Chatterbox: Literature Edition

Traaaaash this book is traaaaash

It gets even worse?

I dunno. I don't think you can beat that bit about Ohara and "near-fatal ecstacy". Dr.

Reading Brian Sanderson's Elantris, only to find out later that this is apparently the bad book that everyone skips because it gives totally the wrong idea about the author.

Yeah... It's kind of bad. Although it has some interesting ideas, the sociopolitical commentary is just painful, and the writing is terrible.

I do know he gets better though, since I've already read The Gathering Storm.

Ooh, it's getting pretty good. The former prisoner Zimbardo got to be the parole board chair internalized his role too much. Said the whole place reminded him of prison.

It's strange that things got as bad as they did and no one voluntarily opted out but one guy (and it's implied he was under extreme enough stress to not know what he was doing anymore). Part of it was the pay (fifteen bucks a day in 1971 dollars), and that's the express reason for at least two people to stick around, but to some extent no one seems to remember they can walk out at any time.

@Wicked: Asha...Oh boy. Hate her. Hate her hate her hate. Also, you're not very far in that book at all.

Anyway, I'm looking into Guy Gavriel Kay. I've been recommended The Lions of Al-Rassan by English Ivy and I have the second book of the Sarantine Mosaic, but haven't read it yet since I don't have the first. Figured I'd get it since I saw it at Half-Price Books and it might not have been there the next time I went. It was also the only book they had by Kay, so yeah.

According to my receipt, I just bought:

• Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear (I'll write a page for him sometime)
• The Divine Invasion
• Overclocked, a collection of short stories by Cory Doctorow
• Buddha vol. 1
• The Gnostic Bible, which covers everything from Manicheanism to the Cathars
• WWW HR Giger COM

This is because Powell's is the best store ever.

edited 6th Dec '09 2:22:00 PM by Tzetze

Gnostic Bible - a reference book for Gnosticism, I'm guessing? I might need that.

It's a Doorstopper compendium of translated Sethian, general Christian, Valentinian, Syrian, Hermetic, Mandaean, Manichaean, Islamic, and Cathar gnostic literature.

I'm looking at the table of contents right now; apparently it contains something called "The Coptic Manichaean Songbook". Niiiiice.

Darwin's Radio is a pretty good book. That's the first one right? I should reread it sometime soon, methinks.

The Coptic Manichaeans had all the best tunes.

Crosspost from Troper Updates:

My cousin just gave me this book called King Dork. It's supposedly "Catcher In The Rye for the MySpace generation. So far, it's kinda dull.

Hopefully I'll soon be able to break out some phat Coptic beats whenever I wish.

^Again, you read Catcher?

edited 6th Dec '09 7:28:14 PM by Tzetze

I did. 'Twas alright. I liked Holden, but everything else was merely okay.

Done with Nation, next on my list is The Hunt For Red October (Kafka can sit on his shore for a bit longer).

Haven't seen the film, so I'm pretty excited.

edited 17th Dec '09 2:19:18 PM by Lemurian

New Pratchett, you say? Must go to library sometime soon and look for it.

I don't think Tom Clancy is a good writer, but The Hunt For Red October is a good story in spite of this.

Catcher In The Rye came across as one of the most hilariously narmy books I've ever read. I can barely believe that people can actually take it seriously.

Trying to get through Lord of the Rings. I love the films, but the I get committment anxiety every time I try to read the books. Now on my fifth attempt.

Clancy is a boring writer. He is however a very detailed writer. Im in the middle of the Night Angel Trilogy by Brent Weeks. If your looking for better military fiction that doesn't read like tech manual check out Ghost

Be warned though this book and its series was started as a means of therapy suggested by the Authors shrink to help him deal with Issues. Baen books who has published just about everything he has written picked it up said what the hell and published it.

Some parts read like a really trashy romance novel and the rest reads like military action novel. The rest is flavoring. You could skip the more norty parts but once you get your head around it you realize they help make the character. There are more books and in the later ones he eases off the soft core porn feel.

Hell just go to Wikipedia.org and enter military fiction. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Corps_Series

edited 19th Dec '09 4:23:56 PM by TuefelHundenIV

I now have House Of Leaves in my possesion. I'm going to regret this, I just know it.

You mean you're going to regret reading it? I thought it was damn good. Then again, I like that sort of thing. I doubt it's for everyone.

Alara Unbroken is finally getting better. Not good, mind you. But it stopped doing the annoying thing where we would have one character get a chapter of one page and then it moved on to another character. There are like nine characters. It took quite some time before I cared about any of them

I'm going to regret 'cause I'll never sleep again.

Oh. Well, it's not quite that bad either.

Then again, I'm a Nightmare Fetishist, so what do I know?

edited 23rd Dec '09 8:03:00 PM by Lucky Revenant

Holy crap, The Shahnameh is due back in a couple of days. I need to get reading.