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A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin. Really enjoyed A Game of Thrones, and this one was chugging along pretty well with some good build up, interesting characterization, and some nice mockery of traditional fantasy tropes. And then Renly Baratheon gets killed randomly by an evil magical shadow. I must've reread that paragraph about ten times to make sure I was reading it correctly. The random insertion of a magical "the plot has to go this way, sorry character you were enjoying reading about!" into a pretty much non-magical world really just killed it for me... Toph Bei Fong fucked around with this message at 14:21 on May 8, 2008 |
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May 8, 2008 14:17
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ohthatdan posted:Actually, reading your post I do want to clarify some things that I should have done to begin with. First off, I will actually say that I should have posted I really enjoyed the Navidson Record rather than saying it was "pretty good". There were points where I was genuinely terrified with what was about to happen next. I also felt that the layout of the book aided that, such as spacing out words fewer and fewer on pages to compliment a tense moment. However, I just couldn't really get into the Johnny Truant story, mostly because I was honestly more driven to conclude the haunting Navidson Tale. I got a good chunk under my belt reading both before I just skipped the Truant portions at the time because I was completely satisfied with the main story. I do understand that the tales run parallel, furthering Johnny's disorientation as The Navidson Record goes on, but I just found myself more drawn towards the Navidson stuff, and its effect on me rather than Johnny. I also shouldn't have used the word crap, so I'll change that to "not as much to my liking". I had this exact same experience with the book. The Navidson Record was just far more interesting and suspenseful than the sections about Johnny going crazy, having weird sex, getting into fights with huge Polish guys, and after the first couple Johnny sections, I just started skimming. I just couldn't get into him as a character, and found myself utterly uninterested in anything he said or did. Different strokes for different folks, I suppose. It's a fun book, no doubt, and approaching it like, say, a Stephen King novel, rather than something by James Joyce or Thomas Pynchon makes it a lot easier to stomach. edit: italics are not spoilers... 
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May 13, 2008 06:49
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Chocolate Milk posted:To contribute: Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake. It was well-written, but I just couldn't maintain interest for long enough, or figure out what was going on. Plus the idea that there were two more books in the series made me feel like I had this massive task to complete, so reading it seemed like a chore. I don't think I could have gotten through this if I hadn't read Anthony Burgess' introduction where he recalls a conversation he and Peake had about writing a novel that would be thousands of pages long and go literally nowhere, with the main character being only about a month old by the end of the first installment. With that mindset, I could just sit back and enjoy with description, knowing that I didn't have to worry too much about the plot advancing, save for in very broad strokes, rather like watching someone set up dominoes for an entire afternoon, then waiting another two days to set up a lot of other things to make the terrain look more interesting, before finally knocking them down. I'd also highly recommend the BBC miniseries from a couple years back. They hit on almost everything in the book, cut it down to about 6 episodes, and make it look drat cool to boot.
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May 27, 2008 18:15
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Lackloss posted:Les Miserable- I have tried twice, and I always stop at Waterloo because it is about eighty pages that all he talks about is waterloo and I can't even divine what he is doing with it. Sure people died and the French lost, but what does it have to do with Valjean? Oh, but how else can we further establish that M. Thénardier is a bad person? I mean, as if the point hadn't been driven home already by the systematic child abuse and penny pinching and otherwise being a huge douche to everyone but his daughters and wife?   I started skimming around page three of this, and gave up on the book shortly after. The musical was much better, and a lot easier to follow chiefly because it didn't have these huge digressions to complain about French society that have only vague ties to the plot.
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Jun 2, 2008 19:02
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Greyish Orange posted:I might get criticised for this but I really can't finish Jack Kerouac's On the Road. I know that it's meant to be a classic, and was very different for its time but I just can't stand any of the characters. The story flits between different people all the time, and the writer doesn't seem to do anything - he just seems to be viewing Dean's activities with a sense of boredom. I found reading the "original scroll" version of On the Road a lot better than the neatly edited and paragraphed and name altered version that was properly published back in the 50s. Something about the change in format, additional swearing, real names, and the sheer urgency of the wall of text made it read a lot more like a somewhat crazy, desperate, and unreliable narrator trying to convince himself not to commit suicide, and less like a whiny teenager trying to convince himself that he's so much cooler than everyone else. The introductions and background essays were pretty illuminating and interesting also. It doesn't alter the fact that it's about a sexist douche and his "too cool" friend bumming around the country writing poetry that's "really good! you should get it published!" while treating their wives like poo poo and bumping into various "colourful characters", many of whom overstay their welcomes. I hated the original for the exact reasons you described, but loved the scroll for the same reason I loved Ellis' American Psycho and Chester Brown's Paying For It, as character pieces about hosed up individuals who can't step outside themselves, but I'll be the first to admit that not everyone gets that same kind of enjoyment. Toph Bei Fong fucked around with this message at 02:32 on Dec 17, 2013 |
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Dec 17, 2013 02:29
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Taeke posted:I just found out I have to read Ulysses for a literature course I'm starting in a few weeks. I already gave it three tries in the past. Time to get started a fourth, and this time actually slog through. This might help: http://www.columbia.edu/~fms5/ulys.htm
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Mar 14, 2014 17:57
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Moby Dick isn't so much about an awesome whale fight as it is about a guy trying to find meaning in his life so he doesn't commit suicide; he details the new life he chooses exhaustively to avoid focusing on himself or his past. It is a Good Book, one of my favorites, but I can see how some people would find it a chore to read because of how much detail is crammed in, and the 1850's sentence structure. edit: my wife hated it when she tried to read it, but loved it when I read it to her. Try an audiobook version perhaps?
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Jul 14, 2014 20:57
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MightyJoe36 posted:I actually liked The Fountainhead. Once you are able to get past the bombastic diatribes, it's a pretty good story. Atlas Shrugged was not anything like that. It's all diatribe. It's like one big stream of consciousness rant that she got so caught up in, she forgot to write the story. I kept trying to get to the story part, but then I just gave up. The Fountainhead would have been a better story if it had ended with Roark in jail for blowing up the building, because he's a terrorist, and then going to jail because seriously? Or refusing to build under Keating's name on principle, and holding out to build the ones he wants under his own name. Rather than the mulled over fairy tale "it all works out in the end if you stick to your principles" gloss that's tacked on. If all that makes principles work out are rich men with money, well, that's kind of a crappy moral, ain't it? Though, considering Rand's views about the world... Not a bad story up until that point, though. And for those of you who want Atlas Shrugged without wanting to actually track down a copy of Atlas Shrugged: http://galtse.cx/ Bet you can't read the whole thing!
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Sep 23, 2014 01:45
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kannonfodder posted:They don't hate themselves. They hate you. Taking their precious books away from them... I love being a librarian because it's basically the opposite of retail: "Go on, take the book. No, no, don't pay for it. Yeah, take a few more, go right ahead. No, I don't care which ones. I don't have any agenda or mandate here, I just want to know what you'll enjoy reading so I can point you in the right direction. Time-travelling pirate gay romance? Sure, it's right over here... Just bring it back eventually, please?"
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Oct 8, 2014 14:35
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