This is all going to sound negative, so I should say up front that I enjoyed the book and thought it was fine.
But if you said to me "this book is about a space empire involved in an ongoing war ruled by an immortal god-emperor and the empire's main political structure is a bunch of houses, I would assume you were talking about Warhammer 40k. I'm not a huge 40k guy but I've read like 8-10 of the novels so I'm reasonably familiar and I like those books a lot, for what they are.
So colored by that backdrop, Gideon just wasn't quite enough anything to fully satisfy me. It wasn't the grimdark ultra-pulp that 40k is but it was operating too much in that space for me to get away from the internal comparison. It wasn't funny enough to carve out a separate niche in my head, although there were certainly flashes and if the author leans into that more I'd be all for it. The action was fine but relatively sparse and there wasn't any sexy sexy to spice it up so I ended up wanting more fireworks somewhere that it just didn't quite deliver.
All of that's on me, it's me bringing a lot of context to the book that it didn't ask for, but that's where I ended up with it. I'll read the next one and (as unendurably pompous as this is and I'm sorry) I hope the author figures her tone out and really leans into it, whatever it is, because this really felt like a first effort to me that could get better with some time and mental energy put into developing it.
On Gideon
I'm mostly confused about the structure of the houses/government. The Emperor seems mostly absent, so do the Houses just do their own thing? Ninth House seems poor/weak but I'm not sure how weak they are relative to the others. The descriptions make it sounds like there's only 100 people that live there, so I'm not sure why the other Houses don't just take it over, or why they give them any say in things. Gideon wants to join the Space Army, they're off fighting somewhere, it's not clear who or what. Are there cities? Farms? Industry?
I take it you're still reading? A good chunk of that is explained while a bunch really isn't, not in any meaningful way.
SPOILERS:
Sounds like the Houses generally have their own planets. The Ninth planet is far from the sun, basically uninhabitable and utterly fucked.
STORY SPOILERS, FOR REALSIES:
It is all but said that the Ninth house sacrificed 200 children to make sure Harrow was a bad ass necromancer. They lost an entire generation with all the knock on effects about replacement that would cause. Harrow is obsessed with becoming a Lyctor because it is the only way she can imagine keeping her house intact. So far the other Houses don't know about it because the Ninth is super secretive and not really integrated but that won't last forever.
I've finished.
The sacrificing 200 children almost assures their doom. But it didn't seem sustainable in the first place. I'm not sure what the consequences of the Ninth House dying out would be though. As you said, the planet is shit, so I don't think anyone will move in, unless they think that world needs someone to guard the Locked Tomb
Harrow also wants to wake up the girl in the tomb. I don’t think her goals overlap with the Ninth House or the Emperor.
I still haven’t finished Nemesis Games! I keep meaning to but then I don’t!
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
I recently finished The Devourers by Indra Das.
It's a book about werewolves, or rather shapeshifters who are sometimes known as werewolves but seem to essentially encompass most mythical figures throughout human history. They're more or less immortal, they turn into something which is hard to fathom/describe but is most frequently likened to an animal, and they kill and eat humans. Large swathes of the book take place in the Mughal Empire, where the terms Rakshasha and Djinn come up a bit more frequently.
The actual narrative is split between a couple of timelines, a modern day historian who makes the acquaintance of one of these creatures, and a series of scrolls that he is transcribing that detail the history of certain other shapeshifters. Of course these pieces fit together better than they initially seem to and there's direct parallels between some of the modern elements and the scraps of history, because that's how narratives work, but I don't want to give too much away (although I think the connections are pretty apparent once you get into it).
I found it interesting, but I think ultimately fairly unsatisfying. The mythology elements of the werewolves and some of the narratives alluded to or directly described there were fun enough, but the book is also definitely trying to say some things about humanity and sexuality that weren't quite landing for me, including spending a lot of time dealing with traumatic sexual assault.
But then again, I finished it a week and a half ago at this point and I'm still thinking about it, so maybe I did find it interesting enough.
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Last night I finished Macbeth, Jo Nesbo's literary adaptation of, well, you know.
