About six hundred pages, I’d guess.
9 Likes
This was a really entertaining, quick read. Cyberpunk libertarian hellscape but with magic in a not-really-Shadorwun-like way that struck me as fresh and new in some ways. (Though the main character is a freelancer and so “minimum wage” was really the wrong choice for title.)
4 Likes
For the past week I have been trying to read “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.” It’s been like walking barefoot on gravel. Am I missing something? Can I stop? Does it get better?
Whenever something starts to happen, Smiley — a character I generally like — starts on some long stroll down memory lane. The whole thing is written in a style that is trying to be as obscure and jumbled as possible. Carré is trying to put me in Smiley’s head having his stream of consciousness. But I am not Smiley!
7 Likes
Would probably play better as an audiobook, as it can get a trifle samey, but overall a good read thus far.
7 Likes
I adore that book. It was the first thing I’d ever read by Le Carré, and it blew me away.
The flashbacks are important. The whole book is a meditation on how the past haunts the present. It also shows just how petty spycraft during the Cold War was. Le Carré didn’t do much of that in real life, but apparently spooks from that time generally agree he got the psychology right.
None of which will help you if it’s not working for you. If you’re not feeling it, I’d say stop and find something else – it’s a bad fit. I loathe loads of well-respected best sellers, so I can relate.
9 Likes
I can’t count the number of times I have tried and failed to read Gravity’s Rainbow or infinite Jest and been rebuffed. Even as audio books, my mind wanders away from the narratives.
7 Likes
I would like this book (and most of pynchon) a lot more if I weren’t so damn depressed. I’m just never in the right frame of mind for his books.
I finally read Robinson Crusoe sometime this summer, for reals. I tried to read it at least three times but never finished. It’s not that the book didn’t interest me, but that I was distracted and put off by the format. No chapters at all, and wildly inconsistent spelling, grammar, capitalization, and punctuation. It was basically formatted like a 300 page comment on a right wing news site, and like many comments on right wing news sites, was ridiculously pro colonialism. I’m not sure if it was actually in favor of colonialism or making fun of colonialists, but I chose to believe the latter over the former.
7 Likes
I will give it one more chance.
4 Likes
Currently reading this new sci-fi by Sue Burke called “Semiosis” – it’s interesting, and fun (first of a series, i guess). Human settlers on a new planet come to realize that the intelligent life on the planet is NOT the other alien animal life they find, but the PLANTS.
4 Likes
Just finished “John Cleese: Professor At Large.” Being a really smart celebrity, Cleese was invited by Cornell University to be a visiting professor to come by two weeks a year for a few years and give lectures and interview people. The book is a collection of the transcripts of these talks. They’re all fascinating, with topics like religion, screenwriting (with William Goldman), and so on. It’s witty, but not out and out funny.
5 Likes
Finished A Fire Upon The Deep which was an ebook freebie from Tor. It was a fun and interesting space opera.
Now I have a Doc Savage book and picked up The Apparitionists at the library as that is the kind of history that I really get into.
5 Likes
I’m beginning to think I just don’t really like Iain Banks. I’m reading Excession, and I like the ships talking to each other. But the rest of it reads like satire, and isn’t funny enough to pull it off.
4 Likes
I’m not a huge fan either. I’ve read The Wasp Factory, which was supposed to have been so brilliant, but it was only meh. It was weird, but not in a good or compelling way, more like in an “I can do without reading this” way. So I never read anything else by him again.
2 Likes
So my above 2 reads are kind of on hold while I share something MrsTobinL brought home from the library.
I was all ‘wait what?’ on the description. I am just over halfway through now and it is a riot and apparently the 3rd book in a series.
The writing is a perfect send up of the style.
4 Likes
What a great idea! Now we need a Tom Swift parody.
3 Likes
I often have to flog myself to get through old free books from Gutenberg. No so, so far, with Two Years Before the Mast.
6 Likes
Also a pretty good flick.
3 Likes
I understand this fellow is trending.
8 Likes
Excession is not his best and neither is The Wasp Factory (if you prefer your Banks without an M).
Consider Phlebas was the first Culture novel I read and it’s a great entry into the universe that he created. Some of the later novels (Excession included, iirc) are more interested in fleshing out the philosophy than telling a story.
That’s all well and good if you’re already invested in the Culture and the philosophical questions that Banks is interested in but as actual stories, some are decidedly better than others.
If you want to give the Culture a second chance, Consider Phlebas, The State of the Art and The Player of Games are much more representative.
Transition is my favourite SF book of his (it has an M but isn’t a Culture novel), and as far as his non-SF books go, I’d recommend The Steep Approach to Garbadale over The Wasp Factory any day.
Have you read any Ken McLeod? If Banks isn’t to your liking and you have a Scottish lefty SF-shaped hole in your life as a result, I can’t recommend him highly enough…
5 Likes
It’s actually Consider Phlebas that lead me to the “satire that just isn’t quite sharp enough” conclusion. I really liked Player of Games, though, which is why I"m reading Excession.
I haven’t read Ken MacLeod yet! I’ll add him to an upcoming “white guy” slot in my rotation.
5 Likes