I should probably read it again, I may have just been in a pissy mood when I read it. Then again, I’ve got so much else to read that seems unlikely…
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Finished the first book in The Murderbot Diaries and am looking forward to more of them and the Apple TV series this week. Interesting world building and a nice take on a computer as the main character. We’ll see how the show runners translate the world to the screen and how they deal with all the inner dialog going on.
I saw the trailer and it just didn’t grab me how the book did. I guess because the book is almost entirely about what’s going on in a person’s head and that’s hard to translate on screen
That’s going to be the hard part for sure.
After loving The Old Man and the Sea, I dove into The Sun Also Rises and didn’t love it nearly as much, so I switched to A Farewell to Arms. Just started it so we shall see.
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I love TSAR, but there are totally valid criticisms of it. Parts of it read like a boring travel blog. Hemingway’s century old views of women are not great by today’s standards. Having said that, it stands up well to critical analysis though - it is fundamentally about generations, and how people struggle with living in the value systems and expectations established by their prededing generations. That dynamic still really resonates today, IMO. Today’s younger people aren’t literally scarred by mortar fire from WWI, but they’re scarred enough from the disastrous impacts of Reagan/Thatcher politics, IMO.
If you don’t like that book that’s very reasonable, but there’s my pitch for why I personally like it. It’s not to everyone’s taste though.
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As an aside, if people are interested in Hemingway and audio books, Spotify has a reading of A Farewell to Arms by John Slattery that I really enjoyed.
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To be clear, I certainly don’t dislike it so far, but it’s just quite different in tone and content from the first book and I was in the mode of wanting more like the initial read. Still looking forward to reading more Hemmingway.
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Be aware that if you read a lot of Hemingway and then try to read another author you like you’re likely to not like them as much. I read a compendium of Hemingway short stories and then tried to read a Heinlein book when I was in high school and the difference was very striking.
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First Nobel Prize odds sheet came out a couple of weeks ago:
For the extremely brave: The insufferable snoots at WLF have started their speculation page
lol I’ve read 4 of the “red flag” books on the list he’s talking about (and that’s if I only count one of the Dostoevsky books)
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Ah yes, all the boys and their reading of Clockwork Orange.
Now as I got up from the floor among all the crarking kots
and koshkas what should I slooshy but the shoom of the old
police-auto siren in the distance, and it dawned on me skorry
that the old forella of the pusscats had been on the phone to
the millicents when I thought she’d been govoreeting to the
mewlers and mowlers, her having got her suspicions skorry
on the boil when I’d rung the old zvonock pretending for
help. So now, slooshying this fearful shoom of the rozz-
van, I belted for the front door and had a rabbiting time un-
doing all the locks and chains and bolts and other protective
veshches. Then I got it open, and who should be on the door-
step but old Dim, me just being able to viddy the other two of
my so-called droogs belting off. “Away,” I creeched to Dim.
“The rozzes are coming.” Dim said: “You stay to meet them
huh huh huh,” and then I viddied that he had his oozy out, and
then he upped with it and it snaked whishhh and he chained
me gentle and artistic like on the glazlids, me just closing
them up in time. Then I was howling around trying to viddy
with this howling great pain, and Dim said: “I don’t like you
should do what you done, old droogy. Not right it wasn’t to
get on to me like the way you done, brat.”
I went through a phase in high school where I read a bunch of dystopian fiction: A Clockwork Orange, Handmaid’s Tale, Brave New World, 1984, Fahrenheit 451
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I have a feeling you are not the target for concerns about men and their problematic books, unless they are trying to root out overly bookish men.
The Youtube video is a pretty good discussion of why this list and others like it are stupid
Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster
By Adam Higginbotham
9/10
I haven’t read the wiki for the book but it’s got to be the basis for HBO’s Chernobyl. A lot of the scenes in the book make an appearance in the show and the book’s tempo, it’s minute by minute depiction, has the same outline as the show.
It’s well written and engaging. I ended up not putting it down and read it in a few days
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Finished Bag of Bones this morning and I will give it a 7.5 out of 10.
The book started off a little slow, almost dragged on at times, but I never felt bored with it or wanted to hurry through it. I stayed interested in the characters and enjoyed trying to piece together all of them and their roles on the TR - and of course all the clues and the subtilties with each of them. Once chapter 21 hit, it definitely became hard to put down.
I definitely do better at visualizing and forming landscapes and environments than I do with faces. I didn’t realize just how little of a description I had of some of the main characters but I am going to try to work on that as it makes it tough to remember a lot of different people and their roles in the story if I cant put a picture on them..
I think I am going to read either Duma Key or the Long walk, but before I do, I want to first read on of his lower rated books to see how much of a difference there is between them. Maybe something like the Regulators, or From a Buick 8 or Doctor Sleep. Not sure yet.
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The Long Walk is so good. It’ll get you hyped for the upcoming movie.
I hear Regulators is BAD, but if you really want to punish yourself you have to pick one that is also unreasonably long like Under the Dome.
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BOB is a top book for me. Desperation and regulators I didn’t like at all. I know people do so ¯_(ツ)_/¯
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Finished Hemmingway’s The Sun Also Rises and not sure what to think about it.
Going to try A Farewell to Arms next.