Has anybody read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne? I can hardly remember it since I read it while I was in elementary. I thought it was good for being an old school science fiction novel.
Audio books are the bomb. I drive a lot so podcasts/audiobooks are my shit if Iām not listening to sports radio. I donāt like using up all my data on pandora.
Listened to a few recently: Blood Meridian or The Kid Says āI Dunnoā (poor choice, McCarthy doesnāt translate to the medium at all. Would not recommend), On a Pale Horse which was pretty good, Dirk Gentlyās Holistic Detective Service (read by Adams, good stuff) and the previously recommended The Martian which read really well. I have Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul playing now but I have local sports radio to listen to so I need to take another trip.
I recently bough 20,000 Leagues as a novelty. I havenāt read it in forever. Iāll let you know once I get to it, Volkan
edit2: Gonna have to light a fire under my brotherās arse since he just bought ASoF&I:GoT and I want to read that series after consuming the shows like plants do sunlight. Gotta harass him when I see him on Steam playing Shadows of Mordor later, tell him to get ta reading.
blood meridian
the border trilogy (all the pretty horses, the crossing, cities of the plain) - in order
picked up Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Murakami, seems crazy so far, never read any japanese fiction and ive heard good things about murakami, like right up my ally good things so im excited to get through this book.
im outi
Roberth
Danke.
I know I should actually read Blood Meridian (see my previous post about McCarthy translating really terribly to audiobook). I hadnāt known about the border trilogy though so Iām definitely going to track those down.
While I was buying Children of Dune I bought Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey since I lived in his hometown (Zanesville) for a spell and he is the guy that really established Westerns as a genre so I figured I am in good hands. Weāll see.
I mentioned in the Lounge that I joined a book club and our first book is Invisible Cities by Italo Covino. Ordered it on Amazon. Iām pretty excited for this to start, a lot of the people seemed really cool. A lot of grad students at one of the best CS departments in the country. So Iām excited to see what real software developers look like.
Started getting into Pynchon over the past year and finished reading the Crying Lot of 49. Very good shit.
You guys remember these from elementary school:
Then we had this:
The author of the book below came to our elementary school back in 1988 and spoke about the book during an assembly:
I finished reading 100 Years of Solitude. It took me a month due to holidays and travel but it was so worth it. I canāt believe how well put together the universe is in the book. A worthwhile read for anyone.
Iām now reading Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. Iāve heard good things so I have high expectations.
So this is happening. New Harper Lee novel after 50 some years, and 3 months after her sister died.
Read Invisible Cities by Italo Covino and I donāt really know what to make of it. I had a couple different ideas of what was going on but the more I thought about each of them the more I wrote them off. Interesting book, looking forward to seeing what people say about it.
Back to Dune and the Dream Relm for me. Started Children of Dune last night and I have been reading my *Sandman * omnibus. Iām about 2 issues away from finishing Vol. I and I donāt think I know anything anymore.
Not gonna lie, I teared up when I heard this on the radio today.
Alright so in the last month I read valor,malice,ready player one and child theif. I highly recommend them all especially valor and malice.
I finished War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. I can see why the novel is considered one of the all time greatest. The story starts off really slow but it really pays off in the end. There is a moment in the book at the battle of Borodino where MOTHER RUSSIA was born. Even though the book is historical fiction many of the core events of the story accurate to history, just from a Russian perspective. The only thing I didnāt love about the book is Tolstoy didnāt like historians and ranted about them several times during the book, to me it distracted from interesting narrative he told.
If thatās the only Pynchon youāve read, oh boy. I read that first, then V, then Gravityās Rainbow. GR still ranks as the most bizarre pieces of media Iāve ever encountered, and it is fucking brilliant.
Picked up a little reference guide on world religions since Iāve been curious about the subject for a while now. Just covers the basic facts on various religions, like Zoroastrianism? Thatās a new one for me.
I was reading Murakamiās Norwegian Wood but I got drunk and left the book on the subway. Weak. I was nearly done, too.
Had to wikipedia the plot.
I guess now Iāll go on and probably read some non-fiction. Get my loins all wet and shit.
Snow kept me from book club last month. Wouldāve liked to hear otherās thoughts on Invisible Cities. It was pretty cool. This month is Ready Player One, which is gonna be a re-read but I liked it the first time and it was long enough ago that I donāt mind.
Iām about halfway through Children of Dune. I like it, Iām probably going to give the series a little bit of a rest after this book though. I heard God Emperor of Dune is supposed to be a long plodding intermission between trilogies(Dune, Messiah, Children <- God Emperor -> Heretics, Chapterhouse, 7), which I think is a really interesting idea but Iām gonna need a break before all that. Iāve gotta finish Sandman still, gonna knock out Volume II asap, and I got a Star Wars book that is A New Hope in the style of a Shakespearean play and Iām really excited to see what thatās all about.
I got an E-reader last December and now have been reading pretty regularly in the early hours of the morning when I wake up and cannot fall back to sleep. So far I have read a couple of books I would recommend. āStation elevenā (dystopian fiction), āAll the light we cannot seeā (WWII story thats not really about the war) and āThe Girl on the Trainā (a mystery/suspense novel).
In terms of sci-fi, my favorite authors in the genre are Ursula K LeGuinn (āThe dispossessedā and āLathe of Heavenā are some of my favorites from her.) and and Philip K Dick. About a couple years ago I decided to read through the list of Hugo winning classic science fiction (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebula_Award_for_Best_Novel ). I started with the winners and the picked up some of the nominees from authors whose work I had read before and liked. I would recommend that to anyone who is just looking for some science fiction to read.
Norwegian Wood was some depressing shit. I actually kind of liked it, though.
Sadly, almost all of the Zoroastrians are gone now, it was a major religion in Iran before the rise of the Ayatollah Khomeini. It was discussed in great detail in a book I read on Iranian culture, the name escapes me right now. Zoroaster put a great deal of emphasis on the life and works one does, and not as much on the faith of the individual. Itās interesting how different Iran as a country was before the Ayatollah, the country was on the right track to be one of the centers for science and technology in the middle east.
Despite being a scientist for a living, I have only gotten into science fiction during the last 3 years, and am still delving into many legendary writers for the first time.
Last year I read Sheckley, Harry Harrison, Stanislav Lem, Clifford Simak, and Ursula LeGuin, all writers I was either completely unfamiliar with, or had one one work by previously. And I liked them in that order; Sheckley is an extraordinary genius and one of the greatest writers to ever live, Harrison is one of the finest comedy/pure entertainment writers ever, and Lem is a tremendous intellect with outstanding imagination and the highest level of genuine science in his work.
LeGuin, while still decent, was the weakest of the bunch. The Lathe of Heaven was a good book that should have been a great book. (My review, for anyone curious) And The Left Hand of Darkness was simply boring crap. (Review)
Funny, I just read my first book by him last week. He is pretty fucking awesome.