English is really fucking weird with spelling. Kinda makes up for the super ultra mega easy grammar. Spelling aside, I think English is probably the easiest western language for non-natives to achieve basic communication skills. Spanish is super tricky for Portuguese speakers, there are lots of catches and fake similarities.
English is really fucking weird with spelling. Kinda makes up for the super ultra mega easy grammar. Spelling aside, I think English is probably the easiest western language for non-natives to achieve basic communication skills. Spanish is super tricky for Portuguese speakers, there are lots of catches and fake similarities.
Ye, English is incredibly easy to make yourself undertood for basic concepts, but it's essentially impossible to speak "perfectly" once you get into any kind of complexity, not least because there are very few unexcepted rules, and those "rules" run a full spectrum from "Literally everyone does this" to "personal preference". Shit, we can't even make our mind up on punctuation rules. And the rules are constantly shifting. As is the spelling.
Certainly very few English people come anywhere close.
Also: 1100+ irregular verbs, take that, foreigners! And English speakers!
I always remember teaching English to a large group of mixed nationalities, mentioning I was getting worse at spelling, and them all explaining how weird it was for them to hear an adult say that. That was when I first learnt that most languages across the world are fine for an educated adult to spell, and English is weird.
From the many nationalities I have had contact with, native English speakers(Canadian, American and English, no difference) take the cake as the absolute worst at spelling in their own language.
English is really fucking weird with spelling. Kinda makes up for the super ultra mega easy grammar. Spelling aside, I think English is probably the easiest western language for non-natives to achieve basic communication skills. Spanish is super tricky for Portuguese speakers, there are lots of catches and fake similarities.
Ye, English is incredibly easy to make yourself undertood for basic concepts, but it's essentially impossible to speak "perfectly" once you get into any kind of complexity, not least because there are very few unexcepted rules, and those "rules" run a full spectrum from "Literally everyone does this" to "personal preference". Shit, we can't even make our mind up on punctuation rules. And the rules are constantly shifting. As is the spelling.
Certainly very few English people come anywhere close.
Also: 1100+ irregular verbs, take that, foreigners! And English speakers!
Ahh... I have no idea where the irony ends in this post. It's like Poe's law for punctuation. Like, I've been sitting here for five minutes trying to diagram that first sentence in my head, and now I have a migraine.
But what would "perfectly" be? I started learning English when I was 10, and I "graduated" at 18. There are language courses you take off-school, on dedicated, hum, schools. For instance, I went to one called "Cultura Inglesa", or "English Culture", which actually focuses on British English.
I did have some lame English and French classes at my actual school, but meh. After 18, I was just immersed in games, movies, TV shows, comics, books, Internets... That got me up to where I'm today. Never formally studied English again. I made my living off English skills for the last 10 years, working as literary translator, for a while, then subtitling for cable, then hardcore in-office game localization... And now I'm an editor at a publisher. I don't know how bad my posts should look to you guys (especially when I'm feeling lazy), but I do fancy myself pretty good at this whole English thing. Oh, I also taught English classes for a few months, but I suck at teaching.
On the other hand, French, which is another Latin language, much closer to Portuguese, is a billion times harder and confusing and opaque and obtuse. Why the hell they omit all the last letter in every word? They have even more verbal tenses than Portuguese (which is another really fucking hard language), their articles and prepositions are hellish. Standard Italian is a lot easier, and their spelling-to-phonetics thing is gorgeous, once you learn how each basic syllable sounds, it always sounds the same. Spanish is a mixed bag of dialects and idiosyncrasies. I can handle hours of meetings with people speaking English, trade thousands of work emails with them, but I'll freeze like a piss drop in the north pole if I have to type one quick message to my Spanish coworkers. I can understand movies, read books, but fuck talking anything more complex or writing at all.
Trust me, English is wonderfully and delightfully easy. I love it.
