What's new

Books you've read in 2009 (1 Viewer)

DaveF

Moderator
Senior HTF Member
Joined
Mar 4, 2001
Messages
28,687
Location
Catfisch Cinema
Real Name
Dave
My wife and I read Neil Gaiman's Coraline during our recent trip to Boston. It was an interesting and quirky book; having seen the movie first didn't take anything away. In fact, this is a case where the movie may be better than the original book.
 

Lucia Duran

Screenwriter
Joined
Sep 30, 2005
Messages
1,089
My daughter has been getting me to read some of her YA books. Just finished Generation Dead by Daniel Waters and working on Kiss of Life: A Generation Dead novel by Daniel Waters. The series revolves around a town where teenagers are coming back to life (zombies) and trying to find a way to fit back into life with the living. Interesting story.
 

Philip Hamm

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Jan 23, 1999
Messages
6,874
I'm finishing up this book right now: Atomic Awakening: A New Look at the History and Future of Nuclear Power http://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Awakening-History-Future-Nuclear/dp/1605980404/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251301312&sr=8-1 Highly recommended!!!!!!
 

DaveF

Moderator
Senior HTF Member
Joined
Mar 4, 2001
Messages
28,687
Location
Catfisch Cinema
Real Name
Dave
Empire, by Orson Scott Card.

The first book by Card that I've read -- yes, I realize that Ender's Game is required reading, but I've never gotten to it -- it tells a fictional but plausible story of a present-day civil war in the United States. It's a fun romp, with right-of-center protagonists, but a reasonably balanced view of Left and Right bad guys. The writing is clunky at times; his take on do-no-wrong, buddy warriors is fun, but he's no Tom Clancy. While the construction of the civil war is plausible, I wished the story had hewed closer to realistic.

It's real strength is as a 200 page introduction to the 5 page afterword, wherein Card laments the hyper-partisan, hyperbolic political rhetoric in America. This was the best part of the book and I think worth reading.
 

mattCR

Reviewer
HW Reviewer
Senior HTF Member
Joined
Oct 5, 2005
Messages
10,897
Location
Lee Summit, Missouri
Real Name
Matt
Dave-

While Empire is a Card book, it was one that was commissioned and had to follow certain guidelines, as it was written as sort of an option toward a video game. I found the book to be "good" but far from his best work, and once I realized how it had come about, I knew it. I've got two of my employees reading "Children of the Mind" right now; we finished Xenocide. Some of Card's stuff is truly brilliant.
 

James_Kiang

Screenwriter
Joined
Aug 29, 2000
Messages
1,171
I had started Pride and Prejudice and Zombies but just could not get into it. That may have just been my own mindset at the time and I fully intend to finish the book eventually. Steven Erikson's 9th Malazan book, Dust of Dreams, came in a week or two ago so I'll also crack that one. I picked up Suzanne Collins' sequel to The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, last night and that is what I am reading now. Only two chapters in but I am enjoying it so far.
 

Ockeghem

Ockeghem
Senior HTF Member
Deceased Member
Joined
Feb 1, 2007
Messages
9,417
Real Name
Scott D. Atwell
I just finished Tertium Organum (Ouspensky). It's one of my favorite books, and one I've read a couple of times. Now I'm working my way through The Screwtape Letters (C. S. Lewis) again. I really enjoy reading many of the works of C. S. Lewis, whether they pertain to medieval history or Christian apologetics.

One of the key topics in Lewis's "Great War" with Barfield was whether imagination -- and I hold that literature is an expressive projection of the imagination -- is a valid road to (philosophic) truth. (To state it more succinctly, whether imagination is a valid road to truth.) I think so. Lewis' response was quite nuanced. Originally, in their argument (which went on for years), he did not accept the imaginative route as valid. I think he came to accept it as such, but with important qualifiers.
 