It's a modern (well, 1970s set) crime thriller, about Inspector Macbeth and Chief Commissioner Duncan and Inspector Duff and so on and so forth. Hecate is a drug kingpin, Lady Macbeth runs a casino, there's a biker gang, it's a standard modernizing Shakespeare affair.
I've never read any Nesbo before, so I can't really speak to his typical style or anything like that. As a novel it was fairly good, the story of two cops from similar circumstances who end up diametrically opposed due to... a somewhat bizarre series of events, but I can't really blame Nesbo for that part. It was, maybe, a bit too long and too involved - every character in it has some level of complete story arc, when you probably only really need that for a few of the principles.
As an adaptation it was frequently baffling, as it managed to pick up on things that I've seen productions of the show completely miss, while dropping essential bits that no dramaturg would ever let slip. Nesbo seemed torn between modernizing things entirely (magic is a drug, obviously, it's always a fuckin' drug with these things) and making things weird and anachronistic (Macbeth, the head of the SWAT team, primarily fights with throwing daggers), and I'm not sure if either decision would really work but the split between the two definitely isn't doing him any favors.
Some more detailed stuff, spoilers for Macbeth (both versions, I guess). More explaining cool/terrible things that happened in it than like, detailed discussion, because I assume nobody else has actually read this book.
- Macduff becomes an actual character and I really like it. They're still doing the man born of no woman, but it actually is a bit better here - he was an emergency c-section, as his mother was attacked by a drug kingpin with a sword. She died without really giving birth, he lived, and he has a scar on his face to show for it. And part of his whole thing, and the reason he ends up entangled with Macbeth from the very beginning, is based around hunting down that drug kingpin and murdering him. He's a man driven by vengeance even before Macbeth kills his family.
- Similarly, while I think Macbeth is a much better defined character in that source material, the depths that they added here were great too. Macbeth was a teenage drug addict who got taken in by Banquo (who was already a police officer at this point in time). His path towards becoming a cop is born out of this compassion, which serves as a nice contrast between him and Macduff and makes him feel a bit more sympathetic with the whole process that gets him into power (he still becomes an absolute monster, of course, but he spends some time being swept around by fate before then).
- Lady Macbeth's sorrow at being unable to have a child, which is an implicit miscarriage in the play, is turned into a whole thing here. Which is a thing that frequently gets missed in the show, so I was glad to see it. But it's also made very gross here - she had a child earlier in life after being raped by her father, and she killed that child because it looked like him. Like I said, very gross, and also feels like a really weird thing to include for a character who refused to murder someone (in the play) because he looked too much like her father. That element was, predictably, cut.
- Obviously replacing magic with drugs is extremely boring and predictable, and turning Hecate, goddess-queen of the witches, into a sadistic old man is also very boring and predictable. It's 2020, let women be sadistic drug kingpins and also let them cast spells.
- Having actual literal Satan be a part of the book is an absolutely insane decision and I cannot believe that it happened still. Especially in a version that replaces all of the magic of the source material with drugs. But yeah, Seyton, Macbeth's armorer in the play and one of his SWAT flunkies here, is heavily implied to be the actual fucking devil, a read that I have never heard in all my years of experience with this play, something that must have come entirely out of the ether.
For reference, he's a crime author, and from what I know if his works, none of those adaption choices are all that surprising. What is surprising is him doing Macbeth. I should probably read his stuff, most of my family are fans, and he's supposed to be quite good at writing the ongoing disaster type of detective.
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
For reference, he's a crime author, and from what I know if his works, none of those adaption choices are all that surprising. What is surprising is him doing Macbeth. I should probably read his stuff, most of my family are fans, and he's supposed to be quite good at writing the ongoing disaster type of detective.
Oh I know who he is, I'm familiar in the vague sense with the Harry Hole stuff, I've just never actually read any of it.
For reference, this is a part of the Hogarth Shakespeare series, in which famous modern authors were contracted to do book adaptations of Shakespeare plays. This is the... seventh, I think, that I have read. They are of a pretty mixed quality overall, and this one is probably going to end up right in the center of it.
