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Printheads: The Book Club 2011
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CommentAuthorWarped Savant
- CommentTimeJun 12th 2011
Mercer -- Let me know what you think of Air. I know some people that have really loved it and some people that really didn't like it. Hopefully you're in the group that like it. -
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Reading a shared-background anthology, "Machine of Death." Each short concerns people dealing with a new technology: A machine which prints out a card with your cause of death.
Not bad, so far. -
Finished Paolo Bacigalupi's Ship Breaker today. It's a well written YA novel, genuinely suspenseful in a well realized corner of a climate wrecked future. Plotted very movie-like, I could see the story translated to screen with very little tweaking. That's not necessarily a plus, as in a way the story breezed by a little to easily, but I may be a bit jaded as I really liked his Windup Girl, and that was an adult novel, much meatier and complex. I'd still recommend Ship Breaker, it's a good book. One of then better realized characters in it is Tool, an augmented person created as a splice of human, dog, predatory cat and hyena, who's invented species is biologically designed for unquestioning loyalty to a "patron". Tool, somehow, is able to step outside of this genetic script and serve no master. He becomes a Jim-like character helping the boy protagonist escape up the Mississippi, and gets some of the best lines in the book. There's a speech he gives where he tries to convince the boy that rushing off to rescue someone against impossible odds is maybe something he shouldn't do, because, like her though he might, she is going to die one day, inevitably, whether she is rescued or not, and maybe it isn't worth his own life just for the long chance of delaying that day. The fatalism was bracing, coming in the middle of a fairly formulaic rescue adventure. And Tool's choice when it becomes clear the the boy is going to go after the rescue anyway is not what you have come to expect from the animal-like companion in a story. The book is probably worth a read for that episode with that character alone.
I started a journalists' book-length investigation of the international trade in human tissue called The Red Market: On the Trail of the World's Organ Brokers, Bone Thieves, Blood Farmers, and Child Traffickers. It is every bit as compelling as you might suspect. -
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CommentAuthorinfomancer
- CommentTimeJun 13th 2011
@StephanJ I'm reading Machine of Death at the moment as well. I'm liking the author's different approaches to the idea. Apparently they're beginning to consider submissions for a second MOD anthology now. -
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@infomancer my friend James Foreman wrote Heat Death of the Universe.
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- CommentAuthorMercer Finn
- CommentTimeJun 13th 2011
@Warped
Just finished reading AIR. The first issue was brilliantly constructed, and (unlike a lot of people out there, it seems) I found the protagonist really engaging. The dream-sequences and flashbacks are great throughout (particularly the origin of Blythe's aerophobia), but I'm slightly less enthused by the plotting, which zig-zags rather aimlessly.
Also, can't say I'm feeling M.K. Perker's work that much. His airplane interiors look nothing like the real thing. His faces can be expressive, but they are sometimes just weird-looking. However, props for the flying machine at the end of issue 4. That was awesome.
Thanx for putting me on to this. I don't regret buying it. It's one of the more interesting and intelligent comics out there, and G. Willow Wilson definitely deserves a bigger audience for her work. I hear the series was cancelled after 24 issues. Does it wrap up in a satisfactory way? I want to read further, but only if the series doesn't leave me hanging midway thru the story... -
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CommentAuthorWarped Savant
- CommentTimeJun 13th 2011
@Mercer
Glad you liked it. I agree with your thoughts on Perker's artwork, but I think that's why I like it. The plot does go around a bit and there are some twists and turns, but the series was supposed to be somewhere near 60 issues and, as you said, it was cancelled after 24. Willow Wilson had warning that it was being cancelled and was therefore able to give an ending. It is obviously rushed, but everything gets wrapped up, and, as far as I can remember, is explained. There's some things that I wish could've gotten a little more time given to them, but it is what it is.
If you don't have it yet, I highly suggest picking up the same teams Vertigo OGN called "Cairo". It's black and white, and a complete story. I probably liked it even more than Air. -
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- CommentAuthorInvincibleM
- CommentTimeJun 13th 2011
Working on David Foster Wallace's The Pale King
It can go from Hair pulling to captivating between pages. It does feel very unfinished.
I hope it somewhat comes together(though I remember being equally flummoxed by Infinite Jest in the first stretch) -
Recently:
The Deep Range by Arthur C. Clarke - First re-read of that in a very long time. Clarke was probably the biggest literary figure in my life from the ages of about 11-16. Which is a weird, formative time. And so reading anything by him again has a large psychological component on top of the actual story. On the topic: A readable but dated bit of sci-fi set under the sea instead of in space - worth reading for the sci-fi buff only, probably.
What really came to mind, though, was wondering what his writing would have been like if he'd been able (or willing) to write as an openly gay man. It's pretty hard to imagine - but I'd give almost anything for the opportunity to read queer Clarke.
