She should! I do not know much of her work, but her rendition of Judith Slaying Holofernes has a certain muscularity to it that I particularly enjoy.
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What are you reading? (June 2017)
- Thread starter Maklershed
- Start date
She should! I do not know much of her work, but her rendition of Judith Slaying Holofernes has a certain muscularity to it that I particularly enjoy.
I'm about 40% of the way through the Brocade Guards book, and it's really interesting so far. It covers a period of Chinese history I was unfamiliar with: the Jingnan Rebellion near the beginning of the Ming Dynasty. It's a pretty fascinating conflict with the Prince of Yan starting with 800 men on one side and the Jiangwen Emperor with one million men on the other. It looks like the fallout from this war will fill out the rest of the book.
I don't know why I couldn't get into Night's Master. I adored Tanith Lee's Wolf Tower series when I was younger.
I don't know why I couldn't get into Night's Master. I adored Tanith Lee's Wolf Tower series when I was younger.
It depends on what you like, I suppose. This reads like mythology, and so might come off as a little bit predictable at times (although there have been plenty of surprises). I personally was always interested in reading mythology (Greek, and especially Hindu/Indian mythology). I will definitely try some of her other works, as this format of loosely connected mythological stories does have its limits.
Zelenogorsk
Banned
I finished Gerald's Game. Not crazy about the ending but as far as the first 300 pages go I'd say it's some of the best writing i've ever read from King.
I'm still working through Fool Moon but it's starting to wear on me. I knew I had a bias against urban fantasy when I started this series so this isn't too surprising. But i'll finish it eventually. These books are short after all.
A bunch of fantasy on my TBR so i'm not sure where to from here but probably Age of Myth or Kings of the Wyld. I've heard great things about both of em.
edit: I'm reading Kings of the Wyld and it's awesome.
I'm still working through Fool Moon but it's starting to wear on me. I knew I had a bias against urban fantasy when I started this series so this isn't too surprising. But i'll finish it eventually. These books are short after all.
A bunch of fantasy on my TBR so i'm not sure where to from here but probably Age of Myth or Kings of the Wyld. I've heard great things about both of em.
edit: I'm reading Kings of the Wyld and it's awesome.
MrOogieBoogie
BioShock Infinite is like playing some homeless guy's vivid imagination
I'm currently on the second of George R. R. Martin's Dunk & Egg novellas in the Knight of the Seven Kingdoms collection, and I'm loving these stories.
I'm reminded once more just how talented a writer Martin is, especially at developing real characters and real history of time and place. I believe everything in this world.
I'm reminded once more just how talented a writer Martin is, especially at developing real characters and real history of time and place. I believe everything in this world.
sparky2112
Member
FINALLY finished:
Very long, very good. For everyone who thinks the Constitution is the end-all-be-all, its wording is sufficiently vague enough to have had to rely on Washington's precedent to solidify how we still interpret it. As single-volume bios of GW are concerned, this is probably the place to start. It seems that his voluminous papers have taken two-ish centuries to wrangle into something coherent, and Chernow certainly benefited from those efforts.
Now onto:
which won The Booker and is, accordingly, quite good. At times, the writing is achingly beautiful.
And this:
The author was interviewed on Fresh Air this week, and just listening to all the 'continuity of government' plans - including two small 'towns' burrowed into mountains that remain active today in the event of catastrophe (think Dick Cheney's (shudder) 'undisclosed location' on 9/11)...well, it's fascinating.
Very long, very good. For everyone who thinks the Constitution is the end-all-be-all, its wording is sufficiently vague enough to have had to rely on Washington's precedent to solidify how we still interpret it. As single-volume bios of GW are concerned, this is probably the place to start. It seems that his voluminous papers have taken two-ish centuries to wrangle into something coherent, and Chernow certainly benefited from those efforts.
Now onto:
which won The Booker and is, accordingly, quite good. At times, the writing is achingly beautiful.
And this:
The author was interviewed on Fresh Air this week, and just listening to all the 'continuity of government' plans - including two small 'towns' burrowed into mountains that remain active today in the event of catastrophe (think Dick Cheney's (shudder) 'undisclosed location' on 9/11)...well, it's fascinating.
Kyleripman
Member
About to start (thanks to gaf recs):
Edit: looks like my library loan expired before I got around to this one. Whoops!
Edit: looks like my library loan expired before I got around to this one. Whoops!
It is completely unreasonable.
But wait, I had no idea that Penric's Mission finally had a sequel.
Maybe try the Vorkosigan books? Their flavor is different from the Chalion books, but it's still Lois McMaster Bujold and they're still great.
By the way, are the newer Foreigner books any good? I loved the first couple of trilogies, but I don't know if I need more beyond that. {I tend to substitute "atevi" for "Japanese")
It is completely unreasonable.
