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Post by jimmalone on Aug 2, 2020 12:05:23 GMT
Graham Greene - A Gun for Sale
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Post by cheesecake on Aug 4, 2020 19:55:58 GMT
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Aug 5, 2020 6:40:40 GMT
The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury: Sci-fi lit is always very hit-or-miss with me, but unlike some other major figures of the genre, Bradbury sure as hell knew how to take his pioneering ideas and articulate them in clear, engaging prose. This was a great read, one haunting vignette after another that amounts to an eerie, strangely hopeful whole. you must look into some of his other collections if you enjoyed this. The Illustrated Man and S Is for Space contain some of his very best work.
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Aug 6, 2020 0:07:31 GMT
so it turns out that the only Austen audiobooks available at my library through Overdrive have awful tinny sound. All of them are Tantor Media productions with narration from Wanda McCadden, the only exception was Pride & Prejudice which as I said above was a Duke Classics production and sounded beautiful. I'll be recommending the Naxos productions with Juliet Stevenson (whose voice is soooooo much better than McCadden) to my library but god knows if they ever get picked up. Damn. If the worst comes to the worst I'll probably just pick them up on Audible, but for now I'll be reading other stuff. There are so many books available through Overdrive, it's insane. There's more than enough there to keep me busy for years. anyways, I'm starting with Unbelievable b T. Christian Miller (Penguin Random House Audio, narrated by Hillary Huber).
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Post by Martin Stett on Aug 6, 2020 3:14:58 GMT
Almost finished with Anne of Green Gables. I feel that Takahata's adaptation expanded the material so beautifully that this seems almost cheap by comparison. It's definitely a good book though.
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Post by Mattsby on Aug 6, 2020 20:19:37 GMT
Film Noir Reader 3 - Can't get enough of this. Short interviews with Fritz Lang, Sam Fuller, Joseph H Lewis, de Toth, Dmytryk, Preminger, Wilder, Wise; and James Wong Howe, Lizabeth Scott, etc. Fascinating how some of them were still trying to grasp what noir is - I think these talks were done in the 70s? - and whether/how much they were conscious of what they were doing at the time. I liked Fuller's bits the best, he's quotable ("A grifter is a grifter after all whatever the grift"), mentions Sartre, gives some simple but great filmmaking tips ("Movement should be a counter").
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Post by Deleted on Aug 6, 2020 22:51:27 GMT
Almost finished with Anne of Green Gables. I feel that Takahata's adaptation expanded the material so beautifully that this seems almost cheap by comparison. It's definitely a good book though. This is like mandatory reading for every Canadian girl lol.
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Post by Martin Stett on Aug 7, 2020 3:23:07 GMT
Almost finished with Anne of Green Gables. I feel that Takahata's adaptation expanded the material so beautifully that this seems almost cheap by comparison. It's definitely a good book though. This is like mandatory reading for every Canadian girl lol. Of course the book that defines your national identity comes down to "a lot of nice people are nice to each other a lot."
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Post by countjohn on Aug 7, 2020 5:33:21 GMT
This is like mandatory reading for every Canadian girl lol. Of course the book that defines your national identity comes down to "a lot of nice people are nice to each other a lot." Our national book is either The Great Gatsby or Huckleberry Finn. We've got issues.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 7, 2020 6:29:20 GMT
Just finished an excellent script for a hypothetical Blood Meridian film adaptation from stephen ! I highly encourage you guys to hit him up about it if you're interested in seeing what it's like Think I'm going to pick up The Divine Comedy, gone too long without getting to it
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Post by Martin Stett on Aug 7, 2020 13:19:38 GMT
Think I'm going to pick up The Divine Comedy, gone too long without getting to it How do you like allegory and references to obscure pieces of history that Dante's readers would have known about, but will confuse people in the 21st century? Be prepared. This is one of the classics to defeat me, and it defeated me very early on. I hope that you enjoy it more.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 7, 2020 20:30:05 GMT
Think I'm going to pick up The Divine Comedy, gone too long without getting to it How do you like allegory and references to obscure pieces of history that Dante's readers would have known about, but will confuse people in the 21st century? Be prepared. This is one of the classics to defeat me, and it defeated me very early on. I hope that you enjoy it more. I'm all for writers beating my ass and I've always been really interested in the subject matter of this one, so I've high hopes. The only books I've stopped reading are ones that have been so thoroughly awful I just felt like I was wasting my time (Ready Player One, for example, lol), so even if this one's over my head I'll still get through it
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Aug 8, 2020 20:01:03 GMT
Unbelievable was excellent. A sobering duel-account of victim victimization and a small group of investigators who put their heads down and did their jobs to find a brutal serial rapist. Gave me a new appreciation of the miniseries (which to my memory is extraordinarily accurate to Miller and Armstrong's reporting here) and especially Dever's portrayal of Marie. This account features a lot more characters, most notably the rapist himself who gets an extensive treatment whereas he barely features at all in the miniseries (for the better in that medium IMO, but I still appreciate the comprehensiveness here). The one thing I find somewhat hard to reckon is Wever's interpretation of Stacy Galbraith ("Karen Duvall" in the miniseries). I love love LOVE Wever's performance because its so highly-specific and distinctive; an ultra-serious, even closed-off person who has learned to mask deep reservoirs of compassion and indignance beneath layers of distanced professionalism. You can tell she's acting because the work's so technical and specific but she's totally devoid of affectation or showiness. The book briefly describes Galbraith as outgoing but doesn't go very far in delineating her personality traits, which tells me that much of the character's creation in the show was up to Wever. That just makes me love her more. next on deck: Huxley's Brave New World (Blackstone / Michael York). You have to be living under a rock to not have heard of this book, but I've never seen an adaptation, I've never read it, and I've never heard anyone talk about it so I'm going into this completely blind.
