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Author Topic: Rate the last book you read.  (Read 194216 times)

mañana

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Re: Rate the last book you read.
« Reply #190 on: July 26, 2009, 12:11:58 AM »
Did you like the movie?
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pixote

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Re: Rate the last book you read.
« Reply #191 on: July 26, 2009, 12:16:01 AM »
Did you like the movie?

Oops, I forgot to add, "I'm pretty sure the movie is a whole lot better, though it's been a while since I've seen it."

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mañana

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Re: Rate the last book you read.
« Reply #192 on: July 26, 2009, 01:00:56 AM »
Canadianization tends to improve things.
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Bill Thompson

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Re: Rate the last book you read.
« Reply #193 on: July 26, 2009, 09:09:53 AM »
The Preacher #1-7 (Gone To Texas)
--I tend to be a fan of things most would find blasphemous, simply because there shouldn't be such a thing as blasphemy and any story willing to shout that from the rooftops has already scored points with me. Gone To Texas does something else, it brings interesting characters and a compelling story along with the supposed blasphemy. Garth Ennis does at times fall too much towards writing what he knows, Irish street toughs, but he's always done that in his writing and you eventually get used to it. He also struggles with constructing the narrative at times, the first few issues are a bit hard to follow because he never quite makes it clear what is happening now as opposed to what events with the trio together are a flashback. But, he does so many other things well, like the interesting characters and the matter of fact dialogue, and creating a world where a preacher wants to find God and kick his ass, John Wayne's non-corporeal person talks to said Preacher, vampires exist and there's an entity known as the Saint of Killers who kills everything in sight, mostly out of habit. Of course his most well known creation from this arc is Arseface, a character who is both disgusting and heartbreaking to watch. All in all a great start to the series, almost as great as I remembered it, with only a few less than stellar moments and some shoddy narrative construction to start.

Grade: A

Junior

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Re: Rate the last book you read.
« Reply #194 on: July 26, 2009, 09:29:12 AM »
The Saint of Killers is freaking awesome.
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alexarch

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Re: Rate the last book you read.
« Reply #195 on: July 26, 2009, 11:58:17 AM »
World War Z

Very cool, very easy read. It took the subject matter - A Worldwide zombie apocalypse - seriously, and I appreciated that. Because it was told as an oral history from many, many different sources, there were few characters that stood out. My favorite section was about a female drop pilot who got caught in a wild zone, overrun with zombies. She had to escape to safety with the company of an anonymous voice on the other end of a help line.

It may have been the copy on the back of the book, but it did remind me of The Hot Zone, which I loved.

Creating a different voice for each of the myriad characters presented a problem for the author, with a few exceptions. The military personnel, the mercenary, and the corrupt drug company exec all had distinct voices. Unfortunately they were all of the "Let's kick ass! Grrrrrr!" variety, which I despise.

Other than that, it was incredibly immersive. I read it in about a week, which in the case of a Dan Brown book, is an indication of how insulting it is. In this case, I never felt like I was reading something simplistic.

Junior

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Re: Rate the last book you read.
« Reply #196 on: July 30, 2009, 04:24:27 PM »

Special Topics in Calamity Physics
Marisha Pessl

This was almost a book club book but something else took its place. That doesn't have much bearing on my review, but whatever.

I had no idea what this book was about going in. It wasn't until a couple of hours (I listened on my iPod instead of actually reading) when I realized that it was just a kind of coming of age novel with strange outcroppings of detective fiction and a pop and high culture dictionary in its briefcase. It chronicles the senior year of Blue Van Meer and how she interacts with a strange group of kids, their enigmatic teacher/mentor, and her eccentric father (Sam Rockwell in the movie, perhaps?). There are a couple of deaths and disappearances.

It's probably a good thing Pessl chose a standard story to tell because it allows her to flourish. Her similies and metaphors are rediculously interesting and she knows how to manipulate the story and characters to get what she wants to get out of them. I had some major flashbacks to my senior year of highschool, now three years removed. The prom scene in particular was spot on.

It's worth a read if you like a writer that shows off and still constructs a pretty good story. And if you like old movies.

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Colleen

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Re: Rate the last book you read.
« Reply #197 on: July 30, 2009, 07:48:24 PM »
World War Z

Very cool, very easy read. It took the subject matter - A Worldwide zombie apocalypse - seriously, and I appreciated that. Because it was told as an oral history from many, many different sources, there were few characters that stood out. My favorite section was about a female drop pilot who got caught in a wild zone, overrun with zombies. She had to escape to safety with the company of an anonymous voice on the other end of a help line.

