ThunderPeel2001

Books, books, books...

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Finished The Narrow Road to the Deep North a little while ago. I can sort of thank the Thumbs for opening my eyes to Booker Man Prize, because I've loved every winner's book I've read so far. 

 

I was in the mood for something a little more cheerful, and the description was something like "beautifully written love story set during WW2" and what I got a seriously brutal account of Australian POWs (slaves) worked to death to build a Japanese railroad through Thailand. 

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Finished The Narrow Road to the Deep North a little while ago. I can sort of thank the Thumbs for opening my eyes to Booker Man Prize, because I've loved every winner's book I've read so far. 

 

I was in the mood for something a little more cheerful, and the description was something like "beautifully written love story set during WW2" and what I got a seriously brutal account of Australian POWs (slaves) worked to death to build a Japanese railroad through Thailand. 

Ah, I've been wanting to read that book. Any more thoughts on it?

 

I just finished All the Light We Cannot See, another 2014 book about WWII (pattern??) that I thought was pretty well done and worth checking out.

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Oh no, now I'm choking on the pressure to say something!

 

I thought it was excellent, and the sort of thing that I think you might like based on other things you've liked from a narrative/prose perspective, though it's really man heavy, and I know that's not your favorite. Haha. Beautifully written, modern fiction in that it has sense of a deep history on its given topic. The characters are colorful, wretchedly miserable, and varied, being a work camp of various Australians, and a few others picked up and sent to the railway. I don't read a lot of WW2 stuff. Pretty heavy overall in that good people aren't rewarded for their heroism, and bad people aren't all punished for evil.

 

I saw you tweeting about those Elena Ferrante books. Somebody on another board I read was talking a bit about the Neapolitan books. I hadn't heard of them. Recommended it seems?

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It is my sole mission right now to get everyone around to me read the Ferrante's Neapolitan novels. They are incredibly emotionally powerful books and the writing is absolutely gorgeous and deserve all the praise they've received. So yeah, highly recommended!

 

(Sidenote: Sorry if it appears that I wouldn't want to read novels that only deal with male characters. My objections are a little bit more complicated than not liking that a book only has male characters, but I'll try to be more articulate about that in the future than just saying 'this book has men and therefore I hate it.' Thanks for the Deep North talk!)

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Aww! I didn't think that at all! No apologies needed!

 

WW2 is really one of those things that's supersaturated in a kind of typical masculinity, and I'd like to think I've got some sense of where I think you're coming from on this, so I figured it was worth a mention as Narrow Road is definitely the story of a straight man going through one hell, while also loving his uncles wife. I'd like to say I appreciate, and understand a desire to see a more equitable feminist representation, especially in literature.

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I read 75% of Wolf in White Can last night, after finding it hard to get into for the first 50 pages or so. I'm exhausted at work today, but it was a really good read.

I kind of wish it had ended a chapter earlier. Even with the inexactness in the depiction of the attempt, I feel like it detracted from the overall impact of how vague things had been. Earlier in the book, the narrator mentions something that he can't put into words -- a feeling or a memory, I can't remember exactly. I feel like something along those lines would have been more impactful for me. As it stands, I'll just pretend the book is 5 pages shorter.

Also, Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination and Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Post-war Detroit area phenomenal books and if you have even a passing interest in anything they cover, you should probably read them.

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Ah, I've been wanting to read that book. Any more thoughts on it?

 

I just finished All the Light We Cannot See, another 2014 book about WWII (pattern??) that I thought was pretty well done and worth checking out.

Beautiful book.

 

What I first thought was a before, during and after of the Death Railway shifted into a love novel that explored love in all it's infinite forms. Love is the glue that holds the story together. It's the various loves holds and help the POWs in the Japanese death railway; it's also a love that destroys our main character: because he such a creature of love. 

 

Flanagan is an amazing writer of love, especially in the first part of the book when our main protagonist falls in love. There's no unnecessary adverbs and adjectives, no baroque descriptions of falling in love, no purple prose: it's straightforward, but open to our experiences. It's hard for me to describe how much that part of the book affected me. I think because I was also falling in love--now in love--with my girlfriend and reading that matched what I was going to.

 

Narrow also explores the cosmic damages that occur from such illogical things like the death railway; how those cosmic damages settles on the characters after the death railway and how those damages transfers to their children, and society as a whole.The madness that seeps into the characters, the tragic but ultimately useless and pathetic deaths that happen to them.

 

There are other things Narrows explores, but I'll let that up for you to discover, if you want to read it.

Also, Ferrante is one of the best writers. Shitty how she has to deal with the sexism in Italy. 

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I grabbed All the Light We Cannot See as this month's audible choice, as there were no Ferrante options, though they're a little short for my monthly commute. 

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It is my resolution to read more books. We are a month in to 2015 and I have read one... Pathetic.

