Mythos by Stephen Fry
What book is on your nightstand? Readers!
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ApolloSimcoe
Well-Known Member
Third book of the Altered Carbon series, Woken Furies
Good one from an anarcho-capitalist former blogger that I used to follow:
Book 1: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005JPPMS6/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20
Book 2: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07B5283G2/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20
Overall a pretty decent little set of books.
Book 1: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005JPPMS6/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20
Book 2: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07B5283G2/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20
Overall a pretty decent little set of books.
Well, right at hand I have Rescue of the Bounty, The Novels of Dashiell Hammett, Krauthammer's Things That Matter, and Nigel Calder's Shakedown Cruise. The last is written about sailing a 38' ketch named Nada on her first cruise. Nada lives here on Long Island now. My friend owns her, and I've sailed and cruised aboard. The book feels a bit like a family story.
For some reason my wife thinks I have too many books. I told her there is no such thing.
For some reason my wife thinks I have too many books. I told her there is no such thing.
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Did you read Steve Calahan's Adrift? I read it a while back, pretty good true story of sailing disaster.
6Tap
To drink beer is human..
Sailing disaster?
Brings back many memories of when my father was lost at sea 41 years ago. Been wanting to write a book about it myself but have never done it.
May there be fair winds and calm seas.
Brings back many memories of when my father was lost at sea 41 years ago. Been wanting to write a book about it myself but have never done it.
May there be fair winds and calm seas.
Sailing: I think either I, or someone else mentioned them so sorry if so, but I enjoyed To the Ends of the Earth: A Sea Trilogy, by William Golding. Also Pincher Martin, same author. British sailor stranded on a literal rock in the middle of the North Atlantic, ship was torpedoed, WWII. Think Robinson Crusoe, with Crusoe's living in an island paradise comparatively speaking. Along with the Sea novels and The Inheritors (neanderthal meets homo-sapien), loved Pincher.
My greatest fear, though I used to compete open ocean swims. I'm really sorry your father had to endure that, terrible disaster. I'll only gently say, I hope he came back to you. A story that needs to be told.
6Tap
To drink beer is human..
Happy for you, 6Tap. Good.
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I could not finish Pincher Martin. Promising, with incredible detail by a gifted writer. Such incredible, incredible detail. But my god, how can one write an entire chapter on a wet rock that Pincher was clinging to. I found myself skipping pages of this incredible detail, and ultimately gave up when I realized the author had no intention of moving the plot along. I suppose I would have finished it when I was younger, but these days I have low tolerance/patience for things that don't appeal to me.
Hahahaha, yeah, I get that. When I first went through it I was on a mad tear through English writers - I've read, several times, every word the late John Fowles wrote, to include his personal diaries (going all the way back to teen years), musings on writing, studies on islands and trees, novels. I was nuts for him. And it was in this period that I read all the Goldings, incl. Pincher Martin. It would be interesting to read it again now. You've said it really well, eloquently, as a critique and I respect that. Did you ever come to the finish?
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No, did not finish. I presume from the pace of the thing that Pincher is still clinging to that wet rock
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I have two New Year's resolutions: golf more, and read more. I've loaded my kindle up and hope to contribute to this thread more this year
I'm trying to watch less tv, read and write more.
I have read Adrift, and many other non fiction sea stories. I've been sailing since childhood, and I'm a Coast Guard vet, so those stories appeal to me. I particularly like shipwreck or abandon ship stories. Tall Ships Down and Fastnet Force Ten are among the best. Total Loss too.
I have read Adrift, and many other non fiction sea stories. I've been sailing since childhood, and I'm a Coast Guard vet, so those stories appeal to me. I particularly like shipwreck or abandon ship stories. Tall Ships Down and Fastnet Force Ten are among the best. Total Loss too.
No, did not finish. I presume from the pace of the thing that Pincher is still clinging to that wet rock
Lips are sealed. But NO, THAT AIN'T IT!