Stormwatcher, your posts come across like any native speaker, at least to me. I wouldn't know you were not a native speaker based on your posts alone. You probably have an accent when speaking, though, which honestly is the only way most English speakers know if someone is not a native speaker.
I also group English into an easy language, because although the rules are often bewildering, it's very easy to be understood. That's largely due to the flexible grammar, but also to the fact that I personally think the mishmash of rules means that anyone who speaks/writes English has to expect things to not always match their expectations. It does seem to me that English is a language where it's easy to be understood, and that results in it being a common in-between language between people who don't speak the same language. I've heard two people who speak Korean and Chinese carry on a terribly incorrect conversation in English, but because they interpreted the English similarly, they had perfect understanding of each other. I think that's neat.
Yeah, it's amazing to see people from 5 different countries having important and meaningful conversations in English across 3 continents... without any native speakers around. I've been part of such events many times. Greek CFO, French Division Director, Japanese, Spanish and Brazilian PMs... Everyone on skype with a very different accent and even grammar/vocabulary levels, but perfect understanding.
The accent thing is interesting in many aspects too...
But we're already way too off topic, so maybe we should start a "Languages are so weird man" thread and talk about books again.
Quicksilver is by far the hardest to make it through, the first parts of Jack and Eliza's story are the only part that were really interesting. The political stuff Eliza gets into later in the book is a slog but it's setting up some really great stuff in the later books, you just have to learn to like it. And yes Stephenson has always been about rewarding you for being a nerd, whatever your subject of fascination may be.
.
I read Selfish Gene after Watchmaker. Both great and it's really hard to believe those books are over 3 decades old. I recommend either one to people that want a good comprehensive understanding of evolution without falling prey to making it too "pop sci".
Believe it or not my favorite parts of Quicksilver were Waterhouse palling around with Newton and the Royal Society. It evoked an intense desire to find a peer group like them, similar to what I assume a 15-year-old has when watching Jersey Shore. I'm only in the first 100 pages of Confusion so there's a long way to go before I can give a review.
It is an interesting read, and the setpiece at the very end of The System of the World is sort of awesome in a totally implausible way. Well, there are two implausible setpieces at the end there.
But it's a series that's about the journey more than the destination. Jack and Eliza's friendship (relationship?) is one of the cruelest yet most enjoyable things to read about. Seeing Waterhouse and Newton drift apart is heartbreaking in its own way.
English is really fucking weird with spelling. Kinda makes up for the super ultra mega easy grammar. Spelling aside, I think English is probably the easiest western language for non-natives to achieve basic communication skills. Spanish is super tricky for Portuguese speakers, there are lots of catches and fake similarities.
Ye, English is incredibly easy to make yourself undertood for basic concepts, but it's essentially impossible to speak "perfectly" once you get into any kind of complexity, not least because there are very few unexcepted rules, and those "rules" run a full spectrum from "Literally everyone does this" to "personal preference". Shit, we can't even make our mind up on punctuation rules. And the rules are constantly shifting. As is the spelling.
Certainly very few English people come anywhere close.
Also: 1100+ irregular verbs, take that, foreigners! And English speakers!
Ahh... I have no idea where the irony ends in this post. It's like Poe's law for punctuation. Like, I've been sitting here for five minutes trying to diagram that first sentence in my head, and now I have a migraine.
Well I'm glad you enjoyed the experience as it was intended.
Stormwatcher, your posts come across like any native speaker, at least to me. I wouldn't know you were not a native speaker based on your posts alone. You probably have an accent when speaking, though, which honestly is the only way most English speakers know if someone is not a native speaker.
I also group English into an easy language, because although the rules are often bewildering, it's very easy to be understood. That's largely due to the flexible grammar, but also to the fact that I personally think the mishmash of rules means that anyone who speaks/writes English has to expect things to not always match their expectations. It does seem to me that English is a language where it's easy to be understood, and that results in it being a common in-between language between people who don't speak the same language. I've heard two people who speak Korean and Chinese carry on a terribly incorrect conversation in English, but because they interpreted the English similarly, they had perfect understanding of each other. I think that's neat.
