OS Book Club Pt II

[KSUowls]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

So a few months ago I mentioned I had started the Kris Longknife series by Mike Shepherd, and I've slowly been advancing through the series. I'm not going to call these literary classics, but they are well written and fun to read.

A quick recap. The series takes place a few centuries down the road after humanity has colonized the stars. Over time various political factions have grown centered around the Earth faction and some outlying factions largely led by powerful families. The story features a character Kris Longknife who a member of one of those powerful families, daughter of the prime minister to one of these outer worlds, and with a name that is galactically infamous. "You're one of those Longknifes".

Kris Longknife: Deserter
The galactic stage was set towards the end of the first book (Mutineer), but Kris was still just a pawn in a much larger game. After the second book that description still holds true, but you do start to wonder how one person can keep finding themselves in so many dire situations. This is perhaps my one gripe about the series at large. You start to wonder just how much the author is forcing content to create a story. To the author's credit though, he does a good job at making a point to show that these aren't all just necessarily the case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time events. Overall Deserter was an entertaining. Plenty of action to keep you turning pages and it foreshadows some political dynamics that make you want to see what the future holds for this character.

Kris Longknife: Defiant

The first two books danced around some political intrigue in the universe at large, but the action is mostly localized. The action was also fairly consistent throughout the books with any down time just setting up the next event. In Defiant the scale starts to grow beyond events that are caused by our main character as some much larger conflicts start to appear. Also, unlike the first two, this is the first time the books were not a series of connected small disasters leading to a larger climax. In Defiant, the primary threat is understood pretty early on and the meat of the story is focused on the intensity, stress and intrigue of preparing for that threat, and the story isn't any worse off for it. I do continue to have my concerns about the 'luck' that has played a very large part in all three stories to this point though.

eta One other thing I wanted to mention. The setting of this series is a few centuries down and technology has definitely progressed, but the advancements in technology are not a always a center piece of the story (with a couple of notable exceptions). Sure there are space ships and the occasional really cool piece of tech, but people still drive cars and daily life seems much closer to our own universe than you might think when you hear about a science fiction story set somewhere around the year 2400. If I were to make an analogy I'd say that the universe resembles that of Joss Whedon's Firefly. Core worlds, capital planets and big cities operate with an almost aristocratic flair while less populated planets take on a more agricultural existence with little in the way of governing bodies.


I started the 4th book (Resolute) a few weeks ago, but other things have kept my attention. I hope to get back to it soon.

[KSUowls]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

Well...writing about the last two books got me motivated to finally finish Kris Longknife: Resolute. What can I say at this point? The formula remains very much the same as the first 3. Kris somehow finds herself caught in the middle of some unexpected event, caught in a life or death situation with the odds stacked supremely against her. Though now as I'm typing this it reminds me of a podcasts I have been listening to recently (The History of Rome). Some of the recent episodes touched on Julias Caesars campaigns in Gaul and in the East where it seemed as though he was always outnumbered. Much like the ancient general, Kris Longknife keeps finding herself outnumbered with the odds stacked against her. However, where Caesar had experienced legions of Rome following his orders, Kris is often left with what is at best local militia fending off trained armies.

I must admit that though each of the 4 books so far have been entertaining, this formula described above has gotten a bit exhausting. Also, while the main cast of Kris Longknife and her staff have been interesting enough to maintain the story, the antagonists have been wholly inept and honestly poorly written.

I have the 5th book with me ready to go, but I think I will be taking a break from this series for a while. Looking at my Amazon book wish list I really need to start making a dent in that.

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

I slacked majorly this week and haven't picked up It since the weekend. I don't think it'll be a beast since the chapters/parts are very manageable and so far the breaks between are fantastic stopping places (case in point). I hope to get a good session in tonight, though.

I have been going through Binge Mode's Harry Potter podcasts still. Like I said before it's fairly entertaining and going in at the beginning with the perspective of the whole canon is a great angle. The parallels they draw between Buddy Garrity and FNL to McGonagall and Quidditch are hilarious.

