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Ugly In The Morning
Jul 1, 2010


FourLeaf posted:

A few months ago I started reading the first book in the Engineer Trilogy by K.J. Parker, and I just couldn't get through it. The characters are robotic. I understand that the main guy is an engineer so he is super logical and detached, but soon I realized that all the characters seemed to be equally inhuman and emotionless. I'll probably pick it up again eventually, though. Does it get any better?


Yeah, it actually gets really, really good. It took me a while to get halfway into book one, and then I hit the point where it really gels and I couldn't put the whole series down. It builds in intensity pretty quick, and the stakes are always really high for both the characters and the world.

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Captain McStabbin
Jul 12, 2010

Ethically Challenged, Climax Approved.



I almost didn't get through House of Leaves, until I decided to skip anything typed in courier. I may have missed out on a third of the story, but I want to read about people exploring a freaky house, not an idiot who hallucinates because he spends too much time inside.

For a book I actually didn't read, Atlas Shrugged. If I'm over a hundred pages in and nothing has happened yet, then it's not worth the time.

hyperhazard
Dec 4, 2011

I'M BUTT WIZARD

WebDog posted:

I'll add Girl with the Dragon Tattoo to the list. The first warning flag was family members suggesting I'd like it on account of "there's computer hacking stuff" and how cool she was for writing her autobiography on a phone when bleeding to death.
Reading this thread makes me feel better about disliking the book too. For a couple months, I struggled through the first half. Then it picks up and I read the rest of it in one night. I still consider it 5 hours of my life that I will never get back. Blomkvist is such a Mary Sue that the none of the reveals are surprising. Everyone who dislikes him is bad. Everyone who likes him is good. For a book that prides itself on feminism, I also found it incredibly misogynistic. If you like a guy, you have sex with him. However, unless he's completely vanilla, he's a murderous rapist. I won't go on, since I know a lot of people really enjoyed it, but it just left a bad taste in my mouth when I was finished.

bweep boop! posted:

Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis. When I have the time, I can tear through a moderately sized novel in a day or two, but for whatever reason, I absolutely hated every single character, and every single situation presented up to the halfway point were just tedious and contributed nothing to the plot (of which I couldn't figure out even then). This took me almost two weeks of steady reading and re-reading of the things my mind just blanked out. I mean, I should have known, considering British Literature is definitely not my favorite style, but hey. Maybe one day I'll try again.
Well this serves me right for hating Dragon Tattoo. Lucky Jim is without a doubt one of my favorite books. I enjoyed how cynical the main character was toward academia; it really rang true to my university experience. Most of the characters are pretty despicable, though.



As for books I couldn't get through, I found The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen to be utterly incomprehensible. The book's prose is excessively flowery, while at the same time completely ignoring "show, don't tell."

Here is the summary of the book from Wikipedia:

quote:

The Heat of the Day revolves around the relationship between Stella Rodney and her lover Robert Kelway, with the interfering presence of Harrison in the tense years following the Blitz in London. Harrison, a British intelligence agent who is convinced that Robert is a German spy, uses this knowledge to get between the two lovers and ultimately neutralize Robert. Stella finds herself caught between spy and counterspy, and ends up spying on Robert to find out for herself if Harrison's accusations are justified.
Now here's an actual passage from the novel:

quote:

The restaurant was waning, indifferently relaxing its illusion: for the late-comers a private illusion took its place. Their table seemed to stand on their own carpet; they had a sensation of custom, sedateness, of being inside small walls, as though dining at home again after her journey. She told him about her Mount Morris solitary suppers, in the middle of the library, the rim of the tray just not touching the base of the lamp... the fire behind her back softly falling in on its own ash-no it had not been possible to feel lonely among those feeling things.

If anyone else managed to get through it, I'd love to know how.

