Books, books, books...

[Roderick]

I think the reason I've gravitated towards genre fiction for so long has been because it's so easy to describe and place. I'm thoroughly overwhelmed, as a writer, with the possibilities and full scope of adult literature. (As I've stated before, this is one of the reasons I'm so excited about the bookcast, since I hope that'll remedy some of that by breaking me out of the mold and inspiring reflection.) The story I was mulling over is very pulpy in that regard. It's the only thing currently I feel I have any grip on creating.

Edited April 18, 2012 by Rodi

[Chris]

  Rodi said:

I think the reason I've gravitated towards genre fiction for so long has been because it's so easy to describe and place. I'm thoroughly everwhelmed, as a writer, with the possibilities and full scope of adult literature. (As I've stated before, this is one of the reasons I'm so excited about the bookcast, since I hope that'll remedy some of that by breaking me out of the mold and inspiring reflection.) The story I was mulling over is very pulpy in that regard. It's the only thing currently I feel I have any grip on creating.

That's fair, I was just speaking to the broader point I suppose, which is probably outside the scope of what was being specifically discussed.

[Roderick]

Well, those are kind of the insights I'm hoping to hear and discuss in the cast

[ThunderPeel2001]

  dibs said:

TLDR: I'm a secret facist trying to get you to read propaganda by posting gibberish.

I don't know about that, but you've clearly got issues with self-pity and low self-esteem if you think that's what Ben and I were saying.

[Ben X]

  ThunderPeel2001 said:

I don't know about that, but you've clearly got issues with self-pity and low self-esteem if you think that's what Ben and I were saying.

Yeah, I bet you point and laugh at Harry Potter readers on planes.

I've finished Forever War and loved it. I have the Forever omnibus and am currently halfway through Forever Peace which I'm enjoying almost as much.

Troopers-wise, I guess my worry is that I would be unable to appreciate the story and literary techniques while recognising and analysing the strong political agenda. Maybe not, or maybe the latter would be interesting enough. I'm certainly willing to give it a shot.

Edited April 19, 2012 by Ben X

[brkl]

It kinda sounds like the movie managed to be more layered than the book.

[Orv]

  brkl said:

It kinda sounds like the movie managed to be more layered than the book.

Not at all.

SPOILERS, SOME MINOR, SOME NOT

The movie still has the "if you want to stop a man from pushing that button, disable his hand!" cool parts, but it totally skips over things like Dubois, the actual history teacher, giving the class on "the right of the enlisted to vote", and the handling of "juvenile delinquents" which is one of the huge points that people bring against the story for fascism, among other things.

Dubois the teacher and Rasczak (Michael Ironsides in the movie and Rico's first LT) are two completely different people. Hell, he even has a second LT who buys it on a drop, before Rico himself becomes the LT of Rico's Roughnecks.

His father, staunchly opposed to his joining the Mobile Infantry in the movie and then never seen again, actually joins up in the book and is intensely proud of Rico.

Spoilers end

I am in no way going to deny that Heinlein was a pretty... interesting guy, when it came to his political views, and he's been accused of just about every unsavory political view possible. But there's a reason it's classic sci-fi.

The biggest complaint I have with the movie (face it, it's a good popcorn action and gore fest) is the down-grade, if you will, of the MI from power-armored shock troopers to general human wave grunts. It's not a bad movie (yes it is, but it's still good fun) but it's not the same as the book. Also, Denise Richards.

[Scrobbs]

Talking about dick authors (ok, maybe you weren't but it's triggered a memory), a friend lent me the first two books of L Ron Hubbard's sci-fi years ago. This was before I knew he was responsible for the dickest organisation ever, but I read these books, and ended up really hating the author for writing this. From what I remember, all of the characters were massive dicks, either rampant, selfish egotists, sly, backstabbing bastards or something else. You might think that this is cool and realistic, rather than the one dimensional characters we sometimes have to put up with. However, they were pretty one-dimensional iirc, but were all one-dimensional bastards. Not one of the characters had any redeeming feature at all, and the entire society just seemed to be out for themselves and barely functioned. This may, of course, have been his point, but it made for a miserable experience. I don't think I made it half-way through the 2nd book.

Then I found out that he had started a quasi-cult, and it all became clear. I thought back to his books and was glad that I hated them, that without the front-loaded knowledge of him starting this cult for idiots, I still loathed him.

[Edit]I had to look the name of the books up, and it was 'Mission Earth'.

[ThunderPeel2001]

  Ben X said:

I've finished Forever War and loved it.

I'M SO SORRY!!!!!

[Corelli]

Just finished The Hunger Games.

No! Bad mainstream culture! Bad!

[Orv]

Jury duty: On one hand, the dullest six dollars I have ever made.

On the other, I finished Brandon Sanderson's The Way of Kings which you should all really quite read.

[circadianwolf]

I've been working my way through _Revolutions in Reverse_, a collection of David Graeber essays. They're quite good--there's a lot of history I wasn't aware of regarding various social movements from the 1970s onward (in which Graeber was directly involved) as well as larger theoretical explorations that thankfully (and characteristically of Graeber) don't disappear up their own ass in academic terminology and frameworks. (I say this as someone who has read and appreciated Baudrillard, Deleuze and Guattari, etc.) The book is really poorly edited, though; there are quite a few typos and even a few incidences of whole sentences appearing twice. Very odd.