[KSUowls]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

I haven't actually read these in years, but the mention of Harry Potter has me reaching by to some of the other YA novels I've read. I would be surprised if these have not been mentioned in this thread before but here goes. There might be some light spoilers to follow:

The Hunger Games Trilogy

Hunger Games
An on going theme for my thoughts with this trilogy is that the Suzanne Collins did a fantastic job of portraying the psychology of a dystopian future civilian. Before Katniss ever even enters the games, she is a 16/17 year old who realizes how messed up her world is and doesn't want to ever have kids to have them live in that terrible existence.

Another thing I was impressed with was how from the very start this story did not pull any punches. I remember reading Divergent (another Dystopian YA) not long after finishing this trilogy and just thinking about the stark differences in not just tone but execution of character actions.


Catching Fire:
Interestingly this book inspired my favorite movie of the series, but it was my least liked book.

I can respect the emotional gymnastics that Katniss was being put through at the very beginning having just recently come out the survivor of a death game (on top of the 17 years of experience she had prior), but the entire first half of Catching Fire reads like an entirely different story than anything else in the trilogy. At the same time as being concerned with her lot in life she is lamenting her suddenly turmoil in deciding Peeta or Gale. It was as if Suzanne Collins suddenly thought herself a writer of a cheap romance novel before finally getting back to the world she began writing about in the first book.

As bad as the first half was though the 2nd half makes up for it. Katniss is thrown into yet another tragic situation, meeting new friends whom she will have to kill in a few days. I loved the introduction of some of these new characters, making you become more attached to them than any of the contestants (excepting Rue) from the first. Add to that the start of a much larger political scheme and it just made for a great read.

Mockingjay
So let me say that I am still shocked by some of the things that occurred in this book. I'll save any spoilers in case someone has been living under a rock and not at least seen the movie, but the buildup of the first two books made the happenings of this one all that more meaningful. I like when books take chances and don't drastically alter the tone of the entire series in favor of a happy ending with a neat little bow on top. Catching Fire may have deviated from the series for a short period, but this one again pulled no punches.

Hunger Games was a roller coaster of a series. In the span of 3 relatively short novels you become extremely attached to several of the characters and feel for them being unfortunate enough to have been born in such a terrible time.

[DJ]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

I haven't actually read these in years, but the mention of Harry Potter has me reaching by to some of the other YA novels I've read. I would be surprised if these have not been mentioned in this thread before but here goes. There might be some light spoilers to follow:

The Hunger Games Trilogy

Hunger Games
An on going theme for my thoughts with this trilogy is that the Suzanne Collins did a fantastic job of portraying the psychology of a dystopian future civilian. Before Katniss ever even enters the games, she is a 16/17 year old who realizes how messed up her world is and doesn't want to ever have kids to have them live in that terrible existence.

Another thing I was impressed with was how from the very start this story did not pull any punches. I remember reading Divergent (another Dystopian YA) not long after finishing this trilogy and just thinking about the stark differences in not just tone but execution of character actions.


Catching Fire:
Interestingly this book inspired my favorite movie of the series, but it was my least liked book.

I can respect the emotional gymnastics that Katniss was being put through at the very beginning having just recently come out the survivor of a death game (on top of the 17 years of experience she had prior), but the entire first half of Catching Fire reads like an entirely different story than anything else in the trilogy. At the same time as being concerned with her lot in life she is lamenting her suddenly turmoil in deciding Peeta or Gale. It was as if Suzanne Collins suddenly thought herself a writer of a cheap romance novel before finally getting back to the world she began writing about in the first book.

As bad as the first half was though the 2nd half makes up for it. Katniss is thrown into yet another tragic situation, meeting new friends whom she will have to kill in a few days. I loved the introduction of some of these new characters, making you become more attached to them than any of the contestants (excepting Rue) from the first. Add to that the start of a much larger political scheme and it just made for a great read.

Mockingjay
So let me say that I am still shocked by some of the things that occurred in this book. I'll save any spoilers in case someone has been living under a rock and not at least seen the movie, but the buildup of the first two books made the happenings of this one all that more meaningful. I like when books take chances and don't drastically alter the tone of the entire series in favor of a happy ending with a neat little bow on top. Catching Fire may have deviated from the series for a short period, but this one again pulled no punches.