PalmTreeFun
Apr 25, 2010

*toot*


1984 by George Orwell. I loved the book, but my god was it depressing to read. I had to put it down. I looked up the ending online later, and holy poo poo. It makes sense why he ended it the way that he did, because that'd miss the whole point of the story if he didn't. Totalitarianism is bad and it certainly doesn't have a happy ending for most people in it, and the guy you turn to in a desperate grab at freedom isn't going to be a deus ex machina for you like in a story. Also, we knew more about your little escapades with your girlfriend than you thought we did.

General Battuta
Feb 7, 2011


I read 1984 when I was literally about seven years old and I thought it had a happy ending. He'd finally got his poo poo together. He loved Big Brother.

HUMAN FISH
Jul 6, 2003

never seen the light of day

Captain McStabbin posted:

I almost didn't get through House of Leaves

I went to the library today to pick up my copy of House of Leaves. I paged through the book, checked online that it already had a reservation on it, gave it back to the library lady.

I don't think I'm able to finish it in 30 days.

Some day, maybe..

Popular Human
Jul 17, 2005

and if it's a lie, terrorists made me say it

HUMAN FISH posted:

I went to the library today to pick up my copy of House of Leaves. I paged through the book, checked online that it already had a reservation on it, gave it back to the library lady.

I don't think I'm able to finish it in 30 days.

Some day, maybe..

I know it's too late for this, but it's actually nowhere as long as it appears. lots of the pages at around the 3/4ths mark have just a few words on them.

HUMAN FISH
Jul 6, 2003

never seen the light of day

Popular Human posted:

I know it's too late for this, but it's actually nowhere as long as it appears. lots of the pages at around the 3/4ths mark have just a few words on them.

I noticed that, but it just seemed so daunting that I'd rather take my time with it. Plus I have like 5 books in the pipeline already. I'll read it eventually.

edit: Fun facts, I reserved it like two weeks ago - it had 6 reservations before me. With 30 days of loan time each. I was expecting to get it in a few months or so, but I guess others got the same impression that I did and returned it the same day

But yeah, I'll read it when my backlog isn't this full.

edit2: Just to be clear, I wasn't scared of the length, it was just I got it ahead of time and wasn't ready to start reading it.

HUMAN FISH fucked around with this message at Feb 3, 2012 around 20:09

Chamberk
Jan 11, 2004

when there is nothing left to burn you have to set yourself on fire


Middlemarch is one of those insurmountable books. I can tell it's good, but it's so DENSE. I've only made it 2 chapters in on this try, but I swear I'll get through it this time... slowly.

bewilderment
Nov 22, 2007
man what

When I was a lot younger I was into the Wheel of Time series. Then Crossroads of Twilight came out. I read a few pages of prologue.
I discovered that 100 pages of the book was prologue. I read a little bit more.
I found out online that the main character only appears in about five pages.

I have never finished Crossroads of Twilight. Or read more than 50 pages for that matter.

Nierbo
Dec 4, 2010

Go for the take him down!

Z for Zachariah. Really wasn't feeling it and didn't like the main character's attitude so I just didn't bother finishing even though I generally love that sort of book.

hogswallower
May 8, 2005

Precious Pig Bits

PalmTreeFun posted:

1984 by George Orwell. I loved the book, but my god was it depressing to read. I had to put it down. I looked up the ending online later, and holy poo poo. It makes sense why he ended it the way that he did, because that'd miss the whole point of the story if he didn't. Totalitarianism is bad and it certainly doesn't have a happy ending for most people in it, and the guy you turn to in a desperate grab at freedom isn't going to be a deus ex machina for you like in a story. Also, we knew more about your little escapades with your girlfriend than you thought we did.

I reread 1984 around the anniversary of my dad's death a few years ago and, between the two, spent almost a month in the throes of one of the deepest states of depression I've ever experienced. I hardly left my apartment or talked to anyone at all aside from going to work. It's still one of my most favorite books, though.

Rogue1-and-a-half
Mar 7, 2011


hyperhazard posted:

As for books I couldn't get through, I found The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen to be utterly incomprehensible. The book's prose is excessively flowery, while at the same time completely ignoring "show, don't tell."

