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Nicholas Sparks might be getting a divorce 
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Jan 7, 2015 01:10
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Today I am reading 5-star reviews of Mein Kampf on Goodreads  quote:Reading this book gave me an in-depth look into Hitler's early years and the events which led up to his forming the Nazi party. There were reasons why Germany followed this man and other than his views on race, I found myself agreeing with much of what he wrote. Even though I don't agree with his racial premises, I can fully understand how he and others developed these views. Our World History classes in high school and college fail miserably to paint an accurate picture of events and the mindset in Europe leading up to World War 1 and years following. Very little is taught on the onslaught of Marxism, the Progressive Movement, Socialism and the Jewish monopoly of International Finance and Trade Unions and the role these groups played in shaping historical events. quote:After I learned about Adolf Hitler and finally got past the lies told about the man I started to realize that his intentions and motives were not to take over the world. He was trying to protect White Christian Germany from being destroyed by the internal jewish parasite eating away at Germany’s well being. I discovered his book “Mein Kampf” and decides to put my time into reading it. After I managed to find Mein Kampf in a public library I was instantly drawn into this beautifully composed ideology of Eugenic nationalism. Experiencing Mein Kampf has changed me from being conservative Robert Brandt into Third Position Robert Brandt. Reading Mein Kampf was like finding a part of me, hidden and suppressed because of what the public school system taught me as a child. I could not put this book down. I kept it in my bag wherever I went and was fascinated by it’s pure genius and lyrical beauty. How could the world not only ignore Mein Kampf but also curse it and outcast such a masterpiece and pretend it was a plan to conquer the world. When it was the obvious and rational plan to save the world. Had no one read it I wondered? Just saying it was the work of an evil man. How could sensible people just attack this book without even knowing anything about it! I could see why the Jews would hate and curse it, but why my own people? quote:I completely agree with his non pacifist ideas, as we know nothing in world has achieved with pacifist non violence or so called AHIMSA. If you have a right to fight, you should with nail and teeth. This principle is worth considering present scenario of India, where politicians and bureaucrats prostitutes Mother India, to increase their bank balance. I would say nothing can be done with Satyagraha or non violence strikes, a generation needs to be awaken to fight with patriotic spirit for their Mother. If I had a ability to curse, I would have cursed Gandhi for filling young Indians mind with stupid non violence theories!!. quote:I love NSDAP, no matter other said.
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Jan 7, 2015 02:24
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Hedrigall posted:Today I am reading 5-star reviews of Mein Kampf on Goodreads The Holocaust: Just a little bit too harsh
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Jan 7, 2015 03:21
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I'm a few days late on my summary of my reading for the year, but I read 17 books unrelated to my school this year, which I feel isn't too bad for a full time student who also works. Best: The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power. This book was loving exceptional, it was entertaining and so informative. Rarely a day passes that I don't think back to it for some reason or another. Worst: Probably House of Leaves. I have no idea why, but man did this book not entertain me at all. It was just dull. Longest: I read the whole A Song of Fire and Ice this summer, so that was 5 books of about ~1000 pages each. The Prize, as described above, is around 900 as well, and isn't nearly as quick of a read as fantasy. Regrets: Probably reading the whole ASOIAF series, when there were so many other things I'd rather have read during that time spent. It turns out it's very similar to the TV Show, who knew. Not necessarily bad books, just not worth the sheer investment of reading ~5000 pages.
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Jan 7, 2015 05:33
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First time here in a while, and I see we're wrapping up the year.. Books read: 38. Not all that proud of this. I've been tracking what I've read in a spreadsheet for the past few years, and every annual sheet has been getting shorter. Best: Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo. Believe the hype. Chevallier, Fear. Probably the greatest war memoir I've read; the NYRB imprint has never steered me wrong. McCarthy, Suttree. Ledgard, Submergence. Worst: Gone Girl. Far from the worst pop-fic I've read, but it's the closest I came to tossing a book aside. Ruocco, Another Governess/The Least Blacksmith. Experimental fiction is a gamble. Nothing worth making GBS threads on, but it wasn't my cup of tea. Longest: The Count, 1243. That and Suttree took up some sizable swaths of the year. Regrets: None, really. Netflix might apply here. Anyway, back to business. The Millions' fantastic biannual preview is up: http://www.themillions.com/2015/01/most-anticipated-the-great-2015-book-preview.html I haven't combed through the whole thing yet (I tend to do that when it hits a new month), but right now I'm looking forward to Miranda July next week and Tom McCarthy next month.
