I don't know what the heck to call this thread!

[Expletive Deleted]

The Company by K.J. Parker.

I usually like Parker's non-fantastic fantasies (The Folding Knife, The Hammer, the "Engineer" trilogy), but this one didn't do much for me. The plot is on rails towards a more-or-less inevitable ending and the way Parker slowly doles out the characters' backstories, a device that usually works well for him or her (Parker is pseudonymous), just conceals how flat and thin they really are.

The book's about four veterans, war heroes, who've been out of the army for a decade and are drifting unhappily through life. Their beloved commanding officer comes back and talks them all into a plan to start a small colony on an island he's found and effectively stolen from the army. They buy a ship, hire a crew, and set sail. Things go wrong more or less from the start, until they find that the island is home to a huge gold strike. Then the real trouble starts, as greed and paranoia start to set in and old slights (via those aforementioned backstories) take on new weight.

[CaptainCanada]

The Captive Mind by Czeslaw Milosz

My fiftieth Nobel Laureate (though I'm still four away from fully 50%)! Milosz was a Polish poet/author awarded the Prize in 1981, and this is his major nonfiction work, a "classic of anti-Stalinism". Much like Lord Russell's The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism, this is very interesting from an historical perspective as much as a philosophical one; Milosz spends a good deal of time recounting the ways in which intellectuals and artists acclimatize themselves to a totalitarian state, and also provides a number of biographies of fellow Polish authors and the myriad ways they fell in with Stalinism.

[dan bailey]

"Everybody Talks About the Weather...We Don't" by Ulrike Meinhof

As a bit of a Red Army Faction obsessive, I clearly need to buy this. Didn't even know it existed.

*hangs head in shame*

[dan bailey]

UBIK's one of my favorite books. It's one of the few that made me feel like reality was falling out from under me.

I'd read 5 of his novels previously, but my first real immersion into PKD came during the summer after I graduated from high school, when I was recovering from a really taxing bout with Crohn's disease & didn't feel like doing much besides reading (not that I ever felt like doing much besides reading, but at least now I had a really good excuse). Within a matter of probably a couple of weeks I'd wolfed down Counter-Clock World, The Crack in Space, The World Jones Made, Solar Lottery, The Game-Players of Titan, Galactic Pot-Healer, Ubik, Now Wait for Last Year, Eye in the Sky & Dr. Bloodmoney, along with probably at least The Preserving Machine & maybe The Best of Philip K. Dick as well.

I've never been the same. Neither has my grasp on reality.

[Libaax]

I finished reading Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll


I didnt read this a kid so i didnt have to see it with new eyes as an adult. My impression is that its both a mad, fun story and it is also complex one for a novel aimed at children. A story whose literary quality both kids and adult can enjoy.

I have more respect for Carroll's writing ability than i expected and i like how he didnt look down on the reader. Some books aimed at kids look down at them, oversimplify things. I have not even see a film based on this novel so everything was fresh, new to me. Other than knowing the characters was classic ones that appear in many other stories. I know the Mad Hatter from Batman comics as a villain. The scene with Alice, March Hare, the Hatter was one my fav parts of the novel. There were also some lovely poetry qouted in the novel and im not surprised to find after a quick search that Carroll was a poet.

Some 1800s books are important,rated in their times and become classics but doesnt have the same effect,the writing and storytelling ability centuries later to be true literary classic imo. This is novel is not one of those and its a very fine classic.

[CaptainCanada]

Snow Country by Kawabata Yasunari

This is the second Kawabata novel I've read, and, from what I'm told, it's his most famous. It's a nice little story, and he has a very poetic sense for visuals, but I sort of feel like I don't know enough about traditional Japanese culture to get the maximum out of his work.

[Lee Kaye]

I finished reading Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll


I didnt read this a kid so i didnt have to see it with new eyes as an adult. My impression is that its both a mad, fun story and it is also complex one for a novel aimed at children. A story whose literary quality both kids and adult can enjoy.

I have more respect for Carroll's writing ability than i expected and i like how he didnt look down on the reader. Some books aimed at kids look down at them, oversimplify things. I have not even see a film based on this novel so everything was fresh, new to me. Other than knowing the characters was classic ones that appear in many other stories. I know the Mad Hatter from Batman comics as a villain. The scene with Alice, March Hare, the Hatter was one my fav parts of the novel. There were also some lovely poetry qouted in the novel and im not surprised to find after a quick search that Carroll was a poet.

