Books, books, books...

[Merus]

Honestly it started to get problematic by the second book. I think it had a place back in the day when there wasn't much fantasy to read at all, but we have much better stuff these days.

[JonCole]

Well, maybe I'm a closet objectivist but I enjoyed it. I guess if you're a fellow American and love Ron Paul read it in my new "Capitalism Fuck Yeah" Book Club.

[osmosisch]

If the gratuitous sex stuff bothered you, I really don't know how you could make it through an entire book named Blood of the Fold.

Sheer inertia, plus I was a lot less picky what I spent my time on back then. For reference I kept reading the bloody Wheel of Time books until the tenth one.

[Damian]

I am currently reading Dorothea Dieckmann's Guantanamo, which is a fictional account of a young German/India who is kidnapped in the middle of the night by American troops and taken to Guantanamo.  The book goes through the harrowing details of his days (Similar to Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich), but the language here is raw, uncluttered, unambiguous, immediate, effective.

 

Highly recommended.  Dieckmann is an amazing writer in terms of sheer kinetic power, and I think that this book will be one that enters into literary history as truly exploring the horrors of America's prison camp.

[MrHoatzin]

I'm reading a book called 1491 by Charles C. Mann. It's a collection of most recent best archeology+anthropology about the Americas before 'Peans brought their pet smallpox and passively murdered 90% of humanity already on the continent—before they even stepped deeper into the heartland to declare the continent empty, whereupon they could proceed to murder the widows and orphans of the pestilence... It goes into the invention of maize—I say invention because the engineering of corn from its ancestor plants is far more fantastic a feat of domestication than the paths taken by Old World grains, genetically and conceptually speaking. Really interesting book. Written about ten years ago.

Also recently passed through my hands and eagerly recommended: Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching. Ursula Le Guin edited a version of the book that is pretty fantastic (the copy I rented from the library had the audio book as well, read by her! ). She retains some of the ambiguities and subtleties in the language that translators historically translated with a more macho, "manual for princes" skew which she saw as somewhat distracting from the message.

I've been devouring all kinds of books about alternate patterns of thinking and conception of the world at large, in preparation for the project to come after Hobo Lobo wraps up. Dune was p baller material in this regard.

 

If anyone can point me in the direction of other fascinating works of anthropology, philosophy or speculative world-building fiction, I would greatly appreciate it!

[namman siggins]

Re-reading The Dog Stars by Peter Heller and reading the new Peter Matthiessen book, In Paradise.

Both are brilliant and profound in their exploration of the dark crooks and crannies of the human soul; highly recommend then.

[seamus2389]

I'm anti-recommending the Sword of Truth series. It's the worst fantasy series I've ever read by a long mile. God I hate it so much. Ugh. It's so fucking preachy. The first few books are like "all right this could be fun" dumb fantasy crap dumbness, which is great!, but then it devolves into Goodkind shoving anti-communism down your throat for the rest of the series.

 

Sorry. I fucking hate it. Sorry again.

 

This guy is doing a chapter by chapter read of Wizard's first rule and alot of the problems with that series are there right from the start

[savdec449]

I don't know how I'm still reading for classes (well, I totally do) but right now my weekend is dedicated to reading a few histories of the intellectual in the academy. Womp womp. (Actually really enjoying them, though this tells you just what kind of nerd I am). 

[feelthedarkness]

Luminaries - Eleanor Catton: Great fun! A kind of murder mystery noir set in the New Zealand gold rush. All the characters are representatives of Astrological signs, and the antagonists are heavenly bodies. I don't buy that stuff, but it's a wild structure, and every section is half as long as the previous section. Fairly sumptuous prose that I would recommend to fans of Wolf Hall or Thousand Autumns. My one, plebeian, complaint is that the structure leaves some of the plot threads unfulfilled emotionally, as the narrative ends about 80% through the text, when the cycle renews, as dictated by the name of the town. 

[JonCole]

This guy is doing a chapter by chapter read of Wizard's first rule and alot of the problems with that series are there right from the start

 

As much as I can tell everyone loves heaping shit on this book, I don't see how anyone could be interested in reading that chapter-by-chapter reading of it. I get not liking a book for good reasons (which most of you guys seem to have), but reading someone's exercise of hatred through meticulous rantings seems a little tasteless.

