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Printheads: The Book Club 2011
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CommentAuthorbrittanica
- CommentTimeFeb 14th 2011
I read Snuff recently, too. I was expecting to not really like it at all, but it was engaging (despite all the Palahnuik tropes I couldn't help but notice).
After that, I blazed through The Hardcore Diaries- Mick Foley. His stuff is just such feel-good reading, to me. He comes across as such a warm and kind person, so different from what one would expect from a guy most known for damn near dying in a Hell in a Cell match.
I started Controversy Creates Cash- Eric Bischoff; it was bought at the same time as that Foley book, because the fella has been interested in checking it out for a while. It's okay, not great technically, but it's cool getting another perspective on the WCW stuff (yeah, I'm a wrestling nerd). I haven't finished it, though, since I found a copy of In the Fascist Bathroom- Greil Marcus, and boy oh boy, I've needed a really good music book for a while. 100 pages in, and there's already three artists he's written about that I really wanna check out. -
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Any of you going to pick up the books from the SF/Weird Novelists thread?
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CommentAuthorCorey Waits
- CommentTimeFeb 15th 2011
@RenThing - definitely going to bookmark the thread and come back to it later, but at the moment I already have heaps of reading to catch up on (and no spare money really). -
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@Corey
I can recommend Kameron Hurley's God's War, I thought it was quite good. -
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CommentAuthorWarped Savant
- CommentTimeFeb 15th 2011
OddBill -- Thanks. That makes it sound interesting... I'll probably read a few other books first though.
Ellis -- Thanks again. I'll read The City & The City once I finish Cherie Priest's "Clementine". -
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CommentAuthorm3t4lfi3nd
- CommentTimeFeb 15th 2011
Really am hooked on The First Law Troilogy by Joe Abercrombie. On the 2nd book now. Comparable to ASoIaF, in that it 's great characterization in a gritty fantasy realm filled with brutality and war. Has been hard to put down most nights and I can't reccomend enough to people who like their fantasy with salty (yet rich) characters and bloodshed. -
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i finished Heinlein's Glory Road and was right saddened by it.
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Finished Windup Girl last night. The ending wasn't as all-fuck grim as I thought it might be.
Second half of The Two Towers is next. Then maybe Bonecrusher, or the Dying Earth tribute anthology.
Non-fiction: The Other Science Fiction by Prelinger. A big, thick paperback of reprints of Space Age corporate image ads and recruitment ads by aerospace contractors. -
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CommentAuthorTacoHugsPHD
- CommentTimeFeb 16th 2011
Reading Radix by Attanasio and having my mind melted. Seriously one of the more enjoyable sci-fi epics i've read in a minute -
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- CommentAuthorian holloway
- CommentTimeFeb 16th 2011 edited
just finished the audiobook of Cherie Priests Clementine. t'was much good. pretty bummed that the paper version only came out in such a ltd edition though. now the only people who seem to own it are selling it for comedy money on ebay. -
I bought _Just Kids_ today, by Patti Smith (which won the National Book Award).
I watched her talk to Charlie Rose. She told him that, back in the 60s, she and her boyfriend were poor; dressed up, and went for a walk in the park. A tourist couple were in the park, there to take photos of the "artists". The wife said to take a picture of Patti and her friend, and the husband said no: "they're not artists, they're just kids" (hence the book title). -
i bought some poem books by Bukowski and i'm loving them.
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- CommentAuthorian holloway
- CommentTimeFeb 17th 2011
i always dug his ^ poetry way more than his novels. -
Just got The Windup Girl. I'll admit I hadn't heard of it until I perused this thread, but it seemed interesting and upon checking it out sounds like just my style of fiction. I've been needing something to read lately (other than The Federalist Papers, which I'm reading just so I can say I have), so I'm pretty excited to have this in my hands.
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@allana - Heinlein makes a great counterpoint to Bataille, eh? :P I read /Glory Road/ in like, 5th grade, and I'm afraid to pick it back up again to see just how saddened I'll be.
I remember the cringeworthy bit about spanking his wife with the flat of his sword. But please, never with your hand! Sigh. -
Having had mention of it come through multiple feeds lately, I downloaded the free PDF english translation of Kirill Yeskov's The Last Ringbearer and have been reading it... it is very surprisingly good!
That link will take you to the livejournal of the translator, who gives a little background on the book and the translation, and why it is a free PDF, and provides a link for you to download it.
Basically, Kirill Yeskov, a Russian scientist, got a bug in his head about Tolkein's Lord of the Rings and wrote what is essentially a fourth book to it, after the fall of Mordor, but told from the POV of some soldiers in the defeated army of Mordor. His premise is that most of what we know from Tolkien's books is the post-conquest propaganda of the victors, demonizing and dehumanizing the defeated Mordorian's to justify what became an Elvish led genocide of Middle Earth's only technological civilization, the only human civilization with enough organization and strength to pose a challenge to their dominance of Middle Earth. The Orcs aren't werewolf riding monsters, they are nomadic humans from the plains of Mordor. Trolls aren't monsters either, they are hillfolk from Mordor. Magic exists, but it is a force used mostly to keep civilization in a pastoral stasis, making the Western Lands a tame lesser copy of the Elves' native Arda. Aragorn is an opportunistic usurping tool of the elves. Gandalf is a warmonger. Saruman is the only member of the Grey Council to advocate the virtue of science. Sauron is the mostly powerless figurehead king of the rising scientific kingdom of Mordor.
His constructing of the "real" story of the war and the politics of Middle Earth is really quite brilliant. It really does feel like what the actual motives behind the somewhat cartoonish nobility depicted in many of Tolkien's characters might have really been.
The translation is not done by a professional, and is a little clunky in places, but is overall quite good, with moments of real poetry. He did it in conjunction with and with the approval of the author, so it is as close to an "official" english translation as we are likely to get.
The book is a free PDF because, although it has been published by actual publishing houses in other languages in Europe, the Tolkein estate is very agressive in defending the copyright of Tolkein's works in English, and would almost certainly never sanction this.
It is, sort of, fan-fiction. But I'm about a third of the way through and I can't put it down. It is very well done for what it is! -
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CommentAuthorShawnAldridge
- CommentTimeFeb 17th 2011
I'm reading the Harlem Cycle novels of Chester Himes. Brilliant stuff. Gravedigger Jones and Coffin Ed are classic characters. -
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- CommentAuthorKSullivanLingle
- CommentTimeFeb 18th 2011 edited
A fantasy novelist friend told me to read Sherwood Smith's adult series "Inda", so I am. It is suprisingly good though the constant jerk of alternating POV without definitive transition is super annoying. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys political fantasy in a well developed (though borderline silly on at least three points) world. I've seen it compared to Ender's Game in concept and do not completely disagree with this.
I've spent the past six months going through an endless list of YA fiction, hitting primarily best sellers. I've done this in research of what's selling and what's considered genre appropriate, basically, for a YA novel idea I've had. Interesting finding - I pretty much determined after finding incest on chapter the second of a best seller that anything goes insolong as it is not graphic sex description, blatant "big hitters" foul language and there's at least a nod given to a moral lesson somewhere. -
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CommentAuthorFauxhammer
- CommentTimeFeb 18th 2011
@m3t4lfi3nd-- I just finished "The Blade Itself" a few minutes ago; I really enjoyed it.
GLOKTA FOR PRESIDENT -
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- CommentAuthorWill Ellwood
- CommentTimeFeb 18th 2011
Earlier this week I read Snow Country and today I reviewed it.