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Cyn Greythorne posted:The Iron Council by China Meiville. I found it difficult to enjoy, mostly because it lacked the smooth narrative flow of Perdido Street Station and The Scar, both by the same author. The spartan writing style was simply not engaging, though, as usual, Meiville presented some very interesting ideas. I almost hesitate to begin the Kraken for fear that it will be more life the Iron Council and less like The Scar. I enjoyed Kraken but I've only read that and Railsea so far so I can't really compare it to anything else he's written. It's only 400ish pages so not too long.
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Nov 7, 2013 12:08
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Right now for me it's Woken Furies by Richard K Morgan. I liked the first two books, Altered Carbon and Broken Angels, and I actually like this one, too! But for some reason, no matter how much I read it I never seem to get far. It doesn't look like a long book, Amazon says like 400ish pages print, but it's taking so long to get to the end I just keep giving up on it. It doesn't help that there's two different plot lines, minimum, so it feels really disjointed.
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Nov 7, 2013 20:22
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Fremry posted:The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean. I thought, "I love non-fiction, chemistry and interesting stories back stories to scientific discoveries." I got about halfway through it before I just completely lost interest in it. Honestly, the science is dumbed down to the point of idiocy and he tries to cram in as many elements as possible which means he can only spend a frustratingly short amount of time on each one. Sadly Chemistry is severely lacking when it comes to popular science books, especially when compared to physics and biology. I recommend The Alchemy of Air by Thomas Hager if you haven't read it already. It's about the Haber-Bosch process and Haber's sad quest to be accepted as a True GermanTM. Crew Expendable fucked around with this message at 20:59 on Nov 7, 2013 |
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Nov 7, 2013 20:38
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Night Film by Marisha Pessl. I just couldn't continue with it. I was lured in by the design and novelty of 'putting' web sites into the book, but it couldn't make up for a piss poor narrative and an author who seemed to change her mind about what sort of book she was writing every seven pages.
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Nov 8, 2013 01:15
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I liked Forgotten Beasts of Eld by Patricia McKillip so checked out another one of her books, the Riddlemaster of Hed. While it had some interesting bits, the main character was super timid and whiny - made it halfway through but just couldn't continue. Jackard fucked around with this message at 06:11 on Nov 10, 2013 |
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Nov 10, 2013 06:08
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I could never finish Dune by Frank Herbert. I heard nothing but the best reviews for that book, which really surprised me, because I found a lot of the characters to be underdeveloped and generally uninteresting, as well as the narrative of the story could get confusing at times. I don't like the writing style of Stephen King for that same reason. I hate when the author jumps around perspectives of other characters with no warning, seeming in the same paragraph. I don't want to have to reread the same poo poo two or three times to figure out whose thoughts I am reading, ya know?
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Nov 10, 2013 07:06
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Far Country by Peter Rice. It was so terrible that I couldn't even get to the alien bird that got all the fan boys up in arms. After sixteen pages with the author using 'kilograms per square centimeter' as a unit of force and entire ships depressurizing due to a single puncture, I just had to stop. I dropped Neverwinter halfway through for something more interesting. It's been over a year, haven't even considered opening it back up.
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Nov 11, 2013 00:14
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Krypsis posted:I could never finish Dune by Frank Herbert. I heard nothing but the best reviews for that book, which really surprised me, because I found a lot of the characters to be underdeveloped and generally uninteresting, as well as the narrative of the story could get confusing at times. I don't like the writing style of Stephen King for that same reason. I hate when the author jumps around perspectives of other characters with no warning, seeming in the same paragraph. I don't want to have to reread the same poo poo two or three times to figure out whose thoughts I am reading, ya know? I agree with you. Dune is meant to be a 'must read' but I just had the feeling of 'is this it?' If I had been given it with no knowledge of the title, I would've thought it was just generic old sci fi.
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Nov 11, 2013 19:35
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My dad just got that JJ Abrams/Doug Dorst book S, and I really doubt I'll be able to get through it. I like the idea of two people communicating and telling another story in a book through margin scribbles and putting things in the book like postcards, but it's just too busy looking to read and I already want to punch the grad student in the face because he sounds like a dick. I just finished the forward. Good concept but boy howdy do I hope the execution gets better.
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Nov 26, 2013 19:28
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Just borrowed Eats, Shoots and Leaves and tried to read it tonight. Couldn't do it. Aside from the British style and expressions - which I thought would be subtle enough to overlook - there are just too many passages that seem like they're written by an overcaffeinated college student (ex: the author vows to wreak pretty extraordinary violence on people who don't follow proper punctuation rules.) Style aside, I agree with a review that said this book is a 20-page paper puffed up into a book. There's just not enough material placed consistently enough for it to be worth the read.