 

I've been reading Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive series, halfway into the second book. There seems to be no hidden manifesto in this one, but I might be mistaken as I apparently have been before. I enjoyed Way of Kings, though it was a bit long. I never read Wheel of Time, but boy do some of these fantasy writers love their overly long tomes. Sanderson does do some nice worldbuilding and the book never seemed laborious, just very deep in ambition.

[Twig]

As much as I can tell everyone loves heaping shit on this book, I don't see how anyone could be interested in reading that chapter-by-chapter reading of it. I get not liking a book for good reasons (which most of you guys seem to have), but reading someone's exercise of hatred through meticulous rantings seems a little tasteless.

 

I've been reading Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive series, halfway into the second book. There seems to be no hidden manifesto in this one, but I might be mistaken as I apparently have been before. I enjoyed Way of Kings, though it was a bit long. I never read Wheel of Time, but boy do some of these fantasy writers love their overly long tomes. Sanderson does do some nice worldbuilding and the book never seemed laborious, just very deep in ambition.

To be fair, I think people are shitting on the first book retroactively because the later books fall apart so fantastically. It's like a "hey, this got bad... but I wonder if it was already bad?" And then when they re-examine, they're actively looking for bad things instead of just reading casually. So, it's a deserved hatred, but maybe misdirected. I don't know if I'd call it tasteless, though. (I also have no intention of reading this, because it DOES seem rather pointless.)

 

At any rate, books! Hurray books!

Brandon Sanderson reportedly took the Wheel of Time series and made it actually good again (at least, relative to the last few books Jordan wrote before he passed away), which is an impressive feat if true, so I'm willing to buy into his own series not being terrible!

[namman siggins]

Luminaries - Eleanor Catton: Great fun! A kind of murder mystery noir set in the New Zealand gold rush. All the characters are representatives of Astrological signs, and the antagonists are heavenly bodies. I don't buy that stuff, but it's a wild structure, and every section is half as long as the previous section. Fairly sumptuous prose that I would recommend to fans of Wolf Hall or Thousand Autumns. My one, plebeian, complaint is that the structure leaves some of the plot threads unfulfilled emotionally, as the narrative ends about 80% through the text, when the cycle renews, as dictated by the name of the town. 

since you lined Luminaries you should check out The Ghost of the Mary Celeste & The Infatuations

[juv3nal]

Luminaries - Eleanor Catton: Great fun! A kind of murder mystery noir set in the New Zealand gold rush. All the characters are representatives of Astrological signs, and the antagonists are heavenly bodies. I don't buy that stuff, but it's a wild structure, and every section is half as long as the previous section. Fairly sumptuous prose that I would recommend to fans of Wolf Hall or Thousand Autumns. My one, plebeian, complaint is that the structure leaves some of the plot threads unfulfilled emotionally, as the narrative ends about 80% through the text, when the cycle renews, as dictated by the name of the town. 

 

ooh that sounds neat.

[feelthedarkness]

since you lined Luminaries you should check out The Ghost of the Mary Celeste & The Infatuations

 

Ooh, thanks for the recommendation! I also need a new book for the audible hopper, and Ghost is in the right range (12-20 hours for my commute. 

[Merus]

As much as I can tell everyone loves heaping shit on this book, I don't see how anyone could be interested in reading that chapter-by-chapter reading of it. I get not liking a book for good reasons (which most of you guys seem to have), but reading someone's exercise of hatred through meticulous rantings seems a little tasteless.

 

I think there's really only one good chapter-by-chapter dismantling of a novel, and that's Fred Clark's evisceration of Left Behind and its sequels. By stepping through, section by section, he highlights not just where the story is badly written, but explains the philosophy and theology behind it, and how that theology affects American political discourse. He calls them the World's Worst Books, and has spent several years going into detail about how that's not hyperbole. It turns out there is a lot to know about the minutiae behind the John Birch Society's insane rewriting of the Bible.

[MrHoatzin]

I think there's really only one good chapter-by-chapter dismantling of a novel, and that's Fred Clark's evisceration of Left Behind and its sequels. By stepping through, section by section, he highlights not just where the story is badly written, but explains the philosophy and theology behind it, and how that theology affects American political discourse. He calls them the World's Worst Books, and has spent several years going into detail about how that's not hyperbole. It turns out there is a lot to know about the minutiae behind the John Birch Society's insane rewriting of the Bible.

 

I remember this, would make for a pretty baller podcast/audiobook.

