What are you reading at the moment

[wurwolf]

Oh yeah, Barsoom! I meant to check them out because of the movie, and because a series will keep me busy for a while. I'll look for them at the Strand.

Never heard of Jasper Fforde. Is that an author, character, or name of a book?

I'll look into Sax Rhomer, too, although I'm mostly meh about that because of the Mountain Goats song and John Darnielle gets on my nerves sometimes.

[Tripe H. Redux]

Never heard of Jasper Fforde. Is that an author, character, or name of a book?

Author, his big character is Thursday Next. I think if you like Fables there's somethign for you in his books really.

I'll look into Sax Rhomer, too, although I'm mostly meh about that because of the Mountain Goats song and John Darnielle gets on my nerves sometimes.

That's right, was trying to remember which of your bands had done that song, I've listened to it a couple of times, I don't understand why it has that title.

[wurwolf]

Alright, I'll keep all of this in mind. Thanks, guys!

[Tripe H. Redux]

My friend Jax does a good read on the villian from The Eyre Affair.

[wurwolf]

Finished reading The Scarlet Pimpernel. Snoooooooooooooore....

Without intending to, I've read three books in a row that were all written by female authors from a female's perspective, and they are all quite different in their portrayal of women. The Scarlet Pimpernel is intended to be a swashbuckling romance, I think, but there's not much swashbuckling going on. There's not much of anything going on in that book. I really hated how the woman was written -- dainty and feminine, with much mention of her darling face and lily white hands. At one crucial point she faints and then later has to be carried by her strong and handsome husband and I was like, OH COME ON. Plus you could see who the Scarlet Pimpernel was going to be a million miles away.

The female in The Bell Jar is also a fragile creature, but I was more willing to forgive it since it was a story about mental illness. While I might have questioned Esther's actions, I never questioned the character as a literary point or as part of a story, if that makes any sense.

Wuthering Heights is just balls out crazy -- everyone's an asshole, men and women alike. Women had their defined roles in that time period but those roles never impinged on the character within the story. The women were just as stupid as the men and could be just as dickish. I think of the three I enjoyed this story the most.

So, now onto some other things, less womany things. A reread of Kurt Vonnegut's Slapstick is in the queue. Thanks to Tripe's wife I plan on reading Tenant of Wildfell Hall when I can get my hands on it, and I will look into Jasper Fforde based on your recommendations here. I can probably find the Princess of Mars series easily enough, thanks to the movie, so I'll keep an eye out for that, too.

[goflyblind]

i'm currently reading an electrodynamics exam, which i have twenty-four hours to finish. hurrah.

for leisure, i'm going through the dark tower series from front to back. i'd read them all before, but spaced out quite a bit.

[mrbasehart]

I bought the last Game of Thrones hardback edition, then when I received it, knew that there was no way I was going to lug that bloody brick to work and back every day if I wanted to read it.

And wurwolf? Jasper Fforde is great.  The Thursday Next series is particularly good.

[lassieface]

I'm about to start The Magicians by Lev Grossman. Should be good. But I still have to finish A Storm of Swords.

[Gandalf Lundgren]

Glad I don't live in Crittenden County.  Really good and interesting.

[Johnny Unusual]

http://static.tumblr.com/bpexq0c/6itlsidck/thatisall_avatar.jpg

Hodgman just keeps getting better and better.  For a non-narrative book, it has a fantastic narrative.  This man really needs to make a proper novel.  You know... before the world ends.

[mrbasehart]

Giving a bunch of stuff away to charity the other day, I was rooting through a box of books and found a couple that I hadn't read and mistakenly put away.  So at the moment, I'm reading this:



My copy is from 1985, so there's nothing updated or revised about it, but it's still a good read.  It's certainly not as dense as other screen biographies I've read (such as Chaplin or Brando's) and there's not a huge amount of stuff that's truly revelatory - Katharine Hepburn could be an arrogant snob, but was fiercely loyal to her friends and utterly devoted to Spencer Tracy - but as an overview of the woman's life, it's good enough.

[Thrashalla]

Working on two of them right now.

Fantastic so far. I started out listening to the audio book - read by his brother Patrick, but I switched to the print version because it was just too strange hearing George's words coming from another voice; even one eerily similar. (Especially when he reads some of George's famous bits.)

It's really inspiring and touching and has even sparked off a couple of psychological breakthroughs of my own in regards to my own relationship with comedy.



I'm not very far into it, but it's definitely easier to get through than most other self-help books because Hardwick doesn't take himself so damn seriously. Replace the usual self-help jargon with videogame and Star Wars references, and you pretty much have this. The time-management aspects are what drew me to it and have delivered some good ideas thus far.

[Johnny Unusual]

Finished That is All.  Tomorrow, I'm finally going to start the last book I got for Christmas:

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman.  Looking forward to it.  Been a while since I've read a straight-ahead novel.  Also picked up The Dream Master by Roger Zelanzy at a used book store.

[Dim of the Yard]

I just finished something I randomly grabbed off of the shelf at the library: The Case Runner, by Carlos Cisneros. In it, a lawyer fresh out of law school finds an illegal immigrant on his doorstep and agrees to help the man find his family. Things go south quickly when the immigrant is found dead, and slowly the new lawyer discovers that the man was at the center of a massive case running ring managed by one of the biggest law firms in the state.

It's not really a book I think I can recommend. A longer explanation is behind the spoiler tag. All you really need to know: wordy, confusing, and disappointing.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It sounds more exciting than it actually is. The story is generally well-written, and the story starts off with one hell of a bang. However, the story gets lost in a lot of frivolous stuff. While the author doesn't spend enough time on the main case behind the story, he goes very in-depth about the food that the lawyer eats, or the long conversations with his assistant about fishing.

On the one hand, sure, it's a lawyer story, written by a lawyer no less. You can expect it to get wordy. But where the author spends time building insignificant details, other parts of the story get lost. The big court case the story builds up to is glossed over, summarized, and neatly wrapped up in a single chapter. The author also doesn't spend much time expanding on the emotional side of the story, so when the lawyer tears up during the court case remembering the immigrant, it feels out of the blue and ham-handed. Even worse, he has a habit of dropping exposition into the dialogue in the exact place where it makes the least sense. (At one point, his ex-girlfriend's father actually reminds him how and when his parents died. Dude, I think he knows!)

There are passages in the story that are genuinely effective. The scene that describes the accident that took the life of the immigrant's wife and son is shocking, gut-wrenching, and some of the best writing in the book. The author has a lot of promise. But the rest of the story gets lost in over-explanation and needless details, which leads to a confusing story, a rushed endgame, and a generally unsatisfying read. Basically, the story started off really strong, then promptly lost itself about halfway in and never recovered from it.

[wurwolf]

Nicely written review there, Dim.