What are you reading?

Kolya on 17/12/2009 at 15:11

I'm pretty sure there are a few medieval novels about thieves. Like (http://chikune.com/blog/?p=1801) this one.

Thirith on 17/12/2009 at 15:23

Quote Posted by Kolya

I heard good things about that movie 'Kolya' but haven't seen it myself yet.

It's well worth checking out. I definitely like its combination of gruffness with heartfelt sentiment; the former keeps the latter from getting saccharine, the latter provides a highly effective contrast to the former. And the acting is beautiful, especially by the kid (no comparison to phony precocious kids in so many Hollywood productions).

reizak on 17/12/2009 at 19:38

There's plenty of books with dashing rogues in them if you can stomach the romance novel variety :erg:

PeeperStorm on 18/12/2009 at 02:21

You could always go dig up the Thieves World books. The character Hanse is more or less that setting's version of Garrett.

mrle01 on 18/12/2009 at 10:55

Last book I read was Snail on the Slope by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky (they are probably best known for their novel Roadside Picnic which was turned into a movie Stalker by Tarkovsky). I must say that this was one of the strangest books I ever read. Hard to make out what's really happening in the book or what's it about.

PotatoGuy on 18/12/2009 at 12:33

I've just finished everything we had in the bookcases of Hella Haasse, in my opinion one of the only living Dutch writers which books deserve to be translated.

Anyone of you ever read something of her?

PeeperStorm on 27/12/2009 at 17:49

Just finished The Big Time by Fritz Leiber: Soldiers in The Change War (time travel war) get some R&R at a rest stop (the location for the entire story), and the collected characters need to deal with a crisis. Much complaining ensues about how much this time travel stuff sucks. Much exposition ensues about how a time war works. Much talking in pidgin English generously sprinkled with foreign lingo and anachronisms ensues. Characters are assholes to each other repeatedly, and form little cliques.

It plays out a lot like The Boys In the Band, but with time travel instead of homosexuality.

Sulphur on 27/12/2009 at 17:52

Finished The Road. That was some cheery December reading!

Fragony on 27/12/2009 at 18:46

Quote Posted by PotatoGuy

Yes, but I am a bit surprised you are being so hard on dutch literature, there is an absolute wealth of talent.

the_grip on 27/12/2009 at 19:42

Quote Posted by Scots Taffer

I'll tune in here to see your verdict by the end, curious.

I finished it this weekend (after taking a brief break into a Data Warehousing book for work), and I think it is an excellent novel. I really did not find the violence disturbing or the like - although it was certainly shocking at times, but I think the shock factor was the casualness of the violence... the seeming acceptance of it by everyone in the geography of the story. The richness of the history in the story is quite well done... you can tell McCarthy did his homework.

I do like books with an interpretive ending as this one has... after some very good discussion regarding violence and mankind's perpetuation of it, the ending thus leaves quite a bit of room for guesswork as to what happened.

I also liked how the story was initially told from one character (the kid) and then zooms out so to speak to show the nature of crowd violence with the scalp hunters marauding through the desert. It really gives a sense of being sucked up into crowd violence, and the kid's individuality only comes out again at the end. The contrast between the kid, who is anything but a hero, and the judge, who is both incredibly villainous and charismatic at the same time, is remarkable.

I liked this book so much that I read through The Road this weekend. The Road is so much more simply written, and I really liked it. Very simple and easy but refreshing. The scene in the middle of the book where the two men and the pregnant woman are marching down the road and what happened next was very shocking to me... much more so than anything in Blood Meridian. The Road offers a great look at humanity from a different angle. I haven't felt such sympathy for characters in a while.

I'm thinking of staying with McCarthy for a while and picking up All the Pretty Horses.