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Jan 7, 2015 23:02
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The Millions  My reading queue always grows quite a bit with the books I find there.
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Jan 8, 2015 02:46
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Read 67 books this year, bought probably over 100 (and that with a - luckily mostly virtual now - stack of 400-500 books). Best was the re-read of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series, which was a good third of all books read this year. Worst was Crichton's Sphere, which I read for the GiantBomb book podcast on it. Dated, misogynist and hilariously dated Yellow Peril xenophobia versus the Japanese ("They don't think like us!"). Biggest regret: Not nearly as many non-fiction books read as planned.
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Jan 8, 2015 10:37
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Humidity got to my books, now the pages are wavy, I thought of laying some weights on it to straighten them out. Does it work?
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Jan 9, 2015 10:43
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Should do a bit of good. It's that or ironing the pages.
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Jan 9, 2015 14:02
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I bought a random book the other day, The Passive Vampire by Ghérasim Luca, and I got no idea what it's about yet. Seems to be go on about Objects social etymology; like I said, no idea.
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Jan 12, 2015 11:30
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Trying to remember the title of a book I read a few years back to see if the author has released anything recently. It was post-collapse America, involved a group of criminals (think Ocean's Eleven but weirder) who came together to take on a crime boss who controlled New York. That is about all I can remember other than the fact that it had a really really long title and the cover was tan with technicolor lettering similar to the original Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd Century America cover.
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Jan 14, 2015 05:43
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D-Pad posted:Trying to remember the title of a book I read a few years back to see if the author has released anything recently. Liberation: Being the Adventures of the Slick Six After the Collapse of the United States of America by Brian Francis Slattery
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Jan 15, 2015 04:16
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Late 2014 summary: Read (21): Gun, With Occasional Music, by Jonathan Lethem Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie In the Night Garden, by Catherynne M. Valente All You Need is Kill, by Hiroshi Sakurazaka Annihilation/Authority/Acceptance, by Jeff VanderMeer Boy, Snow, Bird, by Helen Oyeyemi The King in Yellow, by Robert W. Chambers The Martian, by Andy Weir The Rise of Ransom City, by Felix Gilman The Revolutions, by Felix Gilman Purple and Black, by KJ Parker Blue and Gold, by KJ Parker The First Fifteen Live of Harry August, by Claire North The Magician's Land, by Lev Grossman How the World Become Quiet, by Rachel Swirsky Academic Exercises, by KJ Parker Echopraxia, by Peter Watts The Bone Clocks, by David Mitchell Colours in the Steel, by KJ Parker I liked pretty much everything in there except for Boy, Snow, Bird (awful ending) and The Martian (bad writing), if I had to pick a best novel, I guess it would be a tossup between the two Gilmans and The Bone Clocks. Definitely regret not reading more, since I've been getting distracted rather easily lately even though I have plenty of free time. I really want to try and read all of KJ Parker's stuff this year though, everything I've read of theirs has been consistently excellent.
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Jan 15, 2015 16:09
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I'm reading Steven Runciman's "A History of the Crusades", and it's the best narrative history work I've ever stumbled upon. Does anyone here like the genre? I'm looking for similar books, basically narrative history written in a way that isn't either silly and 90% invented or a cold list of events. The work has to be factually accurate but elegantly written, the former because gently caress you, stop making poo poo up, the latter because no one likes history that reads clunky.
Kawabata fucked around with this message at 06:32 on Jan 17, 2015 |
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Jan 17, 2015 06:24
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You're probably already aware of Erik Larson, but I really like his stuff. He does come to some conclusions on his own when it comes to things no one actually saw happen and told about (like the events of some of the murders), but I do think they are at least reasonable conclusions based on evidence from the time. The Devil in the White City is excellent, as is In the Garden of Beasts. I also really liked Evan Thomas' Sea of Thunder. The Battle of Leyte Gulf, especially the Taffy 3 action, is pretty interesting stuff, and Thomas goes through the trouble of showing both the American and Japanese sides.
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Jan 17, 2015 20:57
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I'm really sorry if this has been discussed at length, but is there any consensus on the best translation of War and Peace? I figure if I'm going to try to read something that big I might as well stick to the best version.