But it turns out that you can do some amazng things with lego:
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Also, you know, the most incredibly productive, dynamic and diverse culture in history.
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DynagripBreak me a million heartsHoustonRegistered User, ClubPAregular
I'm reading blindsight by peter watts and not really liking it much at all. About 70% through.
It's pretty formulaic and it feels like Watts is impersonating someone else's style and doing a bad job of it
Might switch to rose madder instead.
I decided on Player of Games instead as my current read, and have been having a hard time getting into it, but have gotten to about the 2nd 'chapter' (about 100 pages in, I'm right when he's being blackmailed..). I'm not sure why I'm having as hard a time getting into it, as I am.. Might be the terra-ness of what I've read so far, and I'm not huge on the made up bars with amazing waterfall vistas where droids fetch games from inside town... Meh, just definitely a taste thing, and I know I'm interested enough to make it through (probably by the end of tomorrow if I spend much time able to read just deep enough to follow it.. Does this novel have a lot of mythology/references that I need to be aware of, or could I read it while being slightly distracted?).
My first Culture novel, and I'm probably gonna get around to Use of Weapons as the next (just reading the ones that I've heard the most about that have stories that interest me a bit.. I know a vague framework of the Culture and it's droids and what not.)
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DynagripBreak me a million heartsHoustonRegistered User, ClubPAregular
Just skimmed through to the end. Should have known to not get this book based on me not liking his rifter stuff but oh well. It is satisfying to see that Watts is now reduced to novelizations of video games
I decided on Player of Games instead as my current read, and have been having a hard time getting into it, but have gotten to about the 2nd 'chapter' (about 100 pages in, I'm right when he's being blackmailed..). I'm not sure why I'm having as hard a time getting into it, as I am.. Might be the terra-ness of what I've read so far, and I'm not huge on the made up bars with amazing waterfall vistas where droids fetch games from inside town... Meh, just definitely a taste thing, and I know I'm interested enough to make it through (probably by the end of tomorrow if I spend much time able to read just deep enough to follow it.. Does this novel have a lot of mythology/references that I need to be aware of, or could I read it while being slightly distracted?).
My first Culture novel, and I'm probably gonna get around to Use of Weapons as the next (just reading the ones that I've heard the most about that have stories that interest me a bit.. I know a vague framework of the Culture and it's droids and what not.)
The first few chapters just set the scene. Roll with it.
I just read Feed, which was actually a really good zombie novel. I was passed it by a friend, didn't know what it was about, and nearly stopped from 'meh, zombies'. But I continued, and thought it was a very good light-but-not-dumb read, with an excellent ending.
The ending was good enough to make me sad to learn it is part of a 'trilogy'.
I wanted to like Feed but too many things about it struck me as completely unbelievable. The entire journalistic system at the core of the book seemed like the kind of thing that someone who was really, really into LiveJournal 5 or 10 years ago would have thought was the inevitable future. As someone who was never into LiveJournal to begin with it all seems a bit far-fetched. And as someone who lives in the age of Twitter it seems a bit quaint, too.
Then there's the fact that the novel's post-post-apocalypse world only makes sense if you don't think about it at all. The moment you prod the surface more heavily than reading the words printed on the page, the whole thing just explodes in a rain of puss and dead poor people. 'cause being not-fabulously-wealthy in that world is simply not an option. You're either extremely rich or dead. Which isn't actually a way that you can run a world that depends heavily on consumer electronics. Someone has to be making all of those disposable zombie test kits.
