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I too will take up the booklord-challenge. I'm currently re-reading Purdy's House of the Solitary Maggot and finished today A Third of a Nation, a weird depression-era play about how poo poo hosuing in New York is, and how the government should pay up to fix things up.
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Jan 12, 2015 19:04
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Mr. Squishy posted:I too will take up the booklord-challenge. I'm currently re-reading Purdy's House of the Solitary Maggot and finished today A Third of a Nation, a weird depression-era play about how poo poo hosuing in New York is, and how the government should pay up to fix things up. Don't u usually read all those sorts of books anyway? Doesn't seem like much of a challenge IMO.........
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Jan 13, 2015 02:54
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Stravinsky posted:1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year. I made a draft of this post and came back a week later to find that you added more challenges! I better post this now while I have the chance. Here are some plans and ideas for the booklord's challenge: 1. 25: I hope to manage at least two a month. 2. I will read the Hunger Games trilogy before the last movie comes out, but there will be more female authors. (Edit: I forgot to mention I also want to see if I can understand this criticism.) 3. Plenty of opportunity for overlapping with the ladies and other categories. Possibilities include Edwidge Danticat, Mo Yan, Saiichi Maruya, Chang-rae Lee, Tété-Michel Kpomassie, James Baldwin, Cherríe L. Moraga, Catherine Lim, Laura Esquivel. 4. This is a challenge. I may need recommendations (I will look into CestMoi's). 5. Does art history count? I plan to read a number of textbooks. Maybe Early Medieval Art by Lawrence Nees, or David to Delacroix by Walter Friedlaender. I also have stuff like Paddy's Lament by Thomas Gallagher. 6. Maybe A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft. 7. I hope to read Seamus Heaney or Anne Sexton sometime soon. And maybe older stuff, like the Pearl/Gawain poet. 8. The Crying of Lot 49, or If On a Winter's Night a Traveler. I have never read the authors of these books but see them mentioned around here rather a lot. 9. Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett. 10. The Blind Owl: my library catalog says this is Persian experimental fiction, with a subject heading "hallucinations and illusions," by Ṣādiq Hidāyat. I guess this is the one. The record says "compiled by" by Carol L. Sayers but doesn't identify the translator. 11. On Love by Alain de Botton. 12. Like science fiction? I may try Have Space Suit—Will Travel by Robert Heinlein, and Tales of Pirx the Pilot by Stanisław Lem. 13. Sounds like Blind Owl. 14. I'm open to it, but I probably won't be able to unless I own it or it's in my local library. That's why I'm compiling a Goodreads list of what's available. 15. I don't know of any upcoming publications I'm interested in, but I'm sure to come across some. 16. I really do need to go through those unread books on my shelf. To name one: Foundation, by Asimov. 17. Riders to the Sea, by J.M Synge. In the past I have read Playboy of the Western World, and recommend it. 18. John McGahern's All Will be Well is an autobiography. 19. My library has One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and I look forward to it. 20. I think Shanghai Baby was banned in China. Reviews are mixed. I'm curious. 21. Maybe The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction. 22. Hawk & Fisher? I am currently reading An Irish Literature Reader: Poetry, Prose, Drama, edited by Maureen O'Rourke Murphy and James MacKillop. I want to read a bunch of Irish lit and thought this would be a good introduction. Also, Goodreads. Fedelm fucked around with this message at 18:04 on Jan 13, 2015 |
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Jan 13, 2015 05:53
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Roydrowsy posted:
I actually just finished the second book and it's basically HBO's Rome goes to space. I don't mean that in a bad way-- lots of backstabbing (both literal and figurative) and political intrigue, along with some really brutal battle scenes. My heart was pounding during the last scene and books rarely give me such visceral reactions. I would recommend it if that sort of thing interests you.