Never tried this one, but several years back when all those folks were doing the 100 best books of the century, I found Bowen's The Death of the Heart on one of the lists and since it was the rare book on any of those lists that I had never even heard of, I gave it a try. I actually forced myself to finish it, but it's really awful.

Also, it appears that Bowen really likes to title her books The (Noun) of the (Noun).

Lord Sandwich
Nov 5, 2008

by Y Kant Ozma Post


Guns, Germs, and Steel was a loving slog. It's incredibly well-researched, but he beats you over the head so much with the conclusions that I couldn't enjoy it.

Ras Het
May 23, 2007

when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.


Lord Sandwich posted:

Guns, Germs, and Steel was a loving slog. It's incredibly well-researched, but he beats you over the head so much with the conclusions that I couldn't enjoy it.

Did the conclusions make you feel uncomfortable?

Farecoal
Oct 15, 2011

A product of Hugs Boson Industries


PalmTreeFun posted:

1984 by George Orwell. I loved the book, but my god was it depressing to read. I had to put it down. I looked up the ending online later, and holy poo poo. It makes sense why he ended it the way that he did, because that'd miss the whole point of the story if he didn't. Totalitarianism is bad and it certainly doesn't have a happy ending for most people in it, and the guy you turn to in a desperate grab at freedom isn't going to be a deus ex machina for you like in a story. Also, we knew more about your little escapades with your girlfriend than you thought we did.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninete...wspeak_appendix

Its possible that there was a happy ending.

BananaNutkins
Aug 26, 2004

I'll split you open and I don't even like coconuts.


Ras Het posted:

Did the conclusions make you feel uncomfortable?

Smarmy Post of the Week!

I read GG&S and can affirm that it was a well-researched slog. It made many common sense conclusions, and I really don't understand why it won a Pulitzer. Maybe it won because no one had written on such an interesting subject in such a boring fashion before.

bean_shadow
Sep 27, 2005

Don't you write a book about this George Orwell!

PalmTreeFun posted:

1984 by George Orwell. I loved the book, but my god was it depressing to read. I had to put it down. I looked up the ending online later, and holy poo poo. It makes sense why he ended it the way that he did, because that'd miss the whole point of the story if he didn't. Totalitarianism is bad and it certainly doesn't have a happy ending for most people in it, and the guy you turn to in a desperate grab at freedom isn't going to be a deus ex machina for you like in a story. Also, we knew more about your little escapades with your girlfriend than you thought we did.

George Orwell wrote the book while he was dying of tuberculosis. That partly explains why the book is so depressing.

fatpat268
Jan 6, 2011


The Mechanical Hand posted:

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.

Best one sentence summary I saw via Amazon was "It's Twilight for Eldery Male Nerds."

Some big time sci-fi and fantasy writers were all about it and I can't blame them given that it's chock full of sci-fi, fantasy, and 80s references. I mean the goddamn book is literally centered around that poo poo.

For those not in the know, in Ready Player One the world is falling part and the economy sucks and everyone lives in shithole trailerparks. But it's cool because they can basically log into a huge virtual reality MMO (see: snow crash) and live happily. And it's great and the guy who made it died and left his fortune to a huge in game easter egg hunt (see: the da vinci code) and you can win trillions of dollars. He loved the 80s so it's chiefly centered around stupid 80s poo poo.

The main character/narrator, however, is a geek pandering sperglord who is the sort of intolerable nerd you can't spend more than 5 minutes around before they start quoting Monty Python at you. He's a know it all geek who revels in being able to recite direct lines from movies more exact than you can.

But it's not just that he's intolerable, he's also loving stupid. The whole book tries to build up how clever and witty he is but then about halfway through the book (this is where I stopped) the big bad evil company who is trying to win the fortune to take over the MMO threatens our hero's life. They do this in game by showing him a live feed of the trailer park he lives in with his scumbag aunt. They tell him it's rigged with explosives. He figures "Ha! I'm safe! I'm logged in from far away in a hidden lair!" He calls their bluff and logs off then immediately worries his van will blow up.

