I picked up 4 graphic novels from the library, they have a pretty good collection there. All of them in Dutch, which kinda sucks but then most of what they have is translated from French and there is no way they would have the French versions anyway, so whatever.
I just started one called Emir of the Rif, Ben Abdelkrim, by Mohammed Nadrani. It's about the guerilla war by the Moroccons of the Rif Mountains against the Spanish occupation in the 1920's. It's not exactly as well-researched as Joe Sacco's book but seems interesting enough. Very clearly written from a Moroccon perspective.
Also started reading Child of the River by Paul McAuley, the first book of a trilogy. It is a science fiction book which is set in a fantasy-like society made up of genetically modified beings. So far it's pretty good.
Still chugging along on The Death of the Gods. It's compulsively readable, but slow going for me because I just can't stand to read anything on the computer for hours on end. Now, when I want an audiobook to listen to, I've been listening to:
Sadly, this is the last O'Brian I've been able to squeeze into the reading challenge. The Ionian Mission and Treason's Harbour fits in with the past winner's challenge to read two books beginning a series or any two in a continuing series, and this is for the category where we read a book that was the basis for a movie provided we've seen the movie first. I saw Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World long before I started the Aubrey-Maturin series—indeed it was standing on the HMS Surprise herself at the San Diego Maritime Museum that made me want to start reading the books.
I just finished The Far Side of the World and claimed my ten points. Superb book. Similar to parts of the movie, but with enough differences that I didn't feel I was treading the same old ground (not that Patrick O'Brian's prose makes boredom a very likely outcome in any case).
But it did fill me with a renewed enthusiasm to listen to:
Typee is available as a high quality audiobook at LibriVox, which I've just downloaded. The Far Side of the World made mention of the Marquesas often, and it's Melville's experiences here in these islands that form the basis for Typee. Also, the "Cook, Melville, Gauguin: Three Voyages to Paradise" exhibition is still on in San Diego and I intend to see it again after I've finished the book.
But all that awaits me tomorrow, because it's now a quarter to two in the morning.
An English translation of a French novel by Martin Page titled How I became Stupid about a guy who does whatever he can to lose his intellect (alcoholism, suicide, a lobotomy, prescription drugs, etc.). It's really quite amusing.
I finished The Death of the Gods a few days ago, and it was truly one of the best books I've ever read. But now I'm a little fiction-ed out, so I'm going with the autobiographical Typee as an audiobook and this as a physical book:
This is one of the books from that library haul, and I have to finish it soon or return it unread. I'm using this as the book for the challenge category related to my major, and like the mini-theme on Rome, I also have a mini-theme going on Darwin. The other books I am reading include The Beak of the Finch by Jonathan Weiner, The Origin: A Biographical Novel of Charles Darwin by Irving Stone, and On the Origin of Species (facsimile of the first edition) by the man himself.
You know, sometimes the generator that publishes your posts is way too predictable.
Actually it's a philosophical novel. The idea being that intelligence is the root cause of human suffering... though I don't believe that is actually true because from what I understand stress is caused by a lack of information and uncertainty... so I suppose it is what you know and not just how much you know.
Whew! Catch-up time. Pandora's Star, and the sequel, Judas Unchained, by Peter F. Hamilton. Space opera built around human society expanding to other worlds through wormhole gates, and encountering an aggressive species previously contained by a mysteriously constructed Dyson Sphere containing an entire star system. The build is slow, but Hamilton has time because the two novels together are about 2,100 pages. Technology is interesting, xenosociety is pretty well written, characters decent. I also found extra interest because these were the basis for a role-playing scenario I participated in earlier this year. I liked this better than the other Hamilton novel I read, but I'm not planning on seeking out his other works.
