What are you reading?

Tallyfire said:
I just started the audiobook version of Lincoln in the Bardo. This book is crazy. It has 166 narrators!

I love the writing and the concept but I'm not sure I'll continue listening to it. It feels like whiplash every ten seconds.
Click to expand...

That sounds ... odd. </typically British understatement, stiff upper lip and all that>

Most books I've read (and most stories I've written) have only one narrator -- either camera-POV or first-person-narrative. :) I've read a few, and written one, with two MCs (Main Characters) -- but reading such books can be tricky, and writing one takes a lot of planning, exactly to avoid whiplash like that.

I can't even imagine so many narrators. It sounds bonkers.
 
Rath Darkblade said:
I can't even imagine so many narrators. It sounds bonkers.
Click to expand...
It's so bonkers that the author uploaded a video on Youtube titled "George Saunders Explains How To Read Lincoln In The Bardo." Even the paper version is confusing.

It's not like it's an unknown book, though. It won the Man Booker prize.

I have stopped listening because I wasn't in the mood for something that heavy, but now I miss the crazy narration and the characters. Three hours in, I was getting the hang of it.
 
After watching the old Disney adaptation from 1949, I decided to read “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”. I find it really interesting that the Headless Horseman became such an enduring icon given his brief appearance in an already short story.
 
I'm reading "The Limits of Genius" by Katie Spalding ... which is all about the fine line between being a genius and being a lucky (but sometimes very stupid) person. Lots of fun, highly recommended.
 
I'm finally finishing the Kingsbridge series with The Evening and the Morning. Nobody can accuse Ken Follett of writing outstanding prose; it's neat and tidy, prone to modernisms and distinctly readable, but he's not really got the knack of turning a phrase. There's nothing 'well-crafted' on a sentence level about his work. However, the man's a storyteller par excellence. He draws you in with character and story quickly, and before you know it, you're hooked. This one's no different. 40 pages, in two POV characters established along with many of the secondary cast. I can already tell where it's going, who the villain will be, who will be conflicted, who will be the hero of the whole thing, and I already have my sympathies and hatreds I'll carry through the next 880 pages. It's a laudable skill.
 
I continued my stroll through classic horror with The Were-Wolf by Clemence Housman.

Recently, I noticed there doesn’t seem to be a defining work of literature for werewolves the way Dracula is for vampires or Frankenstein is for mad science and artificial life, but this one was an enjoyable read deserving of the same notoriety. Also very interesting to find some old-time horror with a villainess; the only other example that comes to mind is Carmilla.

I’d love to see an adaptation raise its notoriety.
 
Started an ARC I picked up at a booksellers conference 3 weeks ago: When Tomorrow Burns by Tae Keller. It is Middle grade contemporary. I picked it up because she was a pleasant, interesting person. Had no idea until just now that she is also a Newberry Award winner.
 
X Equestris said:
I noticed there doesn’t seem to be a defining work of literature for werewolves the way Dracula is for vampires or Frankenstein is for mad science and artificial life,
Click to expand...
Isn't it this book you're talking of? Come to think of it IDK either, would have gone with Jekyll and Hyde. Maybe somebody knows of an earlier work with werewolves.


I took a break from my PKD megaread and just finished Cormack McCarthy's Outer Dark. In general, I like his stuff and the way he writes, but this one, I can't see its point. It's just a series of god awful events.
 
DLC said:
I took a break from my PKD megaread and just finished Cormack McCarthy's Outer Dark. In general, I like his stuff and the way he writes, but this one, I can't see its point. It's just a series of god awful events.
Click to expand...
That's how I felt about Blood Meridian. I enjoyed The Road, but the former just left me cold. I didn't dislike the characters, I could muster no feeling either way for any of them (and don't remember a single fact about the book other than that at this point), so I just stopped reading it about a third of the way through. I know the old forum considered Mr. McCarthy to be a god made literary flesh, but he just doesn't do it that well for my tastes.
 