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JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
I'm just surprised, if you'd asked me what Norwegian author would adapt Shakespeare, he's not who springs to my mind. Though to be fair, no one springs to my mind for that, I don't follow my country's literature.
That sounds like an interesting project though. I might look into it next time I'm reading up on non-sci-fi literature. Has anyone adapted Titus Andronicus?
JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
The Tempest. But since her Prospero is an insufferable small-town theater director who got kicked out of the annual drama festival where he was going to put on The Tempest, it gets real weird. Bit of a Hamlet 2 vibe, but more literary and Atwoody.
It's probably the first book of hers that didn't crush my spirit even a little bit!
The Tempest. But since her Prospero is an insufferable small-town theater director who got kicked out of the annual drama festival where he was going to put on The Tempest, it gets real weird. Bit of a Hamlet 2 vibe, but more literary and Atwoody.
It's probably the first book of hers that didn't crush my spirit even a little bit!
So Prospero as Corky St. Clair from Waiting for Guffman? Love it!
I'm just surprised, if you'd asked me what Norwegian author would adapt Shakespeare, he's not who springs to my mind. Though to be fair, no one springs to my mind for that, I don't follow my country's literature.
That sounds like an interesting project though. I might look into it next time I'm reading up on non-sci-fi literature. Has anyone adapted Titus Andronicus?
Not yet. The full list is:
Othello, retold as New Boy by Tracy Chevalier
A Winter's Tale, retold as The Gap of Time by Jeanette Winterson
The Tempest, retold as Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood
Macbeth, by Jo Nesbo
King Lear, retold as Dunbar by Edward St Aubyn
The Merchant of Venice, retold as Shylock Is My Name by Howard Jacobson
The Taming of the Shrew, retold as Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler
That's roughly my ranking, from best to worst as well. New Boy is legitimately phenomenal - it's Othello told in a middle school classroom over the course of a single day.
I believe Gillian Flynn is also working on a Hamlet adaptation, but that's not out yet.
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BaidolI will hold him offEscape while you canRegistered Userregular
I'm watching a recording of Brandon Sanderson signing pages while answering questions and this question about how he came up with Reckoners is now four stories deep covering, at this point, 5 years of history.
I finally finished Nemesis Games! Only took me a week of waffling around to finish the last three chapters.
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GustavFriend of GoatsSomewhere in the OzarksRegistered Userregular
So I just finished Authority, the sequel to Annihilation
And. Well
I did not expect this book to be an incredibly weird episode of Archer.
But seriously I greatly enjoyed it. It's such a weird follow up to Annihilation, being so much more, I don't know procedural? But I think it works to its favor. ANYWAYS ON TO ACCEPTANCE
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JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
Man, I probably need to try Annihilation again. I hated it the first time I read it, but I think I may have been projecting some of the loathing I felt for the mouth-breathing Dexter-looking dickhead who suggested it for book club.
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Raijin QuickfootI'm your Huckleberry YOU'RE NO DAISYRegistered User, ClubPAregular
I'm reading Haunting of Hill House so I checked IMDB to see who played the main characters...
Did they change Eleanor to Nell in the show?
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
So I just finished Authority, the sequel to Annihilation
And. Well
I did not expect this book to be an incredibly weird episode of Archer.
But seriously I greatly enjoyed it. It's such a weird follow up to Annihilation, being so much more, I don't know procedural? But I think it works to its favor. ANYWAYS ON TO ACCEPTANCE
I really liked Authority, it's a perfect depiction of institutions eating themselves while refusing to even acknowledge existential questions. For me both of the first two books are fundamentally about humanity's inability to understand, appreciate, or appropriately respond to the natural world, because we're too obsessed with our own made up bullshit and tribal bickering.
Acceptance I didn't enjoy quite as much (though it's very well written), but I'm not going to say more because I wanna hear what you think.
So I just finished Authority, the sequel to Annihilation
And. Well
I did not expect this book to be an incredibly weird episode of Archer.