A Dance With Dragons, by George R.R. Martin: this was okay. It's been a long time, so I had to dredge my memory. I wanted a lot more Arya, and less Greyjoy. Daenerys' challenges were interesting, and Tyrion is still vastly captivating as written. The best of this novel was the description of the small river boat moving through the drowned ancient city. The worst was what I saw as over-emphasis on the cruelty of the Bastard- I get it, he's a sadistic, evil person, in a position of power. But once that's been shown , do we really need to reinforce and revisit this theme again and again? I'd like GRRM to kill off but not replace characters so aggressively. I look forward to some forward motion and some resolution. Am I supposed to hold out any hope for the major character who is likely dead but might still be alive and terribly wounded? Also, the R'hllor priests' powers are creepy but I want to learn more about their storyline.
The Magician King, by Lev Grossman: I liked this sequel to The Magicians quite a bit. Grossman writes modern fantasy but does a great job of rethinking overused tropes, moving in unexpected directions, and building interesting characters. Quentin is from our world, but after mastering real magic at a specialized wizard's college, he has become one of the kings of Fillory, a Narnia-like world. But he is bored and restles, and seeks out a quest of some sort- along with one of the Queens of Fillory, another Earthling named Julia, once a friend of Quentin's and a wizard who learned magic the hardest way. Quentin's character, while mildly sympathetic, is always shown in the clearest lights, his self-serving motivations always laid bare. Julia's journey from a girl who failed to make the entrance exams for wizard school and had her memory of it poorly excised, to a wizard of daunting prowess, is a pretty fascinating and dark story. The writing is good, and the realizations of the characters that the people they knew are changing with or without them, is a continual thread.
Finch, by Jeff Vandermeer: John Finch is a human police detective of sorts, under the aegis of the occupiers of the city-state of Ambergris. Ambergris has suffered through decades of civil war by two major factions, in a vaguely steampunk world with 1916 human technology. The occupiers of the city are the Greycaps, sentient fungus bipeds that came up from underground six years past. With one hand their giant red mushrooms produce soma-like drugs to keep the humans placid; on the other hand humans are pressed into brutal work camps, building mysterious towers for the Greycaps; life is cheap and the city is full of humans infected with fungal blights, gangs, spies, and strange fungus-based technology. The story was decent, and the fungus alien and strange. Finch as a human ostensibly working for the Greycaps and caught between alien and unforgiving masters and fellow humans who despise him for it was engaging enough to keep me involved in the storyline.
Now I'm reading Sleepless, by Charlie Huston- a prion disease spreads across 10% of the world's population- one that makes the infected unable to sleep; slowly they degrade mentally and physically, until they die. A supposed treatment drug has been produced, and undercover LAPD officer Park is told to track down illicit sales of this massively controlled drug. The impacts of such a disease on society are displayed; the characters compelling; Park's honesty, thoroughness, and flat affect at odds with his pretend career as a drug dealer. Zombie-like sleepless people slowly losing it, the social contract expiring, Huston paints a compelling world. Shades of William Gibson, but only shades; Huston has his own voice.
Batman: The Man Who Laughs which is meant to be the sequel to Year One which I last plugged (also coming out as a DC animation on DVD this month ) and is based on the introduction of the Joker in the first issue of Batman and his mysterious background as the original Red Hood.
Also, The Killing Joke which is a pretty popular and widely read story centering around The Joker's causing the paralysis of Barbara Gordon which is the catalyst to her becoming The Oracle later in the series.
Pandora's Star, and the sequel, Judas Unchained, by Peter F. Hamilton. Space opera built around human society expanding to other worlds through wormhole gates, and encountering an aggressive species previously contained by a mysteriously constructed Dyson Sphere containing an entire star system. The build is slow, but Hamilton has time because the two novels together are about 2,100 pages. Technology is interesting, xenosociety is pretty well written, characters decent. I also found extra interest because these were the basis for a role-playing scenario I participated in earlier this year. I liked this better than the other Hamilton novel I read, but I'm not planning on seeking out his other works.