Hunger Games was a roller coaster of a series. In the span of 3 relatively short novels you become extremely attached to several of the characters and feel for them being unfortunate enough to have been born in such a terrible time.

I read all three Hunger Games books and thought 1 and 2 were great. Three was OK; felt the move towards Snow dragged a bit, as we all knew at that point the confrontation was coming.

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

In my search of series to get into The Hunger Games never really came up. Is it still worth going through?

[DJ]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

In my search of series to get into The Hunger Games never really came up. Is it still worth going through?

I think so. All three books were already out by the time I started reading them, so once I got hooked on the first one, it was easy to carry that momentum into the next two books.

[KSUowls]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

In my search of series to get into The Hunger Games never really came up. Is it still worth going through?

Personally I loved the series. If you've seen the movies they do a relatively good job of staying true to the book, but to me one of the most important aspects of the series was the inner dialogue of characters which was difficult to portray in the movie.

All 3 books are only 300-400 pages long too so you can knock them all out fairly quickly.

[NolanRyansSnowmonkey]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

In my search of series to get into The Hunger Games never really came up. Is it still worth going through?

I read them after watching all of the movies, and still thoroughly enjoyed them. I enjoyed them even more than the movies.

[DieHardYankee26]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

Going to Meet the Man by James Baldwin

Spoiler

I didn't think the short story format always complemented Baldwin's writing style the way that longform fiction, or especially non-fiction do. It came off meandering at times, thoughts felt a little too drawn out. Still an incredible writer, one of my favorites if not the favorite, and the stories were worth reading, the stories that led to Going to Meet the Mountain are there so you can kinda see where the spark came from out of there. There's a decent variety of characters outside of those first few, and Baldwin on societal interaction and race is always great. A big theme with these collections was that the stories were from early stages in the author's careers so it's cool to see the progression to the author that he would become. I still need to read his last novel, but as I said his best work to me is his essays.

Spoiler

"There are times and places when a Negro can use his color like a shield. He can trade on the subterranean Anglo-Saxon guilt and get what he wants that way; or some of what he wants. He can trade on his nuisance value, his value as forbidden fruit; he can use it like a knife, he can twist it and get his vengeance that way. I knew these things long before I realized that I knew them and in the beginning I used them, not knowing what I was doing. Then when I began to see it, I felt betrayed. I felt beaten as a person. I had no honest place to stand."

"I know everybody’s in trouble and nothing is easy, but how can I explain to you what it feels like to be black when I don’t understand it and don’t want to and spend all my time trying to forget it? I don’t want to hate anybody—but now maybe, I can’t love anybody either—are we friends? Can we be really friends?"

"It was under cover of darkness, my own darkness, that I could sing for them of the joys, passions, and terrors they smuggled about with them like steadily depreciating contraband. Under cover of the midnight fiction that I was unlike them because I was black, they could stealthily gaze at those treasures which they had been mysteriously forbidden to possess and were never permitted to declare."

"I cannot help saying that I think it is a scandal—and we may all pay very dearly for it—that a civilized nation should elect to represent it a man who is so simple that he thinks the world is simple."

"Perhaps there was always murder at the very heart of love: the strong desire to murder the beloved, so that one could at last be assured of privacy and peace and be as safe and unchanging as the grave. Perhaps this was why disasters, thicker and more malevolent than bees, circled Paul’s head whenever he was out of her sight. Perhaps in those moments when she had believed herself willing to lay down her life for him she had only been presenting herself with a metaphor for her peace, his death; death, which would be an inadequate revenge for the color of his skin, for his failure, by not loving her, to release her from the prison of her own."

You Can't Keep A Good Woman Down by Alice Walker

Spoiler

I loved the Color Purple so I had little doubt that I would enjoy these stories, that's a series of letters so the format is somewhat similar. Again, a fairly varied set of stories, all with women main characters. Speaks on things like interracial relationships and abortion, there's a really...interesting (strange?) aside about pornography. It was a really interesting read, just caught me off guard. She definitely uses her characters to get her points across in more direct ways in some stories than others. There's a great story about an older woman who gave her music to a musician to tour the world with and their dealings over the years.

