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read any good books lately...

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GKR View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote GKR Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 15 2015 at 15:19
Just finishing another Machado de Assis, "Esaú e Jacó".

Delicious.


Edited by GKR - October 15 2015 at 15:20
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote t d wombat Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 15 2015 at 15:55
Originally posted by GKR GKR wrote:

Just finishing another Machado de Assis, "Esaú e Jacó".

Delicious.


OK, I'm getting sorely tempted. Where to start, have to be English translations as I have no Portuguese. Posthumous Memoirs or something else ? 
Andrew B

“Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.” ― Julius Henry Marx
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote GKR Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 15 2015 at 16:47
Machado de Assis surely must have good english translations, because he is studied in North American and European Universities.

Sadly, I dont know any good edition, as (obviously) I always read it in portuguese.

The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas, are also known in English as Epitaph of a Small Winner, its his first work in the style that immortalize him: cruel, acid, ironic (even with comedy), realist and treting the best and the worst in human nature. Start with this one, surely.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote t d wombat Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 15 2015 at 17:39
Originally posted by GKR GKR wrote:

Machado de Assis surely must have good english translations, because he is studied in North American and European Universities.

Sadly, I dont know any good edition, as (obviously) I always read it in portuguese.

The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas, are also known in English as Epitaph of a Small Winner, its his first work in the style that immortalize him: cruel, acid, ironic (even with comedy), realist and treting the best and the worst in human nature. Start with this one, surely.


I figured as much. OK then, consider it added to the Pile of the Unread.
Andrew B

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote GKR Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 16 2015 at 07:39
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote t d wombat Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 19 2015 at 16:41
Originally posted by Toaster Mantis Toaster Mantis wrote:

Second the recommendation of Iain M. Banks, I think The Player of Games is my favourite novel of his. I've been seeing some of Mieville's novels when I go to the nearest public library, and they look interesting from the descriptions on the cover.


Having dispenssed with that drivel from Poul Anderson I've moved on to Mieville's Embassytown. If anyone can come up with two more exceptional writers of Sci-Fi/Fantasy then please let me know. I don't mean the masters of old but new guys. Sadly Banks is dead and Mieville is not exactly prolific.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Atavachron Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 19 2015 at 17:04







Edited by Atavachron - October 19 2015 at 17:05
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Toaster Mantis Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 22 2015 at 15:04
Right now I'm reading...


Short essay collection by Umberto Eco, which delve into confusing political and ethical situations. So far I've read the one analyzing how the political discourse surrounding the Gulf War expose the media's underlying motivation structures, as well as one about how his childhood memories of Italy's defeat in World War 2 shaped his current worldview. He's got a rather wry sense of humour and impressive sense for connecting different academic subject matter to each other, which kind of remind me of Tom Wolfe.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote t d wombat Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 22 2015 at 17:41
Toaster, Have you read other Eco ? He really is a splendid talent, both with his fiction and non.  Even Hollywood couldn't completely fluck up his wonderful "Name of the Rose".
Andrew B

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote timothy leary Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 22 2015 at 17:48
Originally posted by t d wombat t d wombat wrote:

Thinking of Michael Moorcock and his fantasy fiction reminded me of one of the very few works of fantasy that really enthralled me in later years.

China Mieville's "Perdido St Station" . Alternative world, alternative history with dollops of magic and alchemy mixed in with steampunk technology.


Great place to start, great author

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote t d wombat Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 22 2015 at 18:54
Originally posted by timothy leary timothy leary wrote:

Originally posted by t d wombat t d wombat wrote:

Thinking of Michael Moorcock and his fantasy fiction reminded me of one of the very few works of fantasy that really enthralled me in later years.

China Mieville's "Perdido St Station" . Alternative world, alternative history with dollops of magic and alchemy mixed in with steampunk technology.


Great place to start, great author



Agreed. I think I've read most of his output. PSS is still my favorite, though "The City and the City" and "Railsea" were also very good. "King Rat" feels like an early work, which of course it is and I didn't get into either "The Scar" or "Iron Council". Readin Embassytown at the moment. Jury is still out. To be frank it feels like a  Young Adult book. I probably should go back and reread Scar and Council.


Edited by t d wombat - October 22 2015 at 18:56
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Toaster Mantis Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 23 2015 at 04:40
Originally posted by t d wombat t d wombat wrote:

Toaster, Have you read other Eco ? He really is a splendid talent, both with his fiction and non.  Even Hollywood couldn't completely fluck up his wonderful "Name of the Rose".


Yeah, back when I studied art history at university the curriculum included several of UE's essays on the subject. I've been meaning to read Foucault's Pendulum one of these days but right now I don't really have time or energy to read a novel that long and complex.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote t d wombat Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 23 2015 at 15:50
Originally posted by Toaster Mantis Toaster Mantis wrote:

Originally posted by t d wombat t d wombat wrote:

Toaster, Have you read other Eco ? He really is a splendid talent, both with his fiction and non.  Even Hollywood couldn't completely fluck up his wonderful "Name of the Rose".


Yeah, back when I studied art history at university the curriculum included several of UE's essays on the subject. I've been meaning to read Foucault's Pendulum one of these days but right now I don't really have time or energy to read a novel that long and complex.


Last year I put myself on a no fiction diet. It actually took me a couple of months this year to get back to to it. I think I just needed to chill out for a while. Indeed it may have been this thread that got me started again. Nonetheless fiction for me has to go beyond the usual blather. Thrillers usual bore me to tears, I'm to old and too cynical to give a flying fornication about fictional romances and I simply do not get the point of historical fiction. For me the best Sci-Fi has the scope to keep me interested while I do like top notch crime fiction especially British and Scandinavian. Iain Banks, Gabriel Garcia Marquez  and Paul Auster are examples of authors of straight fiction that I do enjoy. 
Andrew B

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote tbonson04 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 28 2015 at 21:27
After a big hipster Chuck Palahniuk phase, I have moved on to Henry David Thoreau's Walden.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote BaldJean Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 29 2015 at 20:56
I just reread "Melmoth the Wanderer" by Charles Maturin. One of the very best Gothic novels ever. There are passages which are so terrifying I could hardly read on. The corruption of the innocent nature child was the hardest to take for me (though some people may not consider that passage terrifying at all), closely followed by some of the tortures the monk goes through.


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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote t d wombat Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 30 2015 at 15:51
Originally posted by BaldJean BaldJean wrote:

I just reread "Melmoth the Wanderer" by Charles Maturin. One of the very best Gothic novels ever. There are passages which are so terrifying I could hardly read on. The corruption of the innocent nature child was the hardest to take for me (though some people may not consider that passage terrifying at all), closely followed by some of the tortures the monk goes through.


Oh yes. An absolute belter. Not an easy read but a great one nevertheless.
Andrew B

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (1) Thanks(1)   Quote dr wu23 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 31 2015 at 10:12


Edited by dr wu23 - October 31 2015 at 10:15
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Barbu Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 05 2015 at 13:30
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Atavachron Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 05 2015 at 13:39
^ I read that in a single day when it came out.  I don't think the band were real happy about that book.

"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."   -- John F. Kennedy
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Barbu Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 05 2015 at 13:48
^ Found it in some dusty old boxes of mine some days ago, first read in more than 20 yrs. Didn't remember it to be so WILD.

Pretty disturbing stuff, indeed.
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