My library just got a book called, I shit you not, WWW.COM
The description:
"As the internet expands and creates a playground, Ramon Ramirez & Daniel Munger surreptitiously slither to the top by creating an inconspicuous organization, The Secret Society, which makes them the most powerful and feared men in America; and they only have 1 rule: There Are No Rules! A simple click can get you sex, money, and even murdered! Unexpectedly, things change when Ramon and Daniel's fate leads them to cross paths with a charismatic group of ambitious women paired with sinister talents. These women have a master plan to outsmart the smartest and do the unachievable. Take down The Secret Soceity from the bottom to the top, One by One. Open WWW.COM and see Chance, Seven, Justice, & Patience validate the dangers of the click into the unknown"
I'm on percocet and a shitload of sleep deprivation and this still sounds insane to me
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
My library just got a book called, I shit you not, WWW.COM
The description:
"As the internet expands and creates a playground, Ramon Ramirez & Daniel Munger surreptitiously slither to the top by creating an inconspicuous organization, The Secret Society, which makes them the most powerful and feared men in America; and they only have 1 rule: There Are No Rules! A simple click can get you sex, money, and even murdered! Unexpectedly, things change when Ramon and Daniel's fate leads them to cross paths with a charismatic group of ambitious women paired with sinister talents. These women have a master plan to outsmart the smartest and do the unachievable. Take down The Secret Soceity from the bottom to the top, One by One. Open WWW.COM and see Chance, Seven, Justice, & Patience validate the dangers of the click into the unknown"
Awful, terrible, shitty, disgusting plot aside
Who the hell though WWW.COM would be a good name for a book?
So Cloud Atlas was a fine book, but I think I was expecting a bit too much from it. I was hoping the six stories would tie up and into each other in interesting and significant ways. They really don't, each one really stands by itself for the most part. I think I was hoping for something more like Hyperion, which I would say is a better book, still.
On each individual story:
Adam Ewing: This one was okay. Had me reaching for my dictionary which is uncommon, and hard to do, frankly. I would say this is a Melville story? Or almost something like Darwin, which I haven't actually read. Didn't get a whole lot out of this one, other than Adam Ewing is an okay guy, and most everyone else is some degree of jerk. Except Autua.
Robert Frobisher: My favorite. Mr. Frobisher is quite a likable rapscallion, and I enjoyed all of his misadventures and wittiness. And it has a nice and sad ending.
Luisia Rey: I felt like this one tied in the least to the other stories thematically. It reads pretty much like a conspiracy thriller, which are totally common these days. Probably the easiest and most exciting to read, although remembering who was who from one half to the second took some effort. An entertaining read, but not much meat on its bones.
Timothy Cavendish: I wasn't feeling this one through the first half. Cavendish was kind of a whiny old jerk. I think his imprisonment and escape did his character some good, it was much more fun in the back half. A generally funny story, it feels like someone already made this into a movie. I kept seeing an aged Colin Firth as Cavendish. Very British.
Sonmi-451:Competes with Frobisher for my favorite section. I really liked the interview format, learning about this future world, an unraveling what went on to bring her to this point. This section should be plenty flashy for the movie.
Zachry: Phew, the dialect. Reading this part got to be a chore at points. It was an interesting take on the post-apocalyptic world though.
Is there any good criticism of it? I'd really like to read someone talk about themes and motifs and such.
Some real quick thoughts:
The movie's tagline is "everything is connected," but I don't think that's the point of the book at all; the connections are really just a conceit or gimmick. He's written other books with similar gimmicks. His first, Ghostwritten, is six or eight independent but loosely-linked short stories separated by east-to-west time zone rather than era (so there's a Tokyo story, then a China story, then a St. Petersburg story, etc.)
Rather than connections, I think the book is about cycles and history repeating, and specifically the human tendency toward ultimately self-destructive predation and exploitation - and more importantly, how it happens on all levels of magnification, like a fractal. There's your tribe-on-tribe genocides and even nuclear war but these large-scale things ultimately stem from the same human impulses that cause bitter old men to try and hurt and dominate their people closest to them, or that cause caretakers to treat their elderly charges like prisoners.
