The B&B Book Review - The Bear and Badger

acemuzzy

Oh God house of leaves. Was grumbling about that to a mate the other day, when the shopkeeper recommended it. Overrated puff.

yourfavouriteuncle

DS. You like horror and Gillian Flynn? Then surely you've read her little horror novella The Grown Up? It's my favourite bit of her small bibliography. It's ace and is the only horror book I've read where the main character is the best hand job giver in town masquerading as a palm reader. Seriously the first chapter is her discussing how she's developed such a strong technique. Brilliant. Then it goes a bit Poe.

yourfavouriteuncle

I wasn't having a snooty dig at the fantasy genre btw. I'm by no means saying that you're all geeks for enjoying it (but our surroundings probably mean we're all pretty geekish) just that it's a genre that's so far off my radar that I'm surprised it's as big as it is. I come in here looking for book talk and the majority of it is about fantasy stuff that I just can't enjoy. I've tried to like it. I've tried differing types. I don't really think it's all dragons and elves. Simply, it leaves me cold in much the way that devs behind big franchises develop backstory and lore for a game once it becomes big enough that I just can't buy in to.
Books about a man staring out of windows and jerking off dog memoirs though? I'd be all over that.

Bollockoff

Great Expectations is proper great and I'm enjoying the dry humour of it. I'm surprised how modern it feels.

I remembered Twain saying some stuff about Dickens as they were contemporaries and I found this magazine review he did of Dickens giving a live reading in New York. It's hilarious since it's pretty damning after a gethype intro paragraph which shows he loves Dick's work and got burned like going to a shit live concert.

http://charlesdickenspage.com/twain_on_dickens.html

His pictures are hardly handsome, and he, like everybody else, is less handsome than his pictures. That fashion he has of brushing his hair and goatee so resolutely forward gives him a comical Scotch-terrier look about the face, which is rather heightened than otherwise by his portentous dignity and gravity. But that queer old head took on a sort of beauty, bye and bye, and a fascinating interest, as I thought of the wonderful mechanism within it, the complex but exquisitely adjusted machinery that could create men and women, and put the breath of life into them and alter all their ways and actions, elevate them, degrade them, murder them, marry them, conduct them through good and evil, through joy and sorrow, on their long march from the cradle to the grave, and never lose its godship over them, never make a mistake!

Lord_Griff

Labyrinths by Borges is now a firm favourite. To the shitter it goes.

tigersgogrrr

Acceptance has improved dramatically. Closing in on the end now. Not sure the payoff will be wholly worth the investment, but it's making a go of it. Finally.

Aaroncupboard

So Sharp Ends is just as excellent as I had hoped. After the excellent 'Half A ...' trilogy, it is so good to be back in The First Law world. Each story has been very good with only one slightly lesser one so far (Hell). Otherwise it is just fantastic and Javre and Shev are easily the best of the new characters. Just wonderful.

TheDJR

I need to get that.

tigersgogrrr

Javra and Shev are great.

Gremill

Yeah, I'm a third of the way through it now - it's excellent. Can't believe I got it for only 99p!

Javre & Shev are brilliant - but it was great to catch up with Craw and his crew too.

tigersgogrrr

I thin Craw's story is one of the best. Genuinely funny.

I bought it in hardback. No regrets! Cover art is beautiful.

acemuzzy

acemuzzy wrote:

Is Sharp Ends safe having not read the First Law trilogy??

Aaroncupboard

As much as I would say it is safe (and there really has not been any significant spoilers so far), it gains a lot from familiarity with the characters and main events of the trilogy.

Aaroncupboard

tigerswiftly wrote:

I thin Craw's story is one of the best. Genuinely funny.

I bought it in hardback. No regrets! Cover art is beautiful.

Yeah that was a real pleasure. Simple set up, brilliant characters, excellent pay off.

tigersgogrrr

I think it's completely safe. You'd probably get a few more winks and nods of the head I'd you'd read the novels, but it's a great collection regardless.

Gremill

acemuzzy wrote:

acemuzzy wrote:

Is Sharp Ends safe having not read the First Law trilogy??

You can read it, enjoy it and it won't spoil the trilogy - but I genuinely think you'll enjoy it double plus if you know who the characters are.

yourfavouriteuncle

Barkskins. Annie Proulx. It's really fucking big but I'm loving it.

yourfavouriteuncle

And thus endeth my contemporary literature review class for the week.

barren_sky

Just finished Cryptonomicon at someone's recommendation. Books don't get much better plotting than that. And the math!! Any other Neal Stephenson stories match up to that?

