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I struggled with Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantell. It's not a period of history I especially enjoy (thanks, school history lessons!) and I have this strange dislike of fictionalising real people. Descriptions of what real people thought and ascribing emotions and motives to them when there isn't any evidence just rubs me up the wrong way, which is probably why I don't read a lot of historical fiction. It probably wasn't just the genre, though, as I later I realised I didn't finish her book Beyond Black either, and that's about a medium in modern-day Britain. She keeps winning prizes so it's clearly a problem with me and not her.
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Oct 27, 2014 23:38
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God's Demon by Wayne Barlowe. Love the man's artwork. His writing needs work.
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Oct 28, 2014 22:34
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Lady Demelza posted:I struggled with Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantell. Same. I found it dull and quit half-way.
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Oct 29, 2014 04:33
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Gertrude Perkins posted:The other, and more understandable, is Foucault's Pendulum. I made it about a hundred pages before I got lost in Templar lore. Eco is a great essayist, but his fiction is like searching for beautiful pearls in enormous buckets of gravel. This book is a huge taking-the-piss of the occult. If occult's not your thing then I can see how it could be incredibly dull.
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Oct 29, 2014 04:35
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Kubla Khan posted:This book is a huge taking-the-piss of the occult. If occult's not your thing then I can see how it could be incredibly dull. I read this book about a year before *The DaVinci Code* got super big, and it made DaVinci Code seem like some idiot child's idea of a cool conspiracy story. Foucault's Pendulum is better written, more intellectual, and more historically interesting, than any similar novel I've ever read. This has the side effect of making it less of follow-able story, but the trade-off is well-worth it.
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Oct 29, 2014 05:26
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Snak posted:I read this book about a year before *The DaVinci Code* got super big, and it made DaVinci Code seem like some idiot child's idea of a cool conspiracy story. Foucault's Pendulum is better written, more intellectual, and more historically interesting, than any similar novel I've ever read. This has the side effect of making it less of follow-able story, but the trade-off is well-worth it. Mr. Eco himself has a hilarious quote about that, when asked if he'd read it: quote:I was obliged to read it because everybody was asking me about it. My answer is that Dan Brown is one of the characters in my novel Foucault’s Pendulum, which is about people who start believing in occult stuff. Also agreement on God's Demon. Sick art, cool ideas, but his writing just can't do it justice. I was so happy to find out my library had it, and then so sad when I had to put it down 
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Oct 30, 2014 03:04
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I can't stand One hundred years of solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. I don't know why because I feel as if it's a good story, but it just turned into people just betraying other peoples love and I got bored of it.
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Oct 30, 2014 03:39
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I strongly urge you to try again later on. The prose and imagery in his writing is fantastic. Try to be less preoccupied with the need for a three act plot and just enjoy the writing as its presented.
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Oct 30, 2014 22:00
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Lady Demelza posted:I struggled with Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantell. It's not a period of history I especially enjoy (thanks, school history lessons!) and I have this strange dislike of fictionalising real people. Descriptions of what real people thought and ascribing emotions and motives to them when there isn't any evidence just rubs me up the wrong way, which is probably why I don't read a lot of historical fiction. It probably wasn't just the genre, though, as I later I realised I didn't finish her book Beyond Black either, and that's about a medium in modern-day Britain. I am about a quarter of the way through with this and am finding it difficult to get through as well which is unusual for me because I love historical fiction and don't mind a lot of names and dates (in fact I've read a lot of Alison Weir's non fiction centered around this particular time in history with no issues). I actually loved the first few chapters describing Cromwell's childhood, and there are occasional flashes of brilliance - not sure why it isn't snagging me fully. It may be a case of the right book at the wrong time.
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Nov 3, 2014 22:42
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Kafka's The Castle. I get it, they don't want to admit him to the castle. I've read his other stuff and it's just an agonizingly drawn out version of any other nightmarish bureaucratic story he's done. At least the parts of it I reached in my reading.
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Nov 4, 2014 17:34
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A Confederacy of Dunces I just felt that it was just the same joke repeating constantly, and that Ignatius as a character had stepped over the line of being too loathsome/annoying/un-changing to care about as a character I would like to follow around. I made it about 2/3 of the way through and couldn't really keep going.
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Nov 4, 2014 20:46
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Lately I've been trying to read Väinö Linna's trilogy Under the North Star, with little success, which is quite sad because they are all books that I really do wish to read. It is the dialogue, more than anything, that kills the reading pleasure. The characters speak with this very distinct farmer accent, which, when translated, sound like absolute poppycock.
