losthighway wrote: Tue Dec 31, 2024 4:25 pm I've been reading Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. It was recommended by coworkers and contextualized as an antidote to the phony Hillbilly Elegy. The David Copperfield parallels were interesting. Three fourths through it's feeling good not great. Oddly, the stuff I'm really on board with is less satisfying in fiction form. Like the opioid epidemic. She's sharing a true phenomenon but at some points I feel like I see through the fourth wall and can see her thinking "and here I'll help people understand this about Appalachia!". It makes me just want to read more nonfiction about the labor struggles of coal miners.

I felt the same way. I’ve never read David Copperfield, so a lot of the parallels were lost on me. It just felt a little too out-of-touch or something.

The last Kingsolver book I really enjoyed was The Lacuna. It dealt with Trotsky, Kahlo, Rivera, and the Red Scare in a really interesting manner.

Dovira wrote: Thu Dec 26, 2024 7:03 am

El Protoolio wrote: Thu Dec 19, 2024 5:29 pm My only problem with Asimov, as it is with Clark and, this is a controversial opinion and will trigger some folks mainly fm Mike Upchurch, Frank Herbert, is that they are all terrible writers. Cool stories, other than Herbert, but absolutely terrible writing.

I wouldn't say terrible. It's not unreadable because of annoyance or boredom. But there is a lot of blablabla. I'm halfway into the first book now and most of it has just been dialogues about something that is happening somewhere else.

Finished the first book and it's actually just bad. Like I said it's just clumsily dialoguing through the entire plot. And the dialogues have the tone of some hokey, overacted TV series. No suspense to speak of, plot-significant devices are just flatly introduced whenever they are needed. "Oh so you have a blaster-repelling atomic forcefield? Well I have a special anti-atomic blaster that can shoot through that - ha ha!", and so on.

And even so, it isn't completely worthless. I never felt bored or like I was stuck. The opening chapter was fine (and quite different from the rest of the book). But it's like he had the skeleton of a story and then didn't bother.

I'm on the fourth chapter of another nerd classic - Lord of the Rings. This one is better. Except for the long, boring "prologue" before anything even starts.
I skipped it and I don't feel like I missed anything.

Quantum in Pictures by Coecke and Gogioso, and Hobbes’ Leviathan

I restarted reading the Mars trilogy after realising Tolkien’s Unfinished Tales etc was really boring.

A third of the way through Red Mars. I hope Musk hates it for being “woke”.

Gramsci wrote: Thu Jan 16, 2025 7:39 am I restarted reading the Mars trilogy after realising Tolkien’s Unfinished Tales etc was really boring.

A third of the way through Red Mars. I hope Musk hates it for being “woke”.

Robinson's Mars trilogy is great. I tore though those when I read them decades ago. Great stuff. My favorite by Robinson is "Memory Of Whiteness". Just a very weird story. "Icehenge" is also pretty entertaining.

Currently reading "Emperor of Rome" by Mary Beard. I have read a few of her books on Rome now and watched some of her TV shows on YouTube. She brings these people and events and era to life. I really like her take on things. The book on Roman humor she wrote that I mentioned earlier was very interesting.

Kim Stanley Robinson is king shit. Love every book of his I’ve read

llllllllllllllllllll wrote: Fri Jan 17, 2025 6:23 pm Kim Stanley Robinson is king shit. Love every book of his I’ve read

His dialogue is really well written. Which is a nice change from a lot of sci-fi that has interesting characters and story but horrible dialogue.

JG Ballard - Kingdom Come. $5 hardcover at the library