The Gamer's Quarter

ryan · . Joined: 20 Feb 2005 Posts: 999

I'm currently reading A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War and finding it not all that enjoyable. The links to more contemporary events come across as either unnecessarily forced or just hokey ('coalition of the willing'). His writing is just too meandering for my taste; following a war of 27 years by theme is not helped by breaking off into tangets five paragraphs long. Some of it is interesting - symbolic importance of ravaging land matched versus the actual futility of it in such an area - but, just, ugh. Hopefully it gets better. It's lucky I got to a chapter on tunnels in Ancient Invetions, otherwise, to the back with ye!
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OtakupunkX · . Joined: 23 Mar 2006 Posts: 730

helicopterp · . Joined: 13 May 2006 Posts: 1435 Location: Philadelphia

Yeah so I somehow didn't equate shin reading thread gaiden with talking about books. So I'm a little dense.

Otakupunkx, those three books form a nice little triangle, subjectually speaking. You have done well to read them more-or-less concurrently.

This summer for me has been filled with the breathtakingly fascinating (Crime and Punishment, Dr. Faustus), the interesting and highly competent (Petersburg, Dead Souls, Lost in the City), and the readable-but-ultimately-mediocre (High Fidelity, The Corrections). I will read whatever I can of Ishmael, a collection of Chekhov plays, The Moviegoer, and The Castle in the next week before being academically (but no less blissfully) confined to studies of Faulkner, Pushkin (in the Russian!), and Chaucer.
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GSL · Posted: Fri Aug 11, 2006 2:00 pm Post subject:

Thank goodness for summer and the ability to read during downtime at work. I'm getting though about one novel per week, and I hope to have at least ten done by time time classes start up again. I finished Galactic Pot Healer by PKD about two weeks ago, and was quite pleased with it. I was vaguly disturbed by the very ending, as it left me with the thought that I ought to be gleaning something deeper from it, but all told I'm a fairly dumb reader when it comes to pulling the unseen out of a text.

Next was Alfred Birnbaum's Japan-only English translation of Murakami's Norwegian Wood. I read it more for completeness' sake, and further reinforced my opinion that Birnbaum is simply a lousy translator, which is unfortunate as some of my favorite Murakami novels have been translated by his hand. He just has a horrible stilted way of saying things that makes you very aware that the novel you're reading was initially written in some very different language--a glaring opposite to Jay Rubin's transparent text. Still, I like having the opportinity to read different translations of a book and get a sense of where both the translaters were coming from. And this one had a weird ending too, one that really felt contrived or tacked on, as though the author just thought to himself, "Well, my last chapter was totally building up towards this ending, so I'll just totally toss it and write this other one instead, just for shits and giggles!" I'm not talking about a twist ending or even something with an underlying significance like in Galactic Pot Healer, I'm talking pure, undistilled WTF.

After that was more PKD, this time A Scanner Darkly. My only regret is that I read the book AFTER seeing the movie last week. The movie in hindsight was such a faithful adaptation of all the major scenes in the book that I'm sure I would have squealed with glee had I watched it after finishing the book. No matter though, it was still excellent.

And now I'm moving into Roger Zelazney's Lord of Light. I'm only a few pages in, but the combination of classic sci-fi rolled liberally in a dressing of Hinduism is certainly promising, if not a little odd.

simplicio · . Joined: 03 May 2005 Posts: 1091

rf · . Joined: 15 Jul 2006 Posts: 23

I like Birnbaum more than the other translators. He's kind of awkward, yeah, but that's actually a strength. When the characters recount vague impressions of their situations, Birnbaum makes them sound like a fuzzily written philosophy paper, which gives the impression that they're struggling to articulate some really stark metaphysical impression, rather than making some offhand remark ("my world is the dream of an octopus" vs. "things seemed, um, weird"). I think I only see it this way b/c I don't like Murakami much.

GSL · Posted: Sat Aug 12, 2006 3:28 am Post subject:

J.Goodwin · . Joined: 31 Jul 2006 Posts: 297 Location: North Shore, MA

simplicio · . Joined: 03 May 2005 Posts: 1091

Lackey · . Joined: 11 Jul 2005 Posts: 1107 Location: Canada

Oh hey, the Dirk Gently books are two of my favourites. Of course I haven't read them for years, I'm not sure if my opinion will have changed or not. Maybe it's time for a re-read.

Currently reading more Kafka, The Castle this time. After hearing so much about how precise Kafka is with language I wonder if the English translations are really accurate? I assume they've done the best they can. His books are fantastically boring though, and I mean both of those adjectives literally.
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Scratchmonkey · . Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Posts: 1439

purplechair · . Joined: 28 Mar 2005 Posts: 378 Location: in my pants

I happen to be reading Virtual Light, at present.