Spoiler

"They want what you got but they don’t want you. They want what I got only it ain’t mine. That’s what makes ’em so hungry for me when I sing. They getting the flavor of something but they ain’t getting the thing itself. They like a pack of hound dogs trying to gobble up a scent."

"To share the power of each other’s feelings is different from using another’s feelings as we would use Kleenex. And when we look the other way from our experience, erotic or otherwise, we use rather than share the feelings of those others who participate in the experience with us. And use without consent of the used is abuse."

"Hack writers always said black people were chocolate colored; this saved them the work of looking."

"Her first abortion, when she was still in college, she frequently remembered as wonderful, bearing as it had all the marks of a supreme coming of age and a seizing of the direction of her own life, as well as a comprehension of existence that never left her: that life—what one saw about one and called Life—was not a facade. There was nothing behind it which used “Life” as its manifestation. Life was itself. Period. At the time, and afterwards, and even now, this seemed a marvelous thing to know."

"The state of lust itself is not a happy one if there is no relief in sight. Though I am happy enough to enter that state whenever it occurs, I have learned to acknowledge its many and often devastating limitations. For example, the most monumental issues fade from one’s consciousness as if erased by a swift wind. Movements of great social and political significance seem but backdrops to one’s daily exchanges—be they ever so muted and circumscribed—with the Object of One’s Desire."

"What was the duty of the son of a destroyed man? The son of a man whose vision had stopped at the edge of fields that weren’t even his."

Flying Home and Other Stories by Ralph Ellison

Spoiler

Another collection of short stories, many of which were taken from early stages of his career. In contrast to the Baldwin stories, none of these felt overwritten and sometimes felt a little lacking. The stories improve as the book goes and the title story, the last one, is the best and longest. I wouldn't say I was disappointed, but it does seem interesting and kinda put into perspective that he put out Invisible Man and then struggled to finish his other novel for the rest of his life. Even though he felt he missed the mark and failed with IM, it's a testament to the level of work he put into it that he even put it out at all.

Spoiler

"He could not get it all, but yet he understood. It was like understanding what music without words said."

"He had already played with the ball; that he would discover later. He was learning the rules of the game already, but he didn’t know it. Yes, he would play with the ball. Indeed, poor little rascal, he would play until he grew sick of playing. My, yes, the old ball game. But I’d begin telling him the rules later."

"When you must have them judge you, knowing that they never accept your mistakes as your own but hold it against your whole race—that was humiliation. Yes, and humiliation was when you could never be simply yourself; when you were always a part of this old black ignorant man. Sure, he’s all right. Nice and kind and helpful. But he’s not you. Well, there’s one humiliation I can spare myself."

"Between ignorant black men and condescending whites, his course of flight seemed mapped by the nature of things away from all needed and natural landmarks. Under some sealed orders, couched in ever more technical and mysterious terms, his path curved swiftly away from both the shame the old man symbolized and the cloudy terrain of white man’s regard. Flying blind, he knew but one point of landing and there he would receive his wings."

From Socrates to Sartre: The Philosophic Quest by T.Z. Lavine

Spoiler

Book from my philosophy class. Gives a brief overview of 6 major Western philosophers (Socrates/Plato, Descartes, Hume, Hegel, Marx, Sartre) and covered a little of the ground in between them, but mostly the movements these guys were involved in. It was written well for a textbook, easy to get through, did what it could to boil down what are obviously large concepts and philosophical works into sections that could be digested by a laymen. The most interesting thing to me was the way the major ideas reflected the knowledge that was given by the sciences/math evolving during the time. Physics coming up, Descartes wants to use mathematical proofs to prove the existence of self. Biology starting to bubble, Hegel sees the history of philosophy as the evolution of ideas through time periods in different societies. Sartre coming up in Europe in a time of occupation pronounces the importance of self and the ability for one to exist outside of circumstances deemed by others and take control of life. I took down a list of the works it mentioned and all of the other people that came up outside of these 6 so that'll be something to read.