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Nov 6, 2014 08:14
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To The Lighthouse. It's a short book, but the writing style is so bizarre that I just couldn't keep reading more than halfway through.
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Nov 6, 2014 13:34
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The Dennis System posted:To The Lighthouse. It's a short book, but the writing style is so bizarre that I just couldn't keep reading more than halfway through.
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Nov 6, 2014 14:10
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WAY TO GO WAMPA!! posted:I was in an English class where the entire course was reading that book, page by page, and discussing it, page by page, for the entire semester. Practically everyone in the class absolutely hated it except for myself and a few other students. I definitely don't think I could have read it on my own, though. I've always felt like I should like Virginia Woolf but I was never able to get into her. At all. Mrs. Dalloway bored me almost to tears. I find it interesting, however, that people usually either love her or hate her; I think the things she writes about are too mundane to get me invested very much.
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Nov 6, 2014 15:04
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Psychotic Vampire posted:Lately I've been trying to read Väinö Linna's trilogy Under the North Star, with little success, which is quite sad because they are all books that I really do wish to read. It is the dialogue, more than anything, that kills the reading pleasure. The characters speak with this very distinct farmer accent, which, when translated, sound like absolute poppycock. Haha, I'm a Finn and I'd really like to see those translations. Could you post some? edit: welcome! Hogge Wild fucked around with this message at 15:15 on Nov 6, 2014 |
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Nov 6, 2014 15:13
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Hogge Wild posted:Haha, I'm a Finn and I'd really like to see those translations. Could you post some? Thanks for the welcome!  The translations are in Swedish, perhaps you don't mind? Maybe I should explain myself by saying that the way in which the characters talk isn't really a huge hindrance as such, but it gets very off putting and breaks the flow of reading when you constantly keep doing double takes to reassure yourself that you understood what the character just said. But I'll get through them eventually. Anyway, since you asked for them: 1, 2, 3
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Nov 6, 2014 17:23
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Psychotic Vampire posted:Thanks for the welcome! My Swedish is a bit rusty, but I understood most of it. Though it helped that my Swedish speaking relatives talk kinda like that. Linna was a working class author, and the carrying theme of his books are the differences between people from different backgrounds, and the language and dialects his characters use reflect this. Is he using a certain Swedish dialect for the people from Häme or is it just a generic 'this is how the Finns speak'? What dialect does he use for the Swedish-speaking Finns?
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Nov 6, 2014 19:15
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Hogge Wild posted:Linna was a working class author, and the carrying theme of his books are the differences between people from different backgrounds, and the language and dialects his characters use reflect this. Yes, of course. As I said earlier – it may be worth stressing it – Linna's writing style and his view of Finland through the perspective of a labourer and the ways in which he convey this is worth all praise there is, however, it feels to me that much of his style has been lost in translation. My father who's from Finland, and who read the books in his youth, agree with me on this point, the translation of the dialect is mere gobbledygook (to a Swede, of course). The translators don't even try to adapt the spoken language into something more suited for the Swedish eyes. I don't know if I've simply picked up a rubbish translation, or if all of them share this. Hogge Wild posted:Is he using a certain Swedish dialect for the people from Häme or is it just a generic 'this is how the Finns speak'? Basically yes. They're just speaking Swedish but with Finnish accents, depending on their social situation. If they're proletariats they speak with deeper more incoherent accents and vice versa if they're higher on the social ladder. Hogge Wild posted:What dialect does he use for the Swedish-speaking Finns? They alongside Halme [citation needed] speak Rikssvenska. Psychotic Vampire fucked around with this message at 20:30 on Nov 6, 2014 |
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Nov 6, 2014 20:06
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Captain Mog posted:I've always felt like I should like Virginia Woolf but I was never able to get into her. At all. Mrs. Dalloway bored me almost to tears. I find it interesting, however, that people usually either love her or hate her; I think the things she writes about are too mundane to get me invested very much. She definitely seems like an acquired taste, though I've only read To the Lighthouse. The way you described Mrs. Dalloway is similar to how I would describe TtL but I would give it a go anyway if you're interested, see if it clicks.
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Nov 6, 2014 20:24
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Psychotic Vampire posted:I don't know if I've simply picked up a rubbish translation, or if all of them share this. Looks like there's only one translation. Psychotic Vampire posted:They alongside Halme [citation needed] speak Rikssvenska. Halme was self-educated and spoke "book language", which is quite different from the various dialects and normally used only in writing or official surroundings.
