For work - Henry Lawson Collection, Neuromancer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Collected Short Stories of Edgar Allan Poe, The Hunger Games and The Necronomicon (collection of short stories).
Woah, I missed this one before.
So how does one end up reading Neuromancer, EAP, Huck Finn and the tales of my dear, beloved Katniss for work?!? And are they hiring?
Reading a few things:
Booky Wook 2 by Russell Brand - never thought much of the dude, but I read a piece he wrote on the passing of Margaret Thatcher, and was pretty impressed. The book itself is enjoyable fluff.
A classic hard-boiled murder mystery by Lawrence Block - Eight Million Ways to Die.
A Joe Lansdale short novel, Hyenas.
Ender's Game. Only 8 chapters in, seems interesting. A bit slow for my tastes, and the author throws you right into the setting without any warning.
It's about a 6 year old kid who is recruited to start training by the army (6 being the average age for their odd form of drafting) of a repressive, anti-religion, anti-nationalistic, and generally anti-individuality world government. Believe it or not, yes, these are the protagonists.
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Trying again to get through Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun. With single sentences that run on across 2-3 pages of the Kindle screen, it's hard going in parts.
The Golden Bough (for non fiction) and Hereward the Wake by Charles Kingsley (who wrote The Water Babies) for fiction. The latter's better than I expected, even if (or because) the hero is a thick, drunken, upper-class thug.
Well, I haven't gotten much reading done with my week-long sickness, so I thought I'd watch some more Netflix-delivered I, Claudius. Just finished the episode where Caligula, as Zeus, reenacts his love with Metis.
I think I'm going to be sick for another week...
Hey, Limey, how is The Golden Bough? I tried reading that once, but I didn't get very far...
Brilliant. Well worth persisting with, although it is very late Victorian - sentences go on for years, and anyone who isn't a wealthy British male whiteperson is a savage and a halfwit, or both. Still, every page is packed full of neato ideas for spells/rituals (etc) for your favoured FRP system and it's actually pretty readable; he had a nice, dry sense of humour and obviously knew his stuff. I've just got a cheap abridged version - there are umpteen volumes of the real thing.
Plus, he called James II a dull bigot, so 3bn extra points for that.
Yeah, I remember reading that unabridged copies go into placing the
stor(ies)y of Jesus in the context of what he was talking about, but my copy was abridged (but not cheap, as I recall) edition and I lost interest. I'll have to pick it up again someday.
I'm afraid to read my copy of Golden Bough. I got it at a decrepit used book shop that I think was condemned the next week, and the cover is all torn up and appears to be made of some kind of rotting animal hide that someone colored black with a paint brush and stretched over cheap cardboard or something, and the pages are like super-thin and yellow and seem like they'll fall apart if you so much as look at them. I think it cost me about $0.42 or something, based on the red sticker that was on the front.
I'm afraid to read my copy of Golden Bough. I got it at a decrepit used book shop that I think was condemned the next week, and the cover is all torn up and appears to be made of some kind of rotting animal hide that someone colored black with a paint brush and stretched over cheap cardboard or something, and the pages are like super-thin and yellow and seem like they'll fall apart if you so much as look at them. I think it cost me about $0.42 or something, based on the red sticker that was on the front.
That sounds like a book with a bit of personality.
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Trying again to get through Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun. With single sentences that run on across 2-3 pages of the Kindle screen, it's hard going in parts.
Stick with it. It's worth it. It's on my top 10 list, which should say a lot given how not Catholic I am, and how very Catholic the book is.
Brilliant. Well worth persisting with, although it is very late Victorian - sentences go on for years, and anyone who isn't a wealthy British male whiteperson is a savage and a halfwit, or both. Still, every page is packed full of neato ideas for spells/rituals (etc) for your favoured FRP system and it's actually pretty readable; he had a nice, dry sense of humour and obviously knew his stuff. I've just got a cheap abridged version - there are umpteen volumes of the real thing.
Plus, he called James II a dull bigot, so 3bn extra points for that.