But wait, I had no idea that Penric's Mission finally had a sequel.
Mira's Last Dance, you lucky boy.
I dunno, because I only got about six in before giving up
And sadly I've read all the Vorkosigan books and novellas. I guess I'll try The Sharing Knife.Sadly, the Sharing Knife and the Spirit Ring aren't as good as Bujold's other books.I dunno, because I only got about six in before giving up
I dunno, because I only got about six in before giving up
Did you ever get around to reading The Goblin Emperor? I can't remember if we talked about it.
Michel Faber's superb novel will, if nothing else, definitely not make you want to travel back in time to the London of 1875, which has been conjured onto the page as a miasma of deeply unpleasant odors and things you must avoid stepping in or getting on your clothes. Rarely has a time period been depicted so vividly. But one shouldn't take from this that the novel is unpleasant to read, in any sense; Faber's prose is consistently engaging, and has a lively narrative voice that is in some ways a mimic of 19th century prose styles (talking to the audience every so often as if telling a story). It's an adaptive narrative voice, as well, shifting between a number of very different characters, from the very cynical (even if at times still hopeful) main character Sugar to, say, the childish whimsy and pathos of Sophie Rackham, who never grates as one fears she might.
Michel Faber's superb novel will, if nothing else, definitely not make you want to travel back in time to the London of 1875, which has been conjured onto the page as a miasma of deeply unpleasant odors and things you must avoid stepping in or getting on your clothes. Rarely has a time period been depicted so vividly. But one shouldn't take from this that the novel is unpleasant to read, in any sense; Faber's prose is consistently engaging, and has a lively narrative voice that is in some ways a mimic of 19th century prose styles (talking to the audience every so often as if telling a story). It's an adaptive narrative voice, as well, shifting between a number of very different characters, from the very cynical (even if at times still hopeful) main character Sugar to, say, the childish whimsy and pathos of Sophie Rackham, who never grates as one fears she might.
I bought this novel awhile ago and have it on my shelf! I can see it from where I am seated, and it stares at me, judging.
It's not judging me nearly as much as James Smythe's copy of The Explorer sitting right next to it that I haven't read either, though. <___________<
Heh, it took me a few months to get around to reading my copy. The length means it's a bit of a commitment.
I did and we did
Excellent.
Have you read The Golem and the Jinni? I know you are against properly updating your Goodreads, so checking that is unreliable. >:|
I confess, I do have commitment issues with very large books. It's even larger looking because it's not a mass market paperback!
TharpDaddy
Member
Reading The Dark Tower series atm, giving it a second shot. Now that i'm past the slog of the 2nd book (I really didn't like the modern day stuff) it's easier to stick with.
After this series i'm finally going to read the Lord of the Rings books. For some reason I've never given them a read, but it's so integral to today's fantasy that i'm doing myself a huge disservice by having that gap.
After this series i'm finally going to read the Lord of the Rings books. For some reason I've never given them a read, but it's so integral to today's fantasy that i'm doing myself a huge disservice by having that gap.
Yeah I think it was just not what I expected from the author at all. I enjoyed reading mythology when I was younger (haven't really gotten back into it though) so maybe I'll pick it up again someday.
I am about 85% of the way through Red Mars now. Things are coming to a head. I also sort of spoiled myself on a few things trying to look up a character on a wiki page.
Basically, that some of these people live 200 years to make it to the third novel which I already knew was set way in the future
Maklershed
Member
Michel Faber's superb novel will, if nothing else, definitely not make you want to travel back in time to the London of 1875, which has been conjured onto the page as a miasma of deeply unpleasant odors and things you must avoid stepping in or getting on your clothes. Rarely has a time period been depicted so vividly. But one shouldn't take from this that the novel is unpleasant to read, in any sense; Faber's prose is consistently engaging, and has a lively narrative voice that is in some ways a mimic of 19th century prose styles (talking to the audience every so often as if telling a story). It's an adaptive narrative voice, as well, shifting between a number of very different characters, from the very cynical (even if at times still hopeful) main character Sugar to, say, the childish whimsy and pathos of Sophie Rackham, who never grates as one fears she might.
Oh shit, Victorian era London setting is my jam and this sounds interesting but 922 pages? Hmm
Ouch, that hurts.
Speaking of recommendations, I'm interested in learning up on Indian history so are there any good overviews I can check up? I'd imagine that anything useful will have to start substantially earlier than Alexander's invasion.
Funyarinpa
Member
How is S. ("The Ship of Theseus")?
Really intrigued but is it worth the price? Loved House of Leaves.
Really intrigued but is it worth the price? Loved House of Leaves.
What hurts?
The back and forth between the two characters is compelling enough but there is something lacking about the rest of the novel. It's just...bland in comparison. It's a shame because the novel has an interesting gimmick otherwise.
