I'm reading Redemption Ark by Alastair Reynolds. Next book needs to be something more educational but I'm too stressed this week for anything serious.
I'll be at burning man next two Mondays, anyone up for posting these while I'm gone? Otherwise I'll just pick it up when I get back.
Ready Player One. More like Ready For It To End.
Did you see JTHipster's writeup on it? So good.
Just finished The Things They Carried. It was like a better version of Phil Klay's Redeployment (also an excellent book). I can't really stress just how much of an impact that The Things They Carried had on me. The writing style was really haunting and it really serves as a reminder as to how horrific a foreign policy mistake the entire Vietnam War was, and the experiences our soldiers went through. I also read In the Footsteps of the Prophet, a nice little biography by Tariq Ramadan on the Prophet Muhammad. It was not nearly as hagiographical as I thought it would be, which was a plus. As for this week, I will be reading Andrzej Sapkowski's The Last Wish - short stories that help set up his Witcher series of books, which I aim to eventually read. After that, I might try out The Sorrow of War for a nice little account of the war in Vietnam from the other side's perspective.
I read The Things They Carried for ap English in high school. It was by far the most impactful of the books we read for that class. I ended up reading most of the other books O'Brian wrote after that. I might have to reread it now, is been almost ten years.
I absolutely love The Things They Carried. I studied it in college which helped a lot because there is so much there that you can gloss over. It's super interesting how deep and crazy and the connections you can make in a piece like that. If you have the time, kb and I had a long-ass discussion on truth and fiction and lies and stuff over here a while back. The Things They Carried comes up.
Damn, that was one hell of an interesting conversation. It's definitely a lot to take in. I think what really struck me about The Things They Carried was that it didn't actually matter to me how much of it was true or not but rather what mattered was that it had this feel of authenticity to it. It focused on so many little tiny things that I never associated with war stories - like the feel of the landscape, and just the primordial aspect of Vietnam as a place (in the eyes of those soldiers). I think for a long time I was pretty enamored by the idea of serving in the military but this book (among other things) really shattered the idea that I would ever have the stones for that sort of thing. But yeah it really is a fantastic book. I would recommend Phil Klay's Redeployment as a sort of modern rendition of the same thing (a collection of short stories about a war, this time Iraq) but it lacks the same impact because it doesn't have the same sort of continuity. Still a good read, though!
Okay I finished Ready Player One (thank god) and couldn't decide what sword/sorcery book to pick next so now I'm on Le Morte D'Arthur, the sword/sorcery ur-text.
I read the first 3 volumes of Transmetropolitan this weekend. It was gross and cyber-punky and violent and sexy and ugly and sex and futuristic and amazing. I seriously love it. It's definitely not everyone's cup o' tea, but it sure is mine. Here's some pages I randomly found so you can get a feel: I also stayed committed and started reading American Gods (which is why I only brought the first 3 volumes of Transmetropolitan with me). I'm ~120 pages in so far so stuff has happened... but not too much...or it hasn't come together yet. It reminds me of a surreal dream or a Lynch movie with a bit of The Dark Tower thrown in. So far, I'm glad they have these random stories that aren't part of the main story with Shadow because I probably would have fallen asleep a few times if they didn't. The story about the vagina lady who eats the guy she's fucking after he worships her was intense...but I had been reading Transmetropolitan so I was already in that mindset. I had to double check which book I was reading for a second though. Violent, gross, sexy, intriguing. Totally my style.
I just finished Wuthering Heights. I'm a pretty big fan of classics (I like to see what the hype is about) and man, I was not expecting this. I am more confused than ever as to why anyone thinks Heathcliff and Catherine made a good couple. The symbols of the book were awesome though. A pity Emily died so young!
It's been awhile since I read it. Spoiler alert for anybody who hasn't read it yet: Were you massively confused when Cathy dies, and then on literally the next page her daughter is born also named Catherine and with almost no indication in the first place that her mother was pregnant to begin with!? I was a good 2 or 3 confused pages into the next chapter before I realized what was going on.
I had the same thought when I read it in school, ages ago. Heathcliff is a jackass, and Catherine is an idiot. Maybe the point is that they deserve each other.
I put 2312 on hold and started (and finished) The Martian. I bought it a year ago and never got around to reading it but after seeing the trailer last week I finally picked it up. Holy shit was it good, i highly highly recommend it. I can post the thread the next couple of weeks btw.
