What books are you reading now?

shau · Post by **shau** » Thu Mar 10, 2011 12:39 am

fbmf wrote:The Annotated Sherlock Holmes, the Baring-Gould version, to my daughter.

Game On,
fbmf

That's odd. I just started listening to the original Sherlock Holmes books. I needed something to do while sweating off some pounds at the gym, and I found some free audiobooks. I heartily recommend them as they are very clever and only occasionally shockingly racist.

Post by **fbmf** » Thu Mar 10, 2011 1:17 am

shau wrote:... and only occasionally shockingly racist.

They were written over 100 years ago for the most part. They're allowed to be racist by the standards of 2011.

Game On,
fbmf

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Thu Mar 10, 2011 2:17 am

A couple months back, I got a complete Sherlock Holmes set. All the novels, all the stories Arthur Conan Doyle ever wrote.

Towards the end, it was a little amusing to see how many times Doyle tried to wrap things up only to come back and okay, "Okay, but this is THE LAST TIME"

Darth Rabbitt · Post by **Darth Rabbitt** » Thu Mar 10, 2011 1:45 pm

Maxus wrote:A couple months back, I got a complete Sherlock Holmes set. All the novels, all the stories Arthur Conan Doyle ever wrote.

Towards the end, it was a little amusing to see how many times Doyle tried to wrap things up only to come back and okay, "Okay, but this is THE LAST TIME"

Reminds me of slasher movies.

For example, Friday the 13th, part IV: The Final Chapter.

And then they proceeded to make a bunch more sequels.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Thu Mar 10, 2011 5:18 pm

Except the extra Shelocks were actually good.

As I recall, there was "The Last Adventure" or whatever which had Moriarty show up and then promptly go over a waterfall with Sherlock.

Then there was the sequel, which had Sherlock actually survive the waterfall hit, and scramble on up, then further up, and decide he was going to spend a while incognito because, really, Watson, that one had been just too close.

This went on for a while. Then Doyle tried to do "His Last Stand", which had a close-to-elderly Sherlock making a valuable contribution to British counter-espionage right before World War 1.

Then there were a couple of novels, and a final round of stories which Doyle prefaced by saying these had been a huge part of his life too, it's really gratifying that they're so beloved, but, no, REALLY, this is the LAST TIME.

And it finally was.

Datawolf · Post by **Datawolf** » Thu Mar 10, 2011 7:34 pm

Maj wrote:I second that, Cynic. Those are serious gateway books.

Don't listen to them, Cynic! You get your kids started on reading early and the next thing you know, they're graduating college!

JUST SAY NOE TO BUUKS LOL

zeruslord · Post by **zeruslord** » Fri Mar 11, 2011 7:53 am

So, while at college, I read: (several of these were discussed upthread, but I got out of the tgdmb habit)

Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville. I don't really know how to feel about it. On the one hand, everything I read about the world was really cool, inspiring, or just made me want to know more backstory. On the other hand, I found myself largely uninterested in the story as such. All the characters were interesting as characters, all the background details were badass, the monsters were something I wanted to steal, but somehow I didn't care about the plot. Worth reading as an exercise in worldbuilding and atmosphere, less so as a novel, IMHO.
Summer Knight, by Jim Butcher. Fourth book of the Dresden Files. I'm a fan of the series so far - name_here is probably going to be sad when the next couple books "somehow" "mysteriously" end up in my backpack on the way back to Pittsburgh at the end of break - and this is more of what I liked about the first three. On the other hand, the overall power level of the series has been rising pretty severely, and I'm not sure how great a sign that is. It's still firmly ensconced in the urban-fantasy/noir niche, but pulls in more of the fey and the White Council. Butcher's depiction of the fey is among the better ones I've seen, but his global organization of wizards seems more like a plot device for quest-giving and/or trolling Dresden than a functional organization.
Mistborn, by Brandon Sanderson. It's set in a semi-post-apocalyptic medieval fantasy world with a magic system based on using metals to gain one of a fairly limited set of powers. The action can basically be split up into noble politics, chilling with a thieves guild, and superhuman magicians throwing themselves around cities. The politicking is much less well written and seems generally shallower than the rest of the book, but I think that's largely a show, don't tell issue.
The Diamond Age (Or, A Young Ladies Illustrated Primer), by Neal Stephenson. It's set in a successful post-Moore's Law and somewhat post-scarcity world where computation has moved to purpose-built nano-scale mechanical devices, focused on a Neo-Victorian New Atlantis and it's surroundings. The plot is more coherent and held together more tightly than in Cryptonomicon or Snow Crash, centering on an AI book, originally developed for a duke's granddaughter, designed to bring up a young girl to be not just well educated and well-mannered, but also an independent thinker, etc., and the three girls in whose hands it ends up. The CS Stephenson touches on is both better explained and less of a total lie than I'm used to seeing, the action is interesting, he explains enough of how the world got where it is early enough, and there's only one bit in the middle where I get totally lost (oppose: the next two books on this list).
Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson. Sort of a prequel to Cryptonomicon, I guess. Set in 17th century England, it follows something-or-other Waterhouse as he chills in England and is a scholar. It's very well done in the small, but in the large seems thoroughly incomplete - the first shoe never really drops, let alone the second - probably because it's the first of an eight book series.
The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Stirling. Set in a steampunk alternate-history England where Babbage finished his mechanical computer and went on to become a leading politician. It suffered heavily from not telling the reader what was going on. I've got no clue what the macguffin actually is, beyond "some program with interesting properties" - and I don't think the authors did either. All we ever know is that it's a program. I don't know enough about 19th century England to tell you if the alternate history is any good, but the CS side of the alternate history is pretty well done - or at least decently hidden away, unlike the ludicrous visions in Neuromancer. Mostly, the book was marred by flat characters being pursued by unclear foes for unclear reasons while an interesting world around them is basically ignored.
The Windup Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi. A post-petroleum biopunk setting, where artificially-engineered blights and plagues have crushed all non-genetically engineered crops. It's set primarily in Bangkok, which has managed to prevent itself from being overrun by plagues, taken over by agribusinesses, or flooded by a rising sea, but only because the Environmental Ministry was made the central part of government by the previous king. The action revolves around a windup, an artificially engineered human being, so called because of the stutter-stop motion engineered into them to mark them out as different. There's a pretty big bait-and-switch pulled as to the actual plot of the book - all the threads brought up at the beginning get resolved, at least for the reader, but there's also a coup in the middle. It's in competition with The Diamond Age as the best book I've read so far this semester.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Fri Mar 11, 2011 5:13 pm

zeruslord wrote: [*] Summer Knight, by Jim Butcher. Fourth book of the Dresden Files. I'm a fan of the series so far - name_here is probably going to be sad when the next couple books "somehow" "mysteriously" end up in my backpack on the way back to Pittsburgh at the end of break - and this is more of what I liked about the first three. On the other hand, the overall power level of the series has been rising pretty severely, and I'm not sure how great a sign that is. It's still firmly ensconced in the urban-fantasy/noir niche, but pulls in more of the fey and the White Council. Butcher's depiction of the fey is among the better ones I've seen, but his global organization of wizards seems more like a plot device for quest-giving and/or trolling Dresden than a functional organization.

The next couple of books get more low-key. No armies fighting for the fate of the world pop up again in the series. Book 7, Dead Beat, doesn't involve armies fighting for the fate of the world, but it does have some crazy-awesome undead.

The White Council will get more development as the books go on. There's some adversarial figures in it, but also some cool people (McCoy and Injun Joe come to mind). But, yeah, it's an Old Man's Club and a weird mix of functional and petty politics.

Dresden -does- get stronger as the series goes on. But a lot of it's in a way such as "Okay, I had time to make more of those force-catching rings and improve the design some" or "I made a better shield bracelet" or, after a while, "Thanks to some teaching I'd been doing, I had to hit the fundamentals again. My fine control's gotten a little better."