I'm sorry... what? They showed this prick the trailer park, not his loving van. He gambles his family (albeit, scumbag family) and their neighbor's lives and then worries he'll blow up when they loving showed the trailer park, not his goddamn van. Lo and behold the trailer park blows up. He feels guilty for maybe a page that his neighbor he liked died and then he continues being angry and not remorseful or even in shock or denial.
loving what? gently caress you Ernest Cline, give me my money back.

Haha, wow, I didn't even make it that far in the game.

What really bugged me about Ready Player One is all the inane 80s references. Pages of that book become flatout info dumps of 80s pop culture, where the main character/narrator goes on to say basically (paraphrasing): "I watched the entire TV series of this and that, I played every game and mastered it, and blah blah blah." Then it goes on to list everything for no apparent reason.

I'll confess, I'm not an 80s child (more of a 90s child... born in 87), but I certainly can appreciate some of the references. However, it just became downright groan worthy, an at some point I just gave up. It makes it even worse when you realize that the author modeled Halliday after himself since I read that Ernest Cline owns a delorean (just like Halliday in the book owned).

At that point, I just couldn't read any more of that crap, and from the spoilers you posted, I'm glad I didn't go any further. It's just shallow in every way possible, it seems.

Farbtoner
May 17, 2011

by Y Kant Ozma Post


The Mechanical Hand posted:

The main character/narrator, however, is a geek pandering sperglord who is the sort of intolerable nerd you can't spend more than 5 minutes around before they start quoting Monty Python at you. He's a know it all geek who revels in being able to recite direct lines from movies more exact than you can.

The part where he works tech support solely so the author can cram in the insufferable "have you tried not being an idiot? " unwarranted self-importance that computer janitors have was one of the most punchable things I've ever read. What an awful, pandering shitheap of a book.

bean_shadow
Sep 27, 2005

Don't you write a book about this George Orwell!

The funny thing about Reply Player One is that my dad loved it and he hardly knows how to use a computer at all. I do not get it. It floored me when he said he loved the book.

Unfit For Space
Nov 8, 2009



Farbtoner posted:

The part where he works tech support solely so the author can cram in the insufferable "have you tried not being an idiot? " unwarranted self-importance that computer janitors have was one of the most punchable things I've ever read. What an awful, pandering shitheap of a book.

My biggest problem with Ready Player One is that you never feel like the protagonist is in danger or has any risk of not getting what he wants. Even in the part of the book that's supposed to be his lowest point, where he's working tech support in a ripoff of the part in The Space Merchants where the protagonist becomes a slave of the evil antagonist's corporation, Cline flat-out tells the reader within a page of his being captured that the protagonist has the situation covered because he's a super smart geek that's just so much better than everybody else that works for the evil corporation.

Popular Human
Jul 17, 2005

and if it's a lie, terrorists made me say it

servoret posted:

My biggest problem with Ready Player One is that you never feel like the protagonist is in danger or has any risk of not getting what he wants. Even in the part of the book that's supposed to be his lowest point, where he's working tech support in a ripoff of the part in The Space Merchants where the protagonist becomes a slave of the evil antagonist's corporation, Cline flat-out tells the reader within a page of his being captured that the protagonist has the situation covered because he's a super smart geek that's just so much better than everybody else that works for the evil corporation.

I wasn't a fan at all of Ready Player One, but to be fair, he does tell you outright that he's writing this after (i'm paraphrasing) something like dozens of films and hundreds of books have been written about his super-awesome nerd exploits. So it's not like his safety or eventual triumph is ever in doubt.

