Reading more
Aug. 24th, 2004 05:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
altarielLots more. Backlog from January.
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Another choice from my reading group. I enjoyed this a lot more than I was expecting, given that I’m sniffy about mainstream fiction. It has a good orang-utan character, and literature needs more of them (sadly this one isn’t in the whole book). I loved the ‘shaggy-dog’ elements of it and kept on reading and reading, but, like much mainstream fiction, I ended up feeling unsatisfied at the end, like you do at the end of a bag of Quavers.
The Separation by Christopher Priest
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communicator wrote a good post about this a while back which I can’t really improve on (although I’m too lazy to go and look it up for readers of this journal). Very much my kind of book – alternate history (set around WW2), and very carefully and methodically structured. Oh, it’s about two brothers, one a warrior and the other a pacifist, in case that seems interesting to anyone on my friends’ list...
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Sheer, unadulterated brilliance. Bloody brilliant. The arrival of the Americans at the prison camp must be one of the blackest moments of black comedy ever written. Why have I never read this before?
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
I have no doubt that if I sat down and really thought about this book, I would find it very satisfying. Unfortunately, I’m a lazy sod, I like instant gratification, and I got a bit bored. The ol’ INFJ FI-COAT bell was clanging throughout, though, and I suspect bits of it will keep leaping out of my subconscious when I’m least expecting it.
The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
iainjcoleman insisted in the strongest terms that I read this. I have a feeling my reading of this suffered from the same problem I had with Dracula and Frankenstein: i.e. that they are both so influential and I came to them both so late that I’d already soaked up their main ideas just from their influence. I did like how Victorian it was. And it did make me want to reread The Tripods.
Irresistible Forces ed. by Catherine Asaro
An anthology of SF romance, which hadcommunicator and archbishopm writhing in agony when I put the mere idea to them. I bought it because it had a Bujold novella in it, Winterfair Gifts (Miles’s wedding!!) and, to be honest, that was the only story I thought was any good. There was another one which wasn’t bad but I didn’t enjoy it enough to go and pull the book off the shelf to remind myself which one it was.
Feminine Gospels and The World’s Wife by Carol Ann Duffy
glitterboy1 had kindly bought me the first of these for my birthday, and then trixieleitz kindly gave me her spare ticket for a reading Carol Ann Duffy was giving at some literary festival that was on in this part of the world, so I picked up the second one as a result of listening to her (particularly after hearing ‘Mrs Faust’). The second book is poetry from the perspective of famous people’s wives (the clue is in the title). I loved it. From the first collection, I’d pick out ‘The Laughter of Stafford Girls’ High’, which is a very long poem about what happens to a stuffy girls’ grammar school when a couple of the students begin to laugh, can’t stop, and then others begin laughing too. Carol Ann Duffy delivered chunks of it completely deadpan at the reading – she would do a couple of verses, switch to a few other poems, and then go back to check on how the girls were doing.
Good Wives by Louisa M. Alcott
I was sure I hadn’t read this, but I seemed to know the plot. Huh. So no great surprises.
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Another choice from my reading group. I enjoyed this a lot more than I was expecting, given that I’m sniffy about mainstream fiction. It has a good orang-utan character, and literature needs more of them (sadly this one isn’t in the whole book). I loved the ‘shaggy-dog’ elements of it and kept on reading and reading, but, like much mainstream fiction, I ended up feeling unsatisfied at the end, like you do at the end of a bag of Quavers.
The Separation by Christopher Priest
communicator wrote a good post about this a while back which I can’t really improve on (although I’m too lazy to go and look it up for readers of this journal). Very much my kind of book – alternate history (set around WW2), and very carefully and methodically structured. Oh, it’s about two brothers, one a warrior and the other a pacifist, in case that seems interesting to anyone on my friends’ list... Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Sheer, unadulterated brilliance. Bloody brilliant. The arrival of the Americans at the prison camp must be one of the blackest moments of black comedy ever written. Why have I never read this before?
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
I have no doubt that if I sat down and really thought about this book, I would find it very satisfying. Unfortunately, I’m a lazy sod, I like instant gratification, and I got a bit bored. The ol’ INFJ FI-COAT bell was clanging throughout, though, and I suspect bits of it will keep leaping out of my subconscious when I’m least expecting it.
The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
iainjcoleman insisted in the strongest terms that I read this. I have a feeling my reading of this suffered from the same problem I had with Dracula and Frankenstein: i.e. that they are both so influential and I came to them both so late that I’d already soaked up their main ideas just from their influence. I did like how Victorian it was. And it did make me want to reread The Tripods. Irresistible Forces ed. by Catherine Asaro
An anthology of SF romance, which had
communicator and archbishopm writhing in agony when I put the mere idea to them. I bought it because it had a Bujold novella in it, Winterfair Gifts (Miles’s wedding!!) and, to be honest, that was the only story I thought was any good. There was another one which wasn’t bad but I didn’t enjoy it enough to go and pull the book off the shelf to remind myself which one it was. Feminine Gospels and The World’s Wife by Carol Ann Duffy
glitterboy1 had kindly bought me the first of these for my birthday, and then trixieleitz kindly gave me her spare ticket for a reading Carol Ann Duffy was giving at some literary festival that was on in this part of the world, so I picked up the second one as a result of listening to her (particularly after hearing ‘Mrs Faust’). The second book is poetry from the perspective of famous people’s wives (the clue is in the title). I loved it. From the first collection, I’d pick out ‘The Laughter of Stafford Girls’ High’, which is a very long poem about what happens to a stuffy girls’ grammar school when a couple of the students begin to laugh, can’t stop, and then others begin laughing too. Carol Ann Duffy delivered chunks of it completely deadpan at the reading – she would do a couple of verses, switch to a few other poems, and then go back to check on how the girls were doing. Good Wives by Louisa M. Alcott
I was sure I hadn’t read this, but I seemed to know the plot. Huh. So no great surprises.
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no subject
Date: 2004-08-24 09:59 am (UTC)Still, in Alcott's eyes, a bearded intellectual is of far more worth, no matter how patronising he is to Jo.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-24 10:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-24 10:33 am (UTC)Absolutely agree
Good Wives by Louisa M. Alcott
I was sure I hadn’t read this, but I seemed to know the plot.
Always published in the US as part of Little Women, so it appears in the movie versions....
.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-24 10:38 am (UTC)Aha. I knew the story before I saw the recent film, but I don't remember reading it as a kid. I guess there's some stuff we just can't avoid picking up.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-24 06:55 pm (UTC)Me too. And, in fact, I don't think I've bothered to read the other stories in it yet! I devoured the Miles wedding one as soon as the book arrived, and then I put it down and read other stuff.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-25 01:38 am (UTC)