And what did you think about it? Would you recomend it?
I'm currently reading "Anathem" by Neal Stephenson. Man this book is awesome. You read the first hundred pages and you feel like you're mashing your head against a brick wall. All the strange words. Having absolutely no context. . . .Crazy. But once you get into it, feel the flow, learn those references, it just flows. By 400 pages in, a third the words on the page aren't English anymore but I can understand every word. I want to be an Avout.
So cool.
"The Martian" is next, followed by a book I was loaned called "Packing for Mars." That was a coincidence.
I recently read Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, because it has very good reviews.
It wasn't actually very good. It smacked of someone trying to be clever but not actually being very clever at all. It wasn't a terrible read but I wouldn't really recommend it.
I haven't seen it, and I'm not sure I'll bother to be honest.
I thought the film was actually better than the book (which is so rare). They couldn't have really done the film "straight" (it would have been awful if they had tried), but what they actually did was true to the spirit of the book - and an improvement on it, IMO.
I was pretty hyped up to read this book after seeing so many recommendations, and completely agree with you -- I didn't find the book to be terribly good or particularly clever and came away feeling like it was completely overhyped. I definitely second the recommendations to skip the movie, as it really doesn't work well.
Haha, I wish! No, it's a different David Mitchell.
I read The Martian. I blew through it within a week, which is amazing because I don't often make time for reading since I've moved out with my boyfriend. I thought it was a ton of fun. Never thought reading someone's thought process on surviving on Mars would be that entertaining. Personally, I can't wait for the movie but I'm trying to curb my expectations of it as much as possible.
Currently, I'm re-reading Leviathan Wakes for the...fourth time. I'm pretty much going to re-read The Expanse series every time a new book comes out. I'll probably keep re-reading them after that. I like that it feels like a mix of everything on top of the scifi backdrop. It's by no means a literary masterpiece, but I love the series. Also looking forward to the show and also trying to curb my expectations for it :)
I don't know if this will interest you, but Andy Weir gave a talk at Google about the software he created to keep the details of the book accurate to what is realistically feasible. It gave a nice view of the behind the scenes process for me and I was rather disappointed with the Google guys not applauding his software, having seen what goes into some of that stuff from Kerbal Space Program, to do that for a book is just astounding!
Re-read Infinite Jest. Would definitely recommend it to those pre-occupied with drugs, entertainment, tennis, or have had friends go through detox. It's pretty long though (Took me 1.5 months to read both times) and can be a tough nut to crack open at first.
I'm currently rereading Infinite Jest. By far one of the best books I have ever read. I have a minor freak out whenever I find anyone else who is reading it. I'll try and hold back my affection.
would love to know what you think as you're going along. I think it's gonna be a minute before I tackle another thousand-pager, though.
Gotta work my way through my goodreads list somehow.
Just finished on walk home today, no footnotes in this version though. My thoughts are slightly in line with earlier comment, though it was revealed later in that parts of the story are based on his own experiences when he was in the service of the IRS.
It definitely doesn't stand as a whole book, and unfortunately the overarching story is even less revealed than infinite jest. He celebrates the champion of boredom though, with characters telling the stories of how they came to the IRS. This Is Water shared a lot of the same ideas, of acts of kindness from bureaucrats navigating the complexities of organizations to help a person. But in the same way that he made a twenty minute speech out of a joke about goldfish, there are many more complexities discussed, settings shown, and characters explored.
I would recommend it, but not to people who haven't read infinite jest or other Wallace stories first (haven't read other books, just many stories/essays)
My plan is to start The Pale King during the fall semester. How does it compare?
I was completely blown away by The Pale King... it inspired a couple of those moments of complete clarity/insight/at-oneness-with-the-universe (is that a thing?). I felt it was more accessible than Infinite Jest, as well, but it might just be that I was already used to DFW's style by the time I read it.
Highly recommended.
Not too far into it, but the two points of reference I've noticed so far are to the language of Luckily the Account Representative Knew CPR and themes in the essay in Infinite Jest where Hal writes about the logical next step of the 'post'-modern hero:
- He is a bureaucrat, and his heroism is bureaucratic, with a genius for navigating cluttered fields.
