madamv
Oi! With the poodle already
I've just finished this, it is a lovely quick read.
I'm halfway through the complete Sherlock Homes stories too. Read them as a kid, rather enjoying going over them again.
*What book are you reading? (part 2)
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I'm halfway through the complete Sherlock Homes stories too. Read them as a kid, rather enjoying going over them again.
Wow. I cannot recommend this highly enough. Absolutely fucking brilliant, from beginning to end. Storyline, storytelling, syntax - poetic in parts. I haven't been this impressed since my last Ray Bradbury. Gutted I finished it last night. Started Jon McGregor's 'This Isn't The Sort of Thing That Happens to People Like You' but I fear it's too early to plough into something else. Not much would stand up after the Shriver book - I'm inwardly complaining already about how it's not as good.
ringo
Macaroni cheese controller
Consider Phlebas - Iain M. Banks
Some great ideas and concepts and well written, but some of the names are annoying. Don't read that much of it, and probably the biggest issue I have with sci-fi is the silly character names. It must be just too tempting to invent new, weird sounding names for alien life forms.
Anyone else struggle with this? I can see it wouldn't quite work to have hairy monsters and three legged trolls called Dave and Paul either though so I'll have to put up with it.
Some great ideas and concepts and well written, but some of the names are annoying. Don't read that much of it, and probably the biggest issue I have with sci-fi is the silly character names. It must be just too tempting to invent new, weird sounding names for alien life forms.
Anyone else struggle with this? I can see it wouldn't quite work to have hairy monsters and three legged trolls called Dave and Paul either though so I'll have to put up with it.
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
names change. even in our own lifetime. Even in location changes from here to america.
the only thing that annoys me about sci fi names is trying to invent ones for my own stuff lol
I'm reading the Star Wars Thrawn trilogy.
the only thing that annoys me about sci fi names is trying to invent ones for my own stuff lol
I'm reading the Star Wars Thrawn trilogy.
Orang Utan
Psychick Worrier Ov Geyoor
I like funny made up names. Fantasy ones are even better.
Yours,
Scarletmane Dewjaw
Yours,
Scarletmane Dewjaw
maya
timewasting fool (in every universe)
'Commissar Quadrat'- a graphic novel about a private eye who looks like a square and tries to solve a murder case, then mysteriously gets cast into another dimension where everyone mistakes him for a flatscreen tv.
(Yeah, I know: Flatland, but... it's much more than that.)
(Yeah, I know: Flatland, but... it's much more than that.)
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ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Currently reading "Who Killed Mister Moonlight? - Bauhaus, Black Magick & Benediction" by David J. Haskins. Makes me feel old, as I was a Bauhaus fan from '79.
onenameshelley
is Major Morgan's bitch
The map of time by Felix J Palma.
billy_bob
Air of bewilderment model's own
Every Short Story 1951-2012 by Alaisdair Gray.
950-page monster of a collection, not easy to read in the bath, and there's a dog fucking a woman on the spine, so maybe best not left lying around when your in-laws come over (
), but he's fantastic. He always reminds me of a non-science fiction Philip K Dick in imagination stakes, but without the slight English-as-a-second-language feel of PKD's clunkier writing.
950-page monster of a collection, not easy to read in the bath, and there's a dog fucking a woman on the spine, so maybe best not left lying around when your in-laws come over (
), but he's fantastic. He always reminds me of a non-science fiction Philip K Dick in imagination stakes, but without the slight English-as-a-second-language feel of PKD's clunkier writing.
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Voley
🐀
"Who On Earth Was Jesus?" - David Boulton. A search for the historical evidence for the existence of Christ. Enjoying this so far - I'm only a few chapters in but Boulton seems to have a knack for getting to the heart of the matter. Seems very objective so far - he makes a good point about previous scholars, when faced with a lack of historical evidence, muddying the waters by projecting their own beliefs and prejudices on to the subject matter. He seems resolutely intent on not making the same mistake so I'm interested to see where his research takes him. Very interesting so far. Awful cover, mind.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Starting "Britain's Beer Revolution" by Roger Protz and Adrian Tierney-Jones.
May Kasahara
take me to the feeling
I finished Doctor Sleep last night. Best Stephen King in years; what he's lost in brutal character-killing ability, he's gained in emotional resonance.
I finished The Fever by Megan Abbott the other day. It was a mix of teenage thriller, horror, legend type thing, updated with references to social media. It was just this side of not-quite-boring-or-insulting-enough to read. Some nice red herrings in there. Not my thing at all, but it sounded quite good when I read the blurb in the library.
Just started Maggie and Me by Damian Barr. Promising. The writing is of a high standard.
Just started Maggie and Me by Damian Barr. Promising. The writing is of a high standard.
starfish
No dialogue. Just plot.
He's brilliant. I need to catch up on my reading of him soon. Nocturne is the next one for me. Im about 10 short of reading the complete series.
One Stranger to Another by Edwin E. Smith
Very Good!!!