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Jan 29, 2015 04:19
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Okay, so, I'm looking for the name of a book. Basically, it's about this guy who symbolizes America to a really ridiculous degree. Like, the whole story is literally just American history, only there's a guy who represents America. I remember this one part in particular, when it gets to the Civil War, the book symbolizes that by having the dude beat himself up and break a bunch of poo poo he built. Does anyone have any idea what I'm talking about? I've been searching for hours and it's driving me crazy.
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Jan 29, 2015 22:53
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Colleen McCullough is a very well-loved Australian author. She's probably best known to goons as the author of the First Man In Rome series of historical novels. Anyway, she died this week. Here's how a Murdoch newspaper here chose to obiturise (obiturate?) her: 
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Jan 30, 2015 04:14
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Hedrigall posted:Colleen McCullough is a very well-loved Australian author. She's probably best known to goons as the author of the First Man In Rome series of historical novels. The only author I thought that'd inspire such a passive-aggressive obit is GRRM. huh, that highlighted section actually sounds like it could be one of his character descriptions
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Jan 30, 2015 04:47
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Hedrigall posted:Colleen McCullough is a very well-loved Australian author. She's probably best known to goons as the author of the First Man In Rome series of historical novels. She managed to be witty and warm despite being overweight and plain? What an amazing woman.
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Jan 31, 2015 02:48
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writing=wit/weight
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Jan 31, 2015 09:28
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Snowman_McK posted:I'm really sorry if this has been discussed at length, but is there any consensus on the best translation of War and Peace? I figure if I'm going to try to read something that big I might as well stick to the best version. Translations are a contentious issue, and each attempt has its advantages and drawbacks. I've read War and Peace in the Constance Garnett and Pevear and Volokhonsky translations. Of the two, P&V was certainly superior, the biggest drawback is they do not translate the portions of the book written in French in the body of the text, but in footnotes below. If you speak French, this would probably be the best choice. I've read a few articles reviewing this edition that point out a certain woodenness that P&V attribute to Tolstoy, but some reviewers to an excessively literal translation. The Garnett translation is not highly regarded, but it is in the public domain, so you can read it for free. The biggest issue is its expurgations and inaccuracy. Constance worked quickly and would sometimes skip unfamiliar words. Some, however, continue to prefer her free and easy rendition, and it certainly reads fine. I've heard good things about the recent Anthony Briggs translation, and I will probably try this one on my next re-read.
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Feb 1, 2015 18:15
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PatMarshall posted:Translations are a contentious issue, and each attempt has its advantages and drawbacks. I've read War and Peace in the Constance Garnett and Pevear and Volokhonsky translations. Of the two, P&V was certainly superior, the biggest drawback is they do not translate the portions of the book written in French in the body of the text, but in footnotes below. If you speak French, this would probably be the best choice. I've read a few articles reviewing this edition that point out a certain woodenness that P&V attribute to Tolstoy, but some reviewers to an excessively literal translation. Thanks for that. There's no urgency. It's on my list, but I thought I'd save it till the end of the year. Please, keep me updated on the Briggs.
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Feb 3, 2015 01:40
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So apparently Harper Lee is releasing a previously-unreleased book about adult Scout that she originally wrote before To Kill a Mockingbird and I'm pumped as gently caress?quote:Publisher Harper announced Tuesday that "Go Set a Watchman," a novel the Pulitzer Prize-winning author completed in the 1950s and put aside, will be released July 14. Rediscovered last fall, "Go Set a Watchman" is essentially a sequel to "To Kill a Mockingbird," although it was finished earlier. The 304-page book will be Lee's second, and the first new work in more than 50 years.
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Feb 3, 2015 16:50
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Pierson posted:So apparently Harper Lee is releasing a previously-unreleased book about adult Scout that she originally wrote before To Kill a Mockingbird and I'm pumped as gently caress? HUH. Out of all the sequels coming out of the woodwork, this is the last one I expected. I'm feeling oddly content/excited about this. If she had just written it recently I'd be more concerned, but if she wrote it way back when, I'm feeling pretty optimistic about its quality.
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Feb 3, 2015 17:28
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nerdman42 posted:HUH. Out of all the sequels coming out of the woodwork, this is the last one I expected. Yeah I had the same uneasy reaction when I first saw the headline, then felt genuinely excited after reading the details. Can't wait for this.