Which other Hamilton have you read? I was considering picking these two up if I ever find them dirt cheap, but I dunno. The only other Hamilton I've read is his Night's Dawn trilogy (also, A Second Chance at Eden, which is not technically part of the trilogy, but a set of short stories set in the same universe). It sounds similar in execution to what you read...it's a well crafted, sprawling space opera with lots of interesting bits, a lot of well-realized world building, and a crazy plot about the dead returning, but it's not...I dunno. It's not sci-fi, really. It would make a great setting for an RPG, but it doesn't really have anything to say about humanity's relationship with technology. Or, rather, it has lots of little things to say about it, but they're all tangential to the larger concern: finding ways to kill the dead.
Quote:
A Dance With Dragons, by George R.R. Martin: this was okay. It's been a long time, so I had to dredge my memory. I wanted a lot more Arya, and less Greyjoy. Daenerys' challenges were interesting, and Tyrion is still vastly captivating as written. The best of this novel was the description of the small river boat moving through the drowned ancient city.
I also loved the setting details around the drowned city. I could have stood about a 50% reduction in Daenerys scenes, though. Each Dany chapter was mostly a retread of the previous one, and her chapters are probably the worst instance of Martin just repeating a catch phrase for a character over and over. Say "floppy ears" again. I dare you. I double-dare you, motherfucker. Say "floppy ears" one more goddamn time. Seriously, it's worse than Jon Snow and how he knows nothing.
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The Magician King, by Lev Grossman
Huh. I've heard good things about this series elsewhere...putting it on the list.
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Finch, by Jeff Vandermeer
I loved this one. Have you read the two books that sort of came before it? The first is City of Saints and Madmen, a collection of short stories set in Ambergris spanning its founding through the time just before Finch. The second, which I have not read because I mistakenly thought Finch came before it, is Shriek: An Afterword, and I take it is an annotated (by another character) collection of the writings of Duncan Shriek, a historian in Ambergris who features prominently in CoSaM and, IIRC, is mentioned at least a couple of times in Finch.
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"Trans Am Jesus" is "what hanged me"
I also read Lev Grossman's books. I'd have to say he does a decent character, but something wasn't quite right about his female characters.
I just finished Simon Peggs Nerd do Well which was one of the more interesting celebrity autobiographies I've read. Mostly because they guy can actually write, plus goes off on various Star Wars deconstruction. Although he talks about luck of becoming famous, he also put in a lot of work. He comes off as a normal flawed person, who is kind to people he mentions, and doesn't alter his writing for the US audience. My son now gets to watch The Wombles, which are quite nice.
The death of Queen Dido in the Aeneid is one of the most moving things I've ever read, especially in the hands of John Dryden as translator.
Quote:
Then Juno, grieving that she should sustain
A death so ling'ring, and so full of pain,
Sent Iris down, to free her from the strife
Of lab'ring nature, and dissolve her life.
For since she died, not doom'd by Heav'n's decree,
Or her own crime, but human casualty,
And rage of love, that plung'd her in despair,
The Sisters had not cut the topmost hair,
Which Proserpine and they can only know;
Nor made her sacred to the shades below.
Downward the various goddess took her flight,
And drew a thousand colors from the light;
Then stood above the dying lover's head,
And said: "I thus devote thee to the dead.
This off'ring to th' infernal gods I bear."
Thus while she spoke, she cut the fatal hair:
The struggling soul was loos'd, and life dissolv'd in air.
Which other Hamilton have you read? I was considering picking these two up if I ever find them dirt cheap, but I dunno. The only other Hamilton I've read is his Night's Dawn trilogy (also, A Second Chance at Eden, which is not technically part of the trilogy, but a set of short stories set in the same universe). It sounds similar in execution to what you read...it's a well crafted, sprawling space opera with lots of interesting bits, a lot of well-realized world building, and a crazy plot about the dead returning, but it's not...I dunno. It's not sci-fi, really. It would make a great setting for an RPG, but it doesn't really have anything to say about humanity's relationship with technology. Or, rather, it has lots of little things to say about it, but they're all tangential to the larger concern: finding ways to kill the dead.