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Spoiler

Where to even start with this one...first, my mom asked me what I was reading the other day, I told her Lolita, she said "Like Long Island Lolita?" And I remembered that that story in I Love The 90's is the only reference to Lolita that I had known. I knew what it was about vaguely, but I was thinking of that throughout reading, mostly because the story is not really that similar to the incident.

This is the prison memoir, at first intended to be read in his trial but eventually decided to be saved for after his and Lolita's death, of Humbert Humbert, trying to explain to the reader how he ended up in the situation he's in and why he's not a bad guy. I won't say why he ended up in jail other than that it wasn't Lolita related (directly), but that the majority of the story, is about this dude and his lust for a 12 year old girl. He explains it as if there's an irresistible charm emitted by girls between the age of 9 and 14 that only 40 year old men and above can see. Him being European and Lolita being American is important for a few reasons, one being that Lolita's mother fell in love with him because he was exotic, the other being that they trek all over the US and that's kind of a point made. The whole book is the diary, so it's in first person, and as a result, it's a pretty uncomfortable read. Humbert is obviously very eloquent, but has a very high opinion of himself and just the way he portrays the feelings of a 12 year old girl make it clear he can't really be relied upon, as if his trying to explain his lust away didn't do that.

As far as the book, it's almost indisputably the most beautifully written thing I've ever read. The way he uses language (with French sparsed in) is just masterful. I always say I like my books with sauce, this is about as saucy a book as I can imagine. I was constantly going over passages again and again just making sure I fully grasped the meaning, and understood all the words, I had a wikibooks page open to translate the French for me, it's just incredible.

The afterword was also great to me. The whole time I was reading it, I was obviously very impressed by the language but the topic was just...not hard to get over, but impossible to. That's a part of it. You're in this guy's head, you're thinking his thoughts, I was just wondering why he wrote it...and then in the afterword, he explains basically that it wasn't a moral undertaking, that it was art for art's sake in the purest sense, an attempt to transcend that kind of thought and just be beautiful. It really is a fascinating book, I would recommend it to anyone, it's just interesting. Because the narrator is so clearly dishonest it becomes an attempt to decipher whatever truth can be taken from his attempts to hide behind ability to perfectly articulate his insanity. Really a classic in every sense of the word, will be checking out more Nabokov, sooner rather than later. And also, dude is Russian. He learned English growing up at an early age but still, it's technically a second language. Just wild. And he had a quote in the afterword about how it's almost embarassing that he had to use a language outside of his native tongue to achieve what he wanted to with Lolita. He also acknowledges that it exists somewhat as a love letter to the English language.

Spoiler

"You have to be an artist and a madman, a creature of infinite melancholy, with a bubble of hot poison in your loins and a super-voluptuous flame permanently aglow in your subtle spine (oh, how you have to cringe and hide!), in order to discern at once, by ineffable signs—the slightly feline outline of a cheekbone, the slenderness of a downy limb, and other indices which despair and shame and tears of tenderness forbid me to tabulate—the little deadly demon among the wholesome children; she stands unrecognized by them and unconscious herself of her fantastic power."

"And I catch myself thinking today that our long journey had only defiled with a sinuous trail of slime the lovely, trustful, dreamy, enormous country that by then, in retrospect, was no more to us than a collection of dog-eared maps, ruined tour books, old tires, and her sobs in the night—every night, every night—the moment I feigned sleep."

"We live not only in a world of thoughts, but also in a world of things. Words without experience are meaningless."

"Whatever evolution this or that popular character has gone through between the book covers, his fate is fixed in our minds, and, similarly, we expect our friends to follow this or that logical and conventional pattern we have fixed for them. Thus X will never compose the immortal music that would clash with the second-rate symphonies he has accustomed us to. Y will never commit murder. Under no circumstances can Z ever betray us. We have it all arranged in our minds, and the less often we see a particular person the more satisfying it is to check how obediently he conforms to our notion of him every time we hear of him. Any deviation in the fates we have ordained would strike us as not only anomalous but unethical. We would prefer not to have known at all our neighbor, the retired hot-dog stand operator, if it turns out he has just produced the greatest book of poetry his age has seen."

"And presently I was driving through the drizzle of the dying day, with the windshield wipers in full action but unable to cope with my tears."