It was The Emporer of the West by Hywel Williams. Its about Charlemagne and the Carolingian rennaisance. I read a buttload about Charlemagne in sixth form history and produced 2 essays on him and really enjoyed it, so naturally I enjoyed this book. Charlemagne seems like the kind of figure people should know more about.

Now I am reading as I lay dying and I am a simpleton so I am finding hard going in parts. Enjoyable though.

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Anyone know where i can get a 1st edition of the Illiad? Totes romantic.

 

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Almost done with MY BRILLIANT FRIEND and I can confirm that Ferrante is super-rad.

I have no idea how she plotted these books out but the feeling is of an accumulated history of the community, lending every action weight as a reaction to the years prior. Plus some brutal introspection and an outstanding portrait of female friendship. Like Sarah said, she's one of those authors who makes you less a fan than a convert.

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Almost done with MY BRILLIANT FRIEND and I can confirm that Ferrante is super-rad.

I think that I am going to read that next. Sounds great

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I'm halfway through Gravity's Rainbow and it is super great but I miss the helpless struggle of Lot 49. 

 

Also, I am skipping the songs because I am a cretin.

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Anyone know where i can get a 1st edition of the Illiad? Totes romantic.

 

Couldn't it be a first edition of that particular publication of The Iliad? Maybe it's a really nice version and that's a first edition of it from the 50s or something?

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Well, I just found out about Scribd, and I'm BAFFLED that it's in my country... They have the Terry Pratchett books I haven't read yet? How is this even possible? 

 

I know you guys have Netflix and all that, but for me to have something like this and not region locked? I'm just utterly shocked! I'm just expecting it to be gone tomorrow, it's just... too good to be true?

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Not sure if anyone cares, but look into Edward St. Aubyn's Patrick Melrose books if you like tragicomic novels. Bit of Zadie Smith mixed with Ian McEwan, so far.

 

Almost done with MY BRILLIANT FRIEND and I can confirm that Ferrante is super-rad.
 

Further, stronger confirmation awaits in the second one.

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Finished As I lay dying the other day. I really, really liked it. Early on I found myself not understanding it, having to read sections twice because of the language and the indirectness of it all but after a little while I got into it and I read the second half 10 times as fast as I did the first. I know, I know, it's not a long book but as I said above, I am a simpleton. Yeah I really liked it, it was frustrating and sad and beautiful. Anybody here read it? What did you think?

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I just finished Terry Pratchett's Dodger as my first "Scribd" book and... I'm kinda disappointed? 

 

It's not that I'm disappointed it was a Discworld book even look it looks like one, it read like one anyway, it's the plot that bothers me. It's about a Victorian street urchin who influences directly almost everything in that era, every character except Dodger is real and everything you know them for? Dodger did it, somehow...

 

The book never spells out things, but I feels like it's rubbing it me in the face... Gee, I wonder how this loveable street urchin will influence CHARLES DICKENS?!?! I guess that's the only point that really bothers me, because the whole "Charles Dickens meets a street urchin" angle. It was like Victorian Forrest Gump?

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I'm halfway through Gravity's Rainbow and it is super great but I miss the helpless struggle of Lot 49.

 

That's the book I've tried to finish like 5 times and have never made it through. Not because I dislike the writing style, but because I'll put it down for a bit and come back to it and have only the vaguest notion what is going on because my memory is terrible or something?

 

Certainly there have been other books I've given up on and still more that I would encounter similar problems with if I tried to read them, but GR is the only one where I've actually made an effort to go back and try again.

 

The last time I tried was at least a couple of years ago, maybe it's time to have another crack at it.

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For me the content is what stops me from enjoying GR, it's simultaneously disturbing and extremely dull. Too unpleasant for whatever payoff there might be.

I may try again at some point as well; I've certainly enjoyed Lot 49 quite a bit.

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I loved GR, but I think "not getting everything on one pass" is a totally acceptable and likely expected outcome. Or at least how I explain the extent of my retention, har har. It's deliberately dense, and it's one of those books that people often read with a reference guide.

 

I think of it as a lifestyle book, deeply nested with reference and allusion. There no reason you couldn't read it many times in a life. 

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I just started reading Cormac McCarthy's Child of God and just realised that the 2 books I have read are now shite James Franco films.

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Just finished David Mitchell's The Bone Clocks. I can see why it's so popular, well plotted and very exciting but literary enough that you don't feel totally guilty at the page-turn-y-ness. Highly recommended for anyone in need of a 'smart' thriller.

 

Trying to read mostly short stories this year. Starting with George Saunders and Alice Munro. Anyone have must-share favs in the short story game?

 

edit- Just dug into the back-discussion on Bone Clocks. I will say that the fantastical parts are pretty well-handled but I'm not generally a fan and if it wasn't extremely well done then I probably wouldn't have finished it. If you can put up with that stuff, it's fine and still a good book; if you like fantasy/sci fi, it's going to be great; if you can't stand that stuff, it probably won't work..

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