I actually mentioned it a while back in this thread-
Quote:
Originally Posted by chunksmediocrites
I just finished The Reality Disfunction Part 1: Emergence, by Peter F. Hamilton. This is the first book of Hamilton's I've read, and I may check out at least another to see how the rest of his writing is. He's billed as hard sci-fi and he has his strengths in world-building; the tech and the cultures are fascinating and rich. The space-opera aspects and the individual characters were okay to weak, and he tended in this novel to offer grotesque, over-described and casual or ritual violence against people and especially children, which was off-putting and felt punched-up and a little ham-fisted. Hamilton also throws in some fantasy aspects into what is otherwise sci-fi: evil demonic spirits, and a lone vaguely psychic character. Sometimes I'm willing to go with this, but here it was a little too pat and tacked on. I was drawn into the (very) slow-building story enough to see it through to the end of this novel, but this is only the first part and it felt like a slog by the finish, with too many running sub-plots and new characters introduced every chapter.
As to GRRM's latest:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Adam
I also loved the setting details around the drowned city. I could have stood about a 50% reduction in Daenerys scenes, though. Each Dany chapter was mostly a retread of the previous one, and her chapters are probably the worst instance of Martin just repeating a catch phrase for a character over and over. Say "floppy ears" again. I dare you. I double-dare you, motherfucker. Say "floppy ears" one more goddamn time. Seriously, it's worse than Jon Snow and how he knows nothing.
Your comments on Dance With Dragons are pretty much spot on; I don't mind the "you know nothing" so much, and I'm ready for more info on the capitalized Mysteries of Beyond the Wall. Bran's story gave some info and development but was pretty flat and treated his companions as throw-aways.
On Finch:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Adam
I loved this one. Have you read the two books that sort of came before it? The first is City of Saints and Madmen, a collection of short stories set in Ambergris spanning its founding through the time just before Finch. The second, which I have not read because I mistakenly thought Finch came before it, is Shriek: An Afterword, and I take it is an annotated (by another character) collection of the writings of Duncan Shriek, a historian in Ambergris who features prominently in CoSaM and, IIRC, is mentioned at least a couple of times in Finch.
It's funny because I have read most or all of City of Saints and Madmen, and Finch reminded me of it, but I had forgotten the title and didn't connect the two books directly until just now when I went googling for , so I could make the comparison. City of Saints and Madmen was rich in detail but wandered like a fever-dream narrative. Maybe I'll pick it up again.
Just finished up Corey Robin's The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin and Max[x] Barry's first novel, Syrup.
The Barry is Barry being Barry. The absurdities of corporate culture, in this case, marketing specifically, are lampooned by taking them seriously. The whole plot revolves around competing marketers marketing themselves to a marketing department. I was a bit weirded out by how closely he parallels the basic structure of this novel ins his later work Company. In both, a young naive male protagonist with no close male friends works closely with and ends up in a romantic relationship with an attractive cynical woman, and together they succeed by combining his bumbling innocence and human decency with her superior mastery of corporate gamesmanship. It's nothing I would have commented on had he not done it twice, but in that context it's pretty strange. Another repeated Barry fascination is pseudonymous identification with brands. Where in Jennifer Government, characters took the surname of their employer, here the image conscious aspiring marketers adopt pseudonyms as part of their effort to brand themselves, so the main characters in the novel are named Scat, 6, Sneaky Pete, and @. A decent read...4 devastatingly hip pseudonyms out of 5.
The Robin was fascinating. He attempts to draw out the common threads of ideological conservatism starting with Edmund Burke and the French Counter-Revolution, and concludes that modern conservatism is a reaction to progressivism and arises from "the felt experience of having power, seeing it threatened, and trying to win it back". A lot of what Robin refers to as power is what we normally think of as privilege. I have to admit, his theory seems to hold up when applied to every practical political dispute I can think of. If I weren't so lazy, I'd start up a thrad about it.
My favorite chapter was one about Scalia's jurisprudence, which makes passing reference to Scalia's love of games as a field in which inequality is allowed to shine gloriously forth, which flies in the face of everything I think I know about gaming. Most games have rules that are designed to create a level playing field, not to allow success in previous games to dictate advantages in current games.
