The Idiot Board Readers Corner - General Discussion

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

No! I need to dig that up. He's a great writer and I breezed through like 17 Sharpe books but got burned out on it.

Thanks for the recommendation. That series was awesome. I read it waiting for the last Khan series.

I'll check out all of those as well. Thanks guys. I'm excited!

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

11/22/63 by Stephen King. Jake uses time portal in pantry of friend's restaurant to travel back to 1958 and save JFK. Like all King novels of its girth it could have stood to lose about 100-150 pages. It's not a thriller, but it is thoughtful, clever, occasionally cruel, and (as someone on here said a bit back) reminds us that the good ole days weren't necessarily the good ole days. Incredibly insightful about society, the idea of time and history and the past, and about human behavior. It's one of King's more literary works, like the Bachman stuff. The most plodding part is the details of Jake's life between '58 and '63. That's the point to detail the minutiae, it is a life. I still think the same effect could have been reached with trimming. It's a Stephen king book. You like him or don't it seems. I think it's a fantastic work. Last third was fucking heart breaking. I was having a rough time finding good fiction this year. This hit the spot.

Paul by A. N. Wilson. Does its best to capture the life of the Apostle Paul with what little source material there is. He makes the argument for Paul being the real father of Christianity. What it does even better is capture a first century Jewish society under Roman rule. The eccentricities of the Jewish faith, daily life and worship, and what we know about a first century Jew are used to interpret Paul and Jesus' writings (even though nothing was written by either directly, but their followers). Not only that but Wilson makes a wonderful argument for what Jesus, as a seditious Palestinian Jew under Roman government who is proselytizing for ONLY Palestinian Jews and not the redemption of the world entire, actually taught, his motivations without 2000 years of opinion and assumptions based on the Bible/faith in practice as we know it now. Based on the Bible as it was even first written down a generation after the events it recalls, as the proto-Christians were a fractious group from the very beginning, having their own interpretations and arguments of what the man they supposedly knew even said. A real history book about religion instead of a religious history book.

Ivan The Terrible by Henri Troyat. Biography of Russian Tsar, Ivan. Bloodthirsty, psychotic, megalomaniacal tyrant with a twinge of religious zealotry. Quick, interesting read that is also fucking disturbing. There was enough blood, rape, genocide, murder, torture to make me literally sick. I felt like shit once I finished. The scope of this guy's avarice and hate was mind boggling. Even better was he convinced himself he was an extension of God throughout his entire reign.

 

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The Postmortal by Drew Magary. Anyone here who reads KissingSuzyKolber, the football blog (and I know a few of you do), knows about Drew Magary and the book he wrote. I finally decided to give it a read (as I find myself increasingly drawn to futuristic fiction titles). It is essentially about a world where they discover the cure for aging. Not death, mind you, but aging itself. It delves a bit into the ethical questions that come with the cure for aging, but also a bit into the political aspect, and the decision making process behind those that get it. It is a world where energy is at a premium, people are living (theoretically) forever, and the population is booming, without nearly enough resources to feed everyone.

My two issues I had with the book are that it is fairly fragmented between the two acts, and that in the third act, the character takes a major right turn. First, the book is clearly split into three acts, but there is a huge time gap in between them, as a major event happens, and then the author just sort of jumps ahead 20 years. I wanted to know what happened the next day and week. The other issue is that the main character makes complete 180 on something during the third act. He goes through a lot during the events laid out in the book, and one part of the third act in particular kind of didn't make a lot of sense to me, but I can't give it away without major spoilers.

Overall, I'd recommend the book. I thought it was really good and well written, and he does a good job of drawing you into the world, especially in the first two acts.

8/10

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

This is another "fictional future" book. The energy crisis hit, and hard, and people are now poor and, of course, overpopulated. The protagonist lives in the 'stacks,' which is simply a bunch of mobile homes stacked on top of one another, 20 to 30 high.

The catch is that that is just where his body lives. He, like most of humanity in the book, spends most of his time logged into the OASIS, which is an MMO that is kind of like SecondLife meets World of Warcraft meets the Super Soldier Serum from Captain America. It is a massive online simulation where people work, go to school, and essentially live. The currency in the OASIS is the most stable currency in the world, and the simulation is how they get around the energy crisis: if you just have to log into the OASIS to go to work, you never have to leave.