GSL · Posted: Sun Aug 20, 2006 11:50 pm Post subject:

Neuromancer is a rather odd book considering the rest of Gibson's bibliography. While all of the others (save for some of the stories in Burning Chrome) are almost immediately accessable to the reader, I stand by the assertion that once can only form an educated opinion on Neuromancer after reading it twice. I have yet to meet anyone that completely 'got' the book the first time through; the people willing to give it a second shot usually come away satisfied, and those who don't might as well have closed the book halfway through the first read.
I'm not quite sure that I understand or agree with the assertion that it's poor writing that makes a book fully come alive the second time through. I'm sure everyone has seen a few movies that made you say, "AH! NOW I get it!" the second time through; Fight Club (yes, saw the movie before reading the book), Pulp Fiction, and Jin-Roh all spring to my mind as immediate examples. Why are we more willing to extend this sort of tolerance to film, but not books?

J.Goodwin · . Joined: 31 Jul 2006 Posts: 297 Location: North Shore, MA

I did like Idoru. I think the simple truth is that, like the US, Japanese culture has already pretty much matured to it's ultimate state.

The tchotchkes may change, but the feeling remains the same.

IMHO, the US (at least, the US inhabited by caucasians) reached this point in the late 1960s. Japan...I don't know enough to say, but I think it was somewhere in the middle of City Hunter's first couple animated series. It would take a good sit down and watch through to pinpoint it exactly. Certainly by the time City Hunter 3 started up, they'd already reached that point.
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Playing - Ninety-Nine Nights - Xbox 360

Dracko · . Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 2613

Speaking of cyberpunk and Japan, has anyone here read a book called Blood Electric by Kenji Siratori? I'm told it's supposed to be a stream-of-consciousness, cut-up story about teh progressive development, from a first person perspective, of an artificial intelligence. Such a concept leaves room for all sorts of experimentation, I'm sure, but I'm simply wondering if it, along with other forms of so-called "bizarro literature", delivers successfully.
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helicopterp · . Joined: 13 May 2006 Posts: 1435 Location: Philadelphia

SuperWes · Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2006 8:02 am Post subject:

GSL · Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2006 1:46 pm Post subject:

SO! Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny. Finished it about a week ago, and it has been influential in projecting Zelazny to the upper tiers of my favorite SF authors. The story takes place in the distant future on an Earth-like planet settled long ago by a group of colonists who apparently had some sort of latent X-Men-style mutant powers, which they enhanced with futuristic technology. Among these things they brought with them were devices able to transfer a person's consciousness from one body to the next. With these devices. cloning appartatus, and their own powers, they set themselves up as gods of the Hindu pantheon to rule over the other inhabitants of the planet as they saw fit. The cloning/soul transfer bit gave them the power to grant reincarnation to the peasents, and mind-reading devices searched a person's 'Karmic record' to decide the status of the form they would take on their next trip through.

The book's tagline is "His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred to drop the maha- and -atman, however, and called himself Sam. He never claimed to be a god, but then, he never claimed not to be." Sam was one of the original colonists to the planet who settled down as a minor deity but ultimately grew very disenchanted with the heavy-handed way the gods ruled the rest of humanity, doling out technological advances as they say fit (the printing press was 'discovered' on three seperate occasions, all of which ended with the gods razing the town it was found in). And what better way to oppose a pantheon than to create a following around the idea that gods are not needed, and that only personal reflection is required to obtain Enlightenment and ultimately reach Nirvana? And so Sam takes on the name Siddhartha and sets about establishing a religion to oppose the Hindu gods...

I could go much deeper into the plot, but it's really complex and hard to do without spoiling things. It is certainly one of the most amazing novels I've read in a while if only for the concept of Hinduism with its gods explained through high technology. It's really an engaging book that's well worth a read if you can find it, and has enough twists to keep you constantly interested, and enough references to bygone Earth religions and whatnot to keep you smiling every time you catch their meaning.

helicopterp · . Joined: 13 May 2006 Posts: 1435 Location: Philadelphia

I finished Daniel Quinn's Ishmael a few days ago and it was everything I wanted it to be and a little more. Thomas Mann's Dr. Faustus is the best thing I've read all year. I have begun and am enjoying both The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera and Possession by A.S. Byatt. Unfortunately, I own neither of them, so I can only read them when I can. Outside of that, I've got gobs of Faulkner and Chaucer for two classes, and some Russian folktales for another. I just felt like saying all that.
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J.Goodwin · . Joined: 31 Jul 2006 Posts: 297 Location: North Shore, MA

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

I bought the first and third book of the Valis trilogy...