Sound Mind by Tricia Sullivan. A sort of metaphysical exploration of the effect of music on reality. Or where reality comes from, and what happens if you try to fuck with it. Or something? I'm honestly not sure what this was supposed to be about. The first 1/3 hooked me in, but when it came time for development and explanation, it all went completely to pot. That said: It was unexpectedly pleasant to read something set in the '80s and it has made me interested to look up some of Sullivan's other (and, reputedly, much better) books. -
I ffffffffffiiinally finished Defence of the Realm. I don't want to compare my reading of it to protecting the UK through counter-espionage. But has been a very big read.
Unwinding with Kazuo Ishiguro's Nocturnes. -
- CommentAuthorMercer Finn
- CommentTimeJun 15th 2011 edited
@Warped. Cool, I'll check it out. And I'm probably going to get at least the next Air trade, and see how it goes.
Right now, fallen back on reading A Game Of Thrones. Competent, comforting epic fantasy. Sorta reminds me of Jacqueline Carey, but with the Continental S&M stuff replaced with Anglo-Saxon grimness. -
In Search of Excellence (Tom Peters and Bob Waterman) and Blue Ocean Strategy (Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne) for my thesis. Both books aren't helping much but they're a good and interesting read.
I've also read Immortal Iron Fist (bought it for the art, stayed with it for the cool story) and Casanova (in one word: "wow" followed by *brain explosion*) and I'm now rereading V for Vendetta (every time I reread it I think I go a little bit more paranoid regarding our society). -
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CommentAuthorHEY APATHY!
- CommentTimeJun 19th 2011
Just finished Tropics of Capricorn (again) and am going to do the Cancer next (again), because ovary trollies and lines like:
The moment you have a "different" thought you cease to be an American.
are just plain addictive. -
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I was working my way through JG Ballard's The Kindness of Women, until it made me incredibly sad. Beautifully well written as always, but needed a break.
Currently working on Catherynne M Valente's Palimpsest, which is simply wonderful. Met her briefly at Continuum Con via @m1k3y, read a couple of her shorts in the con book and was inspired to check out her novels. Magical, inspiring stuff. -
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CommentAuthorLabyrinthine
- CommentTimeJun 21st 2011 edited
I've just read the first two books in A Song of Ice and Fire - yes, because of the TV show. It was all a bit too large and intimidating and Robert Jordan-esque for me last time I tried. To be fair I was about fourteen. Also, for some reason I seem to have a very realistic false memory of the first book containing more point of view character death than it actually did. Nobody was torn apart by wolves at all! I am confused.
Anyway blah blah blah George R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R. Martin is a mad genius blah blah how glad am I that I got into it late enough that I won't have to wait long for the next book in the series by the time I get up to it? *readies herself for the death glares of a million old fans*
EDIT: lol Machine of Death! I have that as well, it's pretty great. I didn't know they were doing a second one! *plots* -
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CommentAuthorFauxhammer
- CommentTimeJun 21st 2011
About a third of the way through The City and The City--man, Mieville is good. The Weird shit is well in place, but not at the expense of the Cold War Noir heart of the story.
@Labyrinthine: I read the first three books years ago, and I'm not going back or buying another in the series until GRRM finishes. I remember what the long drought between Dark Tower books was like, and I'm in no mood to repeat it. If you're looking for something to fill the time, though, might I suggest Abercrombie's First Law trilogy (that I believe I'd mentioned earlier in the thread)? It's grimy and brutal and political like ASoIaF, with two main differences: it's more of a story and less of an exercise in deconstruction of the Fantasy genre, and it's finished. And man, what a finish. -
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Reading Claude Lalumiere's THE DOOR TO LOST PAGES, an episodic novel comprising of loosely connected short stories, in the vein of Chambers' THE KING IN YELLOW or Machen's THE THREE IMPOSTORS. Pretty good, so far.
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CommentAuthorProf Structure
- CommentTimeJun 21st 2011
Just read Roadside Picnic which Tarkovsky filmed as Stalker. Excellent book - moving, engaging and leaving images that linger in the memory -
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Just burned through Patient Zero and The Dragon factory(love this motha). Now ready to start. The King of Plagues.
A little over half way done with Red Seas Under Red Skies. Books about clever people make me happy. -
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CommentAuthorWarped Savant
- CommentTimeJun 21st 2011
Just finished The Devil of Nanking by Mo Hayder. I love this man's writing style. The story parallels a girl in modern time trying to find out about the massacre of Nanking and the person that she is trying to get information about it reading the journal he wrote while surviving the massacre. The way that the two things run together is very well thought out. Combine that with the fact that you learn very early on that there is something wrong with the girl (or, at least, people think there is) and how slowly the petals of the flower are pulled back before it is all finally revealed. There's so many different things that happen in the story and they all wrap up really well. This is one of those books that I would suggest to most anyone.
What to read next: A Game of Thrones or The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo? -