[agorman]

I'm a little over half-way done with Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami and really losing steam...I'm having a lot of trouble connecting with it in any meaningful way and getting very little out of reading it. He also does the classic Male Novelist thing where women are described solely by their physical appearance and sexuality which I have very little patience for at this point....Have any of you read it and had a different experience? 

[Professor Video Games]

I read that one years ago and also remember it dragging really, really badly in the middle. I can't remember details at this point, but I think it gets more interesting towards the end?

 

I've knocked out a couple books recently. First was The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon, which was great. I wish I had the comic book chops to catch all of his golden age era name dropping but it's not necessary to enjoy the story at all, which has some really beautiful writing in it. Also it taught me about the existence of Bat Mite.

 

Also I just finished Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace, which is a collection of essays that on the whole I really liked. I'd say I could use a few fewer footnotes in there, but then it wouldn't be DFW would it?

[Mangela Lansbury]

I'm a little over half-way done with Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami and really losing steam...I'm having a lot of trouble connecting with it in any meaningful way and getting very little out of reading it. He also does the classic Male Novelist thing where women are described solely by their physical appearance and sexuality which I have very little patience for at this point....Have any of you read it and had a different experience? 

 

Murakami is big into the boku narrator, which is basically a guy casually telling you a story. There are a few exceptions (After Dark, Underground, and some short stories come to mind immediately) but he generally does that male novelist thing quite a bit so maybe he's just not the guy for you. He's also probably not for you if you don't like protagonists who describe in intimate detail how they make their spaghetti or why they decided to drink cheap scotch.

 

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World was 2 books originally and neither are really very good. Stick 'em together and it just gets worse.

 

I read The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler and the New York Trilogy by Paul Auster on plane rides recently. They were both pretty great for that purpose, but Chandler was better. I'd never read any of his stuff before and really enjoyed it. Does anyone have any recommendations for where to go after the Big Sleep?

[Nappi]

I read The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler and the New York Trilogy by Paul Auster on plane rides recently. They were both pretty great for that purpose, but Chandler was better. I'd never read any of his stuff before and really enjoyed it. Does anyone have any recommendations for where to go after the Big Sleep?

 

Farewell, My Lovely and The Long Goodbye are the most praised I think. Apart from those three I have only read The High Window and it was quite good too. I would imagine that all the Marlowe novels are at least decent.

[agorman]

I ended up finishing Hard-Boiled Wonderland the other day, and my opinion didn't change much/got worse.  There was a bit in the end I found somewhat interesting but overall bounced off the book pretty hard. I have very little desire to read anything else by Murakami.

[Professor Video Games]

Haha now that you mention it, I never read anything else by him after finishing that one either...

[Trip Hazard]

I read The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler and the New York Trilogy by Paul Auster on plane rides recently. They were both pretty great for that purpose, but Chandler was better. I'd never read any of his stuff before and really enjoyed it. Does anyone have any recommendations for where to go after the Big Sleep?

 

Go for a slash and brush your teeth, lazybones. The Long Goodbye is an excellent read.

[Empty]

i think hard-boiled wonderland is an awkward and boring experiment in bridging the gap between his style and the american genre fiction he loves from just before murakami's most fertile period creatively. i'm well overdue a re-assessment of murakami though, i loved his works as a teenager but thought 1Q84 was just absolutely terrible as an adult and while i still believe the wind-up bird chronicle is brilliant i'm a bit suspicious of how much my appreciation of his older stuff was driven by the quality of his work or just that his way of writing male leads particularly resonated with my lonely teenage dork worldview (him and woody allen films kinda defined what it meant to be an adult at that age which is probably bad, particularly wrt seeing women) 

 

reading knausgaard's first my struggle book at the moment. i like it but it reminds me of speak, memory in that it makes me feel very sad about my limited powers of memory.

[Trip Hazard]

I've been reading Consider Phlebas, which is a decent enough adventure yarn, but isn't really blowing my mind. I should've tackled these culture books in order, but before I even knew they were a series I'd read The Player of Games, and it's pretty clear that Consider is the work of a writer not entirely settled into his own style. Some of the prose is a bit clunky, and info on umbrella topics like what is the culture, how did it come to be, how did the war start etc. is often delivered in long, rambling narrative passages that I find difficult to digest, particularly when I compare it to how it was relayed in Player, where it was woven right into the story, a niggling thread inevitably to be picked at.

 

Still good, like.