3000psi
Jan 25, 2012

by Fistgrrl


If there's ever been one book that really truly absolutely defeated me, it's Mason and Dixon by Pynchon. There was just no development, nothing was ever followed through on, nothing ever mattered. In Tristram Shandy there's a part where he says that his book is simultaneously "progressive" and "digressive", he's constantly taking all these detours but they all add up to something. Whenever I try and relate a story from that book to anyone I always find myself getting carried away just like Shandy, remembering all these stupid details and digressions that only enhance the story. The book just got better and better as you read it, as all the seemingly pointless tidbits snowballed and gave the characters an incredible depth. Pynchon just seemed totally aimless by comparison. The writing was unfocused, sentences just seemed to evaporate meaning the longer they drew on. Voice was another big problem for me, he took all this time to set up this frame narrative for the book which never really went anywhere, and it was like Pynchon just gave up on that whole conceit.
Nothing in the book ever seemed funny, none of it was organic or relateable. It all came off like a strained exercise in strange historical trivia taken from the endnotes of various old books. I really like 18th century novels, and it really surprised me that I could laugh and cry so readily when reading a 200 year old book but not be able to relate to anything in one so contemporary and well regarded. I was hoping for an insightful take on the different forms the novel took during its 1740-1840 heyday, but by page 400 or so I just got fed up.

3000psi fucked around with this message at Feb 16, 2012 around 11:22

z0331
Oct 2, 2003

Holtby thy name


Not trying to say you should like it, and I haven't actually read it, but Pynchon is an extremely post-modern writer which practically means by definition that his characters are not organic or relateable. Trying to look at his work in the same light as an 18-19th century novel isn't going to get you very far I think.

Myrmidongs
Oct 26, 2010


Made it through Fellowship of the Rings, got about 30 pages into The Two Towers before I gave up. Ugh. I like Frodo, the other hobbits, Gandalf, and the lore surrounding. Every single time anyone not a hobbit or Gandalf opened their mouth just made me more and more depressed at how thin the other characters were. I've finished the books once when I was pretty young, but have never even been able to finish Fellowship since then.

P.S. gently caress Shadowfax, I vote for Fatty Lumpkin as lord of the horses.

hyperhazard
Dec 4, 2011

I'M BUTT WIZARD

Myrmidongs posted:

Made it through Fellowship of the Rings, got about 30 pages into The Two Towers before I gave up. Ugh. I like Frodo, the other hobbits, Gandalf, and the lore surrounding. Every single time anyone not a hobbit or Gandalf opened their mouth just made me more and more depressed at how thin the other characters were. I've finished the books once when I was pretty young, but have never even been able to finish Fellowship since then.

P.S. gently caress Shadowfax, I vote for Fatty Lumpkin as lord of the horses.
The Two Towers is the worst of the three books, unless you like sitting down to 150 pages of Urk-hai marching. I ended up slogging through it years ago after someone promised that the Helm's Deep battle would be worth it. It wasn't. The entire thing lasts about 20 pages, at which point Book 3 ends, and Book 4 begins with more walking.

Return of the King is pretty good; if you can stomach more Tolkien, I'd say skip to that one. I liked Denethor as a character, and the passage with his demise really got to me somehow. It's equal parts gory and tragic. And if you're into the lore, Eowyn's character has a lot of connections to Norse and medieval mythology. (Even though her romances are shoehorned in there because, hey, it was the 1940s, and women couldn't just walk around without a man. What kind of happy ending would that be?)

/waxing on about LOTR like the huge nerd I am.

PonchtheJedi
Feb 20, 2004

Still got some work to do...

For me it was The Passage by Justin Cronin. I got around halfway before the book managed to bore me to giving up. I should mention I have a very high threshold for bad books - I can slog through almost anything if the story is decent. This book has a really cool premise - government experiment creates vampires who proceed to wreck poo poo - but I got so bored that I eventually quit.

Spoilers for the first half or so of the book : The first half of the book is all about Wolghast and the kid, and then after the apocalypse it just gets boring. I hated giving up on the book, it seems to have a lot of fans and maybe I just hit a crummy passage. Should I keep on?

funkybottoms
Oct 28, 2010

Funky Bottoms is a land man

PonchtheJedi posted:

For me it was The Passage by Justin Cronin. I got around halfway before the book managed to bore me to giving up. I should mention I have a very high threshold for bad books - I can slog through almost anything if the story is decent. This book has a really cool premise - government experiment creates vampires who proceed to wreck poo poo - but I got so bored that I eventually quit.

