|
Grex > Books > #3: What Was the Last Book You Read? | |
|
| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 298 responses total. |
otaking
|
|
response 225 of 298:
| 
Nov 30 16:05 UTC 1999 |
I just finished reading "Doomsday Book" by Connie Willis. I highly recommend
this book. It follows the tale of Kivrin, a 21st century college student who
is sent back in time to 14th century Skendale, a village outside of Oxford,
to study the Middle Ages. Trouble begins when people in the 21st century
succumb to a mysterious illness, hampering any attempt to retrieve her from
the past.
I don't know how to adequately describe this novel in the short amount of time
available to me, except to say that it's the best novel I've read this year.
I can't recommend it enough to fans of SF or medieval history.
|
gelinas
|
|
response 226 of 298:
|
Apr 7 04:23 UTC 2000 |
The 'last' book I read was _The Neutronium Alchemist Part 1: Consolidation_,
which is the third paperback in a six-book "trilogy" (apparently, it was
originally published in three hardcover volumes). I'm working on the
next part, "Conflict" now. Fun stuff, but there are a lot of characters,
a lot of plot lines; about what you would expect given that each paperbook
runs over 500 pages.
|
gorwell
|
|
response 227 of 298:
|
May 7 00:52 UTC 2000 |
I finish and re-reading The radiant future, the invisible writings, The age
of longing, the first is buy alexander zinoviev, second is arthur koestler.
|
otaking
|
|
response 228 of 298:
|
May 7 06:14 UTC 2000 |
I finished reading Feng Shui for Apartment Living recently. Good book.
|
md
|
|
response 229 of 298:
|
May 22 12:32 UTC 2000 |
I want to finish my George Eliot marathon this summer
but I keep getting interrupted. At Borders yesterday
I picked up two irresistible interruptions: _Nabokov's
Butterflies_ and Borges' _Complete Fictions_.
The title of the Borges book sounds a little bit affected.
Why "fictions"? There are no novels or novellas, so why
not call them "short stories" like everyone else? Well,
first of all, "ficciones" is what Borges himself called
them. Secondly, many of them are unclassifiable -- not
stories, exactly, but not essays or reviews, either.
Some of them read like essays and reviews, but the authors
and works they deal with are all invented by Borges.
Anyway, here, between two covers, is everything Borges
wrote of that nature. Many old favorites of mine, and
many more I'd never heard of, all in brand-new translations.
The translator takes a big risk in renaming one of Borges
most famous "fictions" from the familiar "Funes the Memorious"
to "Funes, His Memory," explaining that "memorious" is
not a good translation of "memorioso" ("elephant-memoried"
would be more like it, he says).
_Nabokov's Butterflies_ tries to collect everything Nabokov
ever wrote of the subject into one volume. It has the entire
"Butterflies" chapter from _Speak, Memory_, the butterfly
parts from all of his novels and stories, excerpts from
interviews and letters, all of Nabokov's scientific papers,
selected diary entries, and various other stuff from the
Nabokov Archives including plans of projected works. It is
almost 800 pages long and is filled with illustrations --
photographs of Nabokov in collecting mode at all ages,
photographs, Nabokov's own drawings, ec., etc. This is one
of thise books that can fairly be described as "sumptuous."
|
gerund
|
|
response 230 of 298:
|
Dec 4 03:36 UTC 2000 |
Stephen King, _On_Writing_.
Having read most of it I'd have to say it's thoughtful and entertaining,
providing insights of a man who's been writing for many many years. It provides
more than that, however, in giving Mr. King's perspective on his life as well
as that fateful day in 1999 that almost ended his life. You'll get a sense of
the man that I think might be hard to gleen if you've only read his fiction.
|
remmers
|
|
response 231 of 298:
|
Dec 4 14:41 UTC 2000 |
John Grisham, _The Runaway Journey_. Got it to pass the time on
a recent airplane flight. Never read Grisham before. Probably
won't again.
|
remmers
|
|
response 232 of 298:
|
Dec 4 14:42 UTC 2000 |
Oops, make that _The Runaway Jury_.
|
mcnally
|
|
response 233 of 298:
|
Dec 4 21:54 UTC 2000 |
So you read "The Runaway Jury" on your runway journey?