But seriously I greatly enjoyed it. It's such a weird follow up to Annihilation, being so much more, I don't know procedural? But I think it works to its favor. ANYWAYS ON TO ACCEPTANCE
I really liked Authority, it's a perfect depiction of institutions eating themselves while refusing to even acknowledge existential questions. For me both of the first two books are fundamentally about humanity's inability to understand, appreciate, or appropriately respond to the natural world, because we're too obsessed with our own made up bullshit and tribal bickering.
Acceptance I didn't enjoy quite as much (though it's very well written), but I'm not going to say more because I wanna hear what you think.
Yeah there is such a strong theme through both of how just fucking ill equipped we are to existential change or threats. But it also has a sort of comfort to it? Like we are gunna be utterly dismantled and destroyed in a means of cosmic horror nightmares and pigs with people faces. But hey can't do much about that and hey that could be neat?
It feels like a very natural evolution of the subgenre of cosmic horror really. What happens when it lands? We've all lost our minds in the face of the unknowable, fine, but now what?
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GustavFriend of GoatsSomewhere in the OzarksRegistered Userregular
After I read Acceptance I might illustrate a sort of triptych because I have a fun idea of a joint one on Annihilation and Authority. And I have been toying about stretching illustration muscles again by just drawing something from every book i read this year.
Oh, I absolutely found it comforting in a way - a reminder that really we don't matter so much, and that the terrible things humanity has done will eventually decay and be lost while the universe continues.
3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
I've always found that sort of bleak existentialist philosophy very comforting, but when you tell people in real life that you stay calm in stressful situations by reminding yourself that your life is completely insignificant in the grand scheme of things they give you weird looks.
+10
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Raijin QuickfootI'm your Huckleberry YOU'RE NO DAISYRegistered User, ClubPAregular
I'm not finished with Haunting of Hill House but Mrs. Montague is the WORST.
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Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
I've been working my way through the Witcher series. I find it impossible to judge the quality of a book I'm reading, so these might just be trashy fantasy drek, but I am eating them up and have read 3 and a half of them in the last couple of weeks. My Goodreads goal is to read just 2 books a month because I am so bad at reading, so these are getting me off to a good start for the year.
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JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
The Witcher books are good, meaty fantasy.
Are you allowed to listen to audiobooks at work? At Lowe's I couldn't have my headphones in while customers were in the store, but there was an hour of shelving before we opened where nobody cared. And an hour a day of audiobooks can get you through quite a few books over the course of a year.
I read the Last Days of New Paris and enjoyed it muchly, though I think the epilogue was unnecessary.
Just let it be a weird story, don't need to frame it with some pseudo "alternate universe" schtick.
Anyway I had a good chuckle at all the art and occult name dropping and as usual, mieville's imagery is unparalleled.
Edit: weird, half my post vanished
Started on Llosa's Notes on the Death of Culture but I don't know if I'm gonna plough through it. Starting with a defence of Eliot's classist bullshit is not a great look, and his first essay is bemoaning the loss of the written word even though we live in the most literate period of history ever. Seems like it's gonna be fairly reactionary, so I've shifted to a set of conservationist essays by David Haskell called The Songs of Trees.
astrobstrdSo full of mercy...Registered Userregular
Mary Higgins Clark died. I think I've only read one of her books, but my grandmother who passed away a year and a half ago had two shelves on her bookcase full of her stuff.
I'm not finished with Haunting of Hill House but Mrs. Montague is the WORST.
C'mon, worse than Mrs. Dudley?
"Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
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Lost Salientblink twiceif you'd like me to mercy kill youRegistered Userregular
“We couldn't hear you, in the night. No one could. No one lives any nearer than town. No one else will come any nearer than that. In the night. In the dark."
"Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
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Raijin QuickfootI'm your Huckleberry YOU'RE NO DAISYRegistered User, ClubPAregular
I've been reading a lot of history lately and I kinda want to try something fictional but I don't know what.
Maybe a scientific fiction? Mayhaps and fantastical romp? It also needs to be relatively light because I really only get to read in chunks in my downtime at work.
Any suggestions? I know that's hella broad but I got no clue where else to start.
