Books, books, books...

[tberton]

I have The Bone Clocks sitting on my bookshelf but I don't know if I want to pick it up right after Brief Interviews with Hideous Men.

 

I agree that David Mitchell can be quite frustrating author at times. Parts of his novels are among the best writing I have ever come across – like the Frobisher story in Cloud Atlas or the more mundane parts of The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet – but those are always balanced by elements that I find off-putting – like the innermost stories in Cloud Atlas or the cult in The Thousand Autumns or the comet shaped birthmark in fucking everything.

 

Man, I love the two innnermost stories of Cloud Atlas. Zachry's story is my favourite. And I didn't really mind the cult stuff in Thousand Autumns, although the book didn't really start shining for me until Penhaligon shows up.

[Argobot]

I have The Bone Clocks sitting on my bookshelf but I don't know if I want to pick it up right after Brief Interviews with Hideous Men.

 

I agree that David Mitchell can be quite frustrating author at times. Parts of his novels are among the best writing I have ever come across – like the Frobisher story in Cloud Atlas or the more mundane parts of The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet – but those are always balanced by elements that I find off-putting – like the innermost stories in Cloud Atlas or the cult in The Thousand Autumns or the comet shaped birthmark in fucking everything.

 

David Mitchell has said that while you can read all of his novels as individual works, they are also connected by a larger thread with repeating characters, actions, etc. That kind of writing doesn't appeal to me generally, but I can ignore it for the most part. However, The Bone Clocks contains an egregious connection to Thousand Autumns that had me rolling my eyes the entire time I was reading it:

Dr. Marinus is one of the Good immortal travelers. In The Bone Clocks, Good immortals are immortal not by choice but by accident and the Bad immortals are immortal because they choose to drink the blood of children. It's revealed that Magistrate in Thousand Autumns was also one of those Bad immortals, because he accidentally found a "psychodecanter" that he uses to harvest baby blood and stay youthful forever. In Marinus' section of The Bone Clocks, he spends time reminiscing about his great escapade in Dejima with his friend Jacob de Zoet. If Mitchell had parts of The Bone Clocks planned out while he was writing Thousand Autumns, it's frustrating to think that the baby murder plot was included just to be a future callback. That section is so out of place with the tone of the rest of novel; being reminded that it exists was not a fun reading experience. 

[aeolist]

Does anyone else here read Peter F Hamilton? It's been a while since I read his older stuff and I just picked up Great North Road. I'm trying to figure out if he always treated his female characters this badly or if it's a new thing for this book.

[Mawd]

Could anyone please recommend some awesome contemporary dramas in the vein of Laurie Moore?

All the Adult Contemporary I see at the library usually incorporates death and mystery as the central plot device which I find quite tiresome. I've been really enjoying stories that have female main characters and centre around people between 20-40. It doesn't have to be female centred just focused on 'mature' themes; Actual mature not the type of 'mature' description people apply to sex, drugs, and pimps.

Other than that I've really enjoyed Larry Niven, L.E. Modesitt, and William Gibson of late. Although I've lately been sick of the tendency for many (usually fantasy) writers to describe the sexual appeal of every female character. I don't know if I have a bug up my butt or it's just that I'm a mostly homosexual man but I don't need to know if the very young girl is starting to 'fill out' in her 'bosom' (thanks Raymond Feist) or the woman is 'comely' yet also has a weighty bosom (L.E. Modesitt). It doesn't ruin books, but it does provide a source of frequent eye rolling. As a source of possible hypocrisy I was amused by Laurie Moore's female character in 'Who Will Run The Frog Hospital?' who described herself with a myriad of pet names for her 'mosquito bumps' and drew attention to the disconnection between her self image of having small breasts and the reality of her emergence into womanhood.

[osmosisch]

Does anyone else here read Peter F Hamilton? It's been a while since I read his older stuff and I just picked up Great North Road. I'm trying to figure out if he always treated his female characters this badly or if it's a new thing for this book.

It's been a while since I read his Neutronium Alchemist books but I vaguely recall being a bit grossed out at times.

[Argobot]

Could anyone please recommend some awesome contemporary dramas in the vein of Laurie Moore?

