redding is teh hard; How about a Books thread?

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Where are you up to? It quickly lost my interest a few cantos into Purgatory.

I got a copy of Notes from the Underground bundled with The Grand Inquisitor Parable. If you can get that, its a good preface to him I'd think. (Only Novel ive read is The Idiot)


currently reading an old sailors copy of Peter Freuchens Seven Seas

Start with Crime & Punishment; it just feels like the obvious access point, and it's such a great fucking read. Then Notes From The Underground if you're interested in something in a similar vein - if not, save it for later, it's very short. Then The Devils; it's a full pitch into the darkness and really needs to come before Karamazov, and once you've got through that, you can pick and mix between the less 'typical', slighter bloatier tomes that are The Idiot and A Raw Youth, the few of his short stories that are any good, and The House Of The Dead which gives you the perfect opportunity to read a fuller biography at the same time! Bam!

Love Foundation. One of the best things about it is how... anti-climactic the whole trilogy is. Skip the ones after the first trilogy... they're just shitty cash-ins.

Currently reading Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath. Dayum, it's really good. Took me by surprise, too, was expecting 'another boring book about PEOPLE!!!', but it's such a great read. The style makes it easy to read, it never drags on despite being long as fuck and I like how glum it is - I keep referring to it as 'postapo rednecks' because it really feels that way. The scorching sun, poverty, people at their throats, misery, dust everywhere, etc. Potato seal of approval.

Yeah, I'd recommend this (though I've never read The Devils)

My order was:

The Brothers Karamazov
The Idiot
Crime and Punishment
Memoirs from the House of the Dead
Notes from Underground

I thought Karamazov was the best and Crime and Punishment sort of touches a lot of themes in BK, but I didn't like it as much even though it was a great book alone. I wish I read it before Karamazov.

The House of the Dead is an interesting book even if for its historical value. Some pretty interesting stuff about the day to day life in a Czarist prison camp.

Steinbecks cool, his descriptions of california and camaraderie make you kinda wish you were some sucker stuck in the depression, golden sunsets behind you, doing nothin with your bros cuz theres nothin to do. Havnt read Grapes of Wrath but id reccomend his other stuff: Cannery Row, Mice n Men and East of Eden - which my 14yr old self remembers having a p hard hitting ending (manly tears). Dunno how postapoc they read compared to Grapes but they definetely all have that surreal sort of feeling that Steinbeck is good at invoking.

I've been reading "The Sketch Book" by Washington Irving. I'm a sucker for his Romantic short stories. It's basically all of his short stories that were published in magazines over the years including his famous Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

Well, some of the subjects don't interest me so I skipped them. You can safely do that since most stories don't tie into each other.

The whole "Christmas Eve, Morning, and Dinner" was nice and pleasant. Probably should have waited for around Christmas before getting into that part

Finished I am Legend and Hell House by Richard Matheson, are any of his other novels worth looking into?

Finished Paradise Lost. Really bloody good, but I can't say I actually enjoyed reading more than a handful of parts. Don't think epic poetry's really for me. Think it's something I'd really enjoy analysing for a class or something... maybe wasn't the best choice of things to read during studying for exams.

Finished reading Dave Duncan - The Seventh Sword 4 - The Death of Nnanji

If you're not aware of this, this is the first series by Dave Duncan, and still the most popular.
It's a fantasy where a highly regimented bronze age culture is being changed by their gods, who resolve to import a Earthman to mess with things, a form of a old chauvinist trope (like lest darkness falls, though the guy doesn't do as much introducing as he should really - it focuses more on politics and duels).
The books are fun, especially because they focus on the warrior caste, which are samurai basically, plus some embellishments.
This last book wasn't expected (i sniffed out that Duncan refused to write sequels - the ending of the trilogy is "neat" - until confronted with a huge pile of money), but it was fun, if with ridiculous engineered ending (but that's ok, it's a miracle).

So, they're fun timewasters, endorse.

I've heard good things about A Stir of Echos though I haven't actually read it.

What did you think of Hell House? It was a bit too in your face horror at the end for my liking, but otherwise a nice read. I'm more into the ghost remaining mysterious kind of story.