That was me with War and Peace. I finished it, but then again I was younger at the time and decided I would slog through even though I hated it just to say I'd finished it.
I believe War and Peace is a sadistic joke inflicted on the public by literature professors that hate us and think we're rubes. So they foist a book that has no redeeming value outside of being an excellent [AND HEAVY!] doorstop and wait to see who will be stubborn enough to trudge through 1000+ pages of that tedious, meaningless, tome.
Hahahaha, oh, come on, fellers. Yes, some of it painful - but the battle sequences are some of the finest threads of writing I've ever experienced. As an orthodox nationalist, he almost made me a believer; along with Anna Karenina - scenes there after day's harvest done, peasants drinking rye-beer and eating their dark rye bread. I don't know, I find Tolstoy beautiful. Each to their own! Maybe it helps to play in Chekhov plays. You get used to a bunch of Russian aristos milling about, lol.
Talking of words conveying a rich feel hard to put into words, that's Thomas Hardy for me. All of them, I think, can't think of one I didn't love. Forgive the length, beginning of Return of the Native. If Tolstoy made me feel Russia in its rise to a truer self-sensing nation, Hardy brings me straight back to my English blood, ale, and villages - always a good and necessary thing.
Return of the Native (from Chapter 3, The Custom of the Country)
While the men and lads were building the pile, a change took place in the mass of shade which denoted the distant landscape. Red suns and tufts of fire one by one began to arise, flecking the whole country round. They were the bonfires of other parishes and hamlets that were engaged in the same sort of commemoration. Some were distant, and stood in a dense atmosphere, so that bundles of pale straw-like beams radiated around them in the shape of a fan. Some were large and near, glowing scarlet-red from the shade, like wounds in a black hide. Some were Maenades, with winy faces and blown hair. These tinctured the silent bosom of the clouds above them and lit up their ephemeral caves, which seemed thenceforth to become scalding caldrons. Perhaps as many as thirty bonfires could be counted within the whole bounds of the district; and as the hour may be told on a clock-face when the figures themselves are invisible, so did the men recognize the locality of each fire by its angle and direction, though nothing of the scenery could be viewed.
The first tall flame from Rainbarrow sprang into the sky, attracting all eyes that had been fixed on the distant conflagrations back to their own attempt in the same kind. The cheerful blaze streaked the inner surface of the human circle—now increased by other stragglers, male and female—with its own gold livery, and even overlaid the dark turf around with a lively luminousness, which softened off into obscurity where the barrow rounded downwards out of sight. It showed the barrow to be the segment of a globe, as perfect as on the day when it was thrown up, even the little ditch remaining from which the earth was dug. Not a plough had ever disturbed a grain of that stubborn soil. In the heath's barrenness to the farmer lay its fertility to the historian. There had been no obliteration, because there had been no tending.
It seemed as if the bonfire-makers were standing in some radiant upper story of the world, detached from and independent of the dark stretches below. The heath down there was now a vast abyss, and no longer a continuation of what they stood on; for their eyes, adapted to the blaze, could see nothing of the deeps beyond its influence. Occasionally, it is true, a more vigorous flare than usual from their faggots sent darting lights like aides-de-camp down the inclines to some distant bush, pool, or patch of white sand, kindling these to replies of the same colour, till all was lost in darkness again. Then the whole black phenomenon beneath represented Limbo as viewed from the brink by the sublime Florentine in his vision, and the muttered articulations of the wind in the hollows were as complaints and petitions from the “souls of mighty worth” suspended therein.
It was as if these men and boys had suddenly dived into past ages, and fetched therefrom an hour and deed which had before been familiar with this spot. The ashes of the original British pyre which blazed from that summit lay fresh and undisturbed in the barrow beneath their tread. The flames from funeral piles long ago kindled there had shone down upon the lowlands as these were shining now. Festival fires to Thor and Woden had followed on the same ground and duly had their day. Indeed, it is pretty well known that such blazes as this the heathmen were now enjoying are rather the lineal descendants from jumbled Druidical rites and Saxon ceremonies than the invention of popular feeling about Gunpowder Plot.