Spoilers for the first half or so of the book : The first half of the book is all about Wolghast and the kid, and then after the apocalypse it just gets boring. I hated giving up on the book, it seems to have a lot of fans and maybe I just hit a crummy passage. Should I keep on?

Nope. If you made it a little way into the stuff after Wolghast's portion and weren't feeling it, it doesn't get any better- just the opposite, in fact.

Stupid_Sexy_Flander
Mar 14, 2007

Is a man not entitled to the haw of his maw?


PonchtheJedi posted:

For me it was The Passage by Justin Cronin. I got around halfway before the book managed to bore me to giving up. I should mention I have a very high threshold for bad books - I can slog through almost anything if the story is decent. This book has a really cool premise - government experiment creates vampires who proceed to wreck poo poo - but I got so bored that I eventually quit.

Spoilers for the first half or so of the book : The first half of the book is all about Wolghast and the kid, and then after the apocalypse it just gets boring. I hated giving up on the book, it seems to have a lot of fans and maybe I just hit a crummy passage. Should I keep on?

In the same boat.

Everyone says it gets more boring from there, so I just kinda decided to bust a gently caress it and move on to something else.

My latest "Couldn't get through" was Mighty Hammer Down. I posted about it in the scifi/fantasy thread.

Basically, while the premise sounds cool, turns out to be one of those airport fiction books set in a fantasy settings, with evil muslims and long speeches about how they suck, are evil, and you can't trust em.

I got 75% of the way through the book (according to the kindle) and just had to quit. For a book about a reborn god of war who is supposed to piss off the other gods and start wrecking poo poo, it was nothing but page after page of the author blabbering on about his worldview and how the other characters worldview was wrong.

Me? I don't give a drat. I read fantasy to read about giant battles with axes and swords and dragons and magic and elementals kicking rear end and taking names. You know, fun stuff. Tried "fast forwarding" through pages where it looks like there is a big right wing speech going on, and ended up skipping so many pages I decided to just quit.

dorijan
Apr 24, 2011
sleepy

A Crown of Swords by Robert Jordan is the first book in quite some time I've decided not to continue reading for the time being. The books in the series before this one were very good, unfortunately this one annoyed to no end: they are still looking for the Bowl of the Winds - not much progress overall, still tugging braids.

something_clever
Sep 25, 2006


PonchtheJedi posted:

For me it was The Passage by Justin Cronin.

I actually enjoyed "The Passage", and I'll probably read/buy the sequels (used and in paperback though). It reminded me of all the horror/post apocalyptic novels I read as a teenager. Definitely nothing original, it reads like some slightly retarded bastard child of "The Stand" and "I Am Legend", with "Dan Simmons" as the godfather and with a tiny dash of nasty "Koontz" DNA thrown in.

Aust posted:

I'm struggling to get through 2666. I like it a lot but it's slow going. I think it's like trying to eat a lot of very rich food. I've only finished book 1 and I think I want to take a break for a while. I have a feeling there isn't going to be a strong, driving central plot.

I struggled with it as well. Especially the 1st couple of parts. But it gets progressively more readable, interesting and especially mind loving the further you read. And there is a central plot and connection through all the parts, though in no way conventional nor particularly strong. But ultimately It might be one of the most memorable books I've read in the last few years.
And if you already like the 1st "book", which I assume is "The Part about the Critics" and IMO is an annoying drag, it can only get better from there.

I (Recently) couldn't finish:

I made it ½ way through The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay before moving on to other books. I enjoyed Chabon's "Wonder Boys", "The Yiddish Policemen's Union", and Kavalier and Clay wasn't necessarily bad, but the part I read just seemed a little too melodramatic, overlong and contrived. Maybe some goon who've read it, can tell me if I should pick it up again or just leave it be?

