The Idiot Board Readers Corner - General Discussion

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

Are there any new stories that include SlingBlade?

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

Yes he is, and is funny.

Simply, buy it if you like Tucker's work and want to support independent authors. He might have mental issues (does) and might be a narcissistic asshole (is) but he is still an independent author who is very, very accessible.

The book itself is fine, it's the same-old same-old as IHTSBIH (which is the worst acronym ever, for the record) - the writing is the same, the stories are similar and the rest of the book follows through the exact same way.

What I will complain about is that is he tries to demonstrate a cerebral side to his stories but it always invariably ends up being "FUCK IT, LETS DO IT, I'M AWESOME!". Sometimes you don't have to show depth of character to make a funny story, especially a character as transparent as Tucker Max, oh well.

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

Yeah, what he said.

There wasn't a whole ton of SlingBlade in this one, but when he's on...he's on.

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

I need some information about speed reading. I've recently been feeling frustrated with my reading speed so I looked up some tips on how to read faster. I like the idea about reading more as a chunk of writing, but I also feel that it will take away from the style/pacing the author is trying to make. The advice to ignore commas and punctuation is particularly troubling to me.

Does anyone have any experience with this? Does this advice detract from reading or does it became natural?

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

I can read about 1100 words a minute, and my comprehension is still quite good. It depends; at that speed, I'm probably only going over about 60-70 percent of the words, and my eyes are centered in the middle of the line, as going from left to right at that speed becomes annoying. I also try not to vocalize the words in my head.

A lot of the time, I will read considerably slower (like 500-600 words a minute) if it's something I enjoy and really want to savor, which seems to occur with most literature I have completed recently.

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

I read at about 450-500 wpm. If I rush myself I can read at somewhere around the same speed as KIMaster and not really miss much, but I don't have the time to fully enjoy the literature or reflect while I'm reading. Honestly I wouldn't worry too much about your reading speed. Just make sure you take the time to get something out of what you're reading, and of course the time to enjoy. My opinion anyway.

That being said, I haven't read very much lately. Partially because I need breaks here and there, and partially because starting work out of college means I have less free time now. So I decided to stop into Barnes and Noble tonight. I took some time with Assholes Finish Fist and decided I'm not even going to buy it. It's not just because I'm older than when I read the first book, this one really is worse. Besides, talking about how awesome he is and how the girl he's fucking isn't emotionally stable just isn't that interesting. Congratulations are due to him for making it as a writer, but I think he's a one trick pony. The movie was downright awful and from what I read of his latest book, it was nearly as bad. I think I read about 60 pages, and at most snorted a couple times. Plus, while much of what he has to say about life is insightful, a lot of it happens to be pretty fucking stupid. I'm sorry, pussy is not the be all end all reason I do everything. I don't give a flying fuck what anyone says about that, or whether they personally believe it. People do a lot to impress women and get laid, it's not everything. In the end I picked up some other books I know will be good, and definitely better than Assholes Finish First.

Just to be clear, this post isn't about hating on Tucker, or anything like that. His material just doesn't do it for me anymore.

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

I would agree with this, too. As long as you're happy about your rate of consumption of literature, just read at whatever speed you are comfortable with.

Focus-

Just finished my second Terry Pratchett novel, Going Postal, the prequel to Making Money. It's set in the fantasy world of Discworld, which, despite magic, wizards, werewolves, golems, etc. functions remarkably similar to our own society.

This one follows Moist von Lipwig, a well-known swindler and robber who is seemingly hanged for his crimes. However, the despot of Ankh-Morpork, Lord Vetinari, spares his life, and makes him the local Postmaster, a remarkably dangerous job, as 5 Postmasters have died in the past 4 weeks.

While a very humorous, fast-paced, entertaining work, it also has some unexpectedly deep ideas about human nature and interaction.

I can easily see Pratchett is such a famous, beloved figure. The Discworld books are quick, well-written, damn exciting, but also have that additional layer of depth which makes them excellent.

Yeah, when I read Tucker write that on a message board, I was seriously confused.

Yes, there are absolutely guys whose main goal in life is to get as much attractive pussy as possible. There are also many guys for whom that's secondary or tertiary, and whose main impetus is anything from building a global business empire to playing the piano better than anyone in history.