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Nov 28, 2013 06:29
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Ugly In The Morning posted:My dad just got that JJ Abrams/Doug Dorst book S, and I really doubt I'll be able to get through it. I like the idea of two people communicating and telling another story in a book through margin scribbles and putting things in the book like postcards, but it's just too busy looking to read and I already want to punch the grad student in the face because he sounds like a dick. I've been meaning to pick it up myself but then again House of Leaves is one of the few books I've never managed to finish. I didn't find any of the prose engaging enough to want to work with the format so I just returned it to the library. I'd have to actually buy S. so I'm not sure if it's worth it yet.
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Nov 28, 2013 19:47
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No More Toast posted:I've been meaning to pick it up myself but then again House of Leaves is one of the few books I've never managed to finish. I didn't find any of the prose engaging enough to want to work with the format so I just returned it to the library. I'd have to actually buy S. so I'm not sure if it's worth it yet. I love the concept of House of Leaves and it bothers me a lot that the actual quality of the writing is (in my opinion) too poor to make it a worthwhile reading experience.
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Nov 29, 2013 16:18
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Lord Foul's Bane, Stephen R. Donaldson. If you want a blander stock fantasy with a shittier hero than what you see in Terry Goodkind stories, this is it. It's also the first of a whole series of books in his bargain bin Tolkien setting that Steve got to publish, I'm guessing thanks to a deal he made with Satan.
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Dec 2, 2013 00:20
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Don Quixote, what an awful repetitive mess.
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Dec 2, 2013 02:20
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A Question of Power, by Bessie Head. It involves a woman trying to recover from a mental break, and deals with race and gender in Africa. I just found it incredibly dull and unrelatable. Then again, I read half of it in college during a semester when I was reading two novels a week for classes, so that might have had something to do with it.
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Dec 2, 2013 04:10
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Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? left me ... crestfallen? Disappointed? I not sure how to exactly put it into words, but after a tense book, with major character development, well paced action and drama, throwing it all away with a (maybe) literal deus ex machina seems really unsatisfying and a cop out. Plus the themes in the ending really clash with the themes in the beginning, or at least my interpretation of them. Lamb: The Gospel according to Biff, Christ Childhood Pal was a humorous romp with the occasional drama and action scene but it blended really well and was really, really enjoyable. However, given the ending is not even a spoiler, it's really draining to go from wacky, lighthearted fun, to the crucifixion, that I never really completed it. I just can't do it. Atlas Shrugged was a just a mess of everything Ayn Rand was thinking at the time while writing it. The Fountainhead was good (although some parts, namely the gratuitous rape scene, can be skipped entirely) and looking back, it was kind of the start of my questioning of society. At it's best, it was like a good airport novel, somewhere comfortably between light and heavy without too much preaching (although that is really debatable, preferably somewhere else) and at it worst, it was the tabloids, nothing (except the rape scene) too shocking or gossipy. Atlas Shrugged was written like Ayn Rand wanted to kill people with it. The random dicking over of some poor rear end in a top hat plus characters that exist entirely on hating the main characters were like sand paper. Gone was the social commentary and it was replaced with Ayn Rand vomiting it all up right in front of you.
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Dec 10, 2013 02:52
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Buller posted:Don Quixote, what an awful repetitive mess. Yeah the original is a very long slog. There's also some dire translations that take a lot of the whimsy out of the text which makes it worse to read.
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Dec 10, 2013 02:54
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A few months ago I read the first hundred or so pages to One Hundred Years of Solitude and then put it down. I was enamored by the whimsical prose and the really nice characterization, but honestly I was bored to tears. I think this is mostly because I couldn't detect any overarching plot? Is there a consistent narrative that runs through the novel, or is this it? Just little vignettes of these peoples lives, loosely connected to one another? I consider myself a pretty patient reader, but this one just didn't do it for me.
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Dec 11, 2013 04:34
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There's a definite plot - it's all about the accelerating pace of change. While time in the story is cyclical in a way, the cycles aren't purely repetitive: there's an acceleration and an unhinging due to historical forces. So the beginning of the story's beautiful and meandering and then as it goes things start to...come apart a bit. Start practicing how to tell apart a billion characters with the same name, though!