The Golden Bough is a little outdated, but still well worth reading (as it illuminates what Joseph Campbell was trying to say without Campbell's misleading and vast oversimplifications). It's doubly good if you can find yourself a leather chair, a fireplace, and a glass of port to read with, for the proper ambiance. :-)
Finished Alister MacLean's Bear Island. Movie was much better but the book has a few moments of its own. Incidental two or three of them connect to Polish former aristocrat...
I read the (abridged) Golden Bough long ago and Campbell's Masks of God more recently. IIRC correctly, the Campbell is a little outdated. The Golden Bough is completely obsolete. Not to knock it, but we've done so much more and so much better archeological and anthropological work since even the 60s.
Is there anything that takes a similar approach and a similar scope, but draws one work done in the last half century?
Not that I know of. I've got Robert Brockway's Myth from the Ice Age to Mickey Mouse on my Amazon wishlist, but haven't read it yet so can't recommend it. Patrick Harpur takes the concept in some interesting new directions, but can get a bit woo-woo for my tolerance.
Just finished re-reading the Riftwar Saga by Feist. Last time I read it was in 87. Never read anything else from him, but always enjoyed that one.
So I finish re-reading, and thinking that is was better than I remembered, and looked at what was out there. Wow. So I am about 50 pages into Shadow of a Dark Queen. I'll be reading this stuff for awhile now.
Oh, I'm also reading the Yellow Sign.
Finished Alister MacLean's Bear Island. Movie was much better but the book has a few moments of its own. Incidental two or three of them connect to Polish former aristocrat...
Love all of MacLean's stuff, but Puppet on a Chain, Caravan to Vaccares, Fear is the Key would be at the top of the list, and Bear Island, Goodbye California, et al. at the bottom.
Just picked up Age of Aztec by James Lovegrove. Basically, what if the Aztecs had near-modern technology when the Spanish cam and did their thing?
Bad things. The spread of the Aztec empire to a world government for one. Blood sacrifices and everything. It can be funny in a dark humor way to be reading about the televised blood rites.
Just finished Intruder by CJ Cherryh.
About to start Cold Days by Jim Butcher.
Within pages of finishing Accelerando. I don't think I've taken this long in reading a book since I took over this thread. I blame my illness.
My apologies to my loyal fans.
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Basically, what if the Aztecs had near-modern technology when the Spanish cam and did their thing?
For an interesting follow-up, Jared Diamond's (nonfiction) Guns, Germs, and Steel does a pretty good job of explaining why that wasn't (and wouldn't be) the case.
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I was kind of interested in checking out his Why Is Sex Fun?, but I was so bored by Collapse I never got around to it.
Finished Accelerando. It was pretty neat. I'm not sure I can say I understood everything that was going on in it, but I understood enough to be impressed. I also hope I die before the Singularity. Thanks for the recommendation, Comrade Curtin!
Moving on to Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch as recommended to me, aeons ago, by Comrade Dwarf. It's funny, because one of my oft-quoted Gore Vidal quotes runs--
And now, speaking of women's liberation, I wonder what Caligula is up to...
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Basically, what if the Aztecs had near-modern technology when the Spanish cam and did their thing?For an interesting follow-up, Jared Diamond's (nonfiction) Guns, Germs, and Steel does a pretty good job of explaining why that wasn't (and wouldn't be) the case.
Yeah, it's definitely not a "guys look what could have happened" kind of what if but more of a "I'm bored, I'm going to write this, oh, people bought the book, cool" kinda what if.
He also has versions of this for the Norse, Greeks, and Egyptians. I think he also has a few thrillers. Definitely not an author that will become super famous, but he's pretty good.
It has a grimdark feel and pulls in some pulp elements. Kinda like V for Vendetta in terms of it follows the story of a vigilante as he combats the evil all controlling government of death.
It also does a great job of showing why theocracies don't work. At all. "The gods told me to" quickly becomes a scapegoat for all sorts of vile behavior.
