Help
Stop me from reading Ender's Game again. Recommend some spring break literature.
West 116th Street
We aim to please. Ourselves, mostly, but we do aim to please.
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Info Please
Content Please
Blog Archives
- November 2005
- December 2005
- January 2006
- February 2006
- March 2006
- April 2006
- May 2006
- June 2006
- July 2006
- August 2006
- September 2006
- October 2006
- November 2006
- December 2006
- January 2007
- February 2007
- March 2007
Blogroll Please
- Baseball Musings
- Informed Comment
- Rafe Colburn
- Aaron Gleeman
- Bronx Banter
- Beyond the Boxscore
- Iain Cash
9 Comments:
"Old Man's War", John Scalzi
"The Night Watch", Sergei Lukyanenko
"Old Twentieth", Joe Haldeman
Two suggestions, strikingly similar to anonymous's up there:
Starship Troopers, by Heinlein.
The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman.
Also,
Hyperion, by Dan Simmons, which I found excellent, and perhaps Fall of Hyperion. The rest of the books in the series I was not as crazy about.
"Snow" Orhan Pamuk
"The Mission Song" John le Carré
"The Baroque Cycle" Neil Stephenson
(It'll take forever, teach you more about Isaac Newton that you ever needed to know, but hey...go for Baroque!)
OK,
If you did not like Snow crash, (which you did not) you will find the baroque cycle irritating, at best. Here is my review:
http://tsaleh.blogspot.com/2007/03/crappy-book-review-quicksilver-neal.html
Maybe if you only had the baroque cycle on a multiple decade intersteller flight, it would be OK. But if you have all the books in the known universe to choose from, there is little reason to pick Stephenson.
If you have not read any cormac mccarthy, try Suttree and Blood meridian for the finest of his southern and western novels, respectively...
or just recall the mother tongue, and sit back with a hearty dose of something new from lib.ru
if you've never read any James Michener, he writes some reasonably decent Based-on-a-True-Story type epics (the smallest of his books i've seen to date was 750 pages) - I've got The Source (middle east), Hawaii (just that), and Space (just started it, so will be a long wait) in my treeware collection if you want to borrow something.
I forgot you're Russian... "The Night Watch", mentioned in the first post (that was me) is an English translation of a Russian novel, so you might enjoy it more in Russian. I'm sure if you look up Lukyanenko, you'll find his native-language works, including this one.
Also... I agree that all the novels suggested by "yathrib" are good... I mentioned the ones I did because they're all pretty new. I figured you already knew Heinlein, Haldeman and Simmons....
Regardng Michener... he's great, but slow. Try "The Drifters", if you have any interest in the "hippie"culture of the late 60's and 70's.
The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins
Blink - Malcom GladWell
Give me a try, they may intrigue you.
Me likey piktures.
Y: The Last Man
Gee Tarik, I guess the Baroque Cycle didn't do it for you. Cormac can write like a dream, but his plots are so empty that i can't get through them. Once I stopped reading Baroque for ploit, and just enjoyed the style, and historical insights, I found it a wonderful treat, all 2700 pages. A lot about Newton I'd never known. ON the other hand, I like Philip Glass too, and I know a few folks who get the screaming tedia from him.
Michener is at best a B- writer, though. Stodgy and pedestrian, plodding relentlessly on. Dawkins is a must, and Gladwell is a fun romp, though Blink isn't as good as The Tipping Point, and both are really magazine articles padded to book length. If that sort of thing is what you want, Freakonomics by Levitt and Dubner is a better value, I'd opine.
Selfish Gene is an absofuckinglutely essential book. No ifs ands or butts. Even if I'm not fond of Dawkins in his current atheist uber alles phase, he gets forgiven for Selfish Gene.
Post a Comment
<< Home