From a purist point of view, I don't think anyone whose primary goal is pussy can ever truly be great at anything.

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

I've been reading The Big Sleep one of the "classics" of hardboiled literature, a genre I hadn't really been exposed to outside of reading and watching The Maltese Falcon in high school.

It's a fun read, it keeps you guessing to a point, and it flows well. Don't expect Don Quixote depth, but it's better than a lot of mystery style novels going to day

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

I just finished Jack Wakes Up, which is an entertaining crime fiction about a struggling, washed-up actor who's been away from the game for a couple years, due to his drug addictions. But after being sober for about a year, he gets caught up in another jam that is much more dangerous to his well-being--an extremely intense drug war.

It's written in the present tense, kind of reminiscent of the way American Psycho was scribed.

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

I just finished reading The Wrong God by Paul Guthrie last night, and I wanted to pimp it here, because Paul Guthrie is my dad.

Pops has a PhD in astrophysics, and worked for many years as an atmospheric chemist for NASA. We moved to Northern California in the early 90s, and he finally got talked into joining a tech startup, about six months before the bubble burst.

So...he's been unemployed/retired for about ten years now, and filled the time by writing a novel about a physicist who discovers an unexplained ability to manipulate his surroundings that can only be described as magic. The book probably qualifies as a thriller in the sense that it pits the portagonist against an ultra-fundamentalist Christian leader who wants to use the hero as an example of the second coming of God's prophet to lead a Christian army to conquer the world.

It's actually pretty well written, in my biased opinion, and the plot is well constructed. It's a quick read, but its only available electronically since it hasn't really been published yet, a fact that he's still working on if anyone knows any agents or anything like that.

Anyway, I think its worth reading, and if he gets stupid rich off it, maybe he'll give some of the money to me.

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

I just finished reading Flashman the Man and Flashman in the Great Game and really enjoyed both of them. They are part of the Flashman series of novels written by George MacDonald Fraser and are written under the guise that Sir Harry Paget Flashman is an officer of the British Army who is sent off on a series of adventures ranging from the first Anglo-Afghan War to the Indian Mutiny in 1857.

While the events that take place are historically accurate, the books are written with the pretext that the author (George Fraser) found the documents to Flashman's memoirs and is simply editing and publishing them. This isn't exactly true, but the detail and description of the events that surround Flashman while he is going through Afghanistan and India is amazing. George Fraser uses annotations and notes to confirm certain events Flashman could have actually lived through, which gives the books a certain credibility towards being accurate historical novels.

Personally, I enjoyed the Great Game a little better because I found the events that happened leading to and during India's War for Independence from the British Empire to be incredibly interesting. The attitude of the British towards the Indians and the detail into which the book goes as Flashman lives through the Meerut rebellion and the Seige of Cawporne and Lucknow make this book well worth the read. I read this one first and then went back to the beginning to read Flashman the Man. I'm about to start the next book Flashman's Lady, and if that one's any good, I'll probably read the series in its entirety.

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

I'm just finishing The Machine of Death, a collection of short stories edited by Ryan North (the guy responsible for Dinosaur Comics)

The stories all share a theme - there's a machine that can tell you how you will die. It might be vague, or ironic, but you will know. For example it may say "suicide" but you'll end up killed by a suicide bomber. The stories all deal with tales in the world where this exists, including implications on the creator. The stories are, by and large written by people popular in nerdy web humour circles - for example Randall Monroe, and Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw

Most of the stories are really, really good, though some of them seem to flow somewhat disjointedly, potentially as their writers are used to a very different medium.

You can buy it on amazon, but they also released it free on pdf:
<a class="postlink" href="http://machineofdeath.net/a/ebook" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://machineofdeath.net/a/ebook</a>

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

Assholes finish first I returned it before I finished it it was so bad. Understand I LOVED IHTSBIH. This book is the exact same fucking thing, exactly. Same format, same genre, same tired and silly one-liners.

What Tucker doesn't seem to grasp is that the way he describes things is so much more funny than the lame "You haven't been this excited since Brad Pitt took his shirt off in fight club" lines. His talking about the Duke admin was hilarious all the attempts at dumb jokes were awful.

