Das Book: the very new reading thread

[hannah]

f'real, though, the older kid from squid and the whale is my guess, you know, the older brother of the pepsi girl.  ok. twice today i've mentioned pepsi ad campaigns. and i can't seem to capitalize. good night!

[guanajuato]

I loved Kavalier and Clay. Milly, wanna fight?

also Greg, I read some Arsene Lupin stories in French class when I was a kid and loved them, but I don't remember them very well.

what do you like about the amazing adventures...?

[dieblucasdie]

Also, we'll be lucky if Zach Braff doesn't end up directing the thing.

I fear for the world's safety now that he doesn't have Scrubs to keep him busy.

[maggiego]

As for the novel, I love Chabon's prose, and I love the ambition of it. I can see how the middle stuff (in particular the war stuff) pushes the structure too far perhaps, but I dunno, I loved even that chapter. I loved both leads and also Rosa. I just cannot imagine fitting all that into a single film, so I hope they don't even try, and opt instead to just take on the primary narrative. Then again, they might bugger that, too.

More IMDB: The director is the English dude who did Billy Elliot. I liked Billy Elliot well enough I guess, and certainly more than I liked Garden fucking State.

[hannah]

He also did The Hours.

[dieblucasdie]

Well, and I was just looking into it, and it's already had like, 3 different directors.  At one point it was supposed to have Tobey Macguire and Natalie Portman, at one point Jude Law.  Looks like a clusterfuck.

if it makes you feel better Chabon adapted it.

[guanajuato]

As for the novel, I love Chabon's prose, and I love the ambition of it. I can see how the middle stuff (in particular the war stuff) pushes the structure too far perhaps, but I dunno, I loved even that chapter. I loved both leads and also Rosa. I just cannot imagine fitting all that into a single film, so I hope they don't even try, and opt instead to just take on the primary narrative. Then again, they might bugger that, too.

More IMDB: The director is the English dude who did Billy Elliot. I liked Billy Elliot well enough I guess, and certainly more than I liked Garden fucking State.

yeah, is there any better prose-writer working today?  i dunno. maybe jonathan lethem before he wrote the abortion called fortress of solitude. which he followed up with the dwarven-rape called you don't love met yet. i cringe, i cringe.

i really like his chabon's writing too. i guess i just didn't like that book so much. 

[Andrew_TSKS]

fortress of solitude is awesome, but you don't love me yet was pretty cringeworthy once it got going.

[elpollodiablo]

It looked awesome. AWFUL (that is what you get when you try to post while on the phone)

I thought FoS was quite good. The first 1/4 of it is utterly fantastic, though it does falter some toward the end. I liked that it gave a little insight into the whole Bennington/early 90s literary brat pack thing.

jordanmichael if you're reading this you should know that there are at least three novels out there that present fictionalized versions of your place of learning. Though I don't know how you could be going to school there and be unaware of it.

[Lucy]

I just read the new Denis Johnson (Tree of Smoke) and really enjoyed it. I wish I had revisited Jesus' Son before reading it so I could do a better job comparing the two, but his writing is still clean while never feeling sterile, and it moves along so well. It owes a bit to the Quiet American, and does a nice job of tying together the CIA, military and humanitarian involvement in Vietnam without relying on clearly delineated sides.

[davy]

I just read the new Denis Johnson (Tree of Smoke) and really enjoyed it. I wish I had revisited Jesus' Son before reading it so I could do a better job comparing the two, but his writing is still clean while never feeling sterile, and it moves along so well. It owes a bit to the Quiet American, and does a nice job of tying together the CIA, military and humanitarian involvement in Vietnam without relying on clearly delineated sides.

i recommend the name of the world. you can read it in a day, and it's my favorite thing by johnson. one of the best love stories ever. i think. i mean, i think it was a love story. there's this one scene... jesus...it's good.

[davy]

i'm reading tad williams right now. i got this epic fantasy bug that just ain't going away, and i read somewhere that tad williams' memory, sorrow & time series is what inspired george r.r. martin to write a song of ice and fire.

i'm about 75 pages in, and it's pretty good so far. he's a good enough writer to make it work, so i'll see where the story takes me.

[coldforge]

maggie


kavalier and klay is not good at all.

[elpollodiablo]

Michael Chabon is precious and overrated WAKE UP AMERICA

[guanajuato]

i'm reading tad williams right now. i got this epic fantasy bug that just ain't going away, and i read somewhere that tad williams' memory, sorrow & time series is what inspired george r.r. martin to write a song of ice and fire.

i'm about 75 pages in, and it's pretty good so far. he's a good enough writer to make it work, so i'll see where the story takes me.

I read those books when I was younger. I never really was sure what to think about them. You're on the money, Tad is a decent writer, but goddamn if he doesn't write a lot of background noise that can get a bit mind boggling after a while. I think it gets worse as it goes on, as the over-description drives one slightly mad. And they are big books too. He has this other series called Otherland, which is even bigger, and is full of brilliant set pieces, but again --- like the Dragonbone Chair, gets bogged down in overblown description.