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Jan 13, 2015 23:16
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tookie posted:I actually just finished the second book and it's basically HBO's Rome goes to space. I don't mean that in a bad way-- lots of backstabbing (both literal and figurative) and political intrigue, along with some really brutal battle scenes. My heart was pounding during the last scene and books rarely give me such visceral reactions. I would recommend it if that sort of thing interests you. That sounds dope as gently caress and I'm gonna read it sometime.
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Jan 14, 2015 11:36
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Me and a couple of friends already have a challenge for most books read in 2015 so I'm pretty motivated as it stands, however this seems like a really good way to get me to go outside of my normal comfort zone of Stephen King plus assorted fantasy novels. My overall goal will be 40 books and I will try to hit every one of those categories in the initial challenge within that number. I need to get working out what I am going to read. I've finished three books so far: The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch - Already mentioned in this thread, seconding that it was a lot of fun. Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch - The sequel to Lies, this one was good enough but I didn't enjoy it as much as the first. It's hard to put my finger on it but it felt a bit more contrived in certain places and I struggled to remain interested in what felt like very long passages about nautical jargon. Galveston by Nic Pizzolatto - I was looking forward to this as I loved True Detective but didn't feel this book was great. I think maybe I was expecting something in a similarly metaphysical vein and was approaching it from the wrong angle. And I am just starting Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carré The book that's been sitting on my desk all this time will be The Diary of Anne Frank and the short stories will be The Periodic Table by Primo Levi. I'll probably ask for suggestions on the other topics as I come around to them but for the moment, does anyone want to give me a wildcard?
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Jan 14, 2015 15:22
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Lemon posted:I'll probably ask for suggestions on the other topics as I come around to them but for the moment, does anyone want to give me a wildcard? One Bloody Thing After Another by Joey Comeau.
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Jan 14, 2015 15:29
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Tiggum posted:One Bloody Thing After Another by Joey Comeau. Thanks!
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Jan 14, 2015 15:35
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I really liked the first Dune. I also thought the following three books were okay in their own right, as a conclusion to the main character's story. Heretics Of Dune was a pulpy mess, that was enjoyable enough, but really lacked a lot of what made the first book so exciting. Instead, there were magic space sex cults and Super Saiyans. It's been years since I'd read a Dune book, but I thought I'd finally give Chapterhouse: Dune a go, and hoo boy, what a mistake. I thought it'd be interesting to see how far down the rabbit hole the series went (without resorting to reading Brian Herbert's attempts), but I had to stop reading halfway through. What a torrid piece of poo poo.
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Jan 14, 2015 17:18
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I'm up for this. - I'm aiming for 50 books this year. - At least two big books, >800 pages. - I'll let four friends give me a book to read. Everyone does it anyways, may as well acquiesce. - Everything else will be my usual mix of classics, crap, books hanging around my bookshelves, and Discworld.
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Jan 15, 2015 05:22
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If you want a book to make you mad every couple of pages, I can heartily recommend Rise of the Warrior Cop. It's obviously a really biased look at police militarization as a negative thing, but it's well-researched and about a pretty unambiguously lovely trend so it didn't bother me. I started Falstaff, my wild card book, last night. It's fun so far, which is good because I definitely didn't want to read heavy poo poo after getting mad about abuse of police power for a week straight. So far: 1. The Lies of Locke Lamora, Scott Lynch (reread) 2. Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces, Radley Balko 3. Falstaff, Robert Nye (in progress)
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Jan 15, 2015 08:32
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Book 4 - One Bloody Thing After Another by Joey Comeau. This was my wildcard. Thanks to Tiggum for recommending this, it grabbed me right away and I burned through it really quickly. Like all books I read in one sitting I find it hard to put into words what I think about it but there was certainly something to it and I think I will most likely re-read at some point.