And then there's (I'm not sure if it qualifies as a spoiler since it's something that Doesn't happen in the book, but just in case)
the whole heavily-implied incest thing. The author explicitly draws attention, repeatedly, to the fact that the two main characters are not-real-siblings who have a closer-than-typical relationship, avoid dating, and are frequently mistaken as lovers rather than (or in addition to) siblings. And it goes nowhere. I mean, I'm not an incest afficianado or anything, but if you're going to introduce a recurring incestuous love story theme to your novel then at least do something with it. Don't just point at it every couple of chapters to remind the reader it's still there without ever picking it up and flipping it around. Either make the characters deal with it or don't bother introducing it in the first place.
I mean, the book doesn't have so strong of a plot in the first place that you can just have a romantic sub-plot that only half-exists and not have it be a big deal. It's essentially a travelogue with a half-baked, not-very-mysterious political mystery on top. The relationship between the siblings is at least as much the central story as the whole whodunnit aspect.
The mechanical aspects of the zombie infection were new and interesting, I'll give the author that, but I found pretty much everything else poorly thought out and written with passable-at-best prose.
re: your spoiler (Feed book 2 and 3 spoilers)
They do address the Shaun and George relationship thing much more in depth in the 3rd book. It also gives Shaun more reason to go insane and hear George's voice in his head all throughout book 2.
If you can suspend belief about zombies why can't you accept that technology surrounding zombies has become sufficiently cheap after 30 years? I know we don't have hand held tests for viruses, but we do have cheap ones for certain types of cancer and for glucose levels for people with Diabetes. The world certainly could have survived without the test kits until they became cheap enough.
Personally, I treated the Feed series as a fun romp and I enjoyed it. It isn't going to win any awards and it has a few parts that are kind of unbelievable (more so in book 2 and 3), but with a book like this I'm not expecting extensive realism.
CommunistCow on
No, I am not really communist. Yes, it is weird that I use this name.
I decided on Player of Games instead as my current read, and have been having a hard time getting into it, but have gotten to about the 2nd 'chapter' (about 100 pages in, I'm right when he's being blackmailed..). I'm not sure why I'm having as hard a time getting into it, as I am.. Might be the terra-ness of what I've read so far, and I'm not huge on the made up bars with amazing waterfall vistas where droids fetch games from inside town... Meh, just definitely a taste thing, and I know I'm interested enough to make it through (probably by the end of tomorrow if I spend much time able to read just deep enough to follow it.. Does this novel have a lot of mythology/references that I need to be aware of, or could I read it while being slightly distracted?).
My first Culture novel, and I'm probably gonna get around to Use of Weapons as the next (just reading the ones that I've heard the most about that have stories that interest me a bit.. I know a vague framework of the Culture and it's droids and what not.)
The first few chapters just set the scene. Roll with it.
I've gotten into it, and thanks for the encouragement.. About to get to the 3rd chapter, and have to admit that I'm not in love, but it's gotten a lot better, and I do like the meta story, and some of the foreshadowing.. I particularly liked the jail metaphor with the labyrinth. Gonna try and put it to bed before I go out tonight.. Have about 150 pages left, so a pretty substantial session of reading is about to start.
I just finished Rook which was decent, but I'm not sure I enjoyed it as much as many other people.
I didn't really like the jumping back and forth between interesting stuff happening in the present and some letter written from previous the Myfanwy Thomas. This really killed the pace.
"Holy shit this Grafter death cube is about to swallow me whole. Oh wait lets take a break to give a plodding description about this time I went shopping with an ancient god" zzzZZzz
I'm now on to re-reading Name of the Wind and I'm certainly picking up on a LOT of things that were hinted at in the beginning of the book that obviously wouldn't have made sense on the first read through.
CommunistCow on
No, I am not really communist. Yes, it is weird that I use this name.
If you can suspend belief about zombies why can't you accept that technology surrounding zombies has become sufficiently cheap after 30 years? I know we don't have hand held tests for viruses, but we do have cheap ones for certain types of cancer and for glucose levels for people with Diabetes. The world certainly could have survived without the test kits until they became cheap enough.