When the creator and owner of the OASIS dies, he starts a contest. The creator and owner is described as being borderline autistic, with an obsession with 80s pop culture (movies, TV, music, and video games), who hid three keys and three gates, all of which lead to an 'Easter Egg" he hid within the OASIS. The first person to find the Easter Egg will win full control and ownership of the OASIS, and become an instant billionaire. Of course, this leads to everyone looking for the egg, including a rival corporation that wants control of the OASIS so they can start to charge users a monthly fee and monetize it more. In the book, everything about the OASIS was free except travel expenses between worlds, and "real estate" which they could sell to build planets and buildings. This was how the company that ran the OASIS made money to maintain it.

The author is clearly a geek, and shows a lot of knowledge of 80s pop culture and video games. He really embraces it with this book, which is maybe why I enjoyed it so much. I thought the book did a fantastic job of drawing me in and keeping me reading, with a very likable protagonist, and an antagonist that you love to root against. I got through this book in about three days, which is really fast for me, as I found myself having trouble putting it down. There may have been a few small logical leaps, but overall I still really dug the hell out of this book, and would highly recommend it to anyone. I'm even trying to get my wife to read it, and she is the complete opposite of a geek.

10/10

 

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The Dark Tower series by Stephen King

I'm about 3/4 through this 7 book series, and it's one of the most engrossing works of fiction I have read in years. All together, it's about 4,000 pages, and I'm blowing through 'em.

Roland, a combination of John Wayne and a knight of the Round Table, is on a never-ending quest through time and space to find the Dark Tower at the center of the universe. Sounds weird (and it is), but it's a blast. It has scenes of epic gun battles mixed with time travel, interracial amputee sex, vampires, child murder, and giant robot bears. During my exam study days (when colleges give you entire days off to prepare for finals) I just drank shitty beer and read these books all day.

As another poster commented, people generally have a pretty polarized view of King. You're gonna love him or hate him. It's weird, long, and at points, unnecessarily detailed. But King's characters are bad ass, his childhood descriptions are spot-on, and the story is fucking awesome. I'm a little worried about how book 7 is gonna wrap this up, but we'll see.

If it sounds like I'm kissing King's ass, it's because I am. I haven't had this much fun with a work of fiction in awhile.

43/46 crawdaddies

 

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Building Social Business by Muhammad Yunus

This book is a short introduction to the concept of a social business by Nobel prize winning economist Yunus. He pioneered microfinance in Bangladesh as a poverty reduction tool and has been a proponent of what he calls "social business". The basic premise is that if a business generates a profit, instead of that profit going to shareholders (aside from their initial investment), it goes to achieve a specific purpose or project like educate poor mothers on child health, or fund a hospital. It's basically taking a successful business and using it to bridge the gap between public and private enterprise. The book itself is short, well-written and inspiring. He uses a lot of actual examples of collaboration from companies like Danone, Adidas and Intel, among others. It's an interesting concept and a challenge to the conventional ways of doing business. Worth reading, easy to find in an airport bookstore.

Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser

This is a book detailing all the evils of the fast food industry. It can seem a long-winded, meticulously researched anti-corporation rant, but a few times in the book you go: "Fuck, he's made his point quite well." He talks about the history of the industry, the personalities behind it (some of them were downright ghoulish people), and analyzes carefully what the circumstances were that allowed this industry to flourish. He then goes into the dirty practices, from labor abuses, to horrifying standards of what is considered food, to marketing exclusively to children, and so on. It's a bit dated, as it was published nearly 10 years ago, and a number of food documentaries and expose-style books have come and gone since then, but I think this one sticks because it focuses solely on fast food and goes into a great amount of detail. Worth picking up if you never plan on eating at a McDonald's again.

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

After spending far too many years hanging in front of a computer screen, I recently renewed my love of reading an actual book. I already feel smarter.

This thread gave me some direction on the books I thought would be engaging and my Amazon order has arrived. Problem is, where to start?

The Road - Cormac McCarthy (I just finished No Country for Old Men)
Lone Survivor - Marcus Luttrell
The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Fool - Christopher Moore
In Cold Blood - Truman Capote
Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk
Modern Drunkard - Frank Rich

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

Someone earlier on this thread suggested a website called Good Reads (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.goodreads.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.goodreads.com</a>).