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Tue Mar 22, 2011 8:12 pm

I've now also read The Windup Girl. There are three gaping setting questions that aren't even a little bit answered, one of which is a spoiler:

1) Okay, so I can totally buy greedy GM companies releasing blights to destroy crops, but where the everliving hell did blister rust and the other food-borne anti-human pathogens come from? Especially blister rust, since it's only foodborne and thus clearly not an extermination campaign by random religious fanatic with a genehack kit #5957. Killing potential customers is not high on the good business practices list.
2) So, um, why does AgriGen want the seedbank so much? If it's all pre-blight crops, won't they pretty much instantly die unless they spend a shitload splicing in resistances? It's clear why Thailand wants them, since they're a source of crops without the AgriGen mods to sterilize them, but that doesn't quite work the other way.
3)

Why, exactly, are the windups all capable of flipping out and killing eight-plus dudes? For that matter, they apparently drop the stutter-step motion when they go into bullet-time, so it seems almost intentional. I can't imagine "Capacity to kill eight dudes with guns" was on the specifications sheet for "personal secretary".

The book is pretty solid past those, however. Everything pretty much went to shit due to Peak Oil, Global Warming, and Idiots With Genetic Manipulation Gear, with stuff like someone releasing a beetle that utterly destroys forests and some other guy inadvertently releasing active camo cats that bred true, plus a bunch of plagues. Now the GM companies own everywhere except Thailand, courtesy of the shitload of plagues they released destroying every natural food crop on the planet. Thailand avoided that fate via the Environmental Ministry and copious quantities of fire.

erik · Post by **erik** » Wed Mar 23, 2011 5:39 am

Still reading Sherlock Holmes (Arthur Conan Doyle) stuff. There's plenty of it.

Also reading "John Dies at the End", by David Wong. It's keeping me entertained and turning pages.

PoliteNewb · Post by **PoliteNewb** » Wed Mar 23, 2011 4:51 pm

So read some "Wild Cards" novels...I re-read "Busted Flush" (which was good) to refresh my brain on current events in the storyline, then read "Suicide Kings"...I'm almost done.

It was a good read (if you like Wild Cards books), and I'm appreciating the closing of the Mark Meadows/Tom Weathers storyline. Hella sad, though...I mean really really sad, on multiple levels.

Good stuff: more Lohengrin (I like him), good development/closure on the Jonathan Hive/Simoon romance, good focus on Wally, interesting stuff with Noel.

Bad stuff: Bubbles was written like shit, 2 women stuffed in the fridge (at least), some borderline racist stuff, several prominent characters simply dropped like hot rocks (DB, Kate, etc).

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Fri Mar 25, 2011 3:43 am

Blasted wrote:
Maj wrote:I just started Unprotected Texts: The Bible's Surprising Contradictions About Sex and Desire, by Jennifer Wright Knust.

Written by a female Baptist minister, the introduction totally grabbed me with its comparison between Jezebel and Esther. The first chapter makes a case against Bible-justified abstinence-only "sex education.
I'd like to hear your thoughts once you've finished the book.

I finished the book while in the hospital, but unfortunately had to return it on the way home (it was overdue and there are fines by the day for that sort of thing), so I can't refer to it, but here are some of my thoughts...

On its face, the purpose of the book is to show that the Bible doesn't have a unified, coherent policy on sex. Readers across sects and across time have come to different conclusions based on the same passages, and passages contradict each other all over the place. In the book, Knust makes the case for same-sex relationships and sex outside of marriage as two examples that are supported by the Bible, despite what current Biblicists claim. She also reinterprets famously bantered stories - like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the creation myth in Genesis - to demonstrate the fact that they can have meanings (and have had meanings) aside from the ones we currently hold. Interesting note: Any translation of the Bible that uses the term "sodomite" is translating incorrectly as the term was only equated with buttfuckery around the 11th century.

I don't know that I agree with all her interpretations, but she makes her point loud and clear: You cannot simultaneously believe that the Bible is the literal truth while also believing that it lays down certain requirements for sex. And for those who want to attribute some sort of figurative interpretation, you have to jump through enormous hoops to make all the passages agree on sexual practices, unless you're limited to the Old Testament, in which case, sexual practices can be summed up by saying that if it works out in the favor of Israel, it's OK with the LORD.