I have burned through a lot of Brandon Sanderson's work, and literally a ton of other fantasy in hopes of finally setting the rules for my magic system. Still have a few more of his works to get through before I can consider my research complete, but my magic system for the most part is developed.
I've only ever read the mistborn trilogy and the follow up to them as far as Sanderson goes. I enjoyed them but fantasy normally isn't my favorite genre. Anything else by him I might enjoy? Supposedly he's going to write more books in the mistborn universe eventually but I'm not holding my breath.
Mistborn is a great piece of fiction with one of the most inventive magical systems I've encounter outside of Robert Jordan's magic system. If fantasy isn't really your thing Sanderson may not be your thing because that is what all his fiction is about really.
He by far has the widest reaching epic I've encounter. His creation of the cosmere is something that I couldn't even imagine doing with fiction. The Elantris series, the Stormlight Archives, the Mistborn Series, The Warbreaker series. The idea that in some way all of these worlds are connected, and somehow share elements is unbelievable. When Sanderson finishes his work the Cosmere is going to be the largest epic collection of all time.
See, but that is part of the system. His three laws encompass what magical systems have to be about. The magic itself, the limitations of that magic on people, and how that magic links with the world around it. It is because he builds magic systems like these that they work so well.
I liked it. By the end I was skimming sections of science porn to get to the story. I think many of his readers tire of the educational bits in his books, I know my tolerance for his science and history exposition has waxed and waned from novel to novel and subject to subject. I feel like some of his novels are essentially high brow pulp while others are more serious or literary. I'd put this amongst his serious material. I've met some fans who couldn't get into this one and I'm not surprised. It's not as challenging as Anthem but less challenging than Cryptonomicon in my opinion. I liked it, it's not amazing. The consistency of his work reminds me of Marukami, knocking it out of the park sometimes, very good other times, and occasionally enjoyable but disappointing when compared to what he can do at his best.
Does nerdy shit count? I started reading Optimality Theoretic Syntax. Optimality Theory (or OT for short) is a really influential theory in the field of phonology, but its applications to syntax remain largely ignored because the syntax standard is the Minimalist Program (MP). OT is awesome though and I want to learn more about what it can and can't explain about syntax so I'm reading this book. I'm all about that violable constraint life, and very interested in syntax, so OT syntax is like my dream. Plus I'm discovering that there are stochastic OT models and I'm just like where has this been all my life?!
Linguistics as a field really sets an example for how to alienate anyone from ever being interested in it because of the horrible terminology. Optimality Theory... Minimalism... opaque terms that don't help -__-. Basically OT is a super cool theory, but since Minimalism is the "king" of syntactic theories no one pays attention to OT as applied to syntax. Which isn't cool because OT is awesome!might not have much interesting to reply with since everything you said is totally over my head
I think you'll enjoy (and by enjoy, I mean be horrified by) the Chomsky text generator.
I've been reading The Confusions of Young Törless. It's really, really good. Törless wrestles with some extremely abstract emotions and sensations; I'd highly recommend it. If you like evocative imagery/metaphors/etc, you'll love it. (Don't let the summary deter you from reading it)
I've been reading more than normal the past two weeks. [What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy]( http://amzn.com/1403984530) is the first. I'm disappointed in this one. If there is anything that you need to know about video games is that if an academic, member of the media or political animal over 50 starts talking about video games, prepare for cringe. A full 1/3 of the book is about how to create identity and how the identity of the player in the game interacts with him as a gamer. The book is dry and dull on top of that. I have one more chapter, then I am done with it. Not recommended. The things they Carried is a book I am reading before I hand it over to my dad. Interesting without being overbearing and focuses on the people on the front lines of Vietnam. Not sure if this crowd would be into it, and honestly not my usual fare, but I'm glad I got it. War book people may want to get this one. Reality is broken I've been looking forward to this one and get to finally start it this week. I'll post a review as I have had it in the pile for about six months but had other stuff on top of it. My "lite" reading this week is Paranomality a book Richard Dawkins suggested about two years ago. I'm hoping to run through this on over the weekend depending on life stuff getting in the way. I read fast, and for me, this is about a typical sampling. I aim for five to seven books a month depending on work and life commitments. I rarely read fiction; real life is far more weird and amazing.