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Jan 15, 2015 09:33
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Aiming for the unrealistic goal of 75 books. I figure posting here will give me that extra boost of motivation. Already read 3. I try my best to give priority to modern/contemporary Korean literature (the ones you recommended to me a while back in the other thread when I mentioned Young-Ha Kim). As such, in addition to your recs, I'm hoping to get through (most of) the Library of Korean Literature books, that newly-released K-Fiction Series, and anything else I can get my hands on. Everything in between will be serious literary junk like Man Booker/Pulitzer prize winners.
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Jan 15, 2015 22:02
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About halfway through my first challenge book House of Leaves, as far as I'm concerned, Johnny Truant can go eat a dick. Hoonestly, I think that book could've done with an editor doing some clipping, except they probably didn't want to disrupt the whole THIS IS ART thingy. Sure, it's playing with layout and sturcture, I get it, now let me get back to the house.
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Jan 17, 2015 13:49
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Someone wildcard me. Make it good!
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Jan 17, 2015 14:18
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Corrode posted:Someone wildcard me. Make it good! Concrete by Thomas Bernhard.
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Jan 17, 2015 14:29
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anilEhilated posted:About halfway through my first challenge book House of Leaves, as far as I'm concerned, Johnny Truant can go eat a dick. Hoonestly, I think that book could've done with an editor doing some clipping, except they probably didn't want to disrupt the whole THIS IS ART thingy. Sure, it's playing with layout and sturcture, I get it, now let me get back to the house. Weird - I just took this out of the library too for my list. I haven't started it yet, though.
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Jan 17, 2015 17:16
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First update... 1. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold - John le Carre - This was a pretty cool books. Some of the intricate plotting and spy lingo went a bit over my head, but I got enough of it overall to be pretty engaged with it throughout. A pretty sad book overall but thrilling, in a way. I dunno if I'm going to read more of him though, his writing did a weird thing to my brain where I'd have sleepless nights after I read the book, like the words were replaying in my head washing over me, distracting and overwhelming my mind. It's really hard to describe, but his writing got into my subconscious in a weird way that made me lose sleep. Crazy, I know. 2. The Gunlinger - Stephen King - A re-read. I finally read through the Dark Tower prequel comics from Marvel and immediately started going through the Dark Tower series because I couldn't get enough Roland, and caught the bug again. To be honest I probably could have skipped the first book because the comic that covers it was pretty comprehensive, and the book isn't exactly the best DT book. Not bad, but nothing like the ones to come. 3. The Drawing of the Three - Stephen King - Another re-read due to jonesing for some DT. I always waver between this and The Waste Lands as my favorite DT book and this read through further cemented my love for it. The whole scene with Roland in Jack Mort's body is loving gold. Some of my favorite Roland-isms are in this novel. Who doesn't laugh at Roland taking out the cop that shot at him in a crowded pharmacy narrowing missing bystanders, then taking the time to lean over his unconscious body to tell him that "You’re a dangerous fool who should be sent west. You have forgotten the face of your father." There are so many great culture clash moments like that between Roland and our world it's charming and funny as hell. 4. Maphead by Ken Jennings - A really pleasant a neat read about maps, and the people who are obsessed with anything having to do with them, from just looking at them, to collecting them, to memorizing geography, to travelling, geocaching, road/highway nuts and more. I've always been a bit of a map geek, and it was interesting learning about how many obsessive subcultures there are among map geeks, and also seeing how the time inordinate time I spent during my youth staring at maps was not only shared, but dwarfed by some of the people in this book. You also learn plenty of interesting facts to keep you entertained throughout. Highly recommended if you are in anyway into maps or geography. 5. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Corpes - Mary Roach - A pretty interesting and enlightening read about how cadavers help shape our knowledge of ourselves and what a large part they play in research and medical training worldwide, with some interesting detours into the science and philosophy of disposing of corpses. As well as a chapter dedicated to the historical precedents of cadavers for medicinal uses (hint: there are a shitload more than you would think). I don't really think this authors sense of humor is all that funny, she tries to make you laugh a lot but only succeeded like once with me , however it isn't annoying or anything, just not funny. Still though the book was pretty informative and reads like a series of magazine articles or something, which makes sense considering it's her first book after a career of writing for magazines. I'm reading her book Packing for Mars right now, and it's pretty cool so far even though I know nearly everything about the freakin space programs of the world already. So, 5/40 2/8 Non fiction 1/4 Books by Women 1/4 Non sci-fi fantasy fiction A good start to the year as far a sheer numbers go, and if this continues I probably will eventually up my total to 52 or 60 or something, and maybe upping at least my non-fiction sub goal since I think I'm gonna be reading a lot of that this year, however for now we'll keep going with my current goals. It's early after all, and I do plan on reading Malazan sometime this year so that might bring my pace to a crawl anyway. Damo fucked around with this message at 13:38 on Jan 18, 2015 |
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Jan 18, 2015 13:26
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Damo posted:2. The Gunlinger - Stephen King - To be honest I probably could have skipped the first book because it isn't exactly the best DT book. It so is.