Adam Lenhardt

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Feb 16, 2001
Messages
26,972
Location
Albany, NY
It's been a while since my last update:

The Hollow by Agatha Christie. An unusual Hercule Poirot novel in two important ways: First, Poirot is surrounded for a change by characters that are on-the-whole as smart as he is. Even the police inspector handling the case is portrayed as being competent, insightful and very good at his job. Poirot speaks to Inspector Grange as a collegue and keeps his usual condescension to a minimum. Second, the story is almost entirely story-driven rather than plot-driven. The lives of these people are complex and more fully fleshed out than Christie's usual suspects and foils. Here she is more preoccupied with how they relate to one another than how they relate to the crime. The result feels more like a typical Miss Marple mystery than a typical Poirot mystery. Unfortunately, this book continues the Poirot series tradition of too-clever endings; Christie can't resist a murderer that couldn't possibly have done it, and that makes pinpointing the perpetrator easier than it should be. That being said, the impressive characterizations still make this one of the more memorable and worthwhile Poirot tales.

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. When the author was a freshman at Syracuse University, she was brutally assaulted and raped in a tunnel on campus. In the aftermath, she was told she was lucky: another girl in that same tunnel had been murdered and dismembered. It is the latter, more dire fate that befalls her 14-year-old protagonist Susie Salmon (like the fish) here. What follows is Susie's unrelentingly sentimental and remarkably charitable first-person retelling of the events following her murder as she looks on from heaven.
This is not a happy story, because nothing about the death of a fourteen-year-old -- especially under such horrific circumstances -- can be. Because only her elbow was recovered by police, her family is plagued with the uncertainty of a horrific event not quite proven. Susie, in turn, is plagued with the helplessness of being unable to share what she knows only too well. She also yearns for the future Mr. Garvey stole from her as she watches her family mourn, grow, change and evolve. Some of the most poignant moments come from Susie watching the milestones of her younger sister's life, knowing that she herself will never get to experience them.
Large stretches of the story are mired in debilitating misery of best and most affirming sort. Unlike the cold, isolating suburbia of most post-war literature, Susie left behind a place and time where she was wholly and truly loved. Her father Jack is the most sympathetic character besides Susie herself, his all-consuming grief destroying him even as he keeps it mostly locked in with masculine restraint. Truly a parent in a way hardly any literary fathers are allowed to be, the moments when he grapples with how to love his living children under the weight of his daughter's memory are positively heartbreaking. It doesn't take him long to correctly deduce, partly through instinct and partly through perspectiion, that his next-door neighbor raped, murdered and dismembered his daughter his oldest daughter. His inability to prove anything is even more heartbreaking. Her sister Lindsey was the smarter, taller, more athletic and more graceful sister. Susie would have been stuck in her shadow had she lived, but instead Lindsey is stuck in the shadow of the dead girl she so closely mirrors. Her strategy to break free involves embracing adulthood as prematurely as possible; the goal is to put as many miles as possible between herself and the sister she lost.
Susie's father and sister are the only family members with the strength to confront their grief directly. The youngest sibling, Buckley, is too young to process his loss. Their mother is overwhelmed by sorrow for a daughter she loved but never desired. A feminist archetype long stricken with Betty Friedan's "Problem That Has No Name" her characterization is the most shallow. Her mother is far more interesting, a woman who looks at the loss of a grandchild as the latest in a string of miseries to be comfortably paved over with a steady diet of alcohol. As a veteran of misery, she finds herself in the best shape to make tactical decisions that will keep the family from unraveling.
There is a subgenre of the modern novel that I like to call tragedy porn within which authors like Jodi Picoult are building a career. This story should not be so easily dismissed. While the foundational event is undenibly tragic, the ripples from Susie's life drew those whom she loved together and helped them fit. Sentimental in the best sense of the word.

Five more to come when I'm a little less sleep deprived...
 

DaveF

Moderator
Senior HTF Member
Joined
Mar 4, 2001
Messages
28,687
Location
Catfisch Cinema
Real Name
Dave
Originally Posted by Ockeghem

One of the key topics in Lewis's "Great War" with Barfield was whether imagination -- and I hold that literature is an expressive projection of the imagination -- is a valid road to (philosophic) truth. (To state it more succinctly, whether imagination is a valid road to truth.) I think so. Lewis' response was quite nuanced. Originally, in their argument (which went on for years), he did not accept the imaginative route as valid. I think he came to accept it as such, but with important qualifiers.
I'm a fan of Lewis and have read Narnia many times over the years and his popular apolgetics books at least once. But I've never heard of this "Great War" nor of this Barfield. Can you elaborate? It seems I've long missed some interesting Lewis material.
 