I made it to page 130 of Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon (although as a vacation novel). Supposedly the most accessible of Pynchon's writings, and in the "crime/mystery" genre as well, which is one of my favorite genres. All though I didn't really make a severe effort to finish it, it was just pretty meh! I really can't remember a lot of it a ½ year later. The only things I recollect are a lot of convoluted plot threads/characters and a Lebowski like protagonist. This doesn't bode well for "Mason & Dixon" which is waiting on my "to read" shelf.

something_clever fucked around with this message at Mar 2, 2012 around 18:53

barkingclam
Jun 20, 2007


something_clever posted:

I made it ½ way through The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay before moving on to other books. I enjoyed Chabon's "Wonder Boys", "The Yiddish Policemen's Union", and Kavalier and Clay wasn't necessarily bad, but the part I read just seemed a little too melodramatic, overlong and contrived. Maybe some goon who've read it, can tell me if I should pick it up again or just leave it be?

If you don't want to finish it, it's your loss. I think Kavalier and Clay is his best novel and the stuff set during the second world war is great.

3000psi
Jan 25, 2012

by Fistgrrl


something_clever posted:

I made it to page 130 of Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon (although as a vacation novel). Supposedly the most accessible of Pynchon's writings, and in the "crime/mystery" genre as well, which is one of my favorite genres. All though I didn't really make a severe effort to finish it, it was just pretty meh! I really can't remember a lot of it a ½ year later. The only things I recollect are a lot of convoluted plot threads/characters and a Lebowski like protagonist. This doesn't bode well for "Mason & Dixon" which is waiting on my "to read" shelf.

Don't do it. If you want to read a funny satire of 18th century society read Tristram Shandy. I have absolutely no idea what Pynchon was doing in Mason & Dixon.

MourningView
Sep 2, 2006


Dunk a l'Orange


something_clever posted:

I made it ½ way through The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay before moving on to other books. I enjoyed Chabon's "Wonder Boys", "The Yiddish Policemen's Union", and Kavalier and Clay wasn't necessarily bad, but the part I read just seemed a little too melodramatic, overlong and contrived. Maybe some goon who've read it, can tell me if I should pick it up again or just leave it be?

I think it's his best novel by quite a bit and one of the better ones of the last couple decades but if you don't like it by halfway through it's probably not going to get any better for you.

Emery
Feb 8, 2012

Where were you when I was...


I don't know if it was just me, but the book I couldn't get through was The Hunger Games. Something about it just rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe it was the way Katniss didn't seem to have any defining traits other than being hungry, or perhaps it was how some of the details stretched my suspension of disbelief ("I go out and hunt and gather every day and bring home deer and rabbits and berries, enough to support two families of people, but we're still so huuuuuuuuungry!"). I think it was when the son of the inexplicably still in business baker who gets to eat bread, which is specifically called a luxury, complained about being hungry all the time that I finally gave up on the whole thing as poorly written.

fuzzy_logic
May 2, 2009

thank you master nyaAGHAGHAGAHGAHAGHBDHBHJBJAVBJH


Fighting-Fefnir posted:

I don't know if it was just me, but the book I couldn't get through was The Hunger Games. Something about it just rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe it was the way Katniss didn't seem to have any defining traits other than being hungry, or perhaps it was how some of the details stretched my suspension of disbelief ("I go out and hunt and gather every day and bring home deer and rabbits and berries, enough to support two families of people, but we're still so huuuuuuuuungry!"). I think it was when the son of the inexplicably still in business baker who gets to eat bread, which is specifically called a luxury, complained about being hungry all the time that I finally gave up on the whole thing as poorly written.

it's not just you, I got three chapters in and just HATED it. Everyone on facebook is now extolling it as the greatest thing ever written, I dunno.