Some 1800s books are important,rated in their times and become classics but doesnt have the same effect,the writing and storytelling ability centuries later to be true literary classic imo. This is novel is not one of those and its a very fine classic.

They have just featured that in SFX, and like you I have never read it, but it's hard not to be aware of many things about it. I will read it soon I think.

[clayholio]

Just finished a pair of musician autobiographies.

"The Book of Drugs" - Mike Doughty. This one lives up to it's name and then some. If you enjoyed Soul Coughing's music, you might also find it hard to read about how badly they all got along (and what a wreck Doughty was during that time span). But it's a very open book, and Doughty doesn't seem to try to gloss over much of anything. It's well-written, but it's not a pleasant ride.

"The Last Holiday: A Memoir" - Gil Scott-Heron. This is pretty much the opposite, in that a lot of the low points of Scott-Heron's life aren't addressed at all. It's just not that kind of book. Instead, there's quite a bit about his education, and Stevie Wonder's push to get Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday to be a national holiday. A fascinating read, even if it doesn't address a lot of the things you might expect he'd address in a book.

[Slam_Bradley]

Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World by Dan Koeppel.

The first half to two-thirds of this book was quite good. It dealt with the history of the banana, its travels around the globe and its introduction to the West and the political ramifications of its growth in Latin America. It was even interesting to find that the banana we eat, the Cavendish, is not the same banana that our Grandparents ate, the Gros Michel. The last third or so of the book, however, deals with the danger to current banana crops of blight and the quest for a new banana. That left me cold.

I can say that I know more than I ever expected to know about bananas.

[Serik]

Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World by Dan Koeppel.

The first half to two-thirds of this book was quite good. It dealt with the history of the banana, its travels around the globe and its introduction to the West and the political ramifications of its growth in Latin America. It was even interesting to find that the banana we eat, the Cavendish, is not the same banana that our Grandparents ate, the Gros Michel. The last third or so of the book, however, deals with the danger to current banana crops of blight and the quest for a new banana. That left me cold.

I can say that I know more than I ever expected to know about bananas.

That book's on my reading list for the year. Though I don't understand why the last part of the book left you cold -- the efforts to save the Cavendish sound like the most interesting part. (I read an essay about it last year; an eccentric plant breeder in the tropics and a determined millionaire Australian farmer are among the many folks trying to create a blight-resistant, commercially-viable replacement.)

Then again bananas make my throat itch, so screw 'em. :)

[Deathstroke]

I finished reading Sara Paretsky's mystery novel Hardball the other day.

[Puma]

Just finished the Hunger Games trilogy. Very well done for a YA series. I had stayed away from it thinking it would be another Twilight bad romance or Uglies rip-off but it is well written, with good characters, and is a terrifying blend of ancient Roman and modern society.

[jesse_custer]

First, I finished The Hunger Games (just the first book). Sometimes the exposition kills the pacing/suspense, but overall, the book moves fairly well. I really like its commentary on reality television, but I do wish the book hadn't deliberately avoided moral dilemmas. The strongest part of the book is the "relationship" between Katniss and Peeta. I might check out the second book, but I'm looking forward to the movie, as I expect it to cut out some of the exposition and other weaker parts of the book.

Second, I read Dirty Work by Larry Brown. It's about two Vietnam veterans in a hospital. One is a black man who lost all his limbs, the other is a white man whose face was sent to hell and back. An incredibly powerful novel that's easy to read. The climax sells the idea that life is stranger than fiction - even though this story is fiction, it seems real. Anyone who likes Hemingway, Faulkner, McCarthy, or just great literature should check this out.

[Libaax]

A Princess of Mars by ERB

I have read the first 100 or so pages of the novel just now and i have hard time seeing why anyone would found the writing to be dated.

Sure its old school late 1800s classic adventure writing but im enjoying the prose as a tool for sword and planet adventure. John Carter is a convincing narrator,hero. He talks like a gentleman but he is a complete badass. The way ERB writes about the different cultures of Mars takes you there so vividly.

[Slam_Bradley]

A Princess of Mars by ERB

I have read the first 100 or so pages of the novel just now and i have hard time seeing why anyone would found the writing to be dated.

Sure its old school late 1800s classic adventure writing but im enjoying the prose as a tool for sword and planet adventure. John Carter is a convincing narrator,hero. He talks like a gentleman but he is a complete badass. The way ERB writes about the different cultures of Mars takes you there so vividly.

I find Burroughs very easy to read. Much easier than a number of his contemporaries. And light years easier than folks who were writing even twenty years earlier.