Interestingly, Knust also demonstrated how the Bible itself is made of layered interpretations - later Biblical writers were translating and revising the earlier books with their own ideas that were relevant to their time and place. As society changed, so did the views of Biblical authors. I don't think I've ever thought of the Bible as containing its own interpretations before, though after being shown examples, I certainly see it.

She also talked about how literal Biblicist views are actually relatively modern. We exist at a point in time where being rational is taken for granted and people are expected to provide proof for their faith. While not entirely explicit, I felt an underlying sense that the current wave of literal interpretation is what happens when that expectation of rationality and the emphasis on providing proof crashes into the religious.

Underneath all that, and only slightly related to it, my perspective on the Bible has totally changed. I see it now as a history on how a group of people got together and decided that they were going to make themselves stand apart from the other people around them. Through magnificent twists of psychology, the Israelites went from being random schmoes that were just like everyone else to being a distinct people through extensive villainization of their neighbors, isolationist practices, and extreme compartmentalization and categorization strategies. As a result, I can understand how Christianity frequently finds it difficult to define itself and its people except in the fact of strangeness. Its inheritance is very exclusive, yet proselytizing is a core tenet. It's like loving peanut butter while being allergic to peanuts.

Lastly, the author said something that I really like and that applies to more than just the Bible. In the conclusion, she said that when she teaches classes on the Bible, the first thing she does is have her students admit their "wishes" - what they hoped to find in the Bible's pages while they studied - because there is justification for almost any perspective within the book. Not only does it help provide things to study during the course of the class, but it allows people to see alternate theories because they are more conscious of their confirmation bias and thus in a better position to consider other views.

I really enjoyed this book because it got me thinking. There were a lot of interesting tidbits and details, and I liked how she didn't just stick to the Bible, but drew on outside sources in order to put interpretation into context. I didn't feel like she was trying to convert me to anything other than the perspective of the Bible not being literal truth or having the final word on how sex should be.

Blasted · Post by **Blasted** » Fri Mar 25, 2011 4:18 am

Maj wrote: She also talked about how literal Biblicist views are actually relatively modern. We exist at a point in time where being rational is taken for granted and people are expected to provide proof for their faith. While not entirely explicit, I felt an underlying sense that the current wave of literal interpretation is what happens when that expectation of rationality and the emphasis on providing proof crashes into the religious.

There's a lot of arguments over the genres of various texts, but certainly many of the early Christian writings and Jewish scholars of the same time believed that the Torah and some of the writings in the OT were history and could be defended as such. I'd argue that the literal interpretation has been the defacto norm in the protestant churches until the advent of the various forms of modern textual criticism., I'd have to check up on my textbooks to provide dates, though.
I find dating the OT rather interesting. Given all of the issues with the Torah especially, I'm always amused by people giving a definite date of authorship.

As a result, I can understand how Christianity frequently finds it difficult to define itself and its people except in the fact of strangeness. Its inheritance is very exclusive, yet proselytizing is a core tenet. It's like loving peanut butter while being allergic to peanuts.

The dominant Jewish sects of Jesus' time were also heavily into evangelism, there's probably a phd in comparing the methods of proselytization. Of course, the big difference is that some of the Christians were treating gentiles as equals, a distinct difference from Judaism.

I really enjoyed this book because it got me thinking. There were a lot of interesting tidbits and details, and I liked how she didn't just stick to the Bible, but drew on outside sources in order to put interpretation into context. I didn't feel like she was trying to convert me to anything other than the perspective of the Bible not being literal truth or having the final word on how sex should be.

I'll try and put some of my book money into it then

, I saved some money not buying another textbook this week so I'm sure I can swing it.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Fri Mar 25, 2011 4:36 am

See if you can't get it from the library, if you're not sure about it. That's where most of my books come from first.

Blasted · Post by **Blasted** » Fri Mar 25, 2011 6:23 am

I can claim it on tax due to study, so I have a text book budget I'm better off spending.

PoliteNewb · Post by **PoliteNewb** » Fri Mar 25, 2011 3:55 pm

Started reading "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn"...so far (about 12 chapters in) it's excellent. Very slice-of-life, as I find most books written about poor people tend to be.