Personally, I treated the Feed series as a fun romp and I enjoyed it. It isn't going to win any awards and it has a few parts that are kind of unbelievable (more so in book 2 and 3), but with a book like this I'm not expecting extensive realism.
[/quote]
It was less the technology and more the society. The society presented is simultaneously highly technical/technology-dependent and individually isolationist. If people can't bring themselves to socialize together in relatively safe settings, what are the odds that they're willing to work together in factories? I don't have a problem with the existence of cheap, disposable virus testing kits; I have a problem with a culture of shut-ins who have the money to install extensive home security systems producing an endless supply of cheap, disposable test kits. Who does the work in a world where any workplace accident, however minor, creates a biological contamination zone? Who makes all of the tiny recording devices that the protagonists churn though? Who could possibly afford to ship any products anywhere when driving a cargo truck requires hazardous duty pay--assuming that you can find someone insane enough to take the job in the first place but not so insane that they already have a job in the surprisingly lucrative field of running away from zombies on camera?
I dunno. I got through the book so clearly it didn't bother me that much. The general form of the news and entertainment industry were more troublesome to me that the wonky socioeconomic factors.
I'm currently reading the latest Dresden Files book, Cold Days. It's standard Butcher so far but seems oddly disconnected from its predecessor. I'm only a few chapters in, though, so perhaps events from the previous book will become relevant at some point.
Burned back through Aaronovitch's River of London stuff, because I was in the mood for some reason.
Now on with Kraken, one of Mieiville's later works..I'm not sure what I think yet.
Burned back through Aaronovitch's River of London stuff, because I was in the mood for some reason.
Now on with Kraken, one of Mieiville's later works..I'm not sure what I think yet.
I have very mixed opinions on Kraken but I don't want to give any minor spoilers so I'll wait till you're finished
If you like Mieville's typical prose you should enjoy it
I quite enjoyed Kraken on its own merits, but it kind of felt like a novella's worth of concept stretched over a full novel, and it stole quite a lot of stuff pretty shamelessly from Neverwhere.
If it was any author's other than Meiville, you'd say "That was some pretty good fun urban fantasy I suppose."
From the author of Embassytown and Railsea...
V1m on
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Mojo_JojoWe are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourseRegistered Userregular
I was given a copy of The Psychopath Test at Christmas so I have been reading that in favour of finishing up the night Angelo books. Fun but I get the feeling that the author is more than a little dishonest with how he reports events. Not entirely sure why. Good read though, I wish he had taken the time to reference his work properly though
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
Yea, I've gotten similar feelings about Jon Ronson and his reporting, but at worst I'd say he puts intention/emotion into actions that didn't really happen for story clarity/comedy. I really enjoyed the psychopath test, and the Lost at Sea short stories recently last year. When you get done if you wanna talk about Psychopath, I still rememeber it pretty well.
I quite enjoyed Kraken on its own merits, but it kind of felt like a novella's worth of concept stretched over a full novel, and it stole quite a lot of stuff pretty shamelessly from Neverwhere.
If it was any author's other than Meiville, you'd say "That was some pretty good fun urban fantasy I suppose."
From the author of Embassytown and Railsea...
How is Railsea? I haven't heard anything about it, but I adored Embassytown, and generally like Mieville quite a lot.
Mike Danger"Diane..."a place both wonderful and strangeRegistered Userregular
I finally finished The Little Friend! It didn't blow me all over the walls like The Secret History did but I still highly recommend it. One of the reviews called it a "young adult mystery for adults" and I would say that's a pretty fair description.
Next is probably Zero History, after which I will have read every novel written by William Gibson to date(!)
I got these for Christmas:
- The City and The City (i herd you guys liek mieville)
- Lush Life (one of my friends recommended the hell out of this to me)
- The Wind Through The Keyhole (I have not read The Dark Tower novels in forever so we'll see how this goes)
I finally finished The Little Friend! It didn't blow me all over the walls like The Secret History did but I still highly recommend it. One of the reviews called it a "young adult mystery for adults" and I would say that's a pretty fair description.