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Dec 11, 2013 04:59
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Ugly In The Morning posted:My dad just got that JJ Abrams/Doug Dorst book S, and I really doubt I'll be able to get through it. I like the idea of two people communicating and telling another story in a book through margin scribbles and putting things in the book like postcards, but it's just too busy looking to read and I already want to punch the grad student in the face because he sounds like a dick. Funny, I just started this on the recommendation from a friend after describing House of Leaves and I have to agree that it seems "too busy". I can't believe I'm saying this but I think House Of Leaves is more readable by being less literal (no scribbles in the margins and documents falling out of the book) about the multinarrative. I'm not sure I'll be able to get through it. It's a cute idea but I'm never really sure what I should be reading (the side notes? The documents falling out of the book? The actual narrative?) but most of all it's just too visually busy to focus on anything. Snuffman fucked around with this message at 01:06 on Dec 12, 2013 |
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Dec 12, 2013 01:03
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RunningIntoWalls posted:
As weird as this is going to sound, it does get better. It doesn't end on the crucifixion. Obviously that is a pretty big piece of the latter part of the book, but it does end on a more  note. Kinda hard to NOT end on a higher note than "We nailed your best friend to a big hunk of wood after beating the poo poo out of him", but it's pretty good. The actual crucifixion isn't drawn out (thankfully).
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Dec 12, 2013 01:36
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Snuffman posted:
Yep, exactly. I only made it through the forward and chapter one before deciding to drop it. They went overboard on the concept and made it something that was stressful to read, and the actual story was only sort of ok, so I didn't feel any need to keep reading and try to get used to it.
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Dec 12, 2013 05:20
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:As weird as this is going to sound, it does get better. It doesn't end on the crucifixion. Obviously that is a pretty big piece of the latter part of the book, but it does end on a more Thanks for that. Maybe now I can finish it.
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Dec 13, 2013 23:40
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Ugly In The Morning posted:Right now for me it's Woken Furies by Richard K Morgan. I liked the first two books, Altered Carbon and Broken Angels, and I actually like this one, too! But for some reason, no matter how much I read it I never seem to get far. It doesn't look like a long book, Amazon says like 400ish pages print, but it's taking so long to get to the end I just keep giving up on it. It doesn't help that there's two different plot lines, minimum, so it feels really disjointed. I didn't like the books you mentioned that much but I loved his more recent A Land Fit for Heroes. Check them out. The worldbuilding is much better and he manages to create characters that feel somewhat realistic, rather than bland protagonists that can gently caress everything that moves.
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Dec 14, 2013 17:51
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I might get criticised for this but I really can't finish Jack Kerouac's On the Road. I know that it's meant to be a classic, and was very different for its time but I just can't stand any of the characters. The story flits between different people all the time, and the writer doesn't seem to do anything - he just seems to be viewing Dean's activities with a sense of boredom.
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Dec 15, 2013 11:55
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Greyish Orange posted:I might get criticised for this but I really can't finish Jack Kerouac's On the Road. I know that it's meant to be a classic, and was very different for its time but I just can't stand any of the characters. The story flits between different people all the time, and the writer doesn't seem to do anything - he just seems to be viewing Dean's activities with a sense of boredom. Actually I don't think you're in the minority here. Despite being hailed as a classic every single person I've ever met who has read this book agrees it's boring and self-indulgent, myself included. I finished it but it was such a slog.
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Dec 15, 2013 17:52
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Kerouac sucks. Burroughs is the superior Beat.
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Dec 15, 2013 18:46
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I saw the trailer for Divergent and thought "Hmm, I like dystopias, and I liked Hunger Games, I should see if the book is any good." Technically I finished it, but I did it while gagging and skimming... She constantly whines about how lovely she is all the time while everyone stands back and stares in awe and she can't figure out why, and also that really hot boy likes her and she doesn't know why because she's so ugly but gosh she hopes she will see him again soon because he makes her feel weird and she kind of likes it but who is she kidding no one would ever like her she's awful at everything *scores first place at everything* And then they kissed but the next morning at breakfast he ignored her and she was so hurt and why is he ignoring her she thought he liked her?!?!? Who is she kidding no one could like her he must hate her. There couldn't possibly be ANY other reason for him to not want everyone to know he is madly in love with her. Well fine then she hates HIM too, HMPH. Oh wait he was ignoring her because he's the god drat leader and there might be accusations of bias gosh what a completely obvious reason why didn't she see it before. He's soooo smart to think of that she loves him sooooo much more now.  Every character was one-dimensional, nevermind the complete lack of worldbuilding in what should be a dystopian world, where worldbuilding is usually the best part... It's my fault for reading Young Adult fiction I guess, but I feel like YA shouldn't be synonymous with "Intelligence Insulting"
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Dec 15, 2013 18:46
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Tagra posted:It's my fault for reading Young Adult fiction I guess, but I feel like YA shouldn't be synonymous with "Intelligence Insulting" I haven't read it but I recall that she said she made the intelligent faction the bad guys because she was upset at a professor in one of her classes that said some bad things about popular fiction (I forget if it was popular genre fiction or just popular fiction in general, but I guess that doesn't really matter in this anecdote).
