knitdanIn ur baseKillin ur guysRegistered Userregular
I guess I’m frustrated because early on there was the promise of a better book. And the two main protagonists are actually pretty well written. Plus once you get to the titular Priory it’s pretty fuckin cool.
I almost wish it had been written as a trilogy or even just a duology. Give some of the ideas room to breathe instead of going setup>20 pages>payoff
“I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
was there ever a clive cussler/steven king where the two authors have to team up to save dirk pitt and roland deschain from a dark alliance of some evil archaeologists and the crimson king, while riding a cool tandem motorcycle
I guess I’m frustrated because early on there was the promise of a better book. And the two main protagonists are actually pretty well written. Plus once you get to the titular Priory it’s pretty fuckin cool.
I almost wish it had been written as a trilogy or even just a duology. Give some of the ideas room to breathe instead of going setup>20 pages>payoff
I liked the two main protagonists a lot
My problem was that a whole pile of the book is spent with other, much much less interesting characters that I didn't give a shit about.
If the book had just been trying to do like 2 or 3 things I think it would've been pretty good. Instead it's going for like 12 things and it's just a mess because of it.
Kana on
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
I'm rereading Gideon the Ninth and this book rereads very well. There's a lot of weird stuff going on in the margins of the book, then when you reread you're like "Oh, this is actually discussed a lot more than I ever noticed." Lots of little details about wtf is actually going on with this space necromancer universe, or who knows what when. Also wtf is up with the villain, who is actually almost painfully upfront about their identity and opinions from very early on. Which of course no one notices. Also the entire Harrow and Gideon relationship is just really good.
And then also just Gideon herself, who as far as I can tell (really proper spoilers)
is unaware that she's some sort of weird immortal reincarnating soul who's nigh unkillable. Which is actually probably why her slang seems so out of place compared to every other character - yes, it's meant to be, she keeps making references to things that Gideon shouldn't actually be familiar with.
She thinks her "mom" escaped from prison with her, but rather it seems like her mom died and *poof* there's a new baby Gideon ready to go. Then the ninth house tried to like poison gas little kid Gideon and it flat out didn't work. So considering the end of the book is Harrow getting merged with Gideon's soul... And then Gideon's body once again disappears... Some real weird shit is gonna happen in book 2.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
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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 A Void, by Georges Perec (translated by Gilbert Adair).
This is a book that I feel like I've known about for a couple decades now. I don't know exactly how I learned about it, but I used to read all sorts of weird facts and trivia books as a kid, and I imagine that one of those might be responsible. If you are not familiar, it is a novel that is written entirely without the use of the letter e - written originally in French and then translated using this same restriction. The idea fascinated me, and I've been low key intending to read it ever since then, until this year, when @ceres got it for me for Secret Satans.
And it is a very clever book. Writing without the most common letter of the alphabet is, of course, extremely difficult, and writing 50,000 words that way even more so. Not only is the book without the letter e, it is actively about the disappearance of the letter e, told through the story of the mysterious disappearance of Anton Vowl, and structurally suggests the disappearance of the letter e, with things like a missing fifth chapter. Both the author and translator do some virtuoso work here which absolutely cannot be overstated - one of the coolest segments was somewhere in the middle where a character is reading through some classic poetry, and reads transformed versions of Hamlet's "To Be Or Not To Be," Poe's "The Raven," Shelley's "Ozymandias," and a couple of others, and they're an absolute delight to read, being intimately familiar with the originals.
It's also kind of a slog though. My first comparisons in reading it were A Clockwork Orange and The Pet Thief, as I feel that a lot of times the language is based less around understanding what they're saying with the words they have and more around figuring out what word they're trying to dance around. There is a certain thing, where when the author needed to come up with, say, a food, rather than just writing the singular food and going on, he will list a dozen different foods that it could have been, all available as options until a character chooses one, which feels like he is showing off how clever he is (and padding space, assuredly). And while the plot is delightfully intertwined with the idea of the novel, it's not actually a very good mystery or anything like that - in practice it largely consists of people telling their life stories and then promptly dying.