Next is probably Zero History, after which I will have read every novel written by William Gibson to date(!)
I got these for Christmas:
- The City and The City (i herd you guys liek mieville)
- Lush Life (one of my friends recommended the hell out of this to me)
- The Wind Through The Keyhole (I have not read The Dark Tower novels in forever so we'll see how this goes)
I've been thinking of reading Gibson again. I quit reading his stuff in highschool and haven't really been able to find time/get into Gibson for a while; something about his style that I just burned out on (I read all 9 or 10 of his books that were released pre-2000, and I've picked up Neuromancer in the last couple years, and just wasn't able to really get into it.. Been thinking of picking up the ALl Tomorrow's Parties/Idoru trilogy conclusion (I'd need to read All Tomorrow's Parties again as I think that was the book that I quit reading him on.) If you had to recommend 1 Gibson book to rekindle the fire, what would it be?
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Mike Danger"Diane..."a place both wonderful and strangeRegistered Userregular
Pick up Pattern Recognition. It's the first of his post-9/11 novels, is set in the modern day, and is really, really good.
Started reading The Magician King by Lev Grossman over the holidays. Realised I'd forgotten everything from it's predesessor, so I reread The Magicians and then came back to it.
I liked The Magicians the first time, but it was even better on reread. And I realised too that I missed alot of the themes of the book that become blindly obvious on reread.
The Magician King was a good read too. Not quite sure what to think of it yet, there's some stuff in there that I think will click better on a second go through, but it was quite enjoyable and the ending is in many ways harder then the first book, and yet more hopeful. It's another step in Quentin's growth as a person and the reaction to the ending makes this very obvious.
The first book is alot about fantasy and how it's not just a literary genre, but the things we believe in or want and how acheiving your fantasy is not the end of a journey. The second one seems to be alot more about the idea of the quest, of the difficulties of changing and the consequences of it to the people undergoing change. And wraps it all up in an "epic quest" the same way the first one wraps it's ideas in a bildungsroman.
Pick up Pattern Recognition. It's the first of his post-9/11 novels, is set in the modern day, and is really, really good.
Yes, I agree completely.
Going to add it to the queue, as I think I actually might have that one around somewhere.. I'll probably just buy it in e-book form after I get done with my current.
Still not done with The Player of Games.. I didn't really get any time to pick it up, and have been gaming instead of reading; Gonna fix that now.
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lonelyahavaCall me Ahava ~~She/Her~~Move to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
I finally finished the Peter the Great Bio.
Then, over holidays, I read through A Handmaid's Tale. I finished it in one day. I absolutely could not put that down. It was both fascinating and terrifying.
Posts
Ye, English is incredibly easy to make yourself undertood for basic concepts, but it's essentially impossible to speak "perfectly" once you get into any kind of complexity, not least because there are very few unexcepted rules, and those "rules" run a full spectrum from "Literally everyone does this" to "personal preference". Shit, we can't even make our mind up on punctuation rules. And the rules are constantly shifting. As is the spelling.
Certainly very few English people come anywhere close.
Also: 1100+ irregular verbs, take that, foreigners! And English speakers!
From the many nationalities I have had contact with, native English speakers(Canadian, American and English, no difference) take the cake as the absolute worst at spelling in their own language.
Ahh... I have no idea where the irony ends in this post. It's like Poe's law for punctuation. Like, I've been sitting here for five minutes trying to diagram that first sentence in my head, and now I have a migraine.
I did have some lame English and French classes at my actual school, but meh. After 18, I was just immersed in games, movies, TV shows, comics, books, Internets... That got me up to where I'm today. Never formally studied English again. I made my living off English skills for the last 10 years, working as literary translator, for a while, then subtitling for cable, then hardcore in-office game localization... And now I'm an editor at a publisher. I don't know how bad my posts should look to you guys (especially when I'm feeling lazy), but I do fancy myself pretty good at this whole English thing. Oh, I also taught English classes for a few months, but I suck at teaching.