"It is strange that the tactile sense, which is so infinitely less precious to men than sight, becomes at critical moments our main, if not only, handle to reality."

Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone next, also I've got a book called Lost Connections about real world/societal causes of depression and anxiety and scientist attempts to study the links and what it means, so I'll be going through that. Gonna do Dostoyevsky probably in September now, Lolita was dark and dense, I need a break lol.

[DieHardYankee26]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling

Not much to be said about Harry Potter that hasn't been said before. I read the series probably 3 times as a kid but haven't touched them in a while and haven't seen the Deathly Hallows movies so it'll be fun to get back into the series as a whole now that it's been out for a while. Took me like 8 pages and I was just hooked, I'm sure part of it is nostalgia, but the writing is so light and whimsical, it makes for a really fun read, like taking a time machine back to childhood. I had forgotten the way the books got bigger and bigger (through OotP) so it was also a quick read. Having Binge Mode as a companion is fun, getting to hear 2 huge HP fans break down the themes of individual portions of the book. The quote that stood out most from this wasn't even because it was particularly amazing writing, just wild foresight: "He’ll be famous — a legend — I wouldn’t be surprised if today was known as Harry Potter Day in the future — there will be books written about Harry — every child in our world will know his name!". I'm sure hundreds if not thousands of fantasy books have run with the same line, it's just funny to see it after it's been the series of a generation basically.

Vicious by V.E. Schwab

Found this author from my girlfriend who read a series of YA books from the author and recommended I read one of her books because it was superhero related and I love superheroes. I dunno how normal this is but she writes under Victoria Schwab for her YA books and V.E. Schwab for her non-YA books and I thought that was cool for some reason.

Anyway, the book deals with 2 college roommates, one of which sets out to look into the potential existence of EO's, ExtraOrdinary people, people with powers. He nails down a set of criteria that he thinks would lead to the emergence of powers, which has to do with trauma dealt with during Near Death Experiences. Both of them try the experiment on themselves, basically trying to kill themselves and be brought back to life, and become EO's, but have a falling out when the guy who started the experience has an issue dealing with his religion and begins to see EO's as unnatural. I don't want to get into too much more plot stuff but that's the opening.

I loved it. The writing is smooth, picturesque without being overwrought. The themes explored are by far the best part. The friends falling out, there is another story in there with 2 sisters, the way the powers manifest themselves during the NDE's, the philosophical issue of whether or not there is something naturally wrong with something that's unnatural, just loved all of it. This would make an awesome show or movie. The sequel is supposed to come out late next month so I'll be all over that as soon as it comes out. To be clear, it's not a superhero story in the sense that there's a costume, it's just dealing with powers. Personally, that's always what I mean when I say hero stuff, I've never considered it to be about caped crusading and whatnot. It's a great book for someone like me who love love loved Heroes (at least the first season, RIP, never forget the Writer's Strike).

Spoiler

"Victor knew he was praying. It perplexed him, how someone about to play God could pray to Him, but it clearly didn’t bother his friend."

"Victor looked down at the body then, expecting to feel some shade of the guilt that had washed over him when he’d lied to her before, but there was nothing. He wondered if Eli had felt this strange detachment, too, when he woke up on the bathroom floor. Like everything was real, but nothing mattered."

"The calm troubled him; the fact that the physical absence of pain could elicit such a mental absence of panic was at once unnerving and rather fascinating."

"There had been a time when he spoke to the EOs, tried to impart to them the logic, the necessity, of his actions, tried to make them understand before they died, that they were already dead, already ash, held together by something dark but feeble. But they didn’t listen, and in the end, his actions conveyed what his words had failed to."

"It always came to him, right here, when the light—he’d say the life, but that wasn’t right, it wasn’t life, only something posing as life—went out of their eyes. A moment of peace, a measure of balance being restored to the world. The unnatural made natural."

Getting through Baseball A Literary Anthology slowly but surely, still convinced no sport fits better to the page than baseball what with all of the scenery and gloriousness of spring and summer. Also starting Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. I hope to get through at least Goblet before Dostoyevsky time hits but we shall see.

