I started rereading one of my favorite series from my childhood:
(https://i.imgur.com/k8lR654.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/BsLEfHr.jpg)
They're quick reads, nothing too impressive or fancy. Just solid, good-natured, fantasy adventures with fun characters. I probably read all 10 books at least a dozen times when I was younger, but this is the first time I've read them in nearly 15 years. They still hold up, though.
What are they about?
How does Electric Sheep and/or Hyperion compare to Neuromancer or Ender's Game? I like my sci-fi simple, you dig?
Picking up Dune because I've never read it and The Color Purple for a monthly book club.Dune is cool but if you continue with the saga know that the books steadily decline in quality and don't really come back up ever. The third or fourth one is about where they stop being worth it. :-*
Started and nearly finished Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? today and...it seems I was wrong about Dick. The first book of his I read made a notoriously bad impression. But Do Androids is fantastic. The copy I have is only 210-something pages and can be read in a day. Get on it.
Well she is a robot after all
Its been so long but I remember I always thought the book and thw movie were so different I couldn't really compare them
Maybe someone with a better memory can jump in but the book had so much stuff about animals and that was ommited from the film but thats probably something about the nature of life etc
Its been so long but I remember I always thought the book and thw movie were so different I couldn't really compare them
Maybe someone with a better memory can jump in but the book had so much stuff about animals and that was ommited from the film but thats probably something about the nature of life etc
The first 150 pages I was willing to say that they were both different in a good way. They’re different but they also come to the same conclusions. I just feel the way the film articulated itself and expanded upon those conclusions to be more my taste. Androids certainly isn’t a bad book (it’s actually partly fantastic it’s just flawed) and I can suggest it to fans of sci fi, but it’s just a curious case where the movie ends up being preferable to me than the book.
We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil RightsI read this one. It's funny because the book "runs out of space" and implodes when it gets to the 2000s. After spending 450 some pages on detailed and even handed investigations of the civil rights canons of corporate law over three centuries, including noting many times areas where minorities like the women and the blacks gained advantages from Court rulings for corporations, it drops all pretense of objectivity and becomes a screed about the coming horrors from Citizens United and the need to repeal the First Amendment to protect the government from being influenced too much by anyone who desires to change it.
because I'm going to devote a lot of time to reading black history and literature.
We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil RightsI read this one. It's funny because the book "runs out of space" and implodes when it gets to the 2000s. After spending 450 some pages on detailed and even handed investigations of the civil rights canons of corporate law over three centuries, including noting many times areas where minorities like the women and the blacks gained advantages from Court rulings for corporations, it drops all pretense of objectivity and becomes a screed about the coming horrors from Citizens United and the need to repeal the First Amendment to protect the government from being influenced too much by anyone who desires to change it.
I complain more because it's jarring and throws off the book than the content which I expected. It's one of the better example of a trend I've been noticing where books fall apart completely at the end, trying to write some wrapping up that ties the historical stuff into something modern and then brings in an opinion piece the author wanted to publish but all they had was this book contract for some dull semi-scholarly non-fiction book, rather than just going "how bout them old times huh?" and dropping fifty pages of useless end notes. (Also seeing less of that part, just lists of "further books on the subject" swiped from elsewhere.)
Like a week after I read it, reason coincidentally posted an interview with the author which offers a decent overview of the books' content:spoiler (click to show/hide)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glIaWzWFKhM[close]
because I'm going to devote a lot of time to reading black history and literature.
Like African or African-American history?
I guess you've already read Chinua Achebe's stuff, if not, Things Fall Apart is basically a must-read.
A Fire Upon the Deep
(https://i.imgur.com/Hw4uK8o.jpg?1)
One of the strangest and most difficult reads I've ever come across. Whether or not you enjoy reading it will depend almost entirely on if you buy into the central concept of the book: that the book itself is every bit as twisted and confusing as the titular house. If you don't, it'll just come across as trying way too hard to be quirky.
I mean. It seems obvious to me that it'd have a bit of a slant. It's called "How corporations won their civil rights", right? That naturally brings up the argument that corporations aren't people. Hence "We The Corporations." It kind of wears where it's coming from on its sleeve. Literally.That's not, in any way, my complaint.
Because this is the cover.
(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/91VInKy9QXL.jpg)
So I recognize the slant it'll have. Hell, that's why I want to read it in the first place!
I mean. It seems obvious to me that it'd have a bit of a slant. It's called "How corporations won their civil rights", right? That naturally brings up the argument that corporations aren't people. Hence "We The Corporations." It kind of wears where it's coming from on its sleeve. Literally.That's not, in any way, my complaint.
Because this is the cover.
(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/91VInKy9QXL.jpg)
So I recognize the slant it'll have. Hell, that's why I want to read it in the first place!
I'd recommend David Sedaris. He's a very funny writer and he's a gay! This is excellent because you can show off his books to strangers in coffee shops so they can see how progressive and superior you are and make them wish they were dead and covered in sewage..
I'm guessing you've read Toni Morrison Cindi?
Beloved, Jazz and Paradise are the go-to books.
He's a very funny writer and he's a gay!
Her emphasis on the twist makes me wish he'd been gay just to see which way they'd have run with it
Light hearted amusement -
Meet the man who made Everest fabulous
or suspicious cynicism -
Gay men camping. Should we be worried?
I liked Koontz when I was in 4th grade. Steven King with more of an obsession with teenagers having sex.
I liked Koontz when I was in 4th grade. Steven King with more of an obsession with teenagers having sex.
I liked Koontz when I was in 4th grade. Steven King with more of an obsession with teenagers having sex.
I don't get how some of you were reading shit like that in the 4th grade. I was reading Goosebumps and The Magic School Bus.
Nothing made my parents genitals hard like their kids having "Nth grade reading levels at the age of X" and being able to brag about it. That combined with their belief they shouldn't censor anything had me reading horror novels by age 10 and humping the floor in the corner of the living room while they watched NC-17 foriegn films.this. my parents made me read a bunch of classics like dickens when i was 10 so i could name drop them in interviews for secondary schools
I liked Koontz when I was in 4th grade. Steven King with more of an obsession with teenagers having sex.
At that age I was just reading more or less the same things my dad and older brother were reading: lots of 80s/90s fantasy and Arthur C Clarke.
At that age I was just reading more or less the same things my dad and older brother were reading: lots of 80s/90s fantasy and Arthur C Clarke.
Man, I love Rendezvous with Rama. Fantastic book.
I’ve always wondered: is dean koontz good? You see his books everywhere and he seems to have a billion books.
I’ve always wondered: is dean koontz good? You see his books everywhere and he seems to have a billion books.
No.
Do you like Dan Brown, John Grisham, or other books more easily found in airport bookstores than libraries? If so, Koontz is your author. Sleazy, lame, predictable, cheap. Stick with King, Peter Straub, or for bonus points try Jack O'Connell.
David Sedaris is fucking awful. The only reason why he still gets work is because is blackmailing the right people, I’m sure of it.
De eeuw van mijn vader by Geert Mak. (My Father's Century when translated.)
It's both a biography of his dad's life but also delves into the entire history of the timeframe in which he lived. Covering the first World War, Interbellum and Second World War from both a Dutch and Dutch-Indonesian perspective. Also covers the pillarisation of the Netherlands as his dad was a Calvinist.
I think they were about linguistics, my dude
David Sedaris is fucking awful. The only reason why he still gets work is because is blackmailing the right people, I’m sure of it.
No he's not. People like him and Bill Bryson write for people who have read all the big brain books and have realized that they are too shallow to ever really understand or care much about anything beyond what pizza to order. Did you know there's an entire wall of Noam Chomsky's books in Manchester Uni? A wall! A whole wall of books and they're not even good. They're all about linguistics. I read 4 of them. I have no idea what they were about. Never had that problem with a David Sedaris book.
Got Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Beach from some second-hand shop. I pretty much like scouring second-hand places just as much as reading the books.