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Feb 3, 2015 17:30
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Pierson posted:So apparently Harper Lee is releasing a previously-unreleased book about adult Scout that she originally wrote before To Kill a Mockingbird and I'm pumped as gently caress? I was hoping for her cocktail recipes book: Tequila Mockingbird. I've seen the movie so many times, but never read the actual book. With a nine-year old stepdaughter I'm trying to get into reading, now is as good a time as any to set a good example I guess.
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Feb 3, 2015 18:43
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I'd say 9 is about the perfect time to read To Kill a Mockingbird. The prose is pretty straightforward and when I read it for the first time, around that age, I sort of enjoyed the scene setting childhood adventures portions that come before the trial begins more than I have on subsequent readings, when I was just eager to get to the courtroom drama. I think adults tend to identify more with Atticus and want to get to his parts while kids have a better appreciation of Scout's POV.
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Feb 3, 2015 19:23
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Baby Babbeh posted:I'd say 9 is about the perfect time to read To Kill a Mockingbird. The prose is pretty straightforward and when I read it for the first time, around that age, I sort of enjoyed the scene setting childhood adventures portions that come before the trial begins more than I have on subsequent readings, when I was just eager to get to the courtroom drama. I think adults tend to identify more with Atticus and want to get to his parts while kids have a better appreciation of Scout's POV. One of my favorite troll opinions is to argue that TKaM is the greatest work of Southern Literature. The book is good enough that you can make a solid argument for it, and just-quite-not-there enough to drive fans of Faulkner or Flannery O'Connor up the wall. I read an interesting essay a little while back from an African-American author who didn't like TKAM because she felt it removed agency from black characters; she saw the whole thing as a sort of Plantation Myth for the Jim Crow era -- Yes, Jim Crow was horrible, but look there were these few Noble White People!
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Feb 3, 2015 19:36
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I can't believe Harper Lee is publishing a new book, let alone a sequel to Mockingjay.
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Feb 4, 2015 00:11
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I've been excited about the book.. but then I read this: http://jezebel.com/be-suspicious-of-the-new-harper-lee-novel-1683488258 I've read other criticisms online about her basically being senile and signing whatever gets put in front of her. I really hope this isn't the case.
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Feb 4, 2015 00:19
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Juanito posted:I've been excited about the book.. but then I read this: That article is literally 2 random twitter accounts making pre-judgements and a link to another Gawker media article about Harper. It's just pure click-bait bs. The author of the article is trying to imply, via the use of the tweets, that said book is actually new and not written in the 50s as a way to discredit it or just get people riled up. Lee had the same problem when she wrote TKAM because everyone assumed Truman Capote wrote it for her because "an unknown writer can't be this good". Speaking of, how exactly was TKAM "exploited" according to twitter expert @dreamoforgonon? I expect that the book will be merely good, rather then fantastic, because everything about it is how her editor much preferred the flashback's to Scout's childhood rather then the modern setting, which is what led to TKAM. pentyne fucked around with this message at 06:12 on Feb 4, 2015 |
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Feb 4, 2015 06:08
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Okay, then here's the article those two tweeters are building their cases on, published last year: http://www.vulture.com/2014/07/decline-of-harper-lee.htmlquote:In responding to Lee’s new letter last week, Penguin Press released a handwritten letter Alice Lee wrote to Marja Mills in 2011. It read, in part: “When I questioned Tonja” — her onetime protégé, inheritor of A.C. Lee’s firm — “I learned that without my knowledge she had typed out the statement, carried it to [Nelle’s apartment], and had Nelle Harper sign it … Poor Nelle Harper can’t see and can’t hear and will sign anything put before her by anyone in whom she has confidence. Now she has no memory of the incident … I am humiliated, embarrassed, and upset about the suggestion of lack of integrity at my office.” The author of the Jezebel article, while not linking to the Vulture article, doesn't seem to me to be implying the book wasn't written by Lee. Neither is @theshrillest. Go Set a Watchman has been rumored for a long time (I remember reading about it while doing research for a TKAM paper in middle school) and it's been clear that it wasn't released because Lee didn't want it to be. Now, suddenly, the narrative has changed -- the manuscript was miraculously "rediscovered" after being "lost" and is being published scant months after her older sister, who fielded all her legal issues, has passed. EDIT: To back up the claim I made, here's a history of TKAM from 2010 that mentions Go Set a Watchman: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/harper-lees-novel-achievement-141052 quote:Ater she moved to New York City in 1949, she struggled for years with a hodgepodge of anecdotes