Moreover to light a fire is the instinctive and resistant act of man when, at the winter ingress, the curfew is sounded throughout Nature. It indicates a spontaneous, Promethean rebelliousness against that fiat that this recurrent season shall bring foul times, cold darkness, misery and death. Black chaos comes, and the fettered gods of the earth say, Let there be light.
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I have another New Year's Resolution related to reading - just thought of it due to the topic: I'm finally going to start AND FINISH Humboldt's Gift (Saul Bellow). It's a very fine piece of writing, and it also have a lively plot, and for some reason I've started and put it down at least 3 times. The bookmark is still in it, halfway through, from the last time
For me it's not about the quality of the writing; it's about the connection to the characters. It's that I'm 600 pages into a book, and I don't give a rat's patootie about any of the characters. Do they go to war? Do they stay? Do they live? Do they die? Do the love interests get married? Are they deceptive and unfaithful?
Eh. I just didn't care about any of them. When a character goes to war, you should care if that character comes home alive. When a character faces a duel, you should care whether that character wins the duel. When the young aristocrats get married, you should care whether the marriage works or doesn't. I didn't care.
He failed to create engagement. So it was just a VERY long list of events to me, events of which I found myself completely ambivalent on the outcomes.
As a counterpoint, you've got something like Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged. She's a terrible writer. Wooden two-dimensional characters that are typically either wholly heroic or wholly villains. Stilted interactions. Spending 30 or so pages on a monologue.
But I actually found myself eager to turn the page and find out what happens next. For as terrible as her writing is, at least the plot was engaging.
But I actually found myself eager to turn the page and find out what happens next. For as terrible as her writing is, at least the plot was engaging.
estricklin
Well-Known Member
I really hate to quit reading a book, but since I read so many, (around 50/year) I have started allowing myself to quit reading one or two per year, instead of slugging through it and being miserable. I think you mentioned Children of Time in this thread? I actually gave up on it 1/3rd through. Last year I gave up on a fantasy book, that I completely have forgotten the name of. I think the solution is to be more picky about the books I start. I now download a sample ALWAYS and screen it first.
Hmm... I actually really enjoyed Children of Time. Just not your genre?
Current book:
The Fire in the Stone: Prehistoric Fiction From Charles Darwin to Jean M. Auel by Nicholas Ruddick
Upcoming:
The Benedict Option by Rod Dreher
Recent books:
Eye in the Sky by Philip K. Dick
Solar Lottery by Philip K. Dick
Tolkien and the Critics: Essays on J. R. R. Tolkien's the Lord of the Rings edited Isaacs & Zimbardo
Crashing Suns by Edmond Hamilton
The Colors of Space by Marion Zimmer Bradley
The Blackcollar by Timothy Zahn
A Call to Duty by David Weber and Timothy Zahn
The Exile of Time by Ray Cummings
These are just some of the titles I've read in the past 4-5 months...
The Fire in the Stone: Prehistoric Fiction From Charles Darwin to Jean M. Auel by Nicholas Ruddick
Upcoming:
The Benedict Option by Rod Dreher
Recent books:
Eye in the Sky by Philip K. Dick
Solar Lottery by Philip K. Dick
Tolkien and the Critics: Essays on J. R. R. Tolkien's the Lord of the Rings edited Isaacs & Zimbardo
Crashing Suns by Edmond Hamilton
The Colors of Space by Marion Zimmer Bradley
The Blackcollar by Timothy Zahn
A Call to Duty by David Weber and Timothy Zahn
The Exile of Time by Ray Cummings
These are just some of the titles I've read in the past 4-5 months...
Andrew Hodgson
Well-Known Member
Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk.
A friend has been chastising me for not reading the Game of Thrones books so those will be next up.
Also American Sour Beers for brewing fare.
A friend has been chastising me for not reading the Game of Thrones books so those will be next up.
