I found out John Scalzi is coming to my town! So I picked The End Of All Things. I'm really enjoying it so far. I love when authors build a world, present you with all the rules and structures, then just as you get a feel for it radically change everything. I feel like Asimov does that well when he talks about the laws of robotics. Scalzi has spent a long time building this world, it's really fun watching him turn it on its head.
What are you all reading? If they are the same books as last week, are you enjoying them?
Did my annual re-read of Jurassic Park and The Lost World. I always find some tiny new thing to appreciate about the writing or some philosophical point. Yes it's an annual read, I really think that Crichton captured something essential about science fiction in his time period. Some mix of frankness, fantasy and self-awareness that I find appealing.
Not reading, listening to the audiobook "zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance". I've seen it mentioned not long ago on hubski too and decided to give it a try. I had no expectations and find it very strange but interesting so far. As a side benefit (because the book is not really about motorcycles) I had been able to say stuff like "hum you spark plugs are blackened, i think your engine is running rich" to my boyfriend for a laugh now. He's really into motorcycles so I think he likes when I at least pretend to be interested about how his repairs are going on the Maxim.
How are you liking the book? It's been on my list forever, but I keep picking up other books and putting it on hold.
The way it's written is very strange but interesting! I'm not sure audiobooking it was the best decision tho because some concepts can be a bit too complicated to understand right away. I'm not done yet, so i'm withholding my judgment until I see where his journey (both physical and philosophical) bring him. What I can say is that I've been liking it so far, but mostly because of the way it's written than for the ideas yet.
Thank you! Maybe I'll give it a shot soon them.
On a DFW binge, reading Both Flesh and Not: Essays. A bit cerebral, and there are a few book reviews in there of books I haven't read ( One that sounded neat ), but also interesting thoughts on Terminator 2 as well as a story about Fermat's Last Theorem and why so many pop-math / -science books do so poorly.
I audiobook due to life constraints, but I'm working on Brave New World right now. If you can get past how poorly the science has aged and concentrate on what the message is, it's interesting as a political commentary. I'm about finished with it, but I still don't know how it will end, so that's good as well.
Hey! I don't hubski on the weekend so I didn't see this until just now. I finished the book on Saturday. So the entire final act (Bernard, Helmholtz, and the Savage talking with the Controller) and epilogue (Savage at the Lighthouse) of the book is almost superfluous, but where it isn't it is surprising in direction. The whole of the book is spent showing how messed up all societies are. The glitzy, consumerized, and clean future of London, and the nasty, brutish, and short version of Malpais (literally means Badlands which I thought was funny). Neither of the societies has life perfected. On the one hand there is high art remaining in Malpais, and on the other there was real and genuine contentment for most people in London and the civilized world. People took pride in their work, they delighted in sexual promiscuity, and didn't really notice the lack high art in general. In Malpais they had religious ceremony and real art but they were nasty to each other and competed and fought over status. Both of the societies were arguments for and against the other throughout the entire book. But in the final act you have the Savage and the Controller articulating and belaboring these points where it wasn't really necessary. There were a few more points that I was able to articulate for myself better as a result of their conversation, but it was really just focusing already formed ideas as opposed to revelation. What this scene really does for me is argue for London in its current state, because overwhelmingly the only argument against London, peace, and contentment is high art and love. But when presented with these somewhat convincing points, the Controller has literally already thought of all them and has arguments against them which to him are convincing. Instead of painting the controller as another cog in the large machine they show that he (and assumedly his cohorts) have wrung their hands over these issues and decidedly, with regret over the loss of art, that the pain and suffering concomitant with art, heroism, and love are not worth the reward. He acknowledges that even though there may in fact exist a supreme being that in general they have little to ask of that being and so have let it fade away from consciousness. I actually did have a problem with the epilogue and how it fit into the argument of the story. When the savage goes into hiding at the lighthouse and attempts to purify himself he exposes all of the nasty bits of religion which would have been great arguments against it in the first place. In London people never experience real pain and so their lives are of no consequence by default. When the controller explains that there can be no heroes because there is no tragedy and strife it's a good explanation of this. So I don't begrudge the people of London who force the Savage to suicide because this is the first real piece of life that they've ever seen. He has upset their stability and because they have no understanding of the gravity of his actions, they have no remorse over upsetting them. They just want to see something new. But I needed the Savage to transcend himself and he didn't. At the end of the story he was a young naïve boy, spurned by his lover, depressed over death, turning to religion in order to make himself better, and upset when it didn't work. He was literally the incarnation of all the reasons that London left his world behind. One choice I didn't agree with was the flagellation. Of all the nasty bits of religion that they could have included, self-denial as with fasting would have been fine, but flagellation is just the most obscene example of what's wrong with religion that I can think of. So instead of having some sort of existential moment and going home as a failure with new and wise understanding of the world, he beats himself with a whip until he can't stand living in that world anymore and hangs himself. It's not that it was believable, it's just what I would expect a young man to do, and this was a place for someone to be larger than life for the purpose of the narrative.
I am reading this excellent collection of Chinese folk-tales from the 17th century called Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio. It was compiled and written in the 17th century so it really has an interesting tone and, to be honest, it's pretty hilarious as well. Before that, I was reading up on Hindu myths and the like and afterwards I have to reread the excellent Ugetsu Monogatari, which is a collection of Japanese folk-tales and myths... All of this is research for a new novel I'm thinking about writing at the moment.
