Books 2nd Edition, Foreword by m0r1arty Options

[Shack]

Yeah, the first is the best in my opinion, but the other two are good. Catching Fire is very similar to the first, but Mockingjay is a bit of a different monster.

Now about halfway through Mockingjay.

My only problem is that Katniss is a bit too whiny. That said, she is meant to be a teenager.

[sweetbutinsane]

My only problem is that Katniss is a bit too whiny. That said, she is meant to be a teenager.

Still, I bet she's nowhere near as bad as Bella Swan. By the sounds of it, she has legitimate reasons to complain about her life anyway.

[gulfcoast_highwa...]

'A Dance With Dragons' arrived yesterday. Thing is huge! It's hard to read for too long sat down, your arms get tired.

[Shack]

Have just finished the Hunger Games trilogy.

Good writing, frenetic pace throughout BUT I did feel a bit let down by the ending. She just ended up choosing Peeta all of a sudden because Gale was working somewhere else and then got knocked up. I can't believe she was happy!

Would be interesting to see how the films compare overall, I enjoyed the books but not sure if they'll "teen up" the films.

[Raven]

I finished reading Matter by Iain M. Banks yesterday, and I think I can safely say it's the best Culture novel I've read since Use of Weapons.

It seemed to take a long time getting to the point, but the last hundred pages were excellent.

I want one of those suits . . . and a drone. Oh, and it would be nice to be able to do all those cool things with your body as well . . .

[Jimmay]

Has anyone read the Walking Dead spin off Novel?

[widowspider]

I've been reading Tana French's latest book, Faithful Place. I'm a total sucker for a crime thriller, so I enjoy her books, and I especially love the way she captures the Dublin accent and dialect so well. You just read all the dialogue in a Dublin accent in your head, you can't help it. That's clever.

[maian]

I forgot to mention it here, but the last book I read was One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey, which I didn't care for all that much. The story is great, and having rewatched the film I know that it can be told well, but I did not enjoy Kesey's writing at all. There are some very powerful moments, but it large felt foggy and unfocused, and it was a real slog to get through (I've been reading it off and on for about three months, and I only ever managed to make it through about ten pages at a time.) Not a terrible book, but not something I enjoyed particularly.

I'm now splitting my time between IT, which is terrifying, and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut, which is full of typical Vonnegut brilliance, including the following extract, which strikes me as particularly apt given the Occupy movement:

When the United States, which was meant to be a Utopia for all, was less than a century old, Noah Rosewater and a few men like him demonstrated the folly of the Founding Fathers in one respect: those sadly recent ancestors had not made it the law of the Utopia that the wealth of each citizen should be limited. This oversight was engendered by a weak-kneed sympathy for those who loved expensive things, and by the feeling that the continent was so vast and valuable, and the population so thin and enterprising, that no thief, no matter how fast he stole, could more than mildly inconvenience anyone.

Noah and a few like him perceived that the continent was in fact finite, and that venal office-holders, legislators in particular, could be persuaded to toss up great hunks of it for grabs, and to toss them in such a way as to have them land where Noah and his kind were standing.

Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens comes to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system created. Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage. And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no law had been passed. Thus the American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun.

E pluribus unum is surely an ironic motto to inscribe on the currency of this Utopia gone bust, for every grotesquely rich American represents property, privileges, and pleasures that have been denied the many. An even more instructive motto, in the light of history made by the Noah Rosewaters, might be: Grab much too much, or you'll get nothing at all.

This post has been edited by maian: Dec 16 2011, 09:47 PM

[widowspider]

I forgot to mention it here, but the last book I read was One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey, which I didn't care for all that much. The story is great, and having rewatched the film I know that it can be told well, but I did not enjoy Kesey's writing at all. There are some very powerful moments, but it large felt foggy and unfocused, and it was a real slog to get through (I've been reading it off and on for about three months, and I only ever managed to make it through about ten pages at a time.) Not a terrible book, but not something I enjoyed particularly.

I'm now splitting my time between IT, which is terrifying, and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut, which is full of typical Vonnegut brilliance, including the following extract, which strikes me as particularly apt given the Occupy movement:

Wow. Prescient or what? Gonna steal some of that quote.

[maian]

I'm amazed that it was written in 1965. That's what's so mindblowing to me about it, and pretty much all of Vonnegut's work. He was able to write so brilliantly about the time in which he lived, yet in a way which could apply to pretty much any time before or since. Heck, he throws that whole segment up on page 9 of the book. He knew what he wanted to say and he said it is as plainly and as often as he could, and that's why he was so great.

[widowspider]

I'm amazed that it was written in 1965. That's what's so mindblowing to me about it, and pretty much all of Vonnegut's work. He was able to write so brilliantly about the time in which he lived, yet in a way which could apply to pretty much any time before or since. Heck, he throws that whole segment up on page 9 of the book. He knew what he wanted to say and he said it is as plainly and as often as he could, and that's why he was so great.

To me, that is the mark of a truly brilliant writer - take this from Thomas Paine's work The Crisis Papers, written in 1776:

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods, and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as Freedom should not be highly rated.

He was another of the plain-talking genius writers.

[maian]

I always wondered where that phrase came from. I've read it and seen it referenced many times before, but never actually known the source. I've been meaning to read up on Thomas Paine for a while, and reading that Christopher Hitchens wrote a biography about him has piqued my interest again.

[widowspider]

I always wondered where that phrase came from. I've read it and seen it referenced many times before, but never actually known the source. I've been meaning to read up on Thomas Paine for a while, and reading that Christopher Hitchens wrote a biography about him has piqued my interest again.

Definitely read some Paine, this and Common Sense are good starting points, as well as 'On Slavery' which is a blistering attack on the hypocrisy he saw in America after the Revolutionary War, where they had fought for freedom and then kept slaves. His life is absolutely fascinating.

[Silky]

Gonna give the Hobbit a whirl.

[Raven]

Stay with it if you find it hard going at first, it gets better as it goes along!