|
remmers
|
|
response 234 of 298:
|
Dec 5 02:37 UTC 2000 |
Exactly!
|
m1a1crew
|
|
response 235 of 298:
|
Dec 7 13:47 UTC 2000 |
Eniac by Scott McCartney. Have become very interested in Computer History
lately, this is a good intro book to lay some framework on the subject. I
thought it was an objective look at who stood where in the development of the
first working computer and the spread of computer science. The author
sets the record straight as too VonNeumann's role in the birth of computers,
he contributed greatly to the birth of computer science while it was Eckert
and Mauchly who bore the first working computer. Although I was very
disappointed that there was no mention of Turing and Colossus. Many people
dispute this as the first true working computer and Turing as the real father.
Also many places where details would have been appreciated, the author vaguely
described the events and moved on. Overall still a good read.
|
mcnally
|
|
response 236 of 298:
|
Dec 7 22:04 UTC 2000 |
If you're in Ann Arbor, have you stopped by the EECS building to view the
piece of ENIAC that's on display near the front of the atrium?
|
md
|
|
response 237 of 298:
|
Jan 14 14:05 UTC 2001 |
Mayflies, by Richard Wilbur. An extremely slim volume of poems by our
greatest living poet. Maybe his last, as he turns eighty this year and
his output seems to have slowed down sadly.
Spaking of poetry, I was reading a volume of Robert Frost's letters the
other day, and noted that he said "Cadmus and Harmonia" was his
favorite long poem by Matthew Arnold. The title meant nothing to me,
which was alrming because I know, or thought I knew, all of Arnold's
poetry.
The Oxford Authors selection of Arnold's poetry and prose (published
fifteen years or so ago) didn't have "Cadmus and Harmonia" in either
the ToC or index, but it doesn't purport to be complete. I have two
collections of Arnold's poetry that call themselves "complete," both
from the late 19th century shortly after Arnold's death, one by Oxford
and one by Macmillan. The Macmillan volume didn't have anything
called "Cadmus and Harmonia," but the Oxford edition did: both the ToC
and the title index showed "Cadmus and Harmonia" as starting on page
112. But on turning to that page, I found myself in the middle
of "Empedocles on Etna," near the end of the first act.
I must've rechecked the ToC and index of the Oxford volume three or
four times, in growing disbelief. I started to feel like a character
in a Borges story. Finally, as a last resort, I pulled down Stedman's
Victorian Anthology and the 1879 Golden Treasury selection of Arnold's
poems. The Stedman had nothing; but there, in the little Golden
Treasury selection, was my poem. I recognized it immediately as the
passage from the first act of "Empedocles on Etna."
All I can think is that Palgrave excerpted the passage from the verse
drama, which was much too long to include in full in the Golden
Treasury edition, and published it as a standalone poem in the
collection, with or without Arnold's permission, and that that is where
Robert Frost saw it. It probably became a Victorian sentimental
favorite, and so earned the oblique reference in the Oxford edition.
100 years ago, that reference wouldn't've puzzled anyone.
The poem is about a man and a women who saw their children all killed,
and who were turned into snakes by the gods, in an act of mercy, and
sent to a beautiful hillside overlooking the ocean, where they lived
ever after in blissful reptilian ignorance. Frost's reference to it
was in a letter written around the time his daughter Marjorie died of
puerperal fever after giving birth to her only child. The tragedy as
much as killed Frost's wife, and sent Frost into a deep depression.
Just a few years later and they could have saved Marjorie with
antibiotics.
|
md
|
|
response 238 of 298:
|
Jan 14 17:01 UTC 2001 |
Okay, the Oxford Authors edition has a note to the "Empedocles on Etna"
passage remarking that it was published separately by Arnold as "Cadmus
and Harmonia" as early as 1852.
Also, Frost didn't say it was his "favorite long poem by Matthew
Arnold," but his favorite poem, period, "long before I knew what it
would mean to us." I've got to stop quoting stuff from memory. Worked
ten years ago, doesn't work now.
|
oddie
|
|
response 239 of 298:
|
Jan 15 05:02 UTC 2001 |
"started to feel like a character in a Borges story."