The book itself does briefly touch upon the idea that someone might be going into it blind, which in many ways I think would be the most interesting way to read it. I don't think it would take you long to figure it out, but there is definitely a charm to that idea. Of course, for anyone reading it now, you're probably reading it because of its reputation, and the cover of the book itself will tell you what is going on immediately, so that's not actually really possible at this point.
All that said, I'm still going to be keeping it on my bookshelf, but more as an oddity than as any sort of recommendation for other people to read. If nothing else, it is exceedingly clever in the way that it uses and plays with language, I just think those ideas are perhaps a bit stronger in theory than in practice.
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Shortytouching the meatIntergalactic Cool CourtRegistered Userregular
I'm rereading Gideon the Ninth and this book rereads very well. There's a lot of weird stuff going on in the margins of the book, then when you reread you're like "Oh, this is actually discussed a lot more than I ever noticed." Lots of little details about wtf is actually going on with this space necromancer universe, or who knows what when. Also wtf is up with the villain, who is actually almost painfully upfront about their identity and opinions from very early on. Which of course no one notices. Also the entire Harrow and Gideon relationship is just really good.
And then also just Gideon herself, who as far as I can tell (really proper spoilers)
is unaware that she's some sort of weird immortal reincarnating soul who's nigh unkillable. Which is actually probably why her slang seems so out of place compared to every other character - yes, it's meant to be, she keeps making references to things that Gideon shouldn't actually be familiar with.
She thinks her "mom" escaped from prison with her, but rather it seems like her mom died and *poof* there's a new baby Gideon ready to go. Then the ninth house tried to like poison gas little kid Gideon and it flat out didn't work. So considering the end of the book is Harrow getting merged with Gideon's soul... And then Gideon's body once again disappears... Some real weird shit is gonna happen in book 2.
I agree with this, except the part about the harrow/gideon relationship being really good
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
I'd argue that whether they had a good relationship or not, it was well written and compelling.
I also found the arc from enemies to friends pretty believable
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ceresWhen the last moon is cast over the last star of morningAnd the future has past without even a last desperate warningRegistered User, Moderatormod
Last night I finished A Void, by Georges Perec (translated by Gilbert Adair).
This is a book that I feel like I've known about for a couple decades now. I don't know exactly how I learned about it, but I used to read all sorts of weird facts and trivia books as a kid, and I imagine that one of those might be responsible. If you are not familiar, it is a novel that is written entirely without the use of the letter e - written originally in French and then translated using this same restriction. The idea fascinated me, and I've been low key intending to read it ever since then, until this year, when @ceres got it for me for Secret Satans.
And it is a very clever book. Writing without the most common letter of the alphabet is, of course, extremely difficult, and writing 50,000 words that way even more so. Not only is the book without the letter e, it is actively about the disappearance of the letter e, told through the story of the mysterious disappearance of Anton Vowl, and structurally suggests the disappearance of the letter e, with things like a missing fifth chapter. Both the author and translator do some virtuoso work here which absolutely cannot be overstated - one of the coolest segments was somewhere in the middle where a character is reading through some classic poetry, and reads transformed versions of Hamlet's "To Be Or Not To Be," Poe's "The Raven," Shelley's "Ozymandias," and a couple of others, and they're an absolute delight to read, being intimately familiar with the originals.
It's also kind of a slog though. My first comparisons in reading it were A Clockwork Orange and The Pet Thief, as I feel that a lot of times the language is based less around understanding what they're saying with the words they have and more around figuring out what word they're trying to dance around. There is a certain thing, where when the author needed to come up with, say, a food, rather than just writing the singular food and going on, he will list a dozen different foods that it could have been, all available as options until a character chooses one, which feels like he is showing off how clever he is (and padding space, assuredly). And while the plot is delightfully intertwined with the idea of the novel, it's not actually a very good mystery or anything like that - in practice it largely consists of people telling their life stories and then promptly dying.