[Scipio]

  circadianwolf said:

I've been working my way through _Revolutions in Reverse_, a collection of David Graeber essays. They're quite good--there's a lot of history I wasn't aware of regarding various social movements from the 1970s onward (in which Graeber was directly involved) as well as larger theoretical explorations that thankfully (and characteristically of Graeber) don't disappear up their own ass in academic terminology and frameworks. (I say this as someone who has read and appreciated Baudrillard, Deleuze and Guattari, etc.) The book is really poorly edited, though; there are quite a few typos and even a few incidences of whole sentences appearing twice. Very odd.

Is this the whole book? about 120 pages. It looks like you can get a pdf for free if it is. The site looks pretty legit.

[circadianwolf]

Yeah, it's linked to on the publisher's site: http://www.minorcompositions.info/?p=284 That's the whole thing.

[Ben X]

Finished Forever War and loved it. The sequel was a bit mental and 'late-Hitchhikers/-Red Dwarf novels'. I'm now reading the "companion novel" Forever Peace, and am quite enjoying it now I've been able to disassociate it in my mind from the first one.

[ThunderPeel2001]

There's a short story which shows Mary Gay's story from her point of view, apparently. I've not read it, though.

[Nappi]

Yey.. My birthday present arrived! As if I didn't have enough unread books already.

[vimes]

Happy birthday and awesome present you got here! I've bought around half of them individually and never regretted any of the purchase.

[Nappi]

  vimes said:

Happy birthday and awesome present you got here! I've bought around half of them individually and never regretted any of the purchase.

Thanks! I haven't read any of them yet, as I'm in the middle of Raymond Chandler's The Long Good-bye, but I assume these to be a great way of discovering authors that I may be interested in.

[Roderick]

Vimes, only now do I notice you are actually in Singapore, despite it having been clearly there underneath your avatar for a long time! What are you up to over there?

Infinite Jest is one of those books that I do want to read at some point. Bone too. OK, pretty much everything in this topic too >_>

[vimes]

So, I just finished The Man in the High Castle.

I expected the book to focus on Hitler, since I thought the titled refered to his "Kehlsteinhaus"; but I was wrong and that's probably for the better.

I just wrote a wall of text about what I feel is the main thematic, but it doesn't feel like it should be here. I might post it on goodreads and link it here.

So, as a summary

• it's brilliantly crafted
  
• it explores both 'thought experiment' kind of puzzles and very personal human ones
  
• Nobusuke Tagomi is one of the most complex character I've ever seen depicted
  
• I wish I had known more about the I Ching and pre-War Japan before starting reading. So maybe you'll want to do that.
  

If anybody can tell me where the short, saccaded sentencing that some of the character employ during decision making comes from, I'll be super grateful. I suspect it's from Japanese poetry but I'm not sure

[Nappi]

  vimes said:

If anybody can tell me where the short, saccaded sentencing that some of the character employ during decision making comes from, I'll be super grateful. I suspect it's from Japanese poetry but I'm not sure

I took that to be the authors idea of how Japanese mind works. But yeah, it probably originates from Japanese poetry/literature. It is interesting and I hope someone has some real insight into this.

[brkl]

I should probably read that again, although there's a lack of androids and/or reality altering drugs..

[vimes]

I spent another whole day reading; this time going through Forever War, which I really enjoyed.

The first part was less impressive than the rest though : I'm interested in technonological projection but the ideas presented there have probably been recycled in a dozens other books and movies; so the novelty wasn't as striking as what it might have been.

I took a lot more out of the second part of the book which deals the relation of veterans to the military, overblown by the effect of time dilatation. It gets to really interesting places - notably, intelligent explorations of the evolution language and sexuality - and the main character provides an increasingly interesting view of the world (which isn't a given) but I wish it dropped a few concepts that were smart, but not essentialy linked to the building of the structure of the book.

For that, it's a bit inferior to The Man in the High Castle, in the sense that in the end, it's a bit overwhelmed by the possibilities of its main narrative tool (time dilatation) where K Dick's book demonstrate a lot of restraint with a similar device.

Anyway with that book done, I can't push reading Infinite Jest anymore .. I'm thinking of hacking it apart like this suggests. I'll probably go for 3 pieces + notes.

[ThunderPeel2001]

  vimes said:

So, I just finished The Man in the High Castle.

I expected the book to focus on Hitler, since I thought the titled refered to his "Kehlsteinhaus"; but I was wrong and that's probably for the better.

I just wrote a wall of text about what I feel is the main thematic, but it doesn't feel like it should be here. I might post it on goodreads and link it here.

So, as a summary

• it's brilliantly crafted
  
• it explores both 'thought experiment' kind of puzzles and very personal human ones
  
• Nobusuke Tagomi is one of the most complex character I've ever seen depicted
  
• I wish I had known more about the I Ching and pre-War Japan before starting reading. So maybe you'll want to do that.
  

If anybody can tell me where the short, saccaded sentencing that some of the character employ during decision making comes from, I'll be super grateful. I suspect it's from Japanese poetry but I'm not sure

I know one thing: The I Ching is Chinese, and not really part of the Japanese culture.

Besides that I found the book to be quite dull, and I eventually gave up. I should really give it another go.

Interesting trivia: Dick used the I Ching to decide what was going to happen next to each of the characters.