All the Adult Contemporary I see at the library usually incorporates death and mystery as the central plot device which I find quite tiresome. I've been really enjoying stories that have female main characters and centre around people between 20-40. It doesn't have to be female centred just focused on 'mature' themes; Actual mature not the type of 'mature' description people apply to sex, drugs, and pimps.

 

Alice Munro! All of her writing is about painfully realistic women navigating through the world. And like Lorrie Moore, Alice Munro writes compact short stories where every word carries weight. 

[namman siggins]

Other than that I've really enjoyed Larry Niven, L.E. Modesitt, and William Gibson of late. Although I've lately been sick of the tendency for many (usually fantasy) non-strertpyed writers to describe the sexual appeal of every female character. I don't know if I have a bug up my butt or it's just that I'm a mostly homosexual man but I don't need to know if the very young girl is starting to 'fill out' in her 'bosom' (thanks Raymond Feist) or the woman is 'comely' yet also has a weighty bosom (L.E. Modesitt). It doesn't ruin books, but it does provide a source of frequent eye rolling. As a source of possible hypocrisy I was amused by Laurie Moore's female character in 'Who Will Run The Frog Hospital?' who described herself with a myriad of pet names for her 'mosquito bumps' and drew attention to the disconnection between her self image of having small breasts and the reality of her emergence into womanhood.

If you're interested in more fabulist/fantasy novels without female stereotypes check out:

All the Birds, Singing: A Novel by Evie Wyld

Duplex by Kathryn Davis

Station Eleven  by Emily St. John Mandel

The Bees by Laline Paull

 

Alice Munro! All of her writing is about painfully realistic women navigating through the world. And like Lorrie Moore, Alice Munro writes compact short stories where every word carries weight. 

This this this and this.

 

Also, Hilary Mantel's early novels before Wolf Hall would be another great recommendation. 

[Mawd]

Thanks I'll be sure to check them out!

[voxn]

where do you guys go for book recommendations? Any specific critics/critical outlets you always find worthwhile? Just scalp forum threads like this one?

[Mawd]

where do you guys go for book recommendations? Any specific critics/critical outlets you always find worthwhile? Just scalp forum threads like this one?

Sometimes I ask my friends but these days I mostly go to a niche bookstore run by Lit. students, check out the latest titles and write down names and authors. Then I go to the library and comb through the new releases. Sadly all the newest ones all have a $5 surcharge and a shorter borrowing time so that method hasn't exactly been fruitful yet.

Alice Munro! All of her writing is about painfully realistic women navigating through the world. And like Lorrie Moore, Alice Munro writes compact short stories where every word carries weight.

Duplex by Kathryn Davis

Another thankyou, I went to the library and found 'Dear Life' by Alice Munro and yeah she's everything I've been craving. Really enjoyed the first story, 'To Reach Japan'.

I also found Duplex (the only one from your recommendations that wasn't on loan) so I'm ready to dig into that after I sample more Munro.

[Nappi]

I wish I had a better system for searching for interesting authors. Most of my book purchases are based on friend and forum recommendations, occasional book reviews, related product sections in Amazon et al., and me wandering aimlessly through Wikipedia. I have had limited success with the recommendation engine of Goodreads, but the "Readers Also Enjoyed" and "Lists with this Book" sections can be quite helpful at times. It is also a good place to lurk what others are reading.

[Argobot]

I get a lot of my recommendations from reviews, obvious places like the NYT and the New Yorker and smaller places like The Awl or The Millions. That's usually for more recent publications. For older books, I'll just walk through a local used bookstore and see what's available. Usually they have something in stock that I've been meaning to read for years.

 

Finding one or two friends with similar book tastes is also great, because then you can swap books and use each other as barometers for whether the other one will enjoy reading something.

[namman siggins]

The Awl and Millions are great places to get recs.

I'm have my own little system that I've built up over the years. I'm not going to explain it because it's a somewhat convoluted and has little quirks that just with for me.

[Merus]

God, I was just thinking about William Gibson's Pattern Recognition just the other day, and how it was a near-future book written in 2004 and ten years later it feels like it could happen in our present. It's easier, doing near-future, but it's nice that one of our most prescient writers can also write worth a damn. (Even if I didn't care for Neuromancer.)

