EPTWhat Are You Reading 2015 - Page 24
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farvacola
United States18819 Posts
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Zergneedsfood
United States10671 Posts
Now we're reading Pale Fire.....and my mind. It's full of fuck. xD | ||
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Inkblood
United States463 Posts
![[image loading]](https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1413464739l/20706284.jpg) Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie HNNG!! I loved this book! I put off reading it for a while because I loved the first one so much and since I didn’t have established faith in the author I was nervous this one wouldn’t be as good. I NEEDN’T HAVE WORRIED. It’s hard to qualify what makes me love these books so much, and I’m a bad reviewer when it comes to books I loved. All I can say is this series is easily top three favorites of all time for me. I cannot wait for book three. (my heart, pls, be still.) ![[image loading]](https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327921884l/7165300.jpg) The Black Prism by Brent Weeks I have to say, I’m surprised so many people think so highly of Weeks after reading this book. (I’m not hating on them liking his work, I just was very disappointed by the book.) The characters felt poorly formed, and I couldn’t bring myself to give a damn about any of them. Kip was the worst though. I don’t know why he’s even a viewpoint character. He’s an unlikable jackass, not competent at anything, is supposed to be smart, but the only evidence we have of this is him pushing people’s buttons and then being called clever for it. When the only notable positive trait--which is made a point of in the book--is “taking punishment” I think you’ve gone too far. That’s all well and good, I like that trait in anime and the like, but there has to be something else that makes me care or at least intrigued. The magic system was weird, vague, complicated, and possibly poorly explained. It felt like he tried to make a Brandon Sanderson-esque magic system, but its rules didn’t feel very well defined. After finishing a 700 hundred page novel I feel like I should have a pretty good idea of what the magic system is about, and I just didn’t have a clue. Mechanically the writing could be better. An extreme example of this is when there’s a tense scene, people are fighting or about to fight, it’s established that a character is brash and likely to get herself killed. (“It was like she was racing him to Death’s gates.”) Then a line (before she fights, mind you) tells us, “But she wouldn’t die today.” And I just facepalmed. The tension was sucked out of the fight scene like a balloon was popped. Thank you! Thank you for telling me the outcome of the scene before they fight. If only writers did that all the time, right? And there are other examples of things like this, like they’re sneaking through a hostile town, flames, soldiers all over the place, and he takes two huge paragraphs to tell us about the river trade system or some shit. There’s a time and a place for world building and slower pacing, but putting it there is just lazy and tempo ruining. Like, the characters are fearing for their lives, their friends and loved ones are dead or probably dead, and we're being told about this‽ There are other things about his mechanics that could be better, but those are two of the big ones that bothered me. Overall, I just didn't like this book. I occasionally saw flashes of why other people enjoyed the book, but they seemed few and far between. ![[image loading]](https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1427740839l/448873.jpg) The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner It . . . was a book. I don’t know . . . it was a fun, fast read. I enjoyed it. But nothing really stood out to me as particularly good, or particularly bad. I’ll probably read the next book because I heard it gets better. My only real complaint other than it didn’t make me feel anything special was that it felt like over half the novel was: travel, eat, sleep, travel, eat, sleep, etc. etc. Had enough investment in the characters to still enjoy the book though. Also, I think I’m coming to the conclusion that YA isn’t really for me. I’ll keep reading it. And plenty of people enjoy it, which is fantastic. But it seems like it’s not my cup of tea, seems like every time I enjoy a YA novel I’m like, “Well, that was good, but I like their adult fiction better.” | ||
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Inkblood
United States463 Posts
On April 23 2015 13:14 babylon wrote: Finished The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison (aka Sarah Monette). Damn good book. It somehow manages to be a busy court intrigue novel filled with all sorts of understated but powerful scenes. Semi-grimdark, but it is dragged out of the grimdark subgenre by sheer force of the main character's dogged sense of decency. Easily the best fantasy book I've read this year so far (minus my reread of Lions). I can see why it was nominated for best novel for both the Nebula (2014) and Hugo (2015). So I really liked The Goblin Emperor, and am a fan of most things considered a part of the grimdark subgenre, but how is The Goblin Emperor grimdark at all? Even without the likeableness of Maia, I thought it was notably very different. Is scheming politicians grimdark now? (I'm not trying to attack your opinion here, it's just rather different from my own, and I'm curious why you think it's grimdark-esque.) P.S. Dug through twitter to find this  Kameron Hurley seems to agree with my assessment, though I find the phrase "end of grimdark" to be rather sensationalist. But hey it's twitter. | ||