The book itself does briefly touch upon the idea that someone might be going into it blind, which in many ways I think would be the most interesting way to read it. I don't think it would take you long to figure it out, but there is definitely a charm to that idea. Of course, for anyone reading it now, you're probably reading it because of its reputation, and the cover of the book itself will tell you what is going on immediately, so that's not actually really possible at this point.
All that said, I'm still going to be keeping it on my bookshelf, but more as an oddity than as any sort of recommendation for other people to read. If nothing else, it is exceedingly clever in the way that it uses and plays with language, I just think those ideas are perhaps a bit stronger in theory than in practice.
I had never heard of it but I do love linguistics and the concept was fascinating to me. It seems like the kind of thing that could be done really well or terribly, with not much space in between and the latter being more likely. I also didn't imagine it would be about word finding so much as a mystery about the disappearance of the guy only written entirely without the letter, and so more understated than it sounds like it is. These things are really fun to me until I'm beaten over the head with the concept. The idea put me in mind of House of Leaves for the systemic themes of the work, only less of a nose dive off a cliff and into a deeply chaotic existential terror kind of but maybe not.
I would actually be interested in reading other novels involving some kind of systemic text-based word-painting, if that makes sense. There's probably a word for word-paining in text, but it's not coming to me and I can't find it. :P If anyone knows of something like that, I'd love to hear about it.
And it seems like all is dying, and would leave the world to mourn
I would actually be interested in reading other novels involving some kind of systemic text-based word-painting, if that makes sense. There's probably a word for word-paining in text, but it's not coming to me and I can't find it. :P If anyone knows of something like that, I'd love to hear about it.
Have you read Ella Minnow Pea? Similar conceit (although on a much smaller scale than A Void it sounds like) but with the letters LMNOP.
Ella Minnow Pea is a girl living happily on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina. Nollop was named after Nevin Nollop, author of the immortal phrase containing all the letters of the alphabet, “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”
Now Ella finds herself acting to save her friends, family, and fellow citizens from the encroaching totalitarianism of the island’s Council, which has banned the use of certain letters of the alphabet as they fall from a memorial statue of Nevin Nollop. As the letters progressively drop from the statue they also disappear from the novel. The result is both a hilarious and moving story of one girl’s fight for freedom of expression, as well as a linguistic tour de force sure to delight word lovers everywhere.
When Harrow said that Gideon was her friend, I felt like it would have been appropriate for Gideon to at least call Harrow a bad friend and I was a little disappointed that there was nothing like that.
When Harrow said that Gideon was her friend, I felt like it would have been appropriate for Gideon to at least call Harrow a bad friend and I was a little disappointed that there was nothing like that.
yeah
there's that scene where harrow admits she's treated gideon like crap but hey! that just means you knew that was a shitty way to behave the entire time you were doing it! you don't get to come back from this for free!
I've got about 30 pages left, and I honestly wasn't expecting 1) for them to actually be able to steal the Gathering Storm and 2) Singh to be fucking executed. He seemed like a character that would show up in the next book as an everpresent threat.
Also, RIP Clarissa. I figured she'd go out in this book but that was a pretty badass way to do it.
Real, real interested to see what happens in the next book. And then, of course, the 9th book, whenever that comes out.*
*I might get a library copy of the book when it comes out and buy the paperback version when that's printed - mainly because I have all other eight books in paperback and I feel weird having one hardcover copy.
I'd argue that whether they had a good relationship or not, it was well written and compelling.
I also found the arc from enemies to friends pretty believable
There's also
a bit of sexual tension there with them too. But anytime gideon starts to think about it her brain screams and runs away in the opposite direction.
Kinda the same with Harrow, but she definitely gets very jealous when Gideon gets all googly eyed around Dulcinea.