I thought it was the first and second.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

Mr. Mechanical · Friendly Stranger Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 1276

I purchased some P K Dick while on vacation this summer: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, and The Man in the High Castle. I've only read the first since I've been back, as I've also been skimming through the Larry Niven short story collection N-Space, which is just all kinds of awesome. If you've never read Larry Niven you've never really read science fiction as far as I'm concerned. It was actually Halo that caused me to seek out and read Ringworld, so that's one more thing I can thank that game for.

dhex · Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2006 9:14 pm Post subject:

GSL · Posted: Sat Aug 26, 2006 12:18 am Post subject:

J.Goodwin · . Joined: 31 Jul 2006 Posts: 297 Location: North Shore, MA

GSL · Posted: Sat Aug 26, 2006 12:47 pm Post subject:

Mr. Mechanical · Friendly Stranger Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 1276

J.Goodwin · . Joined: 31 Jul 2006 Posts: 297 Location: North Shore, MA

Just for gods sakes DON'T read the draft chapters of The Man in the High Castle 2.

Seriously, I say DO NOT.
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Playing - Ninety-Nine Nights - Xbox 360

GSL · Posted: Sun Aug 27, 2006 4:36 am Post subject:

Draft chapters of a sequel? Here now, explain yourself!

J.Goodwin · . Joined: 31 Jul 2006 Posts: 297 Location: North Shore, MA

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

dhex · Posted: Mon Aug 28, 2006 7:49 am Post subject:

so i'm reading midnight's children by salman rushdie. it's really great. he's really great. he gets a lot of shit in some circles for not being indian enough or whatever, but those circles are filled with fuckfaces.

i remember taking the satanic verses out of the library as a kid - well after the fatwah came down, but probably after the berkeley firebombings since there's no publicity like free publicity - and being more or less completely lost. i knew i was reading good words but i had no idea why the words were offensive to anyone. there were plenty of contexts i had no way of understanding, and i found it hard to beleive that the cutesy parody of khomeni in exile was the source of all the problems. of course, nothing i read at the time in the daily news helped me understand very much, and we didn't have cable so i couldn't catch booknotes...so long story short, it took me nearly a decade to re-read the book with at least most of the contexts sorted out. it holds up, i think.

the whole fatwah thing regarding the satanic verses was a pretty sad chapter for international letters. not so much fuckfaces holding forth death threats - this is as old as religion itself - but the reaction of people who would otherwise be on the side of free speech. even now, the general attitude when the book is taught or lectured about is that rushdie basically had it coming or should have been more careful - something which would be completely unthinkable if the target was a christian politician or leader and the author of a class more protected than atheist westernized indian.

needless to say, if even a minor religious figure - the leader of a christian identity sect, let's say, involving less than 500 people (i.e. all of them) - had threatened terrence mcnally for corpus christi, no one but cultural conservatives would have said he had it coming or he should have been more careful. the very idea is absurd; after all, the response would come, art is about provocation and other nonsense like that.

i don't agree with a certain traditionalist catholic friend of mine on a lot of things, but on this point he's right; the only reason this sort of double standard occurs is because christians are largely (read: completely) unwilling to kill for reasons of slight or insult or blasphemy in america. i can understand the bitterness he feels about this point, even if i'm somewhat creeped out by the implication that people would kill over criticism, no matter how vile.

but as we saw with the death of theo van gogh, politics and ideology will always come before principle. if van gogh had been gay, we'd have already seen three or four movies of the week. if he'd been gay and writing against christianity, the 20 foot statute would already have been created on the spot he was killed and russell crowe would have just finished wrapping up the film of this courageous man who stood against religious intolerance. instead we are reminded of the obvious; that he was a brusque man, or an asshole, or a whole lot of both. it's amazingly racist in one sense. "don't provoke those people, they, uh, take their religion uh, very, uh, seriously..."

it is a charicature that all of the talking heads have a stake in keeping alive.

repeated once again with those lousy danish cartoons and all the engineered brou-ha-ha over that.

people fucking disgust me sometimes.

edit: i forgot south park's cartoon wars episode. they'd run the bleeding from her ass virgin mary piece a few weeks before, iirc. needless to say comedy central didn't worry about running that.
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J.Goodwin · . Joined: 31 Jul 2006 Posts: 297 Location: North Shore, MA

Well, if you're going to bring up the Satanic Verses, you have no choice but to recognize Howard Philips Lovecraft. Another New England homeboy.

I haven't found anything that he actually wrote (beware, there are some stories that the executor of his estate either wrote or "finished" after his death that are utter crap) that wasn't great. It's classic 20s pulp at it's best.

I would go out of my way to ensure that you get one of the more recent editions which have been back checked to his notes for corrections though, just because of the above referenced problems.