I generally try to keep with most speculative fiction. If you're on a kick like that, and you find Tad a bit ... much, I recommend you try Joe Abercrombie which is kind of a cross between George R R Martin and Robert Howard, and a lot more readable than that combo might sound. Also, Stephen R Donaldson just published another book in his Thomas Convenant trilogy, I've been meaning to get around to reading (I have it in my TBR pile which is mounting daily as I'm just now trying to shoot past Hart and Boot by Tim Pratt a mostly unsung Kelly Link like short story writer as well as Chabon's new one and some Updike who I've not read much of but I am begging to agree with David Foster Wallace's infamous panning of Updike in Harper's or the New Yorker or wherever as being a sexy man pervert - LITERARY ASSASSINATION = YOU GOTTA LOVE IT, BITCHES!)

Epic fantasy is a genre where you end up having a few great ones, and a whole lotta bad ones who ape the good ones. I think Tad is sort of in there, near the top, but I think there's a wash between him and a writer like Martin who has pretty much gone out there and started busting some MOTHERFUCKING teeth. (Steven Erikson's good, especially the more of it you read, I don't know why it works like that but they are such enormous books filled with hundreds of characters that you end up liking them better and better as each volume comes out which is an inversion of the usual situation -- ala Jordan -- where each volume is systematically worse).

Oh, and an excellent author to watch out for, R Scott Bakker, a Canadian, has written some great books, darker and grimier than Martin even. He's probably a genius.

You may already be familiar with these writers, Davy, but just in case...

[Almanzo]

As an embarrassing, overweight lover of epic fantasy, I've never been able to get into GRR Martin even though he's THE guy in the field right now. His stuff just feels too much like "historical fiction" to me - there's not enough monsters, not enough magic, not enough world building, just lots and lots of too-realistic medieval castles.

On the other hand, I think that Steven Erickson is basically the greatest thing to happen to the genre in about 50 years. The guy's stuff is amazing, challenging, engrossing, and starts out completely impenetrable instead of hitting you with glossaries or a protagonist that's just as in-the-woods as you are so you learn everything through his eyes.

[guanajuato]

As an embarrassing, overweight lover of epic fantasy, I've never been able to get into GRR Martin even though he's THE guy in the field right now. His stuff just feels too much like "historical fiction" to me - there's not enough monsters, not enough magic, not enough world building, just lots and lots of too-realistic medieval castles.

On the other hand, I think that Steven Erickson is basically the greatest thing to happen to the genre in about 50 years. The guy's stuff is amazing, challenging, engrossing, and starts out completely impenetrable instead of hitting you with glossaries or a protagonist that's just as in-the-woods as you are so you learn everything through his eyes.

Really? I'm kinda shocked. I can kinda see what you mean, but I think GRRM by adding a dose of reality has upped the game. I'm all for Erikson because he's doing some outrageously good work, yet especially his first couple mad-sized volumes feel less than essential (I think he's grown a lot as a writer and it really starts to show around book three and book four which is where I was able to start caring about his characters). GRRM has yet to write a bad word in those books, a word out of place, or anything that could be considered 'filler'. But on the Erickson kick, have you read any Ian Cameron Esslemont? They created the Malaz world together, and were both, what anthropologists? http://www.amazon.co.uk/Night-Knives-Ian-Cameron-Esslemont/dp/1904619185

If you like Erikson, have you tried Bakker, the dude from Canada? He's something else.

[Andrew_TSKS]

hey jon, all of those writers are getting really popular with my store's epic fantasy readers lately (other than martin, who has been THE man for a while), and it's generally with the more intelligent readers who like some of the same stuff i do, rather than the jordan/salvatore fanatics. so i've been considering checking all of them out. i'm really hesitant to jump into the middle of some ridiculously long and as-yet-unfinished epic fantasy series, though. not looking forward to the idea of getting jordan-ed.

[Almanzo]

As an embarrassing, overweight lover of epic fantasy, I've never been able to get into GRR Martin even though he's THE guy in the field right now. His stuff just feels too much like "historical fiction" to me - there's not enough monsters, not enough magic, not enough world building, just lots and lots of too-realistic medieval castles.

On the other hand, I think that Steven Erickson is basically the greatest thing to happen to the genre in about 50 years. The guy's stuff is amazing, challenging, engrossing, and starts out completely impenetrable instead of hitting you with glossaries or a protagonist that's just as in-the-woods as you are so you learn everything through his eyes.