Let's see, in my "next to the bed pile," (that is, I have begun reading these books, and generally they're what I read when I only have time for small segments) I have:
Packing for Mars (Mary Roach)
The Treasures of Darkness (Thorkild Jacobsen) -- reread
Mysteries of the Snake Goddess (Kenneth Lapatin)
The Prague Cemetery (Umberto Eco)
The Color of Distance (Amy Thomson) -- reread
Murder of Angels (Caitlin Kiernan)
Traveling with the Dead (Barbara Hambly) -- reread
The Empress of Mars (Kage Baker)
The Secret History of the Mongol Queens (Jack Weatherford) -- reread
The Beginning of Desire (Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg)
In my "next to the bathtub pile" (the pile for when I have longer to read) I have:
Liar's Blade
Little, Big (John Crowley)
Feathers (Thor Hansen)
The Emperor's Knife (Mazarkis Williams)
Perdido Street Station (China Mieville)
Od Magic (Patricia McKillip) -- reread
And on my Kindle (for when I eat alone or have to wait somewhere for whatever reason), I have:
The Shining (Stephen King)
Angelopolis (Danielle Trussoni)
The Demonologist (Andrew Pyper)
Legend (Marie Lu)
The Warded Man (Peter V. Brett) -- about to get rid of this one
Caves of Terror (Talbot Mundy)
I don't read nearly as much as I used to, so it takes me a long time to get through books, longer than it would take if I actually sat down and read them.
That said, I'm currently reading the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind, but alas I am still on Wizard's First Rule LOL
Thogh I have to say to the OP... you are reading Harry Turtledove, if you haven't already you MUST read his other AH novel, Guns of the South. Time travelers go back in time and give General Lee AK-47's just after his famous loss at Gettysburg. Having fully automatic weapons the South easily wins the war even after Gettysburg (they explain why they didn't go back to the beginning of the war, won't spoil that for you)
Let's see, in my "next to the bed pile," (that is, I have begun reading these books, and generally they're what I read when I only have time for small segments) I have:
Hmm. What an interesting concept. Well, I recently cleaned up my gobbo cave, but here's what I found stacked up around my stack of hay and rags:
The Oxford Illustrated History of the Roman World by John Boardman, Jasper Griffin and Oswyn Murray to flip through while watching I, Caligula
The Dore Bible Illustrations which I borrowed from my artiste friend and should really give back some day
Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin which I snagged out of boxes of my grandmother's books--her house is being put on the market next month
The State and Revolution by V.I. Lenin, which I am reading with my local commie club--a source of frustration because 2 of them have ADHD and don't read anywhere near as quickly as I do
Class Struggles in France, 1848-1850 by Karl Marx for supplementary reading on the Marxist position on the state
Zeke and Ned by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, also snagged from my grammie
Revolutions of 1848: A Social History by Priscilla Robertson, supplemental reading to the supplemental reading on the Marxist position on the state
United States: Essays 1952-1992 by Gore Vidal, which has served as light bedtime reading for a very long time
A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn was re-reading the chapters about the end of the 20th century
a Time-Life book on The World of Michelangelo also snagged from dear old Grangobbie
and the following commie pamphlets: Black History and the Class Struggle No. 23: South Africa--Marikana Massacre--The True Face of Neo-Apartheid Capitalism, The Development and Extension of Leon Trotsky's Theory of Permanent Revolution, Stalinism--Gravedigger of the Revolution: How the Soviet Workers State Was Strangled and, finally, Karl Marx Was Right: Capitalist Anarchy and the Immiseration of the Working Class.
Man where are all my fantasy books?
I don't keep any books in the bathroom.
Mrs Gersen keeps getting on me to read her latest Oprah pick... (pause to look up title: Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet). Just the title makes me want to gag, and it doesn't help that we have the same daily conversation:
Her: "Have you started that book yet?"
Me: "That Tavern at the Corner of Hot and Sour Soup or whatever it is?"
Her: "I put it on your bedside table on top of your Kindle so you won't forget!"
Me: (Reading kindle and looking at the floor, where there's a heap of stuff including a pair of wooden clubs and the book she's talking about) "Oh, it's right here!" (Goes back to reading Kindle)
Whenever my friends catch me reading Toni Morrison they make "Ha, ha, Oprah" comments and I just say, yeah, go read Lord of the Rings again for the umpteenth time, you illiterate philistine.
What do you need clubs next to your bed for, Kirth? Do I want to know?
What do you need clubs next to your bed for, Kirth? Do I want to know?