I had to read this. Fuck Paradise Lost. Fuck epic poetry. I would gladly surrender all the epic poetry I had to read to a book-burning bonfire. I'm not big on poetry in general, but at least most people have the decency to maintain some sense of brevity in their poems.

Brofists. Some of the most American literature ever written. Tortilla Flat is also great and a very interesting read, and it gets some Kodex Kredits for alluding to Arthurian tales.

My mind kept being drawn back to The Haunting (1999) which was disrupting. It's wasn't bad by all means but it was enjoyable. Matheson seems to have a thing for 'scientifically' devising explanations of myths.

Finally read all the stories on The Essential Harlan Ellison: 50 Years Retrospective. The guy is a fucking genius, I'm really pissed that not a single work of his was ever released here in Brazil.

Funny that amount the many classics like I Have No Mouth But Must Scream, A Boy and His Dog or The Beast Who Shouted Love At the Heart of the World, my favorite story was the short & simple "The Very Last Day of a Good Woman".

Gonna roll the bones? Wait, that wasn't Harlan, but his anthology Dangerous Visions

Has anyone read the Qur'an? I'm thinking of informing myself with some Perennialist and Sufistic thought before I do.

Harlan Ellison is such a weirdo, but enjoyable. I really enjoyed Lonelyache especially considering his own history.

There is a listenable, free dual-language version on the Apple store if you own an iPod/Phone/Pad.

While I've read only a little of it, apparently it loses a lot from not being read in arabic (which I can imagine, actually). It also happens to be batshit insane.

I remember when we came up with a 'stereotypical Qur'an five-line' with a BRO of mine after reading through some particularly lulzy chapters.

Verily, for His People
God is merciful and forgiving
For them are destined gardens
murmuring with rivers
all the others are fucked

This is basically the abridged version of Qur'an. If smiting infidels (read: everything) and maximal paranoia are your thing, by any means, read it

It's worth it, it's maybe my favourite of his books. The first part is a mess, directionless and unwieldy - but once it gets going, it's a shot of pure hellishness. He also finally gets his own back on Turgenev by turning him into a snivelling revolutionary collaborationist.

I made it halfway through a few years ago, and my reflections on it at the time were similar to Roxor's. Commands like 'Go out and and kill the idolaters, besiege them at every turn, ambush them...' are all very well when you're delivering in-context instructions to your band of desert people being attacked by other desert people, but it's pretty fucking unhelpful as words to be read as the direct will of God centuries later. Constant hints at the punishments awaiting unbelievers were likewise depressing. I had a Muslim partner at the time and it was quite calming to talk to her about all the problems she had with that book, because it really rubbed me up the wrong way.

Just finished The Master and Margarita - the mischief at the start became a bit repetitive, but I loved it. The devil's ball sequence, with the corpses flinging themselves down into the fireplace on nooses and in coffins, was fantastic.

Yeah, I read that same collection a few years ago, and it's a very concentrated dose of brilliance. Mefisto in Onyx was probably my favorite, just might re-read it all again soon.

I'm a big fan of those colelctions, Dangerous Visions that SCO mentioned is good too, and H.P Lovecraft's "Necronomicon" collection was amazing too. None of those texts ever got printed around here, so buying everything in one nice book really helps.

Helen Lowe - Heir of Night
Mindy Klasky The Glasswright's Apprentice
Stopped reading 10 pages in, both fucking terrible, execrable writing even.

Jennifer A. Nielsen - The False Prince
Much better. Stupid twist story, but i can't fault the writing much (median talent), the slight sentimentality and ridiculous theme annoyed me though. Finished it, because the narrator amused me at times.

All of them kids books, first two more than the third.
Of course, kids books nowadays tend to start with a murder, so the "kids book" part is more like "no sex, and teenaged protagonist/narrator", misplaced idealism and simple words and sentences.

I've read all of "The Glasswright's Apprentice" and you may well have made the smart choice. It's not that the book is horribly cliché (something fairly common in the fantasy genre), it's just that it doesn't have anything interesting in it. At all. I can't understand what the author was thinking and I can't understand why the book got at least three sequels.