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IgnE
United States7681 Posts
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babylon
8765 Posts
On April 24 2015 00:21 Inkblood wrote: So I really liked The Goblin Emperor, and am a fan of most things considered a part of the grimdark subgenre, but how is The Goblin Emperor grimdark at all? Even without the likeableness of Maia, I thought it was notably very different. Is scheming politicians grimdark now? (I'm not trying to attack your opinion here, it's just rather different from my own, and I'm curious why you think it's grimdark-esque.) P.S. Dug through twitter to find this Kameron Hurley seems to agree with my assessment, though I find the phrase "end of grimdark" to be rather sensationalist. But hey it's twitter. https://twitter.com/KameronHurley/status/589178924900421634 Don't apologize, that is a really good question. I consider the setting grimdark, not because the novel deals with court intrigue, but because the novel is set in a realistic, flawed dysfunctional court with no sense of external grace or idealism except that which comes from Maia himself. In my opinion, the only thing that keeps the book from devolving into grimdarkness is Maia's decency and strength of character. If Maia were not who he is in the book, then what would the novel be about? (Grimdark, in my humble opinion.) I will also counter your quote with a quote from Monette herself, who herself describes that the setting is in fact grimdark-esque: "And on its own merits, The Goblin Emperor‘s set-up is fairly grimdark: the protagonist is abused and powerless, the empire is dysfunctional, if not actually dystopian, and of course the whole thing begins with a Hindenburg-esque disaster that throws the entire government into convulsions. "I don’t entirely know why the story turned in a defiantly non-grimdark direction, except that my protagonist, Maia Drazhar, refused, resolutely and absolutely, to be an antihero." In my view, the novel comes off as so strongly anti-grimdark because it takes a grimdark set-up and effectively turns it on its head. (I don't think this set-up is particularly innovative, but I do think that this novel executes this very, very well.) I guess the follow-up question to that is whether or not it's reminiscent of high fantasy. I personally don't think it is, because the source of saving grace is internal (Maia's character), not external (destiny, fate), but that's just me thinking off the top of my head. Hope that clarifies! :D | ||
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Inkblood
United States463 Posts
On April 24 2015 01:00 IgnE wrote: Maybe "grimdark" is not a useful category. I mean, that's reasonably true. But all subgenres are inherently weird, finicky, and ultimately close to uselessness. It gives you a teensy, tiny bit of information about a book. Genres are a little bit better. "Oh, it's fantasy? Great." But people have a hard enough time figuring out what Fantasy means. "The Buried Giant? Pfft, that's not fantasy." etc. etc. So if people sometimes have a hard time figuring out what constitutes such a large and easily defined genre, the smaller you get the more personal the definitions become. That doesn't stop it from being an interesting point of discussion. imo On April 24 2015 01:36 babylon wrote: Don't apologize, that is a really good question. I consider the setting grimdark, not because the novel deals with court intrigue, but because the novel is set in a realistic, flawed dysfunctional court with no sense of external grace or idealism except that which comes from Maia himself. In my opinion, the only thing that keeps the book from devolving into grimdarkness is Maia's decency and strength of character. If Maia were not who he is in the book, then what would the novel be about? (Grimdark, in my humble opinion.) I will also counter your quote with a quote from Monette herself, who herself describes that the setting is in fact grimdark-esque: "And on its own merits, The Goblin Emperor‘s set-up is fairly grimdark: the protagonist is abused and powerless, the empire is dysfunctional, if not actually dystopian, and of course the whole thing begins with a Hindenburg-esque disaster that throws the entire government into convulsions. "I don’t entirely know why the story turned in a defiantly non-grimdark direction, except that my protagonist, Maia Drazhar, refused, resolutely and absolutely, to be an antihero." In my view, the novel comes off as so strongly anti-grimdark because it takes a grimdark set-up and effectively turns it on its head. (I don't think this set-up is particularly innovative, but I do think that this novel executes this very, very well.) I guess the follow-up question to that is whether or not it's reminiscent of high fantasy. I personally don't think it is, because the source of saving grace is internal (Maia's character), not external (destiny, fate), but that's just me thinking off the top of my head. Hope that clarifies! :D Awesome, that does clarify, thank you. And it