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Jan 18, 2015 17:10
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Tiggum posted:It so is. Crazy. The Gunslinger is the only one I've reread and still own, because I felt with every subsequent book the series spiralled further and further into mediocrity (barring The Wastelands, which is great in its own right. Edit: that is to say, I agree with Tiggum.
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Jan 18, 2015 18:50
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I don't think it's bad or anything, I said it's not the best. It's certainly not anywhere near the worst. It's mainly that my reread was really spoiled because I read the comic that summed it up again quite nicely. That's the biggest reason I could have skipped it this time around. Reading the novel felt like I had just read it a day ago cause of the comics. It's a great book in its own right, but I like book 2 and 3 better. They are just more fun and that's most of what I like about The Dark Tower. The gunslinger is probably my third or fourth favorite. The thing that kind of brings it down for me is its loneliness. Roland doesn't have many people To play off of and its so goddamn serious it's kind of a bummer. I mean it fits his character and where he's coming from as a person and the situation he's in, it just lacks the stuff that made me really like the series, which is the stuff that book two really ramps up. Damo fucked around with this message at 21:09 on Jan 18, 2015 |
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Jan 18, 2015 21:01
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Damo posted:It's certainly not anywhere near the worst.
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Jan 18, 2015 21:07
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I'll take the Booklord Challenge if I can tweak it to be 20 books, possibly revising it upwards if I make good progress. I used to be able to clear 1 per week easily but now between the mental drain of school and the everything-drain of a physically demanding job my reading's taken a huge dive in favor of easier recreation, (I'm trying to remember if I've read more than one book since I started working and going to school at the same time and I don't think I have  ) so I'm setting myself a goal that I think I'll have to work for but still won't turn reading into a chore on top of all my actual chores.I think I naturally tend towards a lot of stuff on the list (non-fiction especially, and I read a lot of women and non-white authors) but a lot of it is out of my comfort zone, like poetry and plays, which I never read, so I'm excited to see what comes out of it. Also if someone could go ahead and wildcard me, that'd be great.
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Jan 19, 2015 01:22
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WeaponGradeSadness posted:I'll take the Booklord Challenge if I can tweak it to be 20 books, possibly revising it upwards if I make good progress. I used to be able to clear 1 per week easily but now between the mental drain of school and the everything-drain of a physically demanding job my reading's taken a huge dive in favor of easier recreation, (I'm trying to remember if I've read more than one book since I started working and going to school at the same time and I don't think I have Alright, Maggot by Paul Muldoon should get you out of your funk.