Still waiting on it in the mail, but by the end of the week I'll hopefully start "Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution" by Eric Foner. Heard the guy speak on a podcast a while back and figured I'd take a look at one of his more well-known writings.
Just picked up American Gods (apparently the 12,000 word longer "author's preferred text" edition). Only finished the first charpter last night before sleep, so don't really know what to think yet. I'm just hoping it will live up to the expectations.
Performance Practices in Johannes Brahms' Chamber Music by Clive Brown, Neal Peres Da Costa and Kate Bennett Wadsworth.
I'm a nerd.
This week's focus is Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia. It is very good sci-fi. It is very good political fiction. It is very good anarchism study. It is very good utopia study. It is very good. More to come as I finish it. I'll also be reading the rest of the Hainish Cycle, as I've always meant to do.
Le Guin is easily one of the greatest writers in American history, or, at the very least, American sci-fi, and even with all the praise, I don't feel she's nearly appreciated enough. Interestingly, I've never read Octavia E. Butler, but she evokes the most wild range of responses from people I've ever seen.
Since balance is important in life, I'm reading two books: 1) The Gita, a respected classic in which Prince Arjuna gets mentored by Krishna on life, death, spirituality, and more. and 2) Where the heart is, a... you know... guilty pleasure that I should probably be ashamed of.
I'm finally getting around to reading Phantoms in the Brain by V.S. Ramachandran. There are a lot of really interesting ideas in the book, especially the idea that we can learn how the brain works by studying what happens when it doesn't work the way it should. Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee, Ramachandran's co-author, do a great job of making the book an easy read without sacrificing any relevant information.
I've recently acquired quite a library of books through the bookcrossing shelf, and since then, I have more than enough to read at least for a year, given how slow I am at that at the moment. Right now, I'd doing small steps into finishing the "Single-Storey America" by Vladimir Pozner, having finished the book of the same name by Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov. I love both books, and parting with them would be a pain to experience, which is how I justify taking so long. I can't bring myself to finish the collection of Sherlock Holmes' cases because I love the character and his stories, too. At the same time, I'm reading - very slowly - "The Last of the Mohicans" by James F. Cooper. I've heard about it, but never thought it's about Native Americans and the earlier America exploration. Reading it in Russian seems off, but I can see how the dialogue can be good in the original English.
Still on Dust! It's a lot slower than the first two, so I've been dragging my heels on it. Might finish this week, might not.
I finished All the Pretty Horses earlier in the week, so I've moved on to The Crossing. During the last thread I mentioned that ATPH didn't seem like much of a Cormac McCarthy novel as nothing terrible had happened. Turns out I was about two pages away from all hell breaking loose. I'm sure the same thing is about to happen here.
Miss Spitfire by Sarah Miller. What a neat little book that portrays how hard it is to learn with troubles like blindness, deafness, etc. I love the personalities the author describes for each character. It really is a book where I feel like I'm inside the book.
I am reading the Portable Dorothy Parker. It comes in at around 600 pages. I have read about 30 so far. This will be my book of the week for a while, I suspect. I am definitely enjoying it. It has been a long time since I have picked out 'literary' or 'poetry' books simply because I like the author and not because they are Works I Should Check Out Or Know. I expect some enjoyable reading for a while ahead of me.
I would actually try and see what is available for free online as she wrote a lot of short poems and stories, which could give you a good preview. I just finished the short story "Mr Durant" and it was very well done. "Arrangements in Black and White" is a popular lit class read but for good reason.
I just discovered I checked out the wrong copy of In Search of England from the library. There are two books about traveling around England; one a classic and one uninteresting. Couldn't remember the author and like a fool assumed the library would just have the classic.
My wife and I still have about 2 hours to go in the Armada audiobook, also randomly listening to H.P. Lovecraft stories. I had heard that some of his stories were racist, but damn, I didn't realize how racist; really jarring.
There is one in particular which I just couldn't finish, The Rats in the Walls, where there is a cat named N****er man and is mentioned so much. Some revisions have it renamed to Black Tom, but the audio book I have didn't. All in all there are still a number of great stories, you just have to sigh and shake your head when the only non-white characters are useful idiots who dig up corpses for the more enlightened white characters.
I've never liked Lovecraft but will give that a skim; sounds educational. My problem is I don't think he's aged well, the occult just isn't scary to me anymore. I recently read Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer, if you haven't read it you might like it! Similar building horror but a more modern take.
I'm reading Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue by John McWhorter. It's a history of English, and McWhorter presents the case that English is so different from other Germanic languages (Dutch, German, Frisian, etc) because of Celtic influence between the Jute/Saxon invasions and the Normans. It's pretty well written, in terms of style, but I feel that it occupies kind of a weird space. What I mean is that the treatment of the material might bore a layperson (and McWhorter can get a bit repetitious when trying to drive a point home), yet as someone somewhat familiar with formal linguistics (I do applied ling), I find myself wanting a more technical treatment with more in-text citations. Other pop-Ling that I've read, like Pinker's Language Instinct, feels brisker and more accessible, yet still able to provide enough meat to a semi-specialist.
I just found out my favorite Magic card artist did the book art for his books ! http://www.jasonchanart.com/#/the-broken-empire-1/ How are you liking the series?