I gave it a go, and it's great. I used to just list my "To Read" books in a dull Notepad document, but I'm glad I now have an easily accessible e-version to play around with and organize.

The recommendations feature surprised me as well, about fifteen of them were books I've wanted to read for a while and had just forgotten about.

Highly recommended - I have no "friends" as of yet, so feel free to add me.

 

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I've recently become interested on reading more in depth into the Cold War and Communism as a whole, as I've become fascinated by the hysteria and panic of the time, mostly through podcasts and the like. I don't know much beyond the basic jist, as we never studied it in school. Unfortunately, I don't really know where to start on such a broad topic. Any suggestions for broad, overview books to start out with and then more specific reads for afterwards?

Thanks in advance.

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

I just finished this book The Rest Is Noise by Alex Ross. It's a retrospective of 20th century classical music-- but wait, there's more!!!!

To be honest, I hated most 20th-century classical music, as 90% of people do. Certainly everything atonal, without distinction. Even most of the tonal stuff I hated-- Benjamin Britten sounded like milk four days past its use-by date. I saw Pelleas and Melisande at the Met and slept. As a music student this has been a point of shame. So I got Ross's book in a last ditch effort to pay my respects.

Ross both loves music and is incredibly, often frighteningly eloquent. He puts things that sound genuinely awful in a context that makes you understand them, and his summaries of pieces are oftentimes as beautiful, if not moreso, than the works themselves. If you have Spotify, you can listen as he talks about things, and you begin to see what he means. A lot of this music is infused with pain, ugliness, fury-- it does not sound 'good', and you do not want to put it on at dinner, but it is effective and affecting. And there are those rare gems in the rough-- the final movement of Olivier Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time" (written and premiered in a concentration camp), narrating Jesus' ascent to Heaven, serene beauty in the face of the most savage evil in human history--that will send waves of shivers down your spine like prostate-induced orgasms.

If you've ever had even a passing interest in what all that bullshit's about, Ross's book will fascinate you. So very highly recommended.

 

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At Home by Bill Bryson.

This is the same guy who wrote A Short History of Nearly Everything so I expected it to be awesome. It was not. Enter 632 pages of mundane, wordy, weird and sad British history as Bryson tries to create the history of the modern house, from building materials, history of glass as a product, to sanitary conditions, etc. Some of it was fascinating, but the majority of it was boring. I will give him credit, it was exhaustively researched and features nearly every prominent historian, scientist, public figure (not associated with war or politics), and author from the mid 1700s until the late 1900s. If you ever want to win at trivia night, this book is a step in the right direction. Not bad, but there are more compelling histories than the "Tale of the man who brought you a toilet".

 

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The Complete Chronicles of Conan by Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard has long been toted as the creator the sword and sorcery genre of literature. As a long time fan of both 80's movies, I approached this book with some clear expectations -- there would be damsels in distress, plunder, and lots of killing. After 800+ pages containing over 30 distinct stories ranging from 7 (previously unpublished drafts of stories) to around 120 pages (the novella The Hour of the Dragon), I can faithfully say they were met and then some. In fact, this book is so good it makes the movies seem ungodly shitty. No matter how many men or monsters Conan slays, it never gets old, albeit slightly repetitive. I attribute this mainly to its publication history -- almost every story in this volume was written in the early 1930's and serially published in fiction magazines, predominantly Weird Tales. The constant cliffhangers and swift resolutions smack more of great writing tailored for such a medium than they do of hackery, and these stories are sure to excite the youthful adventurer in their readers. All together, these stories piece together the character of Conan the Cimmerian with an unparalleled depth compared to others' attempts to re-imagine Howard's work (attempts which are especially tempting considering he killed himself when he was just 30 years old without a formal conclusion to Conan's story). There is a mythic quality to this work that really allowed me to appreciate Conan for what he is -- Man at his mighty manliest. He is the antithesis of weakness, pity, and self-doubt. This was an awesome bedside reader that filled my dreams with fantastic scenes from Hyborea, the fictional world Conan inhabits.

 

11.22.63

11.22.63, by Stephen King.
(Disclaimer: I should point out that I am biased. I am a King fan, and Insomnia and It are two of my favourite books. That said, I'm not a blind fan. The last half of Under the Dome was disappointing, as was the ending to The Stand. Just so you know where I'm coming from. Anyway...)

11.22.63 is ostensibly a time travel story with the central premise that an ordinary teacher finds a way to potentially prevent the assassination of JFK. Like so many of King's books, though, it's no more about time travel than Needful Things is about a shop, or It is about a serial-killing clown. The time travel is a plot device used to ask all sorts of questions about hope, determination, love, and acceptance, and the double edged sword that those things can be. Unusually, the story isn't Horror. I'm not even sure how to categorize it - there are elements of romance, and mystery, and action, and probably more that I don't recognize.

So, is it any good? Yes. In fact, it goes well beyond good, into 'superb' territory. The characters are compelling and sympathetic. The pacing is good. At 800~ pages it is definitely longer than it could have been, but I'm not quite sure why the idea that books should be as short as possible is so pervasive. There seems to be this opinion that if you can trim anything from a book without losing crucial plot points, you should. If the world and the characters are interesting, why not linger for a while? If you are looking for something short and plot driven, this isn't it, but then outside of short stories that's never been King's specialty. The really fascinating elements of this story, though, are the big picture themes. I'm loathe to say anything which will hint towards the ending, but damn if this book hasn't stuck in my brain for days on end. I'm haunted by the ending in a way which is exceedingly rare for King, and I really can't recommend it enough. Just go and read the thing. Amazon and the NYT both rate it as one of the best books of 2011. What more do you need?

In a timely coincidence, I just came across this short story which deals with some of the same themes. It's free and awesome. I can almost guarantee that listening to it will be a good use of your time. Michael Marshall Smith - This Is Now.

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

I went with Lone Survivor. I'm hardly the expected demographic for this topic (Canadian, middle-aged woman), but I recall so many great things being said about this man and this story on the RMMB and simply couldn't wait.

There's no need to review it, but I'll say that I read the whole thing yesterday (well, it took until 10am this morning). I am just astonished at a human's ability to use mind, body and spirit to excel. That man and his like deserve every accolade that ever comes to them. Absolutely superior speciman's.

Now I'm going to go clean my tub so I feel like I accomplished something today. The task probably wouldn't impress a SEAL, but hey, it's filthy and pretty daunting. I'm a bit scared.

Hitchhiker's Guide is next.

 

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Wasn't really sure where to stick this, but here seems like a good enough spot.

Gohastings.com has a sale going on for 40% off new and used books.
They offer hardcover, paperback, and epub versions. The coupon also offers 40% off DVD's and 30% Blu-Rays if you are interested in bundling, but I'm more after the books.
All books ship for free as well.
The coupon code is GOHASTINGS!

 

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Let's begin by reviewing

The Lady With the Little Dog and Other Stories, 1896-1904 by Anton Chekhov

Despite being Russian, I've read relatively little literature from my own country. In fact, I had never read anything by Chekhov before this, even though he's a classic third only to Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.

Earlier in his career, Chekhov wrote wonderfully humorous stories, but later in life, including this collection, his stories grew dark. This morbid turn coincided with Chekhov developing tuberculosis. Being a doctor, he knew he would die young, which occurred in 1904, at the age of 44.

The collection of stories here offer a bleak, somber portrait of bourgeoisie and noble life around the year 1900 in Russia, especially in the provinces. All of them are as strongly realistic as possible, with Chekhov rarely including a single flourish. The realism is dizzying and overwhelming at times, especially with regards to the frailty, selfishness, and naivete of human emotion.

Like every good liberal of that time, there is a strong anti-bourgiese sentiment in Chekhov's works, and he despises the rich...sound familiar? It's worth noting that all of these liberals were executed some 20 years later by the very Bolsheviks they helped bring to power.

As noted above, Chekhov's main profession was that of doctor, and many of his characters tend to hold that same profession. So again, he infuses as much of his personal experience in crafting a story as authentic as possible.

Unfortunately, the powerful realism, especially with regards to human emotion, is often the only thing the tales have going for them. Taken together, some of the stories are also a bit too similar to one another, and a few suffer from predictability. Yet, I also wouldn't call a single one "bad", and several are very good. They're starkly real, depressing, genuine accounts without any fanciful elements.

He's definitely good, and I understand Chekhov's status and appeal. Still, I hesitate to call him "great", especially when I consider the short story masters of the 1915-1930 period (the Golden Age of the Short Story) like Maugham, Dreiser, and Fitzgerald are all better. I also prefer Steinbeck's lone book of short stories as well as Akutagawa's work over this one from Chekhov.

That's heady company though, and I would still recommend everyone to check out Chekhov's writings.

 

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Chasing Che - Patrick Symmes

I loved this book. It's well written, strange, and thoroughly enjoyable. It chronicles the author's motorbike journey across South America as he attempts to retrace the formative journey of a pre-revolutionary Che Guevara half a century before. I have to admit my knowledge of Latin/South America in general and Che in particular is not what it should be, and this turned out to be a good primer on various elements of the history, politics, and cultures of the region. Symmes doesn't worship or condemn Che; instead, he seeks out the experiences that turned a frivolous, women-chasing med student into the world's most famous revolutionary and ruthless killer. While the Che subplot is surprisingly interesting (even for someone with limited interest in Che himself), the most fascinating parts of the book are Symmes' observations as he crosses much of the continent on a 20 year old bike with no resources. (Binary, was it you that linked to that incredible story of the Belgian couple that 4x4'ed across the Congo? This book is reminiscent of that.) The anecdotes and experiences he recalls are riveting, even as the scale of the endemic poverty he encounters sinks in and becomes heartbreaking. As an added bonus, Symmes is a wordsmith. He writes atypically well for both a journalist and a travel writer, and his phraseology can be a work of art.

Chasing Che is a short, exceptionally well written travelogue with an interesting and unusual hook. According to Amazon, you can pick it up for $3.99 with shipping included. It's the best $3.99 you will spend this week.

 

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There's fiery debate over the Hunger Games in the movie thread right now, and I'd like to hear what people thought of the books. My girlfriend convinced me to read them and I enjoyed the first despite myself, but the second and third really fell flat for me. The very very end of the first had some very Twilight-esque (it seemed, never stooped low enough to read those) love whining, and I felt like the idiotic whiny preteen love plot really took over the whole thing in the second and third books, to the point where a very significant death near the end of the trilogy felt more like a quick out to end the romance than an actual emotionally weighty event. And I realize it's a book for early teens, but could the good and bad guys have been any more outrageously black and white? The bad guys always do the most absolutely evil thing they could possibly do (see the aforementioned death), and the good guys seem to just bitch and moan about their feelings. All that complaining aside, I did think the first one was fun, a bit deeper and way more gory than I would have expected. I'd recommend it if you're in the mood for a few hours (seriously, read it in less than an afternoon) of dystopian kids killing each other.

Also, maybe this is just a weird thing of mine, but am I the only one who HATES reading books written in the first person present? Christ, I even get why it makes sense in the context of a survival battle, but I can hardly stand reading books written like this. Never quite been able to put my finger on why though, just feels really awkward or something.

 

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I marathonned the entire Hunger Games trilogy over the last few days. The plagiarism I think is limited entirely to the arena content, which is basically the second half of the first and second books. Naturally both have a sociopolitical aspect but I think they're handled very differently between BR and HG) - That's no excuse obviously, but I figure I may as well put in where I stand on what's plagiarized and what isn't as it seems to be a very violent debate.

Honestly I liked them for not being very good. They were simple stories, but more I think the flaws Katniss has as a character apply to myself more than a lot of the cliched protagonist flaws that float around (also I'm secretly a 14 year old girl). I'm never going to call Hunger Games high art, but I got a decent ride out of it.

The ending was way too rushed, but nicely dark and a LITTLE bit existentialist (though certainly not intentionally). The 'babies ever after' bit was stupid but whatever.

 

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I read all three of The Hunger Games trilogy about a year ago. The first I found entertaining, but they got exponentially worse in the second and third book. I had read Battle Royale about a month before, so it colored my opinion of The Hunger Games. My biggest problem was with the protagonist being named Katniss. Not that its a bad name, but how are you gonna name a character Katniss and not have any of the other characters call her catpiss. To me, that was the least believable thing about the entire series.

Ok read, but whether she plagiarized it or not, Battle Royale is a much better book. A big difference being it is a novel for adults, whereas Hunger Games is the Twilight version of Battle Royale.