Michel Faber's superb novel will, if nothing else, definitely not make you want to travel back in time to the London of 1875, which has been conjured onto the page as a miasma of deeply unpleasant odors and things you must avoid stepping in or getting on your clothes. Rarely has a time period been depicted so vividly. But one shouldn't take from this that the novel is unpleasant to read, in any sense; Faber's prose is consistently engaging, and has a lively narrative voice that is in some ways a mimic of 19th century prose styles (talking to the audience every so often as if telling a story). It's an adaptive narrative voice, as well, shifting between a number of very different characters, from the very cynical (even if at times still hopeful) main character Sugar to, say, the childish whimsy and pathos of Sophie Rackham, who never grates as one fears she might.
I have a mighty need.
The thing about long books. I'm about halfway through one that comes out to 6800 pages. It's weird to be reminded that 300,000 word books are actually very long.
I assume it is self-published and/or a fanfic.
There's a reason why no publisher will agree to publish anything anywhere near that length, even in parts
Out of curiosity, is it worm you're reading? I recall that one being somewhere around 6000 to 7000 pages if converted into an ebook format. Or something.
Chinese novels tend to be very long to begin with. The four classics are published in multiple volumes and range from about 800,000 to 1,000,000 words. Some of the most popular novels of the 20th century range from about 1-1.2 million words.I assume it is self-published and/or a fanfic.
There's a reason why no publisher will agree to publish anything anywhere near that length, even in parts
The one I'm reading started life as a webnovel, and these tend to be even longer. His first (successful) novel was 3.6 million words and was published in 11 or 12 volumes. Note that these aren't fly-by-night books. They're popular enough to get TV adaptations.
Nah, it's 锦衣夜行. I call it Brocade Guards, but that might not be the proper translation.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01BKD8YOE/?tag=neogaf0e-20
That's a good start on the poems.
If you're looking to get into his prose, maybe start with Tales of Ordinary Madness or Ham on Rye.
Max Armstrong
Member
Just finished A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki:
Fuck this book!
What a waste of my day. Who likes this shit? A lot of people it seems, the reviews on Goodreads are so great I thought I was in for a treat and even after the first few pages I thought, well this looks pretty good, but man I was wrong, wrong, wrong. It should have been a neat little story about a Japanese teenage girl lost in her own country after growing up in America, but it's also mixed with a story about a Canadian couple who somehow find her diary and we are buried under a pile of useless trivia about things that don't fucking matter at all and it turns into a fucking mess of zen bullshit, environmental save the planet soul spirit dream hippy midlife crisis schrödinger's cat quantum physic what the fuck is going on, and slowly the books drains your fucking life out of you until finally it's over and you can rest in peace knowing the worst is behind.
Fuck this book!
What a waste of my day. Who likes this shit? A lot of people it seems, the reviews on Goodreads are so great I thought I was in for a treat and even after the first few pages I thought, well this looks pretty good, but man I was wrong, wrong, wrong. It should have been a neat little story about a Japanese teenage girl lost in her own country after growing up in America, but it's also mixed with a story about a Canadian couple who somehow find her diary and we are buried under a pile of useless trivia about things that don't fucking matter at all and it turns into a fucking mess of zen bullshit, environmental save the planet soul spirit dream hippy midlife crisis schrödinger's cat quantum physic what the fuck is going on, and slowly the books drains your fucking life out of you until finally it's over and you can rest in peace knowing the worst is behind.
Wafflecakes
Member
Tried to read Red Sister recently.
Terrible book. Do not recommend.
1. Characters were bland and samey. Didn't care much about any of them
2. Foreshadowing was either nonexistent or hamfisted. Nothing between.
3. Descriptions were not nearly clear enough to be able to picture what was going on. The magic system still doesn't make much sense to me outside of the main character's powers.
4. Plot? What plot?
Terrible book. Do not recommend.
1. Characters were bland and samey. Didn't care much about any of them
2. Foreshadowing was either nonexistent or hamfisted. Nothing between.
3. Descriptions were not nearly clear enough to be able to picture what was going on. The magic system still doesn't make much sense to me outside of the main character's powers.
4. Plot? What plot?
Oh. Well, that's a bit silly. Though a 900 page novel would probably be closer to 450,000550,000 range depending on how dense each page was. The Book of the New Sun (816 pages) is ~390,000; the coda The Urth of the New Sun (327 pages) brings it to just over 500,000 words. I think most people would say that a book over 500 pages is long, though. Maybe not long relative to the biggest books, but long compared to a typical book.
Anyway, I hope I didn't make you think I avoid reading long books. You should read that to mean that I procrastinate on starting them, not that I don't read them! I read maybe 1530 longer books a year.
