So I’m reading a book called Always, by Sarah Jio. It’s about a woman in her thirties (Kailey) who’s about to get married to the man of her dreams. Except she can’t forget about a guy called Cade who she’d been seeing about ten years ago. Then one day, she bumps into a homeless guy in a restaurant and, to her surprise, she realises it’s Cade. The book is written through excerpts of “past” (how she and Cade met, their sentimental experiences together) and present (what her life is like with Ryan and her quest to get back in touch with Cade so that she could find out what happened to him and help him out). I guess these shifts between present and past makes the writing touching because we see it through Kailey’s memories and why she feels so passionate about helping the former love of her life who is only now a glimmer of his former self. I don’t know if anyone on this site has read anything written by this specific author but apparently she’s a very sentimental writer and often explores themes like romance, love and how it all evolves. I’m something like a quarter of the way through this.
L'histoire du Canton de Neuchatel is what i am reading now. Fascinating read, only if you're interested in the subject though. Filled with history and it also managed to help me trace back my family even further (can now trace it back reliably to 500CE, to 264CE with some amount of certainty and to 500BCE with conjecture assuming).
I have been looking for something difrent . I recently started The New Mammoth Book Of Pulp Fiction ,collection of short stories . The stories were mostly published between 1930's to the 60's and are described as hard boiled fiction . It includes some famous writers like Dashiell Hammett and Mickey Spillane but also writers that have been long forgotten . There are some shortcomings , regards to attitudes of the time of writing . But the writing is concise with twisting plots . Written to be entertaining and easy to read . For me , so far so good .
Almost finished the Fellowship Of The Ring....Part of me wishes I could read it absent the movies influence, but the other part enjoys the great cast of actors playing their respective roles in my head. Moria felt so much more oppressive, like I was traversing it with them for a long time. I'm also starting to read The City & The City by China Miéville. Going from Tolkien simple and effective vocabulary to that is actually really difficult for me. I'm finding myself looking up every other word.
SPOILER ALERT I read The Catcher In The Rye recently; for about a week I had an opinion; formulated a conclusion... That phase is over; stored away for whenever I wanna revisit this tale. I finished it, I allowed myself to then watch video reviews and adaptations on YouTube I found while reading but avoided the temptation to play for fear of spoilers, so when I read it; I went to YouTube, found this video I had never found before, and it made me lol since I just read the book; I went on to formulate something profound about society and Holden Caulfield in some ancient Egyptian paper/tomb and his taunting f' you he spies when he can get no rest when I reread it and then read that final chapter again about him laughing at the notion of whether he knows if he's capable of doing something before he does it. This was the first video I saw as soon as I finished reading this this week... It made me laugh. SPOILER ALERT
I get the same problem with Altered Carbon when thinking about the tv/film of the books you have read. It can often ruin the experience, and has certainly altered my view of AC series now that I've read all three of Richard Morgan's books. Wish I could take it back but that book has long gone.
Blood Secrets: Chronicles of a Crime Scene Reconstruction by Rod Englert with Kathy Passero Research for a story I have been struggling with. It's an easy and interesting read. I'm enjoying it.
I have a whole slew of true crime and serial killer novels cued up, waiting for me to start my next WIP.
Oh God, I hated it. Please don't take offense. It's so strange how polarizing that book is. It's either the best or the worst. As well-written as it is, I still can't stand Holden Caulfield. I want to shoot him in my people-shooting hat. I felt the exact same way almost twenty years later when I read Dostoyevsky's Notes from the Underground. The MC could almost be Holden all grown up and still hating on all the phonies while behaving as the phoniest of all. They're both brilliant character studies. I just can't get behind a book if I hate the MC, I guess.
I wasn't required to read it, tried to several times in my twenties and just put it down after a few chapters. As they say, the opposite of love isn't hate, it's apathy.
Same. I reread it every couple of years and it never fails to conjure back the awe I felt the first time I read it. The climax with Holden walking down the street feeling like he's disappearing is one of my top ten moments in literature. It's indescribably powerful.
You could probably view Holden as a “phoney” but I felt like a identified with the “real” Holden Caulfield through his thoughts and internal monologues. I think (apart from people who speak their mind), a lot of us tend to say one thing on the outside and think something else on the inside. Eg. You might say “that outfit looks good on you” but actually you think it looks frumpy and ridiculous. I think Holden Caulfield was hilarious like that. I see how it could come across as phoney if you’re bothered by that thing. I don’t mind the occasional white lie from people myself if it makes me feel better. I thought he was somewhat “polite” that way. No one’s inclined to like a book when hating on the MC. Especially since the entire book is centred around him. If I hated the MC who comprised the majority of a story, I probably would never get past the first couple pages. In HC’s case, I know in many ways he think he’s an outright failure, but I don’t think I’ve met many characters like him in my real world. It was an intriguing character study.
