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Jizzo T. Clown
Joined: 27 Mar 2006
Location: at my wit's end
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 Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2007 3:48 am Post subject: |
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| If you're into fiction Toni Morrison's Sula is an entertaining read, as is Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, about the spread of fundamentalism in Africa. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath should be required reading for every manic depressive out there. |
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The_Eyeball_Kid
Joined: 20 Jun 2007
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| Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2007 4:12 am Post subject: |
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I've recently enjoyed:
The Ballad of Lee Cotton
by Christopher Wilson
Postively 4th Street
by David Hajdu
Stormy Weather
by Carl Hiaasen
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
by Michael Chabon
The Long Firm
by Jake Arnott
Next on the to-read list: Against the Day, Thomas Pynchon's newie. |
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Hopelessly Human
Joined: 03 Oct 2006
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| Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2007 8:42 am Post subject: |
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Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
Intriguing and very funny. But keep the dictionary by your side. Or maybe I'm just lexically challenged. |
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rumdiary
Joined: 05 Jun 2006
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| Posted: Sat Sep 08, 2007 12:32 am Post subject: |
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Farewell Waltz by Milan Kundera
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
The Most Beautiful Woman in Town and Other Stories by Charles Bukowski
Glamorama by Bret Easton Ellis
A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick |
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rumdiary
Joined: 05 Jun 2006
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| Posted: Sat Sep 08, 2007 12:35 am Post subject: |
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| blackjack wrote: |
I strongly recommend [b]
The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell |
I loved The Sparrow. Great recommendation! |
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karma police
Joined: 01 Sep 2007
Location: all roads lead to where you are...
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| Posted: Sat Sep 08, 2007 9:52 am Post subject: |
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| Jizzo T. Clown wrote: |
| If you're into fiction Toni Morrison's Sula is an entertaining read, as is Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, about the spread of fundamentalism in Africa. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath should be required reading for every manic depressive out there. |
a simply excellent recommendation if you are a fan of Sylvia Plath like me...
another great read that i read on the plane here is Killer Dreams by Iris Johansen. a real thriller where a sleep thearpist's life turns into a nightmare when the plot pits her and her son against a killer who�s the stuff of nightmares. don't close your eyes or he�ll get you...
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dutchy pink
Joined: 06 Feb 2007
Location: Incheon
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| Posted: Sun Sep 09, 2007 8:09 am Post subject: |
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alyallen,
Tanglewreck is a kids book, I was so excited when it was coming out, I was at Barnes and Noble first thing that morning. But i had a previously bad experience(?) with her kids book. I was living in Mozambique and caught wind of a new book she wrote. I ordered it from Amazon to a fairly remote place in Moz., at great expense, thinking, to bad for these starving kids, but i need a literary fix, I'm paying a hudred bucks to get it sent here. it arrived.... a 20 page kids book.
it was good though, just not in the circumstances.
Did you ever read Boating for beginners?
It doesn't appear in most of her bios....
I don't have any of her books here... |
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The Bobster
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2007 6:28 am Post subject: |
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| rumdiary wrote: |
| A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. *beep* |
Always annoyed me that this guy's last name gets bleeped by the obscenity filter. When I get annoyed with someone here, I usually just ask them to stop being such a richard.
That IS one his his best books, by the way. |
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Thunndarr
Joined: 30 Sep 2003
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| Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2007 6:35 am Post subject: |
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| The Bobster wrote: |
| rumdiary wrote: |
| A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. *beep* |
Always annoyed me that this guy's last name gets bleeped by the obscenity filter. When I get annoyed with someone here, I usually just ask them to stop being such a richard.
That IS one his his best books, by the way. |
As a big fan of the movies "Blade Runner" and "A Scanner Darkly" how would you say his books compare to the movies? (Of course I realize that the books are generally superior to the movies.) However, what kind of differences do you see? Style? Tone? Atmosphere? |
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rumdiary
Joined: 05 Jun 2006
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| Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2007 8:15 am Post subject: |
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| Thunndarr wrote: |
| The Bobster wrote: |
| rumdiary wrote: |
| A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. *beep* |
Always annoyed me that this guy's last name gets bleeped by the obscenity filter. When I get annoyed with someone here, I usually just ask them to stop being such a richard.