Joseph DeMartino

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Jun 30, 1997
Messages
8,311
Location
Florida
Real Name
Joseph DeMartino
I'm also a fan of Lewis (Screwtape is a particular favorite.) Barfield was a British poet and philosopher, a friend of Lewis's from Barfield's first year at Oxford and a founding member of the Inklings, the informal literary society that Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkein began there. (The Inklings were the successor group to the Coal-Biters, which had gathered to read all of the Icelandic sagas in the original language. Once that project was completed, the group died a natural death, but a core group found that they enjoyed one another's company so much that they continued meeting to discuss other things they had read in common, and eventually to read out and critique each member's own work. The Inklings were the first audience for The Lord of The Rings and a number of Lewis's works. According to Lewis's brother Warren, who was also a member, "Properly speaking the Inklings was neither a club nor a literary society, though it partook of the nature of both. There were no rules, officers, agendas, or formal elections." They generally met in Lewis's rooms at Cambridge each Thursday evening, and often met at a near-by pub - The Eagle & Child, which they nicknamed "The Bird and Baby" - for lunch on Tuesdays.)

Barfield was a devotee of a religio-philosopical movement called anthroposophy, which Lewis considered rank superstition during his atheist period, the period of "The Great War". Lewis, of course, ultimately came to religious belief himself, first to a belief in God in 1929, followed two years later by his conversion to Christianity. That final conversion was helped along mightily, according to Lewis himself, but a long, late-night walk and conversation about the very issues at stake in his debates with Barfield - truth and the imagination. The conversation wasn't with Barfield, however. It was with Tolkein and Hugo Dyson, another academic and Inkling, and an expert on Shakespeare. (Dyson was a fan of Tolkein as a person, but not of his writing. He preferred Inklings meetings where they just talked and no one read their work. He was known to shout, "Oh God! No more Elves!" during the months when Tolkein was reading LotR to the group. Tolkein eventually gave up reading at the meetings, or at least the ones Dyson attended. in an article about Tolkein's work and faith:


Myths, Lewis told Tolkien, were "lies and therefore worthless, even though breathed through silver."
"No," Tolkien replied. "They are not lies." Far from being lies they were the best way — sometimes the only way — of conveying truths that would otherwise remain inexpressible. We have come from God, Tolkien argued, and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily toward the true harbor, whereas materialistic "progress" leads only to the abyss and the power of evil.
"In expounding this belief in the inherent truth of mythology," wrote Tolkien's biographer, Humphrey Carpenter, "Tolkien had laid bare the center of his philosophy as a writer, the creed that is at the heart of The Silmarillion." It is also the creed at the heart of all his other work. His short novel, Tree and Leaf, is essentially an allegory on the concept of true myth, and his poem, "Mythopoeia," is an exposition in verse of the same concept.
Building on this philosophy of myth, Tolkien explained to Lewis that the story of Christ was the true myth at the very heart of history and at the very root of reality...

...Such a revelation changed Lewis' whole conception of Christianity, precipitating his conversion.
Regards,

Joe
 

Ockeghem

Ockeghem
Senior HTF Member
Deceased Member
Joined
Feb 1, 2007
Messages
9,417
Real Name
Scott D. Atwell
Joseph,

That's interesting and informative information. Thanks for posting.

I only found out years after the fact what C. S. Lewis' passions were before he wrote much of the fiction fans of his know and love. His work in medieval literature is also very good, and very enjoyable to read. Of course, one has to like that period (which I do in abundance as I am a medievalist) to appreciate fully his talents in this discipline.

I knew that he died the same day that President Kennedy was assassinated. What I did not know was that Aldous Huxley died on this same day as well.
 

Ockeghem

Ockeghem
Senior HTF Member
Deceased Member
Joined
Feb 1, 2007
Messages
9,417
Real Name
Scott D. Atwell
Reading this thread and similar threads, I've been wondering what my favorite authors (all-time) are these days. I used to play the 'greatest' game regarding composers, but eventually realized that subjectivity being what it is, it's pretty much a no-win situation. It's also not that important, other than as an academic exercise of sorts.

In any event, listing "favorites" in any expressive category -- music, or literature -- can be a vexing exercise, if consideration of other factors is invited in past the merely subjective (e.g., "I like it, it appeals to me ...," etc.).