A small review:
Edwin Smith talks about revision, false starts, what poems will last and why it is important to write not just for contemporary publications but for the audiences of Frost, Whitman, and even Keats and Shakespeare. He discusses the value of finding your own voice. And he tells very movingly, how he “often left my warehouse job after a fourteen-hour shift and wrote a sonnet the same way another man might drink a beer or watch a ball game.” Since I felt so connected with the poet, I was surprised that I had trouble getting into his poems. One that Smith considers his best, “Springtime Come,” contains this verse about a seven-year old in a school yard: “…tired from the recess and tarrying there, / giving no thought or fancy to the day / long years later when heavy with days / solitude would be in itself complete,” which to me seems lifeless and excessive. The images of the first poems are good enough, but the poems seem over-written and reaching for meaning and importance they don’t earn. Then in “Aquarium” we are treated to a rich vision of the moon as “some big fish / swimming blunt, / slow and deliberate” and we are suddenly through the doorway of words into a world of surreal beauty. “Dark of the Moon” speculates about what would have happened if they had left Buzz Aldrin stranded on the moon, “separated by more than time and space / from even the rain and the wind.” The moon seems to be a touchstone again revisited in “Café Satellites” “Other planets have many moons, / is ours a spoiled brat only child / twisted insane by loneliness / bound to us not by love but desperation?” Wow!
One of my personal favorites is “Never the Jailer” though I wish Smith would have inverted the two final words “like something worn upon the brow / that isn’t a crown quite.” There is such a nice thing going with the “worn” ”brow” “crown” sounds that the vowels and consonants of “quite” sidetrack. Besides the inverted word order strives too much to be poetic. Getting published in small literary journals may be of questionable benefit, but reciting poems before an open mike helps iron out things the eye may not see, but the ear hears. The people who write poetry and those of us who read it are not “One Stranger to Another.” In fact, we may feel we know each other more intimately than we know our spouses or children. We share an experience, and more significantly, the challenge of grasping that experience in words.
Very Good!!!
A small review:
Edwin Smith talks about revision, false starts, what poems will last and why it is important to write not just for contemporary publications but for the audiences of Frost, Whitman, and even Keats and Shakespeare. He discusses the value of finding your own voice. And he tells very movingly, how he “often left my warehouse job after a fourteen-hour shift and wrote a sonnet the same way another man might drink a beer or watch a ball game.” Since I felt so connected with the poet, I was surprised that I had trouble getting into his poems. One that Smith considers his best, “Springtime Come,” contains this verse about a seven-year old in a school yard: “…tired from the recess and tarrying there, / giving no thought or fancy to the day / long years later when heavy with days / solitude would be in itself complete,” which to me seems lifeless and excessive. The images of the first poems are good enough, but the poems seem over-written and reaching for meaning and importance they don’t earn. Then in “Aquarium” we are treated to a rich vision of the moon as “some big fish / swimming blunt, / slow and deliberate” and we are suddenly through the doorway of words into a world of surreal beauty. “Dark of the Moon” speculates about what would have happened if they had left Buzz Aldrin stranded on the moon, “separated by more than time and space / from even the rain and the wind.” The moon seems to be a touchstone again revisited in “Café Satellites” “Other planets have many moons, / is ours a spoiled brat only child / twisted insane by loneliness / bound to us not by love but desperation?” Wow!
One of my personal favorites is “Never the Jailer” though I wish Smith would have inverted the two final words “like something worn upon the brow / that isn’t a crown quite.” There is such a nice thing going with the “worn” ”brow” “crown” sounds that the vowels and consonants of “quite” sidetrack. Besides the inverted word order strives too much to be poetic. Getting published in small literary journals may be of questionable benefit, but reciting poems before an open mike helps iron out things the eye may not see, but the ear hears. The people who write poetry and those of us who read it are not “One Stranger to Another.” In fact, we may feel we know each other more intimately than we know our spouses or children. We share an experience, and more significantly, the challenge of grasping that experience in words.
weltweit
Well-Known Member
Just reading Telegraph Avenue, Michael Chabon ..
It is a pleasure to read, in that the descriptions and flights of fancy are rich and developed, but I have got to page 200 of 625 and nothing has really happened yet plot wise. I told my son this today and he said Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men which they are reading in school is only about 200 pages in total
It is a pleasure to read, in that the descriptions and flights of fancy are rich and developed, but I have got to page 200 of 625 and nothing has really happened yet plot wise. I told my son this today and he said Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men which they are reading in school is only about 200 pages in total
Orang Utan
Psychick Worrier Ov Geyoor
I gave up on that after about 100 pages. I love his writing normally but this time it was too overwrought and, yes, fuck all had happened. I also wasn't convinced by the characters. And his novels usually have such wonderful, loveable characters.Just reading Telegraph Avenue, Michael Chabon ..
It is a pleasure to read, in that the descriptions and flights of fancy are rich and developed, but I have got to page 200 of 625 and nothing has really happened yet plot wise. I told my son this today and he said Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men which they are reading in school is only about 200 pages in total
weltweit
Well-Known Member
Good to hear that from you OU, glad it isn't just me thinking that way!!
Orang Utan
Psychick Worrier Ov Geyoor
Read The Amazing Adventures Of Kavalier & Clay instead - one of my favourite books everGood to hear that from you OU, glad it isn't just me thinking that way!!
weltweit
Well-Known Member
That is the one (My cover tells me) he won a Pullitzer for. I will add it to my to read list.
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