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Dec 15, 2013 18:54
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Srice posted:I haven't read it but I recall that she said she made the intelligent faction the bad guys because she was upset at a professor in one of her classes that said some bad things about popular fiction (I forget if it was popular genre fiction or just popular fiction in general, but I guess that doesn't really matter in this anecdote). Haha. Yeah, it kind of is your own fault, Tagra. I'm not judging though, sometimes you just want lighter reading, even if there's a good chance that it'll be retarded. I've willingly read the Da Vinci Code myself.
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Dec 15, 2013 18:58
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e: double post
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Dec 15, 2013 18:58
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Srice posted:I haven't read it but I recall that she said she made the intelligent faction the bad guys because she was upset at a professor in one of her classes that said some bad things about popular fiction (I forget if it was popular genre fiction or just popular fiction in general, but I guess that doesn't really matter in this anecdote). We laugh, but she's going to make mad cash off the movie deal simply because she wrote in the correct popular-genre-of-the-week. And any time someone attempts to help her improve her writing she will be all "How many movies have been made from your books?" 
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Dec 15, 2013 19:00
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electricsugar posted:Actually I don't think you're in the minority here. There's a reason Capote criticized it as, "That's not writing, that's typing." Personally, I can't finish Blood Meridian. It's not that it's a bad book, but it's just horrible people doing horrible things over and over again, so I get bored and go read something else.
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Dec 16, 2013 00:21
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thrakkorzog posted:Personally, I can't finish Blood Meridian. It's not that it's a bad book, but it's just horrible people doing horrible things over and over again, so I get bored and go read something else. E: It took me at least 4 tries to get through it, myself, because I kept getting stymied by that middle section, but it's absolutely worth finishing.
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Dec 16, 2013 15:10
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Neurosis posted:that can gently caress everything that moves. This is another annoying part of Woken Furies. It feels like every 50 pages there's another goddamn awkward sex scene. Cut that poo poo out!
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Dec 16, 2013 16:45
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Greyish Orange posted:I might get criticised for this but I really can't finish Jack Kerouac's On the Road. I know that it's meant to be a classic, and was very different for its time but I just can't stand any of the characters. The story flits between different people all the time, and the writer doesn't seem to do anything - he just seems to be viewing Dean's activities with a sense of boredom. I found reading the "original scroll" version of On the Road a lot better than the neatly edited and paragraphed and name altered version that was properly published back in the 50s. Something about the change in format, additional swearing, real names, and the sheer urgency of the wall of text made it read a lot more like a somewhat crazy, desperate, and unreliable narrator trying to convince himself not to commit suicide, and less like a whiny teenager trying to convince himself that he's so much cooler than everyone else. The introductions and background essays were pretty illuminating and interesting also. It doesn't alter the fact that it's about a sexist douche and his "too cool" friend bumming around the country writing poetry that's "really good! you should get it published!" while treating their wives like poo poo and bumping into various "colourful characters", many of whom overstay their welcomes. I hated the original for the exact reasons you described, but loved the scroll for the same reason I loved Ellis' American Psycho and Chester Brown's Paying For It, as character pieces about hosed up individuals who can't step outside themselves, but I'll be the first to admit that not everyone gets that same kind of enjoyment. Toph Bei Fong fucked around with this message at 02:32 on Dec 17, 2013 |
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Dec 17, 2013 02:29
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Rabbit Hill posted:This is absolutely true for the middle 50% of the book. But the last 25% is so fantastic it redeems everything you've just slogged through, 100 times over. The ending is so good I couldn't read anything for weeks after finishing, because what else could compare? I slogged through, and was just glad it was over in the end. I'm probably in the minority, though, and almost certainly not the book's target audience.
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Dec 17, 2013 03:13
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I tried to start Flashman after hearing good things about it here. I just find the main character entirely too insufferable to tolerate.
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Dec 18, 2013 15:58
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electricsugar posted:A few months ago I read the first hundred or so pages to One Hundred Years of Solitude and then put it down. I read this in class, and someone in the discussion group said "you really have to think of the town as the main character of the book" and suddenly it all made a lot more sense.
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Dec 18, 2013 16:48
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Just dropped Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. There are certain phrases in it that were pretty (though I won't ever forgive Joyce for "ineluctable modality of the visible"), and the table chat and sermon were both enjoyable parts to read, but good God is Dedalus a boring character. Unfortunately, I suppose undercutting him in exchange for more outward observation would defeat the purpose of the book.  I wonder if I'm in the minority with my opinion of Joyce? I'll get around to Ulysses eventually because, well, it's Ulysses, and even Finnegans Wake ought to at least be educational, but Portrait just isn't doing anything for me.
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Dec 20, 2013 22:37
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