A big part of the fun of the book is in recognizing the literary styles that Mitchell consciously riffs on. You were right to mention Melville in connection with the Pacific story, but it also has very strong Joseph Conrad overtones, especially with "The Secret Sharer." Frobisher's adventure is in the vein of country house dramas like Evelyn Waugh's novels. Luisa Rey is not just a conspiracy thriller, but a very specifically 70's conspiracy thriller, written with the kind of airport-novel efficiency of guys like Frederick Forsyth or Robert Ludlum. Cavendish is definitely in the vein of modern middle-class UK literature like Martin Amis. Sonmi is a big stew of dystopian fiction and a bit of cyberpunk, and Zachry's story owes a huge debt, including some of the dialect, to Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker.
So Cloud Atlas was a fine book, but I think I was expecting a bit too much from it. I was hoping the six stories would tie up and into each other in interesting and significant ways. They really don't, each one really stands by itself for the most part. I think I was hoping for something more like Hyperion, which I would say is a better book, still.
On each individual story:
Adam Ewing: This one was okay. Had me reaching for my dictionary which is uncommon, and hard to do, frankly. I would say this is a Melville story? Or almost something like Darwin, which I haven't actually read. Didn't get a whole lot out of this one, other than Adam Ewing is an okay guy, and most everyone else is some degree of jerk. Except Autua.
Robert Frobisher: My favorite. Mr. Frobisher is quite a likable rapscallion, and I enjoyed all of his misadventures and wittiness. And it has a nice and sad ending.
Luisia Rey: I felt like this one tied in the least to the other stories thematically. It reads pretty much like a conspiracy thriller, which are totally common these days. Probably the easiest and most exciting to read, although remembering who was who from one half to the second took some effort. An entertaining read, but not much meat on its bones.
Timothy Cavendish: I wasn't feeling this one through the first half. Cavendish was kind of a whiny old jerk. I think his imprisonment and escape did his character some good, it was much more fun in the back half. A generally funny story, it feels like someone already made this into a movie. I kept seeing an aged Colin Firth as Cavendish. Very British.
Sonmi-451:Competes with Frobisher for my favorite section. I really liked the interview format, learning about this future world, an unraveling what went on to bring her to this point. This section should be plenty flashy for the movie.
Zachry: Phew, the dialect. Reading this part got to be a chore at points. It was an interesting take on the post-apocalyptic world though.
Is there any good criticism of it? I'd really like to read someone talk about themes and motifs and such.
Some real quick thoughts:
The movie's tagline is "everything is connected," but I don't think that's the point of the book at all; the connections are really just a conceit or gimmick. He's written other books with similar gimmicks. His first, Ghostwritten, is six or eight independent but loosely-linked short stories separated by east-to-west time zone rather than era (so there's a Tokyo story, then a China story, then a St. Petersburg story, etc.)
Rather than connections, I think the book is about cycles and history repeating, and specifically the human tendency toward ultimately self-destructive predation and exploitation - and more importantly, how it happens on all levels of magnification, like a fractal. There's your tribe-on-tribe genocides and even nuclear war but these large-scale things ultimately stem from the same human impulses that cause bitter old men to try and hurt and dominate their people closest to them, or that cause caretakers to treat their elderly charges like prisoners.
A big part of the fun of the book is in recognizing the literary styles that Mitchell consciously riffs on. You were right to mention Melville in connection with the Pacific story, but it also has very strong Joseph Conrad overtones, especially with "The Secret Sharer." Frobisher's adventure is in the vein of country house dramas like Evelyn Waugh's novels. Luisa Rey is not just a conspiracy thriller, but a very specifically 70's conspiracy thriller, written with the kind of airport-novel efficiency of guys like Frederick Forsyth or Robert Ludlum. Cavendish is definitely in the vein of modern middle-class UK literature like Martin Amis. Sonmi is a big stew of dystopian fiction and a bit of cyberpunk, and Zachry's story owes a huge debt, including some of the dialect, to Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker.