In case I don't see the need to shoot anyone. But lately the cats think they're awesome toys -- they attack them and grab them and gnaw on the ends.
P.S. Down with Tolkien! No more Epic Pooh!
I have Accelerando waiting on a table and a few other books.
I'm about halfway through Perdido Street Station by China Mieville. I'm thoroughly enjoying it.
P.S. Down with Tolkien! No more Epic Pooh!
My main problem with that essay (which, don't get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed) was that I always liked Pooh.
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Sorry if I'm being thicker than usual, but would someone mind explaining 'Epic Pooh' to me?
Also, +1 to bedside weaponry (and books). I've got a smallsword in the corner (nb: not a euphemism) as a protection against Norse marauders. And squirrels.
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As I said, I thoroughly enjoyed the essay, while violently disagreeing with Mike (and Kirth) about the merits of Tolkien.
My comment above was motivated by my hetero life partner's refusal to read anything other than J.R.R. over and over and over...
Doodlebug: Hey, Eric, why don't you try these Joe Abercrombie books? I think you'll really like them.
Eric: Oh yeah, cool.
A week later I catch him re-reading The Silmarillion.
Doodlebug: What the f*!+?!? Are you only going to read those books for the rest of your f$$%ing life?!? Here, this is f+!+ing Elric of Melnibone, he invented the D&D alignment system, read it.
Eric: Oh yeah, cool.
A week later he's rereading Children of Hurin or whatever.
[Facepalm]
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You could always Google it. The short of it: it's an essay by Michael Moorcock about why LotR sucks.
EDIT: Ninja'd by the goblin!
I was kind of interested in checking out his Why Is Sex Fun?, but I was so bored by Collapse I never got around to it.
I really liked Guns, Germs, and Steel despite all the fretting about a dirty scientist trespassing on historical grounds that was in vogue when it came out. I was excited for Collapse and made it about a hundred pages in. It barely felt like a good written by the same guy. I understand he also gets some regular history pretty wrong later on, but I never got that far.
Other news:
Still slowly working my way through Fateful Lightning. It's not bad by any margin and has a few advantages over Battle Cry of Freedom but not enough. He's trying to cover twice the time span and content in less than half the pages and it shows a lot. There are occasions when he incisively points out something that McPherson either just assumed or didn't see as important, like just how rickety the American constitutional structure was (and is) but it comes off feeling more like a breezy textbook than a meticulous survey.
Which may have been the intention, I suppose.
It barely felt like a good written by the same guy. I understand he also gets some regular history pretty wrong later on, but I never got that far.
I didn't notice any of that, but, to be honest, I skimmed quite a bit.
EDIT: I'm not sure how you're tastes run, Sam, but I left a present for you down in the OTD Gender Politics thread.
"Conscience" by Louisa Thomas. It is about Norman Thomas' three brothers and their family's reactions to WW1. Norman Thomas was one of America's leading Socialists in the first half of the 20th century, and a crusader for social justice.
What was NT's position? Most parties in the Second International failed hardcore, but the American Socialist Party held out for quite a while...mostly, I cynically imagine, because America didn't enter the war until 1917.
You could always Google it
Hey! Be nice to Limey, Kirth, he has the Anklebiter seal of approval.
You could always Google it. The short of it: it's an essay by Michael Moorcock about why LotR sucks.
EDIT: Ninja'd by the goblin!
I hadn't seen the essay; thanks for the link.
It reminds me of my own feelings when Game of Thrones really hit it big and I heard a few comment about how GRRM had done something incredible by removing morality from the Fantasy genre. Sez I, "Gee, that sounds like something you'd say if you first saw the movies of LotR, then read the books, and assumed you thereby knew everything about the entire genre."
Personally, I think JRRT surpasses Lewis as a writer, but was glad to see Susan Cooper, Lloyd Alexander, Roger Zelazny and Fritz LYE-ber (the man may be dead, but that's the pronunciation he demanded) mentioned.
As for what I'm reading, after running off with my mother's copy of the latest atevi book (look, I returned it) it's back to Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.
What about Milne, Lord Dice?
Fritz LYE-ber (the man may be dead, but that's the pronunciation he demanded)
I was born in Germany; it never occurred to me that anyone might pronounce it differently than that.
