ThunderPeel2001

Books, books, books...

Recommended Posts

I've read Wind-up Bird Chronicle and Wild Sheep Chase. At times, I enjoy the pace and absurdity, but then there are points in each book where the whole thing completely falls apart. I've heard that he does not plan his books before he writes, preferring to make it up as he goes along, and boy does it show. Overall, I enjoyed the books though.

 

Speaking of Japanese books, I'm just starting Kangaroo Notebook by Kobo Abe. I've heard very good things, and as a fan of both Kafka and Japanese literature I'm pretty excited. If anyone's interested in getting into Japanese books, I'd recommend anything by Soseki Natsume. Not only was he incredibly smart and well-versed in both Japanese and Western culture, but he was also damn hilarious in the way that only someone who is very smart can be. I've read "I Am a Cat" and "Bocchan" and loved them both. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I read Norwegian Wood and loved it but it's the only one I've read. Everything I've heard about Murakami seems to imply his work gets less special the more of it you read, because it tends to reveal a quirky formula of sorts?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I read Norwegian Wood and loved it but it's the only one I've read. Everything I've heard about Murakami seems to imply his work gets less special the more of it you read, because it tends to reveal a quirky formula of sorts?

 

I would agree with that. Even after only two books I can start to see patterns emerging. I think I read in an interview once that he knows this and likes it. I think it's kinda neat to be re-telling a similar story over and over, but on the other hand, his protagonists (at least in the two I've read) have been basically the same person. I'm fine with similar plot elements if the characters have different reactions to it, but reading the same sorta stuff happen to the same sorta guy becomes a bit much. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I love Haruki Murakami. Norwegian Wood is an interesting one because it's Murakami's attempt at the standard romantic novel that is super popular in Japan. It's much less surreal and unresolved as a result, and I think the most accessible. 

 

I think the books taught me how to deal with a lack of satisfying resolve; That every book is going to leave some things unanswered, and you have to accept that.

 

Haruki Murakami is pretty much the only author that I will buy in hardcover when his books come out, but I can see why they're not for everyone.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I've read most of the Wind Up Bird Chronicle and I'm relistening to it on audiobook. Got a few other books lined up for after but will put Norwegian Wood on the list.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I read Eisenhorn recently, because I wanted something dumb with guns in it, and it did not disappoint. I wouldn't recommend it though, except to dopey teenagers.

 

And now I'm reading Small Gods, which I never even thought to read until Terry Pratchett died, but which is wonderful so far. A nice break (for me) from the more established characters of the Discworld, as well.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I finally read The Colour of Magic, my second DW book after Morte. It's not as striking as Morte but it's been pretty wonderful so far.

After that I think I'll go back to reading warhammer and warcraft books until I find something serious again. 

I have a whole list of cool contemp fiction writers I want to look at but not moolah to buy them with. So I'll just sit here with my at times trashy sci-fantasy collection.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

moddy, I don't know where you are located, but I know that pretty much every public library in the USA now has access to ebooks & audiobooks, so even if you are too busy to go check out and return books, you can find a ton of stuff on whatever network your particular library is subscribed to, all you have to do is have a library card. Obviously that isn't super helpful if you don't have a public library card and it's too inconvenient to get one, but it's a super great thing to use if you have the chance.

It's how I read the Robert Galbraith (JK Rowliing) mystery novels since they're super expensive in hardback and I can't justify dropping the $ on a book I will definitely only read once and don't have any desire to show off on my bookcase.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Well I live in New Zealand fyi.

I've just moved to a new place so my Wellington Central Library card has become costly to use since I would spend about $8 to bus into the city.

I've thought about signing up to the local library but the bus timetable isn't very sympathetic as it comes only every hour during most times I can go. I would walk but it's six Kay over Coastal roads with no sidewalk and cars travelling at 70km. So basically until someone has a reason to drive there or I have a bunch of time &emergy to spend I won't be signing up and getting things out.

Libraries are great but it's a bit of a hassle this time around.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Was browsing the bookshop this morning and got talking to one of the lovely lads that works there. He recommended Fourth of July Creek, probably because they had a special on, but I was just wondering if anyone here has read it?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Bloodborne finally pushed me to take the plunge on Lovecraft.  Bought a kindle version of his complete works for 10 bucks.  Enjoying most of the short stories so far.  All of them hold up remarkably well.  Always impressed when anything (book, movie, game) does this. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I have been tearing through Paul F Thomkins comedy podcast - Dead authors. He plays H.G Wells who brings dead authors to our time and interview them and it is brilliant.

 

In particular Brendan Behan (possibly my favourite and not just cause I'm Irish), Charlotte bronte, Plato, Oscar Wilde, Rod Sterling and Anne Frank are incredibly funny to the point I was laughing out loud cycling down the road looking like bit of a weirdo judging by some of the looks I got.