I agree with pretty much all of this. I feel like I oversold myself on the connectedness, which is almost a red herring. The real joy is the literary shapeshifting. I haven't read a wide enough variety to really appreciate it though.
All of his "oh yeah we're talking about that guy now" things were annoying. I get that you're juggling a lot of characters but give your readers a little bit of credit.
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ButtlordFornicusLord of Bondage and PainRegistered Userregular
i went back to reading supergods yesterday
such a cool book
silver-age superman being one man's way of venting his neuroses is incredibly
Man Last Argument of Kings was good, but man. Man.
Say one thing for Joe Abercrombie, say that he doesn't feel the need to write happy endings.
my
main issue with that series is that in retrospect its so clearly constructed just to get you to that "haha gotcha!" ending, it ends up making a lot of what came before hollow and perfunctory. The premise behind the twist is neat but he didn't need 2 and a half books to get there and once he shows his hand its obvious he dosen't really care about most of these characters with one or two exceptions. So at the end I thought it was a neat trick but it lacks the emotional punch it needs once the sleight of hand is obvious.
Man Last Argument of Kings was good, but man. Man.
Say one thing for Joe Abercrombie, say that he doesn't feel the need to write happy endings.
my
main issue with that series is that in retrospect its so clearly constructed just to get you to that "haha gotcha!" ending, it ends up making a lot of what came before hollow and perfunctory. The premise behind the twist is neat but he didn't need 2 and a half books to get there and once he shows his hand its obvious he dosen't really care about most of these characters with one or two exceptions. So at the end I thought it was a neat trick but it lacks the emotional punch it needs once the sleight of hand is obvious.
I don't think I will re-read the books, but they were fun. They do sort of feel obviously constructed, in retrospect.
The whole with Bayaz manipulating damn near everyone the whole time so he could stop his crazy rival and turn Jezal into a puppet ruler was an interesting thing. I certainly didn't expect Jezal to become king, or Bayaz to wind up in charge.
I really enjoyed the bits with totally not Vikings, aside from the "say one thing about..." thing damn near every chapter.
Man Last Argument of Kings was good, but man. Man.
Say one thing for Joe Abercrombie, say that he doesn't feel the need to write happy endings.
my
main issue with that series is that in retrospect its so clearly constructed just to get you to that "haha gotcha!" ending, it ends up making a lot of what came before hollow and perfunctory. The premise behind the twist is neat but he didn't need 2 and a half books to get there and once he shows his hand its obvious he dosen't really care about most of these characters with one or two exceptions. So at the end I thought it was a neat trick but it lacks the emotional punch it needs once the sleight of hand is obvious.
Yeah, it left me feeling pretty hollow. Bayaz as the cranky old past-his-prime Magi who was barely keeping it together, who had to come out of retirement for one last stand was great. Bayaz as the all-powerful spider who controls the kingdom and emasculates, manipulates, or twists all of the characters I'd come to enjoy over the course of the series.? I like that much less. I was waiting for the last turn at the end where someone (Ferro?) said fuck that and stabbed him to death but whoops, that didn't happen. It killed my interest in The Heroes and Best Served Cold, I'm going to have to go back to them later.
Has anyone read the Eli Monpress books by Rachel Aaron? I like the premise and idea of the series, I think I'm going to give them a shot.
Man Last Argument of Kings was good, but man. Man.
Say one thing for Joe Abercrombie, say that he doesn't feel the need to write happy endings.
I loved all the books as good fun, not necessarily great writing, but I definitely think they got worse/more depressing as the series went on. Last Argument of King was just fucking
CRUSHINGLY sad at the end, especially in the aftermath of Adua's "victory". Fuck Bayaz on the real. I don't think I hate any character in literature as much as I hate that old fuck.
Though I will say, I enjoyed all his character tics--at least in that book. I couldn't get into Best Served Cold or The Heroes.
honestly, I think I should start spicing up my love life by responding in unusual and out of place ways. If it worked for whats-her-name, it could work for me too!
"What do you want for lunch today?"
"Egg salad." I shriek.
I've been reading Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel and I'm not sure how I feel about it.
I like the change in perspective during one of my favorite periods of history, but there is something about her writing style that just makes it really slow reading for me. I don't know what it is.