Starting King Solomon's Mine (yay, free ebooks!), and hoping to burn through it quickly, because yay, new Murakami this week!
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"Trans Am Jesus" is "what hanged me"
Just finished up Corey Robin's The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin....
The Robin was fascinating. He attempts to draw out the common threads of ideological conservatism starting with Edmund Burke and the French Counter-Revolution, and concludes that modern conservatism is a reaction to progressivism and arises from "the felt experience of having power, seeing it threatened, and trying to win it back". A lot of what Robin refers to as power is what we normally think of as privilege. I have to admit, his theory seems to hold up when applied to every practical political dispute I can think of. If I weren't so lazy, I'd start up a thrad about it.
Start a thrad anyway!
It sounds to me like the title is a riff on Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind, which is actually quite a decent piece of historical writing, and nothing like the mindless polemics of modern-day 'movement conservatism'—at which Kirk probably would have been justly horrified, if he had lived to see it.
I'm trying to get through everything I checked out from the library before the books have to go back, but I also just ordered two new books, and I can't wait for them to get here.
Merchants of Doubt is perpetually checked out of both the public and uni libraries, and Here Be Dragons hasn't even made it to either the uni or public libraries. That is a bit surprising to me because it's a new publication from a major press on biogeography, a very relevant topic to some of the research at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, which is where most of the books on biology are housed. But libraries are hurting for funds everywhere in California, and new acquisitions are among the first things to be dropped.
Thanks, from:
Adam (10-25-2011), Crumb (10-25-2011), Gonzo (10-25-2011)
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What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires -- desires of which he himself is often unconscious. ... The origin of myths is explained in this way.
Already funny and interesting, and I'm only about 40 pages in. I do hope he managed to make the world of T'Rain as fun as the Metaverse, because how people obsessively devote so much of their lives to things like World of Warcraft is incomprehensible to me.*
*
All that time, and what meaningful thing can players point to that they've accomplished? They've produced nothing. They're a success in an ephemeral fantasy world.
All that time, and what meaningful thing can players point to that they've accomplished? They've produced nothing. They're a success in an ephemeral fantasy world.
I didn't say I don't understand all video games. I play them sometimes, like when I can't, or don't feel up to, practicing knife-throwing, making art, world-building, reading, swimming, watching movies . . .
There's a difference between dicking around on Mario Kart and devoting ones life to WoW or Second Life (clearly they don't have a First).
I am nearly done with Ancients of Days, the 2nd book in the Confluence trilogy by Paul McAuley. It must be pretty good because I have the new Terry Pratchett waiting for me since I was reading the first part. So yeah, I like it a lot, even though the protagonist gets captured a lot and then escapes in a deus ex machina kinda way (not really fair because the way he does it is a major part of the plot, but it does get a bit annoying after 4 or 5 times...)
The series is set on an artificial planet (not really a spoiler as you figure that out soon enough) where there are all kinds of different creature or bloodlines as they call them. It has a bit of a fantasy feel to it, with swords and other low-tech weaponry and technology, but the magical element is provided by machines in all sizes. In the second book you get more background on how that world was built and cetera, so it's a bit more science-fictiony.
Also reading The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity, by Richard Fletcher, about how Europe became christianised.
I'm reading yet another of the books tossed out by the librarian at the high school where I teach. It is The World of Herodotus by Aubrey de Selincourt, who wrote the Penguin translations of Herodotus and Livy and quite a few others. He died shortly after writing this book in 1962, unfortunately.
He's an amazingly good writer, and reading this makes me want to read more of his writings. He may be a bit old-fashioned for some, but I just love this sort of writing--very descriptive and detailed, but very humane too.
There's a 2001 paperback version of this book on Amazon, if anyone is interested. I completely agree with the one review posted there.
Re: What are you reading?
) and is based on the introduction of the Joker in the first issue of Batman and his mysterious background as the original Red Hood.
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