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What are you reading Chapter 4

#61
Lee Moses said:
I hadn't realized that this thread had revived in another "Chapter." Based on recommendations from "What Are You Reading? Chapter 3," I am currently reading:

BraveNewWorld_FirstEdition.jpg


It's a pretty quick and gripping read. I'm pretty busy with other things, but I picked it up last night and should finish it up in a couple of days.
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I was a little disappointed in this book as a story. The backdrop is ingenious, and it's worth reading just to see the future world Huxley predicted. But the character development is lacking, probably intentionally so. There is not a single character with whom the reader can identify or whom the reader can respect, with the possible exception of one supporting actor. Huxley's story seems to grow cruder the further one reads. There is no resolution or hope, and I suppose that's to add to the bleakness of the scenario and to urge readers to prevent that future long before it arrives.

So there are reasons for it, but it diminishes the sheer pleasure of the reading.
 
#63
Yesterday, I finished Maxine Hong's Memoirs of a Childhood Among Ghosts, which I found fascinating... comparing and contrasting her experience as the child of Chinese immigrants, and mine as the child of a Japanese immigrant.

Now I'm reading A Rising Thunder by David Weber... space opera brain candy, but no one does it better than Weber! (I think Drake does it as well, but no one does it better!)
 
#64
3234718 said:
It was so sad when he died. I'm gonna read this one again:
401px-God_is_not_great.jpg
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for the turn on;
Am reading "God...
Now.
Nice grumpy atheist!
fnord!

I was reading and still am while reading Hitch, Antichrist: Two Thousand Years of the Human Fascination with Evil by Bernard McGinn. They are a good pair to read together as the end of times scenario is studied in both from different angles.
 
#67
Vanity Fair - Thackeray

written in the mid 1800s story about two young women, one good, one not so much, growing up in England. Also about two families, one goes bankrupt, one prospers. About English and French society and the fall of Napoleon at Waterloo. About life & love, morality & decency.
Writer is good. A lot of the story is narrated tongue in cheek. Reads a lot like Dickens. Long book.
 
#70
Possession - A.S. Byatt

Two present day English literary researchers discover an unknown romantic liaison between two mid 19th century poets. The race to discover the poets love letters, who will legally possess them, and where they will reside is on between an English literary professor who wishes to keep them in their home country of England and an American art collector who would like them in his personal collection in the US.

A romance novel as the young male research student leaves his long term girlfriend to track down clues with a female professional literary scholar.
 
#75
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

Cloud Atlas consists of six nested stories that take the reader from the remote South Pacific in the nineteenth century to a distant, post-apocalyptic future. Each tale is revealed to be a story that is read (or observed) by the main character in the next. The first five stories are interrupted at a key moment. After the sixth story, the other five stories are returned to and closed, in reverse chronological order, and each ends with the main character reading or observing the chronologically previous work in the chain. Eventually, readers end where they started, with Adam Ewing in the nineteenth century South Pacific. Each story contains a document, movie or tradition that also appears in a previous story. It shows how history not only repeats itself, but also connects to people in all time periods and places.
 
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#76
ryco said:
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

Cloud Atlas consists of six nested stories that take the reader from the remote South Pacific in the nineteenth century to a distant, post-apocalyptic future. Each tale is revealed to be a story that is read (or observed) by the main character in the next. The first five stories are interrupted at a key moment. After the sixth story, the other five stories are returned to and closed, in reverse chronological order, and each ends with the main character reading or observing the chronologically previous work in the chain. Eventually, readers end where they started, with Adam Ewing in the nineteenth century South Pacific. Each story contains a document, movie or tradition that also appears in a previous story. It shows how history not only repeats itself, but also connects to people in all time periods and places.
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That sounds really interesting. I might have to pick up a copy of that.
 
#78
MonetBass said:
I've heard the book is really interesting. The movie, not so much. :(
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Yeah. When I looked it up on Google, the first hit was the IMDb page for the movie. From ryco's description it doesn't sound like something that would adapt well into a movie.

I would absolutely LOVE to see a [well adapted] movie version of Invalid Link Removed, though. I dread the day it comes out because so many movies absolutely slaughter the books they're based on, but I still want it to happen in case it's pulled off right.
 
#80
Lee Moses said:
I was a little disappointed in this book as a story. The backdrop is ingenious, and it's worth reading just to see the future world Huxley predicted. But the character development is lacking, probably intentionally so. There is not a single character with whom the reader can identify or whom the reader can respect, with the possible exception of one supporting actor. Huxley's story seems to grow cruder the further one reads. There is no resolution or hope, and I suppose that's to add to the bleakness of the scenario and to urge readers to prevent that future long before it arrives.

So there are reasons for it, but it diminishes the sheer pleasure of the reading.
Click to expand...

I just bought the counter novel to this book: Island. I haven't gotten into it yet, as I've just begun reading the Fountainhead. I look forward to finishing both.
 

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