[osmosisch]

It's amazing how good Gibson is at, well, pattern recognition and extrapolation.

He's like Douglas Coupland except about the future rather than the present.

[namman siggins]

The new collection of Hilary Mantel stories are blowing me away.

I've never read Gibson. Where should I start?

[osmosisch]

Depends, do you want more or less future? Neuromancer is an absolute classic more on the strength of having invented cyberspace/'jacking in' than being a particularly amazing novel. Its follow-ups (Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive) then deal with fallout from the events of Neuromancer in various ways. With Virtual Light the direction of being more interested in subculture than in computer stuff per se comes strongly to the fore, and all subsequent novels are set closer and closer to the present day conceptually, though tech tends to be slightly more advanced.

They're all good, but for different reasons.

[Nappi]

Neuromancer was fascinating, but I did not enjoy Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive nearly as much. Pattern Recognition and Spook Country were both good, in my opinion. They highlight quite nicely how weird, futuristic and science fiction-y our present actually is if you choose to view it that way.

[Tanukitsune]

The last book I read was about a mommy detective called "Bundle of Trouble", which I thoroughly enjoyed despite committing the great mystery sin of giving the final clue to the protagonist and not the reader....

 

Is StoryBundle the only recurring book bundle out there? They've got four bundles running at the same time, which is a record for them. They have the very first NaNoWriMo bundle, with many books to help you be a better writer, a Supernatual Suspense bundle with some Clive Barker in it, a Mystery/Thriller one and a Cyberpunk one with a book called Star Hounds which I hated because the main protagonist is just an awful arrogant person. 

[feelthedarkness]

I'll cosign what Nappi & everyone has said. Neuromancer is mandatory stuff, and really the only starting point but Gibson's next few years are a combination of "just sci-fi pulp" and genuinely interesting ideas. Pattern Recognition and Zero History hit me just right because he managed to write books that were based around two types of things I was getting really into at the exact time I was getting into it. PH with obsessive/secretive internet culture culling, which for me was punk/hardcore record collecting, and ZH with secret, raw, word of mouth fashion. His last three books are cool takes on our specific modern dystopic disease, but not "post apoc" style. They were not broadly well received by sci-fi types. His non-fiction essay collection Distrust The Particular Flavor is also fun! 

 

For the poster looking for Women centric adult books, Rachel Kushner's The Flamethrowers is something I'd strongly recommend! Part of the buzz around it is that she really breaks open that modern "referential" literary style that is often associated with a boys club (Franzen, Wallace, etc..). Also seconding Munro's Dear Life! 

[Mawd]

The Sprawl Trilogy is a fantastic read, I do seem to prefer Neuromancer to the rest although they all have their moments. I haven't read much else of his But I will say that I highly enjoyed Virtual Light and even grew to love Idoru.

[namman siggins]

Thanks for the information y'all!

Oh, Moddus check out Atwood's Stone Mattress and The Robber Bride.

[Mawd]

Cheers.

[Woodfella]

I finished Blood Meridian. I think it's he best book I have read, although that is not saying much (a close second is Mr Tickle).

 

It's relentlessly grim, tense and brutal. Yet the language is totally beautiful at times.  I found myself reading lengthy passages twice, three times just to get my head around them. It's about a lad who joins up with a load of bastards, led by a mad bastard and a big bastard. These said bastards cut about  Texas/Mexico killing folk and scalping them . It's super good. Would like to hear an Idle Book club on it. Do they still do those?

 

I feel like I've been beaten up, put through the wringer . I need something light and funny next I think... American Psycho it is. 

[juv3nal]

Re: Gibson, the documentary about him is on youtube

 

also on the internet archive: https://archive.org/details/NoMapsForTheseTerritories

 

I've read everything of his aside from Distrust That Particular Flavor and probably like Virtual Light the least?

 

His last three books are cool takes on our specific modern dystopic disease, but not "post apoc" style. They were not broadly well received by sci-fi types.

 

That's somewhat understandable, because they're kind of not sci fi. Still enjoyable though.