I see Holden as more afraid of being a failure, or at least not living up to his dreams and expectations, than actually believing he is a failure. You can't lose a game if you don't play it, and Holden is trying his damndest to find a way not to play adulthood. He starts by rejecting the world—everyone is a "phoney" not to be respected. Everyone is unworthy of being listened to or emulated. Reject society before society can reject you. And that's a fairly common coping mechanism for adolescents. Which is why the emotional conflict in The Catcher in the Rye is so relatable for so many people.
www.fml.com It can be funny, it can be sad.... Relevant to us perhaps.....? https://www.fmylife.com/article/today-my-mother-found-out-i-published-a-book-she-demanded-that-i-pay-her-all-my-royalties-as-repay_131275.html I kind of wonder how much money the mom thinks this writer has made....
Making my way through bits of the Jorge Luis Borges full collection. You would think the guy had multiple personalities. So out there that it seems pieces of himself literally detached and became characters around him, and the stories were that of his own reality.
Currently reading The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson. It has my attention, but I'm not far enough in to make any worthwhile judgements. I recently finished Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence. Big fan. It has a very compelling protagonist, good pacing, and I was surprised at just how good Lawrence's prose was. I can't remember reading a more evil main character in high fantasy than Jorg. In fact, I imagine he's too wicked for a lot of readers to appreciate, so I'll be careful who I recommend this series to.
I'm currently racing through Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. I've recently amassed a small collection of writing manuals, about ten so far. I don't know why I started with this one. It barely touches on the aspect of writing I most want to study at the moment, namely structure. It's funny though. There's less new information in here than I'd hoped, but a lot of commiseration over the writer's plight and some decent advice on pushing past the mean little voices in your head. It's not bad.
Glad you liked it. I've become quite a fan of Lawrence, and I think he deserves to be better known. For people who are curious about the Broken Empire series but don't want a literal monster for a protagonist, Red Queen's War by the same author, in the same setting, is a terrific alternative. It's just as good, if not better, but has a lighter tone and a less despicable leading man. So, I haven't been reading much lately. Working my slow way through Red Queen's War. Finished Going Postal (Discworld) and now reading Monstrous Regiment. I still love Discworld, but I think I might be getting fatigued. After this one I'm going to give it a good long rest. I finished H. G. Wells' The Time Machine, which was lovely, and I've started on War of the Worlds. Meanwhile I'm looking for my next book. I want something in the Gormenghast vein, and I've seen The Worm Ouroboros recommended in that capacity. Anyone familiar with it?
Re-reading In Conquest Born by C.S. Friedman. It's not holding up as well as I'd hoped it would, but I first read it as a fifteen or sixteen year-old babygoth, so that's to be expected. Although as a debut novel which was nominated for the Campbell Best New Author award, it ain't no slouch either. Also have Jim Butcher's second Dresden book on the shelf, along with Jesus Christs by A.J. Langguth, one of my favorite religious/blasphemous books ever. Currently out of print, but I was responsible for buying three or four of the most recent run, one for me and the others as gifts.
I'm reading Andre Norton's Zero Stone for like the 8th time probably. I know she wrote for the pulps and a lot of it was cheesy space opera stuff, but when she was good she was damn good, and this is one of my favorites by her, though she used a weird long-sentence style that I don't care for, especially in the beginning. After things pick up though I don't care anymore, the concept is so compelling. I had noticed before and this time it keeps jumping out at me—I swear Dan O'Bannon must have read this story and largely based his Alien script on it. There's a ridiculous amount of similarities, except that in the novel the alien is telepathic and intelligent, and it implanted itself in a cat rather than a human host, so the offspring is catlike but mutated. There's even a scene where the protag has to put on a space suit and escape a ship while carrying the cat in a transparent-sided box. The big scare on the spaceship wasn't the alien though, it was plague. But I can see O'Bannnon just shuffled some elements around. For instance Ripley didn't put on the suit so she could escape the lifeboat, but only to open the hatch and blow the alien out. Oh, and speaking of a lifeboat, one plays a huge part in The Zero Stone. I also suspect a certain ridiculous scene of Princess Leia flying through space using the Force might have been inspired by one part of this book.
May I recommend Becoming A Writer by Dorothea Brande? It's also a non-fiction book on writing. And like BbB, it's not about the technical aspect of story relating stuff but a guide on how to live as a writer. It's a really old book(like typewriter and talking picture old), but I enjoyed reading both of them almost the same.
I’m reading Sanibel Flats by Randy Wayne White.The book is about retire CIA spook and marine biologist, he finds murder of his friend.I love Randy Wayne White stories.