about small-town Southern life, first called Go Set a Watchman and then Atticus. She received encouragement from an agent, Maurice Crain, and an editor, Lippincott’s Tay Hohoff, who had seen the work-in-progress, but one night in 1957 she flung the unfinished manuscript out the window of her Manhattan cold-water flat. After a teary phone call to Hohoff, Lee charged down the stairs, recovered the forsaken pages—and then began a title-on-down revision that resulted in a book that would become a Literary Guild selection and Book of the Month Club alternate, and that the New Yorker would call “unpretentious and totally ingenious” and the Chicago Tribune would hail as “a novel of strong contemporary national significance.” This is the general understanding: GSAW contained flashbacks that would become TKAM. The remaining material, while providing potential for a sequel (since it covered Scout returning home as an adult), wasn't up to Lee's standards, and she never intended to publish it. EDIT 2: And heck, here's a fairly comprehensive Mallory Ortberg writeup on all the really questionable stuff that's hanging around this incident. H.P. Shivcraft fucked around with this message at 17:32 on Feb 4, 2015 |
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Feb 4, 2015 16:13
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I've been working my way through Stravinky's reading challenge for 2015, which is also a great way to make one read things I wouldn't normally consider and find myself wanting to tackled the "book that's been sitting on a table for a while" challenge. I have both Gravity's Rainbow & Infinite Jest sitting solidly in this category - I can also easily put them in other slots but in my mind, they're books that I've been promising myself that I would get around to someday. The question, is which book should I read first? Given their significance and weight, I'm thinking that I would have to put the other one away for at least a couple of months but ideally, I'd like to read them back-to-back.
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Feb 10, 2015 21:05
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Furious Lobster posted:I've been working my way through Stravinky's reading challenge for 2015, which is also a great way to make one read things I wouldn't normally consider and find myself wanting to tackled the "book that's been sitting on a table for a while" challenge. I have both Gravity's Rainbow & Infinite Jest sitting solidly in this category - I can also easily put them in other slots but in my mind, they're books that I've been promising myself that I would get around to someday. The question, is which book should I read first? Given their significance and weight, I'm thinking that I would have to put the other one away for at least a couple of months but ideally, I'd like to read them back-to-back. Read Gravity's Rainbow first.
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Feb 11, 2015 21:36
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Swede's conversation with his brother after finding Merry in Newark in American Pastoral is one of the greatest things I've ever read. The critics are right - Roth is a master at writing about anger.
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Feb 12, 2015 13:01
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Quandary posted:I'm a few days late on my summary of my reading for the year, but I read 17 books unrelated to my school this year, which I feel isn't too bad for a full time student who also works. The Prize is a terrific book, and my nerdy best friend and I constantly make jokes about Mr. Five Percent. I'm thinking about picking up Steve Coll's Private Empire soon, which focuses on ExxonMobil.
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Feb 12, 2015 13:06
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I got a book published a couple years ago and I'm not sure how to spread the word and get people interested. Does anyone here have some advice? The book is aimed at middle-schoolers, with the goal of teaching a bit about weather and science through an exciting narrative. I'd link to it, but I'm not sure if there are rules against self-promotion here. Any advice?
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Feb 15, 2015 03:47
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DorianGravy posted:I got a book published a couple years ago and I'm not sure how to spread the word and get people interested. Does anyone here have some advice? The book is aimed at middle-schoolers, with the goal of teaching a bit about weather and science through an exciting narrative. I'd link to it, but I'm not sure if there are rules against self-promotion here. Do you have any contacts within the literary scene or perhaps among teachers? Networking among people like that or even just networking in general is really a critical part. I also know that many authors are keeping up an avid social media presence to spread the word. Perhaps trying to put yourself out there as well just to have a foothold? From what I've observed it really is just being noticed and promoted by the right people.
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Feb 17, 2015 01:57
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The only rule against self-promotion here is that posting your real name and your actual work on Somethingawful is the internet equivalent of dropping your pants and getting a "KICK ME" tattoo across your buttocks. So not so much a "rule" as a "do so at your own risk." That said if poo poo ever gets spammy or annoying we would have to make a rule, but as of now there's no rule at least for this forum as far as I'm concerned.
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Feb 17, 2015 02:41
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