 

They are surprisingly insightful (especially with the statue of limitations for murder having passed so they have no problem admitting to it)  either cause the people playing them seem to really have done their homework or are fans of the particular author which took a turn for the worst when Ben Schatz discovered what Roald Dahl said about the jews in an interview.

 

Thomkins H.G Wells is a delight and I am hoping for an episode where he is interviewed by his nemesis Jules Venn.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Does Gormenghast count for this? I'm planning on reading that soon.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
 

I've read Wind-up Bird Chronicle and Wild Sheep Chase. At times, I enjoy the pace and absurdity, but then there are points in each book where the whole thing completely falls apart. I've heard that he does not plan his books before he writes, preferring to make it up as he goes along, and boy does it show. Overall, I enjoyed the books though.

 

Wind-Up Bird was great I thought for about 95% of its length then I realised it wasn't going to end in a satisfying way and indeed it didn't. I read somewhere that the English publisher insisted on a page limit with it which makes it read badly but having read more of his books since, a lot of them end up going nowhere so it might just be his thing. I've enjoyed a few for the first two-thirds but Colourless Tsukuru was the only one I've genuinely enjoyed from beginning to end.

 

This week I ran out of money to buy new books and so have started The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet which I bought in a Kindle sale over four years ago and have never really fancied starting despite loving Cloud Atlas. It's brilliant and I am a fool.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I guess I kinda started reading the ASOIAF series again.  Maybe by the time I re-finish it, the 6th book will be out ;s

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Does Gormenghast count for this? I'm planning on reading that soon.

Sorry! Meant to post this in weird fic thread.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

In the LA review of books Sofia Samatar writes about the author who wrote this novella which is an imagined synopsis of 7 season of law and order SVU episode by episode. It has the ghosts of  murdered women with bells for eyes and doppelgangers of the two main detectives that is one of the most imaginative and disturbing things i have read.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I decided to re-read the Otherland series by Tad Williams since I've been moving it around with me for over a decade and can barely remember anything about it.

 

I'm only partway through the first book of the series and I'm really surprised by how good it is. There's a passing reference to a poly marriage in California through some news set-up, one of those blurbs that books put at the start of chapters to build a world. The main character is a black woman who's a professor in an IT field in South Africa. The racial problems in South Africa are dealt with in a surprisingly good way, and the way Williams writes about housing in northern California (increasingly insular gated communities and huge honeycomb slums) is really believable, in a sci-fi not-quite-dystopia way.

 

It's not a perfect book, but for something that I went into expecting the kind of dumb, empty pulp I liked when I first read these (I think I last read this book in middle school or freshman year of high school?), it's been a surprisingly substantial read. It's still pretty pulpy, and I'm sure it'll only get moreso as the series goes on, but for now I'm just really enjoying that teenaged me actually liked something that now me still likes and finds relevant. Good job, teenaged me!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I decided to re-read the Otherland series by Tad Williams since I've been moving it around with me for over a decade and can barely remember anything about it.

 

Tad Williams also wrote the Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy, which basically defined what I thought about post-Tolkien fantasy as a teenager. I reread it once at the end of college and still liked it quite a lot, but I've lived nearly the whole decade since then afraid of recommending it anyway, because who knows why fantasy holds together and fantasy falls apart. I'm glad to hear that his other life-destroying series of monster tomes holds up, even at a glance!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I am a huge Tad Williams fan, mostly on the strength of his two mega-epics you guys mention. Otherland especially is such an amazingly ambitious idea.

His one glaring weakness is his inability to close out these epics within a reasonable timeframe. There's just too much padding.

His character work is very good though I think, and his "villains" are always complex and interesting. Ineluki is still very memorable to me (and sorrowful and thorny).

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Finished Bleeding Edge. I'm of mixed feelings! It's a strange bird of a book, in some ways taking Inherent Vice and even further simplifying the cartoonish aspect of his writing, the flippancy, but in terms of plotting I think it's knottier and more vague like some of Pynchon's earlier work. There is seemingly no climax or resolution, which is fitting in a way. I did get a strange feeling where I understood almost all of the various cultural references, which is a first for his work, if only to illuminate how much I probably will never catch in the others. I also dig the Snow Crash/Neuromancer trip into VIRTUAL SPACE, though given the way writers seem to love Second Life, I bet that is the more likely touchstone.  

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Ayo I am about to finish Gravity's Rainbow (finally, it's been real), and I think I will read Charles Portis next. Probably Masters of Atlantis.

 

Also, that guilty feeling you get when  you are enjoying are book but secretly excited to be done with it so you can read something new: I have that feeling a lot.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now