Marty Sugar Posted June 8, 2015 Share Posted June 8, 2015 I picked up another Dan Fante book (Spitting Off Tall Buildings), and once again he is not disappointing me. His alter-ego antihero, Bruno Dante, is such a loveable loser. Also plowing through Stephen King's Revival (first King book I've read in a long time, as a while back I really soured on the writer as a person), and it's a lot of typical King fun. Plus I'm 3/4's of the way through A Feast For Crows; I enjoy it, but some of it is a little bit of a chore. I'm very glad all of Brienne's gallivanting around doing fuck-all didn't make television: we'd have had eight seasons of it. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jingus Posted June 9, 2015 Share Posted June 9, 2015 Yeah, fan consensus is that Feast For Crows is easily the weakest of the series, and I heartily agree. I just didn't give a damn about all the convoluted shenanigans involving the Ironborn and the Dornish machinations and really had to fight the urge to just skip every chapter that wasn't about Arya. The TV show either cut out or vastly improved all that boring bullshit, thankfully. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cwoy2j Posted June 10, 2015 Share Posted June 10, 2015 I picked up another Dan Fante book (Spitting Off Tall Buildings), and once again he is not disappointing me. His alter-ego antihero, Bruno Dante, is such a loveable loser. Also plowing through Stephen King's Revival (first King book I've read in a long time, as a while back I really soured on the writer as a person), and it's a lot of typical King fun. Plus I'm 3/4's of the way through A Feast For Crows; I enjoy it, but some of it is a little bit of a chore. I'm very glad all of Brienne's gallivanting around doing fuck-all didn't make television: we'd have had eight seasons of it. IMO Revival is the first book in a while that he wrote a decent ending for. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reed Posted June 14, 2015 Share Posted June 14, 2015 The Kennedy Curse by Edward Klein. It's an interesting look at the Kennedy's family tribulations. I think it kind of becomes absurd when Klein genuinely tries to argue there's some of sort of genuine supernatural curse following these people. Um, it's like, there are a lot of them, so doesn't it stand to reason bad things are going to happen? I mean, I'm pretty sure if you went through every large family you'd find tragic shit, it doesn't mean much. Also, I'd put a lot of it down to recklessless: Joe Jr volunteers for one suicide mission after another and his plane goes down, JFK refuses to follow even basic security protocol (that ends well) and JFK Jr decides to go flying at night even though he barely has any solo experience. There's another sister who insisted a pilot fly her to Paris even though the weather was awful. She crashed too. I genuinely felt bad for Jackie Kennedy when Klein says she lost her mind at her son taking flying lessons because she knew the family's history. She was a smart lady, that one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Control Posted June 14, 2015 Share Posted June 14, 2015 Reading Thomas Pynchon's V. and having a hard time resisting the urge to change my display name to Bongo-Shaftsbury (Egyptologist). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Randy Posted June 14, 2015 Share Posted June 14, 2015 I read V within the past year. There are so many different characters, I barely remember his place in the story. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Control Posted June 14, 2015 Share Posted June 14, 2015 Mostly his role is that he has an amazing name. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liam Posted June 16, 2015 Share Posted June 16, 2015 Is V any good? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Randy Posted June 16, 2015 Share Posted June 16, 2015 It is definitely worth reading. Like I said, there are alot of characters introduced, and they are grouped together in different time periods, so when Pynchon goes back to them it can be difficult recollecting who they are and their significance in the story. The overarching story is about the transformations of the character, V. But the majority of the book is devoted to tangential characters. It is worth reading for the gradual revelation of who the character is and what V has been through. It is also interesting for the vast amount of intriguing "characters" that pop in and out of the novel. I just finished reading Orfeo by Richard Powers. The main character is an avant-garde classical music composer. He went to school for music, only after transferring over from studying chemistry. This is an important part of his background; fast-forward 40+ years. He looks into the concept of transferring the markers of DNA sequence: ACGT to musical notes. He then comes up with the idea to reverse the process: to write a piece of music, and then write an organism's DNA sequence based on the composition. He ends up being investigated by the FBI for these experiments in his home. It was an interesting book, although the one difficulty with it is their a ton of musical terms used. If you are not very familiar with musical theory, you will need a dictionary. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AxB Posted June 19, 2015 Share Posted June 19, 2015 Currently reading The English Monster by Lloyd Shepard. It's a two-pronged historical novel, one about a guy who goes to make his fortune at sea in the 16th century, and one about a horrific murder in London in the 18th century. Seems good so far, and hopefully we'll find out what the two stories have to do with each other at some point. Before that, I read Toll the Hounds by Steven Erikson. It's good that he's trying to bring things together, but one of the main characters is travelling incognito towards the epic showdown, and the moment he takes off the mask and says his name, you're clearly supposed to be going 'Oh Shit! It's really him!'. But I had no idea who he was. Because there's too many plotlines and too many characters and you never get to know any of them properly before they disappear for a few hundred pages. There's good scenes in it. Good chapters. But it's ultimately too unwieldy to hang together enough to be a good book. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shane Posted June 20, 2015 Author Share Posted June 20, 2015 I'd somehow gone 30 years without doing a deep dive into Bradbury. Read Fahrenheit 451 years ago and I'm sure I've come across a short story here and there in anthologies. Picked up The Martian Chronicles and have been straight up blown away. So relevant that it feels like it might have been written last week. I think the next few reading months might be spent catching up on what I missed... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobholly138 Posted June 20, 2015 Share Posted June 20, 2015 Mirrorshades edited by Bruce Sterling Found this anthology at the library book sale. It is missing the dust jacket,so I almost passed it by. But the title caught my eye. Then flipped thru it and saw it was a cyberpunk collection. Read the first 2 stories last night and it is good so far. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OSJ Posted June 20, 2015 Share Posted June 20, 2015 Mirrorshades isn't merely good it's the definitive cyberpunk anthology. My copy is one of my most treasured possessions, as it is inscribed to me by all contributors and by Ellen Datlow (she wasn't in the book, but as the editor of Omni she was probably the most significant editor in the field.) I really can't think of any other theme anthology that did such a thorough job of covering its subject with all quality material. Taken by themselves, every story in there stands on its own as an important piece of work. You can't say that about Dangerous Visions, The Hard SF Renaissance, or even the brilliant In the Fields of Fire. Just an amazing book, it's one of those that after reading you'll immediately want to dive back in with a ruler and notebook, so that you'll be sure to not have missed anything. Enjoy! Mirrorshades edited by Bruce Sterling Found this anthology at the library book sale. It is missing the dust jacket,so I almost passed it by. But the title caught my eye. Then flipped thru it and saw it was a cyberpunk collection. Read the first 2 stories last night and it is good so far. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobholly138 Posted June 23, 2015 Share Posted June 23, 2015 Yeah I am surprised I hadn't read it before. Discovered Gibson thru Neuromancer in 87 or 88. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reed Posted July 6, 2015 Share Posted July 6, 2015 Every Story is a Ghost Story: The Life of David Foster Wallace by D.T. Max. This is an interesting, sensationalist-free look at David Foster Wallace's career. The last few chapters are (obviously) rather sad: Foster drives himself crazy with writers' block trying to finish The Pale King and even decides to go off his meds because they're "blocking his creativity." Which, yeah, doesn't end well. Not sure what the lesson here is: Even geniuses need to cut themselves some slack sometimes? I don't know. He could have phoned it in a little after Infinite Jest and still been better than 99% of writers. Sometimes Wallace verges on self-parody a bit, though. "This is a post-modern parody of post-modernism" he tells someone about a short story of his in one of his letters, and ends up sounding a bit like a stuffy academic character in a Woody Allen movie. On a sidenote: D.T Max is a cool-ass name for an author. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jingus Posted July 7, 2015 Share Posted July 7, 2015 Sometimes Wallace verges on self-parody a bit, though. "This is a post-modern parody of post-modernism" he tells someone about a short story of his in one of his letters, and ends up sounding a bit like a stuffy academic character in a Woody Allen movie.Yeah, I remember one time in one of his essays, he was mocking another academic author for being too verbose with his word choices and using too many ten-dollar words. And then Wallace begins the next paragraph with a multi-syllabic ivory-tower word salad which you had to see to believe. It wasn't quite "antidisestablishmentarianism' but it might as well have been. And I've tried to read Infinite Jest twice, and both times quit after a hundred pages of inexplicable nonsense happening to a thousand different characters, all being described in this ridiculously cold and analytically detached style of prose. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnny Sorrow Posted July 7, 2015 Share Posted July 7, 2015 I'm reading "Satan Is Real : The Ballad of the Louvin Brothers" by Charlie Louvin. I'm halfway through and it's awesome. No punches pulled, and full of the real life grimy and gritty parts of Country Music. The kinds of things current Nashville wants hidden. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reed Posted July 7, 2015 Share Posted July 7, 2015 Sometimes Wallace verges on self-parody a bit, though. "This is a post-modern parody of post-modernism" he tells someone about a short story of his in one of his letters, and ends up sounding a bit like a stuffy academic character in a Woody Allen movie.Yeah, I remember one time in one of his essays, he was mocking another academic author for being too verbose with his word choices and using too many ten-dollar words. And then Wallace begins the next paragraph with a multi-syllabic ivory-tower word salad which you had to see to believe. It wasn't quite "antidisestablishmentarianism' but it might as well have been.And I've tried to read Infinite Jest twice, and both times quit after a hundred pages of inexplicable nonsense happening to a thousand different characters, all being described in this ridiculously cold and analytically detached style of prose. I sort of liked Infinite Jest. The Pale King...eh, not so much. And that's really sad because he essentially killed himself trying to write a book...and not only did he not finish it, it's not even a very good book. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cliff Hanger Posted July 7, 2015 Share Posted July 7, 2015 Started SO YOU'VE BEEN PUBLICLY SHAMED. The first couple chapters are way more intense than I was ready for on a Tuesday morning commute. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt D Posted July 7, 2015 Share Posted July 7, 2015 3/4th through my yearly Flashman (Flashman and the Angel of the Lord this time around) and I'm sad that I'm almost done with it. I only have Flashman and the Redskins, Flashman and the Dragon, Flashman and the Tiger, and Flashman on the March left. Four more years, though I suppose I can read Mr. America and Black Ajax (and Candlemass Road/The Reavers). I'd already read The Pyrates which wasn't as strong as I hoped. I'll probably hit Fraiser's memoirs at some point too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liam Posted July 9, 2015 Share Posted July 9, 2015 Started SO YOU'VE BEEN PUBLICLY SHAMED. The first couple chapters are way more intense than I was ready for on a Tuesday morning commute. I'll probably pick this up at some point. Really like the look of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OSJ Posted July 11, 2015 Share Posted July 11, 2015 I'm actually caught up enough on writing projects that I'm able to kick back and read something fun just for the hell of it, so what did I turn to? A guy on eBay had the six-volume SFBC set of A. Bertram Chandler's John Grimes saga for $85, seemed like a hell of a good deal as for some reason the last two volumes in the set seem to be hard to find in nice shape and I'm really anal about condition... I haven't read any Chandler since I was a kid and I'd forgotten just how much fun this stuff is. It's basically Horatio Hornblower in space (not that there's a damn thing wrong with that)), written by a guy that spent most of his adult life in the Australian Merchant Marine. With that background, the shipboard stuff all rings true and the series starts with Grimes as a Lieutenant in the Survey Corps, mapping the worlds in the far-flung corners of the Galaxy and follows his career to the rank of Fleet Commodore where after a time he gets tired of the bureaucratic aspects of the rank and says "Fuck it!" and goes off exploring again. Yeah, no one's going to mistake the science in these books for anything written by a physics major, but this is science fiction adventure of the most fun and accessible variety that you're likely to encounter. Chandler wasn't a great prose stylist, but he was one hell of a storyteller and while I'd read and enjoyed bits and pieces of the saga before, this is the first time going through the whole enchilada from start to finish and it's proving to be one hell of a great voyage. If you're not fussy about condition you can find copies for a couple of bucks. Start with Lieutenant of the Survey Service and if that doesn't hook you in, then you have my condolences. Seriously, Chandler is one of two authors that I really enjoyed as a kid that have held up forty years later because the authors were such great storytellers, (the other being James White with his "Hospital Station" series). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shane Posted July 13, 2015 Author Share Posted July 13, 2015 Got through Finders Keepers. It's not classic King or anything, but it's a perfectly enjoyable thriller. Also re-read The Road. Such a bleak book at times. The hopeful ending, in some ways, seems to go against all that leads up to it. Currently re-reading Snow Crash. Well...listening to it, actually. I read it years ago and spent the time since thinking it was an amazing read. Wanted to see if it holds up. Mostly, it does. Not a huge fan of the narrator, but the story is keeping me hooked. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super Ape Posted July 16, 2015 Share Posted July 16, 2015 About to decide whether to jump into Going Postal, or get my annual re-reading of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy underway. I love Pratchett's work, and H2G2 is a masterpiece (I used to have an anthology of the first five books somewhere, but damned if I know where it is, so I'm settling for a library paperback copy). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GuerrillaMonsoon Posted July 18, 2015 Share Posted July 18, 2015 Why I read Go Set A Watchman, I have no idea. Just awful. Certainly fake. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts