191 replies to this topic

[Mike]

The Books thread - what are you reading?

[Arjan Dirkse]

A Dutch book with selected passages from the Upanishads with a commentary.

It's interesting but not really grabbing me yet.

[Will]

Sharpe's Company.

[Ulf Imwiehe]

I’m on a bit of a Tennessee Williams kick at the moment. I finished The Glass Menagerie this morning and have just started A Streetcar Named Desire.

[Johnny Henning]

Reading a lot lately - most of it to do with or by JRR Tolkien. However, one of the stranger books I'm reading is Andrew Collins' FROM THE ASHES OF ANGELS.

Collins is a fringe archaeologist along the lines of Bra Steiger, Graham Hancock and Jay Weidner. Essentially, Indiana Jones wanna-be's who are not accepted by the established archaeological community -- which in itself is not widely accepted by the mainstream, to be honest.

In any case, most of the book is complete speculation and personal opinion, but it puts for a very radical theory that the book of Genesis and older books in the Jewish Apocrypha and Dead Sea Scrolls - primarily the Book of Enoch - describe angels not as supernatural beings, but as a divergent race of advanced human beings with extremely long, possibly immortal lives, that interbred with mankind and essentially taught us civilization.

His writing is pretty opaque and indirect, but to extrapolate, the angels and watchers in the books of Genesis and Enoch are actually very tall, strong human beings, or some closely related species of human, with elongated heads who had already established a very advanced civilization before homo sapiens arrived on the scene. Essentially, the difference would be similar to our modern technological civilization compared to pre-Columbian North American natives.

There was some sort of division inside this community regarding interbreeding with their human worshippers, and a few of the angels, the Watchers, mated with human women and taught human beings the beginnings of their own civilizations - and also became the basis for the first "Gods" including the Sumerian and Greek/Roman pantheons.

Now, he is not very specific, yet, as to where God would fit in this theory - is He the King Angel or something of a different order entirely - but this division between Heaven and the Watchers eventually led to the destruction of their offspring, the Nephilim, and all humans except for Noah, who apparently was something like an angel or Nephilim himself. And this destruction is the source for the stories of the Fall from Eden, the Great Flood, the fall of Atlantis, the destruction of the Tower of Babel, Soddom and Gamorrah and so on. Essentially, the great catastrophes of the Bible are actually an ongoing genetic conflict over the offspring of angels and God. Noah is apparently the "approved" genetic hybrid between Godkind and Mankind, and the Nephelim are the divergent, unapproved strain.

In some ways, to compare it to Tolkien mythology, the Angels are like the Valar or the high elves, while the Watchers and Nephelim are like Morgoth or Sauran and the Ringwraiths, Orcs and Dragons.

Implicit in this is the idea that, for some reason, angelkind is either on the wane or unable to reproduce and mankind, as the Children of God, are their method for moving their race and civilization forward into the future.

[Mikha'il Tegler]

Thanks to some very long plane trips I just finished the last of Dewey Lambdin's Alan Lewrie series (and am anxious to read the new book out in January). This series really caught me off-guard. early books on the series, the main character was pretty amoral. making him unlikeable, and much of the book reads like pornography. granted pretty well written pornography.

The series really grew on me though, similar to the Hornblower or Sharpe series, but provides a lot more detail about life back in the time of the end of the American Revolution through the Wars with France to 1804 (so far). The writing style squeezes out the action as compared to the aforementioned series. In the end it seems a lot more worthwhile.

The second book "The French Admiral" remains my favorite for now. My biggest complaints are early on Lambdin uses too much of what I think are American style slang. I just don't see a British sea officier using the work "fuck" in 1794. Takes me out of the story. The more recent books seem to have avoided this.

Now if someone could kindly explain what "Mine arse on a band box" is supposed to mean it would be much appreciated.

[Dave Wallace]

I just recently read Farenheit 451 for the first time. It's an enjoyable, quick read, with quite a few fun/interesting ideas, but at the same time it feels like what it is: several short stories stitched together, with all the shifts in tone and pacing and slight inconsistencies that that implies. Still, I had fun with it - and like a lot of the best dystopian fiction, it's eerily prescient at times.

[Ulf Imwiehe]

I pounded through A Streetcar Named Desire last night. Boy, the last two scenes always give me a good kick in the guts…!
Next up: Thornton Wilder – Our Town.

[Mike]

Anne McCaffrey died yesterday, at the ripe old age of 85.

I read one of her stories, The Smallest Dragonboy, in an anthology published by (of all people) Marks and Spencer when I was about 6, and it made me want to fly with the dragons of Pern. It took a few more years but I eventually found the rest of the books, and for a while they were among my favourite books of that genre. I loved the relatively subtle SF flavouring to the early stories, which seemed more blatantly fantasy, gradually shading into more overtly SF as the larger story unfolded. I'm still very fond of some of the characters in the Pern stories - Lessa, Jaxom, Menolly, Robinton - and hope they go on being read for a long time to come.

I stopped reading the Pern books around about the time All The Weyrs of Pern came out, in the early 90s, which brought the story to an end of sorts; I've picked up some of the newer ones (including the ones co or sole authored by her son) and they've never really appealed to me in the way the original books did, though it's good to see them still there. Regardless, I think McCaffrey left her mark on SF and her contribution deserves to be celebrated.

[Rory Abel]

Anne McCaffrey died yesterday, at the ripe old age of 85.

I read one of her stories, The Smallest Dragonboy, in an anthology published by (of all people) Marks and Spencer when I was about 6, and it made me want to fly with the dragons of Pern. It took a few more years but I eventually found the rest of the books, and for a while they were among my favourite books of that genre. I loved the relatively subtle SF flavouring to the early stories, which seemed more blatantly fantasy, gradually shading into more overtly SF as the larger story unfolded. I'm still very fond of some of the characters in the Pern stories - Lessa, Jaxom, Menolly, Robinton - and hope they go on being read for a long time to come.

I stopped reading the Pern books around about the time All The Weyrs of Pern came out, in the early 90s, which brought the story to an end of sorts; I've picked up some of the newer ones (including the ones co or sole authored by her son) and they've never really appealed to me in the way the original books did, though it's good to see them still there. Regardless, I think McCaffrey left her mark on SF and her contribution deserves to be celebrated.

I remember growing up and my mother being an avid reader of the Dragons of Pern books. She had whole bookshelves dedicated to the series. I've read a couple of them and enjoyed them, though I was never the major fan that my mother was. It definitely a sad loss to the genre.

I just finished Kafkaesque, an anthology of stories that relate to Kafka in some way. It a collection definitely done a disservice by it's title. Going in I was expecting stories that were... well, Kafkaesque or at least what I think of when I hear the word, mainly the individual threatened by a byzantine surreal world. Instead, it's mainly stories with Kafka making an appearance of some kind and then a few stories that treat the surreal as normal. Only one of the stories really captured that feeling being Kafkaesque. The rest was just generally forgettable. A big disappointment.

[Ulf Imwiehe]

I just finished Kafkaesque, an anthology of stories that relate to Kafka in some way. It a collection definitely done a disservice by it's title. Going in I was expecting stories that were... well, Kafkaesque or at least what I think of when I hear the word, mainly the individual threatened by a byzantine surreal world. Instead, it's mainly stories with Kafka making an appearance of some kind and then a few stories that treat the surreal as normal. Only one of the stories really captured that feeling being Kafkaesque. The rest was just generally forgettable. A big disappointment.

Is that the one featuring the Robert Crumb story? It’s on my to-read list but considering that your disappointment mirrors my friend’s reaction to the book almost exactly, I guess I’ll go in with my expectations lowered considerably just to be on the safe side.

I have finished Our Town by Thornton Wilder and while I appreciate the play’s impact on modern drama I felt somewhat let down by the, in my opinion, rather ham-fisted third act.

Currently reading, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee. Now that’s what I call great dialogue!

[Christian U]

Albee is awesome. I always wanted to do Zoo Story, but it never happened.

[Ulf Imwiehe]

Albee is awesome. I always wanted to do Zoo Story, but it never happened.

And going on 84 he’s still producing great work. I saw a performance of his The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? a few years ago. It was a very… interesting experience.

[Rory Abel]

Is that the one featuring the Robert Crumb story? It’s on my to-read list but considering that your disappointment mirrors my friend’s reaction to the book almost exactly, I guess I’ll go in with my expectations lowered considerably just to be on the safe side.

Yup that's the one.

[Ian Smith]

Just got done with the first Hunger Games book. I'd always heard of it in the same breath as the Twilight series so that put me off. 
There's definitely a romantic side to the story but there's a bit of a twist that keeps it from being to schmaltzy.

The characters are all well rounded so you care about who lives or dies, and the story goes along at a nice clip to.
And as to be expected from a story about kids killing each other, it's pretty dark in places to.

I'm well into the second book now and so far it's just as good.

Edited by Ian Smith, 24 November 2011 - 09:09 PM.

[Ben the Obiwomble]

I am slowly working my way through Snuff. Not because it's bad, it's brilliant - I just don't want it to end!

Oh and can someone please put out Pride & Extreme Prejudice? I'd buy it!

[Adam Wednesdays]

About to start "A Feast For Crows." Definitely looking forward to it.

[Ulf Imwiehe]

I’m reading Peer Gynt by the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen. It’s a freaking amazing play, blending drama with surrealism, Norse mythology, evocative poetry and scathing social commentary – a bit like theatre on shrooms, in a sense.

[Christian U]

Fuck. Now I feel bad because I have never read Peer Gynt, much less seen it performed. I think The Doll's House is the only Ibsen play I've read and seen.

Time to rectify this.

[Ulf Imwiehe]

One thing I love about Henrik Ibsen is the way he tossed out his crazy scripts for dramaturges, directors and actors to fucking deal with it, decades before deconstruction became commonplace.