Recently I sold on amazon without finishing Wraeththu (I got the omnibus), God that was utter crap. It had the same "author writing fanfic about her own characters" shtick as Mercedes Lackey but without the fun. My girlfriend and I used to get drunk and read The Emo Adventures of Poor Gay Vanyel aloud to each other and had a great time, but this was just bizarre and terrible.

I got halfway through God-Emperor of Dune before ditching it for the same reason as I ditched the Hitchhiker's Guide series after about 3 books: I realized that if I turned the page and found that every major character had instantly died, I would not give half a poo poo.

I'm slogging through Don Quixote and liking it but it doesn't look like I'm gonna make it ...

Stuporstar
May 5, 2008

One day, cock of the walk. Next, a feather duster.


I'm another one who couldn't get through Don Quixote. Perhaps I need to find another English translation that isn't in such archaic language.

I stopped reading the Lord of the Rings about halfway through The Two Towers when I was 15. I tried again before the movies came out. I found I got antsy with Frodo and Sam trudging across the swamp because I wanted to know what the other characters were doing more, so I skipped that part and went back to it once the other characters completed their storylines. Switching up the order worked wonders and I finally finished the fucker.

It's funny I couldn't get through Lord of the Rings at that age, because somehow I read through the entire Dune series no problem (and I can't fathom how, seeing as it went downhill from God Emperor on). I also ripped through Heart of Darkness no problem at 16. At the time, I thought it was the most thrilling book I ever read. This thread is starting to make me think that's weird or something.

Most recently, I couldn't get past page one of Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon. I heard this guy was one of the biggest influences on many bigger and better SF writers, so I thought I'd check it out. Here's the first page:

quote:

One night when I had tasted bitterness I went out on to the hill. Dark heather checked my feet. Below marched the suburban lamps. Windows, their curtains drawn, were shut eyes, inwardly watching the lives of dreams. Beyond the sea's level darkness a lighthouse pulsed. Overhead, obscurity. I distinguished our own house, our islet in the tumultuous and bitter currents of the world. There, for a decade and a half, we two, so different in quality, had grown in and in to one another, for mutual support and nourishment, in intricate symbiosis. There daily we planned our several undertakings, and recounted the day's oddities and vexations. There letters piled up to be answered, socks to be darned. There the children were born, those sudden new lives. There, under that roof, our own two lives, recalcitrant sometimes to one another, were all the while thankfully one, one larger, more conscious life than either alone.

All this, surely, was good. Yet there was bitterness. And bitterness not only invaded us from the world; it welled up also within our own magic circle. For horror at our futility, at our own unreality, and not only at the world's delirium, had driven me out on to the hill.

We were always hurrying from one little urgent task to another, but the upshot was insubstantial. Had we, perhaps, misconceived our whole existence? Were we, as it were, living from false premises? And in particular, this partnership of ours, this seemingly so well-based fulcrum for activity in the world, was it after all nothing but a little eddy of complacent and ingrown domesticity, ineffectively whirling on the surface of the great flux, having in itself no depth of being, and no significance? Had we perhaps after all deceived ourselves? Behind those rapt windows did we, like so many others, in-deed live only a dream? In a sick world even the hale are sick. And we two, spinning our little life mostly by rote, sel-dom with clear cognizance, seldom with firm intent, were products of a sick world.

Does anyone else hear a big reefer being sucked back at the end of every question mark, or is it just me? I can't stand this poo poo already.

maxnmona
Mar 16, 2005

if you start with drums, you have to end with dynamite.

Stuporstar posted:

Does anyone else hear a big reefer being sucked back at the end of every question mark, or is it just me? I can't stand this poo poo already.

That's well written and nothing about it says stoner to me.

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barkingclam
Jun 20, 2007


Stuporstar posted:

I'm another one who couldn't get through Don Quixote. Perhaps I need to find another English translation that isn't in such archaic language.

I'm a fan of J.M. Cohen's that Penguin used to have (it's pretty easy to find used), but Edith Grossman's or Burton Raffel's are good also.

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