On the other hand, French, which is another Latin language, much closer to Portuguese, is a billion times harder and confusing and opaque and obtuse. Why the hell they omit all the last letter in every word? They have even more verbal tenses than Portuguese (which is another really fucking hard language), their articles and prepositions are hellish. Standard Italian is a lot easier, and their spelling-to-phonetics thing is gorgeous, once you learn how each basic syllable sounds, it always sounds the same. Spanish is a mixed bag of dialects and idiosyncrasies. I can handle hours of meetings with people speaking English, trade thousands of work emails with them, but I'll freeze like a piss drop in the north pole if I have to type one quick message to my Spanish coworkers. I can understand movies, read books, but fuck talking anything more complex or writing at all.
Trust me, English is wonderfully and delightfully easy. I love it.
The lines are "I, you, he/she/it, we, you, them", as usual.
I also group English into an easy language, because although the rules are often bewildering, it's very easy to be understood. That's largely due to the flexible grammar, but also to the fact that I personally think the mishmash of rules means that anyone who speaks/writes English has to expect things to not always match their expectations. It does seem to me that English is a language where it's easy to be understood, and that results in it being a common in-between language between people who don't speak the same language. I've heard two people who speak Korean and Chinese carry on a terribly incorrect conversation in English, but because they interpreted the English similarly, they had perfect understanding of each other. I think that's neat.
The accent thing is interesting in many aspects too...
But we're already way too off topic, so maybe we should start a "Languages are so weird man" thread and talk about books again.
So, did anyone here read 50 shades of grey?
It is an interesting read, and the setpiece at the very end of The System of the World is sort of awesome in a totally implausible way. Well, there are two implausible setpieces at the end there.
But it's a series that's about the journey more than the destination. Jack and Eliza's friendship (relationship?) is one of the cruelest yet most enjoyable things to read about. Seeing Waterhouse and Newton drift apart is heartbreaking in its own way.
Well I'm glad you enjoyed the experience as it was intended.
Chinese is calligraphy; English is Lego.
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
It's pretty formulaic and it feels like Watts is impersonating someone else's style and doing a bad job of it
Might switch to rose madder instead.
My first Culture novel, and I'm probably gonna get around to Use of Weapons as the next (just reading the ones that I've heard the most about that have stories that interest me a bit.. I know a vague framework of the Culture and it's droids and what not.)
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
The first few chapters just set the scene. Roll with it.
re: your spoiler (Feed book 2 and 3 spoilers)
If you can suspend belief about zombies why can't you accept that technology surrounding zombies has become sufficiently cheap after 30 years? I know we don't have hand held tests for viruses, but we do have cheap ones for certain types of cancer and for glucose levels for people with Diabetes. The world certainly could have survived without the test kits until they became cheap enough.
Personally, I treated the Feed series as a fun romp and I enjoyed it. It isn't going to win any awards and it has a few parts that are kind of unbelievable (more so in book 2 and 3), but with a book like this I'm not expecting extensive realism.
I've gotten into it, and thanks for the encouragement.. About to get to the 3rd chapter, and have to admit that I'm not in love, but it's gotten a lot better, and I do like the meta story, and some of the foreshadowing.. I particularly liked the jail metaphor with the labyrinth. Gonna try and put it to bed before I go out tonight.. Have about 150 pages left, so a pretty substantial session of reading is about to start.
"Holy shit this Grafter death cube is about to swallow me whole. Oh wait lets take a break to give a plodding description about this time I went shopping with an ancient god" zzzZZzz
I'm now on to re-reading Name of the Wind and I'm certainly picking up on a LOT of things that were hinted at in the beginning of the book that obviously wouldn't have made sense on the first read through.