Wolf Hall is a great book but i'll be damned if i'm ever going to finish it
i enjoyed it while i was reading it but it's one of those books where as soon as you put it down you can't remember a single thing that happened
@Buttlord did you ever finish MHI or did a couple of sentences turn you off?
i'm curious, because reading the second book of the grimnoir chronicles and it's quite a different story that provoked your "outrage"
i wasn't really mad, and i kept reading it. i got distracted by supergods but i'm sure i'll finish it in the near future
honestly, the way he writes bugs me more than anything else in the book
like i said, i wasn't mad, i just thought that this little speech by a badass monster hunter that was basically "them goddamn liberal *insert any slur, really*lovers" was really goosey and unnecessary
at the very least, you could do the same speech without it sounding like a downhome ding dong
beyond that though it's fun enough that i'll finish it, but his semi-stilted writing is going to be the thing that keeps me from reading more
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ButtlordFornicusLord of Bondage and PainRegistered Userregular
@Buttlord did you ever finish MHI or did a couple of sentences turn you off?
i'm curious, because reading the second book of the grimnoir chronicles and it's quite a different story that provoked your "outrage"
i wasn't really mad, and i kept reading it. i got distracted by supergods but i'm sure i'll finish it in the near future
honestly, the way he writes bugs me more than anything else in the book
like i said, i wasn't mad, i just thought that this little speech by a badass monster hunter that was basically "them goddamn liberal *insert any slur, really*lovers" was really goosey and unnecessary
at the very least, you could do the same speech without it sounding like a downhome ding dong
beyond that though it's fun enough that i'll finish it, but his semi-stilted writing is going to be the thing that keeps me from reading more
honestly, monster hunter alpha is his best written (MHI) book because it's not written from owen's standpoint
i like the grimnoir chronicles so far. sometimes, sluggish, other times, action packed and full of treachery
diablo III - beardsnbeer#1508 Mechwarrior Online - Rusty Bock
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ButtlordFornicusLord of Bondage and PainRegistered Userregular
i might give another one a shot but like i said, his actual style of writing, the way he constructs his sentences, is the biggest turn-off for me
moreso now that i'm 2/3s of the way through supergods, which is fucking fantastic and superbly written
gmo owns
read supergods
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AntimatterDevo Was RightGates of SteelRegistered Userregular
supergods is fantastic
if you love grant morrison
so i think it's fantastic
however i can totally see why people would be turned off of it
I think it's pretty safe to say I would hate supergods
yerp
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ButtlordFornicusLord of Bondage and PainRegistered Userregular
i think the thing that makes supergods so much better than the things i've read about the history of comics is A) morrison being crazy-ass grant morrison about it and the fact that it's half-autobiography using his own life as a backdrop for these things and saying "look here's what this shit was like for a kid/young guy getting into writing comics at the time"
better might be the wrong word. interesting is a better one.
also, i'm super-stoked, his new series, Happy, starts tomorrow
on the surface it looks like his most straight-forward thing yet, which of course means it's going to end up being batshit insane but hey
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AntimatterDevo Was RightGates of SteelRegistered Userregular
Posts
I'm on percocet and a shitload of sleep deprivation and this still sounds insane to me
What is wrong with you?
mortal weapons can't kill him anyway
I wonder if he's a cool dude?
Awful, terrible, shitty, disgusting plot aside
Who the hell though WWW.COM would be a good name for a book?
@Sassori, like, at his/her house? Or at a meeting? Convention? I mean are they friends or did they happen to bump into each other?
She works for Scholastic Bookfairs so my assumption is that it was related to that
Some real quick thoughts:
Rather than connections, I think the book is about cycles and history repeating, and specifically the human tendency toward ultimately self-destructive predation and exploitation - and more importantly, how it happens on all levels of magnification, like a fractal. There's your tribe-on-tribe genocides and even nuclear war but these large-scale things ultimately stem from the same human impulses that cause bitter old men to try and hurt and dominate their people closest to them, or that cause caretakers to treat their elderly charges like prisoners.