Fritz LYE-ber (the man may be dead, but that's the pronunciation he demanded)I was born in Germany; it never occurred to me that anyone might pronounce it differently than that.
The introduction by Moorcock in the first White Wolf collection mentions that "Fritz could be sensitive" about the pronunciation, so I'm trying to re-train myself. Hell, I don't know, to honor the dead, I guess.
Sure, DA, Milne's cool, too. I was just thinking that Moorcock's right in the essay: as much as I love The Chronicles of Prydain (the dial goes to eleven) Alexander probably isn't as good a writer as Susan Cooper. The last time I read the Prydain books, I found some parts a bit formulaic. Of course, the first time i read them I was in fifth grade, so it was all new to me. Alexander was one of the people who taught me the formula.
Fritz LYE-ber (the man may be dead, but that's the pronunciation he demanded)I was born in Germany; it never occurred to me that anyone might pronounce it differently than that.The introduction by Moorcock in the first White Wolf collection mentions that "Fritz could be sensitive" about the pronunciation, so I'm trying to re-train myself. Hell, I don't know, to honor the dead, I guess.
Sure, DA, Milne's cool, too. I was just thinking that Moorcock's right in the essay: as much as I love The Chronicles of Prydain (the dial goes to eleven) Alexander probably isn't as good a writer as Susan Cooper. The last time I read the Prydain books, I found some parts a bit formulaic. Of course, the first time i read them I was in fifth grade, so it was all new to me. Alexander was one of the people who taught me the formula.
Susan Cooper won my heart when I read her books in third grade for many reasons, but primarily for the lovely discussion Will and John Rowlands have in The Grey King about the nature of inhuman good. So much children's literature is very simple -- good is good, the end. I loved that in Cooper's books, she had the harsh, absolutist goodness of supernatural forces opposed by human compassion. I felt, as a little kid, like she wasn't trying to simplify things for me. Also there are some moments of ravishingly beautiful writing in her work.
Susan Cooper won my heart when I read her books in third grade for many reasons, but primarily for the lovely discussion Will and John Rowlands have in The Grey King about the nature of inhuman good. So much children's literature is very simple -- good is good, the end. I loved that in Cooper's books, she had the harsh, absolutist goodness of supernatural forces opposed by human compassion. I felt, as a little kid, like she wasn't trying to simplify things for me. Also there are some moments of ravishingly beautiful writing in her work.Fritz LYE-ber (the man may be dead, but that's the pronunciation he demanded)I was born in Germany; it never occurred to me that anyone might pronounce it differently than that.The introduction by Moorcock in the first White Wolf collection mentions that "Fritz could be sensitive" about the pronunciation, so I'm trying to re-train myself. Hell, I don't know, to honor the dead, I guess.
Sure, DA, Milne's cool, too. I was just thinking that Moorcock's right in the essay: as much as I love The Chronicles of Prydain (the dial goes to eleven) Alexander probably isn't as good a writer as Susan Cooper. The last time I read the Prydain books, I found some parts a bit formulaic. Of course, the first time i read them I was in fifth grade, so it was all new to me. Alexander was one of the people who taught me the formula.
I was twelve when I read those books. That was just old enough that, having read The Dark is Rising first, I found Over Sea, Under Stone too childish for my oh-so-developed taste. Remains unread to this day.
It's totally weird, though. She wrote the second book first, with no ideas beyond wanting to write a story with a huge snowstorm in it iirc, and ended up with a subtle high fantasy story that just happens to be about a ten year old. Then her publishers said "Looks like a kids series to us, make it so," so she went back and wrote OSUS stone as a kid's book. Or maybe it's not that weird, and I'm just rationalizing my own snootiness from 30 years ago.
But yeah, Jess, I know exactly what you mean. Reading The Greenwitch, you see Will through Jenny's eyes, and it's very educational seeing the character from the outside after The Dark is Rising. By the end of it I was pretty sure that Will's (and Jenny's for that matter) magic power was maturity, never mind all that stuff about the endless battle between Light and Dark.
Man, I loved those books, and then they made the worst movie of all time out of The Dark is Rising. Fricken Hollywood does it again.