That IS one his his best books, by the way. |
As a big fan of the movies "Blade Runner" and "A Scanner Darkly" how would you say his books compare to the movies? (Of course I realize that the books are generally superior to the movies.) However, what kind of differences do you see? Style? Tone? Atmosphere? |
Of course the books were better but I would have to say both movies were great adaptations. It's really hard to point out any differences in Blade Runner because its been a long time since I saw the movie and there are different versions of the movie. |
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wolfgang
Joined: 01 Sep 2007
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| Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2007 11:52 am Post subject: |
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Anything by Cormac McCarthy
All the Pretty Horses
No Country for Old Men
Coen Brothes movie about the latter is coming this fall. |
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The Bobster
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2007 12:46 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
| rumdiary wrote: |
| (Of course I realize that the books are generally superior to the movies.) |
Of course the books were better but I would have to say both movies were great adaptations. |
There were some reasons PKD was was not recognized as a genius in his lifetime. He was not one. At least, not a litererary genius.
He did not put words together very well. Sentences, paragraphs ... they just don't click the we want therm to in literature. That was not one of his gifts - most of his life, he banged novels out over the course a weekend, got paid a pittance for them. Google "Kilgore Trout," and you'll start to get the idea.
When genius happens in science fiction, it's because someone had an idea no one had before, and THAT was Dick's genius. Sad truth is, though,even Total Recall was a better movie than the short story, "We Can remember It For You Wholesale" was as a story. And it was just a so-so story. William Gibson has the world's credit for inventing he word "cyberspace" but PKD had the idea about 20 years earlier both in this novel, and UBIK.
The new idea : that life can be lived outside of the meat we walk around in every day, and the idea makes some people think it is possibble, and the proof is that I'm here talking to you over the Internet ... when genius happens in science fiction, the real world makes it real a short time later. |
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faster
Joined: 03 Sep 2006
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| Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2007 3:28 pm Post subject: |
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| The Bobster wrote: |
| There were some reasons PKD was was not recognized as a genius in his lifetime. He was not one. At least, not a litererary genius. |
I like PKD, but I agree with you completely.
| The Bobster wrote: |
| Sentences, paragraphs ... they just don't click the we want therm to in literature. |
Hehe!
| The Bobster wrote: |
| most of his life, he banged novels out over the course a weekend |
On a terrifying amount of amphetamines.
PKD was a visionary whose drug-fueled, paranoid imagination was prescient. He imagined a lot of things that really happened and others that likely will.
His stories, though, are often inferior to the movie adaptations, in a rare twist. It was his ideas, not his writing, that made him important. |
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Alyallen
Joined: 29 Mar 2004
Location: The 4th Greatest Place on Earth = Jeonju!!!
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| Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2007 5:14 pm Post subject: |
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| dutchy pink wrote: |
alyallen,
Tanglewreck is a kids book, I was so excited when it was coming out, I was at Barnes and Noble first thing that morning. But i had a previously bad experience(?) with her kids book. I was living in Mozambique and caught wind of a new book she wrote. I ordered it from Amazon to a fairly remote place in Moz., at great expense, thinking, to bad for these starving kids, but i need a literary fix, I'm paying a hudred bucks to get it sent here. it arrived.... a 20 page kids book.
it was good though, just not in the circumstances.
Did you ever read Boating for beginners?
It doesn't appear in most of her bios....
I don't have any of her books here... |
Damn it! I already ordered it from Whatthebook but that's ok. I have a 12 year old sister. Maybe she'll like it?
Boating for Beginners? Never heard of it.... |
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The Bobster
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Tue Oct 09, 2007 9:46 am Post subject: |
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| faster wrote: |
| His stories, though, are often inferior to the movie adaptations, in a rare twist. It was his ideas, not his writing, that made him important. |
Yes, this is the very thing I forgot to say, and thanks for saying it for me. And, by the way, a lot of the best science fiction writers totally suck on the level of literary aesthetics in terms of beautiful sentences and paragraphs. The idea is the main thing with the genre.
Just finished Haruji Murakami's Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the The End of The World. I liked it, and I'll look for more by him. It's technically science fiction, by the way, or else an amalgam of that and magical realist-fantasy.
Before that it was Chuck Pahluniak (I KNOW I'm not spelling that right, but he's the guy wwo wrote the novel that became Fight Club), a novel called Hiaunted. Managed to be both gross and disturbing and oddly (VERY oddly, as in macabre) humorous. Not for the faint of heart, or anyone eating lunch in the near future. Despite the title, there's nothing really supernatural going on, just a lot that's intrigueingly implausible.
I like wierd, though, so right now I'm halfway through another of his called Diary. I'll let you know when I finish it. |
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