Author Topic: Fave Books / Currently Reading  (Read 947178 times)

Shaggy 2 Grote

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Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #1695 on: August 29, 2011, 03:19:34 PM »
Took a break from Black Swan to read Grant Morrison's Supergods. It could have used a better editor -- it's riddled with minor errors, and he repeats himself A LOT (I don't know how many more times I can bear to hear something brightly colored called "lysergic"). He also has a kind of superficial, Time/Life view of recent American cultural history. But despite all this, he's funny, a pretty compelling storyteller, and an often fantastic prose stylist.
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puppycity

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Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #1696 on: September 01, 2011, 10:36:19 AM »
American Gods - Neil Gaiman (currently)
I am Legend - Richard Matheson (Just finished)
Tearing Down the Wall of Sound: The Rise and Fall of Phil Spector -  Mick Brown (queued up on the night table)
Go Dog Go! P.D. Eastman (the kids love this crazy thing.)

JonFromMaplewood

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Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #1697 on: September 01, 2011, 10:40:44 AM »
Go Dog Go! P.D. Eastman (the kids love this crazy thing.)

A DOG PARTY!
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yesno

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Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #1698 on: September 01, 2011, 10:59:01 AM »
I've read some sci-fi recently.

The City and the City by China Mieville, excellent
The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi, so-so
Permutation City by Greg Egan, excellent

babylonsean

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Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #1699 on: September 02, 2011, 12:01:31 PM »
I've read some sci-fi recently.

The City and the City by China Mieville, excellent
The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi, so-so
Permutation City by Greg Egan, excellent

I just finished Perdido Street Station by Mieville. Have you read it yet? That book was AMAZING! I am fixing to read The Scar. I also have The Windup Girl on my list. I'll have to check out that Permutation City book as well.

yesno

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Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #1700 on: September 06, 2011, 01:48:55 PM »
I've read some sci-fi recently.

The City and the City by China Mieville, excellent
The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi, so-so
Permutation City by Greg Egan, excellent

I just finished Perdido Street Station by Mieville. Have you read it yet? That book was AMAZING! I am fixing to read The Scar. I also have The Windup Girl on my list. I'll have to check out that Permutation City book as well.

Perdido Street station is very good, but I haven't yet read any of the followups.  Just that and The City and the City.

Permutation City is weird, but it expounds on ideas I've thought about--cellular automata, ontology, nature of consciousness.  I just read another of his books,  Schild's Ladder, and it did many of the same things but with other scientific and mathematical ideas. It was an interesting read but I didn't get most of it.

I go back and forth with sci-fi, I'll find something I really like and go on a binge but then I'll encounter a book that's so badly written I'll abandon the genre for a while.

B_Buster

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Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #1701 on: September 07, 2011, 12:56:49 PM »
I enjoyed Denis Johnson's Train Dreams so much I'm rereading Angels and will follow that up with Stars at Noon, the only other book of his I haven't read.
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crumbum

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Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #1702 on: September 07, 2011, 06:45:33 PM »
I enjoyed Denis Johnson's Train Dreams so much I'm rereading Angels and will follow that up with Stars at Noon, the only other book of his I haven't read.

I've only read Jesus' Son and I've heard, perhaps wrongly, that his work is rather variable in quality. What would you rank as his best?

ryansartor

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Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #1703 on: September 07, 2011, 09:56:42 PM »
I loved Jesus' Son. The Name of the World is really good by him, too. I just finished Point Omega by DeLillo, which I avoided because it got a bad review, but I thought it was as good as anything I've read by him. I'm almost done with Mao II, which is also really good.

babylonsean

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Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #1704 on: September 08, 2011, 01:26:03 PM »
I've read some sci-fi recently.

The City and the City by China Mieville, excellent
The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi, so-so
Permutation City by Greg Egan, excellent

I just finished Perdido Street Station by Mieville. Have you read it yet? That book was AMAZING! I am fixing to read The Scar. I also have The Windup Girl on my list. I'll have to check out that Permutation City book as well.

Perdido Street station is very good, but I haven't yet read any of the followups.  Just that and The City and the City.

Permutation City is weird, but it expounds on ideas I've thought about--cellular automata, ontology, nature of consciousness.  I just read another of his books,  Schild's Ladder, and it did many of the same things but with other scientific and mathematical ideas. It was an interesting read but I didn't get most of it.

I go back and forth with sci-fi, I'll find something I really like and go on a binge but then I'll encounter a book that's so badly written I'll abandon the genre for a while.

I know what you mean. Sci-Fi can be really bad at times. Schild's Ladder sounds like it would be too challenging for me, as I often get lost when things get too scientific or abstract.

Right now I'm reading Kraken, also by China Mieville. It is one of the most insane things that I have ever read, and at times can be very difficult. I would still check it out, though.


Steve of Bloomington

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Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #1705 on: September 08, 2011, 01:33:34 PM »
Twisty Little Passages, a book about the history of Zork and similar games. Apparently there's a community of programmers developing these games (using in some cases the Z-machine used for Zork) just for their own fun and amusement. Games about being a pet dog or set in a world based on the book 'The Age of Wire and String', those sorts of things.

The book doesn't dive into the technical details as much as the book Montfort wrote about the Atari 2600 does, but it's still a fun look into text adventures, MIT culture, etc and so on.

B_Buster

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Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #1706 on: September 08, 2011, 03:02:37 PM »
I enjoyed Denis Johnson's Train Dreams so much I'm rereading Angels and will follow that up with Stars at Noon, the only other book of his I haven't read.

I've only read Jesus' Son and I've heard, perhaps wrongly, that his work is rather variable in quality. What would you rank as his best?

His work is variable. My favorites are Angels, Jesus' Son, Tree of Smoke, and Train Dreams.
See God, Kai

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Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #1707 on: September 08, 2011, 04:42:36 PM »
Twisty Little Passages, a book about the history of Zork and similar games. Apparently there's a community of programmers developing these games (using in some cases the Z-machine used for Zork) just for their own fun and amusement. Games about being a pet dog or set in a world based on the book 'The Age of Wire and String', those sorts of things.

I had no idea this book existed, but I'm going to pick it up post-haste!
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Rick in Salt Lake

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Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #1708 on: September 10, 2011, 05:04:12 PM »
I just finished re-reading "Slaughterhouse Five" and am beginning to re-read "The Crying of Lot 49"...
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hardweek

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Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #1709 on: September 14, 2011, 10:42:12 AM »
Halfway through Mike Edison's "I Have Fun Where ever I Go"...super entertaining.