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Jan 19, 2015 01:40
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Will shoot for 35 again this year, no other sort of variables (as my attempts to tick off the bulk of the Joseph Brodsky reading list last year was an unmitigated disaster). 1. L.P. Hartley - "The Go-Between": Delightful, nostalgic novel about a naive schoolboy who serves as a message-runner for an aristocratic young lady and her farmer lover, unknowingly continuing their rather dangerous liaison under the nose of the young woman's prospective landowning husband (whom our little Mercury respects highly), ending in disaster. 2. Christopher Isherwood - "Mr Norris Changes Trains": Interesting, occasionally-funny character study of a shady British ex-pat's activities in political and business circles in Berlin just after Hitler takes power. Working on "Harlequin's Millions" by Bohumil Hrabal next. Seems to be more of the same from him, populated with a host of drunks and other curiosities in small-town Czechoslovakia.
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Jan 19, 2015 02:40
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First update: 1. The vanilla read a set number of books in a year. - went with 35, though I'm at 7 already so perhaps I aimed low. 2. Read a female author - Amy Poehler's Yes Please (there will be others) 3. The non-white author 4. Philosophy 5. History 6. An essay - I read A Mathematician's Lament which I recommend if math or math education is of any interest to you - available online if you google for it. (I also read David Sedaris' Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls which is a collection of essays so this challenge is definitely complete) 7. A collection of poetry 8. Something post-modern 9. Something absurdist 10. The Blind Owl 11. Something on either hate or love 12. Something dealing with space 13. Something dealing with the unreal - Currently reading House of Leaves for the first time to knock off this challenge 14. Wildcard (Some one else taking the challenge will tell you what to read) 15. Something published this year or the past three months 16. That one book that has been sitting on your desk waiting for a long time 17. A play 18. Biography - I could use Poehler's book again here, but I know I will read more biographies and books by women this year anyway, so I'll wait to check this off. 19. The color red - I read Josef Albers' Interaction of Color, a sort of textbook on color theory and how perception can cloud it. It was a little over my head since I don't have much background on this stuff, but it was interesting and certainly out of my element. 20. Something banned or censored 21. Short story(s) 22. A mystery I also know what I'll be reading for 8, 9, 11, 15, 16, and 20, so I'm off to a good start. If someone else taking the Booklord challenge would like to give me a wildcard, I'm game for it now - something funny would be appreciated.
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Jan 19, 2015 04:33
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anilEhilated posted:Nope, that's Wizard and Glass. Thing stopped three of my attempts to reread it; I don't care what the final payoff is, it's not worth wading through this amount of horrible teenage romance. Absolutely agreed. From what I recall, you can skip that one and miss practically nothing though.
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Jan 19, 2015 04:37
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The Berzerker posted:First update: Black Ajax by George MacDonald Fraser. There's a lot of period vernacular in this one, but if you can get get through stuff like the Aubrey/Maturin books or Huck Finn with no problems then you should be fine. If not, I suggest Arthur Conan Doyle's Rodney Stone as an ease in read (it's also worth reading since Ajex is Fraser's response Doyle's treatment of the regency era, and, because you asked for something humorous, a big influence on the work of PG Wodehouse). High Warlord Zog fucked around with this message at 07:18 on Jan 19, 2015 |
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Jan 19, 2015 07:08
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First time doing this challenge. Going to set the goal to 20 books and i'll move away from fantasy. I will also try to check as many marks from the booklord challenge as possible.
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Jan 19, 2015 17:23
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High Warlord Zog posted:Black Ajax by George MacDonald Fraser. There's a lot of period vernacular in this one, but if you can get get through stuff like the Aubrey/Maturin books or Huck Finn with no problems then you should be fine. If not, I suggest Arthur Conan Doyle's Rodney Stone as an ease in read (it's also worth reading since Ajex is Fraser's response Doyle's treatment of the regency era, and, because you asked for something humorous, a big influence on the work of PG Wodehouse). I'll read both - Rodney Stone appears to be (partly) classified as a mystery, so I can use it for that challenge. Thanks for the recommendations!
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Jan 19, 2015 17:45
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6 - An essay. The TSR chapter from Designers & Dragons, which is freely available. 17 - A play. The Tempest. Saw it performed last year, and it was much better seen than read. Probably the weirdest Shakespeare play.