Also American Sour Beers for brewing fare.
estricklin
Well-Known Member
No excuse really, I love Sci-Fi, and especially anything to do with time travel. I think the thing with the spiders was what annoyed me the most.
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Did you read Vonnugut's TimeQuake?
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Or better, Dark Matter? Oh yea, that is a time travel that will bend yer mind. Haha, loved this one.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0180T0IUY/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20
deadwolfbones
Well-Known Member
Reading The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Scott Dickinson. Excellent fantasy about the perils of empire, told from the perspective of a colonized girl as she climbs her way up the imperial ladder aiming to take it down from within.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0765380730/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0765380730/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20
Ahh. I can see how that would be the case, especially early in the book. It all ties together as you progress, though.
estricklin
Well-Known Member
I got the sample, it looks up my alley.
Lately I've read:
Great Expectations
Rouge Lawyer by John Grisham
Get Well Soon: A History of the World's Worst Plagues and the Heroes That Cured Them by Jennifer Wright
The Great Gatsby
All the Pretty Horses by C. McCarthy
The stand out for me the past few months is this one, the description does not do it justice, but it had me after the first few paragraphs!
I have been thinking more seriously about starting The Wheel of Time this year, it's been on my bucket list forever. I've seen a lot of people mention it in this thread.
I was skeptical. I just finished the tenth book and I've really enjoyed them so far. The biggest issue is that by the seventh book or so there are so many different threads going on that you end up going through an entire book without a whole lot happening in any of them - a crisis that would normally be introduced and resolved in a single book may take three or four volumes to finally resolve. Jordan's really good at getting the reader back up to speed whenever he switches to another thread, but it can be a bit frustrating to get invested in one of the threads only for it to go back into hibernation a couple chapters later without making much progress and not return for another 250 pages.
OP
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I read Great Expectations in 1981. Checked it out from the Los Angeles Public Library. It's sitting on the shelf next to me right now
I've given all of my books away, or in garbage / garage sale, but a few remain, including this one, for reason of guilt. One day I'll return it, I swear. It was a great book with the unexpected ending of course. Pip and Tom and Mrs Haversham. I read most everything Dickens wrote. Tale of Two Cities was his masterpiece for sure.
Nope, you're right, and these are good points. Most immediately for me is that it's the same when I watch an actor - because I was one, for a long time; Shakespearean, classically trained, Chicago theater, Los Angeles stuff you'd never seen me in (lol). And so I cannot help it - when I watch a performance, I'm not only taken by the performance, by the character, but also by the work of it, the choices I can see, the truth of what the actor is doing, etc. And to some extent it's the same for me when it comes to writing. Character (and I think you're right here), yes. I'd also say character can include things like land, or mood....Tolstoy's harvest and cider or ale or whatever it was, and peasants....I can't say I cared all that much about these bit players against the leads of the novel. I didn't really even see them, from my recollection, as individuals. They were "peasants," though I'm visual in the extreme and I did see bits and pieces of "Russian peasant." The vortex for me was the absolutely beautiful mood he evoked, and in that mood I felt the centuries of Russian existence, and the beauty of that history. And I felt the beauty and incredible torture of a traditional hay harvest. Hardy does the same for me, across all his novels.
More than character, I have to feel the writing is living, that the writer is playing with me as I read. I enjoy metafiction a lot. I fell hard for John Fowles, read everything by him (sorry if I say this earlier....I probably have). I love the seamlessness between the fiction, the writer letting me know he or she is writing it, the character of the book itself. Something like Day of the Dead or Samhain - the gossamer thinness between worlds and the potential to reach across. Good metafiction does this for me.
Finally, E.M. Forster, "round" and "flat" characters. Both vital. I don't really care so much about the flat characters, or even know what they're doing, but their presence is vital if I'm to hang with the round characters.
I don't know. Great points, both your posts. I cannot do Ayn Rand, but I hear you on wanting to know what happens next. I don't always need it. I'm reminded of Daniel Martin by Fowles. Many considered that a terrible book, a failure. A few, like me, and as far as I know, the late writing teacher and author John Gardner (Grendel, host of others), and...maybe another one, one of those, lol, have thought Martin is maybe his finest. And it's absolutely atmospheric. Fowles described it as "being about Englishness."