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Nov 6, 2014 20:50
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Latest book I've just given up on totally was "The Devil You Know" by K.H. Koehler. It sounded kinda interesting (son of the devil tries to help find a kidnapped kid, turns out heaven decided to wipe out all demonkind, etc) but holy gently caress this book is just bad. I don't mean "OH HEY THERE GARY STU WHERE YA BEEN??", I mean just, bad. First up, the devil's kid runs an occult shop. He's an ex cop, but a total "daemon" and has continuous sex with his roommate who is a witch of some kind who enjoys "milking" him cause daemons always have tons of excess sexual energy that can mess up poo poo. (this is when a warning flag went up in my head) He meets up with another woman who is totally amazingly gorgeous and she's totally into him. (another flag, slightly larger) The story devolves from there. Turns out he has a familiar which is some giant loving satyr goat thing that lives in the woods, and has an enormous wang. Did I mention satan's kid is Bi? Cause he mentions it a lot, in case you forget from 3 pages before where the redneck local calls him a fag all the time. (running out of room, so many god drat flags) So, anyway, after not having sex with the giant satyr and his giant wang (cause while the satyr is up for it, he's also swimming in bitches or nymphs cause it's their mating season and god dammit why is this stuck in my head), he ends up meeting the girl who he totes fell for earlier when she comes to him again for help, and then he explains how SHE'S a daemon too! (you can gasp here, it's truly shocking) Then, because she's just been through a horrible ordeal, she wants to bang him. They bang, for she has NEVER BEEN WITH A DAEMON and finds this completely an option but since he's a high level demon he has a gigantic wang, and it's too much for normal women. Thankfully apparently "daemon" women have gigantic vaginas that can handle horse wangs, and they have sex for about way too god drat long in way too much detail. But wait, it's ok, cause while there's going to be pain and blood this time around (  ) it's ok cause the girl totally wants it and they do it more, because he's awesome and hung like a pony. (at this point there are no more flags, it's graduated to flares and SOS signals with searchlights)Basically when a book spends more time discussing the lead characters dick over the plot itself, it's time to put it down and go find something new to read. This is why I hate urban fantasy. I see a book that sounds kinda cool, I go to read said book, and it's hosed up weird rear end porn. Let the lesson be learned, and learned well. Never wonder how deep the rabbit hole goes, because it can get way more hosed up that you anticipated and you will more than likely not be happy with what you find. You can never unsee things, nor can you unread them.
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Nov 12, 2014 07:58
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Has anyone finished The Eternal Wonder by Pearl S. Buck? Because I've just read half the book and so far the protagonist has had nothing but a solid gold horseshoe up his rear end. I'm guessing it's supposed to be uplifting, but the real message of the book so far seems to be, "Some people are born special geniuses and if life is made 100% comfortable for them they will blossom into awesomeness." and it just seems to be a completely loving poisonous moral that forgets all about hard work and suffering. I can't help comparing it to The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho, which went for the same kind of message about how if someone is hungry for knowledge and open-minded, they can achieve great things, except that book constantly threw nails in the road and the character had to loving WORK to get anywhere. Compared to that, The Eternal Wonder seems like a saccarchine, lying piece of crap, and I'm wondering if it's worth bothering to read to the end. Edit: Nope. Apparently this paper-thin character goes on a totally awesome trip and learns a lot and comes home and writes a book that becomes an instant best seller that makes him a super rich celebrity and he didn't have to work at it one bit because he's just a loving wish-fulfillment cypher. gently caress this. I'm gonna read some Gogol. Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 04:48 on Nov 30, 2014 |
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Nov 29, 2014 08:05
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I have a question. Probably a dumb question but I am clearly missing out on something important so uh, here goes. Is there a point to Snow Crash? Everyone who likes cyberpunk cites it as a great book to read but I don't understand why I should continue. Why is the reader supposed to give a poo poo about an idiot who landed in a pool trying to deliver a pizza? The conceit itself is farcical (a pizza based economy!) but I could deal with it if the text turned it into something interesting but instead I got...a dumbass on a skateboard who blows himself up and lands in a pool and a stranger completes his pizza delivery for him and this is BIG DEAL. Okay. Well. I continued a little bit past that into the description of the digital world but so far it strikes me as a poor man's Ghost in the Shell and I'd rather rewatch that franchise than waste more time on this book. So what am I missing? What is the point? Does it ever get better?
