On January 02 2017 19:31 maybenexttime wrote:
I definitely do not recommend reading P. K. Dick's novels. I tried two of them and they were just bad... T___T

I really liked "do androids dream of eletric sheeps ?" and "the man in the high castle" wasn't that great but I liked the atmosphere a lot all that talk about japanese philosophy and the quest for purpose.

Flicky

England2670 Posts

January 16 2017 13:39 GMT

#62

On January 12 2017 02:35 Dark_Chill wrote:
Finished Girl on the Train, probably 6-7/10. Nice intrigue, a bit repetitive, it'll make a terrible movie.
Gonna mix it up with some fantasy, trying some Glen Cook
[image loading]

I read The Black Company a few years ago and found that it was alright as a story but was very well written when in came to the battles. Intrigued to see what others think.

B.I.G.

3251 Posts

January 16 2017 16:10 GMT

#63

I honestly really enjoyed the first three books of the black company. Easy to read, not too long, interesting characters, grey vs grey rather than black vs white... Nothing mind blowing but solid all around.

Nyxisto

Germany6287 Posts

January 16 2017 18:50 GMT

#64

Oh, also Obama is on the Liu Cixin hype-train

+ Show Spoiler +

What are some of those books?

It’s interesting, the stuff I read just to escape ends up being a mix of things — some science fiction. For a while, there was a three-volume science-fiction novel, the “Three-Body Problem” series —

Oh, Liu Cixin, who won the Hugo Award.

— which was just wildly imaginative, really interesting. It wasn’t so much sort of character studies as it was just this sweeping —

It’s really about the fate of the universe.

Exactly. The scope of it was immense. So that was fun to read, partly because my day-to-day problems with Congress seem fairly petty — not something to worry about. Aliens are about to invade. [Laughter]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/16/books/transcript-president-obama-on-what-books-mean-to-him.html?_r=0

Carnivorous Sheep

Baa?21244 Posts

January 19 2017 19:29 GMT

#65

>Obama is on the Liu Cixin train

idk how to feel about this

farvacola

United States18858 Posts

January 19 2017 19:34 GMT

#66

Ambivalence is the only way to fly.

goody153

44280 Posts

January 21 2017 19:09 GMT

#67

Finished reading Travellers GateTrilogy by Will Wight

It was alright. Probably the fantasy series with the most combat i've read so far, like i think majority of book 2 and 3 are made up of nothing but fighting.

There was alot of trope and genre deconstruction happening(i mean it's expected the book cover for the first book literally says that) and sometimes it's unexpectedly funny moments (like one the protagonist getting angry at the enemy for doing a classic exposition/turn him in to an ally in the middle of fight )

I think the 2nd book is is the strongest point of the series.

Overall it was alright (the fights were really fun to read) and the ending wasn't great(well this rarely happens) but it was just right.

123Gurke

France154 Posts

January 21 2017 21:23 GMT

#68

I am still slowly making my way through le rouge et le noir. This is very rewarding for me as an immigrant to France because it gives me a lot of context and historical perspective on things I have seen here. Examples: province vs Paris, the role of catholicism and the resulting laïcité (which is still weird for me as a german)... The translation I have also contains an appendix written by the translator that is extremely helpful in that respect.

Not at all related to this, I have realized that out of the (probably) hundreds of books I have read nearly none have been written by female authors. Essentially the only exceptions that come to my mind are Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin. I find this rather curious. Partly it can probably be explained by the fact that in some periods and cultures there were just no female authors, say in ancient Greece. But this is of course not a satisfying explanation for contemporary literature where there are lots of female authors. Have any of you had similar experiences? If so, do you have explanations?

In any case, I am considering mixing my reading list of French authors (thanks again corumjhaelen) with female authors. The only problem that I have is that I have no idea what I should read. So, dear TL bookthread members, what are your recommendations?

Carnivorous Sheep

Baa?21244 Posts

January 21 2017 21:39 GMT

#69

It's largely a consequence of what you read. If you read books generally considered classics/The Western Canon/philosophy/theory/scifi/etc., you're going to read overwhelmingly male authors because there aren't many canonized female authors. If you read a lot of contemporary literary fiction you're going to find your ratio much closer to 50/50. If you read romances you're like going to be reading well over 60% female authors.