makes much more sense. I was seeing it through the lens of how the story was with how Maia acted. I.E. the bad guys are bad, and get their comeuppance, the good guys are good and things work out, the grandfather shows up and is such a nice bloke, along with other, smaller, details. So I was looking more at the arc of the story. While this seems more like a vision of what the world would have been like without Maia as he was. And now that you point it out, it does seem like it would have been a great deal darker had he not affected things as he did. So yeah, thanks for clarifying, I think I get it now. And I guess I agree with the opinion. Even if I wouldn't have compared the book to grimdark, I see how that was a pertinent point to bring up in your original post. But yeah, The Goblin Emperor = good  | ||
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farvacola
United States18819 Posts
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Nyxisto
Germany6287 Posts
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babylon
8765 Posts
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Zergneedsfood
United States10671 Posts
On April 24 2015 04:10 farvacola wrote: I honestly had no idea that grimdark was even a thing until reading this page. It seems like a dumb word to be honest. Yeah I thought it was a joke, a kind of sarcastic designation that people give to works that are too edgy for their own good or something like that. | ||
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Surth
Germany456 Posts
"One wonders what kind of love Žižek meant when he talked, in connection with Deleuze, about his "true love for a philosopher" (Organs 3). Is it possible to love Deleuze? Žižek, it seems, can love Deleuze only when he has first dressed him up in Hegelian drag." http://www.uni-koeln.de/phil-fak/englisch/abteilungen/berressem/zizek/zizek.html#01 | ||
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corumjhaelen
France6884 Posts
On April 24 2015 09:45 Surth wrote: "[note #1 for a reader's manual: whenever Žižek writes 'of course,' be particularly careful!]" When anyone does that be particularly careful :p I learnt not to write it when I was half bluffing in my maths exams cause it would systematically be called. Just keep on writing as though everything is fine and cristal clear. Also read french fiction, not only philosophers  Second half of Dissemination looked like gibberish to me btw. Reading Lukacs, which I like a lot. Maybe one day I'll get to understanding somthing about Hegel. One day. | ||
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123Gurke
France154 Posts
On April 24 2015 04:19 Nyxisto wrote: I've read Neuromancer and I'm really confused and had trouble following the book. The slang together with the jumpy narration really makes it hard to understand what's going on and it seems like so much stuff is really condensed into a few paragraphs at times. I think I'll have to read it again at some point. So the question is: Did you like it anyway? To me it is definitely one of the best books ever written, and whenever I reread it every few years I am reminded of how great it really is. Should reread it soon. Actually, it is one of the few books I took to France with me. | ||
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seom
South Africa491 Posts
On April 24 2015 22:39 123Gurke wrote: So the question is: Did you like it anyway? To me it is definitely one of the best books ever written, and whenever I reread it every few years I am reminded of how great it really is. Should reread it soon. Actually, it is one of the few books I took to France with me. I like Neuromancer a lot but the prose is unnecessarily obtuse | ||
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Carnivorous Sheep
Baa?21242 Posts
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Nyxisto
Germany6287 Posts
Also the book is just really dense. That's not necessarily bad, but there's just so much stuff in about 250 pages which together with the prose makes it definitely not an easy read. | ||
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Surth
Germany456 Posts
which means ill probably have to get into Whitehead. sigh... | ||
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babylon
8765 Posts
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Surth
Germany456 Posts
Zizeks Violence can be insightful every now and then, but I would hesitate to call it philosophy. At best, its a kind of witty psychology, not much different from TheLastPsychiatrist. Read the first part of Baudrillard and then chucked it in the corner. I think one day I will just create a reader of a few hundred pages out of Baudrillard works. 90% of his writings can be trimmed. Also bought Shaviro's The Universe of Things because none of the bookshops here have Whitehead. Shaviro's description of the speculative realists is already pretty benign and even so they seem pretty dumb. Now back to 1,000 plateaus. I usually mark certain paragraphs in theory books but Im not making any notes within this one. I think sammy's description of it as an acid trip is pretty accurate, im just not sure how good that is. FInally, I also bought a short story collection by Don DeLillo. Nice enough, but I think ive lost my taste for short stories. So maybe Mao II next - i really really liked Libra, after all. | ||
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