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Dec 1, 2014 04:40
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If you don't like or 'get' the first 30 pages you will not enjoy the book. It's half satirical post-cyberpunk pastiche, half leaden exposition-driven neurolinguistic fantasy.
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Dec 1, 2014 05:03
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HIJK posted:I have a question. Probably a dumb question but I am clearly missing out on something important so uh, here goes. It technically gets better and worse. Some interesting concepts are eventually introduced, but things even dumber and more ridiculous which keeps average quality about the same. Stephenson is a writer who has many faults, but is somewhat aware of them and continues to improve, which is why his later books are all better than Snow Crash. I love cyberpunk, and I would never recommend Snow Crash except when discussing influential cyberpunk things. As a big William Gibson fan, I find Stephenson's attempts at cyberpunk to be crass and unengaging by comparison.
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Dec 1, 2014 06:18
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I had the same reaction at first until I just started laughing about it all and read on. It gets more interesting later on (at least for me, but then again, I study linguistics somewhat) but in the end it's just a wild roller coaster ride of everything a 90s teenager considers radical and awesome crammed into a ridiculous anti-Scientology story with genuinely interesting tidbits thrown in for good measure. If it doesn't amuse you even a little bit then don't bother finishing, but when I made the switch and started reading it as satire it became highly enjoyable. I just wanted to know what ridiculous poo poo he'd come up with next, and it's kind of funny to read the start of a scene and think of the most over the top way to handle it I could come up with, and then Stephenson knocking it out of the ball park. The biggest flaw in my opinion is not the insanity of it all, which I accepted as intentional, but the inconsistency of the characters, especially Hiro. He's exactly what Stephenson needs him to be in any given situation, supreme tactician one moment because that's cool, dumb rear end in a top hat that provokes poo poo unnecessarily the next because that's also cool.
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Dec 1, 2014 13:12
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Agreed. Stephenson is definitely of "more stuff" school of writing, just cramming all sorts of ideas and vignettes in. When this works, you're amazed or at least diverted. When it doesn't, the massive plotholes, cliches and fan-service become very apparent. Case in point: Anathem. Enjoyed it a lot, it's massively clever, but he clearly decided to have a kung fu fight scene at one point for no reasons other than (a) it was cool and (b) our hero needed to get out of a jam.
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Dec 1, 2014 13:42
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HIJK posted:I have a question. Probably a dumb question but I am clearly missing out on something important so uh, here goes. Honestly, I don't think it's similar to Ghost in the Shell at all.
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Dec 1, 2014 14:00
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Taeke posted:I had the same reaction at first until I just started laughing about it all and read on. It gets more interesting later on (at least for me, but then again, I study linguistics somewhat) but in the end it's just a wild roller coaster ride of everything a 90s teenager considers radical and awesome crammed into a ridiculous anti-Scientology story with genuinely interesting tidbits thrown in for good measure. I see. I'll give it another go in a little bit with this in mind. Thanks for all the responses, they were very helpful.
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Dec 1, 2014 14:15
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Taeke posted:I had the same reaction at first until I just started laughing about it all and read on. It gets more interesting later on (at least for me, but then again, I study linguistics somewhat) but in the end it's just a wild roller coaster ride of everything a 90s teenager considers radical and awesome crammed into a ridiculous anti-Scientology story with genuinely interesting tidbits thrown in for good measure. I think literally the worst aspect of the book is that the characters are all written indistinguishably from eachother. They are all wisecracking dorks all the time. The interesting elements in Snow Crash are kind of neat, but Stephenson does similar things much better in Cryptonomicon or Anathem, which are his two best books. I couldn't finish the first book of the Baroque Cycle and I really don't think the whole thing is for me. I've said this before, but Stephenson is terrible at writing interesting characters and has an unhealthy obsession with describing holly-wood style action sequences in extreme but sterile detail. I absolutely love the ideas that he likes to explore and I don't know anyone else who does so much research on what he wants to write about or makes books that are so completely about the idea he wants to explore on every level, but he can't write relatable non-nerds to save his life. Snak fucked around with this message at 16:25 on Dec 1, 2014 |
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Dec 1, 2014 16:21
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Snak posted:I think literally the worst aspect of the book is that the characters are all written indistinguishably from eachother. They are all wisecracking dorks all the time. The Baroque Cycle is pretty interesting but I could only bring myself to really care about the nerds (Newton, Hooke, Leibniz, Waterhouse). Jack's story is an endless rollercoaster of Forrest Gump-style "regular dude just happening to be there during major events" which can be fun but gets tiring way before Stephenson can bring himself to end it. Eliza's story is similarly interesting for a while but bogs down when she basically becomes a conduit for dumping the history of western European diplomacy during the years covered in the book on the reader. It's a pretty great work when it's on its main themes (the development of science and capital in Europe) and pretty plodding otherwise I think.