What a great description. :-)
|
md
|
|
response 240 of 298:
|
Jan 15 14:18 UTC 2001 |
Thanks. I was thinking of "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius," where the
narrator finds a long article on Uqbar in a bootleg edition of an
encyclopedia, but then can't find it in the original edition and,
what's much worse, can't find any reference to Uqbar anywhere else.
|
md
|
|
response 241 of 298:
|
Jan 15 14:38 UTC 2001 |
Btw -- continuing the Borders bashing from another conference -- I was
at the big Borders in Farmington Hills a few days ago while I still had
Matthew Arnold on the brain, so I decided to see what they were
carrying by Arnold. Answer: absofuckinglutely nothing. Not one volume
of poems, no prose, no biography, no criticism. Nada. I don't even
want to know who else they don't carry anymore. It went from Maya
Angelou to John Ashberry, as I recall.
(A blind item in the old Spy magazine told about a "respected American
poet" who, when was asked by a student at an Ivy League reading what he
thought about some poem by Maya Angelou, replied that he had never read
anything by Maya Angelou. When the student expressed shock, he
said, "But nobody actually reads Maya Angelou. She's one of those
poets whose sole function is to be taught in schools.")
|
oddie
|
|
response 242 of 298:
|
Jan 16 04:26 UTC 2001 |
re240 - yes, I know the story. Last year in English we got to write one
"research paper" on any topic we liked, and I did Borges.
|
md
|
|
response 243 of 298:
|
Jan 16 15:13 UTC 2001 |
I used to love open-topic "research" assignments.
So, what do you think "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" is all about? I
used to think it was about an alien culture, from another dimension or
something, taking over earth. Lately, I'm thinking it's an allegory of
the triumph of American popular culture (Tlon was made in the USA,
after all) and the real danger of it replacing native cultures
everywhere. Borges was probably thinking of movies and jazz back then,
but nowadays there would be language and history as well. The scary
part, at the very end of the story, is when even such things as
language and history become distorted and eventually completely
changed. Spot quiz: Whay are mirrors and fatherhood abominable?
|
oddie
|
|
response 244 of 298:
|
Jan 22 08:11 UTC 2001 |
*wracks [racks?] brains* Obviously it's because they both have to do with
multiplying the number of things, but why this is abominable to Borges
I've forgotten if I ever knew. Why is it?
I guess I was exaggerating a bit when I said I "knew" the story, as now
that I try to think about it my recollection is distinctly fuzzy (it
wasn't one of the stories I read closely for the research paper, and now
I can only remember the part about the encyclopedia entry and something
about things coming into existence when they were written about.) I'll
be down at the library some time this week though and will look for the
anthology in which I originally read it, and then I might be able to
write something meaningful.
The research assignment was a whole lot of fun. I can't say that I'm
too happy with the final product as a whole, because it doesn't really
have much of a thesis--I have a tendency to start writing such things with
only a general sort of "focus" in mind, in this case the theme of the
labyrinth, and hope that by the end I'll have discovered something which then
can be made into a thesie statement. In this case it didn't really work,
principally I think because I kept hoping to find that the stories featuring
labyrinths would turn out to have a kind of philosophical consensus,
and they rather obviously don't, as I belatedly realized at 2a.m. on the
morning of the day the paper was due. For example: in the famous "Garden
of Forking Paths" Borges presents the idea that the universe is constantly
being duplicated in slightly different forms as decisions are made, so the
number of "possible futures" increases exponentially with the passage of
time. But in "A Survey of the works of Herbert Quain" he seems to present
the opposite view, in the form of a book with nine possible stories of
Evening #1, three possible stories for Evening #2 and only one for the
third evening. (He then goes on to say that this is only a poor imitation of
the universe's true scheme, which would feature [naturally ;-] an infinite
number of branches). There are other examples too, like "The Lottery in
Babylon" where the labyrinth is constructed not by conscious decisions but
by chance. Borges is less interested in presenting a single view of the
world than he is in toying with the various possibilities. At least that's
what I think. :-)
(Apart from a couple of interviews in which he talks about his innate
philosophical skepticism [fairly selective it seems, since he also has a
great interest in mysticism and suchlike], I think it was "The Library of
Babel" that led me to this conclusion. The Library is obviously the universe,
and there are descriptions of various groups who seem to symbolize different
"ways of knowing", to borrow the relativists' phrase; the narrator expresses
distrust for more or less all of them.)