I was wondering if he'd reference it. I read Broom of the System, and I liked noting the stylistic similarities between the two. Noticeably with the manmade creation of desolate wastelands in both of them.
Not trying to cause a minor freak out, but I'm also currently re-reading Infinite Jest. I'm enjoying that it's also Wimbledon season...
That book is the only reason I play as much bad tennis as I do. The way he mathematically describes the game using limits was one of the coolest inter-disciplinary discussions I have had the pleasure of reading.
I just finished Seveneves by Neal Stephenson yesterday. Honestly, it's going to take some time to parse out what I really thought of the novel, but my first impression relates to "The pain and the ecstasy" of reading modern Stephenson work. He gets so, so, so lost in the minutia of the technologies he creates for his scenarios, he will often forget how to bring the reader back to the social aspect of his narrative, but the narrative can be so good. It's nerdcool done right. The last book in the novel actually had some very solid worldbuilding behind the narrative (much more so than Anathem). I hope he revisits this setting at some point. Now then, as much as I enjoy Stephenson, I think I need to cleanse my palate with something decidedly less technically oriented.
I think I just picked that up at a thrift store. I'm in the middle of his book, "Anathem" and I'm loving every minute of it.
Can you synopsize Seveneves without spoiling it? There are two books in the way before I get to it, but I'm lovin' me Stephenson right now.
Sorry, I'm on my phone so this will have to be brief. Seveneves is a novel in three parts, all three of which is spurred by the catastrophic destruction of the Earth's moon. The three parts could be summarized as: the exodus of Earth, the initial plight of the survivors and the eventual return to Earth.
I'm working through a bunch of counter-culture classics this summer. I've just finished The Dharma Bums and Inherent Vice by Pynchon. Now, I'm working on Naked Lunch, Catch-22 and A Clockwork Orange, which all take very different mindsets. I think Naked Lunch would make a lot more sense high on opium, but Catch-22 has been a mix of hilarious and sympathetic for me. I'd highly recommend The Dharma Bums and Inherent Vice as great intros to their respective authors, without the difficulty of say Desolation Angels or Gravity's Rainbow.
I just finished reading Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future .
It was delightful and inspiring. I recommend it, if you are into that sort of thing.
I've also read Steve Jobs and The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon and it's even interesting how similar these guys were while being quite different. They all had different passions, upbringings, and paths to get to where they were. But they are also all highly intense, expect impossible things from their employees, have employees who develop an unwavering loyalty to them, and so much more. None of them were "nice" people in any sense of the word, although Elon definitely gets cut more slack than Bezos because he's "changing the future".
If you want to catch an excerpt from the book, check it out:
It's a very good representation of what the other 400 pages contain.
If I hadn't already given it to my dad to read, I'd send you my hardcover. It's really a great read. I will say, especially if you've read Steve Jobs, this one gets less and less objective as it goes on. It's still telling the story, but Isaacson did a great job of really being skeptical and laying down the full range of opinions from beginning to end. I don't think it's too gratuitous and I really didn't notice or mind it until looking back, but I already had a boner for Musk beforehand. It's still a great book and an amazing story.
Aw thanks, that's okay though it's gone on my wishlist and can keep for a bit. I don't really read any biographical works, but I really enjoyed An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth UK by Chris Hadfield. I'd highly recommend reading it but there was a great story he told from it in a TED talk which you should definitely watch.
I seem to remember reading the story on the Guardian website but cannot find any trace of bar a tweet they sent out when the story went live. I wonder why that got removed?
Just finished Dhalgren by Delany. I didn't know what I was going into. I read it because I was looking for a different Delany book and they didn't have it in the bookstore. It is amazing, difficult and quite fascinating. In a way it is a masterpiece with all the problems of being a masterpiece - it is gorgeous, has parts that echo and has parts that I had to bookmark because they are just that beautiful. But at the same time it is a doorstop, is extremely difficult, at time doesn't make sense, has modernist pyrotechnics of language, and offers no resolutions. (I like the fact that it is open-ended beyond normal, but I understand why that is a major problem)
If you mean the latest book I've finished, then it would be Stephen King's 11/22/63.
I love the style of it. It shows the 60s America - a place and time I'd love to visit had I the opportunity - in good details while not hindering the story.