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Dec 1, 2014 18:06
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Jazerus posted:The Baroque Cycle is pretty interesting but I could only bring myself to really care about the nerds (Newton, Hooke, Leibniz, Waterhouse). Jack's story is an endless rollercoaster of Forrest Gump-style "regular dude just happening to be there during major events" which can be fun but gets tiring way before Stephenson can bring himself to end it. Eliza's story is similarly interesting for a while but bogs down when she basically becomes a conduit for dumping the history of western European diplomacy during the years covered in the book on the reader. It's a pretty great work when it's on its main themes (the development of science and capital in Europe) and pretty plodding otherwise I think. Yeah, I would rather read a non-fiction treatment of the same material than slog through Jack and Eliza's antics.
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Dec 1, 2014 18:10
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The first Baroque Cycle book is a major slog, I tried reading it and gave up. About a year later I found a copy of the second one on the train, read and loved it and the third and final one. I tried reading the first one again after those two and still couldn't make it through more than half of it. I guess that means that I feel the opposite: the doctor and Newton parts are the slog and killed my interest when the first book was mainly their book. Glad I stumbled across that second one though, cuz it really is a fun and interesting epic tale once you get invested in it and don't have to start out with rambling minutiae.
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Dec 3, 2014 13:39
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I just put down my copy of William Gibson's new book, The Peripheral. The plot summary made it seem right up my alley, but the book itself slammed me with a legion of under-described minor characters and under-explained far future lingo. I will probably revisit this book sometime, but right now I'm not feeling it.
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Dec 15, 2014 22:31
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Taeke posted:I had the same reaction at first until I just started laughing about it all and read on. It gets more interesting later on (at least for me, but then again, I study linguistics somewhat) but in the end it's just a wild roller coaster ride of everything a 90s teenager considers radical and awesome crammed into a ridiculous anti-Scientology story with genuinely interesting tidbits thrown in for good measure. I always took snow crash to be as much tongue in cheek as it is serious. There are tons of cyberpunk tropes that seem to be taken to their most extreme (See the Enforcers as corporate security). I mean the main characters name is Hiro Protagonist, and he's a hacker samurai. C'mon now.
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Dec 17, 2014 17:59
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LLCoolJD posted:Kafka's The Castle. I get it, they don't want to admit him to the castle. I've read his other stuff and it's just an agonizingly drawn out version of any other nightmarish bureaucratic story he's done. At least the parts of it I reached in my reading. Nope it's fantastic and really funny.
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Dec 18, 2014 01:08
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I have never stopped reading a book halfway through, but Justin Cronin's the 12 may be the first. The passage started out great, then became "breakfast club in the apocalypse" and now it is getting silly with the nazi rapist group.
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Jan 18, 2015 23:06
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savinhill posted:The first Baroque Cycle book is a major slog, I tried reading it and gave up. About a year later I found a copy of the second one on the train, read and loved it and the third and final one. I tried reading the first one again after those two and still couldn't make it through more than half of it. I guess that means that I feel the opposite: the doctor and Newton parts are the slog and killed my interest when the first book was mainly their book. Glad I stumbled across that second one though, cuz it really is a fun and interesting epic tale once you get invested in it and don't have to start out with rambling minutiae. Maybe I'll try skipping to the second one, I never made it through the first despite multiple attempts. Reamde, though, is one of the few books I hate-finished. It's 1000+ pages long, and I knew I despised it around page 300 or so, and I've avoided anything of Stephenson's since.
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Jan 20, 2015 18:06
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joepinetree posted:I have never stopped reading a book halfway through, but Justin Cronin's the 12 may be the first. The passage started out great, then became "breakfast club in the apocalypse" and now it is getting silly with the nazi rapist group. You will not regret quitting on the 12. It takes all the promise of the The Passage and craps on it.
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Jan 20, 2015 21:51
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