But it's such a change for them just evolving into friends that the thought of more then that is just too much to deal with.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
I've got about 30 pages left, and I honestly wasn't expecting 1) for them to actually be able to steal the Gathering Storm and 2) Singh to be fucking executed. He seemed like a character that would show up in the next book as an everpresent threat.
Also, RIP Clarissa. I figured she'd go out in this book but that was a pretty badass way to do it.
Real, real interested to see what happens in the next book. And then, of course, the 9th book, whenever that comes out.*
*I might get a library copy of the book when it comes out and buy the paperback version when that's printed - mainly because I have all other eight books in paperback and I feel weird having one hardcover copy.
Holden not being rescued is one of the biggest surprises I've had in a book.
I've got about 30 pages left, and I honestly wasn't expecting 1) for them to actually be able to steal the Gathering Storm and 2) Singh to be fucking executed. He seemed like a character that would show up in the next book as an everpresent threat.
Also, RIP Clarissa. I figured she'd go out in this book but that was a pretty badass way to do it.
Real, real interested to see what happens in the next book. And then, of course, the 9th book, whenever that comes out.*
*I might get a library copy of the book when it comes out and buy the paperback version when that's printed - mainly because I have all other eight books in paperback and I feel weird having one hardcover copy.
Holden not being rescued is one of the biggest surprises I've had in a book.
Yeah, I only knew about it when looking at the back of the 8th book! It’s kinda nuts.
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JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
edited February 2020
We're reading Circe by Madeline Miller for book club. Good lord, this is some fine writing.
I'm a bit worried that I won't have much to say about it, though. I'm pretty weak on the classics, so I think I'm missing a lot of the cleverest stuff Miller is doing to subvert the original narrative. The only other thing I've read by her is Galatea, and I was much more familiar with that source material, so I know the kind of curveballs she can throw while technically telling the same story.
I really like how much of a self-absorbed meathead Jason is, though.
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Circe is pulled from a lot of different sources, so it's a bit of a weird one there - if there was a good singular source I could recommend on it, I would. The obvious comparison to make is Song of Achilles, which is also technically pulled from a ton of different sources, but a general knowledge of the Iliad will overall carry you through the meat of it.
Like, honestly, the best resource for learning the source material in Circe is looking stuff up on Wikipedia. Almost all of Miller's stuff has some basis in mythology, and you should be able to find a lot of that online given our cultural adoration of Greek mythology.
This is neither a value judgment nor a review but I am going to have some things to say when the next Dresden Files book actually releases and some of ya'll have read it.
Piling on the Circe praise train. I thought Song of Achilles was great, but Circe is on another level entirely. Madeline Miller, apart from her substantial wordsmith chops, is a daring, high wire acrobat staying true to the source material while also playing with it and even subverting it. I wish I could wipe my memory of it and read it for the first time again..
I thought I’d ask here since I’ve had help finding obscure/forgotten books before:
My sister’s being driven nuts because she hasn’t been able to find a monster book she enjoyed as a kid. She says it was about monsters under a bed, and they had a monster playground and/or held a monster party. She says she remembers it having black pages and one of the monsters was green.
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Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
Today I discovered I can rent audio books from my library, which is good. Then ten minutes later I discovered they have a pathetically small selection on offer, which is not good. Life is so full of disappointments.
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JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
Today I discovered I can rent audio books from my library, which is good. Then ten minutes later I discovered they have a pathetically small selection on offer, which is not good. Life is so full of disappointments.
Sorry, Smof. The UK has been unreasonably cruel to their libraries since the financial crisis. I've been reading articles about it since I was in grad school.
I know you've already got a lot to yell at your politicians about, but if you're ever in a position to yell at a politician this would be a good starting point.
Thoreau was observant and compassionate about some things and a complete asshole to some of the people he interacted with who didn't really deserve his ire of judgement or whatever the fuck he was doing and it really pissed me off
Man, I can't really feel BAD for people who just want to go about life as usual after the Laconians took over. It's a fucked situation, but if I was just some random mook... What could I really do to help in the face of something that ridiculous?
