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Geoluhread 07-28-2012 05:57 PM

A handmaid's tale.
Hating every line of this book. Great idea but VERY poor production and writing.

Saya 07-28-2012 07:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Geoluhread (Post 699157)
A handmaid's tale.
Hating every line of this book. Great idea but VERY poor production and writing.

Bwah? Atwood is a fantastic writer!

EDIT: You have every right not to enjoy it, of course! Its also not something I'd recommend to any non-North American people, as its a very political reflection of American conservativism in the eighties. If its your first Atwood I'd probably recommend another dystopian like Year Of The Flood.

Geoluhread 07-29-2012 05:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Saya (Post 699158)
Bwah? Atwood is a fantastic writer!

EDIT: You have every right not to enjoy it, of course! Its also not something I'd recommend to any non-North American people, as its a very political reflection of American conservativism in the eighties. If its your first Atwood I'd probably recommend another dystopian like Year Of The Flood.

The reason I didn't like it is mainly the way it's written, the story is great. The main character [Offred] is not, however. She is very stupid and it was very hard for me to like her.
The structure of the paragraphs and jumps from narrating and memories were very 'ungraceful' .. I'm not a literature geek but I've read my share of books.. and this one isn't my cup of tea in terms of way of writing.

Anyway... I just finished The Handmaid's Tale and I started American Psycho.

Saya 07-31-2012 09:40 PM

Ooooh okay, sorry, usually when someone says something was badly written I start thinking in terms of things like grammar or redundancy or things like that and not necessarily chronological format, you know?

In that case I don't think I can recommend much Atwood, most of her books do that. The only one I can think of that didn't was Moral Disorder, which was an anthology of short stories that were all about different stages in a character's life. It was okay over all, the only story I really loved though was the one where the character is reading to her dying father.

Anyway, just finished Racism Without Racists, should be required reading. Was really shocked to learn how many people aren't okay with interracial marriage, integration or affirmative action.

Reading St. Francis by Nikos Kazantzakis, not sure if I'll finish it, its well written and I like some stuff about it, but Francis's character development is weird. Like he goes straight from worldly rich boy to self-flagellating saint with no in between.

Mir 08-01-2012 02:46 AM

Wuthering heights by Emily Bronte for the umpteenth time... <.< >.>

CuckooTuli 08-02-2012 08:27 AM

About to start on The Invisibles. I've been looking forward to this one for a loooong time :D

Angelic Dissonance2 08-05-2012 04:36 PM

Just finished Sandman 6: Fables And Reflections.

Versus 08-16-2012 11:26 AM

FM 3-20.15 (Tank Platoon)

Saya 08-16-2012 05:20 PM

Finished Beloved by Toni Morrison, took me a while because its just that sad. But it was really really good.

Now reading This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color.

colette.montoya10 09-13-2012 12:14 AM

The Count of Monte Cristo
 
i think this thread is very helpful to know about good books to read. i have bought 'The Count of Monte Cristo' by Alexander Dumas last month. yet not completed, i keep reading a chapter per a day. it is very interesting.

Johnny Gnar Gnar 09-25-2012 04:05 PM

^^ Agreed. Lo, he returns for his occasional visit. Right now I am in the middle of Res Gestae Divi Augusti, but I am a nerd. Also working on Rhineman's Histories of the Crusades. I will be a perpetual student, I do believe.

CIRQUEFREAK91 09-27-2012 08:02 AM

Just finished The Hunger Games. There were many discrepancies between the book and the movie.

Drew Keaton 10-08-2012 12:34 AM

Just finished reading a fantastic anthology called Enter at Your Own Risk: Fires and Phantoms. My review...

Although gay-themed writing has come out of the closet in the last decade, there seems to be a self-imposed closet in the genre. For some reason, much of it strays into the bodice-ripper territory of the Harlequin Romance penny novel. We are traveling down a nice plot and STOP INSERT EROTIC comes along. Enter At Your Own Risk: Fires and Phantoms breaks that mold with a fantastic collection of Gothic ghost tales of the gay flavor.

There is the touch of erotic here and there. There is love lost and love avenged. Some come out of the closet and some wish they had. There are two stellar Gothic classics included among the modern writers. Edith Wharton’s “The Eyes” and “In Kropfsberg Keep” by Ralph Adams Cram remind us that we’ve been in literature long before we were allowed to be literature. Among the current crop, there are a few standout tales here. Robbie Anderson’s “When You are Right” and B.E. Scully’s “Time For One More Show” are both intensely frightening stories of revenge from beyond the grave. “The Neglected Ones” By Joshua Skye is a haunting tale of loneliness and the depths to which a young man will go to end those feelings. Richard Hall’s masterpiece “Country People” is included here. “Promises in the Dark, Whispers at Dawn” by Vincent Waters paints a vicious and violent picture of guilt, perceived sin, and hate. T. Fox Dunham’s “Last Dance in the Rain” explores fear, isolation, and panic in a wonderfully accurate Civil war setting.