I've been reading a lot of history lately and I kinda want to try something fictional but I don't know what.
Maybe a scientific fiction? Mayhaps and fantastical romp? It also needs to be relatively light because I really only get to read in chunks in my downtime at work.
Any suggestions? I know that's hella broad but I got no clue where else to start.
How does a time travel lesbian romance via epistolary flirtations sound to you? This Is How You Lose The Time War was the best novella I read last year. The nice thing about the majority of the book being letters between the two is it is really easy to read in brief bursts as natural stopping points are all over the place. Really why my mind jumped to it and not just because I'm trying to get everybody ever to read it.
I've been reading a lot of history lately and I kinda want to try something fictional but I don't know what.
Maybe a scientific fiction? Mayhaps and fantastical romp? It also needs to be relatively light because I really only get to read in chunks in my downtime at work.
Any suggestions? I know that's hella broad but I got no clue where else to start.
Gideon the Ninth is fun, light, and full of romp.
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knitdanIn ur baseKillin ur guysRegistered Userregular
Started A Brightness Long Ago
It’s hitting all the strong points of Kay: plucky independent women doing dangerous things, young men making the transition from boyhood to maturity, powerful men who hate each other yet occasionally meet to talk over a glass of wine.
I’m not sure about the overall setting. Within Guy Gavriel Kay’s fantasy Europe, the Italian city-state analogue is not particularly interesting to me. But I do enjoy the characters so i can forgive the fact that they're trapped in what I consider to be a tedious, if eventful, period of fictionalized history.
“I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
I've been reading a lot of history lately and I kinda want to try something fictional but I don't know what.
Maybe a scientific fiction? Mayhaps and fantastical romp? It also needs to be relatively light because I really only get to read in chunks in my downtime at work.
Any suggestions? I know that's hella broad but I got no clue where else to start.
A Long Way To a Small Angry Planet. A nice light Sci-Fi romp that focuses on relationships between people.
I've been reading a lot of history lately and I kinda want to try something fictional but I don't know what.
Maybe a scientific fiction? Mayhaps and fantastical romp? It also needs to be relatively light because I really only get to read in chunks in my downtime at work.
Any suggestions? I know that's hella broad but I got no clue where else to start.
Maybe Devil in the White City? Technically it's a true story, of a killer in the Chicago World's Fair. But it feels like a page-turner crime thriller.
Or Epitaph, which is a Mary Doria Russell's Homeric masterpiece retelling the build up to the OK Corral. Her novel of Christians hiding Jews in Northern Italy in the waning days of the 2nd World War, A Thread of Grace, is also great. Not too light, though, that one.
Madeline Miller is a crackerjack. Her retellings of Achilles/Patrocles and Circe are fantastic.
Posts
Now I'm reading The Haunting of Hill House... Because I somehow haven't before.
It's a book about werewolves, or rather shapeshifters who are sometimes known as werewolves but seem to essentially encompass most mythical figures throughout human history. They're more or less immortal, they turn into something which is hard to fathom/describe but is most frequently likened to an animal, and they kill and eat humans. Large swathes of the book take place in the Mughal Empire, where the terms Rakshasha and Djinn come up a bit more frequently.
The actual narrative is split between a couple of timelines, a modern day historian who makes the acquaintance of one of these creatures, and a series of scrolls that he is transcribing that detail the history of certain other shapeshifters. Of course these pieces fit together better than they initially seem to and there's direct parallels between some of the modern elements and the scraps of history, because that's how narratives work, but I don't want to give too much away (although I think the connections are pretty apparent once you get into it).
I found it interesting, but I think ultimately fairly unsatisfying. The mythology elements of the werewolves and some of the narratives alluded to or directly described there were fun enough, but the book is also definitely trying to say some things about humanity and sexuality that weren't quite landing for me, including spending a lot of time dealing with traumatic sexual assault.
But then again, I finished it a week and a half ago at this point and I'm still thinking about it, so maybe I did find it interesting enough.