I appreciate your posts, bwarbiany. I don't read fiction anymore, almost entirely history. But you made me think on these things, always a good thing.
I read Great Expectations in 1981. Checked it out from the Los Angeles Public Library. It's sitting on the shelf next to me right now
That's awesome. Expectations was the one book in my son's education that I thought was going to kill him. The one and only time we did this - and this is our guilt!, lol - his "cliff notes" were a series, I think it was, on PBS. Terrible.
Amazing and cool how we all have our tastes. Now you know of course I have to pick them up.
Am in the middle of Matthew Hockenos Then They Came for Me: Martin Niemoller, the Pastor Who Defied the Nazis. It's an interesting book about a German man who was an officer on a U-Boat in WWI, became a pastor, and seemed ok with the rise of Hitler in Hitler's early days before he realized what Nazism was going to do to the country and the church. He was eventually arrested for speaking against the Nazis from the pulpit and after being sentenced to time served he was thrown in a camp until the end of WWII.
Certainly not a blameless man, but a good case can be made that he would become a repentant man. I think there are lessons that can be learned from his life.
I'd recommend it.
Certainly not a blameless man, but a good case can be made that he would become a repentant man. I think there are lessons that can be learned from his life.
I'd recommend it.
To pivot to a different topic, this to me is somewhat like my disdain for baseball. I never played it [except one little-league season], so the delicate chess match between pitcher and batter just doesn't grab my attention. Thus I simply can't watch it. It's barely tolerable to watch one meaningless game out of 162 where the difference between winning and losing is only 1/162nd of the equation of whether you reach the postseason. The individual games to me aren't interesting, and thus with nothing really riding on the outcome, watching an individual game is unbearable. I *might* get into it around playoff / World Series time, but that's it.
Contrast that to motorcycle racing, which most people barely even know exists. I love it, because having ridden, I completely understand the battles that two riders are going into in each corner. Trying to figure out where to line up a potential passing opportunity, when and how the lead rider blocks his pursuer, etc, even how riding strategies completely change between the 250cc bikes and the MotoGP premier class monsters, and how different the riding styles are between MotoGP riders who came up through the 125cc/250cc international circuits vs those who came over from American or British Superbike classes.
To each their own...
I was always amazed at how much Jordan could say with so few words. I loved the way he would have so many threads going, and weave them together. Often there were characters in one thread having a profound affect on characters in another, without either group knowing that the other was involved.
I'm glad someone picked up the torch to finish the story, but Sanderson's writing style is very different. What Jordan had planned for 1 book took Sanderson 2 massive tomes to tell. I got about halfway through the final book before I put it down and walked away for over a year. 500 pages on a single battle was just too much.
estricklin
Well-Known Member
I read Great Expectations in 1981. Checked it out from the Los Angeles Public Library. It's sitting on the shelf next to me right now
I read Oliver Twist when I was 10 years old maybe, and it was definitely above my reading level, but I was so took with the characters, I regret waiting so many years to read another Dickens book now. I was thinking when I finished Great Expectations, "Wow!", written over 150 years ago, and still a valid story with big characters. Leave it to Dickens to make convicts heroes and to tell such a powerful story of love, heartbreak and adventure with crazy plot twists in the same book.
The late fees are going to break you by the way.
My intention at this time, is to only read the ones written by the original author, as that seems to be the advice I get a lot. The weaving of many stories reminds me of Game of Thrones, which I'm currently on the last book of, I like that style of writing.
I'd not heard of Niemoller, thanks, Kent. When I saw the title I first thought you were talking about Dietrich Boenhoffer, another theologian, Lutheran Pastor, anti-Nazi ultimately suffering death along with others of the July 20 plot against Hitler. Can't recall how I came to his story but there's at least one documentary out on him.
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