Seventeen stories and a fantastic introduction by Robert Dunbar round out this marvelous anthology. Each one captures the Gothic tradition established by Poe, Byron, Shelley and others a century ago. Haunting, painful, mournful, vengeful… make sure this one’s in your trick or treat bag this year!

Geoluhread 10-09-2012 05:07 PM

I finished Ken Follett's new novel, Winter of the World.. It was superb, I like his style of writing, I think if more people wrote historical stuff the way he does I'd be a bit more interested.

I started re-reading Kafka on the Shore by my all time favorite Haruki Murakami.

FistsofFury 10-10-2012 01:52 PM

I'm reading 'Warriors of the Storm' by Jack L Chalker. Book 3 of 4 in the 'Rings of the Master' series.

BourbonBoy 10-10-2012 07:57 PM

About halfway through Moby Dick but I gotta admit, I've skipped a few chapters here and there simply because, well, the author rambled on about the hemp rope from the Philippines at one point and at another placed a short story in the middle of the novel about another whaling ship that almost mutinied.

But overall, I must say I love the story itself and even though I know how it ends (my dad watched the film religiously when I was a kid) I'm the foreshadowing .

Saya 10-10-2012 07:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BourbonBoy (Post 701955)
About halfway through Moby Dick but I gotta admit, I've skipped a few chapters here and there simply because, well, the author rambled on about the hemp rope from the Philippines at one point and at another placed a short story in the middle of the novel about another whaling ship that almost mutinied.

But overall, I must say I love the story itself and even though I know how it ends (my dad watched the film religiously when I was a kid) I'm the foreshadowing .

HE DOES THAT THOUGH. I really want to reread Moby Dick but I'm trying to find a abridged version that cuts out all of Melville's rambling.

Seriously, you're not missing much.


Also, which film? Just watched the one with Gregory Peck recently.

BourbonBoy 10-10-2012 08:08 PM

The one with Gregory Peck as Capt. Ahab. It's definitely one of my all time favorite films and it was very historically accurate from how the ships would hunt the whales to the diversity of the crew (not just personalities but also their ethnicities).

I've tried to watch the reinterpretations of the original film but the remakes just don't feel right for some reason.

Saya 10-10-2012 08:12 PM

I felt like Gregory Peck was too young for the role at the time, but I also have a really really hard time seperating him from Atticus Finch so it could have just felt weird because of that.

I also had a crush on Queequeg in the book and was disappointed there has never been an adaptation where he was as attractive as I pictured him.

BourbonBoy 10-10-2012 08:29 PM

I can see why as well. It wasn't until high school that I finally saw him in "To Kill A Mockingbird" for American History class (which is an awesome film regarding segregation, lack of faith in science, and how someone can completely disregard facts even when a fact is demonstrated right before them) that I had to do a report on. While watching TKAM I kept expecting him to yell "With my last breadth, I spit at thee!" even though it was in two separate films. Guess that's what happens when someone takes over a role in a film so well you can't see them doing anything else without recalling another film they were in

Versus 10-10-2012 09:11 PM

OH MY GOD MELVILE SHUT THE FUCK UP I KNOW IT'S FUCKING WHITE MOVE THE FUCK ON.

Sorry. Residual anger from reading that book. I'm going to change my signature now.

BourbonBoy 10-10-2012 09:18 PM

XD And for a sec I thought you'd yell at me for reading "Moby Dick"

Versus 10-10-2012 09:21 PM

No. That book is so fucking infuriating. It's like "wtf does this have to do with anything?" Except you realize that only halfway through the parts that get like that.

BourbonBoy 10-10-2012 09:28 PM

Yeah, I've realized that by now. If the subject of the chapter sounds boring, then chances are the chapter will be.

Seriously, who gives a flying fuck about the order of who eats first among the officers on the Pequad? This is one of the few times in my life I've actually said to myself while reading a book "I get it [writer of story x], time to move the fuck on and advance the story."

Then again, my attention span tends to be short at times so when the author goes on tangents I simply skim over the contents

tessla-jane 10-10-2012 09:57 PM

11/22/63 by Stephen King. Interesting but dry :/


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