OS Book Club Pt II

[HealyMonster]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

Almost done with Lightening by Dean Koontz. First Koontz book ive ever read, its an easy read, didn't dislike the book but my overall rating for it would be meh. If you're into time travel type mystery then id def. give it a read.

[DieHardYankee26]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

Contact: loved it. Very spiritual as expected, basically a fully fleshed out book based on the "I believe science is informed worship" from Varieties of the Scientific Experience. I feel like so much of the way I think was influenced as a kid by listening to Sagan that it's like I'd almost read it already. Nothing better than two scientists writing science fiction, especially when one of them is a woman and the main character is one. Had an unexpected (to me) twist at the end too that was very emotional.

Spoiler

Mass Effect 1 is my favorite game of all time and this book gave me the same sense of awe and possibility. Obviously, they are both fictional but just the vastness of space really opens up so many possibilities. When contact is finally made and the extraterrestrials are talking to the main character, it felt so much like Sovereign talking to Shepard (my favorite scene in game history). Nothing more humbling than the idea that there could be beings out there looking at us like we look at ants.

"At the very moment that humans discovered the scale of the universe and found that their most unconstrained fancies were in fact dwarfed by the true dimensions of even the Milky Way Galaxy, they took steps that ensured that their descendants would be unable to see the stars at all."

"If the one year old, the fiver year old, the twelve year old all find compatible personalities in the beloved, there is a real chance to keep those sub-personas happy. Love ends their long loneliness. Perhaps the depth of love can be calibrated by the number of different selves that are actively involved in a given relationship."

"Perhaps, all things considered, Ellie would have been happier had she received only silence from the stars."

"You get to thinking of the Earth as an organism, a living thing. You get to worry about it, care for it, wish it well. National boundaries are as invisible as meridians of longitude, or the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. The boundaries are arbitrary. The planet is real."

"It was vaguely burdensome, being responsible by your innocent actions for the fates of unknown worlds."

"She had spent her career attempting to make contact with the most remote and alien of strangers, while in her own life she had made contact with hardly anyone at all. She had been fierce in debunking the creation myths of others, and oblivious to the lie at the core of her own. She had studied the universe all her life, but had overlooked its clearest message: For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love."

On to Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, I'm going into it with a lot of hype but I find it hard to believe it's better than The Road. I'm excited to find out. I had a few things lined up for after that but I think I'm gonna do Beloved by Toni Morrison after BM and push some other stuff into July/August.

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

No Country for Old Men is excellent. I personally like that one slightly more than The Road.

[DieHardYankee26]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

If BM is as good as the acclaim I see around it says it is, I'll probably end up adding him to the list of people I want to read everything of (Du Bois, Baldwin, Morrison, Angelou, DFW). I loved the hell out of The Road, I still need to see the movie. I'll get into No Country eventually, I've never seen that movie either but I know it has a ton of acclaim behind it. I wonder if this could be one of those rare movie better than the book instances.

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

To me they are fairly equal. There are some things the book does better that almost all books do better than any other format. On the flipside the movie does certain things better simply because it is a movie. It also helps the Coens direction is masterful on this.

I was actually able to finish Goblet of Fire this weekend thanks to some uncomfortable sleeping arrangements. I'm glad to have finished the book because I felt like I was reading it forever, but of course by the end I just wanted to jump into the next Harry Potter. Order of the Phoenix is 900 pages so I'll hold off for a couple weeks.

I'm not sure what I will start this evening. I'm leaning towards Matilda because I loved that book (and movie) as a kid and I could probably finish the book in one sitting now. On the other hand we could have nieces staying with us this weekend and that would be a great book to read to them.

We've been going through the Lord of the Rings movies and I really want to go through those now.

Decisions.

OT: I thought I would share this "cover" of Sir Mix-A-Lot's Baby Got Back.

https://youtu.be/KMHrXPJEntI

[DieHardYankee26]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

I vaguely remember a movie called Matilda and a scene involving chocolate cake that made me not want to eat it for a few years but man it's been a while since I heard that name. So many of Dahl's stories I watched movies of repeatedly growing up, I'll have to get into his books eventually.

I also will want to get back into HP, the memories are flowing. I can remember begging my uncle to take me to the midnight B&N release for Order of the Phoenix and paying $70 for a special edition. What a time.

Gonna get Blood Meridian and Beloved done this week, and then figure out what's good for next month. There's a few things I was supposed to get into this month that got pushed when I fell into my fiction binge so those will all come back, slate looks like this right now:

Spoiler

As I Lay Dying (Never read Faulkner, have been told he's the Prose God and I need to but Sound and the Fury from what I've heard is exceptionally difficult as the first book of his, so I'm going with this one to see how I like his style)

Founding Brothers

Elon Musk biography

Superintelligence

Ways of White Folks

Shadow and Act

Native Son

Invisible Man

Revolutionary Suicide

Having now found my entry into fiction, I'm gonna prioritize getting through all the Great American Novels. The issue there being most of them are by authors with more than one classic to their name (Faulkner, Steinbeck, Toni Morrison) so most of them will need more than one book. Steinbeck I already know I've got Of Mice and Men and East of Eden alongside Grapes, Faulkner As I Lay, Light in August, Absalom Absalom next to Sound and the Fury, and everything Toni Morrison has done.