I_R

The Baroque Cycle are essential imo, don't be put off by the setting. Need to have another reread of that actually.

Tempy

Just finished Matheson's I Am Legend there. A good book that came out during that golden age of scifi that (as I have learned so far in my course) was full of Neville type characters. the rational engineer that can fix the world. Luckily, it rather subverts the trope and ends up being a far better book, and also Neville is wonderfully flawed. Having seen the Smith film, and knowing the outline of the plot beforehand there were little surprises, but it's a testament to the strength of the book that that final chapter is exceptional still. Secondary reading for Horror SciFi is Ellison's I Have No Mouth etc, and Octavia Butler's Bloodchild. Strong semester start, after Wells last week.

trippy

Tempy wrote:

Matheson's I Am Legend

I liked but was mildly underwhelmed by I Am Legend. I loved his short story Duel on which the incredible film was based, though. Need to read more of his work. (Your course sounds cool, Tempy)

duel-1971-killer-truck-dennis-weaver-steven-spielberg-first-film.jpg

duel-1971-killer-truck-dennis-weaver-steven-spielberg-first-film.jpg

Tempy

Getting ahead of the uni game by reading The Diamond Age early. 100 pages in and it's wonderful, though more serious than Snow Crash, still the section about Judge Fang I'm at now has just made me grin:

"The hour of noon has passed," said Judge Fang. "Let us go and get some Kentucky Fried Chicken."
"As you wish, Judge Fang," said Chang.
"As you wish, Judge Fang," said Miss Pao
Judge Fang switched back to English "Your case is very series," he said to the boy. "We will go and consult the ancient authorities. You will remain here until we return."
"Yes, sir," sad the defendant, abjectly terrified. This was not the abstract fear of a first-time delinquent; he was sweating and shaking. He had been caned before.

The House of the Venerable and Inscrutable Colonel was what they called it when they were speaking Chinese. Venerable because of his goatee, white as the dogwood blossom, a badge of unimpeachable credibility in Confucian eyes. Inscrutable because he had gone to the grave without divulging the secret of the Eleven Herbs and Spices.

Aaroncupboard

So that is Sharp Ends finished. Many of my thoughts are the same as posted earlier. Javre and Shev are outstanding characters and steal every story they appear in. Each story was unique, interesting and enjoyable. Not much more you could ask for.

regmcfly

Working my way through Marina Warner's Phantasmagoria. It's amazing the way she continually manages to disseminate folk lore, fairy tale and the like. This one is focused on horror and what makes us scared and why we are scared of them. Fascinating stuff

Gremill

I_R wrote:

The Baroque Cycle are essential imo, don't be put off by the setting. Need to have another reread of that actually.

Yeah, absolutely phenomenal.

tigersgogrrr

tigerswiftly wrote:

I've been tempted to stop reading the 3rd book (Acceptance). It really isn't doing it for me in the same way Annihilation did, and I found Authority a bit of a drag. I devoured Annihilation. I found the weirdness very unsettling.

It got better.

But I'm not entirely convinced the second two books were worth the investment. Certainly not a pay off after the excellent first novel.

Lord_Griff

Pinker's "The Better Angels.." hardback is retailing at crazy prices. Not sure why..

tin_robot

I've spent the day off sick, so thought I'd finish off reading Ready Player One.
I don't know whether it's because I'm not feeling well, but it irritated the life out of me. It's like trying to read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory whilst someone feverishly masturbates to an episode of "I love the 1980s" in the background. It consists almost entirely of exposition intercut with nods towards various cultural references that it presumably hopes you'll feel clever for recognising, but invariably explains in tedious detail just in case.

I'm a bit surprised by quite how viscerally I despised it, particularly given that I know lots of people who absolutely love the book. If nothing else, I made it to the end, so there must have been something keeping me going. (There are a lot of much better novels I've never finished.) But then, I can always finish a Big Mac, despite thinking they taste bland and knowing it has no nutritional value. I felt much the same about this.

Anyway, my pile of stuff to read next includes Annihilation and the new Alan Moore tome Jerusalem. Trying to decide which my addled brain would cope with best...

Gremill

I'm reading a book called 'The Hatching' which is as much fun as the title might suggest if you're into daft horror stories.

Howdy, Stranger!

Categories