Good way into Apt Pupil now (I've been ill) and my god is this a disappointment. I can see what King is trying to do, it seriously needs an editor, it's repeating itself an awful lot, and I don't find the characters believable. At all. The way it's going, it all just seems so very over the top, it doesn't have any subtlety at all, and a story like this needs subtlety to really pull itself off. The descriptions of memories WW2 are so far the best thing about it, and I have to be fair the writing is very evocative, but everything else is utterly mediocre.
"The Code Book" by Simon Singh. About cryptography, cryptanalysis, and ciphers mainly. But he does short bios on historical figures regarding this area too. A good read, interesting side notes and history.
I've also started reading Mason and Dixon by Thomas Pynchon again, as well as Different Seasons by Stephen King. Mason and Dixon is maybe my favourite novel ever, and this'll be my third reading of it. These two books could not be more different, let me tell you!
Haha, and you will thank me. If you want, I can type the first few paragraphs of Mason and Dixon and let you see what it's like? The quality of the writing is astounding. Pynchon is always worth it, put you do need help, and I can point you to a fantastic website that can do that too. By the way, did you see my post on Apt Pupil? I've still not quite finished it yet, but my opinions have not changed. It's on the last thread page, right at the bottom.
I saw you post on Apt Pupil. I'm not surprised. I didn't think King could maintain such a high standard. I don't think I need help with Pynchon. Mason and Dixon is in my shopping cart on Amazon - I have some stuff to go through before I get to it, but I'll get to it.
I am probably going to get some indignation for this, but I got bored and stopped reading Kafka's The Castle after four chapters (72 pages). It's my first exposure to Kafka, so I am probably missing a lot of metaphors and motifs that might have kept me more intrigued. All I got was: the castle represents a fulfillment in life based on prestige; we can never actually get there because prestige can't provide fulfillment; and people are willing to do whatever it takes to try to get there. I was able to get through Crime and Punishment on the basis of the intriguing characters, even though the actual plot didn't pull me until he murdered the two people (which is over 100 pages in). The Land Surveyor is complicated, but I just am not finding myself interested in him or the other strange characters that inhabit the village. I'm not sure if his writing style just isn't for me, or if I'm lacking the specific knowledge of Kafka that would allow me to appreciate his work more.
Kafka is funny, I think you need to prepare yourself with him, and ignore all of the rubbish that is said about him too. There was a good Kafka thread on here not too long ago, focusing on his short story Metamorphosis. Crime and Punishment is a fine novel though. I didn't mind that it took long to get to the actual start of the story, but I can see why you might. I've just finished Different Seasons by Stephen King. I was pleasantly surprised, for the most part.
Just finished The Outsider (or The Stranger in the US) by Albert Camus. This is my first venture into Camus' writing, and while I really liked it, I found Meursault to be an exaggeration to meet the needs of the message. While I wouldn't say this novel lacks intellectual depth, there is nothing really 'poetic' about it. It's mechanical, in a very real sense. Now reading Dreamcatcher by Stephen King.
I am reading "The Art of Fiction" by John Gardener and I am loving it! I just finished Twilight. My reason is that I never read most of the bestsellers and I figured there must be a reason that they are bestsellers, so I might as well open myself up to that. Shockingly, I enjoyed most of it.
Managed to find my old copy of Robert Louis Stevenson's short stories. The Penguin collection The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde and other tales of terror, and I've actually read the entire thing in a day, I just could not stop myself. Good stuff here!
Gardner's The Art of Fiction is my favorite book on writing. It's not as nuts-and-bolts as some other books, but it says the right things to novice writers who are very serious about their art. I find it inspiring, and I reread it often.
Just finished the Farseer Trilogy by R.Hobb. I liked those three books although if I'm really honest the first book was great, then I read the second because I liked the character and the story was still engaging enough. The third the story fizzled out at the end with a really uninteresting climax. Overall I think the character arc for the central characters was good but the overall plot, was pretty weak. It started out interesting but I expected more of it and it seemed like the author had a good story idea then failed to fully develop it. Waking up stone Dragons?...yeah not so much. I would have preferred a more mundane solution to the problem outlined at the beginning of the story and something more along the lines of the main character's story arc which the first two books spent a lot of time developing. But I liked her protagonist and companion characters enough to pick up the story in the next trilogy. Sadly, the author has now lost their shine for me. Fool's Errand spent the entire first 1/3 of the book rehashing the good old days (the authors previously successful trilogy) and the story didn't start until page 236. That's a lot of pages for no plot or character development at all. One can only drink so much brandy and feed chickens for so long. I noticed this author has a new book with these characters just released but I doubt I will bother to read it. It's a story I think that reached it's natural conclusion with the first set of books.
Sabriel, by Garth Nix. I won't be finishing it. In the first few pages I see it has the stink of Australian fantasy authorship about it. That incongruent mix of fantasy ideals that never seems to work and always comes off as a derivative of a derivative. The writing works yes, the characters are a bit wooden, and then there's the lets plonk a girls grammar school into the middle of a fantasy milieu idea. It reads like a book written by someone with only a vague idea of all these concepts.
PensiveQuill I had the Sabriel series shoved into my hands by a friend who insisted they were really really amazing. I finished the whole series, but I agreed with your opinion the entire way. I kept hoping it'd get better, but it really didn't, IMO. having just finished Watership Down, I then picked up Player of Games, but I'm two chapters in and feeling extremely meh about it. I read Maker of Weapons, but my misunderstanding of a (admittedly rather vaguely written) scene in the first half of the book completely altered my perception of the main character, to the point where I found the ending extremely uncomfortable and more than a little squicky--and if you've read the book, probably not for the reasons you'd expect. I also anticipated the "surprise twist" ending, but there was a scene that made no sense if the twist had taken place, so I tried to ignore my suspicion of the twist through the entire last third of the book--and then was extremely annoyed to find out that no, that was the twist, and the scene still didn't make any sense! as much as I've had people rave at me about how awesome the Culture series is, and that book in particular, I was left very disappointed by it. so I'm not reading Player of Games with much enthusiasm at this point, and will gladly put it aside if I can find something better.
I currently have my head buried in The Obesity Paradox by Carl Lavie, MD. Usually, I'm not a big non-fiction reader but this book is proving to be an interesting read, especially given my own cardiovascular issues. Coming in more than 30 pounds under were I should be has only compounded matters. The numbers and the science are telling an interesting story. Definitely worth a read for any science buffs.
Plot & Structure, James Scott Bell. I'm having a little tissy with my plot at the moment. Yes I've got the gist of things but some of the motivations seem weak and full of holes. I've decided to go back and analyse my story before I proceed much further to work this out. This book isn't a definitive work but it does take you through the most common pitfalls and you can check your work for that. I can at least see where the tension was lost in certain places. So far it seems worthwhile.
The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch, volume three of the Gentlemen Bastards Sequence. I'm rather enjoying it.