The public library is saving me though with being able to checkout digital books, incredible. Gotta love the way they've updated with the times, checking out games, movies, all kinds of stuff.

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

The library is underrated. They've had movie rentals for as long as I remember. I remember going to the county library in elementary school and being able to check out Berenstein Bear VHS.

[Qb]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

The library is underrated. They've had movie rentals for as long as I remember. I remember going to the county library in elementary school and being able to check out Berenstein Bear VHS.

I get CDs from it all the time, in fact, I have 10 or so at home I need to return by the end of the week...

I'm working on A Rumor of War by Phillip Caputo. Got it for vacation earlier in the month, but only knocked out a few chapters. Hard to squeeze it in to the regular routine. Not sure if I mentioned it before, but the last one I finished was American Nations by Colin Woodard.

Next, I probably need some fiction to change it up, but who knows when that will even be. I tend to read in bursts when I'm really into something and/or if I have down time at work. If those two line up, I can plow through something in a few days.

[DieHardYankee26]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

I looked up Rumor of War on Amazon, sounds interesting, like All Quiet on the Western Front for Vietnam. Let us know how that one turns out, might have to add that one to the list. I am definitely adding American Nations to it, the Amazon reviews say the last part goes off the rails but in any history book it's hard to judge reviews because you don't know if they're based on the opposition to the actual book or just the authors ideology. I may double that one up with Anti-Intellectualism in American life.

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

I've pulled The Fellowship of the Ring off the shelf and will start that tonight. I haven't decided if I'm going to read the Prologue (its basically a back-history on hobbits and major events) since its about 25 pages. I have actually read about half of this book 2 years ago while on vacation, but it didn't stick when I got back home.

I'm also going to try and read a chapter or two of Destruction of Black Civilization each week. I think the overview was too good because it basically outlines the whole book from the start so that kind of quenched my thirst for a bit when I first started it.

No real plans this weekend other than wanting to grill/smoke some stuff which would give me plenty of sitting time to dive into The Rights of Man, too.

[DieHardYankee26]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

I'm like halfway through Blood Meridian, I like it a lot but so much of the enjoyment would hinge on how someone feels about McCarthy's writing style. I saw a thread on Reddit yesterday where someone said they hate The Road. I couldn't even fathom it. I see a lot of complaints about not knowing when there is dialogue, I dunno if it's arranged differently in the physical books (I don't think it is) but I don't really get that complaint, it's kinda valid for like a half hour but after a while I think it becomes pretty clear what he's trying to convey. I should finish tomorrow, and then be able to get into Beloved.

One thing I was thinking about with LOTR and GoT is I don't know how well I will do with all the poems and songs and recipes and superfluous **** that gets thrown in fantasy books, I've just never liked it. I hear The Hobbit is fairly easy and straightforward to get through though so that'll be an easy entry point.

I may have found a way to digitize and get Destruction of Black Civilization on my Kindle, so if that works out, I'll add it to next month's slate.

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

Game of Thrones keeps that **** to a minimum level. They might have a poem or song every now and then, but its rare.

I haven't encountered it much in the actual books for Lord of the Rings, but the appendices are as long as some novels.

[DieHardYankee26]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

That is good to know, I'll probably start throwing in one of those a month. I haven't had to deal with a series yet, I figure I should spread them out to avoid getting too burnt out on them.

[WaitTilNextYear]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

The discussion of Harry Potter in the Off Topic thread brought me here. For those inclined toward fantasy stuff, whether Rowling or Tolkien, I'd recommend The Silmarillion by Tolkien. It sort of contextualizes the whole Lord of the Rings and Hobbit world a bit more completely. Sort of an alternative book of mythology that draws on Greco-Roman mythos.

[dickey1331]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

Just finished Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver. I really enjoyed this book. Now I just have to see the movie.

Now I'm just waiting until July 4th for Milo Yiannopoulos book to come out. I'll probably see if I can finish my H P Lovecraft short stories in the meantime.

As for what else I've read this year

The Circle by Dave Eggers. I really enjoyed this book and I think it's foreshadowing what could happen the in future. It's a shame the movie did terrible. Haven't seen it yet though.

Heart Shaped Box by Joe Hill. This was pretty good. You can tell Kings son has the same similar writing as his father.

The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party by Daniel Brown. Another good book. I couldn't imagine going through this and I'm not sure what's worse. This or the incident that Moby Dick was based on.

The Zookeepers Wife: A War Story by Diane Ackerman. This one was okay. Certainly learned a lot about Polands side during the war.

Watership Down by Richard Adams. Whoever thought a book about rabbits would be so good. Great, great novel.

Hitler: Ascent 1889-1939 by Volker Ullrich. I'm pretty fascinated by Hitler and this was an excellent and very in depth book about him. Supposedly the author is making a sequel from 1939 until his death.

I've read a few other books this year but I'll stop there for now.


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