I’m currently reading Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus—it’s such a fun and thought-provoking story! I love finding book recommendations online, and usmagazine sometimes features great celebrity book picks and reviews. It’s a nice way to discover something new to add to the reading list.
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Another Book Thread
- Thread starter jen
- Start date
St. Clown
Ideas Posted are Likely Not My Own
The summer of 2020, that’s when I read my first Stephen King book. Knowing nothing about any of his books’ contents beyond It and The Shining, I decided upon The Stand as it was one of his most popular books. This happened to be the expanded version, which, in his foreword, he said is most like the finished book he handed to the publishers before they forced cuts for length, etc..
That was the wrong time in history to read The Stand for the first time. The early parts of the book, Captain Trips might as well have been COVID-19, based upon dang near all the symptoms. Freaked me the F out.
Now I’m on my fourth reading of The Stand, and I have to say that it’s been my favorite of his, followed by It, and then perhaps 11-22-63. I tried getting into The Dark Tower series, but couldn’t get past the first few chapters before becoming completely bored with it.
That was the wrong time in history to read The Stand for the first time. The early parts of the book, Captain Trips might as well have been COVID-19, based upon dang near all the symptoms. Freaked me the F out.
Now I’m on my fourth reading of The Stand, and I have to say that it’s been my favorite of his, followed by It, and then perhaps 11-22-63. I tried getting into The Dark Tower series, but couldn’t get past the first few chapters before becoming completely bored with it.
ScoobyDoo
NPC
Glad you enjoyed The Stand. The uncut version is arguably my favorite novel of all time. I read Stephen King in High School. Pretty much after High School I stopped reading him and never read The Dark Tower series although I intend to at some point.
Kepler
Cornell Big Red
While it can never approach his masterpiece, and his oft-misunderstood cult classic, Chuck is still out there trying.
Kepler
Cornell Big Red
So I am 1/7th of the way through Anna Karenina.
1. It's beautiful. A far more nuanced and interesting read than War and Peace.
2. It's really fucking funny, on a bunch of levels at once. It has Austen's ability to capture manners and their various shades and textures of humor, but it also has Tolstoy's genius in the narrator's voice and it is a strange combination of gentle and ruthless. Dostoyevsky and Bulgakov are like that, too. It must be the cold.
3. For once, it has few enough characters you don't get confused (much). I literally kept a scorecard for War and Peace. It famously has almost 600 characters with speaking parts, and well over 100 are important characters, and they all seemingly have names that are permutations of each other. I can actually keep straight what's going on in this one.
4. It's just better. Better narrative, better story, no endless meta-historical irritable bowel syndrome cafe philosophy. Everything that happens or is said is to effect and it all fits together. I think he must still have an an editor for this.
5. It -- dare say it? -- is a page-turner. Most of the books I read are masochistic. It's not you couldn't read them; it's that you wouldn't want to. But this is summer light reading. It's every bit as easy a read as say Gatsby or Hemingway, at least in this translation. And you'd want to have a cognac with Lev, which is another thing you can rarely say about my books.
I'm only barely in, but so far highly recommend. It will take me all year to read it; I am that slow.
1. It's beautiful. A far more nuanced and interesting read than War and Peace.
2. It's really fucking funny, on a bunch of levels at once. It has Austen's ability to capture manners and their various shades and textures of humor, but it also has Tolstoy's genius in the narrator's voice and it is a strange combination of gentle and ruthless. Dostoyevsky and Bulgakov are like that, too. It must be the cold.
3. For once, it has few enough characters you don't get confused (much). I literally kept a scorecard for War and Peace. It famously has almost 600 characters with speaking parts, and well over 100 are important characters, and they all seemingly have names that are permutations of each other. I can actually keep straight what's going on in this one.
4. It's just better. Better narrative, better story, no endless meta-historical irritable bowel syndrome cafe philosophy. Everything that happens or is said is to effect and it all fits together. I think he must still have an an editor for this.
5. It -- dare say it? -- is a page-turner. Most of the books I read are masochistic. It's not you couldn't read them; it's that you wouldn't want to. But this is summer light reading. It's every bit as easy a read as say Gatsby or Hemingway, at least in this translation. And you'd want to have a cognac with Lev, which is another thing you can rarely say about my books.
I'm only barely in, but so far highly recommend. It will take me all year to read it; I am that slow.
Just finished The Invention of Morel, by Adolfo Bioy Casares, and I’m just starting The Pacific and other stories, by Mark Helprin. Don’t know what to think of Morel. It’s intriguing, but I’ll have to reread it.
My first by Helprin. He can write, and the first story, about a voice impresario in Italy, leaves me eager to read more.
My first by Helprin. He can write, and the first story, about a voice impresario in Italy, leaves me eager to read more.
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wolverineTrumpet
not particularly bad
I do most of my "reading" during my commute these days. A coworker recommended I check out The Looking Glass Wars. He read it, I listened to it and must say the narrator did a great job. The voices were distinct enough I always knew which character was talking. The sound editing for the character General Doppelganger (who can split into generals Dopple and Ganger) was given just a slight echo when he spoke.
The book I listened to after that series was Agatha Christie's the Man in the Brown Suit which was so poorly narrated I had a hard time knowing which character was talking that even the male vs. female characters were indistinguishable.
The book I listened to after that series was Agatha Christie's the Man in the Brown Suit which was so poorly narrated I had a hard time knowing which character was talking that even the male vs. female characters were indistinguishable.
The Looking Glass Wars nailed it, distinct voices and even subtle effects like the echo for General Doppelganger? That’s the kind of extra detail that pulls you in.
Meanwhile, a flat or unclear narration like in The Man in the Brown Suit just makes the whole thing harder to follow
Meanwhile, a flat or unclear narration like in The Man in the Brown Suit just makes the whole thing harder to follow
MissThundercat
Are the cis okay?
I'm currently working through Thus Spake Zarathustra.
Not exactly light reading.
Not exactly light reading.
Kepler
Cornell Big Red
I've gotten to the 40% point in Anna Karenina. You know how every other chapter of Moby Dick is about whaling, and every other chapter of War & Peace is about military tactics? Well, every other chapter of Anna Karenina is about rural sociology. Domestic economy. 19th century progressive Russian farming techniques. It does actually relate to one of the intertwined plots, and it's interesting in its own way, but the bodice ripping definitely gets put away for long stretches of wheat cutting and crop rotation and pig troughs, not to mention The Peasant Question.
mookie1995
there's a good buck in that racket.
mookie is working through….
Paying back Jack by Christopher moore
The Queen City detective agency by Snowden wright
&
Damascus station by David mccloskey
Paying back Jack by Christopher moore
The Queen City detective agency by Snowden wright
&
Damascus station by David mccloskey
One thing, and you've commented on this regarding German philosophers: You are getting a lot from Dostoevsky; what would Russians say is the "more" you would get if you were reading him in Russian?
Kepler
Cornell Big Red
Maybe more seasonal affective disorder and binge drinking?
The present US situation is a fair stand-in for post-Decemberist Russia.
I am certain a Russian gets more from Tolstoy than I ever can. The blood is the life, Mr. Renfield.
Even the letters are scary:
That aint right.
There is I am sure more poetry and nuance in the original Russian, not to mention wordplay and jokes. Tolstoy is hella funny is a very Andrei Rublev Extra Dark way and in the native tongue it's gotta be 3x as biting.