(Another story I really enjoyed was "Death and the Compass", which has both
a nice symmetry of construction [to go along with the symmetry of the
mansion?] and a macabre murder mystery keeping up the pace.)
--
query: what are the four elements of fantasy, according to Borges? I remember
the story within the story but not the other three.
|
oddie
|
|
response 245 of 298:
|
Jan 22 08:16 UTC 2001 |
hehe...I just realized that I used the phrase "distinctly fuzzy" up there,
which isn't really an oxymoron but sounds like one.
|
gelinas
|
|
response 246 of 298:
|
Jan 31 16:23 UTC 2001 |
At the end of November, my wife gave me Tom Clancy's _The_Bear_and_the_Dragon_.
When I started reading it, I realised that he had covered a lot of ground
since _The_Sum_of_All_Fears_, so I went to the library and got
_Without_Remorse_, _Debt_of_Honor_, and _Executive_Orders_. When I finished
them, I went back to _Bear_, and discovered there was another one,
_Rainbow_Six_. So I got it and started reading. Got a little bit into it, and
decided that _Bear_ was chronologically earlier, so I went back to that. Then I
came across a reference to Rainbow which made it clear that I was wrong, so I
finished _Rainbow_ before continuing with _Bear_. Now I'm done.
Clancy is an exciting writer, but I've decided he is also a poor writer.
It's not just the proofreading, which seems to be a general problem these
days, and it's not just the inconsistency in continuity, which is more
important to his books than to some other authors'. But I can't quite
put my finger on why he leaves me dissatisfied. I guess it is the details
he gets wrong after appearing to be putting so much effort into getting
them right.
Consider. He designates a Marine helicopter squadron as "VMH-1".
Problem is, the "V" means "fixed-wing"; Marine helicopter squadrons are
designated HM_-xx. The third character identifies the kind of helicopter:
Attack, Light, Medium, and Heavy are the usual choices. The squadron he is
talking about in his books doesn't quite follow that pattern; it is HMX-1.
I know he wants to avoid entanglements with Real Life, but this isn't the
way to do it. Change the third character from an X to an M or an L or H;
change the number to 5. But calling a rotary-wing unit by a fixed-wing
designator is Just Wrong.
Inconsistency in Continuity: In _Debt_, _Orders_, and _Rainbow_, he
calls the successor to the KGB "RVS." In _Bear_, he changes it to SVR.
EXCEPT at the top of one page its RVS, and then toward the bottom of
that same page it is back to SVR. (That's also a proof-reading problem,
isn't it?) In the first three, John Clark uses the Russian name Ivan
Timofeyevich Klerk. In _Bear_, it's Ivan Sergeyevich. Except at the
very end when he's called "Ivan Timofeyevich" again.
I won't comment on the physics he uses at the end of _Bear_ to build
fake-suspense, but I will say that I *still* haven't figured out how
six plus two equals ten.
|
jocky71
|
|
response 247 of 298:
|
Nov 8 02:11 UTC 2001 |
I am reading "The Corresctions" by johnathon Frazen. BORING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
|
md
|
|
response 248 of 298:
|
Nov 9 14:44 UTC 2001 |
Franzen is reportedly a good writer (I've only read a couple of his New
Yorker pieces) but a social idiot. When The Corrections was selected
as the next Oprah Club book, Franzen made some supercilious remarks
about the Oprah Club, whereupon Oprah Winfrey announced that she was
skipping The Corrections and going on to the next book. This was after
Franzen's publisher had increased the first printing from 80,000 to
500,000 on the strength of the Oprah Club selection. Franzen issued an
apology, but it was too late. Then he started a book-signing at some
chain store with a remark about how lowbrow he thought chain-store book
signings are.
|
cpnmonk
|
|
response 249 of 298:
|
Jan 21 18:54 UTC 2002 |
I just finished reading _Primary Colors_ by Annonymous, not a bad book althoug
I did find it far more gripping then the movie version of the story.
Certainly the ending was a bit more satisfying overall.
|