The Penguin classics editions are all based on the corrected texts and are easily available, whereas the Arkham House editions (also corrected) are much more difficult to find (limited printings, and they rotate them annually, so they are not consistently in print).
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Playing - Ninety-Nine Nights - Xbox 360

dhex · Posted: Mon Aug 28, 2006 8:43 am Post subject:

huh? i fail to see the connection. but i've never really dipped my toe into lovecraft, which is sort of ironic considering the company i've kept.
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J.Goodwin · . Joined: 31 Jul 2006 Posts: 297 Location: North Shore, MA

dhex · Posted: Mon Aug 28, 2006 9:08 am Post subject:

gotcha. so what are they?
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rf · . Joined: 15 Jul 2006 Posts: 23

Can anyone recommend something by Kenzaburo Oe? This is coming from someone who doesn't like Japanese literature much because the translations tend to be really bland, and the straightforward take-home messages aren't usu. worth the slog. Flipping through Oe's books at a bookstore (Powell's!), the writing, etc. looked a little more dense and meaty, as far as I could tell. Is this true, and if so, what should I read?

GSL · Posted: Sat Sep 02, 2006 1:48 pm Post subject:

So, I just finished Snow Crash last night. While not my absolute favorite author (though he ranks up in the top five or so) Neal Stephenson is the one writer who constantly amazes me with how he makes his stories work. I don't know of anyone else who could pack such long novels so full of such varied information, and still have it all be entertaining to read. The man's some sort of robotic genius.

I'm trying to decide if I want to start on Quicksilver or give myself a brief break from the Stephenson epic for a while. I know when I get started on the whole Baroque Cycle, I probably won't want to read anything else before I'm done.

helicopterp · . Joined: 13 May 2006 Posts: 1435 Location: Philadelphia

Somehow, I missed this thread earlier this week when y'all were talking about Rushdie. I heard the man speak in Oxford (ostensibly about Shalimar the Clown, but really about anything he wanted to speak about). He is a brilliant thinker, a wonderfully brash man, a competent and engaging speaker, and a real disappointment to read. I have read the Satanic Verses and the first hundred or so pages of Midnight's Children. I find that the ease and breadth of his imaginative composition cannot escape his compositional style of heavy-handed, verbose specificity. A good magical realist text--and you don't have to look very hard in the second half of the twentieth century to find one--should not obfuscate ideas with words. His dizzying wordplay is impressive, but the narrative he presents calls for a clarity of voice that he seems unable to provide.
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J.Goodwin · . Joined: 31 Jul 2006 Posts: 297 Location: North Shore, MA

He has a writers convention or similar that he helps organize. This year the topic is religion and there are a number of (depending on your perspective) high profile religious persons who are going to be speaking.

For some reason I can't find a website...
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Playing - Ninety-Nine Nights - Xbox 360

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

In case anyone was really curious, I gave up on Nuromancer. Srry!

I started Valis, which may have been a mistake. I am having a hard time getting into the story. I am reading at night now to wind down and I just end up rereading too much trying to figure out what he is saying. I don't know if a drug induced theological and spiritual detective story is really working for me right now. Does the story start to take some kind of narative soon, or does it remain as just a psycho/theological discussion platform?
_________________
“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

OtakupunkX · . Joined: 23 Mar 2006 Posts: 730

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

J.Goodwin · . Joined: 31 Jul 2006 Posts: 297 Location: North Shore, MA

dhex · Posted: Tue Sep 05, 2006 10:18 am Post subject:

helicopterp · . Joined: 13 May 2006 Posts: 1435 Location: Philadelphia

Which Miller?

And if words about words all wrapped into wordplay is your thing, try Nabokov's Pale Fire. The man is a virtuoso.

Finally, I am awestruck here in the UGA library basement because every day I work I get to look at the most beautiful copy of Ulysses I have ever seen.
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Dracko · . Joined: 10 Oct 2005 Posts: 2613

Pale Fire is a treat. It's one of the most playful and stimulating reads I've had in a while. It reminds me of IF in how truly responsive it is to the reader's own connection-drawing and investigation.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

dhex · Posted: Tue Sep 05, 2006 10:38 am Post subject:

henry miller, of course.

pale fire is a beautiful work.

there's a cloth-bound english publication of ulysses in my local used bookstore - reason number 4 million to put up with the cost of living in nyc - and one day i hope to have it. i also hope to grow wings and fly one day as well.
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helicopterp · . Joined: 13 May 2006 Posts: 1435 Location: Philadelphia

The Ulysses I get to look at is part of a great-works-ish set by the Franklin Library in Pennsylvania. Every work included is bound in leather (complete with the those cool old-school-looking ridges on the spine) embossed with a unique (not unique to the set as a whole but to each individual work) gold pattern. The page edges are gilded and each work comes complete with illustrations. My only complaint with the series as I have seen it so far is that the Crime and Punishment printed as part of it is not the superb Pevear and Volokhonsky translation (which did not come out until a decade later).

The Ulysses I own and will read whenever I am feeling courageous is a well-worn paperback with a simple black cover bearing the title and author in yellow and green. I found it cheap and used at Blackwell's and am terribly fond of it.
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