[JayCutlersCig]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

Currently reading “Matterhorn” by Karl Marlantes. It’s about a new platoon leader in Vietnam, having to deal with issues of racism, military intelligence (or a lack thereof in this case), leaders whose self-interests outweigh those of the war, and the grueling task of guerilla warfare in Vietnam. Marlantes was an LT himself in the war; he’s a well-educated man and a damn good writer.

I’m going off to college in a few days and picked up a few books to read: Farenheit 451, Stephen King’s “The Body” (the book that inspired the movie Stand By Me), and a book by that chick who wrote “Gone Girl”.

Gonna have my plate full, but I’m looking forward to it.


Sent from my iPhone using Operation Sports

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

Well, I am about 1/3 of the way through IT. After taking almost 3 weeks off from reading I came back full force this past weekend.

There are a lot of ****ing words here. There are scenes where everything is described in excruciating detail down to the color of a fence rail and outside of the context of reading the book it can be rather mundane. Still, while actually reading it is effective as hell because it's a way for King to create space and fluctuate it at will to control the pacing of this tome.

The tension creeps in and like Big Bill getting his bike Silver up to speed the tension steadily increases until the reader is dashing through the pages and knocking all those ****ing word out of the ways like limbs in a dense forest.

Obviously there is a lot to process as there are multiple layers to the story. The curtain has only been drawn back on one of those, but there's enough being planted that you know there's a lot more to this creepy, **** show than a shape-shifting clown.


I also started Richard Rothstein's Color of Law this weekend. I will most likely read a chapter a day from here on out (or two depending on time). Only two chapters in and I'm already aggravated. The book traces back what is thought to have been de facto segregation of urban/suburban areas to actual de jure segregation enforced from the top down via various housing departments and policies. It is an incredible bit of knowledge to have and paints everything into a much bigger picture with more perspective and understanding.

[JayCutlersCig]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

Well, I am about 1/3 of the way through IT. After taking almost 3 weeks off from reading I came back full force this past weekend.

There are a lot of ****ing words here. There are scenes where everything is described in excruciating detail down to the color of a fence rail and outside of the context of reading the book it can be rather mundane. Still, while actually reading it is effective as hell because it's a way for King to create space and fluctuate it at will to control the pacing of this tome.

The tension creeps in and like Big Bill getting his bike Silver up to speed the tension steadily increases until the reader is dashing through the pages and knocking all those ****ing word out of the ways like limbs in a dense forest.

Obviously there is a lot to process as there are multiple layers to the story. The curtain has only been drawn back on one of those, but there's enough being planted that you know there's a lot more to this creepy, **** show than a shape-shifting clown.


I also started Richard Rothstein's Color of Law this weekend. I will most likely read a chapter a day from here on out (or two depending on time). Only two chapters in and I'm already aggravated. The book traces back what is thought to have been de facto segregation of urban/suburban areas to actual de jure segregation enforced from the top down via various housing departments and policies. It is an incredible bit of knowledge to have and paints everything into a much bigger picture with more perspective and understanding.

I’ve never really liked King’s lengthier works. He’s an excellent writer; as a writer myself, I like to study his technique, but I think some of his detailed scenes are unnecessarily detailed. Still, no one can weave a story like he can.

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

I’ve never really liked King’s lengthier works. He’s an excellent writer; as a writer myself, I like to study his technique, but I think some of his detailed scenes are unnecessarily detailed. Still, no one can weave a story like he can.

It's definitely a point worthy of debate.

On one hand it is exceptionally written. It's easy to lose yourself in those pages and passages where you're going into the mind of a character who will most likely never show up again during the course of the book.

On the other hand you're wondering to yourself after you put it down about how necessary it was to dive into the backstory of a character who is only in one chapter.

I realize that it all serves a "purpose" of supporting his themes, fleshing out the world, and establishing a spiderweb of connections to the insecurities/fears that plague them all, but still. He has the main characters doing the same work so it feels fluffy.

I can already tell where the editor came in and was like, "c'mon Stephen. You don't need to repeat this **** again."

Already I can see how somebody would love King and how somebody else would absolutely hate his work.