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Post by Joaquim on Aug 8, 2020 22:12:26 GMT
A People’s History of the United States
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Post by Martin Stett on Aug 11, 2020 0:48:23 GMT
A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis.
So, uh... yeah, this was published under a pen name, for obvious reasons. A collection of journal entries after the death of Lewis's wife, this is some of the most raw and unfiltered writing I have ever seen. For anybody to publish something this intimate takes courage - for somebody (especially a theologian) to write these words at all is something I marvel at. Always been a fan of Lewis's novels, but this is my first foray into his nonfiction work.
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Post by DeepArcher on Aug 11, 2020 18:27:31 GMT
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin: Really exemplifies Le Guin's uncanny ability for creating her own original worlds and societies that act as philosophical interrogations of the structures and ideologies of our own. This is a really compelling work that, while I had some flaws with (the structure of shifting to the past timeline every other chapter was a bit jarring, some scenes are just far too dialogue-heavy), is extremely successful in examining the tensions between opposing human ideologies and whether they can be reconciled. Really great piece of thoughtful sci-fi from maybe the best genre writer ever, and one of my favorites in general.
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chris3
Badass
I just ordered a slice of pumpkin pie...
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Post by chris3 on Aug 13, 2020 1:37:44 GMT
Just finished book five in the Dune Chronicles: Heretics of Dune. This one is my least favorite of the series so far, but it's still a fascinating, entertaining read. On one hand Herbert continues to expand upon his universe in rich and unpredictable ways. I was absorbed by the idea of the mysterious Scattering and their imminent return upon the known universe. It was also pleasantly surprising to see such a marked shift in focus towards women characters and matriarchal organizations (a rarity in science fiction, especially for the eighties from a male author). The Bene Gesserit vs. the Honored Matres ("whores" in the eyes of all Reverend Mothers) is a truly compelling oncoming war between female societies. The Matres themselves seem like a very odd combination of Herbert's ideas on feminism that range from the forward-thinking to the hilariously camp reductive (the Honored Matres are basically power-hungry space witches who have mastered sex to the point wherein they can literally enslave any man with their sexual prowess... yeah). I also find it extremely weird yet somewhat welcome that seemingly out of nowhere the Dune Chronicles become intensely sexually explicit. There is at least one sex scene in this book that makes anything in the Song of Ice and Fire series seem tame, which wouldn't be so strange if it weren't for the fact that the previous novels were quite "PG-13" in content. There's also a set-piece towards the end depicting some extreme ultraviolence heretofore unseen in the saga. It's a thoroughly strange shift in content and not at all what I expected.
Unfortunately, the actual narrative is nowhere near as engaging as the earlier books in the series. Herbert introduces an entirely new batch of characters (as well as over one thousand years passing in between books) and it became increasingly difficult to keep all of them straight in my head. There is so much political scheming from every single warring sect that throughout the entire novel I had no real idea of what any of the characters' actual motivations were. It also feels like most of the novel consists of separating these characters into groups and then moving these groups around the geography of their respective planets without much rhyme or reason, like pawns on a chess board moving at random before the player can make up his mind on his plan of attack. And while the book is much more action-heavy than the previous (masterful) entry God Emperor of Dune, I wasn't as emotionally invested in the action sequences because oftentimes I had no idea who was attacking our heroes and/or why (this excludes the previously mentioned scene of glorious extreme slo-mo violence mayhem). This was also the first entry since Dune Messiah that feels more like a novel to set-up future storylines than an actual satisfying narrative on its own. With that second book it was forgivable since it was only 330 pages; less so here with a 670 page count that feels mostly like set-up or filler despite a return to the sprightly pacing of the first and third chapters in the saga.