DLC said:
Isn't it this book you're talking of? Come to think of it IDK either, would have gone with Jekyll and Hyde. Maybe somebody knows of an earlier work with werewolves.


I took a break from my PKD megaread and just finished Cormack McCarthy's Outer Dark. In general, I like his stuff and the way he writes, but this one, I can't see its point. It's just a series of god awful events.
Click to expand...

Iain Aschendale said:
That's how I felt about Blood Meridian. I enjoyed The Road, but the former just left me cold. I didn't dislike the characters, I could muster no feeling either way for any of them (and don't remember a single fact about the book other than that at this point), so I just stopped reading it about a third of the way through. I know the old forum considered Mr. McCarthy to be a god made literary flesh, but he just doesn't do it that well for my tastes.
Click to expand...
Just a matter of how you prefer to read about dead babies. Cormac offers trim levels!
 
Funny enough, I liked Blood Meridian. The only book of his I'm yet to read is The Orchard Keeper.
 
DLC said:
Isn't it this book you're talking of? Come to think of it IDK either, would have gone with Jekyll and Hyde. Maybe somebody knows of an earlier work with werewolves.
Click to expand...
You’re referring to The Were-Wolf? I wouldn’t consider it defining in the style of Dracula because it’s fairly obscure and doesn’t seem to have influenced later depictions of werewolves much if at all. Hardly anyone would recognize the name White Fell. You don’t see people fighting werewolves by sprinkling their paws with holy water, and modern werewolves favor the wolf-man hybrid form over the folkloric wolf form.

Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is probably the closest fit, since it hits the same themes, but of course it’s not a literal werewolf story.

If we broadened the scope to all media rather than just literature, I’d say it’s The Wolf Man from back in 1941.
 
Where there's wolves there's legends of people turning into them. They were probably just what we'd call serial killers.
 
DLC said:
Funny enough, I liked Blood Meridian. The only book of his I'm yet to read is The Orchard Keeper.
Click to expand...
Did you read The Passenger? Came out right before he died. It was... weird. Even by his standards.
 
Iain Aschendale said:
I didn't dislike the characters, I could muster no feeling either way for any of them
Click to expand...
I just read The Road and that pretty much sums up how I felt. No connection to the characters whatsoever until the final scene
where the father died and the boy has to carry on
I think the language he uses is distancing, calling them the man and the boy throughout, and describing their feelings and reactions rather than putting the reader more deeply inside their heads. It's a shame because I really wanted to like this book.

Also just finished The Handmaid's Tale which was excellent. So much tension throughout, and frighteningly plausible world building. I found out that she wrote a sequel that answers what happened to the main character, but I'm not sure I want to read it -- sometimes it feels better to not know, you know?

Currently reading The Night Circus.
 
defaux said:
Also just finished The Handmaid's Tale which was excellent. So much tension throughout, and frighteningly plausible world building. I found out that she wrote a sequel that answers what happened to the main character, but I'm not sure I want to read it -- sometimes it feels better to not know, you know?
Click to expand...
I preferred the sequel, The Testaments, to the original novel. It's far more than "What happened to Offred?"
 
Damn, people have different opinions on books. I think that handmaid's tale is absurd waffling bullshit and Blood Meridian a masterpiece.
 
The Handmaid's Tale definitely wasn't my favorite of Margaret Atwood's books, though I don't put it in the absurd waffling bullshit category, either. The Robber Bride is one of hers that I've read repeatedly.
 
DLC said:
Damn, people have different opinions on books. I think that handmaid's tale is absurd waffling bullshit and Blood Meridian a masterpiece.
Click to expand...
It's true, and it changes over time. I went through a period of reading a lot the likes of Tom Clancy, David Baldacci, Lee Childs etc. and thoroughly enjoyed them. Yet if I read one now, I find it formulaic and predictable -- the genre has largely lost its mystique for me. 10 years ago I would never have read Atwood, Ishiguro, or others that are quickly becoming my favourites.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top