably my favorite of any Batman comic I've read, which is most of it, excluding a chunk of the golden age stuff. After reading those I started reading Bone which I've been meaning to try for years and so far I'm liking it a lot.

As for real books I'm slowly working through Name of the Wind, I could easily have finished it months ago but it's one of the few fantasy books that I've actually liked in a long while so rather than read it as fast as I want I've been rationing it and then will probably do the same with Wise Man's Fear, especially since it will most likely be close to 4 years before the last book comes out.

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I just finished The Wise Man's Fear. I'm kind of ambivalent about it. At times it feels like a badly written early teen fantasy. At other times it is a really interesting and somewhat unique fantasy story and a thrill to read. If Kvothe was less full of himself, maybe it would be better.

I guess it was pretty much the same in Name of the Wind (and in the first 300 pages of TWMF basically the same things happen as in the first book), but it was new enough then that I noticed this less.

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At first I hated Name of the Wind because if how cocky Kvothe was, I wouldn't have gotten past the first 100 pages if my friend didn't keep insisting I continue.

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I wouldn't say I hated it, but I did actively dislike Kvothe's "I am great at everything"-thing. I had the feeling that was toned down a bit in the Wise Man's Fear, or at least it bothered me less. Plus, it had him fucking up a lot more.

Did you end up liking it after all then, Baron?

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Look, if they're anywhere as involving as A Song of Ice and Fire - if they induce serious withdrawal symptoms in you - then I'll read them. Are they anywhere close to that level?

Because I just saw the new Game of Thrones trailer (for season 2) and am very excited for it. They're moving in stuff from book three (to give

Robb and Jaime something to do, I guess

), but I'm still very excited.

I feel like reading historical fiction. I wish I lived in the States or someplace similar. I'd go to the store and snap up a Bernard Cromwell paperback like that.

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I picked up Droidmaker: George Lucas and the Digital Revolution and so far I think it's going to be just about everything I wanted Rogue Leaders to be. The history ends in 1986, but Noah Falstein, David Fox, and Ron Gilbert were around by then.

It's a crazy technical book, and the general theme seems to be: LucasFilm Computer Division created everything! It was written by someone who was there, so the recollections and details are really vivid. Enjoying it so far :tup:

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Look, if they're anywhere as involving as A Song of Ice and Fire - if they induce serious withdrawal symptoms in you - then I'll read them. Are they anywhere close to that level?

Well, that depends on the reader, doesn't it. Personally I think they are, but don't blame me if they're not for you.

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