The Books/Reading Thread

[TageRyche]

Here's my review of the Adrian McKinty novel Police At The Station And They Don't Look Friendly.

 

[TageRyche]

My review of the Robin Yokum novel "A Welcome Murder" is a Mystery Scene magazine online exclusive.

 

[Einherjar86]

Finished Kunzru's White Tears. It was a really good book, a good mix of social commentary and disturbing horror fiction. It was also nice to read a work of techno-fiction that was actually about race. Usually techno-fiction is pasty white.

Now on to Zadie Smith's White Teeth.

 

[EspaDa]

 

[Einherjar86]

Never was a huge fan of that book. I think it was a landmark publication for postwar fiction for a number of reasons, but stylistically and thematically I never found it interesting. Be curious to hear what you think.

Well, I'm setting Zadie Smith aside for a bit because I'm going on a little vacation soon and want to take some leisure reading--so I'm moving on to Gemma Files's Experimental Film, which, despite its title, is not nonfiction.

Here's a quote from the LA book review:

Experimental Film follows Lois Cairns, a former film critic and teacher who begins a slow descent into depression when she discovers her son Clark has been diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. Her life and career both appear to have stalled until she watches an experimental film called Untitled 13, which has been assembled from fragments of stolen footage. What catches her attention is a short clip of a silver nitrate film from the early 20th century depicting a woman in a white veil holding a deadly scythe. For Cairns, the footage evokes the Wendish folktale of Lady Midday: a supernatural being who haunts the fields of poor farmers, rewarding those who accept their labor and punishing those who disrespect her. The discovery spurs a dangerous obsession for Cairns, as she seeks to publish an account of the film’s original creator, Mrs. A. Macalla Whitcomb, an early Canadian cinematographer and Spiritualist who disappeared under mysterious circumstances in 1918.

 

[EspaDa]

Never was a huge fan of that book. I think it was a landmark publication for postwar fiction for a number of reasons, but stylistically and thematically I never found it interesting. Be curious to hear what you think.

Well, I'm setting Zadie Smith aside for a bit because I'm going on a little vacation soon and want to take some leisure reading--so I'm moving on to Gemma Files's Experimental Film, which, despite its title, is not nonfiction.

Here's a quote from the LA book review:

Yeah, of course, I'll share my thoughts with you. After like 60 pages nothing's really happening, I'm not really aroused.

 

[Cronopio]

Just finished reading this. Some kind of weird mix of the Matrix and Dark City.

 

[TageRyche]

I finished reading the Andrew Cartmel novel The Vinyl Detective - The Run-Out Groove.

 

[EspaDa]

Never was a huge fan of that book. I think it was a landmark publication for postwar fiction for a number of reasons, but stylistically and thematically I never found it interesting. Be curious to hear what you think.

I've read this one pretty quickly, in like 4 or 5 days. It was an easy read, the language of the book is very simplistic and it's apparently designed for children and adolescents. The action was predictable and underwhelming, main character Holden Caulfield was overdrawn. Not an interesting book as far as I'm concerned.

 

[EspaDa]

 

[EspaDa]

Great shit

 

[Einherjar86]

I've read this one pretty quickly, in like 4 or 5 days. It was an easy read, the language of the book is very simplistic and it's apparently designed for children and adolescents. The action was predictable and underwhelming, main character Holden Caulfield was overdrawn. Not an interesting book as far as I'm concerned.

Yeah, I actually had to read it for a grad seminar. It's considered a monumental book in postwar American fiction, but I always felt that it appealed more to an adolescent audience. Obviously, Holden Caulfield is someone whom adolescent men would identify with, but not grad students and certainly not women. Never found it to be an interesting book.

Admittedly, I feel like Salinger was trying to be critical of Holden's character, to even poke fun at him at times. Unfortunately, Holden proceeded to become the voice of an era for introverted and angsty teens. It's the Gecko Effect (a la Wall Street)--readers are supposed to be critical and suspicious of him, but they end up identifying with him and consequently admiring him. People don't want to see fiction as a way to criticize themselves.

 

[rms]

but not grad students and certainly not women.

interestingly, i've found that more high school age/college aged women like Catcher than men. I've not really found men who enjoy that book

 

[Einherjar86]

Ha, well, that could be a hasty reaction on my part. I've only really discussed it in a graduate seminar, which was comprised of men and women. No one was floored by it or anything, but that may have more to do with us being grad students than with any gendered predisposition.

 

[TageRyche]

I finished reading an advance copy of the Laurie R. King thriller Lockdown. I enjoyed it and wrote a review that will hopefully appear in a magazine that I write for.

I also finished the paperback edition of the Ace Atkins novel Robert B. Parker's Slow Burn. It is the continuation of Parker's Spenser series and I liked that one as well.

 

[Vegard Pompey]

Just finished this. It's basically batshit conspiracy fiction tangentially connected to the TV series. Doesn't add all that much of value to the world of Twin Peaks but it is very fascinating as a guide to some of the more outrageous cryptohistorical theories of the last two centuries, beginning with Meriwether Lewis' assassination at the hands of the Illuminati. And some of the craziest shit in it is supported by actual historical records.

 

[EspaDa]

This shit's crazy. Loving it.

 

[tagradh]

Just finished The Stars are Legion and The Industries of the Future. Now reading Civil Wars: A History in Ideas, Homo Deus and The Collapsing Empire.

 

[Einherjar86]

I have no idea where the fuck to put this, but it involves a writer I love (Peter Watts) so I'm leaving it here. That said, it's not actually a book--it's a fucking sci-fi metal opera:

http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=7426

I’m writing the story. It involves terrorist vegan gengineering and academic hierarchies and marbled lungfish and autocannibalism. Also terraforming and First Contact with aliens who showed up on Earth long before Kubrick’s transcendent monolith-makers, and who— being not very bright— bet on an utterly wrong horse. There’s a lot of story, a lot of backstory, and yet the story almost seems to be the least of it. It’s an actual opera, you see; a fusion of classic high-pitched arias and growling distorted black-metal grunge. There’s music, and a libretto. There are singers and sets and costumes— relatively primitive at this stage, the event was basically a proof-of-principle exercise after all— and scientific fact-checking courtesy of a number of real authorities, not the least being the co-discoverer of Dark Energy. We’re after verisimilitude, here. This aims to be the most scientifically-rigorous opera about alien lungfish on Mars ever written.

 

[TageRyche]

My review of the Joseph Kanon thriller Defectors is can be read via this Mystery Scene magazine link.