Funyarinpa
Member
This book's the favorite novel of a close online friend of mine, goddamn I wasn't expecting that teardown lol.
Finished this:
Utterly tedious. And frankly misleading, the brief synopsis on the back which is quite intriguing lasts all of a couple of chapters and then it descends into utter pretentious tedium. The end is complete balls.
Also this one:
Was only ok, I didn't find the dialogue especially believable and it was fairly predictable, but mildly entertaining.
Utterly tedious. And frankly misleading, the brief synopsis on the back which is quite intriguing lasts all of a couple of chapters and then it descends into utter pretentious tedium. The end is complete balls.
Also this one:
Was only ok, I didn't find the dialogue especially believable and it was fairly predictable, but mildly entertaining.
Max Armstrong
Member
I mean if your friend fits into all that zen shit stereotype I can totally understand how they could eat this shit up. Every good review for the book on Goodreads is written by someone who looks exactly like how I pictured the main characters in the subplot.
Thanks for this. I'm mainly looking for a novel to dig my teeth into so i'll go for either of your two recommendations. I'll keep his poems in mind too!
Yeah, that's a pretty normal way to look at it. For the longest time, the longest book I ever read was the Lord of the Rings, and it rings in at 481K words. The first book to top that for me was To Green Angel Tower by Tad Williams at 520K, and that's pretty much my standard until I started reading Chinese novels.
Over Christmas, I started reading Huang Yi's Twin Dragons of the Tang Dynasty, and it's a gargantuan book - around 5 million words. The writer I'm reading right now started writing seriously in 2006, and he's been writing 2 million words a year. It's nuts how books like this destroy all sense of perspective (and time). If the lists of the longest novels started including Chinese novels, other books may not make those lists any more.
There was a kind of ur-magic realism ambiance to all of the short stories, and I liked the weird ones the most, in particular, Orbis Tertius, Babylon Lottery, and The Library of Babel. I suppose I enjoy musings on the shape of the world. I'm going to reread the Prologue now because sometimes I wasn't sure if Borges was writing fiction or non-fiction.
Is there a point to the length of those novels?
For instance, I've read The Story of the Stone, a 2500 page Chinese novel that in the English translation is probably around 11.2 million words, and the length is justified just by the sheer scope of the cast, which basically amounts to a small village of several hundred individuals and the attempt to recreate a world in copious detail. It's the same for other really long Chinese novels I've read, like Journey to the West or Three Kingdoms. What are they doing with all of that space in Twin Dragons of the Tang Dynasty?
And do they manage to maintain some kind of unity over the course of that length? Like, The Lord of the Rings is really one book, and while The Book of the New Sun was published separately as four books and a coda, it only makes sense as one book and a coda. But something like The Wheel of Time (over 4 million) books or A Song of Ice and Fire books (around 2 million) don't even aspire to come across as a something other than individual entries. It's difficult to hear you say five million for a novel without me thinking, "... This is why we invented editors."
Lily and the Octopus
Just finished this. Was pretty good, I mean he's a good writer, but I feel like pet books a lot of the emotional weight is un-earned, cause you can just describe any pet relationship and its going to resonate with people and the main character is fairly annoying, specially early on, but you get used to it or it gets better. So I'd recommend the book.
Going to tear into this one next:
The Count of Monte Cristo
Lord help me. Even Mr Dumas has that "bitch please" look on his face at the start of this endeavor
Are these actual singular novels, or are they closer to something like Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, which has its many connected sub-arcs as "books" but really only makes sense if you read the entire thing?
Even as a series, I don't see how you keep something going fresh for 6 million words.
It really depends. The books I'm talking about are all historical novels with an immense amount of detail and lot of historical figures so they're going to be really long to begin with. The Twin Dragons novel is also a wuxia adventure so it'll also have a ton of fictional characters and factions. Here's its ridiculously long character list.
On the other hand, even though it's one of the most popular Chinese novels in the last couple of decades, I think that it could definitely trimmed down a bit. I've put in on hiatus for the time being partly because of this, and partly because I've picked up Yue Guan's books and Yue Guan is a much better writer. The Brocade Guards book I'm reading right now is a historical novel set in the early Ming Dynasty, and it has a crazy amount of detail. Everything from the social system, to foreign affairs, to court politics, to warfare, to economics, and so on. It weighs in at 3.8 million words, and they're all justified.
The longer Chinese novels are all serial works, the older ones were published in newspapers and the newer ones start out as webnovels. As such, they're continually written and released so they don't really break down into individual books. When they get published as physical books I don't think that the individual volumes even get their own titles.
They're singular novels. The volumes are usually just the title of the book and the number of the volume. Here's the Amazon listing of the Twin Dragons novel.
This post makes the Chinese books that you are talking about seem more like a prose (and no doubt more sophisticated) version of what other countries do as comics/manga.