For instance, there is a lot I like about Beowulf. Is there any basis for comparing its putative greatness with, say, the Illiad? Or Moby Dick? It's hard to say -- and, in casual exchanges, I'd say, impossible. I can say why I like it. I couldn't quickly explain why I think it is, or may be, considered great literature. In a list of 100 great works -- or authors (the author of Beowulf is not known of course) of European literature, the defense of counting it in, or leaving it out, I would leave to others. I don't have a real task with that burden.

C. S. Lewis, in the Letters I've been reading, talks about his fifteen-year composition process for a volume of the Oxford History of English Literature (OHEL). His volume was entitled "16th Century Literature Excluding Drama." (I have an edition of it at home.) He had to make a lot of choices, and defend them. His book Experiment in Criticism is also recommended reading at the academy. ;)
 

Philip Hamm

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Jan 23, 1999
Messages
6,874
I just finished Trade-Off: Why Some Things Catch On, and Others Don't by Kevin Maney. Highly recommended! Kevin takes an interesting look at business through a lens which evaluates opportunities in terms of "convenience" and "fidelity". On the "Convenience" side, stuff is easy to access, cheap, not particularly the best quality but good enough. On the "Fidelity" side, things have "aura" (such as luxury goods) or are perceived to be among the best quality products and experiences available. Most successful products and services end up either offering high fidelity or high convenience.

One of Maney's examples is music delivery. The highest convenience solution is MP3s and Itunes and MP3 players. The music you want is a few clicks of a mouse away and you can easily have it anywhere you want. The quality may not be the best, but the cheap price and ease of use make the model successful. At the other end of the "fidelity" spectrum is the act of attending a live concert. The actual quality of the music you hear may not be good in many venues. However, the experience of watching your favorite musicians actually play in front of you (and be able to tell people that you were there), for many people, is worth the extreme inconvenience involved. You have to buy an expensive ticket, travel to a venue, park, go to your seats. It's about the least convenient way to hear a song possible, but is hugely successful because of the quality of the experience.

Maney brings through many interesting case studies in the course of the book, and offers many other observations. A very interesting concept he brings up is the "fidelity mirage", the idea of offering a product or service which is both high fidelity and high convenience. Over and over again, people try to reach the fidelity mirage, and every time they fail. Maney brings up some compelling examples of failures in attempts to reach the "Fidelity mirage" in his book, including the Starbucks coffee chain.

Personally, when reading the book and Maney's example of the "Fidelity mirage" and how it is such an enticing business proposition, I thought of the whole concept of Satellite Radio as a very good case study in the concept.

Highly recommended!!

www.amazon.com/Trade-Off-Some-Things-Catch-Others/dp/038552594X/ref=sr_1_1
 

Sam Posten

Moderator
Premium
HW Reviewer
Senior HTF Member
Joined
Oct 30, 1997
Messages
33,674
Location
Aberdeen, MD & Navesink, NJ
Real Name
Sam Posten
Originally Posted by Andy Sheets Also for CSL. If you've never read the Screwtape letters, now is the perfect time to start.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned The Road, by the author of No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy. Despite having SIX novels here at my desk I'm in the middle of, The Road and No Country are the only books I've actually finished this year. The Road is coming to theaters soon, starring Ewan McGregor. No Country as a book outdoes the Coen's Movie, which says a LOT.
http://www.amazon.com/Road-Cormac-McCarthy/dp/0307265439

Still unfinished:
Watership Down.
Closing time (sequel to Catch 22)
Liseys Story
The Last Templar
Einstein
1776 (cannot get into this one)
The Dark House

After those and a couple more Kings I never got around to I wanna read Choke and Pygmy since I liked Fight Club so much, just havent picked em up yet...
 

Paul D G

Screenwriter
Joined
Dec 25, 2001
Messages
1,914
Quote:
Originally Posted by DaveF

Finished listening to audiobook of Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer. Quite interesting book. As with his Into Thin Air, it was an exciting, tragic story of extreme outdoorsmanship.
Just this past weekend there was a PBS documentary on this story. The filmmaker followed in McCandless' footsteps and interviewed a number of people who knew him. One guy, it turns out, had found his backpack in the bus (which the police foolishly and completely missed). It was believed to be empty but he found a hidden compartment which contained numerous forms of ID for Chris, plus $300 in cash. This implies that maybe he intended to return if his adventure failed.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Top