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Jan 20, 2015 03:00
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Update One: Civilization and Its Discontents - Sigmund Freud I read this as a part of the marathon read that took place on January 3rd. I've read it before, but the refresher was welcomed. It remains surprising to me how applicable Freud's insights are almost a century later, and also how mischaracterized he has become in contemporary society. I would encourage you all to read it as it is pretty accessible compared to some of his other stuff. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - Tom Stoppard I need to see this play performed. It is extraordinarily clever and funny. Call of Cthulhu - H.P. Lovecraft I had to get myself into a very particular mindset to enjoy this. The suspense was there, but I really had to let myself run away with it in order to feel it. I've only read this and "At the Mountains of Madness" by HPL. While I like what he tries to do, specifically, the slow-build into the profoundly strange, I have walked away from both of my experiences with a sense that it could have been so much better. Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino I read this for TBB's January Book of the Month and I am glad I did since I'm not sure I would have ever picked it up on my own. The book deviates from a typical narrative and it just worked for me. Calvino strikes a wonderful balance of evoking some fantastic imagery, while also playing with some interesting philosophical ideas. It can be enjoyed just for the language and images, for the philosophical, and as a serious piece of literature. I will probably read more Calvino as a result and likely come back to it for a re-read in the future. Challenge Status 1. 4 of 42 books read. 6. An essay - Civilization and Its Discontents - Sigmund Freud 8. Something post-modern - Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino 17. A play - Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - Tom Stoppard 21. Short story - Call of Cthulhu - H.P. Lovecraft
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Jan 20, 2015 05:48
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lifg posted:6 - An essay. The TSR chapter from Designers & Dragons, which is freely available. You might like Of Dice and Men. Anyone have a play recommendation that is NOT Shakespeare?
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Jan 20, 2015 06:04
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Dienes posted:You might like Of Dice and Men. Sam Shepherd! True West and Buried Child are both excellent. Edward Albee is also very good, check out Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and The Zoo Story. A lot of Neil Simon's works are good reads. Rumors, Brighton Beach Memoirs, and Chapter Two are nice.
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Jan 20, 2015 06:16
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Dienes posted:Anyone have a play recommendation that is NOT Shakespeare? Caryl Churchill's A Number deals with ethics around cloning. Very intimate play Sam Shepard's Buried Child is a fever dream of a family reunion of poor, squalid hillybillies. George Ryga's The Ecstacy Of Rita Joe is a tragic and comic indictment of the treatment of First Nations in Canada. Edward Albee's Who's Afraid Of Virgina Woolfe begins as a lovely dinner involving two couples, one older and one younger, that slowly decends into madness.
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Jan 20, 2015 06:22
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Ha. Beaten w/r/t Shepard and Albee.
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Jan 20, 2015 06:22
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Dienes posted:Anyone have a play recommendation that is NOT Shakespeare? Couple more: Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin In The Sun is great. It's about an impoverish black family that is about to come into a large sum of insurance money and how that affects their lives. Sidney Poitier starred in the film version which was also great. If you've never read Arthur Millers Death Of A Salesman it's an excellent indictment of the American Dream. Also, I'm not as a big a fan as some, but Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot is worth at least one read if only to understand its cultural significance. Oh, oh, and one more, read Ionesco. Eugene Ionesco. His plays are brilliant and hilarious. I'd recommend The Bald Soprano.
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Jan 20, 2015 06:38
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Exit the King by Ionesco is also great, gotta love some Theatre of the Absurd.
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Jan 20, 2015 06:42
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Dienes posted:Anyone have a play recommendation that is NOT Shakespeare? The Importance of Being Earnest is hilarious.
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Jan 20, 2015 07:05
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Tiggum posted:The Importance of Being Earnest is hilarious. And pairs well with Tom Stoppard's Travesties while you're at it.
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Jan 20, 2015 07:10
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