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Anyone read anything interesting lately?

I'm like half way through "Heavy Time," by CJ Cherryh. She's amazing at characterization, except that I think it's getting in the way of the plot a little. >_<

I've been reading a lot of Discworld books lately. Those have been interesting and funny.

Finished Oniria last week. Quite an interesting book, a little bit of violence here and there, but good story. But 300 pages... barely lasted 3 days.

I decided to reread some of my collection of Jacqueline Carey (mainly just the first three books of the Kushiel's Legacy series). Took me less than a week I think - I forgot how good they are, and basically ate each one up in a matter of a couple days.
Probably a chick book, but a damn good one.

I'm reading Boris Vian's "Heartsnatcher" right now. It's interesting, but a bit forced, I'm still undecided about it. I got it in the bookstore, just liked the illustration on the cover.

I read a bit of Sergei Dovlatov's "Affiliate" the other day, I've read the book about three times by now, but it's so easy to read and engaging, consisting of little anecdotes that later tie up into a story, that I like going back once in a while to read a few of those anecdotes. Highly reccomended.

I'm mostly reading non-fiction books these days. I'm halfway through Elizabeth Abbott's "History of Mistresses", it's rather interesting even though at times very manipulative.

I'm ~250 pages into It. I started reading about a month ago but then I put It down for a few weeks so that I wouldn't be distracted by it (I feel like the Knights who say Ni) while trying to get actual real life things accomplished. Stephen King manages to be both the bane and the joy of my existence.

A Clockwork Orange. I'm afraid I may have been spoiled by the movie, however, as I'm only a little ways into it and am getting impatient for the thing to get to the friggin' point. Right now it's all "Alex and his droogs are violent!" and I'm like "Yes, yes, I know they are, now get to reprogramming Alex already!" I realize this is fully my own fault, however, and am trying to toss out my foreknowledge of the plot while I'm reading it, but it's proving somewhat difficult. This is one big reason why I like to read the book first.

I am enjoying the language of the piece, at least, though I don't like how he'll explain some of his words from time to time, especially if he's not going to explain them all . . . it's especially egregious in those spots where the word he defines is far more easily determined through context than many of those he doesn't define. It's jarring, and makes me wonder just who it is he thinks he's narrating to.

Hopefully I'll be able to make it through the rest with only these minor bits being troublesome. The movie is one of the very very few Stanley Kubrik films I can find even somewhat palatable, which has to mean something for the underlying story.

I did that one for a high school english ISU

My mom had a really old copy - had a translated list of all the jargon Alex uses throughout the book. You do pick it up more the more you read it though.

Also found the sort-of-secret very last chapter on the internet and printed it out and shoved it in the back of the book, because I like how it made the book end. Although the usual book ending made the movie end in a fun way.

If you really get bored with it, grab some friends and re-enact a few scenes.

On second thought, that will probably work better if you grab some enemies instead.

Pimpette wrote:My mom had a really old copy - had a translated list of all the jargon Alex uses throughout the book. You do pick it up more the more you read it though.

Yah, I'm getting the hang of it pretty easily myself, partially because I've already heard a lot of it from the movie and partially because I'm fairly good at picking thing up through context. It's really the biggest selling point of the book for me, too, since I'm into that sort of language thing. Been slowly working on building my own fictional lingo for the past few years, in fact.

Also found the sort-of-secret very last chapter on the internet and printed it out and shoved it in the back of the book, because I like how it made the book end.

Fortunately, the copy I'm reading already has that chapter put in. Most American copies of the book made nowadays do, it seems.

Just read "If Chins Could Kill" by Bruce Campbell. It was awesome.

Halfway through a biography of Cary Grant at the moment.

Last fiction I read was all of Baum's OZ books (those Ruth Plumly bitch books aren't canon, IMHO). It's always amazed me how those stories are so simply written but your imagination fills in all the gaps naturally to flesh out the world. I wish I could go back in time and erase the movie with Judy Garland from ever being made, though. I'd like to see what the world would have looked like in my head without it's technicolor influence...which I can't get rid of no matter how much brain bleach I use. THE SLIPPERS WERE SILVER, you BASTARDS!

Corgan_dane wrote:I wish I could go back in time and erase the movie with Judy Garland from ever being made, though.

YES.

Return to Oz can stay, tho'. It was a mash-up of several different books in the series, but at least it actually walked and talked like an Oz story.

There's an animated series of movies about Adventures in Oz. We had them on videocassette when I was little- they weren't the story told in "THE MOVIE," but I'm hard pressed to remember any more details than that. Other than that I think it disturbed me at points. Although I'm not quite sure how they line up with the book, having never read it- anyone else know of this?


...Which is pretty much a pointless thing for me to tell you anyway, since you just said you didn't want outside influences about the book. /irrelevance

I just finished The Ordinary, a book about what happens when a fantasy world meets a sci-fi world. It started out pretty interesting, but the second half got a little tangential. Also the good guys decided to conquer the sci-fi world... does that really make them good guys? they wanted to bring equality and spirituality and magic and all kinds of stuff to the sci-fi planet. Because we all know that forcing such things on a another country really works.

Nevertheless, it was an interesting idea.

I'm rereading The Art of War (Sun Tzu) right now. Before that I reread the Tiffany Aching books (Terry Pratchett), and before that I was attempting to read the Eragon books on the recommendation of a coworker but had to give up because towards the end of the second book I suddenly realized I was rooting for everyone to die and having fantasies about kicking characters in the crotch.

Next I'm planning to finally finish The Crystal Horizon by Reinhold Messner, because I got halfway through then got distracted and completely forgot I was reading it.

Jim North wrote:A Clockwork Orange. I'm afraid I may have been spoiled by the movie, however, as I'm only a little ways into it and am getting impatient for the thing to get to the friggin' point. Right now it's all "Alex and his droogs are violent!" and I'm like "Yes, yes, I know they are, now get to reprogramming Alex already!" I realize this is fully my own fault, however, and am trying to toss out my foreknowledge of the plot while I'm reading it, but it's proving somewhat difficult. This is one big reason why I like to read the book first.

Omg Jim is bored by senseless violence!

Jim North wrote:Hopefully I'll be able to make it through the rest with only these minor bits being troublesome. The movie is one of the very very few Stanley Kubrik films I can find even somewhat palatable, which has to mean something for the underlying story.

What's wrong with Lolita?

Halfway through a biography of Cary Grant at the moment.

Louis Bunuel's biography was the best of it's kind I've read. I wasn't even bothered that he doesn't talk about his films very much.

McDuffies wrote:Omg Jim is bored by senseless violence!

See, this is one of the aspects of desensitization towards violence that the angry mothers of the world don't seem to get! Eventually we get so desensitized towards it, we just can't be bothered to do it ourselves anymore! Lately I can't even get up the energy to cross the street to beat a homeless person to death with a baseball bat. It's kind of sad, really.

McDuffies wrote:What's wrong with Lolita?

Never seen it, to be honest. But I think I've already stated before why I'm not very fond of Kubrick films. Maybe I'll look it up and copy/paste it into this post.

Ypu don't have to, I'll just get annoyed and call you a philistine.
Lolita is imo his most conventionally good film though.