It's a modern (well, 1970s set) crime thriller, about Inspector Macbeth and Chief Commissioner Duncan and Inspector Duff and so on and so forth. Hecate is a drug kingpin, Lady Macbeth runs a casino, there's a biker gang, it's a standard modernizing Shakespeare affair.
I've never read any Nesbo before, so I can't really speak to his typical style or anything like that. As a novel it was fairly good, the story of two cops from similar circumstances who end up diametrically opposed due to... a somewhat bizarre series of events, but I can't really blame Nesbo for that part. It was, maybe, a bit too long and too involved - every character in it has some level of complete story arc, when you probably only really need that for a few of the principles.
As an adaptation it was frequently baffling, as it managed to pick up on things that I've seen productions of the show completely miss, while dropping essential bits that no dramaturg would ever let slip. Nesbo seemed torn between modernizing things entirely (magic is a drug, obviously, it's always a fuckin' drug with these things) and making things weird and anachronistic (Macbeth, the head of the SWAT team, primarily fights with throwing daggers), and I'm not sure if either decision would really work but the split between the two definitely isn't doing him any favors.
Some more detailed stuff, spoilers for Macbeth (both versions, I guess). More explaining cool/terrible things that happened in it than like, detailed discussion, because I assume nobody else has actually read this book.
- Similarly, while I think Macbeth is a much better defined character in that source material, the depths that they added here were great too. Macbeth was a teenage drug addict who got taken in by Banquo (who was already a police officer at this point in time). His path towards becoming a cop is born out of this compassion, which serves as a nice contrast between him and Macduff and makes him feel a bit more sympathetic with the whole process that gets him into power (he still becomes an absolute monster, of course, but he spends some time being swept around by fate before then).
- Lady Macbeth's sorrow at being unable to have a child, which is an implicit miscarriage in the play, is turned into a whole thing here. Which is a thing that frequently gets missed in the show, so I was glad to see it. But it's also made very gross here - she had a child earlier in life after being raped by her father, and she killed that child because it looked like him. Like I said, very gross, and also feels like a really weird thing to include for a character who refused to murder someone (in the play) because he looked too much like her father. That element was, predictably, cut.
- Obviously replacing magic with drugs is extremely boring and predictable, and turning Hecate, goddess-queen of the witches, into a sadistic old man is also very boring and predictable. It's 2020, let women be sadistic drug kingpins and also let them cast spells.
- Having actual literal Satan be a part of the book is an absolutely insane decision and I cannot believe that it happened still. Especially in a version that replaces all of the magic of the source material with drugs. But yeah, Seyton, Macbeth's armorer in the play and one of his SWAT flunkies here, is heavily implied to be the actual fucking devil, a read that I have never heard in all my years of experience with this play, something that must have come entirely out of the ether.
For reference, he's a crime author, and from what I know if his works, none of those adaption choices are all that surprising. What is surprising is him doing Macbeth. I should probably read his stuff, most of my family are fans, and he's supposed to be quite good at writing the ongoing disaster type of detective.
Oh I know who he is, I'm familiar in the vague sense with the Harry Hole stuff, I've just never actually read any of it.
For reference, this is a part of the Hogarth Shakespeare series, in which famous modern authors were contracted to do book adaptations of Shakespeare plays. This is the... seventh, I think, that I have read. They are of a pretty mixed quality overall, and this one is probably going to end up right in the center of it.
That sounds like an interesting project though. I might look into it next time I'm reading up on non-sci-fi literature. Has anyone adapted Titus Andronicus?
Which play did she do?
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
It's probably the first book of hers that didn't crush my spirit even a little bit!
So Prospero as Corky St. Clair from Waiting for Guffman? Love it!
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
Not yet. The full list is:
Othello, retold as New Boy by Tracy Chevalier
A Winter's Tale, retold as The Gap of Time by Jeanette Winterson
The Tempest, retold as Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood
Macbeth, by Jo Nesbo
King Lear, retold as Dunbar by Edward St Aubyn
The Merchant of Venice, retold as Shylock Is My Name by Howard Jacobson
The Taming of the Shrew, retold as Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler
That's roughly my ranking, from best to worst as well. New Boy is legitimately phenomenal - it's Othello told in a middle school classroom over the course of a single day.