It was less the technology and more the society. The society presented is simultaneously highly technical/technology-dependent and individually isolationist. If people can't bring themselves to socialize together in relatively safe settings, what are the odds that they're willing to work together in factories? I don't have a problem with the existence of cheap, disposable virus testing kits; I have a problem with a culture of shut-ins who have the money to install extensive home security systems producing an endless supply of cheap, disposable test kits. Who does the work in a world where any workplace accident, however minor, creates a biological contamination zone? Who makes all of the tiny recording devices that the protagonists churn though? Who could possibly afford to ship any products anywhere when driving a cargo truck requires hazardous duty pay--assuming that you can find someone insane enough to take the job in the first place but not so insane that they already have a job in the surprisingly lucrative field of running away from zombies on camera?
I dunno. I got through the book so clearly it didn't bother me that much. The general form of the news and entertainment industry were more troublesome to me that the wonky socioeconomic factors.
I'm currently reading the latest Dresden Files book, Cold Days. It's standard Butcher so far but seems oddly disconnected from its predecessor. I'm only a few chapters in, though, so perhaps events from the previous book will become relevant at some point.
Now on with Kraken, one of Mieiville's later works..I'm not sure what I think yet.
Goodreads
SF&F Reviews blog
I have very mixed opinions on Kraken but I don't want to give any minor spoilers so I'll wait till you're finished
If you like Mieville's typical prose you should enjoy it
If it was any author's other than Meiville, you'd say "That was some pretty good fun urban fantasy I suppose."
From the author of Embassytown and Railsea...
How is Railsea? I haven't heard anything about it, but I adored Embassytown, and generally like Mieville quite a lot.
It's marketed as a YA novel, but I can't say I noticed anything with that particular aim. Felt like Miéville doing what he usually does.
Next is probably Zero History, after which I will have read every novel written by William Gibson to date(!)
I got these for Christmas:
- The City and The City (i herd you guys liek mieville)
- Lush Life (one of my friends recommended the hell out of this to me)
- The Wind Through The Keyhole (I have not read The Dark Tower novels in forever so we'll see how this goes)
I've been thinking of reading Gibson again. I quit reading his stuff in highschool and haven't really been able to find time/get into Gibson for a while; something about his style that I just burned out on (I read all 9 or 10 of his books that were released pre-2000, and I've picked up Neuromancer in the last couple years, and just wasn't able to really get into it.. Been thinking of picking up the ALl Tomorrow's Parties/Idoru trilogy conclusion (I'd need to read All Tomorrow's Parties again as I think that was the book that I quit reading him on.) If you had to recommend 1 Gibson book to rekindle the fire, what would it be?
Yes, I agree completely.
I liked The Magicians the first time, but it was even better on reread. And I realised too that I missed alot of the themes of the book that become blindly obvious on reread.
The Magician King was a good read too. Not quite sure what to think of it yet, there's some stuff in there that I think will click better on a second go through, but it was quite enjoyable and the ending is in many ways harder then the first book, and yet more hopeful. It's another step in Quentin's growth as a person and the reaction to the ending makes this very obvious.
The first book is alot about fantasy and how it's not just a literary genre, but the things we believe in or want and how acheiving your fantasy is not the end of a journey. The second one seems to be alot more about the idea of the quest, of the difficulties of changing and the consequences of it to the people undergoing change. And wraps it all up in an "epic quest" the same way the first one wraps it's ideas in a bildungsroman.
Going to add it to the queue, as I think I actually might have that one around somewhere.. I'll probably just buy it in e-book form after I get done with my current.
Still not done with The Player of Games.. I didn't really get any time to pick it up, and have been gaming instead of reading; Gonna fix that now.
Then, over holidays, I read through A Handmaid's Tale. I finished it in one day. I absolutely could not put that down. It was both fascinating and terrifying.
now I'm starting on Hood by Stephen Lawhead.
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wait what? Railsea is a "YA" novel? I... I wouldn't give a kid a Meiville novel.