Really? I'm kinda shocked. I can kinda see what you mean, but I think GRRM by adding a dose of reality has upped the game. I'm all for Erikson because he's doing some outrageously good work, yet especially his first couple mad-sized volumes feel less than essential (I think he's grown a lot as a writer and it really starts to show around book three and book four which is where I was able to start caring about his characters). GRRM has yet to write a bad word in those books, a word out of place, or anything that could be considered 'filler'. But on the Erickson kick, have you read any Ian Cameron Esslemont? They created the Malaz world together, and were both, what anthropologists? http://www.amazon.co.uk/Night-Knives-Ian-Cameron-Esslemont/dp/1904619185

If you like Erikson, have you tried Bakker, the dude from Canada? He's something else.

I know about the whole relationship and "shared creation" of Malazan, but I haven't read the Esslemont. I don't think it's really come out over here, and I haven't been driven to import it or anything. I'm actually at a kind of breaking point with Malazan where I just want to wait until it's completely done, then read the entire thing in one stretch because I've already had to re-read a few of the books to keep up.

I don't really understand why I can't get into GRRM - I really don't. I feel almost guilty.

I'm an unabashed Robert Jordan fan - at least through the first five books or so. He totally took a nosedive into the toilet, but I have so much affection for those first five.

[guanajuato]

hey jon, all of those writers are getting really popular with my store's epic fantasy readers lately (other than martin, who has been THE man for a while), and it's generally with the more intelligent readers who like some of the same stuff i do, rather than the jordan/salvatore fanatics. so i've been considering checking all of them out. i'm really hesitant to jump into the middle of some ridiculously long and as-yet-unfinished epic fantasy series, though. not looking forward to the idea of getting jordan-ed.

yeah, andrew, these folks are doing some damn good work. i suggest bakker if you've read martin already (and it sounds like you have). i think he's a head above erickson, just because erickson's early books (in my opinion) suffera little as far as characterization, whereas bakker's works are like getting run over by a train right at the start. his books seem like alien fragments, and he's probably the closest any epic fantasy writer except tolken has come to writing major literature out of the genre (though martin does, also, on a good day). although it's not the same on a textual level, reading bakker's books, seems to have the same underpinnings that fans of speculative fiction once upon a time might have felt when they first picked up the shadow of the torturer or something. an alien fragment that you can't quite decipher the use of. except in this case, these are big books, and there's a certain amount of horror to them that gene wolfe doesn't usually expose. a grimy, bloody aftertaste that a lesser writer would attempt to fake or submerge in the text, bakker brings forward. it's really exciting speculative fiction, dressed up as epic fantasy. of course, line for line, wolfe breaks down the competition, but wolfe also, line for line, destroys 99% of 'mainstream lit mongers' and brings the noise.

that a sense of alien is alive and well, speaks well for a future in books.

i have a quiet theory that as the reading level drops among the majority of peeps, the reading level increases in the minority of peeps, so that certain books, released now, are absolutely essential because the authors are bringing something to the page that was unknown, even ten years ago. but i also feel the best work is being done in speculative fiction rather than the mainstream. it's almost like the mainstream has become the genre ghetto, which is quite strange. i like it, because it's... about time speculative fiction came out of the closet. obvs, mainstream lit has become more speculative in the meantime...but it's a gross thing, like, 'don't worry people won't think you're into speculative fiction because so and so wrote it'...

i'm off on a tangent because i'm passionate about this! sorry!

[Andrew_TSKS]

it made sense to me all the way through, and i agree with the great majority of it. i bet pollo will take issue with some of it though.

[lastclearchance]

yeah, is there any better prose-writer working today?  i dunno. maybe jonathan lethem before he wrote the abortion called fortress of solitude. which he followed up with the dwarven-rape called you don't love met yet. i cringe, i cringe.

I liked Kavalier and Clay when I read it but that was a few years ago; I agree with Julianne Shepherd that Junot Diaz did Lethem better than Lethem in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (though I have space in my heart for Lethem for being the bigger music nerd).

[guanajuato]

oh he'll come around. he's just inundated with his schoolwork and such, because he's on the prowl to be a professor and whatnot. it seems to me that it's always been speculative fiction, all the way through, but because of the dynamics of college, there's a strong impulse in colleges to teach century-old speculative fiction, on the one hand because it's teachable because the ins and outs have been noted, and on the other, because it's respectable and universal. plus, he's a total dickwad! just kidding pollo. i'd trust you to babysit. you're a good guy down in your nethers.

[guanajuato]

yeah, is there any better prose-writer working today?  i dunno. maybe jonathan lethem before he wrote the abortion called fortress of solitude. which he followed up with the dwarven-rape called you don't love met yet. i cringe, i cringe.

I liked Kavalier and Clay when I read it but that was a few years ago; I agree with Julianne Shepherd that Junot Diaz did Lethem better than Lethem in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (though I have space in my heart for Lethem for being the bigger music nerd).

that junot diaz looks pretty good, clearance! NICE!

[guanajuato]

i'm completely smashed by the way! someone bring me water from the well so i can lead my kid to his schoolbus in the morning, without forcing him to wear a cowbell around his neck while i stumble around and attempt to rape trees.