Nyxisto

Germany6287 Posts

January 21 2017 21:50 GMT

#70

well in the sci-fi genre there's some good well known stuff. Butler, Atwood, Le Guin are all excellent and will keep you occupied. Also while we're at women writing sci-fi there's a cool recent short story by a Chinese author:

http://uncannymagazine.com/article/folding-beijing-2/

farvacola

United States18858 Posts

January 21 2017 22:04 GMT

#71

I never miss a chance to push Woolf, and because you're a literary type, I'd say you should start with To The Lighthouse. I'd also recommend Gertrude Stein, and The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas is a good place to start there. If you're looking for something more contemporary, I like pretty much everything Zadie Smith writes, though On Beauty is arguably her best and most accessible novel.

corumjhaelen

France6884 Posts

January 21 2017 22:14 GMT

#72

Among old stuff. Woolf obviously, she's just something else. The Brontë sisters... Well mainly Wuthering Heights I guess. La Princesse de Clèves by Mme de Lafayette, excellent novel. Or George Sand is well-known but yeah... I think there are many undervalued poetess too... (Louise Labé, Marceline Debordes-Valmore, perhaps Baudelaire biggest source of inspiration, Emily Dickinson obviously...)
Sylvia Plath ?

bardtown

England2313 Posts

January 22 2017 00:15 GMT

#73

Authors were not really a thing in ancient Greece, but you can read Sappho's fragments if you like poetry. I find there's something about having only fragments that makes her even more appealing. This in particular, although I do not know how much credit should go to the translator:

Here under boughs a bracing spring
Percolates, roses without number
Umber the earth and, rustling,
The leaves drip slumber.

Frankenstein also springs to mind, as does Middlemarch.

{CC}StealthBlue

United States41117 Posts

January 22 2017 19:42 GMT

#74

123Gurke

France154 Posts

January 22 2017 20:51 GMT

#75

Thank you all for your recommendations!

On January 22 2017 06:50 Nyxisto wrote:
well in the sci-fi genre there's some good well known stuff. Butler, Atwood, Le Guin are all excellent and will keep you occupied.

Thanks! Any particular recommendations for these authors? I guess for Le Guin the canonical choice would be The Left Hand of Darkness? For Atwood The Handmaid's Tale? Concerning Butler I have no idea.

On January 22 2017 07:04 farvacola wrote:
I never miss a chance to push Woolf, and because you're a literary type, I'd say you should start with To The Lighthouse.

Well, I am certainly not a literary type

I get paid for thinking about (theoretical) computers and finite structures all day. I am only reading fiction for fun in my free time. I'll take your comment as a compliment though. Does this change your recommendations?

corumjhaelen

France6884 Posts

January 22 2017 20:54 GMT

#76

As someone who had a pretty extensive training as it gets in pure mathematics, I'd say it changes nothing

Acrofales

Spain18299 Posts

January 22 2017 23:28 GMT

#77

Some more female authors for you:

Talking about the classics, there's also the Dragonriders of Pern series by Anne McCaffrey. Some great, some good, some not so good, imho. But she was one of the great scifi authors of the 20th century.

I personally really like Robin Hobb. I wouldn't say that her books are literary masterpieces (but I don't think I'd say that of Le Guin either). Both the Farseer trilogy and the Liveship trilogy were well imagined and written. The latter one has a pretty good female lead.

Harry Potter is pretty famous. It's not exactly literary, but it's passable pulp reading. The books are better than the movies, imho.

That's probably it for fantasy/scifi.

I'm not quite sure why Harper Lee hasn't been mentioned yet. Insofar as I know, she only wrote one book, but it's marvellous. Read To Kill a Mockingbird.

I personally don't much like Doris Lessing, but she won a Nobel prize, so there are people out there who do. I had to read The Grass is Singing for literature class, and that was it. No more Doris Lessing for me.

Isabel Allende writes bestseller after bestseller. Insofar as I know they are all horrible (I only read one of her books, once, and decided it wasn't for me). But she keeps churning them out and people keep reading them ;P

Carnivorous Sheep

Baa?21244 Posts

January 22 2017 23:42 GMT

#78

On January 23 2017 08:28 Acrofales wrote:

I personally don't much like Doris Lessing, but she won an Oscar, so there are people out there who do.