It may have been the copy on the back of the book, but it did remind me of The Hot Zone, which I loved.

Creating a different voice for each of the myriad characters presented a problem for the author, with a few exceptions. The military personnel, the mercenary, and the corrupt drug company exec all had distinct voices. Unfortunately they were all of the "Let's kick ass! Grrrrrr!" variety, which I despise.

Other than that, it was incredibly immersive. I read it in about a week, which in the case of a Dan Brown book, is an indication of how insulting it is. In this case, I never felt like I was reading something simplistic.



I've been reading this for the past few days and agree with this review.  I'm really digging it.  My favorite story so far is the onew with the stranded astronauts, and the Chinese captain wh stole his submarine to try to save some Chinese pople.

pixote

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Re: Rate the last book you read.
« Reply #198 on: August 03, 2009, 04:17:46 AM »
I read the first three parts of this book ("The Sword in the Stone", "The Queen of Air and Darkness", and "The Ill-Made Knight") about a year-and-a-half ago and only just now got around to reading the fourth and final part ("Candle in the Wind") .  Normally I'd feel bad about that, but those parts were originally published separately anyway (from 1938-1940) in more or less the same form, and the fourth part didn't appear until years later (1958).  It took me a little time to get back into it — White can be pretty boring when he gets mired in long paragraphs of descriptive prose and ornamental lists — but once the story started to take shape, all of what I liked about the first three parts came back to me.  The greatest asset here is White's characterization of King Arthur.  Whenever he's at the center of things, striving to do right but never knowing for sure what that right thing is, it's wonderful.  I'm not a huge fan of White's contemporaneous references ("One of them who was called Baptista Porta seems to have invented the cinema - although he sensibly decided not to develop it." — BOO!), but the ethical and philosophical paradoxes he works through with Arthur are generally really engaging.  And there's one particular "oh shit!" moment in part four that hit me awesomely hard.

In my head, I kept comparing what White does here, reworking Mallory's Le Morte d'Arthur (which I hope to read some day), with what Robert Graves did with his two Claudius books.  I didn't find White's prose or storytelling to be quiet at Graves' level, but he's not too far behind.  He certainly manages his fair share of nice moments:

  • The Wart did not know what Merlyn was talking about, but he liked him to talk. He did not like the grown-ups who talked to him like a baby, but the ones who just went on talking in their usual way, leaving him to jump along in their wake, jumping at meanings, guessing, clutching at known words, and chuckling at complicated jokes as they suddenly dawned. He had the glee of the porpoise then, pouring and leaping through strange seas.
     
  • "I like fighting," said the Wart. "It is knightly."
    "Because you're a baby."
     
  • So we may well believe that the King's men were shriven on the night before they fought. Something of the young man's vision had penetrated to his captains and his soldiers. Something of the new ideal of the Round Table which was to be born in pain, something about doing a hateful and dangerous action for the sake of decency--for they knew that the fight was to be fought in blood and death without reward. They would get nothing but the unmarketable conscience of having done what they ought to do in spite of fear--something which wicked people have often debased by calling it glory with too much sentiment, but which is glory all the same. This idea was in the hearts of the young men who knelt before the God-distributing bishops--knowing that the odds were three to one, and that their own warm bodies might be cold at sunset.
     
  • "Some say he is a madman. He has sixty-four knights in prison, whom he has captured in single combat, and he spends the time beating them with thorns. If he captures you he will beat you too, all naked."
    "Sounds like an exciting man to fight."
     
  • Long ago I had my Merlyn to help. He tried to teach me to think. He knew he would have to leave in the end. So he forced me to think for myself. Don’t ever let anybody teach you to think, Lance. It is the curse of the world.
     
  • "I wish I had never been born."
    "So do I, my poor boy, but you are born, so now we must do the best we can."

All in all, I think I pretty much had the same experience with The Once and Future King as smirnoff did.

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The Once and Future King  (T. H. White, 1958)
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smirnoff

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Re: Rate the last book you read.
« Reply #199 on: August 03, 2009, 07:19:43 AM »
Great to hear your thoughts on it pix! Yeah, if you power through it, there's lots a parts that'll pop out and make you glad you kept reading. Can you see yourself ever wanting to reread it? I'm starting to feel that way now.

 

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