demagogue on 30/12/2023 at 00:57
I've been reading The Count of Monte Cristo. It's apparent why it was a pop sensation for its time and since. It's also pretty contrived. I guess in that sense Dumas is in similar company as Dickens and Hugo. I'm absorbed by it like I am for a Crichton novel. I was somehow thinking it might be more of a literary classic like Moby Dick, War & Peace, or Tess of the d'Urbervilles, but it's more ... whatever the 19th Century word for pop would be, but I really like it all the same.
Atlas on 30/12/2023 at 05:33
I just started reading The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick. I've previously read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and wanted to read more PKD books. Other than that another older sci-fi novel I started a while back but haven't got around to finishing yet was Hyperion by Dan Simmons which I thoroughly enjoy so far.
Harvester on 2/1/2024 at 15:46
Burned out on The Shards by Bret Easton Ellis. It's just pointless and tedious vapid nihilism and hedonism. Didn't appeal to me.
A book I did like was Identitti by Mithu Sanyal (original is in German, I read a Dutch translation). It's both a novel and a contribution to the identity politics debate but it's not a humorless political pamphlet but instead it's written in a vivid, intelligent, often funny style while still making me think and broaden my knowledge about serious issues.
taffernicus on 5/1/2024 at 04:35
Here are the books i will probably read this year : Why We Get Sick by Benjamin Bikman, Godel Escher Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, The Joy Of Music by Leonard Bernstein and The Design Of Everyday Things by Don Norman. The one that excites me most is Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet. I like seeing internet development in restrospect. What tech companies , people and organization involved in internet development and why certain design decision should be made...
Midgard on 5/1/2024 at 13:59
Masters of Death - The SS-Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust by Richard Rhodes, focusing mostly on the atrocities in Ukraine in WWII. Yes, it's as grim as it sounds and I may give up soon but at least it does have some not entirely unhumouous moments, like the bitchiness in some of the upper echelons of the Nazi Party. A fellow Nazi Official once said of Himmler in 1940, practically to his face, "If I looked like Himmler - slack butt, pigeon chest, receding chin, almost Mongolian eyes and small, feminine hands - I would not talk about race!" :cheeky:
mxleader on 10/1/2024 at 02:16
I picked up another book by Edward Abbey (Author of The Monkey Wrench Gang) called Down the River. It's a short book of personal essays he wrote over the years. I'm in a river rafting mood again these days so I'm gravitating towards those kinds of books whether fiction or non-fiction.
CZmeltdown on 13/1/2024 at 19:37
I finished been reading blood meridian by Cormac Mccarthy last week. I haven't been able sleep since. would definitely recommend!!
sp4f on 31/1/2024 at 22:09
Just finished re-reading the Greywalker series (up to book 7) by Kat Richardson for the 6th time, I think. Still got the bookmark 'Blue sent me years ago somewhere.
Also re-read the Honor Harrington series by David Weber. Think Hornblower in space (complete with crossing the T & broadsides aplenty). He writes really interesting & complicated characters who have their own particular motivations & reactions to the various events that unfold over the series. Been a favourite of mine ever since I randomly found the first book, On Basilisk Station, in a clearance book shop at some bleak discount retail outlet shopping complex years ago.
Other than that I've recently read The Modern Antiquarian & The Megalithic European by Julian Cope, The Boat Of A Million Years by Poul Anderson, Cities in Flight by James Blish & strangely A Companion To The Vietnam War edited by Marilyn B. Young & Robert Buzzanco (don't remember where I bought this or why but hey it's on my shelf so why not). And quite a lot of random japanese light novels as well.
demagogue on 31/1/2024 at 23:10
I saw yesterday that they're going to make a tv show out of the book I've been reading, The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nhuyen. It's about a Vietnamese refugee coming to the US after the Vietnam war working as an agent for the communist north in the US. It's been a trip so far.
It's coming after Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon, which cuts to the heart of the cognitive dissonances, moral blindness, and overall assholery to which a person has to constantly subject themselves to stay motivated to do the work of an OG communist apparachik. But it's playing differently here from the perspective of someone from Vietnam, which had been in constant war for four decades at the time. I don't think the comrades on the ground in The Sympathizer had the same space that the OG apparachiks had to get deeply disillusioned by the whole performance yet, or maybe it's still to come. Our protagonist is in the US now in the prefab '60s. So we'll see.
Harvester on 1/2/2024 at 09:58
After bouncing off the vapid, pointless nihilism and hedonism of Bret Easton Ellis' The Shards I read Anéantir (To Destroy) by Michel Houellebecq in a Dutch translation, I can't speak French well enough to read it in French. It's pretty bleak but hope still glimmers through in places, it's my first Houellebecq but it's supposed to be his most hopeful novel yet. Just be prepared if you're expecting a a political thriller that the political intrigue ultimately takes a backseat to the personal life of the protagonist and musings on philosophy, society, relationships, theology, politics in general etc., but all those elements of the novel are interesting.