NOW READING

Okay, so my King insanity continues with Night Shift. About three stories in.

Also, I still haven't finished Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue, but I'm not complaining - it is a philosophical treatise, so I guess it's understood the reading tempo will be slower. And it's absolutely amazing. (For those not in the know, it's a very significant book on moral philosophy, deconstructing the idea of a "subjective" morality and criticising the current discourse on morality by describing the utter chaos we got into past Enlightenment. That is, people using words they don't understand and lack the logical argumentation for such a long time that actual philosophers - and, well, most people in fact - simply throw up their hands and say "who knows, I'm right, you're right, we can never know the truth," put very simply) He's vicious, yet cool, calm and collected, he has a lot of good arguments and what he says rings true. Though it's not easy to hear (well, read) that.

It's also funny how he begins the treatise by referencing the cult science-fiction story A Canticle for Leibowitz in all but name.

The Malazan Book of the Fallen is also great - I'm in the second half of Gardens of the Moon and I still feel the same - it's really not that hard to get into it. Okay, a lot of characters, a lot of backstory, a unique system of magic and gods… but to be honest, Ellroy's L. A. Confidential and possibly even ASOIAF were much less friendly to a newbie reader, IMHO. At least here three characters don't share the same name (well, some of the characters have several instead, but you must have known that).

It's intriguing and I'm really looking forward to the rest of the series - discovering the huge world is going to be a treat and I also like it's already finished - that is, the fact the author has made up the world and the stories beforehand and then went and wrote it down, coherently and without undue delays (I'm looking at you, GRRM - honestly, the fact he's either unable or unwilling to even deliver the product and the delays keep getting worse - I distinctly remember looking forward to 2016 as the year Winds would come out… yeah, right - made me appreciate the series a bit less. I'm not being "possessive of the author", as Gaiman and others have put it, he's free to do whatever the hell he wants, but I'm also free to not give a damn anymore, especially if I have invested my money and so much of my time into it).

I also continue in my romance with Flannery O'Connor - currently reading A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories. Not a lot of surprises, but it's refreshing to read a Catholic author who's this cynical.

And from the opposite side of the "Cathspectrum" there's Dom Samuel's De tout coeur - a Trappist abbot's meditations on the Church in the 21st century, about the monastic life and about living in faith in these modern times. Sounds clichéd, but it's a rather good read.

And finally, because I have to return the book asap, I opened C. S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces. I'm 50 pages in and I'm still not sure what to make of it. It's very well written and considering it's freakin' Lewis I presume I'm going to love it in the end, but so far I'm a bit lost.

Yeah, it might be a tad too much. But I have to return some of those books and I got De tout coeur as a penance from my parish priest (while he explicitly said to read it immediately, because of the nature of the act), so I'm trying to do my best :D
 
I've been re-reading, for the first time since I was in university, The Second World War by Winston Churchill. I'm currently on the first volume, The Gathering Storm. While Churchill does paint himself in a positive light, and his memoir is certainly not a verifiable history (being published as it was while many things, such as the Ultra program, were still classified), it is a fascinating read. I'm currently at the part about Neville Chamberlain's Munich adventure, and there are many comparisons to be read into the current state of the world today: the most powerful man in the world (or one of the two) being fleeced publicly by a stated enemy.
 
Finished The Wind Through the Keyhole, on to Wolves of the Calla. I’m not sure how I feel about this one, it wasn’t the most compelling story to read but it’s good to learn new things about our hero. The boy Tim in the story reminded me of Jake. Eager to continue with the main story now.
 
Just finished Storm Front, by Rowland White. Absolutely cracking (and easy-reading) account of the SAS and RAF in Oman circa 1972
 
I finished reading Tropic of Cancer a few days ago. I'm still thinking about it. Overall it wasn't a favorite but there were many lines I thought were clever, funny or just an example of talented writing. But after a while (more like towards the very end) it started to get tiring to have the narrator be such an ass when before it was even kind of charming. It was pretty easy to get through it even though it didn't have much of a plot going on, and it was mostly "Henry Miller" talking about other people and their quirks, and how he always was thinking about food or sex.

By the way, I know I never said what happened with me and Catch-22. I did finish it. It took very long even though I enjoyed it when I did pick it up. I think its dialogue and characters are probably the strongest points. To be honest though, it just gets hard to follow the "storyline" and what relationship certain characters have with each other. Also, the writing style is often bland even when it describes situations that should be interesting.
 
Ariana said:
o_O
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A lot of the writing was like: He went into a dark room and was followed by two other men. Drops of sweat were starting to form on his forehead. He started to cry. The two men laughed and placed a paper right in front of him, on the desk. He cried in an ugly way. He was a soft-spoken man, with frizzy and in other ways badly-textured hair, but also - I'm boring myself just writing this. I mean, it's not bad, and his intention was probably to make a cold-hearted writing style but it still came off bland to me at times, even though the story itself was intriguing. There's just more vivid ways to describe a situation. Although it's definitely a small flaw and the dialogue makes a big part of the novel anyway. It's a great book regardless.
 
I know what Joseph Heller's style is like. ;) It's carefully crafted and well-thought of, both stylistically and semantically. What you call "bland" is a stylistic vehicle carrying a two-fold (at least) purpose. Catch 22 was not written to entertain readers, it was written to make them think. And be embarrassed. And be confused. And think more.
And by the way, your example sounds nothing like Heller.
 
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Ariana said:
It's carefully crafted and well-thought of, both stylistically and semantically. What you call "bland" is a stylistic vehicle carrying a two-fold (at least) purpose. Catch 22 was not written to entertain readers, it was written to make them think. And be embarrassed. And be confused. And think more.
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I can know what it was meant to do and still find it bland.
 
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

Just finished "The Man in the High Castle"; I was hoping to like it more, but neah ...
 
AWM said:
Forever And A Day ~ Anthony Horowitz

James Bond novel set before Casino Royale
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I've recently been reading the Bond novels, Moonraker was the last one I read. Forever And A Day sounds interesting, would you recommend?
 
Almost finished with a book by Betty Medsger called The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI.

Amazing and detailed account of a 1971 break in of an FBI office where all the documents were stolen. They ended up revealing for the first time the FBI'S illegal surveillance, blackmail, and allowing crimes (including murder) to happen and innocent people to go to prison if Hoover did not like them. This went on for decades (until Hoover's death in 1972)
 
Stephen Crane's The Black Riders and Other Lines, yet again.

I stood upon a high place,
And saw, below, many devils
Running, leaping,
And carousing in sin.
One looked up, grinning,
And said, "Comrade! Brother!"
 
Since @Black Wizard thinks I should be more open about what I'm reading...

I finished Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions this morning. Really, really good, probably better than Slaughterhouse Five. I love his writing style a lot and the way he attacks everything America is built on is unbeaten. Fantastic novel.
 
Diesel 11 said:
Since @Black Wizard thinks I should be more open about what I'm reading...

I finished Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions this morning. Really, really good, probably better than Slaughterhouse Five. I love his writing style a lot and the way he attacks everything America is built on is unbeaten. Fantastic novel.
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Have you read Cat's Cradle?
 
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