This sounds harsh, but overall it's a fun read and only suffers from comparisons to its superior predecessors. My favorite thing about Heretics of Dune is that it's filled with so many truly bonkers creative decisions. Star Wars this is not. And I must mention that, as usual, Herbert closes the novel with a satisfying (if rushed) climax and an absolutely terrific final scene. Hopefully Chapterhouse closes out the series on a good note, but either way I've gotten way more than my money's worth on this great series, even if this one wasn't quite up to the high bar set by the previous entries. 7
Rankings so far:
Dune 10 Dune Messiah 7.5 Children of Dune 9 God Emperor of Dune 10 Heretics of Dune 7
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Aug 13, 2020 21:24:30 GMT
has anyone read Myra Breckinridge? I'm dying to get my hands on it.
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Aug 14, 2020 2:49:01 GMT
gosh for having such an enduring legacy, Brave New World is pretty damn uninteresting. Not the dystopian book I was expecting, it's kind of a stylistic summation of 1930s anxieties about technological and social advancement and sexual promiscuity burdened by some odd noble savage proclivities. The book's use of sex is so prudish and blushing, and central to Huxley's society, that it practically feels like a response (thirty years too soon) to the free love moment. It's confusing what exactly the book is meant to oppose, except general conformity, but the nonconformists in this book are tiresome and half-baked and basically unsympathetic. I could go on, but narratively the story really leaves a lot to be desired. It has one protagonist and then shifts to another. Some plot elements lack proper exploration, etc. The world-building could've been better. I will say it's also funnier than I expected. There were portions that have a ring of satire to them (the wildlife photographer's struggle to get shots of John in his lighthouse for example). That was confusing too, because I don't think this was meant to satire (?) but then there aren't any serious consequences for noncomformity in this world, not next to Orwell or Bradbury. Hell, two of the noncomformist characters even get something of a happy ending because they're shipped away to an island full of others just like them. anyways, didn't care for it. next on deck: Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Caedmon, Kate Burton)
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Post by TerryMontana on Aug 14, 2020 12:44:56 GMT
gosh for having such an enduring legacy, Brave New World is pretty damn uninteresting. Not the dystopian book I was expecting, it's kind of a stylistic summation of 1930s anxieties about technological and social advancement and sexual promiscuity burdened by some odd noble savage proclivities. The book's use of sex is so prudish and blushing, and central to Huxley's society, that it practically feels like a response (thirty years too soon) to the free love moment. It's confusing what exactly the book is meant to oppose, except general conformity, but the nonconformists in this book are tiresome and half-baked and basically unsympathetic. I could go on, but narratively the story really leaves a lot to be desired. It has one protagonist and then shifts to another. Some plot elements lack proper exploration, etc. The world-building could've been better. I will say it's also funnier than I expected. There were portions that have a ring of satire to them (the wildlife photographer's struggle to get shots of John in his lighthouse for example). That was confusing too, because I don't think this was meant to satire (?) but then there aren't any serious consequences for noncomformity in this world, not next to Orwell or Bradbury. Hell, two of the noncomformist characters even get something of a happy ending because they're shipped away to an island full of others just like them. anyways, didn't care for it. next on deck: Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Caedmon, Kate Burton) Couldn't have said it better!! I read it very recently only bc it's considered a classic but I didn't care for it at all. Plus, it reminded me of some Philip K. Dick novels (although I like many of his books). For sure it was a great inspiration for his body of work.
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Post by cheesecake on Aug 14, 2020 16:09:50 GMT
Almost finished with Anne of Green Gables. I feel that Takahata's adaptation expanded the material so beautifully that this seems almost cheap by comparison. It's definitely a good book though. This is like mandatory reading for every Canadian girl lol. I have a very disturbing Anne of Green Gables shrine in my apartment. I had no idea how much Anne related stuff was in my possession until I lumped it all together.
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Post by cheesecake on Aug 14, 2020 16:10:57 GMT
Went into this completely blind and damn, this is not escapism at all. Really good so far.
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Post by jimmalone on Aug 15, 2020 13:27:43 GMT
Think I'm going to pick up The Divine Comedy, gone too long without getting to it I've been reading this this year as well. Especially "Inferno" is fascinating, but the longer it goes the harder it became for me and somewhere in "Paradiso", despite this should maybe be the most interesting part for several reasons, it lost me.
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Post by jimmalone on Aug 15, 2020 13:31:54 GMT
Think I'm going to pick up The Divine Comedy, gone too long without getting to it How do you like allegory and references to obscure pieces of history that Dante's readers would have known about, but will confuse people in the 21st century? Be prepared. This is one of the classics to defeat me, and it defeated me very early on. I hope that you enjoy it more. I thought this was pretty interesting sometimes, especially with the references about the Guelphs and the Ghibellines and therefore about the political and religious issues of his time. But yeah most of the mentions of his friends were rather not so intriguing, except when their story or monologues were good.
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Post by jimmalone on Aug 15, 2020 13:35:13 GMT
Ivo Andric - The Bridge on the Drina
Another classic to cross of from my Must read list. I'm halfway through and it's a fine read, historically and ethno-culturally interesting.
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