Also, don't you tell me Amos is missing! Don't do it!
frankly I think "let the mob have their way with the monsters who've been literally farming them and their children" would've been a more satisfying end for me personally
The time I came closest to physically shaking one of my colleagues was when we were talking about the challenges of doing introductions at academic conferences (do you just read out their CV? do you go all fanboy? or do a totally dry two line intro?) and he said "Oh yeah, once I had to introduce someone at a physics conference who I had never heard of, I had no idea what was interesting about him or what to emphasize or anything. I guess he was an author? something Hofstadter?"
I mean of course he googled him, but if you haven't read GE&B it's not gonna be obvious how important it was to the pop-sci understanding of the field. Also I think he was dragged into doing the introduction at the literal last minute because someone else couldn't make it, so he didn't have much time to prep or ask around.
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I almost wish it had been written as a trilogy or even just a duology. Give some of the ideas room to breathe instead of going setup>20 pages>payoff
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
I liked the two main protagonists a lot
My problem was that a whole pile of the book is spent with other, much much less interesting characters that I didn't give a shit about.
If the book had just been trying to do like 2 or 3 things I think it would've been pretty good. Instead it's going for like 12 things and it's just a mess because of it.
And then also just Gideon herself, who as far as I can tell (really proper spoilers)
She thinks her "mom" escaped from prison with her, but rather it seems like her mom died and *poof* there's a new baby Gideon ready to go. Then the ninth house tried to like poison gas little kid Gideon and it flat out didn't work. So considering the end of the book is Harrow getting merged with Gideon's soul... And then Gideon's body once again disappears... Some real weird shit is gonna happen in book 2.
This is a book that I feel like I've known about for a couple decades now. I don't know exactly how I learned about it, but I used to read all sorts of weird facts and trivia books as a kid, and I imagine that one of those might be responsible. If you are not familiar, it is a novel that is written entirely without the use of the letter e - written originally in French and then translated using this same restriction. The idea fascinated me, and I've been low key intending to read it ever since then, until this year, when @ceres got it for me for Secret Satans.
And it is a very clever book. Writing without the most common letter of the alphabet is, of course, extremely difficult, and writing 50,000 words that way even more so. Not only is the book without the letter e, it is actively about the disappearance of the letter e, told through the story of the mysterious disappearance of Anton Vowl, and structurally suggests the disappearance of the letter e, with things like a missing fifth chapter. Both the author and translator do some virtuoso work here which absolutely cannot be overstated - one of the coolest segments was somewhere in the middle where a character is reading through some classic poetry, and reads transformed versions of Hamlet's "To Be Or Not To Be," Poe's "The Raven," Shelley's "Ozymandias," and a couple of others, and they're an absolute delight to read, being intimately familiar with the originals.
It's also kind of a slog though. My first comparisons in reading it were A Clockwork Orange and The Pet Thief, as I feel that a lot of times the language is based less around understanding what they're saying with the words they have and more around figuring out what word they're trying to dance around. There is a certain thing, where when the author needed to come up with, say, a food, rather than just writing the singular food and going on, he will list a dozen different foods that it could have been, all available as options until a character chooses one, which feels like he is showing off how clever he is (and padding space, assuredly). And while the plot is delightfully intertwined with the idea of the novel, it's not actually a very good mystery or anything like that - in practice it largely consists of people telling their life stories and then promptly dying.
The book itself does briefly touch upon the idea that someone might be going into it blind, which in many ways I think would be the most interesting way to read it. I don't think it would take you long to figure it out, but there is definitely a charm to that idea. Of course, for anyone reading it now, you're probably reading it because of its reputation, and the cover of the book itself will tell you what is going on immediately, so that's not actually really possible at this point.
All that said, I'm still going to be keeping it on my bookshelf, but more as an oddity than as any sort of recommendation for other people to read. If nothing else, it is exceedingly clever in the way that it uses and plays with language, I just think those ideas are perhaps a bit stronger in theory than in practice.