I skipped ahead and read "Tuckerfest" and a couple more then I returned it the same day I bought it. I don't know maybe I outgrew his demographic or maybe I was just expecting something a tiny bit different, something a little bit fresh. I was sadly mistaken.

Don't waste your money on a hard back edition of this, and you can probably wait for all the story's to be posted on-line if your broke.

I think his run may be up after this, thanks for Rudius, IHTSBIH, and thousands of laughs.

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

While this story is at the surface about a man trying to save his wife from the pervasive darkness, the book tells a similarly dark story throughout history.

"fact may not be truth, and truth may not be factual"

Murakami shows us an ocean of stories all consisting of mystique, fate and the Wind-Up Bird's cruel destiny. While the main story moves along, Murakami dips us into the water to look at interrelated stories. A girl working at a wig factory, a broken soldier is trapped at the bottom of a well, a psychic prostitute. Their lives are dragged along by fate's carriage. Okada, the main character, slips in and out of a dreamworld they're all connected by.

This novel is not strapped down to the ground. Murakami's stories are beautiful and share themes, but are not necessarily answering or complete (what of the boy who dreams of the Wind-Up Bird?). His stories are captivating though and it's impossible not to be swept up in his lyricism and sleepy world.

Grade: A

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil John Berendt

A New York City journalist travels back and forth to Savannah, Georgia..meets and befriends several different residents, encounters all sorts of weirdness. The last half of the novel is pretty much the view of a murder trial that occurs in Savannah. It took me a long time to finish this book...it was one of the longer books I've read, but I think this was due to the fact that it failed to hold my interest for the long run. I got into certain sections, then got bored with others quick. A lot of characters are introduced, some interesting, some not. It's well written, descriptive and pretty funny at times but by the end, I was simply reading just to finish it.

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

Breakfast of Champions- Kurt Vonnegut I picked this up at a used book store for 2 dollars, and anything by Kurt Vonnegut for two dollars is an absolute steal. Nobody does humor or creates vivid characters like Vonnegut. A lot of the time he doesn't even bother describing what his characters look like, the reader is left to determine that based on the quirky personality each one has. He breaks literary rules but pulls it off consistently, due to his consistently awesome voice and genius. I know I'm not breaking any new ground praising Vonnegut, but he needs his due.

Unpopular Essays- Bertrand Russel This was at the same used bookstore, and I know Russel was brilliant so I figured I'd pick it up. It's just a collection of essays on random subjects such as the practicality of philosophy, his thoughts on the future of mankind(published in 1950), and more. I thought the preface was especially great: "Revieweres took me to the task, saying they found parts of the book difficult, and implying that my words were such as to mislead purchasers. I do not wish to expose myself again to this charge; I will therefore confess that there are several sentences in the present volume which some unusually stupid children of ten might find a little puzzling. On this ground I do not claim that the essays are popular; and if not popular, then "unpopular."

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

I bought a copy of Voice of America by E.C. Osondu yesterday and finished it by dinnertime. Osondu was born in Nigeria and lives here now, so his first collection of short stories concern themselves largely with African life and the transition from African to American life. The majority of the stories are very good, namely "I Can Lend You My Wife," "Voice of America," and "Jimmy Carter's Eyes." I'd definitely recommend it.

Another good book I read recently is What Happened by Peter Johnson. It's a short book and reads very easily, it didn't feel like I was reading but rather just absorbing the words on the page. It's about a high school boy and his brother and friends, but doesn't feel like another shitty high school novel. It's another great and easy read.

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

Ok, did you actually read either of these books? I have to ask, because you aren't actually offering a review of either of them. I haven't read the second one (which you at least defined for us so mightily), but as for the first "review," it's ok to praise Vonnegut, he's a good writer. But not everything that he has written is great. I have a feeling you are just throwing out some hogwash you have heard about him. Literary rules? What the fuck are you mumbling about? As for Vonnegut's "due," he gets enough already. In fact, much too much. Breakfast of Champions was a weak (maybe even downright bad) novel. If you have a different opinion, let's hear it in an actual review, please.