I believe Gillian Flynn is also working on a Hamlet adaptation, but that's not out yet.
And. Well
But seriously I greatly enjoyed it. It's such a weird follow up to Annihilation, being so much more, I don't know procedural? But I think it works to its favor. ANYWAYS ON TO ACCEPTANCE
Did they change Eleanor to Nell in the show?
The show has essentially no relationship with the book
Like, ostensibly yes, but really Eleanor gets kind of split between all of the children
Ohhhh. OK. That's good to know.
I really liked Authority, it's a perfect depiction of institutions eating themselves while refusing to even acknowledge existential questions. For me both of the first two books are fundamentally about humanity's inability to understand, appreciate, or appropriately respond to the natural world, because we're too obsessed with our own made up bullshit and tribal bickering.
Acceptance I didn't enjoy quite as much (though it's very well written), but I'm not going to say more because I wanna hear what you think.
Yeah there is such a strong theme through both of how just fucking ill equipped we are to existential change or threats. But it also has a sort of comfort to it? Like we are gunna be utterly dismantled and destroyed in a means of cosmic horror nightmares and pigs with people faces. But hey can't do much about that and hey that could be neat?
It feels like a very natural evolution of the subgenre of cosmic horror really. What happens when it lands? We've all lost our minds in the face of the unknowable, fine, but now what?
Are you allowed to listen to audiobooks at work? At Lowe's I couldn't have my headphones in while customers were in the store, but there was an hour of shelving before we opened where nobody cared. And an hour a day of audiobooks can get you through quite a few books over the course of a year.
Anyway I had a good chuckle at all the art and occult name dropping and as usual, mieville's imagery is unparalleled.
Edit: weird, half my post vanished
Started on Llosa's Notes on the Death of Culture but I don't know if I'm gonna plough through it. Starting with a defence of Eliot's classist bullshit is not a great look, and his first essay is bemoaning the loss of the written word even though we live in the most literate period of history ever. Seems like it's gonna be fairly reactionary, so I've shifted to a set of conservationist essays by David Haskell called The Songs of Trees.
RIP.
C'mon, worse than Mrs. Dudley?
"Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
"Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
Mrs. Dudley is some kind of ghost powered robot or something.
Mrs. Montague is just so fucking condescending! The way she talks to everyone just gets on my nerves.
Maybe a scientific fiction? Mayhaps and fantastical romp? It also needs to be relatively light because I really only get to read in chunks in my downtime at work.
Any suggestions? I know that's hella broad but I got no clue where else to start.
How does a time travel lesbian romance via epistolary flirtations sound to you? This Is How You Lose The Time War was the best novella I read last year. The nice thing about the majority of the book being letters between the two is it is really easy to read in brief bursts as natural stopping points are all over the place. Really why my mind jumped to it and not just because I'm trying to get everybody ever to read it.
Gideon the Ninth is fun, light, and full of romp.
It’s hitting all the strong points of Kay: plucky independent women doing dangerous things, young men making the transition from boyhood to maturity, powerful men who hate each other yet occasionally meet to talk over a glass of wine.
I’m not sure about the overall setting. Within Guy Gavriel Kay’s fantasy Europe, the Italian city-state analogue is not particularly interesting to me. But I do enjoy the characters so i can forgive the fact that they're trapped in what I consider to be a tedious, if eventful, period of fictionalized history.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
A Long Way To a Small Angry Planet. A nice light Sci-Fi romp that focuses on relationships between people.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Maybe Devil in the White City? Technically it's a true story, of a killer in the Chicago World's Fair. But it feels like a page-turner crime thriller.
Or Epitaph, which is a Mary Doria Russell's Homeric masterpiece retelling the build up to the OK Corral. Her novel of Christians hiding Jews in Northern Italy in the waning days of the 2nd World War, A Thread of Grace, is also great. Not too light, though, that one.
Madeline Miller is a crackerjack. Her retellings of Achilles/Patrocles and Circe are fantastic.
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Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2