A big part of the fun of the book is in recognizing the literary styles that Mitchell consciously riffs on. You were right to mention Melville in connection with the Pacific story, but it also has very strong Joseph Conrad overtones, especially with "The Secret Sharer." Frobisher's adventure is in the vein of country house dramas like Evelyn Waugh's novels. Luisa Rey is not just a conspiracy thriller, but a very specifically 70's conspiracy thriller, written with the kind of airport-novel efficiency of guys like Frederick Forsyth or Robert Ludlum. Cavendish is definitely in the vein of modern middle-class UK literature like Martin Amis. Sonmi is a big stew of dystopian fiction and a bit of cyberpunk, and Zachry's story owes a huge debt, including some of the dialect, to Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker.
I agree with pretty much all of this. I feel like I oversold myself on the connectedness, which is almost a red herring. The real joy is the literary shapeshifting. I haven't read a wide enough variety to really appreciate it though.
Say one thing for Joe Abercrombie, say that he doesn't feel the need to write happy endings.
such a cool book
silver-age superman being one man's way of venting his neuroses is incredibly
main issue with that series is that in retrospect its so clearly constructed just to get you to that "haha gotcha!" ending, it ends up making a lot of what came before hollow and perfunctory. The premise behind the twist is neat but he didn't need 2 and a half books to get there and once he shows his hand its obvious he dosen't really care about most of these characters with one or two exceptions. So at the end I thought it was a neat trick but it lacks the emotional punch it needs once the sleight of hand is obvious.
I don't think I will re-read the books, but they were fun. They do sort of feel obviously constructed, in retrospect.
I really enjoyed the bits with totally not Vikings, aside from the "say one thing about..." thing damn near every chapter.
Has anyone read the Eli Monpress books by Rachel Aaron? I like the premise and idea of the series, I think I'm going to give them a shot.
I enjoyed the merry torturers, but even the jovial brutality had lost its appeal at that point.
I loved all the books as good fun, not necessarily great writing, but I definitely think they got worse/more depressing as the series went on. Last Argument of King was just fucking
Though I will say, I enjoyed all his character tics--at least in that book. I couldn't get into Best Served Cold or The Heroes.
now, on a whim
I have started 50 Shades of Grey
it is awful
so much inappropriate verbiage!
'What're your interests?'
'Books.' I whisper.
WHY WOULD YOU WHISPER
THAT HAPPENS LIKE EVERY CONVERSATION
i'm curious, because reading the second book of the grimnoir chronicles and it's quite a different story that provoked your "outrage"
I bet her grade 2 teacher told her to never use the word "said".
"What do you want for lunch today?"
"Egg salad." I shriek.
Wolf Hall is a great book but i'll be damned if i'm ever going to finish it
i enjoyed it while i was reading it but it's one of those books where as soon as you put it down you can't remember a single thing that happened
the style gets in the way of the story, i find
i wasn't really mad, and i kept reading it. i got distracted by supergods but i'm sure i'll finish it in the near future
honestly, the way he writes bugs me more than anything else in the book
like i said, i wasn't mad, i just thought that this little speech by a badass monster hunter that was basically "them goddamn liberal *insert any slur, really*lovers" was really goosey and unnecessary
at the very least, you could do the same speech without it sounding like a downhome ding dong
beyond that though it's fun enough that i'll finish it, but his semi-stilted writing is going to be the thing that keeps me from reading more
read supergods, scrubs
honestly, monster hunter alpha is his best written (MHI) book because it's not written from owen's standpoint
i like the grimnoir chronicles so far. sometimes, sluggish, other times, action packed and full of treachery
moreso now that i'm 2/3s of the way through supergods, which is fucking fantastic and superbly written
gmo owns
read supergods
if you love grant morrison
so i think it's fantastic
however i can totally see why people would be turned off of it
right, i understand that, i'm telling you monster hunter alpha isn't written like a fucking crack baby shit on a typewriter
better might be the wrong word. interesting is a better one.
also, i'm super-stoked, his new series, Happy, starts tomorrow
on the surface it looks like his most straight-forward thing yet, which of course means it's going to end up being batshit insane but hey