Moreover, the way Mr. King tells the story - so that the protagonist has to work to get to his objective and has major obstacles on his way, many of which he doesn't overcome and has to back because of it - is precily why I like his fiction (I've also read his shorter stories from the Goes to the Movies compilation as well as Cell). Not only such storytelling makes sense from the real-world perspective that I'm looking for in my own writing as we as others', it makes the reader feel the character's pain and pleasure because they're able to relate.
I must say, however, that I didn't like the ending of the book. After all the gorgeous storytelling and the exciting story it's impossibly shallow. The mistical atmosphere of the whole plot is shattered into pieces with one unnecessary and bland explanation. Cell did a lot better with retaining the ambiguity of the ending and the overall situation: no explanation given as to precisely how and why it happened, and it felt good not to know it.
The book I'm reading now is a collection: One-Storey America. It combines the Ilf and Petrov version (the 1935 Soviet journalists' impression of the US after a travel across it, a wonderful insight even for Americans of that time period) with the Pozner and Urgant (the 2006 Russian showmen's impression of the country, following the same route as Ilf and Petrov, the result of filming the TV series of the same name for the Russian TV) and the Kan versions (Brian Kan being the, uh... Montanan? who'd provide additional insight for the new crew in a similar manner to what Mr. Adams did for the Soviet journalists). Worth reading - at least the Ilf-Petrov part, for I'ven't read the Pozner-Urgant part yet - even if you're an American and think you know everything there is to know about the country, as evident by the contemporary reviews of the US newspapers.
I am currently reading The Shining - it's an absolute classic, and fantastically scary (much scarier than the movie, in my opinion). Next up, I was thinking of reading Throne of the Crescent Moon - it's a fantasy novel that has a Middle Eastern setting so that sounds really fascinating :)
I quite recently finished The Magus by John Fowles, which I found to be quite a compelling read. Taking part on a small Greek island in the 1950s, the plot centers on an Englishman who becomes the pawn in some elaborate psychological game directed by an old foreign gentleman he meets whilst on the island. In particular, the fact that neither you as the reader nor the main character are quite sure about what is real, what is acting and what is illusion as the main story progresses kept me reading and enjoying the twists and turns of the plot.
I just finished The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. While I enjoyed it in some sections, I was left ultimately dissatisfied. This may have been the fault of the advertising for the book though, as I was expecting "the next Harry Potter."
There was quite a lot of description in the novel, but not much action. The entire story spans a few decades, but not a lot changes during that time until the last few chapters.
I have been on a classic Science Fiction kick at the moment, having read some Heinlein, Asimov, Niven and Bradbury; I last read Ringworld and would really recommend it, there's a reason it's a classic. I'm only disappointed that my local library does not have the sequel books, well, it has Ringworld's Children and the blurb for that has somewhat spoiled what happens in the preceding books.
Currently reading through Dust by Hugh Howey, it's fairly interesting so far and I'm getting a bit of a Logan's Run-esque feel from it.
I have just finished Gardens of the Moon, which is the first in series of ten volumes of the Malazan Book of the Fallen. Despite the fact that the world hits you in the head with such complexity it's hard to follow sometimes, I enjoyed it overall. Right now I have Deadhouse Gates, which is the second book of the series, sitting on my desk, about one-fifth in.
I finished The Three-Body Problem a few days ago, it was pretty good! (but it's a best-seller, so not really a very brave recommendation).
Also, I had to look up the three-body problem in wikipedia, it's fascinating that such a basic system can be so complicated.
- In 1887, mathematicians Heinrich Bruns and Henri Poincaré showed that there is no general analytical solution for the three-body problem given by algebraic expressions and integrals. The motion of three bodies is generally non-repeating, except in special cases.
I've been reading the series A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin aka the Game of Thrones books. I got tired of being out of the loop with all the pop culture references to it and my boyfriend happened to own them. I only caught the TV show once and didn't watch long for fear of spoilers so my opinion only relates to the books. I am on A Dance with Dragons currently so I'm nearly through with the series.
