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Printheads: The Book Club 2011
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CommentAuthorFauxhammer
- CommentTimeJul 6th 2011
Finally finished Palimpsest, and am kicking myself for not doing so earlier. The dreamy language and logic kind of threw me the first time around, but man did it ever pay off in the end. Gorgeous. -
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Jamie Heron: "hope Spook Country is as good as Pattern Recognition."
It is. In spades.
I'm reading The Crossing by McCarthy, and On War by Clausewitz. -
i read three books while i was away: Americana and Libra by Don DeLillo, and a collection of sci-fi stories by Edgar Allen Poe. the latter was excellent bus-reading (although i haven't tackled "Eureka" yet).
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CommentAuthorCorey Waits
- CommentTimeJul 6th 2011
ebullientsoul
Currently reading Gravity's Rainbow. It makes 2666 look like a straight forward novel. Also, this thing takes every single detour it possibly can. That said, Pynchon knows how to write an evocative sentence.
I haven't officially given up on Gravity's Rainbow, but I also haven't picked it up in something like 9 months...
Anyway, still on the Beerlight kick. Up to Slaughtermatic and loving it. It's right up there with Atom. I also think someone needs to make a sandbox Beerlight game... Probably Volition when they're done with Saints Row the Third, 'cause they seem like they'd understand the insanity that is Beerlight. -
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Just started "The Terror" by Dan Simmons, and I'm having a hard time getting into it. I think that it's me and not the book though. Hard to get into an Arctic tale when it's 80+ degrees F out.
I'm also picking through "Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves" by Naomi Aldort which is a book about parenting with a focus on how to talk to children so you don't piss on their ideas and emotions. It's very good so far. -
@CamyLuna - stick with The Terror, or maybe save it for winter. The ending is worth the slog. Dan Simmons is a real hit and miss author. The Hyperion Cantos and The Terror rank among my favorite books, and Ilium was inspired, but Olympos betrayed Ilium's potential so thoroughly that I almost swore off Simmons altogether, and Drood was a tedious, pointless and sort of dim witted slog.
The Terror is good Simmons though, and worth keeping at. It's ending goes somewhere you'll not expect and it goes there very movingly. -
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CommentAuthorAlan Tyson
- CommentTimeJul 6th 2011
Just nabbed "Welcome to Bordertown," a short story collection edited by Holly Black, with a hell of a lot of good names attached to it - Neil Gaiman, Cory Doctorow, and Dylan Meconis (yeah, there's a comic in there, too!) come to mind right away. I showed up a bit too late to get into the series it's a tribute to/continuation of, and just two stories in, I'm wishing I hadn't been. It's aimed at the YA crowd, but don't let that scare you off - here be the good shit. Urban fantasy's source code, in a lot of ways. -
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Reading Mark Hodder's BURTON AND SWINBURNE IN THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE CLOCKWORK MAN, the second volume in the Burton and Swinburne series. I love the first one, I think it's probably the best steampunk novel I've read in years. This one ain't no slouch either. Great stuff.
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- CommentAuthorAnanzitusq
- CommentTimeJul 6th 2011
@nigredo
I've been interested in the series, but the only steampunk I've read has been Cherie Preist's clockwork century stuff, so i'm curious but also have no idea of what the "good" steampunk to read is.
speaking of steampunk fiction, does anyone remember 90's manga series "Steam Detectives?" -
Ned Beauman's BOXER, BEETLE at the moment. Loving it, throws out a dozen ideas a page, the story is moving at a great pace and I'm learning new words as I go but not in an annoying pretentious Will Self verbosey way. Nazi's, boxers, bugs and trimethylaminuria. Brill.
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- CommentAuthorian holloway
- CommentTimeJul 7th 2011
@Nigredo
glad to hear the new Hodder book is good. i loved the first one and have been singing it's praises for months now. Didn't realise the second one was out yet.
currently reading Kim Newman's Anno Dracula. It's a bit of a slow start with a awful lot of world-building but it's showing promise. -
- CommentAuthormybrainhurts
- CommentTimeJul 7th 2011
Finally started The Good Soldier Svejk. Seeing as Heller cited it as the biggest influence on Catch-22, which I read countless times as a teenager, I should've probably got round to it sooner. -
@ ian holloway
It's great, dude, but it's not officially out yet. His publisher sent me a proof copy.
@ Ananzitusq
There are loads of series available, most of them kinda iffy. I can't really claim to have read all of them, as most of them sound quite generic and boring. I wouldn't have read Hodder's first novel either if it didn't involve Richard Francis Burton. I was really happy that it turned out to be so well written and plotted as well as sufficiently pulpy. -
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CommentAuthorLabyrinthine
- CommentTimeJul 8th 2011
A bit further into After The Myths Went Home and I am rolling my eyes a little at the Pan/Dionysys triumphalist trend - there are so many myths we really don't need to focus on rewriting Bachanals over and over again, don't you think? - but I greatly enjoyed Continued On Next Rock by R.A. Lafferty and Mystery Train by Lewis Shiner. Both stories have that quality of smooth insertion of the jarringly wrong into everyday scenes that also attracts me to China Mieville and Cory Doctorow whenever he bothers with fantasy. -
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CommentAuthorinfomancer
- CommentTimeJul 11th 2011
Read Philip Roth's The Dying Animal over the weekend, and overall I liked it. Prose was nice and lean, nothing extraneous in it. Will read Ghost Writer sometime soon.
I'm now in the middle of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. Everyone seems to hate him now for one reason or another, but I still like that terse style. Sun is an odd snapshot of the young, wealthy, and self-absorbed. I can see why it came to define the Lost Generation, they're not heroes or villains, they're just kind of there. They do things, but none of them seem to matter.
Also reading some Greek Tragedies. Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes. It's all in one big volume, so I'm kind of skipping around and reading whichever plays catch my eye. -
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Reading How the Hippies Saved Physics by David Kaiser and absolutely loving it.
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- CommentAuthorsellmeyoursoul
- CommentTimeJul 11th 2011
@Inofmancer - I haven't read him in forever, but I always loved Hemingway's short stories. For my money, there aren't a lot of people who can do as much with so little.
@oldhat - I'm assuming it probably involved "medical" marijuana.
I just finished Tolkien's translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. I was vaguely aware of how the story went, but really enjoyed it and was surprised by how little my jaded modern expectations were met. I've just started his translation of Pearl, which was in the same old English manuscript. A very different piece, but so far I'm enjoying it as well. -
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CommentAuthorinfomancer
- CommentTimeJul 11th 2011
@sellmeyoursoul I definitely agree. I think most of the backlash is the overtly "manly" tone of his later work. Accusations of misogyny abound, and the racial views were none too enlightened either. As true as those accusations may be, I think his work is still unique and effective, and that considering his career as a whole reveals a pretty accurate picture of a fascinating personality. -
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CommentAuthorFauxhammer
- CommentTimeJul 12th 2011
Hey--does anybody know of any good, free books for das Kindle? -
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CommentAuthorTacoHugsPHD
- CommentTimeJul 12th 2011
@Labyrinthine How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe was one of my favorites last year. I read that in quick succession with Super Sad Super True Love Story and The Gone Away World and felt like I was living in a bubble universe constructed out of Douglas Adam's secret files. -