I agree with this, except the part about the harrow/gideon relationship being really good
I had never heard of it but I do love linguistics and the concept was fascinating to me. It seems like the kind of thing that could be done really well or terribly, with not much space in between and the latter being more likely. I also didn't imagine it would be about word finding so much as a mystery about the disappearance of the guy only written entirely without the letter, and so more understated than it sounds like it is. These things are really fun to me until I'm beaten over the head with the concept. The idea put me in mind of House of Leaves for the systemic themes of the work, only less of a nose dive off a cliff and into a deeply chaotic existential terror kind of but maybe not.
I would actually be interested in reading other novels involving some kind of systemic text-based word-painting, if that makes sense. There's probably a word for word-paining in text, but it's not coming to me and I can't find it. :P If anyone knows of something like that, I'd love to hear about it.
I finally bought a copy a couple weeks ago
Now to wait another ten years before I actually read it!
this is not behavior I'm interested in seeing someone come back from
it's part of the reason I thought the relationship at the center of The Stars Are Legion was very good
it was honest about the cost of some hurts
gideon the ninth was not
or, another read would be that Gideon was willing to forgive and forget in a way that makes me think less of her, which also sucks
Have you read Ella Minnow Pea? Similar conceit (although on a much smaller scale than A Void it sounds like) but with the letters LMNOP.
Thoroughly charming book.
EDIT:
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Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
there's that scene where harrow admits she's treated gideon like crap but hey! that just means you knew that was a shitty way to behave the entire time you were doing it! you don't get to come back from this for free!
Also, RIP Clarissa. I figured she'd go out in this book but that was a pretty badass way to do it.
Real, real interested to see what happens in the next book. And then, of course, the 9th book, whenever that comes out.*
*I might get a library copy of the book when it comes out and buy the paperback version when that's printed - mainly because I have all other eight books in paperback and I feel weird having one hardcover copy.
There's also
Kinda the same with Harrow, but she definitely gets very jealous when Gideon gets all googly eyed around Dulcinea.
But it's such a change for them just evolving into friends that the thought of more then that is just too much to deal with.
I'm a bit worried that I won't have much to say about it, though. I'm pretty weak on the classics, so I think I'm missing a lot of the cleverest stuff Miller is doing to subvert the original narrative. The only other thing I've read by her is Galatea, and I was much more familiar with that source material, so I know the kind of curveballs she can throw while technically telling the same story.
I really like how much of a self-absorbed meathead Jason is, though.
It's a fantastic fantastic book, if a very brutal one - but Greek myth was also brutal. It's pleasing it dosent shy away from that
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Like, honestly, the best resource for learning the source material in Circe is looking stuff up on Wikipedia. Almost all of Miller's stuff has some basis in mythology, and you should be able to find a lot of that online given our cultural adoration of Greek mythology.
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
My sister’s being driven nuts because she hasn’t been able to find a monster book she enjoyed as a kid. She says it was about monsters under a bed, and they had a monster playground and/or held a monster party. She says she remembers it having black pages and one of the monsters was green.
Sorry, Smof. The UK has been unreasonably cruel to their libraries since the financial crisis. I've been reading articles about it since I was in grad school.
I know you've already got a lot to yell at your politicians about, but if you're ever in a position to yell at a politician this would be a good starting point.
Wow I still love it. Fire Logic is very good. Earth Logic is, so, so good.
Neat!
Thoreau was observant and compassionate about some things and a complete asshole to some of the people he interacted with who didn't really deserve his ire of judgement or whatever the fuck he was doing and it really pissed me off
Also, don't you tell me Amos is missing! Don't do it!
I really enjoyed it but
tell me good independent booksellers in downtown SF and the east bay area. I hunger for novel tree pulp.
I'm not in bay area myself, but I've liked Green Apple books anytime I've swung by.
https://www.greenapplebooks.com/
There's City Lights, arguably one of the most famous bookstores in the US. (#2 after The Strand in NYC?)
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
i nearly cried.