Personally, I think these books are worth a read. I really like how much depth is given to the characters. There are a lot more main characters than most books have. I think the series gives a nice sense of seeing the same events through a variety of perspectives. It is primarily about noble families, but they have many differences in how their families came into power and how each character relates to their position and the world around them. There are some very ugly facets to the world they live in - some use the ugliness to their advantage while others try to make a better world and cleanse the area around them of that ugliness. Each and every person is flawed and imperfect (in a good, relatable way) and many points in the story amount to one step forward followed by two steps backwards.
These stories carry a lot of grey areas. If you like a black and white world they aren't for you, but if you like to contemplate moral quandaries and you enjoy stories from personal perspectives about the human condition and the strains of war I think this is a worthy collection to read.
I finished reading Firefight by Brandon Sanderson quite recently, and although I found this particular series (The Reckoners) to be slightly childish, I thouroughly enjoyed it. I love how Sanderson can create an entire world with its own set of rules (Stormlight archive, Mistborn trilogy, etc) and make it seem realistic. As you might be able to tell I've been reading a lot of his books recently :)
I am currently reading Ash by Mary Gentle. Remarkable book which blurs the distinction between Science Fiction, Fantasy and Alternate History.
I just finished "The Magician's Land" by Lev Grossman. Absolutely adored it. I've gotta say, I see the problems a lot of critics have with it, but it manages to make me not care about them. You hate the protagonist in the first book, and begin really rooting for him in the second. The whole magic system that's used there is really fascinating to, as is its short meditation on the nature of the divine.
I just finished Harlan Coben's The Stranger and have just started the first James Bond book, Casino Royale by Ian Flemming.
Finished reading Charles Dickens's David Copperfield. It is 900 pages and enjoyed reading it absolutely. Not my biggest read, since I finished Ulysses last year, and this year George Eliot's Middlemarch (also 900 pages long). Would recommend it wholeheartedly.
Finished two books recently: Everything Belongs by Richard Rohr and The White Plague by Frank Herbert. The latter, The White Plague, is fiction by the well-known author of Dune with the premise that a man-made virus is killing women--all women--around the globe. It's not as good as his Dune series, but it's still an enjoyable book.
The first book is about Christianity by a well-known Christian mystic. It's hard to articulate exactly what appealed to me about it, aside from giving a completely different take on how Christians should act. You've heard the saying attributed to Gandhi, "'I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ"? If Christians acted in a way compatible with how Rohr teaches, Gandhi would be just fine with them.
(I also read Neuromancer for likely the 15th time, and of course it's highly recommended.)
I am taking a children's literature course this summer to be honest. Last week I read Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry by Mildred D Taylor, and Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech. Both were great powerful books.
I liked Roll of Thunder best, because it was a very personal depiction of the consequences of redeemer politicians in the south. Many southern states pushed blacks away from the polls with Jim Crow laws and elected corrupt politicians. Their goal was to run the state at a profit by providing no public services, like schools or hospitals, and selling the labor of chain gangs to private industry.
One particularly powerful part showed the school bus carrying white children, not just passing the black children, but making a game of trying to push them off the road. I cannot imagine the damage, that did to all the children involved.
In my spare time I am trying to read The Game Believes in You, How Digital Play Can Make Our Kids Smarter by Greg Toppo. I was reading Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin, but it is just so much more violent then the show. It takes to long to get back to a happy place.
That sounds like a really cool course with a great reading list! What is the class like? Is it treated just like any other literature course, analyzing the books themselves, or is it more about the teaching of children's literature, like the impact those books have on culture for children, etc? Just curious!
I just finished Armed with Madness by Mary Butts, a largely-unknown modernist author. The book is certainly unorthodox in many ways, but I enjoyed it a great deal. The best way I can think of to describe it would be as a mixture of James Joyce, T. S. Eliot, and Harold Pinter. It's definitely not without flaws, but, at only about 150 pages, I would definitely recommend it.
All Of Me by Kim Noble, great book about Kim's life as a person diagnosed with DID. The life story is written by one of the personalities who identifies as Patricia. It's a fantastic perspective in the mind of a fragmented brain. While I did get frustrated at her unawareness to her condition, the book is definitely worth a read. It really makes you appreciate your mind.
I recently read Meg by Steve Alten, after it had been announced that Eli Roth is going to make a movie out of it. The novel was somewhere between Chrichton and Sharknado, but all in all quite enjoyable in a pulpy kind of way.