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Fri Mar 25, 2011 6:48 pm

Blasted wrote:I can claim it on tax due to study, so I have a text book budget I'm better off spending.

Doesn't text book budget on taxes actually have to higher education courses?

Blasted · Post by **Blasted** » Sun Mar 27, 2011 2:56 am

Cynic wrote: Doesn't text book budget on taxes actually have to higher education courses?

I'm doing a degree while I work fulltime. So I have an income where managing my tax scale matters.

Neeeek · Post by **Neeeek** » Sun Mar 27, 2011 5:32 am

Blasted wrote:
Cynic wrote: Doesn't text book budget on taxes actually have to higher education courses?
I'm doing a degree while I work fulltime. So I have an income where managing my tax scale matters.

Books are only something you can claim at all if you've got 4 or less years of post-high school education. Just FYI.

Blasted · Post by **Blasted** » Sun Mar 27, 2011 6:29 am

Neeeek wrote:Books are only something you can claim at all if you've got 4 or less years of post-high school education. Just FYI.

I can, if it's related to my current employment. Too general a course and it doesn't count, which could do me in. We'll see how brave my accountant is come tax time.

Neeeek · Post by **Neeeek** » Sun Mar 27, 2011 9:05 am

Blasted wrote:
Neeeek wrote:Books are only something you can claim at all if you've got 4 or less years of post-high school education. Just FYI.
I can, if it's related to my current employment. Too general a course and it doesn't count, which could do me in. We'll see how brave my accountant is come tax time.

Only if it exceeds (with certain other expenses) 2% of your income, and you are already itemizing deductions.

Blasted · Post by **Blasted** » Sun Mar 27, 2011 9:17 am

Neeeek wrote:Only if it exceeds (with certain other expenses) 2% of your income, and you are already itemizing deductions.

But I'm in another country

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Sun Mar 27, 2011 1:34 pm

I recently went on a re-read of the David Eddings Sparhawk series.

It'd been a year or two. I'd forgotten how much back-and-forth banter there was. At the same time, the second trilogy lacks the tension of the first. I mean, Team Evil actually picked their ranks from mean-spirited and not very bright people. That makes them fairly ineffectual as villains.

But I can see the Tamuli as the part where David Eddings started declining. Redemption of Althalus was just...mediocre. The Dreamers was just plain bad.

Starmaker · Post by **Starmaker** » Mon Mar 28, 2011 7:31 am

So, I got my hands on Wise Man's Fear. 200 pages into it so far.

1. More blatant disregard for student safety. Harry Potter doesn't come close. After establishing back in Vol.1 that newbs practice magic transferring energy from an external source to an external target, and that using one's own body as a source of energy is terribly dangerous, it turns out that this basic newb exercise is actually even more dangerous as the energy lost in transfer heats up the caster's body. One character points out that this "insignificant" detail was not taught on purpose, because the students had to arrive at the conclusion themselves. ARRRRGH. (It is also established that safety is considered to be really fucking important because (1) the magicians are still fighting the bad public image and (2) most students are rich).

2. Artsy gays. "Look how politically correct I am." Guess what, no you aren't. Really, there are two gay characters, both of them artsy types, and the issue is introduced as "These two dudes are totally gay for each other. What, you didn't know? See, men can have sex with each other! It's true!" No, no, and no. "Artsy gays" is no better than "number-crunching Chinese" (hint: both are bad). Want to bring up homosexuality and highlight how enlightened your civilization is? "After the lecture, I went to the library. Tom the librarian, the boyfriend of Bob from the alchemy lab, sat at the front desk. I asked him whether he knew something about soul-eating demons that murdered my family." There you go.

3. "As you know"-style rehashes of old stuff. Dammit, it's not a saturday morning cartoon episode, it's just the second volume. There's no need to waste a chapter on repeating facts the reader needs to remember from Vol.1 as long as there are important facts from Vol.1 that are not repeated. If Vol.2 cannot function as a standalone book, do the returning readers a favor and don't dilute it with "as-you-know" dumps.

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Mon Mar 28, 2011 6:48 pm

Read both "Thunderer" and "Gears of the City" by Felix GIlman.