I read a book monday night called The Games by Ted Kosmatka. It was about a dystopian near future where a new event has been added to the Olympics, elimination by death Gladiator matches. BUT, each country, rather than being represented by a condemned prisoner, or military psycho, each nation develops a chimera creature of some kind, genetically. It was a pretty good read, with a few of very interesting discussions about evolutionary biology, xenobiology and sentience. That said, there were some really bad moments, and plot devices that shone like grease on cheap pizza. Yeah, you enjoy it in the moment, but you know it's not good for you long-term. There's a quote on the Goodreads page that sums up the (somewhat limited) appeal quite nicely Edit, I'm also supposed to start Oryx and Crake and it's sequels this week.I have The Year of the Flood and MaddAddam at the moment, Oryx and Crake is coming back to the library today or tomorrow then I pick it up. I'm not feeling to hopeful about the series. I leafed through The Year of the Flood just to try and get a feel for Atwoods style and I can't say I'm impressed so far. Her language is pretty simple (Yeah yeah the character she was dealing with at the moment was kind of dumb, but the language-environment of a dumb character doesn't have to succumb to stereotype) and the dystopian-sci-fi-horror thing is really ham handed, considering how much praise these books have gotten. Maybe I'm just missing something.You had me at, "In this amoral future, genetically engineered monsters fight to the death at public Olympic gaming events."
I gave up on Ben Horowitz's "Hard thing about hard things" halfway through because he's just such a douchebag and because I really don't need to know how to be a CEO of a company. I was told the lessons were translatable to other endeavors but they're not. So I picked up Jon Ronson's The Men Who Stare At Goats and it's f'n awesome, as Ronson books tend to be.
"Everything you love sucks and I know because trust me I'm a 30-something guy that runs a company." e: I still need to read Publicly Shamed, pretty sure that's him.I really don't need to know how to be a CEO of a company. I was told the lessons were translatable to other endeavors but they're not.
40-something and Andreesen Horowitz, but yeah. The entitlement from the "I had a dotcom and it made me rich" crowd is pretty nauseating. e: start with "Them: Adventures with extremists" or if you prefer your information in audiovisual format, "Them" was the outcome of an awesome BBC series called "the secret rulers of the world."
Just got a hold of Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs, and some books by David Sedaris. Purpose of doing so is that I've been wanting to write an autobiographical novel for quite some time, and I'm trying to figure out how to do it in a way that isn't so depressing.
Burroughs dropped out of school after the sixth grade and obtained a GED at age 17. He chose his name at age 18, and legally changed it in Boston.[1] He later enrolled at Holyoke Community College in Holyoke, Massachusetts, as a pre-med student, dropping out before the end of the first semester. He decided to settle in New York City and worked for a Manhattan-based advertising company. In 1996, he sought treatment for alcoholism at a rehabilitation center in Minnesota before returning to Manhattan. His books are published by St. Martin's Press and Picador. Some of his childhood experiences were chronicled in Running with Scissors (2002), which was later made into a film. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusten_Burroughs further information about whether it's a memoir vs autobiography: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusten_Burroughs#ControversyBurroughs was born Christopher Richter Robison in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the younger of two sons to poet Margaret Robison and John G. Robison, former head of the philosophy department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is the younger brother of fellow memoirist John Elder Robison. He was raised in Massachusetts, including the towns of Shutesbury, Amherst, and Northampton. His parents divorced on July 29, 1978, when Burroughs was twelve years old, and he was adopted by his mother's psychiatrist who resided in the Northampton area.
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2007/01/burroughs200701 It's a hurtful fucking book, utterly devoid of love or compassion for anyone but Augusten Burroughs. You don't see that kind of hatred in Mommy Dearest.
This is a tricky issue, and I don't want to get into an argument with you. I'll just say bad things were done on both sides. On a slightly different note, more related to my original comment: the stuff he describes in his book matches with scary precision stuff I experienced as a kid. And it worries me that if I were ever to write a memoir about the psychologically unstable people who tortured and abused me, that I'd be publicly excoriated for doing so.
Then write something else. We all got baggage. If you define yourself by the hurt you've felt then you open yourself to be redefined by those you accuse. "Bad things were done by both sides" isn't an argument that holds a lot of water when the memoirist is forced to recant. If the truth isn't interesting enough don't lie and pretend it's real. I'll say this - if you aspire to be Augusten Burroughs there's zero point in us conversing further. Edited to add: if you want to read a black bunch of biography from someone who doesn't say "it's all true!" about made-up shit so that he can feel better about himself, Jerry Stahl is your guy.